Archive for April, 2007

April 30, 2007

Grammy eggs

Today I wrote an article for the German romance magazine, Loveletter, about why a chef is a perfect hero. It was to promote Delicious, which is being released in Germany in June.

One of my main points in the article is that food has the power to evoke strong memories, and as an example I mentioned how every Sunday my grandmother Cohen used to cook my brother and me brunch. I never used to like runny eggs so she used to fry eggs for me by breaking the yolks and cooking the whole thing until it was well done and crispy. I called it a “Grammy egg”.

To this day, whenever I eat an egg cooked this way, I think of my Grammy and those Sunday brunches. Lawrence Welk on the TV, comic books in the closet, wrapped strawberry sweets with a liquid centre on the coffee table, doodle pads near the phone covered with crosshatch Grammy scribbles, Grampy sitting by the window watching the people walk by on their way to the Methodist church, and hard-cooked eggs and–if we were lucky–home fries.

Recently, when I was very pregnant, very hungry, and very cranky, my mother made me upside-down toast (which is essentially buttered bread fried in a skillet). Her grandmother used to make that for her when she was a child and she considered it the ultimate comfort food. My mother used to make it for us with soup on cold winter afternoons and made it our comfort food, too. As soon as I smelled upside-down toast, all my crankiness was gone, and all I could do was hug her and say, “Oh, Mommy.”

What food is evocative of memory for you?

April 29, 2007

Savoy and firsts

The Savoy was wonderful, not least because Nell won the Romance prize.

It was a day of firsts for me. First time getting baby on a train and in a cab and in a bus. First time leaving baby with a babysitter (the saintly Biddy). First time putting on high heeled shoes since last July. First time being at the Savoy when not pregnant and therefore able to drink champagne with my editors. First time breastfeeding baby in the posh ladies’ loos at the Savoy.

All these firsts make you so much more confident. I know, now, that I can travel to London with a pushchair, and how to find routes around the city. I know that the Fecklet will behave himself with a non-parent, and that he will come out safely on the other side even though I’m not watching him breathe.

It wasn’t my first time getting my breasts out in public, not by a long shot, but it was definitely the first time in such elegant surroundings. (Ann Summers van notwithstanding.)

By the time I got home I was utterly exhausted and I spent yesterday doing little but sloping around the house grabbing a nap whenever possible.

April 26, 2007

crows, crows, crows

I just emailed the revised draft of One Night Stand to my editor, whom I will be seeing at the Romantic Novelists’ Association awards luncheon at the Savoy tomorrow.

Terrified? Me? Never.

crawls under couch

April 25, 2007

I hate breast pumps.

April 24, 2007

day of the living dead

Having gone to bed at 7 pm as usual last night, Fecklet woke up at 10.30 screaming, and continued to do so until 4.00 this morning. There were brief periods of respite when my husband took him downstairs to watch Night of the Living Dead (I kid you not–apparently Fecklet fell right to sleep–odd baby) and when he fell asleep whilst feeding, only to wake up the minute I tried to put him down.

The teething has begun with a vengeance.

Finally I remembered Calpol. Within twenty minutes he was snoring.

At 8 am, however, he was bright and happily awake and has continued so until just now (12.30) when he’s fallen asleep again. I’d like to sleep but I know he’ll wake up soon. So I’ll try to grab a nap if he takes one later this afternoon.

We’ve been very lucky so far, because he’s been a good sleeper at night, since he was born.

Feel like zombie today, though.

April 23, 2007

ONS revisions part 2, and Shakespeare

So the next thing I did was to analyse the content for repetition.

In my word document, I highlighted all the bits that were about the romantic relationship, and tried to see whether they had the same structure. I noticed that two chapters began the same way, with my narrator summing up the fact that time had passed, in a similar fashion–so I changed that.

I noticed that the hero kept on meeting up with the heroine and offering her food (he’s a pastry chef, yum), and while I like that in a man, I decided to change one of those incidents so that it happens somewhere else and he doesn’t offer her food–instead she has to grovel a bit (hooray!). Altering the pattern there actually makes the character arc better, because before the hero came to make the peace, whereas now the heroine has to do it herself.

I’m going to go through it again looking for more structural similarities.

Mostly right now though, I’m tired. Fecklet was up from 3-5 am with teething troubles and itchy skin and although it’s only 8.20 pm, I’m wrecked. I’m going to bed to read a book on eczema. (How exciting.)

Oh. And it’s Shakespeare’s birthday. I could quote some Shakespeare for you, but as I do that on a daily basis in my day job, I’ll skip it. Instead I’ll offer you a great joke:

Shakespeare walks into a pub. The barman takes one look and shouts, “Oi, you! Get out of here! You’re bard!”

April 22, 2007

ONS revisions part 1

My agent called me about One Night Stand, and she says it’s “85% there”. (She also said some very good things about it, but I’ll save those for my own personal satisfaction.) The problem isn’t the ending, which I was a little afraid of, as it ventures into some quite broad comedy; she liked the ending. Nor was it the beginning, which she’d said in a former draft was rather slow; I’d revised it. No, unfortunately my middle sags. The external plot disappears, and some of the scenes are quite similar in their setting and structure.

(Actually I was delighted with 85% of it being right, considering I wrote this book when very pregnant and with a newborn in the house. I’m not surprised the middle lacks a bit of imagination when really, all I could think about was breastfeeding.)

So I’ve spent this weekend (what time I didn’t spend waxing, see below) working on revisions.

First, I looked at the notes I wrote down while talking with her and I made a list of things to do.

Then I analysed what happened in the middle of the book. It really helps me to see things visually, so I drew a flow chart of each chapter and its events, and looked to see what sort of events these were. Sure enough, chapters 18-19, and 22-25, were all more or less about the developing relationship between the hero and heroine, with only a short interlude for chapters 20-1 to deal with external plot.

I decided that I didn’t want to cut the romance scenes, not wholescale anyway; they’ve got important emotional development in them, and besides, I like them. I decided instead to go with the assumption that the book itself isn’t slow-paced and lacking tension; it’s the reader’s perception of the book, because although things are happening (and happening fairly quickly), they’re the same sort of things.

So what I did instead was brought the external plot into this part of the book. I added a bit of a scene in chapter 19 that has nothing to do with the romance and happens in another town. I cut an external conflict scene from chapter 27 and put it, with some changes, in chapter 23. So now I have bits of external plot alternating with the romance. Hopefully that will keep up tension in both areas.

I did those things on Friday and Saturday and today; tomorrow I’m going to deal with the repetition issue, and I’ll blog about that then.

April 21, 2007

hooray for Tessa!

Tessa Radley is celebrating the release of her first novel with Silhouette Desire, Black Widow Bride, by having a blog party with lots and lots of guests and lots and lots of chances to win books and other stuff.

I’m up there today, here, but check out all the authors writing on the topic of new things and change, by visiting her blog.

April 20, 2007

ah, the glamour

I am spending my Friday night waxing.

I should not complain that this is not exciting. Aside from my eyebrows, five months ago I couldn’t even see most of the parts of my body that require waxing, let alone reach them.

I’m off to rip out more hair by the roots. Hooray!

April 18, 2007

a trip to Wokingham, part 2

(Part 1 of this gripping story is in the post below.)

The poop is of epic proportions. It soaks through the Fecklet’s nappy, through his Elvis babygro, though his jumper, through my jeans. It is yellow and speckled with curds. I stand up, holding him outwards so he won’t smear me, and the poop drips down his leg and onto my arm.

“Do you have a changing table in your loo?” I ask a waitress (not the one who brought me the bug in my salad).

“We don’t have a loo,” she tells me, “but there’s a public toilet across the courtyard.”

I carry the baby across the courtyard. The public toilet is out of order. I think I’ll find a clean corner somewhere to put him down on the changing mat that attaches to my nappy bag and change him…but the courtyard is lined with restaurants, all of them with plate-glass windows, all of them with diners sitting looking outside.

Have I mentioned that my son’s favourite new pastime while being changed is grabbing his ankles and holding up his butt and privates so they get more air and are extra-visible?

Finally I find a secluded bench outside a hairdresser’s with frosted windows. This is perfect for changing Fecklet and scrubbing myself down. Only one problem: it’s underneath a tree which is coming into leaf, shedding hulls with every slight gust of wind. Two sharp-looking hulls land within an inch of my baby’s eyes before I’ve got the mess cleared up.

By now it’s been about an hour and a half since we left the car dealership. So we make our way back, optimistic that surely everything will be easy from here on in.

Except when we return, we’re told that it will be another half an hour. “That’s fine,” I say calmly, “except my baby needs to eat before then. Do you have a quiet place where I can feed him for fifteen minutes?”

“Sorry, nothing like that,” says the car salesman. He goes away. Five minutes later another salesman comes by, and I ask him. He also says no.

“You’re really testing our customer service here,” he jokes, and I say, with even more admirable calm, “Yes, yes I am.”

When the third salesman comes by, I say to him, “Gosh, my baby really needs to eat. Do you think it will put off your customers when I breastfeed him right here near your main entrance, or do you think it might attract more?”

This salesman thinks hard. He says, “Actually, I have an idea.”

I follow him around the building. There stands a midnight-blue Chevy van with tinted windows. He unlocks it.

“Leather seats, fully reclining, and a blind on every window,” he tells me. “Used to belong to Ann Summers. Make yourself at home.”

I climb in with the Fecklet. It does, indeed, have leather seats, in cream. They look like mini La-Z-Boys. There are cup holders. There is plush carpet. There is a faux walnut dash, and two TV screens, and a microwave. The interior is screened with accordion blinds, so nobody can see me as I feed my son and try to imagine what Ann Summers used to do with this van.

You wouldn’t believe the look on the face of the young man sweeping the car lot when I emerge from the van holding a baby and adjusting my clothes.

April 17, 2007

a trip to Wokingham, part 1

What a day.

So I need to get my car serviced and because of the warranty I need to get it serviced at the place I bought it from. On the phone they assure me they can get it done in one hour while I wait. I insist that this is important because I’ll have a four-month old infant with me, and I’ll have to keep him entertained and fed and clean while I wait. They say, “No problem.”

I get to the dealership (it’s about a 25-minute drive from my house). “It’ll be two hours,” they say. I try to argue that they promised, but it’s out of their hands apparently as the mechanic doesn’t work in-house.

This is my fault. I should have known never to believe a used car dealer.

So I pack up Fecklet and walk into Wokingham, which is 15 minutes’ stroll away. It’s a fine, sunny, breezy day and on the way Fecklet discovers how to pull off his sun hat and stuff it into his mouth. Everything is good.

I decide to go for lunch, find a likely-looking cafe, and go in and select a salad and a smoothie. I ask if it’s all dairy-free (Fecklet is looking like he has allergies so I’m experimenting with avoiding dairy), it is, so I sit down and tuck in.

Two bites in I see a black thing in my salad. It looks like a beetle. It is a beetle. A dead one, attached to the leaf with a bit of dairy-free dressing. At this point I’m wishing for a cheese and butter sandwich dipped in whipped cream.

I ask for another salad and while I wait, Fecklet starts to wail. Now, the only available seat in the cafe was the one beside the plate-glass window, with other people sitting outside directly opposite, and another restaurant with outdoor seating across the pathway. Not exactly a private spot for breastfeeding.

At this point in my life I’ve shown my breasts to just about everyone in the known universe (including many, many motorists the length of the M6 on my trip to Cumbria, and the entire B&Q car park on my birthday). Nevertheless I try to breastfeed discreetly, draping a muslin over the top of my tit and using the Fecklet to cover the rest of it. This works very well, except for when he squirms off (which he does often), showing my nipple to all and sundry.

I deliberately do not look around to see who is watching. At one point I hear someone behind me commenting, “He likes it squidgy and warm”, but after listening further I ascertain that she’s talking about her own son’s cheese panini and not observing my son’s appetite.

My bug-free salad arrives and I try to eat it with one hand, spilling tuna and capers on my jeans, though this doesn’t bother me. Tuna and capers are by far the least disgusting stains on my clothes lately. Only this morning I have looked down at my t-shirt and detected poop, drool, spit-up and milk…and those were just the secretions I could see. (I changed after this. Needn’t have bothered.)

Fecklet squirms and I let him sit up to burp, still eating tuna salad with my other hand. And then it happens.

You see, I’ve been so foolish as to leave the house when Fecklet has not yet pooped. Usually he does his business at least twice in the morning…and it’s 1.30 and he’s been, thus far, poopless.

You can guess what happens next.

But not what happens after that. Not the van. Nobody could guess the van.

To be continued…

April 15, 2007

website update

I’ve given in One Night Stand to my agent, and am waiting (quaking in my boots) to find out what she thinks.

Meanwhile I’ve been working on my website. I’ve updated my books page, and posted excerpts for All Work and No Play… and One Night Stand.

I’ve also posted some details about the courses I’ll be leading in August and September, and I’ve put up a photo of myself with cleavage on my home page.

If you’re Italian I’ve also got a contest.