Well I did warn you . . .

Just to say that  after I posted about The Advanced Romance Writing Course in  Fishguard in February,   someone who read the blog  has now booked one of the two remaining  places for Feb 2013.

So there is now only one place left on the course coming up. After that, it's fully booked up.

 If you want to book here's where you'll find the details.

If you don't get  your booking in in time for this space,  you can still leave your name and email and if anyone drops out between now and February, then any spaces will be offered  on a first come first served basis.

So looking forward to seeing everyone  in February.

Thank you and a bit of news

You are all so lovely. Thank you so much for the wonderful compliments on my new publicity photo. I was blushing as I read them - still am, thinking of them.  I'm so glad you approves.

The Babe Magnet says he's not surprised. He picked out that photo from the set of contact prints - some of the others weren't too bad but that was his favourite.  So I'm happy.

This brand new 'official' photo is pretty important to me as it marks a new stage in my writing - I hope. Certainly it marks the acceptance and scheduling of my 61st Modern Romance. Some of you will have spotted that this has been a long time coming, and I was going to blog a  bit about that   but I think I'll leave it for a my next post because I have some other news that  needs to be posted first.

I have been getting organised and planning my next few weeks  and one of the things I really must do - with some urgency  - is to update my web site and reorganise that.

Which means that I need to bring up to date the details of the events  coming up in 2013.  And as the first of these will be the Writers' Weekend at Fishguard in February,  I thought I'd check just what the situation is with booking for this weekend.

The Advanced Romance Writing Course has a strict upper  limit of 15 places  available. It has always been very popular, in fact has usually sold out almost every time - but there are more than three months still before the actual date of the event. (It runs from 15th - 17th February) So I was suprised to find that it is already just about sold out.

There are in fact only two places left on this course  for February 2013.  (And I've already had some interest in one of those places.) So if you are interested in joining us in beautiful Wales next year,  now is the time to thinking about booking so as not to miss out.

I am so looking forward to going back to Fishguard - I love the place, the hotel staff are always so very helpful,  I get to be back with the wonderful Anne and Gerry Hobbs who  as most of you know also run the fabulous Writers' Holiday in Caerleon in July.  The weekend is great value for money - only £219 all in, and if you book online,  you save an extra £10 of that.

There’s nothing extra to pay -  you can even  be collected from Fishguard or Haverfordwest Railway stations and return you there at the close of the event on Sunday afternoon. You’ll have a choice of single, double, or twin roomed, all en-suite accommodation (even taking the trouble to guarantee that you’ll have a room next to your friends), and excellent full board plus (vegetarian choices) hospitality for the duration of your stay. Fully inclusive, the only extra expense will be in the bar during the weekend, or if you wish to purchase a book or souvenir from the Bookroom.

There are courses and places that are much more expensive  - but believe me, we cram a lot into one weekend at Fishguard. I always come home inspired and buzzing with ideas - even if I have no voice left after all the teaching.

Oh yes  - the teaching -   This course is open to previous Fishguard workshop or Caerleon Romance course participants or  those who have been on one of my basic Romance courses or workshops elsewhere. It is not for beginners. Designed especially for Fishguard to move you on, the whole weekend will be concentrated on this workshop - without other distractions. Guests are encouraged to complete work with me prior to the weekend commencement, and everyone will have a short one to one session with me to discuss your writing.  This is in addition to a series of six advanced novel workshop sessions.

So if you’re interested – check out the full details on the Writers’ Holiday website  and get your booking in now , and I’ll hope to see you in February.

For those of you who have already booked, I’m so looking forward to seeing you (again  - for some of you) and I’ll be contacting you all very soon about the  course.

Can’t wait!

Congratulations & Photo

First thing today is to congratulate the Top  28  - the writers who have been chosen to go into the next stage of the So You Think  You Can Write contest.   This is a real achievement for all of you  - so Congratulations! I hope that this success spurs you on to greater things - I'll look forward to seeing the results of the next stage when they are revealed.

If you haven't see the list, then you can find it here.

Good luck to the long list 'winners' - but really, the hard work starts now. It;s one thing to create a first chapter, polish it and submit it and win the attention of the editors/reader voters - quite another to craft it into a full length, fully developed and readable story.   Go for it!

Those who have not been selected - this is not the end. I'm sure that more than the 28 long listers will have been noticed - and I hope that having taken the plunge and written something  you will not give up now. Remember, getting published is a marathon, not a sprint - keep on  keeping on and hopefully there will be many newly published authors from this contest.

Photo - I expect you'll be seeing lots of these all over the web in the last few days - When the authors all met for the annual Association of Mills & Boon lunch, back in September, Harlequin provided a photographer to take photos of everyone there  so a s to provide a new publicity photograph for author pages etc.  We all received our copies of the new photos last week and as I said many authors have been posting them on their web sites, blogs etc.   So if you've always wondered what a favourite author looks like you'll find them around the web.

And if you want to know what  mine looks like - well, here  you are. 

The Babe Magnet likes it, so does The Offspring and even Flora and Charlie think it looks like Mum!

Kate's Corner day

It's October 15th so that means that I'm blogging over on We Write Romance today in my regular Kate's Corner spot.

I'm not doing well in keeping up with my personal blog here but at least I am blogging in my regular 'guest spots' which is something! I keep hoping that at some point life will settle down a bit.

Well I can hope . . .

Good luck to everyone who has entered the So You Think You Can Write Contest - I'm looking forward to seeing the list of the final 28.

Catching up again

Well, that was a busy week.   I'm not quite sure where most of it went -  I was deep in revisions so I  was barely away from my desk.  We had family to visit and I have to judge a writing contest for a  Writers'  Circle . . . Blink and the week was gone.

I did actually blog a couple of times on my usual   monthly dates for other sites but then the internet played up and I didn't post to let everyone know.  So if you want to catch up, then there are posts
 here   on the Pink Heart Society Blog (talking about the So You Think You Can Write contest)
and
here at Tote Bags 'N' Blogs  - talking about my favourite season

I'm back today with some interesting news -  I was talking about older books  and that seems to be the thene of the  month really because I've just discovered that Mills & Boon have brought out some of my older titles in brand new ebooks. This is part of a new initiative to republish  older titles in the  Mills and Boon Vintage series.

At the moment they are publishing  Modern Romances  from the 1990s and there are five of my older books appearing in Kindle editions from today.  I noticed these last week, while I was still busy revising,  and they just had blanks for their covers but today I'm really pleased to see that they have proper covers  with the artwork from the past editions in a new format .

The books now available are :
The Unexpected Child
Hers For  A Night
Flirting With Danger
No Holding Back     (which has one of my favourite openings ever)
The Groom's Revenge.


So if you missed any of these in the past and would like to catch up on some older Kate Walkers  here's your chance.

I'm not sure about being called Vintage - but it's the books not me!

And talking about older books -  special thanks go to Marybelle, Maria and Princess Fiona. I'm sorry I was so busy that I've neglected to answer your comments - I really enjoyed reading about your book collections so  - if you'd like to email me  -  see the link  at the bottom  of the page, I'd like to see if I can add a book to your Kate Walker collection. I don;t have any really old ones but I'll let you know which of my backlist books I do have and you can choose one of them.