Eleni Konstantine's Blog: Eleni's Taverna, page 10

Magic Thursday ... ooops delay....

Sorry but I forgot to let you know that I was at the DarkSide Downunder blog on Thursday, talking about cover love.

I have my paranormal romance short story Sealed with A Kiss FREE on Smashwords, so check out the post for details.

~yia~

Super Sunday: Get a free cook book with purchase at Musa!

Musa Publishing are being super yet again and are offering a FREE book with any purchase during October since it's birthday month.


I have two recipes in there - a Caesar Salad and Mana's Pastitio!

You can see the book here....but don't also forget about the fantabulous post I did the other day about the 30% off selected books.

Week 1 (Oct 1-7) is Aurora Regency and Clio (Historical), and
Week 2 (Oct 8-14) will be  Calliope / FEA (Finally Ever After) / Wiccan House titles. 

Sloane Taylor, the driving force behind Musa's blog was the driving force behind this publication. She's a super duper wench.

Happy buying! :)

~yia~

Fantabulous Friday: Musa Birthday Sale!

Musa Publishing turns TWO!!!

This month, keep a look out for the Musa Publishing 30% birthday sale!
This is from the Musa blog.....




Join us from October 1 - 31 for 30% off top selling books.

Oct. 1 - 7 Aurora Regency & ClioOct. 8 - 14 Calliope/FEA/Wiccan HausOct. 15 - 21 Erato (GLBT)Oct. 22 - 28 Euterpe & Pan (YA)Oct. 29 - 31 Melpomene/Thalia/Urania

Click Musa Publishing for exciting books.Enjoy our Blog with fun topics and fantastic recipes.Speculative fiction fans be sure to read Penumbra eMag Blog.And of course, check us out on Facebook.

So what are you waiting for? Go grab some great reads now!
~yia~

Fantabulous Friday: Besieged cover shortlisted

Today on Fantabulous Friday, I'm spruiking Rowena Corey Daniell's cover for Besieged .


Isn't it just fantabulous!

This art of this cover is up for the Ravenheart Award, part of the David Gemmell Awards.

You can vote for it here.

The artist is Clint Langley and you can see more of his work at his website here.

~yia~

Eleni's Library: Progress

Click the link below to go to my Eleni's Library blog post about my reading.

Eleni's Library: Progress: I'm starting to do some more reading again. Thank goodness! I hate it when life gets so busy and tiring that my brain doesn't have...


~Happy reading and yia!~

Super Sunday:

The Quote
"If you can dream it, you can do it." ~Walt Disney


The funnies
Thanks Alison!




Hope you have a great week everyone.
~yia~

Talking conference

Come check out my blog post about the conference at the SARA blog...

SARA - Sassy in the South: Southern Speak - RWA Conference - Always Worth It!...



~yia~

Super Sunday: Where have I been?

I am so sorry that my blog had gone into a longer hiatus than expected. A number of reasons - health, conference, Tafe...everything melded together and my writing and blogging have been the two avenues to suffer the most.

I have missed blogging and all of you. So I'm back!


One thing I do enjoy doing is spending time with the godkids and the boys love watching movies. Ice Age 4 was on the other week and at this scene, I don't think I have laughed so hard for ages.





Hope you had a laugh too.


Have a great week.

~yia~

Writing Buddy Wednesday: Alison Stuart

Today, my Writing Buddy guest is the lovely Alison Stuart who writes historical stories often with a romantic twist. I met Alison online many years ago. She is an amazing person who with some other amazing ladies, put up their hand to be part of the committee for the flailing Romance Writers of Australia back in 2002 and formed the first cyber committee. It is because of them and their dedication that RWA is still here and growing stronger. Alison was the first cyber president and she was living in Singapore at the time. That's commitment!

Let's get chatting with Alison Stuart!




Hi Eleni and thank you so much for having me over to visit you.


Your most recent release is Secrets in Time. Can you describe this book for us? 
SECRETS IN TIME , is my shortest and most romantic (and, I hope, slightly humourous) story to date. I wrote it at a very sad time in my life as a total escape and it is a romantic time travel with a dashing cavalier for a hero and a very modern doctor as a heroine. 


Please tell us a little about your road to publication.

A road strewn with rocks, boulders, bear traps, one way streets and dead ends…

I started writing when I dislocated a shoulder skiing. That first book (now BY THE SWORD), garnered a lot of interest, did well in several major awards but never found a publisher. Too romantic to be historical and too historical to be a romance, I was told.

So I jumped on the epublishing train just before epublishing took off. Needless to say that particular train shunted itself into a siding. When I got the rights back, self publishing was just taking off so I re-released them myself. About that time the non-writing career took off and I stopped writing all together. When the career ended abruptly in an organizational restructure and a redundancy, I took a year off and just wrote books.

However the mainstream publishing industry still seem to want books that they can market under single labels and are not interested in my cross-genre stories so thank you for the rise of the epublishing market and all those wonderful readers who do want to read cross genre stories. However my stories are not “hot” and “steamy”, which are the e-publishing industry staple, so I still struggle to find readers in the cloud!

It is an amazing time to find myself as a writer. Still a long way to go though!



What attracted you to the historical romance genres?

Historical fiction has been all I’ve read since I was first caught out reading Rosemary Sutcliff under the blankets with a torch at the age of 8. I instinctively sought out authors (like the great Rosemary) who wrote stories with a hero I could fall in love with and a heroine I could relate to and if I could combine that story with an English Civil War setting then that book was a keeper! (Barbara Softly was a favourite author). Those first novels I penned as a teenager were definitely “historical romance” so it is no wonder when I started writing that I just continued with writing the sort of stories I liked to read.



Gather the Bones has been nominated for a few awards. Congratulations! What is about this book that has captured the readers’ attention? 
Thank you. I have been thrilled to get the nominations. I write stories that cross genres…which some readers and publishers may see as a fault. My stories are not easily classified as “historical” or “romance” or, as is the case with GATHER THE BONES , throw in “mystery” and “ghosts. 
Downton Abbey with ghosts?

I don’t think any of my stories could be described as “fluffy”. I like deep characterizations and complex, often black plots. I write about war and the effect of war on people and relationships – whether it is the English Civil War or, as in GATHER THE BONES , the first world war. That may not appeal to all readers but obviously it does to others. So, thank you to my readers for supporting me.


Are you a plotter? Pantser? Or somewhere in between?

A 98% pantser. I start with the idea of characters, setting and story kernel but after that it is on for young and old. This is much easier with romance than with a mystery or suspense story which is what I am dabbling with at the moment.


What are you working on now? And what’s in the near future for Alison Stuart?

Alison Stuart is turning to crime (with, I hope, a romantic bent). The current WIP is a regency suspense which was intended just as a straight regency romance but didn’t stay that way. After that I am dying to get stuck back into the idea for a series of mystery novels set in an exotic location (historical of course). 



What is your favourite part of the process of writing?

Rewriting. I view my first draft as a rough sketch. For me the joy of creation is in the rewrite when I go back and bring the story to life, filling in between the sketches with colour and movement. When the characters start talking back to me is a magical moment. 


What are you currently reading?

I am deeply into Sandra Gulland’s Josephine Bonaparte trilogy – THE MANY LIVES AND SECRET SORROWS OF JOSEPHINE B. Sandra was a founding member of the blog, HOYDENS AND FIREBRANDS, set up by a group of writers who work in the seventeenth century so I’ve got to know her through that. It is now public knowledge that her Josephine stories, which are written in first person as a diary, have been optioned for a TV series. I do hope it comes off!


~~~Thanks, Alison!


You can find Alison at:
website - alisonstuart.com
blog - alisonstuart.blogspot.com
Facebook
Twitter @AlisonStuart14
Goodreads

~yia~


 

Blogs oh blogs, oh my....

I have been remiss of letting you know when I'm at other blogs.

The two regular ones you will see me on are the DarkSide DownUnder blog and the SARA - Sassy In The South Blog, in both cases I'm the blog mum. I'm really proud of my teams and their interesting posts. Why not follow us?


First of all the DSDU blog - btw like the new logo designed by yours truly?


Last week I talked about TV watching and research. You can find the blog post HERE.


With SASSY in the South - I'm compiling the Reading Adventures column, which are reviews by our members.

It's a brand new blog with it's own logo, yep by yours truly...








I've also been blogging about conference spotlights on the Romance Writers of Australia blog and doing the New Releases posts.


So plenty of blogs to go and go read. Go on, what are you waiting for?

Oh, yes, here's my ~yia~

:)