Book giveaway till the end of the week, plus other news

[ 0 ] 17/01/2022 | liza

Happy New Year everyone with a super cute photo that one of you sent me (thank you!), and the best wish meme (writer anon) I came across on FB.

I hope you’re doing well -or at least not terrible- and that the first two weeks and the back-to-school days have been OK. Here COVID is on the rise again with many infections around us and amongst the kids’ classmates, but as a family unit, we’re doing well so far. I know you must be super busy with work and family obligations so all the news down below is segmented per subject so you can skim through the content and read only the sections that interest you. If you’d like to get in touch afterward, I’d love to hear back from you.

1) Giveaway

During the holidays, I noticed that a language teacher who was not amongst my acquaintances, K. Wyatt Reguera, chose to feature my books on her Instagram. It was a lovely surprise, and spontaneously in order to thank her, I offered her as a gift one of my books and one for her followers. You can read more and participate in this book giveaway till Sunday the 23rd of January here. Good luck!

2) Wonderful memories and excited about 2022

Two years ago, and right before the pandemic started, “Where am I from?” was just about to get published, and I was planning my “back home” trip to Malta for the book launch. This post came up as a memory reminder on FB with the artist Platon and his last graffiti painted for this book. A fun -or not so fun- fact is that all my published books came out during the pandemic! Also, it is during the pandemic, now in 2022, that I’m taking the leap of faith and will try to make it work as a full-time writer. Things have been going great on that front, and over 1,800 books found a forever home in a child’s library in December only!

3) University of Liverpool 2022 Alumni Award nomination

Another lovely surprise to wake up to yesterday was this one. An old classmate of mine nominated me this year, and tagged me in a private uni group, for the University of Liverpool 2022 Alumni Award. I had no idea there was such an award, and as it’s been several years since I graduated -it must have been 2011 or 2012- so you can imagine how totally unexpected this is. Another fun fact, this time about languages, I studied in French for my first degree and in English for my second. Greek is my native language, and Norwegian is my husband’s native one and our children’s strongest.

4) Together They Blossomed coming very soon in bilingual editions

I’m getting ready now for the experiment I mentioned a while back, to translate and publish “Together They Blossomed” as a bilingual book for adults, a book to gift to the one we love in their native/emotional language + English. I can’t wait to share with you all the English-French, English-Spanish, English-Italian, and English-Greek editions in the coming days. If it goes well, I will consider more languages. Anyone here who might want to read it in any of these language combos once the files are ready and before publication? The French one is ready.

Here’s an old video I received from Sandra Rogers Photography when she opened the box with her English edition printed copies . Click here to watch it.

5) Happiness Street is now available in English-Danish

You can find it on all Amazon stores. Here‘s the US one.

6) More editions in Greek

“Happiness Street” and “Cousins Forever” are now available in Greek-English, Greek-French, Greek-Swedish, Greek-Portuguese, Greek-Spanish, Greek-German, Greek-Dutch, and Greek-Italian (more language combinations are available upon request). You can find them on all Amazon stores, and exclusively via the bookstore Paper Kittens FB page / eshop in Greece.

7) New children’s book “Sunny’s Magical Headband”

No news yet when it comes to its publication. As mentioned earlier, publishing books during the pandemic can be a bit unpredictable, and it does present some obstacles, especially for traditional publishing. I’ll let you know as soon as I know more. This is a photo from the early stages of book production when the artist Eva Rodríguez was painting with traditional means all the different illustrations. This is a book I love dearly and I hope it will go in print and be shared with you all very soon. It will be published by Faraxa Publishing in Malta, EU.

8) Free eBooks every 1st of the month throughout 2022. Yay or Nay?

I guess you remember the promotion I put together last year that lasted 6 months where on the 1st of each month readers could download any of my eBooks + eBooks from many other authors for free? I’m considering doing the same this year as well, but just myself this time, and offer all of the eBook editions of my independently published books for free every 1st of the month. What do you think? Should I go ahead? I’ll be deciding during this week.

For the ones who are new here and have no idea about who I am and/or look like, here’s a recent photo that was taken by our 5-year-old daughter, who loves taking photos, during our Christmas holiday in Gran Canaria, Spain :).

And here’s the cutest snowman ever that the kids made once we came back to Norway… Since then we’ve had tons of snow again which has now alost completely melted.