Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Sibel Hodge: Summer Book Club

Sibel Hodge is the newest featured author of the Summer Book Club. Get SBC free at Smashwords!
 
About Sibel…
 
Sibel Hodge is the author of romantic comedies and chick lit mysteries. In her spare time she’s Wonder Woman!


Her first novel, Fourteen Days Later, was short-listed for the Harry Bowling Prize 2008 and received a highly commended by the Yeovil Literary Prize 2009. It is a romantic comedy with a unique infusion of British and Turkish Cypriot culture. Written in a similar style to Sophie Kinsella and Marian Keyes, Fourteen Days Later is My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Bridget Jones. My Perfect Wedding is the sequel to Fourteen Days Later, although it can be read as a standalone novel.

The Fashion Police was a runner up in the Chapter One Promotions Novel Competition 2010 and nominated Best Novel with Romantic Elements 2010 by The Romance Reviews. It is a screwball comedy-mystery, combining murder and mayhem with romance and chick-lit, and the first in a series featuring feisty, larger-than-life insurance investigator, Amber Fox. Written in a similar style to Janet Evanovich and Myron Bolitar, The Fashion Police is Stephanie Plum meets Harlan Coben. Be Careful What You Wish For is the second Amber Fox Mystery.
 
 
Tell us a bit about Be Careful What You Wish For…
 
Be Careful What You Wish For is the second Amber Fox murder mystery that follows on from The Fashion Police:
 
For fans of Janet Evanovich, Kate Johnson, and Gemma Halliday...

Armed with cool sarcasm and uncontrollable hair, feisty insurance investigator Amber Fox is back in a new mystery combining murder and mayhem with romance and chicklit…

Three deaths.
A safety deposit box robbery.
The boxing heavyweight champion of the world.

Somehow, they’re all related, and Amber has to solve a four year old crime to find out why.

As she stumbles across a trail of dead bodies and a web of lies spanning both sides of the social divide, it’s starting to get personal. Someone thinks Amber’s poking her nose in where it’s not wanted, sparking off a game of fox and mouse – only this time, Amber’s the mouse.

Amber’s forced to take refuge in the home of her ex-fiancé, Brad Beckett, and now it’s not just the case that’s hotting up. So is the bedroom…


All Levi Carter wanted to be was the boxing heavyweight champion of the world, but at what cost?

All Carl Thomas wanted was to be rich, but would his greed be his downfall?

All Brad Beckett wants is to get Amber back, but there’s a reason for the ex word.

Be careful what you wish for…you might just get it.
 
Amber Fox is a feisty, wise-cracking insurance investigator with wild hair.  Is she anything like you at all? 
Absolutely! She's got a lot of her in me but I'm not telling you exactly which bits for fear I might incriminate myself!
 
What was your favorite part of Be Careful What you Wish For? 
Ooh, that's sooo hard! It's my baby so it's all my favourite. I love the fact that it's got a solid mystery combined with a lot of humor, wit, and romance. Probably typing The End is my favourite part - then you know that all the ideas in your head have finally come together.
 
Will we get to hear more from Amber Fox in the future? 
Amber loves to talk so she'll definitely back to tell another story. Just try and shut her up!
 
How do you get the ideas for your books? 
It's all the voices in my head that make me do it. I write so I won't have to be medicated!
 
Do you ever suffer from Writer's Block? 
Sometimes. When that happens I usually drink a bottle of wine and throw ideas around with my husband. Well, that's my excuse for cracking the wine open anyway!
 
What's your favorite thing to snack on while writing? 
Nuts (no jokes, please!).
 
Do you plot everything before you start writing or do you just see where the story takes you?
I’m definitely a fly-by-the-seat of my Wonder Woman knickers kind of girl! I think I’ve got Plotophobia. I make most of it up as I go a long - creative or crazy? I’m not sure which.
 
What are you working on now? 
I'm working on some new ideas for my next chicklit novel which will be called The Hen Party. It's about a group of girls who go to Vegas for...yes, you've guessed it, a hen party. But they end up getting much more than they bargained for. I’m also hoping to start the next Amber Fox mystery at the end of summer.
 
Do you have any advice for aspiring indie authors?
First and foremost, you have to write a good book with a good blurb and cover if you want to succeed. But to do that, you need to learn your craft well. That’s the first hard bit over with! The second is marketing and promoting, and this is pretty hard, too. What works for someone else won’t always work for you, and it takes up a lot of time that you could spend on writing. But I’ve mingled with some inspiring and fantastic authors and met some great fans because of it. Would you get that if you were trad-pubbed with a marketing department? I don’t think so. Being on a personal level is so much more rewarding.
 
I think you can do anything you want to in life. You might have to go a different route to get there than you originally thought, but if you never try, you never know what might be. Go for it!
 
What do you do besides write? 
Promotion takes up a lot of my time, but it's lovely to interact with other readers and authors. I swim, do yoga, walk, read. Oh yes...and the occasional bottle of wine!
 
More about Sibel…
 
Sibel talks to WG2E about how she went from 200 rejections to Amazon top 200! http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/welcome-to-the-wg2e-sibel-hodge
 
Sibel’s interview on The Eerie Digest, the Online Mystery and Hollywood Insider Magazine. http://www.eeriedigest.com/wordpress/2011/07/interview-with-author-sibel-hodge/
 
Sibel talks about plotting her novels on Traci Hohenstein’s blog. http://msthriller.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/guest-blog-by-sibel-hodge/#comment-152
 
You can find out more about Sibel on her website: http://www.sibelhodge.com/
 
Be Careful What You Wish For is available from:
 
 
 
Smashwords
 
And Sibel will be doing a live Facebook chat at https://www.facebook.com/summerbookclub on Saturday night July 23rd at 6.30 pm UTC/GMT - which for the US is 11.30 Pacific, 12.30 Mountain, 1.30 Central, and 2.30 Eastern. She’ll be giving away an ebook copy of Be Careful What You Wish For to one lucky commenter!

For reviews and purchases of my latest novels: http://www.sibelhodge.com/Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sibelhodge

4 comments:

Sibel Hodge said...

Thanks so much for having me. I'm delighted to be this week's featured author! :)

author Christa Polkinhorn said...

I read "Fourteen Days Later" and "My Perfect Wedding." Great light-hearted and suspenseful reads. Loved the accident-prone, clutzy, feisty and loveable heroine.
Christa

Author Scott Nicholson said...

PJ Schott said on Facebook "Sibel Hodge is one of the great ladies of crime writing."

Sibel Hodge said...

Thanks so much, Christa! Soooo glad you enjoyed them. Yep, Helen is like that and more!

Oh, wow, Scott! That's lovely of Pj to say that. Ooh, I'm blushing now! :)