Friends, Furries, Expeditions and English Ebooks

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By the time you read this I will be heading for Manchester Airport to meet Anne McAllister who is coming to visit. She wants to spend quality time with Sid of course and to help celebrate Madame Flora's first birthday.

But first we will be heading for Michelle Reid's lovely home in Cumbria to spend a night there. I'm so looking forward to that. One of the delights of being in London last week was meeting up with Michelle and her husband and I expect that we will spend the day talking about books, writing, heroes, writing, books and more books.

Then on Saturday we will head home, bringing Anne with us, and organise the important birthday party. I can't quite believe that Flora is a year old. It's a poignant anniversary because she was born just as my dear old friend the ginger alpha Robert Redford (Bob to his friends of whom Anne was one) died. But the Floozie has helped to fill the hole that he left. So we will celebrate and I know that Anne will have packed special treats just for the occasion (and plenty for Sid and Dylan of course). I hope that The Heck family of hedgehogs will put in a nocturnal appearence - but it is getting close to hibernation time now that the evenings are growing colder.

Talking about pets - over on Publisher's Weekly Beyond Her Book, Barbara Vey is running a special Saturday post where authors/publishers/agents/editors are sending in pictures of their pets and a separate picture of themselves. Readers will then try to match the pet and the owner. I've sent over a pic of A Cat of Superior Breeding - so regular readers of this blog will have an advantage with one set of pics anyway!

On Saturday I'm taking part in the Harlequin September Blog Bash where 30 authors have been asked to blog about their favourite Harlequin Moments. So although I probably won't be blogging here on Saturday as I'll be driving across the country from west to east, my Harlequin Moments post will be up at eHarlequin for you to read.

And ebooks - one of the things I learned at the AMBA lunch last week is that Mills & Boon books will now be available as ebooks. The books can be bought from Waterstones right now and there are plans for them to be sold on the Mills & Boon site soon. They are only just beginning to put the monthly books out in this format but I was delighted to see that The Alcolar Family Trilogy is one of the first to be made available this way. So this means that it will always be available in this format in the future. like the ebook bundle for sale on eHarlequin.

Other good news there is that the M&B site will be keeping books in stock for longer than the basic 3 months they've had them on sale up to now. So if they have copies in stock you will be able to buy from an auhtor's backlist until they sell out.

And if you buy a Sony ebook reader, then 3 M&B books come preloaded - including Fiona Harper's book. English Lord, Ordinary Lady . There were several Sony readers on show at the lunch and the size and compactness did seem tempting - but I so love real books!

What do you think?

Oh - and talking of ebooks - when I was checking on The Alcolar Family on eHarlequin just now, I discovered that Bedded By The Greek Billionaire is already on sale in its ebook form - and in the Top Ten Bestsellers even thought it's not out in book form until November.

Another plus for ebooks.