Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

July 15, 2008 • 5 Comments

I saw this on Amanda’s blog and thought I’d have a go. The Big Read, an initiative by the National Endowment for the Arts, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. How do you do?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

July 10, 2008 • 9 Comments

No, I’m not miserable (I don’t do the miseries)…. I’m blue with cold…………………… it’s freezing here………….. We do get blue skies eventually, it’s just first thing in the morning we have harsh frosts and very low temps. And it’s not just me (I do suffer from the cold more than most people). Even my partner is moaning about it.

The thing is, when we moved from the UK to NZ in 2001, in my naivety I thought it was going to be hot all year round…. I know, you’d think I’d have done some research on this, seeing as weather was a huge reason for moving overseas. Having said that I rarely wear a coat even in winter. We’re seriously thinking of moving to the Sunshine Coast in Australia, though, in a few years….. though I’m reliably informed I won’t be able to stand the heat in the summer months….. bring it on, that’s what I say.

Other news………… only 2 weeks and 5 days until San Fran…. and if you think I’m going to bore you senseless with my countdown, then you’re right……..  Clothes almost sorted. Going for a birthday weekend away next week and plan to get the remainder of my conference wardrobe… as well as celebrating my birthday… or should that be commiserating… it’s one of those birthdays you really don’t wish to discuss.

July 2, 2008 • 9 Comments

MySpace Glitters

Barrie Summy had the fabulous idea of having a July 4th recipe exchange. So…… I live in NZ and we don’t celebrate 4th July…. and I don’t cook….. not a lot of hope for me then. But, suddenly I remembered chocolate biscuit cake, which is what I make on special occasions (not very often because I love it so much I can hardly draw breath without popping a piece in my mouth).

So….. Happy 4th July to all of you in the USA…… and if you make Chcolate Biscuit Cake I promise you won’t be disappointed. Sorry, all measurements are in imperial and not metric. Hopefully you’ll understand what all the ingredients are:

Chocolate Biscuit Cake

8oz of digesstive biscuits - crumbled very finely (I use the end of a rolling pin)

2oz butter or margarine (I use dairy free spread, just as good)

2 tablespoons of golden syrup

4½ oz plain (dark) cooking chocolate

Half an orange

 

Melt syrup, chocolate and butter in a pan. Stir in the biscuit. Put mixture into a greased tin. Press down all over with the cut side of the orange.

Leave to set. Cut in squares.

YUM!!!

 

 

June 27, 2008 • 6 Comments

Bestselling author Jenny O’Connell presents a sizzling new series for summer. Her first two Island Summer novels, LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS (MTV/Pocket Books; June 2008; $9.95 each) highlight the lives of the summering visitors, the year-round locals living in the beach towns of Martha’s Vineyard, and the fireworks that explode when they combine for three steamy months.

In LOCAL GIRLS, friendships are in danger of ending with the summer. Kendra and Mona are best friends, local girls who spend their summers catering to rich tourists and the rest of the year chafing against small-town life. Then Mona’s mom marries one of the island’s rich summer visitors, and Mona joins the world of the Boston elite, leaving Kendra and Martha’s Vineyard behind. When Mona returns the following summer, everything is different.

Unlike his sister, Mona’s twin brother Henry hasn’t changed. He’s spending his summer the way he always has: with long, quiet hours fishing. Early mornings before work become special for Kendra as she starts sharing them with Henry, hoping he can help her figure Mona out. Then Kendra hatches a plan to prove she’s Mona’s one true friend: uncover the identity of the twins’ birth father, a question that has always obsessed Mona. And so she begins to unravel the seventeen-year-old mystery of the summer boy who charmed Mona’s mother. But it may prove to be a puzzle better left unsolved–as what she is about to discover will change their lives forever…

In RICH BOYS, Winnie jumps at the chance to babysit for a wealthy summer family and earn some extra money—but soon learns that life in the Barclay’s beautiful vacation home isn’t as perfect as it appears. And what was supposed to be a carefree summer quickly becomes more complicated than she ever thought possible.

I can’t wait to read these two books. Jenny took the time to answer a few questions for me:

1. What inspired the plot for your books?

The books take place on Martha’s Vineyard, so first and foremost summer was the greatest inspiration. I’ve always felt like summer is a time when anything can happen, it’s all about possibility. LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS have very different plots, but they’re both about the possibilities, opportunities and changes summer brings.

2. Why did you decide to write in this genre?

I love writing teen books. It’s a blast going back and remembering what it was like to be a teenager – so much of what I write is based upon my own experiences growing up.

3. What is your writing process like?

Pretty much sit down and start typing. I know the beginning, the end, and nothing in between. I just let the story take shape as it unfolds.

4. What are you working on now?

A third book in the Island Summer series.

5. What do you do when you’re not writing?

I work! I have a “real job” that I also love (in advertising). I also play field hockey, which is why I have odd black and blue spots all over my body.

6. Who do you like to read?

I’ve been on a Sarah Dessen jag lately, I love her books. I love going back and reading books I read as a teen, just to see if they still hold up – and they do! I don’t read fantasy or mystery or historical or suspense. I just like reading about ordinary girls like me.

 

Learn how you can win an Island Summer t-shirt – just in time for the beach. Go to http://jennyoconnell.blogspot.com and enter to win today! And learn more about LOCAL GIRLS and RICH BOYS at www.jennyoconnell.com.

June 21, 2008 • 4 Comments

I am very excited to tour Read My Lips, by my author friend Teri Brown. And what’s even more exciting is that in just over five weeks I’ll be meeting Teri in person at the RWA conference in San Fran….. there will be lots of hugging and squealing…..

 

So here goes……

 

1. What inspired the plot for your book?

My niece is profoundly deaf and I was always fascinated with her ability to read lips and keep up with conversations when the family got together. There were times when as a youngster she would tell her grandmother, “too loud!” because we were all talking at once and the noise was overwhelming through her hearing aids. My Mother in law was very active in deaf advocacy and I learned a lot from her. I think the seed for Read My Lips was planted during some of those conversations.

2. Why did you decide to write in this genre?

I enjoy teens. I “get” them. I remember very clearly what it’s like to be in high school and I get along with my children’s friends really well. In fact, my daughter was talking to some of her friends about texting other people’s moms and they all agreed that it was weird… except for her Mom. I guess I’m different, because my kids’ friends text me a lot! So writing a book for them wasn’t that much of a stretch.

3. What is your writing process like?

You mean beyond panic? Is there a writing process other than, “Oh crap, I better start on that?” I usually come up with an idea and let it perk a bit. Then I try to write a synopsis. Sometimes the characters are so compelling that I jump right into writing, but that doesn’t workout so well. I like to have a roadmap first. Sometimes I do a collage while writing the synopsis and other times I do a brain map on a program called Inspiration. Then I just sit and write as often as I can.

4. What are you working on now?

What am I not working on? LOL! I am juggling an inspirational young adult, my Pulse option book and a YA paranormal. I usually don’t work on so many at the same time, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s just the way it turned out.

5. What do you do when you’re not writing?

Like most writers, I READ! A lot. I also spend a lot of time hanging out with my kids. Or as much time as I can… they lead very busy lives, so when they have a moment to hang with Mom, I grab it. Sometimes I even bribe them with fast food or trips to the mall. Hey, whatever works!

6. Who do you like to read?
So many! Right now, I am loving Rachel Vincent and Cassandra Clare. And I love anything by Kate Brian and Scott Westerfeld.

 

Thanks so much, Teri.

June 17, 2008 • 5 Comments

Well….. missing from blogging, yes. Action….. hmmm….. that’s what I’d like you all to think. The trouble is I’m not sure what counts as action. Have I been writing up a storm….. la la la la la…. have I been doing lots of motel work….. la la la la la….. so what have I been doing?????

Ummmmmm I’ve just finished a jigsaw (much better than the last one). I’ve almost finished the latest Louise Bagshawe… omg can that girl write… and I just noticed from the jacket flap she lives in Northamptonshire… that’s where I used to live in the UK… which means we’re practically related.  I’m seriously thinking of doing some stalking.

Oh… I’ve just remembered… I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time planning my wardrobe for the conference in San Francisco. And, a writer friend’s husband phoned yesterday about ordering a limo to get us all from the airport to the hotel. A LIMO!! I was very excited by that because I think I’m the only person in the world who hasn’t actually been in one. So, picture me standing up, head out the sun roof waving….. a la movie Calendar Girls, or Pretty Woman.