Uncertainties

Finally, revision of the Matho trilogy is complete.

I sent it off for re-publishing this morning, and can 

now relax and enjoy the garden, the sunshine and dog walks!

Currently uncertain as to beginning any new writing project. It takes so long to complete, and though there are lots of ideas spinning around in the subconscious nothing  is solidifying into an idea that I am prepared to spend a whole heap of time on. Perhaps I just need a rest, time off to relax. I can always concentrate on marketing and improving covers. 

Recently I put my cover for Silver Season up to Discovering Diamonds Cover critique duo (Cathy Helms and Tamian Wood) and received some really useful comments that have spurred me on to  do something about it. For the moment I'm so relieved at having got the revision off to Kindle that I'm going to relax and enjoy an ice-cream in the sunshine - oh, and watch Rafa go for his 14th Roland Garros championship.

Pre-Orders

Something I'm trying for the first time with THE CRAIGSMUIR AFFAIR - pre-order at Amazon.
I've set a date and loaded the cover. I've been given a date by which I must load all info, which is fair enough. Now I'll wait and see when and where it is listed - if it is!

Astonishingly, we haven't begun packing yet. It looks like it is going to be the usual last minute dash, but that's all part of the fun. Before we set off on the journey south I shall have to give Tim a good walk so he'll sleep until we get a good way down the country. That means getting up very early, but that's OK too, as we're usually alert and awake well before normal time when there's a big trip in the offing.

I'm trying to ensure that I have everything I want loaded onto my laptop so that I can continue to proofread while I'm in France. Disaster if I forget anything! Tennis is distracting me right now. It's the Madrid Open Final tonight and it is between Andy and Nadal. Finally, Rafa seems to be back on track, so I think I shall splurge £6.99 and pay for 24 hours viewing so I can watch the match. If I were to stay in England it would be better value to pay for a month but that's OK. The price is considerably cheaper than paying to visit the venue!

Spring is a lovely time to visit England - so many shades of green to enjoy. The froth of white in the pic is the mass of garlic flowers that have opened up in the last week. The bluebells are out too, in the shadier places.

Domestica and writing

Drowning in domestic things with no time for blogging for the last few days.  Getting ready to go to France, and that is where my next blog will come from just as soon as I can get myself set up electronically. We've also been very social this week. Everyone seems to want to make the most of the warm evenings with the happy clink of wine glasses and conversation. Last night we enjoyed an enclosed log burner in a neighbour's garden. It provided a lovely glow, kept us warm and also kept the nasty little flies away. I recommend one for any garden.

Almost done with the washing and ironing. Now the problem is what to take and what to leave behind. Then of course there's the tennis from Roland Garros, and I'm watching every Rafa match because, as I say to my long suffering dh, you never know when it might suddenly be his last match. Not that I'm ill-wishing him - I want him to go on for years or as long as he wants to. There's Djokovich to keep an eye on, and Fed to watch when we get the chance. It all takes up a lot of time, and then there's Tim to walk. The thing that is suffering is my writing, but that will soon be rectified. The one I suppose I should watch is Murray, but he is so graceless. I know his tennis is good, but I  always want to shout at Andy - Stand up straight, get your head up, move like an athlete....why he shambles around I can't imagine. There's nothing wrong with his physique or his looks, and yet he refuses to present himself to best advantage.

Viking Magic is out and doing well on Amazon Kindle, so I'm concentrating on  Capture a Queen. That's the  one that has been going on in the background of my life for so long now that you would think there would be nothing to alter. But I'm amazed to find I'm still editing. Simplifying text, making it flow more elegantly, tightening the drama where possible, changing a few -ing endings where I spot them. Also, cutting where I think it needs it. I'm hoping to have this finished and published on Kindle this year, hopefully in the autumn when people start reading on cold winter nights.

I'm also wondering about Createspace. It would be nice to have a book in my hands again and Capture a Queen is aimed at Historical fiction rather than historical romance. If anyone has comments on Createspace, do let me know.

As flat as a pancake

I won't get much writing done today. DH has finally succeeded in passing on to me  the cold he picked up in Zermatt, so I'm not functioning at my best. I spent the morning watching Rafa/Federer's semi-final in the Australian Open  until some glitch stopped the pics coming. (Fear not - it was recording, so I can pick it up later.) By then the dog was getting restless, so I took him for a stroll (I strolled, he ran everywhere) by the riverside. When I got back it was lunch time, and I ate while checking my e-mails. Bad habit, I know, but so time-saving.

I might repair to bed this afternoon, as I can't seem to get warm even though I have several layers one on top of another. I can try reading. I say try because I fell asleep twice last night while reading and I don't think I should blame Sarah Dunant's Blood and Beauty. It was me....Sometimes I just don't notice how tired I am.

I have several other books to get through before February. I have a Joanne Harris  and a Diana Gabaldon sitting unread on the shelf, and I am due to review two books for the HNS. It never rains but it pours - I go for weeks without the sniff of a good book and then half a dozen come along at once and I don't have time to sit and read them all.

Still, the Viking adventure is shaping up well. I'm up to Chap 16, and at 3,000 words per chapter, that's about 48,000 words. I don't have the energy to do anything to it today. Strange how writing always seeems such a sit-down-and-be-comfortable hobby, but I can't do it when I'm tired or under the weather. I need energy flowing to get the story rolling, and today I'm as flat as a pancake. Hence all these miserable cliches .....

Order out of chaos

Other people's blogs can be such a rewarding place and I recommend a trip over to anita's to discover the organisational skills a writer needs. I use some of them, I suppose we all do some of them. I like little spiral notebooks, 4 inches by 3 inches which open vertically rather than horizontally. I find it much easier to write notes and read them back in this format. It fits in the smallest handbag, or a pocket, sits in the car dash pocket ~ and it really is a go anywhere pad. I'll probably end up with one for every novel I ever attempt.

I finally mastered using the Style button to highlight my chapter headings. They then come up in a separate pane at the left side of my screen, and with one click I am transported from chapter 20 to chapter 2. Great for checking or editing. It had me going for a while though; I used to end up with the whole chapter in the left pane. I soon learned to be very careful about highlighting only what I wanted. On the other hand, you could include the first lines of each scene if you wished.

I have a spreadsheet that combines chapters, word count, page numbers and one-liners as to content chapter. Having read Anita's piece I shall now try her colour chart for checking POV/character as that sounds a really good thing to do. And I'm curious to see how even-handed I've been.

Vamos Rafa - good decision to withdraw from Barcelona.

Volcanic ash and luncheon

Volcanic ash is causing misery around the whole of Europe, including this country, but so far I've seen no sign of it. But it must be there, high in the sky above me, for the airport 9 miles away is closed. Airports to the north and south are closed, too. Strange feeling, to look up and think what's there, and that it must come down somewhere, sometime.

didn't get much work done over the weekend as it was our turn to host a Sunday lunch. Now I know that those of you with families do this sort of thing in your sleep, but for me, a three or four course lunch with wine and coffee is a major undertaking.

I tackled one of Gordon Ramsay's recipes. Lamb rump with thyme and potato boulangere. Sound simple, but our local Farm butcher had no idea what a lamb rump night be. At this time of the year, he said with a smile, local lambs are so small that 3 lamb rumps for six people would mean I had six hungry guests. He thinks it's a New Zealand term and maybe their lambs are big enough, a different breed of lamb, perhaps, to make the cut worthwhile. Not here, so ~ Gordon Ramsay please take note ~ use terms that are recognised throughout the UK. It will make my life so much easier.

Good to see our friends happy and tucking in, enjoying the Cloudy Bay - still our favourite white wine, and there wasn't much of anything left, so I guess that means something. Then I couldn't sleep. Still hyped up and mind revving, but not sensible enough to do work on the wip. So I found Rafa's match at Monte Carlo and enjoyed the various snippets of him winning the final against Verdasco.

Sex sells!

The vanishing snow revealed a dead pigeon, chest-down, wings half folded, in one of our ground cover plants. It has been given a hasty burial. No signs of attack, though we occasionally see a sparrowhawk in the garden.

Watched Rafa's first match in the Australian Open this morning - thank the Lord for red button viewing - and he seems to be almost back to form. I think he has changed his way of moving around the court, and certainly his serve has improved. It may be my imagination, but I see a lot more of the graceful side-steps we associate with Federer in Rafa's approach now.

Splendid party at the weekend to celebrate a neighbour's birthday. Another neighbour reports my book Far After Gold shocked her 82-year-old mother, so now all the other female neighbours are threatening to read it too. As one of the men pointed out, their desire to do so has nothing to do with literary merit, or a beautiful setting, but purely because its "sexy." Howls of derision greeted that remark. I confessed I was glad my mother wasn't alive to read it, for she would undoubtedly have had something to say on the subject.

Dh and I celebrated my being signed off from the Freeman, too. I can do whatever I want now, according to the wonderful Mr Hamilton. Though I have to say it is a strange feeling to sit opposite a man knowing he has had his hands inside my chest and stitched odd bits of me together again. He feels something of a stranger, yet also a good friend.

Now for some work on the wip. Decisions must be made. Am I going to complete the chapter with 1000 words of Meg's encounter with the Dowager, or make everyone wait and follow for that outcome and concentrate instead on Harry's story? I'll ponder that as I pop downstairs and make a lunchtime sandwich.

Both pics are of Prudhoe Castle in winter, just as the snow was arriving.

Heroes of the day

Rafa couldn't be here to defend his title so the Wimbledon final seemed a bit flat this year.

Roger was there, looking cool and trying hard . Andy Roddick was there, looking uncool and trying hard, sweat dripping from the peak of his cap from the second game. Neither could break the other's service game. Tie-breaks became the order of the day.

Until the last set of course when tie-breaks are not allowed. It went on and on, until I began to fear that one of them would fall down and not get up again.

Tennis is the gladiator sport of this day and age. One on one, for anything from forty minutes to over five hours without a break unless it happens to rain. Heroes are made in this sport, some seem born to be heroes.

Footballers may think they are fit, but they should try this for a living. Enter a tournament and any given day five sets are a possibility for the men. A team chase a ball on a football pitch, one man on a tennis court. He doesn't just want to beat his opponent, said one retired professional on tv last week, he wants to destroy him.

Roger looked worried, but never raged or threw things as so many do. And amazingly in these days of females grunters, trillers and screamers, this match was silent. The crowd made the only noise, and the audience at home could hear the racket strike the ball. There is no sound more redolent of summer and strawberries, unless it is the sound of leather on willow. Beautiful day.

Roger won. I'll save that pic for tomorrow.

Can a hero be a jerk?

The pic on a slant is Aydon Castle, built in the late 1200s.

I seem unable to copy text into here as I used to do. It can only be because I've moved from Internet Ex 7 to 8. Is it an oversight, deliberate or am I doing something incorrect now? So instead of quoting someone, I'll now paraphrase a blog that struck a chord with me this morning.

Talking heroes and villains, the general feeling is that it is OK for a villain to be a jerk, but if a hero leans towards something that doesn't fit the strict hero credentials, the author is liable to get lambasted. I've had it happen, but I believe, like the writer of the blog, that heroes do have a tendency to slip into real life and do snap, bark, and do the occasional venial thing when they are upset, disappointed, or wake up with their noses out of joint that particular day.

Heroes are not impossible beings in my mind. They're human like the rest of us and so they have days when nothing goes right. Put them in a situation where the love of their life throws them over for someone else and I'd huff in scorn if all he did was say "So be it; she loves him and I must endure it." What a wimp, I say. I'd rather he threw something, or punched the rival, or let rip with a few choice swear words for an hour or so - and then got himself under control again.

"Defeats never make you grow, but you also realise how difficult what I achieved up until today was, and this is something you need sometimes. You need a defeat to give the value to your victories." Rafael Nadal.

Rafa may be talking, with his strange and wonderful grasp of the English language, about tennis, but his words have a strange echo for me and for everyone in this difficult writing game. Once upon a time I never thought I'd get a book published, and now I have. Then I had three published. Then I worry about why agents refuse me - and then I read Rafa's words and I think how far I have come. Vamoose Rafa! and Vamoose us!

Rafa

Ah, this picture says it all. Unbelievably, Rafa lost his match against a man he's beaten every time they played in the past.

"He didn't surprise me because I know how he plays and how dangerous he can be. I didn't play my best. I played very short and I couldn't attack. I made it easy for him to play at his level. But I lost. It's not a tragedy, I had to lose one day. I must accept my defeats with the same level of calm that I accept my victories."

Well, I should have more time for writing now. Until Wimbledon, that is. I hope he has a good rest, enjoys his birthday at home for the first time in years.

The picture is courtesy of Reuters.

RNA and Pin ups 2009

Romantic novelists have voted and the results are out ~ here are their choices for the sexiest male celebrities of 2009:

1 Richard Armitage - see pic to the right. I didn't see him in North and South, regrettably, but caught up with him as baddie Guy in the latest Robin Hood. The fact that he wore black leather and played opposite a less than charismatic Robin had to help. He replaces Penry-Jones in Spooks ( and what an exit he had! Talk about going out with a bang!) and I'm watching....

2 Johnny Depp. H'mm. Saw him as the pirate and recently as JMBarrie. Good actor, but there's something not quite right....

3 Hugh Jackman - see pic with towel. I haven't to my knowledge seen HJ in anything, but like what I see...

4 George Clooney - nah. Almost a caricature of a handsome man

5 Daniel Craig. a bit scary sometimes as Bond, but certainly fanciable.

6 Sean Bean, ah yes. It's that wicked grin and the insubordination that do it for me, but is he perhaps just a tad past the pin up stakes now?

7 Alan Rickman, a great actor but not exactly a pin up for moi.

8 David Tennant. Definitely dislike the wide-eyed look he persists in displaying

9 Pierce Brosnan. Like Sean, perhaps a little over his sell-by date

10 Gerard Butler. Who?

I have no quarrel with most of the choices, though Clooney, Tennant and Rickman don't do it for me. I think one person they've overlooked is the new world number one tennis player

Rafa Nadal (in the blue tee shirt).

How about it? Anyone agree with me?

My book and the Australian Open

Since my book is published this Friday I thought I should let everyone know the good news.

This picture is of Ullapool - but not of the Ullapool of today. This is my view of Skuli' Grey Cloak's Steading, the place where Flane takes Emer when he buys her in the Dublin slave market. As the week progresses I'll add my impressions of Emer, Flane and Oli.

I am still immersed in the Australian Tennis Tournament. Today Murray was beaten. I wonder what the headlines will scream tomorrow? The British press can be cruel I think, in the way it pounces on a UK player and lauds them to the skies before they've ever won a Grand Slam. I've watched it happen so often over the years. The players must come to believe a little of the hype, and then the fall must hit very hard. Far better to wait until Murray wins a Grand Slam before touting him as the favourite before players like Djokovic and Federer. Nadal is always polite, and so avoids confrontation. It looks like being a Nadal-Federer final, and I know who I want to win.

Complications

I'm working hard with no time for blogs! I've got myself into a situation where I have 3 separate stories on the go, and I'm doging between them. Victorian, Regency and Tudor. Enough variety there for anyone, I think, but I'm not really progressing as fast as I should. Variety there may be, but 3 stories dilutes the concentration. For me, anyway.

Why am I doing this? Because two have been rejected and I see good stuff in them that I don't want to let go. So I'm tweaking.

Can tweaking ever be good? We'll see.

Tennis news this week - Nadal beaten by Murray, Murray beaten by Federer. Federer wins first major tournament this year, so that has to be good. Murray advances, may soon be number 4 in the world. Pity I can't warm to him. Nadal has to be tired after all he's done this year - reached Number 1 and got a gold in Beijing. It's almost tempting me to buy Sky Sports so I can watch the matches, but at £17 per month....£204 per year...way too much. I'll listen on Five Live.

Olympics and Sport

The Olympics have dominated life in this household over the last few days, mostly because we have Freeview and can select the sport we want to watch from half a dozen options. Amazing. I've enjoyed watching Rafael Nadal fight his way to the gold, and dh has watched all the rowing and cycling events. We both enjoyed Michael Johnson's comment that Phelp's tremendous haul of gold medals has to be put in perspective - If the athletes could run the 100 yards forwards, backwards and sideways, and win a medal each time, it might come close...
I can remember how handsome we girls thought Mark Spitz all those years ago, and what an astonishing talent he possessed. Numbers may well change before the end, but so far Team GB is doing good on the medal table. There have been years when we've slunk away with hardly a gong to our credit. And how things have changed for Russia now that Belaruss, Ukraine and the like have broken away. China is suddenly coming good, and with 1.2 billion people, there is certainly a big pool of potential talent there. Track events, particularly the sprints, are now dominated by black athletes. Also it seems that if you are of medium height, you need not apply for anything at all. Being small is an advantage in gymnastics, being tall is an advantage in everything else. Medium comes nowhere, except perhaps cycling and even then....
Ah, but I have enjoyed it all.

It will seem an awful long time till London 2012.

Go Rafa!

I am intrigued by this man, and even I think that's a little strange and hard to explain in a mature woman. But rest assured that though his physique is certainly attractive, it is not, as everyone probably suspects, the reason for the interest.
Not my sole interest, shall we say. I have been looking for an image that encapsulates his ferocious concentration on the ball, and the second picture (taken by Julian Finney/ Getty Images) comes closer to it.

What I really want is the moment before he hits the ball, when he reminds me of one the hunting animals with prey in sight - the same intense concentration. And it isn't just for that one ball, nor that one game, but for entire matches; the fascination is how he manages to maintain that level for two, three hours or more.

There's also his sheer commitment to return everything, no matter how difficult, and to return it with interest. His physical stamina is incredible, but his mind must be his most powerful weapon. He seems to think positive all the time, no matter what people like Federer throw at him - and Federer is a man who can deliver the most telling shots without effort.

Tennis players must think very quickly. Tennis balls travel the length of the court in normal play at something close to 90 mph and the players must have reflexes that are truly phenomenal. Hard enough to get the racquet to the ball and return it safely, never mind turning the shot into an attack as well.

Some of this I may well be able to incorporate into a hero at some point. Not that my heroes play tennis, you understand; but I can try and instil some of the relentless "attack" into a sword fight or a verbal battle. It is astonishing how much sport we can observe, absorb and use in writing fiction.

My current hero lives in Regency times, and he needs to be a bit of an action man at times. If I could conjure up a little of Nadal's intensity for him, I think it would be good. I should certainly enjoy writing it!