Christmas Around the World Giveaway Video and Blog Tour

Christmas Around the World Giveaway Blog Tour

Happy Holidays from my home to yours. I'm very excited to share with you something special for the holidays. I'm fascinated by the traditions we have in the United States with all the different cultures represented here. With that in mind, I hatched the idea to grab a few of my favorite author buddies from various countries to have them share what makes the holidays special to their families.

I handpicked five amazing authors from around the world to join forces with and created the Christmas Around the World Giveaway and Blog Tour.

All last week we featured one blog post a day with an accompanying video from each author sharing their Christmas traditions and gave you a peek inside their books and what one of the characters would experience in their time and place.

Today is my day to share my Christmas traditions based on my Grandmother’s love of the holiday and overabundance of gifts and family fun in a split family. Also, I will paint a picture of what life was like in England in 1752, the year featured in my book, Stealing Time, which was the year they skipped 11 days to jive with Europe’s Gregorian calendar. Check out my video to learn more.  

You can enter the giveaway here: 
Christmas Around the World Giveaway

Click here to enter!

Grand Prize

Enter to Win 1 Grand Prize of These Five Star 

Dramatic Books from Around the World 

Plus 6 Additional Winners of Each Book

Books by Suzanne Kelman, Seumas Gallacher, Gloria Casale, KJ Waters, David P. Perlmutter, and Thomas J .NIchols. 

Ends December 16, 2019

Join us for an incredible journey around the world through the eyes of our authors and their protagonists starting in WWII Holland and continuing from to the Middle East over to Hong Kong, through the hills of Pennsylvania and deserts of Mexico, ending back in time in eighteenth century London. We are excited to share with you our own holiday traditions and what life was like for the characters featured in our books. 

More about my "breathtakingly original" time travel novel set in a hurricane. 

Stealing Time: Book 1 - A Time Travel, Historical Fiction Adventure

A devastating hurricane. A time travel betrayal. Will Ronnie survive the witch hunt or forever be lost in time?

Link: https://geni.us/StealingGiveaway

Stealing Time is the first book in the best-selling "Breathtakingly original" time travel series that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

As Hurricane Charley churns a path of destruction towards Orlando, Florida, Ronnie Andrews scrambles to prepare for the storm and seeks shelter at her boyfriend’s weather lab. What she finds there is more terrifying than Mother Nature's destruction.

During the peak of the hurricane, Ronnie is hurtled back in time to eighteenth-century London where she is caught in a web of superstition, deception, and lies in a life and death struggle to return to her own time.

Her best friend Steph is thrust into the middle of the hurricane where it quickly turns into a living nightmare as she is faced with losing everything.

Stealing Time is the first book in the “breathtakingly original” Stealing Time Series of time-travel wrapped in a hurricane. If you like strong-willed modern women and gripping stories that transport you back in time, then you’ll love KJ Water's Books.

Don’t miss the next book in the series, Shattering Time, available now, set during Hurricane Frances tossing Ronnie back to the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island in a fight for her life and for those facing the mysterious disappearance of our first colony in America.You can find it here.

Other Authors in the Giveaway and Tour

I'm excited to share the blogs and videos of the other authors here. I have the full blurbs and links here to all the books in the giveaway.

Suzanne Kelman: A View Across the Rooftops

On Monday December 2 we began our journey in 1941, Nazi-occupied Amsterdam with Suzanne Kelman in her international best-seller A View Across the Rooftops. Suzanne is a British author who lives in Seattle and delights in her English Christmas traditions every year. Please visit Suzanne’s video and blog post here: https://suzannekelmanauthor.blogspot.com/2019/12/december-book-giveaway-books-from.html.

Seumas Gallacher: The Violin Man's Legacy

Then we pop over to Seumas Gallacher’s blog featuring his international crime novel The Violin Man’s Legacy. Seumas was born in Scotland and lives in Abu Dhabi. His main character, Jack Calder, investigates a murderous diamond heist in Holland that leads him to Hong Kong and South America. You can visit blog here: https://seumasgallacher.com/2019/12/03/christmas-joint-blog-tour-and-giveaways-o-come-all-ye-faithful-readers/.

David Perlmutter: Five Weeks

David P. Perlmutter took over on Wednesday, December 4 sharing his Jewish upbringing in London, and will detail the true life and nearly deadly adventure in the hills of Pennsylvania where he spends Christmas with his boss in his book Five Weeks. David spends a decent amount of time in the #1 spot on Amazon with his soon to be movie, Wrong Place Wrong Time. You can visit his blog and video here: http://thewrongplaceatthewrongtime.blogspot.com/.

Gloria Casale: Bioterror: The Ultimate Threat

Thursday, Gloria Casale shared her holiday memories from her youth in New Jersey in a strong catholic family where they celebrated the tradition of St. Nicklaus on December 5th every year. 

Her book, Bioterror: The Essential Threat, while fiction, covers an all too real situation of bioterrorism and brings us on a harrowing journey beginning in Washington, DC and carries us around the world from Russia and Eastern Europe, to Indonesia, England, Syria, and the White House, as we chase the outbreak of a mysterious small pox-like illness. You can find Gloria’s blog here: https://www.gloriacasalewrites.com/post/blog-1.

Thomas J. Nichols: Color of the Prism

Chief Thomas J. Nichols was featured on Friday, December 6, where he spoke about his poor upbringing in Missouri, some of which was spent in an orphanage. As a former police chief, he writes crime fiction with teeth and will detail what Christmas is like for his characters in the dry dusty backdrop of Mexico. His book, Color of the Prism, follows an undercover agent who spearheads an investigation into a violent Mexican drug cartel. You can find Tom’s blog and video here: https://thomasjnichols.blogspot.com/.

Thanks for joining us on the journey! I'd love to hear your comments! 

Don't miss this other Giveaway I'm running.

I'm excited to announce 2 exciting giveaways I'm running this November.

1. Rewards for following my social media accounts!

Win a $25 Amazon Gift Card or 1 of three book bundles for following my social media accounts! Ends December 11, 2019.

Click Here to Enter KJ's Follow Me Giveaway

Sign up for my newsletter to receive a free book, Blondie in the Water - True Tales of a Water Loving Mom. Sign up here: 

Strangely I'm Still Here!

Strangely I'm Still Here

A Journey With a Brilliant Author, Blogger of the Year, 

and All-Around Great Guy 

I am very excited to bring to you a dear friend Seumas Gallacher, who has just released his autobiography. He is a fascinating Scotsman with an intriguing background in international banking and finance, then corporate troubleshooter turned best-selling author. Please check out his post to learn more! I'd love for you to follow him over on his blog here. 

A Journey to Myself – Writing my Autobiography

 By Seumas Gallacher

   

For authors, the old maxim is often quoted, ‘Write about what you know.’

I’ve been at this writing game properly for over a decade now, with a back list of five crime thrillers, a book of my poetry, a self-help marketing and promotional guide for authors, and almost 2,000 blog posts. Add to that a catalog of half-a-dozen ghostwriting assignments for other people’s ‘autobiographies’, and it’s of little wonder that the thought occurred to put my own life story and experiences to print. ‘Write about what you know.’

What happened next was a sometime bewildering, sometime painful, sometime joyful, but always exhilarating, writing trip of discovery. I now understand more clearly than ever before just how much I am truly an amalgam of everything, everybody and everywhere with which and with whom I have ever been associated.

Were there regrets? Of course. Probably far too many to register. I doubt if more than a handful of people on this planet have led a flawless, blameless existence. But I do know that every single incident and experience, good, bad and indifferent, was necessary to bring me to this moment in my life. And I would not seek to change one second of it.

It is amazing how memories bring back not only the plain telling of the story, but for me, it also recalled the feelings and emotions that I had in most of them. I felt them again, and again, and again, some with laughter, but also many of them attended with a quiet tear.

I believe, at this age, finally, I am aware of who and what I am as a person. I like the man I see in the mirror each morning, although it was not always thus. I have acquired a tolerance of myself and my own shortcomings, but more importantly, I have learned to ‘live and let live’ in relation to others whom I meet day to day.

What surprises me, is that having published the book just a few weeks ago, I find that I am remembering many other things which could have been included in the memoir. I will resist the temptation to edit online the Amazon Kindle version, which is easy to do, on the same premise that once I finish writing my novels, I leave them finished.

To all my author friends and even those who have not yet caught the writing addiction, you may want to consider a similar project. It is a wondrous journey to yourself.

Here’s the book blurb:

Fact is often more incredible than fiction. 

Seumas Gallacher has survived long enough to savor places, characters, and events for more than forty years in the Far East and the Arabian Gulf.

He started life in Scotland traveled far and wide as a wannabe Trainee Master of the Universe, but the Universe had other plans for him.

From a career in banking, he escaped to become a corporate troubleshooter.

He discovered the joy and torture of becoming a wordsmith, writing five best-selling crime novels, a book of poetry, and being hyper-active on social media.

‘Strangely, I’m Still Here’ is his story.

Amazon Kindle universal link: mybook.to/StrangelyImStillHere

Other Amazon books by Seumas:

Find Seumas' Crime Books Here

Find his self-publishing book here:

Find Seumas' Poetry Book here

  

My First Video Interview!

So excited to share with you my first video interview on my books, my advice on marketing and how to build your social media platform, simple tips for book covers, and paperback vs. ebooks with Andrea Billig and Self-Publishing Mastery.

Check it out here!

Also last week was quite an exciting week. I put my short-story Blow for free and unexpectedly it spent all five days at #1 in two categories and #2 in the third. If you missed out it's only 99 cents and I'm working on the sequel right now.

http://geni.us/blowblog


I've been busy writing guest blogs and I wanted to share the quirky and fun pieces I've put together for some of my writing buddies in the last few weeks to promote my books. 

Seumas Gallacher: Time After Time. -- Why and where I time travel.

Susan Wingate: Clones and Scones -- If I could have a few clones to help me publish books.

Self Publishing Mastery: 5 Tips for Writing a Compelling Series -- 5 tips I use to write my series. 

Guest Blog on Aaron Alber's Blog -- Author interview with Aaron Albers.

Coming soon: Blog interview with Julie Whitley Pamerleau, podcast interview with Mark Combs, guest blog with Jason C. Bourne, feature on the Author Gang and several other fun things in the works. 

Let me know if you have any blogging opportunities, I'd love to partake!


My books are available here:

Blow: http://geni.us/blowblog

Stealing Time: http://geni.us/StealingBlog

Shattering Time: http://geni.us/ShatterBlog

Sign up for my newsletter here and join the fun! 

Week 2 -- Blondie and the Brit Awards -- Most Creative Book Promotion and Best Fangirl/Boy Story

Week 2 of Blondie and the Brit Podcast Awards 

Find our podcast here! 

In Honor of our One Year Anniversary

Blondie and the Brit are excited to announce our first

“Blondie and the Brit Podcast Awards” 

Each week over the next month we will release the nominees for you to vote on. All categories will be open for voting until October 7. ​We will announce all the winners at our Blondie and Brit Awards and Birthday Bash Facebook party on Friday, October 14.  Please join the fun here. (You have to join to see the posts.)

This week we have two categories to vote on. The Most Creative Book Promotion and Best Fan Girl/Boy Story. 

Click here to vote on last weeks Best Social Media Tips.

Category 2: Most Creative Book Promotion -- Nominees 

Click on the clips below to listen and vote below. Be sure to vote for both categories.

David Perlmutter -- #Cheeky Marketing to sell your book

Mark Sadler -- Pinterest Secret Files

Munir Bello -- Naked Marketing Flyers

Nicole Waggoner -- Teasing your Second Book on Website

Seumas Gallacher -- Using Linkedin to Promote Sales

Most Creative Book Promotion

David Perlmutter Munir Bello Seumas Gallacher

Mark Sadler Nicole Waggoner

free quiz maker

Category 3: Best Fan Girl/Boy Story -- Nominees.

Click on the clips below to listen and vote below. Be sure to vote for both categories.

Camille Di Maio -- How she presented her book to Paul McCartney

Tom Nichols -- Hollywood Hills with Tarintino

Kim Hunt Harris -- Diana Gabaldon Ultimate Fan Girl

Edward Stanton -- Paul Stanley of KISS Fame Keeping his Identity Secret

Best Fan Girl/Fan Boy

Camille DiMaio Kim Hunt

Tom Nichols Edward Stanton

link

Please listen to our last podcast here where we review the voting prior to this week and provide the best tips from our year of podcasting. 

If you haven't voted for previous weeks you can do so here.
Vote on week 5 here: (Most Inspired Storytelling and Best Professional Publishing Tip)

Vote on week 4 here: (Most Helpful Writing Process)

Vote on week 3 here: (Funniest Podcast and Best New Author Story)

Vote on Week 2 here: (Most Creative Book Promotion and Best Fangirl/Boy Story. 

Vote on Week 1 here: (Best Social Media Tips)

To listen to these amazing authors please visit our podcast here or on iTunes here.

thors please visit our podcast here or on iTunes here.

Blondie and the Brit #Podcast Launch -- Writing Publishing and Beyond

I'm so excited to announce that on October 1, 2015, Suzanne Kelman and I (KJ Waters) are launching a new podcast for authors called Blondie and the Brit -- Writing, Publishing and Beyond. 

In celebration of the launch and to get more followers, we have created two giveaways for $25 amazon gift cards (and more) and a facebook party for October 2 at 5:00 pm EST.

You can listen and subscribe to the podcast HERE on podbean and HERE on iTunes.

Check out our new website: www.blondieandbrit.com

Welcome to Blondie and the Brit

and our podcast Writing, Publishing and Beyond. 

The goal is to be a resource and inform writers in all stages of the careers about their craft.  

Every week we will air an interview with those in the Indie and traditionally published arena about writing habits, publishing tips, and marketing strategies.

Giveaway #1 

Giveaway #1 ends September 30, at midnight EST.

To enter the giveaways simply click on the link below. We are giving away a $25 gift card to Amazon and a signed copy of Stealing Time and The Rejected Writer's Book Club, the books Suzanne and I have each penned.

Click here to enter a Rafflecopter Giveaway #1

Giveaway # 2

The second giveaway ends October 7 at midnight EST. To enter this you will need to subscribe to the podcast either on iTunes or on podbean. 

Click here to enter Rafflecopter Giveaway #2
a Rafflecopter giveaway  

We have two prizes for this giveaway -- A $25 amazon gift card AND a signed paperback from Susan Wingate of her award-winning book The Deer Effect. 

Facebook Party

Please join our facebook party as well where we celebrate with the authors we've interviewed for the podcast. The party is Friday, October 2, 2015, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm est. We will be giving away more prizes and announcing the winner from the first Rafflecopter contest.  

Join the facebook party/here!

Click here to join the party. You will have to join the link on facebook to get all of the party activities. 

Mailing List

We would be very honored to have you join our mailing list that will keep you up to date on all of the podcast guests and happenings. Click here to sign up! We are also on facebook and twitter. 

Here are the Authors We Have Coming up in October.

Darynda Jones

NY Times & USA Today

BestSelling Author

 October 1, 2015

Darynda shares how she got her big break into publishing and how she creates her amazing characters.

Susan Wingate

Award Winning and Best Selling Amazon Author

October 1

Susan Wingate shares some of her top social media tips that have helped her become an Amazon Bestselling author.

Dave Perlmutter

#1 Amazon Bestselling author in True Crime in the US, Australia, India and Spain. 
October 1.

David talks about the story behind his life changing book and some of his best social media tips including his #cheekymarketing campaign.

Other authors coming up in October:

October 8 -- Munir Bello a British dating game show host and author of the book The Break Up Recipe.

October 15 -- Jeri Walker who is an editor, indie author, and blogger of WordBank Writing and Editing.

October 22 -- Seumas Gallacher author of The Jack Calder Series and Blogger of the Year winner for 2013.

I welcome any support you can give to promote our podcast and these exciting authors on your blog or social media. Feel free to share this post, reblog however you would like, with the utmost gratitude!

About KJ Waters: 

When I'm not working on the Stealing Time series you can find me on my social media at the links below. My novel is out on amazon here.

I am also the CEO of Blondie's Custom Book Covers, a company that helps authors and publishers create stunning book covers. Please follow our links here.

• Check out my website: www.kjwaters.com

• Follow me on twitter at @kamajowa

• I'm on facebook at 

• http://www.facebook.com/pages/KJ-Waters/206720056103502 for my author site, or my 'jury-rigged work around so I can like you back' facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/kj.waters.39

• I have some photographs up on Fine Arts America at: http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/kj-waters.html for sale, check it out!

• Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/kamajowa/

• Audioboo voice messages:  http://audioboo.fm/KJWaters 

• All About Me page: http://about.me/kjwaters

• Brand Yourself Profile: http://brandyourself.com/

• Check out our website here.

• We are on twitter here.

• Facebook link here.