Susie, Author at Allison & Busby

Author Blog Awards 2010

22 February, 2010

I’ve just been alerted to the upcoming launch of the Author Blogs Awards – run by CompletelyNovel.com. The aim of this award is “to highlight to readers the great content that you can find in author blogs, reward those authors who write excellent blogs, and encourage other authors to start their own.” Here’s how it […]

Snapshot: Ann Cleeves & Martin Edwards

18 February, 2010

Taken last night at the-one-and-only Goldsboro Books (London) where I joined a merry crowd to celebrate the launch of crime-writers Ann Cleeves’ new book Blue Lightening (a new case for Shetland detective Jimmy Perez) and Martin Edwards‘ new book The Serpent Pool (the latest in his Lake District mystery series). Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online […]

An interesting lesson in crafty marketing…

17 February, 2010

I received an email the other day from a finance company wishing to advertise on our website with a link back to their site. I didn’t think it was appropriate, and said as much, but they insisted it would be a “textual advert” and somewhat hidden within the content on the page. Still unconvinced but […]

Love-sick on a book tour

11 February, 2010

We’re coming up to Valentine’s and perhaps inspired by the fact I watched the Sex & the City Movie again which sees Carrie reading a book Love Letters from Great Men, I googled the topic and enjoyed a few minutes perusing a few of such amorous letters posted on the internet. I can’t help but […]

Train your brain (and have fun in the process)

8 February, 2010

It’s a known fact that the Telegraph Online is an excellent source of news, features, review pages, blogs TV and job listings etc…but were you aware that it offered brain-training excercises too? If not, allow me to introduce you to Word Bubbles – a brain-training game to which I am now seriously addicted and causing […]

Review of It’s Complicated

3 February, 2010

Earlier this week I went to see It’s Complicated – the new movie featuring Meryl Streep as a divorcée , who unexpectedly finds herself having an affair… with her ex-husband. The ex-husband is Alec Baldwin, a man who had left her ten years ago for a yonger woman, and to whom he is currently still […]

More neologisms…

2 February, 2010

I absolutely loved reading all the brilliant entries to our recent Caboose competition – the one where we asked you to supply us with alternative meanings for the word ‘caboose’ – see previous blog. Now I’m delighted to discover that The Washington Post has been running similar neologism contests (in which readers are asked to […]

Best Birthday E-cards

29 January, 2010

Never one to shy away from any kind of excuse for festivity, I am happy to broadcast that today is my birthday. On this note, I confess that I am terrible at remembering other people’s birthdays. And when I do remember it’s usually on the actual day and too late to be able to send a proper […]

Happy Australia Day!

26 January, 2010

G’day cobbers – today is Australia Day! I am always reminded of this since my Aussie boyfriend never lets this day pass without due fanfare. In fact, we had a pre-Aussie day BBQ this weekend – replete with bottles of Crown Lager, marinated prawns on the barbie, Aussie snacks such as Burger Rings, Shapes and In a Biskit Dixie Drumsticks, as […]

Word-play and word-rewind…

22 January, 2010

I love clever word games, play on words etc – and this video takes the biscuit. A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. It was submitted by a 20-year-old in contest entitled “u @ 50” (run by AARP ) and I think it is simply brilliant. (Make sure […]

When Customer Service fails…

19 January, 2010

I should have had Broadband up and running in my house by now. I spent over two hours on the phone with Talk Talk‘s Customer Service last night to find out why it had not been installed as yet. It was a call which involved being passed round every one of their departments, sitting in […]

Why delete one of the best songs?

15 January, 2010

Last week I went to see the musical Chicago at the Cambridge Theatre (and now consequently break out into renditions of Mr Cellophane and All that Jazz when feeling bored). I’d recently rewatched the movie version so the songs were all familiar to me – except for one that is, the one about ‘class’. And it’s probably my […]

What do you mean?

14 January, 2010

Sometimes the written word can be misread or misinterpreted. And there are some things that really shouldn’t be left open to interpretation. When my Yahoo News bulletin flashed up an article from SkyNews about a Japanese student who was arrested after driving for four miles with the body of an 80-year-old pensioner lodged in her […]

Big Brother…and Little Baldwin Brother

8 January, 2010

As mentioned in previous blogs, I have recently moved flat. And in the process, unsubscribed to SKY Digital TV (2010 is all about saving…) which means for about two weeks I have been surviving on terrestrial televion. Which consequently means (and you’ll note it’s taken me a good five days to own up to this) […]

We’re back!

4 January, 2010

WHOOSH! (The sound of something hurtling past) What was that? Oh yes, that would be The Christmas Holidays. Yes, we’re back! (Did you miss us?) We’re sitting here with the heating cranked up, sifting through the mass of emails in our inboxes and getting stuck into work again – in my case armed with copious […]

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

23 December, 2009

I moved house over the weekend and I now finally have a Christmas tree. It’s our last day in the office today and this evening will see me holding a bauble in one hand and a glass of mulled wine in the other – decorating my tree. It will be the perfect way to mark this new start […]

Best viral ads of 2009

22 December, 2009

As we reach the end of the year, it’s inevitable that we are inundated with ‘Best of 2009’ lists. No matter what the topic – best books, best gadgets, best TV moments, best music singles, most viewed YouTube videos… you name it. So, since this year has seen the launch of our new website, and, for me, been an […]

Judging a person by what they read

18 December, 2009

I am currently in between reads. I finished The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and now am impatiently waiting for my sister to finish Andre Agassi’s new autobiography Open so I can read it. I’m a big tennis fan and my sister professes that it has the best opening chapter she’s ever read. So, as I was […]

Xmas tips – free stuff, offers and deadlines

15 December, 2009

A few quick thoughts if you (like me) find yourself in the midst of a last-minute panic about Xmas presents. Don’t miss the chance to win a free book, in time for you to to wrap up and put under the tree by visiting Sleuths’ Ink Blog featuring Richard Jay Parker as the guest blogger. […]

The not-so-Oxford-Dictionary definition for ‘caboose’…

11 December, 2009

We recently ran a competition to see who could come up with the best alternative definition for the word ‘Caboose’ (read our previous blog). Well, let me tell you I’ve never had so much fun getting entries in! You are a funny lot you Allison & Busby fans! Hats off to your imagination! We asked […]

Getting that Christmas feeling

7 December, 2009

This weekend we took my little nephew to the Winter Wonderland fair in Hyde Park for his first experience on a merry-go-round. This was followed by an electric Reindeer ride, video footage of which will no doubt be replayed incessantly to family members over Christmas – what with me looking ecstatic on the back of […]