A Very Useful Book

This little beauty arrived this morning, via Ebay. It's MANNERS OF GOOD SOCIETY, written by "A member of the Aristocracy". A research book, obviously, but the best thing about it is that it was published in 1890 ie. the very year that Victorianoid is set!

So, this is the real deal about etiquette of the time, not a second hand source such as an internet search. And it's full of advice to the socially unsure about visiting your friends and acquaintances, leaving your calling cards, how to address various toff and nobs, going to parties, balls and picnics and generally behaving with propriety in the later Victorian age.

Now, I must admit, my story doesn't involve a lot of the activities described in this worthy little tome [especially not the behaving with propriety, quite the reverse!] but at least dipping into it will give me an idea of the mindset of the society conscious folk of the time, and a flavour of the way they wrote and spoke, and even if I don't use it directly, I'm hoping some of its wisdom will seep into my subconscious and maybe lend a little veracity to my Victorian historical writing.

I've actually amassed a few contemporary items for this book: bound volumes of the Illustrated London News and Punch. Bound copies of The Young Ladies' Journal and even a Mother's Companion. I love to handle these original books, and think that people were reading them and enjoying them and looking at the illustrations over a century ago. It makes the Victorian age feel very real to me, and not just some dry, theoretical historical time period.

I think that's what draws me to the Victorian era. You can still get your hands on so much of the stuff they made and used. :)

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Eating: Jaffa Cake Bars
Watching: various
Reading: The Moor/Laurie R. King
Writing: Victorianoid
Feeling: so so

I'm a rubbish blogger, aren't I?

Sorry for not blogging much lately. I have been pretty busy, what with one thing or another...

I've been trying to do a regular writing stint each day, towards a weekly total of 8000 words. Not massive by some people's standards, but enough so that if I keep chugging along at this rate, I'll reach my deadline on KISS IT BETTER fairly comfortably with time to spare for a good edit. Which it'll need!

This week, I've also been prepping an excerpt post for LUST BITES in Friday. This is a bit from IN TOO DEEP. I find it very, very hard to choose excerpts for these sorts of thing. I can never pick out a piece that seems to be standalone, and yet a good sample of the book. The bit I've chosen for Friday is pretty naughty stuff, so I hope anyone who reads this, will nip along and read and hopefully leave a comment. There will be a prize!

I've also been hanging about on Twitter quite a bit, something of which I'm unashamed. I love Twitter and I love my buddies there. I originally started tweeting as a way to have micro updates to this blog [see right] but inevitably, I got hooked into Twitter itself and the interaction with other Tweeters... But it's easy to do, and not too taxing on the grey matter. Just like chatting with a bunch of buddies, really.

Have been doing some reading and DVD watching too. I'm reading the Belle De Jour memoir and at the same time, watching the telly version on DVD. In some ways they're very different, but in others, the essence is the same. Am enjoying both. Belle is a very good writer. I didn't read the blog very much at the time the entries in the book were posted, but I like her conversational style. Dare I say that in some ways, it reminds me of my own first person writing?

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.

OBJECT OF DESIRE - out today!!!

When Sylvia sees her new upstairs neighbour doing Tai Chi in the communal garden of their apartment building, she immediately knows she wants to do far more than borrow a cup of sugar from him. Nathaniel Gowen is everything she wants in a man and more—handsome, sexy, mature and mysterious—and she’s trying desperately to think of a casual way to introduce herself to the man who haunts her erotic dreams and fantasies.

But then one day, he comes knocking at her door…

Read an excerpt

Buy from Total-E-Bound

all vampires today...

Still reading the above and loving it... and am now proof correcting the below... and sort of loving that too, just as much, in its own way. Think it's probably the most romantic thing I've ever written... even more romantic in a lot of ways than the straight romantic novels I've written!



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Telly: not much at all
Choc/Yummy: cupcakes
Mood: improving all the time
Writing: proofs of Buddies Don't Bite
Reading: Dark Lover
RSI/FMS: not too bad


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

me and the book wot I am reading

Taken with the help of the gadget below... and help, I'm nearly as shiny as the glossy book cover!

So who's read/reading The Black Dagger Brotherhood? What do you think? I'm really enjoying Dark Lover!




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Telly: Columbo
Choc/Yummy: seashell chocolate
Mood: better
Writing: not yet
Reading: see above
RSI/FMS: bit sore


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

Welcome to the world, Valentino!

Well, it S17 day here in the UK, and I had breakfast in bed surrounded by roses, messages of congratulation, champagne and the media, anxious to record the auspicious release of my great work...

Yeah, right...

It's just a day like any other day. No big fanfares on my lowly layer of the publishing cake... no thousands of fans camping out outside Waterstones and Borders, waiting to rush in on the stroke of midnight and purchase my oeuvre... I haven't even mentioned it to himself, although I might when he comes home from work.

Anyway, here's hoping that plenty of people do soon discover the book and enjoy it. It's one of those that had a very up and down creation process. One minute I loved it, the next I hated it, but I ended up loving it, so that's what matters. But I also want other people to love my hero Valentino as much as I do... and in that, I'm slightly nervous, because he does have more than his share of quirks and foibles and dodginess in his past... and present. Let's say that he's not a standard erotic romance Alpha hero...

So, those of you who are into idiosycratic and deliberately perverse heroes, and especially if you like long black hair and a twisted version of Italian romantic machismo, do, please, slide on over to Amazon.co.uk or any other fine literature emporium and avail yourself of this quality volume! LOL

In other news: I'm feeling quite a bit better!

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Telly: Japanorama
Choc/Yummy: Arrowroot biscuits
Mood: slightly more focused
Writing: promo
Reading: web surfing
RSI/FMS: bit sore


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

raindrops on roses....

At the moment, these are a few of my favourite things! When the dog bites... when the bee stings... la di da di dah!

Gothic Heat thoughts

I'm finally working on it... but I'm not sure how it's working out. There doesn't seem to be any sex in it yet and I've already written about 2K words. Usually in a PDC, the protagonists have got down to it by this time, but I think there's going to be more 'story' in this one than is usual for me. Not that it's all *that* hugely complicated a story, perish the thought. At the moment, it's more like a paranormal fic with sensual and psychological elements than an erotic novel, although are some mildly sexy bits in it. And things are about to get hot and heavy any minute. :)

I'm also still thrashing out the details of the heroine, Paula's 'predicament'... She's sort of possessed by a demon, but not quite. She's more 'influenced' than possessed, and I have to get the balance of that influence correct... She's still basically in control, but keeps sort of getting nudged into doing foolhardy and dangerous things... I still haven't really nailed down her story yet, I suppose... I also have to work out just *how* bad my bad boy type hero is...

Everything is pretty fluid at the moment...
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Telly: NCIS
Choc/Yummy: mostly cupcakes today
Mood: okay
Writing: 1K Gothic Heat
Reading: Passion/Lisa Valdez
RSI/FMS: so so


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

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!
  

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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!

spotting the goofs

Well, I read through Public Domain again, and spotted a couple more boo-boos. I always like to read through proofs a couple of times at least, in case I miss some dreadful howler on the first pass. This is a big task with a 75K manuscript, but not so bad on a 4K short story. There are a handful of thingoids in PD that need dealing with... mainly because I sent a draft of the thing to the editor for a look-see at quite an early stage. Because it's not my usual type of story, I wanted to know if it would be acceptable, and if not, I'd write another... But it was acceptable, and I never went on to work it over any more, when under other circumstances, I might have done. The good news is that it was pretty much okay as it was... there are just a couple of repetitions here and there that I might have spotted on another round of editing. Otherwise, I don't think I would have changed it anyway...

That's about all I've done today so far, except for some pottering around on MySpace. Which is fun, but it scares me too. Not for the timewasting, which is bad enough, but for the fact that I feel it's a dangerous space, wide open for the nefarious activities of spoofers, hackers, crooks, creeps, nutters and general mischief makers. I think one needs to be very wary there, somehow... It's a great promotional opportunity for writers and other kinds of creative types, but it does merit some care and caution...

Well, I still don't know what project I'm going to do next. When Suite Seventeen is turned in, I'm out of contract, and that's a very depressing state of ungrace to be in. My editor has murmured about projects, but so far, not come to me with anything more concrete than that... and I feel that because I'm not proactively pushing stuff at him, he might forget about me and work with other writers who are hungry and eager and full of dynamic ideas. I suppose I must really discuss this with my agent, but in the meantime, I have various bits and pieces to edit inc. a novella and a short story or two, which could do to be polished and put out there. Nobody's going to accept anything that's still festering on my hard drive or in a heap of A4 in my office!!!

In other news, I've just started reading Alison Kent's how-to book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Erotic Romance. I read a preview of Chapter 20 aka Getting Wild and Kinky and that was totally fabboo, but now I'm going to work my way through the whole book. This book is perfect for me, as I need to understand better how to meld romance and erotica more harmoniously, and raise the volume on the romance side of things to match that on the erotica side of things. It's also v. apt for me because as most people who've read my blog for a while [both here and at the old place] will realise, I am actually a bona fide Complete Idiot! :)

I think there's much to be gleaned from writing how-to books, even if you've been in the game for a while, like I have. There's always something new to be learned, or something that you need reminding of that you've forgotten. Or, and just as important, you can find affirmation in them, in that, you can find yourself going... 'Oh god, yes, I do that...' and you realise you're doing something the right way, or at least in a way that's one of the right ways to do a thing. I think that when I've read Alison's book - which I know is going to be invaluable - I'll dive into Janet Evanovich's book, How I Write. Obviously, I won't be writing romantic crime in the near future... at least I don't think I will... but I expect there to be a lot of great advice of use to writers of all genres amongst the pages.

Ah well... better get on with something, I suppose...

Excerpts, baby, excerpts!

Not one but two!

Gothic Blue

Suite Seventeen

no more foofing

Since I finished the first draft of Suite Seventeen last week, I've been mainly foofing about and achieving very little. I haven't done a scrap of writing, although I have done a bit of web design, so I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on myself - because at least that's something creative. And I have expanded my horizons a bit on the computer. I've set up a MySpace, I've uploaded more photos to Flickr and learnt how to do things there, and I've even posted a new message on my sadly neglected Amazon Connect profile. I've also installed Zone Alarm, for a bit of extra computer security and I've been experimenting with del.icio.us for saving my favourites. At heart, all these things are displacement activities, but sort of useful ones too, so I don't feel too disgusted with myself for spending time on them.

I've also set this blog up here. For a long time, I've been not feeling too keen on Bravejournal... for several reasons. The limitations of the sidebar, the limitations of layout and look, the infuriating advertising in the posting area which frankly gets on my wick and tends to muck with my browser. Now, as I had a pro account there, I simply don't think there should be any ads at all, but there are, and I've had enough of them... I have toyed with setting up Wordpress on my own webspace, but even with broadband, the login process takes a ludicrously long time. Something to do with the way the program talks to my ISP... Life's too short to spend that time just twiddling my thumbs waiting. Which brings me back to Blogger, the blogging platform I began my very first blogging efforts on... I'd always been put off by the necessity to get in and footle with the template to add links and stuff to the sidebar, but now I've discovered beta Blogger, those shortcomings are no more. Admittedly it is beta, and a tiny bit cranky here and there, but generally, I'm well pleased with it so far. And I think most of the crankiness is due to my 'puter needing a tad more memory. But that's something I'm planning to correct in the v. near future with a little trip to PC World for a bit of RAM therapy.

Anyway, all this is just more foofing, innit?

Today, I will be mainly:

• uploading a fab new cover image for a web client
• taking an initial look at proofs for my story Public Domain, which arrived yesterday
• uploading an extract of Gothic Blue to my PortiaDaCosta.com web site
• maybe even setting up another blog, for posting extracts to... [got this idea from above mentioned client

I hope to do a few other bits and bobs too...

Gothic Blue

Gothic Blue,
originally
uploaded by
wendywootton.

Today I was all set to upload an extract of Gothic Blue to my PortiaDaCosta.com web site, but the best laid plans of mice and erotic authors didn't pan out... Instead, I futzed about with the layout for that site [on my own computer, no changes at the site yet], then spent ages reading Romantic Times, and conversing via email with a mate about the reviews there... and then I finished off by spending ages playing with this blog.

But tomorrow, I promise I will upload that extract! I think it'll be the prologue, which tells how the poor accursed Count Andre Von Kastel gets himself into a terrible pickle!

If you think this cover image looks familiar, by the way, you may have seen it here. Many thanks to my buddy Saskia for the link.