Yikes, I'm really going to San Francisco!

Yes, the time has finally arrived! I'm just chilling at the moment before doing my final packing, and then this evening, it's off on the first stage of my long journey to San Francisco. Spending a night at a hotel at Leeds/Bradford airport, so we're on the spot for our 5am check-in... eek!

Not sure if I'll be able to keep in touch while I'm away [I'm a rubbish blogger when I'm home!] but there may be Tweets to the right, if my phone will work properly in the US, and there may even be mini blogs from my phone, although not many, because it'll be expensive.

So, hope to have some nice piccies when I get back, and lots of stories to tell about the conference and all the fun I'll have with my mates, old and new.

Au revoir and all that... :)

Test

Just fiddling

---- 
Sent using a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

A strange and wonderful day!

First of all, here are my newly dyed eyelashes, ready for RWA. They might not look anything special, but believe me, they look twice as long as they did before, due to the pale tips now being a beautiful shade of blue-black. :) Note also the tidy brows as opposed to the previous Neanderthal Babe look...

Today's big news broke, however, just as I was setting off for the La Femme Beauty Rooms. Got a phone call from my agent, with various bits of news... and the big kicker of me having sold four short stories/mini novellas to Spice Briefs!!!

I can barely believe this. In fact I keep waiting to wake up. I was very, very cautiously hopeful about these stories, but the reality of selling them still seems amazing. I've actually only written two of them. One is A Gentlewoman's Predicament, my naughty Victorian thingie, and the other is Twice the Pleasure, a menage a trois story, which is the first in a trio of shorts entitled Risque Reunions, all based around a ten year school reunion. I just have outlines for stories #2 and #3, but they're pretty clear in my mind, and shortish, of course, so I can't wait to get my teeth into them and polish them off too.

The timing of this news is fantastic too, and will help no end with my confidence levels at RWA! At the moment I feel as if I could almost float across to San Francisco, no jet required!

More news as and when it breaks...

My RWA spending money!

Have been to the Post Office and got myself some dollars for my trip to America... although not quite as many as shown above! LOL! I don't think the bills for drinks and snacks and coffees and souvenirs will quite come to $26 millon...

Have also had my bushy eyebrows groomed into an nice neat feminine shape as opposed to my usual Denis Healey style... Tomorrow, my pale and whispy eyelashes go dark... :)

Wahey, this is *so* the result I wanted!!!! :)

Your STAR WARS Identity created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Darth Vader YOU ARE DARTH VADER! You are the sore loser of the group. No one can have a say unless yours still wins. You need to loosen up more and let someone else win from time to time! Darth Vader 100% Princess Leia 90% Boba Fett 90% Jabba the Hutt 80% Chewbacca 70% R2-D2 70% Han Solo 60% C-3PO 60% Yoda 50% Luke Skywalker 50%

This is me to a tee! LOL

I found this quizz at Kristie [J]'s blog....

He's back!!!!!

RECKLESS by Saskia Walker

I've just finished devouring this delicious book by my dear friend and crit partner, Saskia Walker!

I really loved this book, and it's not because Saskia and I are mates. No, this is a terrific, highly readable erotic romance, and it would have delighted me if I hadn't the slightest idea who Saskia was... :)

The heroine is Katrina, an art valuer, who goes to the Catalonia region of Spain to assess and catalogue the great collection of a prominent Catalan family. When she gets there, she becomes entangled in an intriguing mystery. All is not as it seems, and as the story unfolds family secrets are revealed and masks ripped away to uncover the true nature of the various central characters.

Katrina is a lovely heroine. She seems very real and three dimensional, not some idealised kick ass super-vixen or anything. She's very much at a cross roads in her life, and she's reaching out for new experiences and to expand her horizons after a disappointment. As the title suggests, sometimes she's a bit reckless, and behaves very daringly, but that only makes her all the more endearing and likeable, and easy to identify with.

And the men? Well, I can't say too much about them for fear of giving away too much about the exciting romantic suspense plot. In the beginning, there are *two* hot hunks who could quite easily be the hero, but as the story unfolds, the right man emerges as Katrina's love interest, and he's hypnotically ultra masculine, mysterious and complex. Totally yum!

The region of Catalonia - esp. Barcelona - and art itself are also kind of characters in the book too. Saskia's descriptions are lush and evocative, really bringing out the vibrant character of that part of Spain. I went there myself, many years ago, and reading Reckless took me right back to that trip and stirred up great memories. And Saskia also really knows and loves her art, which comes across clearly in the book in the form of Katrina's appreciation of and response to the beautiful works she has to catalogue.

Reckless is a page turning romantic suspense story, but also sublimely erotic, with toe curlingly sensual love scenes that sizzle on the page and make you wish you were right there in the Catalan moonlight with a mysterious, darkly passionate stranger making desperate love to you! Phoooarrggh!

Read more about this cracking book here... along with a gorgeous excerpt!

Gratuitous Ed Norton pic

As Walter Fane in The Painted Veil, which I'm currently watching...

I probably like this guy for the same reasons I like Vincent D'Onofrio. He's a quirky, detailed, supremely talented actor... and he looks hot in a non stereotypical way. :)

another reason why women might ogle my bosom

Last week, my buddy Saskia remarked on the fact that she couldn't stop looking at my chest, because of my Johnny Depp tee shirt. Well, hell, here's another reason why she might look, or indeed any other woman might... Not for my frontage, but for the divine Adam Ant, in full war paint.

I blame Allposters for this extravagance. They're always sending me emails about money off deals. And I can't resist. I must say that this particular tee is a snug fit, due to there only being American 'L' size available, rather than 'XL'. Now I'm not enormously busty, but this tee does cling rather more fondly to my elderly boobs than I'm used to, although obviously people will be looking at Adam, *not* my gazongas. LOL

But, I don't know what larger women in America do for good, neat fitting tee shirts, when US XL only just fits a medium-fat bird like me...

More German Covers

Here's the German cover of GOTHIC BLUE, which is nicely 'blue' and fairly provocative, but at least tastefully free of too much tit and bum. The title has been translated as 'The Castle of a Thousand Sins', which I rather like. :)

I also received a copy of Wicked Words 4 in German this morning too, which contains my story Screen Dream [aka Behind the Screen], but that is a bit tit and bummish, so here's a link if you want to see it.

Unersättlich: Scharfe Stories

The Mad Hatter

Here's a piccie of my new bush hat/sun hat that I just got for my trip to RWA. It's for just in case we choose to go out for a stroll and the sun is bright. I'm not one for exposing my lily white face to the rays, and also with my hair being so chemicalised so brutally, it's not a great idea to get too much sun on that, either. I think the chapeau looks quite nifty, even allowing for me looking like a dead dog due to lack of makeup. :)

In other news, I had a sleepless night, mulling over something, so I feel pretty knackered today. I've made my peace with the issues that were bugging me, and actually see positive spins now, but it's left me weary. I may have forty winks in a minute, or, if I can't nod off, I might relax with Saskia Walker's gorgeous book RECKLESS, which I'm currently loving and savouring.

In even *more* news, I've been interviewed again! This time it's at the wonderful WE WRITE ROMANCE site.

Click here to learn some not particulary dirty secrets about me!

I.am.a.serious.writer not a.kink.penning.freak... Yeah, right... LOL

The summit of Mount To Do

I have an enormous amount of jobs to do today! A veritable mountain of them, and if this peak was the list, it only represents the summit... there's a lot of crap to be dealt with in the foothills too...

I've got emails to send, quite important ones too. I've got parcels to wrap up ie. returning a hat I bought for which my head is too big [no jokes!]. I've got to ring up my bank about some tedious stuff - it's good that they have security measures in place, but it makes for a time sink for us law abiding citizens, honestly! I've got a story I ought to be getting on with, due on the 21st. I've got a new book to get stuck into!!!! I'd love to write some more proposals and outlines. I've web stuff to do, invoices to send. Emails to chase up that probably never arrived because my stupid crapacious ISP [which I will be dumping after RWA, I think] never sent them or got them lost because their anti spam measures seem to allow spam through, whilst blocking bona fide mail...

And that's just a fraction of it... and I'm still sitting here, dawdling over my breakfast and not yet dressed... sigh...

Here's Johnny!

If you've been over to my buddy Saskia Walker's blog today, you'll have read about her reaction to the tee shirt I wore yesterday for our authors' lunch... a rather nifty number, tributing a certain Mr Depp...

So, I thought that you might like to see it!

Of course I'm not quite as svelte as the young lady in this picture, but you get the general idea. And the logo itself is pretty apt too, as I have a tendency to blub at the slightest thing, so even if I'm not a girl, and haven't been for a long, long time, I'm certainly one of the world's natural cry babies!

During our lunch, Saskia gave me a signed copy of her new release, RECKLESS. Now I've already read some excerpts and tasters of this sumptuous book, so I've been dying to get my mitts on a copy of it! Was so desperate that I started reading on the way home on the bus... nearly missed my stop too, because I was so absorbed in the hot opening scene between heroine Katrina and suave Spanish stud, Sergio. Awesome stuff! And the fantastic writing is complimented by a wonderful, evocative cover too... take a look, at Saskia's blog.

Daily Tweetage

• 23:23 Daily Tweetage: 23:23 Daily Tweetage: 23:54 Daily Tweetage: 00:40 Daily Tweetage: 07:24 Oh dear, I'.. tinyurl.com/6foo5o
• 15:37 Just back from fab lunch with Saskia Walker! Planning for RWA and celebrating her Spice sale. Had a wonderful time, as ever. She's a doll!
• 21:52 Cata Fabulous... and a jolly good day!: Visit CataRomance Sensual today and read an interview with .. tinyurl.com/5hmmxw

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Cata Fabulous... and a jolly good day!

Visit CataRomance Sensual today and read an interview with me! :)

And there's also a lovely review of MAGIC AND DESIRE - containing my story ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT...

Have had a lovely day... mainly due to stepping out to lunch with my wonderful writing buddy, Saskia Walker! Lots of lovely chat, and planning for RWA, and generally having a laugh... I treasure these lunches, and I can't wait to travel to America with Saskia and Madelynne. It's going to be a hoot! :)

Daily Tweetage

• 23:23 Daily Tweetage: 23:54 Daily Tweetage: 00:40 Daily Tweetage: 07:24 Oh dear, I'm off to the dentist t.. tinyurl.com/5qabkq
• 08:52 Gonna send off a short story today! Have a good thought, folks... also for another story out with the same editor. Been waiting a while...
• 08:52 Stories...: Spent most of yesterday in my normal pursuit of mildly fretting about a variety of topi.. tinyurl.com/65shnj
• 10:42 Wahey, have started my 'burlesque' story and done 600 words. Am quite liking it too. :)
• 15:21 1K done on the burlesque story, and still liking it!
• 22:06 Just ordered some new tee shirts for RWA! Went a bit mad...

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Stories...

Spent most of yesterday in my normal pursuit of mildly fretting about a variety of topics, but in between that, I edited three stories I've had sitting on my hard drive for a few weeks or so. They weren't doing anything just mouldering there, so it was time to give them their final spruce up before sending them off to editors.

As usual, I'd convinced myself they were pretty ropey. I always do that. Despite the fact that I've been published for a fair few years now, I'm always convinced that most of that was by mistake, and I have no real talent. I think a lot of writers feel that way though, so I'm used to that. However, short stories require a special knack, and even though I used to write loads and loads of them, I've found them harder to do in recent years.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by all three of these shorts. They weren't too bad! It was like reading something written by somebody else. The readability of them didn't seem to connect in any way with the uphill struggle of writing them. Weird, that...

Sent them to my CP, and she really liked the first one, a frisky little yarn on the theme of 'liaisons', so that should be on its merry way to the editor some time today... and then it's fingers crossed for acceptance. I've got another with the same ed. at the moment, so keep 'em crossed for that too! :)

Daily Tweetage

• 23:54 Daily Tweetage: 00:40 Daily Tweetage: 07:24 Oh dear, I'm off to the dentist today. I'm very scared... tinyurl.com/4v3os8
• 12:49 Feeling a bit weary and uninspired today... but must not give in to it!
• 16:06 Have just edited 3 of my stories. I thought they were crap, but actually they seem quite okay looking at them again! :)

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Daily Tweetage

• 07:24 Oh dear, I'm off to the dentist today. I'm very scared. First fillings in 20 years... :(
• 11:09 Wahey, no drilling involved at the dentist. Didn't hurt a bit, didn't take long, and didn't even cost all that much! Colour me relieved! :)
• 20:56 Pearlies: These beautiful pearly whites aren't mine, alas, but am feeling pretty cheery on the dent.. tinyurl.com/42xmez

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