A change of view
Over the past few months I’ve blogged about writing, about books, about food, and about a few other things that have either interested me or happened to me. It’s been fun and I’ve learned a lot. Now though, it’s time for a change.
Over the next couple of months I will be travelling around America and Canada. It’s a trip that will take me from The Smithsonian to Mickey Mouse as I journey from Washington to Las Vegas via San Diego, and then up to Vancouver where I will join a cruise ship and visit Alaska. Then it’s back to Orlando in Florida. My excuse is that it’s all about research. Not true of course. It’s just going to be one long, wonderful holiday with my husband where we will get to see and experience a lot of things including a helicopter flight down into the Grand Canyon, whale watching in Alaska and a trip to Butchart Gardens in Vancouver. The list is long and eclectic.
So my plan is to blog about it. Will I have time? I’m not sure but I am going to do my best because writing about each experience will be a wonderful way to capture each memory. Sharing them will be fun too. And when I return home I will have all those experiences to call on when I start to write another book. So if you are interested in the US and Canada then please keep visiting my blog. I will do my best to keep it interesting and I will try to share a few facts along the way.
Oh, and one more thing. I will carry on working on my present manuscript. After all there will be a lot of time to spare at all those airports and on all those flights. I won’t have to worry about the dusting either….as if!!!
Another guest another post
My guest this week is Loretta C. Rogers. Loretta, who lives in Citrus County, Florida, is a multi-published author and you can read about her books on her website at http://www.lorettacrogersbooks.com/
Loretta says she writes for the pure joy of escaping the day-to-day confines of reality. It’s her belief that escapism is the reason most of us pick up a book. Like me, Loretta is also a firm believer in happy endings.
Like all writers, Loretta spends a lot of her time thinking about her next book. In her case ideas often come when she is on a road trip with her husband on their BMW touring bike. At other times the characters in her head keep her awake at night. It is then that she can be found sitting at her computer in the early hours getting the ideas out of her head rather than tossing and turning in her bed.
Loretta’s latest book Forbidden Son is available from The Wild Rose Press at http://bit.ly/zShp1l both as a print and an e-book. It is also available from Amazon.com at http://amzn.to/z55cqh
Please click on the side link and visit my Guest Excerpt page where you can read all about Loretta’s book Forbidden Son. If you enjoy it then please let me know, or even better, visit Loretta’s website at http://www.lorettacrogersbooks.com/ and let her know.
Cabin Fever is available as a free download 11/12 April
My latest book Cabin Fever is available as a free download from Amazon on 10 March. Books We Love who published it make sure that its authors’ books regularly enjoy a free day in the kindle store. It’s a great way to market books because it helps to introduce readers to authors, and it encourages readers to try books they might not otherwise consider.
So if you would like to read Cabin Fever and you have an electronic reader, or a reading app on your phone or your computer, then try it. It will take you on a journey from Auckland in New Zealand down to Sydney in Australia. En route you will visit the New Zealand Alps and the Sounds (fjords) that have 245 days of rain a year. Torrential rain and swirling clouds that turn the ships into gloomy ghosts as they thread their way between the islands but which is responsible for their spellbinding beauty on the sunny days. There is a trip to Napier as well. This is a town that was razed to the ground by an earthquake in the 1930s and then completely rebuilt in the Art Deco style.
The book also takes the reader behind the scenes to share in the life of the professional entertainers who perform in the ship’s theatre every night. The evening show is the highlight of the cruise for many of the passengers, so download Cabin Fever and find out all about the laughter and the jealousy, the love and the heartbreak of the young men and women who provide this entertainment. Then find out what they do when love falls apart.
Available at http://t.co/cj9ehTD7
Barbequed Sea Bass with Mojo Verde
Months ago, when I first started this blog, I said that I would sometimes talk about the food that features in my books. That is because they are often set in a far away place where the food and the customs are different. They are almost always set in places that I have visited; places where I have discovered new recipes and tried new food. Traveling has broadened my palate and because I bring a lot of my travel experiences into my books, my hero and heroine often eat a meal that I, too, have enjoyed.
Today I am going to revisit my book Accident-Prone Avalon Books to talk about the meal that the heroine, Alex, ate on her arrival in Tenerife. I have already posted the recipe for Papas Arrugadas (Canarian Potatoes). Barbequed Sea Bass with Mojo Verde was served with them, as well as a tomato salad. Even better, the hero, Matt, cooked the fish over an open barbecue.
One of my best memories is sitting in an open air restaurant at lunchtime watching the waves curl onto the shore while I ate freshly grilled sardines, papas arrugadas (the tiny Canarian boiled potatoes) and salad, and drank chilled white wine. Fabulous. It was a lunchtime that lasted about two hours!
In Accident-Prone the barbecued fish with a green salsa sauce that features is a simple meal that can be found everywhere on Tenerife. I didn’t specify the fish in the book. I just said that it was barbecued. But the following dish is probably the one that Cristina prepared, and that Alex enjoyed so much.
Barbequed Sea Bass with Mojo Verde
2 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoon olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 bay leaves
1 kilo fresh sea bass
Preheat an outdoor barbecue to a medium heat and lightly oil the cooking grate (or an indoor grill or a frying pan if the weather is bad!)
In a small bowl stir together lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and bay leaves.
Rub fish with mixture inside and out. A bunch of additional herbs can be added to taste.
Cook the fish over medium heat for 8 to 10 minutes, flipping halfway through.
Fish is done when it flakes easily with a fork.
Serve on a large platter with a bowl of mojo verde.
Mojo Verde
Ingredients
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1/4 teaspoon of fresh ground hot red pepper, such as cayenne
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon of dried thyme
handful of flat-leaf parsley, coarse stems removed
bunch of cilantro, coarse stems removed
4 tablespoons of olive oil
3 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/4 cup of water
Put all of the ingredients in a food processor and blend it into a sauce. Adjust the seasonings
Even better if eaten outdoors with the sound of the sea whispering across the sand only yards away.
If you barbecue it and pair it with canarian potatoes and a tomato salad, then I would love to know if you enjoyed it. I know Alex and Matt did!
Another post…another guest
Yes, another guest excerpt. This time from Beate Boeker. If you mix Latin and German, Beate Boeker literally translates as Happy Books, and with a name like that, what else can she do but find a happy ending for her novels? You can find more information about Beate and her novels at www.happybooks.de
Beate is a successful author who is a marketing manager by day and a writer by night. She has published several contemporary romances with Avalon Books and some short stories as e-books: Check out Chic in France and A Culinary Catastrophe.
Click over to my Guest page to read an excerpt from her latest book, A New Life. It is available on Amazon at amzn.to/I15mz2.
If you enjoy Beate’s story then please come back here and say so. Visit Beate’s website at www.happybooks.de and tell her as well.
Life’s a beach
Fellow writer Jayne Ormorod invited me for a beach chat on her ‘Life’s a beach’ blog. What a wonderful idea that was. It not only gave me a chance to talk to Jayne, it meant that I revisited old memories, thought about my life, and talked about my writing.
Please visit Jayne at www.jayneormerod.blogspot.com and listen in to our beach chat. Then, if you have the time, come back here and tell me your three favourite things. Tell me too which famous writer, alive or dead, you would most like to meet. All the questions are there on Jayne’s beach chat. You just have to think up the answers.
I have posted photos of some of my favourite things. They include Three Cliffs Bay in the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, a wood full of bluebells, preferably with a small child included, and a deserted beach at the end of a hot summer’s day. If you visit Jayne’s beach chat you will learn how often I am able to experience them and how lucky that makes me.
Test your reading speed
Have you ever thought about your reading speed? I hadn’t until this reading test got me thinking.
Writers write. It’s a given. They do something else as well though. They read…a lot. When I am writing, I read for research. I read what I’ve written. I revise it. I read it again. Then I revise it some more….
Then there are all the emails from publishers, prospective publishers, fellow writers and fans, to say nothing of the ones from friends and family. After that it’s facebook and Twitter because social media is part of modern publishing. So are websites like Shelfari, Good Reads and Amazon. Then I have to keep my website up to scratch, and post my blog.
I read the newspapers too, and I always have at least one book on the go. After that there are favourite websites to check. All in all it is a lot of reading, so when I saw this test I was interested. Was I a fast reader, could I improve, how much information did I take in first time around?
I was quite pleased with the result but I think there is room for improvement. In the past my son used to run speed reading courses to help business executives manage their heavy workload, so I know it can be done…now I’m off to ask him how.
What about you? Take the test below to find out your own reading speed.
Source: Staples eReader Department
Guest excerpt from Sandra Carey Cody
Today it gives me a lot of pleasure to introduce author Sandra Carey Cody on my new Guest Excerpt page. Love and Not Destroy is her latest book. It is a story of mystery, love, and a quest for the truth. Sandra Carey Cody is a fine writer whose blogs are also worth following. You will find all the links on my Guest page, so please just click on the side link so that you can learn about her at the same time that you read an excerpt from Chapter One of Love and Not Destroy.
LOVE AND NOT DESTROY:
A baby is abandoned during a museum’s annual Folk Fest. Twenty-two years later, a homeless man is murdered in the exactly the same spot. Connection? Or coincidence? Peace Morrow, the foundling, now an adult working at the museum, is haunted by this question and thus begins a quest that takes her through the dusty boxes in the museum’s storage area, to the antique markets in a tiny hamlet in northern Pennsylvania, and, ultimately, to the innermost reaches of her own heart.
To purchase on Amazon - http://amzn.to/wxIV81
Free download on Amazon
My latest book Cabin Fever is available as a free download from Amazon on 10 March. Books We Love who published it make sure that its author’s books regularly enjoy a free day in the kindle store. It’s a great way to market books because it helps to introduce readers to authors, and it encourages readers to try books they might not otherwise consider.
So if you would like to read Cabin Fever and you have an electronic reader, or a reading app on your phone or your computer, then try it. It will take you on a journey from Auckland in New Zealand down to Sydney in Australia. En route you will visit the New Zealand Alps and the Sounds (fjords) that have 245 days of rain a year. Torrential rain and swirling clouds that turn the ships into gloomy ghosts as they thread their way between the islands but which is responsible for their spellbinding beauty on the sunny days. There is a trip to Napier as well. This is a town that was razed to the ground by an earthquake in the 1930s and then completely rebuilt in the Art Deco style.
The book also takes the reader behind the scenes to share in the life of the professional entertainers who perform in the ship’s theatre every night. The evening show is the highlight of the cruise for many of the passengers, so download Cabin Fever and find out all about the laughter and the jealousy, the love and the heartbreak of the young men and women who provide this entertainment. Then find out what they do when love falls apart.
Available at http://t.co/cj9ehTD7
Publication day has arrived!
Well publication day has arrived for my latest book. Cabin Fever is now available in electronic format from Books We Love as well as from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. Although it’s exciting, it’s also a bit sad because now that the manuscript is published it is time for me to say goodbye to the characters who have lived in my imagination for so long.
While I was making the final revisions I could ‘see’ the heroine, Ellie, singing on stage or walking along the deck towards Drew. He is the hero I have been following for so long. I could see the scenery as well but that was less surprising because I have taken the trip that is the background to the story. I actually suffered the stormy trip through the New Zealand Sounds, and I also enjoyed the wonderful meal up in the Alps. Many of the other backdrops are authentic too, but sadly not Ellie and Drew. How I would have loved to have met them. In later posts I will talk about the cruise, the food we ate and the music we listened to.
Do you relate to the characters in your books, whether you are reading about them or writing about them? I can’t write about anyone until I can see them quite clearly in my mind’s eye – that’s why I am thrilled with the cover as well. It was designed by Michelle Lee at Books We Love, and she has ‘got’ them exactly.
If you would like to read an excerpt then go to my ‘Look Inside’ link, or click on Amazon where you will also be able to read it.
Please let me know what you like about the book and about the characters? And if there is something you don’t like, then tell me about that too. I write for my readers so I am always ready to listen, and to learn.
I hope you will enjoy Cabin Fever and maybe you will fall just a little in love with the hero or the heroine yourself.