November is another busy month! Having finished writing Dark Immortal, book three in the Immortal Series, J.K. Coi has jumped right into writing book four, Forever Immortal. She will be interviewed by Allie Boniface (http://allieboniface.blogspot.com/) on her blog November 5 and she'll be a guest author on the Wild On Books blog (http://blog.wildonbooks.com/) November 10. Also, log into the Raven Night Club Yahoo Group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The_Raven_Vampire_Nightclub/) November 10 where she'll be chatting about the Immortal Series and her newest release, The Trouble With Destiny. On November 13, J.K. will be visiting Ellora's Cave author Emma Petersen (http://emmapetersen.com/blog/), on November 18 she's being interviewed by Michelle Pillow (http://michellepillow.com/blog/). On November 20, she'll be visiting with author Cathy Stang (http://cathystang.blogspot.com/), and on November 25 she'll be joining author Jeannie Reusch (http://www.jeannieruesch.com/wordpress/).
Shiela Stewart's third book in her Darkness series, Embracing the Darkness has just been released.
Books one, Seducing the Darkness and two, Desiring the Darkness are available in both eBook and Print.
Also, check out Shiela's website to find out how the Darkness began and what transpired to start the creation of her vampires. The Origin's of Darkness: http://www.shielasbooks.ca/The%20Origins%20of%20Darkness.htm
Don't miss the newest FREE READ from Cat Johnson and Linden Bay Romance, "Black Cat". (LINK http://www.lindenbayromance.com/product-blackcat-7264-140.html)
Samantha Sommersby has been blogging with the illustrious Shiela Stewart this week on her Dark Carvings Blog.
Check out all the nifty excerpts. And, if that's not enough, check out the free read that Sam wrote for the All Romance eBooks weekly newsletter, Wildfire!
The story is called Skin, and you can find it in the ARe newsletter archive here.
Eliza Gayle, a new author to Linden Bay has signed up for the National Novel Writing Month. NANO is an annual challenge every November for authors to write 50,000 words in one month. She is writing and hoping to finish Book 2 of her upcoming Linden Bay Black Cougar series. For a sneak peek at the first cover, check out her blog at http://elizagayle.blogspot.com
Charlie Cochrane
Charlie Cochrane started writing relatively late in life, but she's always made up stories, either in her head or to amuse her children. Whether it's creativity or an overactive imagination she's not sure. She tries to draw on the many experiences she's hoarded up, to give a depth and richness to her stories; being a child from a not very salubrious part of London who ended up studying at Cambridge must have its benefits somewhere along the line!
Charlie's ideal day would be a morning walking along a beach, an afternoon spent watching rugby, and a church service in the evening. Living in southern England makes access to all these things fairly simple—she says she couldn't live anywhere you couldn't get to decent sports fixtures.
The Cochrane household is made up of Charlie, her wonderfully supportive, generous husband and their three daughters, all of whom share their mother's sense of humour.
Behind the Scenes of Charlie's Latest Release – Lessons in Love
This, for me, was a story which almost had to be written. The whole Cambridge Fellows Mystery Series springs out of my love of detective novels. I adore the works of Dorothy L Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Simon Brett, anyone who can combine a cracking whodunit with interesting settings and amusing characters.
That fondness for detectives, combined with my experience of life at Cambridge University (many aspects of which haven't changed a lot in one hundred years) must have been niggling away at my creative juices. The last little nudge came from re-reading 'Death at the President's Lodging' by Michael Innes. There was a scene with the detective and a don discussing the crime, sitting in a cosy room in an Oxbridge type college. I thought "There's almost something between those two. What if someone wrote a male/male love story in this sort of setting? What if the two men were also amateur detectives?" I then decided that 'someone' should be me.
I ran the idea past Lee Rowan, who said it was worth pursuing and out of that cauldron of ingredients came this series of books. There are six of them so far, in various stages of publishing/editing, and the seventh one is incubating. The two leading men, Orlando Coppersmith and Jonty Stewart, live in my brain on a pretty permanent basis, suggesting adventures they could be having. Their latest idea is to let them visit the Anglo-French exhibition at The White City—I dare say murder and mayhem will follow in their wake. I hope that readers find these lads an appealing pair; they're fiercely clever, but without being full of themselves, witty, handsome and very much in love.
St. Bride's College, Cambridge, England, 1905.
When Jonty Stewart takes up a teaching post at the college where he studied, the handsome and outgoing young man acts as a catalyst for change within the archaic institution. He also has a catalytic effect on Orlando Coppersmith.
Orlando is a brilliant, introverted mathematician with very little experience of life outside the college walls. He strikes up an alliance with the outgoing Jonty, and soon finds himself having feelings he's never experienced before. Before long their friendship blossoms into more than either man had hoped and they enter into a clandestine relationship.
Their romance is complicated when a series of murders is discovered within St. Bride's. All of the victims have one thing in common, a penchant for men. While acting as the eyes and ears for the police, a mixture of logic and luck leads them to a confrontation with the murderer—can they survive it?
Charlie Cochrane Trivia
1. I'm passionate about the theatre. I think the best performance I've seen was Sir Derek Jacobi as Cyrano de Bergerac, back in the 1980's.
2. I studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and had the chance of taking an MSc at the place where they cloned Dolly the sheep.
3. At school, I learned to do mirror writing so we could pass notes without anyone else understanding them.
4. I was stunned when John Barrowman spoke to me from the stage during the pantomime 'Aladdin'. I have no idea what I said in reply, but my daughters tell me I was incoherent.
5. We once lived at the back of Epsom racecourse, where they run the Derby. Every morning we'd be woken by horses clopping up or down the road going to training.
6. I wouldn't be a published author if it weren't for Lee Rowan, who nagged, supported, cajoled and nurtured me until I took the plunge.
7. I'm sports mad, always have been. Best sporting moment has to be England winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup, with Jonny Wilkinson kicking the winning drop goal off his 'wrong' foot.
8. My favourite sporting 'encounter' was meeting the legendary racehorse Red Rum, and feeding him one of the Polo mints he so loved.
9. I started writing by delving into fanfic. I'm possibly the only person ever to have done crossovers between Torchwood and Hornblower. Certainly the only one crazy enough to write Torchwood crossed with Jeeves and Wooster.
10. I have one very silly and totally illegal ambition. I've always wanted to pull the emergency cord on a train.
What's Next?
Look out for Lessons in Desire, due out 1st February 2009
Jonty Stewart has persuaded his friend Orlando Coppersmith to leave the security of St. Bride's college and take a holiday on the beautiful Channel Island of Jersey. While it's easy, within the confines of an Edwardian Cambridge college, to hide the fact that they are lovers, Orlando is worried that they won't be able to keep the truth a secret from the world at large.
When a brutal murder occurs at the hotel where they're staying, the two young men are once more drawn into identifying the killer. The matter gets complicated by the involvement of the victim's son, Matthew Ainslie, who finds Orlando too attractive to resist making a pass. Can Stewart and Coppersmith keep Ainslie at bay, keep their affair clandestine and solve the crime?
