I'm Visiting the Pink Heart Society...

Secrets of the Rich and Famous is being released (albeit in a small way!) this week (7th December), hurray! It is part of the Mills & Boon Direct to Consumer programme this month plus if you are in the UK there are limited print copies available on Amazon UK. The eBook is also available from the Mills & Boon website (see my blog sidebar for links). I will let you know when I have dates for wider publication.

I'm over at the Pink Heart Society blog today, sharing my call story. Come and keep me company if you have time!

The Next Big Thing!

I've been tagged in a blog chain by the lovely (and recently signed) Rae Rivers - read about her Next Big Thing here. Not that I need an excuse to blather on about my first release lol! So without further ado...

What is the title of your book?
Secrets of the Rich and Famous

How did you come by the idea?
After finalling in New Voices I was lucky enough to be given the chance to work with a M&B editor to develop a story from scratch. I was asked to submit three story ideas and the RIVA team picked the one they thought was the strongest. I got the original idea when I saw a news story about executive house sitters - people who get to live in gorgeous houses at a fraction of the rent in return for keeping the place occupied and secure. I wondered what would happen if you were using a posh place like that as a cover story for something and then the real owner reappeared, wanting it back. That is essentially the beginning of Secrets...

What genre does your book fall under?
Contemporary Romance

Which actors would you choose to play your characters if it were a movie?
As I mentioned in my last post, Alex was always based on Alex O'Loughlin, who plays Steve McGarrett in Hawaii Five-0. I didn't really choose an actress for Jen from the start but I think Kate Hudson would be good.

What is a brief synopsis of your book?
Jen is a village journalist trying to get a foot in the door at a top women's magazine by pitching an article that investigates whether an ordinary girl with a high street wardrobe and an overdraft can land a Chelsea millionaire. Since a man like that would immediately think gold-digger, she needs a makeover on a budget and a fictional new life. Jen has bagged herself a Chelsea apartment to house sit, passing it off as her own, and is scuppered when the real owner, Alex, returns, needing the property back as a bolt hole from a media scandal. Having flown halfway round the world to escape the press, he isn't impressed to find one of them has moved in with him. Jen sees him as a fantastic source of information for her project and when she ropes him into helping her, sparks begin to fly.

Will your book be self-published or traditional?
It will be traditionally published by Mills & Boon RIVA.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I'd been targeting M&B for a while and doing well in New Voices really made me more determined than ever. I began to take my writing more seriously and I was determined to grab the chance to work with an editor and throw everything at it. Thankfully it paid off!

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
As this book was written with editorial guidance, I submitted three chapters at a time and then received feedback and revisions on them which I did before proceeding with the next part of the story. This kept me on track and avoided major rewrites/ revisions at the end. Chapters 7-9 took about 3 months including time waiting for feedback and then I wrote the final three chapters in two weeks! By then they'd offered me a contract and asked for the end to be completed quickly. I nearly had a meltdown over it, but the pressure must have done me good because they accepted the final part without revisions.

What about your book might pique the reader's interest?
I think (hope) it's a fun story that will make people smile. And it's set at Christmas time in Chelsea - twinkly lights and frosty pavements - what's not to like!

For the next author in the chain, check out the fabulous (and also newly signed!) Christy McKellen's blog to find out about her Next Big Thing!

My First Cover!

Here it is! My first ever cover for Secrets of the Rich & Famous - I can't describe the unreality of looking at it and seeing my name on it! It's an old-style cover since RIVA is still in its relaunch stage until the end of the year, but I don't care! I'm so delighted with it and I couldn't wait to share!

Here is the back blurb...

"Can she fake it until she makes it?
Join me, journalist Jen Brown (aka Little Miss Ordinary), as I research my next article: can anyone bag a Chelsea millionaire if she looks the part? I'm discovering that the glossy, I-haven't-spent-any-time-on-my-appearance look isn't quick...
To make sure I can fake it with the best of them at the whirlwind of intimidatingly glam Christmas parties, I've blagged myself a secret weapon: the help of genuine billionaire and deliciously gorgeous film director Alex Hammond."

The girl on the cover really looks perfect for my heroine Jen, skinny and blonde, she even looks like she's wearing  fake tan just like Jen does, but interestingly the guy looks nothing like I imagined Alex to look. In my head Alex looks like Alex O'Loughlin (you see, I even gave him the same name!), who plays Steve McGarrett in Hawaii Five-O. Here's a pic on the right in case you haven't seen him.

 But to be honest, they could have put two warthogs on the cover with my name underneath and I would still have been excited! It's the stuff of dreams.

Secrets of the Rich & Famous is due to be released 7th December, but due to the RIVA relaunch it will only get a limited release - it will be part of the UK Mills & Boon Direct To Consumer programme. There will also be a few print copies available on Amazon UK only, click here if you would like one and it will take you there. Hopefully a wider digital release will happen at a later date.

In other news I have emerged from the revisions cave and have pressed SEND on the full MS of The Date Pool. There are likely to be still more revisions but hopefully not horrific ones now, so I am feeling much calmer and am busy catching up on neglected housework and family stuff for a day or two.

Back with a progress report soon!

Nailing Down The Process...

I've hit send on four new story proposals and I'm waiting for feedback on which of these the RIVA team think are suitable to develop. (And crossing everything that at least one of them will hit the mark, it wouldn't be the first time if all four were knocked back). So I thought I'd make use of the waiting time by looking back at what I got right with this last MS that sold, as opposed to the previous stories that didn't achieve those dizzy heights.

I love reading blog posts by authors talking about their 'process'. I adore the idea that there are a list of rules which, if I follow them faithfully, the end result will be a saleable MS. This trait slops over into other areas of my life - I had a shelf full of How-To books on baby rearing. I read Gina Ford and Tracy Hogg, I am a devotee of Dr Christopher Green's Toddler Taming. I wanted to believe that if I followed a set of rules the small one would sleep through the night at six weeks. Some of the rules worked and some didn't (the small one didn't sleep through for MONTHS *grits teeth at memory*). And it's the same with my How-To books about writing. Some of it works for me and some of it doesn't. The trick is to pick out the things that do work.

I thought I'd start with planning, since that is one point that I have nailed down about myself. I am not a pantser. I am in awe of them. How do they manage? How do they know they can sustain their conflict and story for the full 50k? I need to know where I'm going at all times. 

My most recent submission that didn't make a sale was my New Voices entry, Honeymoon With A Stranger, and as I've mentioned before, that story was an example of me starting out as a pantser. I dashed off one chapter because I thought I had an interesting initial hook situation, but I had no idea where the story was going after that. None of that mattered because I didn't expect it to get anywhere in the competition. It placed well in NV because I had no choice but to do some plot development and I had Liz Fielding in the background advising me and helping me brainstorm, but the moment the competition finished and I tried to complete the MS, it got harder and harder to continue with every chapter. I floundered around, not knowing where I was heading, my conflicts weren't strong enough, and as a result the story was rejected by M&B. My characters were good, dialogue and humour worked, but the whole thing fell down because it didn't have a decent story that could sustain me through 50k.

So when I started writing Secrets of the Rich and Famous, with editorial guidance, pantsing was out and planning was most definitely in. I did detailed character interviews and I had to submit a detailed story plan to the editor before I wrote so much as a word. It was broken down into twelve stages - I knew what was going to happen in every chapter, I knew how it was going to end. And in producing this plan, I used a plotboard. I hadn't done this before, and I have to admit part of the attraction was the fiddling around with stationery and colour coding - I like all that! This is what my plotboard looked like when I started out.

Pretty bare really. I split it up into five acts, put in lines for the mid-point, turning points and the black moment, and slapped on post-its for scene ideas and roughly where I thought they would fit in.

I planned to update the board as I went along, adding new ideas as they came to me etc, but this picture is also exactly what the board looked like when I finished the story. For some reason I never got round to adding to it and I never really referred to it, it just sat in my spare room. (At one point I hung the washing too close to it on the airer and it got dripped on - hence the pink streak!) 

In conclusion therefore, I could assume that plotboarding just isn't for me. But I know deep down that setting this thing up helped. It helped a lot. It made me visualise how the story played out and it forced me to think about how and where different events and developments happened in my story. And when I actually did get stuck into the writing I didn't have any problems with sagging middles or floundering about what would happen next, like I did with Honeymoon.

So this time round, I will be doing all the five act organising and plotting all over again. I might not plotboard - maybe I will set up a spreadsheet or draw a diagram, I haven't really decided - but I will do something visual to nail the story down before I start writing.

What works for you? Do you plan or do you dive in and pants?

An Update and a Title!

I am just about back down to earth now after a lovely Jubilee weekend of sunshine and celebrating. (There was wine, lots of it!) Before the long weekend my editor put me out of my misery as I waited for an email requesting revisions, or worse rewrites of the last quarter, by informing me they will be accepting the ms without further revisions. I was so relieved that I initially skipped over the last part of the email in which she offered me a contract  for my next two stories. To say I am delighted is an understatement. The DH broke open a bottle of champagne we'd put away years ago for a special occasion - until now there hadn't been one special enough!

I now have a title ....drum roll... 'Secrets of the Rich and Famous'. I'm liking the title lots - it's a good reflection of what happens in the story without being sledgehammer-descriptive. What I don't yet have is a mainstream release date - although I was told December when I got the call, the release is on hold for now while RIVA undergoes a relaunch a bit later this year. Just wait until you see the covers, they are to die for! It is a terrifically exciting time to have joined the line and I can't wait to see how it develops from here.

So that's my news for now. I'm getting back to normal. I've ejected the older kids back to school and I'm in the middle of writing proposals for my next story. I am also trying to nail down all the things I did right this time that I got wrong before - in other words finding my writing process. There's definitely another post in there.

Thanks so much everyone for all the lovely comments I've had. This has been a super happy few weeks for me.