Alison Brodie's Blog

I love books. I collect them. What's wrong with that, huh? Nothing. But Hubby doesn’t agree. He’s “sick” of having to tiptoe through tottering towers of paperbacks to get from one side of the room to the other. Let me explain. I'm like cat woman. I don't mean the Cat Woman, I mean the elderly neighbour who takes in abandoned cats when nobody wants them. I'm like that with books. People who don't want them bring them to me. And I can't say no.I’ve read some fascinating stories which I wouldn’t normally have chosen. For instance, this one by Auberon Waugh (Haven't heard of him? Neither had I.) The back section was mouldy, so I had to tear it off. Then I got into the story - it's really funny - but because I'd removed the back pages, I now won’t know the ending.My books are breeding like rabbits. And I'm having to hide them from Hubby. I stack them behind curtains and in the bottom of cupboards. It doesn't help that I go to this charity emporium called Emmaus (I'm in France) and all the expats who are going back to the UK dump their books there – thousands of them. Since the French folk are not interested in English books, I have the place to myself. It's just ME! The added bonus is, the books are only 20 centimes each, so I come away with bags and bags and bags.Last Saturday, my Hubby finally went berserk (his voice went up an octave) so I promised I would donate my books back to Emmaus. Problem is, it's not easy donating to Emmaus - it's such a rigmarole of parking, queueing, then handing your stuff to the right person. So, instead, I sidled into the book section and secretly put the books back on the shelves. (Imagine yourself going into your high street bookshop, buying up twenty books, going home, reading them and then tiptoeing back into the shop to surreptiously put them back on the shelves).I have to go. Hubby has found a cache behind the boiler and he doesn’t sound too happy...Right, I’ve just got back from “having a word”.Hubby told me the books are no joke. He said: "It’s intellectual clutter. It’s stultifying, suffocating." He said I’m like one of these eccentric old men in tartan slippers who hoard and don’t answer the door. Then, when Social Services do break in, they find him dead on the floor with his flat filled to the ceiling with piles of newspapers.Hubby’s description gave me a cold chill. Is that how he thinks of me? Is that how I'm going to end up? But I don’t want to be that old man in tartan slippers!Does anybody want a book?

Hello darlinks,I am Zenka, the fabulous star of ZENKA.Linda of Linda's Book Bag told Alison to write about me. Vy? Vy should Alison do this? It is ME who must write about ME. And this is vat I do now.I tell you. From beginning Alison make big mistakes. She has me as tiny voman in background, but I don’t like that and I tell her.So she make me a little bigger. But still it is not enough! How can she be so stupid? I am first class character vith sexy body. I drill and drill into her head until she groans, sits heavily on chair in front of computer, opens up Flesh and Blood (that vas the title then) and re-writes book. After she has done that, I tell her Flesh and Blood is bad title. She must call it ZENKA!!! She changes title to ZENKA (although she does not put in exclamation marks - vich is a pity).Then she must design cover. She vants me walking down London street with my BACK to camera. And the colour is sepia (that means colour of old tea-bag)). I am not sepia person. I vant orange! I vant black! I vant a gun in my hand. And I vant the vorld to see Zenka Valentina Varga’s beautiful face!Alison thought that vas the end of me. Ha!She goes on holiday to Barcelona. She is lying on beach, vanting to empty brain, thankful to have finished book. Then POW I pop into her head. I tell her to change the final chapter of the story. She doesn't want to. She wants me to go away. But then she starts thinking about my idea, and knows it is brilliant idea. She needs to write urgently and not finding pen in bag, grabs the vaiter by his ankle as he hurries by vith tray of mojitos and takes his pen. Her husband, Barry, says to forget that bloody book.Forget that bloody book! He is imbecile. And he vers yellow socks. What sort of REAL man vers yellow socks, huh?So, Alison gets home after holiday and changes final chapter. Now I am happy. Alison is not happy. She has to write to 40 book blaggers to tell them to delete last book she sent and replace vith new one.Alison, I leave you in peace ... for now. And remember, you think you know me, but you will never know me.ZenkaxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThis article first appeared on Linda's Book Bagin 2017.

Great news for my latest release, ZENKA. 6 book blogs have listed ZENKA in their *Top Favourite Books of 2017*I am bragging, I know, but if I don't do it, who will? I don't have a publisher's marketing department behind me. I'm all on my little lonesome. Being Anne chose ZENKA as one of her *Top 3 Must-Reads* click hereBeing Anne (Amazon VINE VOICE Reviewer): click hereDash Fan Reviews: click hereWall to Wall Books: click hereA Readers Review: click hereLauren Sapala, WriteCity: click hereAli the Dragon Slayer: click hereChat About Books lists BRAKE FAILURE as one of her *Five-Star Reads*: click hereBUY on AmazonI hope you all have a great 2018!Alison x

My latest book, Zenka, has just been published on Amazon Kindle.Here is the Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36423193-zenkaLet me tell you a little about it (remember, I am useless at writing a synopsis.  I can write an 80K-word book, but four paragraphs?  Hmm...)  Okay, I'm about to give it a go:ZENKA is a black-comedy thriller set in gangland London at Christmas."Do not vorry, Jack.  Ven I am finished vith Nicholas, he vill be dogs bollocks just like his daddy" -ZenkaJack "Blowtorch" Murray discovers he has a son, Nicholas.  The bad news is, Nicholas is a community nurse whose patients call him an "angel"How does Jack tell an "angel" that Dad is a thieving mob boss?  And can he use his wealth, wiles and tough-guy contacts to make a man out of this mouse - before his enemies turn him into mincemeat? Zenka takes charge.  She has plans to bring out the gorilla in Nicholas, some farcical, most of them illegal, and all destined to spin completely out of control ...This is a tale of loyalty, revenge, and finding family at Christmas.(Tomorrow I will be doing a blog that will introduce you to Zenka.  That's another thing I am useless at:  writing a blog on a regular basis.  But don't give up on me.  I'm trying).

I found this antique pamphlet "A Short Guide to Great Britain" published by the War and Navy Departments, Washington, D.C.  This guide was issued to American servicemen during the Second World War.  Read what it has to say about British women!"British Women At War.A British woman officer or non-commissioned officer can - and often does - give orders to a man private.  The men obey smartly and know it is no shame.  For British women have proven themselves in this war.  They have stuck to their posts near burning ammunition dumps, delivered messages afoot after their motorcyles have been blasted from under them.  They have died at the gun posts and as they fell another girl has steppd directly into position and "carried on".  There is not asingle recordin this war of any British woman in uniformed service quitting her post or failing in her duty under fire.Now you understand why British soliders respect the women in uniform.  They have won the right to the utmost respect.  When you see a girl in khaki or air-force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic - remember she didn't get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich."This is my thought:American women have never had to fight a war in their own country, but if they had to, I bet they would be as brave as the British women.

It’s been scientifically proven that reading reduces stress by 68%.  But how much MORE stress is reduced if you read COMEDY?I write comedy, I read comedy, I watch comedy.  Give meThe Lucy ShowoverThey Shoot Horses Don't They?anyday.My forté is writing humor – I’m not so much a stand-up but a sit-down comedian.  I love reading it, too, so whenTimemagazine plopped into my mailbox at the New Year, I was eager to see their“10 Best Novels” of the year.So I started with the review ofThe Underground Railroad:“After Cora is beaten and raped … grounded in the harsh reality of Africa-American history, toiling ever harder for survival.”No-siree, too depressing.  So I check out the next book,Another Brooklyn:“Four young women … deal with racism, sexual assault, poverty, grief and other traumas.”I’ll give that one a miss, too.  Let’s try the next one,Homegoing:“shines and equally harsh light on the social inequity … it documents the horrors…”Okeydoke, the next one has to be more light-hearted, surely,Imagine Me Gone:“After a son inherits his father’s severe depression and anxiety…”No thank you!  But this one sounds promising,My Name is Lucy Barton“marked by loneliness.  In spare prose with pain pushing through the seams…”Pain pushing through the seams?  I want shrieks of laughter bursting my corset!  I want to chuckle, chortle and snort.  I give up.  These books won't have me cracking a smile.  They'll just depress my already depressing life.So my question to you, dear reader, is this:  What is wrong with HUMOR??  What is wrong with making a reader SMILE??Charles Dickens totally agrees with me.  Take a look:“People mutht be amuthed.  They can’t alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t alwayth a working.  They ain’t made for it.”– Charles Dickens,Hard TimesToo true, Charlie.Here’s another quote, which is a little more modern:“Make the reader laugh and he’ll think you a trivial fellow but bore him and your reputation is assured”–Somerset MaughamI guess that means I’m not going to be famous anytime soon.Pity.  After all, as my grannie says: “Laughter is the best medicine”.  And she’s alive and kicking –with a boyfriend in tiger-print slippers - at the age of 96.

This New Year’s will be pretty uneventful for most of us, apart from drunken Uncle Billy reversing into the mailbox, or grandma getting cheeky with the hot new neighbour.But sweep your mind back sixteen years.  Can you do that?  If you can, you will remember the Y2K bug.  When the US government was spending $150 billion preparing for Armageddon.  When Hong Kong was stockpiling food.  When English ladies were hoarding tins of Gentleman’s relish and turning their koi carp ponds into trout farms.I am a Scot and I was living in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, during Y2K.  My Kansas friends were pretty relaxed about it, although they did follow official advice to prepare for the unknown.  TV warnings ranged from “prepare as if for a six-day blizzard” to “run for the hills!”I didn’t know what was going to happen.  The whole world didn’t know what was going to happen.  Virgin Airlines cancelled all flights on that night.  Would every computer on the planet think the date had gone back one hundred years when those numbers switched to zeroes?Thankfully, there was no Armageddon but there were still glitches; as The Kansas City Star reported on January 2:  “Trouble still looms”“If you think the only time to worry about the Y2K bug is on January 1, then you’re underestimating the problem” said Bruce McConnell, director of the International Y2K Cooperation Center.Six American nuclear power plants had problems.  The doors in a federal building would not lock.  A US spy satellite was knocked off line.  In France the Syracus II military satellite system was running on a software patch while technicians desperately worked to fix it.But some people got lucky. One glitch caused Microsoft’s MoneyCentralWeb site to vastly overestimate the worth of some customers’ portfolios.  And the online mailbox had emails dated 2099.But we all survived.The only folks who’d been relishing the prospect of Armageddon was a group of Survivalists I met.  They had been prepping for years for this eventuality.  They felt vindicated; they’d been right all along.  But they were about to be disappointed.One second after midnight of the new Millennium, the whole world had a stockpile of water purifying tablets, gasoline and non-perishable food on their hands.  And me?  I had a year’s supply of Petal Soft toilet paper (my partner refused to even think of using a dock leaf in an emergency).Sixteen years on, everyone has forgotten Y2K.  Although, funnily enough, I recently met a Canadian banker in Barcelona one drunken evening, who told me of the panic he and his work colleagues had gone through protecting their money in the run up to 2000.He assured me he would buy my romcom novel (which is set in the months leading up to Y2K in Kansas), but I know he won’t.  You know how I know?  Cos he left my contact details under an empty bottle of Rioja before he staggered off into the night.“Brake Failure” is releasing on Amazon on January 9, 2017

5 TOP LIPSWhere would romance be without lips?  Lips are where the first spark flies, when the first thrill enters the nervous system.I’m pretty sure all my books have got lips in them; if not mentioned overtly then certainly they assume pole position on the faces of my characters. I was just thinking it was about time somebody took a closer look at lips, their role not just on a face but in the heart of romance.BTW:  I’m not talking about just the TOP lip as my title may imply; I’m talking about both lips: top and bottom.“Giving lip”.  This is not as rude as it might sound.  In English-English it means talking back in an offensive manner, like my heroine in BRAKE FAILURE when she refuses to be arrested.If your heroine is from the English upper-crust and is about to do something she doesn’t want to do – like, say, get into a police cruiser just after she’s had an argument with the handsome-hunk of a Sheriff - she will have a “stiff upper lip.”“She pouted her lips.”  Your heroine could be having a tantrum and/or urging the hero to do naughty things to her."She licked her lips."  In Romance, this doesn't mean she's salivating, vulture-like, over a fresh cream cup-cake.  It means she's giving the "come-on" to the guy.  And he would be pretty dense to miss this universal expression of intent.It’s not just the heroine who has lips.  So does the hero.  “He brushed his lips down over her neck.”  Animal-esque, but, boy! does it send a tingle down your reader’s spine.“Their lips touched.”  Sometimes this is all you need to tell your reader.  You don’t need to put in the whole sex scenario.  Leave it to your reader’s imagination.  Trust me:  it’s dirtier than yours.“As his lips pressed down on hers, she felt a flame shoot up from between her legs.”  Of course, this is not a real flame.  Hopefully not, anyway.  Of course your character could be a fire-eater.  Here is an observation from Harry Houdini which few can refute and which I suspect is the origin of the phrase “hot lips”:“Flames from the lips may be produced by holding in the mouth a sponge saturated with the purest gasoline.”Generally, though, lips in romance should avoid flammable liquids.Let’s crit. some lit.  Charles Dickens was an intense writer.  Listen to what he had to say:“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.”(To be honest he must have been doing it wrong; it’s actually pretty easy).Lips can say a lot about us.  Take a look at this picture.  Look at the lips. They tell you immediately that this is Penelope Cruz, the famous Spanish person.  If she didn’t have those lips she would not be Penelope Cruz.  So lips say who you are.  They also often say a whole lot more about you that the hugely over-rated heart.In summaryLips in Romance are best used:1.   as a complete pair2.   pliably3.   to show inner turmoil on the face of your heroine4.   used in a non-flammable environment5.   to kiss the hero…and as hot, red, and moist as they need to be for the task in hand.#BTW:  If you want to read about hot lips in action, grab an e-book copy of BRAKE FAILURE publishing on 9 Januay, 2017.

Walls tumble down. They start off by keeping things in, or out – depending on where you stand, or who you are – north/south, rich/poor, East/West, royal/peasant and so on. They end up, when they come tumbling down, letting everything in, or out, depending on whether they sequestered or excluded. When walls fall, things always get better; from Jericho to Hadrian’s Wall, to the walls of the Bastille in Paris to the Berlin Wall; old walls protect old orders. In the world of writing and publishing

  Do you have to stumble over discarded crap to get to your desk? Do you have to side-step the Step Master, skirt your pile of laundry and tip-toe through a maze of teetering books just to get to your laptop?   Here are my 12 Top Tips that will shape you up and settle you down to a year of inspired good fortune. That’s right: I’ve scoured the wisdom of the ancients, the mysteries of the East and the ungoogled frontiers of science to bring you focus, energy, relaxation and good luck   1.  Qi