A Trailer for Celeste

I SUPPOSE authors are all constantly trying to find ways to tell the world about our books, and seeing as quite a few authors are now having trailer's made for their novels, I thought I'd give it a go, and see if it makes any difference to sales.

This was for Celeste, my YA time slip thriller, set here in Coventry, which is published by American publisher, Clean Reads, formerly known as Astraea Press.

Not being particularly technically minded to put a trailer together myself, I took up the offer of a fellow Clean Reads author in the USA, who runs Videos by O, creating videos for any budget. My budget wasn't very big, but that didn't make any difference to the effort that Opal put into the video, with her sending me mock ups throughout the process, and making the changes that I asked for.

Persuading my photographer friend, Rob Tysall (www.tysallsphotography.org.uk) to head into Coventry's City Centre with me a few weeks ago, we set out to take the necessary photos that I'd need to create the look that I wanted for the trailer. 

The story is about teenager, Megan Miller who moves to Coventry with her parents and starts to experience feelings of deja vu. These feelings become stronger and stronger and she gradually realises she has lived, and died before in Medieval times when her name had been Celeste. The story particularly revolves around the ruins of Coventry's old cathedral.

So photographer, Rob and I headed for the old cathedral, armed with a length of blue ribbon and my daughter's black hooded top. He took lots of different shots of the cathedrals and other atmospheric buildings nearby, which I have to say I'm really really pleased with.

It was a fun day, although I noticed a group of sightseers giving me a wide birth, as I stood in the shadows of St Mary's Guildhall with my hoodie hiding my face for one particular sinister shot. 

Back at the studio, Rob produced the images, and did quite a lot of photoshop 'magic' on the 'evil monk' shot you see at the end. Believe me when I say he did a LOT of photoshop work! I don't actually look like this - honestly!!

I then played about with the different photos, working out which order they needed to appear for the best effect, and used the blurb from the back of the book, in short paragraphs, to indicate which words went with each picture.

Finally it was emailed off to Opal who did her 'magic' adding music and a 'moving' effect, and following a few tweaks, hey presto all done!

Who knows if it will result in more sales, but anyway, it was good fun doing it. Here's the link if you'd like to see the finished result:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFDBEt9o3Fw

You can purchase Celeste as an ebook or paperback:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Celeste-Ann-Evans-ebook/dp/B00KQ8XIGE

https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/celeste-6

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/celeste-ann-evans/1119649538?ean=9781500982492

Please visit my website at: http://www.annevansbooks.co.uk

Plaque for James Hadley Chase

You just never know where your random blogging will lead you. A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post on the subject of authors who had inspired me to write. I wrote about crime thriller writer, James Hadley Chase (1906-1985). He was a prolific writer, known as the Thriller King of Europe in his heyday. He wrote around 90 crime novels, with around half of them being made into films.

However, I wasn't aware of any of this when I first picked out one of his novels from the library shelves when I was a young teenager – probably too young to be reading his style of books!

James Hadley Chase

As a child I would go to the local library with my mum, a big Agatha Christie fan. And while I did try reading her books, I have to admit they didn't really grab me. By chance I picked up a James Hadley Chase book - and I was hooked!

He wrote fast moving, page turning stories. Many of them set in gangland America. They're action packed with intriguing characters who have a knack of digging great big holes for themselves through their own greed or jealousy. I thought at the time that he was an American author, but I later learnt - when researching his background for the aforementioned blog, that he was an English author who created his authentic settings and dialogue by making use of American street maps and an American slang dictionary. 

As a teenager, I had no intentions of trying to become a writer, but when I caught the writing bug in my early 20s, I recalled JHC's writing style and did my best to write fast moving page turners with cliffhangers in all the right places - just as he did.  

So with that blog done I didn’t give it another thought, until April of this year when I got a phone call out of the blue from a man called Simon Cole. He explained that he lives in the house that James Hadley Chase was born in. The mention of the author’s name was like a blast from the past. And I listened with great interest as he explained how he and his late wife had been liaising with the Ealing authorities to be allowed to have a plaque erected on his house, marking Chase’s birthplace. After a five year stint of negotiations, permission had been granted. And Simon went looking for someone who JHC meant something to, to unveil it.

Simon Cole and I

“I didn’t just want to get a local councillor to unveil the plaque,” Simon told me. “So I Googled 'writers inspired by James Hadley Chase' and up came a blog by Ann Evans.”

Simon then asked me if I would come down to London on 15^th May to do the official unveiling of the Civic Plaque. Would I!!

Beforehand though, I thought I'd better re-read some of his books, and I was dreading it in case I no longer appreciated him so many years later. But I need not have worried. Within the first few lines I was hooked all over again. And every time I go to the library now, it's to try and find more of his novels.

Admittedly I was a little nervous when I had to deliver a short speech about the novelist to Simon's invited guests on the day, which included the Lady Mayor and a former mayor, the new MP for Ealing, members of the Ealing Civic Society, friends, neighbours and Simon’s family.

And when it came to the actual unveiling, I could only just reach the cover. Thank goodness for high heels! Then it was everyone back into the house for a garden party which I had no problem with! 

It was a fantastic day and something I was thrilled to be asked to do. And the most amazing thing is that the opportunity arose from simply writing a blog post.

In case you don't know very much about James Hadley Chase, here's a few details:

Crime thriller novelist, James Hadley Chase was born on 24th December 1906. His real name was Rene Lodge Brabazon Raymond and he wrote under a number of pseudonyms, namely: Raymond Marshall, R Raymond, James L Docherty and Ambrose Grant.

He left home at 18 and worked selling books and children's encyclopedias. Just before the 2nd world war he realised there was a demand for American gangster books and so at the age of 33 he tried his hand at writing one.

His first book was No Orchids for Miss Blanchett, which it's said he wrote over six weekends. It provoked considerable controversy because of his explicit depiction of sexuality and violence. Nevertheless - or maybe because of this, it became the best selling book of the decade. It was also turned into a successful stage play which ran for over 200 performances in London's Prince of Wales Theatre. In 1948 it was made into a British film, and then in 1971 the American film The Grissom Gang was based on it. Not bad for a debut novel!

Another of his novels – Miss Callaghan Comes to Grief which was a lurid account of the White Slave Trade, was actually banned by the British authorities and both he and his publisher were fined £100 for publishing an obscene novel.

Having a book banned certainly didn't lessen his popularity and he went on to write around 90 crime thriller novels, about half of which have been made into films. He earned the reputation of being regarded as the king of thriller writers in Europe.

How about you? Has a blog post led to something special happening in your life?

Thanks to Rob Tysall of Tysall's Photography (http://www.tysallsphotography.org.uk) for coming along to take the photos.

Please visit my wesite: http://www.annevansbooks.co.uk

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ann-Evans-Books

Twitter: https://twitter.com/annevansauthor

Busy, busy!

Life seems to have been very busy recently. Maybe that's why these first six months of 2013 seem to have flown by. World Book week back in March was the start of it with lots of school visits. The furthest was Peterborough and the closest was Corpus Christie Primary - just down the road!

In between time I had some final edits to do on my latest book, The Trunk, which is now out as a Puffin book, published by Penguin Australia. I'm writing under the pseudonym S.Carey for this which is part of their Eerie Series. Had great fun writing this, and gave my grandson, Jake (14) the creeps when I let him read the manuscript before sending it off. Just the right reaction I was hoping for!

Also around March/April time I received my edits back from All Classic Books, who are an American publisher. They will be publishing my first adult thriller, Death Lay Waiting, and there were lots of changes to make on that – and I'm pretty sure I haven't finished yet!. That's the thing about writing, getting it accepted by a publisher is just the start. Then comes all the re-writing and changes. Whatever you do – don't write in stone.

Then Turquoise Radio got in touch, as they wanted to serialise my book, Deadly Hunter for their kids programme presented by Kaz Cockburn. It had been so long since that book was written (it was first published around 1996) that I no longer had the story on my computer. So it was a matter of re-typing it from the book, to get it into a digital format again.

 Kaz would simply have read from the book but I thought it was a good opportunity to bring it up to date. So all that copy typing kept me pretty busy for a few weeks and I have to admit, caused my wrists to ache slightly!

Kaz did a great job in recording the story which was serialised over about eight or nine weeks. I've turned it into an ebook now, and I should have some of the audio on my website soon. I'll definitely need some assistance from my IT wizarrd son, Wayne to help me with that!

Another exciting opportunity followed. Fiction Express who team up with schools to provide fiction that the pupils can contribute to, commissioned me on a story called The Mysterious Indian Vanishing Trick. The original story was pretty set in my mind, but I had to forget all that and create a brand new first chapter with three choices at the end for the children to vote on, and so dictate what would happen in chapter two – and so forth!

Chapter 1 went live yesterday (Friday 14th June) so this week there will be some instant, real time writing happening, as I'll have just two days to write each chapter. I'm praying that I don't get writer's block... I haven't got time! I hear that chocolate is good for avoiding writers block - well that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

On top of that, I've been writing a couple of non-fiction articles. One for Collector's Gazette on Doctor Who toys; and another for Dogs Monthly magazine on Dogs for the Disabled which took me and  photographer Rob Tysall out and about to the Frances Hay centre in Banbury.

My IT knowledge (or lack of it) came into play to re-vamp Rob's website - www.tysallsphotography.org.uk . Rob and I share his photography studio, which is where I do most of my writing. He wanted to change the colour scheme of his website from black, grey and silver to lilac and purple. Now that might sound easy and straight forward but had me almost tearing my hair out and dissolving into a panic stricken wreck when it all went horribly wrong! Thank heavens for my IT wizard son again, who came to the rescue!

Most recently, Coventry held its Literally...Coventry Book Festival, from Monday to Saturday, with stacks of events taking place. My involvement meant three school visits locally, which were absolutely lovely. I went to Earlsdon Primary, Our Lady of the Assumption Primary and Gosford Primary.

Just a few of the great children at
Our Lady of the Assumption Primary

 Two of those visits were to talk primarily about my book, The Beast which I'm dead chuffed to say won an award in the Coventry Inspirational Book Awards 2013 in their raring2read category.

Which brings me to one of the highlights of this week – the award ceremony. It was held at the wonderful medieval St Mary's Guildhall, with the Lord Mayor, Lady Mayoress, other authors and illustrators plus invited guests. It was quite exciting to meet Sir Quentin Blake who received a Lifetime Achievement award – the first that the Coventry Literary Festival had awarded.

About to have a photo taken. Sir Quentin Blake
has a laugh with author Gaynor Arnold.

And my big moment!

My daughters, Angela, Debbie and oldest grandson, Jake came along to support me, as well as Lorna Hunt from Usborne Publishing. Usborne published The Beast back in 2004. Can't believe it was that long ago. Mind you, The Reawakning and Rampage have followed, making it a trilogy.  My character, Karbel feels like one of the family these days! Although I don't think I'd want to take him out for a walk...

Then earlier this week, I had a real fun evening with The Coventry Writers Group. As part of the Festival we staged an evening of reading and performing our work which had the theme, Coventry Fact and Fiction to a small audience at the Criterion Theatre. My story was Visions, set in Whitefriars Monastery. I adapted it as a little play, and donned a monk's outfit just for fun.

Me as a slightly manic monk!

So all in all, a very busy few months. Better than being bored though!

Some websites you might want to look at:

http://www.tysallsphotography.org.uk

http://www.schools.fictionexpress.co.uk

http://www.usborne.com

http://www.turquoiseradio.com

http://www.literallycoventry.wordpress.com

http://www.allclassicbooks.com

http://www.penguin.com.au

Romance is in the air - or airwaves.

ROMANCE is in the air - or at least on the airwaves, and only on the fictional scene too, but hey, you can't have everything in life.


My romantic novel A Tropical Affair came out as an ebook on Amazon yesterday, which is almost as exciting as when it was first published as a My Weekly Pocket Novel by DC Thompson last year.


Then, it was published under my maiden name of Carroll, as all my books previously have been for children, so to keep the genres separate, I decided to use a pseudonym. I've changed back to the name I've had for the last 30 years for this ebook issue in the hope that young people who have liked my books in the past will stick with me as they grow up.

And I don't think there's going to be any confusion as the picture on the front definitely indicates it's a romantic love story and not a children's adventure or mystery story.  Although Shannon, my heroine, certainly has an adventure or two when hero, Dane Kincade arrives on the scene all intent on destroying her home and livelihood - and stealing her heart.

The original book published under my maiden name.

The lovely little My Weekly Pocket Novels don't have a long shelf life. With new pocket novels published every week by DC Thompson, they're only on the newsagents shelves for about week before being replaced by the next one. Not that I'm complaining because A Tropical Affair has been picked up by another publisher who is bringing it out in hardback in February 2013 - which I'm thrilled about!


Producing an ebook means you have to get a new cover, so luckily for me, I share a photographic studio (Tysall's Photography) in Nuneaton; so I bribed my pal Rob Tysall to create the cover for me with promises of coffee and choccy biscuits.  Then, I needed a happy couple who wouldn't mind posing in a clinch. My daughter and her boyfriend were persuaded with promises of wine and choccy biscuits (not to be consumed at the same time however).

And did we all jet off to that tropical paradise? Oh if only! The resulting book cover was some clever studio shots combined with a touch of wizardry on photos Rob took on a trip to Switzerland! And they say the camera never lies!

Please visit my website at:  www.annevansbooks.co.uk and www.tysallsphotography.org.uk

You can read the first chapter on Amazon:   http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008MY24BO