Archive for the ‘about me’ Category
August 11, 2010 | about me
On Monday, my dad and I thought we’d go for a little ride in his speedboat on the lake. He asked if I wanted to drive, and I said yes. It was a beautiful sunny day, with no other boats on the lake, and I thought this would be a good chance to pootle around on the other side of the lake, the one without any camps on it, to look at the trees and the rocks and the mountains. I figured it would be about a fifteen-minute ride.
(Cue Gilligan’s Island music: A fifteen-minute ride. A FIFTEEN-MINUTE RIDE.)
So off we went, to the other side of the lake. The FAR side, the side beyond the island which sits about 1/3 of the way across the lake, where nobody lives at all, except for deer and moose and raccoons and sixty million black flies. We were happily motoring along, when I decided to hit the throttle a little bit and go faster.
Roar of engine. Boat didn’t move.
“I think there’s some weed stuck in the propellor,” said my dad. We raised the engine to have a look.
No propellor. It had fallen off. And sunk to the bottom of the lake.
We had one oar, no cell phone. We were on the other side of the island, invisible to my mother on the beach. My dad started paddling. It was about 2 pm. My cousins were arriving about 3. We figured we’d get back maybe around 5. Or possibly end up living on the island in makeshift huts along with a movie star and a professor.
Fortunately, we saw a lone boat motoring past the island, and I stood up on the bow and started waving the day-glo orange life vest, which attracted his attention. Turned out it was our neighbour, who’d just happened to decide to take a boat ride that afternoon. He towed us back to shore, just in time for our cousins to witness our ignominious return.
Next time, I’m bringing a phone. And another oar. And a trunkful of sequinned gowns.
August 9, 2010 | about me
(Photo by Sharon Morton Dudley. I’m the one inelegantly sprawled behind the “88″ sign, talking with Danny McDonald.)
I went to high school with all these people! And I borrowed the shoes I’m wearing from my MOM. Orange and purple crocodile heels. Isn’t she cool?
July 22, 2010 | about me
Last night we went out for dinner, as we’re having our kitchen ripped out and the house was full of plaster dust. (More on that in another post.) Anyway, the Rock God said he’d pay for dinner (bless him), and he pulled out a £50 note.
I haven’t seen a £50 note for a very long time, my purse tending to be full rather of 20p pieces, and Fecklet had never seen one before. Upon discerning the illustration on the back of it, he immediately cried, “It’s James May!”
The thing is, I can’t quite disagree with him:
James May, presenter on Top Gear
Sir James Houblon, first Governor of the Bank of England, 1694
I await the day he mistakes the Queen for Jeremy Clarkson.
July 12, 2010 | about me
So last Saturday I went for a picnic with my friend, who said, “I love your hair right now.” Of course, in the way of all rational females, I took this to mean that it was an awful colour and I had to dye it immediately. So Sunday night I armed myself with a packet of brown semi-permanent dye, the kind that works in 10 minutes, and, posting a short message about it on my blog, I went upstairs to apply it.
Remembering the whole giraffe-neck debacle of last time, I made sure to coat my skin with Vaseline beforehand, and after I’d applied the stuff, carefully wiped off any excess on my skin with a baby wipe before it had the chance to stain. The thing is, this all sort of took time, and I’d forgotten to check what time it was when I put the dye on, so I figured I’d leave it more or less 10 minutes from when I’d finished using the baby wipes. What’s a few minutes more or less? I thought.
You may take this as the first piece of evidence that I am monumentally stupid.
I washed the dye out of my hair, maybe 15 minutes after putting it on, maybe 20, who knows. Anyway, I was in for a bit of a shock. Because it was BLACK.
I washed it a couple of times. It still appeared to be black, but then again, it was night time and the lighting wasn’t that good, so I went to bed and decided not to worry about it. My husband came home from work the next morning, thought, and after greeting me in his usual affectionate fashion, he said “Your hair is a little dark, isn’t it?”
Right. This was NOT good. I started looking up ways to wash out dark dye from hair, on the internet.
This is the second piece of evidence that I am monumentally stupid.
I tried baby shampoo, and Head and Shoulders, both of which are supposed to work. And when I say “tried”, I mean “I put them on my hair and left them for an hour and then rinsed and did it again.” The colour faded maybe a little. Not enough.
So I tried Fairy liquid. This is, for anybody who isn’t in England, a brand of dishwashing liquid. Lemon scented, in this case. With a little baby on the front of it, indicating, one would think, that it would not act as a sort of paint stripper on one’s hair.
I left it for an hour. I washed it out. Dark stuff came flooding out with the rinse water, so I immediately put some more on again. And left it.
We don’t even need any more evidence at this point, do we? Can we all just agree that I am REALLY, REALLY, FREAKING STUPID?!
When I was finished with my home chemistry lesson, my hair indeed was not black. Well, not at the roots it wasn’t. It was a sort of dull brown at the roots. The ends were still black. Worse, my hair was the consistency of ten-year-old hay. I tried three or four deep-conditioning treatments. They did nothing.
I looked like a witch.
In tears, on Wednesday, I went to my hairdresser. (Yes, I know. I should have done this first. We’ve all agreed already about my intellectual capacity.) He told me he could fix it. He also told me I was stupid. I didn’t care; I kissed him in gratitude.
Thursday morning—a mere 24 hours, mind you, before I had to go to the conference and be on a panel discussion and give a workshop— a team of three haircare professionals clustered around my poor abused head, performing emergency resuscitation. They gave it a bleach bath to strip all of the colour. They conditioned it. They put another colour on it and put me under a heat lamp. They put more conditioner on it. After two hours in the chair, my hair was a decent colour, it was glossy, it was soft, and I was considerably poorer.
It didn’t matter. I could go to the conference without wearing a hat. It was magic.
Dear blog readers: if I ever, and I mean EVER, mention colouring my hair again by myself, will you please, please, please come round to my house and physically restrain me?
More about the actual conference tomorrow.
Left: Hair dyed by Julie. Right: Hair dyed by professionals.
July 8, 2010 | RNA, about me
I’m off to the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference tomorrow, at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. This means that I’ve just spent the past two hours packing shoes, shoes and more shoes, and hopefully also remembered to take some knickers and deodorant, especially deodorant as the weather is supposed to be hot. (In England! I know!)
It’s going to be a fantastic time. I love the RNA, and this weekend is going to be full of inspirational people and moments. I’m looking forward to hearing the speakers, meeting new people, catching up with old friends. I’m travelling from Reading on a slow train to Waterloo followed by a boat down the Thames, which was the most romantic and relaxing way I could think of travelling on a hot summer’s day. I’m on a panel discussion about “50 Years of the RNA” on Friday, followed by the sparkly Gala Dinner. Saturday I’m going to soak in as much knowledge and vicarious genius as I can. I can’t even begin to name all the people I’m looking forward to spending time with. And Sunday morning, despite my inevitable hangover, I’m giving a workshop on “Creating Character from Scratch.” I have little laminated bits of coloured card for it, and a Power Point presentation.
Since the Big Donkey Dicks moment, I’ve taken two days off writing, to get ready for conference and also to give myself space from the suckage. And I do feel like I’ve got some more ideas and perspective on this story. True, it’s mostly about things I need to fix, but that’s okay. That’s a start.
Thank you to everyone who encouraged me and also laughed at me.
When I get back, remind me to tell you about my Narrowly-Averted Hair Disaster. Or, alternatively titled, Why Fairy Liquid Is Not Shampoo. I would have blogged about it already, but I learned my lesson from the giraffe/vodka episode in York.
(If you’re on Twitter, the hashtag for updates about the conference is #RNAConf10. I shan’t be tweeting as am too technically underendowed but others will.)
July 5, 2010 | about me
I had a great week last week.
I learned about the first foreign sale of the rights to GETTING AWAY WITH IT (to De Kern, in Holland). Keeping my fingers crossed that the Dutch readers like it, and that some other publishers in other countries will be interested, too.
I went shopping for the RNA Conference, which is next weekend. This is very very exciting, and I fully intend to blog more about it, but what you really need to know is that I went out looking for accessories to wear with my Friday evening Gala Dinner outfit and ended up spending the massive amount of ONE POUND. Shopping triumph!
I inadvertently flashed a member of my husband’s band. This was actually embarrassing rather than enjoyable, but the fortunate thing was, I had waxed right beforehand. Which is something of a relief.
I figured out a really tricky scene in my book. The heroine, you see, is going out on a date with a man who is not the hero, but who she thinks could probably be the hero, because at the moment she hates the man who is actually the hero. This is hard. You have to signal to the reader enough for them to not completely fall in love with the wrong guy so they get annoyed when the heroine doesn’t end up with him—but then, you can’t make the non-hero such an obvious jerk that the reader goes, “WTF? Why would the heroine even like this dude?”
In the end, I remembered the advice that every character is the hero in his own mind. So hopefully I managed to make him sympathetic, and yet sow the seeds of the reasons why he’s not good for the heroine. Also, my friend Liz had some great ideas about awkward date behaviour that helped. I still do need to do some work on it, but at least the skeleton is there.
I’ve been on two picnics and for lunch with the Reading chapter of the RNA, and I have been given a pair of shoes!
Let’s hope this week will be as good. It’s starting out great, as my post about what shoes to wear has been put up on the RNA blog this morning.
July 4, 2010 | about me
I am dying my hair tonight in readiness for the Romantic Novelists’ Association 50th anniversary conference, hoping that a safety zone of five days will prevent any last-minute hair-related disasters. I don’t want to have to get the vodka out again.
June 16, 2010 | about me
WANTED: A long-suffering, neat, obedient and good-looking secretary to type up my romantic novels, as I recline gracefully on a couch and drink champagne whilst dictating them. I require a secretary urgently as yesterday I spilled an entire cup of tea over my beloved, wonderful, expensive-and-can-only-be-bought-in-the-US ergonomic keyboard, and now it is dead.
Must be male, type 60 wpm, and be able to open champagne bottles and bonbon boxes. Must be willing to do light housework and do pull-ups whilst shirtless. Preferably to have body of a Greek god. Attractive salary of cups of tea and pats on the head. Overtime probable.
Apply in comments section, below, attaching link to photograph. No David Walliams lookalikes, please.
(With thanks to Allie for the solution to my typing dilemma. I’m sure candidates will be trampling down my door!)
June 4, 2010 | about me
I’m hot, I’m full of hay fever, I’m cranky, my house is a mess and my kid won’t go to bed.
(The library panel on Wednesday night was great fun, though. An evening talking books and writing with four other novelists, with a congenial and interested audience—what could be better?
It feels very far in the past tonight. Hello, Mr Pinot Grigio, where have you been?)
EDIT: One glass of wine and one hour watching Oprah on Diva TV has cured all of my woes. The house is still a mess, but what can you do?
May 31, 2010 | about me
Hmm. I went to Reading Carnival today, to see the parade, hang around, listen to music, eat jerk chicken, and NOT APPEAR ON THE TELEVISION (I wasn’t even wearing lipstick) and I was barely there before a microphone got stuck in my face and a camera pointed at me and I was interviewed for Meridian news.
As my thoughts were basically running wholly on jerk chicken, I’m afraid I babbled something like, “It’s great, it’s fun, we’re all having great fun, we’re about to eat some great jerk chicken, yeah the parade was great and fun, great great great!” before I escaped, thanking the Lord that I had been incoherent enough so that the clip would never possibly be used.
It was used on the news tonight. I didn’t see it, but my friends have contacted me to tell me so. Fortunately nobody asked my name, so only about four people will have identified the babbling woman as me. If you did catch it, let me assure you—I’m better with words on paper. Honestly.
(PS The jerk chicken was really great. And we had fun.)
May 30, 2010 | about me
I love it when it’s warm. In the past two weekends, I have racked up three picnics, a Writers’ Day, a museum visit, and lots and lots of seeing lovely friends and playing with the Fecklet.
Also, last night I made my friend Biddy drink far too much wine and watch Iron Man on DVD with me, and subsequently I dreamed that I was married to Robert Downey Jr. And living in Cambridge.
Life is good. 
May 11, 2010 | about me
Yesterday I had a very exciting phone call. It was from the house and visitor services manager at Basildon Park, which is a gorgeous 18th-century Palladian house, owned by the National Trust. Basildon Park was used in the 2005 movie of Pride and Prejudice, where it stood in for Netherfield Park, and therefore Matthew McFadyen has walked its halls, dressed as Mr Darcy.
I may have swooned about this before.
Anyway.
A good deal of the novel I’m writing takes place in a restored Regency country house, where the heroine serves as a tour guide, amongst other things. So as research, I’d asked if I could go in to Basildon Park and talk to the people working there, and shadow them for an afternoon, to find out what they do. Fortunately, the manager was amenable to this suggestion, and next Friday I’m going to spend the day there learning all about it.
What a cool job I have.
We also discussed another little bit of coolness, which is the story about the National Trust teaming up with Mills & Boon, to produce romance novels about important historical properties. I think this is such a fab idea and I really really want to read some of these.
