I’m going to a dinner tonight…not just any dinner, but the 14/4 Literary Dinner, which is part of the Windsor Literary Festival and features 14 authors who move from table to table during the night to meet different guests. I have a gorgeous handmade vintage scarlet chiffon frock, and fabulous accessories, and I decided I wanted to put my hair up and look really glam.

Two problems. One. My hair is too short to put up properly in a glam fashion. This is a problem I’m prepared for, because I bought this great fake hair thing for when I dress up like a Regency gentlewoman. However, we now have problem two. I bought the fake hair thing when I had brown hair, and my hair is currently red.

Fake hair on left (brown). Real hair on right (red).

Now, you would think this wasn’t much of a problem. I’m not all into this red hair shade anyway, so the easiest thing to do would be to dye my hair back to brown, to match the fake hair thing. Simple. Right?

Not right. The thing is, I have a history of dying my hair immediately before Very Important Events. And sometimes, it goes horrifically wrong. Like the giraffe-neck debacle before the Festival of Writing. Or the Wicked Witch of the West/Fairy Liquid disaster before the RNA Conference. After the Wicked Witch/Fairy Liquid disaster, I vowed never ever to dye my hair again myself, and to let professionals handle it.

The thing is, that letting professionals handle your hair colour requires making an appointment several days in advance, and spending at least sixty quid. Whereas doing it yourself takes twenty minutes and costs just upwards of a fiver. And you get Boots points! Yes!

I asked on Twitter whether I should dye it, and everyone who knew me when I washed my hair with Fairy Liquid screamed “NOOOOOOO!” And everyone who didn’t, said, “Yeah, why not? Live dangerously!”

It was that phrase that got me. My book is called The Summer of Living Dangerously after all. I sort of had to.

I am so gonna look like this chick.

Black gloves. Wicked Witch again? Or just achingly cool?

I put on the dye. I waited for thirty minutes. I washed it off. It made worryingly little mess.

This is the result.

Real (dyed) hair on left. Fake hair on right.

Perhaps this post should have been titled The Spring of Dying Ineffectually.

Still, it is a shade lighter, though you can’t quite tell in the photo, and more like my natural colour, and nice and shiny. And with any luck the dinner will be dimly-lit. I might use the fake hair anyway, even though I have told everyone about it on the internet.

Now that’s living dangerously.

Of course once I’d decided to write a novel about historical re-enactors, I had to go see some. So I coerced Brigid Coady into helping me. I actually blogged about this in detail after it happened, so I’m repeating the post here, in case you missed it the first time. Because it has Tudor Dudes in it. And as it happened a year and a half ago, it’s like time travel, and so fits in with the dual timeline of The Summer of Living Dangerously. Yeah, baby.

***

22 September, 2010
On Saturday, Brigid and I went to Hampton Court Palace for the day. This was totally research. I’m currently writing about a historical re-enactor, and every day at Hampton Court Palace, historical re-enactors, well, re-enact, Henry VIII’s wedding to Catherine Parr. So I had to go and see what these re-enactors did, how it was organised, how they interacted with their audience, how tongue-in-cheek it all was.

Plus, it was the opportunity to ogle some Tudor dudes. Talking on Twitter beforehand, Brigid and I decided that every time we saw someone in Tudor costume, it was imperative to turn to each other and say, “Yeah, baby!” Because that is, you know, Tudor.

We also agreed we would have to closely inspect any male Tudor calves which came into our vicinity.

First, we helped Catherine Parr select her wedding dress. Although she is not, strictly speaking, a Tudor dude, I got some great ideas for my book just from those twenty minutes. (In the chapter “A Most Inconvenient Engagement”, in case you’re wondering.)

Then, we watched Henry VIII talk over his impending nuptuals with his courtiers. And arm-wrestle said courtiers. This particular activity brought Sir Thomas Seymour‘s calf muscles rather close to Brigid and me. As one, we both bent and snapped a photo.

After this close inspection we were both rather enamoured of the roguish Sir Thomas and made sure we had our portrait taken with him.

Then we drank a toast to King Henry VIII (“Yeah, baby!”) and his last bride, from the wine fountain in the courtyard. I need me one of those.

I wouldn’t say no to a Tudor dude, either.

***

Back to 14 March, 2012: All of this was incredibly useful for The Summer of Living Dangerously, even though my characters weren’t playing Tudors. These re-enactors, I discovered later, are professional actors rather than necessarily being history buffs, and they work to a script, from which they ad lib as necessary. My characters don’t have a script, and are a mixture of amateurs and professionals.

The Summer of Living Dangerously is available from Amazon.co.uk here in paperback and for Kindle, from Amazon.com for Kindle here, and with free international shipping from The Book Depository here.

This week, I’m on BBC Radio Berkshire on Thursday at 2.00 pm, an author guest at the 14/4 Literary Dinner in Windsor on Friday, and signing copies of my new book at Waterstones in the Oracle, Reading, on Saturday 17th March from 11-2.

I’ve been celebrating the launch of my book everywhere lately—including on Risky Regencies, the QVC blog and, today, on the Word Wenches. But I haven’t properly celebrated it here, on my own website.

So for the next few days I’m going to be posting some stuff about my book, The Summer of Living Dangerously. Some behind-the-scenes stuff, mostly: about research, about how I wrote it, about the soundtrack and the influences, about some of the issues in the book that have touched me.

First, how the book started. It’s about historical re-enactors, and I got the idea for it when the Rock God and I were in Brighton for our anniversary. We stayed in this brilliant B&B called The Brighton Pavilions Hotel, where every room was decorated to a different theme. We stayed in the Royal Pavilion room and of course our first priority was to visit the Royal Pavilion, the Prince Regent’s lush folly of a seaside retreat.

As soon as we walked up, we were greeted by a woman dressed as a Regency-era servant. She greeted us, told us which way to enter, and then immediately got into an argument with a man dressed as some sort of groom. In the Long Gallery, a young gentlewoman asked if we were there as guests of the Prince; a servant lounged in the kitchen waiting for his favourite kitchen maid to flirt with. When we got to the Music Room, Prince George himself was there, demanding we bow, and treating us as if we were soldiers returning from the Peninsular Wars.

It was amazing.

Afterwards, we walked down to the sea front and saw a gathering of VW camper vans. (This is, apparently, very typical in Brighton.) Then we went to the pub. And it was in the pub that I turned to my husband and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to set a book in a place like that? And to have a heroine who was a historical interpreter, but in reality her life was a total mess, so she became completely obsessed by her fake historical life so that she could escape from her real life?’

And the long-suffering but perfect Rock God said, ‘Yes, that would be great. Have some more wine.’

And so, the book was born.

Next post…YEAH BABY.

The Summer of Living Dangerously is available from Amazon.co.uk here in paperback and for Kindle, from Amazon.com for Kindle here, and with free international shipping from The Book Depository here.

This week, I’m on BBC Radio Berkshire on Thursday at 2.00 pm, an author guest at the 14/4 Literary Dinner in Windsor on Friday, and signing copies of my new book at Waterstones in the Oracle, Reading, on Saturday 17th March from 11-2.

I love meeting readers and a well-organised library event is one of my favourite things to do. Last night I went to Maldon Library to do a Girls’ Night In with Sasha Wagstaff and Jill Mansell as part of the Essex Book Festival.

This event was so well run in so many ways. It had been well-advertised, and tickets had been sold so that the library knew how many people to expect. The library had been decorated with posters of photos of us (!!) and our book covers, and our books were prominently on display in the library to be borrowed. When we got to the library, early so that we could run through logistics, we were greeted with smiling faces, a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. The booksellers were already setting up with a range of our latest titles and our backlist, all attractively set out. The ‘stage’ was set with comfy chairs, a vase of flowers, and fresh water to drink. Apryl, the librarian in charge, chatted with us and when she introduced us, it was clear she’d read our books and had done her research.

I can’t overstate how wonderful it is to be made to felt welcome and valued at an author event.

The audience was great, too; interested, friendly, and full of questions. There was plenty of time at the end to have personal chats and sign some books, and lots of people had made an effort to read our books beforehand.

Libraries are important to readers and to authors. I was over the moon when I got my first job, as a library page, at age sixteen; I spent so much time at Rumford Library anyway that it felt almost too good to be paid to spend time with books. I love it when I go to a vibrant library with well-organised, enthusiastic staff. It makes me feel wonderful. I’ve been to several recently—my own local library, Reading Central, is fantastic, and I’ve had well-run, friendly events at Sandhurst Library too, and Bristol Library. I’m there to promote my own books, of course, but it seems we always end up talking about other books too…books we’ve loved, and books we want to read. That’s what libraries are all about.

What a privilege to work with them.

Today is the day of the Romantic Novelists’ Association awards, now called the RONAs. It’s a glittering ceremony held at the Gladstone Library, One Whitehall Place, London, a celebration of romantic fiction in all its variety. There are awards for contemporary novels, historical novels, sagas, romantic comedies, young adult romances, and shorter-length romances. There’s also the Harry Bowling prize for unpublished novels.

So many of my friends are shortlisted for their fabulous books, and I can’t wait to cheer them on. But more than that, I can’t wait to cheer on romantic novels. The genre is so broad, so vibrant, and gives so many readers pleasure. I think it’s an entirely fitting thing to celebrate.

Of course it’s also an excuse for those of us who usually sit in front of our computers wearing pyjamas to get dressed up in a nice frock and shoes, go somewhere glamorous, and meet with our agents and editors and fellow authors. I am, this very moment, painting my nails Revlon Red to go with my black dress and bright red necklace (and thus typing very, very carefully).

If you’re on Twitter, you can keep up with the news and the winners as they’re announced by following the hashtag #RoNA.

In other news, I’ve chosen a winner at random for my newsletter giveaway…Rebecca Chapman will win a signed copy of The Summer of Living Dangerously.

I don’t usually wallow in my achievements (in fact usually I am neurotically wondering if they are achievements at all) but today I am going to blatantly share the nice things that people have said about my book. Then I am going into town and I am going to buy myself a large slice of cake and a very frothy coffee in my favourite cafe.

Please don’t forget—sign up to my newsletter for a chance to win a free copy.

‘Reader, prepared to be charmed … to cry a little … and laugh a lot. Julie Cohen’s pen dances gracefully over the page in what is on the surface a delightful romp, but which packs an emotional punch that most romantic comedies fail to deliver. It takes great skill to marry both light and dark, but Julie manages this seamlessly and with a deftness of touch that will keep you reading till the very last page. Enchanting.’ — Bestselling women’s fiction author Veronica Henry

‘The flirtation with the Regency world is delightful fun, but that’s also the frame for a moving and deeply satisfying love story. A rich feast.’ —Internationally bestselling historical romance author Jo Beverley

‘Wonderful…moving and heartbreaking and funny and real.’ —Internationally bestselling YA author L.A. Weatherly

‘Loved it! …Made me laugh out loud – a feat usually reserved for Georgette [Heyer]‘—Heyer biographer Dr Jennifer Kloester

‘Total bliss from first page to last; full of nostalgia, bittersweet romance and men in tight breeches. The kind of book you can’t stop reading but don’t want to finish. I loved it.’ —Award winning romance author India Grey

‘The Summer of Living Dangerously captures all of the witty, elegant and dashing style of the Regency era and wraps it in a delicious contemporary novel.’ —Bestselling historical novelist Nicola Cornick

‘Heart-warming, moving, romantic – this is a Regency-come-modern day love story that I just did not want to put down!’ —The Bookbag

“This book was everything I love in a contemporary women’s fiction novel…Just plunge straight in and let the plot wash over you and swallow you up. This is Julie’s best book yet. She just keeps getting better and better.’ —reviewer Helen Redfern

 

You can read an excerpt here, and you can order it from Amazon in paperback here and for Kindle here and, I am reasonably assured, for US Kindle here.

There’s a shortage of perfect short men in the world. We just lost another one.

I owe at least some of my career to Davy Jones. I perfected the art of writing a sex scene at the age of sixteen or so whilst writing steamy stories about Davy Jones and my best friend, Kathy Love, when I was supposed to be doing my chemistry coursework. I have described Davy Jones naked many, many times. Also George Harrison, who Kathy also fancied. And Donnie Wahlberg, but we won’t go there.

It’s probably a good thing I never met him in real life. The Rock God has, though. He bought Davy a beer. Apparently Mr Jones was very gracious.

Very excitingly, I have a book out on Thursday. THE SUMMER OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY comes out in paperback on 1 March and I will be firing up my blog by talking about it.

You can get a sneak peek at the story and see what people have been saying about it by checking out this page on my website.

But in the meantime, I’m going to do a special newsletter-subscribers-only giveaway of a signed copy of the paperback. All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is to sign up for my newsletter using the form right there on the right. If you’re already a subscriber, you’re automatically entered.

I’ll choose a winner next Tuesday, randomly selected from my newsletter subscribers.

Here is an Incredibly Cool Fact about this book: The cover was designed by Hennie Haworth, who did some illustrations for Paul McCartney’s new album. As I spent every breathing hour between the ages of 10 and 25 years old overwhelmingly, passionately, some might say obsessively in love with Paul McCartney, this is very exciting for me. It’s one degree of separation! I think it means that Paul and I are probably fated to get married. Or something like that.

Look! It’s a match in heaven.

Or this:

We both like umbrellas! We both smile at the camera in black and white! We have so much in common! I think it is True Lurve.

My friend Ruth turned up the other day with the most delicious little cakes. They consisted of two rich, chocolatey brownies with a gooey melted marshmallow sandwiched between them. She said that they were whoopie pies.

Rudely, I contradicted her (whilst stuffing my face, of course because they were fantastic). ‘Those aren’t whoopie pies,’ I said. ‘I’m from Maine, where whoopie pies were invented. Whoopie pies aren’t as chocolately. Or as marshmallowy. Or as rich. They’re more sort of…’

But I couldn’t describe them. It was like trying to describe a law of nature, something that you’ve grown up with and always taken for granted and never really thought about. In Maine, whoopie pies are the default dessert. Everyone knows someone who makes them from scratch and when they’re delivered to your house or to the church bean supper or wherever, everyone falls on them with ravenous jaws because, of course, homemade whoopie pies are The Best.

But usually, you buy whoopie pies as a sort of afterthought. In nearly every corner store and gas station in Maine, there’s a plate or a box of them on the counter near the till, individually wrapped in plastic wrap. They might be homemade, by the owner’s mother or neighbour; they might be a commercial brand. They range in colour from brown to nearly Oreo-black, but the filling is always bright white. You pick them up as a little treat when you go in to buy your gas, or your cigarettes, or your six-pack of Milwaukee’s Best. You unwrap them, and the filling and part of the cake sticks to the clingfilm, and you lick those parts off and then you eat the whoopie pie, which is gooey and sweet and bland and soft except for the slight crunch of undissolved granulated sugar in the whipped filling.

The flavour is difficult to describe. ‘Like childhood’ doesn’t quite cut it. Of course it has nothing to do with an actual pie; there’s no pastry involved. The cakes are like cakes but also like soft cookies, and they’re vaguely chocolate flavoured. You can tell there’s some chocolate in there, but it wouldn’t offend anyone by being too chocolatey. The filling is…white. It’s not a marshmallow, and it’s not buttercream. It’s just white and soft with a whiff of vanilla. You can eat the whole thing in about two bites without having to think about it too much. It’s not a cake that’s going to sit in a patisserie window, not a cake that you’re going to write a breathless review about. It’s just a cake. It’s sort of like Mainers: unassuming, but good.

Anyway, after I’d blatantly questioned the authenticity of Ruth’s brownie-and-marshmallow confections, I had to demonstrate what a real whoopie pie was like. So I got the recipe from my Mom, who got it from Denise. Denise and her mother are legendary in Rumford, Maine for their baking. And quite rightly so. Therefore I didn’t question the recipe, which was, if I may say so, a little bit odd and required vast amounts of pure white hydrogenated vegetable fat. To make the filling, you create a sort of glue made of milk and flour and then beat other things into it until you are weary and satisfied.

They turned out just like whoopie pies. I ate one. It tasted like Maine.

After my Advanced Novel Writing course was such a success in November, I’ve booked a couple more dates. Here are some more details:

ADVANCED NOVEL WRITING
Saturday 26 May 2012, 10 am to 6 pm and
Saturday 13 October 2012, 10 am to 6 pm

at RISC, London Road, Reading, Berkshire UK.

(Please note: each course is entirely separate and self-contained; this isn’t a series of courses, though of course you are welcome to come to both!)

This course will help you revise and polish your novel and get you ready to submit it to an agent or editor. It covers advanced conflict, pacing and story structure, writing your synopsis and putting together your submission package. Activities are a mix of discussion, workshopping, critique, and hard serious work (fuelled by cake).

The price includes my written critique of either the first page of your novel, the one-page synopsis of your novel, or your submission cover letter.

If you’ve finished or nearly finished at least one novel and are ready to take your work to the next level, this is the course for you.

Because groups are small, I am generally able to tailor the contents to the participants’ needs. Here are some comments from writers who have taken my courses:

I found the content excellent and your methods have encouraged me to keep going.

You are a truly inspirational teacher!

A brilliant and informative day.

You’re very good at encouraging students to find their own conclusions rather than just telling them the answer. I had a couple of big revelations about my WIP during the day that came out of exercises or conversations you had set up, but felt as if I’d completely worked it out for myself.

The price for the day is £80 per person, which includes tea or coffee and a sandwich lunch. There’s a £5 discount (so you pay only £75) if you bring homemade cake to share!

Groups are strictly limited to 11 participants, because the room only holds 12 people, and this time I haven’t forgotten to count myself.

If you’re interested in booking a place on this course on either of the dates, or if you have questions, please let me know by sending me an email, using the “contact” link on the top right of this page.

I’m also giving a few talks in the next few months—you can find these on my Events page, but I’ll try to flag them up here too as they come up.

I hear advice, very often, about how writers should trust their instincts. How we shouldn’t follow the market, but write what we love because we should trust our instinct about what people would like to read. How we should take criticism but always with a pinch of salt, because we need to trust our instinct about what’s right for our stories.

This is good advice. At least, my instincts tell me it’s good advice. Writing and publishing are so very subjective that we need a life-saver of instinct to cling to, or else we’d flounder around in a sea of conflicting ideas. Well, more than we already do.

The thing is, I don’t really know if it’s completely true. Personally, sometimes my instincts are spot-on. And sometimes, they really really suck.

My instincts, for example, tell me that everything I write will be loads better with at least one penis joke in it. This is so self-evidently not true that I can’t help but regard my instincts with suspicion.

I’ve submitted at least three books that I actively hated when I pressed ‘send’…and every one of those three books has been called ‘your best yet’ by my editor at the time.* On the other hand, when I sent in my last book I absolutely loved every word of it…and my editor (quite rightly) gave me huge revisions.

Several times, I’ve come up with what I think is an absolutely brilliant idea for a story, only to have it shot down in flames by my agent. But then another idea is okay. Why? Why? For the love of God, why?!!?

My instincts do not tell me. They are too busy partying with the penis jokes.

On the other hand, I usually know instinctively when there’s something wrong with a scene or a plotline a conflict or a character, even if I can’t figure out why. It gets all tangled up and it doesn’t work.

Except, of course, when it does seem to work, and I totally love it, and only discover later on that it doesn’t.

In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell says that truly effective instinctive people have trained themselves with knowledge and experience, so that their split-second decisions are often the most accurate. After eight years as a published author, I’d like to think that’s true; that my instincts are informed by what I’ve learned. But sometimes, I can’t help but think that while you should trust your instincts, you shouldn’t trust them too much. You should look around for knowledge and experience too. For good reasons to fall back on. Maybe this is why I’m an analytical writer as well as an impulsive one; I like to know why something feels right.

I’ve had a really good couple of writing weeks, and I really like what I’ve produced. I think it does exactly what I wanted it to do; I think it’s challenging me while playing to my strengths, and I am in love with the characters**. I feel that way, of course, until it comes time to let it out into the world. Then my instincts run off to party again.

What are your thoughts about your instincts?

*I like those books a lot better now, with distance. And no, I’m not going to say which ones they were.

**It doesn’t include any penis jokes, though. I wonder if maybe I should put some in?