Thursday 19 April 2007

last day of the 'holidays'...

Well, I've been moaning and whining about having no focus and not knowing what project to work on next, haven't I? Well, now I know... and am going to have to extract the old digit and get my enormous posterior into gear!

Received an unexpected phonecall from my editor this morning, for a chat about various book ideas my agent had sent to him. We batted various plot bits to and fro, and the upshot is that it looks like I'll be doing a sequel, or linked book, to GOTHIC BLUE! Now, please remember, nothing's set in stone yet, but the new title is provisionally called GOTHIC HEAT and will be out next year...

In GB, one of the supporting players, Paula, has a brush with the baddie, the sorceress Isidora Katori... and some time after the action of the first book, Paula discovers this incident had a more lasting effect on her than she's realised. In deep trouble, she seeks help from bad boy professional mystic and sometime new age con artist Rafe Hathaway and together they go in search of answers at the mysterious Sedgewick Priory... which seems to have disappeared into a kind of English Bermuda Triangle. I only have these bare bones of a plot, as yet, but one or two v. interesting titbits are already beginning to bubble...

Editor and I also talked about a fun and very naughty contemporary, to do after GH is in the bag... and this one will be the escapades of a librarian who drawn into a web of sexual gameplaying by an enigmatic admirer who sends her lots of outrageous notes and emails and text messages... My idea is that this book is loosely set in my Stoneworld universe, and familiar settings and characters may well pop up in the course of the story...

So, in honour of finding out what to do next... I've done absolutely nothing at all today!!! But, like I say, this is the last day of doing nothing, as I can no longer afford to fritter my time away...

Tomorrow's to do list includes:
  • check proofs of my story Watching the Detective
  • web design for a client
  • couple of invoices
  • send parcel to a prize draw winner
  • develop proper outline of Gothic Heat
  • read stuff on mysticism, tantra
  • begin rereading Gothic Blue so I know what I wrote in it
  • try not to panic and run around waving my arms about!

--
Telly: Sea of Souls
Chocolate: lemon drizzle cake instead
Mood: good
Writing: thinking about Gothic Heat
Reading: Passion of Isis
RSI/FMS: bit sore, not too bad


Don't forget Portia's Promos - new stuff being added all the time!

5 comments:

Saskia Walker said...

"try not to panic and run around waving my arms about!"

I love that one LOL Must put it on my list too. :)

Wow, this is all super news for us PdC readers. GOTHIC HEAT is a fab title, I approve immensely. :D

Anonymous said...

Sounds great. And as a librarian myself, it'll be fun to see what you come up with!

Portia Da Costa said...

Glad you like that title, Saskia... I think it's perfect. I had the title long before I had any ideas for the book! :)

Yeah, Nicolette, I'm an ex librarian myself, so I can draw on that experience for my background. It's a long time since I worked in a library though... they were still using cards and tickets when I worked there!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, we've moved on since then! We're more like shops now.

Alison Tyler said...

Congratulations, Wendy!
That's great news...
Alison