Helen Hollick

Carla · Post by **Carla** » Tue February 10th, 2009, 4:09 pm

Review posted. It was self-published, although that's no reflection on the writing. I found it just as enjoyable as many commercially published novels, and more so than many. I had an advance review copy and there were some typos in it (though not enough to annoy me). I understood from Helen that these were fixed in the release edition.

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Tue February 10th, 2009, 4:19 pm

[quote=""Carla""] I had an advance review copy and there were some typos in it (though not enough to annoy me). I understood from Helen that these were fixed in the release edition.[/quote]

Thank you, and good to know about the typos getting fixed. I had one recently that had them on literally every page. Very distracting...

EC2 · Post by **EC2** » Tue February 10th, 2009, 6:12 pm

[quote=""Ludmilla""]Sourcebooks is the publisher reissuing a bunch of Heyers and at least one of du Maurier's (I hope they end up reissuing a bunch of hers the way that Virago has for the UK). I own a few of the Heyers and have been happy with them so far. Hopefully, they'll do right by Hollick. I'm not really knowledgeable about the business side of books, though.[/quote]

Ludmilla, Source are up and coming. They used to have a 'bottom feeder' reputation but they have seen a niche and moved into buying books that have a)sold well on the small press and self publish market - Boswell aka Susan Higgingbotham The Traitor's Wife for e.g. b) out of print classics by deceased authors (Heyer and Du Maurier, Campbell Barnes for e.g. c) books by authors who are well known elsewhere but who haven't yet impacted on the USA market - Helen Hollick, Jill Mansell (who is massive everywhere but the USA as in terms of sales by the millions), me

. Amanda Grange has sold extremely well for them with D'Arcy's Diary, which was originally only a small library hardcover print run in the UK but has gone big in the USA for Source. It's still a developing publisher and going through changes - still shedding its skin. Any author signing contracts needs to get them thoroughly vetted and be aware of what's what. It really is a case of the proof of the pudding.

Misfit, I enjoyed Sea Witch. I didn't particularly notice the typos. There probably were a few but none worse than quite a few published novels. However, with so much to read out there, you are perhaps better reading it from the library or borrowing from a friend.

Margaret · Post by **Margaret** » Wed February 11th, 2009, 3:16 am

I'm reviewing The Kingmaking for HistoricalNovels.info. The review will go up February 23, per request, so I don't want to scoop it too much. But my reaction was mixed. I think Hollick's writing style is very much in the historical romance tradition, even though there are aspects to the novel that take it out of that genre. My preference is for a deeper and more psychologically insightful look inside the characters than a typical historical romance offers, so this was a negative for me, though it might be a positive for other readers. I also felt the novel could have benefited from a good deal of editing. Hollick writes a lot of sentences where she says the same thing in 2 or 3 different ways. I'm an impatient reader, and I don't really want to linger over an idea once I "get" it. But there is a lushness to her writing style that some readers may enjoy.

Margaret · Post by **Margaret** » Mon February 23rd, 2009, 7:05 am

I've posted my review of The Kingmaking now at http://www.HistoricalNovels.info/Kingmaking.html. I also have a short interview with Helen Hollick on my blog at http://www.historicalnovels.info/histor ... -blog.html.

The publicist at Sourcebooks does seem to do a good job for his authors. He's organized a big blog tour for Helen Hollick, taking care to have her answering a different set of questions for each blog, and following up a couple of times to make sure the blog appearances and reviews come out not all on the same day but in the same time frame that the book appears in stores. I've been contacted by other publicists that didn't make nearly such a good impression on me.

Carla · Post by **Carla** » Mon February 23rd, 2009, 11:25 am

[quote=""Margaret""]I've posted my review of The Kingmaking now at http://www.HistoricalNovels.info/Kingmaking.html. I also have a short interview with Helen Hollick on my blog at http://www.historicalnovels.info/histor ... -blog.html.

The publicist at Sourcebooks does seem to do a good job for his authors. He's organized a big blog tour for Helen Hollick, taking care to have her answering a different set of questions for each blog, and following up a couple of times to make sure the blog appearances and reviews come out not all on the same day but in the same time frame that the book appears in stores. I've been contacted by other publicists that didn't make nearly such a good impression on me.[/quote]

Yes, I've been impressed with the publicist too. I'm on Helen's blog tour for 3rd March, so I'll post my review then and cross-post it here. The same guy is also doing the publicity for Susan Higginbotham's The Traitor's Wife.

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Mon February 23rd, 2009, 2:01 pm

Amy has an interview coming out soon as well, blog post here.

Margaret · Post by **Margaret** » Mon February 23rd, 2009, 6:51 pm

There's also an interview and review at http://harrietdevine.typepad.com/. These are good long ones. My own philosophy about blogging is to keep things short, but there's something to be said for long, too. I found it very interesting to read about the publishing challenges Hollick faced.

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Wed March 11th, 2009, 4:57 pm

I see new covers for the books, at least over at UK. What do the rest of you think of them?

EC2 · Post by **EC2** » Wed March 11th, 2009, 5:09 pm

Oh dear, these are just awful compared to her earlier ones. I wonder what Helen thinks. The last one reminds me somewhat of my terrible Greatest Knight audio cover! They have that cheap 'e-book' or self-published look to them

IMO. The first one looks like something from Lord of the Rings - is it Frodo? Ugggh! Sorry, I'm not keen.

Historical Fiction Online

Helen Hollick

The Kingmaking

Kingmaking trilogy