About Me

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Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom
West Country author, winner of Piatkus Entice award for historical fiction 2012.

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Endings and Beginnings, Readings and Dressing Up

Well now. Having just typed "The End" on my latest WIP, I decided it was time to come and have a little ramble through what's new and/or interesting in the TelNix world. 


Lady of No Man's Land is the second in a trilogy which began with Maid of Oaklands Manor and will conclude with Daughter of Dark River Farm. It follows Evie, the daughter of the house, who joins the Red Cross as an ambulance driver and goes off to Belgium shortly after the outbreak of World War One. 

The timing of this book is rather bloody perfect actually, quite by accident. When I wrote Oaklands (under its many previous titles) I'd always planned to do a "companion" novella to accompany it, following the exploits of some of the other characters during the middle section of the novel - the years 1913-1916. Naturally I'd decided to make this quite war-centric, without realising that Oaklands was going to be picked up and published during this summer just gone, or that I would be writing the "novella" as a full-length piece that I would be hoping to pitch to the same publisher just as commemorations for the centenary would be starting to kick off. I hope they like it, but even if they don't you can bet it'll be out there somehow.

So there we have it. I began Lady of No Man's Land on Sunday 17th February, and finished today; just over 8 months later. This might seem like quite a long time for a first draft, but in my defence, yer honour, I've still got my day-job. And it's taken one HELL of a lot of researching! (not my day-job, obvs)

However, I've not been idle: during this time I have edited, formatted and self-published in paperback and e-book the first in the Lynher Mill Chronicles, The Dust of Ancients, which seems to be being well-received, it's certainly selling quite well considering I'm doing it alone with no publisher backing. I've completed a first draft of book 2, The Lightning and the Blade, and begun book 3, The Western War.
I've also built a new website ... two new websites, in fact: re-built my old one at www.terri-nixon.co.uk and made a new one for my self-published work at www.lynhermill.co.uk  

The other bit of exciting news, is that Maid of Oaklands Manor has been shortlisted in the "Best Historical Read" category of reader awards at the Festival of Romance 2013. I'd planned to attend this year anyway, and am down to do a reading (in costume!) at the Art and Romance evening on Friday. I don't want to wear that awful outfit I wore to my book launch party, but if it comes down to it, I might have to.

One last thing - I've put together a collection of some of my old horror stories, and published them on Kindle under T Nixon. It will be free from tomorrow until November 1st, my little Hallowe'en gift to anyone who likes a good, blood-curdling bit of vileness with their morning toast.


So. That's me up to date. There's supposed to be a big storm coming tonight; so far all we have is a bit of rain, but it's meant to hot up a bit later and into tomorrow morning. I'm off to pour the remaining dribbles of last Christmas's Baileys, and watch Downton Abbey. Provided the power stays on. 

Pip Pip!

:) 

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