busybusy

Current work: Med duo 2
Listening to: Coldplay, Snow Patrol and Bach
Reading: Neil Gaiman, American Gods (very interesting read – good pace,too)

Finished the revisions this weekend. Back to the other two books which are both on deadline… Nothing exciting of my own to add so here’s a link to something I found at Shirley’s blog and which amused me greatly (dogs would never, never do this):



And the winner of Sold to the Highest Bidder, picked out of the hat, is Ann M (platypus facts!). Ann, please email me ( kate(at) katehardy(dot)com – replacing the bits in brackets with the symbols) with your snailmail addy and I’ll get the book in the post.

competition(s): winner and more chances to win!

Thanks to everyone who left comments last week. Winner of the competition to win a signed copy of One Night, One Baby is J Squires. Please email me your snailmail address (to kate(dot)hardy(at)btinternet(dot)com – replacing the stuff in brackets with a dot and an @ symbol – sorry to make it complicated, but I’ve learned the hard way that if you put your email address in as a link, the spam merchants rub their hands together and deluge you!).

To find out who won a copy of The Doctor’s Very Special Christmas at the Medical Romance Authors’ joint blog, go take a look (sorry, I am such a tease)… and while you’re there you get the chance to win a copy of Fiona Lowe’s fabulous Vietnam book.

There’s also a Christmas Stocking competition over at Kate Walker’s blog (win lots and lots of excellent books, including a signed copy of One Night, One Baby), and at Liz Fielding’s blog she’s doing daily giveaways from her backlist – she writes the most beautiful books (and I allowed myself a bit of her new Sheik book last night – what a treat).

(And if you don't win, One Night, One Baby and The Doctor's Very Special Christmas are both available on the Mills & Boon website. As is Liz's excellent Sheik book.)

more winners

Fiona Harper has kindly announced the winner – or I should say, winners as she’s picked two – for her prize on my 25th book blog party. Fiona says: ‘I picked becky - because a story like that deserves a book - and christyjan, because her story made me laugh.’

So please get in touch with your snailmail addies (to kate dot hardy at btinternet dot com – closing up the spaces and replacing the dots with a dot and the at with an at sign – the things I have to do to avoid spam, and particularly so at the moment because they’re all going on about weight loss and I’ve just realised why this morning’s weigh-in was so disastrous, i.e. we had dinner out on Friday night and I was a Very Bad Puppy with the pudding menu) and your prizes will be on their way.

I can definitely recommend the book because I read it this weekend...

more blog party winners

Haven’t forgotten! Fiona is on deadline so she'll be back soon with her winners.

In the meantime, here are mine. And because it’s a while since I posted a doggy pic, I thought I'd post one of winner-picker (taken with the new camera – he was still in slight sulk-mode at this point).

Winners of a signed copy of Breakfast at Giovanni's are Minna, Robyn L, KimW, Tinkerdelle and Annabel. Please contact me on kate dot hardy at btinternet dot com (sorry, spam-evasion - close up the spaces and replace dot with . and at with @) with your snailmail addy and a copy will be winging its way to you (sigh, despite UK postal strike).

I also need to remind previous winners to get in touch (otherwise the authors can’t send you your prizes): Minna (for Anne McAllister’s book The Antonides Marriage Deal), Devon (for Shirley Wells’s book Into the Shadows), Janie and Mona (for Lynne Marshall’s book In His Angel’s Arms).

blog party winner

Apologies for being so slack! We have another blog party winner – Anne McAllister’s gorgeous dog Gunnar picked Minna as his winner for a copy of The Antonides Marriage Deal. Congratulations, Minna - please get in touch with your snailmail address so Anne can send you your prize.

I also have some winners from earlier who haven’t been in touch yet – so here’s another call to Devon (for Shirley Wells’s book Into the Shadows), Janie and Mona (for Lynne Marshall’s book In His Angel’s Arms).

As I still can’t get to the bottom of why my email forwarder isn’t working (I may just have to change it completely, sigh), please email me at myfirstname dot mysurname at btinternet dot com (replacing the words and dots and at sign as apppropriate) again, apologies about the format but I’m desperately trying to avoid the spammers!).

and even more winners…

Lynne Marshall says that there were so many responses, she'd like to give an extra prize – so we have two winners of In His Angel’s Arms. (Thank you, Lynne!) And we have another beautiful dog involved; Lynne says, ‘This is Rogan, my Rhodesian Ridgeback and part time muse. After completing his meal, he chose my winners. Unfortunately, he got buttery paw prints on all of the entries.’

Rogan’s choices were: Nell - for her struggle with dyscalcula and getting the CSE math qualification; and Janie - with enough rejections to wallpaper a room!

And because I was impressed with the amount of people who posted, I too would like to offer an extra prize - Breakfast at Giovanni's - to Mona.

Congratulations, Nell, Janie and Mona – please get in touch with me so we can arrange your prizes. (Again – sigh – to defeat the spammers: please email me at myfirstname dot mysurname at btinternet dot com)

and yet another winner…

Jill Shalvis is back from the RWA and got gorgeous Ashes to pick her winner: Juliemt!

Congratulations, Julie – you win your choice of one of Jill’s backlist (see http://jillshalvis.com/book-list/). Sigh, you know the drill about my horrible email…

and another winner

Diane, on the other hand, got her kitten to choose. (And, just to amuse t'other Kate, the title of this pic is 'Scary Holly'.)



Clearly Holly is just as smitten with Hugh-in-a-towel as a lot of romance readers seem to be, because the winner of the scrummy Green & Black's chocolate is Liz Fielding. (Liz, read your email!!) And Diane adds that she loved Robyn’s answer so she’s adding a second extra prize. (Robyn… I'm still struggling with this email forwarder thing so please can you contact me? My email address (sorry to format it like this, but I learned the hard way about how to avoid spam) is myfirstname dot mysurname @ btinternet dot com – thanks!)

winner

Milly Johnson said that her cat (whose photograph isn’t appearing here because Milly says he’s a Siamese who gets more than enough attention) didn’t even get a chance to chose the winner. ‘I read Becky’s and laughed aloud - it just is the clear winner!! And will you thank everyone please for the nice comments and “little stories” that I found really interesting (seeing “hard on” written down made me think how often I've said it - in a sleep context - and missed the opportunity to make a joke!)’ So well done, Becky – your prize is on its way!

and yet another winner

The feline quotient says it’s very, very bored with all these canine pictures and has pointed out that felines are not so undignified as canines (oh, are they not, Sir Sid? I’ve seen those photos of the ‘phraud’). So Kate Walker’s cat, Sid, did the honours to pick the winner of her prize.

The winner is Becky and Kate says, ‘Sid and I are in agreement here as she's the one who added the largest number of names to my TBR list!’

and another winner

Everyone’s being very efficient about drawing their winners. Michelle Styles said, ‘As the ducklings decided not to cooperate, I did a random number thing…’ (I knew you’d want to see a picture of uncooperative ducklings, so… here it is.)

Jan Jones is the winner of Michelle’s prize.

another winner

Our second winner today is Becky, who wins Lilian Darcy’s prize – congrats, Becky! As with Rae-Anne, I’ve left a message on your blog, too.

winner

Jenny Haddon has had major computer problems so I got my dog to do the honours. Well, actually, he lay down on the floor and waved his paws in the air, thinking he’d get his tummy rubbed and this is a specious excuse to publish another dog picture. The real ‘picking names out of a hat’ was done by my 6-year-old, who loved doing it and insisted on drawing all the names out of the hat and unfolding the paper and… I had to explain it was the FIRST name that won.

So congrats to Rae-Anne! (I’m continuing to have the forwarding problems so I’ve left you a message on your blog as well re getting in touch.)

Another winner

And we have another beautiful dog – this time it’s Bramble. Sadly, Bramble’s no longer with us, but Margaret McDonagh has beautiful memories of her: so much so that I was inspired to borrow her for my Cornish continuity book, The Doctor’s Royal Love Child, which is out next April (my vet book, which I so loved writing). Obviously I asked Mags's permission first - and then I was talking to my fellow Penhally authors about the kind of animals we were going to have in the village, and they started telling me stories I just had to use. So we have Maggie Kingsley's gran's parrot, Mags's neighbour's "turbo chick", Jennifer Taylor's daughter's cat rescue... (Did I mention that I loved writing that book?) But my hero REALLY needed a dog. What Mags told me about Bramble made me fall for her - a dog with the waggiest tail in the world. So here she is:




Cheryl is the winner of Margaret’s prize – as I mentioned below, technology is being uncooperative right now, so please check your emails, Cheryl…

Winner

I’ve been a bit slack about sorting this out this week – apologies, but then on the other hand it does give readers longer to post answers and be in with the chance of winning a book… (All right, I admit, I have a book due in on Thursday and my focus isn’t what it should be.) Anyway, I’ve shamelessly pinched a dog pic from Shirley (this is one of her dogs, Tilly, swimming) as part of evening up the canine-feline balance.

Shirley says, ‘I loved these answers, and isn't it strange how the unromantic gestures a) stick in your mind and b) are funny *after* the event? It was very difficult to pick a winner, but I've finally chosen Devon. Let's face it, it was a brilliant gesture on the guy's part. Who could ever forget being given an empty (it's the “empty” that makes me howl with laughter) peanut butter jar as a reminder of a guy? And they say romance is dead!’

I’m having problems with my email forwarder at the moment (sigh, technology) and because of my hideous deadline I’m not able to fix things until I get back from Wales, so I will be trying to email all winners between now and the end of the week.

And more winners...

Fiona Lowe’s gorgeous sons picked Vanessa’s name out of the hat to win a copy of The French Doctor’s Midwife Bride.

Congratulations to Vanessa; please email me with your snailmail details, and I'll pass them on to Fiona!

More winners...

(I couldn't get the formatting to work for all three winners and pics, hence different posts!)

Pat Posner’s dog Charlie was also a star in picking a winner for her prize – Kelly Hunter.

Congratulations to Kelly; please email me with your snailmail details, and I'll pass them on to Pat!

And some more winners...

We have another winner! Nicola Cornick is back from Alaska and (because my guests agree with me that in romance terms felines are getting the lion’s share of coverage – pun intended – and we need to even up the balance a bit) her gorgeous dog Monty picked the winner of Lord of Scandal. Nicola says: ‘Monty has randomly put his paw on Kim W and who am I to argue with his good taste since she expressed the desire to see Scotland and Ireland?’

Congratulations, Kim W; please email me with your snailmail details, and I'll pass them on to Nicola.

And another winner...

Brigid used a random number generator and picked Amy as the winner of the Keith Urban album. Am in the process of putting you in touch…

more winners...

Sorry, I've been a bit slack on this front - blame the tooth! Jill Shalvis and Nicola Cornick will be picking their winners on their return. In the meantime I have two more winners:

India Grey says: 'My girls and I have just got down to the serious business of picking a winner (didn't trust Ruby the cat this time after she was such a huge disappointment last time). Anyway, the name picked out of the box was Katie S. Thanks again for inviting me to contribute. I really enjoyed reading everyone's comments and it was so lovely to be amongst friends and kindred chocoholics!! I'll pass your details to India, Katie.

Nell Dixon has picked Amy Andrews.

Prizes will be on their way shortly!