The Books In My Life - Suzy Turner

The gorgeous and super-talented author, Suzy Turner, has very kindly agreed to write a guest post for Someone Wot Writes! I'll be following it up later with a review of her amazing YA novel Raven.

The Books in my Life

Books have always been incredibly important to me. I remember reading so many different kinds as a child, anything from Arthur C Clarke's Islands in the Sky, Robert O'Brien's Z for Zachariah, some of the Nancy Drew series, a whole load of Mills and Boon and many others before I eventually moved on to Jilly Cooper, Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins. I tell you, I learned a lot from those women!

There are some books that were so powerful to me when I first read them as a young teenager. At that age I guess I was easily blown away. Probably because I needed to be taken away into other people's worlds after I lost my mother when I was just 13.

Some that I remember with fondness are Queenie by Michael Korda, Lace by Shirley Conran and Destiny by Sally Beaumont. I also loved the Lucky Santangelo series by Jackie Collins. There was something about all of those books that really touched me at the time. I ought to read them again and see how I am affected now, as a grown woman.

A little later, I remember my dad recommending Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth. A huge book, I know, but boy... what a story! It was fantastic. The TV series, although good, just didn't do it justice. Jean M Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear was another book I read soon after,and it certainly wowed me!

Since those days, I've become a true Harry Potter and Twilight fan. I know I will read these books over and over. The only other book that I've ever read twice is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden and that is an amazing tale - much better than the movie.

But now, since the advent of ebooks and the kindle, I am thoroughly enjoying reading books written by authors in the same situation as me. Self-published authors who have decided to go it alone. And here I am, being blown away yet again by the sheer talent out there. Some firm favourites include Shalini's Hidden, Johanna Frappier's Fairy Circle, Patti Roberts' Paradox... there are so many, I could easily list tons more!

I haven't given up on traditionally published books, of course. I would never do that, although I do prefer to read on my kindle these days as it's so much more convenient than lugging around books around in my handbag!

Thanks so much, Suzy. I loved reading about your book history. I think we must have almost identical reading tastes!

http://suzyturner.com
http://suzyturner.blogspot.com

Guest Blog by Tore Sinding Bekkeval, NORWAY SURVIVOR - Linked from Hannah Warren's Blog

My thoughts are with the survivors of this truly awful event. I can't begin to imagine what they must have gone through and are yet to endure.

Norway survivor, Tore Sinding Bekkeval, has written a guest post for Hannah Warren's blog:

"I wrote a Norwegian post explaining my experience at Utøya. I had taken this blog for dead, and had entirely forgotten that it was syndicated on Planet Debian. I don’t want to let Google Translate make this disaster any worse than it is – the translation of “bullets” into “balls” being particularly bad – so the international attention the massacre has garnered in consideration, I am writing an English translation of my experiences. I feel somehow duty-bound to make people aware of what happened, but I don’t want to get into anything else but a sober description of the events and some very brief reflections. There are many details I have chosen to omit.

"Others have written their experiences of the events at Utøya. I wanted to write mine down as well, and “get it out there”. Partly, I want to write this down because I’m unsure if I will remember all the details at a later point in time, although I think I’d prefer it if I couldn’t. I’m also writing this because people are asking about my experiences and it’s much better to have an URL to give them, lest I have to keep going through the same spiel over and over again ..."

Read more

Selling Ebooks for the Nook from Barnes & Noble

Yesterday I discovered that my young adult novel, Hidden(Marchwood Vampire Series), was in the Barnes & Noble Nook Top 100 list. And not just in the top 100, but it’s reached the vertiginous heights of number 27!
How did it happen? And what does it mean?

I published to B&N via Smashwords, which is great, but unfortunately it means I have to wait until next month to find out what this chart position represents in terms of sales – NO-O-O-O-O!!! How can I wait that long? My mind is on overdrive wondering how many people have bought my book.

Nearly all my previous sales have been through Amazon. In fact, in June I only sold 6 copies of Hidden via B&N and it was ranked in the thousands. So how has it managed to leap from that, to number 27? I’ve been featured on a few blogs and had some great reviews, but apart from that … I’m stumped.



I’m not complaining, just curious and itching to find out how many I’ve sold. Anybody care to take a wild guess???