It’s the week for getting recognition for Breakaway 🙂

Thrilled to say that Breakaway has won a SFR Galaxy award. You can find all the Galaxy Awards below, and most likely some great new authors and fantastic books. You can find Breakaway in Round 1.

Welcome to the 2018 SFR Galaxy Awards

2018 SFR Galaxy Awards Round 1 – Jo Jones

You can find the other rounds on the SFR Galaxy Award blog, but they are:

2018 SFR Galaxy Awards Round 7 – KJ Van Houten
2018 SFR Galaxy Awards Round 6 – Chris Stock
2018 SFR Galaxy Awards Round 5 – Marlene Harris
2018 SFR Galaxy Awards Round 4 – Lee Koven
2018 SFR Galaxy Awards Round 3 – Heather Massey
2018 SFR Galaxy Awards Round 2 – Riley Moreland

Breakaway has been listed in a 9 Phenomenal Sci-Fi Novels by Contemporary Authors list by Ezvid Wiki.

You can see the published wiki here.

I’m off to look up the other books on the list :).

SKY RAIDERS is free on Amazon until Jan 15th.

The last winner is Carol – congratulations! And all the best to everyone for 2019!

Wow, we made it! Thank you for joining me for the last 24 days, everyone. It’s been great spending the last three plus weeks talking with you all every day 🙂

The last prize is all three ebooks in my Verdant String series. I hope everyone who has regularly commented has won something these last three plus weeks, and if not, you have one last chance!

I know we’ve talked recipes already, but that was about your general favourite. Tomorrow is Christmas Day, and I would love to know, if you celebrate the day, what dish you always make? And if you celebrate a different festival, which dish you make for that? Let’s hear about amazing food! 🙂 I always make marzipan fruit cake (the Nigella Lawson recipe from How to Be A Domestic Goddess). LOVE. THIS. CAKE!

(Just out of the oven.)

The winner today is Lisa! Congratulations, I’ll be in touch to get your books to you.

Wow, one day left to go! I hope everyone has had as much fun as I have.

The prize today is all three ebooks in my Sky Raiders trilogy. I really thought about this series for a long time before I wrote it, and it has a special place in my heart. For those who don’t have a copy of INTENDED, the prequel, it is exclusive to members of my New Release Notification list, so you can sign up in the little form on the right of this post and you’ll receive a copy.

The theme of Sky Raiders at heart is about the potential everyone has inside them. In a literal sense, Taya has had the potential to call a change the whole time, but needs to be out of her comfort zone to realize it. I loved playing with that theme throughout the series.

Do you care about themes in books, or don’t you notice them, you are just interested in a good story?

Congratulations to J.Lee, you are the winner today!

Day 22, and I’m giving away a signed copy of Banquet of Lies.

I had the idea for Banquet of Lies years and years before I wrote it, and I loved the research I did for it, as I am a very enthusiastic cook and I got to look over all kinds of recipes. One of the fun things I watched was an Antonin Carem recipe recreation by British chef Heston Blumenthal. Antonin Carem was my inspiration for the chefs in the story, and there are quite a few chefs 🙂 (And a lot of ladies of the night, too :)). I also included most of the recipes in the book on my website, if you’re interested in recreating some of them – click here.

What’s your favorite recipe, and is there a special occasion you always make it for?

Congratulations, Luzhelena, you are the winner today!

It’s Day 21! Three weeks of giveaways, whew!

Today, I’m giving away the two ebooks from my fantasy duology, the DARK FOREST series. The first book in the series, The Golden Apple, is based on the the fairy tale The Princess on the Glass Hill, which in the original has a male hero, and the princess is the passive participant. I switched that around, and made the princess the protagonist, and I was even able to use a few clues from the original to do it. You can go here to read more about what I was thinking about when I wrote it.

For the sequel, The Silver Pear, I looked at fairytales that had silver pears in them, but none of them lined up with a continuation of The Golden Apple, so I ended up using my imagination, although there is a character in The Silver Pear that harkens back to a very dark character from a British television program I watched in my childhood, Rupert the Bear, the character of Raggety (not the later, sanitized version, but the dark and frankly terrifying one from the original.)

Which is your favorite fairytale with a female protagonist?

I have some writing friends that I’ve known almost as long as I’ve lived in Australia, and Christina Phillips is one of them. She and I met at a writers’ mini-conference and have kept in touch ever since. I absolutely loved her debut novel FORBIDDEN, and I’m thrilled to say that that is the book Christina is offering everyone today.

You can get your copy of FORBIDDEN here.

FORBIDDEN is about a clash of cultures, the Celtic tribes of Britain and the conquering Romans, along with a forbidden love. What I loved so much about FORBIDDEN and the other books in this series was the Celtic backdrop and the ancient Roman time period. We don’t get enough of that! What time period of history would you like to see more of?

Winner for Day 19: Congratulations to Esther M!

I am so thrilled to say that I’ve just started to distribute the audiobook version of my Regency historical novel, A DANGEROUS MADNESS. The talented Shiromi Arserio is my narrator, and I’m thrilled with the way it all worked out. The prize in the draw today is US and Canada ONLY I am afraid, as those are the rules for the giveaway codes I’ve been given, so only commenters from those two countries can go into the draw.

Shiromi lives in the US, but she is British, and that’s one of the reasons I chose her as my narrator, as I liked the idea of a book set in London being read by someone from the UK. Do you have any thoughts about the accent of the narrator when you listen to audiobooks?

Helena is our winner for Day 18! Congratulations 🙂

It’s Day 18 and I have a special treat for everyone today. One lucky commenter will win an audio book of GLADIATOR by my good friend, science fiction romance author Anna Hackett.

You can hear a sample of GLADIATOR here.

My question today is do you enjoy audio books? Do you mix them in with reading?

Learn more about GLADIATOR and Anna Hackett.