Fiona Lowe's Blog, page 26

I've been working really hard on finishing a single title romance…another bride book and last week the only time I left the house was for a hit of tennis, the morning gym session, the bus stop to meet the boys and of course, the supermarket. Apart from that I was glued to the chair and I missed April 1st. I missed all the jokes; everything. I also forgot that I had a book released on April 1st in the US.

So here I am three days later with an update for my US Readers

I know I've been talking about Single Dad's Triple Trouble for three months but for my US  Readers, it is now available at eharlequin as a paperback or an eBook.  Readers who prefer a Kindle edition can pre-order it now and receive it in May

 This story is set on the glorious Australian island of Tasmania and CataRomance said, "Single Dad's Triple Trouble is a realistic, emotional, dramatic and stirring tale of hope, redemption and triumph that will leave readers smiling. I loved Elly's strength, independence and spirit and I couldn't help but fall for gorgeous Gabe and his adorable triplets."

The Pink Heart Society said, " Truthful, moving and romantic."

If you're looking for a book to read over Spring break or at Easter, then consider Elly and Gabe's attempt to find their way through a past of hurt and find the future they deserve.

For pictures that inspired the story, head on over to my website. Oh and that reminds me, I need to do an April update for that too. Rushing there now!

Fiona x

 As you know, we've had a non-summer and yesterday DH and I started doing the autumn gardening…the tidying up, the slashing back, the pruning. As we trimmed the hedge by the pool we lamented how little use it got this year and given our record heat two years ago, it is hard to get our head around the fact we only had one total fire ban this season. 

Instead of heat we've had rain. Buckets of it. As a result, we've seen things in our house and garden we're not used to seeing here in the southern part of Australia. We had a gecko in the bathroom two weeks ago. If you live in Queensland that is an everyday occurrence but down here, not at all. The boys didn't believe me when I told them.

We are also having an arachnid blow out. There are cobwebs EVERYWHERE. I am hopeless at killing spiders so I put them in a glass and deliver them back into the garden, even the Whitetails because they eat other spiders which are making a mess of my windows!   Do you all have 'green bins'? These are bins you put your garden refuse in and the council collect it and mulch it. We have a HUGE garden and one bin so at this time of year we're always scrumming for room and due to a sunny weekend the neighbors had the temerity to have filled theirs too;-)  This means a lot of squishing and jumping on the contents is required. I was sad to see that DH had already 3/4 filled the bin with last week's leftovers before I even got started. 

Just to wind back a bit…for those of you who don't know me all that well, I hate having dirty hands…it's almost OCD but not quite As a result I only ever garden with leather gardening gloves and that saved my life yesterday because as I put my hand in the bin I narrowly missed this.

Now the closest I have EVER been to a Red back Spider in my life is the beer! They  are supposed to live in woodpiles and dark places not on a bit of dead plant that has been in the sun for six days! For the non-Aussie blog readers, Red back spiders are very poisonous and this one was HUGE. Had I been bitten I would have been one sick author and in hospital for a bit. 

So that was my excitement for yesterday and then I had to go against all my 'I don't kill spiders' because I really didn't want this one wandering into the house like the Huntsman from the garden did the other day. How do you safely kill a spider that is more than 1.5 inches across without getting bitten? A spider than an move swiftly and just drops a thread. I'm not proud…I half drowned it and then squashed it. I still feel bad!

It all reminded me of the Scared Weird Little Guy's song so here it is to share and may you all have a Red back-free day!

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It's March 15th so Single Dad's Triple Trouble is now on shelf in the Australia and available online as a paperback or eBook. I wrote this story after our holiday on the glorious island of Tasmania. The holiday house where we stayed had a heap of magazines and I had a feast of catching up on who's who and who's doing what

It got me thinking. Are there some mistakes we make that we can't recover from? Elly and Gabe had broken up; their relationship floundering on their different wants out of life. The story starts out two years post breakup. Can they work through the hurt and betrayal that is still very much alive? 

Single Dad's Triple Trouble is a reunion story. It's my first full book reunion story. Last year I wrote a novella called 'Return to Love' and if you missed it, it is here available as a FREE read. 

 Grab yourselves a copy from Kmart, Target, Big W or Borders.  The cover is different from the UK so this is what yo7u're looking for

 Please make yourselves a cuppa, drop into my website, and read more about Elly and Gabe, as well as seeing pictures that inspired me while I wrote. Check out the Curios section for all sorts of diversions and my blog for weekly ramblesJ If you're on Twitter or Face Book then I'd love to see you there too!!

  Wishing you all the best and plenty of time for reading!

Luv Fiona xx

It's read an eBook week and I love the taglines!

I had no clue eBooks were 40 years old! 

I've copied this from the website, http://www.ebookweek.com/history.html

 In  1971  Michael Hart was handed a real boon – $100,000.00 worth of computer time with a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer. He decided that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. The first "e-book" was born—a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Those humble beginnings would become Project Gutenberg. Today Project Gutenberg houses 20,000 free texts and over 100,000 books are available through their partners. Today over 3,000,000 books are downloaded each month.

So there you go!  If you're new to eBooks and you love a great romance check out Carina Press ,eharlequin and Mlls and Boon. They are great places to start!

It's March 1st so officially autumn in my part of the world and for once the weather seems to know it. We have a cool day with some rain squals and I had to haul out a jacket!

The first of the month also means website updates and this month brings a tweaked  tagline.  Why?  Well, it's because although I  write "outback romance" for Harlequin Mills & Boon in the medical romance line ,  I also write single title contemporary romances set in Wisconsin, USA,  which isn't located anywhere near the outback!  But all my books share one thing in common and that is they're set in small towns with big hearts! 

Talking small towns and big hearts, Single Dad's Triple Trouble is set in a small town on the east coast of Tasmania. CataRomance wrote, ""A tender, touching and believable tale of old passions, fresh starts and devastating choices."  It's available in the UK and Australia and in April in the US.  The Australian cover is a bit different from the UK and US cover. Do you have a preference?

My Carina Press book, The Boomerang Bride, now has a release date of August 8th 2011! I am so excited about this book and have been working on it with my editor where I fell in love with Matilda and Marc all over again!  I loved creating a small town in Wisconsin, a place I have very fond memories of when I lived there for three years. More information is coming about this story in the next few months.

For my northern hemisphere readers, I hope signs of spring are coming your way.

Happy March and happy reading.

Love Fiona x

I was on the radio at 6.20am the other morning. Why? Well, I woke up and heard the breakfast program host asking about electronic books and I thought, "I know something about that!" So I called in and got chatting about one of the biggest changes in publishing since the Gutenburg Press. 

The first time I heard about eBooks was about 2000 and a woman at a writers' group was talking about them. In Australia at that point the only option to read eBooks was on your computer. Fast forward a decade and my, how things have changed! IN 2008, Harlequin started putting out Medicals in dual format (print and eBook) and The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal was my very first eBook.  I put a link on my website and didn't think too much about it. Had anyone asked me then if I'd have an eBook reader in 2011 I would have laughed at them and said, "Nope, can't see myself with one."

But I have a confession to make. I have two.  I blame my family. Yes, it' all their fault:-)  I got an iPad in June because it was so much more than an eBook reader. Don't tell DH but I've been having an affair with my iPad ever since. I adore it and I adore reading books on it. Backlit, adjustable fonts, adjustable background color, divine and lush covers that you can dive into. I'm starting to get excited about seeing my cover for The Boomerang Bride, my Carina Press single-title romance later in the year. 

Basically, there's nothing about the iPad that I don't like except that the family feel pretty much the same way about the iPad as I do and they keep using it!  I sometimes have to fight to read a book on it. So at Christmas I ummed and ahhed about a new tennis racquet and decided on a Kindle instead. I chose a cherry red cover with a built in light (so cute!) and it's just like holding a paperback.  I love it too.

I've discovered that not all eBook formats are the same and that sometimes conversion needs to take place and that Calibre is fabulous for this.  I've learned how to put books on both devices and how they can talk to each other so if I am reading on one reader and then the next day pick up on the other, it syncs to where I am up to!  I love that I can go on a plane with lots of books in something that is the size of one paperback and not worry about breaking the luggage weight limit with books.  It was last June when I was packing for Bali that I first thought, "I think I need an e Reader."

People who have never read an eBook often say to me, "I couldn't possibly do that. I must hold the book. I must smell the book and I'd hate the screen."  To be honest, I don't really notice the screen at all and I get into the story. To me, old paperbacks make me sneeze and I don't like the yellowed pages so that part of reading has never been a draw for me.  My biggest worry was that I would have to give up reading in the bath but Angela James from Carina Press came up with a high-tech solution— put the device in a zip lock baggie! It works a treat.

I 'm not a "this way only" person so I can see myself reading both print and eBooks and happily swapping between the two. What does drive my buying of books is price. The eBook needs to cost less than the print version for me to buy it. Last night I bought a print copy of a book because it was $4 cheaper than the eBook. As a consumer and an author that seemed plain wrong but I think the publishing world is only just starting to come to grips with this massive change. Harlequin however has been a market leader in this area.

As an author, I'm told that romance readers have been quick adopters of this new reading technology so I'm asking this— who of you out there has an eBook reading device and what do you love about it? Or if you don't have one, are you thinking about it?  Do you borrow books from the library on it? Do you buy more books than before your device or did that stay the same? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Oh and PS, my tennis racquet just broke and I had to get a new one yesterday, but that's a blog for another day because I think I have fallen in love with another bit of equipment!

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