quickie...

Have had some fabulous feedback on my Sex with Strangers story from my critique partner! I had a good feeling about this story... and her comments confirm my optimism over it. She loves it! Now all I have to hope for is that the editor likes it too! :)

Mini extract here!

substitutions

Am feeling rabidly curmudgeonly, dyspeptic and malcontent this morning, so to save inflicting my bile on others... and give me more time to sharpen my machete and plan a terrible fate for all those that irk me... I'm presenting some fluffy loveliness instead

Cute Overload

Kitten War

Cat of the Day

Cats in Sinks

Enjoy!

a minor moral dilemma

I've got a minor moral dilemma... and it goes like this.

Every so often, a person emails me, asking for advice and about my experiences in a certain area. They want my help... and I give it. I reply to the questions as best I can. But... this person never thanks me for the stuff I tell her. This person never even replies to my emails or acknowledges them. Last time, I hinted that I'd like a reply, however short, and all I got was the email receipt thingie... But, this person must receive the info I send because she keeps sending questions.

Now this is making me angry. My natural response is to help. And not just, I'll admit, out of the saintly goodness of my heart. I'm a great believer in what goes around comes around, and if you help people, someone will help you in return when the time comes. And when someone helps me, my reaction is to thank them, as any normal person's is.

I don't expect fulsome praise and fawning plaudits from this person, just 'thanks, that helped' would be sufficient. But I know I won't get it, so I'm wondering whether I should supply any info this time... I keep thinking 'why should I?'... but I suppose I'll crumble in the end, and send some info.

What would you do, gentle reader?

what happens in books when your memory is shot

Actually did more editing yesterday than I was expecting to. Especially when I spent a lot of the day watching World Superbikes with himself [some great racing though!] Am now part way through scrutinising the long, kinky scene, using both paper and screen editing... and I'm finding it's far more humane somehow. Definitely a love type scene... the growing bond between the two characters is really coming out, even though the action is very pervy. And I'd almost forgotten this, despite the fact that I only wrote it just over two weeks ago!

That's the problem with having a crap memory! I can't 'hold' the story of a novel in my head these days... I used to be able to once upon a time, esp. when I was engaged in my futile attempts to write Mills and Boon novels [only 55K] but nowadays, the RAM inside my head must have degraded or something, because five minutes after I've written something, I've more or less forgotten it!

Which can create inconsistencies if I'm not careful to scrutinise and edit work several times... although having a critique partner can be an enormous help in spotting the funnies. An instance I encountered in yesterday's editing was... Annie describes making a phone call to someone in the narrative, and then later, when talking to Valentino, she describes the same incident as an actual meeting!!! Ack, nearly a nasty accident there... And also there have been one or two minor occurrences of things being said or done or not said or not done that have impact on the story later on, but which I've completely overlooked...

You can pick up other things in 'repeat runs'... For instance, it suddenly occurred to me that Annie might have behaved like a complete bitch to a secondary character, Charles. But in the editing, it's possible to make her seem less so... by the simple expedient of inserting one, single sentence, that shows that in fact Charles was the one behaving badly.

Anyway, hope to finish this 'pass' today, and maybe do a few more little tweaks... and then hopefully I can send it off to my CP [her time permitting...] and also my agent. And they'll spot even more things that I've missed!!!

not in the mood...

No progress to speak of yesterday. I felt rather under the weather, and the last thing I was in the mood for was the long, complex and somewhat ritualistic sexual set piece I had to edit... Plus, between the meds for my head, my sinuses and my stomach I was feeling pretty spaced out and unable to concentrate on anything, never mind polishing an intense scene of psycho erotic power exchange.

Feeling very chuffed with the initial responses to the extract of Suite Seventeen I posted over at Portia's Prose though... My chums of the VDO persuasion seem to be enjoying certain special little flourishes. :)

edits

Since I posted the excerpt last night, over at Portia's Prose, I've been thinking about more and more tweakage I need to do to Suite Seventeen. This is my process, I suppose, I slam down the main story without thinking too much about background [just to get something down] and then work through the ramifications and filter in stuff later to give it more depth. I was mainly thinking about Valentino's car last night... He has this amazing and very, very valuable classic supercar [there's a reason in the story why he comes to possess such a thing] but I'd not stopped to think about the insurance on such a vehicle, which would be astronomical... so I've got to come up with an explanation for how he can even afford to pay the insurance. I also got to thinking more and more about what Annie has been doing with her life to get to forty plus... She's got no kids... she probably hasn't worked for quite a while... other stuff... but I suppose the fact that the years have flown by and she hasn't a lot to show for them is actually one of the reasons why she's so open to a whole new world of experience with Valentino... so ready to shake things up so radically by getting involved with him. I'm seeing ways to lightly sketch in and hint at these background facets, but the accent is on dealing with them lightly rather than making a huge deal. Basically, I'm writing for entertainment. I want my story to have some emotional depth, quite a bit in fact, but I don't want to get heavy and bring readers down with anguished pasts and sob stories. I'm about giving people a fun read. I'm not about issues or making any kind of particular 'statement'. So I've to negotiate the tricky path between giving readers a true sounding experience and providing them with an escapist sex fantasy to tickle their fancies! :)

Having said all the above, it's Saturday and I'm not getting on all that fast. I'm pratting about mainly, although I have done my static cycling, whilst watching an ep. of Law and Order Criminal Intent... ooh, yummy, yummy Bobby! It seems weird to see him investigating crimes in New York when he should be either sitting in his office in Borough Hall, thinking up the next naughty thing he's going to do to Maria... or actually be doing something naughty to or with her! Probably in the back garden, so his neighbour Annie can watch them...

To be honest, I'm not feeling all that great this morning though. I feel as if a headache might be gathering... the sort that can morph into a migraine if I don't watch it. Will have to monitor the situation closely, and be kind to my poor old noggin... maybe take a pill of things take a turn for the worse...

Roll up, roll up! Excerpt!

New excerpt from Suite Seventeen... click here!

shout outs!

Just wanted to shout out to a couple of super people!

First... Jenny, who sent me a lovely email the other day, saying how much she liked my work and cheering me up on a day when I was full of doubts.

Secondly... Eliza, who is amazing, and she knows why! :)

Oh, and if I linked to you at my old blog, and you're wondering why there isn't a link to you at this blog... well, wonder no more! Just scroll down right to the bottom of this blog and you'll find virtually all the links from my old one. I also hope to be adding more when time permits...

a mixed day

Just what it says on the tin...

One of my royalty statements arrived today, and it wasn't quite as wrist slittingly piddling as I'd feared. Not much, but not so little that they simply sent the greengrocer's lad round with a bag of monkey nuts. Was reasonably satisfied... until started discussing royalty statements in general on a list I'm on... which caused me to look more closely at certain figures, and realise exactly how small a proportion of the price of a book the author actually gets. And how many books get 'returned'... Navy blue gloom set in again... and not for the first time, I started fingering my lottery ticket and chanting incantations. Was tempted to promise my firstborn to the gods of Lotto, but then remembered I don't have one...

So, back to paper editing my opus. Again, mixed. Some bits are okay, but I'm into an uncharted sort of region now. A bit of the book I've only 'written' and not worked over about four or five times. And consequently it's very rough, untidy, twittish and amateurish in a lot of places, and reads like it was a first draft of a first ever novel written by a poorly educated teenager. Oh, I think I'll be able to knock it into shape somehow, but it's going to need a couple more runs over this last 100 pages or so...

On the up side, the rampant indigestion and dyspepsia I've suffered for the last few days hasn't been so bad today. So at least that's in my favour... Wouldn't want to have bad guts over the weekend when Saturday is fish and chip night!

doin' it old school...

Am still paper editing Suite Seventeen and quite enjoying the process... I say 'quite' because there are moments when I can't believe I've written something so amateurish and clunky. The good news, though, is that quite a lot of the stuff is pretty smooth, and there are pages and pages and pages when I don't have to do a single thing to it. However there are some untidy bits, and I'm in one of them at the moment. The character of Annie is sort of wavering a bit, and I've to firm her up and bring her back on point. Although, maybe the wavering is right? She's going through big, big changes, revamping her entire attitude to life and sex, and of course, she's just fallen head over heels for the most exotic, perplexing and perverse man she's ever set eyes on ie. Valentino! Anyone would feel a bit all over the place at a time like that, eh?

Sex and Music

Ack, apparently it's the US publication day of Wicked Words - Sex and Music today... and I'd completely forgotten! Aren't I useless?

Many thanks to publication day buddy Nikki for reminding me. I'll post later with some more stuff about this, but at the mo, I'm deep in paper edits of Suite Seventeen... and actually enjoying myself for a change.

Here's an excerpt!

best intentions... yeah, yeah, yeah...

I did quite well, for me, yesterday. I've decided that I've really got to shape up and make like a proper writer - instead of being a weak, self indulgent procrastinator all the time! I wasn't perfect yesterday, but I did improve on a lot of recent days. Achievements included:

• checked proofs of Public Domain and sent changes off to lovely editorial assistant
• perused and edited my story for the Sex With Strangers anthology [quite pleased with it too!]
• printed off a few chapters of Suite Seventeen for a paper edit
• set up my excerpts blog Portia's Prose
• prepared a bill for a web client
• read some more of Alison Kent's CIG to Writing Erotic Romance

And that lot is quite impressive if you're me!

Today I plan to get on with that paper edit of Suite... I did the edit of the SWS story on paper, and somehow, I found it easier to do that way. I got a clearer view of it. Not good for the environment to do it that way, I suppose. I'm going to allot myself a few chapters a day, so I don't frighten myself off doing it. My critique partner is away on holiday at the moment, so I can't send it to her until next week anyway.

Anyway, that's my main job for today. I may perhaps post a tasty morsel of the SWS story over at Portia's Prose, if I have time, and I'll certainly be reading more of the CIG, because even though I've been writing for years and years, it's still giving me insights into how I should be editing Suite... mostly things which I should be mindful of, but have lost sight of somehow... basics like goal and motivation and that old buggaboo of mine - conflict! God, do I hate having to 'do' conflict in books!!! I'd walk a million miles over broken glass and nails dipped in pus to avoid conflict in real life, so it just seems totally against nature to have to make up conflicts for my characters in my books... but dramatic storytelling is NOTHING without conflict... so there you are, I've gotta do it.

One thing I mustn't do today is continually keep checking MySpace to see how many friends I have. I've really got to get a grip there, and just go once a day to do my socialising and friend adding... It's a super place to network, but it's also a timewaster too. Big time! I've also got to refrain from continually visiting my Google Reader page to see which of my bloggy people has blogged... The posts will still all be there if I ration myself to one or two visits a day, and it'll be more of a treat if I have lots to read at once.

Anyway, time to start on my new, improved productive day! What are the bets on how long this latest of a million resolutions to do better will last?