the best part of a book...

Current work: new Medical plus new Riva idea and a couple of other things...
Listening to: Peter Gabriel
Reading: Milly Johnson, Here Come the Girls (very witty, very warm – enjoying hugely)

Have finished boring everyone with Rome, now :o) And I was going to post this morning, but Blogger wouldn’t let me. Hopefully it will work now.

Today the sky has been blue, my revisions are in (ha – waiting for them to come back with yet more changes, sigh), and I have been working on a new book. Or so.

The first is the next book with a deadline, i.e. the new Medical. I’ve scrapped the beginning and rewritten it, but as the deadline isn’t until the middle of next month that hasn’t sent me into that much of a panic. Although I’m a planner and know exactly what I’m doing, the plan is fluid at this point, and if I get a better idea for getting the hero and heroine between the turning points then I can go with it.

Then there’s the follow-up book – it’s a little bit out of the box and my ed might regret saying yes to the very scrappy outline. But then I caught this fabulous programme about Iceland on BBC4 and it’s just what my hero would do, walk up a volcano. Actually, I’d love to write that one now but I can’t because the stuff that happens in the current one has to happen first, and I guess readers don’t really like working backwards.

I’m also playing with my Riva idea; however, the one I wanted to set in Rome probably isn’t going to work for my editor (at least, not how it is at the moment). As it’s hopefully going to be my 50th title for M&B (though I don’t take anything for granted any more since the Venice book was rejected last year), I’d like it to be something special.

Which is where the third book comes in (or is that #4, as I’m sort of thinking about the follow-up Med I mentioned above?). This one is set in my birth county. (Glamorous? Essex? Actually, yes, because we’re not talking about the media view of the county.)

Planning the book is the stage I like best, when everything is possible and fluid and I can just go with my imagination, be totally wild and then rein it back to something approaching, um, ‘normal’. But I like the wild stuff. At the moment I’m thinking wolves and Boudicca. (I know, I know. If I ring my ed and tell her, she will laugh – but the expression on her face will say ‘that’s going the same way as the reindeer and the elephants, so be kind to yourself and don’t do it’. I might be 100 miles away and not be able to see her face, but I’ve had that conversation face to face enough times to know That Look!)

And so then I went to the library to do some research, and met my friend Kate for lunch. She’s up for the Joan Hessayon Award next Wednesday, so I have my fingers firmly crossed for her. (Oh, lunch? Salmon fishcakes and salad in M&S Kitchen. And we're eating Italian tonight.)

Have a nice weekend!