Vote for the Saboteur Awards

The SABOTEUR AWARDS are here again: VOTE NOW for your favourite poets, publishers, reviewers, spoken word events etc. 

Key Dates:
Nominations are open 1st-30th April 2014
Shortlist announced 1st May 2014
Voting open 1st-25th May 2014
Winners announced and Awards presented on May 31st 2014, Oxford.

OVERHEARD wins its category at the Saboteur Awards

My contribution to OVERHEARD is a short story called THE CELL.

A while back I wrote a short story exploring the tortured mindscape of an Egyptian female hermit from the third century. It's called THE CELL and is published in a short story anthology from Salt Publishing entitled Overheard: Stories To Be Read Aloud edited by Jonathan Taylor (De Montfort University).

Overheard was nominated for a Saboteur Award this year, and I've just heard that it's won its category. So major congratulations to everyone involved!

What the Saboteur reviewer said about my story:

"Religious devotion is taken to a more disturbing extreme by the narrator in Jane Holland‘s ‘The Cell’, which beautifully evokes the isolation of a nun’s cell and her gradual descent into either madness or anther spiritual plane. Rather beautifully, Holland lets the reader see this as both a loss of health and also an outcome to be desired and welcomed."

 Review by Richard T. Watson

Contributors include: Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Ian McEwan, Blake Morrison, Louis De Bernières, Adele Parks, Kate Pullinger, Adam Roberts, Michelene Wandor, Vanessa Gebbie, Judith Allnatt, Jo Baker, David Belbin, Panos Karnezis, Jane Holland, Gemma Seltzer, Ailsa Cox and Will Buckingham.

You can read more about OVERHEARD here on Amazon UK. 

The book is also available to buy from the Salt Publishing website.

Witchstruck wins YA category at the RoNAs 2013!

This is just to let you know that my novel Witchstruck won the Young Adult Romantic Novel of the Year Award tonight in London's Piccadilly.

Judy Finnigan and Richard Madeley (pictured here) handed out the awards.

If I stuttered and blubbed a bit at the podium, I should probably be forgiven. I hadn't expected to win and couldn't quite believe it. It was a truly overwhelming moment.

Here's the winning book: Witchstruck.

Read more about Witchstruck on Amazon.

Award Shortlisting for Witchstruck

From £2.84 on Amazon

My Tudor novel WITCHSTRUCK, written as Victoria Lamb and published by Corgi for Young Adult readers, has been shortlisted for an award administered by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

The award is Young Adult Romantic Novel of the Year, and the winner will be announced, along with winners in other RoNA Awards categories, on February 26th in London. Awards will be handed out by Judy Finnigan and Richard Madeley.

As you can imagine, I'm very pleased about this shortlisting. The shortlist is extremely strong and it's an honour to be in such brilliant company.

Witchstruck is the first in the Tudor Witch series. The second book is out in July 2013, entitled Witchfall.

The Young Adult Romantic Novel of the Year shortlist:

 Jo Cotterill, Sweet Hearts: Model Behaviour, Red Fox (RHCP)
Laura Jarratt, Skin Deep, Electric Monkey/Egmont
Marie-Louise Jensen, The Girl in the Mask, OUP
Victoria Lamb, Witchstruck, Corgi (RHCP)
Sarra Manning, Adorkable, Atom (Little, Brown)
Susan Waggoner, Neptune's Tears, Piccadilly Press 

Witchstruck:
"Twilight meets The Other Boleyn Girl in this gripping and passionate tale of Meg, a spirited young witch learning her craft amidst the danger and intrigue of sixteenth-century England."