Yikes, it's started!

Sweat70 has started and Mr Blue is determined to get tough with me from the outset! Which he needs to, because not only am I a sponsor this time round [I must be maaaaad!!!!] I'm also in the middle of one of my 'oh no, I don't want to write... it's too hard...' things. Which is a bit inconvenient to say the least...

No, seriously, I was feeling like that, but whilst taking a walk up into little town, to the bank [and forgetting to call at the chemists, which I was supposed to call at] I did have a bit of inspiration for the start of my next WIP, which I plan to 'sweat' over, to get at least a goodish chunk done by the time the challenge ends in January. I'm still debating between first and third person, but am veering closer to first at the moment. And even if I start in first and it's a misfire, I'll still have the storyline that I can rewrite in first, won't I?


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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!

Let's Sweat Again!

It's time to sweat for seventy days again... and so help me God, I'm one of the sponsors this time. I can't begin to imagine what possible use I'm going to be. Talk about the blind leading the blind... but here's the official call to arms... Courtesy of Sven...

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We here at Sven Says Sweat invite you participate in round two of our Seventy Days of Sweat Writing Challenge. The challenge begins on Monday, October 15 and runs through Tuesday, January 15.

Yes, that’s 93 days. We’re giving you 23 days off to use as your personal holiday and religious circumstances require

For those participating in Nano who don’t want to start before 11/1, you can use the first 15 days to plan out your story, and then have 45 days to polish once November is over.

The goal is to have a completed manuscript at the challenge’s end.

The rules are simple. You agree to write from 750 to 1500 words a day (depending on your project needs) between the dates listed above. If you need to take off a day, you make up the pages another. Remember: You only have to do the writing for 70 days.

You don’t have to have a blog to participate, but we do want you to sign up below so everyone involved can get to know one another. And if you do have a blog, you can post the information there. Going public with your commitment is about owning it.

As far as reporting your progress, you’ll come back here each Wednesday and Sunday and post your total word count. Those of us sponsoring the challenge will be dropping by your blog (if you have one) and egging you on! And this year we have several co-sponsors who will also be checking up on you! (More on that later.)

The challenge is open to anyone writing in any genre, published and aspiring authors both. On the sidebar, you’ll find our logo if you’d like to put one on your blog. For now, let’s see a show of hands.

Who’s not afraid to sweat?

GO HERE TO SIGN UP!!! THERE'S STILL TIME!!!

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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!

Sigh.... a migraine coming on....

my head is starting to pound and I feel horrible. So for much more interesting stuff, pop across to LUSTBITES and read my post about beautiful transvestites... and to THE HOT SPOT, the new Total-E-Bound blog, where a bunch of the authors are talking about sex toys.

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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!

some good stuff, no writing...

Here's a new favourite of mine... The nifty show NUMB3RS! I caught a couple of episodes, then missed one, so I decided to treat myself to the boxed set of Season One, and have just had a mini marathon. Obviously, I love me a cop show... but I like the angle on this one. I've always had a thing for cute but extremely brainy men, Detective Goren being the prime example, but I must admit to being rather taken with genius Charlie in this show. He's not my usual type, but he's rather cute and so is his big brother too.

Have now treated myself to Season Two as well... I don't think this will replace my beloved Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and the brilliant Clever Bobby, but just because I love one it doesn't mean I can't like the other show too...

In other news, I managed to get my La Cie Porsche external hard drive to work properly and back up my Documents folder! Wonders will never cease!

It wasn't the drive itself, or the USB driver/card etc, as I'd feared... it was the poxy free backup software supplied with the drive!!! When I downloaded me a decent backup program - Genie Backup Manager - the backup set that I calculated would take around four days with the bundled software actually only took 15 minutes!!!!

So that's good news, innit?


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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!

Better....

Well, I've managed to do about a thousand words yesterday and today on CHANCE OF A LIFETIME, my BDSM novella featuring a naughty, kinky aristocrat, who likes to play pervy spanking games in his crumbling and decrepit old stately home... It's not great literature, but it's a bit of a giggle... and the beautiful Marquis of Blaystock is as hot as he is twisted... :)

And while you're here... please, please consider voting for me every day in the Night Owl Romance Awards! I'm in the Best Ebook Contemporary Erotica category and it's a very close call. I probably won't win, but I'm not giving up without a fight, and if you're a PDC fan, and prepared to vote for me each day, I stand a better chance...

Click here to visit the voting site!

Please accept my profound gratitude and appreciation in advance! Love you all!

Rage

This was me, yesterday, raging at almost everything! [only I have better teeth] I did no writing and spent most of the day in a state of fury at 'stuff' and inanimate objects that all seemed to conspire against me to stop me achieving anything positive! My printer was playing up, telling me there were paper jams when there were nothing of the sort... Tried to do a back up to my new[ish] Porsche designed hard drive... Porsche? Don't make me ****ing well laugh! The speed this stupid thing was transferring had more in common with that trolley thing that pulls Space Shuttles out of the Vertical Assembly Building, only in this case, towed by geriatric snails! Had to abandon the back up as my calculations predicted it would take around seven years... grr... Obviously something is wrong there, and I suspect it might be my USB driver or summink like that... Only trouble is if I start getting into diagnostics that's just another thing to stop me writing!

On a plus note, I did manage to free up a bit of space at the side of the bed by moving some books and throwing out some papers, but it's just marginal really. I can move there now, though, so that's a plus...

Today, I am going to write something! I'm not going to get distracted by 'stuff' and I'm going to resist the urge to hang out too long at my favourite blogs and boards. And I'm not going to get sidetracked into promo stuff again today either... either written, or graphicky... Like I said, if I don't actually write anything, what the bleeding hell is there going to be to promote????


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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!

Agh!

... I just can't seem to get any writing done! I'm drowning in sort of writing related/promo related jobs and I'm just not getting to the actual fiction... which is frustrating and worrying because if I don't do any, what the **** will I have to promo in the future? I'm just going to have to cut back and not get as involved with stuff. Discipline myself to just a visit or two per day to my fave sites, and no more. And not take on anything else that I just don't have time for!

But on the plus side of things, here are two new reviews of Hotbed! First one is by Ashley Lister, a connoisseur of fine literature if there ever was one!

Review of Hotbed at ERWA by Ashley Lister

The second is by the legendary Harriet Klausner. It's a little odd, but she seems to like it, so thanks, Harriet! :)

Review of Hotbed by Harriet Klausner


And here's a nice review of Eyes of Desire by Deb at SensualReads.net

Review of Eyes of Desire by Deb at Sensual Reads.

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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!

Bits and bats...

Well, it's the first of October and the fabulous Raven Halloween Hunt is on! I hope you'll click the graphic above and take part in this fun game of hide and seek... There are lots of authors taking part and offering many, many fabulous prizes, including books from little old moi!



On the subject of games of Hide and Seek the above anthology, edited by the fabulous Alison Tyler and Rachel Kramer Bussel has just been published, and it contains an offering from Portia Da Costa! GLINT is a naughty short about a frisky couple on holiday and their sexy high jinks on a beach. There are stories in the collection from lots of top authors, including my fabulous writing buddy, Saskia Walker.

It's available from both the Amazons now: Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com



HOTBED is out too, in the UK, and imminently in the US... It says on the front it's 'an erotic romance', but to be honest, that's stretching a point. It's more like a woman's voyage of sexual discovery type story... and it's very, very rude! But... the heroine does get her man in the end, and something he says and does shows her that she's the one for him even if there's not a lot of hearts and flowers and stuff.

Check it out at the Amazons: Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

STOP PRESS... there's a spiffy new interview with me in The Sandbox at The Writing Playground

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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!

Yeah, things are getting bad again....

My bedside disaster area is getting out of hand again. The pile of magazines and paper is now actually higher than the bedside table itself, and the heaps of books that lean against this pile are at a more or less matching height. I think something has to be done in the next few days or it'll all end in tears.

Sorry there haven't been any posts this last few days. You could say my mind is a bit like my bedside... a teetering pile of unsorted information. I have been crossing stuff off my to-do list, but it just seems as if as fast as I do this, I add new items, so I never get to the end of it. But I suppose that's a writer's life? I'm sure there are writers who sit at a clutter free desk, with their business paperwork in an A-Z filed filing cabinet and with all their books on mahogany bookshelves in an office with a harmonious garden view... but I bet there are more out there who function in various stages of hyper-chaos, the way I do... I could say it's part of the mythos of being a 'bohemian artiste', but that's just pretentious claptrap... what it really boils down to, in my case, is the mythos of being an idle, disorganised slob. :)

Anyway, my naughty Marquis story is moving ahead, at a modest pace... Christian is the type of male character I love. Dominant, but humane, aware of his own foibles and not prone to taking himself all that seriously. He's a sort of blend of Mr Stone and Valentino, but with a title and a crumbling old moneypit of a stately home.


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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!