so tired...

Not one of mine but very cute... and the graphic says it all.

--
Telly: not yet
Choc/Yummy: not yet
Mood: dull
Writing: none
Reading: none
RSI/FMS: see above


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

Lost in Space

Drifting aimlessly, lost my tether, knocked off trajectory by crap and stess... letting down my 'boys'...

--
Telly: Numb3rs
Choc/Yummy: various
Mood: dispirited
Writing: not a bloody thing
Reading: not a bloody thing
RSI/FMS: tired, run down, aching


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

BUDDIES at LUSTBITES

I'm posting at the Lustbites blog today with a fun Q&A [questions posed by my chum Janine Ashbless!] a hot excerpt and a prize draw for people who comment on the post there.

So go here: BUDDIES DON'T BITE

And don't forget to leave a comment so you get a chance of the prize... it's a copy of the Lustbites vamp anthology and a copy of Gothic Blue!!!

--
Telly: Numb3rs S.3
Choc/Yummy: Lindor Dark
Mood: foul/chainsaw
Writing: nothing yet
Reading: nothing yet
RSI/FMS: tired, achy


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

scraping by...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, Professor H, I should be trying to do a tad more than my basic 1K... but it's been a struggle these last few days, to be honest. It's 11.13pm now, and I've just scraped by my goal wordcount. And I'm not sure that the actual words themselves are any good... the text feels a bit dead at the moment.

Thing is, I'm allowing myself to get stressed about things that I really shouldn't get stressed about. Stuff that's just not worth it... meaningless in the grander scale of things. But anyone who visits here regularly will know how I am... I fret over things that I ought to laugh off because they're stupid.

Any road up, crap words or no crap words, I've now officially done a third of In Too Deep! So even if it is total horse plop, there'll be time when the first draft's done to fix it.

And that's a comfort...

--
Telly: Moto GP, Top Gear
Choc/Yummy: Lindor
Mood: fed up with various stuff
Writing: 1K In Too Deep
Reading: nothing much today
RSI/FMS: very sore generally, plus wrists


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

thanks to Saskia!!!

And the delicious skinniccinos and toasties at BB's... I'm in a much, much better mood today!

Writing is a bloody lonely business and while online friendships and associations can be enriching and rewarding, there is nothing, but nothing to beat a face to face with a like-minded chum who's really on the same wavelength. I think the lunches I share every month or two with the wonderful Saskia Walker really help to keep me sane in a world that's sometimes utterly crazy and perplexing.

As usual we were in 'frightening the natives mode', and pretty soon an exclusion zone established itself around us as punters with delicate sensibilities swiftly moved away to tables out of earshot of our frank and occasionally even so slightly raucous [me] talk about writing, erotic romance, publicity, blogging, other authors, promo, editing... and the general bonkersness of the romance author's life. Safely away from the internet and being eavesdropped on by any actual authors/bloggers/online personalities, we can dish the dirt with a delicious lack of inhibition. I would imagine by the time we're finished there are quite a lot of furiously burning ears dotted all around the globe. Saskia, of course, is wiser, kinder and far more generous-spirited than I am, but she tolerantly smiles and listens to my repeated and extended tirades of venting!


--
Telly: nothing much
Choc/Yummy: cheese and ham toastie
Mood: good
Writing: not yet
Reading: ARC
RSI/FMS: tired and achy, but not too bad


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

my mood today

There are so many people annoying me today that I don't even want to begin to list them. I'm in one of my moods of general poisonous resentfulness and ill humour... but fortunately I have one or two nice things that will lift me out of it presently...

• out to lunch tomorrow with fabulous buddy Saskia Walker!
• hair looking splendidly blonde now, due to the ministrations of Anne, my hairdresser supreme
  
• I still have 20 Eppesodes of Season Three of Numb3rs to watch... mmm Charlie goodness!
  
• mmm too for mini choc chip brioches

Not sure if I'll achieve my writing goal today, or tomorrow, but I'm nicely in hand and hey, writing isn't everything in life.

--
Telly: see above
Choc/Yummy: see above
Mood: see above
Writing: not yet
Reading: not in the mood
RSI/FMS: sore and tired


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

HOTBED - out now in the US!

This was not what Natalie had expected. The angry thing she held in her hand didn't seem to belong to the mild, shy man she'd believed she was sitting next to. He felt powerful. Primal. Dominant in a way that bypassed all words. She wanted to get down on her knees and...

Pride comes before a fall... but what if the descent becomes the wildest ride of your life? Two sisters - Natalie and Patti - become rivals when they challenge each other's daring on a dark, downward spiral where nobody is quite who or what they seem, and where transgressing sexual boundaries is the norm.

"Hotbed is a perfect showcase for Portia Da Costa’s inestimable talent." ~ Ashley Lister, Erotica Readers and Writers Association

Read Excerpt

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

--
Telly: Numb3rs Season 3
Choc/Yummy: Lindor Dark
Mood: harassed
Writing: IN TOO DEEP 350 words so far
Reading: in between books
RSI/FMS: very tired and achy


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

it's a struggle...

to get into my writing today. I've been putting it off and putting it off because I've got what feels like a tricky bit coming up next and I'm not sure how to tackle it. I've done a couple of hundred words... but I'm really resisting getting to the meat of the scene. I'm rather afraid of it. :(

However, Mr Blue, Professor Hottie and Kuffer are respectively menacing me, cajolling me, and waving their claws at me from the sidelines... so I'd better shape up, hadn't I?

In better news, I've recently discovered that my very first Black Lace novel is to be reprinted next year, with a brand new and apparently very spiffing cover! No idea what it'll look like yet, but here's the link:

Gemini Heat

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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!

weak bulbs...

I'm still grappling with motivation and tone... and the underlying 'whys' behind my characters' actions and attitudes. And it's tough. I keep getting slight light bulbs of inspiration, but they seem weak and not as compelling as they should.

Thing is, it used to be enough for me in my earlier books for people to just 'be' the way they are ie. sex maniacs a lot of the time, just because... But now, I need to know what made them that way, and what drives them, and what's affected them. They need to be more fully characterised so that they make sense to me, and thus make sense to the reader. I think this is important in erotic romance, more so than in straight erotica. And only confirms I'm writing [or trying to write] now what I should be writing... A proper believable romance with fully developed even if slightly twisted characters, rather than just sex for sex' sake stories.

But me being me, I've made things hard for myself by going for a first person viewpoint again with my WIP. Clearly, this makes for very rich characterisation of Gwen, the heroine, but it's bloody tricky to see what's driving the two hero/anti-heroes, Daniel and Nemesis. Nemesis can speak through his letters and perhaps other media like emails and IM, but Daniel's going to be a tougher nut to crack. But, I had one of my weak bulbs about him this morning. One which sort of works okay, due to a facet of him that's already in the story... bit of happy serendipity, really. It's not really a glimpse into his mind, but it's a way of showing things that have happened to him that casts a bit of a lightbulb glow on why he does the things he does and acts the way he does...

Need to get stuck in and write more of the mutha now..


-----------------------
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!

Wowee, I'm posting at Sven's Gym today!

Go here today to read my thoughts on why writing is like cats... or summink.

Meanwhile back at base, despite the best efforts of Team Portia [Mr Blue, Professor Hottie and Kuffer's Claws of Death] I only managed to get around 1K of words done yesterday. Yes, I know that's meeting my target, but after several over-target days, it feels like a letdown. But I had so many bits of jobs to deal with, not least of all weird stuff with my bank account. Not bad stuff - in fact it might be good! - but it still takes time ringing up places to find out what's going on.

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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!

Monitoring my progress

Here's a photo of Genghis Khat aka Kuffer, pictured with the high tech recording device that I use to log my Sweat70 progress.

Thankfully, I managed 2K words yesterday, and 1.5K so far today, so my lip is safe for the time being...


-----------------------
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!