It’s a cover up… All My Lies Are True is coming out in paperback THIS THURSDAY!

Did you notice we’d changed the hardback cover? Do you want to know why? Well, it goes back to that saying – don’t judge a book by its cover. We say that, but the whole of the publishing industry is based on people judging a book – then buying it – by its cover.

So why the change? Several reasons. One of them is that we – my editor and other peeps at my publishers – have been talking for a while about moving the covers on.

When you’ve written as many books as I have, you tend to update the covers every few books to keep things fresh, while hanging onto the familiarity of previous works that people like.

We talked and planned and, you know, we decided not to wait until book 17 to make the change – I’m kinda impatient so it happened now.

I loved the original cover. The model – Jocelyn, is beautiful and it was absolutely what we needed for the hardback – as proved by the book selling well and going onto the bestseller lists.

With all these accolades, why change? Because I never want to rest on my laurels, never want to get stuck doing the same thing over and over with what goes into the book or on the outside of it.

Changing the cover between hardback and paperback also gives you a chance to focus on a different aspect of the story.

Beach huts feature heavily in both #TheIceCreamGirls and #AllMyLiesAreTrue so I love that we’ve got the chance to explore this aspect of the story with this cover.

And the colours – pink and yellow – was a running theme through all the Ice Cream Girls covers and have been carried on to #AllMyLiesAreTrue.

Have we got it right with the paperback of #AllMyLiesAreTrue? I think so because I am in cover love. What do you think?

#TheHappyAuthor #AllMyLiesAreTrue #TheIceCreamGirls #paperback #hardback #bestseller #dorothykoomsonbooks #podcasts #bookstagram #authorsofinstagram

      

 

All My Lies Are True, the sequel to my bestselling novel The Ice Cream Girls, is just around the corner. If you haven’t read the book and only saw the TV mini-series loosely based on the book or decide to track down the series to watch instead of reading it, I need to let you know there are quite a few *ahem* differences. These changes won’t make sense when it comes to reading All My Lies Are True (AMLAT), so here are the most important differences to keep in mind.

THERE ARE QUITE A FEW NAME CHANGES Serena is raised a Gorringe and in the book her married name is Gillmare. The TV series changed her married name to Farley. Not sure why, but since AMLAT starts off with someone remembering Serena for having a surname that begins with a G, it’s kinda important to point this out. Most of Poppy’s family – her brother, sister and dad – are also renamed in the TV series. Since they form a HUGE part of the sequel, and for the avoidance of doubt: Poppy’s brother is called Logan and her sister is called Bella.

QUITE A FEW CHARACTERS DISAPPEAR/ARE REIMAGINED In the TV series Serena has a child, a sister and her father disappeared from her life. These original characters from my book are a huge part of the second book so here’s a reminder: Serena grew up in a two-parent family with a mother and father. She has older twin sisters called Medina and Faye who are a big part of both books.

The TV series also makes Poppy the product of a single-parent family (do you think there’s a stereotype they were trying to shoehorn in or something?) with an evil step-father. In the book, she actually has two parents and was closer to her father than her mother. The destruction of her relationship with her father due to going to prison is one of the core elements of Poppy’s story arc in the first book and carries on into the second book.

CHARACTERS MEET/HAVE CONVERSATIONS THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN In the book, Poppy stalks Serena and finds a spurious reason to meet Dr Evan (Serena’s husband) but doesn’t let on that she knows Serena. In the TV series, Poppy does tell Evan she knows Serena and she also tries to befriend Serena’s daughter, Verity, which doesn’t happen in the book. Serena also has a huge confrontation with Alain, Poppy’s lover, about him being a journalist, then tells Poppy about it. In the book, Poppy finds out Alain’s secret when he confesses to her at a crucial moment in their relationship. There are very good reasons why none of these things happened in The Ice Cream Girls book – mainly for plot and plausibility reasons. But, also, if any of these things had happened, there’d be no All My Lies Are True. So, disregard all of these changes from the TV series when you read the sequel.

SERENA SPENDS A LOT OF TIME ANGRY AND SHOUTY I’m not sure why the TV series made her that way. . . Actually, I’m being disingenuous – I do know why: they fell into the tired old trope of Black girls being shouty, aggressive and oversexed and then growing into cold, shouty, aggressive women. But, there we are. The Serena in my book is a quiet, shy, thoughtful girl who doesn’t flirt with and seduce her teacher but instead is manipulated, groomed and ultimately abused by a man who knew she would keep his secrets. She grows up into a quiet woman who avoids trouble and focuses on bringing up her children in a stable, happy environment. She loves her husband and she is quiet and unassuming. Very different from the Serena we’re shown on screen.

POPPY HAS VERY LITTLE DRIVE In my book, Poppy was decisive and clever enough to find and stalk Serena, but we see none of that in the TV series. She seems to spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen to her, and I think that was because the core of her story – the relationship with her family – has been removed. In The Ice Cream Girls book, Poppy has drive and ambition and is in charge of her own life, despite living with the constant threat of being sent back to prison. That is a part of her character that is essential for the sequel to work.

MARCUS IS THOROUGHLY UNLIKEABLE In the book, Marcus is charming and manipulative. He grooms and seduces Poppy and Serena before he starts to abuse them. You see very clearly how and why they fall him. In the TV series there is very little evidence of charm, he mainly uses shouting, violence and brute force to get what he wants. It’s hard to believe anyone would go near him, let alone two young women.

EVAN LEAVES WITH VERITY When Serena’s past is revealed in The Ice Cream Girls book, Eva is so incensed by her lies that he forces Serena to leave. In the TV series, he takes his daughter and walks out. Not a significant difference you might think, but it is for the sequel – there’s a pivotal All My Lies Are True scene based on where Serena ends up when she is thrown out. I often wonder if the TV series did this to give Serena another chance to shout at someone. Hmmm.

THE ENDING/KILLER IS DIFFERENT I’m not going to spoil the TV series for you. Only a monster would do that. But a sequel, this sequel, just would not be possible with the ending of the loosely based adaptation. I had many, many issues with the ending that I can’t discuss because I’m not a spoiler monster, but know this – the ending is not the same. It comes from left-field and I don’t think it works, even for the way the adaptation has altered my original story.

 

These are the main differences between my book The Ice Cream Girls and the TV series loosely based on it. There are many, many others, but these are the ones you need to know about in case you want to know in full the story of The Ice Cream Girls before you read the second book. (By the way: you don’t actually need to have read The Ice Cream Girls to enjoy All My Lies Are True, but I don’t want you to rely only the TV series either, to get the idea of the plot.)

I have to state that there were some outstanding elements to the loosely based TV adaptation: some of the cinematography was stunning; and the acting was excellent. I think the actors did a fine job with the material they were given.

But it was the material they were given that I had the real issue with. The Ice Cream Girls, like all my books, was a labour of love. I particularly sweated over this one trying to get the abuse storyline right by attempting to show that it could happen to anyone. Not those ‘others’ we’re stereotypically shown to be abused; I wanted to illustrate that any one of us could end up in a situation like Serena and Poppy. To watch something with my name on be used to perpetrate negative tropes and stereotypes was a bitter pill to swallow. . . and, yes, it still stings all these years later.

I should add, though, that if you enjoyed The Ice Cream Girls TV series, there is no shame in that. I’m genuinely pleased for you. It was a good, solid TV drama (stereotypes excluded) and I might have enjoyed it, too, if I hadn’t heard all those stories about people’s real, lived experiences.

Either way, I hope you feel all caught up now, and you’re All My Lies Are True, ready. If you want to know more of my thoughts on the Ice Cream Girls TV series, then click here and read: The Two Ice Cream Girls.

 

All My Lies Are True is on sale from 9 July.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find out more about All My Lies Are True here: All My Lies Are True

And buy it here: Buy All My Lies Are True

Find out more about All My Lies Are True here: All My Lies Are True

And buy it here: Buy All My Lies Are True

Read this guest post by Sharon Wright about her book, The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick

I wrote the book that could never be written. Writing it took over my whole life for a long while but The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick is definitely, definitely written.

So, I’m the author of the first biography of Maria Branwell, enigmatic mother of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Why first? Because everyone else thought it couldn’t be done. While countless biographies have been written about the Brontë sisters, their brother Branwell and father Patrick, not a single life of marvelous Mrs Brontë existed before I came along. That didn’t seem right. That didn’t seem fair. This fascinating woman gave life to the most gifted literary siblings the world has ever known, then vanished for almost 200 years. Who was she? And why had nobody gone looking for her? And just what was her influence on the masterpieces of the daughters she left behind, Maria’s legacy hidden in Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall?

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t realize just how convinced people were that a Mrs Brontë biography was mission impossible until many and various Brontë fans and experts told me, truly delighted to be proved wrong, when the book was published. Perhaps ignorance is bliss. Perhaps not. Perhaps a long career in journalism just makes you a bloody-minded nonfiction author – bloody-mindedness always magnified by being from Yorkshire. To be fair, when I first wondered aloud why no-one had ever written a biography of the neglected mother of genius, the answer did come swiftly: “There isn’t enough on her.” But telling a journalist there’s no story is the single most effective way to send her scooting off to find it. She just doesn’t believe you. Because everyone has a story, don’t they? I bet there is enough, I thought, if you go looking properly.

When I embarked on my bid to rescue Maria from obscurity, her location in the Brontë story was… nowhere, really. We knew a few sketchy details. She was born in Cornwall and she died a young mother of six in Haworth, everything else was shrouded in mystery. Even the information boards at the Brontë Parsonage Museum refer to her as “a shadowy figure”.

Irresistible, really, to a writer like me.

So off I went with my notepad and pen. Like the Brontës, I was born in Bradford and as a cub reporter I had covered Haworth for the local paper. It was wonderful to now visit the Parsonage as a bone fide researcher, getting to know the wonderful staff as they helped me comb the Brontë collection for the sparse evidence of Maria, once mistress of the home that’s now a shrine to her family. Then I set off to travel the country, getting lost for hours and days in obscure historical archives doing original research, walking in Maria’s footsteps across the West Country and the West Riding, solving age-old Brontë puzzles and unearthing some startling family secrets. Untold time went on tracking down all the pieces to the puzzle, ferreting around in dusty records, persuading people to let me look around their homes and schools and churches, exploring Maria’s turbulent world of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

As I worked on, consumed by my relentless quest, Maria began to step out of the shadows. My secret life plan, codename: Hiding In Libraries, was working. Meticulous original research allowed her life to take shape on my page. And what a life it was, with more real-life drama than a Brontë novel or episode of Poldark. A cast of unforgettable characters, Gothic fiction and haunted houses, a bigwig father in business with smugglers, a mother placing too many babies in the grave, a poor sister married to a ‘bad man’, Enlightenment ladies’ book clubs and balls, a social life not unlike her contemporary Jane Austen. Then a plucky decision to take a dangerous 400-mile journey by stagecoach and that unlikely, fateful meeting in Yorkshire with a handsome Irish parson she called her “dear, saucy Pat”. The rest is history except, somehow, Maria was lost in the telling.

Most of all I was writing a love story, one with world-changing consequences for us all. Going back to book names for a mo, my working title was always simply ‘When Maria Met Patrick’. When Maria Branwell met Patrick Brontë in real life, it meant one day Cathy would meet Heathcliff and Jane Eyre, Mr Rochester in the books of their children. Maria’s gifted daughters would quite literally write themselves into history. It was only fair that someone should write hers. Her life as a clever, witty and brave bluestocking was shot through with hope and adventure, radicals and writing, smugglers and shipwrecks, Regency romance and tragedy. I knew I was writing the untold Brontë backstory, the key to it all. The illuminating prequel to the far better known life stories of her brilliant brood and heartbroken man.

I went looking properly for the remarkable, forgotten Maria Branwell Brontë – lady of letters, lover of Patrick, mother of genius – and I found her.

* The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick (Pen and Sword) by Sharon Wright is out now in paperback. Click here to buy.