It's been a busy but a thoroughly enjoyable ten days hosting old friends, Pat and Mark, from Lesotho. I was a small girl growing up with their son, Julian, and it's been so fun to cover the decades and countries we've lived in since then. My mother and Pat were great friends.

Each day now I'm anticipating the cover art for my next two releases: Lady Lovett's Little Dilemma and my anthology story The Cavalier. July 2 and July 16 are the release dates.


Rake's Honour has also received only 5-Star reviews (three of them) so its reception has been really pleasing. It's not yet listed on Amazon.

And so a new week begins and its back to making sandwiches and making sure school hats are not forgotten and homework is done on time. And lights are out by 9.30pm meaning I must go now.

Promo - Too Little or Too Much

While I now have two author names I reasoned I wouldn't have to do twice as much promo. Besides, how much is too much, and how much does it really count?

For three years I've promoted my lavish hardcovers, published by Robert Hale, with author talks and interviews and a bit of blogging. The books were acquired by a number of libraries, and expensive in Australia, so I chose to ignore popular romance sites on the web to promote them.

In January Robert Hale released my Regency Intrigue Lady Farquhar's Butterfly (under my original writing name Beverley Eikli) as an e-book. A week later, Total-e-Bound released my sensual Regency Historical, Rake's Honour (published under my new pseudonym, Beverley Oakley).

Since then, I've been working overtime to promote both of them. That's meant, often, two different author pages on many sites. I've kept my picture and bio the same but the heat level of each is different - though the level of plot and intrigue is similar. I don't want one of my traditional readers of a Beverley Eikli to find themselves blushing at a Beverley Oakley.

My stories are about women, trapped by convention in a man's world, trying to follow their dreams. Sometimes my heroines are feisty - such as Fanny Brightwell as in Rake's Honour;  sometimes they've had the fire knocked out of them by abusive and drunken husbands - such as Olivia in Lady Farquhar's Butterfly; or sometimes they're still desperately in love with their husbands but don't know how to navigate the matter of procreation - or minimising it - as is the case with Cressida - in my July 2 release Lady Lovett's Little Dilemma - who has five children by the age of 25.

So I've been blogging, advertising with The Romance Studio, The Romance Reviews, Night Owl Reviews, updating my bio with Amazon. I've even tweeted a little (@BeverleyOakley), though I'm still learning the ropes.

Will it make a difference?

Well, I'm learning a lot, both about the process and other writers and their work so that's not a bad thing.

As for the decision to take a pseudonym... only time will tell whether I've made a rod for my own back.

The sting in the tail - or in this case, the toe!

Last night I finished another novella about an older woman and a younger man with lashings of romance, culminating in the usual twist in the tale or (more in this instance, sting in the tail).

Talking of stings in the tail, this morning, I had a rude welcome to the day with a real sting in the toe when I put on my shoe in the kitchen and, shrieking with pain, withdrew my foot to find a spider clamped to the end of my toe. Its fangs were so embedded I couldn't get the spider off for some seconds. I then flung it to the ground, covered it with a glass, then flicked it into a clear ziplock plastic sandwich bag and pierced it with a pin so I could identify it.

Fortunately it wasn't the horrible White-tail I'd feared, so at least my toe isn't going to necrotise or have to be amputated. But it was painful!

Is there a moral to that story? Well, nothing cleverer than check your shoes before you put your feet into them.

An Old Story Ends & A New One Begins
Well, I've typed THE END to my latest story. I've never tackled an older woman, younger man romance and I'll certainly rest this one for a while before I hand it over to my brilliant critique partners. It's the first book in a series so the ending was challenging. How do I satisfactorily wrap up the story with respect to my two central characters when the action is just about to shift to the daughter? Well, I've done it so that's a rhetorical question. Now I need a bit of distance - and some honest feedback from my good old Ozcritters - before I'm in a better position to know if I have or not.

A wonderful review from JERR

When one gets a bad review one has to just take it on the chin and move on. On the other hand, a good review can make your heart sing and just push the passion through that pen! I got such a review for my recently released Rake's Honour. 5 stars from Just Erotic Romance Reviews. Here it is....

Title: Rake’s Honour


Author: Beverly G Oakley

Publisher: Total E Bound
http://www.total-e-bound.com/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=&P_ID=1503

Reviewer: Barbara McCormick

Rating: 5 Stars
Heat

Level: O

Fanny Brightwell must find a husband or be married off to the odious Lord Slyther. Her first attempt at doing so leads her into a compromising position, from which she is rescued by the dangerous rogue Viscount Fenton. Fenton discovers that the memory of Fanny’s kisses haunt him. The two meet at a ball and have an unexpectedly passionate encounter. Afterward, Fenton offers to set her up as his mistress. Since her family’s fortunes rest on her ability to marry well, Fanny must take control of the situation.

The characters in Rake’s Honour, a Regency romance, leap off the page and into the reader’s heart. Fanny is well aware of her obligations to her family, yet yearns to find a husband she can love. Fenton has outgrown his childish excesses and is ready to settle down with a wife. The heat between these two practically sets fire to the pages, a mean trick for an e-book! Ms. Oakley brings the setting and time period to life without lengthy descriptions of society’s strict rules. The sex, oh my goodness, the sex is hot and in unusual settings as Fenton and Fanny must hide what they are up to from the eyes of judgmental society. Supporting characters like Fanny’s younger sister and her friend and confidante, Lord Quamby, bring added life to a lush story. The pacing is just perfect, keeping you in your chair reading right through to the end. The “mamas” are ever present, placing demands on their children to marry well for family’s sake. In the end, Rake’s Honour is about satisfying society’s demands while still finding ways to remain true to oneself and one’s heart. For these reasons, Rake’s Honour earns an honored spot on my re-read stack.

Website Update - New look coming soon.

I've been trying to get an RSS feed onto my website for absolutely ages - and now I've done it, thanks to incredibly knowledgeable and helpful fellow romance writer, Maree Anderson- http://www.mareeanderson.com/

Maree is a fellow Romance Writers of Australia member and clearly far more knowledgeable than I am about this sort of thing. Our organisation is a marvellous resource for information. I've posted my RSS-related queries onto so many technical forums and got nowhere. The advice never worked for me. Last night, however, I posted my question onto the RWA author loop, got my answer by morning and in a couple of clicks had achieved what I've spent hours and days trying to achieve through various other channels. So thank you, Maree!

Beautiful Clare Valley

I love visiting dad and Wuthering Heights, the fabulous 80-acre property that's been in the family for 30 years. We built the mud brick Bronte Manor and now there are three cottages nestled amongst 25,000 trees.

Last night I returned to Clare to do an author talk at the Town Hall. It was a really lovely night, supported by many lovely Clare people and followed by a delicious supper put on Friends of the Library. Thank you to all of them!

My journey from Gisborne to Clare, however, felt like one of those epic road trips. I was booked on staff travel on the 10.10am, but was bumped because an earlier cancelled flight meant every last seat on this flight was booked. We couldn't help but look daggers at the stragglers onto the plane, which scotched our chances of getting on. (Yes, I know, they were paying passengers.)

We then had two hours to wait for the next plane but were told there were no seats available, however if there were no-shows (i.e. people on flex-fares who didn't show up) we'd have a chance.

Fortunately, there were and the three of us got on. A lovely gentleman called Trevor (and fellow standby passenger who was chewing his fingernails like me) was trying to get to a funeral in Adelaide. He was hiring a car so he drove me from the airport to the railway station and then I caught the train to Mawson Interchange and a bus to Gawler where dad picked me up to drive the last hour to Clare. I made it just in time to have a glass of white wine with my sister before getting into my glad rags for the talk.

A nice evening, as I said!

And now it's morning, the birds are singing and it's time to help dad reorganise the layout of his memoirs before I make my epic way home.

Sunday morning dramas

Yesterday my Sunday morning slumber was rudely disturbed by my 7-year-old nephew and 6-year-old daughter bursting in on me in great consternation as the rain thundered down on the tin roof.

"Mummy! Auntie Bevie! You've got to climb onto the roof. Quickly! We left Auntie Penny's birthday presents there in a box last night."

I'd stayed overnight at my sister's house to look after her two little boys so she and her husband could go to a party in Echuca, 2 hours away, leaving my husband to enjoy the solitude of our own house so he could study in peace.

Now, here I was in my green and pink polka dot pyjamas climbing a 15ft ladder in the pouring rain at the crack of dawn, wondering whether I should tell Penny that under my watch the kids had actually done this, or just get the presents - and me - safely out of the rain and just leave it.

The joys of children! And I thought it was going to be the two-year-old who'd be the problem!

Win an e-copy of Rake's Honour

Today I'm blogging with the lovely Maria-Claire Payne, a fellow Total-e-Bound writer at:

http://maria-clairepayne.com/a-no-sex-sexy-saturday-book-give-a-way-with-beverley-oakley 


Maria-Claire is one energetic gal - as you can see from her blog! I've included an excerpt of Rake's Honour and a bit about me.


Meanwhile, this is no ordinary Sunday as I've stayed over to look after my two nephews, together with my two girls, so my sister could go away for a party overnight with her husband, and mine could.... study at our home! (That's what happens when you're married to a pilot. Sleep and study and time away from home flying mean that I look after the kids a fair bit.) However, dh took our six-year-old on a special daddy/daughter trip to buy her the roller skates she's been saving up for. 


Last night was a very broken up night with my two-year-old nephew looking for his mummy but now the kids are eating breakfast and I've snatched a quiet couple of minutes.


Anyway, tell me what you like about the cover art and you're in the pool to win a copy of Rake's Honour.

New Contract

It's always exciting to receive a new contract. This evening I signed my third contract with Total-e-Bound for a novella to be included in their Bodices and Boudoirs anthology. It's called The Cavalier and is set during the English Civil war and under my Beverley Oakley name. It'll come out on July 16, exactly two weeks after my second release on July 2, entitled Lady Lovett's Little Dilemma.

The cover art for LLLD should be coming soon. That's always exciting, too. It'll be very different from my Hale book covers but then the covers reflect the type of story and my Hale books are traditional Regencies and my TEB books are more sensual. Essentially, the stories are still the same stories, though.

The building of our new pergola in the back garden has taken out of me far more than I thought. Including writing time! I've spent literally dozens of hours painting and with Eivind studying for his command on the 737 there's been no one to help. He did hold the 10ft ladder, though, when I had to paint the highest reaches. The girls would hold it for about ten seconds and when I peered down into the misty gloom all those seemingly half a dozen metres below there'd be no one there!

Still, it's better than Eivind being up a ladder since falling off one six years ago was how he broke his back. It's only recently that he has more pain-free days than the other way round. Losing 23kg helped. My hubby look pretty tremendous these days!

AUSTRALIAN WOMEN WRITERS CHALLENGE


I've just signed up for the above which runs from 1 January 2012 -  31 December 2012.


The Goal (as stated on their home page at http://www.australianwomenwriters.com/p/australian-women-writers-book-challenge_25.html is to:

• Read and review books written by Australian women writers throughout 2012, the National Year of Reading – hard copies, ebooks and audiobooks, new, borrowed or stumbled upon bybook-crossing. 

Now, as I'm a romance writer, I aim to read in at least two other genres and to post my reviews here and link back.

The idea is to:

• "help counteract the gender bias in reviewing and social media newsfeeds that has continued throughout 2011 by actively promoting the reading and reviewing of a wide range of contemporary Australian women’s writing."

I'm in!!

Love Thy Neighbour

Well, no more teaching English as a Second Language - for the short term, at least, since the hours of my college were changed and didn't fit in with after-school care.

I loved the diversity of my classes. The cameraderie of students from Kuwait, Libya, China, South Korea, Italy and Greece was proof that people get along if they can get to know one another as people rather than nationalities.

Hanging Rock Races

Went to the Hanging Rock Races last week. This was where the famous 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock was shot. Unfortunately the races last year were cancelled due to kangaroos on the track and this year moved to Kyneton because of a divet.

Anway, just uploaded this picture of me and the family (including beautiful Homer) from last year to show how lovely the scenery is.

I'd forgotten painting was so boring. Or so time-consuming. It's a good thing I have a couple of stories in my head to pot-boil or I'd go insane.

I also have my best friend, my big, loyal Rhodesian Ridgeback Homer, who is never more than two metres away, to keep me company. Every time I go inside to make a cup of tea or find some other excuse to leave the job at hand, he gets up with a groan and lopes after me.

If only my children were so dedicated - or could wield a paintbrush with any expertise or enthusiasm for more than two minutes. Mind you, I won't be on at them to keep up the hard work. I've spent too much time already fixing up the spills and drips.

Soon it'll all be worthwhile. A beautiful 6m x 6m pergola in blue and white will grace the back garden next to the swimming pool and I'll be enjoying entertaining my friends too much to remember how much I detested all the painting.

My ARRA Nomination - a huge thank you!

Thank you to everyone for your congratulations on being nominated for an ARRA award
AND congratulations to all my fellow nominees in all categories.

What a surprise that it was for A Little Deception which has received such mixed reviews. It shows you that not everyone likes the same things as the first few reviews I read were just heartbreaking! This nomination more than makes up for it.

A spontaneous trip to country South Australia (via the Renmark Big 4 caravan park with the kids) meant I was out of cyber contact for nearly 10 days so I've not responded as I should have but I've just booked my flight to Sydney for the ARRA awards dinner. (Not that I harbour any illusions that I'll win but it will be fun to catch up with my writing friends.) And since I can hop over on staff travel I might as well!

Anyway, here's the link to ARRA's blog which has all the finalists in the various categories and, below, the finalists in the historical category.


http://australianromancereaders.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/arr-awards-finalists-announced/#comment-4135

Favourite historical romance for 2011 (proudly sponsored by Rosemary’s Romance Books and Temptation the Romance Bookstore)

• A Little Deception / Beverley Eikli
• Cloudy With a Chance of Marriage / Kieran Kramer
• Heiress in Love / Christina Brooke
• How the Marquess was Won / Julie Anne Long
• Midnight’s Wild Passion / Anna Campbell
• Never Love a Highlander / Maya Banks
• Salt Bride / Lucinda Brant
• The Many Sins of Lord Cameron / Jennifer Ashley
• Unveiled / Courtney Milan
• Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue / Stephanie Laurens

www.beverleyeikli.com

Diving into the world of e-publishing

January is an exciting month as I make my first foray into e-publishing.

Within a few days of each other I've had Lady Farquhar’s Butterfly   re-released by Hale as an e-book. This was followed by my first Total-e-Bound release, a much hotter, shorter Regency Romance about revenge and one-upmanship with a sting in its tail -  Rake’s Honour.


You can read about both stories - and a bit about me - in my interview at http://downunderdivas.wordpress.com/

 Rake’s Honour is my first erotic Regency Historical and its heroine, Fanny Brightwell, has always been close to my heart. She reminds me of Thackeray’s Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair. No doubt many readers of the day abhorred this Regency “bad girl”.

Similarly, many of the editors to whom I sent the completed manuscript thought that desperate, designing Fanny Brightwell was too unsympathetic. So Fanny languished in a drawer, neglected but not forgotten.

Finally, I decided it was time to return to Fanny and make sure readers understood her perspective. After all, if your ambitious mama is all but forcing you to marry a loathsome old man covered in ulcerous sores to save the family from financial ruin, you’re going to take some big risks to snare a more desirable husband.

Unfortunately, Fanny’s plan backfires when Viscount Fenton, the man who turns her insides to jelly, wants her to be his mistress not his wife. This is when Fanny decides it’s time to take the reins and teach her viscount a lesson.

All in all, Rake’s Honour is a viperish little story of love, revenge and one-upmanship with a sting in its tail.

So while Rake's Honour comes with lots of baggage, so does the heroine of Lady Farquhar’s Butterfly   Olivia, Lady Farquhar. Poor Olivia is no less desperate as she's been stripped of her son by her drink-sodden late husband in his will. Lucien, Lord Farquhar has falsely declared Olivia an unfaithful wife and sent the infant to live with a distant cousin. A lot of Olivia's former spirit has been worn down by the abusive Lucien and when she arrives under a false name to work her way into Max's affections in an attempt to win back her child, more problems arise than she could have imagined.

January has started well. TEB has also contracted two other books and I'm looking forward to a July 2 release and a date to be determined for an English Civil War tale of thwarted passion.

The postal service in 1916 - very dangerous across lion-infested territory.

Now it's back to working on my dad's 80th birthday present: a book of his memoirs with photographs from his time as a district commissioner in Lesotho in the 1960s and youth in Botswana  before that. There'll also be stories of his dad's trek throughout the Okavango around 1916-24 when he was a very young administrative officer and later DC, together with lots of pictures from his photo albums.

Grampa on his mule travelling through
 tsetse fly-infested territory. The flies caused sleeping sickness in domestic animals.

I'm just trying out this new took - Blurb - which has proved fantastic - and time consuming as I have so many photographs and they're not ordered as well as they could be. I want to include the hundreds of ageing sepias taking from the 1916 - 24 albums, which dad has had scans, as well as his scanned slides from the ten years he spend in Lesotho, where I was born.

Early travel in Botswana. I think it might have taken just as long as a
mule because of the sandy, rutted roads.

These places will feature in upcoming stories and dad and I are collaborating on a 1960-set illicit diamond smuggling story set in Mokhotlong where was DC. I'm currently learning all about Colonial life in this tiny mountain outpost and it's fascinating.

I had very adventurous forebears.

New Year's Resolutions

My blog about New Year's Resolutions at Tote Bags n' Blogs on December 30th whipped up the inspiration and forced me to plot out the following year's writing and writing-associated plans.

The latter, for me, means promotion. I'm not good at promotion and yet I've been marketing the family B&B in South Australia's Clare Valley - www.wutheringheights.com.au - for years.

No, I'd rather be writing the next book!

My big, blue-eyed girl as she earnestly told me
her New Year's Resolutions
 were to eat more vegetables and spend more time with mummy.

However, things change and with three e-releases in the next six months (including under my Beverley Oakley pseudonym) my books will become much more accessible to the public, both price-wise and physically.

Previously, my lovely UK-published hardcovers were primarily acquired by libraries with prices in Australia that made it difficult for them to compete with their cheaper counterparts.

Now my favourite book, Lady Farquhar's Butterfly, which came out last year in Large Print, is being published as an e-book by Hale. I just wish I had a link for it. Mysteriously, it's disappeared into the ether, though its release date was three days ago.

Hopefully, Rake's Honour, my debut erotic Regency Historical novella which is due for release on January 9th, will make its appearance smoothly, without the associated trauma. Yes, it is traumatic planning for a release, organising advertising and blogging, only to experience the fizzing disappointment of discovering one's book is a chimera which can't be explained until the editorial offices buzz back to life after the new year and there's someone to look into its mysterious disappearance for me.

Enough of grumbling. 2012 is set for being a fabulous year with lots of last year's groundwork coming to fruition. I have two erotic Regencies scheduled for release and am working to meet tomorrow's deadline for another one to be hopefully included in an anthology.

I also have a completed Regency Historical (called The Reluctant Wife and which is not erotic) which Musa has requested after seeing the partial but which got sidelined after Total-e-bound accepted Rake's Honour and Lady Lovett's Little Dilemma (due for release on July 2, 2012). My husband's careful critiquing of The Reluctant Wife has laid bare a major character flaw on the heroine's part - she's not sympathetic enough - so poor old Emily McCartney requires a lot of remedial work. Nevertheless, I'd say any woman forced to marry a man she doesn't know in order to legitimise the unborn child of her dead fiancé, only to lose the baby within weeks, has a big cross to bear and we should all cut her some slack.

Then there's the first draft of another Beverley Eikli Regency Historical as well as 30,000 words of my my 1960's-set illicit diamond smuggling story in the African Kingdom of Lesotho (where I spent my first years) written in collaboration with my 80-year-old father.

Anyway, I intend to blog every Monday, transferring my blog from my website to my Blogger site, here.

I'll talk about the books under my Beverley Eikli name as well as my Beverley Oakley name, though I'll have two separate websites (www.beverleyeikli.com and www.beverleyoakley.com) with excerpts of my forthcoming books on each respective site.

In the meantime, Happy New Year and may at least 50 per cent of your New Year's Resolutions be realised. If I'm needing inspiration I need look no further than my husband whose resolution last year was to lose weight. This year he tipped the scales at 23kg less than he weighed last New Year! So well done, Eivind (whose command slot on the 737 has just come up!!!).

Great news! Lady Farquhar’s Butterfly will re-emerge from her chrysalis to entertain a whole new audience when she’s released in Large Print by F.A Thorpe who have just made an offer.

The book will appear with new cover art and be distributed throughout the UK, Commonwealth countries and Canada.

Critique Carefully

One of my students reminded me last week how dangerous criticism can be when wielded carelessly or thoughtlessly.

During my previous class I'd spoken on the value of judging for realising the shortfalls in one's own writing, but that when critiquing, either on paper or face-to-face, it was important to remember the golden rule: Praise...Constructively Criticise....Praise.

My student said she had gone to her first face-to-face writers' group a few days later and her work had been the first to be critiqued by the group of twelve. "I'm pretty thick-skinned," she said, "but the way some of my group laid into my work was....awful!"

Fortunately my student is a pretty strong character and 'very politely' repeated to her group of fellow writers the advice I'd given in my previous class: that it was important to start with praise before highlighting areas for improvement, finishing on an encouraging note.

The rest of the session went just fine, she said, with everyone having taken on board the potentially damaging effects of unbridled criticism.

After the class, another member of the group told her, "My work is due to be critiqued next month and if you hadn't said what you did I was going to pull out of the group."

I guess the moral is, passing judgement on another's work is a big responsibility.