I’m so excited to have Jayne Hoogenberk, one of the amazing gals from eHarlequin here to visit with us today. Like so many of the Blaze authors, I started my writing journey on eHQ –its a fabulous place!! If you haven’t checked it out, you really need to. But first, check out Jayne’s visit
~~~~
For those readers who don’t know me, my name is Jayne Hoogenberk and I manage the online community at eHarlequin.com and help facilitate the conversations between our authors and readers in a series of spotlight discussions on books and authors in our Forums, on our Blogs and in our scheduled online chats. In fact we have over 200 authors in our social blogging network there! In addition I’m responsible for all of our social media properties on the web AND I produce a number of book trailers for selected Harlequin series and single title books. You’ll find us on pages at Shelfari, Facebook, YouTube, GoodReads, LibraryThing amongst others in addition to our Twitter account, @HarlequinBooks. As we at Harlequin like to say, ”Wherever women are.”

Harlequin has a longstanding tradition of being where women are beyond the traditional bookstore, and we recently celebrated 60 years of providing outstanding reading entertainment for women. We have a selection of FREE downloads at www.tryharlequin.com where you’ll find a taste of everything we offer including Leslie Kelly’s fabulous BLAZE title Slow Hands which earned a 4 1/2 stars from Romantic Times. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you take this opportunity to nab it, but be prepared for an unputdownable read. You may have to cancel your afternoon plans!

So you’re probably wondering what we do online to engage and connect with our readers in all these online spaces where women are? Well for one thing, consider this an early invitation to SAVE THE DATE for December 15th. That’s the date for our annual Holiday Party in our online community at eHarlequin.com. We invite as many authors as we can stuff into your computer, to raise a glass of virtual eggnog and hobnob with our readers in a series of discussions throughout the day (to accommodate the time zones of our international readers) and the highlight is a 3 hour live chat in the evening. I do hope you consider joining us for the fun, and prizes galore and to share holiday cheer with your favorite authors, and yes our BLAZE ladies will be there as always. How often do you get to chat with them in REAL time??

If you need the occasional kick in the pants to get reading after a slump or having trouble deciding which book to pull from your TO-BE-READ pile, I highly recommend our Reading Challenges. Pick one of our fun mini-challenges, countdown, theme or TBR games to gear up your reading and get you turning the pages, and while you’re at it, why not create a community profile and start reviewing the books you’ve read so you have a record of your reading adventures in our community? You just might meet some new friends and find some book recommendations you haven’t thought to try!

Have you ever tried one of our online stories? We publish weekly and daily online stories at eHarlequin.com and you can read and discuss them with the authors as each chapter is published in our companion discussions. We even have a FREE library of stories there so you can sample one from every line we publish . Our online read discussions are lots of fun and are a great way to share your thoughts on how you feel after reading each chapter and where you think the story is going and how it’s going to end. Right now we’re talking with B.J. Daniels in her discussion of A Forever Love and Wendy Warren about Daniel’s Gift, why not join us?

Check out our Forums for discussions on our Series books and Single Titles and if you have a hankering to write one of your own then you really should join the aspiring authors on our Write Stuff board. Did you know that over 50 of our Community members have sold to Harlequin and Silhouette through the years we’ve been hosting writing related discussions? We host live editor chats as well where an acquiring editor joins us to share just what exactly she/he’s looking for in the PERFECT book for their lines, so do check our schedule often. In fact this November we’ll be hosting our own Harlequin version of the popular NANOWRIMO contest where aspiring authors are challenged to write an entire novel through the month of November with encouragement and advice from our authors, so do check us out!

So please FRIEND us on Facebook to keep tabs on what we’re up to on a daily basis, and follow us on Twitter for up to the minute news and information, and if you’re a member of any of the major social networking sites I noted above please stop by and say hello and catch up with us there, and if we’ve missed one you think we should be on, by ALL means let me know. We’ll be waiting for you!

Happy Reading!
Jayne

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 28th, 2010 at 6:00 am and is filed under Guest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.