My next book will be out in November, and I’ve been playing around at making adverts to go up in various social media forms.
I quite like this one, which is supposed to be for facebook.
If you’d like to order an advance copy you can now do so from Amazon in the US or UK
On September 16th I made my annual pilgrimage south to meet up with fellow Mills & Boon authors for lunch in the AMBA hotel (which is a real coincidence as we call ourselves the Association of Mills and Boon Authors, or AMBA for short)
I was lucky enough to be on the same table as Carol Townend, Kandy Shephard, and sat between Kate Hardy and Caroline Anderson.
One of the organisers very helpfully put a list of what I’d ordered when I booked the lunch, on my table setting, which is just as well because I can never remember!
After a lovely, chatty meal, followed by speeches from Craig Swinwood who had flown over from North America for the event, I managed to spend a short time drinking tea with Louise Allen, Sarah Mallory and Carol Townend, before braving London’s public transport system (in high heels) for the author party at the News Tower close to London Bridge.
I will say nothing about the conversation I had with the security guard, who went through my suitcase before letting me into the building, although it did touch briefly on underwear.
And then, up I went in the lift to the party hosted by Mills & Boon, where I met my new editor, Victoria Britton, and enjoyed a few cocktails. And forced Carol and Sarah to pose in front of the slide show of their latest fab covers. You can see a great view of London out of the window behind Carol, including the dome of St. Paul’s cathedral. It made me wonder how any of the editors ever get any work done.
Joanne Grant then presented awards to authors who have had 25 books published. (Please don’t ask me to name them – I’d had more cocktails than I’m used to by then)
And then it was time to leave for my train home. I had all the excitement of sprinting along the platform in direct competition with EVERYONE who wanted to leave London that night, because several trains north had been cancelled due to a landslide. At one point I felt like a contender in the London marathon in fancy dress, since wearing sparkly high heels and towing my suitcase (which may or may not have contained dirty underwear) is not conducive to speed.
I also had, looped round my neck, this goody bag:
Some of the contents, (NOT the chocolate) will be going into a prize draw for my newsletter subscribers. So if you’d like a bright pink tote bag, or a colouring book, (but NOT the mini champagne) then sign up for my newsletter before the next issue goes out (which will be on 15th October) and you can find out how to enter the draw.
And if you’d like to know what happened to the chocolates and champagne – well, I think that’s fairly obvious.
Reader, I devoured them.
I recently attended the RNA (Romantic Novelists Association) conference at Lancaster University, and was interviewed by the Romaniacs for their Sparkle Spotlight series. If you'd like to see the interview, they have put it up on Youtube.
(apologies about the sound levels)
At the gala dinner on Saturday night, I met up with fellow Harlequin Historical writers: Janice Preston, Virginia Heath, Louise Allen, Lara Temple, Sarah Mallory (who was hiding behind) Carol Townend.
We have got together recently to freshen up our joint blog, which you can find at The Hussies Historical Hideaway Blogspot.
We will be sharing news of our latest releases, activities, and posting excerpts from our books if you'd like to pop over and take a look.
The Harlequin Historical authors, otherwise known as the Hussies, have been refreshing their blog spot. Many of us write for other publishers, as well as publishing non-fiction works, and so some extra pages have been added. For some reason I have got the job of updating our new monthly releases with Harlequin, which involves creating a meme with all the covers on it. This is my latest effort, showing all the June covers -
The two-in-one by Marguerite Kaye and Bronwyn Scott looks particularly intriguing. It's called "Scandal at the Midsummer Ball"
I have also finished my regular monthly blog on the A - Z of a writer's life over at the Novelistas Blog Spot, winding up with a little story about zombie kittens.
I have also held a meeting of my RL book club at my house, which involved reading No Highway
It's kind of good news/bad news this week.
Firstly, you may have seen this press release from Harlequin recently:
"...as of July 2017, in North America, Harlequin Romance and Harlequin Historical will be available exclusively through online retailers, in both print and digital formats, and in print through our Direct-to-Consumer channels, where sales are strongest. There is no change to the availability of either series in Overseas markets."
Basically, this means that In "Bed with the Duke" is the last book of mine available for purchase in print form on the shelves of bookstores in North America.
However, if you prefer print to e versions of Harlequin Historicals, you will still be able to get them from online retailers such as Amazon, or the Harlequin website.
And there will be no change to the availability of my books in print or eformat in the rest of the world.
And now for the good news: “In Bed with the Duke” went on sale in eformat on 1st May and went into the Amazon charts as the top selling Harlequin Historical. Not only that, but it reached no 2 in the UK Regency kindle charts, and (briefly) reached number 26 in the US Amazon Regency kindle charts. I didn't have the presence of mind to take a screen shot until it had sunk to 29, I was too busy tweeting it all over the place!
But a huge thank you to all my readers who have made my launch week so wonderful.
I have been out twice this month - well, since In Bed With the Duke
And then the next Friday, it was off to North Wales, where I celebrated the launch with my Novelista friends. It was a double celebration, as fellow Novelista Anne Bennett also has a book reprinted this month. Pack up Your Troubles
At home, in between getting on with my next story, I have been reading God is an Englishman
I'm going to be setting out my stall at Frodsham Community centre on April 8th as part of Weaver Words third festival. If you'd like to find out more, click here.
Congratulations to everyone on the shortlist for this year's rona awards:
I hope you all had a lovely break over the holiday season. I had several days away from my computer whilst hosting various festivities...and then when recovering from seeing in the New Year!
However, I did make time to write my regular monthly blog for the Novelistas, where I talk about how to find your Unique Selling Point.
And now I'm preparing my first quarterly newsletter for 2016 and trying to decide what to give away in the "raffle" part of it. By the time I have collected the names and done the draw it will be getting on for Valentine's Day, so I'm thinking it will have to be something extra romantic.
If you'd like to have a go at winning this mystery prize (since it's still a mystery to me!) or would just like to keep up to date with my latest writing news, then you can sign up for my newsletter where all will become clear.