Get a jump start on Anthea Hodgson’s new book, The War Nurses, which was inspired by her own family’s history. We took a deep dive into this story and at one point we both ended up crying! But don’t worry, we also laughed a lot too. (And make sure you stay till the end to hear about what she’s working on next!) You can pre-order Anthea’s newest novel right now from your favourite bookstore, online or in person, to make sure you don’t miss out. You catch our chat via link in bio.
Tag: fiction
Following on from my last post here are even more reasons you might need a manuscript appraisal.
Oh… I Feel This!
I wrote 10 manuscripts in 12 years before I got a contract. During that
time, I won short story competitions, I wrote freelance, I was shortlisted for
two publishing awards, I had agents request my work and then reject it. I was
scammed by dodgy publishers with dodgy contracts. I was scammed by writing
competitions (that then publish your work and then sell the work back to you).
My spreadsheet of rejections hit 100 (and then I deleted it in disgust). (Oh,
and I had been working full time, part time, casually, in my own business,
running a charity and while pregnant.) I had reached the end of my
tether. It took just one final piece to get me over the line. For you,
that final piece might be a manuscript assessment.
The pain!
Even published authors sometimes need manuscript assessments!
I mentioned above that I once had to ditch 50,000 words of a novel. A novel
that was on contract. With a deadline. I knew ‘something’ wasn’t right. This
was going to be my fourth contracted novel, so it was surprising when I
realised I was absolutely stuck. I paid for a manuscript assessment with
my favourite editor, who I trust, completely. And like a really good editor,
she didn’t tell me what to do. Instead, she asked questions and made astute
observations and in reading her report I knew I had to abandon
that manuscript. (There is a happy ending to this story, which I will share
with you when we begin work together.)
Listen to That Voice
So you just read that bit above where I had to ditch 50,000 words, right? If
I had listened to my inner voice, my gut feeling, just a little bit earlier,
I might not have had to lose so much time, energy, and spinal integrity while
sitting in a chair, working on something that was built on shifting sands.
This is why I’m here to help, with your manuscript, be it fiction, non-fiction, novel or memoir 🙂
You can find the Manuscript Appraisal Booking Page Here.
Jo
Categories
Signed Copies of The Jam Queens
So many of you wonderful readers have asked me about how to get signed copies of The Jam Queens. (Thank you!) Here’s how:
You can now get signed copies of The Jam Queens (for yourself or as a gift) directly from me! The book comes with personalised messages, free gift wrapping (with literal, happy bells on!).
An additional optional free extra includes a short cameo video message via email. You’ll find all the details on my website here: https://josephinemoon.com/book-cameo-video/ (Use this link either for just the book or the book + video.)
Free postage Australia wide.
Free gift wrapping.
Personalised messages.
I had so much fun working on early orders of these today and I can’t wait to bring more cheer to more readers around the country. Jo x
Honestly, we get to chat to such wonderful authors in book club! Our March guest is the very talented Jessica Dettmann with her new book This Has Been Absolutely Lovely. To register for this event click here.
The blurb reads…
Family is forever, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
The charming, hilarious and all-too-relatable new novel from the author of How to be Second Best
Molly’s a millennial home organiser about to have her first baby. Obviously her mum, Annie, will help with the childcare. Everyone else’s parents are doing it.
But Annie’s dreams of music stardom have been on hold for thirty-five years, paused by childbirth then buried under her responsibilities as a mother, wage earner, wife, and only child of ailing parents. Finally, she can taste freedom.
As Molly and her siblings gather in the close quarters of the family home over one fraught summer, shocking revelations come to light. Everyone is forced to confront the question of what it means to be a family.
This Has Been Absolutely Lovely is a story about growing up and giving in, of parents and children, of hope and failure, of bravery and defied expectation, and whether it is ever too late to try again.
We hope you can join us!
Categories
The Jam Queens Inspiration
With competitive jam makers, a variety of jam, The Ghan rail travel, the Australian outback, the Barossa Valley, Maggie Beer, four generations of women, IVF, grief and new beginnings… The Jam Queens covers quite a bit of territory. Here’s an introduction to some of the inspiration behind these elements.
The food
Deciding which food to pursue is never an easy task for me as there is an endless supply of wonderful foods to explore. I always research my foods as much as I can and I practise making them from scratch (e.g. tea, chocolate, cheese, cakes, jam), with the exception of coffee (in The Gift of Life), which requires a lot of specialised equipment (though I certainly watched talented craftspeople doing it).
I have to love the food in my story as it’s ‘the hero’. In order to write about it with enthusiasm, I need to pick a food I enjoy and and am fascinated with. (For all the wine lovers out there, I’m sorry to say I haven’t yet found enough enthusiasm for wine to take it on.) It was actually my husband who suggested jam and after initially thinking it was too limited, I began to wonder about the whole competitive jam making scene and its place in our modern world and that caught my attention. I taught myself to make jam from the internet and realised I would have to enter shows to truly understand the process. I entered the Royal Brisbane Show in 2019 with my strawberry jam and was delighted (and shocked!) to win first place in the novice category. It was a lot of fun and I got a little bit ‘hooked’ 🙂 I then entered my gluten free Persian Love Cake into the Noosa Show and won second place, and another cake into the Eumundi Show (which one first place) and if Covid hadn’t cancelled everything in 2020 I would definitely have gone back for more. (As an aside, the recipe for the Persian Love Cake is included in the back of The Cake Maker’s Wish.) There’s a lot to be said for country shows and their cookery competitions and there is still more I’d like to explore there in the future.
Location research
My foodie themed novels always come together from ‘the outside in’ and my setting is usually the first thing I decide on. I’m a strong world builder so I want to really know that world well, and that usually involves a research trip. For The Jam Queens, I travelled to the Barossa Valley in South Australia with my husband and young son back in 2017. I wasn’t certain about my food theme at that stage but I was interested in fruit and especially apples. (I’ve had an ‘apple book’ floating around me for years now that just hasn’t quite settled yet… One day I’ll get to it.) While in the Barossa, I was lucky enough to be invited to tour the Trevallie orchard with Sheralee Menz, who took me around the apples, pears and apricot trees on a freezing, windy and grey day. My poor sub-tropical Queensland hide was shaking incessantly but Sheralee charged on with enthusiasm and effortless grit. The highlight was seeing a tree there that was over one hundred years old, majestic and magnetic.
The Ghan
The idea of journeying on The Ghan came to me while I was driving the two hours home from a day trip to Brisbane, when it simply popped into my head. I think it must have swum up from the depths of my sub-conscious because my beloved Uncle Anthony had frequently mentioned his hope of taking the trip and it must have settled into me somewhere as a great bucket list item.
I mentioned it to my husband, who enthusiastically agreed and declared it done (he’s fabulous like that), and told me to take my sister. I have been lucky enough to take Amanda with me on nearly all of my research trips, including to the Cotswolds and to Italy, and she is the best travelling mate. We have a ball. Somewhere on that trip, we found our alter egos in Myrtle and Dolce and those two characters became the ones you find in the book. I adore Myrtle and Dolce and wish them a lifetime of wonderful journeys to come (and hopefully a book of their own!).
The teenage pregnancy
The character of Aggie is a forty-five-year old woman who had her first child when she was seventeen. The origins of that backstory came about because while I was promoting The Gift of Life, a friend came to see me speak and the bookseller mistakenly believed she was my mother. My friend has a great sense of humour and we had a good laugh while she mused what sort of teenage mum she would have been. I was in the early stages of playing around with the character of Aggie and I was inspired to explore this idea of teenage pregnancies. I watched many episodes of the reality TV show 16 and Pregnant and was rather horrified at how dreadful so many of the family members behaved towards the pregnant teen and how, in every episode, the pregnant teen was actually the one holding it all together while people all around her fell apart. From that, I knew Aggie would have been a good and capable mum, especially if she got the right support. I also knew it could be a cause of serious separation between her and her mum (Valeria).
The IVF journey
Early on in The Jam Queens we discover that Aggie has been through IVF and now finds herself at a crossroads in that journey, along with her ex partner, Gideon. That particular storyline was specifically inspired by a Mamamia podcast called The Quicky, which provides daily news updates followed by a ‘deep dive’ into a particular issue. In this case, the issue focused on the unique position couples find themselves in when they have ‘leftover’ embryos and must decide what to do with them. I was really captivated by this, not having ever considered it before and wondering what I would do in that situation. I was especially interested to consider how a couple would work it out if they were no longer together.
These are some of the themes and issues The Jam Queens explores. Keep an eye out for my forthcoming post on Maggie Beer and how she made it into the novel too!
The Jam Queens is out 13 April 2021 and you can preorder now from all good books stores and online retailers.
Reading By the Moon Book Club is back again in February with The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by debut author Julietta Henderson.
Click this link to register.
The blurb reads…
Norman and Jax are a legendary comedy duo in the making, with a five-year plan to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe by the time they’re fifteen. But then Jax dies before they even turn twelve.
Norman’s mum Sadie knows she won’t win Mother of the Year anytime soon, and she really doesn’t know, or care, who Norman’s father is. But her heart is broken when she discovers her grieving son’s revised plan: ‘Find Dad’ and ‘Get to the Edinburgh Fringe’.
If meeting his dad and performing at the Festival are the two things that will help Norman through this devastating time, then Sadie is going to make them happen.
So mother and son set off from Cornwall, with their friend Leonard in his vintage Austin Maxi, on a pilgrimage to Edinburgh – to honour Jax and to track down a few maybe-fathers on the way . . .
I hope you can join us!
**Edit update: Due to unforeseen personal events, Monica has had to cancel her appearance at this event. We hope to catch up with Monica next time around ❤️** You’re invited to join myself and a panel of excited readers in a live book club chat with Monica McInerney about her new book, The Goodmothers.
We chat live via Zoom and you can nab yourself a seat in ‘the bleachers’ and ask Monica questions via the chat box. This is a free event by you do need to register to join in.
I hope to see you there!
Lovelies, do you dream of writing a novel or maybe a memoir? A children’s book or fantasy trilogy? Is finding the TIME the thing that is holding you back?
TIME is a writer’s greatest resource yet I find few of us really have a handle on how to work in harmony with it. If you are doing the ‘life juggle’ and trying to find the time to get to your passion project, then this four-week e-course might just be the thing you need to break through your time blocks.
I know what it’s like to write with an array of competing deadlines and priorities and I’ve done it badly and I’ve done it well. If you want to learn how to find the time to write your own book, I’m delighted to share with you the techniques, wisdom and strategies I’ve developed over the years. To find out more about this e-course I created just for you–the time-challenged writer–head on over to this link.
If you already know this course is right for you, you can enrol now!
Thank you to all the wonderful readers who have bought The Cake Maker’s Wish so far. Your support means we need to print more copies! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!
If you’ve read the book already, remember that just by writing a review for Goodreads or Amazon (and posting it to Facebook or Insta and tagging me so I can find it), you’ll go into the draw to win an indulgence pack including Ruby Olive jewellery, Fresh Chai Co chocolate chai, a block of chocolate and a signed backlist book. Winner drawn 2 July!
Thank you so much for your support 🙂
(Australian postal addresses only.)
Categories
Cake and Cover Competition
This week, The Cake Maker’s Wish finally made it out into the world after I began working on it five years ago! I had a wonderful time launching it online last Sunday afternoon. If you’d like to see the video, you’ll find it on Facebook here.
Now… for your chance to win a gorgeous prize pack!
Once you have your copy of The Cake Maker’s Wish, simply take a photo of it with some cake (any cake!) and post it to Facebook or Instagram, tagging me so I know it’s there, and using the hashtag #cakeandcover
Here’s an example:
The winner will be chosen from a shortlist and win this wonderful prize pack, including a brooch and matching earring set from Ruby Olive, a copy of The Beekeeper’s Secret (for you to enjoy or pass on to a friend), my favourite brand of chai (and this one is chocolate chai!), and Lindt chocolate.
The winner will be chosen on 2 July. I can’t wait to see your entries 🙂
Happy reading and caking!
Jo x