I know my Holmes!

The Game's Afoot!

Score: 100% (8 out of 8)

Just took this quiz and scored a clean sweep! Sherlock would be proud...

Fun with ebooks!

I think ebooks are brilliant, and I'm starting to build up quite a collection of them on my Sony Reader, but the problem for a writer is that with an ebook, you don't get the thrill of holding the individual volume in your hands when the crisp, immaculate author copies arrive... or do you? ;)

LOL! Yes, I've been playing with Photoshop again instead of getting on with my writing! Nifty, though, eh?

A GENTLEWOMAN'S PREDICAMENT has been out four days now, and it's received its first four star review on Goodreads from Tracyene, who loved it and can't wait for the next in the series. Wonderfully heartening to hear her good opinion! :)

"Predicament" is also starting to appear at a variety of different digital outlets and can now be purchased from eHarlequin, Kindle, Sony eBook Store, Mills and Boon, Books on Board, Fictionwise and Diesel eBook Store. So if you haven't yet indulged, why not give "Madame" Chamfleur and "her" naughty stable of hot Victorian studs a whirl, eh?

The Long and the Short of it

Over the past couple of days I've been procrastinating. Not an unusual thing for me. I've actually been doing some quite useful stuff while I've been 'not writing', in that I've made inroads into some long needed tidying up and sorting out of both my web site and the book sidebar on this blog. You probably won't notice a great deal of difference in either of them, but it's part of a process of creating more order and uniformity [don't laugh]. It's not finished yet, but both in the blog bar and on the homepage of my site, I've been streamlining links and centralizing all the info for each book on its own individual excerpt page, hence the sudden appearance of a smattering of 'Info/Excerpt/Buy' type clickables [that one leads to IN TOO DEEP, picked at random].

Anyway, while I've been engaged in all this techy/semi creative type activity, hopefully my higher brain function [yeah, right...] will have been mulling over thoughts and issues to do with IN THE FLESH aka Victorianoid. The main thing at the moment is that it's turning out as if it's going to be far too long! I always start out each book worrying if I'm going to 'get the wordcount' ie. whether my undeniably tissue paper flimsy plots will stretch to the required number of words for the publisher's guidelines. I do always manage it, because all sorts of things occur to me as I'm writing and the stories usually turn out richer than I dared dream of when I began... But this time, with IN THE FLESH, I seem to be heading for a massive over-run if I don't streamline the plot a bit. Yes, even the slight plot I've developed for this one seems to be very complex by my standards and needs a goodish bit of wordage. Plus, it's a historical, and the defining historical characteristics of setting and world-building are like extra characters and plot twists in themselves. So they need space too.

So, it's a question of constant monitoring and balancing... One thing that HAS to stay in is masses of delicious, naughty sensuality between my characters, and their emotional and psychological voyage of discovery. Those elements are the bedrock and the raison d'etre [oooh, posh] of my writing and my readers expect and are entitled to those elements... in very large amounts!

I can do this. [I once wrote a 100,000 word long book under another pseudonym] And the challenge is exciting and fun and good for me because I need to grow as a writer. But it does need a fair bit of brain bashing and the occasional step back to review and reassess. Which is what I've been doing these last few days... And the good thing about a little 'holiday' from the writing is, I'm absolutely dying to get back to Beatrice and Mr. Ritchie and find out what incredibly sexy and scandalous thing they're going to do next!

I must not become addicted...

... to Facebook!

I've been spending far too much time on it in the last few days, when I should be writing, doing web design, coming up with new ideas, planning for RWA, and generally trying to get myself organised and keep on top of everything in my life!

But FB is fun, and it's so much easier to update content there than it is on MySpace, which still requires that you grapple with html and stuff to add things to your profile.

I'm going to do better though. I'm going to pitch into my to do list, and achieve something!

Today I will do better!

Am going to make a concentrated effort to do the stuff I'm supposed to be doing today. The 'to do' list is massive again, still, as ever, and I need to polish some items off... including:

1. finish a story [HANG TOUGH]
2. polish some answers to interview questions and send them off to the interviewer
3. do a bit of work towards the tranche of web updates that've just come in
4. do some RWA prep, including order some stuff, make lists, timetables of stuff to do
5. edit two other stories [LIAISONS thing and FLICKER]
6. keep on top of my accounts
7. do some reading for a mate [this is a priority priority, actually]
8. begin thinking about how to tackle my next Black Lace
9. try and pull together some proposals for new book ideas [yeah, like that's *so* easy...]
10. bloody well stop foofing about!

In spite of the technological distractions of yesterday, I did achieve a bit of writing. Just a very modest 200 words, so all is not lost on that front. :)

Right, better get some breakfast and start on the above list...

new toys, new procrastinations

I am so naughty. I will do anything rather than buckle down to my writing. I'm always looking for new techno doohickeys and whotnots to play with rather than apply myself to the serious business of writing.

Yesterday, I signed up for Facebook again, because a good buddy of mine has just joined. I was in Facebook a while back, but as 'Wendy', but I've now joined as 'Portia' instead. Bit schizo of me, I know, but there you are... If you're a Facebook nut, look for me as Portia Da Costa.

I've also just installed the spiffy new Firefox v.3! Very swish and nifty. Bit of a panic now and again, of course, when things don't work quite the way they used to, but you soon get used to the new versions of things... and I think I'm going to like the new Fox.

I've also installed Twitterfox, to further feed my Twitter addiction. Which means all I have to do is click a little 'T' in my status bar in order to 'tweet'!

The Patient

I had such good intentions today, vis a vis writing, but so far it's just not happened. One of the main reasons is that I've been worried about Alice, who is suffering again with dermatitis. Fortunately I spotted this fairly quickly and we were able to zip her into the vets for a jumbo steroid injection to nuke the irritation. And I'm happy to say that she's not really miserable with this complaint or anything... she seems cheerful enough. But we needed to get a professional on the case with the correct medication to sort the problem out.

In other news, I've started watching the European footie. It'll probably be far less anguished experience because our lot *aren't* playing! They can't break the nation's heart if they're not there, can they?


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EYES RIGHT FOR TWITTER UPDATES!

The same old story...

After a reasonably productive day yesterday, I'm back to my old bad, purposeless habits... sigh...

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EYES RIGHT FOR TWITTER UPDATES!

Now why does this not surprise me?

Your Sensitivity Score: 82%

You are an extremely sensitive person. You notice everything. You've probably been called overly sensitive before, and it's partially true. Highly sensitive people tend to be highly intelligent. And you just can't turn off that part of you.

Are You Extremely Sensitive?

I made a thing again...

I made a little banner...

Isn't it nifty?

I'm foofing about again....

I'm foofing around again. Wasting time. Fretting over issues and annoyances instead of thinking positive and getting on with IN TOO DEEP and finishing Professor Hottie's story. I'm so close to the end, within 5K of it... and yet somehow, I can't bring myself to round things off. It's because I'm brooding over stuff, sinking into powerlessness again... and it's very tough to shake this off when it gets a hold on me.

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Telly: nothing
Choc/Yummy: carrot cake
Mood: powerless
Writing: none
Reading: Sanctuary - Eden Bradley
RSI/FMS: so so


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

fear and loathing of page proofs

Agh, those GOTHIC HEAT proofs have arrived! And I'm skeert to death of them!

I hate checking proofs. There's a pleasure in seeing the book as it's going to look when it's on sale, and it makes it all very real... but I'm always terrified, that, no matter how much checking I've done before I lobbed the thing off to the editor, I've committed some almighty continuity boo boo that has also slipped by in the copy editing process. Some stupid plot loophole that renders the whole thing ridiculous... I'm looking at the envelope with the proofs in now, and I feel slightly sick to my stomach. I've put them back in there because they make me shudder just to have them out in the open. But I've got to see to them, because, as usual, there's not really a great deal of time in which to scrutinise them.

All of the above means that my Sweat70 progress will grind to a shuddering halt for a while, unless I can somehow manage to just do a bit in between rounds of checking...


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Telly: not yet
Choc/Yummy: iced bun... for breakfast!
Mood: terrified
Writing: proofs... shudder...
Reading: Claiming the Courtesan - Anna Campbell
RSI/FMS: usual


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

New Look!

I'm feeling so not like writing at the moment, so inspired by my buddy Madelynne Ellis, I've given this ol' blog a slightly new look! Still got quite a few of my sidebar bits to reintegrate, but I had too much crap there anyway, so maybe that's a good thing! :)

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Telly: Top Gear etc
Choc/Yummy: Tesco Belgian Milk
Mood: fed up
Writing: not
Reading: not
RSI/FMS: sore and tired


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

not too much to report...

Despite making heavy weather of it, I've managed to maintain my thousand words a day. Just. I'm not saying how much use a lot of the words are, but at least I'm laying stuff down to be edited... and if my WIP is supposed to be 70K words in total, I've actually done a quarter of that already!!!

Now this would be good news if anything of note had actually happened in the book yet, but it's another of my slow builders/starters and as yet, it's only really meandering along. I'm still at the stage where I think, how the blue blazes is this book going to be long enough? But I always think that, and I mostly reach some sort of tipping point before long where worrying whether I'm going to make the word count switches to... omigod, how am I going to get it all in??? I've a fair bit of a way to go with this one before that happens though.

This, I think, is one of the problems with pantsing. Which is what I mostly do nowadays. I used to write very detailed synopsis/outlines and send them to my editor. These were far longer than a synopsis ought to be, but not as long as a detailed chapter outline usually is... but I managed them somehow, even though synopsis writing is the work of the devil. But lately, I've just stopped doing them... which makes for a much more scary writing experience!

But, I was thinking about some plot bits in the bathroom this morning - again - and I'm wondering if I should make a plan for the rest of the book, based on these notes and a bunch of other stuff I've got jotted in my notebook...

Do you think I should? Would it make me fret less about the way this book is going? Or not going?

p.s. thanks to a blogging buddy, I found a great new site for procrastinating! It's just another excuse for me not writing, but at least this is in a good cause and it builds your vocab too! :)

FREE RICE

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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!

Mr Blue is vexed!

It's almost two o'clock and I've not written any of my WIP yet... His Blueship is not best pleased!


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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!

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!

I *will* do better! Yeah, right...

With the start of a new working week, I'm determined to do better!

Basically, I'm sick to death of myself for frittering away hours and hours of valuable time, either foofing about on the internet, or just sitting like a zombie being negative. It just won't do! And I can't go on doing it, because I have a whole page full of 'to do' list and some of it's just got to be cleared or else I'll sink under the weight of it and never ever catch up. I should be getting stuff done and clearing off jobs, just in case something exciting happens... And no, there's no specific exciting thing on the horizon, but you never know... something might come up, that needs my attention, and then I'll be wishing that I'd used all my wasted time more productively.

Anyway, in spite of being very tempted by my usual foofage, I've managed to get 1K words of Chance of a Lifetime done, and it's only midday. Which means that I've done my quota nicely and can either push on and do a bit more this afternoon, or switch to other jobs that need doing! It does not mean I can go surfing around the Lolcats sites and/or Encyclopaedia Dramatica!

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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!

Oh, the shame of it....

My Sweat70 average is plummeting and I haven't added anything to my WIP in nearly a week!!!

I could trot out any number of excuses, like two sets of page proofs to check, work to do for my web clients, various emotional crud etc etc.... but if I was a real pro, I'd still have been writing. I'm completely ashamed of myself...

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