The Festival of Romance - fun and celebration!

I could have floated back to Scotland on a cloud of bliss after this weekend at The Festival of Romance instead of taking an Easyjet flight. This event, held annually in Bedford England, was three days of excitement and celebration amongst romance authors, readers, and industry professionals.
 

It was fantastic to meet up again with those peeps I already know and to finally meet those I feel I already know so well online but hadn’t yet met face to face. It might appear weird to throw yourself into the arms of people you’ve never met in real life and practically hug the life out of them – yet it felt complete appropriate to do so when these are people I already loved!

I was in contact with lovely JB of Brook Cottage Books before and during my journey to Bedford, as I was flying in from Glasgow to London Luton and she was flying in from Belfast. She sent me a photo so I’d recognise her when we finally met – and this is us just mere seconds after we did!
 

 

Ditto lovely Carol ‘Dizzy C’ (pic below) of Dizzy C's Little Book Blog, the wonderful Kim the Bookworm and fabulous Heidi of ‘Cosmochicklitian’
 

On the Friday night, Linn B Halton, Mandy Baggot and Sheryl Browne and I went to a fabulous Bedford Italian Restaurant for fun, wine and pizza!
 

 

Then at the Saturday night Gala Dinner, just when I thought the festival was only about being amongst fabulous friends, it also became a celebration of our success - when Linn B Halton, Editor in Chief of the emagazine with which I'm an associate editor - was awarded the 2013 Festival of Romance 'Innovation in Romantic Fiction' Industry award for “evolving the loveahappyending.com author/reader initiative into an interactive lifestyle magazine”.

 

 

After receiving her award, Linn said: “Being nominated was a huge honour, but to actually win the award was overwhelming. As organiser of LLm I was thrilled to accept this on behalf of everyone involved. There are thirty-two contributors in total involved with LLm and it is the wide range of articles (including book reviews) that saw our hit counter tip over the 3 million mark a couple of days ago, and we are now at a staggering 3,045,639.”
 

 

Huge congratulations to all the winners of all awards at this year's Festival of Romance and thanks to event organiser Kate Allan for all her hard work - what a fabulous weekend!

Innovation in Romantic Fiction Author winner – Linn B Halton with some of the Loveahappyending Lifestyle Magazine team

  

 

Left to right: Carol, Heidi, JB, Linn, Mandy, Sheryl, & myself

Festival of Romance - and Loveahappyending Lifestyle!

HUGE CONGRATULATIONS TO THE LOVEAHAPPYENDING TEAM!

 

LLm Editor in Chief, our own Linn B Halton has been shortlisted for the Innovation in Romantic Fiction (Author) award for evolving the loveahappyending.com author/reader initiative into an interactive lifestyle magazine.

 

Linn B Halton



 

And Carol Wright from Dizzy C's Little Book Blog, JB Johnston from Brook Cottage Books and Tanya Farrell from After the Final Chapters, all in the Loveahappyending Review Team have been nominated for Best Romance Blogger!

 

CONGRATULATIONS AND WELL DONE LADIES!

 Click here for the full announcement

 

8th to 10th November in Bedford

 

 

Festival of Romance 2013

The Festival of Romance celebrates romantic fiction in all its forms and gives readers a chance to meet favourite and new authors as well as taking part in lots of fun events and parties.

It is the UK's ONLY convention dedicated to romantic fiction.

You can book tickets online for all the Festival events.

Check out what's on and see which of your favourite authors are attending.

See you at the Festival of Romance!

 

Paperback Books and The Festival of Romance

This week, while my lovely editor is working away on Voodoo Child (planned launch date 31^st October) I’ve been busy preparing and formatting the paperback editions of Bagpipes and Bullshot and Reaching for the Stars. This means I’ll have ‘real’ books to offer alongside my ebooks at last and I’ll be able to carry paperback copies with me when I do my personal author appearances.

 

Bagpipes and Bullshot and Reaching for the Stars will be available to order from Amazon sites very soon if you’ve been waiting to read my full length novels in paperback!

These are the paperback covers!

  

 

It’s only four weeks to the Festival of Romance in Bedford! (8^th-10^th November) I’m going to this event for the first time and I’m really looking forward to spending the whole weekend talking about books and celebrating romantic fiction.

There are some fabulous events planned – check out the website and grab your tickets now.

I’m really looking forward to meeting up with writer friends I already know really well, those I have been friends with online for ages but haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet in person, and catching up with what’s going on in the romantic fiction industry - as there will be publishers and agents and editors to chat to about such matters.

I’m speaking at the Coffee and Cake morning on Saturday 9^th November at The Lane, Bedford. I’m also looking forward to attending the Festival of Romance Ball on the Saturday night!

Are you going…?

Do let me know so we can say hello!

Romantic meetings and writerly events…

Happy Friday everyone – I’ve had a an even busier week than usual as I’ve been out and about on writerly business. On Monday I was invited to the famous and very romantic location of Gretna Green for a meeting.

 

It was wonderful to catch up with writers I already know well through the Writers Scotland Group, to be reintroduced to one or two I’d met before through the Romantic Novelist’s Association, and to meet some new lovely writer peeps. The meeting was interesting, involving romance writers, commercial enterprise, media and PR, but as it was a preliminary talk, I don’t think I’m at liberty to tell you exactly what it was all about just yet - so I’ll tell you more when I can!

After lunch and the meeting itself, a few of us had a tour of the famous blacksmith’s shop and the wedding room and had our photo taken in front of the wedding anvil!

In this photo: myself, Lynda Denton, Eileen Ramsay and her husband Ian,
Michelle Styles and Gwen Kirkwood
 

The Marriage Anvil at Gretna Green

 

 

On Tuesday, I was invited to speak about my writing and my life as a writer at the first meeting of the season for the Dumfries and Galloway Tangent Club in a private room at a restaurant in Thornhill. It was an honour to be asked to talk to these lovely ladies and I was right to suspect that when I got there, it being a local group of professional and business women, that I would already know many of them. We had a glass of wine, friendly conversation and lots of laughs, and we also had a lovely dinner. I felt my talk went well, as the atmosphere in the room was so relaxed and warm. I rounded off my talk with a short reading from ‘Reaching for the Stars’ and we had a quiz/competition - the winner being the first correct answer drawn by the restaurant owner!

 

On Wednesday, I was asked if I was interested in doing a talk and a writer’s workshop on the afternoon of Sunday 20th October at an Arts and Crafts Weekend being held at a local village Hall. I thought it sounded like another good opportunity to get out and about and to meet people interested in reading and books. So I accepted.

All of this is of course great practice for the Festival of Romance event in Bedford on the weekend of the 8th/9th & 10th of November, which I am attending as an author. I’m speaking at this event on the Saturday morning at the ‘Coffee and Cake’ event. Tickets are on sale now at the Festival website.

 

The rest of this week I’ve been writing and reading, attending online book launches, and following some exciting blogs. It’s a very busy and exciting time to be a writer!!

Haste ye back here next Friday!

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…!

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!