I May Be Some Time

Hello lovely Fat Girl on the Run Readers

As you might remember, I have been completely consumed over the past few months with this new project thingy at work I've been working on ....

And to be honest - I am still absolutely up to the very top of my eyeballs with it all. Don't get me wrong, I'm having the very best time of my life, but I am truly struggling to find the time to do anything here on Fat Girl.

So for the time being I'm going to sign off of the blog - but you can, if you so wish, find me over on the booksandthecity.co.uk website with my monthly column, on facebook as BookMinx Sjv and @bookminxsjv on twitter.

I've loved talking to you over the past few years, so thanks for listening.

Fat Girl, Over and Out.

Books and the City

So, remember that thing I told you about, the secret project I was working on that was super hush hush... well, we launched today!


Do take a look, and let me know what you think.

What's not to like?

Win 2 return flights to New York with Air France and 3 nights accommodation at the Hotel on Rivington including breakfast!

To celebrate the publication of Adriana Trigiani’s Encore Valentine, S&S are giving you (yes YOU!) the chance to win a trip to New York courtesy of Air France and Hotel on Rivington.



Go on, you know you want to....

And another thing...

The lovely Jane Costello is looking for some readers to star in a promo video for her brand new book - Girl On The Run. If you’re interested, simply upload a video of yourself on YouTube answering the following questions:
1. What do you enjoy about her novels?
2. Which is your favourite Jane Costello book and why?
3. Who is your favourite Jane Costello character?
Then, email the link to jane@janecostello.com – those chosen to appear will receive a signed copy of the new book… and her eternal gratitude! x

So, to celebrate Pay Day last week, I treated myself to a long overdue Book Buy and ordered 16 gorgeous glittery, flittery, embossed, spot UV’d PB’s. Box one was delivered on Wednesday…

Here are my jacket highlights:

The design and font of the authors name -


The embossed title -


The continuing branding -


The flitter on the snowflakes -


The raised gold embossing -


The illustration -


The (quite rare these days) photographic look -


Everything! -


Have started on the Harriet Evans - and as expected, am completely in love with it already.

In other news:

Have a look at a great video Adriana Trigiani has posted for us...Encore Valentine is out in time for Valentines Day (keep your eye on my blog, twitter and facebook pages for an exclusive competition coming soon...) Click Here

Talking of Valentines Day - who wouldn't want to receive a box of these instead of a crumby (see what I did there?) old bouquet?



And those lovely people from Penguin have launched a competition to win a t-shirt in celebration of the paperback launch of Marian Keyes latest book - The Brightest Star in the Sky...

What Have I Been Doing?

I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing…

I did my civic duty (under duress I may add) and sat on Jury Service for the first time. Now, in the interest of my own private security I’m not going to reveal the case I was on on my second week – but suffice to say, the national press have reported on the case in great detail, and yes, the defendant was as guilty as a guilty person can be, wearing a guilty hat and coat, sitting in the guilty chair, drinking a cup of guilty coffee and reading a guilty book.

I finished that brilliant manuscript we are publishing late this year. The title hasn’t been decided as yet, but it’s an absolute joy, very romantic, very nostalgic, very heart-warming – and Ali Harris (the author) is going to be huge.
Me and Him were invited for a rather scrumptious lunch date with Bernie S (and her people) and Lou C (and hers)and I managed to rope both of them into doing the Shine midnight marathon walk with me… bless 'em. Please sponsor me at the Just Giving site, if you can spare a few quid, and think about all three of us come October this year, eating cakes and drinking cocktails whilst tottering around the O2!

I took The Mother to see the Matthew Bourne version of Cinderella again, and as ever, he didn’t disappoint. It’s a slightly different version to the one I first saw in 1997 (ish), but it was great, as are all the Adventures.

And finally, The Girls had a great night at Paramount to celebrate Mel's birthday. £330 bar bill worth of great night. Ah, the Roseberry Fizz champagne cocktails. Much better on the way down than the way up, according to Lorrie!

New Year, New Stuff, Same Stuff

So. Christmas came and went in a puff of pj's, snacks and sofa action.... in fact, I think the very most action that took place in the Virtue household was the day we turned on the Wii, played a round of Sword Fighting (for the record, I beat him... again) and turned it off again to resume the slumped position.

I think I watched enough Poirot, Marple, Midsummer's and Columbo to last a lifetime - and I never thought that day would come.

Santa was very generous - bringing a host of gorgeous things like a weekend away, (more) Asics trainers, a Cath Kidston purse, Tiffany earrings, a new leather bag, electric toothbrush, the very softest slippers you've ever felt in your whole life and a lovely wedge of cash, and the Christmas meal with three meats and more trimmings than was entirely necessary went off without a hitch - despite forgetting the red cabbage till teatime!

And now it's back to work, back to tube delays and price hikes, rain, increased VAT, bills and the longest time till pay day.

But there is new stuff too. There's this thing at work. All a bit hush hush really till Valentine's Day... but it's kind of mine. My idea, my project, my passion. So I've got to learn some Twitter stuff, and have a Facebook fan page, and help design a microsite, and start writing some articles - and then I'll be leading it, and developing it - and running wild and free, and I'm so excited I'm fit to bursting. So if you are a tweeter (or whatever it is) I'm at @bookminxsjv - so please follow me, or whatever it is. Thanks.

I’m very late to the One Day party. But am so glad I came.

Going off-genre is always a risky business for me. My default setting screams “NO!” whenever someone tries to get me to read something that doesn’t have a sparkly pink cover and doesn’t fall neatly into a chick lit theme. But some very persuasive colleagues and chums, who’s opinions I trust immensely, told me One Day would leave me breathless, and quite frankly, they weren’t far wrong.

Obviously it’s a beautiful love story. Em and Dex were bought completely to life, and the impending sense of doom cranked up with just enough sensitivity that even though I know I was being played, I loved every minute of it. I’m delighted that Dex remained a selfish twat even in grief and even though I take issue with a few flaws in Em, I could completely see why she loved him to the bitterest of ends.

However, and here’s my thing. One Day is actually completely on-genre. Just cause it’s written by a man, and just cause it doesn’t have a pink cover, it completely centres around a couple, in love, and the obstacles stopping them being together. It's brilliantly written and all that, but I wonder, in a cynical raised eyebrow way, whether if it had had a pink cover, and been written by a women, the great and the good of the book critic world would have heaped just as much praise on it.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

It's been an interesting year. When I say interesting…

I turned 40. I had The Shoulder. The circle became a square. I had to adjust to the loss of Group Sales Director, UK Sales Director, and Special Sales Manager. And I've had to adjust to the new Big Cheese, the new Medium Cheese and the new Mini Cheddar. We had the Car Accident. I fell off the non-smoking wagon. I’ve now got The Eye.

Sometimes, it does feel like a very steep uphill struggle…

Go to the pub

I’ve never been a fan of cider. It’s just a bit too student for me.

However, I have been converted having supped on a dimpled tankard (or two) of Rekorderlig Winter Cider at the weekend. Yummy.

Buy and Listen... Listen and Buy

If you haven’t already taken yourself off to the shops and bought your copy of Why DO We Have to Live With Men? then quite frankly, you’re dead to me.

However, if you won’t take my word for it (that it’s brilliant, and funny, and a MUST HAVE read) – why not have a quick listen to Bernie on the radio and you will hear for yourself why I love her.

And the winners of the Bundles give away are… Vita in Whitchurch, Helen in Bideford, Karen in Luton, Chris in Battersea, Tracey in Swansea, Beverley in Ilkeston, Suzanne in Leek, Pamela in Ryde and Caroline in North Waltham. The next lot of rules are even simpler than the last ones... Receive. Read. Review.

The Beach Hut

My only criticism of The Beach Hut is that, given my rather goldfish like brain these days, I thought there were perhaps just one or two too many characters to keep track of. Now, I know that each character was absolutely beautifully written, lots of back story, well rounded, you know, everything you want from your main players – but – I did kind of struggle to keep on top of it. Other than that – it's gorgeous. You really feel a nostalgic sense of the Great British Seaside, sandcastles, Fab lollies, almost but not quite, ginger beer and cucumber sandwiches. But the story has much more. Teenage angst. Unrequited love. A funeral. Infidelity. A wedding. Adoption. Redundancy. You’ve got everything you could ever want in there. Some happy endings, some rather sad endings, some hopeful endings, and actually - a few stories that didn't have a full stop at the end of them at all, which I found quite intriguing. I’ve loved Veronica since Love on the Rocks back in 2006, but I think I might have missed Just a Family Affair and Marriage and Other Games in a haze of other books on my reading list…so will be updating my amazon wish list immediately.

Bundles!

We are having a clear out.

As such I have a box full to bursting point of gorgeous new books that I'm going to bundle up together and offer out. To you.

Each bundle (of which there are 7) will have a hardback Jackie Collins and then a couple of paperbacks... you might get a Colette Caddle, Milly Johnson and Jennifer Weiner. It might be an Adriana Trigiani, Paige Toon and Jane Costello...it's that random, even I don't know yet.

And if your name (or the name of a close friend who's deserves a personally signed copy of a book) is Diane, then you (or they) are in for a rather marvellous treat!

So, what do you have to do?

Not much actually, just pop an email to comps@simonandschuster.co.uk with the words FAT GIRL ON THE RUN BUNDLES in the header. The seven winners will be chosen at random from all entries, competition open to UK residents only please. You have till noon Friday 22nd October to enter. Go on, treat yourself.

Things Wot I like....Part 2.

The new No 7 nail varnish in Beanie.



The new competition running on the Simon & Schuster website to win a Project D frock to celebrate the launch of Dannii.

The rather marvellous cupcakes Crumbs & Doilies did for me to celebrate Jennifer Weiner.


The crisp, cold, bright and sunny morning.

Things Wot I Like...Part 1.

Card Factory. Oh Shut Up! I know, I know, it's chav city, but in today's fiscally turbulent times, who can argue with 7 pretty decent greetings cards for £1. That barely covers a Happy Meal these days, so what's not to like?

M&S Iced Spiced buns. You can either buy a single bun. Or a pack of two - one for now, one for later. Guess which pack I buy? Go on, guess!

The Book of Tomorrow by Cecelia Ahern. A beautiful finish on the paperback, and a continuation of the Team Ahern branding makes for a great package. Another magical, slightly bizarre story - after spoilt and stroppy Tamara Goodwin discovers her father dead on the floor on his study, her life falls apart. Forced to move from her huge fancy mansion to her aunt and uncle's gatehouse cottage in the country things start getting weirder and weirder when... actually, no, I'm going to leave it there. It's all rather strange, but ultimately rather fabulous, so grab a copy from Amazon today, on special offer at £3.99. Bargain.

The new series of The Apprentice, tonight 9pm on BBC1. Can. Not. Wait. To. Ridicule.

After just one too many bottles of champagne than is wise on a school night, I discovered that behind my back and without my knowledge, Bernie has relaunched her website and has been blogging away, la la la, on a regular basis.

My life is more complete. She's just so damn funny. Happy reading, happy Friday.

It's been a long time...

...since I last posted.

We'd booked a week off work cause we were knackered! We were going to do a bit of this and a bit of that. Some day's out, some Wii, some sitting on the sofa watching rubbish on the box. And to cut a long story short - day two into the week, some complete twat drove into the back of us, resulting in some excruciating whiplash and our car being written off.

Suffice to say, the mood in the Virtue household was somewhat sombre and stiff for the rest of the holiday - and has only marginally improved now to be honest!

But then today I took myself off to a wee school in Pinner to help out at a charity fun day by selling one or two books.

I took along the worlds favourite pig - Olivia - for a hug and a story, the rather suave Lamb double act opened the fair, and a jolly time was had by all. Look.

Bad Winners

And the winners of the recent Bad Girls giveaway are....(drum roll)....

Nicky from Exeter
Kath from Hull
Sophie from Southwick
Susan from Brightwell
Jen from Bidborough
Bella from Swindon
Natalie from Chester
Suzanne from Leek
Laura from London
and Donna from Edinburgh

Your shiny books will be in the post in time for you to enjoy over the wet and windy Bank Holiday weekend. Don't forget to post a review on every possible web site going, Twitter it, Facebook it, and if you blog, blog it!!

More giveaways and comps coming soon...

To all you sniffers and sneezers, coughers and splutterers. You ear diggers and nose pickers, groin huggers and armpit scratchers. All you eye rubbers and spot squeezers. You nail bitters and hair pullers. All you fidgetters and elbow rammers. For the love of God. STOP DOING IT IN PUBLIC. WE CAN SEE YOU.