A decade of paperwork

Today should be the start of getting back to normal. There's been a week of upheaval at chez Black, but now I have only a few books to move back to their original place and voila! I'm done. It was a good opportunity to weed out all the accumulated rubbish of the past decade, and I've filled the "paper" wheelie-bin ready for collection tomorrow. It is amazing to see how long I have been sending out submissions. The first was dated 8th March 2001 and in it I committed almost every sin - giving my age, mentioning a brother - I mean, what has that to do with my writing? Hopefully I've got better at it.

Not that learning to write query letters and stuff brings success. It brings the same old rejection letters, but now they all say I write very well but they don't love the work quite enough to go with it. I suspect I will have to change the format of my book and bring it into line with all the Queen-type books for sale these days. It seems from my latest dip into the market place that men write from the male POV and women write from the female. There are exceptions, but generally, that is the way it works, but I've done both in the same story. Time for a re-think.

With more snow forecast for today, plus the fact that I'm bowling off to Durham for lunch with friends, I thought I'd put up a picture of the lovely walk along the river bank at Durham on a hot, sunny day. The wooden steps down, used by the boat crews, were steaming in the heat! Those were the days....