Letters and business cards

In September I'm heading off to the London Screenwriters Festival. I am so excited... I only have one screenplay to hawk about (my adaptation of Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase), but it is dear to my heart and I'm so looking forward to getting help and advice to move the project forward. Apparently business cards are essential at the festival, so I organised some this week:

Bit of a Mrs S theme to these... couldn't resist popping a photo of Mrs Sinclair's foreign editions on the back! 

Getting back to my novel writing, I thought I'd share more of my forthcoming novel A Life Between Us. It's a story told in three strands, and one of those is a series of childhood letters written by my protagonist, Tina, as a child in the 1970s. The letters are all written to her cousin Elizabeth, who Tina has never met, and who doesn't appear in the novel. I don't know about you, but I love epistolary novels, and although mine isn't told entirely in letters, they do play a major part. Here is the first of the letters that Tina writes. It appears after the prologue (please see my previous post!) and before chapter one.

Wednesday 29^th October 1975

Dear Elizabeth

Thank you, thank you for being my pen pal. I have wanted a pen pal for a long time. Its handy that your dad is my Uncle Robert but its funny because I have never met him. He went to live in New Zeeland in 1963 my dad said, a long time ago but he lives in America now which you will know because thats where you live. You and me are cusins which is nice. My name is Tina Thornton (we have the same last name you see?) and I am 8 years old in 3 days, on the first of November, don’t forget my birthday please but I know its too late for this year and can you tell me when is yours? I have a twin sister her name is Meg. She is one day older than me. Meg is bossy and sumetimes I don’t like her but most of the time I do like her. Do you have any sisters or bruthers? My proper name is Christina and Megs is Marghuerite but we dont like our real names much. We get teased about them. Other kids say they are posh names la-di-da. We live with our mummy and daddy. In our village we also have our granny and grampys house and our Aunty Lucia lives there too. She is your dads sister! My dad is your dads yungest brother! We have another granny and grampy but we dont see them much. Please write back, I am excited to get your next letter and now I will finish,

Love from Tina Thornton nearly aged 8

PS my hobbies are writing letters. I love reading too. My Uncle Edward says I am a bookworm like him. I like playing with my dolls.

If you would like an early read of A Life Between Us and you could review it, please let me know and I can send you an ARC in October. The novel will also be on Netgalley from December. The publication date is 28 February 2017.

Thanks so much for reading. I hope to have cover news to share soon...