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Wednesday word of the week – Blurb

A blurb is a short description of a book or film for promotional purposes. They’re devilishly difficult to write (though not as bad as a synopsis!)

Talking of blurbs here’s the one for my latest cosy crime novel, which will be released later this month and can be ordered here.

 

Muriel Grahame has kept a secret for seven decades. It’s protected her and loved ones, given them freedom and opportunities. She’s grateful for the chances, the happiness, she’s had. Her wish is to give those gifts to others.
Crystal Clere has mysteries to solve. Some are fun, like the test her police colleagues set to celebrate her move to CID. Others, like Adam’s belief he’s discovered vital information and friend Ellie’s non existent love life are just puzzling. Murder, and further attacks on residents of Little Mallow, are puzzling too but no fun at all.
Muriel wanted to silence gossip for fear it would lead to her secret being uncovered. Now she worries more people will suffer unless she reveals it. But how can she, when the secret is not hers alone?
Crystal gets people talking with cake baking, birthday parties, coffee and questions, questions, questions. She’s sifting through insinuations, speculation and lies to get at the truth.
Can the two women replace fear with joy, and move on with their lives?

 

patsy

Wednesday word of the week – Evince

Evince means to reveal the presence of a quality or feeling, or to make clear and plain. I believe this photo of our front garden evinces my love of flowers.

Evincing is also a word, evinced by its presence in my dictionary.

 

patsy

Wednesday word of the week – Logorrhoea

Maybe you’ve heard, or even used, the phrase ‘verbal diarrehoea’ for someone who talks too much? Logorrhoea is actually the correct word to use as it means an excessive flow of words. It’s prononunced log-oh-ree-a.

patsy

Free ebook

My short story collection Keep It In The Family, is currently free to download. Offer ends 7th December. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, a review will be greatly appreciated.

Here’s the blurb – 

Alec thinks he’s suffered a medical emergency, Dr Kuttemopen says the same about his patient, and Jake and his granddad will be at risk from one if they carry on as they’ve been doing. With the support of loved ones, they could all put these predicted and suspected health problems behind them. Uncle Boris’s condition will never go away, but neither will Aunt Jonna, so he’ll not just cope, but enjoy doing so.

Everyone has problems or concerns from time to time. Some deal with them by always moving on and never looking back, others by asking the right question. They might try to keep them hidden, insist on bringing them into the open, or allow the sea to wash them away. Most will turn to their families for help, but all Miss Frencham’s are gone. All she can do, is tell people about the bodies.

Anne’s spent a lot of time waiting for her daughter; a whole lifetime, but it’s been worth every second. Daniel’s mother and Dizzy’s father-in-law won’t wait a moment for them, until they come to their senses and reunite their families. Stephanie’s waiting for the right kind of snow, and Adam’s waiting for the wrong sort of Santa. Their reward will be to know they did the right thing.

Families, whether we’re born or married into them, or choose them for ourselves all have stories to tell. This collection contains 25 of them.

Get it free here.

patsy

A few words on AI


I don’t use AI to write my books. My readers are real people and I don’t think it’s fair to ask them to buy a book and spend time reading it if I can’t be bothered to write it myself.
If you’d like to read any of my novels or themed short story collections, you can request them from libraries, order through bookshops, or buy them here.

patsy

Wednesday word of the week – Catchword

This book is ‘Display of Heraldry’ which was published in 1660.

Back then it was only the very rich who could afford books (the kind of people who had heraldry to display). It wasn’t uncommon for workers, even skilled ones to be illiterate. You can imagine this had to potential to cause problems when some of those skilled workers had the job of binding individual pages into a book.

To ensure the pages were stitched together in the right order a catchword was used. The last word at the end of a page would be repeated at the start of the next. This meant that even those who couldn’t read the text could match up these two words and avoid expensive errors.

 

patsy

Judged to Perfection

I attended a book fair yesterday. It had been hoped some of the authors could give readings of their work. Unfortunately the acoustics in the building made that impossible.

As I’d printed out my story and nerved myself up to do it, I decided to have a go at home. It’s actually much harder to talk to a camera than real people especially when, without your glasses, you can’t see whether the thing is on or not! (I can’t read them on, just in case you were thinking I’d overlooked an obvious solution to the problem, which admittedly I sometimes do.)

Here’s the result. The story, Judged to Perfection makes up part of the free download offered when you sign up to my newsletter.

patsy

Purple scissors!

I‘m attending a book fair on Sunday (if you’re in Portsmouth, please come and say hello – it’s free entry and there’s a cafe selling cakes). 

That means I need some books to sell, and I therefore ordered some. Feeling pleased with myself for having remembered to do it in time for me to unpack and check them prior to the day I got a little bit carried away and decided to make an ‘unboxing’ video. I’m not sure when or why these became a trend, but from the ones I’d seen I had the impression it was an easy thing to do. I’m less sure about that now! Click here’s to see the result. I hope it makes you smile.