weddings and gelati

Current work: admin this morning, then starting new Medical
Listening to: Katie Melua
Reading: Donna Alward, Hired: The Italian’s Bride (enjoyed very much. Especially the picnic. And the puddings)

Lovely weekend. Had a ball on the radio and a nice lunch out. And then it was my first ice cream making session. Went for the ultra-low fat strawberry yoghurt ice cream. And it was fantastic. Why did I wait so long?

Saturday was wedding day around here; our neighbour’s daughter was getting married so everyone in the street crowded outside to wave her off in the morning (and she looked gorgeous). Saturday evening, it was our former neighbour’s wedding reception – coincidentally, at the same place where my cousin got married last year. Son had told me he had something to wear. I made him try it on in the afternoon and had to send him out with DH to buy something that fitted (another growth spurt, and I admit now that he’s taller than I am).

Son spent most of the first half of the evening (before food) playing football with the other boys. When we finally fished him back inside, the dancing was in full flow, and he did exactly what he did last time… his John Travolta bit on the stage at the far end of the dancefloor. And all the kids joined in with him. At one point they were synchronised (a moment when we wished we’d had the video camera rather than the still with us). They had such a good time, and it was great fun to watch them (from our side of the dance floor). DH spent a while dancing with this very pretty brunette with waist-length hair, but she abandoned him in favour of her brother, who’s a better dancer (!).

The thing about a wedding full of forty-somethings is the music played – it’s all late seventies’ disco (we were too young to go to discos, but knew all the songs from Top of the Pops) and eighties music. Brought back a few memories.

Sunday: fairly lazy day – tired out from three hours of dancing, the night before. Did final readthrough of the revisions and I’m happier with them. Expecting another set on this one, though, when my ed reads it (sent it this morning).

Plan for today: bit of admin in town, then starting the new Medical.

new book and radio interview

Current work: off doing meeja stuff today and a bit of library research
Listening to: Crowded House, Together Alone (I just LOVE the guitar on ‘Fingers of Love’)
Reading: next on TBR

Being dozy this week (and also because *cough* I’ve been a bad puppy and not updated my website this month until yesterday - new books are up there now), I sort of forgot I have a new book out this week. Until BBC Radio Suffolk contacted me, asking when I’m free to do an interview. Remiss of me. Apologies.

Anyway. Here for your delectation is Suffolk Ghosts and Legends (aka Scandals, Sieges and Spooks – the stories behind the ruined castles and abbeys, the people who lived there, and any scandals, sieges and spooks). I had immense fun writing this and going out for days with my research team (the oldest member of whom does the driving while I navigate to find what he calls ‘a tiny bit of masonry in a field in the middle of nowhere’, and the two youngest are in charge of chanting ‘are we there yet?’ and ‘we’re starving and the café’s over there’.)

The picture on the front was taken in broad daylight at Bury St Edmunds. I’m saying nothing about the little ghost (but I’m immensely amused by it. Maude Carew, perhaps. Have I mentioned that I love my publisher and their art department?).

I’m actually on the radio today as well. Back on lovely Graham Barnard and Karen Buchanan’s show on the ‘Ladies at Lunch’ spot. BBC Radio Norfolk, 12 noon today (FM - 95.1, 95.6, 104.4, MW - 855, 873 & DAB). Am looking forward to it because it’s always huge fun, and it will be lovely to see Sara and Tessa again. I will be talking about spooky things… (And then it's lunch out. Italian. Wonderful.)

Oh, and I’ve just come across a really nice review of the Norfolk Miscellany from Derek James, the features ed of the Evening News. ‘Extremely difficult to put down… you can dip in and out for months… A little gem of a book.’ Colour me happy.

Also saw said book in Jarrolds yesterday. On a shelf with lighting that made taking the photograph a little tricky (especially as I was trying to be discreet so people wouldn't realise how sad I was being - hence the poor quality of the photograph). But the combination of the word at the top of the display and the figure to the left of my book has really put a smile on my face. I was also at #7 with Norwich: Stories of a City, which has been on the shelves for SIX YEARS now. So that's pretty cool. (Have also been on this particular display shelf with two other titles in the last month. It's really nice to think that people are obviously enjoying these books; I put a lot into them.)

gelati

Current work: revisions on fairground book
Listening to: Dire Straits
Reading: next on TBR

My name is Kate Hardy and I am an ice cream addict.

I think the worst one was when I was away on business in my ratrace job and persuaded my colleague that we should have dinner in the Haagen Dazs ice cream cafe. Back home, the department secretary (who was dealing with expenses) yelled across the room to me, 'You spent HOW MUCH on ice cream?'

Cue shock-horror from the entire marketing department. In my defence, the bill was lower than if we'd had a meal elsewhere. And it was very, very scrummy.

I used to make ice cream by hand. Though it never lasted long. (I married someone with a similar addiction. We have two children, both of whom have the same affliction.)

And for years I've wanted an ice cream maker.

Floated the idea past the kids yesterday. Verdict: ‘Brilliant. Can we help make it?’ (So that’s 75% of the household in agreement.)

Thanks to lovely commenter Brigitte letting me grill her (and reading reviews online), have decided to go with the sort with a freezing disk as it’s reasonably priced and the disk will fit in the freezer. (The posh Gaggia one, which needs no freezing whatsoever, was the equivalent of two Radley handbags, or two of the gold-and-glass beads for my Pandora bracelet. You can see where this is going, can’t you? Especially as I am in the city on Friday for a radio interview. And I will have to walk past Sonkai. Hmm.)

Rang Lakeland (note, this is on the list of ‘shops in which Kate Hardy is not allowed without responsible adult supervision’. As is House of Fraser. And Sonkai). One ice cream maker in stock. Goody. It has my name on it, ready for picking up tomorrow. B-u-t… I checked and it’s in a Very Big Box. Which means I’m going to need help manoeuvring it to the car.

So I took DH a cup of tea, making kissy noises and being all sweet. He wanted to know what I had done. (Ha. And to think he gets stroppy if I ask that question when he gives me flowers.) Confessed. He has agreed to come and be my muscle man. This is particularly piquant as he claims he is the main (possibly only) person on the ‘responsible adult’ list. (Son is trying to claim he is also on this, cough – I think not. Who forces me into Hotel Chocolat, then? And since when is 12 an adult – even if he IS taller than I am now?) I foresee purchase of oven cleaner, feather duster, new pegs and other such housewifely joys. With son and husband as my bag carriers. Lured with the promise of home-made ice cream.

What I’m really looking forward to involves 0% fat Greek yoghurt and fresh raspberries. Daughter thinks this is a fine idea. Except I need more raspberries because someone raided the fridge when she got home from school - and this is despite having a snack box full of raspberries in her packed lunch. Oink.

So today’s question is: what’s your favourite flavour of (home-made) ice cream? (And all recipes welcome!)

going with the flow

Current work: revisions on fairground book
Listening to: Dire Straits
Reading: next on TBR

Great guitar lesson yesterday. I hadn’t done my homework (to write a piece of music called ‘The Raging Sea’ – because I’d scoffed about one of the grade pieces sounding nothing like a raging sea) because I had this brilliant idea: to cheat massively by playing ‘Oh I do like to be beside the seaside’ (mainly pp, then ff on the last bar in each phrase – kind of a punk version. Well, the concept amused me). Except I came unstuck because the chords I came up with didn’t make sense in harmonic terms.

So I confessed, played what was in my head, and asked Jim why it wasn’t working. Becau-au-ause I had the wrong chords. He explained it was because it was all in fourths, involving diminished chords and jazz voicings. Which led to a discussion about Django. And from there to Dire Straits (Tunnel of Love); discussed my fairground book a bit (!); and from there to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (my second-favourite – possibly joint favourite – DS song, the other being ‘Telegraph Road’). Lovely chilled morning, just going with the flow. Odd how all the stuff I’m picking out at the moment is jazz-based, though.

Have promised daughter I will buy a book of show tunes for piano/guitar and also the sheet music for Grease. Kids are hoping for treats from my royalty cheque (son has put in a bid for an X-box game). Actually, they’ve asked for something pretty reasonable, so I’ll be indulgent.

Had a really, really nice visit with Dad. Probably the nicest in a year or two – one to store away and remember with pleasure, because Dad actually saying that he appreciates me is pretty rare. (Usually it's all taken for granted.) I even managed to get him out of his room and go for a little walk, so I’m very pleased about that. And he was delighted with his punnet of cherries, bless him.

Good news on book front: my agent liked the work I did on the first couple of chapters of the fairground book, and it’s reading as it should be. Hopefully I can sort the rest today/tomorrow, as I’m out on Friday (radio interview and then out for lunch).

storms and 80s food

Current work: revisions on fairground book
Listening to: Kate Rusby
Reading: next on TBR

Amazing storms yesterday evening – went on ALL evening, so that nixed work time. We watched them as a family, including the dog, and the kids were enjoying counting the seconds between the flash and the bang to see how far away the storm was… until there wasn’t a gap. That spooked them a little, bless.

By the time the thunder had stopped and it was safe to switch on the PC again (I have a surge protector, but I’m paranoid as I happen to know three people whose computers have fried in a storm), it was too late to work, so I was a bit self-indulgent and watched the Supersize programme about the food of the 80s.

This was the decade of my teens/very early 20s, so I remember the trends. They did skip around an awful lot rather than presenting it sequentially through time, but it was fascinating to see how much I remembered. All the different sorts of mineral water (but they missed out the ‘flavoured’ ones such as Sao Rico and Aqua Libra, both of which I loved… or maybe that was early 90s). Double espressos (I shudder when I think how much coffee I used to drink – heart attack city. Nowadays it’s likely to be a skinny latte, maybe once a week if I’m out). Nouvelle cuisine (pretty, but definitely not substantial enough). The rise of the foodie (oooh, now I’m very guilty there, but I really do enjoy experimenting and cooking).

And then there was the processed stuff. Sure, everyone ate microwaved meals at some point, but in general I cooked from scratch – always have done. It doesn’t exactly take a long time to prepare beef in red wine, jacket potatoes and steamed veg. (Maybe I should write a low-maintenance cookery book. Cooking for people who hate spending time in the kitchen. Nope, wouldn’t work, because the kitchen is the heart of my house.)

DH used to like Pot Noodles (WHY? They were so vile – they smelled horrible and they tasted worse). He wouldn’t admit it last night but I suspect he liked Ice Magic, the gloopy chocolate stuff that set hard when it hit the ice cream. (And urrrgh, ice cream that tasted of powder. OK, foodie tendencies out here: we made our own or bought the posh stuff. I am desperate for one of those really posh ice cream makers, but I know how bad I’d be with it.) And Pop Tarts… never tried them because they sounded vile. Potato waffles for breakfast? Eh? Don’t know anyone who did that. (Feel free to confess here…)

I definitely remember 80s dinner parties (that’d be late 80s, after I graduated and when we had our first house – umm, they would’ve been quite foodie, too). And drinking way too much wine. Hilarious to see that Pinot Grigio was trendy back then – I still like it. And Chablis. Oaky chardonnay (ick). Hmm - wasn’t that when Aussie wine made it big over here? But I never, EVER did wine boxes. Didn’t do the cocktail thing either (though I did add Kahlua or Tia Maria to coffee – ohh, how could they forget floater coffees? I had some really posh glasses especially for liqueur coffees). I also remember Archer’s Peach Schnapps being trendy. Don’t think I’d touch it now – too sweet, and post-kids I’m an utter lightweight when it comes to alcohol. Two glasses, and it’s hangover city.

They mentioned ciabatta bread (one of my favourites but I read labels now and it presses too many buttons). And then there was garlic bread. In my second and third year at uni, I was in self-catering accommodation. Someone was always cooking garlic bread (often me, I admit – I’d go to the cinema with my best mates on Mondays and we’d eat at mine either before or after, depending on the time of the film).

Eating out. The programme concentrated on yuppie restaurants. As a student, that kind of stuff was way beyond my means. I remember that Pizzaland was a big treat. And obviously Leicester had wonderful curry houses, so that opened my eyes to a whole new area of food.

They barely touched sweets/candy in the programme, with the exception of Opal Fruits. Matchmakers used to be quite trendy, but I have to confess that this was when I discovered Thornton’s Viennese truffles. And Lindt selection boxes. (DH liked Milk Tray – though he used to remove the hazelnut whirls from a box and scoff them before giving the box to the recipient, i.e. his mother or me. He has better manners now.) I remember that chocolates used to come in really pretty boxes you could re-use…

So what are your big food/drink memories from the 80s?

top of the charts – and seeing the wood for the trees

Current work: revisions on fairground book
Listening to: Corelli
Reading: next on TBR

Was delighted on Saturday to see in the EDP that the Norfolk Miscellany is #1 in the Jarrolds local book chart. Yippee. (That’s my third week on their bestseller chart, so I’m really pleased.) (And yes, I’m blowing my own trumpet, but I’m an author and this is local history. If I don’t talk about it, nobody’s going to do it for me!)

As for seeing the wood for the trees… Sometimes, as an author, you’re too close to your book to tell if it works. You read your MS and you read what you intended to say, not what you actually said. Sometimes – no matter how experienced you are – it takes someone else to point that out to you.

Luckily, I have a stellar agent who’s very good at doing that, and in a really positive way. She sent me an email on Friday, pointing out the good bits of the book – and then I got the kicker. It didn’t work for her. Then she asked me two questions: why I started the book where I did, and what the conflict was.

She was spot on about the starting point – oh, duh, why on earth didn’t I start the day before? I can really up the emotional stakes if I start the thing in the right place. As for the conflict… I thought it was a goodie. So I rang her and told her what it was. ‘Great. That works. BUT it’s not on the page.’

Again, she’s right. I’ve downplayed it and left it too long to drop the bombs, and I need to make it clear right up at the front.

As this was my 40th M&B, you’d think I’d know this by now. But hey ho. I spent the weekend revising the first half of the book, after talking over different books with my lovely editor (and warning her not to look at the fairground book because she’s going to have a different version later this week). So I’m focused and I know where I’m going. Good.

Oh, and the result of the editor chat? Sadly, I don’t get my Regency Doctor… well, I can bend him in a little bit provided he doesn’t take over. My time-travel one was a no-no, too. (Though I should add that I am NOT jumping on a bandwagon; I had stuff published in the early to mid 90s that would be classified as paranormal, nowadays. And I’ve been a Barbara Erskine fan for a very, very long time.) But we’ve worked out what I’m doing next, and worked out the conflict that was giving me trouble. Again, sometimes it takes someone else to point something out to you or say something that triggers off your creativity.

Son enjoyed his final cookery lesson on Friday and came home with a really scrummy Black Forest Gateau (which we all liked), and chilli (which I liked but the fussy people I live with refused to try). Bless him, he looked so proud of himself. He has an inset day today (teacher training day). Madam is dismayed to think we’ll be doing something without her. ‘You won’t do anything FUN, will you?’ Bless. She has an inset day at the end of the month, so I’ve promised her we’ll do something fun then.

Go and give Jill a hug

Please go and give lovely Jill Shalvis a hug. Especially if you're a doglover (or a fan of her fabulous blog, in which case you'll already know the news).

superheroes, PHS and getting active

Current work: admin and thinking about next books
Listening to: Kathryn Williams
Reading: various research stuff

I'm over at the Pink Heart Society today talking about a really wonderful drama series. If you enjoyed North & South, I'd love to hear your views!

Julie Cohen has a lot to answer for. Not just because I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of her new book, Girl From Mars (yay, nerdy heroine alert), but she (via Jan Jones, who is also a Very Bad Influence) has introduced me to the concept of becoming a comicbook heroine.

Sadly, the accessories don’t include a magic wand (there is a Jedi light sabre, but it isn’t the same thing), but this is will do nicely. This is me: the Amazing Thoughtful Philanthropist.




Note, this is the thin version of me. And I don’t really have butterfly wings. I do, however, like sending surprise things to friends to cheer them up. Hence the shopping bag. Never underestimate the power of a package from Hotel Chocolate or Lush. :o)

Want one yourself? Nip over here. It takes three minutes and it’s huge fun. (And even if you don’t think you like comics, go and read Dinosaur Comics and you may change your mind. Ryan North is seriously talented and I appreciate his sense of humour.)

Meanwhile, I’m preparing for a chat with my ed about the next few books. And recovering from a session on the Wii Active thingy, which arrived yesterday. It’s certainly interesting – major plus point is that the workout is all in one piece and I don’t have to keep flicking between menus or waiting for the Wii to finish giving me instructions (after the first time, the default is to skip the instructions but you can access them if you need to, which is a very sensible way of arranging things), so a 30-minute workout really does take 30 minutes and not nearer 50. I can see how many calories I’m burning, as I burn them; and it’s helpful and encouraging without repeating itself. Oh yes – and you can choose your music. I can live with the guitar/alternative rock one. (Custom... hmm.)

Cons: measurements are all in metric, and if you’re accidentally holding the Wii bar/Nunchuck the wrong way round it doesn’t pick that up, just tells you you’re doing the exercise wrong or tells you that you’re slowing down when you’re not (and you shout at the TV a few times before it occurs to you why the sensors aren’t picking up). Oh, and why doesn’t the food diary count fruit portions as well as vegetables? I might only eat four or five portions of veg a day, but I’ll also eat two or three portions of fruit. Or maybe I should read “vegetables” as “fruit and”.

But on the whole I like it, and I’m hoping it’s going to interest me enough to make me stick with it for six weeks, until the exercise habit is ingrained.

how cool is that?

Current work: admin and thinking about next books
Listening to: Kathryn Williams
Reading: Sarah Mayberry, Hot for Him (excellent end to the trilogy)

Lovely day skiving off, yesterday. The AA route map said it would take 42 minutes from home to West Runton. Maybe, except they forgot to factor in the tractors... But I had a lovely time. There’s nothing nicer than being nosy with another author’s workspace - except possibly being nosy with TWO other authors’ workspaces. (My friend’s husband is a fairly big name children’s author. His office is very cool – he actually works standing up. I was fascinated as I'd seen an article about people with sedentary jobs trying to lose weight and working standing up walking at 1 mile an hour on the treadmill) My friend’s desk is like mine, only a bit tidier than mine usually is.

Lovely lunch out – excellent food. A real melt-in-the-mouth casserole (lamb with redcurrant and mint), with new potatoes, cabbage, broccoli and carrots. See how virtuous I was?

Oh, all right. I confess. There was a stunning pudding menu. And there are certain things I can always find room for, sticky toffee pudding being one of them. I have been so incredibly virtuous this week that I deserved ONE treat.

And later I had the coolest ever text message esterday from my mate Jo. Guess what I saw at Jamaica airport?

And attached was a pic of this book…

Wow.

Plan for today: do accounts (especially as the Inland Revenue sent me something yesterday). Tinker a bit with outlines. Tinker a bit with nonfics. In other words, a nice pottering about sort of day, where I will be working at my desk, the breakfast bar in the kitchen AND the dining room table, all at the same time, but flitting from one to t’other via the kettle for cups of coffee.

(Dear Inland Revenue. I use at least three rooms in my house for work purposes. Four, if you count the conservatory, and then there’s the garden where I will probably be using a laptop this summer. My office is also the spare room: people sleep there when they come to stay. It’s also where homework gets done. I just annex it as my workspace because the rest of our house is more or less open plan and this is the only way to get thinking space – apart from locking myself in the loo, and that might contravene health and safety regs!)

oh I do like to be beside the…

Current work: admin and thinking about next books
Listening to: Bryan Adams
Reading: Sarah Morgan, The Greek Billionaire's Love Child (lovely fast read - though Sarah and I often have 'great minds think alike' moments, and in this she's given the heroine a backstory I'd been thinking about using!)

Great guitar lesson yesterday. Jim got me to sight-read a pile of grade pieces, and it did wonders for my confidence (as well as being enormous fun). I was a bit sarcastic about one piece (‘The Raging Sea’) so my homework this week is to write a piece called ‘The Raging Sea’, involving syncopation. I’m tempted to do a punk rendition of ‘I do like to be beside the seaside’. Or is that cheating?

Especially as I'm off to the seaside today. Think it might be just lunch at the Priory (no, not THAT Priory) rather than the walk we'd originally planned, as the forecast is for thundery rain.

Lovely ed emailed me yesterday with the title for my March 2010 release: The Doctor’s Lost-and-Found Bride. It's a reunion story so I think it suits it.

My office is now tidy (well, tidier), thanks to help from Miss ‘I love tidying’. I did ask her if she was mad. She claims not. I still have a box to sort through (quite a big one, too), but I’ll do that one handful at a time, on the ‘touch each piece of paper only once’ principle. And somehow she got three new books out of it...

DH and I had a serious discussion yesterday about diet and exercise, and I ordered the new Wii fitness programme thingy (Active Sports or whatever it’s called). I know, I know: I am Kate Couch Potato (or, perhaps more accurately, Kate Glued To Keyboard - Ashes to Ashes finished this week, so that's about 1/3 of my weekly viewing gone) and exercise doesn't thrill me the way playing guitar and reading do, but I have to do something about my very bad case of Writer’s Bottom (a particularly grim combo with the beginnings of middle-age spread). As I don’t want to waste prime work time going to a gym, this might be a good compromise.

Let me elaborate on what I mean by wasted time. My work day starts at 8.45. If I have a class at, say, 10, and it takes me 20 minutes to get there - that leaves me 55 minutes for work before the class. Minus 20 mins for thinking myself into book world, that's 35 minutes to work and that's hardly worth it. Class finishes at 11, shower, home - back at my desk at 11.30, and that leaves me half an hour before lunch, less 20 mins to think myself back into book world. Oh, look, I have 45 minutes to work out of a whole morning. And it's split into two sessions. So it's not an effective use of my time. Do this three times a week, and my productivity will nosedive. (Ditto my earnings. And then how would I pay for gym membership?)

However. If I do a 30-minute workout at home, at 8.45, then have a shower, my work day will then start at 9.30. So that means instead of only having 45 minutes to work in a morning, I have two and a half hours. Less 20 minutes' thinking time, and that's two hours and ten minutes in one lovely chunk.

Given that I probably spent 45 minutes in the morning messing about on the internet while I'm thinking myself into work mode (aka playing solitaire - and I know I'm not the only one who does that), if I don't look at email or the net until I've done my daily quota, it'll just be switching my time from mooching through to exercise, and once I've got the hang of the routine I'll be able to use exercise time as thinking time as well.

That's the plan. (Anyone want to start a book on how long this will last?)

Righty. My accounts are calling...

what do you do at the end of a book?

Current work: admin and TIDYING MY WORKSPACE
Listening to: Julian Lloyd Webber, Unexpected Songs (just unearthed that on the desk)
Reading: Faking it, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far)

So. End of book. Some writers are neat and tidy, but most of the ones I know admit to having the same habits as I do. By the end of the book, you can’t see any workspace or floorspace round the desk, because there are piles of papers and books and sticky notes and… I think it’s known as the Volcano Principle. If a piece of paper is important, it will gravitate to the top of the desk.

I’m very organised (seriously - how else would I produce 8 books a year AND have a life?), but I’m untidy and I loathe filing. I always promise to tidy my desk ‘when I’ve finished my book’ – except I write my fiction back to back, with nonfic in between, so I always have at least one book on the go and the tidying thing never quite works out.

But I have the rest of this week off. Plan is to refill the well, update my project list, tidy my office and sort out various admin. (And I might tinker with one of the nonfics.)

I’m not starting my next M&B until I’ve had a long chat with my ed about what I’m doing next. We’ve scheduled it in for Friday afternoon. I’m not sitting here panicking that it’s going to be a ‘your book is terrible, what WERE you thinking?’ chat – apart from the fact that I’ve confessed to the setting of the last book now and she hasn’t shrieked in horror, this conversation is specifically to talk over the next contract and what I’m going to write. No doubt I’ll do my usual ‘can I do my Regency doctor?’ and ‘can I have a timeslip thing?’, and she’s going to do her usual, ‘ha ha ha – no,’ and will suggest something more sensible (in very broad terms), which will spark a counter-suggestion in my head. We’ll thrash it out between us and I can spend the weekend working out the outlines.

So what am I doing this week? I have my guitar lesson today; and tomorrow, I’m meeting a local author friend for writerly discussion (oh, all right, we’re going out to lunch at the seaside). I had planned to take Dad out to lunch, if he was well enough, but all visiting has been suspended as there’s a sickness bug at the home. (Very sensible, as elderly people are so vulnerable to bugs.) His blip is sort of over – he’s still having surreal conversations with me, but he’s not aggressive so I can deal with it more easily.

Plan is: this afternoon, update project list, tidy desk and go to post office (anyone who’s waiting for post from me – on its way). Tomorrow morning, start on my accounts; Thursday and Friday, accounts and other admin. And by then my head should be back in creative mode…

Finished

Current work: finished the Modern Heat
Listening to: various
Reading: Faking it, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far – still think my faves by her are Anything But You and Bet Me. Any other recommendations appreciated)

Well – the Modern Heat is done and sent to my ed.

I’m tired now and have post-book blues. Cue grumpiness. I hate saying goodbye to my characters; I’m convinced that both my ed and agent will hate the book (even though I know this happens every time I deliver a book, the crows are still here), and my office is in post-book tip mode (have exceeded my mess tolerance level, so must sort that – except I could do with a nap and I have the school run in a minute anyway).

Weighed myself this morning and that’s made my bad mood much worse. I need to be clever with time management and factor some exercise into my day from now on, because putting on 7lbs per book written is just NOT GOOD.

That’s 7lbs for this book, not 7lbs for each one I’ve written this year (which would be a real disaster as that was my 3rd M&B for the year aka #40 overall).

But it’s still not good.

Why? Wasn’t clever with time management and ended up having to put the hours in over the last week, which means my brain thinks I’ve been working really hard (which I have, mentally) but physically I’ve been in the equivalent of near-catatonia (fingers moving at speed over keyboard does not burn many calories). The problem is not so much with my calorie intake, because I do eat sensibly (apart from the Lindors last week, which isn’t that typical. Usually we don’t have chocolate in the house because everyone knows I have no won’t power – I only buy biscuits I don’t like but everyone else does, for the same reason). The problem is that I don’t have enough physical output. Maybe I should try dictating the next book via Dragon while walking on the spot…

A little conundrum

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: Bon Jovi
Reading: Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far)

Busy week with DH's birthday etc - nice meal out at Yellows and when we paid the waitress complimented us on how well-behaved and polite the kids were. Apparently very few kids nowadays bother to say please when they order something or thank the waiting staff when food/drinks arrive. Mine do (after years of parental nagging we don't have to remind them very often) but the fact that apparently many don't rather shocked me. It doesn't take much time to be polite and a little appreciation makes people feel good; I believe that a bit of politeness and kindness makes the world a much nicer place because it's infectious. Be nice to people and expect the best of them, and in general they'll live up to your expectations.

Or maybe I'm just strange.

Am a bit busy with the book right now, so I’ll leave you with a maths problem (thanks to my mate and fellow Medical Romance author Jessica Matthews). Follow the instructions and Regifting Robin will read your mind... Clever, hmm?

(If you want to know how it works, click and drag over the space between the spoilers for the explanation.)

Spoiler:

Whatever you choose will always end up a multiple of 9 – the formula is (10*x + y) - x - y = 9*x
All the squares representing a multiple of 9 contain the same gift. The gifts in those boxes change each time you play the game, to make you think the computer is reading your mind (it’d be too obvious if they stayed the same every time you played).

End of spoiler.

Enjoy!

Craft post: How authors get paid

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: various show tunes
Reading: Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far)

My mate Carol Townend made a comment on a post a few days back that most people don’t understand how authors get paid: great idea for a topic, Carol, so thanks for giving me a prod.

There are an awful lot of myths about authors being as rich as Croesus. People see news reports about J. K. Rowling being a millionaire, and then they think: hmm, if I write a book, I can retire. In times of recession, people love the idea of being able to write a book and make a fortune. Ditto forming a band and being top of the charts. There have been some seriously silly figures bandied about re how much winners of televised talent shows will make - but I skimmed some articles about former Britain's Got Talent entrants and discovered that the reality is very different. One lot said that they get 0.2p per record sold. So for a million records, that's £2,000 earned (less tax and NI) - blimey. I'm not entirely sure whether the £2,000 has to be divided among the entire band, or whether that's £2,000 per person - it wasn't clear in the original article - but the perception is very different from the reality. The same is true with the perception of rich authors.

Rowling’s wealth is news PRECISELY because it doesn’t happen very often in this business. Very few authors make that kind of money - as you'll see if you look at the Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society (ALCS) survey, published in 2007, about authors' earnings in 2005. The average author (median, i.e. put the list in order of lowest-paid to highest, and this is the exact middle of the list) earned £4,000 a year. The mean annual income (i.e. total sum earned divided by number of authors) was £16,531 – which was 1/3 less than the ‘average’ UK wage at the time. (See the full report here.)

Sadly, there is no such thing as getting rich quick in publishing. You have to put the hours in and keep your writing as a second job until you've got your break and made your name. And even then you still have to put the hours in, because books don't write themselves.

So how does an author get paid? It's through royalties, i.e. the publisher will pay you a certain amount for each book sold.

How much will you get? It depends on your contract but, since the demise of the Net Book Agreement (which means that supermarkets can sell a £15.99 book for £3.99 as a loss-leader – that’s marketing speak for enticing someone into the store with a bargain and then they buy other things on impulse while looking round, so the retailer makes a profit from the total shopping basket), many royalty rates are based on ‘net receipts’ rather than cover price.

‘Net receipts’ is the amount your publisher gets for each new book sold.

How much is that? Let’s use round figures for ease of calculation. (Please note, these are not actual figures – they’re to make the maths easy and to show how the system works.)

Say the book retails at £10. This is what the BOOKSELLER gets from the reader.

The bookseller buys the book from the WHOLESALER at something like £7. (So the bookseller makes £3 - out of which need to come overheads such as staffing, premises, marketing.)

The wholesaler buys it from the PUBLISHER at something like £4. (So the wholesaler makes £3 - out of which come overheads such as distribution costs, staffing, premises etc.)

And that £4 is the publisher’s ‘net receipts’. Note, this is a lot lower than the cover price. And out of this the publisher pays overheads such as author's royalties, production costs (typesetting, proofing, artwork, printing, shipping to wholesaler), marketing, staffing, premises etc.

The bit you're interested in is the author's cut. Now, if your contract says you get 10% royalties of the publisher’s net receipts, you get 10% of the £4, not 10% of the £10 cover price. So your cut is 40p a book, not £1 a book.

Bear in mind these are round figures, and who buys a book at £10 nowadays? Think of the £3.99 deal the supermarket gives you for that blockbuster paperback, and it’s easy to see that the publisher’s net receipts for each book is more likely to be £1, so the author in that case would get say 10p a book… and actually, a 10% royalty rate is a bit high for a mass-market paperback edition.

Book clubs and supermarkets go for high volume sales at low prices, which means an author’s royalties will be even lower (it's known as a high-discount sale - and you'll probably find in your contract that a high-discount sale comes with a lower royalty rate). Reality: we're talking pennies per book. As in less than 10p per book.

Anyway, in the example above, our author gets 40p a book. Selling 1,000 books gives our author £400. Selling 10,000 books gives our author £4,000 (incidentally, the figure from the survey). Note that first novel sales are likely to be quite a lot lower than 10,000. JKR sold something like 2,500 of the first edition of Harry Potter. That first-time bestseller that sold millions? Er… it’s news because it's so rare. Something like 75 miles of new shelving is needed in the British Library each year just to house a single copy of each new book published that year. Only a handful of those books are million-sellers, and usually they're by authors who have already made their name.

Say it’s a 100,000-word book. That will take the best part of a year to write. I have seen people say online that authors are lazy, because at a typing speed of 60wpm a book will take, say 28 hours to write. Er… You're missing the point, love. Typing speed has nothing to do with how long it takes to compose a sentence. You need to structure the book, flesh out your characters and give them strong motivations, make your conflict believable yet interesting, make the dialogue realistic as well as moving the plot forward/shedding light on characters… and that takes time. It might take 28 hours of physical effort to type the book out once it’s finished (assuming that the author writes in longhand in the first place – I prefer working straight to screen), but the author will spend many, many more hours thinking, revising, deleting, replotting.

Anyway, back to that £4,000. You don’t get it all in one lump. It starts with an ADVANCE.

Typical advances for a first novel are £1,000 (and for nonfiction, particularly if it's a specialist market, it can be zero). But do note that a real commercial publisher will NEVER EVER ask you to pay towards costs. That’s vanity publishing and you’d be much better off spending your money on an appraisal by someone like Hilary Johnson, learning where you need to do more work to make your book saleable, and putting the hours in to get it right.

You get a chunk of your advance on signing the contract and then, depending on the publisher and your contract, another chunk when the book is accepted (note, you may have to do revisions first - very few books go straight from your computer to acceptance) and possibly another chunk when the book is published. Some publishers hold back a bit of the advance until foreign rights are sold.

Say your book is accepted in January 2009 (bear in mind you will already have spent a year writing it and another year trying to get an agent/publisher and doing revisions). It’s published in January 2010. Your publisher’s accounts are done at the end of December 2010 and the royalty statement for 2010 sales is issued in March 2011. Now (still using the figures above), say you’ve sold 10,000 copies and the royalties are £4,000: your advance has already been paid to you so that has to be taken off. OK, that leaves £3,000 to come to you – but the bookseller can return unsold stock, so your publisher will keep RESERVES for another year (i.e. the publisher holds on to royalties in case some of the ‘sold’ books are returned and the royalties are therefore no longer due to you – so don’t bank on getting all of that £3,000). For a first novel, reserves could be as high as 60%. So that’s £4,000 royalties minus the £1,000 advance paid in 2009/10 and minus a further £2,400 in reserves. Which means your royalty cheque in 2011 is £600. (You may get some of the reserves released in 2012 or even 2013.)

So far, over the course of two and a bit years since your book was accepted (plus the two years you spent working on it and waiting for responses before then), you’ve been paid £1,600 for your book… and you have to pay tax and national insurance on that, by the way. Authors are paid gross of tax rather than net. (There are of course expenses - paper, postage, stationery etc - which can be offset against tax. ALWAYS keep your receipts to prove said expenses, and check with the tax authority/your accountant to be sure of what is and what isn't allowable, or you could end up paying a fine: ignorance of the law is no defence.)

Not enough to live on for all that time, is it? This is why experienced authors advise new authors not to give up the day job for at least five years. There are exceptions, but for the majority it takes at least that long to build your name. And that’s also assuming that your sales are good enough for you to get further contracts from your publisher. (Mid-list positions are scary, particularly in times of recession.) In the meantime, as you’re self-employed, you will not get sick pay or holiday pay or employers’ contributions to your pension: you cover all those costs yourself. If you have a baby, you will be entitled to statutory maternity pay (but it will be the same amount as an unemployed person gets, despite the fact that you've been paying taxes and national insurance; you won't get the 90% of your earnings that employed people get). You also won’t get an annual pay rise or a bonus for working hard because your earnings – royalties – depend on sales, and the only real control you have over your sales is to write the best book you can.

Now, this isn’t my way of saying to people, don’t be a writer. What I’m saying is be realistic in your expectations.

Go into the business because you want to make tons of money really quickly, and you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Apart from anything else, if you don’t care about your characters, your readers won’t, either – and your book won’t be satisfying and it won’t sell. The characters and the story really do have to come first.

Go into the business because you feel that, when you don’t tell stories, it’s like being unable to breathe, and that’s an entirely different thing. Yes, you will need another source of income until you’re established (and even when you're established there are no guarantees that you'll earn squillions - refer back to that report), but you’ll also get a great deal of satisfaction out of your job.

Had I stayed in my rat-race job, I would probably be earning more than double what I earn now. But money isn't the only consideration in a job: there's intangible stuff that needs to be thought about, too. I have flexible hours so I can drop everything when the kids are ill or there's a family crisis and I'm needed to fix it. (Touching wood, here: I've had enough of those in the last 18 months.) My commute is between rooms of the house (depending on where I'm working, and it might be the garden if it's really warm) so I'm not stuck in traffic for an hour or squashed on a train (particularly on hot days when, ahem, some people could do with being introduced to the concept of deodorant). I really love what I do (and even the self-doubt is good, in a way, because it stops me taking my job and my readers for granted – see post from earlier this week about crows).

I can’t think of any job I’d enjoy as much (well, except maybe an archivist or a curator, and both jobs have a writing aspect to them). And I can't think of another job where I could put sunshine into people’s lives: one of the nicest emails I’ve ever had was from a reader who said that when she’s having a bad day, she reads one of my books and by the end she feels that the world is a good place after all. You really can’t put a price on being able to do that. It’s special – and it’s also humbling, too. I love what I do; and I appreciate that I’m lucky enough to be able to live my dream.

Though on the luck front it's also worth remembering Jefferson. ‘I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.’

Indeedy.

The definition of naivety

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: various show tunes
Reading: Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far)

Naivety is: leaving an opened box of Lindor balls in the fridge, when the author in the house on deadline, and expecting them to be there when you get home…

Any more out there? (Definitions, I mean. Not Lindor balls. I still feel a bit sick, actually. But they were nice.)

Craft post: dealing with crows

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: various show tunes
Reading: Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far)

My pal Julie Cohen is probably the first person I can remember using the phrase ‘crows of doubt’. It’s very appropriate: writers are very prone to doubts, and it feels like a crow pecking away at you. (Vicious birds of prey, they are, too.)

Gillie asked me to do a post about dealing with them, so here goes. I should add that this is from the perspective of a published author – unpublished authors might find (2) below useful, and (6) for submitting to the editor, because the only way you find out if you can do it is to try.

So. An attack of the crows. How do you deal with it? Look at why you’re having this crow attack, and that will help you work out the strategy to deal with them.

1. You’re about to start a new book – and, as the saying goes, you’re only as good as your last book. I know a lot of authors who have a crow attack at the beginning of every single new book. So actually, this one’s a positive one, because it means that you’re worrying about whether your readers will like your new book. The fact that you have your audience in mind is good: you’re concerned about their reaction and you’re determined not to cheat them either by rehashing the same old stuff, or by not being fully engaged with what you’re writing. These kind of crows are welcome because they can keep you sharp and stop you being complacent. Just tell them to shut up because you’re on the case, take a deep breath, and go for it.

2. You think you’ve taken a wrong track with the book – you’ve lost your way and it worries you. As a result, you might find yourself playing solitaire or doing Sudoku or (insert your procrastination tool of choice) rather than facing your book. The crows are telling you that you’ve written a pile of crap: and maybe you have. Re-read it. Go back and look at your original plan (if you’re a planner) and see where you’ve deviated (remember, this might be a good thing – when a book takes on a life of its own, it means it’s working) and where the holes are in the original. What’s stopping you going any further? Talk it over with your editor/agent or a trusted friend who’ll let you brainstorm ideas without telling you what to do. Or – and I admit this is going to sound flaky to anyone who doesn’t write fiction – talk it over with your characters. If they’re 2D they won’t work. If they feel like real people to you, they’ll feel real to your reader. So talk to them and find out why they’re stalling. It could be anything from their name (yes, really – changing the name will change the character) to their occupation to the background you’ve given them, or that you need to dig deeper to find the real conflict. Find out what the problem is and fix it. (And note that if you leave it until the last minute, you’re going to have to work stupid hours to meet your deadline, and that in itself might be enough to paralyse you. Get on with it or negotiate a deadline extension, but deliver on your promise.)

3. This is the way you always work – you get to a point in the book where you really doubt yourself, and it’s the same point every time. I think it was Neil Gaiman who said that he rings his agent, tells her his book is crap and he’s junking it, and she laughs and says, ‘Oh, you’re at THAT stage again,’ and reminds him he’s done the same thing for the last few books. As an author, you’re often too close to your work to see that pattern (or you forget it in a burst of authorial paranoia). What you do is mention it to someone who’ll remind you that you do this every time. Then you’ll think about it, realise they’re right, and you’ll be able to ignore the crows and get on with your work.

4. Your ed has given you really big revisions – so you’re thinking that you’ve lost your ability and can’t do this any more. Firstly, if an editor doesn’t think you can fix it, she won’t give you revisions. She’ll reject the book completely. Revision crows means is that you’re too close to the book to see where the real diamonds lie; a good editor will be able to spot them and tell you what you need to do to polish said diamonds (aka give you revisions). There’s also a possibility that your writing is about to move up a gear. My friend and fellow author Lilian Darcy has told me several times that when you’re about to move up a gear, often you’ll get really big revisions. Remember, you CAN do this, otherwise you wouldn’t have the contract to start with. Take a deep breath and tackle the revisions. Or if you don’t agree with what your editor says, come up with constructive alternatives for the bits you don’t agree with and negotiate a compromise that works for you both. I normally say yes to everything, sleep on it, and the next morning ring/email my editor with ‘this bit doesn’t work for me – how about I do this instead?’, and we work it out between us. (My ed, I should add, is fabulous and knows exactly how to get the best out of me, and is very happy to bounce ideas around.)

5. You’ve had a bad review – umm. As an author, you’re going to have to develop a thick skin, which is easier said than done. Put it this way: you might love a book but your best friend doesn’t like it at all, and vice versa. A bad review is ONE PERSON’S view and not everyone will share it. Also note that your editor bought the book because she liked it – and publishers are in business to make money, not to be charitable organisations, so they will only buy something they think will sell. Even so, bad reviews hurt. Moan to your friends (if they’re authors, too, the chances are they will have review horror stories of their own – and they might be worse than yours, which will help you put it into perspective), eat chocolate, go and play some music or whatever it takes to make you feel better – and then put the review out of your mind and get back to work. Oh, and keep copies of the good reviews. It’s useful to re-read them when you’ve had a bad one, to remind you that other people do like your work. (And the fact you remember every single word of the bad review and can’t remember the good ones… Hey. Welcome to being an author.)

6. You’re about to try writing a different sort of book – it’s a step into the unknown. It might work; it might not. The only way you’ll find out is to try. So ignore the crows. Revel in the chance of some creative freedom and just write. What’s the worst that can happen? Rejection? Think of it as a learning experience. It might be that your book has legs but you’ve queried with an editor and it’s the tenth similar pitch she’s had in two days (so try a different editor). Or it might be that this particular voice/genre doesn't fit you – but it could be a springboard to something else, or reaffirmation that you were doing the right stuff for you in the first place. It’s not wasted work because you’ve learned from it. And if it does work: celebrate!

© Kate Hardy 2009

Happy June and wonderful weekend

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: Bon Jovi (at son’s request. DH removes it when he puts my car in the garage. Which I don’t do because I don’t want to scrape it…)
Reading: Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far)

Happy June – and here’s this month’s calendar pic. (How many years is it since I spelled out things in alphabetti spaghetti?)


Had a truly wonderful weekend with lots of lovely things happening.

Still overexcited about having a Romantic Times Top Pick (this is a big deal, actually, as it’s my first ever).

Picked up car on Friday morning and it’s a dream to drive – well, not that I got to drive it much on Friday. DH hates being a passenger; he’s such a pain (fiddling with buttons rather than reading the manual first: ‘What does this do?’… arrgh) that it’s much better for my blood pressure to let him drive. He likes the Corsa a lot more than my Clio – and, to my surprise, so do I. There are still things I need to get used to (the remote controls for the stereo are on the steering wheel instead of on a stalk, plus there’s this ‘soft touch’ thing on the indicators that feels REALLY weird) but I have confidence in the car; much nicer than the last two or three months in the Clio, where I’ve been completely paranoid that it’s going to break down in the middle of nowhere.

Got home to discover message from lovely ed: revisions are absolutely fine, she’s pleased with the book, and #39 has been accepted. Whoo-hoo. (Title and release date tbc – working title was The Emergency Doctors’ Second Chance but I’m expecting Marketing to change it to something with more buzzwords.)

Saturday: discovered that the Norfolk Miscellany is in the Jarrolds bestseller chart, yippee. (And Suffolk Ghosts and Legends is now listed on Amazon – no cover yet, but it’s out in 2 weeks’ time. Yippee.)

Sunday: family barbecue – and there’s nothing better than spending time with my favourite people in the world. The weather was glorious and we all ate too much and talked too much and laughed too much, and it was just fantastic. Bit that made me laugh most? When I made cookies in the morning. Son bounces in. 'I can has cookie? LOL!' (While I'd been baking, he'd been on my PC looking up Lolcats.) Son has excellent comic timing.

Today, it’s back to school for the kids and back to work for me. I still haven’t confessed completely about the setting, but I did tell my ed that this is a light and fun and frothy book...

PS Dealing with crows post coming tomorrow.

Colchester

Current work: picking up my new car and it’s school hols. How much work am I really going to do today?

Listening to: Bon Jovi (son has decided he likes 80s hair bands. Ha ha ha. I have lots of CDs. DH is horrified)

Reading: Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far)

Had a great trip to Colchester. Got all the pics I wanted for the book; and I will admit that the satnav was useful once we got into Colchester. Hilarious that DH ignores it just the same as he ignores his old navigator: get to a roundabout and it’s ‘which exit was that?’

Visited the monastic ruins in the town, and then the castle. It's the largest Norman keep in England (strange, doesn't feel as big as Norwich inside, but that's possibly because Norwich is more open).

I loved the herringbone work. These are narrow Roman bricks and tiles, re-used. I noticed a lot of these in the fabric of the church exteriors, too, so it's obvious that most of the Roman structures were well and truly robbed out in the Norman period.

Was also very impressed by the mosaics. How much work would go into designing one of these? (I should add that this was about 2 metres by 2 metres.)

Saw some amber beads, and thought of Jan Jones:

Also visited the natural history museum (converted church, and I was very taken by the unicorn in the spandrel).

I rather liked the town hall, too. Very grand and Victorian. Interesting choice of figures, though - I understand why they'd choose Eudo (built the castle and the monastery) and Audley (town clerk and politically important in Tudor times). But Boudicca? The woman who burned the town to the ground? Wow.

DH suggested dinner out when we returned home. Went to Frankie & Benny's and had a lovely time... Except I managed to lose our car park ticket. Guy on the desk was really the jobsworth type (and he didn’t look old enough to be at work – or maybe I’m getting middle-aged). ‘I’ll have to charge you for all day.’ Actually, I’ve been in Colchester all day. You’re welcome to see my car park receipt from there to prove it. We came here two hours ago to Frankie and Benny’s. Please can I pay for the time I’ve been here and will you please let me out? ‘You'll have to check your car and the restaurant.’ Not in the car. Went back to F&B and they’d cleared the table. The lovely manager there said, ‘I’ll sort the car park for you,’ and came back with me. She explained they’d cleared the tables and my ticket was no longer there. ‘Well, how likely is THAT?' asked the guy, dripping with scorn. Wow. Talk about rude. This is the restaurant manager. Doesn't the fact she's come to the car park with a customer tell you something? 'Nope, it's a full day’s charge, then.’ And she was great, stared him down. ‘I’m not asking you to do it for free. This lady’s a regular customer and I can tell you she’s been here for two hours. You’re going to do the RIGHT thing, aren’t you?’ He made a face, but he backed down. (He charged me for three hours but hey, I’m not going to argue a point – still considerably less than a full day.)

And this is yet another reason why we’re loyal to F&B. We like the food, the waiting staff are all lovely, and they look after you. Three cheers for them. And especially for the lovely manager who really did go above and beyond.

Craft post: writing nonfiction, part 3

Current work: research trip to Colchester (looking forward to this)
Listening to: DH’s car… so it’ll be John Martyn
Reading: Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far)

I’m off to Colchester today with DH and the kids on a research trip. Castles and abbeys - that kinda stuff. Yippee. I’m also blogging about soundtracks over at the Pink Heart Society today, so do go over and tell me about your favourite musical.

And here's one craft post on writing nonfiction, as promised.

With nonfic, you’re dealing with facts. What kind of facts do you need? (Yup, that’s the question you ask before you start the research…)

Rudyard Kipling had a rhyme about it:

I have six honest serving men
They told me all I know
Their names are what and why and when
And how and where and who.

In schools, nowadays, this is often taught as the five Ws and an H. It works for all kinds of nonfic: journalism, press releases, books… your reader wants to know what happened, to whom, where, when, how and why.

So I review my research material and check that I have answers to the questions – and, if I don’t, I go away and do more research to fill in the gaps:

• What happened in the location?
• Why did it happen?
• When did it happen?
• How did it happen?
• Where did it happen? (Considering what I’m writing about, that one’s a given)
• Who did it happen to? (Yes, the structure should be ‘To whom did it happen?’, to avoid the preposition at the end of the sentence, but I’m making the point stylistically by putting the question word first.)

If I can answer those six questions, I have my story. Because it’s history, things can be open to interpretation (especially the ‘why’ question), so the important thing there is to look at the evidence and make sure that I have information to back up my interpretation. And look at the evidence which suggests the opposite: why am I rejecting one particular view in favour of another?

Obviously these questions can be used to develop points further – particularly ‘why’. Why did an event happen at that particular location, rather than elsewhere? Why at that particular time? Why were particular characters involved?

Once you have the answers and enough of a background (because events don’t take place in a vacuum – there are factors which lead up to the event, and consequences afterwards), then you’re ready to tell the tale.

That's how I do my Halsgrove books. This also holds true for my Breedon books. With Norwich: Street by Street I looked at every street (including the ‘lost’ ones) within the old city walls. How did it get its name, who lived there, what events happened and when, where/what are the significant buildings on the street… and of course ‘why’ to fill out all the details. To find out the answers, I pored over old maps and trade directories, and I was able to pin down former names of roads as well as when the little yards and courts on the main streets were ‘lost’. I also walked every inch of every street, to check I had the physical details right. This involved a considerable amount of research and I think people will find it useful for decades to come (and it probably shows that I’m very proud of that one!).

The Norfolk Almanac of Disasters is basically stories of big events (fire, floods, shipwrecks, extreme weather), formatted as a calendar. What happened, when did it happen (I formatted that day by day, and within that year by year), where did it happen, who was involved, how did it happen, why did it happen?

As for crafting the book itself: each chapter or section is similar to writing an article. You need an intro (giving your thesis for that section, i.e. ‘tell them what you’re going to tell them’), the main body (usually told chronologically, i.e. tell them the story and show the evidence for your thesis), and a conclusion (i.e. ‘tell them what you’ve told them’ – a brief summary, preferably including one very telling piece of evidence you’ve kept back from the body of the story that will support your argument).

Always remember your audience when you’re writing. What are they expecting from your book? (This will be in your original pitch to the editor – what can you give your reader? What makes your book different from books that are already published on the same or similar topics?) Deliver on your promises, keep it simple and edit out the frills (aka introspection and waffling, and cut the jargon unless it’s extremely well known to your audience.

I’d also suggest reading Gordon Wells’ book ‘How to Write Non-Fiction Books’ – I think it’s out of print now, but if you can find it in your library or a second-hand bookshop, it’s very good.

yeehah moment

Current work: Modern Heat (need to get some done today)
Listening to: Corelli (yup, not in good mood)
Reading: Crazy for You, Jennifer Crusie (enjoying so far)

Kids really enjoyed Night at the Museum 2 yesterday. Good SFX and Hank Azariah was hilarious as Kahmunrah – Mr Evil who’s camp and has a lisp. Steve Coogan was excellent, too. Sure, the plot’s a bit thin, but suspend the disbelief and it’s good entertainment.

Also had lunch out; signed a few books as we happened to be near Jarrold’s; and opened son’s first current account (he’s currently feeling VERY grown up).

Spent the evening watching BGT with daughter. Not the best show (some of it was plain awful) but she wanted to see it and have a cuddle, bless.

This morning, I toddled over to Romantic Times to see if the July reviews were up. (Yes, I know. Never, ever read reviews when you’re not feeling at the top of your bounce, because it’s harder to ignore less-than-positive comments. Stupid, stupid. But I’m not a subscriber, so I can only see the rating. And mine said 4.5. Just out of curiosity – not out of expectation, because I haven’t had one yet – I did a search on top picks… and my name came up. Once I find out for sure that I’m not deluding myself, I will be doing a happy dance about it.)

(Hmm. That came across as a bit whiny. Sorry. Crows in evidence this morning, probably because I haven’t done as much as I would’ve liked so far this week.)

Edit: have removed the word 'potential'. (Thanks to my lovely fellow Modern Heat author Heidi Rice for filling me in.)

The key phrase: "Every aspect is spot-on, from thesmoking-hot pair to the sensual step-by-step buildup as attraction turns to love."

Colour me happy.

Rainy half term

Current work: Modern Heat (well, might get some done today)
Listening to: not right now as am the only one up
Reading: next on TBA

Didn't do much yesterday, other than nag DH to fit a blackout blind to our room, because the sun blazes through the (lined) curtains at 5am. I'm a lark so normally that would be fine (yay, the prospect of two extra hours' work at my best time of day), but when you live with an owl who refuses to turn the TV/light off before 11.30 (and even that takes much nagging from the lark), it means sleep deprivation and grumpiness. The blind helped a lot this morning - though he'd sneakily closed the window, and it was really muggy overnight. This morning, as the saying goes, Mummy has a a headache. Fresh air would deal with it but, as it's pouring, dog and kids would protest at the idea of walkies. So today is paracetamol for breakfast.

As it's so damp, I'm planning to take the children to the cinema today. They were torn between Coralline 3D (which I think will give daughter nightmares) or Night at the Museum 2. Then lunch out. Might visit the Castle Museum afterwards.

Apols if I sound a bit flat. The situation with my dad isn't so good right now - not saying more out of respect to his privacy, but let's say my eyes have really been opened on the subject of dementia, and my hat goes off to people who care 24/7. (A good friend has sat me down and given me a stern talking-to - thank you to her for that - and I'm going to start call-screening and dealing with his calls after I've done whatever needs to be done that day. Harsh? I might have said so a year ago, but now I know it's the sensible way to deal with a difficult and upsetting situation.)

Glass half-full: I do have things to look forward to, this week. A whole week with the kids (and I like my children as well as love them); a trip to Colchester for book purposes (I have a list of locations to photograph there); and picking up my new car at the end of the week (DH and the kids are running a book on whether I'll drive it home or wuss out of it). Plus I'm seeing my bestest friend and bestest family on Sunday, so that'll be just lovely.

I did two craft posts on research, last week. Does anyone want to know how I tie it all together and write the book? If so, let me know and I'll do a craft post later in the week.

Let it shine...

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: John Martyn (DH's car has, um, limited choice - he's currently on a John Martyn fest, so John Martyn it is!)
Reading: next on TBA

We’ve been really lucky with the weather, this bank holiday weekend. I’ve been working (and the book’s flowing nicely at the moment – hope I haven’t jinxed it by saying that!) but also going out and about with the family.

Admittedly some of that’s been work, too – research trips. One was to Hethel, to visit the old thorn (which is also one of the smallest nature reserves in the country); as it was just behind the church, we did a teensy bit of churchcrawling. In this part of the world, a square 11th-century tower is a bit unusual (they’re usually round).

There was also a stunning 17th-century alabaster monument I couldn’t resist. (He's wearing lawyer's robes.)

Sunday was a lazyish day. And I knew the azaleas would be out at one of my favourite places (which happens to be in one of the new nonfics as well, and I really needed a new updated pic).

This is Blickling Hall, the finest Jacobean house in the country. Actually, we didn’t wander through the house yesterday, just the garden. I wanted to go last week, when the bluebells were out, but it was rainy and DH wasn’t in the mood. This week, it was just lovely. The wisteria looked stunning (and oh for a corner of a garden like this, for writing purposes).

The azaleas were out. This is my youngest flower - dreadful pun intended. Eldest had his eyes shut, or he'd be there too.

The sky was so blue that the lake looked fantastic.

(My RNA-shortlisted book, Sold to the Highest Bidder, features a lake that looks remarkably like this.)

Both kids like Blickling as much as DH and I do. Madam summed it up as 'a place that makes you feel all warm inside'. And I have to admit that there’s something magical about the place. Lying on the grass in front of the lake (well, a bit further back, where it’s cleaner and the geese haven’t, um, marked their territory) with DH as a pillow, drowsing in the sun… Now that’s a perfect afternoon.

In the evening, DH insisted on a barbecue. Daughter was desperate to watch Britain's Got Talent afterwards, and as it’s half term we’re allowing her to stay up late and enjoy it. It was good entertainment (well, I had to walk out during Nick Hell's spot - a bit too much for me), until the very end. when I think most parents watching that probably had the same ‘arrgh’ moment as I did.

Poor little Natalie really needed someone with her on stage when the judges cast the final vote. The moment when the presenter asked her how she felt and the camera trained on her as she burst into tears – that was NOT good television, in my view. Just mean. Why on earth didn’t one of them just give her a cuddle and quietly help her off stage without the cameras? For pity’s sake, there were two of them, and she was ten years old, on a huge stage, with millions of people viewing at home, just as her dreams had been burst. A little kindness would’ve gone a long way. She did so well to get that far (and if she'd performed a song that showcased her voice better, she probably would’ve gone in to the semis, which made the result even sadder). I could imagine my own child in that position and it was just heartbreaking.

The three I’d most like to see in the final are singers Susan Boyle and Jamie Pugh, and saxophonist Julian Smith. It'd be so wonderful if the judges could break the rules and give all three of them their moment in front of the Queen. I hope they all get wonderful recording deals. (Sorry, dancers. I know you work incredibly hard and an awful lot goes into choreography; but dance doesn't move me the way music does.)

I certainly wouldn’t have the nerve to get up and sing or play in front of all those people, so hats off to all of them for giving it a go.

Craft post: writing nonfiction, part 2

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: Ocean Colour Scene, Moseley Shoals
Reading: next on TBA

So what do I use as my sources? Quite a lot, actually, and I tend to layer them – some give me the bare bones, others give me finer detail.

• Pevsner is brilliant for architectural info – who built it and when – and might flag up something I want to look at further (person or event)
• The English Heritage website again gives me bare bones and flags up things I’ll want to research further
• The Victoria County History (depending on who wrote it – some are better than others) will give me some information about the religious foundations – who founded it and when, for which order, and a note of bishops’ visitations (the bishop visited once every seven years and talked to every person in the house to see that all was well – his list of injunctions or orders flags up problems faced by the inmates. Helps if you can read Latin or at least do a rough translation. The Camden Society has also published some records of visitations, but note they are in Latin and there are no parallel translations)
• The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle – Capgrave’s chronicle, Matthew Paris, Roger of Wendover and some of the others can be useful, too
• Domesday book (useful for pre-Norman buildings)
• Wikipedia (and yes, I know it’s not always accurate – but as long as you doublecheck your facts it’s useful for a quick overview)
• The website of the attraction itself – might give me the bare bones of the history
• Maps – not just present day, but historical ones. You can see the impact of your particular building on the landscape (see local studies/records office, but there are some online)
• Recent monographs (Phillimore has a wonderful series of town and county histories) - again these might flag up things I want to research further
• Modern tourist guides – better still if they have pictures so I can double-check against my list what I’m looking for.
• 19th-century tourist guides – back in the nineteenth century, when improvements to roads/the beginning of the railways made it easier for people to travel and play tourist, a new market for writers developed: tourist guides. Some of my favourites are by Thomas Kitson Cromwell: ‘An Excursion through the County of Norfolk’ is utterly fab. He also did a Suffolk version, and an Essex one. Word of warning. These are NOT CHEAP. We are talking three figures, and DH had a hissy fit when he saw the receipt for my Norfolk copy. (‘You spent more on one book than you did on that expensive Radley handbag?’ Answer: ‘Two volumes, actually, but it’s a research expense – and you can only touch them if you put cotton gloves on or you’ll damage the paper.’) (Yeah. Kate prissy. I'm serious. You touch my special books only if you have clean, dry hands, and I would prefer you to use gloves and/or acid free paper.) There are some 18th-century ones and they’re even more interesting. Where do you find them? Local studies library – or ABE if you’re feeling rich. Note also plagiarism was very common in those days, so you may find the same information repeated in antiquarian monographs. (Plagiarism is illegal nowadays. See note on copyright below.)
• William Andrews’s ‘Bygone’ series (these are from the late 19th century; miscellany-type books and fascinating)
• For the spooky stuff, books written by folklore experts – in East Anglia, I’ve been using Enid Porter; there’s also Westwood and Simpson’s ‘Lore of the Land’, which covers the whole of the UK and is utterly fascinating. Again, it's a springboard to research further: I do NOT copy things down wholesale because it's wrong. wrong. wrong to do that
• Pamphlets and broadsides (found in local studies centres)
• Guidebooks (modern)
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
• Historical directories may tell you more about buildings or people/events (I like White’s 1845 edition – you can view some online at the University of Leicester’s project, here)
• Newspapers (you can see digitised copies of The Times from 1785-1985 online, and also some local newspapers from the 19th century – check with your county library service to see if they have a subscription to the database)
• Other sources include diaries, letters, scrapbooks and trial records (the latter are often printed verbatim in 19th-century newspapers), and antiquarian monographs (on people, places etc – usually 19th century). There can all be found at your local records office/local heritage centre

And this is just desk research. I also visit the places I write about. It gives you a different perspective.

Note that not all places will have sources with detailed information. My Halsgrove books are not comprehensive gazetteers for this reason: I’ve simply included the places with the most interesting stories.

But anyway… that’s where I start. And that is why I have to be fished out of the library if I sneak in research time while DH and the kids are shopping (or, oh bliss, when he took them to the Spongebob movie – I was very happy to pay for tickets and popcorn because I loathe cartoons where they yell ‘arrrrgh’ every two seconds). ‘Just an hour’ tends to slip into rather more than that. And then I’ll come across something else that sparks off another idea or goes into my ‘not relevant to this but it will definitely be useful in future’ file.

COPYRIGHT

This is really important. Be aware of the law of copyright. There’s no copyright in facts (eg William I reigned from 1066 to 9 Sept 1067), but there is copyright in the way that facts are presented. If you quote someone, make sure that it’s fair usage or that you have written permission to use it and make sure you credit your source properly. (Society of Authors has a good publication on copyright.) Basically, if in doubt, CHECK.

Ditto photographs – and you may need to pay repro fees.

Note that costs of permission/repro fees are tax-deductible. Sometimes, your library will do a deal where your publisher gives them a number of copies of your books instead of paying repro fees (this is a win-win situation, especially if your library is part of the PLR sample - sadly, my libary isn't).

And that's it. Hope this gives you an idea of how I do it, but do ask if you have questions!

What makes a great series romance?

You might already have seen this - but if you haven't, here are some wise words from Randall Toye, Director Global Series at Harlequin.

"The key focus is a good story, well told. The basic building blocks? Character, Structure, Pacing, Payoff. Easy to list. Not so easy to deliver. As one author beautifully articulated: "Just because they're easy to read doesn't mean they're easy to write!" Quite the opposite. The series romance, like a sonnet, is a beautiful, disciplined, elegant, and demanding creative form."

So there you go. The full article is here on Isabel Swift's blog - and there are a lot of other interesting posts there, too. Lots of food for thought...

Craft post: writing nonfiction, part 1

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: Julian Lloyd Webber, Unexpected Songs (mainly for Hushabye Mountain – love the chord sequence but I couldn’t work it out. Genius guitar teacher helped me out. Except now I have to deliver and it’s in position three – and I h-a-t-e barre chords)
Reading: next on TBA

Diane asked me to do this ages back: apologies for the loooong delay. Deadlines and stuff.

Anyway. How do I go about writing one of my nonfics?

TOPIC AND SCOPE
First of all, I need to decide on my topic and its scope (and then do the proper outline/synopsis for the publisher... take that bit as read).

My current one for Halsgrove is the third in my ‘Scandals, Sieges and Spooks’ series; last year my Norfolk one was published, this year the Suffolk one comes out, and the one I’m working on now (to be published in 2010) is Essex. The book tells the stories behind the ruined castles and abbeys/priories in the county: when each was built, who lived there, any scandals (which could be anything from embezzlement through to murder), sieges (obviously this mainly involves castles), and spooks (ghost stories, but I’ve stretched this to include fairies, alleged witchcraft and supernatural elements).

PLANNING RESEARCH TRIPS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
So I know the topic and the scope. Next step is finding the locations of the castles, abbeys and priories. The obvious thing here is to look on a reasonably detailed map of the county and list them. I’ll check this list against

• the English Heritage website;
• a list in the Victoria County History (which lists all the religious foundations and castles, as they were in about 1902-10); and
• Pevsner.

As well as checking the location, I’ll also check what’s still physically there (Pevsner and the EH website will give me the best idea there). I know that some will be just earthworks (for example, Haughley castle in Suffolk); others will have remains that are in the structure of churches or private homes (which may or may not be visible from the road; and the private homes or may not have open days); and other will be ruins or tourist attractions that are open to the public. Some might have no visible remains but the village sign will have a carving of what the building once looked like (as in Lidgate castle – course, if the sign’s been taken down for restoration, as it was when I visited Lidgate, you’re a bit stuck *g*). Others might be connected to something interesting in the church (e.g. the stained glass window at Wormingford telling the story of the dragon, or pew carvings of St Edmund’s head guarded by a wolf).

Next, I plot them on a map. This means photocopying a map and marking the sites on the photocopy with a highlighter pen so I can see what’s where. The idea is to maximise the use of my time by visiting several places that are close together – for example, when I did the Norfolk book, it would have been insane to visit Castle Rising in the far west of the county on the same day as visiting Burgh Castle in the far east of the county. But to take photographs at Castle Acre and West Acre on the same trip (when they’re about 4 miles apart) was much more sensible, and I stopped off at Dereham on the way because it was convenient.

How do I know what to photograph? Quick check on the English Heritage website (they sometimes have pics), and also search Google Pictures (often people take photographs for Geograph; and it also flags up if there’s a website which will give me more detail for background information). I’ll also check websites of the nearest church and the villages themselves (which tells me about stained glass and village signs).

So far, so good. But if you rush in to taking the pics without checking you have all the info, you could miss something. For example, I know I want a photograph of Colchester Castle. But I also know that there was a siege which means I also need a pic of Siege House in East Street, and a pic of the obelisk for Lucas and Lisle. If I’d just gone off to Colchester the day after I did my location list, I’d have had to revisit Colchester to take the other two pictures. Given that it takes me two hours to get to Essex and the trip has to be made at weekends (and/or school hols if DH has time off) so I can share the driving, it makes sense to do as much research as possible before we go, so I can make the most of photographic opportunities.

DOING THE RESEARCH
So how do I find out my information?

I could be mean here and just say go and buy my book How to Research Local History (which, btw, has had stellar reviews – there’s lots of info in bite-size chunks and it’s sensibly organised. If you want to get started quickly, that’s your kind of book. If you want something more ponderous, then it isn’t).

But I’ll be nice and tell you more tomorrow...

Happy birthday to my not-so-little boy

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: Fleetwood Mac, Rumours
Reading: next on TBA

Today is the day Son has been waiting for. The day when he turns 12 and I agree to measure his height and admit that yes, he is taller than I am.

Strange to think that twelve years and one day ago, DH was driving me to hospital, ready to be induced. He nearly crashed the car when I informed him that, actually, I was in labour already, because I’d just worked out why I’d woken up with a stomach ache in the middle of the night - and I was having contractions about ten minutes apart...

Note I don’t say twelve years ago today. Oh, no. Son was quite happy where he was and refused to come out. So, 42 hours and 11 epidural top-ups after my labour started (yes, REALLY - from stupid o'clock Monday morning to Tuesday evening), I had a caesarean section.

I remember that first night, when DH had finally gone home. I couldn’t get out of bed at that point, so the very kind midwife tucked my baby beside me for a cuddle. I remember how quiet it was, and how amazed I felt that we’d produced this little life. And how I kept looking at him to check he was really there and I wasn’t dreaming the whole thing. (I also remember DH putting the TENS machine on my back. Never, EVER, let a man with a remote-control habit anywhere near the controls for a TENS machine. 'What does this do? Oops, sorry!' Arrgh.)

Son has brought a lot of joy into my life. He’s given me grey hairs and a bit of worry, too, but I guess that’s what kids are meant to do. And he’s growing into a lovely young man – very kind, very bright, and a bit eccentric (he gets that one from both parents). Not to mention a cheeky grin. (Ten years later... it hasn't changed much from this.)

I’m incredibly proud to be his mum.

Happy birthday to my eldest.

RNA New Writers’ Award Winner

Current work: Modern Heat
Listening to: John Butler Trio
Reading: next on TBA

Busy today (guitar lesson plus parents’ evening plus sorting out stuff with Dad’s current and somewhat prolonged blip – ah, the joys of Parkinsonian dementia) so instead of inane ramblings from moi here’s a press release from the RNA.

I love being able to report good news like this – when someone’s chased a dream and caught it. (All right, so I want to be a fairy godmother when I grow up. Just having trouble sourcing that magic wand right now.)

Anyway, big congrats to Allie Spencer.

Ex-Barrister Wins New Writers’ Award with Romantic Novel set in Chambers


The winner of the Romantic Novelists’ Association Joan Hessayon New Writer’s Award has clearly taken the adage “write what you know” to heart. With Tug of Love, published by Little Black Dress, Allie Spencer plumbed her career as a specialist in matrimonial law.

Her heroine is divorce lawyer Lucy. When Lucy meets Mark, it is love at first sight and would be the perfect match if his scary ex-wife, the PM’s divorce and an old flame don’t all get in the way.

Announcing the winner, judge and Chairman of the RNA, Catherine Jones, commented: “Laugh-out-loud funny, clever, and set in chambers by someone who obviously knows what she is talking about, this novel is sassy and believable with a wonderfully flawed heroine and a great supporting cast. It was a joy from first to last.”

The award was presented by bestselling author Katie Fforde at the RNA’s summer party on 13th May.

Allie felt “completely overwhelmed” and said she first got the idea for Tug of Love when she was a pupil barrister sitting outside a court in London in a very cramped waiting area. At the time, Allie had no idea she would abandon law for marriage and a career as a romantic novelist. Nor did she imagine her second full-length book would be snapped up by a publisher and go on to win an award.

Allie lives in Salisbury with her husband and two young sons. Her idols are authors PG Wodehouse and Douglas Adams and she nurtures a secret desire to be a stand-up comedian.

Meanwhile, Allie is thrilled to have won her award. “The RNA has been supremely supportive and nurturing of me, so this is extra special. Also the judges are both very experienced and successful writers so their vote of confidence counts for a lot.”

The RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme, which is generously sponsored by Dr David Hessayon in memory of his late wife Joan, who was a longstanding member, gives unpublished authors of romantic fiction the opportunity to join the Association and submit a full-length manuscript for appraisal. Promising manuscripts, if deemed ready, are passed to a suitable professional. The Joan Hessayon New Writers’ Scheme Award is given to the best of the novels accepted and published that year.