You may notice I’ve added some of those word meter doohickies to the sidebar.

Dangerous Lies (aka Danglies) is the book I’m working on editing now, albeit slowly around the demands of work and the MA. This is the one that got a blinding critique, and will be submitted on my behalf by the Romantic Noveslists Association.

Taken (aka Frenchman) Involves a terrified heroine and her delectable French missing persons expert hero. They hide out in the Pyrenees until she conquers her fear and forces him to take her back into danger. The final confrontation with the villain takes place among the battlements and towers of the medieval fortified city of Carcassonne, and it’s breathtaking, if I do say so myself.

Danger – Deep Water (aka Going Down) has the heroine I got aquainted with yesterday. I do so love my tortured heroes, and this one’s a doozy. He crops up in Danglies as a largely benevolent if silent figure, an ex-military diver who makes his home on his own yacht. After Danglies, he finally plucks up the courage to admit his long-term love for the fiance of a colleague who died in his care – and is promptly arrested when she accuses him of her deceased fiance’s murder. Poor lad. Thankfully, the heroine is on hand (or rather, in the sea) to rescue him from his self-imposed exile on his yacht after he’s cleared of all charges.

In the ‘it’s darkest before the dawn’ tradition, things get a lot worse for him before they get better, but he finds his way in the end.

Changes to those little word meters will be slow, but I’m hoping to make steady progress on Danglies, and then work down the list. It helps that I’ve now got a reasonable idea of what I want to do in 2006, writing wise.

Some of you will know already that I have a habit of taking circuitous routes home, instead of the direct, boring, motorway-to-motorway option.

I like to explore new areas, and I like a demanding drive.

Like this one:-

North of Grassington, in the Yorkshire Dales 

That was today’s offering, up hill and down dale (literally) passing from glorious sunshine into drifting mist, with each blade of grass on the moorland outlined in frost. Walls and barns, lichen on the pale stone, highlighted in the setting sun. Dormant trees and shivering bushes, water in a rush to be somewhere else.

The perfect blissful wind-down to a hectic but fabulous weekend. I can’t tell you how much it choked me up to see my brother in his scarlet mess dress. He was absolutely magnificent.

And I wasn’t half bad, either.

Add to all that a revelation about one of my heroines-in-waiting that made me itch to start to get that story down. Up to that point I wasn’t sure I was ever going to write that one, as I could see the hero clearly, but couldn’t get a handle on the heroine. But I was listening to some music, and one line grabbed my throat. And then other elements joined in and made me pay attention.

You turn every head but you don’t see me.

That was the one that grabbed my attention. It seems to be more the line that a man would sing, thinking of a woman, but I heard it in my heroine’s voice, a little plaintive, and a little resigned, and I discovered her character on the thought.

Other words from the song conjured up a really pivotal scene:

You’ll fall asleep and I’ll put a spell on you. And when I wake you, I’ll be the first thing you see. And you’ll realise that you love me. *

Suddenly I know what she’s like and what shaped her, and I can ‘see’ several scenes in her POV. Wonderful.

Don’t you just love being a writer?

* Strange and Beautiful. Aqualung.

Did the fairy godmother wave her magic wand and wax Cinderella’s bikini line? Was there an enchanted pedicure attached to that conjured dress? Were the mice turned into hardressers before footmen?

Who knows. I only know only magical assistance could get me ready for an, “ankle length evening dress” dress-code event in less than about, oh, forty-eight hours.

And the outfit planning’s been going on for weeks.

But now I’m smoothed, painted, plucked and pampered, all by my own hand (ball on a budget, do with no dosh?) and shall shortly depart for the know-less lands south of Cumbria. (There’s a line somewhere around Junciton 20 of the M6. I swear it. No-one south of there has heard of Cumbria. “Is that near Scotland, then?” Nine hundred years ago, it WAS Scotland, you ignorant child.)

My brother is in the Territorial Army. Yes, for most people that means a jolly camping trip on a moor somewhere a few times a year. To him it means finding a flexible dayjob so he can devote most weekends and many weekdays to instructing signallers, improving his skills, and supporting his Squadron in various events. It also means lengthy tours in Kosovo and Iraq. He’s dedicated.

He’s also invited me to a Regimental Dinner this weekend. I’m so proud!

And in order to not let him down, his sister has been attempting the steps towards a Cinderella-like transformation.

Anyone got a magic wand?

(Be back Sunday)

Tourist chiefs in the Lake District are going to carve the best Valentine’s Day message on a hunk of rock called The Love Stone.

I don’t know if this is more absurd than sweet, but I do know that surely romance writers have got the best shot at immortalising their words in Lakeland green slate.

Click on the link for details on how to enter. Go on. I dare you.

Oh, and for Julie? More about Jean-Christophe and Cumbria here.

Ah, that traditional pursuit of unpubbed writers everywhere. I haven’t done any good postman stalking for a very, very long time.

Today, when I heard the diesel engined-van, the step on the path, the rustle and fwap of post coming through the door, I held my breath.

Husband rolled his eyes.

Got the postcard back today. So the partial has arrived, and has been opened.

This is not so much of a fait accompli as you might think.

I’ve had several publishers not return them, and one, memorably, return the postcard some six months after I sent the full MS, leading me to the unavoidable conclusion that they didn’t open the packet for six months. That was a packet with “requested material” written across it.

But then, it took me about six months to get the book finished and out to them, so I can’t complain.

Karma, dude.

Blog Notables.

Jo Leigh’s done a fabulous piece on fear at RTB.
It’s Michelle’s birthday.
Julie’s sent off her book, and week early. Woot!
Beth’s giving us one of her trademark inspirational posts.

What was chinese about it?

MSG.

I love chinese takeaway. But, Lord, the combination of salt and MSG leaves me with an overactive a)thirst and b)mind at 3am. So I’m awake.

Very, very awake. Thinking about tomorrow’s dinner, three seperate dayjob problems and fantasising about selling a book at the same time awake.

There are also four cats on the bed. Husband has already given up and is nowhere to be seen. Minnie is attempting to compress my ribcage, Pippi is ejecting me from my own pillow* and Cleo and Chrissy have curled up in a little kitty ying and yang thing, their sleeping, smiling heads pillowed on each other’s flanks. Between my knees.

So I extricate myself from the kitty bed (and to think, I used to think it was ours), go and get a drink (Hooray! No mice and/or slugs in kitchen!**) and return to bed with Fangs because I’ve finished the Christmas anthology. Amnesiac vampires. What more could you ask for.

Apart from sleep.

*Yes, yes, yes, I know I let her get away with murder. But sitting up all night with her in a room that stank of blood, while she whimpered and struggled for breath, while she tried to knead my lap with crushed paws and purr through a shattered jaw…. well, she’s earned special status since her car accident, you know? I stand by my cosseting. (And she’s fine now. Blind in one eye, minus a toe and some claws, and EXTREMELY aware of her special status, the manipulator!)

** Yes, we have four cats. Yes, we have mice. Because they’re LAZY cats. Or cunning mice. We’re not sure which. Although we daily expect the kitchen mouse to leave a gourmet cheeseboard selection and a calling card with a black silhouette of a mouse on it, and the words, And all becase the lady loves… Daa DAAAA da-da-daaaa-daaaaaaaaa!

Red Shoes

Today I am wearing brown boots. I apologise. But since I dug a glass splinter out of the ball of my foot (insert sympathetic wince here) last night, I’m thinking you’ll excuse me. I would say my red-shoes-to-ordinary-footwear rate of success is running at about 40%.

I can do better.

Reading
I’m loving The Night Before Christmas. So far the stars of note are Jill Shalvis and Kathy Love – their stories really shone. Jill surprised me, but Kathy delivered just what I was counting on.

I’m a forgiving reader, not prone to bemoaning the ‘state of the the romance novel industry’, but for me, romance reads fall into two categories. The ones where you enjoy the fantasy, but when you leave the story you sigh to rejoin reality, and the ones that remind you that you’re right to believe in love, dammit. Kathy’s stories remind you that love is out there, it’s real and it’s wonderful.

I’ve surprised myself by enjoying a short story anthology so much. Perhaps it’s really what suits my current existence…. Must try some more, and see.

Any recommendations? (Yes, Sela, I’m asking you.)

Durham
I’m posting this from Durham, Tuesdays being my MA day. And how I love Tuesdays. I’m going to have to muse on this some more, and blog about it properly.

Today the sun is shining on the Castle and the Cathedral, the air is cold, and the students are smiling.

And the river is full of rowers with exceptionally defined musculature.

I’m married, I’m thirty-one, and I’m ogling undergraduate rowers.

I’m going to hell.

Or maybe I just appreciate the beauty in life.

Yes, that’s it. Not lech: artist.

Submissions
In case you haven’t already worked it out, blogging is currently my displacement activity of choice, to distract myself from the fact that I sent a partial to a mainstream UK pub yesterday. I would be entirely unsurprised by a “romantic suspense – are you mad?” rejection (mental note:- must restock my emergency supply of Haagen Dazs Pralines and Cream icecream in case of rejection), but I can’t be the only thirty-something woman who still shivers at the thought of Mary Stewart’s heroes, and longs for more Brit-bred RS on the shelves.

Here’s hoping.