Happy Christmas from Monsieur le Prince... and Portia

His Serene Highness the Overlord in Exile of Nouvelle-Aquitaine wishes you a tolerable Midwinter Eating and Spending Festival.

Seasons Greetings... Prince is not amused...

All the best for the Festive Season! 

Seasons Greetings!

A very Merry Christmas 

&

a Happy New Year!

An Anglo-French Christmas Message

GrumpyCat has nothing on our 'Monsieur'! LOL

Christmas with the SubClub gals!

The girls at THE SUBCLUB are running a super HOLIDAY BUNDLE contest, and I'm helping them celebrate by donating a prize of my two Christmas themed titles 'tied' in a festive bundle, THE GIFT and FIRE AND ICE.

So zip on over there, and find out how to enter. It's a simple question, promise, and there are lots of great prizes on odder as well as my humble offering. :)

http://thesubclubbooks.com/?p=17689

 

THE GIFT is out now!

My Christmas novel THE GIFT is out now! Complete with festive red bow and golden lettering on the cover [see piccie below for more detail].

THE GIFT isn't entirely a new title. It's a re-imagining of an earlier book of mine, KISS IT BETTER, transferring a generic sort of Spring/Summer setting to the more seasonal one of December and the run up to Christmas. Although this was an idea suggested to me by my editor, I do think it works perfectly, as The Gift has a strong 'fairytale' type romance vibe to it, with shades of Sleeping Beauty, almost, along with reunited lovers, and a tough and slightly cranky Prince Charming, who's been through the mill of pain and injury, and almost literally come out on the other side as an entirely different man.

There's also an entirely new and rather sexy epilogue, which includes not only a love scene for hero and heroine Jay and Sandy, but a 'sighting' of Lizzie and John from my ACCIDENTAL TRILOGY. The books are all set in the same 'world' as a few of my other titles, including Entertaining Mr Stone, Suite Seventeen, and In Too Deep.

[Look at that blingy lettering, eh!]

Blurb for THE GIFT

Pleasure with a perfect stranger...

Jay Bentley is a man with issues. Haunted by physical and psychological demons, he seeks solace and sexual oblivion in the pursuit of an exquisite erotic daydream from his youth, and the reality of a woman who has illuminated his inner fantasies since a brief meeting years ago.

Sandy Jackson has always known that a certain magic is 'missing' from her life. She's feisty and philosophical, but her dreams are filled with heated images of a handsome Prince Charming she once encountered, a man who will kiss everything better and gift her with glorious, dangerous pleasure.

But the past is an illusion, and the present fraught with conflict and uneasy compromise… can two passionate lovers reconcile their differences and slake their burning sensual hunger for each other in a wild and daring liaison?

Excerpt here:

http://www.portiadacosta.com/thegift.html


Available from:

Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Kindle UK and Kindle US
 
Also from Barnes and Noble, W H Smith, Nook UK, Kobo, All Romance Ebooks, Waterstones Books and Waterstones Ebooks

And while we're on a Christmas theme... here's another of my titles set during the Festive Season...

Cally and Innes, the boss she secretly adores, are marooned in a freezing flat over Christmas, with broken central heating... and a dose of the forty eight hour flu for Innes. What else is a girl to do but administer her body heat as a therapy to make him feel better?

More info and a sexy excerpt here:

http://www.portiadacosta.com/fireandice2.html

Compliments of the Season!

An Apology

December has been a weird, weird month for me, and with so much going on, I've sort of had to abandon Christmas. 

I was already super busy with writing, and enjoying working on The Accidental Mistress... but I still hoped to source some presents, and send out some cards - albeit probably ecards - and generally enjoy the festive spirit and try and spread some of it around to those I love and care about. I don't do a big Christmas thing, but I was planning to do some stuff, because I do love Christmas and I always hope that everyone will have a good one... 

But then Alice got ill. And when that happened, I couldn't think about Christmas at all. All I could think about was her, and the professional commitments I had. Writing helped, because I had to throw myself into it, and for a brief while, I was in the world of my story, and my mind was distracted from worrying about her. 

Sadly, the recovery I hoped for her wasn't possible, and on Wednesday, we had to have her put to sleep... and now, there's no time, and I have no heart for Christmas. Plus, I have revisions to do for another book, as well as the main book I'm on a deadline for...

So, there's no Christmas to speak of here. I feel bad for not sending cards and presents. I feel mean and like Scrooge... but it's not really that way. I do wish everyone well, and I would love to have spread happy Christmas spirit around, either in tangible terms, or just the emotion of it... but for Christmas 2012, that's just not to be. 

But hopefully, next year things will be different. With any luck, we'll have new cats to love by then, even if we still remember and honour Alice. And I hope that also, things might not be so crazy on the writing front, so I've time to embrace and enjoy the pleasures of Christmas and to spread them around. Hopefully, I'll be able to reach out and connect with the people who think I've forgotten about them, and that I don't care about them... and share the fun and joy of this special time.

So please, dear friends, do have a wonderful Merry Christmas and accept my good wishes for the festive season and for the year of 2013.

Love

Portia

ps. I'll probably still be around on Twitter, and possibly on Facebook, so if I see you there, I'll say hello.

Seasons Greetings!

Peace and Goodwill

Kuffer and Mulder actually... :)

Merry Christmas!

'Tis the season...

... to eat loads and loads of these muthas!

My thighs are begging for mercy, but the orgy of Mince Pies has begun!

Enjoy Christmas Eve folks! Hope the last minute shopping and prep aren't too gruelling, and that pretty soon the warm glow of peace and goodwill enfolds you. :)

This is just a small part...

of the Christmas chocolate I have to 'eat up'. Sigh... it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it. ;)

-------------------------------------------------------------
Telly: Numb3rs
Choc/Yummy: see above
Mood: oppressed by sheer weight of jobs to do
Writing: not yet
Reading: The Ipcress File - Len Deighton
RSI/FMS: sore


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Post Christmas Limboland

Well, it's the day after the day after Boxing Day, and I'm in a sort of post Christmas limboland. Part of me wants to try and get back into some kind of routine, while the rest of me is clinging to the 'what film is on next, shall I have another mince pie, work, wot that?' mentality of the seasonal festivities. This, coupled with the sheer mountain of 'stuff' that Christmas generates eg. wrapping paper, ludicrous amounts of extra 'strange' food, gift items to be assimilated into the household, is making it very hard for me to get into any kind of productive state of mind.

I haven't been entirely idle over the last few days. I have been doing a bit of editing on In Too Deep since Boxing Day, but it's very slow progress and my motivation level isn't high. Am very easily distracted by something on the telly or the desire for more unsuitable Xmas food. On Boxing Day itself, the book seemed like horse pooh, but yesterday, I seemed to get a sort of handle on it. But really, some of the stuff I've written is truly, truly dire. Boring, clunky, uninspired, story-less, strange characters with stupid motivations that people just won't like. This book will need many more rounds of revision after this one if it's to come anywhere near the standard of my beloved Suite Seventeen, which seems to have turned out to be one of my best works, given it's prizewinning status!

What does cheer me up though is that Suite Seventeen seemed like a pile of festering crud for much of the time while I was working on it. It too had to go through a lot of changes and enhancements. It too seemed flat and stupid and pointless. So, if I can get from that, to being judged a year's best novel, with one book, I can do it with another... And I went through the same journey with Gothic Heat too. I don't yet have much in the way of feedback other than the approval of my critique partner and my agent, but I like GH myself now, and it was really one of the hardest, hardest books I've ever had to write!!!

So there's hope for In Too Deep... I think I will probably have to go through this process with every book from now on, as part of the constant raising of the bar. Both in terms of my own writing, and because of fabulous books I read by other writers. I've got to keep pushing, working, improving, not accepting anything less than my best. It's tough out in romance writing world and you can't let yourself slide, even in the tiniest way... You can't sit back and think, 'oh, I'm the dog's wotsits, everybody loves me, I don't have to try now...' because there are hundreds of writers out there, with great ideas, who readers are going to discover and abandon you for if you don't produce the goods to the best of your ability!

-------------------------------------------------------------
Telly: not yet
Choc/Yummy: mince pie in a minute
Mood: uneasy
Writing: not yet
Reading: not yet
RSI/FMS: very, very sore and achy, mainly due to waking up with small but heavy cat sitting on my rib cage!


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Our Xmas DVD viewing...

-------------------------------------------------------------
Telly: Tanks!
Choc/Yummy: everything
Mood: Christmassy
Writing: In Too Deep
Reading: Radio Times
RSI/FMS: so so


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

Season's Greetings from me!