Blogging silence.... aka I has the lurgy....

Yep... that is the reason... I, the worlds worst patient who doesn't do getting colds, has the lurgy....

It started at the beginning of last week, well no, it probably started before that as I was sneezing like made but I put it down to hay fever, upped the antihistamines and carried out..... On Monday I had a tickle at the back of my throat.... by Tuesday, I was coughing and sneezing.... when anyone phoned me at work and asked how I was, I said I was fine, and my team leader's voice would come over the top of the partition between our desks with the single word..."Liar!"

I felt a bit washed out when I got home on Tuesday evening..... and didn't sleep well.... mainly because of the whole thing that goes ... you can lie down and sleep but not breathe, or you can sit up and breathe but not sleep... yeah, not fun.  So Wednesday rolls around and I get up, make it as far as the kitchen to let the dogs out, go dizzy and have to sit down.... for the firs time in over 18 months I phoned in sick to work.... but no, I planned to be better by the next day .... I wasn't.... by then I was wheezing impressively to add to the rest of the cold symptoms... I took paracetamol, drank lots of herbal tea, willed myself to get better.

On Friday I headed to the pharmacy for cold cures - now here's the thing... because I take pain relief meds for my arthritis on a regular basis, I can't also take over the counter cold cures as they all contain paracetamol which would put me over the limit if mixed with my pain meds... well the pharmacist took one look at me and told me to get myself to the doctor as she thought I might have a chest infection.

So off I pottled.... like a good girl.... which is a complete lie when it comes to going to the doctors because I really don't like them... luckily I got to see the nurse practitioner straight away and yes, I have a chest infection.... I then had prescriptions for antibiotics, more painkillers, and cough medicine.... apparently I had an impressive temperature, which I hadn't even registered......

This weekend has not been fun... in between sniffling and wheezing the meds have started to clear my lungs.... which is not a pleasant experience.  I haven't actually had a cold for the last 8 years.... not one that was more serious than a 24 hour thing, probably because I am normally extremely careful to avoid them because of my buggered up immune system.... so this has kind of hit me like a ten tonne truck......

I tried to write today - yeah that was a mistake.... I couldn't get to grips with my characters at all, they just felt flat and distant....... after whining to my beta readers they pointed out that this was probably because I was in fact feeling flat and had a head full of cotton wool....

So tomorrow, yeah, I am going to try and go to work... I don't think work itself will be a problem... getting to the office from the car park may exhaust me completely though  so we shall see........ in the meantime, what is left of my lungs is going to spend a couple of hours before bed time curled upon the sofa indulging in some very necessary comfort reading!

Publication day.....

Stefan, as pictured in my prompt photo

I am preparing this post in advance because I am nervous, and not sure I'll be near the computer tomorrow morning.... but...

At around 10.30 am (my time- which is British Summer Time) the story I wrote for the M/M Group's Don't Read in the Closet event "Love's Landscapes" will be going live!!

I can't wait for people to read about Stefan and Benedict, not to mention the side character, Wilf, who has become my beta readers' favourite.


I am incredibly nervous about this one, probably more so than the previous years.  I am not sure why, but this story just came so easily to me - the characters virtually wrote it themselves.  I know it's not going to win big in the popular stakes - it's a historical story after all and they are not everyone's cup of tea..... and of course those that do like historical stories are probably going to take issues with some of the liberties taken with the historical facts... but that I expect.

My only real wish is that my prompter likes what I've done with her prompt and picture.....


and I am still plodding away with my second prompt.......

In need of a kick up the backside.....

30 days......... yep..... 30 days, this is all the time I have left to write, get beta'd, edit, tidy up and polish my second LL story

And therein lies the problem

I've not even started writing......... what I have so far is a detailed plot outline, some characters that are whispering sweet nothing into my brain, 23 pages of detailed hand written notes on anything and everything to do with 1748 - I mean seriously - politics, world events, fashion (and seriously, I fell into a black hole that is Pintrest on this one yesterday), dueling, masked balls and the history of blow jobs - actually that last one was quite a big part of yesterday's research.... it seemed to depend on so many things as to whether it was "acceptable" sexual behaviour and that changes in different countries and time period... even which party is described as the passive/active partner in terms of the giver and receiver changes ... seriously, I think I could write an essay on the subject.... I did discover in my research that in the Palais Royale in Paris in the late 18th century around 50,000 "little black books" were found - which gave details of the numerous prostitutes to the Court and the "services" each provided....... and I am pretty sure given the attitudes of the time not all those prostitutes were female/het.... which has given me a little more leeway as to what my characters might get up to......

Well, eventually, when I get my finger out and start actually bloody writing...... cos for some reason I cannot for the life of me find the little thread to pull that will start the story flowing......

I knitted the whole edging of a baby blanket last night in an attempt at avoidance...... today I've cleaned the kitchen......

I am starting to feel like the only way I am going to get this started is to wait till I reach full on panic mode of the deadline looming ... which won't be good for anyone!

And the stupid thing is, it's not like I have just no idea or writers block, I know what I want to write, I just keep faffing about........ I have seriously no self discipline at all.........so please, if you see me hanging about on the net and not writing (not during work hours of course, cos then I should be doing real work they pay me for, erm, not hanging around on the net....) feel free to yell at me to go write......

Saturday song.......

This has been playing on the radio recently and although not normally my kind of thing it's really got an impressive ear worm thing going....

My UK LGBT Meet Experience.... Part 2...

And so to Sunday.... It was a later start to the event so I had a very slow start to the morning, pottering around my room, enjoying the shower one more time, before packing up my bags and staggering back to the car to stash it away.... it had grown somewhat since I arrived, not through book purchases, but with swag... lots and lots of swag... I have an enormous amount of pens, notebooks, badges, bookmarks and some basil seeds... as well as chocolate, a memory stick full of goodies, some postcards, tea, coffees, more sweeties... you get the picture :)

I headed to the foyer of the events suite for coffee and had a good natter with a couple of authors about research and historical accuracy, before we went through for the first session on avoiding your mid-novel crisis, which gave some very useful techniques for getting your writing mojo back when it's upped and left midway through a chapter.

After more coffee I headed to the "It's not all sex scenes" panel on YA and NA books.  The panelists were very enthusiastic, but I was slightly concerned that they didn't actually seem to know the difference between YA and NA... yeah, I should have put my hand up and said something, but I really don't like to draw attention to myself.  This was probably the only panel I was slightly disappointed with, though from audience participation I was probably the only one.

The next panel, on contracts, was really excellent, pointing out some important definitions that anyone signing a contract for the first time really should know.. it also dealt with how to negotiate your contract and the relationship between publisher and author.

After another excellent buffet lunch we had the second keynote speech, this time from Aleks Voinov, an I have to say it was one of the best, most inclusive and common sense speech I've heard.  Seriously, the upshot was, don't apologise for what you write or read, be who you are, welcome diversity and have fun....okay so that's like the most summarised summary that you'll probably get, but it was a wise and also humourous speech.

And that just left the feedback and planning session with a view to next year.  As the meet wound down and people started to depart it was quite sad... the next Meet won't be till September 2015, with the exact dates and venue still to be decided.

I headed off about 5 pm and was home just under three hours later.  My dogs were incredibly pleased to see me - though Hope had had a bit of a hissy fit about being left and had managed to break the baby gate that goes over the kitchen door ... literally... it is off it's hinges and I need a new one..... The cats have yet to forgive me and are being very demanding!


Finally, I mentioned that the internet for all it's vastness is a very small world.  I've often wondered if my reading worlds will ever collide and on Sunday they did.  As I introduced myself to a fantasy author whose work I really like, another author mentioned that she'd spoken to both of us before about Girls Own books we'd read when we were younger (and not that much younger).... In the course of nattering... it turns out that I know this author's mother, who is a member of the same Girls Own website as I am and we share a lot of non M/M reading twitter followers :)

I also discovered two other people from my home town... one of whom works with my sister's partner :)  I've got instructions to get in touch to meet up from coffee from them, and from another friend not a million miles away in Leeds.

All in all I had a fantastic time, and I can't wait for next year!

My UK LGBT Fiction Meet Experience.... part 1

So, we shall start by rolling back to Thursday, before it all started...... now I've been eagerly looking forward to this event for the last, erm, well, since January when I booked really..... not only was I getting to go to the meet again this year after having such a fantastic time last year, but this year I was getting to stay over, in a posh hotel, with no critters........ which begs the question.... why the hell did I leave tidying my house to a sufficient standard that I was happy for someone else to stay in it to look after the dogs until the day they were arriving??  Suffice to say Thursday I cleaned....the dog sitter arrived in the evening and had a guided tour of the house, we went through the instructions for dealing with the hell critters.... she signed waivers absolving me of any damage to life, limb and sanity (well not really, but I feel she probably ought to have done)....

On Friday I was up early to pack (yep, I specialise in leaving things to the last minute) and then I waved goodbye and headed off at about 9.30 am....... mainly because I needed to go the the garage and get my smashed right wing mirror replaced before I drove on the motorway (yeah, I was mean to drop it into the garage back in April when the glass arrived.. )

The journey down was uneventful... thankfully... until I arrived in Bristol.... now last year it took me three goes round the one way system in Manchester to find the hotel car park..... this year it took five... including narrowly missing going over the suspension bridge, and turning the wrong way down a one way street... and this is with a sat nav... can you imagine if I didn't have one!

I checked into the hotel at around 2 pm... luckily my room was ready... unluckily, the guy on the desk managed to wipe the credit card details from the system that we'd used to book the room....... and was to be used to pay for it.... which caused a bit of a problem as the card I had with me couldn't cover the room booking... panicked e-mails and texts to my sister (who'd paid for the room as my christmas/birthday present this year) to try and get an authority from her to take out the cost of the room and to confirm the card number.... thankfully, it all went through later that evening.

My room was lovely... and I freshened up in the rather ornate marble bathroom then had a nice lie down on the very comfy bed and read for a while.  I wandered downstairs at around 4 pm and registered for the event... then I sat and knitted in the foyer whilst other people arrived... I ran into a couple of friends from last year and on line which was fab.  I hadn't booked to go out on the Friday night - which was a good thing as I'd crashed and was in bed by 9pm.

Now you'd have thought that having my first critter free night away in over 15 years I'd have managed to have a nice long sleep and lie in...... but no.... I woke up at 2 am and couldn't get back to sleep ... until I opened the curtains and turned the air con on to almost freezing... then at 6.20 am I was wide awake and decided to give in and get up.

The event itself opened at 9.20 am for registration... but with the promise of coffee at 9 am I found myself heading to the conference rooms we were using.  the event itself kicked off promptly at 10 am with a big session in the main room on Novel Openings.  Several authors read from published work and current works in progress, including a really good introduction to a graphic artist who specialises in gay romance comics.  The idea being to show what was the hook into the story in the opening 150 words or so.

I stayed in the main room for the next two sessions, on demystifying publishing - which talked about things to look out for when submitting to a publisher and also how to spot danger signs and what to do about it.  The next session was a really good one on marketing and branding, which for a reader really showed clearly how authors can make it easy for us to recognise them and their work.

After a buffet lunch I was in charge of a "readers only" table when we split into discussion tables - there were lots of other topics being discussed - including sci-fi, self editing, characters with disabilities, web comics, writing sex scenes ....  I had a lovely discussion with the people who came to join me as we wrote what we liked and didn't like on post it notes and talked about them.... I will do a summary of this at some point soon.

After yet more coffee there was a lovely speech from Belinda McBride about what can give you inspiration, can encourage you to carry on and how to deal with writing and real life when it smacks you in the face.  After that was the book fair where we could go round and talk to authors about their books, buy them, get them signed etc

In the evening we had a formal dinner in Palm Court.  During our first two courses (which for me were spicy tomato soup followed by baked aubergine) we were entertained by a fantastic drag queen who sang to us - the only down side for me was the number of photographs being taken.  I know that I wouldn't be in them as I was wearing my white lanyard (the meet organisers are fantastic about this - if you wear a white lanyard then your photo won't be taken or appear on line - even the back of your head) but unfortunately being phobic about cameras a couple of times I started to get a bit shaky and wondered if I'd make it through the meal without a panic attack... it wasn't helped by being at the table right on the edge of the performance stage area and with my back to it.....  After the drag act finished The Songbirds Choir set up and sang beautifully whilst dessert was served (lemon tart)..... then we had a "surprise" for a mini prize giving event when bare bottomed butlers (yes seriously, they wore just an apron to give them a little modesty, and nothing else) came to help escort the prize winners to the front of the room....

The evening came to an end just after 10 pm and I snuck away to go enjoy the comfy hotel bed and to read and unwind......

I will post about Sunday (which included discovery that the internet may be vast but at times it's also a very small world indeed) tomorrow......

Monday Madness....well... sort of..

Start of the week, so time for a what's on the agenda this week post.....

Last week I finished another round of edits for my LL story, A Point of Honour, and have had confirmation that it is now queued for release.... though I have no idea when this will be - I am guessing towards the end of the month.

As I posted on Friday, I also adopted an orphan prompt, which meant much of this weekend was spent on researching.  I have a plot line, character names and some idea of what life was like in Paris in the 1740's and I am starting to sketch out scenes... but haven't yet hit on a starting point for the story - this could be one of those that gets written scene by scene and then joined together at the end.

House wise, I have a shed load of housework to do.... because at tea time on Thursday my dog sitter arrives for the weekend :)

I am extremely excited to be going away this weekend.  Last year I had serious nerves before the UK meet, and spent a lot of time hiding behind my knitting.  Okay, so the knitting is coming with me again, but I doubt I will be hiding behind it as much.

I leave mid morning on Friday to drive down to Bristol. I've not booked to go out on the Friday as I am pretty sure my leg will be in a state of rebellion from the drive and demand that I rest for the evening - which is a pain, but if I want to enjoy the weekend I need to make sure that I am mobile.

I need to pack.... and find something to wear for the gala dinner.... but for now I am just quietly bouncing up and down being quite excited about not only the meet but getting away for the first time in 19 years without the critters!