The Blog of the Year 2012

I’m SO excited and thrilled to be awarded The Blog of the Year by my lovely and talented writing friend Rosemary Gemmell at Reading and Writing Blog

 

The rules for this are:

1. Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012′ Award.

2. Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen - and ‘present’ them with their award.

3. Please include a link back to this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012′ Award - and include these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!)

4. Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them.

5. You can now also join the Facebook group.

6. As a winner of the award — please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award — and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars… Unlike other awards which you can only add to your blog once — this award is different!

When you begin you will receive the ’1 star’ award — and every time you are given the award by another blog — you can add another star! There are a total of 6 stars to collect.

Which means that you can check out your favourite blogs – and even if they have already been given the award by someone else – you can still bestow it on them again and help them to reach the maximum 6 stars!

I'm passing this on to these fabulous and innovative bloggers:

Carol at Dizzy C’s Little Book Blog as she is such a terrific support to writers and for her fabulous Festive Fun feature that she is currently running every day up to Christmas!

Sharon at Jera’s Jamboree Book Blog as she is also a fabulous support to writers and has recently set up her own book promotion business called Fiction Addiction Book Tours which she is so qualified to do that I’m sure it will be fantastic success.

Kim Nash at Kim the Book Worm is an avid reader, book reviewer, and a generous supporter to writers. As well as her amazing blog, this year Kim has been a radio star with her weekly Book Club programme on Stafford FM talking about her favourite books (and kindly mentioned my latest release!) Together with her co-host, Lee, she has now set up a new Book Club/Podcast feature on Facebook. What a woman!

Rea at Rea Book Reviews blog who says that she is a bookaholic and who I think is one of the loveliest and most enthusiastic book bloggers out there. Rea has a fantastic list of reviews on her blog and is a great support to all writers.

Loveahappyending.com – this innovative magazine style blog (with which I am a featured author and associate editor, I have to say!) is the brainchild of talented author Linn B Halton and is supported by a team of authors, book reviewers, and publishers. It has interesting and fun features posted up by Linn and her associate editors three or four times a week and I love it!

And finally, Rosemary Gemmell, who gave me this award and to whom I’d like to pass it back - so that she gets another well-deserved star award for her blog Reading and Writing - for her generosity and in appreciation of her market expertise in advising writers on suitable markets for short stories and articles. In fact, she has written a feature on this subject for the magazine of the Romantic Novelist’s Association, Romance Matters, this very month.

Thank you so very much for this award – which means so much to me.

Please DO visit the other blogs awarded this accolade and spread the word!

I have one more blog to post for this year - on Friday 21^st December - which will be a fun round up of the events that took place on this blog over the past year. I’m looking forward to it already so please do pop back and join me.

Until Friday then, Happy Christmas everyone!

Oh, and did I mention that you might also like my regularly updated author Facebook Page 

and that

I love to Tweet at @JaniceHorton

 

 

 

The Summer Audience Event

I could have floated back to Glasgow from Gloucestershire on a cloud of happiness rather than taken a flight with Easyjet. The Loveahappyending Summer Audience weekend was fabulous fun and an amazing success!  And it was all down to the organisational skills of the woman at the helm, Linn B Halton. I first met Linn on Twitter just over a year ago, when she said she was setting up a reader/writer website and asked if I like to be part of it. I was new to Twitter but immediately recognised this as a good opportunity. I’ve never looked back - loveahappyending.com became established - and Linn and I have become firm friends.

I’d never done an author talk before, and so I was naturally anxious when climbing the stage to deliver my Zero to my Latest Hero speech last Saturday but, happily, the support of my fellow loveahappyending.com authors and the warm vibes from all the avid readers attending the event gave me the boost I needed to talk, on a very personal level, about why and how I became a writer.

Delivering my 'Zero to my Latest Hero' talk!

The day was not only a fabulous success but also a wonderful opportunity to meet up with the seventeen loveahappyending.com authors attending and to catch up with some of my own 'Team Horton' Associate Readers and book bloggers like Louise Graham, Sharon (Shaz) Goodwin, Sue Fortin and Kim (The Book Worm) Nash.

With Kim 'The Book Worm' Nash

Thoughout the day, Kim was also broadcasting live via Stafford FM's Book Club and interviewing attendants!

With book blogger Louise Graham

With book blogger Sharon 'Shaz' Goodwin

With fellow author Mandy Baggot and my editor Kit Domino

With fellow Scottish author Chris Longmuir

Me with author & event organiser Linn B Halton and Lou Graham

One of the highlights of the day was the keynote speech by Catrin Collier, which everyone agreed was spell-binding. Catrin, under various pen names, has published over 41 novels worldwide. She has had three stage plays professionally performed in addition to publishing various articles and short stories. Her first Catrin Collier novel, Hearts of Gold was filmed as a mini-series by BBC Worldwide, and attracted an audience of 6.8 million viewers when shown on UK network TV. Another highlight came in the form of the lovely award-winning author Jill Mansell, who dropped in to select one lucky winner of a a stack of books and e-books, plus a ‘Devils With Wings’ signed poster by author Harvey Black.

Author Harvey Black with his alter-ego Jeremy - but which is which...?

The Loveahappyending Group Photo!

We polished off the day with a meal in a cosy Cotswold pub and raised our drinks to toast a fabulously successful event, each other, and to Linn B Halton and her lovely husband Lawrence for  making it all happen and for bringing us all together

Cheers!

You can read lots more about the Loveahappyending.com Summer Event, our Featured Authors and Associate Readers by visiting the website HERE

And tomorrow, Saturday 23^rd June, I’ve been asked to speak to authors in Dumfries and Galloway on ‘Building an Author Platform’.  The event, organised by The Creative Arts Business Network (CABN) in Scotland, is being held at the Urr Valley Hotel, Castle Douglas. I’m really looking forward to it and hope all this practice will stand me in good stead for doing lots more author talks in the future. I’ll report back on how it went next Friday. Wish me luck!

Shaz's Stars...

Shaz’s Stars is a regular feature on loveahappyending.com

This week, using sun sign astrology, Shaz Goodwin, the loveahappyending.com resident astrologer, interviews me to see how being a Pisces affects my writing!

Click here to link to loveahappyending.com and read the article

Thank you for all your interesting comments on last week's 'cover story' post.
All comments on this week's astrology post are very welcome here or on the loveahappyending.com blog