Hello everyone,
What do you think of my new cover? It’s for the next book in the Queenstown Series, and while it’s not quite ready for you yet, it can be preordered here: The Harp and the Rose It will be out mid-August I think.
The second book, The West’s Awake, was published two weeks ago and hit the #1 spot which gives me no end of joy. It is doing wonderfully well thanks to you all and your support. I must say a particular word of thanks to my advance readers who like always, played an absolute blinder, helping me in a myriad of ways, not least with such lovely reviews.
Harp and Rose and all the gang there seem to have found their way into the hearts of readers as they have mine, and I hope you’ll be glad to hear there is another book in this series in the pipeline.
If you have yet to start this series, it begins with Last Port of Call, a book set on the day Titanic sails from Queenstown, Ireland. It’s not a Titanic book, (there are more than enough of those!) but it was a good kicking off point for a story of love, treachery, betrayal, loyalty, patriotism and action. I think we can all easily visualise that time, there is so much about that ill-fated ship in popular culture, so I shamelessly piggybacked on it! This is a series about a girl and her mother who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances and find that telling a big lie is the only way to survive. Big lies tend to come back to haunt you though.
Meanwhile, all around this storyteller, chaos reigns supreme. The roof of our cottage, indeed the whole cottage, is pretty old. It probably dates from the mid 1800s and the roof needs some fairly serious surgery to survive another winter. So what started out as a small construction job (does such a thing exist? It’s like my Dad always says ‘nobody ever saw a small rat!’) has now turned into destruction of gargantuan proportions. There’s a real sense of ‘well, since we’re doing this, we might as well do that’ about it all and I have a wonderful, hilarious, and very ‘enthusiastic for demolition’ builder doing his worst.
It will be lovely (she says with a gulp) when it’s done, and we are fortunate enough to have a place by the sea to decamp to, so it’s not awful, but nonetheless it’s a trauma. At the moment we can’t find anything, and all of our stuff is piled into two rooms where it will have to remain until the work is complete. Today’s casualties on the missing list involve one soccer sock, the charger for my kindle and a friend’s coat. Still, you have to break eggs to make an omelette right? The main issue we have is trying to modernise the house without it looking like we have done anything. We are a bit precious about the look of it from the outside, even by Irish standards it’s unique and the piper and I have a pet hate of huge modern extensions on small old buildings. Our house looks tiny from the outside, and all additions to date have to be hidden, and we like it that way. I’ll send a finished picture when it’s done. If I’ve any hair left!
So today, I’ll go for a walk on the beach, think about Harp and Rose and what might happen to them next, and then go see my little girl play soccer. she’ll be easy to spot, she’ll be the one with only one sock.
Le grá agus míle buiochas,
Jean xx