TERMS AND CONDITIONS
1. No purchase necessary to enter the competition.
2. This competition is open to UK residents aged 18 years or over, with the exception of employees of the Promoter, their families, agents and anyone else connected with this promotion.
3. Entries must be received by midnight on Friday 11th November 2011. The Promoter accepts no responsibility for any entries that are incomplete, illegible, corrupted or fail to reach the Promoter by the relevant closing date for any reason. Proof of posting or sending is not proof of receipt. Entries via agents or third parties are invalid. Entries become the property of the Promoter and are not returned.
4. Only one entry per person. No entrant may win more than one prize.
5. To enter write 50 words about what makes you a Jojo Moyes fan. Email your entry to marketing@penguin.co.uk , giving your message the title “Trailer Entry”
6. All correctly completed entries will be forwarded to a judging panel made up of the marketing director, publicity director and managing director of Michael Joseph at Penguin books. They will select 10 successful entrants. The winning entries will be the entries that in the opinion of the judges show a clear passion for Jojo Moye’s books and an interest in women’s fiction.
7. The winners’ prize is the opportunity to take part in our book trailer shoot on Saturday 10th December at Penguin Books offices in central London. Promoter will reimburse each winner for any reasonable travel expenses that they incur in attending the trailer shoot but no additional expenses will be covered. In the event that you cannot make these dates, no alternative dates will be possible and the Promoter reserves the right to offer the prize to a substitute winner.
8. Prizes are subject to availability. In the event of unforeseen circumstances, the Promoter reserves the right (a) to substitute alternative prizes of equivalent or greater value and (b) in exceptional circumstances to amend or foreclose the promotion without notice. No correspondence will be entered into.
9. The winners will be notified via email by Tuesday 15th November. The winner must claim their prize within 14 working days of the Promoter sending notification. If the prize is unclaimed after this time, it will lapse and the Promoter reserves the right to offer the unclaimed prize to a substitute winner selected in accordance with these rules.
10. By entering this competition each entrant confirms that his/her entry is their wholly-owned creation and to the extent that such entry makes use of any third party materials that these have been fully cleared unless they are no longer protected by copyright or other intellectual property rights. Entrants will keep the Promoter harmless from any claims in relation to their entry that the entry infringes the personal or proprietary right of any other person. By submitting an entry, each entrant (or their parent/guardian on their behalf) grants to the Promoter a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to edit, publish, translate, modify, adapt, make available and distribute the entry throughout the world in any media now known or hereafter invented. Each entrant (or their parent/guardian on their behalf) undertakes to complete any necessary documentation to formalise the licence. If you do not want to grant us these rights, please do not submit materials to us.
11. To obtain details of the winners please email marketing@penguin.co.uk stating the name of the competition in the subject heading 4 weeks after the closing date.
12. The Promoter will use any data submitted by entrants only for the purposes of running the competition, unless otherwise stated in the entry details. By entering this competition, all entrants consent to the use of their personal data by the Promoter for the purposes of the administration of this competition and any other purposes to which the entrant has consented.
13. The winners agree to take part in reasonable post event publicity and to the use of their names and photographs in such publicity.
14. By entering the competition each entrant agrees to be bound by these terms and conditions.
15. The Promoter is Penguin Books Limited, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL.

Me Before You, out Jan 5 2012

Yes, it's feminist drama, but still entertaining! (picture courtesy of The Guardian)

I’m not a huge theatregoer. I struggle to dispel the suspicion that a lot of it is more fun for those taking part than those paying to watch. I loved War Horse enough to watch it twice; but then it’s hard to believe that life-sized wooden horse puppets are getting anything from being ogled by me and 600 blubbing middle-aged provincial women.
Despite all this, yesterday me and my prejudices headed for London with a friend to see one of the last performances of Caryl Churchill’s resurrected Top Girls. Challenging, modernist drama! Feminist drama! I know. I can feel your waves of envy from here.
And it’s fair to say I was a bit trepidatious. Olivia Poulet, who stars as three different characters, and who, for reasons too complicated to detail here, I was about to meet, had warned me that the first act was “a bit trippy”. She wasn’t wrong.
A 14th century Viking woman sits at a dining table with, amongst others, a female pope (the wonderful Lucy Briers), a geisha, a Scottish philanthropist (Stella Gonet), and a 1980s Joan-Collins lookalike played by the exquisite Suranne Jones.
The talk overlaps, the timing stagey and unnatural, so that it takes about ten minutes for the brain to adjust to both the surreal setting and the choppy bursts of dialogue. Uh-oh, I thought. This is going to be a long evening. And then, suddenly, I, and the rest of the audience were sucked in.
In fact, I was gripped by this production, which has been critically well reviewed by both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph (not a publication known for its love of surreal 30-year-old feminist stage productions).
The shoulder pads and “we-must-act-like-men-to-succeed” schtick may feel a little dated, but it hasn’t lost its power to shock. The second act features two young girls in a Norfolk garden. At one point one apparently licks menstrual blood from the other’s finger; a moment which prompted the whole of one side of the audience to shriek with revulsion. (Um, guys, it’s not, you know, real)
But it is also moving in its examination of the price women pay for success, and what they are prepared to tolerate. It is especially poignant in its treatment of Poulet’s character, a young woman who is plainly doomed to fail in the new, cold, go-getting climate of the 1980s. What seemed most extraordinary to me was the way Poulet seemed to physically alter with each character; here solid, plump and plain, here as a secretary ten years older, desperately trying to fit a higher social bracket. “It’s what good character actors do,” my companion, who is familiar with the ways of thesps, told me.

It's not real blood, people. You're quite safe.

I had arranged to meet Olivia in the pub afterwards. And that was the biggest surprise. I turned from my drink as the door opened, waiting to see the woman I had witnessed on stage, and looked away. That slightly lumpen creature couldn’t be this slight, pretty girl standing in the Clarence? But it was. This wasn’t a matter of make-up, or prosthetics; just that weird alchemistic way of seeming, temporarily, to inhabit somebody else’s skin.
I had a great night, for lots of reasons. In part because it is fun, when you spend much of your working life alone, to hang out with other writers, and especially with actors, who are a different tribe entirely. In part because of the ‘rock’n’roll’ taxi me and my companion got home. But for that brief, mildly bewildering experience of human morphing alone, the evening would have been worth it.
It’s on until the end of the month. Do catch it, if you get the chance.

Me and Damian. Yup, it's tight. And that was *before* dinner.

I am a quarter Scottish. My segmented heritage shines through in my peelly wally complexion, my love of haggis, and my grandmother’s Mac-based surname. Despite this, I have only been to Scotland once. So when Damian Barr, salonniere of the much-feted Shoreditch Salon, asked me to be the guest author at the Turnberry Luxury Reading Weekend, I jumped at it.
The Turnberry weekend is a relatively new concept, borrowed from a similar event at Tilton House. It combines five star accommodation with serious food, a private dinner with an author (in this case, me; for the lucky predecessors: David Nicholls) and a lot of lying around in a very nice hotel chatting with other like-minded people. If your normal weekend is spent wrangling children and other large animals, eating fish fingers and shouting at X Factor, then it is, as the young people say, a no brainer.
For the first time in my life I was offered a loan dress, from the vintage dress agency Juno Says Hello. They sent me three in a black box lined with black tissue and when it arrived I had a nanosecond of understanding how it might feel to be one of those film stars who gets sent stuff for the red carpet (except mine was for a dining room in Ayrshire)
The dress is a 1950s shape and has mink sleeves (before you pelt me with eggs, they are possibly fake) and it has the tiniest waist I have worn since pre-children (ie prehistoric) days.
I was SO excited to fit it that I didn’t actually read the itinerary for the weekend. I should have done; it contained the words: Chef’s Tasting Menu – Five Courses.
Have you ever eaten five courses while acutely conscious of not just your waistband, but every, straining invisibly-sewn seam therein? I have. On the first night (1st course: welsh rarebit, pot of posh baked beans, three fried eggs with truffle shavings. Yup, I did say first course) I was wearing a Vivienne Westwood skirt and jumper. By course three (Gyozo dumpling in Bovril and smoked spring onion reduction) I knew I was defeated. And by course five (posh chocolate sundae with home-made marshmallows. I know, this is why I’m not a food writer) I was pleading for a waistband amnesty.

The dining room. Yes, I know I should have taken pictures of the food. But I was too busy eating it.

By day two I had learned my lesson. I eschewed the Burns Breakfast (haggis and hollandaise sauce) and spent the afternoon walking determinedly with two of the guests; Sophia and Carol. (We talked so much that we managed the rare feat of getting lost between the hotel and the sea – in a hotel which actually looks out on the sea). I only ate two puddings at lunch. I sweated in the steam room.
And yes, I made it into the dress. The dinner was astonishing. I can’t even describe it other than it involved, at various stages, foie gras, crab, and 24hr cooked Orkney lamb. I talked books, read from my book Me Before You for the first time, and then got so overexcited by the audience reaction that I insisted on reading them more of it. Possibly half the book. They were very patient.
It was a really special weekend. I’d highly recommend it, if you want a break from normal life, and a landscape that you might be unfamiliar with (the great island rock Ailsa Craig looms unexpectedly out of the sea depending on weather conditions; herons swoop by like pterodactyls. The golfers are friendly). Even travelling home on a budget airline didn’t put me off.
And I was so relieved that I had not split the dress from bust to hem, as I probably deserved, that when I got home I emailed Juno Says Hello and bought it.
I may well wear it for the Costa Book Awards in January (I am a judge). But I’ll check the menu first.

To the Lighthouse (avoiding all golfers on the way)