Julie Mayhew

Things from the wandering mind of... www.juliemayhew.co.uk

[juliemayhew]

Merry Christmas xx

[juliemayhew]

Really pleased to be helping make this happen. Would love you to come. Book your tickets here

[juliemayhew]

7 Miles Out by Carol Morley is coming with me to Peterborough as I start on the next big thing...

[juliemayhew]

Me, aged 4, in my maternal grandparents’ back yard in Bamber Street, Peterborough. (That huge cat was about 20 years old, btw).

Posting this because I’m beginning a new thing set in my hometown of Peterborough (generously funded by Arts Council England and The Authors’ Foundation, more on that here).

I’m interested in people’s relationships to their hometowns - did you stay in yours, or leave? Do you love the place or hate it? 

Has the place where you grew up in changed as much as you? 

[juliemayhew]

I ❤️ Desperately Seeking Susan

[dreamalottie]

Had such a brilliant time at @juliemayhew’s rebellious gathering in support of The Big Lie @hotkeybooks #booktag #bookstagram #booknerdigans

[yabookprize]

[juliemayhew]

I spy The Big Lie...

[juliemayhew]

Talking about Jessika’s sexuality in The Big Lie on BBC Newsnight

[thebigliebook]

You write a 90,000 word novel, and then Jon Stewart puts it all into one perfect sentence

[dreamalottie]

Book review: The Big Lie by Julie Mayhew

The Big Lie By Julie Mayhew Published by Hot Key on 27 August 2015

Jessika Davina Keller is the daughter of a high ranking official in an alternate history setting of modern day Nazi occupied England. She’s a good girl, who obeys her father. However when a family moves next door, she strikes up a friendship with their radical daughter Clementine that could change everything. Political unrest snaps at their heels and it soon forces Jessika to look beyond her blinkers and sheltered childhood. But what happens when the regime notices what’s going on behind closed doors?

I absolutely adored Julie Mayhew’s previous title from Hot Key Books, Red Ink, and had high hopes for the The Big Lie. My expectations were exceeded and then some, and the words “you HAVE to read this!” have been uttered emphatically many times since I first got my greedy mits on a copy. An alternate history with proud hot pink politics.

This powerful story weaves the past and present into a haunting image of life under the rule of the Reich – made all the more terrifying by its calm plausibility. Taking events such as Justin Bieber’s infamous message in Anne Frank’s house guest book and the protests and imprisonment of Pussy Riot, Mayhew’s modern day is not so far detached from our own.

Read more: http://charlieinabook.weebly.com/charlieinablog/book-review-the-big-lie-by-julie-mayhew

[juliemayhew]

Love this response to The Big Lie - are you free?

[juliemayhew]

Pic source: Guardian

What do I love most about YALC? Probably the people in costume, especially those who have wandered in from the London Film and Comic Con proper and want to know what we’re up to. (”What is a YALC?” one curious LFCC-er asked me as I stood signing at the Hot Key Books stall, as if a ‘YALC’ might be a new human-monster creation worthy of its own standalone genre). But what I especially love is seeing people in elaborate costumes doing mundane things. Wonder Woman eating a packet sandwich, a Transformer have a fiddle with the uncomfortable waistband of his pants, The Joker in full psych-ward get-up settling his bill in Pizza Express. Superheroes are normal people just like us most of the time. And - bear with me -  maybe this is a lovely metaphor for YALC. In books we run and fly in ways we can’t in real life, we love and lose, conquer and save. Then we all come together at Olympia to celebrate our super skills as both readers and writers with other normal/fantastic people just like us.