Last Friday, 5th September, His Cavalry Lady, the first of my trilogy, The Aikenhead Honours, was scheduled to be in the shops in the UK. I seem to have been waiting for months for this book to appear. I was so excited, I ended up going round all the shops looking for it, just to make sure it had actually happened. So if you recently saw a woman fingering all the copies of the latest Joanna Maitland, but not actually buying any, it will probably have been me.For those who missed it, there was an extract in my blog here on 10th August. The story is set in Boulogne, London, and St Petersburg which was then capital of Russia. It's a fabulously beautiful city, as you can see here, especially on one of the rare days when the sun shines.
Some of you may have seen me in a TV spot on BBC WM regional news on 27th August. Sadly, His Cavalry Lady wasn’t mentioned by name, or shown, during the programme. Instead, a voice-over read out part of the back cover blurb while showing sexy covers of M&B Modern novels. Just my luck, eh?
The TV piece — shown around 6.45 pm in the West Midlands region only — was actually more about the Mills & Boon 100th Anniversary than about the individual authors involved (Sara Craven, Carole Mortimer, and me). It registered a degree of surprise that, nowadays, Mills & Boon novels can be quite sexy. That’s progress, in a way, since the received wisdom in the media still tends to be that Mills & Boon novels are about virginal heroines and powerful alpha-male heroes in the style of Barbara Cartland (who never, incidentally, wrote for Mills & Boon).
But all publicity is good publicity, after all, don't you think?
Joanna
http://www.joannamaitland.com
5 comments:
Lovely photo - all that gold! Hardly looks real, does it?
Congratulations, Joanna, I hope the trilogy does very well for you (and I am looking forward to reading this first book).
I agree that any publicity for romantic fiction authors is a good thing, and tv publicity is great, so well done!
Melinda
Your book only came out on September 5? My library, here in the USA, already has a copy. So you're doing something right!
Jan, the guides told me that all that gold IS real! Mind you, they do have their own gold mines in Russia.
Thanks for the congrats on the tv piece, Melinda. It was slightly nerve-wracking waiting for it to be shown, I must admit. They'd filmed for ages, and you can never be sure which bits -- especially unflattering bits -- they might use. On this occasion, though, they left out my fluffs, which was kind.
Linda, my book came out on 5 September in paperback, but it's been out for a couple of months in hardback. Maybe that explains how your library has it? Whatever the reason, I hope you and the other library readers are enjoying the story.
Best wishes
Joanna
Yes, the library has the hardcover. Just for reference, the Belmont Public Library, of Belmont, Massachusetts, buys most, if not all, of the Mills and Boon romances. In searching the catalog, I found 1101 Mills & Boon books.
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