Discounts and a double dose of champagne

Book News:

Gosh, indeedy, it appears that the paperback version of romantic comedy Pink Champagne and Apple Juice is experiencing a sudden surge of popularity. I wonder if people are buying it for Christmas? It's been pretty flat (AKA non-existent) on sales for months so it's lovely to have an unexpected change on that front. If you have bought it, then many thanks and I hope you or the person it's intended for enjoy the read. And don't forget the ebook version is also available, so never say I don't try to cater for all tastes.

Speaking of unexpected sales, you'll be pleased to hear that all my Amber Allure Press books currently have a 25% discount, so that's well worth a browse for sure - and with any luck they'll warm your winter up too and put you in a glowing mood for the Big Season. Enjoy!

At the same time, I'm really getting back into writing my gay fantasy novella, The Taming of the Hawk. I'm just getting to the adventure/political struggle sections now so they should be fun. I do so love writing adventure and battle sections - must be my calm and contemplative nature, eh.

Across at Vulpes Libris Reviews, I find I really don't love all in my review of Madeleine Wickham's The Tennis Party, but hey at least the ending was good. All rather disappointing really, as I've definitely enjoyed some of her other work.

Recent meditations are:


Meditation 597
The fields, woods
and pastures
lie empty.

Only the wind
brushes over
the waiting soil

and grasses,
setting the leaves,
the crooked branches

whispering
of everything
that went before.


Meditation 598
The larger the family
the greater the potential
disaster

as each of them
in their various
ways

constantly
strives to be
master.


Life News:

This week so far has been a week of health appointments. Yesterday I had my eye test and was greatly relieved that I don't have to buy new glasses - thereby saving huge amounts of money which can be put to very good use elsewhere. And today it's been the dental hygienist, so my teeth are lovely and shiny for Christmas, hurrah.

Yesterday evening was the third in the church's special Advent & Compline quiet services - it was just so very relaxing I could have stayed there for ever. Such a wonderful change from the huge busyness and general gubbins going on elsewhere. Honestly, there should be more times set aside for group quietness. It's a real boon.

Oh and we've opened our first champagne of the season - K had one bottle left over from his bulk-buy for the office Christmas so we've celebrated by drinking it. Lovely. You can never really have too much champagne, to my mind. Bring it on.

And, in the virtual world, some Evil Person from Indonesia (where they obviously have nothing better to do ...) has this week hacked into my FB account for reasons known only to themselves. Luckily, FB seem pretty hot on this sort of stuff, so contacted me at once so I could change my password (thank you, FB). So I think I'm normal now (relatively), but really who can tell?...

Finally, in the wonderful world of TV, K and I are devastated that we've seen the last of Series One of the marvellous comedy crime programme, Death in Paradise. We've thoroughly enjoyed its quirkiness, humanity and downright simplicity and we hope that some wise person will hurry up and make a second series - in spite of the fact that nobody but us seems to have liked it, sigh. Anyway, you can never go wrong with Ben Miller. In anything. He's great.

Anne Brooke
The Origami Nun

Romance and song all the way to the finale

Am very pleased to say that All Romance Ebooks are now stocking both Pink Champagne and Apple Juice and Thorn in the Flesh, and Thorn in the Flesh even (at the moment of typing ...) appears on the front page of All Romance Ebooks, so that's been a bit of a thrill. And a special thank you to Leslie of Bristlecone Pine Press for sorting it all out. What a star!

Also today, my review of Erin Pringle's short story collection, The Floating Order is now up at the Vulpes Libris review site. The collection - and I hope (!) the review - is well worth a read, all the more so as I'm disagreeing with literary review giant Scott Pack in my response to Pringle's work ...

And here's this morning's meditation:

Meditation 153

What turns curse
to blessing
is love;

let the light
wash through you
and pray

to one day know
where you came from
and where you go.


This afternoon, Lord H and I are at our first Glyndebourne event of the season and will be enjoying all the romance and song of Purcell's The Fairy Queen, plus there's a bottle of champagne with my name on it, hurrah! I'm getting my glad rags dusted down even now.

All of which is highly appropriate as tomorrow will be my 45th birthday (hurrah!! So young, and so unspoiled, I hear you cry - or maybe not ...) so the chances of any kind of journal entry are shamefully low and I'll be spending most of my day admiring the roses and (I hope) sunshine of Wisley.

Have a great weekend, everyone, and I'll catch up with you on Monday - which will of course be publication date for The Bones of Summer. Well, gosh!

Today's nice things:

1. A new buying home for Champers and Thorn
2. The Vulpes Libris review
3. Poetry
4. Glyndebourne
5. Champagne!
6. My upcoming birthday
7. The roses of Wisley
8. Only two days to the Bones publication date, hurrah!

Anne Brooke - enjoying days of wine and roses ...

Resolutions and revolts

A rather disturbed night last night. God knows why, but Lord H and I were both wide awake at 5am and then slumped again at 8. And not even a neighbourhood party to use as an excuse. Maybe it was the lack of night-time Horlicks? Hmm, I feel an advert coming on ... But at least I had time to think up some sensible resolutions while I was staring at the ceiling.

Which include (a) watching the News more so I at least know something of what's going on in the world, thus lessening the possibilities of looking like a complete dork too often (Iraq? We're at war? ... Still? - no, really, that's just an example. Honest ...); (b) not pushing myself to do stuff too much and relaxing more; (c) doing more of what I enjoy and less of what I feel I have to do. After all, Lord H is the expert at (b) and (c), so I should be able to follow his example fairly easily. So, there you have it. Let's hope that by the end of 2007, I'm a completely informed layabout. Hmm, will there be a test?...

Oh, and Lord H found a news item on the Internet today which said that the French were revolting (please, no jokes ...) because they didn't want to have 2007, as they all thought 2006 had been okay and wanted to hang onto it for longer. Apparently, they held a march to protest the onward movement of time last night, shouting "No to 2007!" (or Non a 2007, more realistically?). I gather the enthusiasm wasn't quenched when 2007 actually turned up, as they then all started shouting "No to 2008!" Marvellous stuff - there's something so quirkily British about it that (a) I wish we'd thought of it first; and (b) it's good to know that the French are finally learning something from us. Vive la similarite, eh? Though this does beg a deeper question of: if we don't like a year, can we bypass it and go onto the next without trawling through a whole twelve months? Sounds good to me, and no doubt our Nanny Government will pass a law about it at some stage. We live in hope.

So, today, I've watched meaningless jolly tv, which has cheered me up, had a nap, which has livened me up and tonight will be opening a bottle of good champagne to toast the New Year again - which will no doubt tank me up. It's good to have a plan.

Today's nice things:

1. Thinking of some low-key resolutions
2. Laughing at the French (sorry - but it is an unsung British activity, and they know we love them really - like a maiden aunt who doesn't fit in but who is family after all ... damn it)
3. Champagne.

Anne Brooke
http://www.annebrooke.com
http://www.goldenford.co.uk