I should probably be ashamed, shouldn’t I? Given that I met JL Merrow at the UK Meet in 2010 and have been following her blog ever since (not to mention working on the BritFlash and “Tea and Crumpet” anthologies with her) I should probably be ashamed that I’ve only just got around to reading one of her books.
However, I can’t be, I’m far too busy going “OMG, this is brilliant!”
I read Muscling Through over the weekend, and I knew within a page that I hadn’t been this excited about discovering a writer since encountering Josh Lanyon. Her characters absolutely leap off the page, and they’re so extremely loveable that I found myself enjoying a contemporary novella in which not much happens except for a slight misunderstanding. Normally this kind of thing bores me rigid, but JL Merrow proves that if you’re a good enough writer you can do anything and make the reader love it. Plot wise this was the professional equivalent of curtain fic, and I didn’t care because I was captivated watching the two of them pick out curtains, they were so adorable together while doing it.
I’m still buried under editing, so this is not a proper review, it’s just an “OMG! You must read this, you’ll love it!” So, to conclude, “OMG! Do yourself a favour and read Muscling Through. It’s wonderful.”
(In my head, blond curly-haired Tom Hiddleston played Larry, and Tom Hardy played Al. This made the reading experience even better for me, but you should probably substitute actors to suit yourself 😉 )
Yay! This is wonderful 🙂 By Honor Betrayed is a SiN five star read! I can’t say how delighted I am. After such a long time with nothing new out I’d lost any confidence I might have had about whether I could do this writing lark. So getting some lovely reviews gives me a big boost to carry on. Thank you to SiN!
http://speakitsname.com/2011/11/16/review-by-honor-betrayed-by-alex-beecroft/
This part amused me:
Sex-wise, I think this is probably the smuttiest book that Alex has ever written, as she leans towards the more veiled sex scene as a rule, but the sex here is postively coarse (but great!). To quote one of the judges on Strictly Come Dancing “It was filthy and I loved it!”
as the only review I have on Amazon so far doesn’t think there’s enough sex. I’d like to think I can add the two opinions up to make “there aren’t many sex scenes, but the ones there are are good.” :) I had to save some writing space for the swashbuckling!
Ooh, what a lovely review this is from the Thrifty Reader blog:
http://thriftyreader.blogspot.com/2011/11/e-book-review-by-honor-betrayed-by-alex.html
“By Honor Betrayed was delicious. That’s the only way to put it. The desire between Tom and Conrad can almost be felt. Everyday touches between master and servant take on a whole new meaning. This was heady stuff.”
“Delicious” makes me hurt my cheeks with grinning. Thank you so much to ~ames~ 😀
When I get ill, I have a tendency towards melodrama. The truth is that I have a tendency towards melodrama at all times, but when I’m ill it manifests itself in the purest form – in weeping and loud declarations that I can’t bear it any more and I want to die. My life is over, I will never again be well enough to achieve anything. I might as well just give up now and allow myself to gorge on chocolate and sleep.
The sleep part is problematic because long periods of having no time alone (such as weeks in which at least one member of my family is at home all day long because of illness) give me stress, and stress gives me insomnia. So I spent a large part of last night on the sofa unable to sleep because of the ticking of the clock, while unable to sleep in my bed because my husband was breathing. How unreasonable is that?!
The chocolate part is problematic because I’ve been on a low fat diet for over a year, and I know that if I once let it slip I could pile the three stone lost back on in as many weeks. I’m only at the ‘I resent the fact that I can’t have chocolate’ stage as yet. I’ll have to be much more wrecked before I actually give in and eat.
So my righteous misery has been gathering speed for so long, deprived of my normal sources of comfort, that I was quite unprepared for it to be interrupted by cover art. But lo! Cover art I have, and it is good 😉
In fact I think it may be my favourite cover art ever. The guy looks like Chris! The stone circle is stone-circley! The Lancaster is a Lancaster! And the over-all colour scheme is lovely. I like the text, I like having a single character rather than a pair on there. I like the fact that he’s got clothes on – I like everything 🙂
I was quite on course for a well deserved tantrum today, but now I think I’ll just look at my cover art again and chill. Life is possibly worth living after all.
Still in the grip of family wide illness (my daughter has it today) it’s nice to have some good news, such as a new book being out 🙂 Today is the release day for By Honor Betrayed, and in Googling to find out where it was being sold I came across a new review of it too. Huzzah! This makes me smile despite the gloom. I award myself a big splash page to celebrate – under the cut to spare my friends’ list the grief of frantic scrolling.
Read the rest of this entry »
In the good news category, I have a lovely interview up on the RNA blog (the RNA being the British equivalent of the RWA.)
http://romanticnovelistsassociationblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/interview-with-alex-beecroft.html
And in other good news, I found a backup of my website (done in August!) which has enabled me to get it back up on its different server in days rather than weeks. I’ve taken the chance to give it a new header and add pages for By Honor Betrayed and Under the Hill.
In bad news, instead of this illness improving I just continue to develop different symptoms. But I’m still healthy enough to sit in front of a computer, so I won’t complain too much.
So, new website host, but does the crossposting still work? This is how we find out 🙂
Every year, I hope to do Nanowrimo. This year I planned to do it. I had even plotted out an 80k long book and written the first 30k in the hopes of finishing off the next 50k during Nano. I don’t know why I did this, because every year the edits on my existing books arrive during November, unfailingly, and they – of course- have priority.
Same again this year 
Not that I should complain, because I’m half way through the edits on Under the Hill, having finished UtH: Bomber’s Moon but not yet started UtH: Dogfighters. After having worked on it so long that I was sick of it, and sent it off to the publishers while I was sick of it, I’m now experiencing that wonderful writerly joy that comes with the realisation that “OMG, this is actually good stuff!”
I’ve also been given a sneak peek of the first stab mockup of the cover, and I can say “eeeeeee!” with confidence, because I love it. I know it’s a bit early to be gushing over UtH, and I ought to be talking up By Honor Betrayed, but eeeeee! new cover art without a single naked man on it, and with all of the elements I asked for. Couldn’t be better.
This is the one encouraging thing to happen during nearly a month of discouragement. First my husband was away and I was ill, then my husband came back and he was ill, while I continued feeling bad. Then both my daughters were grotty and upset for various reasons, while I continued to be ill, and now they’re still depressed and my husband and I are still ill. And soon we’ll have to worry about Christmas. Aargh!
Still, By Honor Betrayed is out in 5 days, so that gives me something to look forward to. (But it also reminds me I have a blog post to write, and a page to make for my website, and a book trailer to put together, and thank God I wrote my guest posts early or the hair I’m currently pulling out would be falling out on its own.)
Melodrama, I haz it.
Wow! A first review of “By Honor Betrayed” and it’s not even out yet! I appear to have cranked the sense of danger up a bit too high for this reviewer, but it’s ok because she enjoyed it enough to come back for more anyway
This was my first Alex Beecroft read and I’m sure it won’t be my last. Guess I’ll just have to make an appointment with my primary doctor to insure my poor heart can stand anymore stories like this. It was fast-paced, well plotted, and historically accurate and is highly recommended.
Thanks a lot to Portia at MM Good book reviews!
Mega thanks too to Jo for doing me proud with a fantastic spread of posts on her blog. I thought I’d just link to the next two for easy access
Interview, in which I answer some very interesting questions
Jo’s reviews of the books of mine she’s read.
After what seems an extended period of radio silence, I’m visible again! I had the good fortune to be invited to guest blog on Josephine Myles’ blog. Jo, whose gorgeous narrowboat story “Barging In” (why can’t I do good titles like that?) came out recently and is already hauling in those 5 star reviews, has let me take over her blog for the day and interviewed me to boot.
I was mostly meant to be talking about my new release, “By Honor Betrayed” which is not quite out yet, but will be in about a fortnight. But being me, and incapable of keeping to the point, I’ve ended up waffling on about everything. This is entirely her fault! If she hadn’t asked such genuinely interesting questions I could have kept to the script, and delivered a smoothly professional promo post. As it is, you get my untidy real opinions and no hard sell at all.
I fail at promo. But Jo wins at interviews Also at making me blush with lovely introductions:
http://josephinemyles.com/2011/10/26/amazing-author-introducing-alex-beecroft/
Just quickly updating this with a link to my actual blog post (+ excerpt).
http://josephinemyles.com/2011/10/26/guest-blog-welcome-to-the-dark-side-by-alex-beecroft/
In which I explain how I got round my dislike of pirates enough to write about them.
