I HAVE MOVED TO A NEW WEBSITE!

THIS IS THE LINK

See you there!

Love, Janice xx

The Backpacking Housewife - Cover Reveal day!

 

It's Cover Reveal Day!

Today is a dream come true! Last summer I was traveling in Asia while also working on a new romantic adventure novel entitled Island In The Sun when I was approached by Charlotte Ledger, the Editorial Director of Harper Impulse to write for them. Harper Impulse is the romance imprint of Harper Collins UK Publishers in London and Harper Collins is one of the world's largest publishing companies - one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Hachette, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster. (Source Wikipedia) Well, you can imagine how totally bowled over and thrilled I was!

I’ve been working as a published writer since 2004. Since then I’ve written a grand total of thirteen titles. The Backpacking Housewife is lucky number thirteen!

I am told it’s unusual these days to be given a contract from a major publishing house before the book is actually written. I found my initial euphoria at being offered such a fabulous opportunity tempered with trepidation over signing a deal with such a tight deadline to meet with the publishing schedule. I knew that travelling around Asia (we were in Vietnam at the time) and not having a daily routine wasn’t going to be conducive to meeting such a deadline.

So my husband and I did something radical. We decided to stop travelling for a while and we registered with a homesitter’s website – listing ourselves as available to housesit for several months. A UK couple with a property in South West France got in touch with us and after several emails and a Skype video call we were offered the assignment to care for a beautiful 500-year-old chateau, a couple of gites, and a cat called Mr Smudge.  We immediately booked several connecting flights from Asia to Bordeaux France.

And, in that beautiful chateau in October 2017, I started work on The Backpacking Housewife. As I was writing a work of fiction that was loosely based on my own travel experiences I wanted to be sure that my commissioning editor was in full approval of my ideas for the book. So, I actually wrote three completely different versions of the all-important first three chapters for her consideration. Only once we had agreed on how the story should start did I begin work on completing the manuscript.

I then worked every day but to a weekly word count. This allowed a bit of flexibility in the daily writing schedule and also made sure I could complete the manuscript on time and to the length required. It wasn’t easy. I had good days and bad days. But, eventually, I finished the story and I now feel extremely proud of what I have written and of my achievement.  All those who have written a book will know this feeling!

And, just in case you are wondering what happened to the other book I was writing? Well, that is now finished too and being edited right now. ‘Island in the Sun’ will be published later this summer.

It has been a team effort with Harper Impulse to progress The Backpacking Housewife from a manuscript to a book. There have been structural edits and revisions. The book has been copyedited and checked over and over. A publication date has been set for 6^th July for the ebook and 12^th July for the paperback. The Harper Collins PR Department has been fully briefed and will be working with me to reach readers.

I was asked to write a cover brief and from that the cover was designed. I was so excited and thrilled and proud when I saw the beautiful cover and I was desperate to show it off to everyone - except I knew I couldn’t – at least not until the cover was officially revealed by the wonderful team at Harper Impulse. It was especially hard not to share when friends attending The London Book Fair told me that the cover of The Backpacking Housewife was being displayed on a giant screen at the Harper Collins stand and sent me the photo!

The Backpacking Housewife on display at the London Book Fair

So I'm really happy to be able to share with you at last - The Backpacking Housewife. Ta-darrrrr!!

In case you missed it - here it is again!

What is the story about? The Backpacking Housewife is a story about an ordinary woman - a housewife with two grown-up children. When she comes home unexpectedly one day to find her husband of 25 years in bed with her best friend, she is so distraught and traumatized and betrayed that she grabs her passport and her handbag and heads out of the door to the airport. What follows is an adventure of a lifetime.

This is the official book blurb: Lorraine Anderson was meant to be making a Sunday roast, not swanning off to Thailand, backpack in hand! But when she finds her husband and her best friend in bed together there’s only one thing to do – grab her passport and never look back! Now, with each mile travelled Lori sheds the woman she once was and finds the woman she was always meant to be. A woman of passion and spirit who deserves to explore the great unknown…and to indulge in the temptation she encounters along the way!

Today is Cover Reveal Day and ALSO the day the book goes up for PRE-SALE!

This means that if you order the book on PRE-SALE you are placing an order for the book at the PRE-SALE SPECIAL PRICE. But you will not be charged for the book until publication day on the 6^th July for the ebook or 12^th July for the paperback. So why not get your order in right away?

Click here to browse the book and find out more on Amazon

The ebook is also available from:   iBooks on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac.

And at:  Kobo and Google Play

What do you think of the cover and the story blurb?

Have you pre-ordered yet?

I’d love to read your comments!

Observations and Snippets from my Favourite Trippets #1

As we venture into our fourth year travelling the world, I’m planning a new series of retrospective blog posts to focus on some very special places that I’ve only previously covered on this blog in overview.

In this post, I’m highlighting Hemingway’s House in Key West Florida.

Our visit to the Hemingway House in Key West was one of the highlights of our trip to Florida. This was the home of Ernest Hemingway, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1953 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 "for his mastery of the art of narrative, most recently demonstrated with The Old Man and the Sea, and for the influence he has exerted on contemporary style". The house too is impressive and has the distinct air and rich ambiance of old world elegance.

The house is impressive and has the distinct air and rich ambiance of old world elegance

A high brick boundary keeps the property private but the view from the first-floor wrap around porch takes in not only the garden but the adjacent street in what is an affluent residential part of town.

I loved walking around the airy rooms and the book-lined hallways, taking in all the family photographs and the personal effects. I could almost pretend I was a house guest exploring the place while Ernest and Pauline (Hemingway’s second wife) had just popped out momentarily.

I could almost pretend I was a house guest exploring the place while Ernest and Pauline had popped out momentarily

The house gives the visitor a real feel for the life the Hemingway’s led in Key West during the 1930’s.

Ernest and Pauline Hemingway

The life of Ernest Hemingway from photographs at his home in Key West

Our tour guide happily gave out lots of insider information about the history of the house, the escapades of the children, the Hemingway marriage, the huge row over the swimming pool and Ernest Hemingway’s ‘last penny’.

The story is that the swimming pool, which replaced what had been Ernest's personal boxing ring, was contracted at great expense by Pauline after she found out about her husband’s affair with Martha Gellhorn, his third wife to be.

When Ernest came back from assignment to find out the exorbitant cost of the pool, he was reported to have thrown a penny onto the ground in front of Pauline, saying, ‘you’ve spent all but my last penny, so you might as well have that!’

Pauline had the penny set into the path where it lay. It is still there today.

The swimming pool that Hemingway said had cost him his last penny

Another extraordinary feature of the house are all the cats that reside there.

These are descendants of a six-toed cat called Snowball. One of Snowball’s kittens (named Snow White) was gifted to Ernest Hemingway by a salvage and shipwreck captain (a respected and official position in those days) called Harold Stanley Dexter. Ever since, the six-toed gene has been passed down through all the generations of cats at the Hemingway house. All were named after Ernest’s famous friends. The cat in this photo is Rita Hayworth.

On the left - Rita Hayworth. On the right - a six toed paw!

I was so engrossed and enthralled by the house and its history and the life of Hemingway, that the following day we visited the Hemingway museum in town. 

There are many exhibits and pictures and movie posters reflecting his work but the centerpiece, which captures a young, enthusiastic, and adventurous Hemingway fishing off his beloved boat ‘Pilar’, is the bronze sculptor by Terry Jones (2005).

The bronze sculptor of Hemingway by Terry Jones (2005).

Ernest Hemingway’s first visit to Key West in 1928 was only meant to be a way stop, but once he’d felt the sun on his face, smelt the salty air and met the locals, he knew it would be his home with second wife Pauline.

A photograph of Ernest Hemingway with his parents and his second wife Pauline in April 1928

He soon became an avid sports fisherman. In 1938 he established a world record for catching seven Marlin in one day. He also garnered a reputation for hard drinking with his new friends Josie ‘Sloppy Joe’ Russell, fisherman Eddie ‘Bra’ Saunders and his brother ‘Burge’ and later Toby Bruce who became his right-hand man and life-long companion.

I’ll give you a short tour of the Hemingway museum using my photos.

A model of Hemingway's beloved boat 'Pilar' in the Hemingway Key West Museum

If you ever do find yourself in Florida I urge you to explore the Keys. We took a Greyhound Bus from Miami and stopped off in Key Largo for a couple of days (which really should warrant another #Trippets post!) before heading across the famous bridges down to Key West. There is so much to explore and lots to do there. The food is fabulous and restaurants plentiful. In Hemingway tradition, bars are a fun feature too. Sloppy Joe's is still there and a new addition is the first and original of Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville.

Here I am enjoying a Margarita at the original Margaritaville Key West!

I loved finding out more about one of my writer heroes and we adored Key West!

Author note: I so enjoyed meeting the six-toed cats that a fictional six-toed offspring features in my next romantic adventure novel 'Island in the Sun' and is aptly named 'Hemingway'!

House hunting failure in Malaysia and other adventures...

After our amazing trip to Bali and the Gili Islands in Indonesia, which you can read about HERE, we headed back to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

We stayed two nights at the Intercontinental Hotel in KL city centre, then two days later, we flew with Air Asia over to the Malaysian island of Langkawi.

This was our second visit to this duty-free island. We stayed here for a week exactly one year ago during our Grand Asian Tour of 2015. We decided to come back here because we had been enthusing about Langkawi to our friends Mark and Rebecca, who live on the island of Koh Tao, in Thailand, and whom we met up with on Gili Air.

Mark and Rebecca were looking for a place to relax and unwind for a week after their hectic final F1 destination and we were looking at Langkawi as a possible place to settle down for a couple of months.

I felt the need to stop travelling for a while and to find somewhere conducive to finishing the manuscript of my next romantic adventure novel. After which, in late December, we planned to head to Koh Tao Thailand for the start of high season – which had always been our plan for the end of 2016.

So the four of us arranged to meet up again in Langkawi.

We thought Langkawi might be a good choice for us as a place to settle for a while as it was just the start of the high season there (and still rainy season in Koh Tao) and we had three month visa, which is standard for UK Passport holders arriving in Malaysia. We also expected it to be relatively inexpensive to live there too. So we booked ourselves into a budget hotel for a week to give us enough time to find a small house or apartment to rent.

But even though we took lots of time to look for suitable accommodation in various places on the island, while Mark and Rebecca chilled out in their plush hotel, we discovered a complete lack of affordable availability and we were told over and over again that rental accommodations had been booked out for months in advance. So total house-hunting failure!

The Langkawi trip wasn’t a complete failure however, as we got to enjoy Mark and Rebecca’s company again. We had wall to wall sunshine for a week. And we got to eat the most amazing seafood – tiger shrimp and lobster - at the most incredibly affordable prices.

And we also got to throw away our worn-out clothing and buy new ones from the market on Langkawi, where they have the softest, lightest, coolest, cotton clothing we’ve ever found. I think I replaced my entire wardrobe (and by that I mean suitcase) for the equivalent of £60. We also stocked up on wine (£3 a bottle for good stuff) and bourbon (at £8 per litre).

So what and where next?

Well, to help us out of our house hunting dilemma, Rebecca and Mark generously offered us their place to housesit on Koh Tao, as they were planning to go back to the UK until just before Christmas. But as it was only the start of the rainy (monsoon) season on Koh Tao and we knew the island would be quiet, with most boats to the island on stand-by and many places closed, we weren’t sure it was the right place for us at this time.

So we headed back to Kuala Lumpur (we had a return ticket) and we went house hunting there instead. For five nights we stayed for free at a very nice Holiday Inn Golf and Country Resort just outside the city, using our hotel loyalty points. 

The lovely view from our room at the Holiday Inn Golf and Country Resort KL

The weather in KL was hot and sunny and the (a free stay on loyalty points) hotel was lovely

While in KL I went to the Malaysian version of Specsavers for some new reading glaases

We used public transport and uber taxis to get around and we searched for and viewed several apartments. Some of them were quite luxurious serviced apartments with outside balconies and swimming pool and gym facitities - yet affordable. However, they were all for long term rental only and not just a couple of months.

During this time, although we both love KL, I still wasn’t quite convinced that I actually wanted to live in a busy city and I worried what Trav would do with himself if he couldn’t go diving while I was busy writing? I mean, you can only go to the cinema so many times before it starts getting a bit repetitive, can’t you? 

KL Monorail - just one of the inexpensive and efficient ways to travel around KL

We viewed a rental apartment here in KLCC

Many apartments in KLCC are serviced apartments with a pool and gym

Coming to the conclusion that we were island people rather than city folk, and as we had been planning to go back to Koh Tao in another six weeks anyway, we decided to speak to Mark and Rebecca and take them up on their kind offer of house-sitting their place while they were away.

Except, that very soon after making our new plans, Trav was immediately offered a fantastic diving opportunity on the island of Koh Tao that would help him towards gaining his PADI Master Instructor certification (his goal for 2017) and which also included our accommodation during our stay.

So, it seems that whether it was still the rainy season or not, we were destined to be heading back to Koh Tao and suddenly I couldn’t wait!

We had a wonderful welcome back to the island and I was so delighted to find that our new home on Koh Tao was a modern studio villa with a lovely big covered porch that would be great for sitting outside whatever the weather. 

Our accommodation is on a huge diving resort here on Koh Tao - so we'll have access to all the resorts facilities including the shops, bars, restaurants and swimming pools - they have three pools and are in the process of building a fourth. The beach is just a ten minute walk away. Things really have turned out really well for us - we simply couldn't have planned it better.

Our beautiful villa on Koh Tao

When we settle anywhere for more than a week then the Trav and Janice's Hoose sign goes up!

This fabulous swimming pool is just a few minutes walk from our new home.

A lovely welcome back to the island from our lovely island friends

First week back on Koh Tao and Trav was diving with whale sharks again

It all sounds so blissful, right? It is EXCEPT for one wee glitch - and that was that at this time we only had 30 day arrival visa for Thailand.

SO, we knew that after just three weeks or thereabouts, we would have to leave Thailand again on a visa run. We decided to 'run' back to KL as it was the most affordable option to get a 60 day visa. You may wonder why we didn't get one to start with but at that time the Thai Consulate was closed for a few days and getting a 60 day visa is a two day process - meaning we would have had to stay in KL for almost another week. So before our 30 day visa expired, we took a three hour boat from Koh Tao to Surat Thani on the mainland. Then a bus for a hour or so to the airport. Then an Air Asia flight back to KL.


While we were in KL this time around we would also be celebrating Trav's birthday. His treats included birthday cake, chocolates and champagne and wine and cheese (ooops, okay, the last three items were for me - and you'll know how much I miss cheese when we are travelling and living on tiny cheese-free islands!) and of course there was lots of bourbon drinking for Trav - plus a trip to the cinema - to watch the new Magnificent Seven Movie.

Trav's Birthday Cake

My wine, champagne and cheese!

The trip to the Thai Consulate in KL to secure our new 60 day visas got a bit stressful because it is a two day exercise and the first day we arrived very early and before opening time to find there was already a huge queue around the building block. We waited in line and then we waited some more once inside and, after almost three hours, when we eventually get to see an immigration officer, he asked for additional documents to be produced, above and beyond what was stipulated - but of course it is at their discretion to do so - which had us running back to our hotel to get online and to print stuff out and to race back to the consulate again in an exhausted and overheated stress before they closed for the day. We made it with only ten mins to spare!

The following day, we did manage to collect our 60 day visas for entry back into Thailand. BUT it was pointed out to us that we don't have any space left in our passports for any more entry/exit stamps or visas.

Our passports are still valid but we have travelled so much we have now run out of empty pages - and this is something we need to address before our current visas expire OR our fabulous travel adventures will come to a grinding halt and we will have to leave our beautiful new home on Koh Tao and Trav's diving ambitions will all be on hold!

Don't panic though - we are dealing with the situation right now - and we have found that we are able to apply for new passports (the ones with extra pages!) as overseas UK Citizens through Her Majesty's Passport office in Bangkok and we should in fact have our new passports in our hands in the next week or so. *Fingers crossed*.

So now we are back on Koh Tao and we are finally able to settle down to the slower pace of island life after the excitement of all our recent travels and adventures and our visa/passport stresses. 

I have been able to focus on getting some writing done and to finish my novel Island in the Sun, which is now with my editor, and also meet my looming deadlines for travel magazine features. Meanwhile, Trav has been busy and happy in equal measures doing lots of new and amazing stuff to develop his diving career while we are here on Koh Tao.

Next time here on the blog – I'll be taking a look back at the highlights of 2016 month by month to recap on all the countries we have visited, the adventures we have had, and the lovely people we have met over what has been a truly amazing and fantastic year.

In early January, just after New Year, Trav and I hope to have our new passports with which to do yet another visa run. We plan to go to the Malaysian island of Penang next time around as we haven't been there before - so that will be another new adventure to tell you about.

Until next time, Happy Christmas to you all and all best wishes for 2017.

Love, Janice xx

A fabulous weekend in KL with James and Sujeong Horton!

In mid-September my husband Trav and I flew from Vancouver Canada (via Montreal, Houston, and Tokyo) to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A total flight time of twenty-five hours and a leap in time of eight hours.

As we can never sleep on planes, you can imagine how exhausted and jetlagged we both were when we finally reached our hotel in KL! However, we did manage to get a good few hours sleep, before we had to dash back to the airport to meet up with our son James and his lovely wife Sujeong, who were flying in from South Korea to meet up with us in KL for the weekend.

Our son James and his lovely wife Sujeong, who flew from South Korea to KL to meet up with us for the weekend.

We hadn’t seen James and Sujeong since February of this year, when we were in South Korea for our grandson Aaron’s first birthday celebrations. Aaron wasn’t with them this time though, as this was a strictly grown-up affair, to help James and Sujeong celebrate their wedding anniversary.

We took the KLIA express train from the airport and a taxi to our hotel. We stayed at the Intercontinental, which is right in the centre of the city (KLCC) and just steps away from the stunning Petronas Twin Towers. Coming into the city at night, the world famous towers are lit up in white lights and they look truly magnificent!

At the hotel, James and Sujeong checked into their room, where we had arranged for a anniversary cake. The hotel staff did us proud by decorating their bed with red rose petals. Then it was cocktails and food and a wonderful opportunity to sit down together and chat and to catch up with each other’s busy lives.

Happy Anniversary to James and Sujeong!

The following day after a hearty breakfast, we headed out to go up to the top of the Petronas Twin Towers – the number one attraction in KL – and we also had tickets to walk across the skybridge that connects the towers at levels forty-one and forty-two. The views of the city from the top and from the bridge are breathtaking.

Looking up from the street at the Petronas Twin Towers

After lunch we hit the malls for some serious shopping and we had a ball.

Then it was back to our hotel for complimentary afternoon cocktails and tapas. After which, we enjoyed the luxury of our club rooms, until it was time to go out to dinner. We chose a Japanese restaurant for James and Sujeong’s anniversary dinner and it was a wonderful evening.

Happy Wedding Anniversary James and Sujeong

We had a fabulous weekend together, it went by too fast of course, but we made beautiful memories and we had a lot of fun. I hope it will not be too long before we can see James and Sujeong and our grandson Aaron and the rest of our South Korean family again.

I hope that you have enjoyed reading about our special weekend and seeing all my indulgent photos (some of which were taken by Sujeong). I enjoy using this blog as a travelogue, and my hope is that for many years to come, it will inspire those of you who follow our world travels to visit the many places I have enthused about. I also hope this blog will serve my family and myself as a detailed and personal travel memoir for the distant future, when maybe Trav and I are old and forgetful, or indeed no longer here.

Where next? James and Sujeong flew back home to South Korea and Trav and I left Malaysia early the next morning to fly to Bali.

This was our first ever trip into Indonesia and we were very excited.

First stop Bali for a few days, then we took a boat over to the three beautiful and tiny tropical islands off Lombok called The Gili’s, where the beaches are soft white sand and no motorised transport is allowed, and where most people get about using a boat or a pony and trap taxi/tuk-tuk or by just walking.

This photo taken by me on Gili Meno - the smaller of the three paradise Gili Islands

So join me here on the blog next time, when I will be sharing with you my truly amazing experiences in Bali and the Gili Islands, Indonesia.

Love, Janice