The Girly Book Blog Hop - Part Deux!

Hello everyone and welcome to the second Girly Book Blog Hop, back by popular demand. Once again we have a whole array of fabulous prizes for you to win. And the topic today is Location, Location, Location, so choosing Sign of the Times to work with, which will also be part of the grand prize, here's why I chose Italy for part of the setting.



I’ve been really lucky that I’ve travelled all over, but I am often asked why I chose to set part of my first book Sign of the Times in Italy. Simple. I love Italy, Italians and the food. What’s not to like? (apart from the honking car horns!)
When I wrote this part of Sign of the Times, I’d already visited many cities and towns in Italy, but as a region, Tuscany has always appealed to me. Now unfortunately it is vastly overrun by German and British tourists and is very expensive, but there are still small towns, like Bibbiena, where the novel is partly set, which have laughed in the face of progress.
Of course, I prefer to picture Bibbiena as it was 10 years ago when I visited it. Undoubtedly now, there are fewer teenagers on mopeds, slouching in outdoor cafés, perhaps the old men playing chess outside the bars have gone to meet their maker and who knows if the town still boasts the prize-winning olive oil.  But in my mind, Bibbiena will always be a small town in the Tuscan countryside, surrounded by rolling hills, vineyards and olive groves. How much of that is in my memory and how much in my imagination is now unclear!
I wonder if the granddaughter of the salumeria owner has taken over her delicatessen. I mistakenly asked for 800g of salami instead of 8 slices...thank God there were 8 of us staying at the villa, but even so, it took us 3 days to eat it all!
I also wonder how Giampiero, the owner of Casa Dovizi, where we stayed, and his family are. They practically adopted us, simply because I was the first person to rent their villa who spoke Italian. Each day he would bring us a little gift  (they lived next door) - coffee, Amaretto biscuits, wine, Sambucca and so on.  I also wonder what kind of teenager his little son became, who he would hoist with ease onto his shoulders, as he chatted with me.
The truth is, I could have written about many parts of Italy. I have friends in Turin, Milan, Rome and Genova, but Bibbiena made such an impact on me, that it had to be the setting for Holly’s stay,   The small hotel with the two Italian sons who were besotted with her and the Italian matriarch, who doted on Holly, were a combination of fiction and a trip to Praiano on the Amalfi coast. The wedding they attended, where a key meeting occurs, took place in a fictional  house, on land I could see from my bedroom window during my stay in Bibbiena. It was such a beautiful location , it deserved to have a wedding set there!
My only dilemma now is do I revisit Bibbiena in a future novel?  After all, there will be a sequel to Sign of the Times in 2014...And now for the prizes. I will be giving away to one lucky reader an ecopy of my new novel, The Dating Game.  To enter, simply use the Rafflecopter form below. You can enter each day to give you more chances of winning - the blog hop is on until the 21st! a Rafflecopter giveaway

 BUT, that's not all. Visit the other blogs to see their posts and enter the Grand Prize Draw (check the loot below - for logistical reasons the Grand Prize is only available to US residents)






Have fun, good luck and hope you enjoy discovering some great new authors!
Sooz