Laura Florand's Blog, page 6

Friday! What are you reading?

Friday Book Club! What are you reading this week?

I’m planning on curling up with Eloisa James My American Duchess. She is the queen of witty, sexy dialogue and I have really been looking forward to this one.

And I’ve already read Virginia Kantra’s CAROLINA DREAMING, but since it’s coming out this week I’ll just mention that I love it and recommend it!

Other than that, my daughter had me read RAPUNZEL’S REVENGE with her (a graphic novel by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale which I think you all were the first to recommend to me. She had read it a while back but kept insisting I should read it, too, so she finally picked it as her bedtime cuddle book and I have to say it was excellent. I recommend it, particularly if you have girls who love adventurous heroines.

Also, for those of you looking for good books for girls, we picked up Friday Barnes by R.A. Spratt at the library and loved it. A great, humorous voice, with a very smart heroine. “Friday was on her third lollipop and she still hadn’t solved the case”. (A stolen diamond.) Excellent. I think we might have to order the next ones from Australia and not wait for the U.S. release.

What about you? What are you reading? Anything you recommend? Anything you’re looking forward to?

Goodreads Giveaway: ALL FOR YOU

Chocolate cups have all found owners!

But if you want to try your luck at another giveaway, ALL FOR YOU is up for grabs on Goodreads! Giveaway ends Tuesday.

This book was nominated for Best Indie Contemporary of 2015 by RT Book Reviews and is the first book in the Paris Hearts series. And I’m finishing up its sequel, CHASE ME, right now, so thought it was a good moment for a giveaway.

I hope you enjoy!

Goodreads Book Giveaway


All for You
by Laura Florand

Giveaway ends January 26, 2016.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Chocolate Cup Giveaways and a Review Drive!

Yikes, it is cold here! I think it is time for a CHOCOLATE CUP GIVEAWAY!  FOUR to be precise.


 
I also want to do a Review Drive, so maybe I can link the two. No, you DON’T have to leave a review to be entered for a chocolate cup, just comment/like below or join the newsletter. But I’ll tell you about the review thing, and if you can take the time to help out, that would be very much appreciated.
 
About…what, 6 months?…Amazon started inserting a page on e-reader devices that says “rate this book” and takes you to questions you answer about it. The problem is, that does NOT review the book. It provides data to Amazon that they, presumably, use to guide what they will try to sell to you. (No one really knows, but that seems to me the most likely thing they would do with data.)
 
Anyway, I have always preferred to have reviews grow organically, and not to do street teams and things like that, which is the common technique but which I have a lot of reticence toward. BUT…I’m not sure how to handle this siphoning off of reviews, because it really does make a big difference for so many things.
 
Anyway, if you have a chance to post a review on a book you’ve enjoyed, I would really appreciate it. I’m particularly focusing energy on ONCE UPON A ROSE, A WISH UPON JASMINE, and ALL FOR YOU, as those are the two series in which more books will come out this year. But any and all are appreciated.
 
A big THANK YOU to anyone who can take the time.
 
And for any and all of you, I am receiving urgent pleas to reduce the number of boxes in this house, between books, chocolate cups, and now Girl Scout cookies.
 
So I’m going to give away FOUR CUPS this week, one a day.

 
Just comment below or on Facebook to enter (and newsletter people are also automatically entered).
 
Here’s your question: How could is it where you are? Are you expecting snow this week?
 
Happy Chocolate!

What are you reading this week?

Friday Book Club! What are you reading this week?

I’m still working on Kahnemann’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, and also reading Modiano’s Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier. (Which I’m not responding to *at all*. It always seems to be a mixed bag with me for Nobel Prize winners–there are ones I find incredible, like Neruda, or Le Clézio, or Camus–and others I just can’t manage to get into.) So I haven’t been getting much reading done, a sure sign I need to pick up a more compelling (for me) book! One that I can read also when my brain is a little tired, which you definitely can’t do with Kahnemann.

Anything you recommend? What’s on your reading slate this weekend?

Chocolate and a Book Giveaway!

I like to try to take time to show gratitude for kindness and pay it forward as often as I can, and this week’s giveaway is a double whammy for that goal, so I’m excited.

For chocolate, it’s Artisan Confections! Chef chocolatier and owner Jason Andelman once generously gave hundreds of his delicious chocolates to the Fall for the Book Festival talk I was doing in Washington, and they were absolutely delicious, so I’m delighted to offer One Lucky Person a 15-piece box from them.

 

 

And author Toby Neal has been such a warm, generous, enthusiastic supporter. *Everyone* can be a winner of her books, because the first book in her Lei Crimes series is FREE right now. Mystery but with a romance arc, too, and a vivid evocation of Hawaii as a setting.

But she’s also started writing romance as well this past year, so I’m going to include a giveaway of an ebook copy of the first in her Somewhere series, Somewhere in Maui. Escape the winter to the islands!

 

 

 

As usual, the chocolate can only got to a U.S. winner (fragile chocolates and international shipping=disaster to chocolates), but anyone can win the ebook as long as you’re able to download through one of the major vendors.

If you’re signed up for my newsletter, you’re automatically in the drawing, but to enter again, just tell me this:

What books are you most looking forward to this year?

Unhealthy Body Coming Your Way! :)

Y’all. I have to share this with you because I am dying laughing.

You know how Matt in ONCE UPON A ROSE has a little trouble with his T-shirt?

So I ran across this image researching sexy guy images as, alas, I must do as one of the onerous parts of my writing career. (NEVER write romances, people. The THINGS you have to do.)

Anyway, I thought–hey, it’s January, bright new year. I’ll do a fun little Facebook ad, with a wink to Matt’s T-shirt issues.

Facebook rejected the ad because–REALLY–it…

“promotes an unhealthy body” and “might make viewers upset”. (They also gave me a firm reminder that I might not want to upset you all in this way and need to think of my public’s feelings.)

So…I don’t mean to ruin your day with an unhealthy body image or anything. I hope you’re not too upset.

Six Favorite Things to do in Paris

For What It’s Worth is celebrating 6 years of blogging, and I’m over there talking about 6 favorite things to do in Paris in honor. And there are giveaways, so check it out!

Happy Blogoversary to a wonderful blogger!

 

Chocolate & a Book Giveaway!

December Chocolate and Books Giveaway!

This month I wanted to give a shout out to the lovely Theresa Romain, who first introduced me to Cocoa Dolce Artisan Chocolates and is so sweet as to bring some as presents for me and my daughter when she visits the area and we get together. (Is she wonderful or what?)

Plus my husband just filled his suitcases with Yves Thuries chocolate for me, so obviously I doubly have to pass on the chocolate love. Plus, it’s Christmas! Hanukkah! Holidays!

So today I’m giving away a 9-piece box of Cocoa Dolce chocolates and the first novella in Theresa’s new Romance of the Turf series, which is set in the world of Regency horse-racing. As you all know, I’m a big fan of Theresa’s work and already loving the horse-racing setting, so maybe this will help you discover it, too. (Available only as ebook, so this is an ebook gift.)

We’ll draw a name from those signed up for my newsletter plus  comments below. (So yes, possible to be entered twice.)

I hope you enjoy this month’s chocolate and book!

If you had a good book and a good box of chocolates right now, what would you do?

[Note: As always with chocolate, I can’t ship to international winners, but it should still be possible to send you the ebook. I hope you enjoy!]

A Gift for You

Happy Holidays to everyone!

November had such a stain of darkness across it for those of us with connections to France, and I just wanted to do something that was happy and spread love and hope.

So I’ve continued the prequel story of Jess and Damien’s first meeting (a popular request!), and I’m giving it to all of you this month as my present to you for the holidays. Finding love and hope in dark times…that would be Jess’s story.

The ebook contains “Be Careful What You Wish For”, which you’ve already seen if you subscribe to my newsletter or keep up with my website, and now the continuation “Night Wish”. It’s about 30 pages.

It’s free at all of the below, except Amazon, which won’t let us set the price below $0.99. (They might adjust later–we’ve requested it–but that’s up to Amazon’s discretion.)

I hope 2015 winds up beautifully for all of you and that this story can bring you all some happiness.

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B018PACLXU?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/night-wish-2?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

iBooks: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/…/book/night-wish/id1062451193…?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/night-wish-laura…/1123048269?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Google: https://play.google.com/…/books/d…/Laura_Florand_Night_Wish…?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Paris

When my daughter was even littler than she is now, she absolutely wanted a snow globe of the Eiffel Tower from one of those infinite number of tourist traps selling them in Paris. So although it went against our ironic Parisian grain, we got her one.

When she got off the Métro, she was heartbroken to realize she had left it behind on the train.

Her father found her another one. It was dropped or perhaps sat on and broke and she cried.

Her grandmother after work the last day before we left Paris that trip searched around until she found one for her and brought it home. My daughter stowed it in her backpack, delighted.

Security confiscated it. (It was a tiny snow globe, far less than an ounce of liquid, but that’s the way airport security is sometimes.)

Her grandmother found another one and wrapped it up in bubble wrap and sent it to her in a Christmas package.

She kept it very proudly and very carefully on a shelf until one day she really wanted to take it to school for some class project they were doing on where students come from.

Later she recounted this mysterious episode in class when water just landed in the room, and no one could figure out where it came from, but it wasn’t until a few days later when the teacher reported finding a tiny collection of glass fragments in the side pocket of her backpack that we made the connection to, yes, once again a broken Paris snow globe.

Now she has one in plastic.

Perhaps my daughter’s stubborn search for a beautiful Paris, protected in a bubble, that she can carry with her unbroken is why this image from Soulcié resonates with me particularly. A friend in France shared it on her Facebook.P