Birthdays and Blogs

 A couple of quick  catch ups today.First, and most important  (at least that's how she would think!)  - today is Flora's birthday. It seems amazing but she is four today and now fully grown and a very beautiful, mature Maine Coon queen.

She and Charlie have just celebrated her special day with an extra delicious breakfast of chicken and ham and have gone out into the garden to enjoy the promised sunshine. It's lovely to see them chasing each other around.

And talking of the garden,  I have hardly mentioned them this year - in fact, I've hardly seen them -  but as there was a report recently that hedgehogs are dangerously close to extinction, I thought I'd keep an eye open for the Hecks, the family of hedgehogs who live at the bottom of our garden,.  We heard snuffling  at the the beginning of summer,  and have spotted lots of fresh hedgehog droppings which  told us they were out there, we just hadn't seen them. So  after watching for them specially this last week or so, I'm glad to be able to report that there was at least one very large, mature hedgehog in the middle of the lawn enjoying  the thrown away chicken cat food. He/she was obviously stoking up for the winter hibernation. I don't know if the sightings were of the same hedgehog or two different ones but  at least there is one still in residence in Hedgehog Towers.

 It's going to be a busy week so I need to mention  a  couple of blogs I'm visiting this week - these weren't included in theBig Blog Tour  which is still going on.  Today I have a post on the Harlequin Presents  Authors' Blog  where I'm talking about  the latest book -  The Return of The Stranger - of course .  I was thrilled to see that the book is already shooting up the best seller lists over on Amazon.com even though  it's still on pr-order only and not yet released. And I was stunned that the Goodreads giveaway that Lee Hyat ran for me had nearly 1200 entries - for five copies!

I've also been invited to guest blog on Lucy Monroe's blog this   week - and I just heard that my post will go live on Friday  - there will be a giveaway with this post if you come by and say hello.

And talking of giveaways - the latest winners from the blog tour are :
Desere S from South Africa - from Marlena Cassidy's blog
And
Janice  H  and Glynis S from Talli Roland's blog (Janice and Glynis please contact me with your postal addresses so I can send out your prizes. 

The Romance Book Paradise  blog hosted by Nas Dean is still open.  And you can find out the next official stop on the blog tour by checking my author page here.