Book News - Voodoo Romance Boxed Set

BOOK NEWS! By popular demand my three bestselling voodoo romance books are now available as a downloadable boxed set. Get ‘How Do You Voodoo?’ ‘Voodoo Wedding’ and ‘Voodoo Child’ in one go for just $2.99 or £1.82 from Amazon for Kindle!

Love Reading Love Books says: ‘A Five Star Read - there’s a little bit of everything, romance, intrigue, mystery, black magic and fun.’

These voodoo romance stories were such fun to write and were inspired by a real life spat between two Haitian women that I witnessed on a flight from the Caribbean to the UK - when one seemed to put a curse on the other. My imagination went into overdrive and How Do You Voodoo? was born!

Available now from Amazon UK and DotCom and other Amazon sites worldwide

Bestchicklit.com - ‘It's fun, it's entertaining, it's magic!’ 

Shazera Book Blog – ‘How Do You Voodoo? will entertain you and engage you. Perfect for reading on that journey.’ 

The Little Reader Library - ‘Another entertaining, fun modern-day tale from this author with a nice balance of humour, sweet romance, morals and a spooky side!’ 

Kim the Bookworm ‘A wonderful story with a perfect ending.’ 

Brook Cottage Books – ‘Throw into the mix a bit of voodoo, a press invasion, a range of strange relatives… and hey presto you have a Voodoo Wedding!’ 

Books4U -  ‘I love all the quirky characters in the story and just the pure madness and fun of it all.’ 

Jenny in Neverland – ‘You know what you're getting and it works with these books although Janice still manages to shock you with even more crazy voodoo magic. I truly enjoyed every one of them.’ 

Brook Cottage Books – ‘The characters are all interesting and unique and the storyline is fascinating.'

May - and back to the Caribbean...

I’ve lots to tell you this month. Trav and I went back to the Caribbean and visited the beautiful Dominican Republic. This was our second trip to this particular island as we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary there last year. This year, we booked on spec just a couple of weeks prior to departure because we saw it at the most amazing price. So amazing in fact that we expected there to be a catch and we were right to be suspicious. It turned out there is  a major construction project going on in the next bay to the resort. We were amazed to see that the idyllic beach filled with palm trees that we had explored the previous year, was now a vast concrete car park and half built cruise ship terminal.

The bay on the left as it was in 2013 and on the right as it is now: a cruise terminal under construction.

The only way to see this in a country heavily reliant on tourism, is positively, for the tourist dollars it will bring into the island. Luckily, there are plenty more idyllic palm filled beaches in the Dom Rep to explore and, call me fickle if you will, but from over the hill at our beach resort location we could only see a single crane that could easily be ignored when focusing on the clear blue ocean, the hot white sand and the beach bar.

 Left: at the beach bar with Trav.   Right: at the main bar with lovely new holiday friends.

 The beach at our resort hotel

 

Trav and I have now visited a total of twelve Caribbean islands. We have been to Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua, St Barths, Tortola, Dominica, St Vincent, Bonaire, Aruba, Curacao and Grenada. The Dominican Republic is one of my firm favourites. The weather is tropical of course and the beaches are idyllic. The island is green and lush and filled with amazing rainforest and beautiful waterfalls. It’s famous for its Amber and Larimar. The Amber World Museum is a must-visit and there is a jewellery shop right next door. Trav bought me an unusual and beautiful ring that ‘twists’ showing amber on one side and blue Larimar on the other - see photo. The Brugal rum factory tour is also worth doing as is the 800m cable car trip to the top of Mount Isabel de Torres.

 My lovely and unusual amber and larimar 'twist' anniversary ring

Did you know that the Dom Rep was the location for the Jurassic Park movie? It really does have that prehistoric jungle feel to it. Trav and I ventured through the rainforest and climbed (and jumped from) seven waterfalls - which was an exhilarating experience and fun - once I’d claimed the fear! The Dom Rep is a real gem I and would highly recommend it to you. We stayed at The Riu Hotel Resort, Bahia de Maimon, Puerto Plata.

 Above: the famous Amber Museum and views of Puerto Plata from the cable car

 

 A dive centre on the beach and the prehistoric rainforest island interior

My Hair Braiding Adventure! The heat and humidity in the Caribbean always plays havoc with my thick curly hair, which refuses to behave itself and drives me crazy. So when I was asked by a young Haitian girl on the beach if I wanted hair braids and extensions - I set aside my fear of ending up looking like Medusa and went for it. I have to say that for two whole weeks it was the easiest holiday hair ever. Once home, it did take me many hours to undo the braids but as my real hair seemed non the worse for its ordeal, I wouldn’t hesitate to have it done again given the chance! What do you think?

 Before, during and after the braiding…!

Trav and I are now back in Scotland and back to work. Our tans are covered up in the usual jeans and woolly sweaters as it’s cold and raining. The welcome home however is warm as our wee west highland terrier Polly is glad we are back and it’s so nice to catch up with our sons #1 and #3.

Son #2, who lives in a city called Daegu in South Korea, where he works as an English teacher, is expecting us to visit in a couple of weeks time. We will be flying from Glasgow to Dubai with Emirate Airlines and from Dubai to Seoul on their new double-decker A380 Super Jumbo. From Seoul we will take the KTX bullet train to Daegu. It sounds like an exhausting trip but I can hardly wait!

So my next post here in June will report on our South Korean trip!

On the writing front: I today submitted a quirky travel feature to Loveahappyending Lifestyle Magazine. ‘Planning for the Snap Gap’ explains how unlike a gap year, a typical snap gap can be a month, six weeks, or a few months long. Are you someone who looks forward to your annual fortnight holiday only to wish it was longer? Are you, like Trav and I, ready to Snap Gap..? If so then do join me and pop over to the http://www.loveahappyending.com/ website to read my feature when it goes live on 19th May.

The latest award winning LLm e-magazine is out now. It’s Issue 4.

 Download your copy now - it’s FREE!

Since the start of the year when we sold our cottage on the hillside and moved to a rented house down by the river, our lives have changed so much. Trav and I have always owned our own home and I thought it would feel strange, even a little scary, not to have a property of our own to call ‘home’. But actually it doesn’t feel scary at all. It feels liberating. I realise that our nesting days are over and our three boys are all grown up and doing their own thing. So this is the time for us to do our own thing too. We are free to explore the world.

So I had a house sign made. It’s a lovely custom driftwood piece made by the lovely Becky at www.driftwoodmagic.co.uk I explained that we wanted a handmade rustic style sign to take with us wherever we went, which we could hang up on a door or a wall, to make anywhere ‘our hoose’ (that’s Scottish for house!) This is the sign. I’m thrilled with it. What do you think…?

 

On the 1st July we are back to the Caribbean again - and this time for three whole months - to an island we have not been to before. Have you guessed where it is yet…?

I promise to tell you all about it next time!

Love,

Janice xx

 

High Days and Holidays...

It’s April and I’ve been Missing in Action for two months!

I spent all of February and a good bit of March settling into our lovely new house by the river - but that’s not all I did - as Mr JH and I grabbed a last minute ‘late deal’ to celebrate my March birthday by cruising the Caribbean.

We flew to Barbados on the new ‘Dreamliner’ plane and joined the ship ‘The Dream’ on which we sailed to ten fabulous Caribbean islands over two weeks. It was all very dreamy indeed!

A dream Caribbean cruise

Mr JH and I have always loved to travel. As soon as we met, we began planning our adventures together and spent an awful lot of time and energy saving up to fund our dream destinations. We started off with an exciting one week trip to the Scilly Isles, where we took our tent and spent every day scuba diving on eighteenth century ship wrecks. A year later we married, and then spent the next two years saving up to go to our dream destination of Barbados. In 1985 we managed it. Two years after that we went to St Lucia. While on St Lucia, we were caught up in Hurricane Gilbert but despite the winds and rain and decimation all around us, our love affair with the Caribbean was far from over.

When our three kids came along we went to Centre Parcs in the UK and Euro Disney in Paris. Then once they were a bit older, we saved up every penny we had to take them to America. We would much rather save up to take the kids to theme parks and beaches in Florida than to put in a new kitchen or buy new furniture. As you can imagine, it took us many many years to get the house fixed up!

Horton's caricatured at Universal Studios Orlando Florida! 

More than anything, Mr JH likes to scuba dive, and just like chips of the old block, two of our sons are PADI scuba diver instructors. I have tried scuba diving too, but these days I much prefer to snorkel a coral reef or to lie on the beach in the hot sun with a cocktail in one hand and a book in the other.

Holidays are important to us and we have always given them high priority. We have been very lucky and have been to some amazing places all over the world, but as we’ve got older and our three lovely sons have grown up, graduated, and made their own way - it not just holidays - but travel and adventure - that calls to us.

Scuba fun!

So this year, Mr JH and I are planning to take a ‘gap summer’. Hence the new blog title! We haven’t actually retired from our day jobs yet of course, as we are both still reasonably young and we need to work, but we are fortunate to both be self-employed. As such, we have shifted our schedules to accommodate taking time out to travel before we do get too old! This will mean we will have to keep hopping home from time to time to check on things but that’s just the way it will have to work this year.

I’m hoping to use this blog over the summer months to record our experiences while we travel, so that our lovely friends and family can see for themselves what we are getting up to and share in our adventures. For the interest of my author and reader friends, I’m also hoping to chart the progress of a book I'm hoping to write this summer. ‘Love Under Construction’ is a contemporary romance novel – itself under construction – which I hope to finish and publish later this year to Kindle and paperback.

So later this month, we are back to the Caribbean: this time to the Dominican Republic – the land of waterfalls and rainforest and palm trees and beaches. I love the Dom Rep: culturally it reminds me of how Barbados was thirty years ago.

Exploring caves and climbing waterfalls in Dominican Republic

During the month of May we will be home in Scotland again, but in June we are flying off to Seoul in South Korea via Dubai to visit #2 son, who lives and works out in South Korea as an English teacher.

At the start of July we are off on an epic and exciting three month long trip, returning to the UK on the 1^st October. So where are we going exactly…..?

I’ll give you a few clues. It’s a tropical island that is approx seven miles long and two miles wide. It is surrounded by the second largest coral reef in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia) and it’s in the Caribbean.

Another clue…? Well, getting there is not easy and takes a bit of time as it’s not possible to fly direct. We are flying from Glasgow to London and then from London to Miami. From Miami we have to fly to Honduras, Central America, and then we will take a small plane out to the island….

Intrigued…? Well you’ll just have to keep popping back here to my blog to find out exactly where in the Caribbean our mystery destination is....

Public Domain Map of the Caribbean: Wikimedia.org

Do please join me on this amazing adventure!

Janice xx