cj2017's journal

For anyone who's not on Facebook (where there has been a lot of chat about this) but might like to help out a fellow fan of lesbian fic, the Caring for Kara auction is up and running, and full of fabulous items. It's an excellent cause, bidding is as easy as leaving a comment below your chosen item, and somewhere in there a signed copy of Snowbound and a bookmark are up for grabs. 

Cheers!

I found out this week that Snowbound has been awarded an Alice B Lavender Certificate for debut novel \o/ The Alice B committee are a group of largely anonymous avid readers of lesbian lit who annually present medals for career achievement, and certificates for outstanding debut novels. More info and a list of all the 2012 winners here. 

Huge thanks to all of you who've shown an interest in and supported Snowbound. Y'all are fabulous :-)

Apparently, this is quite a sneaky little book that I've written. Sneaky as in, released kinda sooner than I'd expected! So, for anyone who might be interested in picking up a copy of Snowbound:

Bold Strokes Books now have it in stock (e-books here). They also have the first ten pages or so up as a preview so you can see what you're letting yourself in for.

Amazon have upped their release date to... well, now! Although they're saying it might take an extra couple of days to process (this one was a surprise because they had it listed as 20 December originally, so thankslaurel_hardy for the heads up!)

I really hope that anyone who does buy it, enjoys it. It's been a fabulous year getting it to this point and I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the people on here who've been such good cheerleaders. A big thank you to one and all :-)

I think that's it.

Over the weekend I sent my approval of Snowbound's front and back cover PDF (bar code included - check all those numbers!) and I reckon the whole thing is probably on its way to the printers by now. 

Despite an editing deadline that gave me a good few sleepless nights, I actually got the rewrites finished in good time. Apparently I'm quite disciplined at writing under the cosh. Strangely - having been warned about the trauma of receiving your beloved manuscript from your editor covered in red pen - I really enjoyed the process. It might have been something to do with the fact that everything I'd been worried about (the characters, the dialogue, the plot, the English setting, the number of times my characters say 'bollocks'**) escaped completely unscathed and the majority of the changes were instead related to point of view and my tendency to use a lot of words that ended in 'ing'. I also got to write a few new scenes which was easier than I would ever have thought (this is a novel that's been about four years in the writing) and quite lovely to do. I'd forgotten how much I loved these characters until I started to write them again. The novel went back slightly longer and a lot better than the version I'd originally submitted. So happy days :-) Now all I need to do is fidget nervously until December 12th...

I was going to write an English to American translation guide for the carihunter lj, but I think most Americans are aware that we talk funny over here and have mobile phones as opposed to cell phones. Going through the novel looking for words that might make you go "huh?" I was instead struck by just how much food there is in the bloody thing (I spent the editing process permanently hungry!). So I decided to write a bit of a Snowbound menu. At some point I will probably stop writing daft stuff for the blog and maybe get permission to put up an excerpt or something but for now you have a guide to bacon butties and rice pudding...


**I think that would be twice *g*

After finally getting my Snowbound edits back to my editor (a feat of work-write-work-write!some!more! that just about finished me off!) I have a little breathing space. So, I decided to put together a bit of an intro to the setting for Snowbound. It's over here at the Cari Hunter lj. The original post doesn't come with much of a preamble because I've just spent the last half hour weeping at lj's crappy cut facility before swearing a lot and then giving up. It does look quite pretty though :-) 

I suspect most of my flist hails from the other side of the Atlantic but for any Brits who may have stumbled across this lj and would like to know exactly what a nervous Northerner reading from their very first novel sounds like... head here for details ;-)

I probably shouldn't be as tickled pink about this as I am... but it did make me very happy when I saw it last night...

And thanks also to Cat who's managed to wangle the book onto Good Reads!

Yay for having an ISBN!