Kathy Rewrites

I’m excited for you to meet author Anni Rose today on my blog, especially because she has some tips on writing comedy callbacks!

Recipe for Mr. Right Blurb

A sprinkle of luck and a dollop of fate …

Ruby Brooks is a little sceptical when her horoscope say she’s going to have a fabulous year – especially when she loses a boyfriend and a job in quick succession. Plus, a rogue kitchen fitter has run off and taken everything, including the kitchen sink!

So, Ruby takes luck and fate into her own hands with an unusual resolution – she’ll enter ten competitions a day, whether they’re for her dream Japanese holiday or a year’s supply of dog food (she doesn’t have a dog) and win her way to happiness.

But when a Valentine’s Day prize from a local restaurant results in chef Adam Finder (and his dog, Brutus) appearing in her life, is that luck or fate? And will Ruby ultimately find out that true happiness doesn’t need to be won?

It’s available at:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3lqwepf

Apple: https://apple.co/3BpysL9 

Kobo: https://bit.ly/3iM3p4H

Google Books: https://bit.ly/3uVCGYv

Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3AmzplN

Website: https://bit.ly/3AsYFHc

Meet the Author Anni Rose Interview

Kathy: Hi Anni, I’m so glad you could join us today on my blog. Anni is a fellow author in the Romantic Novelists Association with me, and I really enjoyed her book, Recipe for Mr. Right.

Anni: Thank you, Kathy, for inviting me, it’s a real pleasure to be with you today.

Kathy: I loved the set-up of Ruby applying to 10 contests a day in Recipe for Mr. Right. And I thought you did a brilliant job of comic callbacks with that set-up. Also, I loved the heart-warming romance between Ruby and Adam. And you did a great job of conveying the stalkerish friend who feels just a bit off. Oh, and I also loved Mr. Tahsin and his son Malik – what great characters. I hope we see them again too. Highly recommend.

Kathy: How did you come up with the applying to contests idea for Recipe for Mr. Right?

Anni: Time to ’fess up, I entered ten competitions a day at one time, but only for a month. I did win a “Write your own Will” book, a pair of rubber gloves, Ideal Home tickets and tickets to a Donny Osmond Concert though!

Kathy: That’s not a bad haul. Have you ever had a kitchen outfitter leave you with no kitchen?

Anni: Of course, the book is entirely fictional; however, a bad experience with a new kitchen might have been the inspiration for it. I don’t think anyone who’s had a new kitchen built will tell you it was much fun, so it was cathartic to get it out of my system by writing about it. But I am lucky, in so much, as I have two really talented sisters, one who designs and builds furniture. She built my current kitchen and (my office) while it was a stressful time for a while, it is just amazing, and I love it.

Kathy: Do you have any pets? What’s your favorite habit of your current pet?

Anni: I’ve always had pets, in the past horses as well as cats, dogs and chickens.

Now we have just the one cat, one chicken and two dogs. Brian is a fifteen-month-old Labrador and Rocky is a Romanian rescue, who came to us after an operation for two broken back legs. He’d been hit by a car and left in the road, nearly eighteen months ago. Both of them are amazing, and usually quite happy to settle in the office while I’m writing. But give Brian a treat, however small, and he won’t eat it until he’s run round it in circles, jumping and throwing it about, until Rocky comes from nowhere and then pinches it. Funnily enough when we had a reunion with his brothers and sisters, it seems quite a few of them do exactly the same thing. Oh, and he tends to sleep with his tongue out. So, whatever he’s lying on can get quite damp.

Kathy: Aww. I love that story.

Meet the Author Anni Rose and Her Thoughts on Writing

Kathy: Do you have a writing routine? If so, what is it?

Not a routine as such because I tend to write whenever I can, so it can be any time of the day (or night). Sometimes I find I’m most productive if I only have fifteen or twenty minutes, so no time to prevaricate and I am very good at that! I try not to go back and read what I’ve written. There’s plenty of time for editing once the first draft is finished. Otherwise I get caught up with rewriting and editing and before I know where I am, a couple of hours have passed in which time I haven’t written anything new.

I usually write directly on to a computer. I really love writing in long-hand and tend to revert to that if I get stuck on a particular idea. That’s my justification for buying new stationery, something I do a lot. Oh, and I find I am most productive when not too far away from a large mug of tea.

Kathy: Are you a pantser or a plotter?

A bit of both these days. One of the first books I wrote, I had no plan at all, other than the characters and a basic plot. I wrote the chapters I fancied writing when I fancied writing them. Some days it was just back story and never got into the novel. I loved the freedom of doing it, but it was a very difficult book to edit, and changed hugely over the first few drafts.

Now, I’m writing a series of books, set in the same town. I really need to be more organized and keep track of characters, places etc. It’s quite often minor characters that I find I’m interested in developing stories for in later manuscripts. Until recently I kept notebooks full of ideas and notes, but these days I’m experimenting with Plottr software, and so far, it does seem easier to be able to just go back and check on something.

Kathy: I feel like I’m a bit of both too.

Meet the Author Anni Rose and Advice on Callbacks and Comedy

Kathy: I really loved your use of callbacks. Do you have any advice for writers on writing callbacks?

Thank you. If there’s something the character needs to do or say at the end of the book, I try and introduce the idea early on and maybe refer to it occasional throughout the book. One of the first writing classes I went to said that if you were going to fire a gun in chapter four, you needed to introduce it in chapter one.

Kathy: Do you have any other advice for writers on writing comedy or romantic comedy?

My family think it’s incredibly funny that I write comedy, because usually if I tell them a joke, I get something slightly wrong. So, they don’t find it nearly as hilarious as I do and I end up explaining the joke to them. I like my main characters to have a sense of humour.

I think that humour is important in life in general. Quite often the things I think are funny at the time when I see them written down later don’t work at all and—I hate slapstick. My heroes or heroines are normal people. My comedy will hopefully come from their reaction to situations they find themselves in. I like them all too much to subject them to absurd physical activity such as pies in faces, pokes in the eye or have them slipping around on banana peel. Having said that I am currently struggling to fit my “Has anyone seen the dog bowl?” joke into my current WIP.

My Favorite Question: If you could choose five writers to join you for a dinner party, who would you invite?

Kathy: And my favorite question: if you could choose five authors to join you for a dinner, who would you choose?

This is an incredibly difficult question. I couldn’t possibly limit my dinner companions to five if I had to include any romantic novelists, so I’m going to exclude all of them. But it goes without saying if I could invite as many as I wanted then you’d be on my list Kathy. But it was still incredibly hard. I have a long waiting list if any of the following couldn’t make it:

So, without the romance writers it would have to be Ben Macintyre – he is a historian, reviewer, and columnist for The Times newspaper. He has written a number of books about historical controversies, and I heard him talk once about Agent Zigzag. I know he can really make the period come alive and has a lovely sense of humour too. So, I think he’d make a great dinner companion. And I have a huge number of questions about other events I’d like to know his theories on.

Enid Blyton: I grew up reading Enid’s books. I so wanted to go to Malory Towers or be a member of the Famous Five. Of course, we’d be having lashings of ginger beer which I think she’d approve of!

Harlan Coben: If you asked me what other books apart from romances I read for relaxation, I’d probably say crime. Anything crime except psychological thrillers—unless that is, they’re written by Harlan Cohen. I think I’ve read all his books and at the moment am loving Stay Close on Netflix.

Vikram Seth: I was introduced to Vikram by Suitable Boy and love his writing style. He is an amazing storyteller, but we haven’t seen much of him for a while, I’m worried he might have writers’ block so my final guest would have to be Anne Lamott.

Anne Lamott: I loved Bird by Bird, great writing advice, very provocative with a light humorous touch. It was one of the first writing books I read, and she gives great advice. I loved her novel All New People too, if anyone can get Vikram going again I’m sure it would be Anne.

Kathy: That is going to be an amazing dinner party! Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I’m looking forward to reading your second book, Recipe for Mr Perfect.

Anni: Thank you, Kathy, it was great talking to you. The punchline for the dog joke – oh yes – I didn’t even know he played cricket.

Kathy: You can follow Anni here:

Twitter: @AnniRoseAuthor

Facebook: www.facebook.com/AnniRoseAuthor

Website: https://anniroseauthor.co.uk

Instagram: anniroseauthor

Recipe for Mr. Perfect Blurb

How do you know if you’ve found Mr Perfect or Mr Perfectly Useless?

Jess Willersey realised things with Martin weren’t perfect, but it’s still a shock when he leaves. Is she destined to a singleton lifestyle with only her cat for company, or could a certain hat-astrophic encounter with a handsome stranger at a rather unusual wedding signal a turning point?

At the same time, Jess’s best friends and work colleagues, Maggie and Sarah, are going through their own personal disasters – from shocking family revelations to dodgy dating app-related drama.

To top it all off, it seems that the handsome stranger won’t remain a stranger – and when Neil Jackson turns up at the friends’ office with yet another bombshell, how long will he stay ‘Mr Perfect’ in Jess’s eyes?

Let’s Talk

So, if you could choose 5 writers to invite to a dinner party, who would you invite?