The Dinner Dilemma

Today the Tweet Treats blog tour is flying all the way to Germany, and without even needing our passports! That very lovely, encouraging and supportive lady @Mariam_Kobras asked me all about the genesis of Tweet Treats, about dinner dilemmas and favourite foods. Read all about it here.

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This just in: a terrific interview with me me me by @iainbroome for writeforyourlife.net. You can read it here, if you're so inclined.

Remember, you can still win a free signed copy of Tweet Treats all this week at @mduffywriter's blog here. Or click the link below to buy your own!

Flying High - And Down To Earth With A Bump!

Greetings all!

Today was rather spiffing I must say. I dragged the ever-petulant dd to the Whitewater shopping centre in Newbridge, where we beheld THESE two behemoths! (They're genuinely mahoosive!)

Purty...

Snogging teens used for scale

Even dd took a good look at the posters and said "The Script? You got a recipe from The Script?! I love them!" "Yes," I replied, serenely. "Very nice boys they are, too." I swear I saw something close to respect in those 9 year old blue eyes...

Just as well I had something so lovely to brighten my day, since today the blog tour stops off at @Chiddle84's blog, where she's not terribly nice to me. Not at all as nice as I deserve, anyhow. Go on over and have a read.

But @mduffywriter is still being all gushy, and you can still win a copy of Tweet Treats here. Or buy one yourself by clicking the link below!

Bargain of the Day

Morning folks! I did my usual trawl of the Tweet Treats listing on Amazon this morning, and lookee lookee what I found! A bargain, if ever there was one. Lulz, etc :)

Anyhoo, today's stop on the blog tour is over on the other side of the atlantic! My little cheffy twitter bird had to get a special passport (with a bird flu vaccination exemption) to go and talk to @erinfaye all the way over in Florida. And the poor lil fluffer got sunburn on his beak, too.

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Still, it was worth it. That Erin is lovely, and though she's probably still in bed and hasn't posted about Tweet Treats yet, you could wander over and take a look at her blog here - it's smashing, and there'll be stuff about Tweet Treats there in due course :)

As ever, you can buy Tweet Treats in all manner of quality bookshops. However, I wouldn't recommend paying more than €7.99 for it. ;)

"I declare Tweet Treats to be launched!"

Those were the immortal words of @patomahony1 in the Odessa Club last night as The O'Brien Press, Medecins sans Frontieres, friends, family and I celebrated the launch of Tweet Treats. It was a fantastic night, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and hope everyone who attended did too.

However, they say that a picture speaks a thousand words, so feast your eyes on the fab pics that Alan from MSF took last night.

I can confirm that the rumours of a Tweet Treats cake were not unfounded! Note actual book, for scale :)

Some people didn't believe that the cake was actually cake. Proof to the right! ->

Left to Right: Ivan O'Brien of O'Brien Press, Me, Pat O'Mahony who launched Tweet Treats 

Here's Ross, Deirdre and JaneAnne from MSF with Tweet Treats :) 

Fantastic Tweet Treats canapes from the staff at the Odessa Club, recipes from @BoyGeorge and @LouDPhillips among others ->

It was a terrific night. Pat O'Mahony did us proud and made a great job of launching the book! I managed to get through a short speech without throwing up on his shoes, so it was all good :)

Today's stop on the blog tour is at @derekf03's blog here and the fantastic @alisonwells has devoted her weekly Tuesday Interview to the book here.

Thanks everyone!

Publication Day!

Woohoo, it's publication day! Tweet Treats is now officially available to buy, just about anywhere.

It's hard to believe that this day has finally arrived. That dreary Thursday in April when I came up with a certain daft idea seems like only yesterday (or 4 days ago, if you want to be painfully chronologically accurate). An awful lot of work has gone into getting this book to the point where you can all hold it in your hot little hands - and not all of that work has been by me! No sirree bob, youse lot did a load of it yourselves what with the tweetin' and the retweetin' and the tweet treatin' - I owe you all a huge amount of thanks :)

One pair who did a shed-load of the above tweetin' etc was mother and daughter team @NettieWriter and @clairecatrina, the youngest contributor to the book. You can read all about their side of the story today on Nettie's blog here. Thanks again, Nettie!

So, tonight is the launch. The very cool @patomahony1 is launching the book! My tummy is, um... Well. Let's not go there, shall we? There are rumours of cake. I can confirm that there will indeed be a rather awesome (if I do say so myself) Tweet Treats cake, but you'll have to wait till tomorrow to see the pics.

Meantime you can buy Tweet Treats from Amazon, Book Depository, O'Brien Press, Eason, Dubray, Waterstones, etc etc from today.

Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

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I do know a lot of nice people. There are those who would say that they only seem nice in comparison to how cranky I am, but I think they're jolly nice people.

One such nice person is @hotcrossmum who blogs for Hello! and wrote a terrific post about Tweet Treats. You can read it here. If you don't already, follow her blog Hot Cross Mum - it's a hilarious slice of modern motherhood.

Then there's the very lovely and talented @colettecaddle who said kind things about Tweet Treats on Facebook. Colette is a hoot, wait till you read her recipe! It still makes me laugh, a year after I first read it.

Most importantly of all, the really lovely people at @msf_ireland wrote this.

I have high hopes for this book. I want it to do well, stratospherically well, not just to bolster my already over-inflated ego, but because I think of every copy sold as money going directly to Somalia, Haiti, Pakistan. I want to sell thousands of copies; maybe a hundred thousand. The royalties from that many sales would make a very considerable difference to the lives of countless numbers of people.

It's all down to you, folks. The more copies you buy as Christmas presents, thank-you gifts, housewarming presents, going-off-to-college presents, or just for yourself, the closer I come to that goal. If you've already bought Tweet Treats, thank you. If you haven't, click on the link below - please.

Scream!

It seems that people who pre-ordered Tweet Treats from Amazon are starting to receive their copies in the post! I'm all of a flutter as people are tweeting me about recipes that tickle their fancy. @julianstockwin (historical fiction author of the Thomas Kydd series) tweeted:

"Just got my Tweet Treats from Amazon. Great little book for v. worthy cause so well done,@janetravers!... I hope it becomes THE Christmas stocking filler for 2011."

Was I chuffed at that? Well, maybe a little bit ;)

@neversarah pointed out her favourite recipe, one from @Beathhigh (Ian Rankin, creator of Inspector Rebus)

"'Rebus' Scotch Eggs' my current fave from #TweetTreats book@janetravers @beathhigh "

to which @Beathhigh replied: 

"Haha: yes, took a lot of work in the kitchen to perfect Rebus's Scotch Eggs...."

@ClodaghMMurphy (author of Girl In A Spin and The Disengagement Ring) tweeted about her own recipe,

"Is that the fried cheese & apple sandwich one? It's dead good, but best to have the cardiac unit on speed dial.;)"

If (when!) you receive a copy of Tweet Treats, and if (when!) you try a recipe, please let me know what you think! You can take a pic and tweet it with the hashtag #tweettreats or tag me on Facebook. You could like Tweet Treats while you're there too, I wouldn't mind at all ;)

Reasons to buy Tweet Treats, Volume 5

So your little darling wants to buy a Christmas present for her teacher.What do you buy? We're all familiar with the phrase 'an apple for teacher', but these days your discerning tutor expects a little bit more. There's always one child in the class who'll present teech with a ludicrously expensive gift, like perhaps something else bearing an apple logo... But you can give something much more thoughtful. And everyone hates that child and his mother, anyway.

There's another old saying that if you give a teacher an apple, she'll eat for a day; but if you teach her how to, um, "apple" she'll eat for the rest of her life. Or something.

So you think giving a teacher a book is a bit like teaching your granny to suck eggs, do you? But teachers love books, and even more than that, they love to encourage children to buy books. With its bright cheery chirpy cover, Tweet Treats will appeal to the kids as a gift, and its useful pages within will appeal to the teacher.




Actually, maybe you should give teacher an apple along with her copy of Tweet Treats and she can learn how to make something with that apple...

Sorted :)

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

News!

Afternoon all!

I know you haven't heard much from me for some months now, but I have been sworn to secrecy. *pious face* Now, however, I can reveal all - Tweet Treats will be out soon! Those fantastic folks at The O'Brien Press are publishing Tweet Treats, which will be released on 10th October, four short weeks from today. You can pre-order it here or here or here... or look for it in any good bookshop from Oct 10 :)

In addition, the good people at Knorr have agreed to sponsor the book, and the superstar who is Marco Pierre White has very kindly donated the foreword! As you can imagine, I am currently dancing like this. :)

As I always planned, I'm still donating all royalties to the incredible organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). They are on the ground at the moment in disaster-struck places like Somalia, and every copy of Tweet Treats sold will directly benefit them.

I want to thank once again every single one of you who donated recipes, told other people about the project and helped to spread the word. Now it's time to ask you all to dig deep once again - buy a copy of Tweet Treats! Hell, buy two. Or ten. Give them to everyone you know for Christmas! G'wan, you know you want to :)

And watch this space for updates!