Isabel Ashdown
Author
Celebrating the Nation’s Libraries
This week I’ve been working with West Sussex Libraries, meeting members of Bognor Regis reading groups, and chatting with the team at Pageturners – all in celebration of Libraries Week.
If you’re looking for a reading group to join, contact your local library for details – and if you’re active on social media, you can join in the conversation and share the library love with the hashtags #WhyILoveMyLibrary and #LibrariesWeek
How To Get Published Event – Open to All
Join us at this month’s Culture Bite Festival for the How To Get Published panel, where I’ll be chatting with fellow writer Stephanie Marland, and Sam Eades, Senior editor from Orion Books.
Together, we hope to give you tips and tricks for getting published, whilst discussing our own particular paths into publishing. Everyone welcome!
Date: Friday 28th September
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Uxbridge Library
Tickets: £5 – bookable in advance here
Fierce Women for 99p!
We’re pleased to tell you that the eBook of Beautiful Liars has been included in the Kobo Fierce Women promotion at 99p.
And the good news is that Amazon Kindle have matched the price, so whichever eReader you use, you can snap it up at a bargain price – for one week only!
Don’t forget you can also sign up to my Book Club for a chance to win free books every month (and receive my latest book news 3-4 times a year) … SIGN UP HERE.
Writing on location … in Norway
Location is an essential anchor within any story, and it’s an element I frequently return to when I’m invited to host creative writing workshops at universities and festivals. Indeed, later this week I’ll be at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, running a ‘Creative Writing Kickstart’ on the theme of location.
An authentic sense of place will serve as a mirror to a characters’ inner emotions, helping to propel the story towards vital actions and dialogue. Locations, it seems to me, are emotional landscapes – quite apart from positioning characters in a particular place and time, they can provide a channel through which those characters can say the things they don’t want to or manage to say in words.
This week I’ve been in Norway, researching the locations of my 2019 novel, Lake Child, a thriller set in the Norwegian fjords. In order to cover a number of locations, the most economic (in terms of time and cost) way to travel was via cruise ship, enabling me to sail in to Stavanger, Olden, Alesund and Bergen – four very different locations in the fjord region, giving me four very different perspectives to draw on for my novel. I’m now entering the tricky second draft stage of writing Lake Child, and have returned from my trip energised and inspired by the experience of walking my characters’ paths. Thank you to P&O Cruises for helping me with information, and for being fabulous travel hosts. I’ll look forward to sharing more news on Lake Child (including cover reveal!) nearer publication …
The Dead Good Reader Awards – vote Little Sister!
The readers have spoken … and Little Sister has been shortlisted for a 2018 Dead Good Reader Award!
THANK YOU to everyone who voted for me back in May. There’s now a second round to get through, so if you’d like to see Little Sister named ‘Most Dysfunctional Family’ at this year’s Theakston Old Peculier Writing Festival in Harrogate, you know what to do! We’re up against stiff competition, from some amazing books and talented writers, so every vote counts. Huge thanks to followers on social media who have already voted this week … I’ll keep you posted on the results!
Did I say thank you? THANK YOU ❤ VOTE HERE before 18th July 2018!
Best Book Club Giveaway!
To celebrate the release of Beautiful Liars in paperback this month, I’ll be giving away SIX fabulous new thrillers to one lucky reader. *To enter, simply sign up to my Book Club Newsletter and you’ll be automatically entered into every monthly giveaway. Easy!
Here’s the link – SIGN UP HERE – and if you’re already subscribed, since new data privacy laws have come in, it’s worth reconfirming your consent to make sure you’re still signed up.
GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!
*UK residents only
Beautiful Liars Launch Invitation
You are warmly invited to join me for a glass of wine (or two!) this June as I launch my new thriller Beautiful Liars at my hometown Waterstones in Chichester. Tickets are free, but must be booked in advance to secure a place. Details on the banner above – look forward to seeing a few of you there!
How I Write: The Bestseller Experiment
This week I had the great pleasure of chatting with writer and podcaster extraordinaire Mark Stay on The Bestseller Experiment, as he asked me questions about getting published, my writing processes, and how I set about plotting the many twists and turns in my latest thriller Beautiful Liars. We also hear from my ace fiction editor Sam Eades, who shares some of her wisdom regarding novel endings and routes to publication. Featuring a wealth of fascinating guests – from Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston to Joanne Harris of Chocolat fame – The Bestseller Experiment is a must-listen for anyone interested in writing, reading and ways with words. Click on the image to tune in!
And breaking news … to celebrate May Bank Holiday, the eBook for Beautiful Liars has just been price dropped to 99p!
Locations in Beautiful Liars
This week the Beautiful Liars Blog Tour continued as I talked to The Quiet Knitter about some of the locations in the book, and shared a couple of exclusive short previews:
‘As a novelist, I’m constantly discovering new things about myself and the way I write. With experience I find that I must be fixed on a location before I can write a word, and being a coastal girl at heart, it’s no surprise that most of my books share a coastal theme. Beautiful Liars is my first departure from the sea – taking us to the diverse locations of rural Derbyshire, modern London and importantly, the Regent’s Canal. Arguably, you could say that I still find myself gravitating towards water …’ To read the full feature, visit The Quiet Knitter here.
Beautiful Liars is on eBook special offer at £1.99 – pre-order it here!
Exclusive Interview
Today the Beautiful Liars Blog Tour stops off at The Tattooed Book Geek, for an exclusive interview with book lover and blogger Drew. Here’s a taster – you can read the rest of the interview by following the link at the end:
1. Would you please tell us about Beautiful Liars?
In Beautiful Liars we meet Casey, a strange and solitary woman who moves into a new home and vicariously inhabits the life of the previous owner – by answering a letter in her name. The letter in question comes from TV personality Martha Benn as she attempts to launch an 18-year-old cold case investigation into the disappearance of her childhood friend Juliet. Before long, Casey’s deception takes over her every waking thought, and her desperation to maintain the connection with celebrity Martha starts to border on instability. Is she dangerous? And will her obsession jeopardise Martha’s case? Only time will tell. To read the full interview, visit The Tattooed Book Geek.
Beautiful Liars is on eBook special offer at £1.99 – pre-order it here!
Teen Perspectives in Fiction
This week the Beautiful Liars Blog Tour kicked off in the run-up to eBook release on 19th April! On Wednesday I chatted to Karen at My Reading Corner about the theme of adolescence in my writing, and shared some of my own reading recommendations.
‘I remember that sense of being the outsider, the invisible person beyond the glass, looking in – and I think in life, that’s possibly one of the most unsettling emotions there is.’ To read the full feature, visit My Reading Corner.
Beautiful Liars is on eBook special offer at £1.99 – pre-order it here!
Join my book club and win prizes!
Subscribe to my quarterly newsletter, and be in with a chance to win a book prize every month! The prizes are donated by Trapeze and Orion Publishing, and range from latest blockbusters to unreleased new discoveries. Sign up here to enter (and to receive the occasional update from me).
Previous prizes have included latest thrillers from authors Sharon Bolton, Daniel Cole, Stephanie Marland and Elle Croft. Next month’s giveaway … The Devil’s Claw by Lara Dearman, a dark and gripping novel set on the island of Guernsey.
GOOD LUCK!
Join my Book Club!
