A Blissfully Spooky Halloween with Coleen Kwan

Coleen Kwan has been a bookworm all her life. At school English was her favorite subject, but for some reason she decided on a career in IT. After many years of programming, she wondered what else there was in life — and discovered writing. She loves writing contemporary romance and steampunk romance. 

Coleen lives in Sydney, Australia with her partner and two children. When she isn’t writing she enjoys avoiding housework, eating chocolate, and watching TV shows like Criminal Minds and Masterchef.

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Halloween Down Under

Here in Australia, Halloween is not a very big tradition, but it is celebrated in some suburbs (and of course retailers love any excuse to sell more merchandise). My children started doing the Halloween thing when they were 5 or 6, but now they wouldn’t be seen dead in a Halloween costume! I sometimes wondered about the mixed messages they were getting—we’d tell them never to accept lollies (ie candy) from a stranger, and yet on Halloween we’d let them go knock on doors literally asking for lollies!

In order not to annoy people, the kids in our suburb only visit houses where there are definite Halloween signs like lanterns, pumpkins, or cobwebs. We usually hang our inflatable skeleton on the front porch to indicate we’re handing out lollies. I put on my battered old witch’s hat and black cape, but I doubt I’d scare anyone. When we first moved into our inner city neighborhood many years ago, there weren’t many kids around because most young couples would up sticks and move to suburbia as soon as they started a family, but these days lots of families have decided to stay put, and it’s great to see more kids at Halloween.

Halloween in Sydney doesn’t have the spooky atmosphere we see in the movies because, for one thing, daylight savings is here, which means the sun sets late, and there’s no dark twilight. Also, summer is just around the corner and the weather is often hot, which means scary rubber masks quickly get discarded and ghoulish paint soon melts off. But none of that matters because the kids have a great time even if they end up with stomach aches from too much sugar.

I’ve dusted off my witch’s hat and filled my bowl with lollies. Happy Halloween, everyone!

She's right where he wants her...

Amidst an ugly divorce and an even uglier scandal, Paige Kerrigan has returned to her parents' estate to hide out until things blow over. While she's enjoying a late-night naked swim, however, she's shocked to find Owen Bellamy— her family's former cute pool boy—standing poolside. Now he's all hot, grown up, and renting the Kerrigan property…and he's definitely not forgiven Paige for how she used to treat him.

Once, the beautiful but spoiled Paige Kerrigan was everything Owen wanted. Now she's broke and Owen finally has his revenge...by offering her a place to stay as his housekeeper. Yet Paige isn't the person he remembers. Instead, she's far more than he imagined, and far more irresistible than is safe. But the last thing Owen can afford is to give his heart to the same woman who once broke it.

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Up For Grabs:

• 1 Kindle copy of Bliss book of Choice

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