Category Archives: books

Baked with Love – out today

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Baked with Love is out today…

I based it loosely on the Great British Bake Off show. Years ago, the programme’s hosts were Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, who were notorious for their dreadful baking puns and sly innuendo.

To give you a flavour of the book, here are some of the ones I came up with for my book. Don’t groan too much…

Sue, fluffy pink jumper clashing with her bright orange hair, stepped forward, beaming at us. “Welcome, contestants, to this year’s Best Baker UK! Why was the ninja so good at baking pastries?

“Because he had a black belt in martial tarts, of course.”

a picture of a strawberry tart
A strawberry tart
a heap of pistachio nuts

Kimberly and Sue cosied up to Rob as he chopped up a large handful of pistachios, tiny flecks of green flying off the chopping board. “Ooh,” Kimberly said. “I do love a chunky nut or two, don’t you, Sue?”

Sue, straight-faced, shook her head. “Nuts ground to a paste are my preference.”

Playing along

Kimberly and Sue rocked up at my bench. Sue picked up a sausage, letting it dangle from her fingers. “Ooh, I love a sausage early in the morning!”

Sue’s joke might be the most obvious one in the entire world, but I played along. “Absolutely, Sue. The bigger the better too, eh?”

“No, no, no,” Kimberly chimed in. No-one but me could see the tightness in Sue’s jaw as she waited for the reply. “The size of the sausage isn’t important. It’s what you do with it that counts.”

She tipped her head in Rob’s direction. To the left, a camera zoomed in on him.

Bread, bread, bread

As I kneaded the dough, punching into it, Kimberly glided up. “Woo, Lissie!” she exclaimed, helping herself to the sultanas piled up in a bowl. “Are you imagining a certain someone when you hit that bread?”

She added an exaggerated wink, directing her head to Rob’s bench.

Deciding that I might as well give Graham what he wanted, I thumped the dough harder for effect. “Not at all, Kimberly. Though it feels therapeutic. Do you want to try?”

“Oh, yes!” she said, digging her knuckles into the dough I handed over. “It’s the yeast I can do.”

“Amazon keeps sending me Rich Tea biscuits even though I don’t like them,” Kimberly said, picking up the tin of condensed milk on my bench.

Spending so much time with them in person meant you could anticipate the jokes.

“But everything’s okay now,” I replied, retrieving a tin opener from the utensil drawer under my bench. “As you’ve updated your cookies preference, right?”

She high-fived me; the move caught on camera. “Ha! Lissie, you should replace Sue. You’re much better at this than she is.”

Sorry about that! If you’d like to buy the book, you can do so by clicking on the button below.

Buy Baked with Love here
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Location, location, location

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Some years back, I went the book launch of Stonemouth, written by the late (and extremely great) Iain Banks, where he admitted he made up the town where the novel is situated because he despised doing research.

That little titbit lodged in my subconscious, as I did the same a few years later when I wrote Artists Town and the Highland Books.

If you create a fictional town or village, there’s no need to worry about confusing the site of the town hall with the derelict church or placing two streets close together for narrative purposes (and risking a chorus of criticism in the reviews from the town/village’s real inhabitants).

Nor need you fret about people from those places presuming you’ve used them somewhere in the novel and portrayed them in an unfavourable light. The author Brooke Magnanti at another book event I attended stated that she made up the setting for her crime thriller, The Turning Tide, so as not to offend her Lochaber neighbours.

Artists Town, a coming-of-age tale set in a small Scottish town, was inspired by Kirkcudbright, the small Scottish town where I spent my formative years.

Picture of Emma Baird sitting next to a street sign for Baird Way in Kirkcudbright
Once upon a time, Kirkcudbright had a creamery. When it was demolished, the council built social housing in its place, and named one of the streets, Baird Street, in honour of one of the creamery’s founders, my grandfather.

Let me let you into the secret of Kirkcudbright’s pronunciation. Those of us born in this tiny town nestled far from the madding crowds in the south-west of Scotland grew up chortling whenever the rare occasion of it meriting a mention on the national news arose and presenters mispronounced it Cur-cud-bright, when it’s—clearly—Cur-coo-bree.

Other Scottish place name minefields include Milngavie, pronounced Mull-guy, Strathaven, pronounced Stray-ven and Bearsden, pronounced Brendan.

(Kidding, Bearsden is pronounced exactly as it is written.)

Like Brooke Magnanti, I didn’t want to offend the locals, so I changed the name Kirkcudbright in the book to Kirkinwall. But because Kirkcudbright is one of the few places in the UK with a castle in the midst of it, any locals reading it will recognise the location straight away.

 © Copyright Colin Smith and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Mackies Fish and Chips plays a key role in Artists Town, and I based the establishment loosely on a sadly no-longer there chippie, Polar Bites, which had an excellent (and well deserved) reputation for its take on the UK’s favourite dish.

Since I couldn’t find a picture of the now defunct Polar Bites, I’ve treated you instead to a drool-worthy pic…

The Highland books, a series of romantic comedies/feel-good escapist novels, are set in the imaginary village of Lochalshie, which is a loose mix of Arrochar in Argyll and Bute, and Lochcarron in Wester Ross.

Lochcarron © Copyright Toby Speight and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The Lochside Welcome, the local pub/hotel, is an important setting in the books and it resembles the Village Inn in Arrochar, appearance-wise, anyway. As far as I’m aware, it’s never played hosted the wedding of a reality TV star—also made-up—but given that she’s a member of a family who’ve been on MTV for many years and a ‘self-made’ billionaire whose fortune comes from a make-up and skincare company, there is no prize for guessing who she’s modelled on.

© Copyright Jim Barton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
Book cover for Highland Wedding by Emma Baird
What the Village Inn looks like in my books.

When you set your novels in bigger towns and cities, it´s okay to go with the real version, and I´ve used Glasgow, London, Norwich and even Great Yarmouth in my books, but small town settings will always be my preferred choice because it´s much easier to create a sense of community, which is why books and TV series set in smaller places appeal to so many people.

You can buy Artists Town and the Highland Books directly from the Pink Glitter Publishing store here.

Food in books

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The Bakewell tart was made by my own fair hand for a party. Retro dishes can be very popular…

My latest novel, Baked with Love, is now available for pre-order. The book features a fictionalised version of a well-known and loved baking show, so there are a lot of descriptions of cakes in it.

In general, there are a lot of descriptions of all kinds of foods in all my books, reflecting my other passions in life, cooking and eating. If I were any good at food styling and photography and filming, I’d run a food blog for sure. I toyed with the idea at one point and came up with the snappy (not) title, Emma Cooks the Books! along with fancy-schmancy graphics too, see above.

Anyway, as that did not happen (food blogs and vlogs look like a tonne of work – and many of them take place in immaculate kitchens, using state-of-the-art equipment that seems as if it’s being used for the first time), I’ve rounded up a collection of foodie pics and quotes from my books…

Highland Fling by Emma Baird book cover
Highland Fling – a romcom set in the Scottish Highlands.
High Heels and Pink Glitter cover by Emma Baird
High Heels and Pink Glitter – a chick lit novel available to read for free on Wattpad. I would love to claim credit for this beautiful chocolate cake, but my sister made it…
Highland Wedding by Emma Baird book cover
Highland Wedding – a romcom set in the Scottish Highlands.
A Leap of Faith by Emma Baird book cover
A Leap of Faith – a Covid-19 lockdown love story.
Beautiful Fighters by Emma Baird book cover
Beautiful Fighters – a NA vampire novel.
Beautiful Biters by Emma Baird book cover
Beautiful Biters – a NA vampire story. I made the carrot cake and decorated it, using my mum’s tried and tested fork method (lines across and then down).
Highland Chances – a light-hearted, feel-good book set in the Scottish Highlands.

Bread, the BBC and lessons in productivity

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Reading is the basic tool in the living of a good life

This week in creativity…

How to spend creative hours productively – part one

To format your book’s paperback edition, use a pre-made template. It takes approximately an hour.

How to spend creative hours productively – part two

Use no templates. Insist on formatting word documents yourself because you know the measurements and you want to do fancy-smancy things. Get yourself in a pickle trying to work out page breaks, section breaks, odd page headers, even page headers, numbering, and so on.

Waste five hours + one hour uploading the document to KDP Print – time you will never get back – only for the system to reject it repeatedly because the margins aren’t correct, despite the fact that YOU HAVE USED THE MARGINS SPECIFIED BY KDP IN THE FIRST PLACE.

How to spend creative hours productively – part three

Skip part two.

Anyhoo, the paperback edition of my latest chick lit novel, Baked with Love, is now in the system and will be available in mid-March.

Adventures at the BBC

On Tuesday, I took part in a pilot show recording for BBC radio. Because the show is about books and reading, a small panel of us, led by Scottish author and broadcaster Damian Barr, discussed Kazuo Ishiguru’s sci-fi novel, Klara and the Sun.

I was the only one who found the book a chore to read. For me, there wasn’t enough description, making it hard to imagine the world he’d created, the dialogue felt awfully stilted and the characters weren’t particularly sympathetic, but everyone experiences books differently, which is why book groups are so fascinating to be a part of.

The others were drawn in by the simple prose and lack of description, and two mentioned binge-reading the book, whereas I read it as part of my ‘to-do’ list for the day.

A few words were bandied about that I had to look up afterwards, having no idea what they meant, and I’m afraid I’ll come across as the panel dunce when (or if) the show is eventually broadcast.

But, as a long-standing admirer of Aunty Beeb (an affectionate British term for the BBC) and almost everything she does, it was a privilege to be involved,

What I’m baking/eating

For years, I followed a low-carb diet. Bread was the thing I missed the most. These days, I eat low-carb-ish, but a small amount of bread is a daily staple because…

… bread is the GREATEST foodstuff known to (wo)mankind.

Like almost all foodstuffs, it is far superior made from scratch. Kneading, on the other hand, is tedious, especially for those of us with butterfly attention spans. But after seeing someone tuck into ‘no-knead’ bread on YouTube, I decided to make two loaves this week.

You’ll need to plan ahead of time because the bread takes fourteen hours plus to make (dough rising time)—but it’s so easy and so tasty*.

Best served with lashings of butter and a thick layer of Marmite.

What I’m watching

The Detectorists, photo BBC

We’ve recently discovered Detectorists on BBC iPlayer and binge watched the three series. The programme follows the fortunes of a small group of metal detectorists and was written and directed by Mackenzie Crook (left in the picture above). It’s sooooo lovely – great characters, acting, the setting, the wildlife. If you haven’t seen it, you’re in for such a treat. I don’t know if it’s available outwith the UK, but if you are reading this and you’re in another country, I hope you can find it!

*As energy prices are through the roof at the moment, bread-making at home is a real luxury because you need the oven at a high temperature and the loaf takes an hour to bake.

This week in creativity

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Quote of the week:

Just in case things get boring, I'm bringing a book

In 2018, I set myself the goal of becoming a full-time writer by the time 2022 rolled around (and out). Ach, it happened and didn’t happen… the money-side never materialised. I suck at selling books.

Is the universe trying to telling me something? Tempting to say, yes. The world has spoken:

Emma, thou should put down thy pen and never pick it up again…

Look, the late Hilary Mantel, Maggie O’Farrell and anyone else who appears on Booker Prize/Orange Prize etc or lists has nothing to fear, but I’ve had enough praise from strangers—via reviews/emails/comments on Wattpad—to believe I’m not dreadful and I’ve won the odd prize here and there that spurs me on.

I write all the time. Busy day ahead? I get up early to cram words in. On holiday? I bring my laptop (or even my cheap, crappy Kindle along with a £10 keyboard) and tap the stuff out in hotel rooms. Christmas, New Year, birthdays and holidays? Pah! The words are squeezed in.

So yes. Goal accomplished, though perhaps not in the way I envisaged. Turns out crafting stories that no-one pays you for isn’t all that bad*.

Recently, I dug out a book I drafted way, way back in 2016. It was easy to write at the time, but when I was done, I shoved it in the metaphorical drawer with a sigh of, Well, that needs a TON of fixing.

And there it sat, accumulating dust over the years. When I re-read it at the end of last year, the errors, and more importantly, the solutions to them, popped up straightaway. Normally, I loathe revising a book but this one has been a pleasure. I scrapped most of what I’d written, and instead used the novel’s skeleton, fleshing it out much more satisfactorily with fresh words, scenes, dialogue and everything else that brings it to life.

An extract from my forthcoming novel, Forever, maybe

It’s so fulfilling.

Otherwise, I’ve spent the week grappling with book formatting for print, much of which has involved swearing at Word.

FFS, don’t start the numbers there. Don’t put them on blank pages! Keep this header, not that one! Look, I want each chapter to begin on the right-hand side. Just do it okay!

Weirdest Google search of the week

The writer’s search engine history is a weird and wonderful list that would raise the eyebrows of many a psychologist.

‘Names for parts’ is something I frequently Google. Settle down there at the back—I’m not alluding to anything filthy, just wondering what this bit of a vending machine/car/key/Calor Gas heater is called.

But recently, I was curious about how to get out of ankle tag. My main character had been tagged and needed to flee. Is such a thing possible?

Reddit (where else?) had the answers, and my favourite was—do your time and then it magically falls off. But, for dramatic purposes, I settled on the poster who suggested slipping a plastic bag over your foot, slathering it with lube, and wriggling out that way**.

Is it possible? Doubtful, but including it in the story allowed me to add an awkward conversation with the neighbours in which my main character knocked on the door and asked if they had any KY Jelly to spare instead of coffee…

What I’m eating/cooking

A selection of tapas dishes

We booked a late lunch at La Barca, a tapas restaurant in Helensburgh for Hogmanay. Tapas is food for gluttons—why try one dish when you can have three or four? The place was also buzzing, which I hope indicates that it is recession-proof in these high cost-of-living times.

At home, I’ve eaten a lot of this Rainbow Plant Life’s mushroom soup. If you love mushrooms, this is most mushroomy experience you will ever have…

Returning to the quote of the week… My first date with my husband took place in a pub. He recalls nipping to the loos and returning to find me engrossed in a book. (Manners prevailed; I put it away again.)

The world is divided into those who always carry a book with them—which is easier these days because those books can be on tablets or phones—and those who don’t.

But seriously, opportunities to read books while out and about arise on a regular basis. On a train, on a bus, in a GP’s waiting room, at the hairdresser’s, in a long queue, lunchtime at the office, coffee shops… why risk not being able to take advantage of them?

Which brings me neatly to…

What I’m reading

The Ministry for the Future

Re-reading this mahoosive whooper of a book for our book group. (I chose it—592 pages, small print. How to win friends and influence people…)

If you spend a lot of time fretting about the environment, this book might be for you because of the optimistic solutions it offers.

A Place of Greater Safety

In honour of the late, great Ms Mantel, I decided to re-read A Place of Greater Safety after watching Marie Antoinette on the Beeb this January (watch it, I beg you—the costumes, the sets, the acting).

What are you reading at the moment? Let me know in the comments… and if you’ve got a weird Google search, post that too!

*I say this from a position of extreme privilege. I have a part-time job, a partner with a full-time job and no kids.

**Please note. I am NOT condoning criminal behaviour.

WOMAN READING PIC: Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/nenadstojkovic/49982362222, reproduced under the Creative Commons Licence 2.0

The Booker Prize 2022 Book Group challenge

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The world would be a better place if more people joined book groups… I have had the immense privilege of being part of one for 20 years now—the Weegie BeeGees* (no-one calls it anything but the Book Group; the moniker was picked for identification purposes) founded by Maryanne McIntyre.

In that time, we’ve had at least 18 members, read at least 167 books and eaten at least 110 cakes. Lucy makes a cake themed around each book, which, given the general love for baking in the UK, most people find intriguing.

Mostly, we have read general fiction (40.7 per cent) and historical fiction (21 per cent). (For more information on our stats, including which genres different members tend to choose, our authors’ geographical spread and when the books we have been reading were published, see Lucy Jane’s 20 years of books and cakes: a book group’s data story.)

This year, the organisers of the Booker Prize along with the Reading Agency decided to invite book groups to apply to be part of the experience. They invited book groups to apply to read the short-listed books and review them—a well-meaning attempt to make literary prizes more inclusive through inviting in we amateurs.

The Booker Prize 2022 shortlist includes the shortest book and oldest author ever to be nominated, three second novels, authors from five countries and four continents, three independent publishers and several titles inspired by real events.

The shortlist consists of

  • Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
  • Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
  • Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
  • The Trees by Percival Everett
  • The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
  • Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

The winner will be announced on 17 October.

My friends Lucy and Morag Pavich put in the hard work of applying, and we were chosen. The six books shortlisted were allocated to each of the book groups (so unlike a real book group situation, none of our members chose the book we read) and off we went to read, digest and discuss Glory…

Two members of our Book Group, if we win the reading challenge with our fascinating insights (!) will be invited to attend the 2022 Booker Prize ceremony and dinner at the Roundhouse in London on 17 October.

Lucy and I were interviewed by Radio Scotland’s Janice Forsyth talking about the Booker Prize book we read and our book group in general. It was a nerve racking experience not least because it was live. I coped by pointing at Lucy every time Janice asked one of the more difficult questions (sorry, Lucy!) and waffling on a bit about if everyone joined a book group, the world would be a better place.

You can listen to the audio here: https://lucyjanes.blog/2022/10/06/the-booker-prize-book-club-challenge/

To cut to the chase though, what did we actually think of Glory?

Over the years, very few books have met universal approval or dislike, and so was the case with Glory. Here’s my review of it…

The joy of belonging to a book group is that you read outside your comfort zone, which can turn up gems. The reverse is true as well of course. Personally, I found Glory a struggle to read. I’m not keen on allegory, and sometimes the satire seemed rather laboured.
Having stared off disliking the repetitive nature of some of the book, after a while it became more ‘rhythmic’ to my ear—tuning into the author’s voice, I suppose—and the writing and descriptions were beautiful in parts. You can’t help but admire the author’s ambition in attempting to tell such a ‘big’ story about a nation and I came away from the book determined to read up more on a history and culture I have so little knowledge of.
I enjoyed Destiny’s story (particularly when she returned and had to ‘tune’ back into the place where she came from) and the social media stuff felt very relevant—not just in relation to the fictional country, but as related to all kinds of events these days. And of course it raised a smile when some thinly disguised bigwigs turned up.
This is the first time I have seen George Floyd turn up in fiction, and I found that part of the book incredibly moving. The multiple points of view added to the novel too. Most novels published in this century concentrate on only a few, whereas this technique felt as if it was the only way you could tell a story like Glory.

Wish us luck in the competition!

My own writing

Reading prize-nominated and prize-winning books is inspiring, though sometimes you end up thinking, “I might as well give up now! I’ll never manage to write as beautifully as that.” But I persevere.

My vampire novel, Beautiful Biters, is now in the Paid Stories programme on Wattpad, which is nice from a validation point of view. Somebody somewhere recognised it as ‘worthy’ of publishing.

I have self-published a lot of books, which gives you control over everything—from the blurb to the uploading and the commissioning of covers. When my story entered the Paid Stories programme, Wattpad changed the cover of Beautiful Biters to the one on the left:

I much prefer the cover I commissioned (on the right), which was created by the talented Jennifer Mijatovic (@wee_mij on Instagram). The Wattpad cover is very ‘American’ and with traditional publishing, you often see two different covers for the UK versus the US market, which is an interesting fact in and of itself.

To me, covers with photographs of people often look cheap, and are cheap because it takes less time and effort to create them than to come up with an original image, such as the one Jennifer did for me, which also does a better job of conveying the adventure element of the story.

I’d love to know what you think, and which cover you prefer…

*We live in and around Glasgow and the slang name for people from Glasgow is Weegies (from the word Glaswegian, pronounced glas-wee-gin for those outside of the UK) and BeeGees from the initials, geddit?

Reasons to celebrate

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I dunno… there aren’t many reasons to celebrate at present, what with the ongoing war in Europe, what’s happening to women in the US, the climate emergency and record inflation levels.

This week, a news presenter on the radio announced that we’d probably noticed how much more expensive our dinners were now than… and I honestly expected him to say, ‘last week’ there, rather than ‘last year’.

Still, I have my own small triumphs. First off, was undergoing tests in hospital that proved I do not have bowel cancer. A great result, eh? A routine bowel screening had shown blood in my sample, necessitating a colonoscopy.

As the literature said, less than 5 percent of those tested actually have cancer and I did not think there was anything wrong with that ‘bit’ of me. However, thanks to the dreaded C-word (the other one), there was a considerable wait for the colonoscopy.

But it went ahead the other week and there was nothing there. NOTHING. Which makes me fortunate indeed, not least because I live somewhere that offers such an efficient screening programme even though our National Health Service is creaking under the weight of backlogs and years of underfunding.

To prepare for a colonoscopy, you eat a low-fibre diet for three days. As a recently converted vegan that posed a real challenge (so challenging, in fact, that I abandoned the veganism for the three days, sorry oh much more principled people than I am). My celebratory post-colonoscopy meal was therefore this:

Tofu, brown rice, lots of veggies, a spicy peanut sauce and picked red onions—every single ingredient the instructions from the Endoscopy Clinic banned on the low-fibre diet.

(Thanks to yummylummy, who let me know about the role sugar-free jelly plays in prep for a colonoscopy… 😉)

Second, I have signed another contract with Wattpad, which will see my vampire book, Beautiful Biters (read the first chapter here) placed in its paid stories programme. While I am under no illusions about what this will do for my income, external validation for the stories I write is more than welcome.

In addition, this week I made my romcom Highland Fling free on Amazon, so that it could be part of a Hello Books promotion and when I checked my sales dashboard this morning, the book had been downloaded a grand total of 2,123 times, the bulk of which were in the US.

(I’m not sure my sense of humour translates. We’ll see!)

The most downloads I’ve ever managed in a week before has been in the 50-odd range, so the figures were a proper, proper ego boost. Let’s hope the good folks who download the book are spurred on to download the other five in the series, i.e. the ones they pay for. If it helps boost my Amazon rankings, it might keep the book more visible for some time, which again should help with sales long term.

If you would like to take part in the Hello Books promotion, which also includes other free romance titles, including this one by Enni Amanda, who created the cover for Highland Fling (and the other five books in the series), you can download the titles for free here: https://hellobooks.com/romance

Third, another small thing, but it feels like a biggie. I’m back into reading again. During the pandemic, I stopped. Not completely, but instead of powering through three or four books a week, it was more like one every few months as I was too busy doom-scrolling through the news and on blasted Twitter (I have a serious love-hate relationship with the platform).

Some gems I’ve read recently include:

Hungry, photo courtesy of my book group chum, Lucy, who also made this delicious tray bake to accompany Grace Dent’s food-related memoir, which came across as very relatable because I grew up in the same era/same sort of world and got invited to a Cosmopolitan lunch too. (A story for another day.)

Small Eden by Jane Davis, which I was lucky enough to receive an advance review copy for and read in two days.

The Cut by Christopher Brookmyre, whose writing and thoroughly Scottish sense of humour I’ve always loved.

My writing chum, Caron Allan, is busy putting together the final touches for her book, A Meeting with Murder, which I am very much looking forward to reading.

And finally, the two by-elections in the UK won’t mean much, if anything, to anyone outside the UK but I did a little dance of joy on Friday morning when the newsreader announced that the constituencies of Wakefield and Tiverton and Honiton had voted out the Conservative Party.

So, this weekend I will crack open that bottle of Moet my sister bought me for my birthday and hope that soon, very soon, we will all come together and rid ourselves of nasty, populist governments, minority imposed judgements that condemn half the population and the terrible, terrible people who have ended up in power.

Cheers, everyone!

Walking in Ireland (sort of) and romance giveaway

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Image by Jonas Fehre from Pixabay

This week, I’ve been waxing lyrical on the delights of County Galway in Ireland for a new client. Those white sandy beaches! The Wild Atlantic Way! The tiny Aran islands in Galway Bay! The green double-decker bus you can stay in!

There is something bitter-sweet about writing of the beauty of somewhere else when you have been stuck in the same place for months and months. I write about the wonderful walks you can do in Galway when my walking route has been the same day in and day out.

Still, I’ve promised myself that as soon as this is over, I’m heading for the hills of… anywhere else, as long as it isn’t West Dunbartonshire.

Sweet romance Valentine’s giveaway…

Need some romance in your life…? Highland Fling and more than 40 other books are up for grabs in the Sweet Romance Valentine’s giveaway.

They include:

A Novel Proposal by E.E Everly… Annalise Owings has fallen in love with her boss, Evan Andrews, editor of a small-press publishing company. What’s worse, Evan is clueless about her affections…

And Songbird Beginnings by Sylvia Price

Sam MacAuley and his wife Annalize are total opposites. When Sam wants to leave city life in Halifax to get a plot of land on Cape Breton Island, where he grew up, his wife wants nothing to do with his plans and opts to move herself and their three boys back to her home country of South Africa.

As Sam settles into a new life on his own, his friend Lachlan encourages him to get back into the dating scene. Although he meets plenty of women, he longs to find the one with whom he wants to share the rest of his life. Will Sam ever meet “the one”?

This book is the prequel to the #1 Amazon Best Seller, The Songbird Cottage.

Click this button to find the freebies

Celebrations all round

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Merry (almost) Christmas! Here in the UK, our celebrations will be far more muted this year as most of us are living under tight restrictions. Most households around where we live put their Christmas lights up a few weeks ago, as did we, breaking the habit of a lifetime. All of us are in need of cheer, aren’t we?

Anyway, talking of Celebrations (ooh, seamless segue!) the featured image at the start of this blog is what I consider the correct order of preference for Celebrations chocolates. The number one choice on the left—the Bounty—is controversial. Three members of my family agree—two don’t, one vociferously.

It seems people in the UK aren’t too happy with the Bounty Celebration either. (Bounty for those of you who don’t know is a chocolate covered coconutty sweet.) This year’s Celebrations advent calendar contained Bounties for three days in a row on 1, 2 and 3 December.

Ruining Christmas

They complained on Twitter, with one person saying: “I’m on day 4 of my celebrations advent calendar and someone tell me why i’ve gotten 3 bounties in a row??????? is this a sick joke or something @UKCelebrations. [sic]”

Other Tweets talked of Celebrations, owned by the Mars company, ruining Christmas after an already awful year.

Yes, of course there are much worse things going on in the world but sometimes I love it when people get worked up about silliness. And if they collectively want to gather up all those unwanted Bounties and send them to me, I’ll be delighted.

Wattys

In another celebratory moment, one of my other books got picked as a Wattys2020 winner, which obviously I’m pleased about. The Wattys are Wattpad’s annual writing prize. Wattpad is the largest online storytelling platform in the world and this year’s competition had more than 40,000 entries from 177 countries.

The prize was awarded for my vampire story Beautiful Biters. Project Over-Optimism, a trait I’m too often guilty of, started whispering in my ear straight away… This is it, Emma B! Netflix is coming for ya! I’ve calmed down considerably since then.

Anyway, this is the cover for the story, along with that nice winner badge on it…

And here is the blurb…

The first vampire attack happened on the way back from the hospital. My sister Rosie was four at the time. Miraculous it had taken that long…

Nineteen-year-old Maya has too much on her plate. Trying to protect her younger sister. Struggling with crushes on unsuitable guys.

Justin is a newly converted vampire, battling to resist the urge to kill and desperately worried about his brother, converted at the same time but AWOL ever since. If the authorities find him first, he’s toast.

When the two of them meet through the vampire Maya earmarks to help her with an exciting project aimed at making money, both are taken aback by the mutual attraction. First rule of vampire-human integration though…? You don’t go that far.

And while living in this bleak world poses its own hazards-not least because those in charge are too ready to ride rough shod over vampires and happy to accept backhanders, Maya and Justin still need to cope with the day to day stuff. Going to college, fighting with your mum, obsessing over the food you can’t eat, dealing with unpopularity and online trolls.

You can read the story for free on Wattpad by clicking on this button…

Champagne glasses picture courtesy of Pixabay.

Bubbles, books and #NaNoWriMo

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<p value="<amp-fit-text layout="fixed-height" min-font-size="6" max-font-size="72" height="80">This week, we’ve been thinking about bubbles…This week, we’ve been thinking about bubbles…

The fizzy ones you find in champagne came into use today* when I finished this year’s #NaNoWriMo. Cheers to me and all that, having completed the 50,000 words in one month challenge. But before I get too self-congratulatory, there is a lot of revising and editing to be done. As someone once said, the first draft of a book is a ‘word vomit’, a hot mess of ill-conceived ideas, open loops and plot holes a plenty.

If I toss them all up in the air, maybe they’ll fall onto the ground and make sense… Said no editor in the world ever. But hey ho, that’s next year’s job. The book is available to read on Wattpad.

The other bubbles involve family and friends. For those of you out with the UK, we are back in lockdown and have been for a while as wave two (or is it still one, seeing as the respite lasted about two weeks?) sweeps its way over our shores. But the UK government and the devolved administrations put their heads together and came up with… bubbles for Christmas.

You can travel. You can see people not in your household. In their or your house too. Only, don’t mix too many households. Three only, so bubble one, bubble two and bubble three can mix but not with anyone else. So if bubble three had a bubble one and two of their own (say, people unrelated to those in bubble one and two), then they are not supposed to mix them up.

Impossible to enforce and relying once again on common sense and decency. Some of us will be more cautious/law-abiding than others. No judgement, except on those who flagrantly break the rules. Anyway, we’re aiming for a mix of dinner with one household/outdoor walks with another one if the winter weather permits.

Finally, not bubble related unless you put it in a bubble called ‘complete escapism from what is happening all around us’, Highland Christmas is now available for pre-order! I have a small but devoted Highland Books fan club on Wattpad, and they made lots of lovely comments about this book, which was gratifying.

You can pre-order the book here (Amazon UK) and here (Amazon US)…

This is the blurb:

Christmas—joy, happiness and family fun, right?

As new parents and the co-owners of a village hotel, Gaby and Jack are looking forward to some time out come the end of December… Sure, being in the hospitality industry means working when everyone else is off, but once they’ve waved goodbye to the hotel’s Christmas guests, it’s all hands on deck for family festivities.

But Gaby’s mum has other plans in mind—ones that set Gaby and brother Dylan on a collision course with her. Nanna Cooper’s not in the best of health and Katya is coping with heartbreak once more. Just who is her baby’s daddy? Dexter demands to know…

Meanwhile, Lachlan seems to be up to no good, meeting strangers late at night and handing over brown envelopes while Mhari, as ever, is poking her nose in everywhere. Caroline, the once super enthusiastic grandmother, seems to have lost her appetite for babysitting Evie.

Featuring misbehaving grandmothers, secretive brothers and a whole lot of laughs, Highland Christmas is a heart-warming tale of rural life in Scotland.

If money is tight, you can read the book for free on Wattpad, where you will find it under my user name @SavvyDunn.

*last night. I’m not a lush. Well, only half the time.