The Alcolar Family Trilogy
is available August 2008
in the UK!

Bedded by the Greek Billionaire
is available September 2008
in the UK!

The Alcolar Family Trilogy Ebook Bundle is available now!

Click the covers for more about these Kate Walker books.

A Message from Kate...

Hello again!

Summer is always a busy time for me – specially July - and this year is no exception. In fact, so far it has been even more busy than ever. That is probably because of the very special year it is. Everyone wants to celebrate the Mills and Boon Centenary and so there are events going on all over the country and I’ve been invited to so many of them.

I’ve just been loving being part of this fantastic company in such a very special year. Celebrating 100 years of successful and hugely profitable publishing is such a major event and I’m proud to be able to share in the celebrations. So far I’ve been to the special 100^th birthday party, attended the opening of the special Centenary Exhibition – And Then He Kissed Her – in Manchester, run a workshop and been part of a panel for an evening with Mills and Boon at the Lincoln Book Festival, and on July 19^th I ran a workshop in Hale Library too. If you missed the details of those, there are reports on my blog – and lots of photographs. There‘s news of another event coming up on Events page so if you live near Guildford, please take note of that.

And then of course, July is the Conference season. I was at the UK’s Romantic Novelists’ Association Conference in Chichester at the beginning of the month and as I write this my mind is full of plans and preparations and packing for the Romance Writers of America Conference in San Francisco which is where I’m heading next. It’s all so – hectic, sometimes exhausting, but also a lot of fun.

But this summer is also a fantastic time for me where my books are concerned. I have two books out in August and one of them is being published as part of those very special centenary celebrations. This is The Duke’s Secret Wife and it’s published as part of the Centenary Special Collection of novellas by so many favourite authors. The Duke’s Secret Wife was originally published in a duo title Society Weddings in which my co-author was Sharon Kendrick. You can find the details about this book here.

The second big event for me in August – and this is one that I’m really really thrilled about – is the publication of the complete Alcolar Family Trilogy in one special By Request volume. This means that The Twelve-Month Mistress, The Spaniard’s Inconvenient Wife and Bound By Blackmail are all collected together in one volume for the first time ever. It’s a very special feeling for me to see this collection coming out in this very special year.

Sadly, all the Alcolar stories won’t be in this collection. Alex’s story, Wife For Real, the one that appeared as an on-line read on eHarlequin.com and started it all off, hasn’t been included in the printed edition. But if you’d like to read it, then there are ways that you can find it.

If you like ebooks, then The Alcolar Family Trilogy is now published as an ebook bundle and this includes Wife For Real as well as the other three titles. The details for this can be found on The Alcolar Family page on this site. Or you can find Wife For Real as a separate Mini ebook on eHarlequin.com or as a free on-line story on the Mills and Boon web site – again details can be found on the page for this title here on this site.

As I announced last time, my award-winning guide to writing romance had completely sold out and a brand new updated, revised and expanded second edition has now been published and is on sale in all good bookshops. Since this was published, I’ve been delighted and honoured by the wonderful reviews the 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance has been given. Recently I discovered a really spectacular review posted on eHarlequin.com. This was so fabulous that I asked permission of the author of the review (a man who knows about writing educational manuals and using them to teach in his own field of real estate) to post it on here. To my delight he gave his permission to do so and you can read this fabulous review on the Writers page.

Finally – big news for those of you who like to enter my contests . . . It’s back! The great big Tote Bag Full of Books Contest is running again this summer.

As you probably already know, for the past two years I’ve run a special Summer Reading Contest in which you can win one of my handy Kate Walker Tote Bags stuffed full of a wonderful selection of books to read on the beach, by the pool, or just curled up in your most comfortable chair at home. And this year is no exception. This year to mark the publication of The Alcolar Family Trilogy collection, I’m linking the Tote Bag Full of Books Contest to the Alcolar Family collection – and as well as the two tote bags stuffed with books that are on offer, there will be two runners’ up prizes of signed copies of The Alcolar Family Trilogy. And all you have to do is to answer a couple of simple questions and you can be in the running for one of these great prizes.

So check out the Contest Page for all the details. And get your entry in now.

One other thing I’d like to point out is the fantastic 100,000 Book Challenge that’s running over on eHarlequin.com. Here’s a way that just by reading and writing a brief review of every title you’ve read you can contribute to a wonderful drive to help promote literacy. The goal this year is to read a total of 100,000 books thanks to the combined Community team and individual efforts. When the reading challenge ends on December 31, 2008, Harlequin will make an unprecedented donation of an equivalent number of books to the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) to assist them in their challenge to fight illiteracy.

All you have to do is to join the Community and post a brief review of the books you read – and you’re all readers, or you wouldn’t be here. So why not join in and help this great challenge as well as enjoying the great books that are available. After all, if you all started with The Alcolar Family Trilogy that would be three books for each person right away! Details and instructions can be found here:
http://community.eharlequin.com/forums/book-challenge/introduction-and-rules

I’ll be back at the end of the month with news of my next published title – Bedded By The Greek Billionaire – and a contest to celebrate that that I’ll be running with a very special friend. So I hope you‘ll come back then and find out all about it.

Until then, have a great summer and I hope you have some wonderful reading.

Kate

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