Advent Calendar Giveaway Day 3

The winner of yesterday's giveaway is Nicolette

Nicolette please email me kate AT kate-walker.com with your postal address.

Thank you to everyone who posted an answer - I think Laney had it right about being snowed in is no real hardship when you have food, warmth - and a few books you want to read! I know this is perfect writing weather with so few distractions

Well, OK with a small ginger and white kitten distraction - and Charlie can be very distracting. He's thinking about writing the next instalment of his diary so watch out for that.

I've been getting some great covers lately. I'm still looking for my first new-style cover (for The Proud Wife out in March) but I've just discoivered this one for a 3-in-one collection coming in February - What do you think?

I haven't found out the title of my book in this collection but it's great to be in with a couple of my personal favourite authors so I'm looking foward to seeing this one and finding out just which novels are reprinted in it.

So today's giveaway is another 3 in 1 volume - this time it's Mistress Material where one of my books was included in a collection with titles by Lucy Monroe and Daphne Clair.

This edition is actually the Australian edition of this collection.

And the title of my book that's included in this volume is The Married Mistress which was originally published in 2003.

The Mistress’s secret...is hot news!
Gorgeous Greek tycoon Damon Nicolaides is always in the news...so when the paparazzi get a tip-off about his new mistress, they come banging on her door.
The truth is that Sarah and Damon were married a year ago but Sarah left him, believing their marriage was a lie. Now Damon’s back to claim his wife, but first he must protect her from the press by pretending that Sarah is merely his mistress...and to do that, he tells her, they’ll have to make their ‘affair’ real!

The Married Mistress is linked to Their Secret Baby which tells the story of Sarah's boss Rhys and his hunt for his baby daughter.

Oh- and this book has recently be rereleased in ebook format so if you like your books in ebook form you can find the details here.

So today's question is: If you were putting together a 3 in 1 volume of Mills&Boon Modern/Harlequin Presents stories - which three authors would you love to include?

Answers in the comments section please - and Sid will get on the job of picing winners on Saturday morning.

Catching up with books

I've spent this last week catching up with so much - updates for my web site, reading scripts to critique for the RNA's New Writers' Scheme, tidying and sorting out my office which is in it's usualy post-book chaos. I added to that chaos by buying new shelves for my bookcases. The new shelves are very useful - but buying new shelves means that I had to move the old shelves up or down several spaces in the bookcases . Which meant that I had to take all the books off the shelves in order to do so. So now I have the new shelves in and all the books to go back on them. But for once in my life, I actually have some spare shelves without books on them! I wonder how long that will last?

In amongst the new books I have to put on the shelves (see - I know those spaces won't stay for long) I have the latest of my own. I have the copies of both the UK and USA editions of The Greek Tycoon's Unwilling Wife with their wonderful sunset covers. It's good to be looking forward to seeing them out in the shops while over on Amazon .com, and .co.uk that 50th title The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge is still on the best selling romance charts after 3 months. And today when I was out shopping, I spotted the 3 in 1 By Request collection Mistress Material which has my book The Married Mistress reprinted in it. (This also has books by Lucy Monroe and Daphne Clair in the volume.)

And when I have sorted out the shelves I hope that I will find my next TBR book! While I was still concentrating on writing Angelos's story, Anne McAllister sent me a copy of her The Boss's Wife for A Week which is out now in Presents - and has been on the Waldenbooks Bestseller list for three weeks! Congratulations Anne! This only makes me want to read this book even more. I did snatch a glance at it while I was still wrestling with Angelos, and before I knew it I was at the end of the first chapter - and I so wanted to go on! But I had to be strong. I had my own book to write.

So I put The Boss's Wife For a Week away safely to avoid temptation. But the trouble is that I put it somewhere so very safe that now that I have time to read it, I cant find it - it's somewhere in the piles of books that need to go back on the shelves! Oh well, at least that means that I have an extra incentive to sort the books out in order to find it. But it also means that when I do find it I shall probably down tools and read until I've finished it. I hope I find it soon.

In the meantime, I've been reading lovely India Grey's first book - The Italian's Defiant Mistress which I thoroughly enjoyed. It's one of those books where I could hear India's own voice as I read which for me is a real plus in a book. It shows an author who has an individual writing voice that will be hers no matter what story she tells. I'm a little bit late reading this in the UK edition which came out in July - which just shows how busy I've been. But like Anne's book this one is out in America this month so if you're looking for a good read why not grab both of them before they're off the shelves?

No - it's no good - now I've mentioned The Boss's Wife for A Week, I'm going to have to find and read it. I've heard such great things about that I just can't wait.

I'll be back when I've got all the books back on the shelves and hopefully found it - and read it!

A Kate Bit - more on covers

Interesting post this morning - parcels from HMB Richmond and from Harlequin New York - neither of which were expected.

The NY package contained translations - one of my books obviously, but one I couldn't recognise because it was translated into a language that I couldn't recognise either. This was the cover ->

Err . . . ??

I tried to think of a book in which the hero and the heroine exchanged white doves - or where the heroine had incredible gold painted fingernails for that matter but I couldn't come up with one - so I took a look inside. It turns out that it's The Antonakos Marriage in Lithuanian. Which just goes to show that you can never guess what cover image a new country is going to come up with. The original Antonakos Marriage (Presents) as you'll remember cover was like this

<-

And this definitely is a new country for me - I've never had a book in Lithuanian before! But I think I may have had some visitors on this blog from Lithuania - my Neo counter shows 10 visits. So welcome to anyone from Lithuania!

The other parcel had large print copies of The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge (and that cover looks really good on the bigger book!) and another, unexpected, 3 in 1 By Request Bestseller collection called Mistress Material, which is coming out in October.

This anthology has a reprint of The Married Mistress in it which is something that I'm pretty happy about. If you remember the other By Request volume I'm in - Bound By A Baby - that's out in the shops now - that has Their Secret Baby reprinted in it. And as The Married Mistress and Their Secret Baby are slightly linked by the characters who appear in them (Rhys, the hero of TSB is the boss of Sara who is the heroine of TMM and he appears at the end of that book) then this means that anyone who didn't get to read both books the first time around now has a chance to read them both together this time.