Janice Horton's Blog, page 28

So what’s your very favourite sort of party…?

 A birthday party, a fancy dress party, a cocktail party, a surprise party, a hen party, a stag party, an office party, a xmas party, a new year party….? And I bet you have just the photo to prove it …?!! On Wednesday 31st July I’m throwing an online party to launch my latest title ‘How To Party Online’. The event will be hosted on Facebook but will also spill over to the blogosphere, to Twitter, and to Pinterest and everyone is invited! To take part, dig out a photo of you looking your party best and post it onto the party page on the last day of July to take part in the real fun and virtual games. Simply comment, like, post, share, tweet (#partyon) to be in the draw to win some fabulous party prizes!   Check out the Facebook Party Page   

‘How To Party Online’ has been chosen by Thornberry Publishers as recommended reading for all authors and writers.

Early Reviews on Amazon
“This book explains, step-by-step, how to prepare for a book launch and do it with style!”

“Janice also adds a very nice personal touch. It's like getting help from a friend”

“I'll be consulting it many times as I plan future online promotional parties.

“This e-book will quickly become a staple on every author's ereader.”

DG Life Magazine says:
“Janice has made it her business to get stuck into the whole self-publishing malarkey. Savvy enough to realise it’s not enough to simply write, she’s studied social media marketing until it could be her specialist subject on Mastermind. She can plan a book launch, maximise publicity, keep the momentum going after the first initial flush, and perhaps most of all, she knows how to make the whole thing fun, which is no mean feat”.

About ‘How To Party Online’

• Online parties are a fun way to launch your book or introduce your product and engage with your target audience.
• Social media applications are perfect forums for parties - the venue capacity is infinite, the guest list is global, and the fun and games can lead to bestselling success!
• This aim of this book is to show you how you can produce measurable results from your very first online party and while you are still working towards building up your social network.
• The purpose of this book is to walk and talk you through each step of the planning and implementation of four very different online promotional parties.
• Together we will look at how much work and effort is involved in implementing each step and we will experience the party format, explore the outcomes, and quantify all the successes.
• I’ll show you how to make it lots of fun! 


Check out the Facebook Party Page
Post up your own Party Photo on Wednesday 31st July
Take part in all the real fun & virtual games !
How To Party Online is exclusive to Amazon for Kindle
Amazon UK    Amazon.com

Trending - and not just on Twitter...!

Grow Your Own is trending - not just on Twitter - but on my Scottish Country Lifestyle feature in Loveahappyending Lifestyle Magazine this week. 
  If you haven’t discovered LLm yet then you are in for a treat with the wide range of articles on lifestyle and entertainment regularly on offer and written by an international cast of guest writers. You can, if you wish, sign up for the newsletter to get a digest straight into your inbox but very soon, due to its amazing popularity, the magazine will also be available as a downloadable quarterly PDF for your tablet and e-reader. How fab is that…!!? 

      Click here to read my latest LLm Scottish Country Lifestyle article   
  I’m thrilled to announce that the winner of my Bagpipes & Bullshot completion is Bouncin’ Barb, who left the correct answer in a comment on the 18th June. Bullshot is indeed an alcoholic cocktail similar to a Bloody Mary! Bouncin’ Barb wins a Kindle copy of Bagpipes & Bullshot so, Barb, do please get in touch with me via a DM on Twitter @JaniceHorton or via email at janice@janicehortonwriter.co.uk and I’ll send it out to you pronto!
Meanwhile, party peeps, you might be interested to know that I’m still busily making plans for the online party I’m hosting to officially launch my non-fiction book ‘How To Party Online’ - and I promise to have news, a date, and links for you next Friday on that!   So 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…!

Virtual parties, cyber pizza, internet ice-cream - and food fights!

I’m excited to be over at the Romantic Novelist’s Association Blog today – talking about virtual parties, cyber pizza, internet ice cream and food fights!
 
I'd love you to pop over and keep me company by clicking HERE

 
Then haste ye back here next week when I’ll have more fun news to share!! Janice xx 

RIP My Beloved Kindle!

 Before I went on holiday I spent a considerable amount of time choosing and downloading to my Kindle all the books I might want to read while away. Dozens and dozens of them! After all, one of the best things about an ereader is that it holds so many books, and after once being charged a fortune in excess baggage due to the weight of my holiday reading, I’m now a total Kindling enthusiast and won’t travel anywhere without it. Actually, I have two Kindles. I have a two and a half year old 3G (the one with the keyboard) and I also have the new Kindle Fire (my prezzy from last Christmas) and, as I planned to do most of my reading on the beach, I decided taking the older one with its non-glare screen was the sensible option. But woe is me! On day two, after reading just one book (Security by Mandy Baggot – which is, by the way, a fabulous and highly recommended read) my Kindle died and could not be resuscitated. (Even on getting home and ordering up a replacment battery, it was still as dead as dead could be). I did ask our holiday rep if there was any books I could borrow, there was but they were all printed in Russian and German, which I neither read nor speak. So for those of you about to embark on your summer travels with your full stocked ereader, I might suggest you sneak a paperback or two into your luggage, just as a back up! If you fancy reading my Kindle bestselling and award winning humorous novel Bagpipes & Bullshot this summer, you can win a copy between now and the end of June by answering this simple question (if you don’t know the answer you could always Google for it!)
What exactly is Bullshot…?
Answers in the comment box below, my email to me at janice@jancehortonwriter.co.ukor you can post to my Facebook Author Page (which I’d love you to Like while you are there!)


Haste ye back here next Friday!

Hot News...!

HOT NEWS..! I’m back from holiday to discover that while I was away my novel ‘Bagpipes & Bullshot’ won The People's Book Award for Kindle (May 2013)! Previous winners include JK Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’, Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’, David Nicholl’s ‘One Day’ and E L James’ ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’.


The People's Book Awardsare the only international awards open to all titles distributed in Kindle or Printed formats by Amazon sites around the world. Established in 2008, the awards site (www.thebookawards.com) attracts large numbers of visitors and in that time thousands of voters around the world has shown their appreciation by supporting and nominating books in the competition. The competition is strong, with several international best sellers, in addition to talented emerging authors making up the field.
Managing Director, Peter Lihousent me a personal message of congratulations and this is what he said!
"Over the years, we've seen a great many popular titles gain the tangible applause of their fans by their votes and comments, but Bagpipes & Bullshot enjoys particularly warm support. It really is quite an accomplishment for an author to inspire their customers so much that they get online and vote in such numbers and leave extremely flattering comments. Janice Horton is a very worthy winner!"
Thank you to everyone who voted for Bagpipes & Bullshot!

COMPETITION

Win a Kindle copy of Bagpipes & Bullshot - just answer this question.

What exactly is bullshot...?

Leave your answer in a blog comment below
or
email your entry to janice@janicehortonwriter.co.uk
or
leave your answer on my Author Facebook Page
 
(competition to run to 30th June)
 Thank you also for the lovely comments on my last post. You are all correct in that the Pearl Anniversary is for 30 years married and Georgina Troy is the winner of an ecopy of Voodoo Wedding! Haste ye back on Friday for my usual weekly posting

Taking time out for a pearl…

 I’m taking time out for a couple of weeks. It’s a special ‘pearl’ wedding anniversary for Mr JH and I this month, so we are off somewhere romantic to celebrate. Although we have organised housesitting cover for the hens and the dogs while we are away, I won’t be blogging or tweeting or FB’ing  as usual (I’ve promised Mr JH that I won’t!!) but I’m sure I’ll return with renewed online networking vigour and lots to share – so until then - lovely peeps, have fun answering this question.   How many years have Mr & Mrs JH been married if it’s their ‘pearl’ anniversary..?
 There's a free ebook copy of Voodoo Wedding in a prize draw for all those who comment below while I'm away - or tweet the answer using @JaniceHorton so I see it - when I get back!  Haste ye Back in a couple of weeks...     

High Maintenance…?

This week, I took a trip to my favourite city; Edinburgh. I must have visited ‘Auld Reekie’ over a hundred times, but I still get a thrill of anticipation as I travel towards the city centre. With Edinburgh Castle as a backdrop, I head straight for Princes Street and make my way from one end to the other, taking in all the high street ‘names’ as I go. Then, if I can dash into Harvey Nichols by St Andrew’s Square before making my way back down George Street, stopping to window shop in Hobbs, Whistles and LK Bennet, all the better!

Edinburgh Castle overlooking Princes Street Edinburgh. Photos: commons.wikimedia.org 
My ultimate destination is to my hairdresser on Fredrick Street. I’ve been going to Angus Gordon for almost twenty years. I love to catch up on gossip with my lovely stylist, spend time relaxing, reading magazines and sipping champagne, as well as getting my hair expertly coiffured. Eeek - that makes me sound terribly high maintenance, doesn’t it?!



A glass of champagne at the hairdresser But in my own defence, unlike some of my very stylish friends, who go to their hairdresser every six weeks, I go no more than four times a year. Of course, by the time I need to go - I mean I really need to go - and practically have to sneak in with a paper bag over my limp, split, drab coloured hair, professing my apologies for looking such an absolute mess.
 
On my way to looking coiffured...!
 But a glass of chilled champagne and my colour fix usually makes me feel much better. Then a special conditioning treatment followed by a head and neck massage quickly banishes any writerly muscle stresses and makes me feel fabulous even before I’ve had a cut and style!
So that’s my ultimate treat. My no-longer-secret indulgence.  Something I save up for and look forward to lots. What’s your indulgence…? Is it a hair appointment, a shoe shopping session, an occasional luxury spa retreat?   Does it make you terribly high maintenance or are you ‘worth it’? Do tell..!!


A bit of sunshine and out comes the bikini..!

    This week, while Horton HQ was encapsulated in a mist so thick there was no sky never mind any sunshine, it seemed entirely unfair to me that everyone south of the Scottish border was basking in a summer heat wave. On Facebook there were wall to wall photos of blue skies, sunny gardens, and friends having their breakfast al-fresco. Envious, me? You bet!So I did a shout out to my lovely English friends – it was a plea actually – to send the sunshine north. And guess what? It worked!

The very next day (yesterday) miraculously, we had warm glorious and mood enhancing sunshine that had me casting off the layers of winter woollies I have lived in for months and hauling summer clothes out of my wardrobe. In no time at all, in a sunshine infused frenzy, I was trying on strappy tops and white cotton dresses – and erm, bikinis.
All ready for my summer holiday then…?   Mmm, not quite.  I have now hauled my trusty torso-track gadget from the back of the cupboard and I’m frantically doing the necessary workout. It seems that winter woollies can hide an awful lot more than a bikini ever could. Now, do you think if I did a shout out my clever English friends to send me a stomach as flat as my ironing board, that it might work too…? Haste Ye Back (that’s both you and the sunshine…!) 

NEW FEATURE – Interesting Plots and Themes - Revenge

To kick of my new blogging feature on interesting plots and themes – I have invited back to the blog Harriet Schultz, American author of the Amazon bestseller Legacy of the Highlands and its just-published sequel, A Legacy of Revenge, to talk to us about her contemporary romantic suspense novels which each have a central theme of revenge, which Harriet cleverly combines with passion, hot men (of course), a love story, intrigue and settings as varied as Scotland, Buenos Aires, Miami and Boston.
Recently, Harriet was invited to write a guest column for USA Today on the theme of revenge in romance novels, for which she interview Jayne Ann Krentz (aka Amanda Quick) for the story. I found this to be fascinating reading. So, in case you missed it, I’ve asked Harriet to pop over to the UK and tell us all about her theme of revenge.
“…if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare
When wronged, who hasn’t craved the satisfaction that revenge can bring? The target could be a boyfriend whose betrayal broke your heart, those mean girls who made your life miserable, or the villain who stole something you value — a material object, something more abstract such as honor, or even the life of a loved one. The list of triggers that might set off the need for vengeance is endless.
Revenge is a very human emotion, a dark and powerful one, yet one that’s hard to resist. It’s the rare person who hasn’t yearned to retaliate for a wrong at some point. In real life, however, getting back at someone isn’t always wise or do-able, so as readers and writers we derive vicarious pleasure when fictional characters do the deed for us.
Vengeance is a popular theme in romance novels and crosses all subgenres from historicals to the paranormal, contemporary chick lit and, of course, suspense. A quick Amazon search for “romance” and “revenge” results in more than one thousand titles. (I was happy to find my newest, A Legacy of Revenge, among the first fifteen on this list).  Delve further and Google comes up with more than two million hits for “revenge in romance novels.”
The titles of romance novels with a revenge theme show that payback can take many forms and may be delivered by a disparate group of characters — billionaires, banshees, jocks, vampires, homecoming queens, rock chicks and even one middle-aged woman.  The plots and people who inhabit the pages of these books are as wide-ranging and original as writers’ imaginations can make them, but all feature at least one protagonist with an overwhelming desire to retaliate for a real or perceived wrong.
What is it that makes revenge such a satisfying plot device? It’s certainly not a new one. The Bible is filled with “an eye for and eye” tales of revenge, it was a favorite of Shakespeare’s and there would have been no Count of Monte Cristo without it. Country music’s queen of revenge songs, Miranda Lambert, says people connect with her lyrics because  “these songs make you feel emotion. They are just so passionate.” And we all know that a romance novel without passion is a book that will not be read.
Revenge snakes its way through both of my romantic suspense novels, but it doesn’t pit the hero and heroine against each other. Instead they’re united in a quest to discover why the heroine’s husband — the hero’s best friend — was murdered and to avenge the killing. The smoking hot (of course) former womanizer’s feelings for the heroine run deep and our hero is equally determined to win her heart. They believe that the vendetta is over at the end of book one, but it comes back to haunt them in the sequel. As Daniel Craig (aka James Bond) says, “revenge doesn’t stop.”
Bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz knows something about the appeal of revenge in romance novels. "When I use revenge as a motive for a hero or a heroine it is always all about family and responsibility to others - never personal.  There is nothing noble, heroic or romantic about seeking revenge for yourself.  But to avenge a deep wrong done to someone in your family or to someone you love?  Ah, that is another story - one I can write."
The uncertainty about if, how, and when the revenge will take place, whether it will be successful, and the ultimate happiness of our hero and heroine are what make these romances so deliciously engaging and keep us turning the pages late into the night.
A Legacy of Revenge When a fourteenth-century Scottish oath leads to murder in present-day Boston, the victim's devastated widow seeks revenge. Determined to find and punish the person who killed her husband Will, Alexandra Cameron joins forces with his best friend, the handsome, wealthy and powerful, Argentine Diego Navarro. A Legacy of Revenge is the sequel to the Amazon bestseller, Legacy of the Highlands. 


To celebrate the sequel’s publication, the first book in the series, Legacy of the Highlands, is priced at just 73p from May 2nd -5th. It’s available from most e-booksellers including Amazon Apple, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. 


About the Author: Harriet Schultz is an award-winning journalist whose career began at TIME magazine. She loves to travel and is happy that something she enjoys adds realism to the locations of her books.
Twitter: @HarrietSchultz
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