Outside the box
(publication date February 21)
Seven authors, all with impeccable writing credentials, present their anthology called OUTSIDE THE BOX: Women Writing Women.
We've each proved our worth with
awards, fellowships, teaching posts and commercial success. We've all
self-published to keep our hard-earned independence and our artistic
identity. Now we’re teaming up for an ebook collection of our
full-length fiction featuring a diverse collection of unlikely heroines.
There’s no one genre. Each novel
is a character-led page-turner.
We want to prove that fine, original
writers are creating work of value and quality. And we want to entertain you.
The anthology will be available for 90
days from February 21, 2015.
Follow the tour every day to read what each of these great
writers has to say about writing and so much more.
BLUE MERCY by Orna Ross
The book: Mercy stands accused of
killing her elderly and tyrannical father. Now, at the end of her life, she
needs Star, the daughter she fought to protect, to know what really happened
that fateful night in 1989.
The author: Orna Ross writes novels,
poems and the Go Creative! book
series. The Bookseller calls her
"one of the 100 most influential people in publishing" for her work
with The Alliance of Independent Authors.
CRAZY FOR TRYING by Joni Rodgers
The book: A regional bestseller
short-listed for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. In the 1970s, a
troubled young woman heads west to create a new identity and shake off the
burden of her mother's radical past, but love and loneliness take her life in
an unexpected direction.
The author: Joni Rogers hit the New
York Times bestseller list with her cancer memoir Bald in the Land of Big Hair.
She is also ghost-writer of numerous other bestsellers and founder
of the League of Extraordinary Authors. Joni lives in Houston, Texas.
MY MEMORIES OF A FUTURE LIFE by Roz
Morris
The book: In this work of literary
fiction, a brilliant pianist’s career is ended by injury. She turns to a
mysterious healer and faces the possibility that her life is someone else's
past incarnation.
The author: Roz Morris earned her
spurs as a ghost-writer, selling more than four million books writing the
novels of other people. She is a
writers' mentor and a radio show host, and she teaches writing masterclasses
for The Guardian newspaper.
THE CENTAURESS by Kathleen Jones
The book: Bereaved biographer Alex
Forbes goes to war-ravaged Croatia to research the life of a celebrity artist
and finds herself at the centre of a family conflict after she uncovers a
mutilated photograph, stolen letters and a story of indeterminate gender,
passion and betrayal.
The author: Kathleen Jones lives in
Italy and is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. She is best
known for her award-winning biographies, and has also written
extensively for the BBC.
AN UNCHOREOGRAPHED LIFE by Jane Davis
The book: Alison gave up the chance to
be a prima ballerina when she became pregnant and turned to prostitution to
provide for her child, but the tempting hope of a better life may come at a
terrible price.
The author: Jane Davis won the Daily Mail Award for
her first novel, which secured her a publishing contract. She has now gone on
to self-publish four other novels and isn’t afraid to tackle the
trickiest of subjects.
ONE NIGHT AT THE JACARANDA by Carol
Cooper
The book: Diagnosed with cancer, Sanjay has no time to
waste. Laure is a successful lawyer, Harriet is a struggling
freelance writer, and Karen is a single mother of four. Before they can find a
soul-mate, they each need to confront who they really are.
The author: Carol Cooper is a London-based
journalist and award-winning non-fiction author. Her debut novel was a finalist in the Indie Excellence
Awards 2014. In her spare time she’s a doctor.
WHITE LADY by Jessica Bell
The book: Sonia, unfaithful wife of a
Melbourne drug lord, yearns for sharp objects and blood. But now that she’s
rehabilitating herself as a “normal” mother and maths teacher, it’s time to
stop dreaming about slicing people’s throats. Easier said than done.
The author: Jessica Bell is
an Australian novelist, poet, singer/ songwriter /guitarist who lives in
Athens, Greece. She is Publishing Editor of Vine Leaves Literary Journal and author of the bestselling Writing in a Nutshell series.
Some of the authors
have answered a couple of questions PLUS there’s an excerpt!
What would you be doing if you
weren’t a fiction writer?
Kathleen Jones:
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I originally
studied law in order to become a barrister, so maybe that's what I would be
now. But I think I'd probably have been scribbling crime fiction on the
back of my papers in court when I should have been paying attention, and my
career would have been very short!
I've also lectured in Creative Writing at various universities and I'm
currently at Lancaster, so there's a good bet that I'd have become an academic.
The detective aspect of research is what drew me to writing biography in
the first place - it's very seductive.
Joni Rodgers:
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My career is actually a balance of writing and editing. For
me, writing is like painting and editing is like sculpting—two very different
art forms, but you employ the same craft skills to a certain extent. Writing is
my soul, but I love helping other writers unpack their stories and discover
their voices.
Excerpt from Crazy for Trying
by Joni Rodgers - Tulsa weaved
on shaky sea legs down the narrow aisle to the cramped lavatory. The door
closed behind her with a hydraulic hiss. Tulsa leaned against it, not knowing
where to set her bulky purse or her bulky self.
She remembered being on an
airplane when she was small. Her mother had nudged her inside and closed the
door, leaving Tulsa alone in the dim, steel-walled closet. She was afraid to
sit down, thinking if she flushed, a trapdoor would swing away and ka-roosh her
right out the bottom of the fuselage, under the sucking scream of the jet
engines and into the vast, silent atmosphere. She tried to go standing up like
she’d seen a man in the park do once but emerged with her pants and kneesocks
damp and her chin trembling.
“Mom,” she gulped, “I was—I
was—”
“You know what,
Tuppy-my-guppy,” her mother said, “I have your burgundy cords in my bag, and
I’m thinking they’d be a little more seasonable when we get to San Francisco.
Comfort-wise. Would you mind changing?”
“I don’t mind,” the guppy
gratefully shook her head.
Grown-up Tulsa closed her eyes,
missing the scent of baby powder in low-heeled shoes.
Alexandra Firestein: “A woman has no reflection so pristine as her
mother; no stronger ally, no greater enemy—except, perhaps, herself.”
Tulsa hitched up her dress, did
what was necessary in the cramped space, and then washed her hands, trying to
avoid the mirror. She wrestled her gigantic purse onto the sink, took out her
Noxzema and wiped away the smudgy raccoonish remains of her mascara. She rubbed
at a smear of blush above each sallow cheek and scrubbed her pudgy neck where
the brocade pattern of the seat cushion had left a bold red imprint while she
slept. She prodded her heavily padded bra, trying to push it back to
semiroundness. Her hair looked like a bad night at the Ice Capades. Her
forehead showed signs of premenstrual breakout.
She was ugly.
Tulsa savored the
mouth-watering sting of it; it was her uniqueness, her red badge of courage,
the only familiar thing left in her world. Someone at some time had opened some
tiny puncture wound on her, and by carefully continuing to peel around the
edges of it, Tulsa was able to open it wider, just enough to prevent it from
healing. She had nurtured it through a spotty childhood and into raw red
adolescence. It had become easier to lay the wound open during high school as
others rushed to reaffirm her worst fears about herself.
She was asked out only once,
and not by one of the three boys in her class who were taller than she was.
Radley Baenmeier was the ill-fated short boy who waited for her after assembly
the day Dr. Fursthort called her forward and gave her a certificate for getting
the highest SAT score in the history of Lighton Valley Christian Academy. The
good doctor was scowling because Tulsa was about to graduate with a D average
and was known to cut classes early and often. What’s more, the girl was a Jew—a
hell-bound, Christmas-concert-shunning Jew—and that mother of hers was a
pestilence, God help us, a threat to decent people. Tulsa ran the gauntlet of
spattering applause to the front of the auditorium, nicked the embossed
certificate from his chubby fingers, wriggled out of a damp handshake, and
dodged behind the heavy stage curtain. She hid, heart pounding, in the
velveteen forest until everyone was gone.
But Radley Baenmeier waited for
her.
Congratulations, he told her
and did she suppose, he wondered, would she maybe want to go see a play or
something sometime, because his mom would drive them on Friday, you know, if
Tulsa wanted to go see Othello, which
the state university theatre department was doing, and it might not suck, you
know, so…you know. Would she? Did she want to go?
Tulsa wanted to go. Truly she
did. Radley was a known brain and not completely unattractive. He was almost as
tall as she was and smelled like he’d just taken a shower with Dial soap. Tulsa
thought she could stand being driven by Radley’s gushy mother and sitting close
beside him for two Dial-scented hours in the aching, artistic dark of Othello. But somewhere between
Desdemona’s passion and Iago’s deceit, she became convinced that this must be
an elaborate practical joke and someone was about to pour a bucket of pig’s
blood on her head just like in Carrie,
and then she got terribly thirsty and crept down the back stairs to make her
way miserably home in the snow. Radley never spoke to her again. He just
schlubbed over to the other side of the hall when he saw her, and Tulsa just
quoted Alexandra Firestein on the archaic, meat-market practice of dating. It
was easier that way. For a girl who looked like she did.
Excerpt from The Centauress by Kathleen Jones
In every tragedy there is the accidental moment –
choosing a particular seat on a train, turning down the wrong road, deciding to
take a lift from the 89th floor – the arbitrary, pivotal moment that means
destruction or survival...
Afterwards they sent me a phial of ash and it goes with me everywhere.
Every night before I go to sleep I hold it in my hand and close my eyes
and try to visualise a face that is gradually becoming more and more remote.
The glass is cold and hard to the touch, but it warms in my fingers and I
like to think that somewhere in it there is a flake of skin, a fragment of
bone, a few remaining atoms of the person I loved. Flesh of my flesh;
bone of my bone.
OUTSIDE THE BOX: Women Writing Women (February 20, 2015 for 90 days) £7.99/$9.99 from Amazon, Nook, iBooks, Kobo and more. More
information on www.womenwritewomen.com.
https://www.facebook.com/womenwritewomen
FOLLOW THE PROGRESS OF THE TOUR TO READ SOME FANTASTIC POSTS BY THIS SUPER
GROUP OF WRITERS
Giveaway
1st Prize-
brand new kindle pre-loaded with the book
10 runners up prizes –
A Digital swag bag
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