the smooth with the rough...

This will be brief, for reasons I'll explain in a mo...

First the smooth... My absolute star of a critique partner has just got back to me about Suite Seventeen and she loves it! Wahey! She says that in places I've even managed to convey the emotions of the 'other' character in a first person narrative... which I think is quite a nifty achievement, though I say it myself! I feel so very very much better about the book now. I did subconsciously sort of love it, even when it was behaving badly, but after the high of Entertaining Mr Stone, I was so frightened that anything that came after it would be a let down. But it seems that Annie and Valentino's story works after all...

But there's always a rough, isn't there, and in this case it's my ****ing, ****ing broadband connection which went kerpuft at around four o'clock with no warning and for no apparent reason. Bastard thing! Bastard, bastard Orange for being so bastarding useless... I know they are, because there's a whole message board about the problems people have with them. I will give them until tomorrow morning, and then I will ring up and berate them... much good it'll probably do me. Now any writer worth their salt would think, goody, no internet distractions... but not me, I've spent hours trying various troubleshooting manoevers. None of which worked.... obviously. And I'll probably go on fretting and achieving nothing until I get it back!

So, folks, if things go a bit quiet here for a while, it's 'cos the broadband thing was a bigger problem even than I feared... Keep your fingers crossed for me, eh?