Inside a Dog and Book Giveaway

My new book, The FitzOsbornes at War is out now in Australia and New Zealand! Very exciting. I haven’t actually seen it in any bookshops, but I’m told it’s out there.

In other exciting news, I’m also Writer in Residence at the Centre for Youth Literature’s blog, Inside a Dog, throughout this month. This week, I’ll be explaining how to write a historical novel in seven easy steps. Come over and say hello! I’m giving away a signed Montmaray book to a commenter chosen at random, so you might even score a free book.

FitzOsbornes at War image

23 thoughts on “Inside a Dog and Book Giveaway”

  1. I’m so excited!!! I’m checking gleebooks, dymocks at broadway and kinokuniya today. I hope I can find it 🙂

    1. Hi, Maddy! Hope you don’t have to go too far out of your way to find a copy. I was in Dymocks Broadway late last week and they didn’t have any of my books, but Kinokuniya has a huge, up-to-date YA section and Gleebooks is pretty good, too.

  2. I would love to go and grab a copy from the bookshop, but I think I will dig up the first ones first, when I go home for the easter break to where the majority of my books are. You can only carry so many with you when you move to uni! Congratulations on the release. 🙂

  3. I can’t wait to pick up a copy, the other two books were so good. We live in Canada but will follow your other post on how to obtain an Australian one, thanks!

  4. Just finished! Thank you so much, I absolutely loved it! Although you managed to make me cry at least twice. Kinokuniya had several copies. Anyway now I can’t wait till you finish your new book, so that I can read that too! 🙂 Congratulations!

  5. Finished… But not really.
    Reading ‘The FitzOsbornes at War’ has had certain lasting effects. For one thing, I’m pretty sure I’m suffering from jet lag. I think it may have been caused by the trip through space (from Australia to England) and time (2012 to the 1930s and 40s). (Or it could be the fact that I stayed up til 4am reading…)
    Also, I seem to have developed a very short attention span and an inability to focus on uni work (or at least, worse than usual). So, for instance, doing readings, I get really distracted by words like ‘ministry of …’, ‘postwar’, ‘democracy’, ‘carrots’, and my mind wanders back to Sophie’s world.
    So, congratulations on creating a world that feels more important and real to me at the moment than the world that I live in! I only hope that I recover some sense of perspective in time to NOT FAIL this semester of uni!
    Thank you for an excellent story! 🙂

      1. I think the carrots came up in my environmental policy course: something to do with carrots and sticks, incentives and punishments…

  6. I can’t wait to read FitzOsbornes at War! I live in America though so I guess I have time to reread the others first. I’ve been sharing them with everyone I know, including the teens I work with! (I’m a teen librarian.)

    1. Well, October’s only six months away, and time flies, especially when you’re a busy teen librarian! Hope you like it when it finally arrives.

  7. Also finished reading last night, after the first bookshop didn’t have a copy, then went to their other store, couldn’t find the book so asked someone who lead the way to … Biography .

    Thank you for a great finish to the series, and a happy ending for the survivors. I wish you didn’t kill my favourite character though – especially as I hadn’t even considered the possibility they could die in the course of the war.

    1. Biography?! I guess I should feel flattered, that the FitzOsbornes are regarded as real people!

      Yes, I know what you mean about that particular character. I was sniffling as I wrote it. But the book was all about how destructive and wasteful war was, so I knew I needed to sacrifice a beloved character, and that the death needed to be shocking and sad.

  8. Just thought you’d be interested. Ages ago, when you first showed the cover for the American hardback of The FitzOsbornes in Exile you said you thought the dress looked more 1950s. I thought so too and so I looked it up online and the page said that it was photographed in 1949. It was taken by Frances McLaughlin-Gill who was born in 1919. Anyway, regardless it is the perfect image of Sophie, if slightly older.

    1. Oh, that IS interesting! I was just going by what my publishers told me. At first glance, it reminded me of the dress Marilyn Monroe wears in The Seven Year Itch. Oh, well, I guess the book is alternative history! And it is the perfect image for Sophie – such a lovely cover.

  9. How exciting!! After reading the first 2 books, I was glad to see there was another one coming. Can’t wait to get my hands on it. October can’t come fast enough. Fun, fun!

  10. Congratulations, Michelle! It’s such a lovely, thrilling book – and what surprises! I did, quite irrationally, yell at you once or twice. And I’m afraid the story was so thrilling I almost didn’t finish my uni assignment last night – I kept telling myself, just one more entry and then I’ll do my work – I don’t think I’ve done such a quick annotated bibliography before!

    Now I get to look forward to endless re-reads!

    Thanks so much!

    1. Thank you, Hermina! But you are allowed to get cross with the author, when the author is not very nice to certain characters of whom you are fond. (Carefully avoiding spoilers, there.)

      However, I am getting a bit worried that so many of my readers are having their uni studies interrupted by this book! Maybe we should have released it during the summer holidays.

      1. While it’s true that the release of The FitzOsbornes at War has had a somewhat detrimental impact on my studies recently, I thought you should also know that your books have also had positive effects on my education. In fact, the Montmaray books inspired me to do a course on 20th century European history last semester! It was a great course (with some really interesting lecturers) and it was great to look at that whole period of history again, in a way that built on my knowledge from high school, and of course from reading the Montmaray books!

        Also, my sister is in the other room reading The FitzOsbornes at War and she keeps yelling at me to tell me how upset she is about everything that the characters are going through. At one point she started yelling: “NOO! No! No no no no no… NO!!”

        1. Twentieth century Europe is fascinating, isn’t it? Such enormous political and social changes in just a few decades.

          Oh, dear – your poor sister. She and Hermina should get together to have a big discussion/complaining session after she’s finished reading.

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