Light bulbs

It's 38 degrees in Jerez, and all sensible Jerezanos are on the beach, which is where I may be later if I manage to hit my 5000 word target for today.

Last night I had a bit of an epiphany. Well, actually, my husband had it for me. I was trying to explain the plot in the latter half of my story, which currently involves a villain, the illegal supply of appetite supressants and a touch of blackmail. Slightly tortuous but relevant, and all leading to a point where my heroine faces losing her business.

With one eye on Newsnight, my husband said, 'That sounds a bit complicated. I'm confused. Can't the bank just call in her loan?'

Well, yes, it could. And the result would be the same. With a lot less effort on my part. Setting up the whole villain/blackmail scenario was getting a bit convoluted, becoming rather far-fetched, and generally causing me major headaches. Simply having the bank get cold feet and withdrawing her loan is far more realistic, ties in with what's already happened and keeps the focus far more on the hero and heroine.

My learning curve isn't so much a curve as a vertical line.

Slightly swamped

I'm back in Spain and battling on with the nightmare that is Book 2. I have a sneaky suspicion that the entire first half might be a bad cliched plot device, so have decided to more or less delete the lot and start again. And I've said I'll deliver the whole thing by the end of June. Fun fun fun.

Where am I?

On the rather unlikely off-chance that anyone's been wondering where I've got to, I just thought I'd pop by to say I'm in London. Not wallowing in rewrite despair and not contempleting running away and hiding (much). No, no. I'm marking EFL exam papers.

When I accepted the contract I thought I'd have Book 2 done and on the editor's desk. Hmm. Still, a change is as good as a rest, and am hoping that spending a week immersed in something totally different has given my writing muscles time to refresh. And after endless discussions about the acceptability of various spellings of the word 'Tuesday' and what exactly constitutes effective communication, I'm quite keen to get back to Phoebe and Alex.