Print Releases and Prize Offerings…

AT LAST!!!!!

Today my latest trilogy is finally in print!

But before we get to that, grab a cup of tea or coffee and read on…

 

For those of you in the northern hemisphere, you begin the long trek through winter, something that always looks so beautiful from where we sit in the south. Snow bedecked trees, elegant forms traced in frost in the gardens. Iced lakes, rivers and ponds, toboggans and snowmen. The romance of a white winter.

Here of course, it’s vastly different.

(Maria Island, Tasmania)

We begin summer.

For me personally, summer is even more important than Christmas festivities. We live summer with family and friends – boating, swimming, fishing, diving. Meals with food picked from the garden, minutes before we eat. Husband harvesting crops and filling barns and silos.

(one of the paddocks on the farm, almost concealed by wild daisies, grasses and rosehips)

Summer is also a time of year where I do my most intense writing. In the coming year, I hope to publish two books which will be a real first for me if it actually comes off.

One is a foray into contemporary fiction, a complete departure from my genres of choice. I’m a cross-genre writer of historical fiction and historic fantasy normally, so this latest, Almost Home, is rather a journey. It came out of the blue when I wrote a Rosamunde Pilcher-styled paragraph for Facebook and a well-known writer asked why I didn’t write a novel about women of a certain age travelling through life. Almost Home suggested itself as I watched close friends lose their loved life partners and navigate the rocks and storms of grief.

I don’t want this to be a sad story – I want it to be one from which people can take hope, not weighed down by negative emotions. Can I combine such a thing with something like massive grief?

Read it and you can be the judge…

The second book to be published is intended to be a fantasy, The Cabinet of Curiosities, and I’m well into its writing. But as is always the case with me, there’s an historical fiction busting to come out as well, and this one to do with convict transportation from Britain to Tasmania in the 1800’s. Whatever the case, one or other will be released in the last third of next year.

BUT!!!! (lots of exclamation marks in this post…)

The most exciting news for me is that the three books of The Triptych Chronicle are now all available in print. You can order them from your regular city bookseller by quoting the ISBN’s, author’s name and titles. Or, you can order them from the Amazon of your choice.

Tobias: ISBN 978-0987330567

Guillaume: ISBN 978-0987330598

Michael: ISBN 978-0648369103

 AND BIG NEWS TO GO WITH THE ABOVE NEWS!!!!!

I’m having a competition to launch the print editions and which will close at the end of January. If you can purchase the PRINT trilogy and send me unusual location pics of yourself with those books, then you’ll be in the running for a…

…Kindle Paperwhite!

 

Maybe you can be really generous and pass this on to all your family and friends, giving them the chance to win the fabulous prize as well. Send your images to my website email address: pruebatten@gmail.com

and they will be posted on my blog, on Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook. The winner will be selected by a former senior media executive, someone we can all trust implicitly for his excellent taste.

Be in it to win it, people! So run, don’t walk!

In the meantime, I really am proud of those three books.

Tobias was awarded a gold medallion from the States from the Indie Book Readers’ Appreciation Group, otherwise known as Indie B.R.A.G. The group only award the medallion to those books that fulfil their professional criteria. It was also shortlisted for the 2016 MM. Bennetts Award for Historical Fiction and the 2016 Chanticleer Chaucer Award for Historical Fiction

Guillaume won the 2017 Chanticleer Chaucer Award for Historical Fiction.

Michael is shortlisted for the 2018 Chanticleer Chaucer Award and the results will be out in April of 2019.

The amazing thing about the three titles is that all were released during quite traumatic episodes in our family life. With Tobias, my adored mother died. With Guillaume, my husband was recovering from cancer surgery and with Michael, my husband had a very serious accident on the farm ATV this year, and it has given him permanent injuries.

Thus each book was launched with very little fanfare and publicity, simply because I had no time. But somehow, they managed to keep their heads above water and earn their living without my subsequent involvement. I love them for their endurance!

***

Apart from writing books, and thanks to social media, I’ve spent much time chatting with friends and readers O/S. My life is so much richer thanks to these people. Richer too for the bonds of true friendship extending across the airwaves. What a wonderful time we would have if we all got together. I’d love to see them all here in my garden on an Australian summer’s day.

As anyone who follows my blog knows, I’m an ingenue gardener – I love gardening and that love is becoming stronger even if the body isn’t!

I’ve also had a super year stitching and am really extending myself thanks to my embroidery friends and to some masterclasses. The interest is another creative outlet and gives the mind a break from writing, allowing ideas to percolate.

For the old body to keep fit and supple, I’m into my third year of ballet and whilst at the end of each session, I can barely climb into the car, by the next day I feel 10 feet taller. I hope to continue this form of exercise forever. After all, our teacher has just turned 90! Formerly a Royal Ballet, Sadler’s Wells and Borovansky dancer, she is an utter inspiration.

And this pretty well brings us all up to date on Prue Batten Writer’s year. Except for one little thing…

I have the complete honour to be Nanny to the most delightfully happy little boy and who at the time of writing is 4 healthy months of age.

I look forward to growing old with him…

Now people! Go out and enter that competition!