Thank you to Jessica at The Bookworm Chronicles
For a lovely review of By Sword and Storm
Two sentences really stood out and encouraged me – ‘Each time the narrative switched, I found myself emotionally torn, as I was rooting for them both.’ and ‘All in all I thought By Sword and Storm was another wonderful, historical rollercoaster ride, that had me gripped from start to finish.’
The splitting of the story over two countries and timelines was a bit of a gamble in case folk wouldn’t engage with that (and technically challenging to mesh them together and still remain true to the historical dates when specific events happened) so I was very pleased that it worked for her. Here’s hoping it works for others!
It was also the first time that I’ve seen what the title page of By Sword and Storm looks like on a kindle… The publisher has sent me files, but for some reason I haven’t managed to access them properly and haven’t got round to asking for them to be re-sent.
That was interesting because I use the same font for the chapter headings in the Katharina books – the second of which, Fortitude, is due out at the end of July and I was totally unaware until very recently that kindle readers don’t get the benefit of that wee refinement because the kindle programme has limited fonts at its disposal. – That makes me a little sad. For those who mightn’t know the font I’m referring to it is called Morpheus and is a rather lovely ‘church-style font, which suits the subject matter of Katharina ideally.
It was found by my cover designer – well done him! Here it is:
Katharina: Fortitude is currently with my editor and two days ago I got a lovely preliminary sentence from him – ‘I’m loving what I’ve read so far. The writing is so rich, so distinctive and so evocative. I’m looking forward to this journey.’ It is always a scary time when waiting for an initial reaction from a professional, who really knows their job, so this is extremely encouraging. I’m looking forward to the end of July now…