Welcome to 'The Coffee Crew'.

The on-line home of Midland authors, Phillipa Ashley, Nell Dixon and Elizabeth Hanbury. Check in here to find out more about our work, get the latest gossip on what we're up to next, or book us for a talk or workshop.

Monday, February 28, 2011

The Great Cover Debate

Well, as we mentioned in our introductory post we have a lovely small collection of stories coming out with E-Scape Press. We have a title - Brief Encounters. We have the stories, four fabulous contemporary stories - two from Phillipa and two from Nell, plus two gorgeous historicals from Elizabeth.
So, how do we find a cover to demonstate all this fabulousness we thought? And, (insert drumroll) who better to ask for an opinion than you, our lovely friends and readers.
Below are four pictures which we thought had the potential to be the perfect cover, or has elements which may make the perfect cover for Brief Encounters - What we'd like you to do is to choose which one you like best and tell us in the comments. This will be open until Saturday midnight (GMT)
As an extra bonus, Nell has offered to choose a random commenter to recieve a free PDF of her latest release - Making Waves. So take a look and get voting! We can't wait to see what you pick.
Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4


Have fun! Hope you like our pics!

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Happy Valentine’s Day and launch of Brief Encounters




Hi there and welcome to the brand new blog of ‘The Coffee Crew’,
We’re a group of three romantic novelists from the West Midlands - that’s the middle part of England, if you’re not familiar with it. We meet up regularly to discuss our projects, share writing tips, gossip – and yes, drink coffee (usually accompanied by cakes.)
We’re all members of the Romantic Novelists Association and we all love writing romance. Phillipa and Nell write funny, sassy contemporary romance, while Elizabeth (aka Liz) writes witty Regency novels.
We’ve chosen Valentine’s Day to launch our blog and an exciting new project.
Brief Encounters is our sparkling new anthology of six romantic short stories. Sweet and sexy, contemporary and historical – the collection has something for everyone, even if we say so ourselves.
The initial idea came from one of our coffee mornings. We all firmly believe that writing should be fun and we love to entertain and amuse our readers. So the moment one of us suggested writing a joint short story collection, we all dashed home and hit the keyboards.
The result was six stories that we hope you’ll love, whatever type of romance you enjoy.
We proposed the idea of the anthology to E-Scape press and were thrilled when they said they’d love to publish the collection.
Brief Encounters will be available as an e-book and in print, later this spring. You’ll be able to download and order the print version from online stores and bookshops. But we’ll be giving all the details over the next few weeks.
There’s just one teeny problem: we haven’t chosen a cover yet. We’ve got lots of ideas and we’ve whittled them down to three or four but we need your help.
We’d love it if you helped us choose the final cover. We’ll be showing you our ‘cover candidates’ and running a poll on this blog very soon.

Keep checking in here for updates on Brief Encounters and our other projects. There may also be cake recipes, cocktail suggestions and features on what inspires our stories.
So, whether you’re loved up, still looking for ‘The One’, or happily solo, we’d like to wish you a very Happy Valentine’s Day.
Phillipa, Nell and Elizabeth xxxxx

PS If you’re wondering, we’re all married with children – and whatever our partners have planned for tonight , we girls will be celebrating with cakes, coffee and lots of juicy writing gossip...