Witchy Thoughts

There is a great post on Amanda's blog today, about how the witches got together. And it reminded me of the first time Sara and I ever spoke.

A few weeks before the RNA conference in 2004, we discovered - quite by chance via the eharlequin boards - that we'd be on the same plane from Singapore to Heathrow. Wow! What an opportunity to get together before the conference!

So we exchanged a couple of formal emails introducing ourselves to each other (hehe, yes remember those polite emails, Sara?!) and then towards the end of the flight Sara came down looking for me (how brave is that?)

I think she must have batted her eyelashes at the flight attendent as he let me ascend to the splendour of business class, where Sara and I then proceded to be Painfully Polite with each other.

ahahaha. I am giggling now as I think of it. The roar of the engines prevented anything but genteel yelling (and I of course never yell) and then we hit some turbulance. After some toilet talk (ie aircraft loos are ridiculously tiny - what did you think I was talking about?!) I had to stagger back to my seat to prepare for landing.

The funny thing is we didn't become friends until after I returned to Australia and Sara returned to New Zealand a few weeks after the conference. We sometimes laugh about that time on the plane, and think how different it would be if we met up now that we know each other so well.

Oh yeah. Next time we'll be prepared, cause we'll take along our laptops so we can msn each other - even if we are sitting on the same aisle (those engines can be pretty noisy, y'know!)

Happy Birthday Amanda!

Luckily you can't hear me singing here, as it would make you weep... hehe.

But here's a big Happy Birthday dear Amanda! And now you're twenty-nine that means - gasp - you're the same age as me!!

Seven Year Itch

Writing itch, that is. Yes, it was seven years ago this Easter I decided to try and put my dreams of publication into practice, by actually sitting down and doing some writing.

My very first effort was a category length romance with weirdy paranormal overtones. The first publisher I sent it to was very enthusiastic and gave me a couple of rounds of revisions. Ah, I thought. Excitedly. At this rate I'll be pubbed by Christmas! And had great fun mentally spending all the dosh I was bound to make (yes. I was either incredibly naive or laughably stupid!!)

Unfortunately, between being offered a contract and said contract arriving, the publisher went into liquidation and although I tried other publishers it seemed weirdy paranormal cats weren't flavour of the month. Year. Decade...

Then I tried targetting Harlequin Mills and Boon and learned weirdy paranormal elements weren't encouraged so I turned to straight contemps. And over the next four years I wrote (and revised) at least a dozen mss, got to grips with Emotional Punch, sucked up a huge amount of invaluable information from the Harlequin website, but, most importantly, met lots of like minded people (ie writers! and romance writers at that!) including the three fabulous witches.

A couple of years ago I decided to try my hand at writing single titles (still straight contemporaries, although I did dabble with first person present - OMG! That was fun) but at the same time could no longer put off a story that had been driving me demented for at least four years. A dark paranormal short, that I sent off to a romance magazine which promptly folded. Sigh.

I wrote another two straight romances, while paranormal got hot. And hotter. And finally it dawned on me... I could go back to my first love of mixing romance with weirdy stuff.

So, it's been seven years and I'm once again writing about reincarnation, witches, psychics and strange magic. I know everything happens for a reason and the universe works in mysterious ways, but I sure hope this time the planets align long enough to snag me a fantabulous contract!

Ball Gowns

It's that time of year again. Youngest daughter's Year 12 ball. So, always the great organiser (hmm wonder where she gets that from?) she leaves it till the last possible moment before realising she needs A Frock.

When I say last moment, I mean it. Like, this weekend and the ball is tomorrow. Cue hysterical laughter.

So darling husband said we will go into the city and find A Frock. Son kicked up a stink as (a) he hates shopping, and (b) he really hates girlie shopping. Whatever. We didn't exactly give him a choice here.

After we spent at least an hour wandering around seriously lost and seriously pissed off at not finding any posh frocks, darling husband decides to cut to the chase, and Asks at the information kiosk. Wow. How cool to have a man with a plan!

We find the chic boutiques and flutter over the fairy frocks. And then we see the prices and have heart attacks instead. Finally, darling daughter tries on yet another gown. It's slinky, shimmery and reminds me of a mermaid princess (I then had to reassure her I was paying her a compliment and not being snarky!)

By the time we got home daughter was beaming, son was scowling, our feet were throbbing and our credit card was red hot. Oops.

In the Bag

Hooray. Finally after way too long I've finished chapter 4! What a relief. The big problem now of course is what the hell happens in chapter 5?

That's the trouble with pansting (is that spelt right?) In the past I've always had at least some kind of outline, or failing that stepping stones that highlighted all the important scenes I had to cover. This time around I have zilch, just notes scribbled down on characters' motivation and such like. It's all new territory for me and I'm not convinced my muse approves.

But I do love the story and can't wait to see how all the various threads are going to untangle themselves before the end.

What do you mean, that's something I have to work out for myself?! You're joking, right?

The Deal - Day Two

Not so good today. I managed just under 3 pages so still haven't quite finished chapter 4. However, guv, it's not my fault!!! My eldest daughter arrived home from uni earlier than I expected so of course had to spend time with her. ahem. Well okay so I didn't really but she decided to put on this terrible film that we'd tried to watch last night but gave up because it was so awful.

You know the type of movie where it's so bad you can't drag your eyes away? On the off chance that something amazing will happen or there'll be this brilliant, imaginative twist at the end that makes the rest of the drivel worthwhile?

Er, yeah. Well 90 odd minutes later we were still waiting for the something wonderful to happen. And then it did. It ended.

Sigh.

I really should've just kept on plugging away at Lil and got that chapter finished!

The Deal - Day One

Okay here's the thing. For the last 12 days I've managed absolute zilch on Kil Lil. And the longer it went on, the harder it was to even think about opening the document, never mind actually write anything.

Not that I've been lazing off completely. I have been busy querying agents, and I find that all quite stressful! (yes so I am making excuses... shoot me...!)

Anyway, apart from the fact I hate it when I'm not writing I was also feeling incredibly guilty because Amanda's been eye deep in revisions and doing an absolute fantastic job. So yesterday Sara and I had a Discussion and decided on a deal to get us both back into the loop.

We decided that today we both had to write one paragraph on our wips.

Not much you might think, but I reckon a lot of it is all psycological. If I could just manage to open that doc and write one paragraph, I'd be back in the swing of it again.

So this morning I dived back into Lil and argh. Double argh. Three hours later I'd managed the grand total of 3 pages, and can I just say it was like trying to pass gall stones (been there, done that...!)

Tomorrow our deal is to finish one whole page, so with a bit of luck I might finally wrap up chapter 4, which has been hanging around for the last three weeks bugging the life out of me.

And as a side note, do you notice I am putting links? Yay me!

Penile Brains

What is it with these emails ads? I've been plagued by that doctor one for ages offering all sorts of sexual edifications but the latest blast reads like some dusty penny dreadful before descending (or maybe ascending is a better word) into complete gobbledegook.

Like, what?

I block and bounce until I feel like I'm playing ping pong with my mouse. What I really want to do is hit reply and tell them to FOAD (see Miss Snark for clarification on that one!) Recently I read the best thing to do is just delete as if you bounce they KNOW YOU ARE REALLY THERE.

Well, oopsy, too late for that one!

I don't care about the odd ones that slip through but when I open up my emails and have 8 of them it really pisses me off. Which I suppose is the point but honestly - what is the point? Am I missing it?

Above and Beyond

My son went off to camp this morning and I'm missing him already (yes how sad. haha). I think the dog missed him in advance, as 11 pm last night my son wanders in to inform us she had crapped in the middle of his bedroom and the stink had woken him up. Argh. I was so not a happy bunny.

Anyway. So I checked his case about 20 times over the weekend to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything and 8 am this morning off we set for the school. I have to say, the teachers are fabulous to do this camp thing every year. It's not something I'd like to do - be in charge of a hundred eleven and twelve year olds for a week. Talk about going above and beyond. It kills me hosting a sleep over for three of them!

So big thank you to the brilliant teachers for giving up their time and I just hope it wasn't a taste of Things To Come that one of my son's friends was ordered off the coach prior to departure for misbehaving. Oops.

Name of the Game

I have a perfectly reasonable working title for WIP. It's not like totally knock your socks off fabulous or anything like that, but it kinda sums up the tone I need ( and I need a title that 'works' for me before I can get stuck into writing!)

Okay so here's the thing. The other day one of my wonderful CPs dubbed it Kill Lil. Hehe. Very funny. The trouble is, now whenever I think about this story, I call it Kill Lil in my head. It's very distracting because my heroine is neither a killer nor gets killed (although the hero thinks she is dead but that's not the point... or is it? Hmm, candle flicker moment!)

All right. Kill Lil it is!

Back in the Saddle

I was so fed up with not writing that I thought bugger it, never mind if I don't have my middle plotted out, just start the story already!

So that's what I did yesterday, when my dh took our son out fishing for lures (I passed on the offer to join them because come on. Just how riveting is it shopping for lures??)

I had about 90 minutes spare and I'd already checked out my loops and Miss Snark, brainstormed work related issues with Sara (aka gossiping... ) and it was just getting beyond ridiculous. I HATE not writing! I get so crabby it's not funny.

I came off line (I always have to come off line before I write. It's just another of those weird rituals I must perform) opened up a new doc, typed in my New Title and voila I was off!

Only three pages, but wow. I feel soooo much better. It's like therapy!

Real Life... what's that...?

Real life's been a bit of a bugger at the moment and is playing havoc with my writing.

Er, okay. So that's just a big fat excuse as to why I've managed sweet zero on the writing front over the last couple of weeks. Three weeks? OMG. Is it really coming up to four weeks?

So here's some less buggerish stuff going on in my life at the moment:

Eldest daughter recently started her nursing course and is really enjoying it. (This is the child who faints at the sight of a needle. I'm agog as to how she's going to handle that side of things and let's just not mention bed baths. Like, please.)

Youngest daughter is doing work experience at a child care centre and is being given a lot of dirty bottoms to clean. Heh heh. Not that I find that funny. Not at all. At least she's given disposal gloves. Heh heh.

My baby (aka only son) is going on his school camp in just over a week and is very excited. I'm not sure how we're going to get through four nights without his noisy presence in the house. Might need to stock up on lots of chocolate.

Oh yes. And driving home from college the other day the tyre on my car exploded. I was just a little bit traumatised.

Wish my muse would buck up and drop a fully formed plot in my lap. I mean come on. Is that really so much to ask?!

Skeleton

The jitters through not writing have now got sooo bad I'm doing crazy unpredictable things. Things like ironing (don't faint). I even washed the kitchen floor for the second time in a fortnight (unheard of). If I don't pull myself together soon and get my nose back to the computer screen who knows where this might end? Cleaning out the wardrobes? Tidying up my desk?

I'm so totally not a panster by choice. I like to have my skeleton in place so I have the general roadmap of where we're going (even if my characters do constantly nip off into the bushes once we start for, um, inspiration). But so far all I have is the beginning, a bit sort of in the middle and a rough idea of the ending.

Which, as one of the witches has been telling me, is more than enough to get started with. Er, excuse me? Are you sure? Isn't that, like, scary?

So why am I getting all excited at the thought?!

Limbo Land

I'm between books. It's a place I don't like to be because it gives me a severe case of the twitchies.

The day after I finished Neo my brain felt like it'd been scrubbed out with a wire brush and was scarily empty of clamouring voices. I think it's a form of shock, as in OMG I finally finished the book. How did I manage to do that? Where did all the words come from and will I ever be able to write another one again?

So the day after that I tricked myself into polishing and editing the ms, agent searching and query letter drafting. Yes, very good! I was Keeping Busy.

But it's not the same as writing! I hate not having something on the go. I feel all disconnected and it's like having a wobbly tooth hanging by a thread. I keep having to prod it with my tongue (I'm not being absolutely literal here...this is just the warped way my brain works when it isn't plotting dreadful dilemmas for my characters).

After a couple of days stumbling around in the abyss, inspiration struck for my next effort. Can I just say Thank Goodness for That?! Of course it involves a bit of research (all hail the mighty internet!) but at least it's a glimmer of something I can sink my fangs into!

Next Up

So now I'm agent hunting. A brilliant place to start is here http://www.agentquery.com I use it all the time, lots of great info on that site.

Half of me can't wait to query, the other half is sick with nerves. I always think I'm going to make some huge pathetic blunder on my letter, such as forgetting to actually type a vital word (I've done that before - AND I read the flipping thing at least twenty times before printing and sending it off. Can I just say.... ARGH)

And let's not go to my weird aversion to the copy and paste function. I tried to copy some pages of my ms today and every time I hit paste what did I get? The blurb! Cue me having a hot flush and heart palpitations thinking I'd somehow buggered up my ms. I mean, the blurb? I couldn't get rid of it. It's still there, lurking in my paste function waiting to leap out at me when I least expect it. What I'd like to know is - where have my copied pages got to??

Ta Da

Yesterday I typed THE END on my very first full length paranormal romance!

Yay! I am sooo excited.

I spent today reading it from start to finish, editing and polishing, tweaking and twiddling. My head is throbbing and my eyes are fit to pop out of my sockets but hey, it's done!

Guess what happens now?!

Timeslip

It's a good job there are 32 days in January. Otherwise I might have gone over my deadline to finish WIP before the beginning of February.

Phew.

AWOL

Don't you just hate it when email plays up? As in, for whatever reason, just not arriving at their destination?

The Mail Administrator is currently my New Best Friend (ha! It's totally one sided, I might add. And not on my side). My emails to one of my brilliant CPs bounces back faster than a speeding donut (in other words, within 5 days. I mean, come on. How are we supposed to have a clue what emails we sent FIVE DAYS AGO???)

It's not that I'm an especially paranoid person (sorry? what was that comment from the back...?) but I do get twitchy when stuff goes missing. I mean, WHERE do missing emails end up? Do they plop into some stranger's inbox? Disappear into some crazy alternate reality? Or just float around out there for eternity?

Whoops

I've started researching my next novel.

This isn't a bad thing as I have a Real Horror of one day waking up and not having a clue what I might write next. The trouble is I am sooo near the end with Neo, and I really have to get a move on to finish by Wednesday, but...

My new characters are calling me. And they rock.

It was okay as they chatted away while I was cleaning my teeth, and having my breakfast and nodding intelligently as various kidlets demanded my attention (luckily they didn't also require me to make conversation beyond the occasional aha, oh yeah, right then), no that's fine. The problem is I spent hours on the net yesterday researching - when I should have been finishing wip.

I have this theory. Deep in my subconscious I don't think I quite want to finish with Neo and so I'm putting it off. I always seem to get this problem when the end's in sight... sigh.

Hopping Off

Going away for a couple of days with dh and the kidlets to meet up with my little bro and his family. So what does the weather do? It pours. And not only does it pour but we get a storm warning as well. In fact there's thunder and lightning as I type. Isn't that typical?

On the writing front I've just left my hero unconscious at my heroine's feet, and not in a good way. Unfortunately he's going to have to stay like that for the next 3 days until I return home. Argh. I am soooo near the end on this one! And how many days left in January... I can't remember... are there enough for me to reach The End??