Bio and interview

I have to send my first three chapters to my editor this week, so am just popping my head out of my cave to say that my author bio and interview have just gone up on the Mills & Boon Author Area page (here). Thrilling stuff!

Questions, questions

I've just discovered Yahoo Answers. A couple of weeks ago I asked how to stop a canary singing without resorting to violence (canary on the windowsill downstairs + voice like a pneumatic drill + echoy patio walls = nightmare). Four answers popped back within an hour and I now write in drill-free bliss. Yesterday I posted a question asking for the name of an 80s film which may or may not have involved murder, models and body reshaping (really, it was that vague) and had the answer this morning.

So I wonder what response I'd get if I asked: What's going to happen in Chapters 7-12 of my Book 2? How do I know if my hero is crossing the line between fliriting and lechery? How can I make sure my heroine's sympathetic when she's supposed to highly competent and capable? Do I have enough internal conflict? Are my secondary characters taking up too much pagetime? And then my biggest concern: is it too similar in style/vocabulary/phrasing to Book 1 or is that kind of the point?

Forbidden fruit

Naturally, now that I'm actually getting somewhere with Book 2, and my characters are beginning to toe the line, I have the best idea ever for a new story. A catchy opening scene, a tormented hero, a lovely healing heroine and a remote desert island. Oh, it's soooo tempting.

So do I give in and open another word doc? No. Partly because I know what I'm like (I have a dozen started stories in a folder called 'Ideas') but mainly because my deadline of June 1 is approaching with alarming speed. Instead I've bought a little notebook and am jotting my new ideas in there. In the meantime Phoebe and Alex are rolling around in the mud in Scotland.

(Update: Oh, and this morning a breakfast show on national Spanish radio played a joke (in a fairly loose sense of the word) on the lovely Hugh Jackman, who is as good a sport as he is gorgeous. If you want to listen, and it's in a mixture of English and Spanish, click on the link that begins 'Descargar...')

Beefcake is back

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In times of recession, it seems, metrosexual is out, beefcake is in. Of course, for lovers of M&B beefcake is always in. But what is beefcake anyway? Is it like meatloaf? And is there any excuse for the photo of Sylvester Stallone?

Semana Santa

It's Holy Week, which, in Andalucia, means pointy hats and processions. It also means that my laptop and I are off to Madrid for a few days. Happy Easter!

Wicked

The line edits are done and now I'm back to Alex and Phoebe. I interviewed them last week, but they kept answering with things like, 'Hah, that's for me to know and you to find out' which wasn't particularly helpful. I shall have to get tough.

But what has been spectacularly helpful is Dr Wicked's Write or Die (thanks to Julie Cohen for the tip). This fabulous widget makes you write or else something nasty happens. This morning I wrote 1200 words in 45 mins.

Suddenly his jaw just clenched

I have a note in my diary for next Thursday which says 'Finish Book 2'. Right. 'Finish Chapter 2' would be more like it. Why is the second book so difficult???

On the proof front I've counted 153 'just's, 30 'suddenly's and 34 'clench's (in varying forms) so now I need scissors to go with my fine-toothed comb. My editor didn't make many changes to my ms, and all are for the better, but there is one line that was added that had me thinking 'please, no!'.