Stephanie Cage - Writer

Today I am hosting fellow Crimson Romance author Zrinka Jelic.  Make sure to read to the end, as Zrinka is kindly offering an ecopy of Rose of Crimson or one of her other books to one lucky commenter.   Welcome to my blog. I’ve never met a Zrinka before! Is it a Croatian name?   Thanks for having me on your blog today. It’s a pleasure to be here. Yes, Zrinka is a Croatian name. It comes from an ancient noble family Zrinski. That last name still exist in Croatia, but the descendants are no longer nobles or they never been. During Feudalism serfs often assumed or were given their masters’ last name as a stake or claim on their lives. You live in Canada now. Do you make use of your different travel experiences in your stories? Yes, for over twenty years now I’ve been calling Canada my new home. I always use experiences from my travel in my stories, however sometimes readers have a hard time believing certain things, like you cannot rent a car with automatic...

Firstly a huge thank-you to everyone who visited during the Wild Roses blog hop.  I hope you enjoyed the hope and maybe discovered some new authors, or rediscovered some old favourites.  Special thanks to those who shared their thoughts about the joys of Halloween - I wish I could give you all a prize, but since I only have one to give away, the winner, as selected by Random.org's random number generator, is: Drum roll and fanfare... JeanMP! Congratulations Jean, a copy of Desperate Bid will be hitting your inbox in the next few days.  I hope you enjoy it (and please don't be shy about letting me know what you think - like most writers, I love to hear from readers - feedback, both positive and negative, is how we learn!) Finally, before we wrap up Halloween for this year, here's something for those of you who wanted to know about my Halloween costume.  This is me playing dress-up - thanks to the Friends of Hyde Park cemetery for the costume, and for a ...

Welcome to the Wild Rose Press Halloween Haunted Garden Blog Hop and Giveaway.  Phew, what a mouthful!  Oh, and welcome back if you've followed the link here from one of the lovely Roses' blogs.  If you've visited before, you may remember I promised you some thoughts on the dark side of light fiction, and here they are...   I love Halloween, and all things gothic and vampiric, which surprises most people who don't know me well. After all, I don't write dark, paranormal fiction.  Well, not often, anyway.  I mostly write light contemporary romances, with not a ghoul or demon in sight (though I do have one, as yet unpublished, story featuring a Djinn.  And even that one's faintly comic).  Occasionally I have an odd outburst of creepiness, as in the case of a ghost story I wrote in which the ghosts of a family who perished in a flood came back to claim a child (mercifully, that one's somehow disappeared off my computer - maybe a poltergeist ...

I've posted several times about prizes, and in particular books, I've been lucky enough to win. The most recent book I mentioned winning was The Italian's Blushing Gardener by Christina Hollis - a fresh take on the whole Mills and Boon millionaire thing, with a lovely, reclusive landscape gardener for a heroine, a refreshingly rural setting and of course the requisite sexy hero with dark shadows in his past. Since, then I also got lucky in an online contest for a copy of Sky Purington's Heart of Vesuvius and a $10 ebook voucher - enough to buy several novellas I'd been drooling over for a while. Having reviewed several of the books I won, it struck me the other day that blog readers might be just as interested to know how the heck I do it. Just why do I keep getting lucky where books are concerned? And it generally is books, although in the past I have been lucky enough to win a pair of jeans... oh, and a holiday, in a writing competition. But mostly, I win bo...

Today I'm visiting author Kelly Moran at her blog. She has some interesting questions for me about my life and writing, including what it's like being a UK author writing for the US market, and what are some of my favourite books now, and from my childhood. There's also a chance to win a pdf copy of 'Desperate Bid' (you don't need an e-reader to enter, as it can also be viewed on an ordinary PC, so if you're reading this, you'll be able to read the book!). If you enjoy book chat, come and visit with me at http://authorkellymoran.blogspot.com/ And thanks again, Kelly, for inviting me! It's always fun making connections with writers on the other side of the pond!