Cassie and Zoe and Jennifer and Kathy and ... Kansas City

I'd like to introduce you all to two lovely ladies today. This is Jennifer and Kathy, and they're fellow members of the OC Babes gang (to whom "In His Eyes" was dedicated to because of all the amazing encouragement they gave me (and continue to give!) with my writing).

Recently Jennifer and Kathy caught up and had a little vacation in Kansas City, Kansas. I desperately wanted to be there too, joining in the fun and eating all the evil-but-delicious food they devoured! Unfortunately, due to scientists not yet inventing transporter beams (What is with you, scientists? Get a move on!) I couldn't be. So instead they did the next best thing: they took Cassie (Cassie's Grand Plan) and Zoe (In His Eyes) on tour instead!

Cassie and Zoe had an awesome time exploring all sorts of locations in Kansas. Here they are at the location of the Battle of Westport (sometimes referred to as the Gettysburg of the West!).

They travelled out to a place called St Joseph, which was the birthplace of the Pony Express and where Jesse James died.

Kathy and Jennifer told me that they thought both Cassie and Zoe have a thing for bad boys -- they couldn't drag them away from all the Jesse James-related stuff.

But it wasn't all history lessons. Here they are having some fun on a very patriotic carousel!

Did I mention they devoured some exceptionally tasty food? This is a place called "Strouds", home of pan-fried chicken! Yum! I'm suddenly hungry...

They even met some new people along the way:

Thank you Jennifer and Kathy for showing Cassie and Zoe such a wonderful time. I know they had a terrific vacation and are very grateful for all your love and support. I only wish I could have been there too...

Cassie Photo Comp WINNER

Thank you so much to everyone who submitted photos for the Cassie Photo Bomb competition. I had entries from Australia (at least four states, which is even more impressive when you consider that the book is not even released here yet!), India, Fiji, USA, the Caribbean, Japan and Korea (thanks Mum and Dad), and let's not forget Bradley Cooper*.

I decided, in the end, that it would be fairest to draw a random winner. Because all the photos were so good, making a decision based on artistic merit was just too tough.

And so .... Drum roll please ...

The winner is ....

Serena! 

Serena was amongst the gang of my MRWG pals who took Cassie to Bendigo to see the Grace Kelly exhibition. (I saw the exhibition last weekend and I highly recommend it!)

Serena, I'll be in touch to arrange your $100 Amazon voucher prize shortly!

Thank you again, everyone, for indulging my requests (and occasional begging) and taking the time to not only remember to take Cassie out with you on your various adventures, but also to take your cameras and send me the pics!

* Thanks also to you, Bradley, for being such a good sport about it all. I owe you a drink. Feel free to claim it any time. :)

Final entries in Cassie's Photo Bomb Comp!

Yes, the competition has closed! But I received this last-minute entry just before the deadline, only I've been too busy (read: slacking) to post it up. So, here we go -- Cassie went to West Australia (just like in the story!). But the book travelled much further than Cassie and Ronan managed on their Country Style store tour.

Thanks to the lovely Kerryn L, here is Cassie at the southern tip of Western Australia:

As Kerryn says: This is Cassie at the most South Westerly point of Australia's mainland. She would have gone there had her WA trip had more recreation time - its only 3 hours south of Fremantle after all!

And here is Cassie inside Jewel Cave, a spectacular limestone cave in the Margaret River region of Western Australia.

I'm so thrilled to see how Cassie has been "getting around" (in a nice girl way, of course!).

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to take and submit photos.

Stay tuned -- I'm going to be announcing the winner of the Photo Bomb competition very soon...

Blog Tour Winner!

As you know if you've been keeping up with me these past few weeks, Cassie's Grand Plan came out on 6 March. And to help get the word out there, I've been doing a blog tour, visiting all kinds of places and meeting and talking with all sorts of wonderful people. Along the way, there have been a few winners who've picked themselves up a signed copy of Cassie's Grand Plan. (Those autographs will be worth a fortune in years to come!) Here's who's already picked up a prize:

21/2 Romance Bandits - Brenda
22/2 LoveCats - Scarlet
22/2 SuperAuthors - Linda
2/3 Get Lost in a Story - Desere
6/3 Romance Book Haven - Jennifer
14/3 Writing Playground - Chey
18/3 LoveCats - Cassandra
20/3 Fresh Fiction - Mary
22/3 RomCon - Alisha
27/3 Lacey Devlin - Sarah
6/4 Cathryn Hein - Natalie
12/4 Rachael Johns - Gemma

In addition to these prizes, the tour offered a "grand prize" for anyone who followed me on all my locations and left a comment. I'm thrilled to announce that the winner of the grand prize, a $50 Amazon voucher, is:

Maria Mohan from Gaelikaa's Diary!!

Congratulations Maria!! Drop me an email (emmie @ emmiedark.com without  the spaces) and I'll be in touch to arrange your prize.

Thank you to everyone who left a comment on the various posts I did, and special thanks to those people who "followed" the tour, leaving comments all over the place for me. Thank you so much! It's lovely to feel like the Emmie cheersquad is growing in numbers day by day.

Thank you also to Nas Dean who was the engine behind the tour, arranging dates, booking in slots and for always being so polite, even when I was running late, in chaos, and generally running around like a chook with its head cut off. Thank you Nas for all your help.

PS -- there's still a chance to win a $100 Amazon voucher in the Cassie Photo Bomb Comp. Entries close 30 April.

Cassie cures domestic boredom!

The latest entry in the Cassie Photo Bomb comp is awesome!

Michelle Somers shows us how simply reading Cassie's Grand Plan can be a distraction from the most boring of household chores!!

Michelle says it's all about escapism: "I loved reading Cassie's Grand Plan because it made even the most mundane household chore bearable!" Yay! 

That's giving new meaning to the term multi-tasking. Thanks for submitting, Michelle! 

Emmie's Mum and Dad take Cassie on holiday

Okay, so I probably can't officially allow my parents to enter the competition. Isn't the general rule, "immediate family and employees are ineligible to enter"? Just as well there are no employees in the Emmie Dark corporation, then... (yet!).

Mum and Dad have just returned from a cruise that took them from Sydney through Asia to China, Korea, Hong Kong and Japan. Just as they were leaving, I said, "Don't forget to pack my book!".

Now my mother will be the first to admit that she's not that handy with the camera--and one of the reasons is that she often just forgets to take photos, because she's more of a "be in the moment" kind of person. But she surprised even herself with some of these shots and I have to say, trying to cull down the dozen or so she sent me was hard work!

My favourite, though, is this one, from the Beomeosa Temple in Busan, South Korea:

Here are Dad and Mum (don't think I need to point out which ones they are) with monks in South Korea. Apparently Dad wanted to get the monks to hold the book, but Mum didn't think it would be appropriate, so she wouldn't let him ask. What with it being a bit of a drrty book and all.... ;)

Dad in Busan, South Korea, taking a little rest from the temple sight-seeing to check in with Ronan and Cassie.

This is in Rubaul, Papua New Guinea. I love this photo and not just because the sky in the background is the same color blue as the cover. What a wonderful expression on this woman's face. So patient and sweet. I can just imagine her thinking, "Yes, I will indulge your very strange request." 

Mum loved this guy. He was the best tour guide they had in Japan, apparently. Although he did get them lost when he forgot to tell them that the bus wouldn't pick them up again if they got off. But that just meant they got to see a little more of Japan. And they didn't miss the boat, which is really the most important thing.

As if we didn't have proof enough, the sign says "Yokohama". Cassie was definitely in Japan!!

So, there you go. Pretty awesome, huh? Think you can beat it?

I'm giving away a $100 Amazon voucher to a randomly selected entry. All you need to do is send in a photo of yourself with Cassie, somewhere in the world! (Entries from other planets are automatically disqualified.) Competition closes 30 April.

Sorry Mum and Dad, you can't win. But you still got to have a great holiday and get in some good practice with the camera!

Cassie meets Grace

Just as well we extended the deadline on the Cassie Photo Bomb competition, because the entries have been flooding in this week! I'm going to split the latest submissions over a couple of posts in the next few days. First up, let's take a look at the wonderful entries from my MRWG pals Serena, Elvina, Margaret and Josie, who took Cassie on a trip to Bendigo to see the Grace Kelly exhibition currently on there.

The best book Serena's ever read! 

Elvina and Margaret couldn't put it down!

Elvina is engrossed -- I wonder which
scene she's reading??? 

Josie uses her iPhone to capture the most
significant passages in the book...

The gang: Elvina Josie, Margaret and Serena
outside the exhibition gallery. They weren't allowed to take photos inside. :( 

Thanks gals! Looks like you had a great time too (although I have a suspicion that's a sure thing when you lot get together!).

More Cassie photos to come soon! You don't want to miss seeing Cassie getting to meet some Buddhist monks...

Still time to send your pic!

How's this for a gorgeous entry in the Cassie Photo Bomb competition?

This is Christine E, enjoying a spot of brunch at the Richmond Hill Cafe and Larder which, as any Melbournian will tell you, is pretty much one of top places for brunch in the entire world. (Even better, looks like Christine has taken a leaf out of my book and is going with a something-yummy that is served in a martini glass...)

The photographer behind the lens of this photo is none other than Dan O'Brien, the photographic genius behind my fantastic author shot.

I had previously declared the deadline for the Cassie Photo Bomb comp to be 15 April, but I'm extending it so you still have a chance to go in the running for a $100 Amazon voucher!!

Just send me a photo of you reading Cassie's Grand Plan. That's it! How simple! It can be somewhere exotic, it can be in your backyard -- either is fine by me. :)

To get you thinking, I have a couple more photos of me to share with you from my recent US trip.

This is me at the Grand Canyon. Just casually sitting right on the edge, so carried away in my reading I don't even notice the one-mile sheer cliff right behind me... not! Never fear, I was on a very safe ledge, we were just tricky with the photo angles ;)

And here's one last one of me from yet another Walmart. I tried to find my book at Barnes and Noble, but none of the stores I visited had any in stock. :( But Walmart was an experience, that's for sure!

When Cassie met Elvis

So I was in Las Vegas. And Elvis was standing there, as he does, on Fremont Street. So I walked up to him and said, "Can I get a photo with you? And my book?"

And he said, "Thank you very much, little lady." (Actually he said, "for a gratuity", but I'm pretty sure it meant the same thing.)

Elvis was pretty excited about Cassie's Grand Plan. He asked my travel companion and photographer to take a few different poses. To be honest, I'm not sure whether Elvis was as interested in helping me promote my book as he was in getting in a bit of dry humping. We really should have taken video at this point, so you could have seen the hip action. (That's my OMG-embarrassed-hilarious-this-kind-of-thing-shouldn't-be-happening-in-the-street expression below.)

Then he wanted me to grope him for a bit. So I did.

Unfortunately, the feather-headressed showgirls across the road who were next on my photo mission had disappeared by the time I'd finished getting to second base with Elvis. All that was left was a second-rate Spiderman and a Spongebob Squarepants that looked like he'd already done several sinkfuls of very dirty dishes. So I decided to let it go with Elvis.

It's good to be (dry-humping) the king.

Don't forget to send in your photos of Cassie in glam (or just plain bizarre) places. Comp ends on 15 April!!

Cassie Goes Global

So it seems Cassie is really getting out there! I have proof myself having just seen my actual book in an actual store! Check it out: Cassie in the Las Vegas Walmart!!

Yes, a silly grin, but I can't help it!

I've also been thrilled to receive more entries from readers around the world. Here is Maria M in Lucknow in North India!! She tells me that the book isn't yet on sale on shelves in the country, but she ordered her copy online. Thanks for taking a chance on a newbie author, Maria!

Maria in India! I think from that secretive smile she must be reading the
scene where Cassie and Ronan are on the beach in Perth...!

Our second entry today comes from Louise R and she's sent us a glorious photo of Cassie on the Freycinet Peninsula in Tasmania.

Gorgeous scenery and gorgeous reader! 

 Here's one more submission -- this one is from me. Yesterday I had the enormous pleasure of driving from Lake Tahoe to Las Vegas through the Sierra Nevadas and down through Death Valley. It is seriously some of the most breathtaking scenery ever.

Nothing to see here -- just a mad author...

After passing through all the secret US bases and missile silos (some parts along that road are seriously a little creepy and had us recalling movies like Independence Day) we stopped on the side of the road to take some photos.

I'm spending the next few days in Las Vegas and then heading for parts as-yet-unknown. I'm sure there will be more opportunities for photos of my book in bizarre places though, so stay tuned!

While I'm off wandering the the world, Emmie's global blog tour of world domination continues unabated. Check out my author blog tour page which lists all the places I'm "appearing". Comments are always welcomed!

Another entry in the Cassie Photo Bomb Comp!

Another entry from Fiji! Reader Shariya Singh was prompted to download Cassie's Grand Plan to her Kindle after reading a review in the Fiji Times!

Thanks Shariya for sharing and for showing us how you can still enter this competition if you have an e-reader version. (Although usually we'd like to see a little more of the surroundings -- not that we don't trust you, just for verification that you are where you say you are! :) )

It's very easy to enter the Cassie Photo Bomb Competition and you could win an Amazon gift card worth $100. Check out this post with all the details.

First entries in Cassie's Photo Bomb competition!

I'm wildly excited by the first entries we have in the Cassie Photo Bomb competition. I started the comp hoping it might get four or five entries. Well, we already have three and it's only the first week, so I'm taking that as a very encouraging sign!!

First up we have an entry from my friend and book publicist extraordinaire, Nas. Nas is reading Cassie's Grand Plan in Nadi, Fiji!

 
Now in the category of "Cassie in groovy places" we have the lovely Jennifer F and Susan L reading Cassie at the Hemisphere Bar in downtown Sydney.  As a very groovy bar indeed, they don't believe in turning many lights on, but you can definitely still make out what these ladies are reading -- and the coaster  in the second photo has the name of the bar on it.

In the running for "best caption" prize so far is this one from Adrian C. He calls it "Book, on a beach chair, in the Bahamas". We likes it.

Adrian also submitted a few other photos of Cassie in the Caribbean.

Can you see Cassie and Ronan? This picture is
almost like a Where's Wally puzzle challenge! 

 Please send me more, more, more!!

Going on tour with Cassie and Ronan

To launch Cassie's Grand Plan (available from this Tuesday, 6 March!!) I'm going on a blog tour. A blog tour, in case you were wondering, is a bit like a rock band tour, but instead of playing stadiums and staying up late drinking tequila with groupies, I visit other people's blogs and go to bed early with a nice cup of tea.

Sounds like fun, right?

Source

The best thing about a blog tour is that there is another chance to win a prize!! That's right, not only do you have a chance to win a $100 Amazon voucher in my Cassie Photo Bomb Comp, you have a second chance to win another $50 Amazon voucher just by following along with my blog tour! The person who comments at each stop along the way is the winner (or a random selection if there is more than one of you).

The tour officially begins at the SuperRomance Authors blog on Monday 5 March. Then you can follow me here:

• Romance Book Paradise 5th March
• Romance Book Haven 6th March
• Writing PlayGround 14th March
• Sunday Smooch 18th March
• Romance Reader 19th March
• Fresh Fiction 20th March
• RomCon Inc 22nd March
• Minxes Of Romance 28th March
• Catheryn Hein's Friday Feast 6th April
• Juliet's Ten Awkward Question- 9th April
• Theory on Thursday 12th April
• Romance University 16th April

After that, if you're not completely sick of me, but are instead, addicted to my witty banter, and feel the need to continue the commenting habit you've developed, you can always come back and comment here, at my very own blog post. Which is where, incidentally, I'll be announcing the winner of the tour prize. 

Now, groupies, get your typing fingers ready, your sparkling repartee sharpened, and -- most importantly -- your glasses on for those damned Captcha images that you have to complete in order to prove you're not a robot. 

Cassie Photo Bomb Comp!

As a newbie author, I'm still pretty excited about the idea of people out there in the world actually reading my book! So I've come up with a little competition. Send me a photo of yourself reading my book somewhere exotic, glamorous, groovy or unexpected. I'll publish them on my blog and the best will win a $100 Amazon voucher!

I may give additional spot prizes for particularly interesting or exciting photos, so go get creative!

Bradley Cooper goes in the running for a $100 Amazon voucher
just for submitting this photo of him reading my book!*

Submit your photo to emmie @ emmiedark.com without the spaces (you know how it works).

We don't need to see your face, so it's the perfect photo-comp if you're camera shy. Just need you, your copy of my book and some fabulous surroundings. Don't worry if you have an e-reader version, just hold up your e-reader screen-forward and pump up the font size so that I can read Cassie or Ronan's name on it. Easy!

The small print: by sending me your photo, you give me permission to reproduce it here on my blog. And the judge's (my) decision is final! Competition is open now and closes on 15 April 2012.

*NB - Bradley Cooper probably didn't submit that photo. But you get the idea.