Held Hostage by Heroes - by KATE WALKER

I’ve had my blog hijacked!

I didn’t know it was possible, but for the past couple of days my personal blog has been completely taken over. And it’s happened to two of my friends as well!

Maybe I shouldn’t complain though – the highjacker is a gorgeously sexy Italian named Domenico Parrisi – in fact he’s the hero of my brand new book – The Italian’s Forced Bride. And he’s taken over my blog to set up a contest for all my readers.

It started like this. If you’ve read Anne McAllister’s blog from January 2 you’ll know that Anne, Liz Fielding and I have been running a joint contest this month. In February we all have books out in America that have ‘Bride’ in the title – The Italian’s Forced Bride is mine, Anne’s book is The Santorini Bride, and Liz has the final book in the Brides of Bella Lucia series, appropriately called The Valentine Bride. So we got together to run the Here Come the Brides contest. The details of this are in Anne’s blog on this site, and on all our web sites (mine, Anne’s and Liz’s and blogs too.)

The prize for this contest – and there are three of them – is a signed set of all three February books. The closing date is February 1st if you’d still like to enter.

That was the Brides dealt with. But then somehow the Grooms got wind of what was going on. Fir

st they were just looking for their Brides, wondering what the girls were up to while they were meant to be planning weddings. But as soon as the guys discovered that the girls were running a contest, they wanted to run one to. And it had to be bigger and better than the Brides contest that was already in place. This was when they highjacked their author’s blog.




First it was Theo - Theo Savas who is the hero of The Santorini Bride. He appeared on Anne McAllister’s blog to complain about his missing Bride.


Then Max Valentine who is the hero of The Valentine Bride joined in from Liz Fielding’s blog.

I was away in Dublin, at Abby Green’s book launch (see a report in the Scrapbook) so I was a little late in catching up with this, but sure enough my hero from The Italian’s Forced Bride – Domenico Parrisi – soon turned up on my blog and all three heroes got their heads together to cre

ate a contest.

The result? They’ve come up with a Scavenger Hunt – one that covers all three blogs. There are nine questions, three can be answered by visiting each author. And you get three chances to enter – one with each author.

And the prizes? Well – those Alpha heroes wanted bigger, if not better in the prize stakes so this is what they came up with:

From Anne McAllister each winner gets:A three-in-one book containing three complete novels: The Cowboy's Code, containing Cowboys Don't Quit, Cowboys Don't Stay a

nd The Cowboy and the Kid (Romantic Times's Best Series Novel of the Year) PLUS a copy of Theo Savakis's book by the author whose name you have to figure out.



From Kate Walker each winner gets:Her best-selling Alcolar Family trilogy: The Twelve-Month Mistress, The Spaniard's Inconvenient Wife and Bound by Blackmail.

And From Liz Fielding each winner gets:Copies of her terrific books all about GROOMS: The Corporate Bridegroom, A Suitable Groom and Her Wish-List Bridegroom

It’s a great contest with some seriously good prizes - and the heroes have been blogging about it for the past couple of days. The contest stays open untiul February 10th so you have plenty of time to enter.

So why not visit all three blogs and find out more about the heroes of these three great books coming up in February – which means they should be on the bookshop shelves in just a week or two. You could enter the scavenger hunt and have a chance to wine nine – nine – books by three authors, all of whom have won awards for their writing.

And while you’re there, check out the HERE COME THE BRIDES contest as well, for even more chances to win. That one closes on February 1st so you'll need to enter soon.

What sort of contests do you like best? And what prizes will attract you to join in?
(No - you can't have Theo, Max or Domenico! Though someone did ask if Theo's brother George could be one of the prizes!)