Book Tour: Murder on the Cliffs by Joanna Challis

One of my favorite bloggers, Sandy of You've GOTTA Read This, hosted a discussion earlier this year of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. While I wasn't able to participate, I loved following along. That discussion was one of the things that first interested me in Murder on the Cliffs. I loved the idea of a mystery surrounding du Maruier.

Please help me welcome Joanna Challis, and enjoy her guest post!








NEW MYSTERY SERIES --- A DAY IN THE LIFE OF DAPHNE DU MAURIER



Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley.

The storm led me to Padthaway.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is my all-time favorite book. I also love the black & white movie with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, chillingly transcribed to screen by Alfred Hitchcock. So when my agent first came up with the idea of using Daphne as a fictional heroine, I blinked not once but twice.

I never thought of writing as a real person. The first thing that flashed through my mind was ‘restricted.’ Unlike fictional protagonists, real people and more so real ‘famous’ people left behind a wealth of information.

Daphne du Maurier did more than that. She wrote her own biography “Myself When Young” charting her early years up to the publication of her first novel and marriage. Daphne is quoted as saying “an autobiography is self-indulgent” and when asked if she planned a sequel to Myself When Young, she replied: “No. I believe one can become too introspective writing this type of thing. I intend to look to the future rather than the past and all I can say is that I had a very happy married life, have a delightful family, and I don’t like books which are full of name dropping.”

Myself When Young – the Shaping of a Writer formed the basis for my fictional Daphne. Although many biographers have stitched together other versions of the real Daphne, none can compare to the horse’s own mouth. In her autobiography, she paints a painfully honest picture of herself, her relationship with her parents and her sisters, her education in Paris, her love for Cornwall and abhorrence for London life, her unrelenting interest in history and her ambition to succeed as a writer. As I devoured Myself When Young, I realized I had a kindred spirit in Daphne. She loved the same things I did: travel, ruins, history, and writing. She often felt socially inept, drawn more to observe people than participate. She loved adventure and intrigue and there were no limits to her imagination.

Of course, I knew when embarking upon a new mystery series featuring Daphne du Maurier, particular criticism would be leveled at me. In creating a fictional Daphne, a heroine starring in her own fictional novel, one providing inspiration for her future works, I had to distance myself from the magnitude of biographers out there who all had a pre-conceived idea of who Daphne was. At the end of the day, nobody knows the real Daphne but Daphne herself and she is no longer here to speak for herself. The legacy of family, friends and her writings are left behind to give us clues and they all paint a fascinating, complex personality, not unlike writers today. Daphne lived in her own world and loved to create worlds. Reading her words, my fictional Daphne-the-heroine leapt off the page and I’m sure if she were alive today, to some extent she would be amused by the thought of becoming an amateur sleuth in the great houses of England.

Sharing Daphne’s deep love of Cornwall, I set MURDER ON THE CLIFFS, out this month by St Martin’s Minotaur, on the Cornish coast. Above the waves and the cliffs, a great mansion looms called Padthaway, the home of the aristocratic Hartley family. As Daphne is on holidays, she is drawn to the house and the mystery of the young bride found dead on the beach. She won’t rest until she has unearthed all the secrets of the eerie Elizabethan mansion, even if it places her in danger.

MURDER ON THE CLIFFS was written with a large nod to REBECCA, du Maurier’s all-time classic. Padthaway forms the inspiration for Manderley and the young dead bride Victoria to Rebecca. Other than that, MURDER ON THE CLIFFS has its own mystery to solve and Daphne is just the one to do it. She’s trusted by the family and this provides the perfect basis for her to subtly begin her inquiries. MURDER ON THE CLIFFS (published by St Martin’s Minotaur) is out 1st December, 2009.

Following on with Daphne’s deep love of Cornwall, PERIL AT SOMNER HOUSE is next, a Winter manor-house mystery set on the Isles of Scilly (to be published 2010).

For more information, please visit www.joanna-challis.com.

Writing as
Joanna and Lisa Challis
MURDER ON THE CLIFFS -- NOVEMBER 2009, ST MARTIN'S MINOTAUR
http://www.joanna-challis.com/







And now for the giveaway...Joanna Challis is giving away a signed copy of her book, Murder on the Cliffs, to one lucky tour visitor. Go to her book tour page, http://joanna-challis.omnimystery.com/, enter your name, e-mail address, and this PIN, 4920, for your chance to win. Entries from Shhh I'm Reading will be accepted until 12:00 Noon (PT) tomorrow. No purchase is required to enter or to win. The winner (first name only) will be announced on their book tour page next week.



A special thank you to Joanna Challis for stopping by today, and Good Luck with the giveaway!

Guest Post by Elle Newmark, author of The Book of Unholy Mischief

I am very happy to welcome Elle Newmark today, author of The book of Unholy Mischief, as a guest blogger.

The Book of Unholy Mischief
Elle Newmark

Like Susan Boyle, I am gobsmacked. While lots of people are talking about The Book of Unholy Mischief, precious few are talking about the point it makes.

In writing this book, I wanted to say something about the potential for magnificence we all hold within us. But in the seven months since the release of The Book of Unholy Mischief, the only reviewer who touched on that was Kirkus. They said, “…Intelligence is the daily special on Newmark’s menu, served with facility and skill.”

Thank you.

On the other hand, The New York Times compared me to Dan Brown. Apologies to Dan, but I am not amused. How can you compare a contemporary thriller to a historical picaresque? I was in London when that review appeared, and I paced my hotel room with steam coming out of my ears. It was a good review and sales went up, but that’s not the point. Well, it kind of is the point for my agent and publisher, but not for me.

I happen to be obnoxiously proud of writing historical fiction that uses food metaphors to illustrate ideas. It’s not something you see every day. The Book of Unholy Mischief is about a chef and his apprentice in Renaissance Venice embroiled in intrigues involving a mysterious book, a corrupt church, powerful bad guys, a sexy nun, and a syphilitic doge. All this serves to teach the apprentice how to become the best man he can be.

Now honestly, when was the last time you read that?

The Book of Unholy Mischief is dedicated to teachers because the chef is a teacher the way Sean Connery mentored Christian Slater in the Name of the Rose. It also uses food as metaphor and magic as Juliette Binoche did in Chocolat. In both cases, these devices were used to make a point.

If you want to know more about Unholy Mischief please visit my website http://www.ellenewmark.com/. If you want to know even more, read the book. Paperback will be out in November 2009.

Elle, thank you for stopping by my blog today, and thank you to Pump Up Your Book Promotion for putting together this tour.

Guest Post by Sandra Gulland, author of Mistress of the Sun

Today I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to Sandra Gulland, author of Mistress of the Sun and the Josephine B trilogy. Ms. Gulland has been traveling the blogosphere in conjunction with the recent release of Mistress of the Sun in paperback, and I am thrilled to have her with us today.

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On the Joys of Travel Research

Sandra Gulland

When I was an apprentice novelist — that is, working on my second unpublishable novel — I consulted with Jane Urquhart, one of Canada's finest literary novelists, who was then Writer in Residence at a near-by university. I'd been struggling with a contemporary mystery/comedy-of-manners novel about an elderly woman who'd been inconveniently possessed by a spirit — the spirit of Josephine Bonaparte, Napoleon's wife. Josephine's "diary" was only a chapter in this mess of a novel, but it was the one part Jane Urquhart felt came to life. "Just do that," she said. I had been obsessed with Josephine's story for over a decade, but I didn't think I had the nerve to write a book about her. "But you'll have to go to Paris," Jane added. ("And Italy, and Martinique," she mussed. "You could have fun with this.") "I have two young children," I said. "It's important," she said.

"I have to go to Paris," I announced to my husband that night, a laundry basket on one hip. I didn't mention Italy and Martinique. He didn't scoff, yet to me it seemed impossible. How could I justify the time, trouble, and family money spent pursuing something as ephemeral as a novel that would likely never be published? Yet I did go to Paris, eventually . . . after I'd interested an agent in a novel about Josephine B. (little did we know it would be a trilogy), after I'd written the beginnings of the draft — after I had some idea what it was I wanted to see there.

Paris was a revelation to me: I fell in love with the city, and that love has endured through many, many visits. From a writing perspective, Jane Urquhart was right: I needed to go. I stood in the convent where Josephine had been imprisoned, walked the streets of her neighborhoods. Going to Paris profoundly deepened my understanding of her, and I brought that "sensual connection" to all the subsequent rewrites. Just before the first novel of the trilogy — The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. — was due to go into publication, I traveled to Martinique, where Josephine was raised. I wasn't happy with the opening chapters of the novel: I felt it needed something more . . . and I found that "something more" in Martinique. I walked to the spot where Josephine had been told that she would be queen, saw her humble origins, talked to a man who had written a book about Josephine's early years on the island. He was the one who informed me that she'd been locked a basement room after seeing the Voodoo fortuneteller: I had my scene.

With each book, I returned to Europe, following Josephine's path . . . through Italy, through Germany. Every trip was yet another revelation. Every time, I returned home to rewrite, and rewrite yet again.

For Mistress of the Sun, I journeyed to the Loire valley, saw my heroine's home — saw the barn in which her horse would have been stabled — saw the spooky ruins of the "chateau" the Sun King gave her, visited every royal castle. I even spent a week on a horseback tour of the Loire: I wanted to feel what it was like to travel at that speed. As we cantered into a castle courtyard, the sound of horse hooves reverberating on the cobble stones, I felt I was living a dream.

"You could have fun with this," Jane Urquart said. And she was right.

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Ms Gulland, thank you so much for this wonderful guest post and for stopping by today.

Please be sure to visit the other stops on the book tour. I have been thoroughly enjoying every one of the guest posts and interviews.

Stop by tomorrow for my review of Mistress of the Sun and a giveaway.

Author Guest Post: The Truth Lies in the Dark by Kristin Callender

Today we are joined by Kristin Callender as a part of the blog tour for The Truth Lies in the Dark.

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Hi to all of you Shhh I'm Reading fans. Thanks for stopping by and a big thanks to Melissa for having me as a guest on her blog. I am Kristin Callender, author of newly released mystery/romance The Truth Lies in the Dark.

By now you may already know what The Truth Lies in the Dark is basically about. The main character, Amanda finds out that she was raised with a dead girl's identity and everyone in her life knew. Initially the only clues she had that something wasn't right were the reoccurring nightmares of an unknown girl. She has to decipher these dreams as she continues to unlock the secrets of her true identity.

In this story the nightmares and dreams play a big part. As much as they terrify Amanda at times, they also become a source of comfort to her. As she gets closer to finding out the truth, and the danger that comes with it, the nightmares transform into glimpses. She is comforted to know that within the dark secret there may be some bright spots, some happy memories to unlock as well.

A recent comment made me think about how the dreams were important in this book and also for me. I had said that I dreamed about a part of the story and couldn't wait to get up and write it. The commenter said that it was interesting that I was inspired by a dream and The Truth Lies in the Dark begins in one. I think that our dreams do tell us a lot. Not as a predictor of the future, but as an organizer of all of our thoughts and memories. I don't believe our dreams can tell us anything we don't already know, but they certainly can help clarify things you are thinking about and remind you of things you have forgotten.

It is not uncommon for me to dream about what I am writing. I have a very active imagination and when I am writing the story comes alive in my mind. I can walk away from the computer and pause it for awhile but can not completely stop it until it is all on paper. So I know that my dreams are a result of that unfinished story still swirling around in my thoughts and a reminder to get it finished.

I hope that I have inspired you to listen to your dreams; which will usually lead you to follow your heart. If anyone is interested in learning more about me, my book, or the Book Blog Tour please go to my website: http://sites.google.com/site/kristincallenderbooks .

Thanks again for stopping by,

Kristin Callender

The Truth Lies in the Dark by Kristin Callender is available on www.amazon.com/Truth-Lies-Dark-Kristin-Callender/dp/1604520140 and also on http://www.bluewaterpress.com/ .

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A special thank you to Kristin for stopping by here today! I hope you all enjoyed the guest post and will check out the other blogs on the tour for The Truth Lies in the Dark.