Something to add to the angst list...

I came across something today that made me instantly paranoid. 

An author who critiques for the RNA's New Writers' Scheme has blogged about doing the critiques. She mentions that she is currently reading a ms that has some problems - purely anonymous you understand. But as I sent my ms in early and nearly everyone I know is planning to send in just before the deadline in August... This instantly made me think 'OMG, she's talking about me' :-()

If you're about to submit to the scheme you might be interested to read what she says here.

Or possibly not.

She says - "I write screeds about how to improve one's technique but what do you do when the problem is the writer's character?"

Gulp. Apparently some would be writers are just plain unlikeable. Or boring. Or both!

Off to cross everything in the hope that it's not my ms that inspired the post :-(

Things my heroes will never do...

1) Mention the word 'compressor', ever.

2) Require my heroines to give an opinion about a car (apparently 'it's a car' and, if pushed, 'it's a nice car' are not enough :-)

3) Insist on treating my heroine to a detailed inspection of every car that he might ever buy and a few he will never buy.

3) Ask my heroine to wash his socks...

Okay, enough husband bashing, he knows I love him really and he did have the grace to say "Shall I shut up, am I boring you?" a couple of times as we traipsed around the Geneva Motor show.

It was actually more interesting than I'd thought, with a voice responsive robot that disco danced on command and an impressive simulator and games section.

Plus there were some seriously flash cars and I got to sit in an Aston Martin (which I have given my hero in 'Wanted - An Unconventional Wife') - so it was kind of research...

Sadly any flash alpha males were also cordoned off with the really expensive cars or in the VIP areas so there was no research of that kind to be done ;-)

Any suggestions as to what your heroes will never do?

Small Successes

I had an email this morning from a magazine bod saying they want to use a 'filler' I sent them. They won't be publishing it until Christmas but I feel disproportionately thrilled by my first magazine filler success. :-)

Silly really but hey, it's nice to have SOMETHING to counter all the R's I've had recently :-)

A big thanks to Suzanne who steered me in this direction and to Womagwriter who has such useful resources on her blog. I've heard that the UK's weekly magazine market pays out £250,000 each week to contributors so I'd say it's definitely worth having a go at fillers, if you have a spare ten minutes...

Geneva

My husband has bought me a ticket for the Geneva Motor Show. Now it's not the Geneva bit I object to, I really love Switzerland and the price of the flight with Easyjet (£30 return) would make it daft not to go along with him. But I was expecting to slip off and find a little cafe somewhere to eat pastries and drink hot chocolate, NOT traipse around looking at cars. 

Is this payback for all the bookshops he's been dragged around over the course of our relationship? I suspect he's only taking me to avoid the huge increase in brownie points I'd have to be awarded if I was left behind with his parents while he was off enjoying himself. (On the subject of brownie points I found a totally pointless gift on the net to record said points! No need to buy it - I keep a perfect tally :-) 

I asked the husband what people went to the motor show to see (hoping that there might be more to it than just cars) and the answer was 'cars and girls'. It seems I am to be treated to many examples like the one in the above photo! Unfortunately I'm not interested in either cars or girls (not in that way, anyway).

So, any bright ideas about how I can turn this from a completely pointless exercise into something more useful?

People watching I suppose, and trying to get some impressions of the kind of cars I'd want to give my heros maybe...

Either that or I'll slip out while he's injecting himself with petrol, or whatever it is that petrol heads do to prolong their sickness :-)

BTW I don't usually gad about so much but I'm taking advantage of free dog sitting at the moment. Pretty soon I'm heading back to my solitary confinement at the renovation wreck/hermit hideaway/writer's retreat (identity changes depending on my mood!) with my dogs and several buckets of pollyfilla!

World Book Day Poll

Leaving aside the annoying headlines like 'Trashy Book Amnesty', an interesting poll for World Book Day has revealed the difference between the books people say they read and the books they actually like to read.

The list  is here for anyone who's interested. Unsurprisingly Mills and Boon make it into the top ten of books people actually read. I can't imagine lying about what I've read. I'm happy to read from every end of the spectrum and have read books on both lists.

In fact I'll come out and say that as well as romance I love to re-read children's books. I am still a great fan of Winnie the Pooh and Paddington :-)

Anyone else got any confessions?

Mistresses

I have a guilty pleasure - I love the BBC TV series 'Mistresses'. It is a little morally dubious and unfortunately we're not talking M&B type mistresses but actual infidelity. But moral issues aside the new second series has some seriously lovely men to watch. You can check them out here

I was surprised to find that the scrummy surgeon character, Dan Tate, is played by Mark Umbers (left) who was apparently at the same university as me at the same time. I was clearly lurking in all the wrong places because I never met him :-)

Scotland as a Modern Heat location (and a random fact)

Following Lucy King's trailblazing lead to make Scotland cool enough for a Modern Heat setting :-) and the discussion on Jackie Ashenden's blog about locations I've been thinking about an old  story idea set in the Scottish Highlands that I set aside for not being 'Modern Heat enough'.

Despite its isolation the Highlands does have more than its fair share of roving millionaire alphas. Skibo Castle down the road from me is a private club so exclusive that you have to be famous or a member of the jet set to have a hope of setting foot inside (Madonna married there and Sean Connery, Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones have all been guests). Owning a Scottish Estate now seems to be as much a 'must have' as a private jet or a yacht.

MFI heir, Paul Lister (aka The Real Monarch of the Glen), owns an estate close to my home and has been attempting to bring wolves and bears back into the Scottish countryside. Thankfully there has been much opposition from my crofter neighbours (who surprisingly don't want their sheep eaten) and he hasn't succeeded so far but the battle gave me an idea for a story about an estate owning millionaire (hero) clashing with a local female journalist (heroine).

Unfortunately that particular story is so laden with external conflict that it will never see the light of day but I'm thinking I may now be able to use the Highlands one day (even if I do a story that shares a London/Scotland location to hedge my bets!).

Here's a random fact I read this morning - if you were to attempt to read every book Mills and Boon had published in the last ten years (at a rate of two per hour), it would take you a quarter of a million years! This seems a tad incredible but the figure supposedly comes from a York University seminar and is mentioned in an article about reading romance fiction in public Underground Politics: Reading on the Tube (surprisingly sympathetic from a non-fan)

I wonder if she means every printed copy, or is including every translated copy...