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    • The Pearl Locket
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  • Short Stories
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  • The Girl with the Emerald Flag
  • The Lost Sister
  • The Storm Girl
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Kathleen McGurl

~ Where past and present collide…

Kathleen McGurl

Tag Archives: Emerald Comb

News update

02 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by kathmcgurl in News

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Tags

audiobooks, Daughters of Red Hill Hall, Emerald Comb, Pearl Locket, The Forgotten Secret, The Girl from Ballymor, The Secret of the Chateau, The Stationmasters Daughter

After an exciting couple of months watching how The Secret of the Château was doing on various Amazon deals in the US and then UK, this month it’s the turn of The Girl from Ballymor that is now selling at just 99p on Amazon UK.  It’s still my favourite of my novels, so I hope it does well.

the-girl-from-ballymor_highres

Later this month, on the 27th, all my older books will be released as audiobooks. There will be five coming out on the same day, which is really exciting! That will mean all my books are available in all formats. I’ll soon be recording some promotional video clips about the inspiration behind The Emerald Comb, The Pearl Locket, The Daughters of Red Hill Hall, The Girl from Ballymor and The Stationmaster’s Daughter, to celebrate these audiobook publications.

Also this month, I’ll be announcing news of my next novel – the tenth. I can’t wait to share this with everyone! Novel Eleven is also written and with beta readers for a few comments before I send it to my editor. And ideas for more are brewing, of course.

I hope everyone’s found plenty of time to read over recent months. I have – along with writing. And house clearing. We’ve been talking about moving for a couple of years, and are finally taking some steps towards doing it. Which means the loft and the garage that we’ve been ignoring for years all need sorting. Funnily, book eleven starts with a character clearing her attic. She gets on with it a lot faster than I have managed to.

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Blog tour!

14 Thursday May 2020

Posted by kathmcgurl in Books, Uncategorized

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Emerald Comb, Pearl Locket, The Secret of the Chateau

Today the blog tour for The Secret of the Château begins, brilliantly organised by Rachel. I’ll be adding links to every review on the book’s page. Can’t wait to find out what people think of this book – please do go and check out some of the reviews. Book bloggers do such a great job promoting books – I really appreciate it.

The Secret of the Chateau Full Tour Banner

In other news, today is also publication day for the paperbacks of The Pearl Locket and The Emerald Comb. It’s so lovely to have these two available in hard copy. They were my first book contract, and I was asked many times by readers if they were ever going to be published as paperbacks, and always had to reply that it was up to my publisher.  I was delighted when they told me that they’d chosen these to go into paperback.

Not only that, but later this year all my older books will be published in audio format! It is all happening.

May already

03 Sunday May 2020

Posted by kathmcgurl in Books, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Emerald Comb, Pearl Locket, The Secret of the Chateau

Or was April actually about six months long? It was shorter than March, anyway (or felt like it).

Cover

I have news this month – on 15th May my latest book, The Secret of the Château, will be released in ebook format. I’m really looking forward to seeing what people think of this one! It’s set mostly in France, as the title implies, and the historical parts are set during the French revolution. Had to do plenty of research for this one!

 

 

The Emerald Comb new coverThe Pearl Locket_FINAL

 

 

Also being released on 14th May are the paperbacks for my first two dual timeline novels – The Emerald Comb and The Pearl Locket. I have been asked so many times whether these will ever be available as paperbacks so it is very pleasing that they soon will be.

 

In other news, I recently signed a contract for audio versions of all my books that aren’t already in this format! The Secret of the Château comes out in July along with the paperback, and the others (the older books, plus The Stationmaster’s Daughter) probably around August. I’m delighted that all my HQ novels will be available in all formats.

New cover for The Emerald Comb!

27 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by kathmcgurl in Books, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

covers, Emerald Comb

I’m delighted to share with you this gorgeous new cover for The Emerald Comb. While I liked the picture on the original cover, I never felt it was quite right for the book. This one is perfect. That house is exactly how I envisaged Kingsley House to be, and I love the new tag line.

The Emerald Comb new cover

I’ll always have a soft spot for this book as it’s the one that landed my my first publishing contract.

And what to do with the old cover? Well, why not do a Banksy, courtesy of Photofunia…

PhotoFunia-1540581944.gif

Catching up!

05 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by kathmcgurl in Books, Campervan, Holiday

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Emerald Comb, Gertie, good news, Promotion

Oh dear it has been over a month since I posted anything on this blog. I had a fortnight’s holiday in Ireland in May, travelling round in our campervan, and I feel as though I have barely stopped moving since.

There is a little bit of bookish news to share – The Emerald Comb is currently on an Amazon promotion – 99p on Amazon.co.uk until the end of this month. Grab it while you can!

As a result of this, I now have TWO books with best seller flags which is extremely pleasing. Obviously I needed a screenshot of this – and here it is.Two best seller flags

While in Ireland we toured the south-west corner – counties Cork and Kerry. This is where my next novel is mostly set, so I found it very inspiring. No date yet for publication but I will let you know when I have one.

Gertie (our campervan) turned out to be perfect – better than we’d dared dream. I love everything about her. Just as well, because next year we plan to spend six months touring Europe in her! Here she is parked at the foot of Carrauntoohil, Ireland’s highest mountain, which we climbed on a beautiful and memorable day. That’s me, just before we set off.

DSCF1528

Life imitating art…

14 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by kathmcgurl in Books

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Emerald Comb

A writer friend alerted me to this article today, and it has made me ridiculously excited. If you’ve read my book The Emerald Comb you’ll see why, and if you haven’t – well maybe this will make you want to!

In my book (and don’t worry, this isn’t really a spoiler) an old beech tree blows over in a storm, and some bones are discovered at its roots. I did a lot of research around this – making sure bones could survive for hundreds of years under a tree. I picked a beech tree because their wide, shallow roots mean they’re more easily blown over in a storm (compared to, say, an oak) Also they tend to suck moisture out of the ground. Bones last longer in drier soil. Finally, with no tap root the bones would be better able to stay relatively undisturbed. All this is important to my story.

So when I read this article, you can imagine how delighted I was to find out that I’d got my research right – bones really could last under a beech tree for hundreds of years, and be discovered when the treThe Emerald Comb V3 cover smalle blows over in a storm! Mind you, I wish now I’d had half the skeleton lifted up
by the rootball as this one was. Didn’t think of that. (And if I had, I’d probably have thought it was too unlikely!)

You know, if I hadn’t already written The Emerald Comb I would right now be so inspired by this Mirror
article I’d be trying to think of a plot surrounding it. I wonder if there’ll be a spate of bones-under-trees novels now? If so, remember that I got there first!

Endings

30 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by kathmcgurl in Books, Writing

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

books, Emerald Comb, endings, Writing

Endings are tricky beasts, aren’t they?

Beginnings are dead easy. I’ve sat in writing classes and written dozens of beginnings, usually with no previous idea of what to write, and often done within a six-minute time limit. Some are better than others, but most could become the start of a story or even a novel.

But endings are another matter. Short story endings need to neatly finish off the story, include the twist, or link back to the beginning, or show the ‘universal truth’ your story is trying to illustrate. Novel endings need to tie up loose ends, leave your characters in a good place, and satisfy your reader. And they mustn’t end too soon – I think novels need a winding-down scene or two, where the main action has finished, to allow the reader to say their farewells to the characters they’ve lived with for the past few days or weeks.

I was looking through the reviews I’ve had for my novel, The Emerald Comb, earlier today. It’s been well received with (to date) 48 four and five star reviews, but there are a handful of three, two and one star reviews as well. The one thing the lower rankings have in common is that they all criticise the ending. They say the ending seemed rushed, and that things were left not quite resolved leaving the reader feeling perhaps disappointed or frustrated.

I find this very interesting, because (and this is a bit of a spoiler, so if you haven’t read it but would like to, skip reading this paragraph) nothing is kept from the reader. There’s no unresolved plot line. By the end of the novel, the reader knows the full truth of what happened. However, the main character Katie does not know everything. I wrote it like this on purpose – one of the themes of the novel is that no amount of research can necessarily uncover the full and complete truth of what happened in the past. If your ancestors really wanted to hide a secret, they probably could, and you’d never know. After exhausting all research angles the best you can do is make an educated guess or conjecture. And that’s what Katie is left with, although the reader knows everything. In my mind the story is resolved, but perhaps the critical reviewers identified so much with Katie they didn’t see it that way! (I’ll take that as a compliment on my skills at characterisation then.)

Some of the other reviews praise the ending for being realistic, and one reviewer stated she was glad I went for the ending I did, rather than the more predictable alternative which some might have expected. There’s someone who really ‘got’ what I was trying to do!

You can never please everyone, but it has made me think hard about the ending I had in mind for my current work in progress, which is another tale of genealogical mysteries. How can I stay true to my themes and yet be careful not to disappoint readers? I think there’s a fine line I need to tread here. Hope I can get it right!

Thankfully, no one’s criticised the ending of The Pearl Locket (so far). Although a number of people have told me it had them reaching for a tissue…

October: a review

01 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by kathmcgurl in Goals, Writing

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Emerald Comb, Pearl Locket, review

It’s been quite a month. Looking back on it, last night, I realised actually it’s been an amazing month.

During October we went to close friends’ silver wedding celebration, a 50th birthday party, and spent a wonderful long weekend at the Cork jazz festival with my sister-in-law and her husband.

In the day job a major project I’ve managed and worked on for most of the year came to a successful conclusion.

And as for my writing endeavours – wow. October has been brilliant.

  • The Emerald Comb went onto an Amazon 99p promotion and sales took off. I’ve had some wonderful reviews. I even had a best seller flag for a while!bestseller3
  • I’ve been featured on loads of lovely blogs promoting The Emerald Comb. For links to them all, see this page.
  • The Pearl Locket went up for pre-order and immediately made it into the historical fiction chart.
  • Sales of Mr Cavell’s Diamond have been boosted by a Countdown deal, and have also been helped by people enjoying The Emerald Comb and coming back to see what else I’ve written.
  • Sales of the How To books ticked along, and I sold more paperbacks of them last month than any other month to date.
  • I have almost finished the first draft of a short new non-fiction book. I had the idea in early October and have raced through it.
  • I’ve had an idea for another novel, might be the next one I write, we’ll see.

November will be quieter, I suspect. Although I’ll be writing a lot, as usual!

Coming soon, a second blog tour for The Emerald Combp

16 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by kathmcgurl in Books

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book, Emerald Comb, Promotion

Emerald Comb BLOG TOUR2

The Emerald Comb promotion!

14 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by kathmcgurl in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Emerald Comb, Promotion

I’m delighted that Amazon have chosen The Emerald Comb for their Kindle Autumn Promotion. It’s now selling at 99p or $1.59 so buy now while the price is low!

Buy from Amazon UK

Buy from Amazon US

Cover in 3-D

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    • Mr Cavell’s Diamond
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    • The Pearl Locket
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    • The Stationmaster’s Daughter
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