I’ve been MIA from this blog for a few weeks. It’s mostly because I’ve been struggling with my novel. After much discussion, my agent, editor and myself agreed that the story I was working on wasn’t particularly “Julie Cohen like” and I have been sent off to come up with a new story that is more…well, me. It’s the right decision, but my brain has been a little bit fried by the requirement to be creative, and also to be myself, on demand.

Fortunately, I’ve come up with an idea that feels very me-like, and I hope that everyone agrees because I’m excited about it. Scenes have started to write themselves in my head, which is always a good sign. I really want to write it.

I also went to the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference. I bet you any money that publishing professionals brace themselves after each conference, because they know a) they are going to get a lot of submissions from inspired novelists, and b) that their current authors are going to suddenly have all these amazing promotional ideas to inflict upon them. Me, I’ve had an idea for a bonus free e-read to promote GETTING AWAY WITH IT, and a book trailer to promote my next book, THE SUMMER OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY. In other words: a lot more work to do! But it’s fun work.

I’ll be talking more about those soon. And my next post will be a few things about the conference. But before that, I just have to say: I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 tonight, and it has merely confirmed and deepened my unshakeable love for All Things Snape.

Severus Snape.

What. A. Dude.

Go on Snape. Give me detention, baby.

Jeremy Clarkson 1 disappeared soon after arriving. The Stig hung around, not eating anything, so we brought home two more orange spotted Harlequins, named Jeremy Clarkson 2 and Jeremy Clarkson 3. I think The Stig was annoyed by the flood of Jeremy Clarksons so he also disappeared, along with one of the new Jeremys.

Jeremy Clarkson 3, though, has stuck around, and the aphid population has noticeably dwindled. I think this particular Jeremy Clarkson is quite a vicious little thing. He bit me when I was carrying him home, and then crawled up the sleeve of my jumper. I thought I’d lost him until the Fecklet spotted him on my neck.

Obviously in aphid hunting, only a clever and ruthless Jeremy Clarkson ladybird will do.

I have never been a good gardener. My husband enjoys telling me I have ‘black fingers’ (as opposed to a green thumb, har de har har). In my care, plants either wither and die or they hang on to a straggly and unattractive life for years and years despite overwhelming neglect.

I have even killed every cactus I’ve ever owned. Very slowly.

Anyway, this year I am actually putting some effort into gardening, and as a result I have some fairly leggy tomato plants which have some green fruit on them, some herbs in my herb garden, and some flowers in pots (which, to be fair, were donated by my neighbour who is a good gardener).

This morning I noticed some aphids on the fuchsia, which is about to burst into bloom. Fecklet and I have become keen ladybird spotters, though apparently we’ve taken up this hobby about four years too late because the UK ladybird population has been overwhelmed by aggressive alien Harlequin ladybirds, so you don’t see a lot of variety. Still, aside from many Harlequins, we’ve seen some seven-spots, a two-spot, and a couple of yellow-on-black fourteen-spot ladybirds, all identified via a handy pocket chart. We know all of the plants and walls in a quarter-mile radius of our house that have been colonised by ladybird larvae, and we’ve been watching them pupate and emerge.

Therefore, we knew exactly where to capture some ladybirds this afternoon to take home for an experiment in biological warfare.

We got an orange one (called Jeremy Clarkson) and a black one (called The Stig). We brought them home and put them on the fuchsia. ‘Eat!’ we urged them. ‘Eat, Jeremy and The Stig! Eat your fill!’

Jeremy Clarkson the Ladybird, bottom right. In foreground, note tasty aphids being utterly ignored.

Several hours later, Jeremy has disappeared, probably in search of greener pastures and/or a better name. The Stig seems quite content still, but the aphid population has not noticeably decreased.

The Stig, hanging upside down from a leaf, not eating, nor, to be honest, going particularly fast.

Will keep you updated.

(In other news, today I decided to reinstate nearly all the scenes I cut out of my book last week.)

This is what I’ve put on my computer where I can see it constantly:

The “WRITE CRAP” is always there. I just thought I needed a reminder of the other stuff.

“Unexpected travel plans are like dancing lessons from God.” —Kurt Vonnegut

Today, I’m going on an unscheduled trip to Avebury with my friend Dennis, who has a layover in the UK en route back to the US after sailing someone else’s yacht to Portugal. The car is all packed and ready with sandwiches, coffee in a flask, and rain gear (and, of course, a towel) and I’m just waiting for him to ring so we can set off!

On Tuesday, I’m going to France (hurrah!) for a few days with my friend David, to taste wine and eat cheese. Considering the last time we spoke French together was in Miss Wood’s high school French class *ahem* some time ago, this should be interesting.

Meanwhile, I’m going to flag up a couple of things I’m involved with.

Make for Macmillan is a fab fund-raising effort, auctioning off crafty type things to benefit Macmillan Cancer Support. This week they’re having a Book Week, auctioning off an amazing range of books signed by their authors. Have a look. Bid high and bid often; it’s all in a good cause. If you win my book, I will write anything in it that you want. Anything!

It starts tomorrow, and runs all week. Have a look here:
http://www.facebook.com/makeformacmillan?sk=wall
And, for a gallery of all the books:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.175705379147025.55498.163410227043207

On Thursday 9th June I’m going to be at Swindon Central Library from 7.30 pm, discussing the life of a writer with authors Sarah Challis and Amelia Carr. Swing by if you can and say hello!

Meanwhile, I’m off dancing…

Guess which one is a current romantic novelist?

I didn’t attend the RNA Summer Party this year; I had to stay in, so I had my friend Lee over instead and she trashed my plot whilst sweetening the blow with champagne. However, I love the RNA, and I love the RNA parties. Romantic novelists are amongst the most friendly, supportive, witty, interesting, well-read, intelligent people I know and there is nothing better than to stand around drinking wine, comparing shoes and talking with them for several hours.

Therefore, I was quite surprised to read the Daily Mail article about the party, which implied that romantic novelists are all elderly ladies with blue rinses, twin-sets and pearls who pen raunchy sex scenes to top up their pensions.

Well, actually, the article didn’t imply that at all. Rather, it directly stated it as fact. The headline is “The Blue Rinse and Bodice Rippers: In Twin-Sets and Pearls, Meet the Ladies Behind Britain’s Steamiest Novels”. This is quite surprising to me, as I’ve been a member for nearly 10 years and have yet to get a blue rinse. I did have bright magenta hair for some time, but not blue (not yet). I’ve never owned a twin-set nor pearls. And though I do occasionally pen raunchy sex scenes (and may perhaps resemble Barbara Cartland—see photo above), I haven’t got a pension.

Okay…it’s an inaccurate headline. Romantic novelists come in all ages, and at any party there’s an age range from 20s to 80s at least, all at various stages of their writing career. I’m quite proud that our membership is age-blind, and there’s a really good reason for this: writing, unlike many professions, is something that you can do whatever your age. My local writers’ group has a similar spread of ages. If there’s a slight leaning towards the over-50s, that’s probably because writing often needs a long apprenticeship, and because it is most often a secondary career. It usually just doesn’t pay enough to be a main source of income.

Most people are busy building their careers in their 20s, and raising their families in their 30s and 40s. It’s only later, when some measure of success and maturity have been gained, that a lot of people get the chance to sit down and realise their dream of writing. Especially women, in this society where the bulk of child-rearing is generally taken on by females.

But besides being inaccurate, it’s hugely condescending. For example, Philip Roth, who recently won the International Man Booker Prize, is 78 years old. Howard Jacobson, who won the Booker in 2010, is 69. Fair enough. But does the media coverage about Roth or Jacobson focus on their less-than-trendy fashion choices or mention that their writing is a nice little “top-up” for their pensions? Uh…no. Of course not.

Is this because they’re writing literary fiction, or because they’re male?

Because for men, of course, age doesn’t really matter. I would be extremely surprised if a Daily Mail journalist walked into a professional association of successful males and bothered to notice that many of them were past their first flush of youth. Powerful, successful men generally are older. It’s accepted. The average age of a US president taking office is 55. The average age of a UK prime minister as they leave 10 Downing Street, to pursue new careers, is 61, which is just about the average age of the sample of romantic novelists whom the Mail journalist interviewed. (Though she did choose to talk to people over a certain age, ignoring the many novelists present who are in their 20s or 30s.) The average age of a US senator is 60. We won’t even talk about the House of Lords—okay, we will. *Ahem*: 69.

These are all mature, experienced people. They are all also, by the way, overwhelmingly male.

So the article managed to be ageist, sexist, and prejudiced against romantic fiction (reducing its authors to “sex-obsessed pensioners”). Oh well—I’m still grateful for the coverage. Romantic fiction isn’t talked about enough. The journalist did say she enjoyed the party and liked the people there. And the article rightfully mentioned that the RNA is “friendly and supportive” and that “romance is one of the few areas in publishing where sales are steady.”

Jan Jones is quoted in the article as saying: “People have always looked down their noses at us. Let them.”

We know the truth.

Rant over. Tomorrow I’ll post a picture of Benedict Cumberbatch for all of us old ladies to drool over.

First off—if you’re anywhere near Sandhurst this week, I’m speaking at Sandhurst library on Thursday night (that’s the 19th May) from 7.30. Come! Please!

Well, both my agent and my editor like my idea for my next book, so I’ve started working on that in earnest now. The working title (Yes! I have a working title! Yes! Everyone likes it! No! I have no idea whether I’ll be allowed to keep it!) is A FRIEND OF A FRIEND, and I’d written 20,000 words of it last month. But then I came back to it after copy edits on THE SUMMER OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY and realised those 20,000 words made very, very little sense. So yesterday I sat myself on my bed with a stack of index cards and some coloured pens and I brainstormed every event that had to happen in each of the story threads.

I solved one plot problem, about why my heroine behaved as she does, and I also came up with some new things that had to happen. Unfortunately the most important thing I learned was that I had to change the 20K I’d already written, to explore the characters a bit more before a certain pivotal event happened. So that’s my job now.

In other news, the Headline book blogger event on Friday was really great, and I met lots of the lovely people who read our books and review them. They are all doing this purely out of love of reading, and it’s a joy to meet a passionate reader. Plus, our team won the quiz!! We rule!

On The Heroine Addicts, I’ve been talking about why writing a novel is and isn’t like baking a cake. We’re going to have our street party in about half an hour. Meanwhile, here are photos of the cakes I have made:

lemon drizzle cake

blue and pink cupcakes (they are blue, honest)

coffee and walnut cake

I have a feeling that I may not eat any cake for some time after this.

I am still making cake! Only now I’m a little bit worried that nobody will turn up to eat it at our street party on Friday. See, it’s a party for the whole street, but as I only actually know five sets of neighbours and two of them are away for the weekend, and it’s a small cul-de-sac anyway, I’m now afraid that there will be great mountains of cake and only a few of us to eat it.

Which, come to think of it, is sort of a dream come true.

Anyway, I neglected to link to this earlier: social website Activagers have interviewed me about Getting Away With It, and they have also written a really interesting review of my book. I think it’s the first time I’ve had a male reviewer’s take on this particular book; it’s always intriguing to see what someone who is not your target audience thinks of your story. In this case, the reviewer imagines my heroine “kicking Jeremy Clarkson where it hurts if he made a sexist comment”. I like that.

They’re also giving away a signed copy, so check it out here.

And do you want to come round to our street for some cake?

We’re having a street party on Friday on our road; we’re going to close off the cul-de-sac and, well…party. I don’t think we’re particularly patriotic (well, I’m American for a start), but it’s an excuse for a party, and any excuse is good, right? I volunteered to make the cakes, and this week I’m making them bit by bit, and putting them in the freezer ready to get out and defrost on Thursday night.

So far I’ve made a lemon drizzle cake, and today I’m having a cupcake blitz. I’m making vanilla cupcakes (which I will frost in pink) and chocolate cupcakes (which I will frost in blue). Later this week, I’ll make another kind of cake—coffee and walnut, maybe, or something involving fruit.

The Rock God wants to have nothing to do with the royal wedding, and fortunately for him, he’s off to Moscow on Friday (“They know how to treat royalty in Russia,” he says with much satisfaction). This means I can watch the wedding on TV and indulge in silly little British patriotic things like Union Jack cupcake cases without fear of him rolling his eyes. I think it will be fun for the Fecklet. And for me—well, as a romance writer, it’s research. Right?

I’ll confess I sort of like the hype. I like the fact that there are Union Jack things in all the shops, or that the British bureaucracy have made a great virtue out of the fact that they’re allowing people to have parties in their own streets, in their own neighbourhoods, with their own food and drink and entertainment, without having to pay for the privilege. I wouldn’t go so far as being excited about the commemorative tea trays etc. But I do like the word “bunting”.

What are you doing on Friday? Will you watch the wedding? Or are you trying to get as far away from it as possible, preferably to a monarch-free democracy, or possibly outer space?

And also, does anyone have some baking tips for me? The last time I tried to make blue buttercream frosting, the yellow butter made the frosting a weird shade of green. Anyone got any tips to avoid that?

Lyme Regis

We had a brilliant holiday in Dorset. The weather was gorgeous—so gorgeous, in fact, that I gave myself sunstroke on the first day by not wearing a hat on the beach. Sunstroke! In April! In England! That has to be some sort of record.

We explored the coastline of western Dorset, got lost in the new roadworks around Weymouth, went to the Tank Museum (I was quite disappointed not to see James May, who is in the ads on their website), taught the Fecklet to play Uno, and ate huge amounts of yummy unhealthy food on picnics and in pubs. Our holiday spirit was such that one afternoon, we spent an hour or so looking out the windows of our cottage, watching the discussion between village church officials and Dorset county council road worker who’d mistakenly knocked down part of the church wall with his truck. It was quite exciting.

On my birthday, we met Nell Dixon and her family for lunch in Lyme Regis. It was the only cold day of the week. Nevertheless, I forced my poor family and friends to eat fish and chips and gooey chocolate cake on the beach, in between fits of shivering. Afterwards, we wandered the streets of Lyme Regis, and Nell’s eldest daughter charmed the Fecklet whilst we popped into a little book shop called Serendip, where we found a copy of Nell’s ANIMAL INSTINCTS, and my GETTING AWAY WITH IT. We immediately bought each other’s books and went about signing them for each other, whilst our family took photographs and the proprietor was a very good sport at being visited by eccentric holidaying authors, slightly damp, smelling of fish and chips and with gooey chocolate cake smears on their fingers.

Nell Dixon and me in Serendip book shop, Lyme Regis

After my birthday, Fecklet and the Rock God caught the train home, leaving me to write, take long walks, and text my friends continually in the absence of any internet connection. I wrote about 5500 words in two days, which was enough to get me through the sticky rough patch I’d got myself into. More importantly, when I went to Dorset, I hated my book and thought it was the suckiest thing I’d ever written (I know, I always say that, but it WAS), and by the time I came home, I actually liked it quite a bit. And I still like it. Result.

Meanwhile, today on The Heroine Addicts, Brigid Coady is explaining how she dared to ignore my advice and suffered horribly as a result. Well, maybe not horribly, but she was mildly uncomfortable, I reckon, and her heroine got pinned to the floor for rather a long time.

We’re off on holiday this morning, in a little cottage a short walk from a beach in west Dorset. If this glorious spring weather lasts, we’ll have an amazing time…though I think we’ll have an amazing time no matter the weather. Fecklet was so excited that he was awake at 3 am…and 5 am…and 6 am. I’m about to pack sandwiches for our picnic on the way to the cottage, and then load up the car. We’re going to have long walks and pub lunches and fish and chips and fly a kite and go to Monkey World and the Tank Museum and paddle in the sea and hunt for fossils and play board games. I can’t wait.

My birthday is Wednesday, and on Thursday morning Fecklet and Rock God are coming back home, leaving me on my own for two days to walk, and write, and think, and drink wine, and read books. It’s one of my birthday presents.

I also got an early birthday present this week, when I discovered that GETTING AWAY WITH IT is in the Bookseller’s Heatseekers Chart. I was nearly as excited as Fecklet was about his holiday (though I don’t think I would have woken up at 3 am about it on my own).

I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to get online or not, but in case I don’t—see you when I get back. Make sure to remember any good news so you can tell me about it!