Fortuitous Research

I love doing research, not just because you get to learn something new, but also because of the interesting tangents it can send your book in. I’m working on Nearly Almost Somebody rewrites at the moment (ready for the big launch in Feb – eek!) and I have a scene where Zoe is in a coffee shop. To set the scene, I gave this description:

After shedding her mac and taking out her book, Zoe folded herself onto an oak chair and sank back against a purple velvet scatter cushion. All credit to Mr Coffee Shop, the place was a little oasis of boho class. Zoe smiled at the three blackboards hanging side by side on the wall: Eat, Listen, Ponder. Under the first were the daily specials, under the second was trackl ist of the eclectic music they’d be playing, and under the latter was a quote:

Oh, better come up with a quote of the day then. Off I trot to Google and since Zoe has gone to the coffee shop to see a bloke she really likes, I type in “Quote About Love”. And since I can’t be bothered to trawl through websites, I select Images and the first one I see had this quote:

I can’t begin to tell you how perfect this quote is for Zoe, Libby and the whole NAS plot. It’s so freaking perfect I’m thinking of using it as the epigraph. How cool is that an little hunt for a window-dressing quote could give me the thread that ties the book together? Cx

Get some Sex, Drugs & Social Media in your life with #Forfeit. It’s available from Amazon for just £1.99 / $2.99 or totally FREE with Kindle Unlimited.

How bad is bad…

So I’m working on some minor rewrites for Nearly Almost Somebody and I have Zoe (she’s a bit of a one) thinking this:

“Besides, going on a date when she was still saddle sore from shagging a different guy the night before was low, even by Zoe’s standards.”

Is it low? It’s not something I’ve ever done, but then Zoe’s a little less inhibited than me (and most people I should think).

What do you think? Cx

SoberOctober: Day #29 – My Font

When designforwriters.com came up with the cover design for #Forfeit one of the things I leapt on for my brand was the font. It totally works with my name and adds a level of frivolity and quirk.

Look who else is using ‘DaftBrush’…

If it’s good enough for me, then it’s good enough for raising millions!

Laters

SoberOctober: Day #27-28 – Fan Art

I always considered my writing to be a selfish thing – purely because of the time it distracts me from my husband and daughter. I did it for me and being perfectly honest, if they asked me not to do it, well, I’m not sure I could give it up. A month sans vin… meh, okay. A month without writing… *palpitations*

But when I finally published #Forfeit and the paperbacks arrived, my daughter was blown away that I’d made them. It might be selfish, but it’s also showing my daughter that if you have a dream, then you make it happen.

And it’s so cool to know my little girl is proud of me. She’s helped make swag for my readers and street team – it’s not child exploitation, honest! She has a #Forfeit keyring on her school bag. And every now and agan, she’ll rustle up a picture for me. This is from the other day. A reminder of who’s my biggest fan…

Daughter_FanArt

The first piece of fan art I ever received was from BoneTags, a Wattpad reader. I will treasure this forever because when Moira shyly told me she’d done a drawing of Daisy and Xander, I couldn’t believe it. I was astounded people were reading my books, let alone loving them so much they’d be inspired to create art for me. I love Wattpad for creating such a supportive network.

Have you ever received any fan art – or made any?

Oh, weight = x – 1 (but I feel okay)

Before and After? Do you know, I might brave some photos when this is all over…

Laters

SoberOctober: Day #20-26 – The End Is In Sight

Wow, I haven’t posted for a while about my sobriety. Update needed. Well, I still haven’t touched any booze (so long as you don’t count Becks Blue which has less than 0.05% alcohol in it!) but with only five days left to go, I am preparing for November 1st.

I’ll admit to purchasing a case of red from Laithwaites, BUT I have absolutely no intention of getting hammered. I’ll no doubt end up way too tipsy, but I suspect it’ll be on two glasses, not a bottle. We’ll have steak and dauphinoise potatoes (our fave Saturday night dinner) and share a bottle of Malbec. I’ll savour every sip, not sink it like it’s beer, and I’ll have a glass of San Pellegrino water with each glass of wine. And that’ll be it. One bottle of wine will be opened, not two. And I’ll be happy with that.

I’m looking forward to that first sip. A lot. I’m not looking forward to a hangover. Or regrets. I’ve had a month of no regrets – I don’t want to go back to them.

In other news, concern has been growing over my new cheese habit. I’ve been replacing my empty wine calories with cheese, crackers and assorted nuts (brazil, hazel and cashew usually). All very yummy, but what if when I start having the odd glass of wine again, I still have the cheese and biscuits? I’ll be the size of a house in no time. Noooo.

Fortuitously, my cheese habit got knocked on the head yesterday when I took my DD to see Box Trolls. Right now, I’d rather vomit over my own head than eat cheese again. Every cloud…

Now all I need is to get get my writing head back on.

Laters

SoberOctober: Day #18-19 – Why Readers Rock 2

The inspiration behind my last post ‘Why Readers Rock’ came from Alyssa. It never fails to amaze me how much people will do for you, people you’ve never met.

One of the most totes awesome is Alyssa. She read my books on Wattpad – I didn’t really know her on there, but she contacted me via Twitter and said if I ever needed a proofer, it’s her day job. Um, how quickly can I snap your hand off? And the girl did a sterling job of proofing 138,000 words for FREE, so you can bet your knickers I’ll be sending her Nearly Almost Somebody when it’s ready too (whether she likes it or not!).

So Alyssa was already a superhero in my eyes, but then when #Forfeit had been out a few weeks, I get an email telling me this:

She orders copies for her friends so they don’t have to pay horrendous postal charges. How cool is that? So today’s post is to say, THANK YOU, ALYSSA.

Love you

SoberOctober: Day #17 – Motivated

One of the things I’ve adored about my writing journey is connecting with readers. It didn’t really happen until I joined Wattpad, but over 20,000 people have read both Forfeit and Distraction – and I’ve connected with a vast number of them.

Some comment on the books – to crit, to praise, to laugh, to vent.
Some message me to say how I inspire them – which never fails to blow me away.
Some stay with me – they join my street team, they become friends.

The lovely Maia in Norway is drawing me maps of the village in my books – like Jilly Cooper has. I adore those.
Amber, a blogger has changed her profile pic to a photo of her holding a copy of #Forfeit.
And Cynthia, my friend in the US, sent me a pic she found – saying it was perfect for Libby. I agreed and made this very rough teaser. And boy is it rough. I’ve so tampered with it that you can’t see the ballet shoes on the ledge beside her. Perfectly Libby.

NAS is coming soon!

SoberOctober: Day #16 – Somebody

Today, I’m getting in the Nearly Almost Somebody zone. So here’s some music – the inspiration behind the Somebody in the title…

SoberOctober: Day #15 – Procrastinating my ass off

When I embarked on this sobriety challenge, I thought I had the most marvellous activity to keep me busy on the dark nights, sans vin: editing the hell out of Nearly Almost Somebody. The reality has turned out somewhat different.

Each night, I sit down to get cracking – and by cracking I mean map out my existing chapters in a spreadsheet so I can see how many need a lot of work and many need a mere tweak. I started doing this over two weeks ago. I’ve mapped out fifteen of forty-three chapters. It wouldn’t be so bad if this ‘mapping out’ was in depth, insightful and making it so I could whizz through the edits in a flash. But most of the mapping consists of nothing more than, “Maggie is murdered,” or “Libby gets poisoned.” I’ve written more in this blog post that I have in my ‘mapping.’

But this isn’t like me. I’m the girl who typed 210,000 words in three months. I don’t do writers’ block. But I don’t really think it’s the lack of booze causing the problem – not that a glass of room temp chardonnay would exactly hurt the situation. No, I think I’m just overwhelmed with the scale of the project. I know the answer is to just get on with it, to type anything, but instead, my evenings disappear in whirl of inactivity. I’m procrastinating with the best of them. I’ve even procrastinated over my procrastination – to such an extent that I now have three categories to my non-writing behaviour:

Guilt-free, Karma-building Procrastination – this involves doing something that doesn’t help your project directly, but will one day reap rewards. Currently, I’m waiting for Natalie Martin to send me the rest of her second novel. I alpha read for her; she alpha reads for me. This istime well spent. Sadly, until she sends me more to read, I’m stuck on with two less worthy levels of non-writing activites.

Guilt-neutral Procrastination – completing a usually tedious task (ironing, pairing socks, jogging on a treadmill) but doing it whilst mulling over your plot. You might be doing anything bar typing, but it’ll all be used when you do get back to your laptop.

Guilt-ridden, You’ll never make it as a Professional Writer Procrastination – you know… Facebook. Cat videos. Those pointless quizzes. I did one to find out if I was colour-blind today. I’m not. Shock.

16 days to go. I’ve never wanted a glass of wine more in my life. I thought this would get easier as the month went on, not harder. BUT then again, I’m going to bed sober and I won’t have a hangover tomorrow.

Laters.

ps. In case you’re wondering, this post is Guilt-neutral Procrastination.

The Novel Previously Known as Distraction has a new title!!

Last week I admitted defeat and accepted that Distraction ought to have a new title – there are too many books out there with the same title. After a brainstorming session over a bottle of wine brought nothing more original than The Broken Ballerina, I went to Twitter and Facebook for help. One of the first to jump to the challenge was my friend Liz. And this girl’s got previous too. She came up with the name for Kat French’s Undertaking Love.

Bearing in mind that the Novel Previously Known as Distraction is about an ex-Ballerina living in a Cumbrian village, Liz came up with the fabulous title of…

Swan Lake District

*smiles* If you’d like to sample more of Liz’s fabulous humour, go check out her book Molly Ringwald’s Cardigan on wattpad.com.

Okay, so Swan Lake District isn’t the title I’m going for, but Liz did come up with a whole raft of ideas, including the suggestion that I might use a phrase from the book. Which is what I did. And reading through the odd snippet, I found my inspiration and so the title was born…

Couldn’t have done it without you, Liz. And to say thank you, I’ll pop a copy of #Forfeit in the post.