Welcome to three days of activities where I hope to introduce you to some headlining acts who have contributed and supported the blog since the early days in September 2013. These last four years have been such an adventure and I hope that it will continue for many years to come.
However, I have to say a huge thank you to everyone who has dropped in and left their mark on the blog. That interaction has motivated me to keep writing and to continue to build a book promotion site that helps other authors get their books noticed. With hundreds of thousands of new titles each week it is a challenge to grab the spotlight, but I hope that in some small way, I can help with that.
In September I will be increasing the number of opportunities to showcase your work with a new author interview series.. with a difference. Keep an eye out in the next week or so as I shall be interviewing myself so you get an idea of the format.
My experience with most of you reading this, is that you are very modest, and have trouble blowing your own trumpet. So to help you with that, here is a short quiz with one word answers to put in the comments alongside your links. The answers I receive may be used against you in the posts on Sunday and Monday
QUIZ
- Which is your favourite recording artist or band
- Pizza or Pasta
- Favourite Film
- Person you would most like to meet Dead or Alive.
Then please leave your blog or website, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter Links.
I am all dressed up and ready to go… well if I am honest this photo is a few years old but hey.. it’s my party. Welcome and come on in.
To get the party started I am going to share a track from my favourite band – Status Quo.. with Looking Out For Caroline and then time to showcase a contributor who has been providing the music content for the blog for the last three years.
It is time to put some people in the spotlight for their long term contribution and support for the blog.
William Price King is an American Jazz singer, composer and musician who I first met t through Twitter, and asked if he would be one of my first interviewees. This elegant artist trained as a classical singer and toured in North America and Europe. Eventually he morphed into jazz smoothly and with great style, and has been entertaining audiences and his fans in the South of France and other European countries for over thirty years. William is also a coach and mentor to a number of young singers who are starting their careers, and will jet off to watch their performances, very proudly I am sure. He has a wonderful family that also includes a world class opera singer and grandchildren who he spends the summers hiking with in the French Alps. Oh and he is a cat lover.
William and his wife Jeanne (who also writes wonderful lyrics for William’s own compositions) have become much loved friends. I am so pleased that we will beginning a brand new series in September with that international, hip swivelling, Welsh sensation, Mr. Tom Jones. You can find all of William’s past series in the archive, and you can perhaps browse that while you listen to this compilation video of William’s incredible performances.
William Price King – A Man and his Music
And before we meet another regular contributer to the blog, here is Robbie Cheadle who has popped in from South Africa to drop off some refreshments.
Perhaps before we meet my other guests today we might have some refreshment courtesy of the lovely Robbie Cheadle who with her son Michael, is the author of the Sir Chocolate series and has provided some excellent guest posts for the blog.
You can buy Robbie and Michael’s books here: https://www.amazon.com/Robbie-Cheadle/e/B01N9J62GQ
Follow Robbie on her blog that shares post on traditional food, crafts and culture of South Africa and of course amazing recipes to enjoy: https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/
Please help yourselves and enjoy.
Time to meet another contributor to the blog.
My next headliner is Paul Andruss who I met through the lovely Sue Vincent, where he had been featured with several of his posts. One thing led to another, and following his first post at the beginning of December last year, Paul accepted the position of Writer in Residence. Paul is a man of many parts… this is not just an observation on his good looks alone or the fact that he does have an odd physical feature… being his green thumb.
If you have watched cookery programmes you will notice that there is a trend to deconstruct everything from strawberry cheesecake to bubble and squeak. Paul does this expertly with myths, legends and the famous and infamous. From the Ancient Greeks to David Bowie he goes behind the story and then reconstructs it to illuminate all the precious nuggets we might have missed before. He has an encyclopedic brain that transcends normal human minds and we are grateful for it along with his wicked sense of humour.
He is also a wonderful author, and I read and reviewed his book, Thomas the Rhymer several months ago. I can highly recommend you read this fantasy novel, and it is FREE to download on his site. Also, many of you enjoyed the essays of Horatio Grin recently and that too is an eBook and pdf that is FREE to download. Follow these links to the archives and also to Horatio’s work.
Legend busting and Paul’s bio and links
Horatio’s Essays and FREE book
It is safe to say that I am delighted that I stumbled across this talented writer, legend busting friend who also supplies me with amazing images from his garden for my haiku.(Thank goodness for that green thumb).
Time for a little more music before I introduce you to one or two people who were the first to welcome me to the world of blogging.
Another of my favourite artists and one of the songs that I have sung in some very strange places!! The wonderful Bette Midler
Where are they Now! Part One.
When I first began blogging in September 2013 I was faced with not only a blank page to fill but nobody to share the final post with. Like millions of bloggers there is a period of time when you wonder if anyone is going to notice you…. and then one day you get a like or two that turn into a comment and it is a wonderful feeling. A number of bloggers took me under their wing and are still there in my archives with their early motivational comments they are also now friends and still part of my blogging adventure. Over the next three days I will share them with you and hope you will return the favour and follow them.
So where are those early supporters of the blog today?
Irene of Irene Design 2011 is a wonderful jewelry creator who sells across most of the popular selling sites. Originally from Denmark, she moved to Spain in 2012 with her boyfriend and lives there with her two cats Bølle and Hvide and her dog Odin. Unfortunately earlier this year Irene was very unwell and offline for a number of months. But she is back online now and although she is not back to making jewelry, she has some wonderful pieces that are on sale on various selling sites.
Check on Irene’s fabulous jewelry and get to know her better: https://irenedesign2011.com/2017/08/19/jewelry/
Anne Casey was not only one of my early visitors she was also my first guest writer with a number of articles on her adopted home Australia. Last month Anne published her debut poetry collection ‘where the lost things go’ to great acclaim here in Ireland and she has her Sydney book launch on September 2nd.
Anne Casey’s poems have been published in The Irish Times, The Murmur Journal, The Incubator, Other Terrain, Backstory, Into the Void Magazine, ROPES Literary Journal, The Remembered Arts Journal, Dodging the Rain, Tales from the Forest, Luminous Echoes: A Poetry Anthology, Deep Water Literary Journal, The Blue Nib, Visual Verse: An Anthology of Art and Words and Thank You For Swallowing, among others.
Find out more about Anne and enjoy examples of her poetry: https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/smorgasbord-guest-post-writing-all-the-wrong-things-by-anne-casey/
Jo Robinson was also one of the first to encourage me to keep going with my blogging and she has continued to be a wonderful supporter. This despite having a two years that would have extinguished the life in most of us which began with the tragic loss of her husband on Boxing Day. This very warm, funny and supportive author, illustrator and book designer has been challenged on every level, and she now lives on a game ranch in the bush in South Africa. This has come with the very obvious problem of connectivity and with roads out with the rain at times, I mean total lack of connectivity. This has not been great for so many reasons, including trying to establish a book design and formatting business. But, great news that Jo emailed me this week and she is online with a new modem and looking forward to be back communicating with us via our blogs.
I will let Jo tell you a little bit about the last two years in this post: https://africolonialstories.wordpress.com/2017/05/02/better-late-than-never/
More about my long-term friends in tomorrow’s post when you will discover the Three Musketeers!
Time for some more music and then news of a FREE book.
Dedicated to all of you who take the time to comment, like and share the posts so often Thank you.
In recent weeks I have been sharing a series called Odd Jobs and Characters which shares my misadventures in some of the jobs that I was lucky to be offered. The people that I met and my experiences morphed into my book Just an Odd Job Girl. As part of this celebration I am offering the eBook FREE for the next three days until midnight on Monday 28th.
I am not part of the Kindle select programme and so I do not run free programmes on Amazon but I do like to run the occasional ‘Friends and Family’ promotion. I have in two formats: Mobi for Kindle and Epub for everything else. I am sorry but this time I don’t have a pdf.. but I can recommend https://calibre-ebook.com/ where you can download for FREE and it means you can read on any device.
To get your copy of Just an Odd Job Girl – Email me at [email protected]
About the book
Imogen was fifty!
Life is unpredictable and will often throw you a curve ball that knocks you out of the park.
For Imogen this curve ball knocked her out of a twenty five year marriage and a lovingly renovated home into a single life at age 50. She had been a very contented wife and mother of two children, who for every one of those 25 years had thought her husband had been equally as happy. It was a shock to find out that she had been delusional and replaced so easily.
Her confidence was non-existent. She had forgotten any skills she possessed and was totally unprepared to enter the modern job market. Or so she thought.
The most recent review for the book
A Real Tonic! By Judy E Martin on 17 July 2017Once I started reading this book, I couldn’t put it down. Imogen feels betrayed, fat and useless when her husband leaves her. She has to find herself a new job after being out of the workforce for twenty odd years whilst bringing up her children and being a dutiful housewife.
Imogen has an opportunity to reflect on the jobs that she had before her marriage and this is where the fun starts.
Sally is such a wonderful story teller who had me spluttering with laughter and cringing with embarrassment at some of the situations that Imogen finds herself in. The characters in the story are some that you would love to meet or love to hate, so realisticlally are they portrayed.i enjoyed this book immensely.;
You can find more reviews here on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23118708-just-an-odd-job-girl
To get your copy of Just an Odd Job Girl – Email me at [email protected]
A reminder of the quiz and about signing the guest book
Here is a short quiz with one word answers to put in the comments alongside your links. The answers I receive may be used against you in the posts on Sunday and Monday
QUIZ
- Which is your favourite recording artist or band
- Pizza or Pasta
- Favourite Film
- Person you would most like to meet Dead or Alive.
Then please leave your blog or website, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter Links.
Coming up tomorrow... meet more of the wonderful bloggers that came into my life in my first year of blogging with special features on the other two Musketeers… Debby Gies and Tina Frisco..some guest appearances from some of those who were the first to support the blog in the first few months and are still there Janice Spina, Teagan Geneviene, The Story Reading Ape, Ali Isaac and Tess Karlinski... more music and time to get the bottles opened… I hope you will join me again.
And before I sign off a few more guests who are celebrating National Dog Day – they are the proud owners of some pretty great writers, acting as muses, stress consultants, food tasters and bed warmers.Find out all about how you can help dogs and celebrate the day with Tink… special assistant to Madelyn Griffith-Haynie… who wrote a post on the subject today and is here at the party https://addandsomuchmore.com/2017/08/26/august-26th-is-national-dog-day/
See if you can guess which adorable fur family member belongs to which blogger?
And here are some more of my dog guests…
Don’t forget to leave your quiz answers and your links in the comments so that I can share some of your music choices in the post tomorrow with your links.
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