Helena Halme's Blog, page 18

The Good Officer Pre-order Offer

‘The Good Officer is a terrific read with lost of drama. Halme’s best work to date’ – Jessica Bell, author of STRING BRIDGE and THE BOOK

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my previous novels and are eagerly awaiting the latest book in my series of Nordic contemporary romances. If so, I have good news for you. Finally, after a few delays, my latest novel, THE GOOD OFFICER, is out on pre-order!

To celebrate its forthcoming publication on 18th November, the book is on an incredible launch offer. You can now PRE-ORDER the novel for just …drumroll please …

$0.99 / £0.99 !

Tap here to pre-order you copy now!

But hurry, this offer ends 20th November when the price goes up to to $4.99 / £3.99.

Read the first chapter from the novel now before anyone else!

And if you can’t bear to wait until 18th November, you can read the first chapter from the novel by signing up to my Readers’ Group (you can unsubscribe at any time). Just tap the image and let me know where to send your exclusive sneak peek of my new book! 

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How to Attend Indie Author Fringe

The virtual doors of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) third Indie Author Fringe event open at 10am Frankfurt/9am London,  Saturday October 22nd. Here’s how to attend and get the most out of our Online Author Conference, and how to join in conversations with Sponsors and Speakers on the day.

How long is the Frankfurt Indie Author Fringe event?

Each Indie Author Fringe event is 24 hours long
We’ll release a new Speaker Session at least once an hour, and will continue doing that for 24 hours
Mark Coker from Smashwords will kick off our Online Conference at 10am Frankfurt time.

How do I attend Indie Author Fringe?

Visit us here on this blog during our Indie Author Fringe event.

Indie Author Fringe

Each Speaker Session is a new blog post, and you can check in throughout the day to see the published sessions. The great thing about an online conference is that the content will be sessions will continue to be available on our blog after the event.
Speaker Sessions are a mix of articles, podcasts and videos.

How do I know when Sessions are available?

On the day of the event, ALLi will be sending out agenda updates, providing a summary of the upcoming Speaker Session, just sign up here to receive these updates that will include the speaker, session topic and time the session goes live. Or visit ALLi:

Frankfurt Indie Author Fringe Agenda page
Can I ask the Speakers & Sponsors Questions?

Visit the Speaker and Sponsor Booth (aka: The Hot Seat) on the day to join in the conversation. Post your questions and comments, and swap ideas with other indie authors.

Visit the Hot Seat (Speaker and Sponsor Booth)
How do I enter the Speaker Giveaways?

Our giveaways will be part of the Speaker Sessions.
Just visit the speaker session after it’s been published to see whether the speaker is offering a giveaway, and enter for your chance to win. There’s lots of different ways to enter, and you can submit multiple entries for each and every giveaway.
You can enter the GIVEAWAYS up until Midnight Tuesday 25th (Frankfurt time)
Winners will be chosen at random via Rafflecopter, and the winners will be notified during the following week.

How to I enter the Best Website Competition?

Our Best Website Competition is open for entries until the start of the conference (10am Saturday October 22nd Frankfurt), and you can submit your Best Website Competition entry here

You can view the Best Website Competition entries here.

We’re offering two prizes for the winning website, and the first person who nominated it.

How do I take advantage of Sponsor’s Discounts & Giveaways?

Check out ALLi Sponsor pages, and see what self-publishing service discounts they are offering

Not an ALLi Member? Tap the banner below to join now!

 

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Talking about miscarriage

Today is the last day of Baby Loss Awareness Week, which highlights the need for parents to commemorate and talk about the, all too short, lives of their babies. For me the week has brought a lot of sad memories of the three miscarriages that I suffered between my two beautiful children in the late 1980s. Even though I have always felt lucky that I lost those babies early on in my pregnancy, and it is now over 25 years since those sad times, I still grieve the children that I never had.

It is wonderful that there is now much more awareness of the grief felt by parents and other family at a loss of a baby. When I suffered my miscarriages, it was a subject you felt embarrassed to talk about. Even doctors, nurses, or health visitors would look away, or say, ‘You’re a healthy young woman, you can try again.’

Of course that is exactly what the Englishman and I did, we tried again until I reached that magical third miscarriage, at which point you were officially deemed to ‘have a problem’ and the health service was allowed to think of ways to help you. When I fell pregnant again, for the fifth time in my life, my GP decided that I may have suffered a sudden drop in hormones during the previous pregnancies, and I was prescribed a 20-week course of injections. I still remember those 20 Fridays that I went to the surgery to have the biggest needle I’d ever seen stuck into my bottom. The hormone was a very thick consistency, so it hurt like hell. But if that meant that I’d have a successful term with a healthy baby at the end , I would have walked on hot coals for twenty weeks – or nine months for that matter.

After the injections, I was sent away and told to be back if I had any problems. I was scared as hell, especially as I carried on ‘spotting’ almost through all of the remaining three months. But when I held my beautiful daughter in my arms after a quickie birth (she was born just 30 minutes after we’d got into the hospital), I felt the luckiest woman in the world.

My heart goes out to all who have lost their babies, because I know that even though talking helps, you never forget.

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Novel London Reading

Join me for an Evening of International Fiction!

Travelling and books are a marriage made in heaven, right? That’s why the next Novel London First Chapter Reading will take place in Travelling Through Bookshop and Cafe, a culture hub with a special focus on world culture, art and travel. And I’m delighted to tell you that, on the night, I will be reading from my forthcoming novel, The Good Officer.

The evening starts at 6pm on 7th October and will be the first outing for The Good Officer, the fourth book in The Englishman series, which tells the story of the tumultuous love affair between Finnish-born Kaisa and English Navy officer, Peter. The novel isn’t published until two weeks later on 22nd October, so if you’d like to have a sneak-a-peek, do come along!

The event is free, and usually well attended, so book your place now. Just tap the image below, or go here. I will be joined by two hugely talented fellow authors, Ben Starling and Stephen Marriott as the compere.

And if you are not in London, don’t worry, the whole evening will be recorded. I will post a link here a week or so later.

I hope to see you on 7th October!

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Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty

Click picture to find out more

Australian author Liane Moriarty’s seventh novel, Truly Madly Guilty, follows a set of friends in Sydney’s quiet and wholesome suburbia, in very much the same vein as her previous books. Her characters are, however, anything but innocent or sedentary. They are all deliciously flawed, selfish but lovable.

In this latest tale we meet the perfect couple Erika and Oliver, who have a sanitised, uncluttered house – and life. They are described as ‘Childless by choice’ by Erika’s best friend, the cellist Clementine. Her life in contrast is chaotic; even her house, which she shares with her husband Sam and two daughters Holly and Ruby, seems to have an ability to swallow things up. Anything from children’s clothes to ice-cream scoops go missing. Erika’s neighbours, the beautiful Tiffany and her loud, rich husband Vid prefer Clementine and Sam to their dull neighbours, and invite the two couples for an impromptu barbecue during an unusually rainy period, dubbed ‘The Big Wet’.

At the barbecue something terrible happens, an event that changes the lives of all who attend. Cracks in relationships are revealed; everyone who was there feels guilty for what happened, including the children. Even the grandparents who weren’t even present are affected by the events of that fateful afternoon.

The narrative in Truly Madly Guilty slips between the day of the barbecue, and the weeks following the party. Moriarty teases us with the central catastrophe, and it’s not until about two-thirds down the novel that we find out what really happened.

This is too late.

I’ve loved all the novels I’ve read by Liane Moriarty, and I eventually loved this one too, but I felt she took too long to get to the central event of the story. The issues she tackles in this book are serious; there’s sexism, motherhood, hoarding and the complicated subject of female friendships. Her writing is beautiful, her characters incredibly well drawn. There is no need for tricks of the trade to keep us reading. I’m sure I would have enjoyed the story if she’d told me even as early on as, say, a third way down the book what happened. I would have wanted to find out the, ‘Who, what, when, where, why, how?’ anyway.

It’s amazing that such a successful author doesn’t trust her own ability to make a book interesting without using an infuriating plot device. Her best seller has sold over two million copies world-wide, and she has sold the film rights to two of her earlier novels (Big Little Lies to Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, no less!). Still, I have to give Truly Madly Guilty 4 stars – purely for the excellent prose, brilliant plot (when it was eventually revealed) and believable, perfectly drawn characters.

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Join the countdown!

I am beyond excited about my next book launch. If all goes according to plan, and the stars are aligned, the fourth book in The Englishman series, The Good Officer, will be out in bookshops and on Amazon in less than six weeks’ time, on 22nd October!

I’m thrilled that The Good Officer has already had some brilliant comments from readers who’ve signed up to give me their honest opinion on the unedited copy of the book.

‘The Good Officer is your best work to date’

‘The Good Officer should carry a health warning – I stayed up all night to finish it!’

Free Book Offer Ends Soon!

You might already know that the first book in the series, a novella called The Finnish Girl is now FREE to download. This is a limited offer which will end on 30 September. All I ask in return is for you to join my Readers’ Group. Of course you can unsubscribe at any time, but as a member you will get other free goodies, and be the first to find out about new books and irresistible offers.

The Good Officer Cover Reveal

Next week, I will post a sneak a peek of the new cover here on my blog, but if you’re member of my Readers’ Group, you would have already had your say on the covers a few weeks ago. Based on the opinion of my readers, I chose exciting new covers for the whole series. Members of my Readers’ Group got the final cover reveal pop into their inbox yesterday  – before everyone else!

Exclusive, Unpublished Chapters

In the coming weeks The Readers’ Group will also receive exclusive, unpublished bonus chapters of the other books in the series, starting with a final chapter of The Finnish Girl, which will be sent out on 23rd September. A week later there will be an unpublished chapter from The Englishman, a week later one from The Navy Wife. Finally, a week before The Good Officer is out, I will release the first chapter to my Readers’ Group.

So, if you’d like to GET A FREE BOOK, be the first to find out about book offers, and get to read exclusive, unpublished chapters, join my Readers’ Group now. It’s easy, all you have to do is tap the box below and fill in your email address. But hurry, the FREE BOOK offer ends 30th September!

Let the countdown to the publication of The Good Officer begin!

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Ten things you need to know about Finland for X-Factor

Photo: VisitFinland.com

Last weekend’s X-Factor saw the Finnish singer, Saara Aalto, wow the judges, so  I thought I’d give you ten things you need to know about her (and my) native Finland.

Finland is a land of thousand lakes. At last count there were 187,888 of them – more lakes in relation to a country’s size than any other. Indeed, with a population of about five million, Finland has one lake for every 26 people.

Photo: VisitFinland.com
Sauna is a Finnish invention and is enjoyed by Finns at least once per week. There are almost as many saunas in the country as there are people. I wrote an article about how important the sauna is for the Finnish psyche for the Co-Scan magazine a few months ago. You can read it here.
Next year Finland will celebrate its 100th year of Independence, which we gained from Soviet Union in 1917. During World War II Finland, together with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, was the subject of a secret pact between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and as a consequence, Soviet Russia attacked Finland. Against all odds Finland won the ensuing Winter War. Although Finland lost other battles with Russia, we managed to keep our independence, even during the Cold War, which we are pretty proud about.
The Angry Birds game (and the movie) is developed by a Finnish firm called Rovio. We like inventing loveable cartoon characters, because …
The author of the Moomin books, Tove Janson, is also from Finland. These whale-like characters were first brought to the UK as a cartoon strip in the London Standard. Last year the first ever Moomin film, Moomins on the Riviera, was co-directed by a good friend of mine, Hanna Hemila.
Finns have a national characteristic called sisu which is something between courage, foolhardiness and stubbornness. They say it was sisu that helped Finnish soldiers win the Winter War.
In the late 1990s, Nokia, the Finnish telecommunications firm, was the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile handsets.
Last year was the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius.
Finns are good at any sport that involves a bit of danger, like rally driving or ski jumping. It’s that sisu again!
Finns are the biggest coffee drinkers in the world, consuming 12 kilos per person per year. Now, that’s a serious caffeine habit!

So there you have it – now you can impress your friends with trivia about Finland.

And here’s Saara’s wonderful audition for the X-Factor, in case you didn’t see it on Saturday. Enjoy!

Would you like a free book set in Finland? Click below for this limited offer!

 

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Do you like literary festivals?

I’m delighted to be able to tell you that there is a literary festival happening here in London next month. If you like discovering new authors and listening to book talk, you should come to the Triskele Lit Fest in London on 17th September.

As luck would have it, I will also be there, displaying (selling and signing) my books. All the three books in The Englishman series will be on a special boxset offer, and my other paperbacks will be reduced for one day too. Good for presents!

What do people REALLY think about Brexit?

It’s now about two months since the UK voted to leave the EU. You may know that I was really quite upset about the Brexit vote; in fact the result, and what happened in the country immediately following the referendum, affected me so strongly emotionally, that I didn’t post much about it on social media. I was afraid I’d be too aggressive. Like someone with anger management issues, I kept away from a conflict in case I’d throw the first punch. I firmly believe in a calm and constructive political debate, not hot-headed crowd-pleasing rhetoric, so I kept quiet until I knew I could express myself as rationally as possible.

Luckily the Englishman and I had booked a social media detox holiday to France only a few days after the shocking events here in the UK, so I had time to calm down.

Recently, when I was asked by journalist Priya Virmani to take part in a video series called Brexit: What Do the people REALLY think?, I jumped at the chance to talk about the vote, and how it has affected me both personally and in my new career as author/entrepreneur. I felt I was ready to be calm and collected, but I tell you, I really struggled to contain myself during the interview not to burst into tears or start ranting and raving.

Here is the interview, which was recorded outside The Hornsey Town Hall in Crouch End. Do follow the Facebook page here, where over the days and weeks to come Priya will post interviews with ordinary people about the Brexit vote.

Want to read more posts like this or find out more about my books? Sign up for my newsletter by tapping the box below.

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Why should you write a book review?

Readers often ask me why they should leave a review, and wonder why reviews are so invaluable for writers.

So I thought I’d explain why, if you love a book, you should write a review.

Firstly, and most importantly, a good number of reviews encourage readers to find a new author. Even for readers who already know the writer, there’s nothing like a recommendation from a peer to encourage you to press ‘buy’ on their latest release.
 Reviews inform other readers about the style and readability of the book. Readers know how to describe a book often better than the author. You’d be amazed how long authors spend agonising over the short book descriptions (well, I do anyway). It’s something to do with not being able to see the wood for the trees, I suppose.
Many online advertisers, such as BookBub, rely on reviews to assess whether they will feature a book on their listings. Although these services are by no means free, a book has to be accepted to be listed. Acceptance depends almost solely on the number of reviews a book has.
Finally, there’s the dark art of the Amazon algorithms; the number, and the star rating, of the reviews on Amazon play an important part in how visible the book is in the store. Of course the same goes for other retailers such as iBooks, Nook and Kobo.

In short, book reviews determine whether the book is in the front window of the e-book shop, or lingering in the back of the store gathering dust.

A review can be as short or as long as you like. Just one sentence will make a huge difference to the success of a book. So please, if you have read and loved a book, make sure other readers find it, and write a review!

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