Writing life:

It was a hugely busy week what with The Hot Floor out on Tuesday. Every time a book comes out I conveniently forget just how long all the promo stuff takes. The Hot Floor seems to be going down really well with readers, which I’m thrilled about. There are loads of great Goodreads reviews, but not much on Amazon so far. If any of you have read it and have Amazon accounts, I’ll be forever grateful to you for taking a few minutes to post a review :D

The Hot Pressure Blog Tour has been taking up a lot of my time and attention, as did a few minor website tweaks my sister carried out for me. You might not really notice them, but there are subtle changes in the colour of text, size of headings, and no more annoying lines around the images.

There’s a freebie cookbook out today too, which I’ve been busy doing some promo stuff for. Passionate Cooks is available from All Romance eBooks now, featuring over 150 recipes from romance authors – including my own creation, the delicious Stuffed Squash Boats. I’ll be blogging more about this later in the week.

Finally, I’ve created the second edition of Last Chance (First Impressions #3). I’ll blog about Last Chance properly later when I’ve finished uploading it onto Smashwords.

Real Life:

This week I decided that I really needed to have a proper celebration for my book launch–especially since the Handle with Care launch took place in the middle of moving house chaos, and for some reason a party for Barging In never really came together. Fortunately there was a Ministry of Burlesque High Tease cabaret show on in Bath on Friday night, so I decided to treat a couple of friends to a fun night out. I was expecting it to be mainly striptease, what with the word burlesque in the title, but what I got instead was even better: a fantastic variety of top quality cabaret artistes! What’s more, we were seated at a table right in the middle at the very front, so we had the very best view of all.

The show was compered by the delightfully camp Dusty Limits, who pleased me immensely simply by walking onstage with a corset as part of his suit. He sang some wonderfully witty and naughty songs, and I wasn’t surprised to find out that he’s won heaps of cabaret awards. Filming and photography weren’t allowed during the show, but he has loads of vids on You Tube so I’m embedding one here of the first song he treated us to:

All the acts were great, but I particularly enjoyed Myra Dubois, a female impersonator who had a jaded and comically pathetic children’s magic act, Auntie Myra’s Fun Show:

Also, I was thrilled to discover a boylesque performer was part of the bill. Not only was Edd Muir easy on the eye, but he did one fire dancing act (juggling and poi!), and then a chinese pole performance in the second half. This involved a nice bit of striptease and cheekily referenced that notorious Diet Coke ad:

But the highlight of the whole evening was the duo EastEnd Cabaret, known as the Queens of Musical Smut. Their costumes were fabulous and their song DangerWank had me laughing so hard I cried real tears:

So there we go, great fun was had and I’m definitely going to be going to future Ministry of Burlesque shows in Bath. Next time, however, I’m not going to drink a four pint pitcher of lager then go up to the boylesque act and tell him I’m going to turn him into a character in my next gay romance novel, honest. He seemed amused, but he might simply have been trying to get rid of the annoying tipsy woman ;P

This Week:

I’m determined to get back to writing Storm and Lightning this week, and to restart the Vintage Smut Sunday posts after the summer hiatus. Things should generally be calming down a little now and I will have time and space to write.

The final two Hot Pressure Blog Tour posts will appear on Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday I’ll have Tali Spencer guest blogging here.

Right, that’s it for now. I need to get my foot up as I twisted my ankle last night (missed the last stair – ouch!). Will be back later with news about First Impressions and Last Chance