Baby naming contest

I'll be giving away advance reading copies of Heirs and Graces to those who get the baby names correct. Come on over to my Facebook page and share your prediction.

www.facebook.com/rhysbowenauthor

Royal Births

We have two royal births to anticipate in the next few weeks:
William and Kate's baby and Rhys's new Royal Spyness novel, Heirs and Graces. Okay, I admit the former is more important to most of the world and there is great excitement and speculation in Britain.
As with all things the British are betting furiously on it. Name, sex, weight, date of birth.... money is being placed on all of the above.
And so far public wisdom is saying  a girl, seven pounds and called Alexandra.

Okay, well I conducted a poll on my Facebook page and our choice seemed also to favor a girl but the consensus was Mary Diana Victoria Elizabeth and for a boy George Phillip with maybe a David thrown in to seal the Wales connection.

So we'll see if we are smarter than the average Brit.  What do you think?

There were also wicked speculations that since the surname is Wales at the moment it could be Killer Wales or Blue Wales (after North West anything is possible). Gray Wales doesn't sound bad, does it?

And the other royal birth?

Well, Heirs and Graces will be in a store near you or one click away on your Kindle or Nook on August 6th. I'll be posting snippets in the next weeks on this blog. This what bestselling writer Deborah Crombie says about it: "The perfect fix between seasons for Downton Abbey Addicts."

I'll be updating my website, and sending out a newsletter asap.
If you think that I haven't been blogging as much as I should, I have been busy catching up after my trip, blogging on www.jungleredwriters.com with my fellow Jungle Reds, and I update daily on my Facebook page www.facebook.com/rhysbowenauthor
Come on over and LIKE my page to get my daily updates. See you there.  Rhys

Home at last

Sorry I' ve been out of action on this blog. I've been on a cruise and in place where there was no internet (like Egypt). If you want to check on what I've been doing for the past month, please go to my Facebook page (www.facebook.com/rhysbowenauthor) where I've posted reports and pictures.

It was an interesting trip for me as I returned to Greece for the first time in 50 years. As a teenager I spent three months going around Greece with a friend, taking local buses, staying in peoples houses. Often we were the only foreigners and were treated as objects of curiosity. In those days Greek women were certainly not allowed out alone and we would be the only females eating in a cafe full of men.

So I was apprehensive about visiting a Greece that now regards tourism as its major money producer. As we approached Mykonos, where Ruth and I spent two glorious weeks long ago, I was delighted to see no high rise hotels, no modern buildings. More souvenire shops, to be sure, but the charm remained. The same for the other islands we visited, except many more houses on Aegina and the deserted little bay where we rented a cottage is now full of up market summer homes.

I was especially worried about Athens as we'd all seen pictures of demonstrations, strikes, upheaval. But it was just as I remembered it (with better roads thanks to the Olympics) with the Parthenon sparkling on the skyline. People were just as friendly and nice as I remembered and nobody seemed too stressed about the poor economy. There were a couple of demonstrations while we were there, but we stayed away. And you can understand why they demonstrate. Salaries are simply not enough to live on.

Above all it's still incredibly beautiful, white buildings, blue sea, towering mountains and good food. What more could one ask?