Friday 28 June 2013

Partying, Planning & Plotting...

This week has whizzed by in a blur. I remember starting the week in the City of Glasgow – at a rock concert on Monday night – I’m not as young as I used to be so I’ll admit that it was Wednesday before I fully recovered!

 
Since then I’ve been busily planning and booking tickets for The Festival of Romance weekend in Bedford later in the year, where I’ve now confirmed I’ll be attending as an author at the Saturday Coffee & Cake Event. Yay!! I’ve also booked a hotel and my flights from Glasgow to Luton and back, so I’m feeling rather pleased with myself for being organised so well in advance!

You can find out about The Festival of Romance HERE.

In the more immediate future - next week in fact - I’m planning to go up to Aberdeenshire to stay over and meet up with some of my Scottish Writer buddies at a cliff top cottage retreat. It really is as idyllic as it sounds. There we will writerly chat, a plotting workshop, a catch up on where we are all at with our writing at the moment, and of course wine. It will be blissful and wonderful!
 
A Clifftop Writer's Retreat in Aberdeenshire
 

 
I’m also planning to have an online party later next month to celebrate the publication of my How To Party Online book and I will be outlining the details very soon – as at the moment I’m still in the plotting – erm, planning stages.

But you know I love a party don’t you…?!
 
Okay, I’ll let you in on what the theme will be.
 
It will be ‘PARTY’.
So I’ll be looking for photos of YOU dressed up in your party attire. Will you be in fancy dress, I wonder? (See below!) Will you at a fancy cocktail party? Will it be a wild hen party celebration? Or a very smart birthday party…?

It’s up to YOU!!!

Party details coming soon!!
Me & Mr JH in '60's Hippys Fancy Dress Wear!
(And yes, Mr JH IS wearing a wig!!)
So Haste Ye Back…!

Friday 21 June 2013

Virtual parties, cyber pizza, internet ice-cream - and food fights!


I’m excited to be over at the Romantic Novelist’s Association Blog today – talking about virtual parties, cyber pizza, internet ice cream and food fights!


 

I'd love you to pop over and keep me company by clicking HERE


 

Then haste ye back here next week when I’ll have more fun news to share!!
Janice xx
 

Friday 14 June 2013

RIP My Beloved Kindle!


 
Before I went on holiday I spent a considerable amount of time choosing and downloading to my Kindle all the books I might want to read while away. Dozens and dozens of them! After all, one of the best things about an ereader is that it holds so many books, and after once being charged a fortune in excess baggage due to the weight of my holiday reading, I’m now a total Kindling enthusiast and won’t travel anywhere without it.
 
Actually, I have two Kindles. I have a two and a half year old 3G (the one with the keyboard) and I also have the new Kindle Fire (my prezzy from last Christmas) and, as I planned to do most of my reading on the beach, I decided taking the older one with its non-glare screen was the sensible option.
But woe is me! On day two, after reading just one book (Security by Mandy Baggot – which is, by the way, a fabulous and highly recommended read) my Kindle died and could not be resuscitated. (Even on getting home and ordering up a replacment battery, it was still as dead as dead could be).
I did ask our holiday rep if there was any books I could borrow, there was but they were all printed in Russian and German, which I neither read nor speak. So for those of you about to embark on your summer travels with your full stocked ereader, I might suggest you sneak a paperback or two into your luggage, just as a back up!
If you fancy reading my Kindle bestselling and award winning humorous novel Bagpipes & Bullshot this summer, you can win a copy between now and the end of June by answering this simple question (if you don’t know the answer you could always Google for it!)

What exactly is Bullshot…?

Answers in the comment box below, my email to me at janice@jancehortonwriter.co.uk or you can post to my Facebook Author Page (which I’d love you to Like while you are there!)



Haste ye back here next Friday!

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Hot News...!


HOT NEWS..! I’m back from holiday to discover that while I was away my novel ‘Bagpipes & Bullshot’ won The People's Book Award for Kindle (May 2013)! Previous winners include JK Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’, Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’, David Nicholl’s ‘One Day’ and E L James’ ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’.



The People's Book Awards are the only international awards open to all titles distributed in Kindle or Printed formats by Amazon sites around the world. Established in 2008, the awards site (www.thebookawards.com) attracts large numbers of visitors and in that time thousands of voters around the world has shown their appreciation by supporting and nominating books in the competition. The competition is strong, with several international best sellers, in addition to talented emerging authors making up the field.

Managing Director, Peter Lihou sent me a personal message of congratulations and this is what he said!

"Over the years, we've seen a great many popular titles gain the tangible applause of their fans by their votes and comments, but Bagpipes & Bullshot enjoys particularly warm support. It really is quite an accomplishment for an author to inspire their customers so much that they get online and vote in such numbers and leave extremely flattering comments. Janice Horton is a very worthy winner!"

Thank you to everyone who voted for Bagpipes & Bullshot!

COMPETITION

Win a Kindle copy of Bagpipes & Bullshot - just answer this question.

What exactly is bullshot...?

Leave your answer in a blog comment below
or
email your entry to janice@janicehortonwriter.co.uk
or
leave your answer on my Author Facebook Page
 
(competition to run to 30th June)
 
Thank you also for the lovely comments on my last post. You are all correct in that the Pearl Anniversary is for 30 years married and Georgina Troy is the winner of an ecopy of Voodoo Wedding!
Haste ye back on Friday for my usual weekly posting