Barefoot Bride

Had some nice news this morning. I received an email from the lovely Jessica Hart saying I'd won her Harlequin Mills & Boon March release Barefoot Bride. Yay me! I love winning books! Jessica's website has recently been updated, so if you haven't visited for a while, pop over and have a look.

WA Writers Retreat

Angel is moving along and I'm up to just over 20k. My only worry here is I'm going to run out of words at the 50k mark. Then again, I thought that with Kill Lill and ended up having to cull several thousand just to get it under 100k. Hmm. Definite pattern there.

Nothing much else to report on the writing front, except to give a big shout out to Julie Anne from the Clayton's Conference fame. She's doing a great job of getting together romance writers living in WA, and is organising a writers retreat in a few weeks time, right on the ocean's edge. Talk about inspiration! Not only that, but she's also set up a brilliant website WA RWA. Pop along and have a look (and drool over the gorgeous setting of the retreat!)

But they ARE Real People!

Anna's comment the other day on how our characters are so real to us, got me thinking. Because it's true. My characters are real to me, not just figments of my imagination, but living breathing people, with hopes, fears and expectations of their own. I know every other writer will completely understand that, just as many non-writers will think I'm totally barking!

And they don't just take over and become real people when I sit down to channel their thoughts. They're in my head all the time, whether I'm ironing (tho I must be honest here - I so rarely use the iron it has cobwebs... ), burning dinner or being the on call taxi service to my darling off-spring. Occasionally other thoughts might intrude, such as - bloody hell, I've forgotten to buy the groceries again - but they are fleeting since let's face it, grocery shopping is borrrrrring! And listening to our characters is way more fun.

I have this huge fear that one day I'll wake up and there won't be anyone chattering away inside my head. Not only would I go insane if deprived of my writing outlet, but how in the world would I occupy my mind??? All that grey matter jiggling about with nothing to focus on. Nightmare!

Angel (no, not THAT Angel... hahahaa)

Last weekend a new idea hit me. Instead of the straight contemp romance I'd been planning (and which I have about a million scribbled notes about), this streetwise angel set up residence in my head and wouldn't budge.

Now, the germ of this idea first sprang into life about eight years ago but I hadn't thought about seriously revisiting it. Not too sure why, because it has all the slightly odd elements I enjoy writing about. I think it was psychological - a truly lovely editor spent a long time with me on that original manuscript and it was accepted for publication, only for the publishing company to go into liquidation.

Anyway, for some reason last Saturday it was all I could think about, and what's more this time around the angel wasn't taking any back seat in the story or being an ambiguous 'is he or isn't he really there' kind of character. Oh no. This time he has Issues, he has Attitude - and he also has a couple of secrets he's conveniently 'forgotten' to tell my heroine.

So this is good news for me, apart from the small fact that I'm flying into the mist with it - a truly terrifying prospect for someone who usually plans and outlines to within an inch of her life! The slightly not so good news is I've stopped querying agents on my last one. oops. This is getting to be a very bad habit. On the plus side, I still have requested partials out there on two separate novels, so I'm just going to see how it goes.

One last thing - the lovely Anna has mentioned my blog in her Favourite Things! Go check out her website and if you haven't yet, don't forget to read the excerpt of her upcoming Avon release, Claiming the Courtesan.

Name Tags

Sara tossed out a fun tag, so here's my effort:

1. YOUR REAL NAME: Christina

2. YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (first three letters of your name, plus izzle) Chrizzle. I could live with this one

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first three of your last) Cphi. I look like an element

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (fav color and fav animal) Lavender Kitty

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, Street you live on): Chrizzle Breaker. Convoy, anyone??

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name, first 3 letters of mom’s maiden name) Phichher try saying this without spraying everywhere

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (favorite color, favorite drink) Lavender Bacardi or whisky

8. YOUR STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your favorite perfume/cologne/body spray)Beautiful/Intuition/White Linen... just call me Estee

9. YOUR WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother & father’s middle name)Herbi Wood I'd be a nymph what else!