This little piggy went to America - wee-wee-wee

The American market is such a difficult one to break into, particularly for books written in British English and with a very British sense of humour.

Despite doing very well in the UK, 'Sell the Pig' had done nothing more than land a tentative trotter on the other side of the pond. But thanks to the most amazing marketing help from my new publisher Ant Press, this little piggy has now got all four trotters in the trough Stateside and is the Amazon No 1 bestseller in its Senior Travel category both in US and UK markets.

I had so much help from New York Times bestselling author Victoria Twead. Sell the Pig went on special promotion for the month of October through various outlets but notably through the amazing BookBub who were fantastic to work with and incredibly helpful. It was a nail biting time waiting to see if the sales would start to go up and huge thanks to Victoria for being constantly at the end of a message to reassure me, and to put up with my squeaks of delight as little old Pig started its steady climb up through the rankings.

There are more than 1.5 million books in Amazon's Kindle store and Pig made it up to #No 54 of all of them, a truly remarkable effort for a modest little first instalment memoir in a fairly specialised market. And Pig's spectacular rise has had a great effect on little brother 'Is That Billinge Lump?' which has also reached No 1 in its category on more than one occasion.

So now I suppose I had better get on and write Part III. I promised to start it this winter. As we often get snowed up here, it's good for making me sit down and write as there is not a lot else I can do. They are threatening us with the worst winter in 100 years, so I dread to think what that is going to be like. Just as long as I still have electricity - my hands are getting too bad to hand write a full length book these days!

A welcome break in the Cantal after the launch of Sell the Pig sequel

Giving birth to a book is an exhausting process, I can tell you! Once 'Sell the Pig' sequel 'Is That Billinge Lump' was safely published by Ant Press, I was in need of a break, a bit of R&R. So I headed once more to the beautiful and peaceful Lac des Estives at Montgreleix in the Cantal.

I had an old friend staying so took him with me and once again we were lucky enough to have the pretty and funky yellow chalet I stayed in in July, with its peaceful views of cattle grazing on the summer pastures. My friend was really blown away by the fabulous scenery and the abundance of wildlife.

He also quickly became a convert to the fabulous food in the Auvergne, and was delighted with how friendly and welcoming the people are. On our last evening, we ate at table with the hosts and about a dozen French guests, from various parts of France.

We had a lovely time driving round the beautiful area, seeing all the sights, including watching a short toed eagle hunting. Of course, the dogs, Ci and Fleur came too. Fleur was having a blonde moment and kept wriggling out of camera shot, and even Ci would only show his rear view!

On our way back, we visited the national Maquis memorial and museum  at Mont Mouchet. As my friend said, if it hadn't been for the French resistance stopping the Germans in their tracks in the Massif Central and preventing them from getting to Normandy, some of us would not be here today. His father drove a mine-seeking tank on the beaches.

We also visited the splendid Garabit viaduct, another stunning example of Eiffel engineering.

So the sequel is safely launched and it and Sell the Pig are taking it in turns to hold the No 1 and 2 slots in their category on Amazon.

As soon as the winter nights start drawing in so I can't be tempted to play outside, I promise to make a start on Part 3 of the tale of Tottie's adventures in France.

Another freebie coming SOON

I'll be doing another FREE prize draw to win a signed paperback copy of Sell the Pig at the end of May/beginning of June. As usual there will be an easy-peasy question to enter the draw, and you'll be able to find the answer on the Facebook page, often amongst the photos. So if you want to start swotting up, the question will be about Mother's family and the answer is in her album. Not that I'm giving you a clue or anything.



If you've not yet discovered the Sell the Pig page on Facebook, do please stop by and say hello, and don't forgot to click Like on the page, so you won't miss out on any of the FREE prize draws coming up in the future.

You'll also find some snippets from the sequel to Sell the Pig, which is well under way and I hope will be available in Kindle format by the autumn.

Plus there's some photos of the first ever book signing for the paperback version. Like most things in France, it took place over a very convivial lunch at the Bar le St Thomas.

If you're not lucky enough to win the next prize draw and you'd like your own signed copy, you can get one direct from me and pay by PayPal or cheque - just contact me here for more details.

See you on the Facebook page?

Famous author of Sell the Pig, Tottie Limejuice

Some authors have to wait for years after their demise to get this sort of recognition, but I just had to share what my friends David and Tiger have been up to ;)

Have dog, will move to France

As promised, I decided to start this blog to support my book, Sell the Pig. Those of you have read it may like to see photos of the main characters, to put faces to names.  And those who have not yet read it might enjoy reading a few excerpts to see if you might like to.

A very brief recap, it's about the, some would say, bizarre decision for my rather unusual family to up sticks and move to France together. Unusual in that the family consisted of Mother, aged 89, and pleasantly barmy with vascular dementia, Brother, a manic-depressive alcoholic with a double decker bus as a plaything, Meic, my larger than life border collie, and me, a decidedly dotty middle-aged freelance copywriter.

For those of you interested in dogs, here's a bit more about Meic.  For those not interested in dogs, my usual advice - look away now.

"I hadn't exactly intended to get Meic. When I'd left my riding centre in Wales, in the early 90s, to move to Dorset, I had a small black collie cross named Mady. She came from a rescue centre, where she was called Mandy, but she was so definitely not a Mandy, I just dropped the N and she became Mady."

Mady

"She was very happy as an only dog. She was a very easy and biddable dog, though inclined to be a little bit bossy with other dogs. She did on one occasion up-end my friend's lovely Staffie, Camilla, whilst giving away a huge amount of weight in the contest. That's how tough and determined she was."

"I wasn't in the market for another dog. There was no danger at all of my wanting one when Anna-Lou showed me the remaining two puppies. But then I saw Meic. Or Mott, as he was called at that time. And something cracked. To Mady's intense disgust, she found herself sharing the back of the car on the way home with a squeaking, peeing, puking puppy who had not had much experience of car travel."

Meic, aged 5 months

"I'm sure there are those amongst you, if you've read thus far, who will be thinking why not just put him to sleep and move and get a new dog once installed in France? Trouble is, I'm a bit of a softie with my dogs and always apply the Toy Rule – as long as a dog is still quite happy to play with a favourite toy, there's too much life there to extinguish, in my humble opinion."

Meic, demonstrating the Squeaky Toy Rule

So there you have a couple of doggy faces to put to names.  The rest is up to you, dear reader.  Tell me what you would like to see photos of and I shall do my best to post them here for you.

A blog about a book

Well, I've finally done it. After writing many blogs for clients, I've given in to pressure and am starting my own. Those of you who have kindly read Sell the Pig http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sell-the-Pig-ebook/dp/B007AU6NZY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1332959871&sr=1-1 have all said you would have liked to have seen pictures of the people and places I wrote about, and are looking forward to a sequel.

This blog is the place where I hope to give you some snippets. It's where I also hope people will pop in and feel free to leave their comments, good or bad, about Sell the Pig and to tell me what things in particular you'd like to read about in the sequel.

I'll try and post some pictures but I'm not very techie and it will take me a while to get the hang of this. I'm also not the sort of writer who thinks it's essential to blog every five minutes. So I'll probably only update it about once a week but I promise to try to keep an eye on things and respond as quickly as I can to your comments.

If I don't, just give me a poke on either Facebook http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000073567904  or Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/tottielimejuice and I'll come whizzing back to respond.

Those of you who have read Sell the Pig will know that Mother and my dog Meic were two of the most important characters, and central to the whole business of moving to France. So it's only right that my first picture should be of the two of them together, long-suffering Meic in his role of Santa's little helper, visiting Mother in the home in St Helens where she was so well looked after.

Thanks for following me on my little blog and thanks for all your kind interest in both my book and my somewhat unusual family!