Hooray hooray! Nina Jones and the Temple of Gloom is officially out, and to celebrate I will be giving away a signed copy to a lucky person who sends me an email using the “contact” button on my website.

But first, I need to continue talking about shoes.

You see, the heroine of my novel, Nina Jones, is a woman who knows all about the power of a good pair of shoes. She has lots and lots of shoes, some of them very expensive and some of them very uncomfortable, and here is an excerpt from the book telling you why:

I’m a great believer in the power of high heeled shoes. They’re beautiful, they’re stylish, they can rescue a so-so outfit, and they make you appear to have legs up to your armpits, especially if you have passably long legs anyway. Also—and this may be obvious but it’s really vital—the taller you are, the more people will assume that you know what you’re doing. I read an article about it one time. I’m five foot ten in bare feet, so high heels make me taller than most women and quite a few men. Therefore I appear both more confident and more competent, merely by putting on my shoes.

I rub the toes of my left foot against the aching arch of my right, and touch the spot on my cheek where Edmund kissed me. Who am I kidding? Blisters are no distraction from an aching heart at all.

I made Nina love shoes because—well, because she’s a chick lit heroine, der! And chick lit heroines always love shoes. Even I love shoes, and I am NOT a chick lit heroine (too old, too cranky, too married). But as I wrote the story, shoes began to form a very important part of the plot and of Nina’s character arc.

She chooses her shoes specifically to impress Edmund, her boss, who is happily married and with whom she is unrequitedly in love. She meets sexy, romantic Spaniard Juan, who will change her life, while she’s stuck in a chair, caught by the buckle of her shoe. When she decides to change her life completely, she donates her shoes to charity.

And then when her life has changed completely, but not the way she thought it was going to, an encounter with some shoes makes her confront her long-buried feelings about her life. A pair of shoes (and some fake tan) is the key to her deceiving her entire family, and leads to her confrontation with her mysterious and angry upstairs neighbour. A pair of cheap secondhand shoes teaches her that feeling comfortable and rather ordinary isn’t quite such a bad thing after all. And one of the most emotionally significant scenes in the story takes place while she’s barefoot.

In short, Nina’s relationship with her shoes is as complicated and as difficult as every relationship. I loved writing that part of the novel.

Anyway, if you’d like to read the book and want a chance at a signed copy, please send me an email using the “contact” button, or alternatively leave a comment on this post with your email address in it, and I’ll choose an entry at random to win.* You don’t even have to say anything, but it’s always nice to hear from you, so I hope you will.

*Warning: you’ll be entered on my newsletter mailing list if you enter. This is pretty harmless and very occasional, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

…of the “who’s got the oldest food” contest is Ehle, for having a packet of herbs that is older than she is.

Ehle, babe, email me your address and I’ll send some stuff to you.

Okay—random contest time!

I’ve got a challenge for all my friends. Go into your kitchen right now. (Unless you’re at work, or somewhere else, in which case, go into your kitchen the minute you get home, unless of course you have to pee first.) Open the cabinet where you keep your tins and packets. Root around in it. Get right to the back. And find the very oldest thing in there. The thing you should have thrown out ages ago. The thing you always meant to use, but never did. Maybe you bought it on special offer, maybe it was for a recipe you never made. Maybe you did use some of it, but the rest of it has languished in the back of your cupboard, neglected, for months that turned into years.

What is it? And what’s the sell-by date?

My friend, fellow author Giselle Green, and I took this challenge yesterday. Giselle (lucky woman) was cleaning out her cupboards for her new kitchen. She found some cans saying “Best Before End 2007″.

Three years out of date. That’s pretty good. I wasn’t sure I could beat it. But sure enough, I looked at my tins and found some new potatoes that said “Best Before April 2007″. I thought that was the best I was going to do, but then I dug further, back in to the recesses of the cupboard, and I found a half-used bag of pearl barley that said “Best Before February 2003″.

Seven years. That’s pretty impressive, I think.

Can you beat it? Go look! And report your answers below. Please, be honest, because it’s more fun that way.

Whoever has the oldest food wins a random prize, of no monetary value whatsoever, of postcards featuring the covers of Girl from Mars, and Giselle’s latest book which is out this month, called A Sister’s Gift. I’ll even throw in a couple extra “Porn for Women” postcards, featuring a picture of a hunky guy cleaning the house.

And, if you’re lucky, some ten-year-old barley.

I’ve chosen the winner of the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS contest. It was very difficult to do. I mean, the contest was to say who (ahem—whom) you’d choose to have sex with in a blue tube, were you to be abducted by aliens. How was I supposed to choose the best answer?

For example, Rach chose a sexy serial killer/gay undertaker. We had two requests each for Hugh Jackman and David Tennant (only two!?) and two for Pierce Brosnan, and four for fictional characters—five if you count Lorraine asking for the hero of her own wip. Kathy did her usual selection of someone barely legal, on a video I couldn’t access from this country. We had Tom Cruise, Robert Pattinson, Peter Andre and his ex Katie Price (separately), a whole bunch of country and western artists (unsurprisingly, from Biddy and Danielle) and one alien Blue Opera Singer.

Who’s the alien? You decide.

In the end I had to choose a winner by random draw. But first I have a couple of runners-up. Girls, I don’t have a prize for you, but you do get eternal fame from being featured on this here blog.

Ruth was quite frightening in choosing nearly all men who I would also welcome naked in a blue tube. I’m not convinced about Rob Lowe (too much jaw), but I’m all over David Tennant, Ewan McGregor in biker gear, and Captain Picard. Good taste, my woman. As a reward, I may have to challenge you to a duel.

Janet Mullany had the post that made me laugh. Her choice was:
At this point, just about anyone with a pulse.

As a reward, I will pimp her book, A Most Lamentable Comedy, a hilariously funny and feelgood and intelligent Regency chick lit from Little Black Dress. Buy it!

But the winner, by random draw, was Gail, who emailed me her fantasies about Tom Cruise from Top Gun with the body of Christiano Ronaldo, holding some baby oil. Totally…I’m sure the aliens could arrange that! Gail, I’ll email you soon to get your address to send you a copy of the book.

Don’t forget the gene splicing and baby oil, boys.

Thanks everyone for playing!

Dude! I have totally neglected to mention that CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is out NOW in paperback!

(I will remind you discreetly that CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is the book I co-wrote with Kathy Love as B.H. Dark, and it’s an erotic science fiction romantic comedy, or, as described on the BBC, an “eromscicom”. It’s about space aliens abducting four human beings in order to form an intergalactic porn empire. It’s sexy, it’s funny, it’s completely implausible, and it contains the line “We’re going to be the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson of the galaxy.”)

You can buy it in your favourite bookstore, or on Amazon here, or with free shipping from The Book Depository here. Or it’s still available as an e-book, here.

In fact, I do believe I have a copy of the paperback to give away with a contest. Either leave a comment or email me, using the “contact” form above, and answer the following question:

If you were abducted by space aliens and made to have sex with someone in a glowing blue tube…who would you want it to be with?

I’ll keep the contest open until Monday the 24th. Or longer, if I’m really enjoying the answers.

Well, this is what I needed on a Monday morning, looking forward to most of this week trapped inside the house with chicken poxy Fecklet:

Honey Trap has just won first place in the single title category of Romance Writers Ink’s More Than Magic contest!

Yay!

Okay okay, I know I said I was going to do a contest on my blog this week (yesterday in fact) but I’d told my newsletter subscribers I’d pick the winner of their contest today and I knew I couldn’t deal with two contests running at the same time. Very little brain, y’see.

Plus, Fecklet…well, Fecklet has the chicken pox. Only two so far, but they’re there. And my book signing is tomorrow. So it’s panic as usual in the Cohen household.

Anyway, I’ve picked my newsletter winners. But first, let me announce the winner of the little contest I had below, which was to guess Digger’s real first name. I only had three guessers, but Jan Jones guessed three times, and she got it right with her first guess, which was Douglas. So Jan—the glowy bracelets are yours!

The newsletter contest was to win a signed copy of Girl from Mars and boy, you know, I’m totally going to have a newsletter contest again. I’ve never had so many entries for a contest, most of them accompanied by lovely little emails saying nice things. You guys are the best.

So because I enjoyed it so much, I chose two winners by random draw. The first is Josie Lee, who lives in this area I think, and so because she seemed so close by I chose another at random, who is Joanne Levy in Australia.

Congratulations Jan, Josie and Joanne! (Nice J names there.)

The catch is, of course, because there’s always a catch around here, like my son getting chicken pox the night before my book signing, for example…where was I? Oh yes, the catch is, that apparently the warehouse has sold out of copies of Girl from Mars and so there are none to be have. Or rather, I don’t have any. I’m choosing to interpret this selling-out as good news.

So therefore I will send out signed copies of Girl from Mars to Josie and Joanne, but it will have to be after I get them myself!

In the meantime, I WILL have a website contest next week, where everyone who didn’t win this time can enter again if they want to. And my signing is tomorrow, and rumour has it that there might be a DALEK turning up!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will post photos.

And keep your fingers crossed for poor Fecklet, whose mother will have to abandon him tomorrow to sign books and wrestle with a robot.

It’s release day! Yay yay yay yay yay!!!

I’m guest blogging on the Writing Playground today, talking about GEEKS. More specifically, about my own geek credentials, which are many.

I’m also giving away a signed copy of Girl from Mars there, so come play!

Don’t forget my little fun giveaway in the post below (buried under all the stuff about my characters)!

In Girl from Mars, the heroine Fil has three best friends, all male. She does everything with them. So here’s a short introduction to Jim, Digger and Stevo:

James T. Lousder, aka Jim is Fil’s best friend. They met at school when they were thirteen and have been inseparable ever since. He’s a computer nerd and a Star Trek fanatic, and he’s got long straight hair which he usually keeps neatly back in a ponytail. He and Fil share a house which they bought between them; Jim works on the first floor, and Fil works in the loft studio. He’s loyal, sarcastic, and speaks fluent Klingon.

A secret real-life fact about Jim: he looks like this guy I see walking around Reading all the time. I don’t know who he is, but he looks like Jim. I saw him once in a cafe I was in with a friend and I whispered, “That’s Jim!” and my friend said, “Who’s Jim?” and I said, “A fictional guy who looks just like that guy!”

No wonder people think writers are weird.

Digger is huge. He’s six and a half feet tall, broad and bearded. Despite his bear-like appearance, he’s very quiet among strangers. The first time Fil met him, she thought he was mute. He’s reticent about talking about himself and his past, but he seems to have an empathy with other people and of the four of the friends, he’s the only one who’ll ever mention anything about (yick!) emotions. His shyness has kept him from getting a regular job, and he earns money by selling stuff on eBay. Fortunately his tastes are simple, mostly running to beer and waffles.

A secret real-life fact about Digger: Anna is in love with him.

Stevo is an artist, like Fil; he works for Combat comics, where he’s known for being brilliant at portraying graphic violence, preferably with lots of blood and body parts. In person, though, he’s timid, neat and unassuming. Nobody would ever know that he’s been having a (gasp!) secret love affair.

A secret real-life fact about Stevo: I gave him my friend Ruth’s last name.

Got that? There will be a quiz later. Well no, there won’t really. But I will give a prize of some really fab multi-coloured glow-in-the-dark bracelets to the first person who guesses Digger’s real first name, in the comments section below.

(And no, it’s not Admiral Smashing Bruiser.)

I was surfing the net and I found this great time-wasting site where you can design your own comic book super hero. So of course, as Girl from Mars is about comic books, I designed heroes for each of my four friends who make up the core characters at the beginning of Girl from Mars. They’re not quite accurate, but they work quite well as portrayals of the characters as they’d like to see themselves.

So, here’s my heroine: Philomena Desdemona Brown, also known as Fil. Portrayed as a comic book heroine.*

Fil is an artist for long-running British comic book Girl from Mars. She’s about five foot nothing, has short blue hair, and she looks like a boy. She wears paint-spattered jeans and comic book t-shirts and she, and her friends, consider her an honorary guy. She’s always seen herself as a freak; she never fit in with any of the girls that she knew, and her parents are both professors of English literature and spend most of their time in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The only thing she’s good at is drawing. So that’s what she does, all the time. In between hanging out with her best friends, Jim, Digger and Stevo.

More than anything, Fil would like to be like the heroine of her comic, Girl from Mars. GfM is a kick-ass space alien who never had a moment’s doubt in her life. She’s smart, green-skinned and gorgeous, and men fall in love with her on sight, only to be scorned. Fil, on the other hand, would probably fall down dead with shock if a good-looking man glanced at her.

Nope, all Fil needs is her three best friends, her job, and Girl from Mars.

And then she meets a good-looking man.

Official publication date is Thursday 11 June, and I’ll be doing a giveaway then, so make sure you come back!

*Don’t ask me what the padded nerf bat is all about. I don’t know.

It’s June! It’s June! And that means it’s the month that Girl from Mars goes on the shelves!

Yay yay yay!!

I’m going to celebrate this month with a FAB booksigning in Reading on the 13th June, and FUN contests and giveaways here on my blog, and FAR OUT extracts and extras and things like that from the book. I’m also guest blogging at a couple of places and generally partying at every available opportunity.

Meanwhile, I’m having a special advance contest for newsletter subscribers only. So if you join my newsletter (by sending me an email using the “contact” button above) you’ll be entered in this contest to win one of the first copies of Girl from Mars on the planet!

You can win a free ebook of B.H. Dark’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS on The Long and the Short of It today!

And lots of other free books all this month. Check it out here.