Deborah's Historical Fiction Blog Tour

To celebrate the launch of The Lady's Slipper in the US, I am doing a blog tour the week before and the week after the launch on the 23rd November.
The following beautiful blogs are going to be a part of it:
http://www.shelfandstuff.blogspot.com/
http://www.historicalbellesandbeaus.com/
http://www.historical-fiction.com/
http://www.macmillannewwriters.blogspot.com/
http://www.historicaltapestry.blogspot.com/
http://www.muse-in-thefog.blogspot.com/
http://www.passagestothepast.com/

and last but by no means least,
http://www.readingthepast.com/
Thank you to them all. If you love historical fiction, these are my favourite sites, why not check them out. More details about the posts soon. See you there!

Historical Fiction paperback designers

The final design for the US paperback of The Lady's Slipper arrived today and it looks absolutely gorgeous with its lovely gold embossed writing. I am always really interested in visual things, having spent a lot of years working in the design field, so I looked up the designer and illustrator on the web and it is interesting to see the other excellent book designs they have produced.

So first up - the designer, Jason Ramirez. Click on the name to follow a link to other excellent book covers he has designed.

Next - the cover illustrator, Larry Rostant. His work is extremely popular at the moment for historical fiction, and also for fantasy, being a skilful combination of photo-manipulation and illustration. His illustrations for historical novels keep the period costume whilst making the female protagonist seem a little more contemporary. On his website I notice that my friend Gaby's book, published in the UK His Last Duchess was also illustrated by him, so obviously he must work internationally.

So many thanks to both of them and the team at St Martin's Press for such a great design.

And I was just chatting to my editor today about the UK paperback design which is also underway, so I'll post about that cover too as soon as I have more information.

American Cover of The Lady's Slipper

Thought I would share the American cover design from St Martin's Press for The Lady's Slipper - just arrived by email this morning.

In the States it is going straight into paperback with a lot of added extras for reading groups, including background history, further reading, and discussion points. I am really enjoying putting these parts together as it is a chance to give a little more information to the reader about my historical sources, and tell the story of how the book came about, as well as recommend some of my favourite books. 

If you are in a reading group maybe you can tell me what sort of questions work best for your group. In my reading group, although we often start by tackling the themes of the book and so forth, we tend to shy away from anything too intellectual. Pretty soon we get down to the "has that ever happened to you?" type conversation, followed swiftly by a "ooh, what did you do?" which leads nicely into them revealing all sorts of fascinating personal information they might not otherwise have told you! But maybe mine is not a typical reading group.

Our next reading group meeting is hosting Bryony Doran, whose book "The China Bird" won the Hookline novel competition, so it promises to be an interesting evening whilst we persuade her to give us the inside info. on her book. More about it after the meeting!You can find out more about Bryony on her website http://www.bryonydoran.com/