All Change - New Website, New Blog

My shiny new website site at lizfenwick.com is live although we are still tweaking it. Please pop by and tell me what you think.

I won't be posting here anymore but here and I will try and be a better blogger again!!!

A Cornish Stranger…countdown

So tomorrow is the first launch event for A Cornish Stranger and it's in Helford at Down by the Riverside Cafe (if you are in the area please join me for drinks & nibbles from 17:00-18:30…& the ferry from the north side will run until then!). And it's rather fun to do this in one of the settings in the book!

Of course at all of these events I have to read a snippet of the book…this is the part of releasing a new book that gives me sleepless nights. Being Dyslexic and reading aloud are not easy companions…

So in the past I have practiced in front of the cats…Snowy and Sooty but they are in Dubai and I am in Cornwall. So I practiced in front of my iPhone and recorded it. Then I decided to video one for those who can't make any of the events and 'want to hear the author's voice' *gulp*.

Hope it doesn't put you off! What do you think about authors reading their work?

It's May…the month of yes…two books out

OK. You haven't seen me in a while because I've been everywhere…well, sort of. Does Perth, Australia - London, Cornwall and Dubai count?

Today is the paperback publication day of A Cornish Affair (this is the small paperback and it includes extra stuff - in this case the history of Pengarrock in ten items).

I've also been preparing for the various events to launch A Cornish Stranger which is out in two weeks! This is always scary time when a new book comes out…I kind of hold my breath and hope that the risks I've taken and story I've told will work. But thanks to the the encouraging words of a few early readers I can breathe again…well partially. Here's an early review if you are curious  Shaz Goodwin's review on Goodreads.

So if you are interested in catching me somewhere soon this is where I'll be!

21st May - 17:00 - 18:30 CORNWALL Down By The Riverside Cafe, Helford (This should be fun. It's actually on of the places in A Cornish Stranger!) Details here.

30th May -15:00 - 17:00 DUBAI Macgrudys on the Beach Road Dubai. This should be a really fun launch as I'll be sharing the venue with another Dubai based author Rachel Hamilton and her debut book The Case of the Exploding Loo (a brilliant middle grade read…my review here. ) Details from info@magrudy.com

31th May 16:00-17:00 DUBAI Book signing at Kinokuniya in The Dubai Mall

5th June 19:00 MANCHESTER Urmston Library with Urmston Bookshop Details here.

12th June 18:30 LONDON Opera & Ice Cream at Waterstones Kensington High Street…please RSVP to me or here as I want make sure there is enough wine and ice-cream!

Just writing that out and I'm exhausted!

PS I'll be in Amsterdam from the 16-19 of June…details to follow

A Cornish Stranger - Advanced Reader Copies Giveaway

It's just under two months until A Cornish Stranger is released. The final proofread is finished and it's about to wing it's way to the printers….

However hot off the press are the advanced reader copies (aka bound proofs). These are the copies used to send to reviewers… (Note: For those who aren't used to ARCs - these copies have not been proofread = are full of errors!)

Orion have agreed to send out five of these ARCs…but how to choose??? I have decided to try Rafflecopter….

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The competition is open until noon GMT on Monday the 31st…Good luck and please spread the word!

The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature and Connections

You would be forgiven for thinking I had fallen off the edge of the earth…the last post was just before Christmas and it's now almost St Patrick's Day…and well I have sort of fallen off of the edge.
I had a book to finish and edit and a family to remind I hadn't forgotten them either…

So I have delivered A Cornish Stranger and am just waiting to review the final proofs…gulp…I can't believe that my third book will be out at the end of May.

Thankfully I finished the copy edits in time to enjoy the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature last week. It was fabulous but then I expect nothing less than fabulous from it. This year it was a bit like old home week in someways catching up with writers who had come before and connecting with people that I had links to even if they didn't know about them. For example Pru Leith was one of this year's authors…I introduced myself…'Hi Pru, you don't know me but you have slept in my bed and cooked in my kitchen.' It certainly got her attention. The full story is a mutual friend used to rent our house in Cornwall. There were other connections with Sir Tim Rice and Andrew Motion but one I hadn't expected at all…

Sitting in the back of a 4x4 on the way to the desert with Justin Cronin the world became very small indeed…we were the same age, both born in Boston and summered on the Cape. It became smaller still when he mentioned where he had a home on the Cape…the same place my parents had. And the it became even smaller the more we chatted..we knew some of the same people, queued for ice-cream at Four Seas…at a certain point we decided to let the past remain still foggy.

Liz Fenwick and Justin Cronin with Philip Reeve in the background

So you can imagine the smile that crossed my face upon returning home from the Orion party on Wednesday evening and looking through the brochure that was in the goodie bag to find Justin's book and mine side by side. Had I not met him in the desert I wouldn't have had a clue how two kids from Massachusetts could end up writers and be published by the same publisher and -  diving into the foggy bits, maybe had danced together some place along the way….