Saturday 11 April 2015

The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor Captures the Amazing Story of the Titanic

One hundred and three years ago today, fourteen people from one village set sail from Queenstown, on the southern coast of Ireland, aboard the fastest, safest, passenger ship in the world: Titanic, and their amazing story is told by Hazel Gaynor in The Girl Who Came Home.
I bought the book at the RNA conference last year after hearing Hazel give a talk about how she originally self-published her novel and how it was taken on by an American publisher, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Apart from feeling just a little envious at that, I have to say that The Girl Who Came Home is beautifully written, capturing the life of people in Ireland just over a hundred years ago; the life on board the magnificent ship, the like of which had never been seen before; the horror of the collision with the iceberg, and the life of a survivor, Maggie, and the later story of her great-granddaughter, Grace. Hazel has pulled all the threads together to give a very satisfactory ending.
One of the images that appears through the story is cherry blossom. Maggie used to meet her sweetheart, Seamus under the sixth cherry blossom tree in Ballysheen every Wednesday, and she carries a handful of blossom in her coat pocket as she boards the ship, and when Grace takes her great-grandmother out for tea and apple pie each week in Cass County, Illinois, they go to The Cherry Tree restaurant. It's a beautiful story with Grace's love for Jimmy mirroring Maggie's for Seamus, and I can thoroughly recommend it.
 I've always been fascinated by Titanic because A Night to Remember was the first film that I was ever taken to see!
Last year, I was also able to visit the Titanic, The Artifact Exhibition in Las Vegas.
That probably sounds a bit tacky, but actually it was as serious an exhibition as you would expect to see at any museum in London or New York.
It told the stories of the people who had lived or died on that fateful night. In fact your ticket, or boarding pass, bore a name and details of a passenger, and you didn't know whether they had survived, or not, until you went out afterwards and looked for their name on the lists, just as anxious friends and relatives would have done all those years ago.
So many passengers made a last minute decision to sail on the ship because of a miners' strike which had meant that other ships couldn't get any coal. Titanic, itself, used one pound of coal a second to move only sixty feet!
The entrance to the exhibition was through the third class cabins to the foot tapping sound of Irish tunes, then we waltzed through to the first class cabins to the sound of an orchestra. The ship was so luxurious that conditions were often better for those travelling third class than for those left at home, even though there were only two bath tubs for seven hundred third class passengers.
There were so many interesting artifacts like china and glass decorated with the distinctive White Star Line flag, and also personal papers and letters which were preserved in leather Gladstone or hand bags, and which had been brought up from the bottom of the sea.
One of the most chilling experiences was walking outside onto the reconstructed starlit deck on the calm, peaceful night of April 14th 1912, whilst music played behind in the salons. Hitting an iceberg and the resulting chaos would have been the last things that any passenger expected.
The most amazing exhibit was a big section of the actual ship that was brought up from a depth of two and a half miles from the North Atlantic ocean.
So if you are ever in Las Vegas, and you are interested in the Titanic story don't forget to go and see it.
Meanwhile, you could always read Hazel's book, The Girl Who Came Home!
















Monday 6 April 2015

Postcards and Suntan Cream - Easter Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal Day 4 - Camping in France with a Little Comedy!

Camping in France is one of my favourite holidays; I also like a little comedy! This story, combining both, features in Postcards and Suntan Cream: my collection of twelve super summer stories, perfect for the beach, a deck chair in the garden, or if we're not so lucky with the Easter weather, by the fireside!


La VallĂ©e d’Amour

‘Peter! There’s a donkey eating my knickers!’
Peter peered out of the tent where he had been trying to catch a quick siesta, to see a soft grey donkey with Kate’s hot pink M&S pants rapidly disappearing into its mouth.
‘I didn’t want to come here. I told you. We’re too old for this.’ Kate stomped towards him, her face as red as the scarlet canvas that Vacances en France used for its holiday-homes-away-from-home. 

My Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal continues today with a Limited Edition Postcards and Suntan Cream  with a fab Sixties cover designed by Samantha Groom which you can download for only 99p from today, until 8am BST on Tuesday, April 7th 2015.
But hurry, after that the price will go back up to £2.15!

If you want to contact Samantha about a cover for your self-published book, you can at magicat45degrees@gmail.com

Postcards and Suntan Cream is available here on Amazon.

Sunday 5 April 2015

Postcards and Suntan Cream - Easter Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal Day 3 - Cruising

Cruising is becoming more popular every year and, because I love it so much, it features in two stories from Postcards and Suntan Cream: my collection of twelve super summer stories, perfect for the beach, a deck chair in the garden, or if we're not so lucky with the Easter weather, by the fireside!


The Woman With The Long Hair



The sun sparkled through her wet hair as Paula rinsed it under the shower by the Castaway deck pool, and swung it up and over her shoulders like an arc of diamonds. She plaited it into a thick dark rope, which reached down past the top of her turquoise bikini bottoms and swished from side to side as she picked her way between the sunbathing passengers back to Karen.
‘I want to ask your advice,’ she said, as she stretched out on her sunbed and closed her eyes.




My Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal continues today with a Limited Edition Postcards and Suntan Cream  with a fab Sixties cover designed by Samantha Groom which you can download for only 99p from today, until 8am BST on Tuesday, April 7th 2015.
But hurry, after that the price will go back up to £2.15!

If you want to contact Samantha about a cover for your self-published book, you can at magicat45degrees@gmail.com

Postcards and Suntan Cream is available here on Amazon.

Saturday 4 April 2015

Postcards and Suntan Cream - Easter Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal Day 2 - The Amalfi Coast


This is Positano on the Italian Amalfi coast which features in two stories from 
Postcards and Suntan Cream, my collection of twelve super summer stories, perfect for the beach, a deck chair in the garden, or if we're not so lucky with the Easter weather, by the fireside!

                   Sea Change

We didn’t need to draw the curtains up here on the steep Positano cliffs. Only the gulls wheeled past our window and dipped down, calling to each other, as they caught an early breakfast.
I’d been awake since the sun sailed into the sky and hovered over the sparkling Mediterranean with the promise of another bright day. But, would this one be any better? 



My Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal continues today with a Limited Edition Postcards and Suntan Cream  with a fab Sixties cover designed by Samantha Groom which you can download for only 99p from today, until 8am BST on Tuesday, April 7th 2015.
But hurry, after that the price will go back up to £2.15!

If you want to contact Samantha about a cover for your self-published book, you can at magicat45degrees@gmail.com


Postcards and Suntan Cream is available here on Amazon.





Friday 3 April 2015

Postcards and Suntan Cream - Easter Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal Day 1 - The Sixties

Easter is here, so give yourself a treat with this Limited Edition Postcards and Suntan Cream in my Amazon Kindle Countdown Deal!
The deal means that you can download this edition with its specially designed Sixties cover by Samantha Groom for only 99p from today, until 8am BST on Tuesday, April 7th 2015.
But hurry, after that the price will more than double to £2.15!

Postcards and Suntan Cream is a collection of twelve super summer stories, perfect for the beach, a deck chair in the garden, or if we're not so lucky with the Easter weather, by the fireside!

The first story is one of two set in the 1960s and gives its title to the book:

Postcards and Suntan Cream

I did so wish that Ted had come on holiday with me . . .
Ellie fingers a dog-eared postcard and holds it to her heart, remembering that hot August when anything seemed possible. She closes her eyes, and the picture’s so real that she can almost smell the suntan cream.

If you would like to find out what happened that hot August so long ago, don't forget that that this Kindle Countdown Deal ends on April 7th.

If you want to contact Samantha about a cover for your self-published book, you can at magicat45degrees@gmail.com

Postcards and Suntan Cream is available here on Amazon.