Ros Clarke's Blog, page 26

Liveblog

So, because it’s the Bank Holiday weekend and I love you, I will be liveblogging possibly the most cracktastic book I have ever read. I admit, I have read this book before. Twice. I know, I know. I read it when I was a teenager and when I saw it on sale in a charity shop a couple of years ago, I had to read it again to see if it really was as dreadful as I remembered.

Reader, it was.

And, so, tonight I will be reading this book for a third time. So you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

But if you want to join in and read-along, the book in question is this:

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Food, glorious food

From Reckless Runaway at the Racecourse:

Luke and Fliss’s Favourite Coffee and Walnut Cake

It’s practically the only thing they can agree on. I agree, too.

8oz butter

8oz caster sugar

4 eggs

Two tablespoons of strong instant coffee

8oz self-raising flour

2.5oz walnut pieces

4oz butter (for icing)

7oz icing sugar

2 tablespoons strong instant coffee

12 walnut halves

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

Cream butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each. Mix in coffee. Fold in flour and walnut pieces. Spoon the cake mixture into two 8in cake tins. Transfer to the oven to bake 25-30 minutes. Remove the cakes from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Beat the butter and icing sugar together. Add coffee. Spread half the icing on one cake. Place second cake on top and spread the rest of the icing. Decorate with walnut halves. YUM.

From The Tycoon’s Convenient Wife:

Emily’s Pasta with Tomato and Balsamic Sauce

Quick, easy, versatile. Perfect.

Put 1kg of cherry tomatoes in a roasting tin. Add lots of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Cook in a hot oven for about 25 minutes, until the skins are split and the tomatoes are soft. You can use the sauce like this, or you can transfer all the contents to a saucepan, blend until smooth and simmer to reduce the sauce, making the flavour even more concentrated. Serve with your favourite pasta shapes, bread and salad. Also good with sausages.

From All I Want For Christmas:

Giovanni’s Tiramisu

Well, okay, Giovanni probably uses his Nonna’s recipe, but this is my favourite tiramisu.

1/2 pint strong coffee

1/2 pint Baileys

400g sponge fingers

2 eggs

3 oz caster sugar

1lb mascarpone cheese

Mix the coffee with the 2/3 of the Baileys in a shallow bowl. Soak the sponge fingers and line the bottom of a glass dish with one layer of biscuits. Whisk the two yolks and the sugar together until thick, then fold in the rest of the Baileys, and the mascarpone. Whisk one egg white (you can discard the other) until thick and frothy. Fold the egg white into the mascarpone mixture, and then spread half of this mixture on top of the layer of biscuits. Repeat these two layers. Refrigerate overnight. Sieve cocoa powder over the top just before serving.

Always make twice as much as you think you are going to need.

From Table For One:

Ward’s Perfect Bacon Sandwich

2-3 rashers of smoked back bacon

2 slices of fresh, white bread

Butter

Ketchup

Fry the bacon. I don’t care if you normally grill it. For a sandwich, you need the fat to soak into the bread. Also, I apologise if you live in the US. You won’t be able to get the right kind of bacon and you will never know how good this could be. Butter the bread. Place the fried bacon on one slice. Pour ketchup over the top. Press second slice of bread down firmly and slice the sandwich in two. Enjoy with a good cup of tea.

The Oil Tycoon and Her Sexy Sheikh

Saqati Biryani

Okay, so Saqat doesn’t actually exist, but this is an Arabic biryani of the kind that Khaled loves.

3 cups basmati rice

1/2 teaspoon saffron (if you can’t afford saffron, use a pinch of turmeric)

2 teaspoons rose water

2lb cubed lamb

3 onions, roughly chopped

4 cardamom poda

3 bay leaves

1 cinnamon stick

8 cloves

8 peppercorns

4 garlic cloves

1 small pot plain yogurt

handful of mint, roughly chopped

handful of dates, roughly chopped

juice of an orange

Salt

Oil

Soak saffron in rose water (if using turmeric, omit this step). Put lamb in a large saucepan, cover with water; add one onion, cardamom, bay leaves, cinnamon, cloves, salt and peppercorns. Boil 45-60 minutes until meat is tender. Keep the meat pieces aside and save 4 cups of the stock.

Fry chopped onion and garlic in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add meat and spices and fry for a few minutes golden. Add mint, yogurt, dates, orange juice and rose water and saffron mixture (or turmeric) and cook for five minutes over a medium heat.

Cook the rice in the reserved stock. Add half the amount of cooked rice to the meat mixture, stir well. Sprinkle the remaining rice on top. Do not stir. Cover and leave on low heat 10 – 15 minutes. Serve with naan or similar flat breads. YUM.

Big Bonanza Bank Holiday Bash: day two

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Coming up today:



Liveblogging

Back in the day, I used to write reviews of romance novels. Occasionally, I would liveblog my reviews as I was reading through the books. It was a lot of fun but quite a lot of work. Today, for one day only, I shall be doing a very special liveblog indeed. Starting around 6pm (BST) if you want to follow along live.

Focus on food

It’s true, I like food a lot, and I like to include it in my books. I’ll be gathering together some of the recipes for you to recreate these scenes in your own home. Sort of.

Happy hour

I’m not telling you when or what, but stay tuned for some extra-bargainous news.

Ongoing:

Find me a sheikh – and win three of my books!

Caption that cover art: classic romance crazy

Find me a sexy sheikh

Romance Land is full to bursting with sheikhs who are sexy, smouldering, sizzling and all-round gorgeous.

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The real world is never as good as Romance Land. Not enough billionaires to go round, for one thing. But also, I think, in the quality of available sheikhs.

So here’s the challenge: find me a sexy sheikh.

Leave a link in the comments to an image/website of a real life sheikh who you think could qualify as a romance hero. No actors playing sheikhs in movies; no cover models; only 100% genuine sheikhs accepted! Feel free to enter more than once if you can find more than one sexy sheikh!

The winner (who will be selected at random from all entries) will receive a FREE copy of my latest book, The Oil Tycoon and Her Sexy Sheikh, and I’ll throw in free copies of The Tycoon’s Convenient Wife and Reckless Runaway at the Racecourse. Competition closes at midnight on Monday (BST).

Caption that cover art: classic romance crazy

I’ve been having a lot of fun putting together cover art for books I am NEVER going to write. But if I were to write them, I’d need to find titles for them, and that’s where you come in. I’m looking for funny, silly, brilliant suggestions for these romance novels. I’ll make up the best ones into ‘real’ (digital) covers for the winners.

So, here’s cover 1:

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Now, let those titles roll!

Big Bonanza Bank Holiday Bash

[image error] I declare the Big Bonanza Bank Holiday Bash now open! Let the fun and games begin.

Bargains

For the whole weekend, my two self-published titles will be on sale at the bargain price of just 99 cents or 77p! If you’ve wanted to try my books, now’s a good time to start. They’re available at the reduced prices at Amazon or, in all formats (including Kindle) at Smashwords. Who also pay a higher royalty rate. Just so you know. I don’t know whether the reduced prices will migrate across other retailers over the weekend or not. I’m afraid that’s out of my control.

Reckless Runaway at the Racecourse is a short, contemporary romance novel available at:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Smashwords

The Tycoon’s Convenient Wife is a contemporary romance novel now available at:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Smashwords

Book Signing

Well, sort of. If you click on the Kindlegraph widget on the right, you’ll be able to request personalised, ‘signed’ messages with the cover of any of my ebooks. These get sent directly to your Kindle or as an email attachment. And best of all, it’s free!

Giveaways

There will also be a giveaway on each of Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I’m giving away a copy of my latest book, The Oil Tycoon and Her Sexy Sheikh, an Amazon gift card, and a beautiful piece of artwork. Stay tuned for details on how to enter.

Games

But it wouldn’t be a bank holiday without some slightly disappointing weather and silly games. So I hope you’ll also stick around and join in the fun.

Caption that Cover Art: Classic Romance Crazy – be immortalised on a book cover

Find me a Sexy Sheikh – win books

SALE!

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To celebrate summer and the Olympics and the Jubilee and all sorts of other fabulous things, I am having a special bank holiday weekend sale!

Both my self-published titles will be on sale at the bargain price of just 99c (about 77p) from 5pm on Friday until midnight on Monday (BST). I’ll post again to let you know when the sale has started and give you the links. If you’ve never read one of my books, now’s your chance to try them out.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!!!

Oh, yes, this is not just a sale. This is a BIG BONANZA BANK HOLIDAY BASH. There will be giveaways, competitions, surprises and more. No matter what the bank holiday weather is like, there will be all sorts of fun to be had here at the Shed.

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God Save The Queen.

148 million possibilities

Last week, a couple from Suffolk won £148 million on the lottery. I heard them interviewed on the radio and they sound really lovely. They took their kids to Dominos Pizza to celebrate. That’s feet on the ground for you. I hope they can make a go of it.

I don’t buy lottery tickets which, as the much-missed Linda Smith used to say, makes me marginally less likely to win than if I did. So I spent most of a 4 hour car journey yesterday mentally planning what I would do with £148 million if I won it. I quite often play this sort of game and usually I find it very reassuring, because I actually wouldn’t change very much about my life at all. I would stop working until the thesis was properly finished, but then I would want to carry on doing what I do, pretty much.

£148 million is rather more than I usually imagine. At £1 million, there’s the possibility of doing some nice things for other people, supporting some of the charities I care about, and becoming a bit more financially secure. I could have some fun shopping trips and, of course, First Class Cabins. At £148 million, it’s possible to imagine things on a much grander scale. I could endow scholarships, build libraries, fund new jobs and more. That’s a lot of responsibility but also a lot of possibilities. I came up with a list of four institutions to which I would give about £10 million each. That still leaves over £100 million to play with. I could do wonderful things for family and friends without a second thought. I could buy ALL THE BOOKS. And ALL THE YARN. That is probably not a good idea. I’d still have over £100 million left.

This is going to take more thought.

Do you play this game? What would you do with an unexpected windfall of £1,000,000? What about £148,000,000?

What I’ve Been Reading

I was on holiday last week and this is what I read:

Playing For Keeps, R. L. Mathewson

I liked it much better than the other book of Mathewson’s I’ve read but it has some of the same issues. Formatting, typos, punctuation etc. are all poor. In addition, she writes heroes who are jerks and heroines who are trying to stop being doormats. I won’t be reading any more of hers.

The Chocolate Thief, Laura Florand

I love, love, loved this so much. Chocolate, Paris, a French chocolatier, chocolate, a cute heroine, more chocolate. Sylvain Marquis made me want to move to Paris and track down my very own chocolatier. Guh. So sexy, so delicious, so much fun. The book isn’t perfect but I’ll definitely be back for more.

The Husband She Never Knew, Kate Hewitt

So good. This isn’t a fun book or an easy read, but it’s so worth it. Kate writes love that’s agonisingly, heartbreakingly real. It’s painful but redemptive, there’s honesty and forgiveness, acceptance and hope. It’s about second chances and the possibility of change. I wish I could write books like this but mostly I’m just happy that I can read them.

MacAllister’s Baby (aka Delicious), Julie Cohen

This is an old Presents that I picked up in a charity shop. I liked it a lot. It’s also about food and there’s a very sexy chef in it as well as a buttoned up schoolteacher and some really good scenes with two ‘trouble’ teenagers. The US title is extremely misleading – this is not actually a baby book at all, though there is a baby epilogue. I shall be looking out for more of Cohen’s backlist.

What have you been reading lately? What should I look out for – or avoid?!

Bestseller!

Okay, it’s not quite the New York Times list, but The Oil Tycoon and Her Sexy Sheikh are currently at 97 on the Amazon Bestselling Series Romance list. Hooray! And thank you if you’ve bought it.