ABOUT

April 3, 2018

 
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People.  They make the world go round, don’t they?  I adore meeting new people and what better way than to do so through the medium of writing?

While writing is part of our everyday through form-filling, emails and texting, don’t you sometimes find yourself creating stories from something?  Or nothing?  Perhaps a scene unfolding through the windscreen while sat in your car, or a journey taken by a stranger in a dream you wake from? Strings of words appear in my mind; plots and twists, creating worlds which need exploring.

I have joined the Romantic Novelists Association and have somehow secured one of only 300 places on their New Writers Scheme for 2018. I can submit a manuscript (ideally around 80-90,000 words) by August, but earlier if possible … so should you choose to jump aboard and watch me progress, procrastinate, spend time on ‘other projects’ will you do me one favour? Shout and remind me I should be working on my WIP 🥂

I love the art of writing.  When I was a teenager I even loved to buy a new fountain pen and quality paper to go with it.  I would clear the desk of all ballpoint pens (riff raff) and push all homework away from sight (ghastly, even if necessary) in order that the new pen and paper would not be disturbed in their first outing.

The spoken word, then in ink but now mostly on a keyboard can entertain and educate,  make us laugh and cry.   If you read any of my posts here then I hope you leave entertained, educated or amused.

March update.  20,000 words down …. only another 60,000 to go … are you having a laugh????

Erotic Historical Romance … appears to be very much alive and well!

June 20, 2019

The hand print was immediate and the brief permanence created by his own stinging palm pleased him.

‘Why does the girl not yelp? Has she no tongue?’ He watched his man move through dried leaves to take a look. Pulling her head back and receiving spittle on his clothes was confirmation enough.

‘She’s an animal My Lord! May I dispose of her for you?’

‘No. I think I should like the opportunity to do so myself.’ Archie lowered his eyes from his soldier to the girl’s backside. Pale skin shivered against the November air, his handprint still visible. Movement was not an option while her thighs and calves were bound tight by thick leather belts. His cock twitched as he noted her flesh squeezed above the leather and brass. Treatment fitting for a thief. He pulled her rough garment back down and its heavy folds fell to the floor. ‘Put her back in the cart. It’s getting dark and I have Court to prepare for. You shall bring her to my quarters at eight.’        

He did not have time for games in the forest today but later, in his rooms, he would play until his body no longer desired attention. Her life had already been extended. If they had left her where they found her, she would be dead by now. Stealing meats and apples from the winter stores of a neighbouring clan carried only one penalty.

So, if this was the start of chapter one in a book you’d never heard of, would you read on? I’m thinking rags-to-riches, thief-to-Queen type thing.

I’ve evidently been watching too many Game of Thrones episodes! Man of the Woods and I have binge-watched our way through Season one and two and now we are three episdoes into the third. Khaleesi is reunited with her dragon babies and is headed ‘home’. There’s gonna be carnage when she arrives …

Is it just me or does her right-hand man remind you of Hutchinson from the original Starchy & Hutch? David Soul I think his name was.

I try to write or type these dragon eggs of ideas as they pop into my head. Saucy fiction, as we know, is a genre I enjoy reading occasionally. I couldn’t only read it though as I would a) get nothing else done in life and b) spend the rest of the time sleeping to restore the balance. Seriously though, I find it escapism; easy-reading and I might read one in every ten books I devour. It was only natural that I would attempt to create some of my own at some point.

While Book 1 is being critiqued by a Reader in the New Writers Scheme with the Romantic Novelists Association, along with the other members of this incredibly supportive scheme, we have to continue writing and exercising our fiction-creation muscles. Martha and Antonio’s story, presently with a working title of Secrets Under a Tuscan Sun, has no sex in its pages. Chemistry, yes and some hugs and kisses. Nothing like a good hug and a kiss.

Book 2 Paper Goodbyes is taking shape in plot form, using Save The Cat method as I am intrigued to see if a different approach from the start makes a difference to Draft 1’s creation. Yesterday I developed ideas for those final ‘beats’ in pen in a journal I bought in Waterstones in Hampstead. I buy lots of journals and have wasted a few. This time I feel I am using one to its full potential.

The story will be told through one POV, that of Toby, a shy boy – I’m thinking around eleven with High School imminent. It is set over the six weeks of the summer holiday accompanying his mother to the small independent book shop where she works (stay with me). Creating a time frame from the start has the added advantage that I can ‘see’ the beginning and end before I even type a word of the manuscript and, more importantly, it adds a great fiction tool available to the author – the ticking clock.

With a shout-line of ….

When all you want is a friend, but all you have is imagination

…. I can categorically tell you with confidence that I can narrow the theme of this novel down to one word – FRIENDSHIP.

Now, this is something I could never do with Secrets. It was one of the first questions I was asked while on the Julie Cohen course last November and when I couldn’t answer (succinctly) she was right to point out that I had ‘Possibly written this story without a theme in mind?’ This could mean the story has no soul, no point which the reader shall grab onto and carry with them through the chapters.

Secrets had morphed organically from a group of collated snippets of flash fiction. I pushed them together with the air of someone excited who knows not what they do. By goodness, we’ve had some fun with it though. Through it I’ve met friends, read books, attended courses, joined the RNA, started new books, kept a blog with decreasing regularity (I actually had some days last week when no-one visited. I know! Zero readers the stats said! Insert three laughing face emojis here – I can’t remember how to find them with this big keyboard).

Lovely to catch up with you all – I’m going to make tea now and take it back to bed for an hour. I hope all your writing plans are going accordingly but if they take a back seat sometimes, I hope you are enjoying what else life has to offer.

Much love xxx

A slice of toast with 007 (and why farmers always moan about the weather)

June 11, 2019

Bread is made with wheat flour. This variety is called SKYFALL 🖤

This morning I needed to pop and get some washing up liquid – thought I’d treat the kitchen to a few minutes of my time. Man of the Woods offered to drive me so we could ‘check the crops’ (hadn’t gone down overnight with the rather torrential rainfall).

Most of us know that bread is made from wheat but how often do we see the crop close-up during the growing season when the ‘ear’ is developing each individual seed which in late July/August will be harvested.

Some farmers grow wheat for feed whereas we grow wheat aimed for milling. It is more expensive to nurture a milling wheat crop, right from the day it’s drilled, because the criteria for bread-making flour is complicated.

Protein in the seed needs to be 13% minimum and moisture needs to be 15% maximum. Every batch of grain taken from the farm after harvest is tested and if the criteria are not reached, your 6-months of hard work becomes obsolete. The expensive seed you bought, drilled and nurtured – because you have the type of land which can support a milling crop (rain-willing) – will be sold instead to a feed merchant for a lot lot less per tonne than it would have been to a milling merchant.

Every time Man of the Woods goes out with his sprayer with fungicide, or fertiliser early on to increase the yield, he is attempting to insure the future of his crop (and yes, I did mean to type insure, not ensure, because these sprays and fertilisers cost thousands). He does this so it will make milling quality. So it will go for flour to make bread. So that we can buy bread and enjoy a slice with blackcurrant.

But in Jan and Feb you simply cannot predict what the Gulf Stream will be doing by May and June. Farming is a gamble. Did you know there are more suicides in farming than any other way of life?

There are some interesting facts here about mental health and farming.

He did make it down to Cornwall, for the final day .. and spent it at an agricultural show 😂😂😂

We mustn’t laugh. The Royal Cornwall show is the jewell in the crown of country shows and there was lots to see. I managed to delay our return to Suffolk and secure two further nights in the holiday apartment so he could enjoy his brief holiday 🤗

I’m not entirely sure where this post is going, I simply had the idea of sharing a rather cool close-up photo of water droplets on some wheat but my words have morphed into something with more meaning.

MoW helps me when I’m low and it is the role of the farmer’s wife to be there morally when they are low and spitting feathers because their multiple working hours have been in vain.

Today he is happy. Only a few patches along the edge of one field has suffered and the green crop is lying flat against the ground and unlikely to recover, lift and continue plumping each seed out to its full potential. The crop is at its heaviest now and therefore susceptible to being knocked over by heavy rain. Once it starts to ripen and go golden (basically dry out and die) it weighs less and can withstand a summer shower.

Can we just take a moment … all washing up done and Joseph still alive on the windowsill ⛩

When all you want is a friend, but all you have is imagination

June 5, 2019

So that’s my new shout line for Book 2.

The one line eye-catching piece of prose at the top of your synopsis, before the thing starts, in the hope it catches an agent’s attention. We were taught about them on my recent CBC course. Some even make it all the way through the process and appear on the front cover of a book!

Taylor Jenkins Reid’s book, ‘After I Do’ had a great shout line, look..

It’s at the top; FALLING IN LOVE IS THE EASY PART. When I read that, I hear an enormous BUT THEN ….

I finished reading it two days ago, with tears steaming down from behind my sunnies. I was sat on a bench (dedicated to somebody who enjoyed years of holidays in this area) as the two main characters re-built their crumbling marriage. An intense, emotional and gritty read about the realism of taking your partner for granted and about what that can lead to. I actually sent Man of the Woods a text immediately I’d finished it. It’s the little thoughts that can go a long way when you’re apart…

📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚

Yesterday we padded around Padstow and ate pasties from the famous Chough bakery and lemon meringue pies from Stein’s Patisserie.

There is no photo of the Cornish pastie as we had to eat them sharpish before the seagulls succeeded in their efforts to swoop in and win a mouthful.

By ‘we’ I mean myself, my young adult offspring and their respective partners. Gone are the days when holidays with children mean holding their hand, watching them jump and down at the sight of blue ice cream, and dealing with over tired whiny pleas of ‘when can we go in the sea, mummy?’.

Now, it’s a delicate balance of suggesting loose plans, being flexible when those fall apart, watching your daughter decide whether she wants to be a fisherman’s wife as her eternally patient BF prepared his various hooks and baits them with now-disgusting pieces of fish from the not-so-cool box he has under his landrover 🤣🤣🤣🐟🐟🐟.

Then you’ve got the clown of the family – the happy-go-lucky son who still eats babybel cheeses and pretends to cry for our entertainment when he can’t find his whatever it is he’s looking for. He’s 6’4″, and I think gained an inch since New Zealand!

On the phone yesterday, MoW told me it rained more than 9mm yesterday in East Anglia and hence he and his father are stopping irritating (that’s not a typo; it’s how farmers refer to irrigating!). So we are holding our breath today for their arrival later. In my experience, the chance that something else can happen on the farm to prevent them making the 7-hr drive is quite high. I won’t believe he’s coming until I see his dad’s car pull up. (All the other cars in the family are here already 😂).

Anyway, back to books. We like a book don’t we. And we like a book shop, especially those cute independent ones, yes? Here’s a cutie – Padstow Bookseller.

This cover caught my eye, as did Julie Cohen’s words upon the front. oooh, I thought. I know and respect this author and if she says it’s great, I might just buy this. Then I opened the dust jacket and saw Susan Elliot Wright is a fellow RNA member, so the connections got even better and I opened and read the first page.

Yup, that was hooky enough for me to get my purse out!!

🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌

On our return from Padstow, being sure to leave the ‘kids’ some space, I retreated to my room with my laptop. After choosing how will spend my sessions at the conference next month, I went on to type up those penned-words I created last Friday towards a synopsis for Book 2. It’s the first draft obviously, but it’s a mini map of the whole idea. On paper/screen it now exists and is not simply only a notion inside my head. I’m excited by it. I even re-watched the Hidden History episode of Michael Portillo’s series which inspired this story!

Then we went in the sea ….

I finished the day studying the list of agents and publishers who are attending the two days of conference … just for us New Writers Scheme members! I mean, just how amazing is that? A chance for us to sit in a one to one meeting, the profressional having read the first 5000 words and a synopsis of our novels, yet knowing we are newbies and don’t really have a clue. It’s their opportunity to find a new voice, a nugget amongst the mountains of debut manuscripts!

I shall enjoy the weekend, the meeting of fellow authors, the standing in line for lunch with famous writers like Katie Ford, Jill Mansell, Julie Cohen, Rowan Coleman .. so many, too many to mention 🌸🥂

If anyone likes my work, it shall be icing on the cake ….

The farming calendar does not pause to fit the whims of its human caretakers. But the writing goes on …

June 1, 2019

… and so I find myself here without Man of the Woods. He is back in East Anglia, irrigating the potato crops which become ‘Charlottes’.

The science behind the ‘new’ potato’s nurture is surprisingly exacting. It is not a question of the agronomist instructing the farmer to: “give this an inch of water any time in the next three weeks.” whereupon he could hurl it on and then leave for his holiday.

No. It is more along the lines of: “These will be sprayed Monday morning, and will need 20mm of water within a 3-day window of that application.

I used to stamp my feet and look surly that I was married to someone who put his job before his time away with the family. Many friends used to raise their eyebrows – while eating potato-based products – and insinuate he was being awkward and boring. What’s more, I’d often agree 🙈.

Now I’m just proud. Speaking to him for half hour a few minutes ago, sat on the floor nursing my now 3/10 migraine (in what is a stunning holiday apartment that he would love) I can hear in his voice the acceptance that this time he cannot join us.

And although his 72 year old father tried to persuade him to drive down and that he would cope with the irrigation alone, MoW will not leave his father with that worry. Machinery has a habit of breaking down, pipes become blocked, the irrigator can sink into the mud just before you’re due to move it twenty yards along the field for the next ‘pull’. It’s hard physical work and while MoW’s father is relatively strong and fit, I know it would worry my husband to leave him to it.

So there it is. The reality of a farming way of life when you don’t have farm-workers; no-one to do the work when you’re not there.

Enjoy your crisps today and give a thought as you crunch that real people produced those for all of our pleasure 🤣

🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌🖌

Meanwhile, in other news, I brought with me a journal for notes to develop my Book 2 idea.

‘Save the Cat’ was also packed because I wish to plan this novel with more care than Book 1! I’ve studied for over a year now this art called fiction writing and while I shall never know all there is to know, my goodness, I have a greater understanding of what makes an okay book into a really good book. (Whether I’ll be able to transfer that knowledge onto the paper remains to be seen but I am excited for the process of Book 2).

Yesterday, as the sun burned away an early haze, I set to work on a synopsis and a tag line.

I had always believed you could never write a synopsis until you’d written an entire novel, because how would you possibly know what to include? The chapters will jostle for position, as we know they always do as we write, and therefore a synopsis surely should not be contemplated until after the book is written to at least a first draft?

Well …

For those of you who have been reading my posts for a while, you’ll remember I attended a course in Devon at RetreatsForYou to study alongside the talented Julie Cohen who has written over twenty books; here are just a few:

Many of her tips have stayed with me, but one particularly.

She asked us all to pause and think about the theme of our novel; the thread of aim or goal for the protagonist through the pages. Without one, even with quality writing, we simply end up with prose about things happening. Julie went even further and encouraged us to think about narrowing it down to a one-word pitch!

It was a hard exercise as we all grappled for words that narrowed our story down but the lesson has stuck. As I contemplate Book 2 (even while Book 1 is in the ‘system’ and being critiqued right now) I find my approach is completely different this time.

I know roughly my story outline but before I type a word, or even map out the chapters I wish to narrow it down to a synopsis, an elevator pitch, a tag line and even one-word. Without telling you yet about Book 2 in detail, let’s look at what I mean in regard to this exercise. Below is a potential 3 star piece of mini fiction;

She walked to the beach and dipped her toes in the Atlantic water. The icy chill took her breath away.

However with a theme, we have heart and soul. For example, let’s give the previous sentence a one-word theme and re-write it slightly;

‘LONELINESS’

The knowledge she would be alone when she had least expected it cut through her plans like a sword. The laughter she’d known they would share was silent before it had chance to exist and as the icy waters stole the warmth from her feet, so too did the wind her hopes. She pulled the jumper closer to her skin in a desperate attempt to protect the shred of courage her journey there had given her ….

We have a real vision of someone now, and how she might be feeling. We have a question – why is she alone yet wasn’t expecting to be so? That’s the hook.

Do excuse me while I pause for a coffee. My migraine is receding and usually around now I can eat without feeling nauseous.

I’ll be back!

Tuscany, reading, writing and archery – so much common ground! #RNA

May 28, 2019

Found this Christmas card in the cupboard when I was tidying at 3am this morning, five months too late to send. It depicts Il Duomo in Milan and when I spotted it, it took me back to my weekend with my travel buddy Hannah last March. I knew she’d appreciate the card – so perhaps you’ll remind me to send it this coming December 🙄

Italy Italy is everywhere it seems .. and a very popular location for romance novels. I give you this link … 💒 … in which you should find the wonderful blog by Angela Petch. A fellow-RNA member, writer and all round kindness-filled lady whom I met and clicked with at last year’s Conference near Leeds.

In this post Angela chats to Daisy James, author of the Paradise Cookery School series and now the Limoncello series, published by Canelo Escape Publishing.

I enjoyed reading about Daisy’s writing day, seeing her summer house where she writes when it’s warm enough. The archery link is something I’ll bring up when I see her next time at an RNA event. (We sat next to each other last autumn at the York tea ☕️)

Perhaps now is the time to submit my Tuscan novel to these guys at Canelo to see if they fancy a little romance/mafia 🖤😅

No. For now, we wait. The manuscript is with the New Writer’s Scheme for its read-through by one of the multi-published authors of romance. Receiving the feedback report will be a double-edged sword; petrifying and exciting! To see what the reader thinks works or not. eeeeek!

Have a great day folks!

Game of Thrones…. I’m going in. What’s all the fuss about??

May 28, 2019

I mean, really. An author pens a story, some screenwriters adapt it, and the world goes mad!

Yesterday, after the first episode:-

Man of the Woods; “So, what’s it about?”

Me: “Well … seems there’s this sister and brother and their other brother – a dwarf – and they’re all a bit … interesting.. And in another kingdom there are five siblings; all children of the baddy from ‘Goldeneye’ but one isn’t the main mother’s actually although there’s a mystery surrounding that. There are five cute wolf cubs and some people with blue eyes in the woods. Oh … and the dragon eggs.”

MoW: “Right.”

The brother and sister with almost white hair must be important. Great contrast, obviously, with the dark (sort of Greek) people of the island across the ‘narrow sea’.

I’ve so got this.

We watched three episodes yesterday in the end and have become intrigued, I admit. I started quite liking the blonde Queen but now don’t trust her .. and as for that terrible twin of hers. He’s an arrogant ****.

The character of Tyrion Lannister is growing on me – I think he’s a sharp cookie.

We are going on a mass family holiday this Friday, to Cornwall but first I have a few horse rugs to process!

My daughter, now 21 (literally last Friday) accompanied me on my rug collection in Kermit. She hates dust and muck and the smell of horse wee, so this was a big deal for her. People have asked me in the past, when she was still a young teen, whether she would take over my rug-cleaning business and I’d laugh, “I doubt it!”.

Anyway it was nice to have her company. I barely see my son these days. He works along my father in law daily, tends to eat at their house for convenience (and they probably have better meal selection anyway because my mother in law is organised and has time to buy things like food).

He comes in to sleep and his 6’4″ self moves around the kitchen opening cupboards in a morning searching for something he’s not communicated to me that he’d like to see. As a modern farmer’s wife I was encouraged to work and bring in a contribution. Oddly enough, with a sole-trader business which somewhat took off faster than we anticipated in 2007, I can’t be in two places at once. And I struggle with the guilt that sometimes wafts around me like mist on an Arthur Conan-Doyle moor. I try and fight it, and the verbal tirade which can accompany it, leaving me feeling bereft of self worth. But I often don’t succeed.

On the plus side, we have our own ponds to play round. I even caught my first fish with the help of daughter’s boyfriend this weekend!

We plopped then back in the murky water each time and after washing my hands many times, I laid back and tried to read my book.

There were lots of distractions; the ever-changing sky, a notepad asking for more details to be added to the plot of another story idea, MoW coming to show me handfuls of maggots…. and then laughing when I legged it away from him. I don’t trust him.

He’s always been a practical joker.

This one time (at Band Camp) he grabbed a harvest spider while I was washing up and had my hands full. He pushed it down my shirt and I went nuts banging my chest in a panic. I was hyperventilating by the time I failed to undo the buttons and ripped the shirt from me instead. As the dead spider dropped to the kitchen floor and my eyes blazed up at him through the tears, he stayed still only for two seconds. Then he ran…