It's Easter Monday 'DownUnder' which is a public holiday. Many people get five days off over Easter..that's a big break and the retailers know it. For a month before Easter the junk mail is FULL of camping equipment sales and DIY sales. In the past we've done both of those things. We've often painted bedrooms, completed a big garden project. We've also gone camping. This year we took a road trip to visit my cousins in South Australia...the state next door. 

We also used it as an opportunity to visit Adelaide University. My eldest son will be off to uni/college next year and he's keeping his options open and we've been visiting quite a few places! It was also a chance for him to get more kilometres/miles under his belt driving because where we live he has to have driven 120 hours before he can sit his driver's test.


It was great catching up with family and seeing the cousins playing together.  I was able to share my exciting news with them and I want to share it here with you too!  Two weeks ago, I woke up to hear my iPad going ping, ping, ping. I stumbled out into the kitchen and read, 'Congratulations on your #Rita12 nomination.' My heart almost stopped and I automatically looked toward the phone to see if the message bank was blinking. Had I missed a phone call in the middle of the night telling me this news? 

Somehow I managed to get my fingers to work and I found the RWA list and yes, there under Single Title Contemporary Romance was my name and next to it was Boomerang Bride. I rang Angela James, the Chief Executive Editor of Carina Press and she told me I was the first Carina Press author to be nominated for a RITA^®  SQUEE!! For those of you who don't know about the RITA^®,  it is the Romance Writers of Amercia's award for published authors. My peers had read this book and deemed it worthy of being nominated.


This is a really special nomination for so many reasons, including the fact this book took a long time to find a home. It shares my love tor Australia and my love for the USA. It combines all the wonderful things about small towns in both countries and I just loved writing it. To read more about it including the song that inspired it, click here.

To celebrate my nomination, I'd love to give away an eBook version of Boomerang Bride.  To be in with a chance to win, tell me how you celebrated Easter this year. Remember to leave your email address in the comment in case you win!  

If you'd like to buy your own copy of Boomerang Bride it is available as a physical book and and an eBook

Fiona Lowe is an award-winning, multi-published author with Harlequinand Carina Press. Whether her books are set in outback Australia or in the mid-west of the USA, they feature small towns with big hearts, and warm, likeable characters that make you fall in love. When she's not writing stories, she's a weekend wife, mother of two 'ginger' teenage boys, guardian of 80 rose bushes and often found collapsed on the couch. A current RT Book Reviwers' Choice Award nominee, you  can find her at her website, facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.

Boomerang Bride is available now from Carina Press,Amazon Kindle, Nook and all other online book stores

Revisions, Reprints, Revivals and Renewals by Kate Wallker

For those of you who celebrate it, Happy Easter!

I always think that Easter is a lovely festival to celebrate as it comes with such promises of Spring and a whole new sense of revitalisation and renewal. Perhaps it’s because of the reason we originally celebrate Easter in the first place – with the story of the resurrection coming after Good Friday and Jesus’ death. Or perhaps it’s because this particular festival still manages to be that bit simpler and less commercialised than ‘big one’ of Christmas with its emphasis on gifts and food and spending. Or perhaps it’s the time of year, with Spring coming at last and the flowers beginning to appear, the trees breaking into fresh green leaves, lambs in the field etc that emphasises the revitalisation and new growth in everything.

This is one of my favourite times of the year. A time that says that, no matter how dull and dreary things have become, how dark and cold the times have been, we can hope to look forward to renewal and refreshment. So perhaps it’s a good time for me to pause and look backwards and then forwards with my books as at the moment I’m sort of ‘in between’ with past present and future all coming together at one time.

The present ( or should I say Presents?) is that my current book The Konstantos Marriage Demand is still on the bookshop shelves in its Presents EXTRA edition for the next week or so. The Presents EXTRA publication schedule means that even when the main run of the Presents titles change, the EXTRA books stay around until the middle of the month. But the way that publishing works means that when each now novel appears for my readers, the book is already ‘past’ for me as I will have written it up to 18 months ago.

The Konstantos Marriage Demand for example was bought by my editor in April last year., and I’ve already written another couple of books since then. One of which I’m revising now. That’s the current book for me – one that will be scheduled and published, probably early in 2011. This means that I always have something to look forward to – which is wonderful!

And the ‘past’ is there in the way that older books get reprinted and come back to have a second chance of publication when they are reprinted because they have been bestsellers in the past. I have one of those published in the UK this month (16th April) when a Mills & Boon By Request brings out 3 of my sexy Sicilian heroes in a reprint collection called Claimed by The Sicilian. Unusually, all 3 stories in this book are my novels, normally the By Request books have stories by 3 different authors so I’m really honoured that the titles here are all mine. (If you want to know which ones they are Sicilian Husband, Blackmailed Wife – The Sicilian’s Red-Hot Revenge – and The Sicilian’s Wife.)

This collection also has one of the new designs of covers that have been brought in for the Mills and Boon editions and I really love it. I’ll post a pic of it so you can see - I’d love to know what you think. New covers, new style titles are coming up and there are more changes planned for the Harlequin Mills & Boon novels in the future as the books get a whole new look – though the one thing that will remain the same is that there will be great stories to read every month.

So renewal and refreshment is in the atmosphere and it’s a great mood that combines with the arrival of Spring to lift the spirits and make me want to look to the future. And it seems to be happening all around – here in the UK, last night was the launch of the brand new season of Dr Who with a brand new Doctor and brand new scripts created by a new team of writers. I watched the first episode last night and was excited by this new ‘relaunch’ of an old favourite. I’ve loved the ‘old’ Doctor Whos (some more than others) but what I love most of all is the way that this long-established series keep reviving and revitalising itself, renewing the ‘mixture as before’ and taking the familiar elements, stirring them up, putting them into new patterns, new versions and so creating something fresh and exciting and entertaining.

It’s a bit like romance writing really – and that’s what I’ve been doing with my books over the past 25 years. My next book out The Good Greek Wife (there's one of those new-style titles ) is like that – and the next project I have on my writing list is going to be even more that way– but I can’t tell you about that just yet. I’ll be able to say more in another couple of months – looking to the future again! So it seems really appropriate that I can celebrate Easter and its sense of renewal with my revivals and revisions. Spring seems like a much better time to think of ‘New Year’ than in the dark, dreary dull days of January! I even had a brand-new publicity photo taken to mark the new season - hope you like it.

So to celebrate Easter and this sense of renewal, I have a giveaway copy of Claimed by The Sicilian which isn’t available out side the UK (though you can get it through the Book Depository with free international postage if you wants to). Just come and chat with me in the comments, tell me what’s new in your world – are you spring cleaning or redecorating? Have you changed your job or maybe even moved house? Or what about your reading lists? Have you discovered a brand-new (to you) author whose books you just love? Please share with me. (When I finish ‘tweaking’ this Sicilian I’m going to have a little more time to read, I hope!) Or let me know what you think about those new covers, new-style titles like the Good Greek Wife. Just come and chat and I’ll get Sid the Cat pick a winner of a copy of Claimed By The Sicilian. (of you can have a copy of The Konstantos Marriage Demand if you’d prefer.)

And I hope you have a wonderful Easter holiday weekend - with lots of chocolate!

You can find out ore about what's new and exciting in my books and my life over on my web site and the really up to date stuff is on my blog.

Sid has chosen a winner and the name he picked is DENISE - so Denise you win a copy of Claimed By The Sicilian. If you email me your postal address (to kate AT kate-walker.com ) I'll get your prize in the mail to you

Ode to Autumn! -- Anna Campbell

by Anna Campbell

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.

How's that for a classy way to start a blog? Kant go wrong with some Keats, kan you?

Actually Keats was talking about a Northern Hemisphere Autumn. Here where I live in subtropical Queensland in Australia, there's not much mist! And the sun well and truly hit maturity when it was pounding down and baking us all through the summer.

We don't get the spectacular change of the seasons here that people in more temperate climates get. There's certainly a shift in temperature but it's hardly drastic. There's a few different plants flowering in the garden and the days get shorter. That's about it.

Nonetheless with the arrival of Autumn, there's a crispness in the air and a freshness to the days that you don't get during our long, hot summer.

I'm not built for the heat, sadly, so I suffer and whine from late November through until early March. All those Northern European ancestors put together a genetic package that is built to withstand Arctic temperatures. So I'm someone who hangs out every year for those first few cool days, especially through February when I feel like the sweltering, sultry weather is never going to end.

Of course, summer isn't all misery and there are things I miss about it before it rolls around again.

One is diving into my swimming pool as a nice break from sweating over my computer. Yes, that is me posing as a bathing beauty, snort! Another is that the wild bearded dragons who live in my garden go into hibernation and I don't see them again until the weather warms up. I love these little guys - it's like having mini dinosaurs hiding in the shrubbery. I miss the long evenings sitting out with my friends under the pergola and looking at the lake. Nothing like a lovely glass of sauvignon blanc and great company and a leisurely summer day.

But all of that finishes pretty much with Easter. I can sometimes squeeze in a week or so of swimming after the big bunny has been, but basically that's the end of summer for us.

But aside from the cooler weather, there are other things I look forward to in Autumn. And not just chocolate eggs!

I love the summer fruits, cherries and peaches and apricots and nectarines and mangoes. But my favorite fruit are the mandarins that kick in late March and hang around for most of the winter. I can eat them by the hundred - and I do. In fact, I turn a nice shade of orange during mandarin season. Well, slight exaggeration, but I bet my innards are orange!

Another thing I love about the cooler weather is that I replace my swimming with nice long walks. It's just too hot, even first thing in the morning, to go far in summer. And there are some pretty places to explore near my house. This is a picture my friend Sharon Archer (who writes wonderful romances for Mills and Boon Medicals) took of the beach five minutes away from me.

All round, I think the cool change will be extremely cool!

And if you'd like something new and fresh to read as the seasons change, why not enter my latest website contest? I'm giving away an advance reader copy of my June release MY RECKLESS SURRENDER. All you have to do is read the excerpt on my books page and tell me the old proverb that the Earl of Ashcroft quotes to Diana Carrick. Here's a clue - it's for the birds! Then email me on anna@annacampbell.info with your answer. For more details, please check out my contest page. Good luck!

So what's happening with the seasons where you are? I'm off to dive into the pool - feel I should take advantage of it while I can!

Hot Cross Buns

Today is Good Friday. It is also the earliest Good Friday in living memory. Easter is set by the Jewish Passover celebration which in turn uses a lunar calender. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon of the Spring. The Spring Equinox happened yesterday. The moon is full tonight. Easter can only be one day earlier and the last time that happened was 1818 or for those lovers of historicals, smack dab in the middle of the Regency period.
Easter like Christmas is always a time of special foods. Lent was a time of fasting and so Easter became a time when food was once again available. One of most familiar cries in Regency and Victorian London, according Henry Matthew's London Labor and Lon Poor 1851 was One a penny, two a penny hot cross buns.
Hot cross buns are spiced currant buns with a cross cut on the top. Sometimes the cross is emphasised with a cross of pastry. I know in the US version, cut peel is often used, but not in the English version, according to Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1977) which is one of the definitive tomes on the subject.
Spiced buns start appearing in Tudor times and by Elizabeth I, decrees are being issued limiting bakers to making spiced cakes and buns only at Christmas and Easter. If you want such things at other times, the housewife has to make her own. This is the situation that pretty much exists up to the 20th century in Britain. And I will say that warm homemade hot cross buns taste far better than those in the shops.
This is the recipe that I have adapted from Elizabeth David. It makes about two dozen.
4 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon soft butter
2 large eggs (free range if possible and as fresh as possible)
1 cup milk warmed
1 packet yeast
1 tsp each -- ground allspice, cinnamon, nut meg, cloves or use 1 tablespoon mixed pumpkin pie spice
1 cup currants (or in a pinch raisins)
Soften the yeast in the milk. Add butter to milk and allow to melt. Add well beaten eggs to yeast mixture.
Mix flour, brown sugar, salt and spices together. Add yeast mixture. Stir until well mixed. Add currants. Mix until well distributed. The dough should be quite stiff.
Cover and allow to rise until double. This takes about an hour (gives you time to read a romance novel).
Divide into 24 balls. Place in a greased tray, allow to rise again (time for more reading of romance), make a cross on top of each with a knife, brush with a little milk. You can emphasise the cross by putting a cross made from either strips of candied peel or strips of short crust pastry (pie dough). Bake in 375 F- 400 F oven for twenty minutes. (Set timer in case you become engrossed in romance novel!)They should be lovely and brown when they come out. You can glaze them if you want. Best eaten warm, but can be split and toasted.
I hope whatever you do this weekend that you have a wonderful time.
all the best,
Michelle Styles