Category Archives: Guestblogging

Behind the Bestseller Podcast

Fantasy Romance, Guestblogging, Interviews, Podcasts, RNA, Sci-Fi Romance, Space Opera, Writing Craft, Writing Life,

I had such an amazing time talking to Sam Blake on her podcast, Behind the Bestseller. 

Romance is the biggest selling genre worldwide and award winning author Ruth Long, in all her various incarnations as RF Long, Ruth Francis Long and Jessica Thorne, writes romance combined with fantasy – from parallel worlds to sci-fi space opera, for both young adults and adults. Discussing what romance is and why it’s so popular, Sam Blake explores how Ruth develops character, the secrets of world building and what makes a successful book in this huge genre. Ruth outlines how important community is and how organisations like the Romantic Novelists’ Association can be of huge help in assisting authors build their career.

Come and listen to us chat about fantasy and romance, about worldbuilding and all the things my characters get up to when I’m not looking. It makes sense*. I promise.

 

*it may not actually make sense.

Paranormal Roadtrip – Spooky Dublin

Guestblogging, Out and About, , ,

Recently I was asked to write blog post on the spookiest places in Dublin, as part of From the Shadows Paranormal Roadtrip. Because A Crack in Everything is set in Dublin I already had a number of ideas lined up. Ghost stories are an intrinsic part of folklore and probably the stories we are all most familiar with. Dublin has more than its fair share, but I was only allowed to pick five.

FIVE!

So difficult.

So here they are:

Paranormal Roadtrip: Destination Dublin with Ruth Frances Long

Paranormal Road Trip: Destination Dublin, Ireland with Ruth Frances Long author of fantasy A Crack in Everything

Inspirations for The Treachery of Beautiful Things – Author Video 3

Author video, Blogtour, Booktrailer, competition, Guestblogging, Interviews, links and stuff, New Books, New releases, ,

Oh my goodness – only one more day to go. How fabulous! It’s so exciting. Tomorrow is the Book Birthday!

This week we’ve had: an interview with me at Xpresso Reads, a wonderful Dream Cast at Book Me! and a guestpost from me about some of the things that went into writing The Treachery of Beautiful Things at Nick’s Book Blog.

It’s the last day of the The Itching For Books Blog Tour but there are still a few coming up over the next few days, so keep your eyes pealed!

Thanks to the joy of Irish weather (which went from unpredictable to biblical today) the last video was filmed entirely indoors but as its about the Ridgeway, the Uffington White Horse and Wayland’s Smithy, that didn’t really matter. Last year while researching The Treachery of Beautiful Things I took a trip to the Ridgeway, so there’s lots of pictures taken there. And it was lovely and sunny!

I hope you’ve enjoyed the videos, the glimpses of some of the inspiration of this book and I hope you’ll enjoy The Treachery of Beautiful Things. It can be bought everywhere from tomorrow (and in a couple of places already) or it can be ordered from (among other places) …

Indiebound |  Book Depository | Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk | Barnes & Noble | Powells

Booktrailers, blog tour & competitions – 10 days to go!

Blogtour, Booktrailer, competition, Guestblogging, Interviews, links and stuff, New Books, New releases, Photo Moments, , ,

So much going on today in all areas of life. We woke up to watch the Mars Curiosity landing, we’re watching Katie Taylor in the Olympics as I type (so I may be distracted) and its 9 days until The Treachery of Beautiful Things comes out.

Everything kicks off today, it seems. And it’s so exciting. So here we go…

The Booktrailer is up on The Story Siren so go and have a look at the awesomeness that @Ickle_tayto made, staring Laura Jane Cassidy as Jenny. We has such fun filming it before we went off for our writers’ weekend and it turned out wonderful. Most of the photos are mine, with a few from Dreamstime.com. The music is from Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech.com. The full credits are visible on the Youtube page. I’ll be putting it up on the site tomorrow. Also on The Story Siren, you can enter to win one of two copies of the finished version of the book. So check it out, comment and enter.

Also kicking off today is the Blog Tour with Itching for Books. I’m so excited about this one as I’ve never done anything on this scale before. First up is a review from Nothing Better Than Books and another chance to win a copy. And another from Auntie Spinelli Reads. So many ways to win!

And finally… we’ve been putting together a short series of author videos to introduce the world of The Treachery of Beautiful Things.  The first of is coming up tomorrow. So stay tuned…

The (Not) May Day post

Guestblogging, links and stuff, , ,

So right, well, due to matters beyond my control… well actually due to responsibilities which I can’t ignore and the massive headache that followed it… I didn’t manage to blog yesterday, which is annoying because I totally meant to.

Because *drumroll* *taa-dah*

yesterday was May Day.

 

That would have been so much more effective yesterday when it was “today is May Day”, you see? But never mind.

 

The reason May Day is important (not just because it’s what I frequently shout. Ok, when I’m in trouble in France anyway) is that The Treachery of Beautiful Things is in part based on the legends and folklore surrounding May Day. It is the first day of summer here in Ireland (notable this year for the pheNOMinal ammount of rain we got). It’s Bealtine, one of the quarter days when the veils between worlds become thin enough to let things slip through. It’s a time of magic.

Alright I never actually got around to writing the blog post, but luckily for me The History Girls had a fantastic one written by Mary Hoffman, so I am totally linking to that. 😀 It even has a lovely picture of the May Tree, aka the hawthorn.

The hawthorn we planted in the garden is doing well by the way. It has little buds. So pretty! Next year we’ll have pictures of it, I promise. At the moment… it’s a stick with some little green buds on it, so not that interesting.

Today (NOT May Day) I’m over at the Australian blog Treasured Tales for Young Adults celebrating its Blogoversary, and talking about Jenny from The Treachery of Beautiful Things. I love Jenny. She’s a complicated girl, who learns and grows over the course of the book, growing into herself as a confident and self-assured young woman by the end of the story. I like characters who develop over the course of a book, rather than being the same the whole way through and I think Jenny shows this. Anyway, see for yourself what I had to say.

And finally, here is my May Day song (late) which is one of the most important songs from my Treachery Playlist – Rabbit Heart (Raise it up) by Florence + the Machine. (I can’t embed it, so follow the link to YouTube).

 

Hurray for news! Bigger Hurray for Competitions!!!

competition, Guestblogging, Interviews, ,

This is another quick blog update but with some super news.

I’m going to be a guest at TitanCon in Belfast in September. I’ll be reading on the evening of the 21st September in McHugh’s and I’ll be at the con all day on Saturday 22nd. Anyone there, please come and say hi!

Also up today is a guest post I wrote for Tangled Up in Words and their Why I Write segment.  It almost sounds sane. Well, sane-ish. Maybe. But most importantly the Tangled Authors are have a massive giveaway which is open for about 3 more days and includes, among many other shiny & spectacular things, one of those elusive ARCs of The Treachery of Beautiful Things. Go and enter! While you’re there maybe leave a comment for me, pretty please?

Psst wanna win an ARC of The Treachery of Beautiful Things?

competition, Guestblogging, Publications, , , , , ,

I’ve a guestpost up on The Book Pushers today, as part of their Fantasy Appreciation Week, on fairytales in modern fantasy — Fairytales in a modern dress. And if that’s not lure enough… oh all right, you can enter to win an author review copy of The Treachery of Beautiful Things!

The giveaway ends on 13th April, and it’s open internationally.