Yellow Lady Bugs was born of the desire to raise the profile of autistic girls and women, who have long been overlooked, dismissed and unassisted for the past near hundred years. (From the Lady Bugs website: “This includes cis women, transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse individuals, and anyone who was socialised, or identifies as female.”)
I am grateful for the opportunity to join this amazing organisation for this conference and hope I can bring some supportive and encouraging words to attendees.
I was very excited to see a lovely Instagram reader post a story with the cover of my novel Three Gold Coins in Greek! Otherwise, I would have had no idea it had been published … such is the way with international translations… and it appears to be a best seller??
With the help of Google translate, I managed to track down a wonderful review by Katerina Tsemperlidou who says:
“A powerful novel full of love, family ties, agony, humor, drama, oppression and the road to freedom.
The story of the book is also an anthem for Italy, for the Italian food and, especially, for the varieties of Italian cheeses, which play their role in the upheavals that the author creates in the pages of the novel.
Very true, very human, optimistic and tender, a novel that will win your heart. Everything we need to snooze in our corner now in the fall.”
Thank you, Katerina!
If anyone has connections to Greek media, please feel free to let them know I’m happy to do some publicity! 😀
So many of you wonderful readers have asked me about how to get signed copies of The Jam Queens. (Thank you!) Here’s how:
You can now get signed copies of The Jam Queens (for yourself or as a gift) directly from me! The book comes with personalised messages, free gift wrapping (with literal, happy bells on!).
An additional optionalfree extra includes a short cameo video message via email. You’ll find all the details on my website here:https://josephinemoon.com/book-cameo-video/ (Use this link either for just the book or the book + video.)
Free postage Australia wide.
Free gift wrapping.
Personalised messages.
I had so much fun working on early orders of these today and I can’t wait to bring more cheer to more readers around the country. Jo x
These meringue bites are so simple (and inexpensive), they’ll become your go-to treat for any last-minute guests dropping in for coffee, or maybe use them as additional birthday party treats.
This is another recipe from The Cake Maker’s Wish. My cake maker, Olivia, gets to have fun creating a wedding cake for a celebrity couple and adds meringues as embellishments to her design, which is another great use for these mini meringues.
The basic meringue recipe is simple but it’s also flexible as you can change the colour (pink, blue, white, caramel or rainbow unicorn!) or flavour (think vanilla, chocolate, coffee, rose or orange blossom) to suit your taste or needs. Glam them up or keep them simple. They can go as far as your imagination desires.
This one can also be gluten free. (In theory, cream of tartar is gluten free but if you have any concerns about it being processed in the same facility as grains then check with the manufacturer.)
Ingredients
4 egg whites, room temperature… free range, please… I love my chooks 🙂
1 cup of castor sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
Add colours or flavours of your choice (e.g. vanilla, rosewater, orange blossom water, coffee, chocolate powder, strawberry powder, jam etc.). Add these to the desired taste or effect but most flavourings only require about half a teaspoon.
Method
Preheat your oven to 120C.
Beat your egg whites and cream of tartar until they are beginning to hold shape.
Add in your sugar a little at a time, mixing well between additions until the sugar is completely mixed through and the meringue is white, fluffy and holds stiff peaks.
Add your vanilla and/or flavourings or colourings of choice and beat through.
Pipe your mini meringues onto baking trays lined with paper. Bite-sized pieces could be the size of a twenty-cent coin.
Place the trays in the oven and reduce the heat to 90C and bake for around an hour and a half. You want them to cook slowly so that they harden into bites.
Tip
Have fun with these! You could try splitting the meringue into two halves and colouring them differently, then putting both colours into a bag and piping them in a swirl to show both colours.
Since I started writing The Cake Maker’s Wish (all the way back in 2015), my imaginary idea of reviving a dying little village by importing people from around the globe has gone a little more global (and viral).
Today, you can buy an Italian house for only 1 Euro, in the same country that previously gave away castles, monasteries and towers. Ireland has called for residents of Australia and USA to emigrate to the tiny island of Arranmore. Spain has had a problem of abandoned villages across the country, so the officials from Galicia set about giving away one of these villages. In all of these examples, the goal has been to give the properties to someone who has detailed plans to renovate, restore and add capital back into the local area, to save a dying population and/or economy, and restore economic trade to the local business owners. This is exactly the premise that I used for the setting of The Cake Maker’s Wish, though at the time, I didn’t know it was really ‘a thing’.
Where it all began…
In 2015 I travelled to the UK on a writing trip to meet with my UK publisher and agent, to delivery an author talk in Abergavenny in Wales and to do research to look for a new story. I travelled with my dad, my sister and my sister’s baby (who was 14 months old). As part of that trip, we rented a stone cottage in the Cotswolds where we based ourselves for ten days and travelled the area from there.
I was lucky enough to get to know some of the locals. Two of them—men who’d grown up in the village in the fifties—made me a cup of tea to tell me about what life was like when they were young. In that conversation, they lamented the fact that the village had changed so much from when it was owned by the Lord of the Manor, which had created a unified, collaborated feel through the workers, with a thriving community spirit. Over time, as the village was sold off, wealthy investors from the city would buy up cottages as holiday homes, but that meant that most of the properties were sitting empty for most of the year. The village couldn’t function as it used to, no longer community-sufficient, with people having to travel further and further away to find work and services and the house prices forcing workers out of the market.
I was really touched by their sadness and went back to my rented cottage and sat down with a notebook and pen and thought, well, I’m a writer, surely I can bring this village back to life on the page. And that’s how it started.
And now…
I confess to being truly delighted that my imagination has conjured something that isn’t completely out of the box at all, that its themes and efforts of small communities trying to survive and hold onto their connections is very real, and that equally real efforts are happening around the world right now to save them. In my heart, I am a girl from the village. I may have been born in Brisbane but I have now spent almost fifteen years living in small country towns. I know the huge beating hearts that live in them and how important it is to support them and celebrate them. This is exactly what my new novel does.
The Cake Maker’s Wish is out 2 June but you can pre-order it now from all good bookstores and online retailers. I look forward to sharing the imaginary village of Stoneden in the Cotswolds with you very soon!
If you can’t wait for the paperback edition of Buddhism for Meat Eaters, you can listen to it right now through Audible, read by Kate Blakk.
”
Publisher’s Summary
For many years Josephine Moon struggled with the question of eating meat, fervently wishing to live as a vegetarian yet requiring meat in her diet. From Josephine’s philosophical, spiritual and physical battle with eating meat came, Buddhism for Meat Eaters – a book for animal lovers, the environmentally and ethically conscious, and generally thoughtful people who eat meat but perhaps aren’t entirely comfortable doing so.
Open, honest, and utterly without judgement, Buddhism for Meat Eaters encourages listeners to be more mindful about their choices, rather than berating themselves for them, and offers ways for people to live ethically, honestly and guilt-free, whether as a carnivore, vegetarian, or vegan. This highly practical guide also includes workbook-style activities and topics for consideration to guide you in your own journey to making wiser decisions on how you consume, how you live, and how to change the world around you.”
If you’re an Audile member, you can pick it up for just $14.95 or 1 credit. If you love audio books but you aren’t a member, I can highly recommend it. I am a huge fan of audio books and look forward to spending my credit each month.
‘An engaging, challenging and ultimately uplifting guide on how to live a compassionate life in our consumerist times.’
My personal stock of Buddhism for Meat Eaters arrived today and they are gorgeous! I’m still so in love with the cover and the addition of sparkly gold highlights on the finished copies really make it irresistible.
Some stock will start appearing in bookshops over the next couple of weeks, though the official release day is July 1, where all good books are sold.
In just over a month, my second non-fiction title will be on the shelf (2 July). The dilemmas, struggles and answers included in Buddhism for Meat Eaters were ones that had been brewing for around thirty years. I always wanted to be vegetarian (preferably vegan) but my physical body did not agree. I was left with a constant sense of guilt, shame and grief over this struggle–my spirit was willing but my body wasn’t.
For years I kept a journal, thinking I could wrestle out this conflict on the page, until years later I had to accept that I had no answers. I put the journal away, and carried on with my life, never having found the peace I craved.
Then one day, I was lying awake in the middle of the night. It was a full moon and I often struggle to sleep during that lunar phase. I can’t even remember what I was thinking about specifically, but somewhere between midnight and two am, it was like the decades of struggle finally made sense. All the threads came together, and I’d finally begun to find peace in the last place I expected to uncover it: Buddhism.
I jumped up and grabbed by laptop and wrote out a page, then sent it to my agent. This! I wrote. This is what I want to write about! For the record, I don’t actually recommend you send your agent/publisher wild ramblings at two o’clock in the morning as a way of pitching an idea, but in this case, it worked. Haylee said she loved it, asked me to write out some sample chapters, began pitching it before I’d finished writing it, and I was blown away to find that it sold so quickly. Clearly, my struggles with eating meat were not unique to me. There was a market for this book. Certainly, by the number of you who have left me comments saying things like This book was written for me or I need this so much or I can’t wait to read this, I am absolutely not alone in this quandary.
Ultimately, this book is one of hope, of healing and making peace with your body, mind, plate and world. If you are drawn to it, I hope it brings you as much encouragement as it did me.
Jo x
p.s. I love this cover so much. It was designed by Lisa White, who also designed the cover for my first novel, The Tea Chest. I think Lisa truly gets my vibe.
Thank you to all who entered this competition. With your help we raised just over $6,000 for this worthy cause for GIVIT. And a HUGE thank you to the generous authors who donated their books, without which we wouldn’t have had a raffle at all! I’ve no doubt the money will be well used and appreciated by the people who need it most.
Winners:
1st prize: Janine A
2nd prize: Sarah H
3rd prize: Gillian D
I have sent you all an email to let you know and to confirm your postal address.
Authors, I will email you as soon as we have address confirmation. X
Today’s the day!