New free Spellcrackers short story - PIECE OF CAKE - in Andromeda's Offspring Fanzine, issue #5. It's a standalone set before The Sweet Scent of Blood - Spellcrackers #1. Enjoy:-D)
And talking of cake - have some spam pics of Birthday Cupcakes made for my horse-mad niece!
Dark double choc with salted caramel buttercream icing
Milk choc with white choc bits and salted caramel buttercream icing
So a (really) short update of Fantasycon* - I had a blast and, more importantly, our cupcakes and biscuits raised £215 for National Literacy Trust. Woot!!
Huge thanks to my fab, fellow bakers Adele, Louise,Rhian,Michaela, and Andrew, with extra thanks to Michaela and Andrew who ended up doing most of the selling/organising.
Some pics of cakes (if you want to drool) are here! (Mostly mine as I had con camera-fail as usual)
And even HUGER thanks and virtual hugs go to everyone who bought and devoured the cakes, and to those who managed to resist temptation but were cake-tastic and still donated. Thank you!
Now onto books (and giveaways - details at the end of the post)! These are some that have come to live
with me recently. Death's Rival is #5 in Faith Hunter's fantastic Jane Yellowrock/Beast UF series, which I adore. Anton Strout's Alchemystic is the first in his new Spellmason Chronicles series, which looks like it's going to Rock*! And I was lucky to nab two copies of Nicole Peeler's awesome Eye of the Tempest at Fantasycon! Yay! Jane True FTW! (And one's in the giveaway!)
Another book that came home with me from Fantasycon is The Steel Seraglio by Mike Carey, Linda Carey, and Louise Carey. Mike is one of my all time writerly heros (LOVE his Felix Castor books!), so I was thrilled when he gave me a signed copy of The Steel Seraglio co-written with his wife and daughter. I'm two thirds of the way through reading it and, WOW!
The third book that I have thanks to Fantasycon, and my lovely pal Ben who introduced us, is Samit Basu's Turbulence. We three had a wonderful writerly chat about writing (;p) and characters and how as authors we love to be evil! *g* At the end of which I forced my first book on Samit and insisted he read it and demanded he give me his asked Samit if he might want to swap books! He said yes! Yay! I haven't started Turbulence yet but I did sneak a quick read of the first page! Awesome beginning!
TURBULENCE is a hyper-real novel set in an over-the-top world. It features the 21st-century
Indian subcontinent in all its insane glory – F-16s, Bollywood, radical
religious parties, nuclear plants, cricket, terrorists, luxury resorts,
crazy TV shows – but is essentially about two very human questions.
How would you feel if you actually got what you wanted?
What would you do if you were given the power to change the world?
‘For wicked wit, for post-modern superheroics, for sheer verbal energy and dazzle, Samit Basu doesn’t so much push the envelope as fold it into an n-dimensional hyper-envelope, address it to your hind-brain and mail it with a rail gun.’- Mike Carey (X-men, Lucifer, the Felix Castor series)
‘You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll gasp and you will demand a sequel.’- Ben Aaronovitch (Doctor Who, Rivers of London)
Onto the GIVEAWAYS
Giveaway 1 - Eye of the Tempest - Jane True #4 - Nicole Peeler
Giveaway 2 - The Steel Seraglio by Mike Carey, Linda Carey, and Louise Carey
Giveaway 3 - Turbulence by Samit Basu
How to enter:
Leave a comment with your 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice books.
1st name drawn gets their first choice of book, 2nd name drawn gets their 1st/2nd choice book, and 3rd name drawn gets the book not chosen by the previous two winners.
Winners drawn by Random.org.
Giveaways are international where Book Depository deliver and end Midnight (GMT) Oct 17th, 2012.
* Many thanks to Marie and Paul, everyone else who did a grand job organising the con, and all the brilliant redshirts!
*Gargoyles and rocks . . . sorry, couldn't resist . . . *g*
*My only sadness is I missed their reading and didn't get to ask how they worked out their collaboration. (I stupidly got my timings wrong and arrived at the end) :-(
So the signing on Sunday with Ben Aaronovitch! I had a fantastic time, the staff at Waterstone's Covent Garden were extremely well organised and corralled us in the window display so we couldn't escape had everything all set up for us: Sharpies, tea (me), diet coke (Ben), table, chairs, and of course, the most important, plenty of wonderful books* ready to sign for willing victims bribed with sweeties happy readers!
Here's Ben and I showing off our books! Please note I have one more than Ben . . . *gets competitive*, though Ben's photographic stance is much more practiced than mine; you can see both his books in full, and read the titles! (I was going for the artistic effect! Note to self: stick with plain and simple in future! *g*)
Thanks to Neil C Ford for the picture
Ben is a pleasure to sign with, and a very witty guy (though, if you've read his books, you'll already know that :-D) - and despite my rabid jealousy over him being a Sunday Times Bestselling Author, signing more books than me, and my frequent threats to summarily despatch him to the fiery pits of author hell with one of my Spellcrackers pencils much chat and fun was had by all. It was brilliant to see some familiar faces - *waves* at Neil, Michelle, Liz, Mark, Marc, and others (you know who you are :-)), and exciting to meet lovely new readers! Thanks so much to all of you for coming, and thanks to Waterstone's for being wonderful bookshop hosts!
And a huge thank you to the awesome Jackie, (visit her website to see more Fabulous Cakes she's made!) who is an absolute star and made us these super scrumptious cupcakes for us! With miniature copies of our actual books as decorations! Wow!!! Jackie, You Rock, Lady!!
Click to embiggen and see the cupcake fabulousness in all its glorious detail.
A close up!
*I know I'm being shameless here, calling my own books wonderful, though Ben had books there too, and his really are wonderful :-D
Thanks to everyone who left comments about their favourite part of a wedding - some of you even shared my enjoyment of the cake, toast and bubbly bit *g*
When my aunt got married, an orange tabby cat jumped on the train of her dress and played with the flowers that the flower-girl dropped. We always joke around that the cat was trying to steal the bride because she was so pretty. :D
I think my favorite part of weddings (at least in this case) is the infectious laughter. Everyone is happy and smiling. The little things that make a wedding unique really bring out the joy of the occasion.
Congratulations Deb! An email is on its way to you!
What's Happening Next!
Thanks again to everyone for entering this giveaway, and all the other celebratory giveaways! (And especially for buying my new books!) I hope you all had fun, and look out for more some time in the future! Until then, normal blogging will be resumed, which translates as - The Deadline of Doom is Looming, so I'm chained to my laptop in the Writing Cave, so posting will hopefully be weekly, but is likely to be a bit more intermittent than that, while I spend time torturing my characters in order to fully live up to my Evil Author persona. *g*
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