Always fun to see all the Christmas stories promoted at this time of year…ranging from short stocking fillers to full on season-long romance. My Christmas offerings are a few years old now, but I think they stand the test of time. I certainly enjoyed looking in on the family at Winterbourne House to write a short story for Affinity’s 2020 Christmas Anthology. Lots of festive traditions mixed in with some lesbian shenanigans (including the obligatory Christmas cracker jokes). Worth taking a look at Affinity’s Christmas Medley collection of stories from 2017 too.
Audio book update
A Wild Moon Rises, narrated by Nicola Victoria Vincent, is now available on more sites including Amazon, Audible, Apple Books, and Spotify.
I’ve been taking part in the IHeartSapphfic Reading Challenge this year…offering my books as part of the weekly giveaway draw as well. This week (starting 4 November) one of the categories is BDSM. So my book, Changing Perspectives, is featured.
For this week’s challenge, I also provided an interview – talking a bit about writing this book. I’m often asked if the subject matter in this book came from personal experience. The answer is ‘no’ – I had to do a lot of research. My main motivation in writing this story was to find out if two very different people could make their relationship work.
If you’re not sure you want to read a book like this, I would say it’s not too heavy duty. I categorise it as BDSM-Lite.
A Wild Moon Rises has been out for two months now. Getting a good reception with comments from readers like these makes the writing journey worthwhile: it reads like a film script – I can see the scenes in my head; I feel like I’ve had a trip up the north east coast; Briarbay has a real community vibe.
We’ve travelled to the north east, Northumberland in particular, many times. Last year, though, I paid more attention to the scenery to help visualise scenes in the book. There are quite a few hamlets along the coastline that could stand-in for my fictional Briarbay.
Now, I’m reliving the story again as Nicki Vincent has started working her magic on narrating the audio book. It’s wonderful to hear it come to life.
My latest book, A Wild Moon Rises, came out on 1st August and not long after that I took part in a podcast with two other Affinity authors. If you want to hear me reading from the book and answering some questions, here are the links: Short version / Long version. Chatting with the podcast hosts, Ali Spooner and Annette Mori, was great fun. They’ve done quite a few podcasts now with authors and audio book narrators. So it’s worth checking out their YouTube Triple A Storytelling channel and subscribing.
Travels in August included a trip to Vindolanda. Absorbing the atmosphere of the ongoing archaeological site is always a thrill for me. I like to keep up with all their new discoveries.
Vindolanda Roman archaeology site on a fine day in AugustGarden at the Vindolanda Muesum
My wife and I stopped overnight at a nearby hotel with well-tended gardens and excellent food, celebrating our 37th anniversary of living together. (I’m doing my gnome impression sitting under a tree.)
Cedar Tree in the garden at Farlam Hall HotelA garden gnome sitting by a tree at Farlam Hall.
A peaceful scene of sheep grazing in Sedbergh. We were making the obligatory stop at Westwood Books on our way home…a fine selection of books, old and new.
Ten days to the release date of my new book on August 1st. Number thirteen, lucky for some. Or should I count in my novella, Three Mile Cache, and call it number thirteen and a half to be on the safe side. I’m not superstitious, really. Am I?
Releasing a new novel always brings on a bout of imposter syndrome. Is the story any good, etc. No matter how times I’ve been in this position, it’s still nerve-wracking.
Like my other books, this one is a romance. The main setting, after the prologue and first few chapters, is the north of England at the seaside. Family history is also a feature, along with questions of inheritance, a persistent ex-lover, and new connections.
I’ve never written ‘The End’ on the final page of any of my novels. My feeling is that it’s not the end of the story unless all the characters have died. As I’m writing romances there is always a happy ever after, or at the very least, a happy for now. Both of those options leave the story open for a continuation.
In March I joined two of my Affinity colleagues on their podcast…Triple A Storytelling…to discuss series and spin-offs. Both Annette Mori and Ali Spooner have written many more of these than I have. But we had a good discussion and I talked about The Starling Hill Trilogy, which began as a one-off story. It soon became apparent that other characters needed their stories told, so books two and three took off from there.
Changing Times, published in 2022, was a spin-off from Changing Perspectives which gave me the chance to explore the development of a new generation of characters – as well as revisiting the old ones. The first book was set in 1993, so I moved the story on thirty years. The younger people inhabit a different world. In the early nineties, not everyone had personal email accounts or mobile phones. The now all-pervasive social media didn’t exist.
In Changing Perspectives, Dani Barker is a graphic designer for an ad agency. She creates storyboards manually, but computers are starting to take over. I included a scene where she tries to familiarise herself with some design software. (She’s not convinced it will ever catch on!) In Changing Times, the ad agency is now a mixed media company run by Dani’s niece, Holly.
The best part of writing sequels and spin-offs is that the settings and characters are familiar, giving me the chance to delve deeper into their stories.
My next book, due out in August, is a one off. (For now.) Title and cover reveal coming soon.
Large parts of Britain were once covered with temperate rainforests. Remnants can be found in the Lake District and I always feel that’s possibly evident here on the eastern edge of Lake Windermere.
On arrival, I’m captured by the clearness of the air, the beauty of the surroundings. I wander down to the lakeside and breathe it all in. Calm and soothing, listening to the gentle movement of the water, the rustling of the leaves, and somewhere the silence broken by the strident calls of wild geese (although the two in this photo are serenely moving along).
Back to the primeval elements: what is this – emerging from the rock – a creature from Lord of the Rings?
A new book
My writing life has stuttered and stumbled through the last two years, but I can finally announce that I’ve just signed a contract with Affinity Rainbow Publications for a new book, scheduled for an August release.
The latest series of Digging for Britain was as fascinating and informative as usual, but I think the one item uncovered that generated the most interest for a lot of viewers, including myself, was the dodecahedron. 33 of these objects have been discovered in Britain with a number of others throughout Europe. But no one knows what they were used for. Theories abound with no idea why they were created. Perhaps it was an early version of a Rubik’s cube.
Vindolanda…site of ongoing excavations near Hadrian’s Wall
I’ve always been interested in British Roman history. So, it was a natural choice to explore some elements of it in my debut novel, Starting Over. At the outset, I knew that an archaeological dig was going to feature as part of the story. However, until about three quarters of the way through the first draft, I didn’t know what the great find would be.
Then my mother gave me a book she’d had for many years – a history of the Brigantes tribe. As I live in a part of Yorkshire that was pretty much in the middle of the territory covered by this tribe – stretching from below Manchester up to the much-disputed border with the Picts – I was quite taken with the story of Queen Cartimandua. The Roman historians gave her the title of ‘queen’. She was really the tribal chief. Although much has been written about Boudica’s exploits, Cartimandua barely gets a mention. She disappears from history and her remains have never been found.
Time to step in and rectify this. Over the three books of what became the Starling Hill trilogy, I was able to give Cartimandua her due – recognition as a leader who aimed for peace with the invading Romans, and a fitting tribute.
The Starling Hill Trilogy
As I was writing the second part of the trilogy, Arc Over Time, the discussions about where to reinter the recently discovered bones of Richard III under the car park in Leicester were ongoing. This led me to speculate in the third book, Carved in Stone, about the location of Cartimandua’s final resting place. I ventured briefly into the paranormal as the Queen was able to have her say in where she wanted to be buried, along with a fitting memorial to her reign. In each of the books, Cartimandua gets a chance to give her point of view, as in this extract from the end of Starting Over: The Last Word, A voice from the Past:
…She had lain a long time in the cold ground, unheralded, forgotten, surrounded by a few tokens representing her position and her wealth, ill-gotten gains some would have said, including her poor excuse of a husband. What did they know? She had kept the peace, traded with the invaders. She had taken care of her people. Her tribe lived free.
Why did that bitch, Boudica, and her rabble grab all the attention? Iceni upstarts. Bunch of foul-smelling horse breeders, rampaging about the countryside, killing, looting. No better than the Romani. Numerous books were written about the marauding queen, a statue erected in a place she’d burned to the ground, and what recognition did she, the peacemaker, achieve? The occasional one line in dry historical tomes. A footnote in the history of the greatest tribe in northern Britain.
And now, her final resting place disturbed. She had chosen to retire here. Away from the conflict raging in her formerly peaceful queendom. It had been a tranquil, healing time with her lover, away from the strife, watching the starlings swoop and play in the clear air across the moors…
(from Starting Over by Jen Silver, published by Affinity Rainbow Publications)
As if the date on the calendar isn’t enough notice of the upcoming festive season, there’s a covering of thick frost everywhere…with maybe some snow on the way.
Time to think about suitable winter reading. Jae has compiled an extensive list of holiday romances to choose from…370 books so far. Christmas at Winterbourne is there, along with contributions from other Affinity Rainbow Publications authors, including a wonderful anthology…Christmas Medley.
The follow-up short story to Christmas at Winterbourne…Winterbourne Revisited…didn’t make it onto the list, but is definitely worth a mention
December Sale now on all Christmas-related books and stories from Affinity Rainbow Publications. Christmas at Winterbourne / Christmas Medley. Sale prices also on Amazon sites.
Reviews for Christmas at Winterbourne
This review from a few years ago still makes my day…a big thank you to Clare Lydon for including Christmas at Winterbourne as one of her top festive picks (and my book is in great company with her other choices.
Some words about my two October releases…my first published novel and my twelfth (I don’t want to say ‘my last’ as I hope I still have another book or two inside me). This is my muse, Colin the Chameleon. He sits on top of a cabinet looking down at my computer screen. I think he’s hibernating at the moment as not many words are reaching the blank page. But I’m thankful for the ones that have emerged to produce books 1 through 12.
Starting Over will always have a special place in my heart. I started writing it during the summer of 2013. Newly retired, with more time on my hands, it was the ideal opportunity to fulfil a lifelong ambition to be a published author. Sitting in my garden writing random thoughts in a notebook about characters’ names, ages, occupations, I somehow knew that one of the MCs was a potter. This led me to researching pottery online. I came across a pottery place in Bardon Mill, Northumberland. This led me to check out Vindolanda. I discovered that I could volunteer to excavate at this Roman site near Hadrian’s wall. The story started to take off after that and I knew that archaeology would have a large part to play in the storyline.
Changing Times developed in a very different way. I already had a cast of characters from Changing Perspectives (story set in 1993, published in 2017). But the main characters would now be of retirement age. So, although I wanted to revisit them, the focus of the narrative for this book was on the younger generation. Setting the story thirty years on meant that Dani’s nieces were now in their thirties. My task then was to find out what Lucy and Holly were up to. They inhabit a world that has changed somewhat since 1993 and I tried to express the impact on them through their different life experiences.
Social media update:
I’ve now joined Blue Sky Social – connect with me there: @jenjsilver.bsky.social
jenjsilver 