Belief in the Story

A posting on the excellent A Pleasant Book blog got me thinking about how important belief is in a story, both for the reader and the author.
In many books the reader is invited to suspend disbelief. For example, Stephen King book Lisey's Story (a fantastic book for anyone who hasn't read it - if you are planning to read it skip the text directly after the close of this bracket as it contains a spoiler) asks the reader to believe in an alternate universe. In fact, every Stephen King book asks the reader to immerse his/herself in disbelief. Mills & Boon Modern / Harlequin Presents books regularly invite the reader to believe that gorgeous billionaires with a social conscious exist and will fall in love with an ordinary woman as opposed to falling in love with Giselle Bundchen.
Ah, you may be thinking - on what planet could Stephen King ever be compared to a Mills & Boon? I'm sure Stephen King could create such a planet! My admiration for his story telling skills is infinite*. The man is a genius. It doesn't matter how other-worldly a particular story may be, at the root of them - especially those published in the past ten years - his books contain an enormous dose of love and heart. Most importantly, when I am reading his books, I believe. He draws me into the worlds he creates. And so do the vast majority of Mills & Boon authors.
I am not going to lie, there have been some stinkers published under the Harlequin brand. There have been books where I have ground my teeth all the way through because the characters were, for me, awful. There have been heroines so pure and good I want to puke. The hero can treat them exactly as he likes and they put up with it and fall in love with him anyway! Naturally, these heroines are virgins. The good news is these kind of Harlequins are becoming relics of the past. I don't mean the virgin heroine. There are still a few of those dotted about in the monthly releases and, luckily for my grinding teeth, even the virgins have the balls to stand-up for themselves. But where I used to adore the virgins, now I need a damn good reason to believe that a fully grown twenty-something woman would, in the twenty first century, be a virgin. Which is where the author's skill comes in. It is the author's job to make me believe. And the only way the author can do that is by believing in her (or his) characters, to bring them to life and make them breathe.
So far I have not written a virgin heroine. One day I would love to write one but before I can do that I need to come up with a reason that I can believe. Then, and only then, will I attempt to write one. Because let's face it, if I the author do not believe, what chance does the poor reader have?

*Except for the Dark Half, Christine, Pet Sematary and the Dark Tower series, all of which I loathed. Sorry!

Writing as a Hobby

This post has come about over something my sister said when she described my writing as a hobby in which I am, hopefully, going to be able to earn some money from. In many respects she was right. When you look at it from an outsiders perspective, it's easy to see it like that. My husband for example, loves playing golf and would give up his job in a heartbeat if it meant he could play professionally. I love to paint. I'm not too bad at it, for an amateur. But I am not good enough to be a professional and nor would I want to be - it does not fulfil me in the same way that writing does. Painting is my hobby.
For me, writing has never been a hobby. To me, it is a necessity. It is my life. One way or another I have always written (regular readers of this blog will know I used to be a business journalist). And I have always read. The two go hand in hand. But it was only four or five years ago I decided to give writing romance a proper go. By the time I had finished my first book - which, incidentally, was crap - I knew there was nothing I would rather do. I was bitten. I could not stop. Even on holidays where my husband bans me from taking the laptop, I will take a big notebook and write by hand whenever I get the chance. My characters are always with me, whether I'm driving the car or cooking dinner or simply trying to fall asleep. And I think this is true for most other writers. For me it's not a case of 'having to take my writing seriously'. That would be like saying 'take the air we breathe seriously'. It just is.

Edits Gone!

First let's start with my apologies for letting it go three weeks without an update. Sorry!

I received my first batch of edits from my new super-duper editor and guess what? Yep, wholesale revisions. I should have guessed. But (and yes, there is a big butt here), the edits/revisions actually took me back to my original story, the one I had in my heart when I first wrote it over two years ago. Three rounds of revisions with M&B had made it a fundamentally different story and, with one round with Entangled, I got the core of my story back.

I'm not going to lie. These edits were hard work. Maybe I could have cheated and cut and paste a number of scenes from the original but my writing has evolved tremendously over the past two + years and I wanted to do justice to it.

With these edits I have learned a great deal too - namely how to use Track Changes! I have also learned that using Track Changes gives me a headache.

Anyway, the edits have gone. I should expect the second round in a fortnight or so. Which means I have time to put my feet up... Erm, no. A couple of days before I completed the edits I got an email from my M&B editor with her thoughts on my partial for them (everyone keeping up?). Luckily she really liked the way the story was progressing but she thought it needed a bit more spark - my hero wasn't really reacting to the situation and thus my heroine could not react to him. With one teensy suggestion, it's changed the whole dynamic of the book and got me out of the pickle I had got myself into. My hero and heroine are both damaged, repressed people and, 30,000 words in, I had reached the stage where I could not see how they were ever going to get it together. I had hit the proverbial brick wall. I figured there was no point in carrying on until I had heard from the ed and luckily, that one little suggestion has helped me no end. I need to revise (ok, rewrite) everything I have done and send the 30,000 words to her in a fortnight. Just in time to receive my second batch of edits from Entangled...

I also need to complete my Cinderella Zombie Killer story if I am going to get it finished in time for the call-out deadline.

Oh yes, and the kids break up for the summer holidays in three weeks.

Do you every wish there were an extra couple of hours in the day?

And do you know what? I'm loving every minute of it!

Thanks for reading - I promise to try not to leave it so long before my next post. xxx

Knickers!

Yes, this post is all about knickers. Or, if you are American, panties. Because knickers and panties are one and the same thing, divided only by the Atlantic separating the UK and the US.

Last night, whilst on twitter, one of my American friends posted a tweet about her husband's friend turning up at her house forcing her to run upstairs and put some pants on. Cue much hysterical laughing from me and an English friend. In England, pants are the male version of knickers. Boys wear pants and girls wear knickers. After much merriment we all agreed that in our next blog posts we would have to drop the word 'knickers' in it.

I decided to take the challenge one step further. After an email from my Entangled editor the other day, the language barrier between the US and the UK had been playing on my mind, and this twitter hilarity solidified it for me. We speak a common language but there are many occasions when we might as well be speaking Martian to each other.

My editor stressed that they are keen to preserve the authenticity of the voice, which in my case is English. I am English, I think in English and I write in English (apart from a couple of books I have written in which the heroines are Irish - in those books I thought and wrote in Irish. Which is English but with it's own living quirks). I go to the cinema to watch films, my kids wear trainers (although my eldest referred to them once as sneakers. Only once mind. He never made that mistake again ha ha ha) and when I was a kid I had a fringe. When I was a kid I also devoured Sweet Valley High books. It was through these books that I first became aware that, despite sharing a common language, there were many words I did not understand. What the heck was a twinkie? And a jock? And a barrette?

So here is my (brief) rundown of commonly different words:

English              American

Knickers           Panties

Pants                Jocks *

Trousers           Pants

Fringe               Bangs

Trainers            Sneakers

Film                  Movie

Fag                  Cigarette

Sweets             Candy

Crisps              Chips

Chips               Fries

Courgette         Zucchini

Aubergine        Eggplant

Hairclip            Barrette

* Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that one as I know a jock in America is also a sporty-type.

I would love to hear about any I have missed, not forgetting the other countries that also have English as its common language, such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Language is a wonderful, fluid, living thing and we should celebrate it in all its forms. But I should stress now I will never watch a movie, my kids will never wear sneakers and when I was a kid I did not have bangs.

Thanks for reading and take care xxx

The Power of Four

I've been tagged by the incredibly lovely Aimee Duffy (honestly Aimee, I don't hate you at all!). I have to answer a bunch of questions and then tag four other unfortunates, ahem, I mean lucky peeps.

So here goes:

Four places I have worked:

1) Behind a bar. I did a lot of bar work from 18 - 20 and I loved it, especially as this was fifteen years ago when smoking and drinking whilst on duty were not frowned upon. I could talk and gossip to my heart's content. Oh, happy days.

2) In a chocolate kiosk in a bus-station when I was a student. This lasted for the grand total of two weeks. The owners of the kiost were the most horrible, nasty, self-righteous w***ers I have ever met. I took great delight in stuffing as much chocolate down my face as was humanly possible the second their backs were turned. I never handed my notice in either. I wonder if they're still waiting for me to turn up for my shift.

3) At a business publishing house. This was my favourite job evah (apart from writing books obviously). I worked as a journalist on the company's four trade magazines. My editor had once worked at Fleet Street when it still was Fleet Street, and as a result had a tendency to spend hours in the pub every day. He was lovely and supportive, and always willing to buy me a pint!

4) Alas, the publishing house went bust. Luckily my dad needed an extra pair of hands in his will-writing business and I'm still there doing a whopping four hours a week. He let's me boss him around and makes me lots of coffee. And he never complains when I use the office printer to print a 188 page manuscript. He's not really counting the days for me to hand my notice in!

Four films I could watch over and over

Ok, my tastes are a little varied but, in no particular order...

1) Grease
2) Dirty Dancing
3) The Day After Tomorrow
4) 28 Days Later

Four Telly Programmes

Don't watch much tv at all but ones I do happen to love are:

1) The Apprentice
2) Once Upon a Time
3) Heroes (gutted it was cancelled)
4) Family Guy

Four authors I enjoy

This is probably the hardest question for me to answer as there are so many authors whose work I love:

1) Stephen King
2) Jilly Cooper
3) Minette Walters
4) Marian Keyes

Four places I've travelled to

1) Australia
2) The Seychelles
3) Thailand
4) Norfolk

Four websites I visit daily

1) eharlequin
2) The Passive Voice
3) BBC News
4) Facebook

Four favourite foods

I am a pig. As I write this I am eating a bowl of popcorn. Asking me to chose a favourite food is like asking me to chose my favourite child.

Four places I'd rather be

1) The Seychelles
2) Tuscany
3) Sweden
4) Disney Land

Four people I want to tag (Sorry - please don't hate me. Blame Aimee. I am.)

1) Catherine Coles
2) Charlotte Phillips
3) Lacey Devlin
4) Lindsay Pryor

That's quite enough waffling about me.

Thanks for reading and take care xxx

Serendipity

Ever since I was a little girl, I've adored fairy tales. I once owned two volumes of encyclopedia-sized fairy stories and would dip in and out of them as the mood took me, right through to late adolescence. One of the biggest regrets of my life was giving them, at the age of nineteen, to some neighbour's kids, along with my enormous collection of Enid Blyton and Sweet Valley High books. I wish I had just let the kids borrow them until they grew out of them and then had them returned to me. Still, never mind - we live and learn.

Yet no matter how much I adored those stories and books, from as far back as I can remember I used to wish those princesses and fair maidens weren't quite so... wimpy. I had the same problem with my Enid Blyton books - if ever you find an old battered Famous Five and discover various scrawled insults to Julian inside them of the 'sexist pig' variety, it's safe to assume that book once probably belonged to me. But I digress.

At the weekend I had reached the dreaded middle section of my wip. As I am still waiting to hear from my editor at M&B, I was reluctant to write my way out of the impasse because, for all I know, I might be heading in completely the wrong direction. I was also still waiting to have an editor assigned to me at Entangled (I have to say, Entangled Publishing are an absolute joy to work with and I sincerely hope that Tempted by Trouble is only the first of many books I publish with them). Then I saw a call-out on Twitter - Entangled were after Halloween novellas. And one of the call-outs were, specifically, for fairy tales with a zombie twist. As soon as I looked into their requirements in more detail I became so excited I was bouncing around the house. At last, I had it in my power to take one of my beloved fairy tales and turn my princess into a heroine with balls! And thus, what I call my 'Kickass Cinderella Zombie Killer' was born. I don't think I've ever had so much fun writing anything - I'm having an absolute blast. And the fact that it's a novella means that I should, hopefully, be able to write it around my edits when I get them, and my M&B story when I hear back from my ed there.

And now comes the serendipitous moment. A couple of days ago I received an email from Entangled confirming who my editor would be - I had been assigned to Adrien-Luc, the very same editor who had done the Halloween call-out, the very same editor that Kickass Cinderella Zombie Killer will be winging its way to when it's all done and dusted. There then ensued some more bouncing!

Obviously this does not mean my Halloween novella will be deemed suitable or good enough but I'm not too bothered by that - I'm writing this one for me.

Thanks for reading, and take care all xxx

Published!!!!!

In my last post I put in a little teaser about my rejected MS.

Well tease no more - I can now confirm that my book, the book I dedicated a whole heap of blood, sweat and tears to, is going to be published by Entangled Publishing.

I've been sitting on this for weeks (they requested I keep my big mouth shut until the contract was signed). I don't know about anyone else but I am terrible at keeping my own secrets. But now I can shout it to the world and tell those of you who are interested how it all came about.

I had a feeling in my gut that M&B were going to give it the thumbs down, so I started researching alternate publishers. Entangled were my first choice (I've got a different full ms with them that was the result of a pitch challenge, and no, I haven't heard about it lol). The impact they've made and the authors they've signed and the editors who are working for them... well, it was a no-brainer really. As a contingency I selected two other publishers. When the big 'no' came, I queried one of the others, who shall remain nameless, who got back to me straight away with a request for the full. Being nice and obliging, I submitted it. Twenty four hours later, less than a week after my R, I got an offer to publish. I was delighted, but...

But I had my heart set on Entangled. I emailed Liz at Entangled, who had had the other MS (I hadn't sent them the new book by this point because I know protocol states one at a time) and explained the situation. I honestly thought it would take months to hear from the other publisher and by then I was hoping to have an answer on the other MS with Liz. By the way, is everyone keeping up? It's jolly confusing, especially for me! Anyhoo, Liz referred me to the wonderful Alethea who read it and decided she wanted it. Except being a bit green, it took me a couple of weeks to realise that she did actually want it - I had to email her for clarification, doh. Since then, we've been sorting out the contract and today I signed it.

Anyway, I'm going to sign off from this post now - my lovely hubby's finally brought us a bottle of champagne to celebrate and I want to drink it!

I just want to thank all my followers for your wonderful support. The romance community is the best!

xxx