Archive for the ‘contests’ Category

October 27, 2008 | B. H. Dark, contests

Okay so CLOSE ENCOUNTERS totally comes out tomorrow. It is, I must humbly admit, the best erotic science fiction romantic comedy I have ever read. Ahem.

And today, we’re giving away a FREE COPY, one day before the release date, at http://southernfriedchicas.com. So go there and leave a comment for a chance to win!

Also, all this week we’ll be posting stuff about the book on B. H. Dark’s blog…and if you leave a comment there, on any post, you’ll be in with a chance to win a FREE COPY there, too!

Today, we’re talking about how CLOSE ENCOUNTERS started. A sordid tale of alcohol and a Greek alpha male who smouldered a bit too much…go look!

September 20, 2008 | contests

I do beg your pardon.

It has come to my attention that yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Therefore, I am reposting my announcement of yesterday in the correct vernacular.

Th’ contest was to answer th’ followin’ question: Who did I name th’ police officers after in Honey Trap, ye scurvy dogs?

To be fair, ’twas a really harrrd contest because ye had to look in th’ book, ‘n be knowin’ how to read, ‘n then be knowin’ whar th’ names came from. Thar be four filthy police officers in th’ book: PC Jane Stanley, PC Raj Criss, PC Simmons ‘n PC Frehley, all ‘o whom, ‘o course, get their surnames from th’ members ‘o KISS.

Annie, who be obviously a woman ‘o jolly taste ‘n immense knowledge, posted th’ correct answer. message in a bottle me, Annie, usin’ th’ “contact” link above, ‘n I gunna send ye ye prize!

Arrrrr!

(Translation courtesy of http://postlikeapirate.com.)

Tags: talk like a pirate

September 19, 2008 | contests

The contest was to answer the following question:

Who did I name the police officers after in Honey Trap?

To be fair, this was a really hard contest because you had to look in the book, and then know where the names came from. There are four police officers in the book: PC Jane Stanley, PC Raj Criss, PC Simmons and PC Frehley, all of whom, of course, get their surnames from the members of KISS.

Annie, who is obviously a woman of good taste and immense knowledge, posted the correct answer. Email me, Annie, using the “contact” link above, and I will send you your prize!

September 15, 2008 | Honey Trap, contests

I’m off for three days to lead a residential course in writing commercial women’s fiction, for Cornerstones Literary Consultancy. From past experience, I know it will be lots of hard work, but also hugely rewarding and lots of fun.

Husband is taking care of the Fecklet. Husband claims not to be able to cook. I’m not really sure this is true, since he lived on his own for many, many years before we married and I became his live-in slave–oh, sorry, excuse me–wife. Anyway, so he will not starve while I’m gone, I’ve just been to Tesco and spent an inordinate amount of money on ready meals and healthy snacks. Hopefully it won’t kill the Fecklet to live for three days on fish fingers and baked beans.

While I’m gone I thought I would leave you with a…

CONTEST!!!

The prize will be a HARDCOVER copy of One Night Stand. Or, if you’ve already got that book, then another book from my backlist.

This is sort of different from my other contests, because this actually requires you to have a copy of Honey Trap on hand. Though you could probably just go to the bookstore and take it off the shelf, looking for the answer. Or get it out of the library.

I’ve already said that I put little private jokes in my books…well, there’s one in Honey Trap that nobody, absolutely nobody, has noticed. See, there are several police officers in the book, because Sophie deals with the police as a private investigator and she also sort of has a stalker. And I named all the police officers after a very special group of people.

Who did I name the police officers after?

Email me the answer, using the contact link up on the top of the page!

(You are so cool if you get this right. And yes, you can go ahead and guess if you don’t have the book.)

I’ll announce the winner and the answer when I get back, on Thursday.

Tags: contests

August 23, 2008 | contests

There are details of the Little Black Dress/Company magazine/Galaxy chocolate short story competition up on the Little Black Dress website:

http://www.littleblackdressbooks.com/getlippy-comp.html

The deadline’s in just over three weeks, though, so get writing!

August 18, 2008 | contests, writing

Here’s an inside tip for a very excellent competition…and free chocolate.

Little Black Dress, Galaxy chocolate, and Company magazine are teaming up to offer a short story competition. Your story could be printed in an upcoming Little Black Dress book, and you could be invited to lunch with Headline editors to discuss your writing!

Details are in September’s Company magazine, on the shelves now. There’s also a coupon for free Galaxy chocolate!

June 22, 2008 | Honey Trap, contests

What a fantastic time I had! Thank you, everyone, for visiting my new-look website and for commenting on my posts and joining the party. I was knocked out by how many people visited and what fun and intelligent comments you all left.

I’m happy to announce that the winner of a signed copy of Honey Trap, which hasn’t actually been released yet but will be out in a couple of weeks, is Fran, whose name is actually Lara but whom I call Fran for reasons rather embarrassing to myself.

Anyway, Lara-Fran, I’ll be emailing you to ask for your address and I’ll send you a book as soon as I get them myself.

And tomorrow I’ll be back to my normal non-party blogging. Probably about hay fever, which is really kicking my ass right now.

Tags: contests, Honey Trap

June 20, 2008 | Honey Trap, contests

It’s Friday, everyone! Yippee-yi-yay!

And that means it’s the day I get to give away a copy of my brand-new, not-even-released-yet novel Honey Trap to a lucky partier/commenter on this post!

In actual fact, I’m spending this afternoon doing research for my next book, which involves me going on a tour of Highgate Cemetery in London. This is all far too gloomy and gothic for a party, though, so I’m going to choose a different venue for the last day of my party.

Honey Trap is about Sophie Tennant, a private detective turned aromatherapist, who goes on tour with a rock band, only to find that the bass player is the ex-alcoholic, ex-womaniser, ex-rock god Dominick Steele, the man whose marriage she ended.

The novel’s climactic scene takes place at Blackbury Festival, a sort of mini-Glastonbury, where the band is playing and there’s a shadowy person in the crowd who’s been threatening Sophie. Here’s an excerpt from the book (based, I must say, on my extensive experience of rock festivals, except for the having someone there trying to kill me part):

The sun beamed down on ten thousand smiling people and Sophie, who stood with her back to a Chinese food stall and her front to a group of teenagers smoking pot.

She breathed in the smell of MSG and marijuana and scanned the crowd. It was between sets, and when she glanced up at the stage across the sea of people she could see Owen and Dempsey changing over the equipment to prepare for the Venusians. Festival-goers strolled around, sat on the ground, lolled in the sun, drank beer, laughed and ate and smoked.

Mostly, they were everywhere, in crowds that blocked her view of everything except for the square metre directly in front of her, or the far-off stage. Blocked her view of her stalker.

The Chinese food stall wasn’t a good vantage point. She began to thread her way through the clumps of people, wishing she’d paid more attention to photographs of crowds when she’d researched the festival. She had the timetable of the day by heart, she had the plans of the entire site memorised, she knew the best quick escape routes from every point, she knew the isolated places where a killer would be likely to drag a potential victim.

But she hadn’t noticed what people would be wearing. For example, hats: there were more silly hats here than she’d ever seen in one place in her life. Viking hats, cowboy hats, tall stripy Cat-in-the-Hat hats. Although so many people seemed concerned to protect their heads against the sun, that didn’t extend to the rest of their bodies: bare-chested men and bikini-topped women sweated and glowed bright red.

Sophie brushed past a man (she thought) dressed as Spongebob Squarepants. Her supposedly inconspicuous outfit of jeans and a white vest top must stick out like a sore thumb. All her stalker would have to do would be to paint himself blue or something and she’d never notice him.

A familiar explosion of drums and guitar on stage told her that the Venusians’ set had begun. Her back was exposed but she couldn’t help glancing up to the stage. Her eyes went straight to Dominick, standing off to the right looking at his bass guitar as he played, seeming not to hear the cheers of the sunburnt crowd.

She knew that intensity he brought to music, because he brought it to her, too.

Now, however, was not the time to think about that. Now was the time to concentrate on the hunt and the chase, which was a good thing because even with all her faults as a detective, she was much better at investigation than relationships. She scanned the crowd again, again failing to spot any villains. She did see somebody peeing into a plastic cider bottle.

“Dominick!” screamed a group of five bikini-topped girls next to her, and again her attention was drawn to the stage. Or rather, to the large screens either side of the stage, where Dominick was magnified dozens of times bigger than reality, and breathtakingly beautiful.

So… what better way to celebrate my blog party and my new book by hauling this whole shebang off to a big rock festival?

The music, the noise, the food, the crowd, the peeing in bottles…but mostly, the music.

C’mon guys, grab a beer from the beer tent and tell me: Who’s on stage?

Tags: contests, Highgate Cemetery, Honey Trap

June 20, 2008 | All Work and No Play, contests

Box up your hats everyone and brush the sand from all your delicate places, we have a winner!

Ellen, she of the frog hat, has won a signed copy of All Work and No Play…

Ellen, email me using the contact button on right with your address and I’ll pop it in the post.

Tags: contests

June 19, 2008 | All Work and No Play, contests

So welcome to Day Two of my party!

In her comment below, Nicola Marsh painted such a lovely picture of working on a beach with gorgeous cabana boys offering massages, that I decided to move the whole blog party to a beach today. We can stretch out on the sand, take a dip in the warm sea, and drink cocktails a-plenty.

Then I found out that it’s Lady Day at Ascot today. And while I’ve never been to Ascot races, I used to work in Ascot and I love looking at the hats. Look at this one, for example. It totally makes you look like you have awesome alien antennae!!

So I’ve decided that today, we’re partying on a beach, wearing couture hats. You gotta shade your face from the sun, after all, right?

Put on your hat, grab a cocktail of your choice (I’m beginning with a bucket of margaritas) and enjoy!

Today my signed book giveaway is a copy of my Mills & Boon Modern Heat romance, All Work and No Play…

This story, about mistaken identity and hot sex with a male model, was published in North America in April, hitting the Waldenbooks bestseller list as Mistress in Private.

It’s not wholly inappropriate that the name of the book was changed, because the hero of the book sometimes goes under a pseudonym himself. As a computer geek and all-round nice guy, he’s known as Jonny Cole. As a stunningly gorgeous, sexy, alpha male model, he’s known as Jay Richard. And lucky Jane Miller, the heroine, gets to know both of these men…though at first, she doesn’t know they’re one and the same.

To win a signed copy, and to join in the party, leave a comment telling me what would you call yourself, if you got the chance to change your name?

Or just describe your hat and what you’re doing with it on the beach…

Tags: All Work and No Play, blog party, contests, Mistress in Private

June 19, 2008 | contests

OMG what a party it is!! I didn’t expect so many guests…fortunately we have infinite supplies of champagne, strawberries, chocolate and coffee here in www.julie-cohen.com land so we’re not running out.

Thank you, thank you, for everyone who’s stopped by and commented so far.

It was really difficult to pick a winner but I got out my good old random number generator and it chose Julia Williams. And because I had so many entries and because Julia is a Famous Author type person who I have actually drunk wine with, I got out the generator again and it chose cyclops8.

So Julia and cyclops8, please email me using the “contact” button on the right and I will put a signed copy of One Night Stand in the post for you. Unless you already have it, in which case I will send you some chocolate.

Special thanks go to Ehle, Dan Wilk, Dennis, Sharon D, Ian Scamans, Patricia, Lori and Biddy for making me laugh out loud at their comments!

Next blog party post (and next chance to win a book!) will go up just after noon.

Party on dudes!!

Tags: blog party, contests, Julia Williams

June 18, 2008 | contests

Julie drags in champagne, chocolate, strawberries and, for those whose sun has not yet hit the yardarm, frothy vats of cappuccino

Welcome to my blog party to celebrate the brand-new redesign of my gorgeous sparkly website, courtesy of Swank Web Style.

It is also Paul McCartney’s birthday. I have marked this day every year since I was about 10 and I developed the most massive crush on the man. Of course, since then we’ve both grown older, and my crush has diminished somewhat. However, I think it’s worth remembering that in his youth, the man was one of the most delectable creatures ever to grace the planet.

I think about it, sometimes. If I were single, and he came along and asked me “How about it?” what would I say? He’s older than my dad. But he’s Paul McCartney. It’s a difficult decision. In the end, I think the Beatle factor would win out over the age factor. There is a small possibility, after all, that he might sing “The Night Before” in bed.

On the other hand, if he showed up looking like he did in 1963-1975, inclusive, the answer would totally be YES!! I don’t even think my husband would mind. He’s a big Beatles fan himself.

Anyway, this is distracting from the very important business of MY BLOG PARTY.

To celebrate, I’ll be giving away a signed book today, tomorrow, and Friday. Today it’s ONE NIGHT STAND. Tomorrow, it’s ALL WORK AND NO PLAY…(aka MISTRESS IN PRIVATE). And Friday, it’s my brand-new, not-even-released -yet, novel HONEY TRAP.

All you have to do is leave a comment below. And you can comment as much as you like and enter each day, because I’ll be choosing a new winner every day. And if you have the book already and you’re chosen, I’ll give you something else, probably involving chocolate.

To kick off the party, tell me, if you could redesign anything in your life, what would it be?

(Or, if you prefer, tell me whether you’d get off with Sir Paul or not.)

Tags: blog party, contest, Paul McCartney