And the books are lovely!  Oh, it’s so, so nice to see them with the new cover – to know I can let people take them off the shelf and not feel that I ought to explain that the cover gives a false impression of what people will find inside.  Don’t get me wrong – I was over the moon when Linden Bay published it first, and I’m always going to be grateful to them, but the cover was a tiny bit of grit in my oyster, and now the second edition has turned the grit into a pearl.

As is the way with book covers, it looks even better in real life than it does on the screen.  But unfortunately I can’t prove that with a photo that you’ll only have to view on the screen anyway.  It won’t stop me trying, though

Frustration, thy name is “Under the Hill.”  I can’t believe this was originally only going to be a novella!

I’m not even thinking about how much editing this thing is going to need!  (A clue – it’s lots and lots.  But I’ll think about that after the first draft is finished.)

I’ve had a slight revelation and realized that if I shut myself in the bedroom for two twenty minute periods of intensive writing, I can do 1000k a day even when Rose is at home, and this is making me lots happier about her study leave.  If I can keep it up while they are both at home, I might even be able to reclaim the summer holidays, and that will be a major source of frustration eliminated from my year.

I will try the local branch, but I’m sorry that I raised anyone’s hopes about a do in London.  It seems it’s not going to happen after all.  This is more the kind of level of enthusiasm I’m used to receiving from bookshops, but I’ve got to admit it’s a bit of a disappointment after the lovely reception I got when I visited personally.  Back to business as usual, it seems

False Colors was a pleasant surprise. I expected the M/M Romance aspect to dominate but it did not. The naval story was well researched and the ship handling, action, and crew interactions were woven into a very believable naval narrative. It is primarily a love story but it is also a very good naval fiction novel.

This makes me squee, because I badly wanted it to be both a good romance and a good AoS novel.  I don’t see why you would have to choose one or the other.

It’s amusing, though, that I see a trend in the reviews, with the Romance readers getting frustrated about the iceberg incident (presumably because they think that Alfie’s period of mourning for Farrant goes on too long?  Or perhaps that he ought not to mourn at all?) while the reviews from a naval novel POV seem to think that was the best bit.  Perhaps you can’t please all the people all the time, but you can clearly please some people some of the time, and some other people at other times

This week has been a great week for reviews, but a poor week for health.  Here’s hoping that next week I feel well enough to write, and if that has to be paid for in no more reviews, I will just cherish the ones I’ve already got and be thankful.

Wave of Reviews by Jessewave says:

Shining in the Sun is a breath of fresh air and you will love the British and French ambience. Alex Beecroft is a wonderful writer and her prose is some of the best I have read. She has a knack for creating complex flawed protagonists with whom readers fall in love and I never want her books to end because I don’t want to leave the characters behind… Definitely recommended.

Full review here.

Which is enough to set me squeeing all by itself, but then Kate Cotoner also gave me a lovely chewy review on Goodreads here , examining the themes and contrasts of the book

She says:

This novel broke my heart then put the pieces back together again. …. I came away from the book with a sense of a specific place and time – a kind of fin de siecle moment that will resonate with anyone who’s ever loved, even hopelessly, in that golden period of summertime. Shining In The Sun is an extraordinary emotional and romantic story that’s richly rewarding to read.

Which makes me want to play Don Henley’s The Boys of Summer – which I’ve adopted as the SitS theme tune – very loud and break open something alcoholic in celebration.  Thank you very much, Wave and Kate!  You are complete stars and have put my mind at rest no end

However, I haven’t forgotten that I was running a competition; whereby anyone who sent me a picture of False Colors on a bookshop shelf would have their name entered in the hat to win a signed copy.  I have now drawn out the name of the winner.

With this photo

And a post of her own where you can see two more here

http://ima-pseudonym.livejournal.com/267797.html#cutid1

The winner is …

(Don’t you just hate it when I do that! )

Sorry.  The winner is lj user ima-pseudonym.

Congratulations!  I’ll be in touch to find out your address just as soon as I’ve posted this.  Then I’ll get the book in the post before the weekend

Thank you so much to everyone who took part!  Hee!  I’m now quite convinced that I have in fact got a book in the bookshops

If anyone else who submitted a photo would like to receive a signed book plate, which you could put into your copy, do drop me a line on alex@alexbeecroft.net and I would be glad to send you one

http://nos4a2no9.livejournal.com/269348.html

who says (among other things, including a very flattering comparison of False Colors and Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade):
False Colors was just as thoughtful and emotionally wrenching as Gabaldon’s second Lord John book (which, um, destroyed me a little) but Beecroft manages to pull off a happy ending for her characters after much suffering and conflict. The book features some of the best plotting and pacing I’ve ever encountered, and for the writers among you who struggle with such things (as I do, endlessly) I’d recommend taking a look at how Beecroft builds her plot around the central romance. She allows the relationship between her characters to develop over the course of many chases, escapes, imprisonments, torture sessions, naval battles and lovers’ quarrels. The book is a scant 326 pages long, and it’s crammed full of historical detail, plot events, secondary and tertiary characters, hot sex scenes and naval description. There is almost too much going on, but Beecroft manages to balance everything out and still find room for character development, introspection, and a very satisfying ending.

and this review on Amazon from Toni V.Sweeney, author of Jericho Road:

http://tinyurl.com/cn5f4x

who says (in part):
I’m totally ignorant of naval or sea-faring terms and don’t know a mainsail from a bosun but that didn’t stop me from loving the vivid, gruesome descriptions of the sea battles or how the British lived in Jamaica and Gibraltar. The bleak, desolation of the Albion’s being stranded in frozen waters after striking an iceberg made me wonder: How did these men manage to survive without computers and other modern equipment on their ships? Surely they had to have an inordinate amount of courage to even attempt such voyages! You have to admire anyone who’d dare choose such a life, much less make a career of it.

The main characters in this story–Alfie, John, and Farrant–are portrayed exactly that way…Alfie, seeking permanent love, Farrant taking medications to help him stave off his vice, and John, questioning in his first tremble of attraction to another man whether both his love of God, his sense of duty, and his chastity are a sham. They are brave men, men with both honor and courage, who hold to duty while flying secretly in the face of public morality, not a limp wrist or a lacy hanky in the lot.

Behold me doing the happy dance and squeeing mightily   Thank you very much, both of you!

I’m fairly positive that I said that Josh Lanyon (who is the ‘male’ the article refers to – I did give them his name!) was a prominent male writer of m/m romance, not “one of the few males who have found success in the female-dominated field of gay fiction”, but see above about talking nonsense when I’m under pressure to reply to a question with any sort of speed.

My attempts to plug Transgressions and False Colors as books also seem not to have come across but I must say, I’m very relieved he at least didn’t call False Colors ‘a torrid potboiler’!

“Male Lovers, Female Readers” in Columbus’ News and Entertainment Weekly

Today has even had a lot of squee in it, after the large doses of OMG!WTF of the weekend.  I must say I’ve missed my squee!

Causes of joy today: