Reconnecting with family and friends in the UK

Sadly, in the last week of April 2017, after Trav and I had been living and working in Bucharest Romania for a month, we heard news from family in the UK that Trav’s dad had become gravely ill. It had been less than three months since the death of his mum.

Trav immediately returned to the UK to be with his dad during his last days.

Just a few days later, after his dad had passed away peacefully, Trav returned to Bucharest and together we packed our bags to leave Bucharest and travel back to the UK to be with family and to prepare for the funeral.

First, we flew into Scotland to meet with our son Iain who lives in Glasgow and our son Ben who lives in Edinburgh.

The silver lining in the dark cloud of our bereavement was that for the second time this year, and in a short space of just three months, we would get to spend more time with our sons, with my own mum, and our much-missed family in the UK.

Blue skies over Glasgow

Our son Iain and his lovely girlfriend Alice

During our few days in Scotland, I also took the opportunity to attend a Romantic Novelist’s Association lunch in Edinburgh. It had been several years since I’d met up with my friends in the RNA Scottish Chapter. When I saw on our group Facebook page that a lunch meeting was being arranged for the morning I arrived back, I jumped at the chance to go along. I took the train from Glasgow and it was wonderful to see blues skies over Edinburgh and all my Scottish writer friends again face to face.

Edinburgh Castle in the sunshine

Blue skies over Princes Street Edinburgh

With Rosemary Gemmell in Edinburgh

With Eileen Ramsay - chair of the Romantic Novelist's Association 

It was wonderful to catch up with my Scottish writer friends in Edinburgh

Also, while we were in Edinburgh, we got together with our son Ben and his lovely girlfriend Hayley and all her family.

Trav and I with Hayley and Ben at the bowling club

Hayley is a ladies champion bowls player and there was a match being played that day at the local bowling club. It was a fun day and a welcome chance to spend quality time with Ben and Hayley especially when in just a few day’s time – the day after his grandad’s funeral – they were looking forward to their three-week holiday in Orlando Florida.

Hayley in action

Hayley's mum Andrea and Graham

Fun at the bowling club with Ben and Hayley and her family

Trav and I travelled down to England by train and were once again so grateful to our best friend Dina, who had generously offered to share her home with us again while we were in the UK.

Hanging out with my best friend Dina

In the days before the funeral, we managed to have some fun times with Dina in our old home town of Widnes and we also got to spend a great day out in Liverpool - exploring all the tourist sites like the Albert Dock and the Caven Club.

The day of the funeral was an emotional one for all the Horton family. For Trav and his brothers, Rob and Stuart, to lose both parent’s in such a short time was heart-breaking. As it was for all eight grandchildren to lose their grandparents. Their legacy of course will live on in them all and also in their one great-grandchild, Aaron, who lives in South Korea and whom they sadly had never met.

A short time after the funeral, on a solemn grey and rainy day in May, Jimmy and Dot’s ashes were buried together in the same Runcorn cemetery where their parent’s had been laid to rest. A small and intimate service was held with just their three son’s and wives present. Trav, being the eldest of the brothers, said a few words over his parent’s grave while we all held hands and said our last goodbyes.

For mid-May, initially from Bucharest, I had booked flights to London in order to attend the Romantic Novelist’s Association Summer Party. This writer’s networking event is a great opportunity for writers to get together with publishers and agents and other writing professionals. As I had been out of the country off and on for almost four years, I also saw this event as a great opportunity, not only for me to meet up with my writer friends, but to put my finger back on the pulse of the writing industry and to see what had changed over the past few years.

I had hastily re-organised my travel arrangements and I was very excited to be accompanied to the event and staying with my lovely writer friend Linn B Halton, who lives outside London. Linn and I hadn’t seen each other face to face (if you don’t count Skype) since the Festival of Romance several years before so you can imagine how much we had to talk about!

Ready for the RNA Summer Party -with my lovely friend Linn B Halton

Linn and I travelled to London together by train, had a fabulous lunch in an Italian restaurant in Piccadilly, and then caught up with other Romantic Novelist’s for pre-party drinks. It was so great to see everyone again. Below are a few photos with my lovely writer chums!

With Linn having lunch in London

Pre-party cocktails with lovely writer friends

With Mandy Baggot

With Talli Roland who also writes as Leah Mercer

With lovely Liz Harris

Soon, Trav and I felt ready to move on again. As we don’t have a home of our own in the UK anymore and, as we still have wanderlust to travel, we were keen to take up our nomadic adventures again and there is nothing like losing people to remind us of the fragility of life and how quickly time passes.

Our flight from London to KL via Singapore

Trav and I want to travel the world together while we can, while we still have our health, and before we get too old to do so. Of course, we love and miss our family and friends, but we appreciate they have busy lives too and being close geographically to them is no guarantee we would see them often as we'd like anyway. So I'm so grateful to the times in which we live; when we can keep in touch with our loved ones whenever we like on the internet and, thanks to affordable air travel, no place and no one in the world is much more than 12 hours away from us.

A farewell meal with my family before leaving for SE Asia

So we left the UK to fly back to Asia. We took a flight back to Kuala Lumpur and, while in a taxi to our hotel in KL, we had some wonderful news from Orlando Florida, where our son Ben was on holiday with his girlfriend Hayley. He had proposed and Hayley had became his fiancée.

The newly engaged Ben and Hayley in Orlando Florida

We were thrilled and so excited to see their proposal on video and to see how happy they are together. Our driver must have wondered what was going on when he heard me squealing and tearful on the back seat of his taxi!

After a good night’s sleep in KL, the next morning, we headed straight for the Perhentian Islands off the east coast of peninsula Malaysia. We flew with Air Asia from KLIA2 to Kuta Bharu - a 45 min flight and then took a bus and a boat over the Perhentian Besar (the larger of these islands). It’s a place that has been on our radar for a couple of years now but we have never been in Malaysia during these island’s short season - between May and September – after which all boats stop going there and all accommodations close down.

What is special about the Perhentian Islands you may ask?

Well, for one they are incredibly beautiful - the beaches are white sand beaches and said to be some of the best in the world - and the diving and snorkelling too is said to be amazing. But there is one other very special reason that we headed out to the Perhentians at this time and that is to do with my current Work In Progress. I needed to go to these islands for research purposes.

In my next book, I have a heroine who is establishing a turtle conservation sanctuary on an island– and so for a week I was going to be staying at a turtle conservation center to learn all about sea turtles and turtle hatcheries and baby turtles while Trav went diving.

If I was really lucky, I hoped that on Perhentian Island I would get to see baby turtles hatching and then help to release them to the sea. If I was really really lucky I would get to see a nesting turtle returning to the beach that she had been born on at least thirty years before, to lay her eggs under the light on the moon, before making her way back into the sea.

Please do join me here on the blog next time to find out more about the beautiful Perhentian Islands and to find out exactly how very lucky I was!

Love, Janice xx

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

 

Wow - What A Year…!

Looking back to this time last year, I was in the middle of launching my celebrity chef novel ‘Reaching for the Stars’ and hosting the ‘Wish I Was Here’ Blog Party before revelling in the champagne soaked aftermath. What fabulous fun that was!

Reaching for the Stars launched December 2011

This year December has been a far more sedate in comparison, which has put me in something of a reflective mood. So I thought this final blog post of 2012 should take a look back over my blogging year.

 

During the early part of 2012, here at JH HQ we explored many writerly themes – like naming characters and selecting settings, to choosing book titles and ‘Arresting Your Reader’. You can click on the text I’ve highlighted to link and rediscover those oh-so-interesting posts!

In March, my birthday month, we explored castles together and also celebrated my blogiversary – my gift that day was seeing ‘Reaching for the Stars’ at Number Two in the paid Top 100 Amazon Bestseller Chart for Women’s Fiction!

Reaching for the Stars reached #2 in the paid Amazon Top 100 Bestsellers Chart

 

 

A highlight of the Summer for me was being asked to speak at the loveahappyending.com Summer Audience, a reader/writer event that took place in the lovely Cotswold town of Tetbury in Gloucestershire. This was the first time I’d ever done a public speaking event and I was a wee bit nervous as I flew down from Scotland to Bristol. I stayed with Linn B.Halton author and founder of loveahappyending.com over the weekend and Linn and I (who first met on Twitter) met for 'real'! I had the most fabulous time. The event was a great success and Linn, as well as all the other authors I met for the first time at the Summer Event, were all lovely.

Speaking at the Summer Event in Tetbury, Glos

Another highlight of the summer came just one week later, when I was asked to speak to writers at the Creative Arts Business Network Conference (CABN) at the Urr Valley Hotel in Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway. My talk was on independent epublishing, not the nuts and bolts of how to do it, but rather how to go about promoting your book once it’s up there on Amazon. The key speaker of the day was award winning author Nicola Morgan (or The Crabbit Old Bat, as those on the blogisphere and Twitter know her best!) It was a fabulous and inspiring day and, once I got over my initial nerves, I really enjoyed it.

 

At the CABN Writer's Conference with Nicola Morgan

Then back on the blog we looked at ereaders vs paperbooks and discussed marketing ‘tags’ – the ones we authors use to identify our ‘brand’ – so that readers know what to expect from us and more importantly from our books. From this I settled on ‘Scottish Fiction with Humour and Heart’ as my own tag.

 

This topic was followed up with a light hearted look at Men in Kilts which was one of the most popular posts of the year – so I had to mention it!

Then in July, I posted a roundup of The Romantic Novelist’s Conference that I attended in Penrith Cumbria. This was such a fab weekend. Friday to Sunday I got to catch up with friends, meet the lovely virtual peeps that I knew from Facebook and Twitter and Blogland in real life, and forge new friendships. On top of that of course was the business of writing and I was interviewed by BBC Radio Cumbria while on site – discussing romantic fiction, of course!

 

With fellow RNA and Loveahappyending author Sue Fortin at Penrith

 

With my bloggerland friend and author Talli Roland in Penrith

 

Kim & Gilly from BBC Radio Cumbria

 

August is the month that hosts the Edinburgh Book Festival and this year saw the inaugural Edinburgh Ebook Festival, to which I was delighted to be invited to take part. You can find out more about this fabulous online event from my blog post here.

In September I put work on my next full length novel aside to began working on a novella entitled How Do You Voodoo? which I planned to launch in time for Halloween. This is a romantic and humorous story about a loveless fashion model Nola Nichols, who thinks being beautiful is a curse; that is until she is cursed and her looks begin to fade just a week before the most important photo shoot of her career.

 

One of the central scenes in How Do You Voodoo? takes place in a graveyard in Glasgow – the Glasgow Necropolis or City of the Dead as it is known - hence my idea to launch at Halloween although the story can be enjoyed at any time of the year! ‘How Do You Voodoo’ has been very well received and reviewed and will be followed up on Valentine’s Day 2013 with its novella length sequel ‘Voodoo Wedding’ and later in the year ‘Voodoo Child’.

The research I did in Glasgow’s City of the Dead produced a voodoo blog post both here and on the blogs of the Romantic Novelist’s Association and Lovahappyending.com.

 

Researching a spooky spot at Glasgow's City of the Dead

 

The October  ‘Spellbindingly Fun Blog Party’ to launch ‘How Do You Voodoo?’ was an absolute blast! Lots and lots of bloggers signed up to join in the fun and cast fabulous spells on their blogs. I was amazed how poetic and imaginative everyone was as well as wonderfully supportive and generous!

 

 

 

In November, another exciting venture was the launch of the Loveahappyending Bookshelf where you can find exciting new authors and the publishers who support them, together with independent authors like myself, who are trying to make their mark. To keep in step with this, I have launched a new venture of my own in connection with the website. I am now editing a twice monthly brand new and tartantastic ‘Bookshelf Reviews’ feature to support the authors and publishers involved.

 

It’s been a truly fantastic blogging year. I’ve blogged every Friday throughout 2012 and in between my own posts I’ve featured some fantastic authors on my Author Showcase. I’ve also played away, guesting on lots of other writer’s blogs and have made lots of lovely blogging friends. I’ve really really enjoyed myself. But to end the year on an ever higher note, I’m astonished and delighted to have been awarded the Blog of the Year 2012. You can read all about this here (last week’s blog post). So all that remains now at the end of 2012 is for me to say Happy Christmas and wish you a very happy New Year. Do join me in 2013. I’ll be here every Friday and will update my author Facebook page regularly. You can find me on Twitter @JaniceHorton

 

Stop Press: I'm talking about Christmas over at Dizzy C's Little Book Blog's Festive Fun Feature - here

‘Lang mae ya’ lum reek’ – as we like to say in Scotland!

Love, Janice xx

 

#rnaconf12

I’m off to the Romantic Novelist’s Association Conference in Penrith Cumbria this weekend and I’m very excited about it. There is nothing quite like spending a whole weekend – from Friday to Sunday - in the company of other writers talking non-stop about books, novels, writing and publishing.

If you think that perhaps a get together of Romantic Novelist’s will be sedate affair with lots of pink feather bowers on stiff shoulders and cups of tea balanced on 50 denier covered knees - then think again. These girls (and some men) certainly know how to party. I do remember at one RNA conference I attended that the bar ran out of booze within the first hour. From the shock on the bar staff’s faces I’m confident that’s never going to happen again!

There’s a full programme of events, talks and workshops to attend. There will be lots of Literary Agents and Editors to talk to as well as friends I haven’t seen for ages and those who up to now I’ve only chatted with online. The highlight of the whole conference though will be the Gala Dinner on Saturday night. I really must remember to take lots of photographs - oh - and to be on my best behaviour of course!

If you’d like to follow the event on Twitter – the hashtag is #rnaconf12

I’ll be back here on Monday, as I’m hosting my lovely friend and fellow Loveahappyending.com author Stephanie Keyes in a special blog spot to celebrate the cover reveal of her debut novel The Star Child. PLUS there will be a fabulous giveaway hosted by her publishers Ink Spell Publishing.

Getting Connected…

Well, I have to say that we haven’t had a particularly good start to 2012 here at Horton HQ. We have been coping with high winds, persistent power cuts and (shriek) a laptop that refused to see in the New Year with us.

It’s shocking (or it would be if we had any power) how much we (I) now rely on the internet to work and connect with colleagues and friends on social networks, forums, Twitter, Facebook and Blogs. All of these things, together with the checking of ones Amazon rankings (okay, so it’s probably better if I don’t do that more than once a day!) means connecting on-line for at least a couple of hours each day.

I’m only able to be with you now, dear readers, because Mr JH has ingeniously managed to connect my new Touchpad (a present from Santa!) with his mobile phone ‘hot spot’ and made it possible for me to blog to you via satellite – how cool is that?!

So, what news do I bring you may ask…?

Well, my getting connected plans for 2012 of course…!

First off, I’m planning a writerly getaway to connect with writing a new novel!

I’ll be popping in from time to time over the next couple of weeks of course, and have some fabulous Author Showcase features for you, but otherwise I will be making a start on Book #4 or The WIP (work in progress) as it must be called because as yet this new venture does not have a title.

However, in true Horton style I have already done all the necessary and extensive research needed to identify with my lovely lady lawyer heroine, by actually working in a Solicitor’s office to get a real feel for her world!

I was hoping that when I’ve written a brief synopsis of the story, you might come up with a suitable title for me – what do you think? Let’s have some suggestions with something legal sounding in the title – but it’s a romance remember!

And also, to connect with my wonderful writer friends and my lovely readers, I plan to attend these amazing events being organised throughout 2012!

The Loveahappyending Summer Audience is a one day reader/writer event being held on 16th June in Tetbury, Gloucester. As an editor with Loveahappyending and co-organiser of this event, I’ll be posting more information as soon as the Lovehappyending.org information and ticket site is launched in early February.

The Romantic Novelist’s Association Conference is being held over the weekend of 13th to 15th July at Penrith, Cumbria. Information can be found on the RNA Website.

The Festival of Romance is being held over the weekend of 16th to 18th November 2012 in Bedford: more information from the Festival Website.

So that’s my plans so far – what are yours – do tell?

Please pop back next week as I have a couple of fabulous author showcases lined up for you and I’ll be blogging from my secret writerly hideaway - probably via satellite!

My Bookshelves...

This week I’m picking up on the bookshelf feature I started earlier in the year, where I talk about favourite authors and show off my prized collection of first editions and ‘keepers’ - as I like to call my most loved books. This time I’m talking about the fabulous author of six equally fabulous novels, Kate Fenton, whose humorous and witty tales of country life in the wilds of Yorkshire are written in a pacy distinctive style that I can hardly get enough of, which is a shame, as the lovely Kate hasn’t published a book since ‘Picking Up in 2002!’



Author Kate Fenton


I met Kate a few years ago at a Romantic Novelist’s Association conference. She is great fun, a real joker, and is as witty in real life as she is in her books. To my surprise, she laughed heartily while admitting that her recent lack of input/output on the writing front was down to her suffering from writer’s block. She said she was “deeply embarrassed, mortified, terrified, and stupefied by a sense of failure.”

On her blog, she says this of her predicament: “No, I haven’t written a new novel recently. By which I mean, nothing since ‘Picking Up’. I guess I experienced Writer’s Block, that scary phenomenon about which one reads with the ghoulish fascination inspired by tales of, say, poltergeists or a fatal addiction to slot machines, while smugly thinking such a dreadful fate could never happen to ME. Except it did. And I’m here to tell you it’s no fun.”

Kate has further apologised to her many fans, saying: “I’m sorry to say my books are currently more or less out of print. It’s all my own fault, natch. In this fast-changing retail world, a book has a shelf life rather shorter – in fact, much shorter – than that of a can of baked beans. And if authors fail to deliver new titles, old ones tend to get put speedily out to grass. Re-issues are promised if and when a new novel is published. Ho-hum.”

It apparently took Kate four years to write and finish her first novel ‘The Colours of Snow’ (which is my personal favourite of her books) and three years later she produced ‘Dancing to the Pipers’. It took her two years apiece to write ‘Lions and Liquorice’, ‘Balancing on Air’, ‘Too Many Godmothers’, and finally ‘Picking Up’. So, despite the speed with which the plots in Kate’s books furiously race along, she has never really been a production line writer has she?

What sort of books are these, you may ask? Well, Kate herself says:  “Oh, I write about, birth, sex and death, really. Doesn't everyone? Also God, dogs, adultery, D-I-Y, suicide, Morris dancing, incest, murder - you know, everyday life in North Yorkshire. With jokes.  But I don't do moody, magnificent brutes, heaving bosoms and surging passions on moon-kissed Caribbean beaches. The odd chilly paddle in Llandudno, maybe.”

The good news is that Kate is still trying to write: she says (talking about herself in the third person) on her (sadly neglected) blog: “That’s right: it’s because she’s run out of excuses, jokes and even suicide threats, in trying to explain her ongoing failure to produce Novel Number Seven. Admittedly, she has been trying – in our view, very trying. You should see her, staring at the wall, muttering to herself, decimating the world’s forests with the manuscripts she so regularly chucks away with a manic cackle as she grows ever poorer, fatter and more morose.”

To me, Kate’s previous novels are a testament to the fact she is a great writer. I can read her books over and over and enjoy them all the more. If she (ever) manages to write another novel, I shall be delighted and it won’t matter a jot to me how long it took her to do it. It’s all about quality not quantity, right?



Kate Fenton Novels on my bookshelves

So here’s a question for you if you are a writer, what’s your opinion on writer’s block and have you ever suffered from it? If you are a reader, how long are you prepared to wait for another novel by a favourite author?

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My previous bookshelf features:  Ruby Ferguson.  Jilly Cooper