Just the one Little Black Dress release this month, and it’s the fifth and final book in Jessica Fox’s Hen Night Prophecies series.
Always The Bride - Jessica Fox - 6th January 2011
“This brilliant fifth and final book in the HEN NIGHT PROPHECIES series rounds them all up to reveal the bride’s tale after she is told ‘You will marry twice…’”
Chick Lit Classics is a new feature on Chick Lit Reviews where we highlight the books we feel are classics of the chick lit genre. Feel free to discuss our choices in the comments section!
As we’re currently in the middle of our Little Black Dress, we wanted to carry it through to our regular weekly features as well, so for this week’s Chick Lit Classic, I’ve picked a 2006 LBD release by Lorelei Mathias, Step On It, Cupid. It was actually one of my first ever LBD reads myself, and definitely sticks in my head because I’ve actually kept my copy on my bookshelf which says a lot considering how many books I read! It’s a fun read about the character Amelie who seems to be the last of the singletons amongst her friends, and she thinks it might be time to change that. It’s a fun, sweet read that I really loved and certainly is a perfect LBD book in my opinion, and if you haven’t yet read it, I certainly recommend you do!
“Amelie’s life is arranged just how she likes it. Brilliant job, great social life, and on-off love-life. So it’s a shock when she realises one day that everyone she knows seem to be happily coupled up – getting married even. Is it time she thought about settling down?
Assigned an awful project in work – writing the ad campaign for Britain’s biggest speed-dating company – she is forced against her will into plenty of market research. And with her best mate Duncan, her annoying boss Joshua and her ex-boyfriend Jack all causing havoc in her life, maybe a speed-dating romance could be her salvation…”
As part of our Little Black Dress week, we’ve been lucky enough to have some wonderful guest posts from some of their authors written just for us. Now comes the turn of A. M. Goldsher whose latest 2010 release No Ordinary Girl was loved by me, so here is the post!
“ME ‘N’ L.B.D by Alan Goldsher.
The whole A.M. Goldsher/Little Black Dress Books thing was an accident. A happy accident, granted, but an accident nonetheless.
The True Naomi Story, my first title for L.B.D., began its life not as a chicklit book, but rather as a dude novel called Jam. Soon after it hit bookstores, a former literary agent of mine suggested I rewrite it from the perspective of a woman. Turned out the protagonist was more interesting as a girl, and L.B.D., out of the kindness of their hearts, offered me a three-book deal, with the proviso that they publish the books under the gender-nonspecific pseudonym of A.M. Goldsher. (No Ordinary Girl, my latest for L.B.D., was released under A.M. rather than Alan, but as you can see, I’ve been outed as a man, possibly because the superhero battles throughout were pretty dude-like, and some intrepid reader would’ve probably figured it out anyhow.)
I’ve now written four books for L.B.D., and look forward to more, in part because my awesome former editor Cat Cobain and my equally awesome current editor Claire Baldwin have been nothing but supportive and sweet. Since book one, they’ve let me be as creative and as weird as I’ve wanted, and I think that’s enabled me to write freely, without ever having to worry that a scene in which, say, my heroine throws her former lover 50 meters in the air, into the middle of Lake Michigan will be questioned. Many editors like to have their fingerprints all over their books, but L.B.D. just wants you to write the best book possible. It’s not about ego, it’s about quality, and that’s not always the case in today’s publishing world. All of which makes me the luckiest dude-chicklit writer on the planet.”
Thanks so much Alan!
Abbey Beynam has super powers. No really, she does. She is super strong, she can fly, she can read people’s minds and many more things that Abbey hasn’t even discovered about herself yet that choose to present themselves at the weirdest of times. Abbey chooses to hide her “weird stuff” (her name for her super-powers) from everyone except her direct family, but when her FBI employed boyfriend Murphy admits he knows about Abbey’s weird stuff and they want her to come and work for them, she suddenly becomes very unsure. She doesn’t want her powers to be widely known about, and she just wants a normal life…except for the occasional night time flight which she really rather enjoys.
Continuing on our Little Black Dress week, today we have the fab Nell Dixon telling us all about what it is that inspires the novels she writes! I loved her latest LBD adventure Just Look At Me Now and I’m looking forward to picking up her other novels! Take it away, Nell!
I’ve always loved reading, but although I can appreciate a ‘heavier’ book, I soon realised that the ones I loved the most were the ones with humour, love and a heroine whose feet were firmly planted in reality. I guess then that it’s no surprise that I’ve ended up writing the kind of books that I love to read. Little Black dress has proved a wonderful home for my kind of story, funny, sweet and romantic.
It’s sometimes quite difficult when you write romantic comedy to decide if what you’re writing simply makes you laugh or whether other people will share the humour with you. I worried about this a lot when I wrote Animal Instincts, the book that won Love Story of the year in March. I loved Dave, my foul mouthed parrot and my heroine’s ditsy but warm-hearted sister, Immi, but I wasn’t sure anyone else would. Luckily, for me readers did like them and I often get asked if I’m going to write a sequel.
Immi does make a brief appearance in my latest book, Just Look at Me Now, as do the Flying Monkeys rock band from Crystal Clear. For me the humour in a book should enhance the story and contrast with the sadder or darker elements of the plot. In Just Look at Me Now, Saffi, with her unladylike behaviour contrasts with Tia, who always has to be on her guard.
Readers often ask where I get my inspiration from. Anyone who has met my three teenage daughters and seen my slightly bonkers home life would know the answer to that question straight away. Especially if they saw me scribbling bits of storylines on the top of the cereal box or sticking a post-it note to my day job diary to remind me of a bright idea I got whilst ferrying my daughters to one of their many destinations.
Hopefully it all comes together when I find my scribbles and sit down in my office to finally write the story. Then I just have to hope that readers will enjoy reading about my characters as much as I enjoyed writing about them.
Visit Nell’s website here: http://www.nelldixon.com/home.aspx
Welcome to Little Black Dress Week! We are aiming to bring you everything that is Little Black Dress on chicklitreviews.com this week, and we hope you are going to enjoy just as much as we’ve had doing it! To kick it all off, we have an amazing prize courtesy of LBD publishers and the lovely Maura…in fact it’s quite obviously the ULTIMATE Little Black Dress prize, and we are so excited to be offering this to you!
You will win a copy of every single Little Black Dress book released in 2010… that’s an amazing 25 books! (In case you’re counting, there are 2 missing from the picture, but they’ll be in your prize!) All you have to do to get your hands on this simply fabulous prize is fill in the Google form below, and we’ll pick a winner at the end of the week using random.org.
Competition closes on Friday 10th December 2010 at midnight. Open to UK residents only. One entry per household. Please read our Terms and Conditions before you enter. GOOD LUCK!
Only the one Little Black Dress release in November and it comes in the form of A.M Goldsher’s superhero offering no Ordinary Girl which sounds fab!
A.M Goldsher - No Ordinary Girl - 25th November 2010
Abbey Bynum never asked for her strange superpowers; she was born with them and man, does she hate them. Only a few family members and her ex-fiancé, the uptight government bureaucrat Murphy Napier, know her secret. But when supervillain Jon Carson appears on the scene under the guise of a brilliant new defence lawyer at her work, Abbey knows she must embrace her ‘weird stuff’ to have any chance of thwarting his plans for world domination. There’s only one person who can assist her: Murphy. He’s had a complete makeover since their split two years ago, but can he help Abbey triumph in her epic superbattle of good versus evil, winning back her trust and her heart in the process?
There’s just the one release from Little Black Dress in October but it sounds like another good one! However, we do have an announcement to make: we will be celebrating all that is Little Black Dress novels in December, from the 6th until the 10th (you can see our graphic on the sidebar). Reviewing a ton of LBD books, interviewing some LBD authors and hopefully having a fab competition so we hope you’ll join us to celebrate the fantastic Little Black Dress imprint!
Sarah Monk - Taking The Lead - 14th October 2010
Theodora is an artist with bright blue eyes and long chaotic hair which is supposed to be brown but gets attacked with colour as frequently as the canvasses she produces. Jonas is half Swedish, tall, with a halo of golden hair and jade green eyes and has channelled his mix of practicality and creativity into his own woodworking business. They are meant for each other. If only they knew each other. Their paths are tantalisingly close at times, but it will take something dramatic in both their lives to lead them in the right direction…
