KD Rose: Author Tales: Interview with Author Raven McAllan!

Friday, November 22, 2013

Interview with Author Raven McAllan!

Author Tales is pleased to present Raven McAllan to you today! She is the author of countless books and will be talking about her take on writing and giving you a taste of her new book Miss Simpkins' School: Flora. Miss Simpkins' School: Flora is a Regency Novel which in and of itself makes it special.

Take it away, Raven!

Writing blogs is a skill I'm still trying to get. It's all very well thinking oh all I need to do is 'er hello, here I am, pimping my latest book. Here's the blurb, here's the buy link, thanks for having me bye'. But that is so not it.

Of course if you have a book out (yes okay like me now) you want to promote it, shout it out from the rooftops/supermarket car park/pub table/publishers site/Facebook/twitter/anyone's blog who's nice enough to host you, but it's not enough. Heavens if someone has given me the chance to hijack their blog for the day, the least I can do, is make it interesting. (How am I doing so far?) It sounds easy doesn't it? Believe me it isn't. Well not for me anyway. I still have a hard time believing I'm published, (yes really, even 50-odd stories on) let alone that people are interested in what I say. However just in case they are, I try to vary what I write.

So here we are today, and I have coffee, two jumpers, thick tights Uggs and a scarf on. Oh and if I got any closer to the Aga I'll melt the laptop… However, as I research Regency times, I reckon I have it a lot easier. At least I accompany my husband a lot, am treated as an equal, and don't get treated as a chattel… This is what Miss Simpkins' School is for. Where seduction's the game, and success is the aim. Let your classes commence. Ex mistress to an Earl, who better than Molly Simpkins to show Flora how to ensure she gets what she needs from her marriage? Flora's intended has an idea she doesn't agree with. Fraser thinks she should be happy to live at their Scottish estate whilst he spends his time in London. It may be the way of the ton, but it isn't going to be Flora's way. This is her chance to show Fraser what he'd miss if he leaves her alone. There's only one thing, she doesn't know how. Luckily Miss Simpkins does.

It's actually quite hard to write Regency when it's a story about an intense relationship. Words we don't use in polite company were of the norm. Words we consider rude, were used in everyday chat, and considered to be perfectly acceptable to everyone. I guess it goes in circles, because I know things I said as a teen are now frowned upon, and I guess it'll be the same for today's teens when they get to my age. (They've got years to go.) However it's a fine line on what words to use and what not. I admit I tend to use a fair few, to keep my story as authentic as possible, but sometimes, I think, oh no, enough, and have to find an alternative. The one thing I won't do is use a word that wasn't in use in the time I'm writing about. Thank goodness for my well-thumbed dictionary of slang. It's invaluable, and introduced me to a whole new world. Words I thought were reasonably new aren't and vice versa. It's no wonder I can spend hours on research!

Now if you're all over excited, here's the buy links… http://www.breathlesspress.com/index.php?main_page=product_free_shipping_info&cPath=17&products_id=508

http://www.amazon.com/Miss-Simpkins-School-Flora-Seduction-ebook/dp/B00GUAUJ1Y/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1385111640&sr=1-3&keywords=raven+mcallan

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Miss-Simpkins-School-Flora-Seduction-ebook/dp/B00GUAUJ1Y/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1385111640&sr=1-3&keywords=raven+mcallan

http://www.bookstrand.com/miss-simpkins-school-flora

https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-misssimpkinsschoolflora-1352197-340.html

Author Bio
I live in Scotland, on the edge of a forest, with my lovely and long suffering hubby, and our two elderly cats. Hubby is getting used to coming in, and rescuing the dinner from the Aga, and handing me over a glass of wine, while I do "just this last little bit". Our kids have grown up and left the roost, and we know our house is too big, but when your daily visitors are Red squirrels, deer, and the odd lost tourist, who'd want to move?

And the way to learn more about me is to have a nosy over on www.ravenmcallan.com

Happy reading, Love R x

Miss Simpkins' School: Flora

www.breathlesspress.com

Ex mistress to an Earl, who better than Molly Simpkins to show Flora how to ensure she gets what she needs from her marriage? It may be the way of the ton, but it isn't going to be Flora's way.

2 comments:

Raven McAllanNovember 22, 2013 at 11:42 AM
Thsnks for having me over. I hope I haven't sent your readers to sleep :)
ReplyDelete
Replies

Add comment

KIRKUS Review of Inside Sorrow

In 11 bare-bones, free verse poems, Rose (Heavy Bags of Soul, 2012) refines a yearslong grieving process into a heartbreakingly potent distillate of sorrow.“I am at a loss,” declares Rose’s bereft narrator after her husband’s death. Ostensibly referring to her uncertainty about what to do with his belongings, the narrator is also confronting an existential fact; she has arrived at loss and seemingly has nowhere else to go. This technique—the evocation of loss on one level to imply an unspeakably more profound loss beneath—is one Rose frequently employs. She writes that “No one ever thinks of tragedy / the other way around / when nothing is left but shoes,” noticing that the “space between my fingers / is ever present. / At any moment, / small slivers,” and other fingers will never interlace with hers again. The sparseness of her verse—often a single beat or two per line—borders on gaunt and serves to codify the body’s and psyche’s inward collapses under the weight of grief, the instinctively protective drawing inward until “we are balled up in the fetal position.” She also structurally simulates the simultaneous, and paradoxical, scattering of self that accompanies a loss of this magnitude. Upon her husband’s death, she is at once “a wall” with “no door,” “the I’s that must witness” and the peripatetic who has “been bleeding out / all over the house. / I can walk / up and down the stairs / tens of times.” The difficulty of relationships—“So much compromise / when it comes to another”—urges her to acknowledge that “some part should feel like freedom / it should feel like freedom / it should,” yet what she finds is that his absence has become a violation of self: “Sorrow has left me naked / in a way I couldn’t have imagined, / leaving my life open to all. / Every nook and cranny.” The recovery of self, the poems reveal, is a long and always incomplete process. Though slightly marred by a handful of prosaic moments, the overall force of these poems is such that lines as simple as “I see a blue sky today. / It seems like a triumph” will, in context, shock readers with their cathartic power. Startlingly touching poetry; be prepared to step inside the sorrow.

Reviews of Inside Sorrow

"This book is a gift to anyone who is dealing with the grief of a loved one,
whether recent or past, and without a doubt will bring them comfort." Danielle Marie, Amazon.com

“Inside Sorrow” is a stellar little book of poems..." Erica Lovett, Goodreads

"K.D. Rose has captured the internal world of grief in a way that very few people
share - the parts that western civilization tells us to suck up and move on, as
if the death of a loved one has no bearing on who we are, that grief doesn't
change us, that life must go on at breakneck speed." K.J. Pierce, Amazon.com

5 Stars

“This book is for girls. This book is for women. This is a book to empower females from teenagers through adults.” I Am: Poetry In Motion by K.D. Rose is not what I expected; a pleasant surprise and a fresh twist on the self-help book genre. I absolutely love the pictures that accompany each poem and writings. They are not merely for you to look at. They definitely capture the vital messages that we should embrace rather than ignore. You will definitely want to look at them more consciously, and the meaning of each picture will resonate in your mind.

It touches on every subject that the female sex is familiar with: what is the perception of beauty in today’s world, limitations that society often impose on women, women’s status in politics and so much more. There is something for everyone, and everything is layered with deep yet clear words of inspiring encouragement. This book is good, not because of the above-mentioned issues we females have to face, but because it softly compels us to confront them. I gravitated to one of the poems, the melancholic and alluring Vinyl Lines – “We are vinyl lines / We have our own groove / We require diamonds / We scratch easily / We cascade melodies.”
K.D. Rose gives us a book with a compelling message that will change the way we see life. Forty-four pages of pure, poignantly beautiful, and thought-provoking empowerment. To all my fellow females, I Am: Poetry In Motion is invigorating and engaging. It is definitely for us." Reviewed by Lit Amri for Readers Favorite

Heavy Bags of Soul 4 Stars

"Heavy Bags of Soul" paints a rather dour picture of the modern world. In this engaging collection of poems and prosody is chronicled the trials and pitfalls of an oppressive world that is as absurd as it is tiring. Yet despite this dim outlook on life the book does offer a sense of hope and unity that serves to offset the nihilism of the main theme. Woven throughout the collection - most notable in the author’s modernizations of the classic Socratic dialogue - this theme of unity maintains that although the road of life is an exhaustive one and that all on that road are laden with their own heavy bags, everyone is in this together and only through tackling the challenges of this world together, only through tapping the resources of the equally heavy bags of soul, will everyone can make it through. Structurally, the aforementioned Socratic dialogues are just one of a variety of literary forms through which the collection’s themes are conveyed. The genre utilized here include both metered and free verse, terse maxims, essays on pop philosophy and cultural movement, and even the occasional bon mot as a punctuation point. This mix of literary formats not only manages to show each and every topical point in a number of different lights, but also challenges the readers who must themselves view each literary format in its own light. Also challenging is the author’s trust in her readers’ intelligence. Though not outwardly acknowledged, that trust is implicit in the author’s habit of using the most diverse and arcane cultural references possible. Citing sources that extend in relevance from Greek taxonomy through quantum physics and on to Top 40 Radio, the topical references may at times have readers wishing they had Wikipedia on speed dial, but do provide for an entertaining, esoteric and intellectually stimulating read."