LIZ FIELDING GOES WILD!

There's an Author Spotlight on the Romantic Times website today, featuring photographs of me when I was young and thin and living in Africa, and talking about Botswana. There's stuff on there you won't see anywhere else so if you want more background, a little slice of my life, click on Romantic Times.


I'm still waiting to hear from one of the winners of my last competition, by the way, so Ginette, if you're out there, get in touch!

We're having gorgeous weather here at the moment (after what seems like an eternity of the bad stuff).

It isn't going to last so I'm off down the garden now to get some writing done while it's still cool. Have a great day.

ROMANTIC TIMES CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

For the last month I’ve been sitting on the most exciting piece of news, barely about to contain myself. Now I can share that on Saturday, at their Convention in Pittsburgh, ROMANTIC TIMES awarded me a Career Achievement Award for Love & Laughter in romantic fiction.

This award is self-explanatory. It’s not for just one book, but for a body of work. All those books that made someone laugh out loud at the same time as they reached for the handkerchief.

If it had been planned it couldn’t have coincided more perfectly with the celebrations for my 50th Harlequin Romance, THE BRIDE’S BABY.

I was also nominated for Best Harlequin Romance again, but this year had to concede the honour to Trish Wylie, to whom very many congratulations. You’ll find a complete list of winners here.

Another champagne moment for someone else, too – Jan Jones, who guested here last week has just sold her Regency romance with a bit of adventure, Fair Deception to Robert Hale Ltd!

Her prize went to Natasha, by the way. We need a snail mail addy, Natasha, when you have a moment!

What else?

Oh, yes, this week’s guest is artist Larry Roibal, who has produced the covers for a number of my books, including two award winners. I’ll be giving away five books with Larry’s special covers this weekend (The Marriage Miracle, The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella, Reunited: Marriage in a Million, A Family of His Own and The Valentine Bride), so do drop by and talk about that most fascinating of subjects – The Cover. Get a little insight into how Larry goes about the production of the perfect cover and ask him those question burning a hole in your brain.

REUNITED: MARRIAGE IN A MILLION and USED BOOKS

I've just been doing a tour of the online bookstores to see whether Reunited is actually available yet. Some places are slower to ship than others. Since the book isn't on sale retail until next week, I was less than happy to see that Amazon UK already have a couple of sellers with "used" copies for sale at under 50p. Actually, when I chekced they were not used. They were "brand new". "In stock". Sourced from the publisher, they say.

No comment.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem with people selling, or buying, used books, but give the author -- and publisher -- a break. We have a couple of weeks on sale retail; it's not long and if we don't sell new books -- it's how we earn our living -- who is going to bother to write them? Print them? Already, the average author earns less than the minimum wage and has to have a "day" job.

I'm luckier than most, I know. My readers are loyal. They buy my books and help pay my kid's student loans. But we're all keen to save money and I can see how buying a "brand new" book for 43p is more attractive than paying £2.89. So listen up.

One of the "used" sellers is The Book Depository and here's the deal. If you buy your very competitively priced copy of Reunited from them via Amazon it will cost you 40 odd pence, plus £2.75 posdtage. However, if you go to The Book Depository's own website, you can buy a copy for £2.89 and they won't charge you for the postage.

Work it out for yourself. It's actually cheaper to buy a legitimate, brand new copy that will benefit the publisher and the author -- the author especially because the publisher will know you love her enough to buy her books (they have no way of knowing how many used of "brand new" used books are sold).

You can work out 4% of the price and discover for yourself exactly how much the author earns per book.

Oh, and ROMANTIC TIMES says Reunited is "... one of the author's best." And gave it 4 1/2 stars.

SOME LOVELY NEWS

THE MARRIAGE MIRACLE, a book that you'll all know is very close to my heart, received yet another honour last night when Romantic Times BOOKclub named it Best Harlequin Romance of 2006.

My colleagues Teresa Southwick and Sandra Marton won Best Silhouette Romance and Best Presents, respectively, so huge congrats to them, too. A click on the link will take you a full list of the winners.

This book has already won the RWA's RITA for Best Short Contemporary Romance and an award from Cataromance. All I need to do now is work out what I did that was so great and do it again!