New Year, new laptop

Well, it's a new year, so I thought I would treat myself to a new toy. Well, not exactly a toy, it's a bit of kit essential to my work, as my trusty HP Compaq is now showing its age quite seriously and I don't want it to conk out and leave me stranded. I've been fancying a new Lenovo for quite some time, so I finally took the plunge. This is my first widescreen laptop, and at first I was not sure I liked that, after being with 4:3 screens for so long... but now, I'm beginning to really enjoy the additional acreage and also get used to the new touchpad which seemed a bit odd to start with.

What am I doing with this nice bit of kit? Currently reviewing some rather old stories of mine, with a view to publishing them myself. Naturally, this involves a lot of revamping and polishing. They're not bad, but they were written at a time when I knew far less about my craft than I do now. I thought they were the bee's knees then, but now, I see faults and ways that I can make them shine and live anew for a new decade... well, new millennium in some cases.

So, look out for some new self published releases in the next month or so, when I've brought these stories right up to super shiny 2012 code!

ps. notice how Sherlock and John are keeping an eye on me while I work?

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. :)

Wahey... smiley Alvaro won...

the 250s, at Assen!

Sadly, Valentino fell off at the first corner in the MotoGP, but at least he got back on the bike and finished.

I'm getting an Edward Norton kind of vibe...

for my next book.

I think it's now safe to say that I've got another Black Lace novel in the pipeline. Haven't actually laid my sticky mitts on the contract, but it's in the works. The book's called KISS IT BETTER, and while I haven't got an actual publication date, I reckon it'll be around June time next year when it's out. Have to deliver by 1st December.

I believe I talked about this book a bit on the blog some time ago, when it had a working title of Smalltown. It's about a couple who've met before, fleetingly and in stressful circumstances, who get together many years later, in circumstances that are also somewhat angsty, at least on the hero's part. Won't go into details, but he's a guy with major issues and secrets, but a profoundly romantic heart and sensibility.

When I originally conceived a prototype of this idea, quite a few years ago, it was a straight romance, and the hero template was James Marsters, but time passes, and me being a floozy, I move on to new passions. I still like James a lot, but he's not right for this hero any more. Neither is my beloved Vincenzo and neither is the delightful Professor Hottie. They've both had their books and stories, and no doubt all these simmering, sexy guys will appear in future yarns of mine, but for this hero, the man whose image calls to me, who feels right for Jay, is Edward Norton... I started to fancy him in a major way when I saw The Illusionist, and that spurred me to write The Retreat, for the Bound Brits collection... so he was a natural for this new story. He seems quirky and deep to me, just as Jay is... and I might even let him have a sexy little goatee beard again too! ;)

Hubba hubba, eh, Sarah? ;)

ps. nip over to my pal Saskia Walker's blog for some awesomely exciting news from her too!

Random Bloke of the Day

The delightful Alvaro Bautista, who won the 250cc Class at today's Moto GP of Portugal in Estoril.

Just look at those lovely smiley eyes!

BOUND BRITS/THE RETREAT

I'm blogging about THE RETREAT, my contribution to Bound Brits, over at Lust Bites today. Here's the link:

QUIET STORM

Intrigued? Nip on over and read all about it... there's a chance to win a signed copy of one of my books there too!

Also, hope to be back shortly to post details of another fun competition for BOUND BRITS, held by all of us BB authors!

Watch this space... :)

Ups and Downs...

Yesterday, I was astonishing!!! I wrote 4K words on The Retreat. Yes, a whole 4000 words in one day... isn't that amazing. I felt like a real, productive writer, the sort I read about in blogs who are prolific as nobody's business and are surging forward and securing faboo contracts all over the place!

Today, I'm less astonishing... in fact, I'm crap. Have done nothing so far, and have got hooked into watching a movie I know I shouldn't have, because I won't be able to stop now...

It's about this guy...

Jason Bourne - one man mayhem factory. Mmmmm..... me like.



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Telly: The Bourne Ultimatum
Choc/Yummy: thorntons alpini bar
Mood: disatisfied with self
Writing: **** all
Reading: Lord of Scoundrels
RSI/FMS: achy


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

What a relief!

After grappling with a variety of Christmas stuff, and a deluge of web design chores, I'm finally writing again... Thank God for that! I'd almost forgotten what it's like!

My current WIP is my romantic BDSM novella The Retreat, with a hero, Ben Chambers, inspired by Eisenheim the Illusionist aka Edward Norton.

Isn't he gorgeous?

I think I have a slight thing for handsome guys with beards. The Divine Vincenzo looks fab with some facial hair, and Professor Hottie often seems to be sporting a manly growth of designer stubble. Mmmmm....



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Telly: Top Gear
Choc/Yummy: jam tart
Mood: okay
Writing: 1.2K The Retreat
Reading: Lord of Scoundrels
RSI/FMS: so so


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

A Serious Dilemma...

Should I start watching Pirates of the Caribbean 3? Or save it until this evening or over the w/e? It arrived in the post this morning, and it's taunting and tempting me... but I need to:

1. write some of IN TOO DEEP
2. think about another possible novella idea and maybe write a bit of that
3. polish a guest blog bit I'm doing
4. do some other blog related thingoids
5. finish adding all my widgets to this blog
6. do my accounts, sorely out of date
7. brace myself for incoming proofs of GOTHIC HEAT [oh God!]

And those are only the most critical jobs that need doing, there are a zillion more... and yet I keep feeling myself being ensorcelled by Captain Jack's siren call...



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Telly: LOCI
Choc/Yummy: iced bun
Mood: oppressed
Writing: nowt yet
Reading: Claiming the Courtesan - Anna Campbell
RSI/FMS: tired, achey


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

Slightly curmudgeonly but also indulgent Thursday

Have been feeling pretty weird the last day or so, with a migraine that never fully 'came out' that seems to have somehow generated a general pissed-off-ness about various writing related areas. News I hear, things people say, attitudes and prejudices I encounter all seem to be getting on my nerves... it's not one or even two or three big specific things... it's more a mood, a feeling I get sometimes that all is not right in the world, that there's 'something rotten in the state of Denmark'... well, not actually in Denmark, but in the angsty ennui-loaded Hamlet sort of way... Does that make sense?

It's all very vague, and hard to pin down, but it depresses me and makes me wish, now and then, that I was in some other business. Although God knows what I'd do as I have no other particular talents and having worked for myself so long, I'm more or less unemployable in any conventional type of job.

Crikey, that all seems very grim, doesn't it? I'd probably feel a lot better if I could smash a few things and punch a few people... but realistically, that's not a solution, is it?

I should be working as therapy... but I'm finding it hard to connect to my WIP. I like it and all that, and I'm sure once I start, I'll be okay, but the start-hurdle seems toweringly high today...

All of which is not helped by a small obsession/crush thingoid that seems to be developing that means I'm spending more time than I should watching DVDs. The Divine Vincenzo is still my main man, but I'm starting to really like another guy too... maths genius Charlie Eppes in the quirky FBI show, Numb3rs... isn't he cute?

This Numb3rs thing has got slightly serious in that I really cannot wait for the shows to be on the telly [again, they're repeats actually, as I missed it first time out in the UK] and have ordered all the boxed sets I can get my hands on, even Series 3, which isn't out yet here in the UK. I just hope that it'll play on my multi region...

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While you're here, please, please, please pop over the the Night Owl Romance Awards and vote for me in the Best Erotic Contemporary Ebook!

If you love you some Portia click here and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE every day until 31st October!

Sunday bits and bats...

I've signed up for the next Seventy Days of Sweat! And a jolly good job too, because I've been slacking a lot in the last week or so, and have not got much writing done. I need the incentive of a group effort like Sweat70 and the scorn and abuse of Mr Blue when I don't shape up and get some words produced...

In other news, I watched Sleepy Hollow on the telly again last night, and I do think I have to have this movie on DVD. Mr Depp looks remarkably scrummy in it, and puts in a deliciously comical turn as Ichabod... Trouble is, I don't know which version of the flick to order: Widescreen or Anamorphic... any suggestions as to which is best?

I have another timewasting, writing-avoidance tool... and it's called I Can Has Cheezburger, a rich repository of LolCats... I could spend hours there [in fact I *have* spent hours there] just browsing the many many comical cat pix!

I blame Alison Kent for inadvertently alerting me to this source of procrastination!




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While you're here, please, please, please pop over the the Night Owl Romance Awards and vote for me in the Best Erotic Contemporary Ebook!

If you love you some Portia click here and VOTE, VOTE, VOTE every day until 31st October!

my Bank Holiday in Spain and France...

with the rough but delicious Major Richard Sharpe! UK TV History has a Sharpe marathon over the long Bank Holiday weekend, and despite my intentions to work at writing and catching up, I've got drawn into Sharpey's Napoleonic War adventures. Gosh, he's so fit, it's hard not to... Odd to think that but for a footballing injury, Sharpe might have had a different face. Instead of the splendid Sean Bean, it might have been another of my faves, Paul McGann, who I was spending the weekend with...

I must say there's something particularly hot about a handsome dashing soldier... My Nathaniel in OBJECT OF DESIRE is a super fit ex serviceman turned academic and in EYES OF DESIRE, Guy is an elite special forces operative on leave. Yum yum!!!

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Telly: Sharpey
Choc/Yummy: Thorntons Fruit and Nut
Mood: lazy
Writing: nothing yet
Reading: Flatliners
RSI/FMS: so so


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

The New Rafe

Here's the 'new' Rafe from Gothic Heat... looks suspiciously like Mr Blue's slightly less psychotic twin brother, doesn't he? ;)

Have now begun my first round of edits, and even though it's early days yet, the bits I've done so far don't seem too horrible. Sadly, though, despite being 2K over budget wordswise, it hasn't reduced much in length yet. I haven't found anything thus far that's so crap that I can gaily rip it out...

Screencap of Vincent D'Onofrio as Mr Blue from The Taking of Pelham 123 TV movie courtesy of The Velocity of Vincent.

One of my favourite films...

Himself is away at the moment, tramping around the Market Garden battleground sites of the Low Countries... and I'm left on my own, minding the cats and missing him. However, last night, one of my all time favourite films was on the telly, and I have to say, it cheered me up mightily!

I love THE 'BURBS!!! I've seen this film umpteen times, but it still makes me smile, giggle, and laugh out loud in places. I love Tom Hanks in anything, and I think this is one of his best comedy roles, although he is ably supported by a bunch of other talented actors. I love the combo of fun dialogue and out and out slapstick in this movie, and even the music is brilliantly appropriate and witty. There are dozens of standout moments, but for me, the scene that always makes me laugh out loud for some reason is the one where poor old Ray/Tom has to eat a sardine off a pretzel, whilst visiting with his creepy neighbours, the Klopeks.



I really don't know why this is so amusing to me, but every time I see it I howl with laughter, and last night was no exception. The cats thought I was bonkers, chuckling and chortling away at this scene, but they are being indulgent with me, because I think they know I'm missing the company of their 'dad'...

In other news, I'm still slugging away at Gothic Heat. Today has been pretty standard with it. One minute, I'm quite contented, enjoying what I've written, and gaining satisfaction from tweaks and improvements... the next, I'm in a tearful panic of horror with it, and wishing, wishing, wishing I'd never agreed to write it and that I was free to work on something else, less hideously disorganised, flung together and inconsistent. At the moment, I'm somewhere in the middle of those two states... sort of enjoying a new scene I'm inserting, which reintroduces Michiko, the Japanese white sorceress from Gothic Blue. This is fine, because I like her, but against my wishes, she's suddenly acquired a new Japanese boyfriend called Hiro... completely out of the blue, and yet another character in what could turn out to be a cast of bloody thousands!

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Telly: UK History
Choc/Yummy: Turkish Delight
Mood: up and down
Writing: Gothic Heat
Reading: nothing much today
RSI/FMS: generally achy, bad pains in hips


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

My Red Hot Love Affairs

I'm guest blogging at ROMANCE BY THE BLOG today... on the topic of my red hot love affairs with guys like this...

Why not nip on over and join the fun!

There's a prize for commenters and the chat is already getting v. naughty... :)

ADDENDUM FOR THE BELLAS

I'm your huckleberry

Last night, I watched one of my favourite films for the second time in a week... and the second time was just as fresh as the first. I love TOMBSTONE! It's not a new movie, but clearly, it's one I never tire of... even though I know the story back to front by now. Well, the story as portrayed in the film... I'm sure the real story of the Earps v. the Cowboys was considerably different and more complex.



Apart from the obvious excitement and tension of the story, and the cracking gunplay of the infamous OK Corral and elsewhere, it's just a film that looks so good. Hot damn, those Earps are so stylish! They must have been the sharpest dressed gunslingers in the whole West. I love the frock coats, the whole severe collar, necktie and posh waistcoat thing, the cool hats... and oh, Wyatt's long, black duster coat that he dons when he means heavy lawman business! I would love one of those myself... I'm not so sure if I fancy men with such bushy moustaches... but then, they were the fashion at the time, and were obviously de rigeur for any self respecting sherriff or deputy.



Kurt Russell is fab as Wyatt Earp, sort of generally noble but also conflicted... but the real star, I think everybody will admit, is Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday... the prince of the morbidly droll one liners. Hard to believe that a guy can be sexy when he's white as a sheet and sweaty all the time, and always on the point of coughing blood, but he manages it supremely and he's certainly my 'huckleberry'. Also kudos to Michael Biehn as a coldly deranged, Latin quoting Johnny Ringo.

I'm not sure whether Tombstone ranks as a classic, traditional western or as a revisionist [not that I'm quite sure what that means]... but I'd say it's got a least some of the latter's qualities, because nobody's portrayed, really, in simple black and white terms of good and bad... The Earps weren't angels by any means. They were ruthless killers themselves, who happened to be on the side of the law, some of the time. Brilliant examples of good 'bad boys' or ambiguous 'good guys'... gotta love 'em!

Anybody else out there like this movie?



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Telly: Tombstone, obviously
Choc/Yummy: Apple Turnovers
Mood: okay
Writing: thinking about Gothic Heat, need to rework some bits
Reading: AGW/Madelynne... loving it
RSI/FMS: bit sore and very tired


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

All the best people bleach their hair...

Thought I would simply post something pretty today... because I need it!

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Telly: Agent Cody Banks
Choc/Yummy: miniature carrot cakes with buttercream
Mood: no comment
Writing: none
Reading: none
RSI/FMS: so so


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

The name's Gump... Forrest Gump

I'm really on a Casino Royale tip at the moment... am watching it over again. I'm loving Daniel Craig in the role too, but here's a Bond I would quite like to have seen...

The name's Da Costa... Portia Da Costa

Well, I've finally watched the new James Bond movie... months and months after most people, of course, but I can't remember the last time I actually went to the pictures. I always wait until the DVDs come out...

I am very impressed with Daniel Craig as Bond. Which isn't what I expected. I was quite fond of Pierce... I thought he was the best bond since Sean and I really wanted to see him continue in the role. When I heard he was passing on it, I must admit that I then wanted it to be Clive Owen, because he's got the 007 look somehow... I was shocked when I heard it was DC... and I just didn't see him as Bond, because of the hair, I suppose, although I'd seen him on the telly and in films and rated him as an actor. But he's great! He's a rough, craggy, rambunctious Bond, forever getting bloody and battered... and really very, very cold at times, in a totally appropriate and very ruthlessly sexy way. I like it that he's a universe away from the burlesque Bond of Roger Moore, although I enjoyed the Moore Bond movies in a comedy relief sort of way. There was nothing of the Bond books in those movies, but there is in the new version of Casino Royale in an updated sort of way. Although I think there's slightly more humour in the books somehow... Book Bond can be quite droll at times, but DC's Bond is more sardonically humorous in a very hardcase and bitter way. I also liked the judicious and relevant use of modern technology. It's utilised in a very real world sort of way, a bit like it is in the Bourne movies. [I do love Bourne... and Matt Damon is faberooney... but he's just that bit too pretty for a deadly killer... although maybe that makes him a more effective deadly killer, 'cos you don't expect it!]

What I'd like to see sometime is a remake of On Her Majesty's Secret Service with Daniel Craig as Bond. Sorry, George L. but you were never Bond for me [and for a lot of folk, I guess] and that's a shame, because the story was very good, with more scope for exploring the emotional side of Bond.

ps. don't forget to slide over to Lustbites and comment, eh?

pps. lisaf... where are you? There's a prize with your name on it if you send me your snail mail addie!!!

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Telly: Casino Royale
Chocolate: Tesco Hazelnut
Mood: okay
Writing: not today...
Reading: Passion of Isis
RSI/FMS: sore


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

Out and about... plus something to make you giggle!

Nip over to Lustbites today and read a v. naughty encounter between two of the boys from Gothic Blue...

There's another giveaway too... :)

But before you go, just take a butchers at this... It was brought to my attention by the wonderful Diva Lisa over at Romance Divas. Don't you just love Bernard's healthy reaction to being rejected?




NB. You can also still comment on yesterday's post in order to be in for the chance of a prize!

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