Winner Of The Giveaway (& more!)

Hello!

As promised, when the giveaway closed this evening at 7pm, I put the names of all 24 entrants into the ‘wheel of chance’, gave it a spin and Clare Banks was picked as the winner. Well done, Clare! (I’ve PM’ed and asked her to let me have her address and I’ll be zapping the book and chocolate off very soon).

Keep following the blog as I may run another, similar giveaway again soon and there is another one currently running on The Saga Sisters Facebook group, so if you’re thinking of joining that, do so before Friday and you can enter that draw.

But if you can’t wait to try to win a copy, don’t forget that ‘The Highland Girls on Guard’ is out as an e-book and on audio from 12th March and in paperback from 14th March and can be pre-ordered now!

Reading Is Good For You

Now, we knew that, didn’t we (that reading is good for us)?

Michael Mosley, that chap that’s always giving advice on how we can live forever make ourselves healthier, says in a recent ‘Just One Thing’ podcast about boosting your health during the working day, that “a study suggests that people who read for 30 minutes a day live nearly two years longer than those that don’t.”

There’s more (scroll down to the piece about reading a novel) here if you’re interested. I like his suggestion that we should drink coffee, by the way but I’m not so keen on the cold shower in the mornings idea! Brrrgh!

Win a Curtis Brown Creative ‘Writer’s Toolkit’ Worth over £1000

Now, here’s a nice writerly competition, that doesn’t involve writing anything (hurrah!).

Those lovely people at ‘Muddy Stilettos’ have teamed up with the writing school Curtis Brown Creative (part of Curtis Brown Literary Agents), to give away a fabulous prize, ‘suitable for novice writers as well as those already writing’ and which consists of:

a place on 7 Curtis Brown Creative online courses: ’30-Day Writing Bootcamp’ and ’30-Day Writing Bootcamp – Vol 2’ (together worth £70), ‘Creative Writing for Beginners’ (worth £125), ‘Starting to Write Your Novel’ (worth £220) – and a choice of 3 further courses from our ‘Deep Dive’ courses: ‘Dialogue – The Deep Dive’ (worth £125), ‘Character Development – The Deep Dive’ (worth £125), ‘Plot & Story – The Deep Dive’ (worth £125), ‘Relationships in Fiction – The Deep Dive’ (worth £125) and ‘Showing & Telling – The Deep Dive’ (worth £125).

Alternatively, the winner may choose any other online courses from this course page, provided that the total value is equal to or less than £790.

The winner will also receive a 500-word report from one of Curtis Brown Creative’s tutor/editors and a 30-minute video or telephone tutorial with them to discuss their work (together worth £240).

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? The competition closes on 18th March and all the details and the entry form are here.

As Sharon’s pointed out in the comments below, you either have to follow Muddy Stilettos on Instagram or you have to be signed up to receive their newsletters, but it’s free to do either – here’s the form to sign up for the newsletters and you can always unsubscribe once the winner’s been announced if you don’t want to get emails from them any more!

Make sure you read all the terms and conditions before you enter. You have to be 18+ and a UK resident and you can’t transfer the prize to anyone else, so only enter if you’re going to use it!

Good luck – and have some crocuses!