Archive for September, 2006
September 30, 2006
top pick!
Got up this morning to find that Married In A Rush has been given a Top Pick by Heather Heistand at Romance Reader at Heart!
Julie Cohen returns with her October release from Mills & Boon Modern Extra, the international line replacing Harlequin Temptation. Once again she writes the perfect short contemporary romance!
Jo Graham is a friend of the characters from Cohen’s last book, but she’s another unique heroine—a risk-taking commitment-phobe. One minute she’s turning down a marriage proposal, and the next she’s having a sexual encounter in a broom closet in a museum! Is that a bad thing when you’ve met the sexiest man you’ll ever see in your lifetime?
Bruno Deluca has a history of attachment disorder himself, but he’s moved all the way from Boston to London so he can spend time with his fatherless nephew, so you know he’s a keeper. When Jo finds herself pregnant, she knows he’ll want to be a part of his child’s life. It’s obvious to everyone but them that the two are perfect for each other in every way as they negotiate a marriage of convenience.
Despite the title, it doesn’t seem like Jo and Bruno are married in a rush, since they are so right together. Cohen keeps it light and fun and sexy, despite a surprising emotional realism. If you haven’t read her yet, make sure you track down all her books!
What a great way to start the day.
I’m going to London today to give a talk on US contests to the London RNA chapter, and then I am meeting Biddy for cake at a cafe-and-sex-shop. Should be an interesting day…but first I need to write a few pages.
September 29, 2006
wasting time, useful books, and floundering around
I mostly procrastinated yesterday…did a bit of tidying, played around on the internet, talked on the phone for an hour and a half with Kathy, walked into town to buy a birthday present for Biddy and ended up trying on maternity jeans instead (I had no success, but did find a top and some leggings), then had to lie down for an hour because I was so tired and sore from walking up and down the hill and around the shops. Pregnancy really does for your feet.
I did call my agent. I’d sent her the synopsis for Close Encounters (that’s the erotic science fiction romantic comedy I wrote with Kathy), and she thought it was hilarious. Both of my editors have heard about the book now, and both of them think it is very funny, but unfortunately there isn’t much of a market for funny erotica in this country, so I guess we’ll be concentrating on submitting it in the US. The market is definitely different there, and we’ve had requests from three publishers (two big print houses and one e-pub) so we’ll see how it goes.
I picked up a copy of Alison Baverstock’s Is There A Book In You?. I was one of the many authors who Alison sent a questionnaire to when she was preparing this book, so I was thrilled to see myself quoted talking about writing along with such authors as Katie Fforde, Phillip Pullman, and Stephen King. (I’m not worthy, but I’ll take the association however I can get it!)
It looks like a very good book, though I haven’t read it through yet–full of little nuggets of information, advice, and experience. It’s the second general “how-to” writing book I’ve bought recently, because my friends Lee Weatherly and Helen Corner, of Cornerstones Literary Consultancy, have written a book called How To Write a Blockbuster. The books are different–the Blockbuster book is more about clearly explaining technical aspects such as structure, genre, characterisation, and submission, and Book in You is more about discovering how you, personally, fit into the world of writing and publishing. I think they compliment each other quite well and I think they’ll both be very useful for reference and enjoyment.
I also wrote 1300 words, which is over my minimum, though not quite as much as I wanted to. I couldn’t figure out my hero’s motivation. I’m having a little trouble balancing the conflict for this book, possibly because my attention span is about ten minutes long. This morning I got up and wrote nearly 900 words of just musing about what the hell my hero thinks he’s doing dragging the heroine hundreds of miles to see his mother. I’m still not entirely sure it’s correct, but I’ve got enough to work with now, and maybe I can change in the edits. It’s not bad enough so that I think it sucks. Yet.
September 28, 2006
being analysed
It has been a few days of very exciting things going on, Anna’s sale being the best of them. I still have to blog about the Mills & Boon party in London last Friday, and some writing-related stuff, too, because I’ve had a little bit of an epiphany about that, but before I do all of that I want to link to the Teach Me Tonight blog.
This blog is a forum for academic discussion about romance novels. Being a romance fan and writer as well as a sometime academic, I think it’s full of fascinating stuff.
Anyway, recently one of the contributors blogged about the symbolism in my Being A Bad Girl, and I have to say I found it very interesting indeed. I know I’ve had many conversations on this blog about using symbolism to build emotion, and Laura on Teach Me Tonight has shown how I’ve tried to do it, from a reader’s perspective. She’s also, I think, brought up some aspects of a romance reader’s use of fantasy, possibly to “support/encourage change in small, incremental ways on a personal level” in their real lives–a statement that rings true for me.
(Oh and if you have a ghost story, add it below–I am loving them.)
September 26, 2006
Anna!
It is always very satisfying when a friend sells their first book.
It is even more satisfying when that friend is your critique partner and an AWESOME writer. Even more so, when the book is the book she has loved for years and years. And trebly more so, when you were the one who nagged her until she revised the book she had loved for years and years and submitted it to publishers.
All of that has just happened to Anna Lucia. And I feel quite extraordinarily smug. So go visit her, here.
September 24, 2006
ghost stories
When I was in junior high school, my best friend lived in this amazing Victorian house. It was arranged symmetrically around a central chimney, so each room had its corresponding room on the other side of the house, and there were two staircases, two porches, two of each bedroom. The attic was the only room that spanned both sides of the house, in dusty high-ceilinged shadow.
In addition, in the centre of the house there were odd connecting doors between mirror-image rooms, so sometimes you thought you were walking into the hallway and would find yourself in another bedroom, similar to the one you had left.
The outside of the house was decorated with gingerbread that looked something like a rising sun, something like a grinning pumpkin face. It was set on the top of a hill. And the house had hardwood floors and elaborate banisters, and creaked in storms and in heat.
It was supposed to be haunted. My friend’s brother had seen a woman in white, screaming silently. My friend and I would tell stories and play with the Ouija board until we were terrified, but I never saw anything.
Except one time I felt something. We were playing hide and seek and I had stuffed myself into one of the closets, the one that had the stairs to the attic at the back of it. I was huddled between coats with my back to the attic door, listening for my friend’s footsteps outside, and something soft brushed against my knee. I heard a low “mmph” sound, like that made by a child. And I was out of that closet so fast I could barely catch my breath. Scared, and secretly very thrilled and pleased.
That’s the only half-ghostly experience I’ve ever had, and it could well have been something to do with the house’s atmosphere and my expectations and hopes. Aside from odd irrational fears, nothing similar has happened to me since.
When I wrote Spirit Willing, I had to decide whether I was going to include any real spirits in my book about a fake medium. Typically, I think I sort of sidestepped the issue. (Though people who have read it might disagree.) There might be a spirit or two–or, more likely, it might be memory, fear, insight, love.
Go on. Tell me your ghost stories.
September 22, 2006
research for Spirit Willing
As a fiction writer I love the idea of creating illusion and belief out of thin air. As a romance writer I believe that even illusion can reflect profound human experience.
For Spirit Willing, I did quite a bit of research for writing Rosie Fox, who’s a fake spirit medium, and this research tended to fall into two camps: researching “real” psychics, and researching “fake” psychics.
For the “real” side, I attended several services at the Spiritualist Church in Reading. Although I’m not a religious person I find religion of any sort very interesting, and the people at the church were consistently welcoming and kind, with a strong faith. I’d like to thank them, even though they didn’t know they were harboring a writer in their midst.
The history of the Spiritualist movement is, in many ways, the history of the emotional life of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as this is a special interest of mine (I wrote my MPhil thesis on this period), I spent a lot of time researching it. (And named my heroine after the Fox sisters, who helped start it, pictured on right.)
I also went and had my tarot cards read. This was an immensely enjoyable experience for me. The reader was warm, interesting, and engaging, and it was totally worth the money to have a nice person talk entirely about me and my problems for an hour. It was sort of like therapy. She taped the session and I’ve always meant to check back over her predictions to see if any of them have come true, but the tape won’t work. A lot of what she said was wrong, and a lot of what she said she could have deduced easily from my manner, clothing, and the information I gave her. But I liked her an awful lot and I would probably pay to talk with her again.
When I was, briefly, a reporter for the Brown Daily Herald, I went and had my palm read for an article. That woman was terrible, and I’ve looked back at predictions she made and not one of them has come true in any way at all, nor are they likely to. My predominant impression of that reading was that her young son came in and kicked me in the middle of it.
I also spent several happy hours watching “psychic” Sylvia Browne on the Montel Williams show. I can’t write my opinion of Sylvia Browne here, because I think it unwise. Let’s just say I don’t think I’d pay money to talk with her. I’d rather be kicked by a small boy.
Although I enjoyed my time with the “real” psychics, my book is about a fraud, and my heart lies with the joyful fakers, the illusionists, the entertainers, the rational magicians.
I thanked some of them specifically in the book, particularly Ian Rowland. His book, The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading, was invaluable to me in learning how a fake psychic does it. It’s an outstanding book and I recommend you buy it.
My female readers may like to know that Ian is single, entertaining, could “possibly be considered non-hideous”, and enjoys the finer things in life such as treating females to exquisite food and wine. I can vouch that he is charming and an excellent writer. And hey, magicians are inherently sexy. That’s why I made my hero, Harry, good at sleight of hand.
Speaking of sexy magicians, I also spent a lot of time staring at Derren Brown, and reading about Harry Houdini, particularly Ruth Brandon’s The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini. Many people will think I’m weird to consider Houdini sexy, but the man escaped from manacles. Good God.
I am also consistently amused, challenged, and informed by the weekly newsletter and forum at James Randi’s website, www.randi.org.
When I was doing my M.Phil. thesis, I did a whole chapter on the Cottingley fairy photographs. Although I didn’t use any of this case, per se, in Spirit Willing, I did use a lot of its elements. The photographs were faked–rather obviously so–but a combination of circumstance, social expectations, and very strong desire made many people believe they were true.
Finally, after I finished Spirit Willing, I read a book that made me so jealous I could hardly think straight. I love it, love it, love it, and it is called Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold. It’s about magicians, trickery, and the redemptive power of love.
Any obsessions, recommendations, experiences, thoughts to share? Or would you just like to comment on The Great Houdini’s thighs?
September 21, 2006
The Midnight Hour
I’m a guest blogger on The Midnight Hour today.
The Midnight Hour is a blog for writers and readers of paranormal romance (including Lori Handeland, Linda Winstead Jones, Kathy Love, Stephanie Rowe, and Michelle Rowen) and I’m blogging about how I’m not a paranormal author, even though my book has paranormal elements.
Sort of.
I’d like to follow up that blog with a few posts on my own blog about paranormal experiences in general. Tomorrow I’ll be in London with many of my fellow Mills & Boon authors having a swanky lunch and a swanky reception, but while I’m gone I’ll post a bit about the research I did on “real” psychics and “fake” psychics for Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak, and then on Saturday and Sunday I’d like to try to start a little bit of a discussion about what you guys think is important about “supernatural” experiences.
Please tell me what you think over on The Midnight Hour, and come back this weekend to talk about spooky whoo-whoo stuff!
September 20, 2006
rant
You know what I HATE?? I hate those stupid Site Pal things, with the pictures of the women who talk to you when you open a web page. There is one on my hit counter stats page, and every time I check the stats (which is, I’ll admit, far too much), the stupid stupid Site Pal ad says “Please type your message into the text box and let me say it.”
It drives me crazy. I don’t want some random robot person talking to me when I check my site stats. I tried making the blonde one say obscenities today, but it didn’t help. It was still just as annoying when it was calling itself a “stupid birdfaced robot bint”.
In other news, one of my best friends is moving to Canada tomorrow. And I just might be a little bit cranky.
September 18, 2006
a year ago
I was looking back at my blog for just about exactly a year ago and you know what? I appeared to have a much more interesting life back then. I was blogging about crane flies and how they were having sex all over the front of my house, and also how I had broken my toe and was walking around school with one shoe on all the time.
This year, things are slightly different. There are fewer crane flies, for one thing, though they are around. They’re not having sex on the front of my house, but they are invading it all the time. And for some reason they lose their legs really easily. I’ve developed a fear of leaving food to cool in the kitchen in case I find a dismembered crane fly leg in there. Ugh.
My toe has healed, obviously, though it has a pronounced bend in it from being broken. My problem these days is swollen ankles and sore feet. I seem to have suddenly entered my third trimester of pregnancy and abruptly discovered oedema, anaemia, and that dark line running down the centre of my belly. I have also rediscovered the exhaustion and crazy-mad mood swings from the first trimester. I’ve started taking iron pills, which do interesting things to you, which I am, you will be glad to know, not going to talk about.
The baby is wonderfully active. I love this. He had hiccups at breaktime today, and then I was told that his feet were visibly kicking underneath my shirt while I was teaching a sixth form lesson this afternoon. I’ve learned to carry on despite his acrobatics, but it’s cool to know that bystanders can see him.
I guess my life isn’t less interesting overall (except on the crane fly front). I do think I need to blog about the inconsequential fun things a little bit more, because if I don’t, I forget about them. And that’s sad.
September 17, 2006
taking a break
So remember when I said I’d reached the Suckage Point on the book I’m writing, big time? I found something quite extraordinary.
I took a break. A guiltless break, because I had a signing to organise, and guests, and I was celebrating and determined to enjoy myself, and for three days I wrote absolutely nothing.
And suddenly…I like this book. It’s fun. There’s this thing I love in romance novels, which is when the reader knows exactly what both characters are thinking, but the characters themselves have no clue about what’s going on with the other person. And this entire book is like that.
Yes, it still has the stupidest plot in existence. But what the hell. That doesn’t seem quite so scary any more. I write stupid plots all the time. Dammit, stupid plots are quickly becoming my niche in the market. I should embrace my stupidity with both hands and love it and squeeze it and call it George.
Breaks aren’t something I can take often, because deadlines are pretty tight. And often, when I don’t write for a few days, my anxiety just grows. I guess the Crows of Doubt need some time to settle in properly.
But this break, for whatever reason, has been a real refresher. So much so, that I’ve changed my working title from The Dumbest Story Ever Told to the much more sensible Her Model Lover.
September 16, 2006
book signing
Thanks to everyone who wished me a fun signing! It was a good day.
Here are a few photos:
Anna attacking dessert at our posh lunch
Biddy in sugar-induced ecstasy
Don’t worry about the book! Get the cleavage in the photo!
Pretending to be a famous author
After the festivities, I came home to find a phone message from my agent, saying that Spirit Willing has gone into reprints…ten days after the release date! Hooray!
September 14, 2006
signing day!
Today is the day of my book signing for Spirit Willing, Flesh Weak. I’ve lined up a whole bunch of my friends to come and see me, so it looks like I won’t be facing my worst nightmare: sitting alone at a table with a bunch of my books next to me, while shoppers conspicuously avoid meeting my gaze.
The promotion frenzy has already begun. I received a call from the Reading Evening Post yesterday, just as I was going in to teach year 10, and did a telephone interview with them after my lesson had finished, whilst hiding from the students in my head of department’s office. Then it was a short trip to the Reading Writers meeting to threaten my writing friends with death if they don’t come along to Waterstone’s and make me feel like I’m not a loser.
Then Anna arrived from the Lake District, and she has, as usual, been soothing my very neurotic brow with her serene presence. She stayed the night so she was here this morning when a photographer from the Post turned up to take pictures of me sitting between my computer and my books.
Typically, the first thing she said after the photographer was gone was, “Those pictures really make the most of your boobs.”
Hooray!!
Biddy is coming along a bit later and we are going for a posh lunch at this place, which I love for the food and also the fact that the chefs often wave and smile from their upstairs window when you walk by.
Then there’s my signing, which is (if you’ve somehow missed all the worldwide publicity) from 5-7 at the Broad Street Waterstone’s in Reading.
And then I, my friends who I have coerced into coming, and any bystanders unfortunate enough to be caught up in the mania of publicity and glamour, are all going to the pub.
