Celebrating

I have two writing reasons to be cheerful today:

1. My crit group's new blog Minxes of Romance is going full steam ahead and some great authors have agreed to take up our author spotlight slots. In fact we have the winner of the RNA's Joan Hessayon award (announced yesterday), Lucy King, guesting in July - you can read about her win here
2. I have started a new story AND found the paper notes for my Secret Billionaire partial so I can make some progress now...

I haven't had so much fun since my aqua-tai chi instructor told the class to swim to the deep end to warm up, completely forgetting that we had weights on our feet...

Discovering Scott Cole

I've been discovering Scott Cole this week, sorry that was supposed to be 'discovering Tai Chi with Scott Cole' ;-)

I'm trying to improve my balance and while I'm attending aqua-Tai Chi classes (yes, it's exactly what it sounds like!) I still have no idea what I'm waving about or why so I decided to buy a dvd.

And there's no way I'd be shallow enough to buy a dvd just because it has a picture of a half naked man on it, honest, it just looked like a good dvd...

Oh and if you're interested, he does do some of the workouts without a shirt on ;-)

Lessons learnt last week

1. Doing character sheets can be fun and makes synopsis writing easier.
2. Not checking emails/blogs until after lunch leads to getting more writing done (who'd have thought, eh?).
3. Ditto only checking blogs twice a week. Being forced to go cold turkey during my internet-less period helped me break the habit. I love it but could spend all my energy checking blogs, answering emails and critiquing and have none left over to write.
4. Looking at animal rescue websites invariably leads to a new addition to the household. Pipsqueak (the name I've given him) was found tied to a road sign half starved. I can only assume he was abandoned because he was old as he's a lovely little chap and has become my new pint-sized shadow. My other dogs have accepted him in true female fashion i.e. bickering amongst themselves while pretending not to have noticed him ;-)

Wicked witch of the west goes to the sea...

Thank you for the welcome back but ah I spoke too soon, the lovely internet went off and when it did come back refused to let me into anything I wanted to see. Added to being too ill to write I embarked on a course of the grumps resembling the wicked witch of the west with very bad PMT. The only highlight of last week was getting myself to the RNA chapter lunch and chatting to some really lovely and inspiring writers, one of whom has the same editor who gave me the famed Business Card.

Fired up about submitting my partial and the upcoming RNA conference even the 40 minute wait in the cold for the taxi that failed to turn up (snark ;-) couldn't totally quench the flame. Although I find nothing more irritating than burning to write and being, for whatever reason, unable to. Thankfully a last minute weekend trip to one of my favourite beaches helped bring me out of the grumps. Sod anger management, give me a bit of sunshine any day! And after a really annoying enforced rest I feel I can write today. Hooray!

Oh, and the dogs enjoyed themselves too!

Back from Siberia

So I finally, finally have broadband and can return to Blogland! J I feel like an outcast returning from a spell in the Gulag where I’ve been having a bit of a foggy night of the soul.

But the fog is starting to clear and despite test results detailing the damage to my brain (for some reason I can’t write ‘brain damage’, it sounds so horrible) or perhaps in a rebellion against them, new Romances keep popping into my head, demanding to be written. So I’m just going to have to find a way to write them, to get some balance and routine back into my life and accept I’ll have to do things differently.

Which I can do - I have got some very nice and clever people helping me and I’ve had training offered for my voice software so I can learn how to use it properly and edit with it.

So watch this space - the partial is almost ready to send off and then I can turn to the stories that are itching to be written.

It’s nice to see on my return to the internet that the UK media is awash with positive stories about Mills and Boon – The Daily Mail reports that digital downloads of Mills and Boon have risen fifty seven per cent in five months.

And my favourite magazine, Grazia, raised the issue as a talking point this week.

And if that doesn’t cheer you up then this picture of a meerkat being used as a backrest by his fellow meerkats has got to raise a smile!

I’ll be blog visiting very soon, just need to shave the beard off first, to make myself presentable ;-)

An interesting choice of metaphor

I'm doing a quick post to quell rumours that I've been crushed by a giant writers' block falling from the sky. Instead I've been surrounded by cardboard boxes (some of which have fallen on me actually) and having yet more problems with my internet connection (grr). Anyway, just because I haven't left any comments on your blogs doesn't mean I don't love you all anymore, in fact I've really been missing my daily blog check and can't wait for life to let me slot back into my normal writing-obsessed routine.

So, to say sorry I haven't been around here are some romance novel quotations that I hope will make you smile :-)

1. His body was hard -- not hard like Milosevic, the Serbian strongman, but hard like the marble on your shower floor, when you fall and bang your knee.

2. Her embrace made his manhood swell like week-old roadkill on hot asphalt in the Georgia sun.

3. Her breasts heaved like a stormy ocean, and her pointed nipples were like hypodermics washed up on the shore.

4.Her petticoats dropped to the ground, rustling like a cockroach in a sugar bowl.

5. He tore open her blouse like a Publisher's Clearing House letter in which he, and some guy named Steven Bouber from Stockton, California, were potential finalists for the $10 million prize.

6. With each breath, her chest heaved like a bulimic after Thanksgiving dinner.

7.Then he kissed her, like a butterfly kisses the windshield of a Porsche on the Autobahn.

8. His manhood stood at full attention, stiff and stony like the vice president.

9. Beatrice was on him like a piranha on a corn dog.

10. His chest was her pillow, and oh, did she drool.

The phantom phone ringer and a creative glimmer

Yesterday I actually wondered if the house might be cursed.

With the heating, hot water heater and drains all still on the blink and the phone line recently joining their strike after a valiant 6 day disruptive action campaign - crackling, disabling my internet and ringing at random times in the night with no one at the other end of the line (and spookily no call registered when 1471 was dialed). Well, maybe it was the internet withdrawal but when my lovely audiobook-playing iphone died and resisted resuscitation the whole curse idea seemed highly plausible. A notion that was only compounded by the electric blanket joining the 'things on the blink' list. Okay, so I've suspected for a while that my skin crackling with electricity when in bed was probably a bad sign but I needed it to keep WARM.

What's next? A plague of locusts?

On the plus side I am now deliriously grateful when anything previously taken for granted actually works. This morning I beamed at the BT man who fixed the "massive circuit failure" and gave me my internet back. It works. It works! I am no longer cast out into the utter darkness :-)

And another smidgeon of hope - I had a new story idea yesterday and an idea of how to fix Secret Billionaire (focussing on the emotion and motivation in each scene and maybe starting completely from scratch again. Gulp). Not exactly a complete demolition of writer's block but it's a start.

And I'm feeling surprisingly zen. Riding on the tide of my internet high I have a dream that one day I will again live in a home with piping hot water and those warm white things on the walls. The internet will flow unimpeded and my iphone pick up emails without my having to climb a tree and... Bother, my dream has just been interrupted by the kettle making a loud screeching noise. No, not the kettle, please spare the kettle (see The Rampage of the Tea-aholics).

I'll be back soon to see what you've all been up to. Plagues of locusts allowing of course :-)