Delight

I can't tell you how long it has been since I picked up a book and didn't stop reading until it was finished. It just doesn't happen very often these days. But yesterday after a solid day's work I began Fortunate Wager by Jan Jones and didn't put it down until after midnight (and as my family will attest - I don't stay awake beyond ten because I turn into a grumpy pumpkin) when it was blissfully finished. I enjoyed everything single second - didn't notice the prose or the style or any damn thing except the characters. I was caught in their world so totally I lost track of time - sheer bliss and so damn rare. The heroine will stay with me for a long time - she wasn't dim or stupid or a wimp as can so often happen in historicals. She was plucky and realistic and bloody hell I so wanted the world for her. The hero was perfect too.........

Simply brilliant if regencies float your boat and they do mine. I just love a good escape from my world.

Now back to the grist mill and to wonder if I love historicals so much why I don't write them (oh yes, I am a lazy sod who can't bothered to do all the research - ho hum)

Repeat after me - Do No Repeat

Back in Dubai and I am cracking on with this 'listening to my Inner Voice' rework of A Cornish House. I find myself yet again stung with my own inadequacies at picking up my 'Irish' love of repetition - to be sure, to be sure. In this go-through I'm also thinking of the reader's experience and I must think my reader terribly thick becauseI have repeated the same damn things again and again albeit a different way each time. Enough already!

So it was heartening, in a strange way, to catch this link from the Guardian on Twitter today. However just because those authors can get away with it doesn't mean I can.

I do know that all my novels thus far do have a number of overlapping themes that I am playing with. I have yet to decide if this is good or bad.

Do you repeat? And if you do what? Themes, images, words......

Conceding Defeat

I'm flying back to Dubai this afternoon because I admit I can't face the driving conditions on the way to Cornwall especially as the wiper fluid in the car is frozen and it means stopping at virtually every lay by to clear the windscreen. I am not a wimp when it comes to winter driving having spent my life until the age of 26 in New England and then did a stint in Calgary. Snow and ice do not hold terror for me - I can drive through them with care. However many of the drivers currently on the road do not have years of experience and that's all I'll say.

I love snow - it's imprinted on my psyche. I can spend hours at a window just watching the white stuff fall. This patch of white weather has given great delight to DD who has little experience of it. So she has made her first snow angels and pelted some well aimed snow balls at me. Her return to school was delayed by a day and she enjoyed every minute.

I loved waking early listening to the special silence that comes with snow fall and then the ensuing crunch when you venture forth....bliss. Here are a few photos of my brief stay in the UK.

I will miss Cornwall but I hope that on my next visit, taken in less than two weeks) I can make it to my lovely home.

My last post promised some links. The first is from agent Jenny Bent and in thispost she sums up concisely what a novel should be.

Anita Burgh has come up trumps again with so many fantastic posts - rejection, pace.... that I will just link to the blog Read and learn.

Finally an interesting post on what is romance vs women's fiction from Guide to Literary Agents.

Traveling

I suppose it's fitting that the first post of 2010 is from the airport - surprise! For a woman who hates flying with a passion I seem to be forever on a plane. I am heading back to the cold and the snow.

I have some great links to post but can't seem to do it here so it will wait for a few days until I am in Cornwall.

I have begun writing again which feels brilliant and I hope everyone else has begun the new year well.