NEW Books-a-Fire Giveaway for November 2012
 
This fall get ready to load your Kindle with great books by 11 awesome authors in the Books-a-Fire Giveaway! You have the opportunity to win a New Kindle Paperwhite as well as Amazon Gift Cards and bundles of books from November 3 to November 17, 2012.  The website address is:  www.booksafire.com
 
Here are the details:
§   There is NO PURCHASE NECESSARY to enter the contest to win a Kindle Paperwhite loaded with 11 e-books by the sponsoring authors. 
§   You may enter once at the Books-a-Fire website and enter again at each author's website.  Links to sponsoring authors' websites are included with each book pictured on the main website.  That gives everyone 12 free chances to win!
§  The contest starts Nov. 3, 2012 and ends at midnight Eastern Time Zone on Nov. 17, 2012.
§   The grand prize winner will be notified by e-mail and we will post the results on the Books-a-Fire website.
§  Additional prizes of one $50 gift card, two $25 gift cards, and two bundles of books by sponsoring authors will also be awarded during the contest.
§  Although buying a book does not increase your chances of winning, we encourage you to browse the books of the authors who sponsor this contest and buy the ones you like.  Visit their websites to see more books.  Choose from a variety of genres, sure to please everyone on your list. 
§ What are you waiting for? Head on over to http://www.booksafire.comk and kindle your reading fires!  

High Seas Travel Writer

When my daughter, Laura, got tired of working as a cruise ship purser she submitted a book proposal to publishers about writing a travel guidebook specifically designed for the cruise ship passenger. Since I love to write, Laura and I took a research trip to the Caribbean Islands together and shared the duties of writing the guidebook. It sounded like an easy vacation, visiting tropical islands and sipping cocktails on the veranda each evening. Wrong! We visited eleven islands along the Leeward & Windward chain of the Caribbean and spent three days on each island running ourselves into the ground gathering information. Who knew that writing a factual guidebook would actually feel like hard work.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the islands. I enjoyed the scent of exotic flowers, the sound of string bands playing Christmas carols, and the feel of the gentle ocean breeze on my sunburned skin (I am a redhead). I even took a community taxi sightseeing across St. Martin/St. Maarten trying to decipher the patois spoken between the locals. My daughter and I also enjoyed scuba diving on several islands. We floated over coral reefs teeming with vibrant tropical fish and felt warm champagne bubbles emanating from hot springs deep within the ocean floor. We tasted weird and wonderful cuisine and accidentally paid way too much for a lobster in Guadeloupe, which we’re still paying off to this day. We couldn’t do justice to all of our adventures in a factual guidebook, so I tucked the experiences away for another day.

It wasn’t soon after we had published the first book, Cruising the Caribbean, when Laura thought about writing a mystery set in the Caribbean. She hated writing fictional stories, so she gave the idea to me. Writing a mystery takes lots of planning, especially when the goal is to use the amazing adventures and island locations we visited in the Caribbean. So I invented a cruise ship company and complex schedule to allow my heroine to investigate a murder while she travelled from port to port. I thumbed through our own travel guidebook to remember the real locations which helped to recreate the ambience of the Caribbean.

Now, nearly 20 years after that first research trip to the islands, I still enjoy reading our current guidebook called, Cruising the Eastern Caribbean, together with my new mystery, Murder Caribbean-Style. The two go hand in hand as we set sail around the same glorious islands. 

I’d love to hear about your tropical adventures, so send me an e-mail and let me know which Caribbean island is your favorite, and don’t forget to check out the latest edition of Cruising the Eastern Caribbean!

See more blogs and explore my books at my website www.quicksilvernovels.com.