Julie (Mae) Cohen

Julie Cohen on writing | Author interview Julie Cohen is an award-winning author and teacher of creative writing. She is the tutor of our upcoming nine-week Zoom course, Writing Romantic & Commercial Fiction. She shares her top tips for…

'Every good novelist is a reader first' 📚

Award-winning author @juliecohen.bsky.social shares her thoughts on genre classifications like 'commercial fiction' and 'women's fiction' as well as her top tips for budding romance and commercial fiction authors.

Read the full interview:

Author Sophie Kinsella dies aged 55 — BBC News The author of the Shopaholic series of novels had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Such a loss. Maddy/Sophie was a champion of her genre, generous to fellow writers and all around a good egg.

apple.news/A8YcuwrK1QjG...

In my next book, my serial killer Saffy poisons everyone who does not give her enough chips

Anyway, this morning we were saying goodbye to the house. My brother knelt down by the socket and called ‘Bye Fuzzy! Thanks for being a friend!’

(My brother is 54. He’s a doctor now.)

A plug socket

So Mom asked where Fuzzy lived.

Matt proudly showed my mom this electrical outlet in the dining room. ‘When I stick my finger in, I can feel Fuzzy!’

My parents got plug covers.

My brother Matt when he was a little kid. My mother cut his hair like this. He’s bald now

When my brother Matt was a toddler, he told our mother that he had a little friend called Fuzzy. Fuzzy was very small and he lived in the wall of the house. He was very fuzzy and he liked to tickle Matt’s finger. Of course my mom thought that Matt had found a mouse, or something worse.

A lot of moving boxes

Today, my parents are moving out of the house where they’ve lived for 54 years (it is across the street from the house where my dad grew up). There are a lot of stories. Here is one:

Statement from @transactualuk.bsky.social about the GG and WI exclusions.

Writing Romantic & Commercial Fiction | Online Course | Curtis Brown Creative Learn how to take readers on an emotional journey and write an uplifting novel with characters your readers will invest in. This nine-week online course comprises interactive Zoom teaching, workshops…

Join bestselling romance novelist @juliecohen.bsky.social for our Writing Romantic & Commercial Fiction course! 💕

Write a heart-warming novel with emotional depth, characters to fall in love with and a plot to make readers desperate to turn the page.

Enrol now:

(My mom thinks this is hilarious)

The mason jars, I don’t mind so much, but I draw the line at the 600 mustard jars

Cardboard box labelled with Mom’s rags

We went out to lunch, leaving the movers to do their job. When we got back, I found this box carefully labelled with ‘Mom’s rags’

Post it reading: These are all rags My mother’s collection She treasures them But they are RAGS So they go in the BASEMENT

‘Do you need all these rags?’ I asked.
‘Yes!’
‘What for?’
‘To wash the windows!’
‘Mom, you only have eight windows in the new house. That is like twenty rags at most.’
‘We need to keep ALL these rags!’
So I left a note for the movers.🧵

Several boxes of rags, old towels, more rags

I have reasoned and cajoled and bullied, and my mother has been gently (!) persuaded to get rid of a great deal of this stuff. One exception: the mountain of rags. 🧵

About fifty empty jars on a table

I’ve been helping my parents move from a 5-bed Victorian detached house to a 2-bed new-build condo. They’ve lived in this place for 54 years, so they’ve built up a lot of stuff. For example this is a mere fraction of my mother’s collection of empty used jars. 🧵

I like it. Am I lost forever

A square glass casserole dish filled with vegetables in cream sauce (you can’t see them) and covered with a layer of perfectly aligned tater tots, which, for the uninitiated, are like mini cylindrical grated potato cakes with a crispy exterior

I have been in the US for three weeks and last night I made tater tots hot dish. Have I changed

A large (maybe 3 feet wide by 5 feet tall) sign on the end of a row of bookshelves that tells the “address” of books that have sensitive content.

Sometimes I think it’s going to be the librarians who will save us all.

Sort of interesting that my spellcheck doesn’t flag up the word ‘shitbaggery’

Classic

Happy anniversary! What did you do next?

I made my mom take it. She found out she isn’t

There is a whole quiz about how to tell whether you are being subjugated in your marriage

A paperback copy of How to be an assertive (not aggressive) woman in life, in love, and on the job: a total guide to self-assertiveness By Jean Bauer

This book, published in 1979, that I found at the back of my mother’s bookshelf

Image of the novel paradise by Julie Cohen. The covered depicts a sunset over a New England lake, with two Adirondack chairs looking out over the water.

Can they have a future when only one of them remembers the past?

My evocative, emotional novel PARADISE is published today by Orion books! It’s about memory, found family, friendship, love and sexuality, set on a lake in Maine. Get it here:
uk.bookshop.org/p/books/para...

Word document with the words The Fucking End

Well thank fuck for that

A harlequin ladybird on a white wall

This ladybird has been hanging out with me every day as I write the last chapters of my book. Her name is ‘Psycho Killer Qu’est-ce Que C’est’

Toby, who flops on his back for belly rubs

Lilah, who will beat you at poker and then slash your throat

I saw a meme recently that said everyone who owns two cats has one cat who is a brainless doofus and one cat who is an evil genius. I present to you: my parents’ two cats.

A very good dog who is a tri-colour Australian shepherd, sitting like a good dog and looking hopefully at the camera because she wants some love

I saw this Good Dog on Sunday. Her name is Rosie

Omg I love Oglaf, it is the perfect balance of nerdiness and funny sexiness