This, of course, is...

... not my body!!!!

But I'm pleased to report that I've lost around half a stone in the month or so I've been trying to cut down on junk food and eat more heathily! And the beauty of it is, I've not had to deny myself completely. I'm still eating some nice things, like fish and chips and Stella Artois once a week, and our home made pasta bake etc. I'm afraid the chocolate has had to go for the time being, but once I get down to a weight I'm happy with, I may allow myself one or two choc treats a week. Possibly as consolation when I feel particularly fed up.

I think that if I can maybe lose another half stone by RWA, or maybe three quarters, I'll consider that sufficient. I've been caught in the prison of total weight/diet obsession before, and I'm not going to let that happen again!

V. busy for the rest of the week...

Things are a bit crazy here at the moment.


I was chugging along nicely with my reunion story, starting to get to grips with it, when the writing life, as it so often does, dropped an anvil on my head. Message from agent saying that editor has asked if there's any chance I can turn in IN TOO DEEP like... now!!! Major eeek agh situation! Now, the thing is finished in first draft, and has even had a polish, but there were some fairly majorish plot/research issues that I wanted to double check, and be sure of... and I was pretty sure that when I found out what I needed to know, there'd be some rewriting. I was also thinking of waiting 'til my actual delivery day, on the off chance that I'd get to see a sneak peek of the real cover... and if the hair or something was different, I could rewrite to fit!

But alas, no... I need a few more days, but I'm going to try and email the finished product in next Monday, which is a full two weeks early, which still helps the editor. Not sure why this rush has come about, but sort of have my suspicions.

I have to give a shout out to my good writing buddies, though, for hand holding me through this, and convincing me I could do it. So yay to Saskia and Madelynne, as ever, and many thanks to Merry and friends for library advice, and the Romance Divas for some medical stuff. And a huge shout out to my fabulous sister Rita, who's a nurse, who supplied me with some totally brilliant and crucial medical info too.

I'd better get stuck in then, hadn't I?

I am not...

... quite such a deadbeat today!

Much to my relief, I'm back on the challenge horse and have racked up a tidy 1.6K words today, on a newish project. It's a novella, based on a school reunion, which might turn into three novellas if the ideas gel properly. It started out not going so smoothly, but now I'm more in the zone with it, and I'm liking my new characters more. It's a story about a woman who discovers that the boy she used to fancy madly at school actually fancies his male best friend... and that the two of them also fancy *her* too... ooh la la!

I've also had a pretty productive day generally, doing chores like sorting out promo, ordering author copies of my forthcoming titles, Gothic Heat and Gemini Heat, and ordering my new bookmarks and postcards, designed for me by the fabulous Frauke of Croco Designs.

I know... I know...

I'm a useless blogger at the moment!

It's not that I don't have any news or anything, or that I'm particularly depressed or more under pressure than is normal for a writer. I just can't seem to translate my news or my thoughts into any kind of meaningful blog post. I think I'm just a little bit tired, and I can't summon the pep for a worthwhile post just at the moment.

In the meantime, here are links to a couple of new excerpts.

GEMINI HEAT

IN TOO DEEP

Enjoy!

The Cat is Back...

I have another new coach!

Probably only the UK readers will get this one... :)

One Day Down...

Well, it was a pretty good first Sven day!

I edited about five chapters of IN TOO DEEP, and despite many qualms about this one, I didn't find it too horrifically bad. It's pretty light on plot, but I'm starting to really like Gwendolynne, and her fairly grounded attitude to life, sexy mindgames, and her larger than sylphlike size. She's excited by the sudden naughty goings-on that she's becoming immersed in, but she's pretty down to earth too.

Later, when I'd done a good editing stint, I even went so far as to do a bit of writing on a different project too. Now this is a gamble, because I can usually only keep one set of characters in my head at once, but I thought I'd give it a shot, as I wanted to get some actual words laid down for the challenge, as well as just the editing. Plus, editing can be intense, and this other thing was like a 'refresher'... Not sure whether this new thing will amount to anything, as I'm not sure it's at all right for the project it's aimed at... but hey, it might come in for some other project at another time, or maybe turn into something suitable with editing.

I don't think I'll achieve nearly as much today, because I'm at a bit in ITD at the moment that needs some drastic reformatting. The characters are IMing each other, and the way I'd got it set out was confusing. So I'm having to do it a different way entirely... Plus, later, I'll be going out, so there'll be no extra evening working today.

Okay, let's get perspiring!

The fabulous Seventy Days of Sweat writing challenge starts again today! Bazillions of people have already signed up, but it's not to late to get on board and join the merry throng of writers all trying to achieve a wordcount per day of 1000 words or thereabouts. I'm one of the sponsors of this fun event, so hope to be attempting to offer encouragement as best I can to my fellow sweaters. As ever, I'm not sure what kind of example I am to others, but I always feel that if I'm not that great a role model, at least I'm showing the way you shouldn't do things, so others learn not to **** up the way I often do! LOL!

I'm actually starting off the challenge in editing mode, as it's now time to return to IN TOO DEEP the story of Gwendolynne, my buxom librarian and the ever so naughty Professor Hottie McHotstuff... It's about time I started posting some excerpts of this farrago of utter nonsense, so check back soonish and there might be a link to a frisky taster...

In the meantime here are some words of wisdom from the Prof...

And Mr Blue is fondling his UZI as we speak....

ps. Don't forget to visit the blogs of the other sponsors, who are HelenKay Dimon, Jaci Burton, Diana Peterfreund, Lauren Dane, Shiloh Walker and Larissa Ione.

I don't usually...

... blog twice in a day, but this just had me screeching with laughter!



Many thanks to the wonderful people at Cute Overload for bringing it to my attention.

This time things will be better...

First of all, these aren't my feet and they aren't my scales... :)

Anyway, after many years of not watching my weight, due to obsessive dieting in my youth that took me to the brink of anorexia, I'm keeping an eye on it again now. But this time, I'm not going to be silly, just relearn my eating habits a bit for long term control.

I think trying trousers on in BHS the other month was a bit of a shock... not only the beached whale I saw in the mirror, but moving up a size. So now I'm cutting back a bit, in a sensible way, so that I can lose a few pounds by RWA. I am allowing my once a week fish and chips and Stella Artois night, so that I don't feel entirely deprived, and I am eating an ordinary dinner at night. But I'm trying to eat more fruit, and cut out the choc and cake for a while, and I'm doing things like not slapping a load of butter on my veg, and following the Kelloggs Special K 'two bowls a day' regime and eating cereal for lunch as well as breakfast. The cereal thing works a treat for me, because it's so easy and doesn't take any prep time... a boon for the busy writer! And as I have boxes of at least five different cereals on the go, I can ring the changes.

I'm not saying I'll never eat choc and cake again... that would be too horrific to contemplate. But what I'm trying to do is reclassify them as 'treats' again, to be savoured as a special indulgence, rather than the regular part of my daily diet that they'd somehow become...

Anyway, I think these relatively painless changes are working. Have lost a couple of pounds since I begun about three weeks ago. Slow, but steady are the watchwords... and it's so much easier this time around because the brutal fact is that as you get older, your appetite does decrease, and I'm far less obsessed with food than I was when I was younger...

Wish me luck!

an insane orgy of widgets

That's what my blog is turning into!

I'm especially fond of countdowns, and you'll see a new one on the left, already counting down to the end of the new Sweat with Sven Challenge that starts on Saturday! I'm sponsoring again, and I'll be trying to set a good, industrious example, but awkwardly, for the first couple of weeks, I'll probably be editing In Too Deep rather than adding new words to a WIP! But even if I'm not racking up the wordcount, I'll still be cheering everyone on and hopefully motivating everyone with words of wisdom. Not mine, 'cos I have no wisdom to speak of, but bon mots from the great and the good of the writing world!

Talking of the great and the good, check out the list of Sweatmates... there are some pretty big names amongst the throng!

Today, I sent my Victorian extravaganza to my lovely and long suffering critique partner and... she loved it! Yippee! I sort of knew it had a certain je ne sais quoi myself, but with me not being a regular historical writer, I really wasn't confident to judge. Any road up, Mrs. Sofia Harewood and her naughty 'educational' chums have been lobbed off to my agent, who will read their story, sigh at it's magnifience, then lob it off to the lovely editor, who will also sigh, think 'this woman is awesome... I need to give her a huge contract... for she is the next big thing'... and I will be in Tesco buying champagne instead of bottled water and alcohol free lager!

victorian frolics... and a fun new board

Yesterday and today, I've been working on a long short story/short novella that's set in Victorian times. It's about this rich widow who decides that next time around, she wants her sex life to be a bit more exciting, so seeks advice from a mysterious therapist called 'Madame Chamfort' and gets rather more than she bargained for...

I'm not a historical author as a rule. [Hysterical, yes, but not historical]. So A GENTLEWOMAN'S PREDICAMENT is probably wildly anachronistic and a bit mental into the bargain, but it's been surprisingly entertaining to write. It's originally inspired by a short I wrote sometime back in the actual Victorian age, but I've twisted it and mauled it and improved it and generally shoved a lot more blokes into it. Here's one of them, the whiskery, sturdy, but very naughty/sexy Ambrose... vaguely familiar, you'll note. ;)

I've finished the first draft of this bunch of nonsense, and now it's to go off to my critique partner, and then my agent, then to a nice editor who will hopefully say, 'Portia, you're a genius! I'll take it!'

More nonsensical fantasy there...

And here's something new for fans of Black Lace, whether they be readers, authors, or prospective authors. The fabulous Madelynne Ellis, with a tiny bit of foofery from me, has set up a fandabidosy new Black Lace Chat Board!

Click the ugly logo that I designed in order to visit us and say hello!