Archive for the ‘One Night Stand’ Category
January 25, 2008 | Girl from Mars, One Night Stand, writing
Because I am being an internet whore (hooray!) I’m a guest today on Jennifer’s Random Musings. Pop on over for a chance to talk about beautiful men and also to win a copy of One Night Stand!
I said I’d blog a little bit about my process for plotting a novel. I’m not much good with plot as a whole; I tend to find that the characters provide the action, so my main job is figuring out the characters. Yesterday, I wrote down a whole bunch of questions about my main character, her three best friends, and the comic book she works on. I’ve answered some of those questions, but I’ve got more work to do on it. As I answer the questions, often scenes pop into my head.
In the early stages of structuring a novel I need to think about how the themes of the book work, and how the secondary characters reflect the main character. Like, for example, in One Night Stand, the characters of Eleanor’s relatives, Sheila and June, reflect issues that Eleanor herself is going through, about change, parenthood, and the nature of responsibility. I developed them and chose what happened to them purely because of how these things would affect Eleanor.
Girl from Mars is about loyalty, and I’ve begun to figure out why and how loyalty affects Fil (the heroine) and Dan (the hero). Now I’m going to do some work about what loyalty means to her three best friends, Jim, Digger, and Stevo–and also what it means to the character in the comic book she draws, “Girl from Mars”.
This should, pretty much, give me the plot! For example, I’m suspecting that Digger has a secret about his family, a very good reason why he doesn’t owe his father any loyalty at all. But something traumatic will happen that tests how he feels about his father and what kind of person Digger is. Of course Digger is a secondary character, so I need to think about how and where I can place this traumatic event so that it actually tests the protagonist Fil’s emotions and sense of herself, too.
I really find that choosing themes in this way, or an issue I want to explore in various permutations, helps me develop the story. Other themes come in, too, and it all gets complicated, but having a general “big idea” is really useful to me.
January 19, 2008 | One Night Stand
I would like to say that I was all Zen-like clam on the day of my launch party, but to tell you the truth I was as hyped up as a speed freak. I was up at 5 am with the Fecklet, and pretty much paced around the house until about eleven when Waterstone’s called to say my books had arrived, after which Fecklet and I danced like wild things all over the living room.
After that I relaxed a bit (though by that time my post on Romancing the Blog about being a neurotic fool had already been published). I went out and bought a bunch of wine, picked up the seven dozen glasses I was borrowing, bought crisps and orange juice and dropped it all off at the shop by 2 pm. That gave me a whole five hours left to…well, let’s put me in a good light, shall we, and say I relaxed? 
Husband took care of the baby while I performed the rituals of putting on makeup and doing my hair and nails, rituals to which I have become a stranger in the past thirteen months. Oh, hello, foundation, where have you been? And you, lipliner, wow, is that what you look like? Then I tripped happily down to Waterstone’s, where my lovely agent had already arrived and the staff had already set up everything for me.
Then, the party started!
My editor Cat Cobain, agent Teresa Chris, me, and Headline editor Claire Baldwin
I’d made name tags, each one describing a different character from One Night Stand, and everyone had to choose the one that best suited him/her. For example, Gets Drunk, Gets Horny, Gets Angry. Or Former Geek, Now Babe Magnet. Or Pregnant By Mistake.
My guests were a great mix of people. I had my mates, of course. Then there were members of Reading Writers, and Thames Valley Writers’ Circle, and the RNA. Several local authors dropped by, including crime writer Patrick Lennon, children’s author Lee Weatherly (aka Titania Woods), Roisin McAuley, and Tania Crosse, as well as booksellers and my local councillor. I was happily surprised to see my MP, Rob Wilson–and promptly made him wear a name tag saying Throbbing Member of Parliament. And of course, there was David Tennant, and his date.
No, wait. I tell a lie. David didn’t show up, though I did invite him. But here are some more photos of the people who did.
After much drinking and chatting (and, I hear, networking), my Fantastic Editor, Darling, Cat, tapped on a bottle of champagne with a pen, immediately sending the contents frothing everywhere. Having grabbed everyone’s attention with flying booze, she said a few very embarrassingly nice things about me. Then Teresa (Fabulous Agent, Darling) announced that I’d been shortlisted for the Romance prize (hooray!).
Me listening to people saying nice things about me
Then Teresa poured me a very large glass of bubbly and I toasted Teresa, Cat, my husband Dave, and the Fecklet and no doubt would have continued toasting everyone had I not been required to read a bit from One Night Stand, with silly voices and everything.
I think I was talking about Cat giving me lots of revisions–ahh sweet revenge! Note killer boots which still don’t make me as tall as my editor.
I’m not sure what happened next in the room because happily, I was deluged with people wanting books signed. Signing books is what every writer dreams about before they are published. The idea that someone could want something you’ve written, with your scrappy signature on it, is quite incredible. The reality, of course, is that you can never think of anything witty to write.
What the heck do you write!?!?
Then we went to the pub.
Today, I am washing seven dozen glasses!
(PS Photos provided by Brigid Coady)
(PPS If you lost a glasses case at the launch, or alternatively if you are David Tennant wanting to apologise for not making it, please email me!)
January 16, 2008 | One Night Stand
Tomorrow evening, I’m having a book launch for One Night Stand. It is in the Broad Street Waterstone’s, and I will read a bit from the book and then sign copies for anyone who happens to want to buy one. Then, I plan to drink.
One thing is marring my sunny skies…the books aren’t available. The warehouse is empty of them, because they have sold out and are being reprinted. Between them, the hardworking bookshop and the wonderful publishers have arranged for a stack of the books to be sent direct from the printers to the bookshop, which is totally going beyond the call of duty and they are amazing, amazing people. The thing is, this can’t happen until tomorrow. The. Day. Of. My. Launch.
I trust the bookshop; I trust my publisher; I do not trust the road between the printer and the bookshop which I am convinced is going to be closed because of a freak snowstorm or something.
All of my guests have a great sense of humour and I’m sure they will understand if they come to celebrate a book that isn’t. But I do hope it is. Please keep your fingers crossed.
On the other hand I have some KILLER BOOTS and a gorgeous velvet jacket to wear. And sequins. Yes!
Oh and I will have an extra-special announcement to make.
January 15, 2008 | One Night Stand, reviews
Pick Me Up! magazine is having a competition to win a copy of One Night Stand and also LBD The True Naomi Story, by A. M. Goldsher.
And, so is Now! magazine, though the question is a little more difficult (for me, anyway).
And even more exciting than THAT, Look magazine has a review of One Night Stand this week, which gives it four stars* and says it’s “a clever, funny and oh-so-sexy novel”.
*To give you an idea of the rating system, they give American Idol five stars, my book and Superbad four stars, and Alien Vs Predator: Requiem only three. Poor Alien.
January 13, 2008 | One Night Stand
Jacksons of Reading is one of those places that are so uncool that they are the epitome of cool.
Reading has a reputation as a shopping capital. It has a soulless though clean mall, called The Oracle (named, ironically enough, after a now-demolished workhouse for people stricken by poverty); it has a pedestrianised street full of chain stores and crowds of teenagers bunking school. Shoppers flock to Reading and cause traffic jams and fill up the car parks, though I am not sure why because every shop here is exactly and repeatedly the same as every shop everywhere else in Great Britain. There are three Burger Kings and three McDonald’s, two Starbuck’s and two Pret A Mangers, two Gaps and two H&Ms and no such thing as an independent book shop.* I hate shopping in central Reading.
There are, however, four places to shop in Reading that do have a soul. The first is the market, which runs from Wednesday to Saturday and sells fruit, veg, and general tat. The second is Smelly Alley, which is so called because of the fish shop and the butchers at one end. It stinks and it isn’t another Sainsbury’s (there are two of those, too). The art deco Harris Arcade looks cool, though shops open and close there at an alarming rate. The last place is Jacksons of Reading.
It was established in 1875 as a gentleman’s outfitters by Edward Jackson, and is still run by his descendants. As I wrote in One Night Stand:
It inhabited a corner (known as Jacksons Corner) between the library and Market Square, just out of orbit of the frenzy of capitalism that was jostling and bumping up Broad Street. The shoppers here were local and had been patronising Jacksons for years, buying wool and embroidery floss, school uniforms, and clothes that knew not the vagaries of fashion…
Jacksons’ departments were laid out on different levels, each one a small microcosm of shoes or workwear or towels. I visited Men’s fashion, made my purchases, admired the system of overhead tubes that delivered my change, and wandered up and down steps, browsing.
I like Jacksons. I like the way it smells, like linoleum and gently folded clothes. I like the people who work there, who ask you what you would like. I like the stiff window mannequins, some of which wear plasters to cover chips and scratches. I wish I could have written more about it, but by the time I came to write this scene, I had had the Fecklet and I couldn’t explore the shop properly because it’s impossible to haul a pushchair up and down the steps that separate every department.
*The nearest independent bookshop is over the river in Caversham.
January 11, 2008 | One Night Stand
One Night Stand came out officially yesterday, and today it’s been among the bestselling romance novels on Amazon all day. Did I check every hour or so to see what position it was in?
Of course not.
January 11, 2008 | One Night Stand
I used Forbury Gardens, the Victorian park in the centre of Reading, as the setting for the scene where Eleanor talks with her best friend Hugh, just after she’s told him she’s pregnant by a man she doesn’t know (and who might look a bit like George Michael).
I spend quite a bit of time in the Forbury for one reason or another, mostly because Fecklet loves the fountain there. The park always seems to contain the following people:
The park is bordered on one side by a church in the shadow of Reading Prison, where Oscar Wilde served his sentence; on another by an upmarket hotel and restaurant, an elaborate courthouse, and a gateway to the ruined Abbey where there is a small plaque saying that Jane Austen went to school nearby. Between this is the entrance to the historic abbey ruins (where you can usually find one person getting drunk and another getting stoned). It’s bordered on a third side by a churchyard containing, among other things, a memorial to a railway worker killed by a freak tornado; and on the fourth by a very ugly dual carriageway next to a poorly designed retail park and a weird looking 60s office building.
This, to me, is fairly typical of Reading: you have a place of Victorian beauty juxtaposed with rather awful developments, mixed in with the genuinely appealing and quirky.
There’s an interesting urban legend about the Maiwand Lion, which I put into One Night Stand. Legend has it that after he’d finished the lion, the sculptor discovered there was something wrong with it (there are different versions as to what, but it usually has something to do with lions not really walking like that), and killed himself. This didn’t happen. I’ve heard almost identical legends about several statues and buildings, both in the UK and in America. At Brown University (where I studied), they say that the science library is sinking because the architects didn’t take the weight of the books into account. Apparently they topped themselves, too.
I liked hearing the legend about the lion. It made me feel at home.
January 7, 2008 | One Night Stand
Now, I may be right or I may be wrong, but I believe that One Night Stand is one of the few, if not the only, romantic comedy novels to be published that are set in Reading.
If I am wrong, please correct me. Maybe there’s a whole sub-genre of which I’m not yet aware.
Anyway, I decided to set the story in Reading for three very simple reasons. One was that I wanted something different from all the rom-coms set in London and New York and exciting places like that.
The second was because of my heroine, Eleanor, the erotic comedy writer. I wanted her to be dissatisfied with her life–her job during the day writing smut, her job during the evenings tending bar in a dodgy pub, her lacklustre love life, her mysterious and far too exciting sister June, her boring mother Sheila, her best friend Hugh’s penchant for bringing home a new blonde or redhead every night. A part of that was being dissatisfied with where she lived. Now Reading is actually a quite nice place to live, but it does have its down sides, and Eleanor sees them all. It’s part of her emotional journey to learn about where she lives and to discover that she’s part of the community.
The third, simplest, and possibly the most compelling reason, was that I live in Reading and I was really, REALLY pregnant and I could barely haul myself out of my chair to go to the bathroom several million times a day. There was no way I was going to go research some exotic location for this story.
Reading it was.
Where’s your favourite setting for a romance? Ever read a good one set somewhere just a little different–or perhaps somewhere very, very normal?
January 4, 2008 | One Night Stand
If you’re a writer (and especially, for some reason, if you’re a writer of sexy romance), everyone always asks you if you base your stories on your real life. The answer, of course, is always No.
However, real life can often give you ideas for your story, which you then develop into fiction. For example I got the idea for my current wip by watching the awesome old 60s Adam West/Burt Ward Batman show on TV. I thought, “My next book is going to be about Batman.” Of course it isn’t (as Batman is property of DC comics) but that was how my heroine became a comic book artist, and the rest has come from that.
I can trace where One Night Stand came from quite easily. I wrote a joking email to my Harlequin editor at that time, where I wrote a sex scene from the point of view of someone who had the flu or something, and every erotic description could also be interpreted as being nauseating. Then, a bit later, I was pregnant and I had morning sickness and I was actually trying to write a sex scene, and every time I thought about sex and all it entailed I wanted to puke.
So I thought, “Hey, that would be a good scene: an erotica writer who can’t write sex because she’s got morning sickness.”
So I had my character: a pregnant erotica writer. What I usually do next in this situation is ask: Why is this a problem?
Ewwww! No! Get off, I’m gonna hurl!!
Well, of course, she didn’t know who the father of her baby was because she’d conceived during a one night stand.
I’d done a book where the heroine gets pregnant off a one night stand–Married in a Rush. In that book, the heroine is the sort of person who would have one night stands, and because this was a Harlequin/Mills & Boon novel and I wanted to use the great hook of a marriage of convenience, the heroine gets married to the father of her baby.
I wanted to do this one differently. I wanted my heroine not to be the sort of person who would ever have a one night stand, even though she’s an erotica writer. And I wanted her not to know the father, and not necessarily to fall in love with him. I wanted the story to be about her search for the father and, though she doesn’t know it, her search for her own happiness and self-knowledge.
And I also wanted her to have sex with someone who looked like George Michael. Just because.
January 3, 2008 | One Night Stand
I have one theme for my posts this month:
ONE NIGHT STAND IS OUT IN PAPERBACK!!
Yes it is. Yup. It’s out. I think the official release date is next Tuesday but hey, it says AVAILABLE on Amazon.
It is a beautiful, beautiful book. I can’t even begin to talk about how much I love the way it looks. Personally, I like the story, too, but I would say that, so you might want to make up your own mind.
But anyway. I’m going to spend some time talking about it over the next few days.
November 4, 2007 | One Night Stand
I’ve never done a link like this before, but I think it’s worked…anyway this is a copy of the VERY COOL two-page spread in the BCA Book Club magazine this month, in which One Night Stand is an editor’s choice. (That means you have to choose NOT to get it.)
(Scroll down to the bit where the editor says I’m one of her favourite discoveries of the past few years…*wild tickled laughter*)
October 23, 2007 | One Night Stand, contests
It’s no good. I’ve got these gorgeous, gorgeous hardback copies of One Night Stand sitting here in front of me and I have to give one away.
So…I’m having a contest. All you have to do is to email me, using the contact button on the right. Put “contest” in your subject line.
(If the contact button doesn’t work for you, email me at julie at julie-cohen.com–using @ for “at”.)
And after a decent interval I will choose a winner totally at random.
Also…if I get twenty or more entries to this contest, I’ll add a mystery prize to go to someone else…and I’ll add another mystery prize for every ten people who enter over twenty. So the more people who enter, the more prizes there will be!
Come on, enter! Tell your friends! Tell your granny!
Small print: if you enter, I’ll add you to my newsletter mailing list, which is a text-only email that is sent whenever I have a new release. You can easily unsubscribe whenever you like.
