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Sharing our love for authors, and the stories they are inspired to tell.

New On The Shelf At Fiction Books This Week

Why are some authors just so nice! Hattie Holden Edmonds, wrote a lovely email to request a review of her debut novel and it took no more than a few moments for me to become intrigued and captured by the unique premise for this story, especially as one of my fellow blogging friends had already beaten me to it, read ‘Cinema Lumiere’ and given it a glowing 5 star rating.

Hattie even delivered on her promise of  a guest post in double quick time, so this is going to be a combination post, which I hope you will enjoy.

Welcome to – ‘CINEMA LUMIERE’

What if someone had secretly made a film of your life?

Hannah Bailey has resigned herself to a dead-end job, she’s sealed her heart against love and her catastrophic thinking is out of control. In fact, she’s hard pushed to find a single reason for her existence – until the day she stumbles across a tiny one-seated cinema and its mysterious French owner Victor Lever…

Set in West London’s Portobello, and Paris, Cinema Lumière is a story of love, loss and seeing your life on the big screen. If you liked The Time Traveller’s Wife and One Day, this could well be the book for you.

Cinema Lumière doesn’t screen Hollywood blockbusters or even low budget arthouse indies. Instead it shows people films of their lives. But how does Victor create such unique biopics and why is he so determined to coax Hannah into that single red velvet seat?

Hi, I am HATTIE HOLDEN EDMONDS

Image Of Author Hattie Holden Edmonds And Her Floating CinemaI was born in the village of Sarratt, Hertfordshire, UK. After a childhood spent at boarding school, followed by Exeter University, where I studied German, I finally escaped to Berlin for a year to teach English.

Four years later and now back in London, I was still seeking a career, ideally something that I was passionate about, that would pay the rent. Even after landing a job as the London correspondent for the German pop magazine Bravo, interviewing all sorts of 90’s music luminaries from Iron Maiden, Mariah Carey and Oasis to Bon Jovi, East 17 and Whigfield, I was still left feeling strangely unfulfilled …

Eventually a friend sent me to a psychic to see if they’d be able to point me towards my passion (whatever that might be).  According to Teresa at the London College of Psychic Studies, I was destined to write ‘funny’ books, which would have a spiritual theme. Still sceptical and now forty pounds worse off, I went on to  volunteer at Comic Relief, then being given the job of in-house copywriter there, where for two and a half years I got to work on projects with some of my comedy heroes, along with writing on more serious matters – interviewing Rwandan widows, child carers and people with Alzheimer’s.

Later, some three years after the psychic’s prediction, I finally started my first novel, inspired by an account of a woman who was shown a film of her life during a near-death experience. That was ten years ago, and now I write full time, run a ramshackle cinema in a fisherman’s hut in Whitstable, and teach meditation at a palliative care unit in Ladbroke Grove.

Funny old path, but I finally found my passion.

Catch up with me at my website

Follow me on Twitter

Like me on Facebook

WHAT SPARKS A STORY?
That first fizz of inspiration can come from anywhere, but for me there were several technicolour moments, that seemed to be spotlighted in the run up to starting Cinema Lumière. One of the most extraordinary incidents took place over ten years ago, but even now, whenever I think about it, I feel a skitter of goosebumps across my skin.
Image Of Spotlight From Hattie Edmonds Guest Post.
But before I tell it, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not the sort of person who hangs around crystal shops, I don’t see absolutely everything as a ‘sign from the Universe’ and as for believing in angels, sorry, it’s a leap too far. And yet…
‘Did that really just happen?’ I asked my friend Angelika as we sat on the Nr. 73 bus, heading towards Kings Cross. We were both staring at each other, trying to find a rational explanation for something utterly irrational that had just happened.
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Earlier that afternoon, we – my German friend, Angelika and I, had been to the Tate Modern, to help take my mind, if only for an afternoon, off the recent death of my father from a stroke. Angelika’s grandmother had also died six months before, so perhaps naturally, our conversation as we’d stepped on the bus, turned to the possibility of life after death. Neither of us had very strong opinions on the subject and neither of us are religious.
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We were the last passengers to board the bus and were sitting at the front on the ground floor, just by the luggage racks. As we rumbled off, we continued the conversation, but seconds later, without the bus having had a chance to stop again and let any other passengers on, we noticed an old man standing to our left, by the driver’s booth. He was dressed in an oddly old-fashioned three piece suit made from Harris tweed. I knew this because my Dad had a thing about Harris tweed suits and as a child I loved going with him to his tailor’s.
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So it was the suit that I clocked first. Then I noticed that there was something sticking out of the man’s top jacket pocket, which I can only describe as an out-sized calling card. Short-sighted as I am, I could still make out what it said because the writing was in such bold print.
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“Death is not the end, it is just the beginning.”
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That is so bizarre,’ said Angelika, in answer to my initial question. But she wasn’t looking at me anymore.
Sky And Clouds Image From Hattie Edmonds Guest Post.
I followed her gaze to where the man had been standing – but now there was only an empty space next to the driver’s booth. We scanned the rest of the ground floor but he wasn’t there either. The bus hadn’t stopped in the short distance since we first noticed him, so presumably he’d gone up to the top deck, although he must have been pretty nifty on his feet. I scooted upstairs to check, but he wasn’t there either.
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Even though it took place over seven years ago, that afternoon has stuck in my mind with technicolour clarity. I’m still undecided about what exactly happened. Part of me wants to dismiss the encounter as simply a coincidence. And yet there’s another part of me, a part which lies a little deeper, that believes that the man who got on the bus with precisely the answer to mine and Angelika’s question poking out of his top pocket, was nothing less than a little miracle.
Portrait Image Of Author Hattie Holden EdmondsHattie Holden Edmonds

Picture of an English red post boxMailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house during the last week. Be warned that Mailbox Monday can lead to envy toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

Mailbox Monday now has a permanent home, where links may be added each week. So why not stop by, leave a link to your own Mailbox Monday post, oh! and don’t forget to leave a comment for our three new joint administrators, after all, we all like to receive them … ‘Mailbox Monday’

 Leslie of ‘Under My Apple Tree’

 Serena of ‘Savvy Verse & Wit’

 Vicki of ‘I’d Rather Be At The Beach’

 This is a great way to plan out your reading week and see what others are currently reading as well… you never know where that next “must read” book will come from!

 …

Thanks for stopping by Hattie, it has been great hosting you, here at Fiction Books and thank you for entering into the spirit of the blogging community.

I look forward to reading ‘Cinema Lumiere’ and wish you every success with both the book and your cinema projects, which could form the basis for a whole new avenue of guest post?

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Written by
Yvonne

I can’t remember a time, even as a child, when I haven’t been passionate about books and reading.
I began blogging, when I realised just how many other people out there shared my passion for the written word and I have been continually amazed at the wealth of books that are available and the amount of great new friends I have made, from literally 'The Four Corners Of The World'.

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Written by Yvonne