The View From the Shoe: Fiona Robyn

I met Fiona Robyn through one of my lovely previous Views From the Shoe, Claire Grant. What fascinated me about her work was her plan for the launch of her new novel Thaw. The plan, nicely monickered Blogsplash, is for as many bloggers as possible to put the first page of the novel on their website on release date, March 1st 2010. I would encourage all bloggers out there to sign up and take part. Anyway, here's Fiona, in her own words:

Fiona Robyn is a novelist living in the countryside in Hampshire with her cats and vegetable patch. Her previous novels are The Letters and The Blue Handbag, and Thaw is out on the 1st of February. Her main site is at www.fionarobyn.com and she blogs about being a writer at www.plantingwords.com.

Thank you so much for your time. So, Louboutin or Converse?
I just had to google Louboutin to find out what it meant, which gives you your answer. I can’t walk in high heels. I had my first pair of Converse All Stars at Uni… happy memories!

Why is there no one in the world who does it quite like you?
Nobody does it quite like me because nobody IS quite like me.

What do you really, really love about it?
About writing? There are lots of things I don’t love, but I do love bringing my characters to life and hearing their stories. I love it when my readers love them as much as I do.

A bit more time in the day, or a bit more money in the bank?
Time, every time. I wouldn’t turn the money away though.

Imagine you “make it”. You wake up, and imagine the day ahead. Tell us about breakfast.
I would have earl grey and a cinnamon and raisin bagel, outside in the sun as I watched the birds and listened to them singing. Exactly like breakfast now, then. Maybe I’d be accompanied by Johnny Depp.

What’s your Jimmy Choo? And what’s just cobblers?
Hotel Chocolat chocolates, especially the butter caramels. Thorntons is cobblers.

Tell us about the last time a fan made you feel 100 feet tall.
A reader in America emailed me to say she’d had surgery for skin cancer recently, and had lots of waiting time at the hospital between procedures. She said that Leonard from my novel ‘The Blue Handbag’ kept her perfect company. Which writer could ask for anything more?

Independent and poor, or under contract and rich?
Under contract and poor ; )

Do you remember that bit on Play Away where Brian Cant stood behind people and did the actions whilst they spoke? If you could choose anyone to stand behind you and do the actions to your sales pitch, who would it be and why?
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Frocks or socks?
Both, at the same time.

Thank you SOOO much

Book Blogger Appreciation Week: Spreading Some Love

I HATE awards and praise-giving, and love-sharing sessions. Most of all I hate #followfriday on twitter. Not because I hate heaping praise on the countless people who do amazing things online. But because I know there'll always be someone I forget; and that someone will feel AWFUL. And possibly take it personally.



So I HATE Book Blogger Appreciation Week, because I want to throw my arms around the whole book blogging community and give it an enormous hug. So I want to apologise in advance for everyone I've missed out. Somewhere there's a loaded gun with a bullet for every one of you to fire right at me. And I want to make a policy statement. my blog roll is full of amazing book blogs on blogger. Anyone who's already there, please consider yourselves bigged up already (as I believe they say). I want to use this week to give a shout out (as I believe they also say) to a couple of non-blogger sites that really deserve everyone's attention



Loudpoet

Guy Le Charles Gonzalez is a former slam poet (can one be a former slam poet? Does that make one a gentle slap poet?) who writes with passion, compassion, wit, and intelligence about writing and social media. He not only cares about the future of literature; he knows a thing or two as well. He also asked me to guest blog for him earlier this month :-)



Phillipa Fioretti

Most of you already know Phillipa. That doesn't mean she shouldn't have another big plug because she's the most articulate, intelligent polymath writer you could hope to meet. She also brilliantly bridges the art and literature worlds.



Eudaimonia For All

Lisa Kenney is another artist who writes about books. She's one of the most thoughtful, erudite readers I've had the pleasure of meeting online. She's simply inspirational for anyone who really loves books. (This is a blogger blog, but I can't get it to appear on my blogroll so that's OK!)



Smelvillewrites

Sarah E Melville designs my covers. Which makes her a goddess of some kind, because they're just amazing. She's an artist, poet, and novelist. And The.Next.Big.Thing



Farm Lane Books

I came across Jackie's blog by accident on twitter. It's very rare that you come across a reader whose tastes seem to click with your own. Jackie is a voracious reader and intelligent reviewer; and I can be fairly sure that if she likes something so will I. Whcih is about as big a recommendation as it's possible to give a reviewer!



Charlie Atlantic

Charlie's the lead singer of InLight, one of my favouite bands, and technically this is a culture blog rather than a writing one. But I don't care, because he's the funniest man on the Internet. And insightful and poignant to boot.



Banana the Poet

How could I not include everyone's favourite alternative poet



Gingatao

Paul Squires is a quite brilliant poet and observationalist. Much like Sulci (who IS on my blog roll), he can take words to places you never imagined possible.

Left Under Books
Charles Dickey is someone who not only cares about books and culture, he's someone who's passionate about raising the uncomforatable issues so many blogs gloss over in their back-slapping and "aren't things wonderful" ness. A blog for anyone truly outside the mainstream