Discovered New Toy!!!!

The ultimate toy for booklovers to be exact:

Library Thing

I've started cataloging my books here and will add to his in the following weeks. This might be interesting for all the people who've asked me what kind of research books I use. Have fun browsing! If you go to my profile page on Library Thing, you can access some fun statistics. Enjoy browsing!

Happy new year to all of you!

You will not believe what I've just done ...

I have just uploaded a new episode of Sandy's Podchatter!! With a reading of a new chapter of BETRAYAL!!!!! Hooray! So, have fun with the new episode. :)

Sandy's Podchatter #17

Looka, looka here

Now that looks like a promising film: the Spanish/British/American production "Miguel & William", in which Cervantes and Shakespeare meet (and fight) (among other things). Here's the trailer. If the film is as good as the trailer, it will be great fun! So let's hope it will also come to cinemas near you. :) A bit more about the film can be found on Dani's Will Kemp website.

Lovely Things That Can Be Found on YouTube :)

Merry Christmas, everybody!

In Germany we already get our presents on Christmas Eve, so just head over to the Members Section of my website and "unwrap" your pressies. Enjoy!

Uhm ...

One of the cats just licked the lid of my notebook. Ugh. Perhaps because she sneezed on it first? *head desk* I so want to be a romance heroine! Their cats never sneeze, are never sick, and never leave hairballs in hallways. And romance heroines don't have to do litter trays.

Oh yes.

And they've got hunks.

Perhaps the hunks do the litter trays? Hmmm ....

"Hunk! Go and do the litter tray!"

Ugh. That sounds like ...* The horror, the horror! I'll just go and do the litter trays myself.

adios

* No, most of you are not supposed to understand this. Whereas some will probably fall off their chairs. :-P

More on setting

After telling you all about how much time I spent selecting the main setting for BEWITCHED, I don't want to withold from you the first glimpse of Rawdon Park. Here it comes:

Finally the day had come that saw her in the Earl of Rawdon's chaise-and-four, sent for by Sebastian. The middle seat had been drawn out to seat three -- one of the Benthams' maids was to accompany them while Sebastian himself rode alongside the coach. And so Amy sat huddled between Isabella's writing desk and several small and large parcels which somehow had found their way into the chaise at the very last minute. Happily, Amy pressed her nose against the glass to admire the landscape outside, while Isabella sat, looking sourly. They stopped for the night at an inn in Cambridge. Not even the fact that Amy had to share a bed with Isabella, who was probably pining after Lord Munthorpe and his sheep, could dim her excitement about the following day. For then they left the Great North Road and entered the marshes and moors of the Fens. Mist hovered over the flat land, clung to the clusters of trees and bushes, and enshrouded the windmills which pumped the drainage from the land into larger canals.

"Dear heavens, what sort of place is this?" Isabella muttered. "I swear it all looks the same. Haven't we passed this spot before? I daresay, we wouldn't even know when we are lost!"
"Nonsense," Amy said briskly. "Mr. Stapleton and Lord Rawdon's driver must know the way perfectly. I am sure we will reach Rawdon Park in no time at all."

And indeed, shortly after midday, they passed through a gate, rattled down a driveway, and behind a gently curving hill red-bricked Rawdon Park rose out of the mist. Dozens of chimneys emitted puffs of smoke, and several windows, mellowly lit, offered a warm welcome.

Sitemeter

I've already had some suspicions when I started my podcast and the stats of the libsyn visitor counter varied wildly from that of sitemeter. But I always thought these differences stem from people downloading or listening to the podcast via podcasts.yahoo and similar services. But now that I've put a visitor counter on my website, too, and sitmeter tells me something quite different than the visitor counter of my webhost, I've reached the conclusion that sitemeter indeed does not count all visitors. The numbers are really worlds apart. Still, I'll keep it on the sites; it's nice (and exciting!!!) to see where you all live. :O)

Hooray!!!!!

I can finally post again! After installing Kaspersky Internet Security on my 'puter, I was no longer able to log into blogger, post on the Romantisches Bücherforum, log into amazon (the horror, the horror!), abebooks (more horror!), and my postings on the AAR message boards disappeared into cyberspace nirwana. But now, ladies and gentlemen, the problem seems solved. And Kaspersky is still running on the 'puter. *g*

Spent the past two days putting together the main setting for BEWITCHED (which involved studying my Baedeker map of Great Britain, leaving through my Baedeker travel guide of Great Britain, consulting yet another travel guide of the south of England, watching an episode of A PICTURE OF BRITAIN -- lovely, lovely BBC series --, going to the 'puter to do some googling, watching parts of said BBC episode again ... and again ... and again, getting out old musty smelling books about old inns in Britain, leaving through big, fat, heavy book about stately homes in England and Wales, and, finally, reading up on travelling in Jane Austen's NORTHANGER ABBEY and PRIDE & PREJUDICE).

The estate of my hero's family will be based on Blickling Hall. Lovely Jacobean building, done in red bricks. I particularily like this pic, a view of Blickling from across the lake. (That lake will play an important role in the novel!!!)

Unusual Historicals

A few weeks ago, a new blog with the lovely title "Unusual Historical" went online. It's a group of pubbed and unpubbed authors who all write historicals with unusual settings or something else unusual. It certainly promises to be a fun blog!

I did a posting today; if you'd like to check it out, it's here.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ...

Well, not really. At least not in my parts of the world. The only thing that looks vaguely Christmassy are the plastic Santa Clauses hanging out of windows, from balconies, down garden walls and galleries ... oops, wrong poem. Anyway. Plastic Santa Clauses ... I could really do without them. Especially when they're hanging right next to a box full of blooming flowers!

Of course, there are lots of other ways to create a proper Christmassy atmosphere. Like putting some Christmas music in your CD player. Or baking some Christmas cookies (and if you do, please send some my way!!!). Or overhauling your website and putting on it some more goodies for your readers. :) Which is exactly what I did yesterday. Most of said goodies can be found in the new members section for subscribers to my newsletter and include the complete first chapter of CASTLE OF THE WOLF, readings of excerpts from THE LILY BRAND and, again, from CASTLE OF THE WOLF. I hope you're going to enjoy these additional features.

And I hope everything works the way it is supposed to work!!!

On amazon

CASTLE OF THE WOLF can now be pre-ordered on amazon.de -- cover pic and backcover blurb are still missing, but I'm working on that. :)

Bad Habits ...

I've got plenty of them. Too much chocolate (results in fine, wide hips), not enough exercise (results in even finer, wider hips), tendency to mutate into couch potato (makes fine hips even wider), tendency to panic (over nothing), tendency to procastinate (regularily results in panic), tendency to grumble (only cure: chocolate, which brings us back to the hips). And I love googling myself and my books. Which is terribly narcisstic, I know, but, hey, you find the most amazing things that way! Like that poem about THE LILY BRAND (which, sadly, seems to be no longer online). Or other people dissing me for dissing them (which is totally new and intriguing way to make online buddies, I tell you *g*). Or CASTLE OF THE WOLF being already listed on the website of an Italian online bookshop. Or lovely people mentioning THE LILY BRAND on their blogs, like the Romance Vagabounds did when they discussed food and romance. And whenever I find something new, I'm as happy as a child in a candy shop. :O)

Yay!

I'm back! With a new computer! New (slim) monitor! New printer (which is also a scanner and a fax machine)! And -- drumroll -- new (and my very first) digital camera. It all came as a bundled package for just € 799. Not bad, eh? So let's hope this new 'puter will work better than the old one.

Okay, to be fair: the old one only died after I had sent off my revisions. That was quite nice of it. :O)