Sweet Charity

Morning all! Today the Tweet Treats blog tour heads to Bolton in England to talk about charity and how it doesn't just have to be dull and boring and stuff. And junk.

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The tour host today is @BoltonBulls, themselves a charity trying to raise funds for their wheelchair basketball team. You could donate to them while you're there, if you felt so inclined; or you might even win a pair of tickets to the see the Stone Roses! Read the Tweet Treats guest post here.

Remember, all this week you could win a free signed copy of Tweet Treats over at @jonpinnock's blog here. There are some good entries so far, stretch your brains and keep them coming.

If (when!) you try a recipe from Tweet Treats, let me know what you think! Tweet an opinion with the #tweettreats hashtag, or even take a pic to tweet or to tag Tweet Treats on Facebook.

As ever, you can just buy your own copy by clicking the link below. Thanks and happy tweeting! :)

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!

Nostalgia and Sleb-Sluttery

Huge thanks to @NettieWriter for hosting last week's giveaway, and generating lots of giggles along the way! You can check to see if you've won here. If you didn't, don't despair - there's another chance starting today!

Now, today I'm feeling nostalgic. Ah, nostalgia! Doesn't it make you feel all warm, fuzzy and, well, nostalgic?

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Today's stop on the blog tour (with a new giveaway) is with the original sleb-slut @mduffywriter. While collecting recipes for Tweet Treats, Maria found she had a rather uncanny (read: scary) ability to chat to celebrities and to bring them around to her way of thinking. I owe her a lot of thanks since a goodly proportion of the celebs who feature in Tweet Treats wouldn't have been there without here. Anyhoo, you can read her version of events here.

Having Maria blogging today reminded me of another piece of writing that she did about Tweet Treats. I blogged about it a year or so ago, but just thought I would reproduce it here. Enjoy!

In Twitford all the fairies came

to hear their fairy queen.

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She had a great idea and

was hoping they’d be keen.

So Fairy Jane began to tell

her real exciting news.

She needed help to form a plan;

they didn’t dare refuse.

Although they quite admired their Queen;

an energetic fairy,

she sometimes donned a grumpy face

that made her seem quite scary.

She never wore the sparkling stuff,

or fairy wings so pretty;                                                              

preferring dark & gloomy clothes

to make her seem more gritty.

She didn’t drink the fairy dew

but loaded up with coffee.

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Instead of nibbling magic stars,

she just chewed gum and toffee.

But when they heard her plan in full,

they all became excited.

They’d help her every way they could;

Team Fairyland united.

A plan to gather recipes

was what she had decided.

She’d surely quickly reach her goal

with all the help provided.

Now very soon the word was spread

of Fairy Jane’s new mission.

And fairies all applauded her

for having such ambition.

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The recipes were flooding in,

but Jane still wanted more.

Celebrities would do the trick;

she’d pound their Twitter door.

The wizards and the fairies who

were helping Fairy Jane,

would listen to her nagging;

(God, she really was a pain!)

The weeks went by, the team worked hard,

and Jane soon cracked a smile.

She realised her team was fab;

they’d made it all worthwhile.

No longer did the fairies fear

the fury of their queen.

For now she only ever smiled

and never more was mean.

She even tried some sparkly clothes

and ditched her gloomy cloak.

She started to endear herself

to all the elfin folk.

And so she called a meeting where

she promised all her team

she’d bring them to Avoca for

some scones with jam and cream!

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.

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 

Momentousness!

It's Monday, I got feck-all sleep, but I'm buzzing. Why? Because THIS arrived in the post! (Thanks Donna @OBrienPress!)

Sure, I'd seen the image dozens of times before, but there's something very special about holding it in your hands for the first time. Somehow it looks different (though still crazy cute!). For me, the best moment was this: 

It's been a dream of mine to have a book published ever since I was a little girl, and to finally see my name on the spine of a book... well, my eyes might have gotten a little moist. I'm only saying they might have, mind you, cos as we all know I'm tough as old nails. Ahem. 

Not only that, but as @barbarascully pointed out, I'm sharing the front cover with non other than Marco Pierre White! Ulp. It might sound bananas, but that had never really occurred to me before. It's a good thing I'd just eaten, or I might well have fainted :)

O'Brien Press have an amazingly talented in-house designer (looking at you, Emma!) who took the vague ramblings that passed for my attempt at describing how I pictured the layout of the book, and produced THIS! 

Pastel... Pretty...!

Anyway, enough of such gratuitous self-congratulation. I shall flagellate later in atonement. 

The important stuff - where can you buy this wondrous tome? And when? Well, it's available on 10th October, though you can pre-order now, and the book is available from all of these fab places:

O'Brien Press   Amazon    Book Depository     Easons     Dubray Books    Waterstones   

and loads of great bookshops all over Ireland and the UK! 

Tune in tomorrow for some more utter fabulousness from a really wonderful person! Until tomorrow, you'll have to guess who that is :)

Reasons to buy Tweet Treats, Volume 3

Home-baked Betty. She's the office Mammy, the one who likes to mind everyone else; the one who always has paracetamol in her bag, or tissues, or wet wipes if you've spilled mayonnaise on your blouse. Betty is the one who instigated Fattening Friday, a day for home-baked cakes, buns and scones - always made by Betty.

That would be great, if Betty's buns weren't about as appetising as Hagrid's rock buns. Poor Betty, she's just so busy being mother hen that she doesn't have time to read recipes properly. The last sponge cake she brought in was more like a lump of asbestos, and just about as good for your health!

Do Betty a favour, give her a copy of Tweet Treats. The recipes are so short, sweet and easy to use that even Betty can bang out some light and fluffy scones, or a really tasty banana bread.

This banana bread was made from a recipe by @mduffywriter, and it's yum!

While you're at it, get yourself a copy of Tweet Treats too, and give Betty a run for her money. Try some golden syrup cookies, or orange biscuits maybe... You'll surprise yourself and realise how quick and easy it is to throw together some home baking when you don't have to wade through pages of ingredients, method and guff about the history of a recipe!

Sorted :)

Reasons to buy Tweet Treats, Volume 2

Dear old "Agony" Aunt Agatha. She means well, I suppose, but secretly she just wants everything her own way. Remember last year, when she said there was too much suffering in the world, and that she didn't want any frivolous Christmas presents? Remember how you went online and bought a goat, put the certificate in a charity Christmas card and presented it to her proudly on Christmas day? Remember her face when she opened it, and how she kept sneakily looking in the card as though she was sure she'd missed her real present? And will you ever forget her counting up her presents at the end of the day and complaining that everyone else got more presents than she did?! So much for €50 worth of goat.

There are some people who, despite their best intentions, just really want to receive a physical present to look at and ooh and ahh over. This year, buy "Agony" Aunt Agatha a copy of Tweet Treats!




 It's pretty, it's useful, it's cool and funky. It's flat and book-shaped, therefore much easier to wrap than a goat. Every copy sold directly benefits Medécins sans Frontières so that Aunt Agatha will feel that she's doing good in the world; and at €7.99 or £6.99 you'll have plenty of change from €50 to throw in a couple of chickens or even a beehive to match Aunt Agatha's hairdo. 
Sorted!