Welcome my friend and prolific author, Jenny Kane!




 Thrilled to welcome my good friend, Jenny Kane to my blog today! Great to have you here, lovely lady - I'm so happy you can fit me in between your manic writing, lol. Let's kick off with some questions...

Many thanks for inviting me over today, Rachel, on this, the last spot on my ‘Jenny Kane’s Christmas Collection’ blog tour.


1.)                What did you want to be when you grew up? An archaeologist – which I was! I spent many happy years on my hands and knees sifting through the past.
 

2.)                Coffee, tea or hot chocolate?  Coffee every time – A Black Americano please!

3.)                What genre do you typically read? Why? – I adore reading crime novels, particularly detective fiction. I like to be sucked into the puzzle of a plotline and see if I can work it out along with the characters in the book.  I particularly like the original Inspector Morse novels by Colin Dexter and pretty much every sort of Victorian murder mystery written.

4.)                Share a favourite childhood memory. – Walking through White Cross woods in Buckinghamshire with my much loved Grandad and his dog Brandy. We’d talk about everything and nothing while hunting for musket shot left over from the English Civil War in the dirt beneath our feet.

5.)                Do you have any shameless addictions? ie. Tea, Books, Shoes, Clothes?  It has to be coffee – I can’t get through the day without it! So much so, that I recently acquired a job which involves travelling around Somerset and Devon reviewing coffee shops for a blog called Have Americano and Pen...Will Travel!

6.)                What do you think is the biggest challenge of writing a new book? For me, the very first paragraph is always the hardest. Getting that immediate impact so that the reader is keen to keep going is so important, that it has to be perfect. I often write a temporary introduction to my novels, and then I write the ‘real’ instruction after the remainder of the novel is written.

7.)                Do you aim for a set amount of words/pages a day?  I aim for 1500 words or one chapter a day (my chapters are generally between 1500 and 2000 words).

8.)                What are your thoughts on writing a book series? I have written three different series now- although I never intended to write any of them! I’m something of an accidental series writer.

My Another Cup of... series began with the novel, Another Cup of Coffee. Set in a fictional coffee shop in Richmond, it tells the interlocking story of a group of university friends, coffee shop regulars, and staff.

As this was my very first novel under the pen name Jenny Kane, after years of writing erotica as Kay Jaybee, I was nervous about how my contemporary fiction would be received. When Another Cup of Coffee became a Kindle bestseller I was stunned – and very excited!

As a consequence, my publisher asked me to write a Christmas novella length follow u- and Another Cup of Christmas, was born.

It wasn’t until the following Christmas (2014), when I was asked to do another Christmas special centring on the Pickwicks cafe, that my ‘coffee stories’ began to take on ‘series’ form.

The idea of compiling a series is daunting. I didn’t want to make the stories too samey or let the characters become dull. To overcome this problem, I decided to take one of the lead characters, Pickwicks’ waitress Megan, and send her on a mercy mission to the Cotswolds. (Christmas in the Cotswolds). This temporary character relocation worked so well, that in Christmas 2015 I took another of the original Pickwick characters, the novelist Kit, on a literary adventure to Scotland. (Christmas at the Castle).

This year, after much soul searching, I decided it was time to finish the Another Cup of...series with one last full length novel; Another Glass of Champagne.

I wanted all the characters in the series to have one more adventure together at the Pickwicks coffee shop before I moved my pen onto pastures new.

As much as I love the characters within these 5 books- and as easy as it would be to keep writing about them- I didn’t want to fall into the trap of rewriting the same story, in a slightly different way, over and over again.

 

The three Christmas novellas mentioned have now been compiled into one volume, entitled Jenny Kane’s Christmas Collection. Available in both paperback and as a Kindle download, you can follow the Pickwicks’ crew adventures over 3 successive festive seasons.

Blurb for Jenny Kane’s Christmas Collection

There is something very special about Christmas…
Jenny Kane's Christmas Collection combines all three seasonal shorts from Jenny’s best-selling Another Cup of … series in one festive anthology.
In ‘Another Cup of Christmas’, we return to Pickwicks Coffee House in London, the setting for Jenny’s bestselling novel Another Cup of Coffee. Together with old friends Kit, Amy, Scott and Peggy, we meet new Pickwicks waitress Megan, who’s in charge of organising a charity event for the local hospital…is romance as well as seasonal goodwill in the air?
‘Christmas in the Cotswolds’ sees Megan, now an established face at Pickwicks, travelling to the beautiful Cotswold countryside after an emergency call from her friend Izzie. Can Megan help Izzie pull off the perfect Christmas at her Arts and Crafts Centre – and save the business from disaster?
Kit Lambert, Pickwicks’ writer-in-residence, takes centre stage in ‘Christmas at the Castle’. Already nervous about appearing at her very first literary festival, in the grounds of a magnificent Scottish castle at Christmas time, Kit suddenly finds herself co-organising the whole thing – and trying to repair old friendships – with the deadline fast approaching…

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Many thanks Rachel,

Jenny xx

 

Bio

Jenny Kane is the author the contemporary romance Another Glass of Champagne, (Accent Press, 2016),  Christmas at the Castle (Accent Press, 2015), the bestselling novel Abi’s House (Accent Press, 2015), the modern/medieval time slip novel Romancing Robin Hood (Accent Press, 2014), the bestselling novel Another Cup of Coffee (Accent Press, 2013), and its novella length sequels Another Cup of Christmas (Accent Press, 2013),  Christmas in the Cotswolds (Accent, 2014), and Christmas at the Castle (Accent, 2016). These three seasonal specials are now available in one boxed set entitled Jenny Kane’s Christmas Collection (Accent, 2016)

Jenny’s fifth full length romance novel, Abi’s Neighbour, will be published in June 2017.

Jenny’s first medieval murder mystery, The Outlaw’s Ransom will be published in December 2016 under the pen name, Jennifer Ash

 

Jenny is also the author of quirky children’s picture books There’s a Cow in the Flat (Hushpuppy, 2014) and Ben’s Biscuit Tin (Hushpuppy, 2015)

 

Keep your eye on Jenny’s blog at www.jennykane.co.uk for more details.

Twitter- @JennyKaneAuthor

Facebook -https://www.facebook.com/JennyKaneRomance?ref=hl  

Jenny also writes erotica as Kay Jaybee

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