high romance

I think I've made some good progress today. Writing has been good therapy against the things that are currently vexing me. I've raced along with Ill Met By Moonlight and managed a good 1.2K words.

I'm getting stuck into the big relationship climax now, the crisis... It's going to be quite wither wringing, fraught with emotion and potential loss. It's paranormal, of course, but I'm keeping the paranormal elements light, quite undefined. I don't want heavy mythos getting in the way of the love story, but I do want mystery and a tantalising otherworldliness that adds - hopefully - to the poignancy. Have been thinking a lot about this story in the last few hours, and I've realised that, at a pinch, if I had to take the sex out of it, the story would probably stand as it is with gentler sensuality and non explicit lovemaking.

However, those who like the superhot PDC stuff needn't worry... I'm not taking out the sex! I'm just complementing the heat with high romance and lots of emotional punch... :)

positive thinking

I'm going to think positive today, and avoid things that put me in a downward spiral of negativity and anger. Yesterday started out well... but deteriorated. I managed to do my 1K words, but I wasn't entirely happy with them, to be honest. The writing felt a bit 'forced'. Now this isn't too much of a disaster, as it can always be worked on and 'lifted' in the editing, so wasn't too bummed about it. Also managed to get one or two bits of other stuff done, webby and otherwise... so a fairly productive day. Spent a fair bit of time trying to sort out some excerpts to enter for a competition... Now this was a vexing task in several ways...

1. I kept seeing things I would have written differently now...
   
2. the excerpts had to be v. short and my scenarios develop gradually a lot of the time
3. I don't think I have a cat made of snow's chance in hell of winning in any of the categories so it's a fruitless exercise anyway

Still, I might post some of the bits and pieces I've chosen at Portia's Prose sooner or later. I must warn gentle readers however that these excerpts are v. rude and contain many v. rude words!

Later on yesterday, though, something happened that put me in a right old 'machete' mood again, and I'm afraid that stayed with me for the rest of the day and even caused me to lose sleep, despite my medication.

But today, and from henceforth, I'm going to ignore the thing as best I can and not let it get to me. Today I will be :

• doing 1K words
• doing web work
• sorting out more excerpts
• entering contests
• attempting to avoid wrath and instead embracing calmness and a shell of invulnerable tranquility [hah!]

Wish me luck!

the view from 'me'...

The laptop is... er... on my lap. Which is where The Tillster would be if the lappie wasn't there.

The black 'bit' in the bottom right is Kuffer.

let's have a good laugh then, shall we?

Always mindful that photos of me that appear online are mostly several years old, I post here for your delectation and high amusement, a photo taken yesterday! The horrible truth, captured for posterity by himself...

Laugh away!

plugging away...

The writerly life seems to be slow going and uphill at the moment. I seem to be playing a waiting game on various fronts, and generally stagnating... It's hard to stay motivated, but I'm trying to keep plugging away at my WIP, even if I don't feel inspired, and there's some comfort, I think in exhibiting at least a bit of dogged determination in the face of not much happening at all. I'm in that mood where one little crumb of positive news would probably make all the difference to me, but I'm in the middle of a stagnant lake and the crumbs just aren't floating my way...

Ill Met By Moonlight is progressing slowly. I've got to a tricky bit now, where Lois has to face the fact that there's something slightly hokey in the state of Robin... It's the awkward place where my familiar contemporary erotic romance style has to collide with the unfamilar paranormal romance aspect of the book and mesh together as a story. So, I'm slightly out of my comfort zone, and it's tough going! I think the only way is to keep on keeping on in my normal voice... Lois has to say, okay, you're not really human, but you're still a hot stud, so let's ****! Which has the pitfall of making her in danger of seeming, infamously, 'too stupid to live'... But what else can I do? A real person faced with a man who changes from an animal into a chap at the blink of an eye would be to run for her car, put the pedal to the metal and go, go, go! Even if she *does* love him... But no, I've gotta make it seem believable that she'd stay around and shag him!

For me, squaring paranormal with my natural contemporary inclinations means facing the uphill task of making a total lack of common sense seem acceptable, believable, and likeable!

eek, agh!

I might be a bit quiet here over the next two or three days... I just looked at my to do list and it's the stuff of nightmares!!!

Why the hell does everything land in my inbox at once? And always when I finally manage to connect with my WIP again?

I'll try and drop in between bouts of tearing my hair and bouncing off the walls!

well...

today is just like any other day, even though there's a book out today with one of my stories in it.

Same old slacking off, same old chocolate guzzling, same old aches and pains... but something must have sparked me up a bit, as I finally got back into writing IllMet and did a mighty 2K words in the end! I managed to complete what's turned out to be a helluva long marathon sex scene, and then felt compelled to kick on, and write a bit of a scene that illuminates Robin the hero's emotions. He's not human, but he's beginning to feel that he wants to be, and my job is to try and convey that yearning effectively. I hope I can do it. I think I can do it. But only the writing will tell... Writing paranormal isn't something I've done a lot of, although I'm very much enjoying it, and I don't want to muck up my mythos... It's all got to make sense within the bounds of the story's internal logic. Don't want to leave any glaring plot holes to spoil the reader's enjoyment, do I?

I've got something 'out' tomorrow... apparently...

Kristina Lloyd reminded me that Sex and Shopping is out tomorrow! I'd completely forgotten... which shows how direly crap I am at promo. Once a story's done and subbed and accepted and proofed, well, I've forgotten it because I'm on to the next thing and the next thing and the next...

Any road up, S&S contains one of my stories, This Very Boutique... which, obviously, is about shopping, but in a slightly off beat styley. I think it's a right laugh, a jolly sort of story, not to be taken in the least bit seriously, but sweet, I think, in its own particular way. At least I think it is...

You can buy the collection from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk although American readers will have to wait until 26th December to order it. Not sure how many folks will be browsing Amazon on Boxing Day though, but there you are!

Anway, I may post a teaser bit of it later today at Portia's Prose, if I can find it on this laptop...

UPDATE... found it! Go to EXCERPT FROM THIS VERY BOUTIQUE!

Oh, and while I'm here, sorry for the sparseness of entries in the last couple of days... a doctor's visit and a migraine have sort of knocked me for six, but hopefully, I'm on the mend now...

Five Interesting Things About Me...

Naughty Jax tagged me... Now, I don't normally participate in things like this, but decided to do a quickie.

1. I have six toes on my left foot
2. I am distantly related to the Romanovs
3. I speak the language of cats
4. I had a paper on String Theory published under an assumed name
5. I was temporarily swapped at birth with another baby and lived with a different family for three months

Please remember that I'm a pathological liar with a vivid imagination and I earn my living by making things up... LOL

ps. I won't tag anyone specifically, but if you feel like doing this for a laff, please consider yourself tagged.

It's Guy Fawkes weekend!

Went to a bonfire last night, with himself, and while I didn't take any photos, because basically I'm crap at photography, I found this lovely image on Flickr which looked very much like the display we saw. It was taken by a talented photographer called berriehol, who v. kindly allowed me to post it here.

Haven't achieved a whole great deal of anything today, apart from one or two tiny web bits for a client, some emails finally dealt with, and one or two other things sorted. I've mainly spent the day wrangling with the synopsis I mentioned, and boy, has it been a bit of a wrassle! I hate writing synopses... The book itself is hard enough to write, without this having to 'sell' it in the form of a potted summary... Eck!

urgh....

It's been tough going these last couple of days... I've felt v. tired and things have been a struggle, but at least I've managed to keep my wordcount up, and am now over half way through Ill Met By Moonlight! I feel I've done quite well with this, considering it was only a pretty vague idea, and I started writing it more or less because I felt I should be writing something, even though it's uncommissioned and might never even find a home...

I feel very bad though, because I have a long list of emails I need to reply to. I don't know why I sometimes feel this strange resistance to answering emails, even those from people I like and cherish. It's v. weird. It's like I want to reply and communicate, but there's this invisible barrier that stops me doing it. It's very similar to the resistance I feel towards writing my fiction sometimes. It's so stupid... because when I manage to punch through that barrier, I'm all right and the words flow... And it's not that I don't want to commicate at all, because I'm managing to write this, aren't I? And I've been posting at my very favourite writers' gathering place in all the world, the Romance Divas Message Board, but emails have been building up and building up... and I must deal with them!

Anyway, today I have a busy schedule... Top of the list is write some emails! I've also some web bits to do, and I've to write a synopsis for another novella that I wrote quite a while ago, because a friend who I'm collaborating with on a proposed two person anthology is hoping to pitch it to an editor within the next week. God, this is a tough one though... like many authors, I hate and loathe and dread writing synopses. I've read all the howtos on the topic, and I have written plenty in my time, but to be honest, if writing novels is tough, writing synopses is a hundred times harder!!!

Any tips on synopsis writing, anyone?

omigod, another VDO dream!

Yikes, I had another dream about being with Vincent D'Onofrio/Bobby Goren last night! It seemed to be the latter, as he had the Goren 'look' but it's all a bit vague so it's hard to tell. I can't remember the details, but we seemed to have been at some kind of club, and had stayed out all night and had dossed down together somewhere. In the same bed, I think, but alas I can't remember anything more intense than a bit of kissing and cuddling... I think we might have been at my parents house, and I was younger than I am now, because I remember getting a ticking off for having a man round! There were more confusing bits that are hard to dredge up... Bobby might have been involved with someone else, but was trying to break up with them, and also there was one fleeting bit where he might have been naked... and possibly wrestling with someone, like in the film Women In Love... but as I say, it's all pretty vague. Unfortunately, in respect of the naked bit!!!