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FREE books, a rare spectacle and pumpkin soup

Now, I wish I could say these were my shoes and that these photos are mine, but I can’t. I found this photograph online, overcome with a deep sense of jealousy!

It’s not often that the Northern Lights are visible from my country and never in my nearly (ahem!) 60 years have I had the excitement to see them with my own eyes.

But the people living in the north of Greece were lucky enough to see the sky and everything under it seemingly on fire with this vibrant red color on the night of November 5! People posted them on social media from Salonica, from Serres and other parts in the north of my country.

There were talks beforehand that Aurora Borealis might be visible from Corfu αs well, but I found no evidence to attest to that.

However, while searching, I bumped into a very interesting superstition on the island of Corfu concerning the Northern Lights. A Corfiot posted on their Facebook page an old text recording this phenomenon as being visible from Corfu back in 1530. According to that text, the phenomenon was visible for two consecutive nights and it colored the sea, making it look like ‘a basin of blood’.

Three years later, in 1533, a great famine plagued Corfu and according to the locals, St Spyridon, the protector of the island, appeared in an apparition before the crew of a boat. It was filled to the brims with wheat, sailing past the island, headed for Italy. The saint commanded them to change course and dock in Corfu and this is what they did, awestruck by the sight. This miracle is celebrated to this day as the wheat fed the starving Corfiots. Back in that time of utter ignorance, the Corfiots, mystified by the earlier sign from the heavens, connected the two events.

This superstition was solidified in their psyche when in 1940, the Northern Lights amazed the Corfiots in the sky once again, and then WWII began! Furthermore, the bombs falling from the sky during the air raids didn’t hurt the city but kept falling miraculously into the sea instead…

To this day, the Corfiots see the Northern Lights as an omen for either an impending intervention from St Spyridon or a catastrophic event.

Which means I am not sure if I am deflated or relieved that they didn’t get to see it this year, LOL!

I am Greek, so I don’t really celebrate Halloween, but I live with a Brit who likes a little something to mark the day 🙂

So, once again, I went for a pumpkin meal to do just that.

And this year, I made the best Hokkaido pumpkin soup ever. The boiled chestnuts and the cheesepies went down very well with it.

Get the recipe here

 

In my latest newsletter, I am sharing a plethora of FREE kindle books! Check it out!

 

OOPPAAA! SIGN UP TO MY BIMONTHLY NEWSLETTER AND GET 3 BOOKS FROM ME AS A WELCOME GIFT! SEE BELOW FOR THIS OFFER!

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY… SHARING IS CARING! Tweet this to spread some love:

Fun news from a Greek author and FREE books for all! #iartg #freebiefriday #Greek Share on X

 

Get Effrosyni’s FREE books with your signup to her bimonthly newsletter! Fun news from her life in Greece and a load of FREE kindle books in every issue! http://bit.ly/2yA74No

NEW! A historical paranormal romance box set. This is the timeless love story that will stay with you forever. Set in Moraitika, Corfu and Brighton, England. Visit Amazon: https://bit.ly/3HEvMPG
Clean romance short read, FREE with Kindle Unlimited. It’ll transport you straight to Corfu to experience summer in an idyllic Greek seaside village. Visit Amazon: https://bit.ly/3pAP3rf

 

Kelly ran a marathon and wound up running a house. With a ghost in it! Both humorous and moving, with delightful sweet romance, it’s just the ticket to lose yourself reading! Read more on Amazon
Summer love and a mysterious haunting in Corfu! Effrosyni’s debut romance, The Ebb, has received an award from Amazon! Check it out here

Beach fun and sweet romance mixed with magic spells and bird shifters… The Raven Witch of Corfu is an original story that will rivet you with its unrelenting suspense. The final twist will blow your mind!
Available in paperback , box set or 4 kindle episodes!
 
Planning to visit Greece? Check out our FREE guide to south Corfu!

 

For delicious Greek recipes, go here. Are you an author? Check out our FREE promo tips & resources here.
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Frantically waving to the world… 10 years later

I am feeling moved today, and a little overwhelmed. Yesterday, November 1st, marked 10 years since I sent out my very first blog post.

This month also marks 10 years since I published my first novel on Amazon (The Necklace of Goddess Athena), and consequently entering the indie publishing universe for one bumpy yet enthralling ride thus far. This is the picture I posted in that very first blog post 10 years ago… I titled it ‘Frantically Waving Across the Distance’ to introduce myself and ask the world out there to connect with me. Reading the short post now fills me with nostalgia, but also with amazement at how little I have changed since then in the way that I think and express myself.

The only things that make me cringe as I read it are the repetitive mentions to the tax office haha. But hey, in my defense, I wrote this at the heart of the Greek credit crunch and everything was about the lack of money back then. Oh, how little did we know back then about what really matters! But anyway, here is an excerpt, if you’d like to take a peek:

“Would you come with me for a quiet ride along the sparkling lagoon waters that lie ahead? You will find a lot of poetry here, not just in verse, but also in the way of my thinking. By the way, I’m not much of a talker. This quirkiness of mine, in a world full of loud and busy voices, has allowed me to learn more this way through my eager ears and my silence. Furthermore, I’ve always preferred the written word to speaking in order to express myself.

“Although I write novels these days, I started with writing poetry. I have been scribbling verses ever since I was as young as ten and often relished my solitude even then, armed with a notepad and a pen, writing about an anthill in my gran’s garden or about the moon on a clear, starry night. Join me as I experience the world, not through the tired eyes of the forty-something who has just been handed a tax note too many by the postman, but through the clear, full of wonderment eyes of the perpetual child inside me.

“Welcome here on my desert island and hop on that boat with me oh friend; let’s transcend magically the geographical distance between us as we cheer together as one: “Happy travels!” ”

I would like to end this post by offering thanks. To all of you who stuck with me these last 10 years. Authors who mentored me, like Jackie Weger and Carmen DeSousa, authors who helped me tremendously along the way, like Nicholas Rossis and MM Jaye, and even more authors who trusted me by associating with me numerous times, like Amy Vansant,  SR Mallery and Chris Kallias.

Last, but not least, I thank the readers of my blog who have been sharing my posts, like Dr Glen Hepker, Annette Rochelle Aben, and Marina Costa, and, of course, the loyal readers of my novels, like Jean Symonds, Louise Mullarkey, Cheryl Worrall, and many many others. I could not possibly list everyone here but I will hold you all forever in my heart with sheer gratitude.

GO HERE TO READ THAT FIRST POST

 

OOPPAAA! SIGN UP TO MY BIMONTHLY NEWSLETTER AND GET 3 BOOKS FROM ME AS A WELCOME GIFT! SEE BELOW FOR THIS OFFER!

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY… SHARING IS CARING! Tweet this to spread some love:

Frantically waving to the world... 10 years later #indiepub #authorlife #writers Share on X

 

Get Effrosyni’s FREE books with your signup to her bimonthly newsletter! Fun news from her life in Greece and a load of FREE kindle books in every issue! http://bit.ly/2yA74No

NEW! A historical paranormal romance box set. This is the timeless love story that will stay with you forever. Set in Moraitika, Corfu and Brighton, England. Visit Amazon: https://bit.ly/3HEvMPG
Clean romance short read, FREE with Kindle Unlimited. It’ll transport you straight to Corfu to experience summer in an idyllic Greek seaside village. Visit Amazon: https://bit.ly/3pAP3rf

 

Kelly ran a marathon and wound up running a house. With a ghost in it! Both humorous and moving, with delightful sweet romance, it’s just the ticket to lose yourself reading! Read more on Amazon
Summer love and a mysterious haunting in Corfu! Effrosyni’s debut romance, The Ebb, has received an award from Amazon! Check it out here

Beach fun and sweet romance mixed with magic spells and bird shifters… The Raven Witch of Corfu is an original story that will rivet you with its unrelenting suspense. The final twist will blow your mind!
Available in paperback , box set or 4 kindle episodes!
 
Planning to visit Greece? Check out our FREE guide to south Corfu!

 

For delicious Greek recipes, go here. Are you an author? Check out our FREE promo tips & resources here.

 

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Lamb on the stove, a Greek Eurovision song from the 70s, and free books for all

Hello! Thought I’d share with you today my family recipe for lamb prepared on the stove with carrots and spices.

The sauce of this meal tastes divine, thanks to the aromatic spices. The tang of the fresh lemon juice added at the very end is all the money! Some of the spices in the recipe are optional, but I do recommend you use turmeric. I include it in most of the meals that I make. It enhances the taste and offers a wealth of health benefits.

You can enjoy this lamb dish with rice or fries. Personally, I prefer it with rice. Any rice suitable for risotto will do, but I’ve also tried it with Basmati or Jasmine or American long-grain rice mixed with wild rice (see picture above).

For the lamb, any part will do, but make sure to have some pieces with bones in them (shoulder or leg are great) as this adds extra nutrients and taste to the sauce.

GO HERE TO GET THE RECIPE

 

Earlier this month, my husband and I visited the annual local produce festival in Megara that took place at a beautiful park. A chef was making mussel risotto for everyone, and the adorable Bessy Argyraki gave a concert at the open theatre in the park.

I was delighted to see she’d brought along Tolis Papadimitriou, one of my favourite stars in the Greek TV comedy, “Mourmoura”. I jumped at the chance to ask him to pose with me for a selfie after his appearance. You should have seen me, smiling to my ears like a teeny bopper LOL!

Well, actually, if you check out the photos I took that night, you will see one of the selfies I took with him.

By the way, if you’re Greek and you can get Alpha channel’s Mourmoura, don’t hesitate to try it. The episodes have been gems ever since series 1. I don’t think I’ve missed a single one and I’ve watched 10 series so far, LOL!

Are you a Eurovision fan? Then, you may remember Greece’s first big hit in this music contest back in 1977 when Bessie Argyraki, alongside three other Greek youths at the time (Marianna Toli, Paschalis and Robert Williams), sang the beautiful, uplifting song, Mathema Solfege. The rest is history, as they say, seeing that all four youngsters developed in time into quite popular music stars in Greece for decades on end.

Mrs Argyraki continues to entertain the Greek audience today. I enjoyed the concert so much, especially as some of her old songs brought back fond memories from my childhood. As a little girl, I was forever borrowing my mother’s big hairbrush from the dresser to sing Mathema Solfege with my friends, LOL!

If you follow Greek music, I invite you to watch this short video from the concert and get a small taste of the dynamite lady, the perpetual young girl at heart that is Bessy Argyraki. Her passion for singing makes her so. Tireless for two hours, amazing, hilarious with her jokes, adorable. She charmed everyone, even the small kids!

Go here to see pictures from the concert and from the park, too.

Hey, before you go! In my latest newsletter, I am sharing a plethora of FREE kindle books! Check it out here!

 

OOPPAAA! SIGN UP TO MY BIMONTHLY NEWSLETTER AND GET 3 BOOKS FROM ME AS A WELCOME GIFT! SEE BELOW FOR THIS OFFER!

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY… SHARING IS CARING! Tweet this to spread some love:

Fun news from a Greek author and FREE books for all! #bookstoread #greekauthor #greekwriter Share on X

 

Get Effrosyni’s FREE books with your signup to her bimonthly newsletter! Fun news from her life in Greece and a load of FREE kindle books in every issue! http://bit.ly/2yA74No

NEW! A historical paranormal romance box set. This is the timeless love story that will stay with you forever. Set in Moraitika, Corfu and Brighton, England. Visit Amazon: https://bit.ly/3HEvMPG
Clean romance short read, FREE with Kindle Unlimited. It’ll transport you straight to Corfu to experience summer in an idyllic Greek seaside village. Visit Amazon: https://bit.ly/3pAP3rf

 

Kelly ran a marathon and wound up running a house. With a ghost in it! Both humorous and moving, with delightful sweet romance, it’s just the ticket to lose yourself reading! Read more on Amazon
Summer love and a mysterious haunting in Corfu! Effrosyni’s debut romance, The Ebb, has received an award from Amazon! Check it out here

Beach fun and sweet romance mixed with magic spells and bird shifters… The Raven Witch of Corfu is an original story that will rivet you with its unrelenting suspense. The final twist will blow your mind!
Available in paperback , box set or 4 kindle episodes!
 
Planning to visit Greece? Check out our FREE guide to south Corfu!

 

For delicious Greek recipes, go here. Are you an author? Check out our FREE promo tips & resources here.

 

by

A strange event in my sleepy little town and an old Greek movie

The derelict old factory in my seaside little town of Nea Peramos (just 36 kms west of Athens) came to life last month… but only for two nights. The old factory used to produce linen and distribute them all over Greece – the brand name was Peiraiki-Patraiki, and later it was taken over by the paper company, Softex, around the 80s-90s. Then, in the 00s, it was abandoned and left to its fate, to weather away through the decades that followed. The factory, and especially its beautiful facade, became famous all over Greece in the 60s as it became the set of the legendary Greek movie, ‘I Kori mou i Sosialistria’ (My Socialist Daughter) starring the most popular Greek movie stars at the time – Aliki Vougiouklaki and Dimitris Papamichael.

Today, the factory is derelict and it’s always quiet over there, since it’s flanked on both sides by open fields for quite a distance. This is why, as I drove past one evening last month, I found it very peculiar to see cars parked back-to-back along the road, for hundreds of meters before and after the factory building.

What’s more, from a nearby field, I saw youngsters emerging in large numbers onto the road. They were walking along the field on a dirt path that was situated on one side of the building. So, if they were visiting the old factory, why were they coming out via a field and not out the main gate, which remained locked like always?

It was all very peculiar, and my first guess was that perhaps something illegal was going on. A rave party? (if these are, indeed, still happening? I wouldn’t know as I am too old, obviously haha!) Some kind of happening for sure!

The people were just too many, most of them looking barely out of puberty too. Arriving home, I checked for new posts in a local Facebook group where the people of Nea Peramos discuss events, and share advice and information among them.

Sure enough, someone had already expressed their intrigue about the parked cars and the many people sighted near the derelict factory.

‘Not to worry!’ someone commented under the post. ‘It’s just a painting exhibition. It’s happening just this weekend!’

‘Oh, now it makes sense!’ another quipped. ‘I spotted a black Jeep parked outside the building the other day. Some guys were standing at the gate and talking’.

The rest of the comments were complaints, as one might expect. ‘An art exhibition? In our town? But, how come we are not aware of this?’

‘Yes, how come?’ another frustrated local would add. ‘Why didn’t they advertise it anywhere so we can go? Who are these people going there and how did they find out then?’

My own reasonings were similar. If, indeed, this was a legit ‘painting exhibition’ then why didn’t it get advertised properly and openly? Why all the secrecy? The factory gates weren’t even opened. And how was it that the only visitors I saw at the site were youngsters? Surely, middle-aged and even elderly visitors would jump at the chance to visit an ‘art exhibition’!?

To cut a long story short, this same oddity was repeated the next evening, and after that, the factory reverted to its usual ghostly state. And that’s when we got to hear the rest of the story…

As it turned out, this was a street art exhibition, after all, and it had been prepared and opened to the public secretly, on purpose. Whoever planned this, wanted to experiment, apparently, to see if such an event could be advertised secretly and still be a success among the young.

For two years, 20 street artists visited the building under wraps to work on a total of 70 murals!

The team that organised the whole thing gave the project the code name ‘Project Peramo’ (from our town’s name, Nea Peramos). The code name had been whispered from person to person these past two years, making its way online only via private Direct Messages – never posted properly on social media. And it still became a success on the weekend of the opening.

Two years of work resulted to this event, a spotlight of just a few hours. No one knows what will happen to the murals post-event. The only thing I have found that I perceive as good news is that the old factory has recently been acquired by a construction company called Dimand and that another company – Royale Sugar – is planning to operate in the building.

The locals, including yours truly, have grown upset over the past decades to see this old gem left to its fate so this is going to excite everyone – to see it in operation again after twenty odd years.

It seems to be frozen in time, judging from the pictures I saw in a blog post online (in Greek) that reported on the street art event.

In one of the photos, you can see a chart where work shifts were being recorded back in the day. And on another, the sign of the staff canteen sports the old font anyone will recognise from the 70s and 80s…

Go here to see plenty of photographs from the street art event!

UPDATE: In 2024, works in the old factory began under new management and are still ongoing as I write this. I look forward to seeing it operational again!

 

OOPPAAA! SIGN UP TO MY BIMONTHLY NEWSLETTER AND GET 3 BOOKS FROM ME AS A WELCOME GIFT! SEE BELOW FOR THIS OFFER!

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY… SHARING IS CARING! Tweet this to spread some love:

A blogger writes about Greek life in a small seaside town #Greek #blogger #writerslife Share on X

 

Get Effrosyni’s FREE books with your signup to her bimonthly newsletter! Fun news from her life in Greece and a load of FREE kindle books in every issue! http://bit.ly/2yA74No

NEW! A historical paranormal romance box set. This is the timeless love story that will stay with you forever. Set in Moraitika, Corfu and Brighton, England. Visit Amazon: https://bit.ly/3HEvMPG
Clean romance short read, FREE with Kindle Unlimited. It’ll transport you straight to Corfu to experience summer in an idyllic Greek seaside village. Visit Amazon: https://bit.ly/3pAP3rf

 

Kelly ran a marathon and wound up running a house. With a ghost in it! Both humorous and moving, with delightful sweet romance, it’s just the ticket to lose yourself reading! Read more on Amazon
Summer love and a mysterious haunting in Corfu! Effrosyni’s debut romance, The Ebb, has received an award from Amazon! Check it out here

Beach fun and sweet romance mixed with magic spells and bird shifters… The Raven Witch of Corfu is an original story that will rivet you with its unrelenting suspense. The final twist will blow your mind!
Available in paperback , box set or 4 kindle episodes!
 
Planning to visit Greece? Check out our FREE guide to south Corfu!

 

For delicious Greek recipes, go here. Are you an author? Check out our FREE promo tips & resources here.