Charmed is out now!

Perfect Christmas reading -- light, fun, HOT, and with a touch of magical whimsy! Charmed is a novella with all the right ingredients for a good night's reading, whether you're snuggled up against the snowy cold, or hunkering with the air conditioner to beat the heat!

You can buy Charmed on Amazon, and from the Destiny Romance website.

Oh, and watch out for that extra bit of spice -- only appropriate at this time of year. And if you read it and loved it, I'd so appreciate you leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Thank you!

Through the looking glass

It's a freaky thing, watching yourself on camera. Do I really look like that? Talk like that? I'd make an appalling actor. Although, I have heard that Hugh Laurie refuses to ever watch footage of himself doing the actoring. He even recorded the entire DVD commentary for one of his movies with his back turned to the screen. So I guess that means maybe I could be an actor, if I followed those rules. But then, again . . . Nope. I'll settle for being one of the people that puts the words in actors' mouths. Well, hopefully. One day. I'm really looking forward to the red carpet premiere of one of my novels becoming a movie. I've got the best dress all picked out.

In the meantime, you can check this out. It's just little ol' me. Talking about Spellbound. With the lovely Carol George, editor at Destiny Romance.

I think it's the first face-to-face interview I've done -- these days publicity is mostly an email-back-and-forward kind of thing. So it was exciting! And scary! And fun!

What do you think? How did I do?

It's Spellbound release day!

Spellbound is now out there, ready for your waiting eyes to devour!

Spellbound is only being released as an e-book, which means you need a computer, an e-reader, or a smart phone or iPad to read it. Who knows, one day it might be on a shelf, but you'll have already read it by then, won't you?

Want to know a little bit about it?

Well, here goes.

It's sexy. Like, really sexy. Like, my mother's not allowed to read it. Got the picture?

It's also funny, a little sad, a little quirky, and a little bit magical too.

On the Destiny site, you can read an extract, which is actually the first whole chapter.

And for those of you with Kindles (or wanting to use the Kindle app on your iPhone or iPad), if you jump onto Amazon and it's not available, just click "pre-order" and it'll fly into your device as soon as it's available. (It might take a day or two from now, just while we wait for timezones to sync up...)

I hope you have lots of fun with Belle, Nick and crazy Aunt Gertrude!

Emmie's adventures in La La Land

Hello everyone! A few days ago, I packed up my belongings and got on a plane for a (very) long time.

Setting off on my journey! 

Apart from being very bumpy, the plane ride went off without a hitch, and I'm now safely ensconced in my new, temporary home in Los Angeles. It's the cutest little apartment, just a bit back from the street. I'm in Venice, about a ten minute walk to the beach. I have a courtyard, an office and -- most importantly for this little princess -- a very comfortable bed.

My little courtyard -- the perfect spot for an afternoon vino
after a hard morning's writing...

In my neighborhood, there are funky shops, innumerable cafes, palm trees -- in other words, it's about as close to St Kilda as you could get outside of Melbourne. (So I like travel, but I also like being at home -- this is the best of both worlds.)

It's winter here, so it's a little chilly. But after doing a little wandering and exploring over the past few days, I've discovered that the best time to be out and about is between 11am and 3pm. It's quite warm and pleasant -- jeans and a jumper (sweater) weather. After 3 it starts to get a little cool and the sun begins to go down. To be honest, I knew I was coming into winter, and packed accordingly, but I'd kind of forgotten about that whole sun-going-down-early thing. At home right now it's still dusk at 8.30-9pm. Here it's pretty much completely dark by 5.30. Should have thought about that.

Why am I here? Well there are lots of reasons, but part of it is to get a change of scenery and reinvigorate my writer's brain. So far, it's working. I wouldn't say I've been exceptionally prolific, but I have been writing every day and that's a change from how things were in the final part of last year. I've also had a few writerly things to get done, like the AAs for Just For Today, as well as going back and having a look over Spellbound, my newly contracted erotica story for Destiny Romance. (Still doing jumpy claps about that one!)

A photo of a mural I spotted on my walkabout this afternoon.

I've only just arrived, really, but I'm heading off shortly for an adventure with a friend in Texas. I'm going to Dallas and Austin, and I've never been to either place, so I'm very excited. I've heard great things about Austin in particular, so I'm going to take lots of photos and come back and give you all an update about that!

In the meantime, happy writing to all of you -- hope 2013 is off to a great start with words flowing!

Guest blogger - Louise Reynolds with "Her Italian Aristocrat"

Louise Reynolds

I'm thrilled to have a guest blogger visiting me today! I'd like to introduce the lovely Louise Reynolds to you all. 

Louise's book, Her Italian Aristocrat, has just been released. I'm reading it right now, and it's making me long for an Italian holiday, Italian food and wine, and a bit of Italian tall-dark-and-handsome! 

Louise is here to talk about her book and I thought it'd be appropriate if she touched on one of the regular topics here on the blog: her favourite wine. 

Welcome, Louise! 

Living in the Southern Hemisphere I tend to drink Australian and New Zealand wines. But in Her Italian Aristocrat, set in an historic hill town in the Marche region of Italy, I couldn’t have my heroine sipping a crisp Marlborough sauvignon blanc, excellent as they are. It needed to be a wine of the Marche and I chose verdicchio. It sounded like the sort of wine I like to drink: Crisp, dry and white.

I’m not averse to research, especially when it comes to wine, but I was in a hurry when writing a dinner scene and I hoped my hero and heroine would forgive me if my choice didn’t perfectly match the excellent vitello tonnato they were eating.

But later, in the spirit of retrospective research, I found myself wondering about Italian wines, verdicchio in particular. So it was off to my local Italian wine merchant to see what I could find.

I offer you Exhibit A:  Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi

Here’s something to like about Verdicchio: It’s only made in the Marche, from the ancient grape of the same name. There are two distinct types, their growing regions separated by a mere 50kms, and with one made within spitting distance of the stunning hill town of Macerata, the inspiration for the town of Montefigore in my book.

Now, I don’t know about you but when it comes to wine my receptors are, well, receptive. They happily engage without reference to terms like bouquet, length and finish. My palate is pre-programmed to ‘like’ and rarely bothers me with complaints. Clearly I am a lush and need help from the experts. Still, the writer in me wanted to express the qualities of verdicchio in my own words first before referring to a smarty-pants like wine guru, Jancis Robinson.

My notes describe it as “golden, with a slight dry sherry flavour, quite dry.” The professional tasting notes said it was “straw yellow, herbaceous, with a bitter almond after taste”.

Despite the difference in choice of descriptors the wine experts and I agreed on the basic characteristics. What hit me most was how different the flavour was compared to the antipodean wines I’ve been drinking. Of course that has a lot to do with the unique grape variety but the concept of terroir, the idea that the product is directly affected by the environment in which it is grown, was also brought home very soundly.

Maybe it was the mellow mood the wine engendered but I found myself thinking that, in a way, a book needs terroir. It should have the flavour of the location, with authentic details, characters who belong and appropriate dialogue. And although I hadn’t articulated it at the time of writing, I tried to give Her Italian Aristocrat terroir, to reflect the character of the beautiful hill towns of the Italian Marche.

Thanks, Emmie, for having me as your guest. I have a special bottle of verdicchio to share with you soon and I’m looking forward to your opinion.

Macerata

Her Italian Aristocrat is available:

To International buyers from www.destinyromance.com

To Australian buyers from Amazon, Kobo, Apple, GooglePlus and Destiny Romance

Louise can be contacted at: www.louisereynolds.com.au or you can find her on Facebook