Champagne popping moments!

There were lots of Champagne popping moments this week! Firstly, when I completed the final revisions for How Do You Voodoo? This romantic and magical novella set in Glasgow's Necropolis or 'City of the Dead' is now with my lovely Editor for a copy edit. Yay! The next step is for the fully edited manuscript to be formatted and converted for Kindle and uploaded onto Amazon. Then it will be ready for readers to download. Double yay!!

 

Would YOU like to receive an advanced reading copy (ARC) of How Do You Voodoo? with a view to you putting up a personal review on  Amazon on or around launch day, which is Friday 26th October?

If so, then email me at janice.horton@btinternet.com and I’ll send you a complimentary pcr (Kindle) copy as soon as I have it. Thanks!

 

Which brings me onto the subject of the launch party! You will see from last week’s post that I’m already planning The Spellbindingly Fun Blog Party, which now has its own designated party page here on my blog. There is a sign up box at the bottom of that page so do consider signing up. I promise lots of fun and prizes and gifts!

 

The second Champagne popping moment this week was to celebrate the launch of the brand new Loveahappyending Bookshelf. This is now an important part of the innovative reader/writer magazine style website that supports a group of handpicked authors both Indie and Traditionally published. The initiative now includes a selection of Publishers too. I am very proud and honoured to be amongst the first to join this new and exciting Bookshelf feature and you can check it out by clicking on the Loveahappyending Bookshelf picture logo.

 

 

My other news is that I have now completed the new tartantastic revamp of this blog and my Author Facebook Page. I’d love to know what you think of it all. I’d also love you to pop over and take a look and ‘like’ my Author Facebook Page if you haven’t yet done so. It’s got a new tartantastic banner that’s different from the one here on my blog and I update the page several times a week with all that’s going on in my writerly world.  I’ve also carried this tartan theme over to my ‘other’ job as Feature Editor of ‘Bookshelf Reviews’ which I’m starting up in October for loveahappyending.com.

 

 

Don’t forget to sign up for the Spellbindingly Fun Blog Party and come back next week for more tartantastic news!

Party Planning!

It is still several weeks away from Friday 26th October - the official launch day of my Halloween Special Novella – How Do You Voodoo? but I’m already planning The Spellbindingly Fun Blog Party!

 

Launching on Friday 26th October!

 

The Spellbindingly Fun Blog Party works like this:

I invite you to join The Spellbindingly Fun Blog Party by asking you to sign up on the form below.
All you need to do is:

Fill in the Join The Party form to let me know you are participating.

Think about what sort of spell you’d like to cast? A Day Off Work Spell? A Love Spell? A More Chocolate Spell? Lots of New Shoes Spell? A Less Stressful Life Spell? Whatever – it’s up to you!

 

AS LONG AS IT’S SPELLBINDINGLY FUN – NO CURSES ALLOWED!

 

 

Then: have a read through all the spellbindingly fun ingredients listed on the magic scroll below and choose the ones you need to make your spellbinding recipe. Use as many as you want or need.

Make up a spell-like verse. Example (for a love spell) ‘I call to the powers below and above, North, East, South, West. In the name of love.’ Only be as elaborate and inventive as you like!

On Friday 26^th October YOU post on YOUR OWN BLOG your Spellbindingly Fun Spell – include your ‘magic recipe’ and your ‘spellbinding verse’ and even, if you want to, a photo or picture of the object of your desire, and then everyone  participating in the Spellbindingly Fun Blog Party can pop over to your blog to see what it is!

That's because...

On Friday 26^th October I will post my own Spellbindingly Fun Spell here on my blog together with a full list of all the blog links of those participating – that’s why you need to sign up – so c’mon – why wait – get signed up now!!

 

I promise you spellbindingly good fun and prizes!

 

 

Next week I’ll be telling you lots more about my romantic and magical novella How Do You Voodoo?

Janice xx

  

The Next Big Thing!

The Next

BIG Thing!

I’ve been tagged in The Next Big Thing by fellow author Melanie Robertson King, who is at the Kansas Book Festival this week launching her debut novel, A Shadow in the Past. I’m instructed to tell you all about my next book by answering these questions and then to tag five other authors about their Next Big Thing. So here I go!

What is the working title of your next book?

 

It’s called ‘How Do You Voodoo?’

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Like many of my ideas, this one was sparked off by a real life event. I was on a flight from the Caribbean a few years ago, which had originated in Haiti. During the flight, I witnessed a ‘spat’ between two female passengers. One went on to become quite ill during the flight. Some people clearly thought it was because she’d drank too much alcohol, but as the meal on board hadn’t been very palatable, I thought it could have easily been down to the food. But then, my writerly imagination kicked in, and I thought - what if one had put a voodoo curse on the other?’

What genre does your book fall under?

Contemporary women’s romantic fiction with humour.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald would be perfect as Nola, who is the Glasgow born heroine of the story. Someone like Queen Latifa or Whoopi Goldberg could play the voodoo ‘mambo’ priestess. As for the hero of the story, well I’ll leave him totally to your own fabulous imaginations!

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Top model Nola Nichols thinks being beautiful is a curse, that is, until she is cursed and her looks begin to fade.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’m not represented by a traditional publisher anymore but I really don’t like the term ‘self-published’.  It implies that an author is ‘going it alone’ and that certainly doesn’t apply to my kind of publishing.  As an Indie ‘independent’ author, I enjoy every aspect of control over my career but I also I have the support of a network of enthusiastic, capable and talented people. I’m part of several writers’ groups, who offer friendship, advice, and both moral and practical support with the writing as well as the marketing and promotion of my books. I employ an editor and a cover designer to help me produce a totally polished and professional end product and I’m continually striving to develop my brand and adapt to industry changes. So, by the time one of my novels reaches my reader, it’s very far from being ‘self’ published.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

How Do You Voodoo? is a novella, a special release for October and Halloween. At 20,000 words it has taken me only four weeks to write a first draft. I’ll do a few subsequent drafts to polish the story and then it will be professionally edited before being formatted for the Amazon Kindle.  A total time scale of eight weeks. During this time the cover will go through several stages of design until we are happy with the final version. As you can imagine, a complete novel would take me much longer than this; usually a full year.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I don’t know. I haven’t read anything similar. I’d be interested in knowing if any of my readers and reviewers can answer this question?

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

See my answer to question two - “Where did the idea come from for the book”.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

If you are looking for spellbinding read on your Kindle this Autumn, you might enjoy my romantic magical novella How Do You Voodoo?  I’m planning a fun launch party on my blog on Friday 26th October and I will be telling you more about this on Friday of this week.  So stay tuned!

 

Here are some great authors I’ve tagged to tell you about their Next Big Thing!

 Harriet Schultz

Kenneth Rosenberg

Rosemary Gemmell

Myra Duffy

Angela Simons Barton

Exploring Glasgow’s City of the Dead!

 

This week, I took myself off to Glasgow’s famous Necropolis or The City of the Dead on a research trip for a scene in my new romantic novella - How Do You Voodoo? - a fun read planned for release in October - just in time for your Halloween enjoyment!

 

 

A scene in the middle of How Do You Voodoo? takes place in a cemetery in the centre of Glasgow where fifty thousand wealthy Victorian entrepreneurs of the ‘Second City of the Empire’ are buried.

It’s just a short walk over the Bridge of Sighs into the cemetery, an outdoor museum of tombs and memorials designed by the major architects and sculptors of the time, including Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, Charles Rennie Macintosh and JT Rochead.  Despite its spooky façade, incredible tombs, and wonky overgrown graves, it’s a very peaceful and interesting place to spend a grey and gloomy Sunday afternoon - plus I got to imagine the scene from my story in all its earthy authentic detail!
 

Here I'm standing on the Bridge of Sighs

 

The view from the Necropolis over Glasgow

Just one of the spooky ivy overgrown memorials

 

More next week on How Do You Voodoo? – the story, the cover, and the virtual Halloween launch party planned for Friday October 26^th  – it's going to be SO much fun!

Janice xx

 

Author Spotlight – Harriet Schultz

Harriet Schulz is an Author from Portland, Maine in the USA. Her background is in magazine journalism. She loves to travel, cruise and sail, and has published a few travel stories. Harriet has also just completed her first novel Legacy of the Highlands, a contemporary romantic suspense story set in Scotland.

 

 

Harriet at Arbroath Abbey

 

 

Well as you all know, I do love a contemporary novel set in Scotland, so when Harriet and I got chatting on Twitter recently, I was interested to know more about how she went about researched the Scottish elements of her story, so I invited her onto my blog to tell us about it.

Take it away Harriet!

My husband and I spent three weeks in Scotland last year. It was a vacation for us both, but for me this trip had an added bonus. I would see, hear and smell the locations in my already-published romantic suspense novel, Legacy of the Highlands, to see if I’d gotten it right.

It was with a sigh of relief, therefore, that we dropped off our rental car 1,500 miles later. For me, that relief came from the realization that I’d chosen and described my locations well. My husband’s was that we hadn’t killed ourselves or anyone else as we drove on the wrong side — to us — of Scotland’s narrow, unforgiving, and occasionally one-track roads.

We followed the coast north from Edinburgh to John O’Groats with a day trip to the Orkney Islands before continuing as far west as we could go. We traveled south to Oban before returning to Edinburgh for our flight home. Two destinations were of particular importance to me — the coast north of Aberdeen, between Cruden Bay and the town of Boddam and Arbroath Abbey where the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath was prepared.

A pivotal dramatic scene in my novel required a location that had physical characteristics similar to Ireland’s Cliffs of Moher. The Internet is a wonderful research tool and I felt confident that the Bullers of Buchan, near Boddam, could be the perfect place for the action I’d planned. But I had to be sure. I posted my question to a Boddam-area chat room. Participants not only confirmed my hunch, but actually went to the site and then posted videos — with sound! — so that I could have a sense of the place. Their generosity was stunning and I thanked the Grampian Life Forum in my book’s acknowledgments.

Despite this, I still wanted to see the Bullers for myself. It was raining as we entered the small car park and headed up the narrow path to the deep hole in the cliffs that fills with the churning waters of the North Sea. The sound was deafening. Hundreds of squawking birds nest in the rocks and waves pound the cliffs with a roar. It was perfect.

Before visiting the Bullers, we stopped in the town of Arbroath. My novel is contemporary, but a phrase in the Declaration of Arbroath and an oath taken by one of its signers form the basis for a murder that occurs almost 700 years later. It was with wonder that I roamed through the abbey’s preserved ruins, imagining the courage it took to ask the Pope to urge the English to leave Scotland and her people in peace.

 

 

 

Harriet near the Bullers of Buchan

Novels are creations of a writer’s imagination. And while there’s a bit of leeway in fictionalizing actual locations, the more real they are, the more believable the tale.

LEGACY OF THE HIGHLANDS. Young, good-looking, successful, and wealthy. Will and Alexandra Cameron had it all until the night he went out to buy ice cream after an evening of passionate sex and never returned. When his body is discovered in a nearby Boston alley, the only clue to his murder is a Scottish sgian dubh dagger left beside it. Will's grieving widow finds refuge in the Miami villa of his best friend Diego Navarro, who has the means, power and temperament to solve the puzzle and to avenge his friend's murder. The sinfully handsome and charming womanizer's feelings for Alexandra run deep, and he becomes equally determined to win the devastated widow's heart. The attraction between them grows as they follow leads from Miami to Buenos Aires and Scotland, unraveling the Cameron family's centuries-old secrets.

 

LEGACY OF THE HIGHLANDS is available as an e-book from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com and most other e-book sellers for £1.45 and $1.99. The book has also been published as a paperback.

 

 

The novel’s bestselling prologue, LUST AND HONOR, is a free download from the same sites.

 

You can catch up with Harriet on her Blog & Twitter

 

http://harrietschultz.blogspot.com

Twitter: @HarrietSchultz

Reaching for the Stars #1

 

 

 

There is nothing quite like seeing your book at #1 in an Amazon chart!

I’m super busy right now, writing my next novel and a novella scheduled for an October release, but over the August Holiday weekend I was stopped in my tracks by Reaching for the Stars reaching number one in the Amazon.com Kindle Contemporary (free) Fiction Charts and also receiving some fabulous reviews.  Thank you to all that downloaded and took part in sharing, tweeting and blogging!

The same weekend, Amazon.com introduced Amazon India! My loveahappyending.com colleague and friend in India, Anjana Vasan, whose fabulous website Kindle and Me checked out my books for sale in India - at 88 rupees - and assures me ‘it’s good - people are going crazy for ebooks’.

All good news!

I have also been collaborating this week with my good buddy and cover designer JT Lindroos, whose work is now in such demand by publishing houses, I’m so glad I found him first. He has redesigned the cover for Reaching for the Stars (which I showed you last week) and now the cover of Bagpipes and Bullshot.  What do you think?

 

 
 

I love love love it - and I can’t wait to see what JT will come up with for my October release and Halloween themed magic romantic  novella  ‘How Do You Voodoo?’

I’m hoping to show you next week!

Love, Janice xx

Tartan-tastic!

I’m not quite ready yet with the big blog revamp but I do have a tartan-tastic new cover for my disgruntled celebrity chef novel ‘Reaching for the Stars’. Check it out!

 

FREE to download on Saturday 25th, Sunday 26th & Bank Holiday Monday!

To celebrate the new look cover and also the August Bank Holiday you can download Reaching for the Stars to your Kindle or Kindle App on your PC, Mac, iPad etc for FREE from Amazon on Saturday 25th, Sunday 26th and Bank Holiday Monday 27th August. Click the link and please feel free to spread the news far and wide!

This is what some reviewers have said about Reaching for the Stars:

“I love the way that Janice writes. You are whisked away to a part of Scotland and get so involved with the story that you feel that you are playing a star role in the book.” Kim The Bookworm

“A wonderful plot and some extremely engaging characters all bundled together in a steamy Scottish kitchen!”  Lou Graham - Book Blogger

“Even though I knew this was a complete work of fiction, I found it fun to imagine one of the top celebrity chefs losing their marbles and giving it all up. What an amazing story that would be to follow in the tabloids.” Lindsay Gentles - Turning the Pages Book Blog

“Horton's writing actually transports the reader straight to the scene - I felt like I actually knew some of the characters.” Sarah Taylor - Today I’m Reading Book Blog.

“Well done Janice Horton you have got the 5 star from me...” Rea Book Reviews

Also: 'Reaching for the Stars' was voted The Most Popular Book of the Month for January 2012 with Readers - on Jera's Jamboree Book Blog!

Get your Kindle copy FREE this weekend!

 

My other news is that The 'Gilly & Kim Let Loose' show is back on BBC Radio Cumbria on Bank Holiday Monday (Aug 27) from 12-2pm. This time it's all about romance and will feature the interview I recorded with Gilly at the Romantic Novelist's Conference last month. Gilly and Kim have been described as the French & Saunders of Radio Cumbria!  So if you get a chance - do listen in on Monday - but if you do miss it you can always 'Listen Again' for up to seven days from the web! BBC Radio Cumbria is on 95.6FM 96.1FM and 104.1FM.

 

Kim & Gilly - the French & Saunders of BBC Radio Cumbria!

 

That’s it for this week – have a great Bank Holiday everyone.

This week I’ve been a bit hyper….

Because there is SO much going on! First and foremost of course is the writing. I’m working on a full length novel for publication in 2013 but I’m also working on a novella which I will publish in October as an ebook to Kindle. The writing is going really well and I’m having a lot of fun with it – so much so that it’s keeping me awake at night - plot ideas keep popping into my head. The novella is a Halloween Special and I can’t wait to tell you more about it in the coming weeks!

I have my fabulous cover designer JT Lindroos working away on the cover art at the moment and that alone is getting me hyped up with excitement, especially as we are tweaking the covers of Bagpipes & Bullshot and Reaching for the Stars at the same time.

In sync with the new covers, I’ll be revamping this blog too – in the next couple of weeks – and I’ll be adding some exciting, fabulous, stylish, and very Scottish features. So, you’ll know where to come for your weekly fix of Scotland, the land and it’s people, (or should I say it's characters?)

Can I ask, if you are interested in knowing more about my current and future writerly projects, for you to subscribe to my Quarterly Newsletter? (see top sidebar)  I promise not to bombard you with ‘stuff’ but to politely send you only exciting news, the odd special offer, and subscriber exclusive newsletter competitions - with prizes.

If the Newsletter is not for you but you’d still like to know what mischief I’m getting into then please do consider ‘liking’ my Author Facebook Page. It's all there!

Following on from my recent blog post on Author Tags - this is the one I decided to go with:

Scottish Fiction with Humour and Heart

This week has been a big week in Edinburgh and I was invited to take part in the Edinburgh Ebook Festival. If you missed it – this is the link to my ‘Auld Lums & New Reeks’ feature in which my books, Bagpipes & Bullshot and Reaching for the Stars, were showcased and peer reviewed as part of the virtual festival. The Twitter hashtag for the still ongoing event is #edebookfest

The wonderful reader/writer magazine style website Loveahappyending.com - of which I am a featured author - picked up the story of my involvement with the Edinburgh Ebook Festival and you can read the feature by clicking the red link.

Also this week: I was featured on Celebrating Authors, where I talked about my favourite authors and ‘five random things’ - one of which became the headline!

Other news: TWO new 5* reviews for Bagpipes & Bullshot which with 22 reviews continues to sell well, particularly in the US, which is totally thrilling.

Finally, I was delighted to find out today that I’m being gossiped about in the September issue of the glossy and award winning Dumfries & Galloway Life magazine - by shortlisted Columnist of The Year Gilly Fraser - in her riviting report on this year's Romantic Novelist's Conference in Cumbria. You can read Gilly’s column here.

So now you can appreciate why I’m a bit hyper….

See you next Friday - I’m off to lie down!

Housework...

There is nothing I want to do less than housework right now even though I am normally a house proud sort of person - as it’s the last thing on my to-do list when I’m working on a new book - but we are putting our cottage on the market very soon. The sales particulars of which will be available online as well as displayed in a glossy brochure and so, over the past week, there has been a steady procession of people scrutinizing the old place.

First there was the Home Report Surveyor perusing (a requirement of selling a property in Scotland) and then the Estate Agent getting the grand tour and taking notes and finally the photographer exploring each room and pointing her lens into every nook and cranny while looking for the right lighting – when there simply wasn’t any to be had.

I’m exhausted. My hands are dry and my nails are ruined from all the cleaning and polishing to bring our humble abode up to the standards of sparkle you might expect to see in the pages of Home & Gardens magazine. Because believe me, if everyone is going to be looking in my boudoir, it’s going to damn well shine like it’s never shone before - even without the right light!

So I apologise for the disruption to my usual wise and witty writerly bloggings and I hope to be back to normal posting next Friday. In the meantime, do remember that if you can’t get to Edinburgh this year for the International Book Festival, you can always attend the Edinburgh Ebook Festival instead – virtually.  It runs from the 11^th -  27th August and I’ll be appearing on Tuesday 14^th August in the Auld Lums review feature.  I also have my own Festival Author Page if you’d like to check it out.  The whole event promises to be innovative and unique and I’m so thrilled to be in the company of so many of my favourite Scottish writers.

So I hope to see you at the festival - virtually

#edebookfest

 

Edinburgh Ebook Festival 2012

It’s coming up to festival time – now you might be thinking music festivals, beer festivals, flower festivals but I’m thinking book festivals and one in particular - the one taking place in Edinburgh this month!

In August, something very special happens in Scotland’s Capital and that would be The Edinburgh Fringe, The Edinburgh Festival, The Edinburgh Tattoo and The Edinburgh Book Festival.

Edinburgh is my favourite city in the whole world and it’s where my eldest son lives and my middle son goes to university. It’s where I browse on George Street, go shopping on Princes Street and get my hair done on Fredrick Street. Its museums and art galleries are amazing and its restaurants are fantastic. – It’s where I set my book ‘Reaching for the Stars’ - and it’s a city close to my heart. Now there are those who can get to Edinburgh and those who can’t. Maybe you live too far away. Maybe you just can’t afford it. Don’t despair.

Indie Ebook Review is bringing Edinburgh to you via the Edinburgh Ebook Festival!

Edinburgh Castle
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Please note this is an independent, virtual festival, with no ties or association to the commercial entity that is the Edinburgh Book Festival.

The inaugural Edinburgh Ebook Festival, in which I have been invited to take part this year, runs online and concurrently with the ‘real’ thing from August 11th to 27th 2012.

The Edinburgh Ebook Festival showcases some of the best of indie e-book writers around. The festival seeks to introduce you to writers, publishers, and to explore the whole world of epublishing from a new and distinctly Scottish perspective.

There will be around 40 featured and contributing writers and a total of around 100 specific ‘events’ including reviews, short stories, poems, features on all aspects of epublishing, writers comments and an insight into who is who and what is what!

The official ‘rolling’ launch of this website will happen at 10am on Friday 3rd August.

From then till the opening event on 11th August, there will be content added to the site by the organisers, who will be getting it shipshape and ready for you to enjoy, highlighting features of what’s to come and how to get the most from this unique festival.

It’s the Edinburgh Festival that you can attend without ever leaving home!

We will all look forward to seeing you ‘virtually’ in the weeks to come. Bookmark the website and Facebook Page and tell your friends. Everyone is welcome and everything is FREE. All it will take is some of your time and we hope to offer you enough interest to have you coming back every day right up until the close on 27th August.

Click here to go to The Edinburgh Ebook Festival Website

Click here to go to the Edinburgh Ebook Festival Facebook Page

See you at the Festival - virtually!

#edebookfest