Tag: guest post

Blog Tour/Guest Post: The Lost Children by Theresa Talbot

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‘Ideal for fans of Broadchurch’…how enticing is that? I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for The Lost Children by Theresa Talbot.  The book is the first in a new thriller series featuring investigative journalist, Oonagh O’Neil.  I have a wonderful guest post by Theresa for you all about her journey to becoming someone who can call themselves a ‘writer’.

Do check out the tour schedule at the bottom of this post to see the other great book bloggers taking part in the tour.  Visit them for reviews, interviews and book extracts.

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The Lost ChildrenAbout the Book

TV journalist and media darling, Oonagh O’Neil, can sense a sinister cover-up from the moment an elderly priest dies on the altar of his Glasgow church. His death comes as she is about to expose the shocking truth behind the closure of a Magdalene Institution. The Church has already tried to suppress the story. Is someone also covering their tracks?

DI Alec Davies is appointed to investigate the priest’s death. He and Oonagh go way back. Oonagh now faces the biggest decision of her life. But will it be hers to make? What secrets lie behind the derelict Institution’s doors? What sparked the infamous three-day riot that closed it? And what happened to the three Maggies who vowed to stay friends forever?

From Ireland to Scotland.  From life to death.

(The book was previously published under the title Penance.)

Format: ebook, paperback (466 pp.)    Publisher: Aria Fiction
Published: 1st April 2018                 Genre: Crime, Mystery

Purchase Links*
Amazon.co.uk ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Kobo ǀ Google Play ǀ iBooks
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find The Lost Children on Goodreads

Guest Post: ‘Hi, I’m Theresa Talbot – and I’m a writer’ by Theresa Talbot

I feel as though I should be standing up at a support group to utter that phrase as it’s taken me so long to say it out loud.

My day job is ‘broadcast journalist’. It sounds slightly grander than it is; basically it’s talking out loud on the wireless. I present the traffic & travel on BBC Radio Scotland and sometimes read the news. Several years ago, I also presented the weekly gardening programme but that was taken off-air and replaced with a programme about men hitting balls with sticks, or men kicking balls, or men swerving out of the way of balls…I can’t really remember which, but there were a lot of men and a lot of balls.

My writing journey has been as long and meandering as the road to Ballacheulish. It would be lovely to say I always had a burning ambition to write, that it’s part of my DNA and as a child I would sit for hours on my own scribbling furiously then pass my stories on to the other kids on the street in exchange for popularity. But in truth I was a listener rather than a teller. For me there was nothing more delicious than being told a story from a grown-up. One of those fabulously illicit tales of gore, ghost and ghouls that seemingly had no part in childhood. Scratch the surface of any fairy tale and there lies the most appalling horror of savage wolves, lost children in the woods and wicked witches on a killing frenzy armed with no more than a basket of poisoned apples.

I can’t remember when I decided I would like to become a writer, certainly not as a child, as to me being ‘a writer’ was something only posh people did. I never even considered it could be a job, and certainly not my job. I remember my sister having one of those portable typewriters – Petite I think was the brand name – it had its own blue carrying case and I was in awe as she battered out ‘the quick brown dog jumps over the lazy fox’ time and time again with lightening speed.

I fell into journalism after a range of jobs as diverse as Library Assistant, Pepsi Challenge Girl and Medical Rep, but somewhere along the line a seed must have been sown that compelled me to write. I went to a few writers’ groups, toyed with short stories, but they were never my thing and I never took myself seriously as a writer, which was fine as neither did anyone else.

Looking back I’ve actually written every day of my professional life for the past twenty two years as a radio journalist – and because I write for the spoken word, this helps enormously when it comes to writing dialogue. I was a freelance comedy writer too. I was listening to a show on BBC Radio Scotland and noticed that there was what seemed like a ton of writers at the end credits. I phoned up the production company that made the weekly programme and asked them where they got their material from. Basically writers just submitted jokes and that was that.  Seemed simple enough, then the following week I was in the hairdressers and a chap sat next to me was chatting away and told me he was a comedy writer for the very same programme. I sent him a joke and he told me to ‘try it, nothing to lose’. So I did and they used it. I did the same the following week, they used that joke too. Armed with my two jokes I went to a BBC producer and nagged her into reading a few other things, and before I knew it I had a weekly slot on another sketch show. I have to say writing a two minute sketch was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It took me almost the whole week to get it right. Like short stories, short sketches just weren’t my thing. But, I’d started on road to becoming a writer and by this time had the bit between my teeth.

When I decided to actually write a book I confess I didn’t have a clue. The main thing that prompted me to get started was that I had a P.C. No longer would I succumb to the noxious fumes of tipex – as typing was not, and still isn’t, my strong point. I had no plan, no structure, just an idea which I started writing. I was inspired by two things – an early ghost story my Dad had told of a priest dying on the altar, and Glasgow’s Magdalene Institution which closed down after a three day riot in 1958.

That story eventually became The Lost Children and I’m thrilled to bits that Team Aria love it as much as I do. So with a book under my belt, can I now call myself a writer? Probably, but it’ll be years before I’m brave enough to utter the phrase…’I’m Theresa Talbot, and I’m an Author’.                                                                          © Theresa Talbot

Theresa TalbotAbout the Author

Theresa  Talbot  is  a  BBC  broadcaster  and  freelance  producer.  A  former  radio  news  editor,  she  also  hosted  The  Beechgrove  Potting  Shed  on  BBC  Radio  Scotland,  but  for many  she  will  be  most  familiar  as  the  voice  of  the  station’s  Traffic  &  Travel.  Late 2014  saw  the  publication  of  her  first  book,  This  Is  What  I  Look  Like,  a  humorous  memoir  covering  everything  from  working  with  Andy  Williams  to  rescuing  chickens  and  discovering  nuns  hidden  in  gardens.  She’s  much  in  demand  at  book  festivals,  both  as  an  author  and  as  a  chairperson.

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Blog Tour/Guest Post: Tapestry of War by Jane MacKenzie

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I’m delighted to be hosting today’s stop on the blog tour for Jane MacKenzie’s wonderful historical novel, Tapestry of War.  Described as a perfect read for fans of Victoria Hislop and Santa Montefiore – and don’t those two authors know how to bring the past thrillingly to life? – Tapestry of War is inspired by the author’s own family history.  During World War 2, Jane’s father-in-law disguised himself to rescue Allied servicemen in the Greek islands, and met his future wife in Alexandria.

I have a fascinating guest post from Jane in which she shares her thoughts on writing a book set in a place you’re familiar with, as indeed she is with the Scottish Highlands.

The tour schedule at the bottom of this post shows the other great book bloggers taking part in the tour where you will find reviews, interviews and book extracts.

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tapestry of warAbout the Book

Amidst the horrors of the Second World War, love and friendship bring two strangers together across conflict-ravaged continents.

In Alexandria, Fran finds her life turned upside down as Rommel’s forces advance on the idyllic shores of Egypt. In place of the luxury and stability that she is used to, she finds herself having to deal with loss, heartache and political uncertainty.

Meanwhile, on the Firth of Clyde, Catriona works day in, day out nursing injured servicemen. As the war rages on, the two women’s lives become entwined – bringing love and friendship to both.

Format: ebook, Paperback (320 pp.) Publisher: Allison and Busby
Published: 19th April 2018                  Genre: Historical Fiction

Purchase Links*
Publisher ǀ Amazon.co.uk ǀ  Amazon.com  ǀ Hive.co.uk (supporting UK bookshops)
*links provided for convenience, not as part of any affiliate programme

Find Tapestry of War on Goodreads

Guest Post: ‘Setting Books Somewhere You’re Familiar With’ by Jane MacKenzie, author of Tapestry of War

It can be funny writing about a place you know from the outside in, that you feel and understand intuitively. It is in a way a gift, since you don’t have to fret over research and getting your facts right. But it brings its own difficulties too.

Tapestry of War is set in Egypt and in Scotland, and of course Scotland is my home. I live in the Highlands, and the whole way of life I describe in the book is one I am immersed in, bathed in, raised my children in. But then, when you come to write that down, you realise you have to take yourself out of it a little in order to find the words, and to describe what is so familiar.

It helps that it is so beautiful, and that we live so close to the forces of nature. You only have to stop and remember a wild night in December, the bitter winds of January, or a long, incredibly peaceful evening in summer. And once you have really embedded yourself in that act of remembrance then you can conjure up the little details, the birds that you see, the smells, how the hills look, the changing colours of the sea, and the description of them flows.

It helped that I was setting the book in the 1940s, during World War Two, because I’m a spectator of that era. But even then, the true Highland culture and social values haven’t changed that much. There are still women just like Aunt Sheila keeping their families together, baking, mending, visiting their neighbours, running village events. It’s a traditional place, is rural Scotland. In my own village of Plockton it can take half an hour to walk to our little shop, because you have to stop and talk to so many people on the way, check on someone who has been unwell, drop some soup into an elderly relative. I really wanted to evoke that, and I hope I’ve succeeded in passing on some of my love for my home country.

In writing about Egypt it was very different. I know Egypt, and have visited Alexandria, but it has changed so definitively since the war years that I relied much more on historical accounts, old pictures, some wonderful memoirs from the time. I do know what the elderly men look like as they sit over their little burners making tea in the streets, and I know how the heat smells, and how the sun rises over Alexandria harbour. But I can be freer in my descriptions of Egypt. I can imagine it and make it my own with much greater abandon.

Isn’t it strange that your own home, the place you live and breathe, should often be harder to write about? It is lovely, though, when your own people read your work and say ‘Yes, that’s it, you’ve captured it. That’s who we are.’               © Jane MacKenzie

Jane MacKenzieAbout the Author

Jane MacKenzie has spent much of her adult life travelling the world, teaching English and French everywhere from the Gambia to Papua New Guinea to Bahrain, and recently working for two years at CERN in Geneva. She now splits her time between her self-built house in Collioure, France, and the Highlands of Scotland, where she has made her family home. She is the author of the best-selling Daughters of Catalonia.

Connect with Jane

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Tapestry of War Tour Schedule