Wednesday, November 6, 2019

Welcome to Part 2 of "THE MEREST LOSS" Blog Tour! @ StevenNeil12 @4WillsPub #RRBC #RRBC_Community



Hello, beautiful readers! Today I have the pleasure of introducing you to Steven Neil, a member of the Rave Reviews Book Club (#RRBC)! Steven writes historical fiction and Victorian historical romance. He has a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the Open University and an MA in Creative Writing from Oxford Brookes University. He has been a bookmaker's clerk, bloodstock agent, racehorse breeder and management consultant amongst other professions in his varied career. He is married and lives in rural Northamptonshire, England. The Merest Loss is his debut novel. Steven is here today to share with us some authors who inspire him.

Inspirations for writing: Ten authors.

Here are ten snapshots of the authors who have inspired me in my writing career.

Jane Austen
Ground breaking. Smart, funny, acute and influential on authors ever since. All her novels can be read again and again but I particularly love Mansfield Park and Persuasion.

Anthony Trollope
The master craftsman. Witty, arch, satirical and full of wonderful observation and subtle character assassination. Try the Barchester Chronicles or The Way We Live Now.

Thomas Hardy
The doyen of 19th century rural romance with a cutting edge. Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Far From The Madding Crowd combine plot, character and setting to great effect; elegies to a time gone by.

Ernest Hemingway
The man who showed us all how to tell a lot more story in a lot less words. The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls do not disappoint.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
A gifted, extravagant and flawed genius. The Great Gatsby still glitters. The best short stories have their own special magic and The Diamond as Big as the Ritz  and The Lees of Happiness are two of my favourites.

John Steinbeck
Doesn’t seem to get the attention he deserves these days but Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath are great examples of how to develop character through dialogue and action rather than telling.

J.D. Salinger
First person stream of consciousness writing at its best. The Catcher in the Rye is quite rightly a modern classic but the much less well known, and equally brilliant, short story collection, For Esme with Love and Squalor, is also a joy.

John Fowles
A truly English 20th century author with his roots in the 19th century. The Magus is wonderfully exotic storytelling and the effortless switching between points of view, in Daniel Martin, shows how it should be done.

Kazuo Ishiguro
An author other writers can learn from: meticulous, elegant and atmospheric. Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go are very different but equally captivating.

Hilary Mantel
A modern ‘great’ in my view. Wolf Hall is not an easy novel but it repays investment and the omniscient narration in the present tense is a powerful mix in Mantel’s hands.

© Steven Neil

I'm sure many of us can agree with him on those authors! If you love historical fiction or Victorian historical romance, then you are going to want to read his debut novel, The Merest Loss


A story of love and political intrigue, set against the backdrop of the English hunting shires and the streets of Victorian London and post-revolutionary Paris.

When Harriet Howard becomes Louis Napoleon’s mistress and financial backer and appears at his side in Paris in 1848, it is as if she has emerged from nowhere. How did the English daughter of a Norfolk boot-maker meet the future Emperor? Who is the mysterious Nicholas Sly and what is his hold over Harriet?

Can Harriet meet her obligations and return to her former life and the man she left behind? What is her involvement with British Government secret services? Can Harriet’s friend, jockey Tom Olliver, help her son Martin solve his own mystery: the identity of his father?

THE MEREST LOSS is available in paperback and eBook in the UK, US, France, Canada and Australia.



Follow Steven Neil on https://twitter.com/stevenneil12 for information on how to purchase the paperback through an independent bookseller in the UK.

Would you like to learn more about Steven Neil? Try these links:





To follow along with the rest of the tour, please visit the author's tour page on the 4WillsPublishing site.  If you'd like to book your own blog tour and have your book promoted in similar grand fashion, please click HERE.

Thanks for supporting this author and his work!  

13 comments:

  1. I liked this post, as I could connect with the view of Steven's inspirational authors, many of which i have read. Thank you for sharing Yvette. Wishing Steven great success with his book.

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  2. Wow! That is quite a list of authors! Great ones to be influenced by! Thank you for sharing, Yvette!

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  3. I recognized 3 authors. Maybe it's a geographical issue. Have a great tour Stephen.

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    1. I recognize some of them from my high school and college lit classes. Lol! I'm so glad you stopped by, Shirley. :-)

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  4. Thanks for hosting, Yvette.

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  5. This is s fantastic list of wtiters and their books. There is a couple I haven't read. Thanks for hosting, Yvette:)

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  6. Hi, Yvette! This is very interesting. I'm always curious about these things. It's great to know who inspired Steven's writing career. Thanks for hosting!

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    1. I agree, Vashti. An author's faves give us insight into the author's mind a bit. :-)

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I love comments, so please share your thoughts with me! :-)