Michelle Styles's Blog, page 54

6 - 2 is the current tally

The tally right now stands at 6 successful extermination of mice and 2 mice who escaped from the Rentokil lethal mouse trap.
I do have to wonder if one of the mice who escaped is the mouse who ate a hole in the live catch trap. Luckily this mouse also ate the poison. The trap has been baited again and pushed slightly back. And I have put the poison down again. Some success I suppose as the rat run poison remains and the other live catch trap's poison was not touched.
So I think we have a bad i...

Mice like peanut butter

Since putting out the lethal mouse trap baited with peanut butter yesterday afternoon, three mice have met their maker. Two yesterday evening, and then one found this morning.

All the poison has gone from the rat run and the two live catch traps. I should note here -- the poison is not able to be accessed by puppies or when they arrive the kittens -- it is why I am using the live catch traps and the rat run.

I have re-baited the lethal mouse trap with peanut butter. And have put more poison do...

More Italian releases

I was really pleased to discover that 2 more of my books are going into Italy in January.

First of all there is the Italian version of An Impulsive Debutante -- IL VALZER DELLA DEBUTTANTE
or Waltz of the Debutante which I think is a lovely title.

The blurb reads likes this:

Inghilterra, 1847

Lottie Charlton è ansiosa di andare a Londra per partecipare alla sua prima stagione mondana. Sua madre si aspetta che trovi un ricco gentiluomo con cui convolare a nozze e lei ha tutte le intenzioni di accont...

Mice in the basement

I discovered late on Friday when I finally got around to getting the Christmas decorations out that we had mice in the basement. They were enticed there by my youngest storing bird seed. Bird seed and mouse droppings mingled. All the stockings had to be washed. Several hand made decorations from long ago Christmases had to be tossed.
What is worse the mice had made nests in several boxes of clothes and old papers. I had carefully stored stuffed animals, dresses I had made for my daughter when ...

Educating Aspiring Authors

As I firmly believe that people have to know about a business before getting in and there has been a great deal of talk about that most ancient of publishing methods -- self publishing.
I would like to highly recommend aspiring authors read this article on the Great Myth of Self Publishing.
Furthermore, the blog How Publishing Really Works is also excellent.


For me, personally, I am very happy with a commercial publishing model (a rather newer model than self publishing btw) for my fiction. But ...

The k word

Because some asked. Yes, the k word has been spoken and approved. My daughter tackled my husband about it just after we returned from Istanbul as a friend's cat had had kittens. To my amazement, he agreed that she could have it as her Christmas present.
The pair will be arriving just after the middle of December.
More news when it happens.
Me thinks Christmas is going to be chaos!

Fresh Fiction, Tote bags and records

The Viking's Captive Princess is featured in the Fresh Fiction Candy's Inside Books column. Candy kindly included a little anecdote about iolite or the Viking's sun compass.

I am at Tote Bags today discussing climate change and writing. Basically some of the things HMB and I have done/are doing to help conserve the world's finite resources. I have been so impressed with the way HMB has used technology to become a paperless office as much as possible. The blog was inspired by a Tote Bags...

12 Days of Christmas and Unusual Historical

Because The Viking's Captive Princess has just been released, there are places to find me with giveaways.
First of all Donna Alward is doing her annual 12 Days of Christmas extravaganza. There is a huge lot of books to win. Today is my day. And I should say that if you want to get in the Christmas mood, Donna's latest novella -- Montana, Mistletoe and Marriage is a great way to do it. Donna even includes a recipe.

Then today sees another excerpt from The Viking's Captive Princess on Unusual...

The official publication date for The Viking's Captive Princess

Today is the official publication date for The Viking's Captive Princess. I know it has been out in the US retail shops -- in time for the Thanksgiving shopping frenzy. But now all the ebook shops have it as well. So if you want to downloaded on a Kindle or nook, you can.
Also I have done an interview with Darlene of Finding the Write Words. It should be up soon.

For me, I am drinking coffee, wrapped in a fleece blanket (hard frost on the ground) and working on my next manuscript that was due 3...

Winners from the November Newsletter

The winners from the November Newsletter are as follows:

Lorraine C -- signed copy of the Viking's Captive Princess

Suzy Roy -- a copy from one of my backlist books


And
Tammy Swift gets the dubious honour of me being her mentor for the year.

All have been contacted via email.

Many thanks for entering.