Friday, August 7, 2009

Welcome to the Online Book Release Party for “Illuminations of the Heart”

Welcome Everyone!

My new medieval romance has been available online for about a month, but is only now beginning to appear in the bookstores, so I decided to have a party to celebrate its ultimate “release” to the public! And since most of my family and friends live too far away to celebrate with me in person, I’ve decided to have my party online and share my excitement with you!

So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to offer a contest and prize every hour for the next eight hours. I’ll be hanging around to “chat” with you in the comments section, so if any of you have any questions about my books or my writing, shoot them my way. I’ll check out the comments periodically and leave you my answers, so be sure to check back.

The prizes are going to start small and build to my “grand prize”…an autographed copy of Illuminations of the Heart. But large or small, each and every prize will have something to do with my book and…yes…you’re going to have to work just a little bit for a chance to win each prize. Each contest will end 5 minutes before the next hour, to give me time to draw a winner before the next contest is announced.

By the way, my watch battery died yesterday, so we’re going to go by the time stamp on my computer. If it doesn’t quite agree with your watch or clock, I hope you’ll forgive me, but I really have no way to control that. But there’ll be a 55 minute window to enter each contest, so you should be okay…as long as you don’t wait for the last minute! (Which may not agree with my computer.)

One half hour from now, the games will begin. So swing back over to JDP NEWS at 10 AM PST to see which prize is up for grabs first!

6 comments:

C. LaRene Hall said...

Is this where we are supposed to comment. I never realized you were in a different time zone that I was. To me it is almost 11 am. I'm excited to read your new book.

Joyce DiPastena said...

Hi Connie,

Yes, this is where you leave comments. I have a feature that alerts me by email when a comment is left, so I can type a reply. :-)

What time zone are you in? I'm in Arizona, but we don't have daylight savings time, so this time of year we're on Pacific Time. When DST changes, we'll be on Mountain Standard Time. I love not changing time during the year. :-)

Anonymous said...

What made you want to start writing medieval Romances?

Joyce DiPastena said...

I read a book in high school called "The Conquering Family" about some of the early Plantagenet kings of England (Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, and John), and it just really fascinated me. So I started reading more and more about the MIddle Ages, and ended up majoring in history in college. That's also when I started writing my first book set in the Middle Ages. (I'd started some stories earlier that I never finished, set in different time periods before then.) I guess I've always been a romantic at heart, so my medieval story also turned into a romance. I never published that one, but I was so far in love with the Middle Ages by the time I finished it, that I've just kept writing in that time period ever since. :-)

Kaylee Baldwin said...

Joyce,
I just finished reading your book a few weeks ago (I got it at Deseret Book to read for a LONG road trip) and I just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed it so much! It helped the hours in the RV pass by quickly and it was nice to read a long romantic novel that was sweet and made me sigh :) Can't wait to read more from you.

Joyce DiPastena said...

Thank you, Kaylee! I'm so glad you enjoyed it. :-)