a grand day out

Had a smashing day today! It was another of my occasional lunches with my splendid writing friend, Saskia Walker... in which we invade a local branch of M&S's Cafe Revive and generally terrorise the other diners and coffee swiggers there with our laughing and racy talk about erotic writing. Because Saskia and I swap emails incessantly, it always feels as if it was only yesterday since we actually met, and consequently we drop straight into a groove of jolly chat, with lots of jokes, feedback on each other's work, and a liberal amount of ripe, creative bitching! LOL

Because the life of a writer is usually a very solitary and quiet one, without much talking [unless you use Voice Recognition software] our super chatty lunches are sometimes a bit of a shock to the vocal chords and I do believe I've got a bit of sore throat now! But I wouldn't give up these get togethers for all the tea in China because there's nothing to beat having an author friend who you can meet 'in the real world' as opposed to online. Especially one who's as wise, witty and kind as Saskia - who is a rock to me in this insane and often irrational world of writing and publishing.

I'm already counting the days to our next lunch!

surprisingly...

I was expecting a higher percentage on this one...

Your Sloth Quotient: 37%

You're a little lazy, but normally you're a very energetic and motivated person. Don't beat yourself up over a little laziness every now and then. You do need your downtime!

How Much Sloth Do You Have?

so chuffed!

Just discovered another five star review for Entertaining Mr Stone at Amazon.com

Thanks, Robin! I'm so glad you enjoyed the book, and I appreciate you taking the time to say so. I've had so many dodgy reviews at the Amazons over the years that a positive one is always especially cherished and appreciated.

STOP PRESS!!!

Just discovered another five star, at Amazon.co.uk this time! It's from 'Erotica Reader from the North'... Mmm.... Mysterious, but clearly someone who totally gets EMS and thoroughly enjoyed it!

As I said above, many, many thanks for taking the time to say you enjoyed my book! I'm all of a glow now... :)

my baby...

Am feeling a bit soggy and weepy at the moment, and it's not really due to the quiz result below. I just went up to the post office and posted the manuscript of Suite Seventeen off to my agent. And now I feel as if a child or close friend has gone away and left me. I always feel a bit blue at the end of a book, both when I finish the first draft and when I actually send it out into the world. First draft blues are because the story is told and even if I have to rewrite bits and add bits, the plot is essentially resolved and I've got my characters to their happy ending and they don't need me any more. Posting off blues are just as intense. It's gone. I won't be working on it any more. I have to leave these characters and get to know new ones. Okay, there's the proof checking, but by then, it's like a book written by somebody else in a way. The intimate connection is broken by that stage.

Suite Seventeen is a particularly poignant one to lose because I've been working on it a long time, and I've had some pretty serious ups and downs with it. It's been hard! But after a struggle, I feel I got there in the end and it's a pretty good book... and the feedback from my critique partner tells me that I'm not wrong in being quietly pleased with the outcome. Whether readers will like it... well, who knows? Different people look for different things in books, esp. in the area of romance, erotic romance and women's erotica... but hopefully, people will enjoy Annie's racy sexual adventure and the love she finds in the course of it. And I know that a certain special group of readers will hopefully appreciate the unique charms of Valentino in the light of the remarkable actor whose appearance and thespian skills inform him! ;)

In other news, I'm keenly scrutinising the weather as tomorrow - fingers crossed - is another of my splendid writers' lunches with my special author buddy, Saskia Walker... A little bit of rain or chilliness will certainly not put us off, but if there's a torrential monsoonlike downpour we may have to regroup and reconvene...

Yikes almighty!!!!

You Are 84% Bipolar

You have some serious ups and downs, maybe to the point of endangering your own life. Consult a doctor to see if you may truly have bipolar disorder.

Are You Bipolar?

Actually, not a surprise as I was diagnosed with mild manic depression years ago, and these things don't tend to go away... It's not the big serious version of bipolar disorder though, so I'm able to deal with it and get on with life.

progress... slightly

Before

After

eek, I'm mental hermaphrodite!

Your Brain is 47% Female, 53% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

I'm not sure this is an entirely true result though... bits of it are spot on, but the words 'rational' and 'reasonable' are not ones that have ever been associated with yours truly! :)

wot a relief!

Got up this morning and sighed with relief as all the correct lights were glowing on my broadband Livebox! Thank heavens for that!

Having to connect via a dialup connection for a bit made me realise just how quickly I've come to take the speed of broadband for granted. I held out against going bb for ages, because my old Win98 desktop just wasn't up to the job, and I thought I was okay, what did I need bb for... but now I realise just what I was missing. A lot of the sites I visit nowadays are just impossible without the higher speed. Anything with movies or music, and even a lot of normal sites that are graphics intensive are just unusable on dialup. So hurray for broadband, even if it's crap broadband like Orange...

Still feeling a happy glow about my CP's response to Suite Seventeen. :) I've done the little bits of tweakage and I think now's the time to print the sucker off and send it to my agent to see what she thinks... It will be weird to have this one off the table because it's been in my life for a long, long time, as there was a long lead time with it... I must have been writing the thing on and off for almost a year now. I've done other things in between, of course. I've written a clutch of short stories, a novella, two partials and a few other bits and bobs... but now it's time to move on and get stuck into other stuff. Am working on another novella at the mo - the one that's mutating from first person to third - as well as reformatting a v. old novel that I'd love to find a brand new home for. I'd also like to get stuck into a proposal for a full novel, but I'm not quite sure what sort of thing to go with until I hear from agent/editor... It's such a relief to know that I've finally finished Suite Seventeen though...

the smooth with the rough...

This will be brief, for reasons I'll explain in a mo...

First the smooth... My absolute star of a critique partner has just got back to me about Suite Seventeen and she loves it! Wahey! She says that in places I've even managed to convey the emotions of the 'other' character in a first person narrative... which I think is quite a nifty achievement, though I say it myself! I feel so very very much better about the book now. I did subconsciously sort of love it, even when it was behaving badly, but after the high of Entertaining Mr Stone, I was so frightened that anything that came after it would be a let down. But it seems that Annie and Valentino's story works after all...

But there's always a rough, isn't there, and in this case it's my ****ing, ****ing broadband connection which went kerpuft at around four o'clock with no warning and for no apparent reason. Bastard thing! Bastard, bastard Orange for being so bastarding useless... I know they are, because there's a whole message board about the problems people have with them. I will give them until tomorrow morning, and then I will ring up and berate them... much good it'll probably do me. Now any writer worth their salt would think, goody, no internet distractions... but not me, I've spent hours trying various troubleshooting manoevers. None of which worked.... obviously. And I'll probably go on fretting and achieving nothing until I get it back!

So, folks, if things go a bit quiet here for a while, it's 'cos the broadband thing was a bigger problem even than I feared... Keep your fingers crossed for me, eh?

Uh oh...

I don't predict much work getting done today... It's 11.20am, and I'm still in bed, sitting up, swigging tea and watching Moto GP with himself... And the motorcycle coverage doesn't finish until 2.15pm!!! As I've said before, I'm not a biker myself, but I do enjoy watching the races, as much for the droll commentaries as for the racing itself. I don't think I'll stay in bed and watch it all... I'll have to get up and get dressed in one of the breaks, but I still don't think I'll be getting much ticked off my ponderous to do list until tomorrow...

Am still thinking about that first person/third person quandary for my novella thingie. Have received some excellent advice on a list I'm on from a writer who does first exceptionally well... and she has also used dual first, and other combinations too. I started changing the text I have so far to third, and it was a right mare of a task, and I was convinced it was turning into a giant pile of poo... but... on reading back the bit I'd transformed, it didn't actually read too badly at all. I think the struggle was colouring my feelings about the outcome... if that makes sense. I think it's quite likely that I'll go with third throughout but I may experiment with first for the heroine and third for the sort of hero... I seem to 'hear' him in third, although I can hear her in both first and third...

So today, when I get up that's what I'll be putzing about with, as well as doing a bit more on a web site update job I have in hand. I say 'get up' in the loosest possible way, as a lot of the time, I actually work on the lappie while sitting up on the bed. But when I get dressed and switch into 'work' mode, those are the things I'll be doing...

why does this not surprise me?

Your Wrath Quotient: 83%

You have the makings of a very evil dictator. If you don't want to go that route, you should consider anger management!

How Much Wrath Do You Have?

I've won the pools!

Yes, believe it or not, I've won the football pools! But before you all get too excited, I'm afraid my prizewinning cheque is only actually for £27, so I won't be rushing out and buying any fast cars, mansions or yachts just yet. Still, twenty seven quid is better than no quid at all, so I'm ahead of the game already today... :)

I think my little win must have been a good omen too, because thanks to a suggestion from my angel of a critique partner, I've finally got a bit of direction on what to write next. She suggested I try a novella, 'cos they're shorter and not such a commitment, and I remembered an idea I had a while back, for which I already had a vague outline [very, very vague] and even a bit of text. Which isn't actually too bad, but I'm not sure about the POV/tense... For this story, short as it is, I think the reader needs to know the hero's POV, but, the stuff I've done so far is in first person present. [Can't believe this, actually... the text I have was written several years ago... and it's in first present... long before Mr Stone was even a twinkle in my libido!!!] Anyway, I think the thing should be in third person, past... but the first person stuff is very immediate. So, I have a question... or questions...

If you're a writer, have you ever written in two first person viewpoints? And if so, did it work to your satisfaction? And did reader feedback indicate that they thought it worked too?

If you're a reader, have you read any books written in dual first person lately - or ever - and did you like that way of doing things? Did it seem natural... or weird?

I'd really like to hear some opinions on this one, and would be very grateful for feedback.

In other news, my results for the How Gross Are You? quiz were not faked! I really am that disgusting!!

And finally, as there hasn't been much chocolate news in this new blog, here's a recommendation....

Tesco's Finest Swiss Plain Chocolate with Espresso Filling.... it's bloody fantastic! Get some!