I'm visiting The Pink Heart Society!

I'm at The Pink Heart Society blog today, talking about my writer's workspace. Come and drop by if you have time!

The Proposal Plan's Release Day!!

Today is a super special happy day for me because my first-ever submission is being published (albeit in a small way - it's available in the UK only and via Mills & Boon's Direct to Consumer programme. To buy from Amazon UK, click the sidebar link).

I still find it hard to believe that my little story has finally made it out of the stack of notebooks in my wardrobe!

I would love to see it get a wider outing at some point down the line, but we will have to wait and see. In the meantime...

The Blurb...

How do you get the wedding you've always wanted?

Lucy Telford knows all about heartache - her teenage crush on her friend Gabriel Blake was a crash course in unrequited love - but these days she's determined to make her own happy ending. If her boyfriend won't get down on one knee, she'll just have to ask him herself!

Step one is enlisting Gabriel's help - as an absolute woman-magnet, surely he can give her some tips on becoming irresistible? But Lucy's perfect plan goes awry when she starts wondering if she's asking the right man to walk her down the aisle...

And the Excerpt...

'I've had it up to here!' She indicated a level somewhere above her head. 'I obviously attract commitment-phobic men. And that's why I've come to get your help.'

He stopped in his tracks, halfway to the door, and looked back at her dubiously.

'What do you mean, my help? What can I do?'

'You have loads of girlfriends, right? And you're the most commitment-shy person I know.'

'Well yes...I mean no.' He tried to work out if there was a compliment or an insult in there and decided there was probably both. 'How is this relevant?'

'I've decided to take matters into my own hands,' she said firmly. 'There's no point hanging around waiting for Ed to get his act together. You can advise me on all this kind of thing.'

He raised his eyebrows at her quizzically.

'Where I'm going wrong, of course. Why he isn't falling over himself to get a ring on my finger.' She warmed to her subject. 'You must have a wealth of experience just waiting to be tapped. You can show me how to be totally irresistible to him.'

He thought for a moment she might actually be going mad. Hangover forgotten, he barged into the kitchen behind her. She'd had some crazy ideas in her time, but this...

'No. Absolutely no way.'

The Very Inspiring Blogger Award

I've been tagged in a blog chain by the very lovely Rae Rivers, whose debut book Cat Got Your Tongue! will be released this year and will be going straight onto my To Read List. It's taken me ages to pick up the gauntlet because I've been fiddling with the partial sub of the WIP (more on that soon), so without further ado...

Rules for the award:

• Display the award logo on your blog
• Link back to the person who nominated you (thank you, Rae!)
• State 7 things about yourself
• Nominate and link to another blogger/bloggers and link to them.

And my 7 things:

1. I have a bit of an obsession with How-To books. It's a comfort thing, I think, the idea that if I follow a list of rules I can have the outcome I want. When I had my children I searched feverishly for the Holy Grail book that would tell me how to instantly have them sleeping through the night. (Incidentally, I recommend The Baby Whisperer by Tracy Hogg as the nearest I got to Holy Grail!)
Now that I'm writing, I have the same desire for a set of rules which, if followed, will give me a good and saleable ms. Of course there is no such set of rules any more than there was one for babies, but part of my brain doesn't seem able to accept that, and so I have a rising pile of theory books on writing. Of course they have helped, but there is no magic formula!

2. I am addicted to Candy Crush, the Facebook timesuck game. I am a terrible procrastinator and this is yet another distraction I don't need when I should be writing. I am currently stuck on level 42, sigh.

3. I had my milestone birthday this year. I thought I would mind being 40 but it turns out I minded turning 30 much more! I'm in a very happy place now with my family and with my writing.

4. I love American TV shows to the tragic point where I feel aggrieved if I have to go out in the evening, especially in the winter when it's cold out and cosy inside! I like nothing better than snuggling up on the sofa in my pyjamas watching my current favourite, The Following (creepy but excellent). I also love Dexter, Supernatural and Game of Thrones. The heroes in my last two books have been based on the stars of TV shows I watch weekly - the inspiration for my current WIP hero is Niall Matter from Primeval: New World (for a pic check out my Pinterest board by clicking on the button in the sidebar). Every Saturday I watch it and think how I can better describe Dan in my story!

5. My favourite childhood memory is watching The Incredible Hulk (the original TV show with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno) while cuddled up with my Dad. I was about four. My mum and brother hated the show, so it really was our special thing. I always thought it was very sad that David Banner could never settle down anywhere because Jack McGee always turned up to flush him out.

6. I'm not well-travelled. I've only been out of Europe once, and all of my trips have been sunshine package holidays. I have a massive bucket list of places to visit and see with DH when the kids are off our hands.

7. I don't have a middle name and neither does my brother. For some reason my parents couldn't agree on one. As a kid I always felt very short-changed by this and I used to make up exotic ones to impress my friends like Saffron and Savannah!


Passing on the tag is hard, as so many of my writing  friends have already been hit and I've taken so long, so I'm tagging Libby, who is extremely creative and since she's recently redesigned this blog (she made my daisy header and buttons!) is definitely a very inspiring blogger to me!

Thanks for reading, and Happy Easter! x

New WIP!

It's been a few weeks since I last blogged, apologies all, but I've been hanging on until I had something concrete to blog about!

Since having 'All Bets Are On' finalised I've been busy putting together ideas for my next story. The way it works (for me at least) is that I send my three best ideas over to my editor and she chooses the one she thinks has the most potential. The next step is for me to come up with detailed character outlines (covering goal, motivation, conflict as well as background details) and a story plan. This bit takes a long time but it's one of my favourite parts of my whole writing process.

This time it has taken three weeks, during which I've filled in character questionnaires (I use the ones in Liz Fielding's Little Book Of Writing Romance), thought about locations and used my plotboard to develop a three act story outline. If you hadn't already guessed, I am most definitely not a pantser! For the first time with this story, I've also discovered Pinterest, which is terrific fun and a terrific time suck. What it has done is given me some lovely visual inspiration for my story in a way I've never really had before. If you want to check my board out (as it is so far), click on the lovely Pinterest button my very clever 13 year old has created for me on the sidebar.

I have a working title for my story - 'The Get-Out Clause', and I've just received feedback from my editor on my story plan - I get a couple of pages of detailed advice. Some of it is the flagging up of potential pitfalls for the story before I begin writing it - for example in this story I have a second love interest for the heroine and my editor has pointed out that I need to keep tabs on this because it has huge potential to detract from the main romance. Other advice is more detailed, suggestions on how I can improve on my plot and how I can deepen the conflict of the main characters.

This is possibly the most prepared I've been for any of my stories so far, but I've learned a lot over the last year and one of the main things is that the more effort I put in at the beginning, the easier the actual writing becomes. I can't say that would be true for everyone - I know of people who have a rough idea and dive straight in and the thought fills me with horrified admiration - but  it's certainly true for me.

I'm off now to put in a couple of hours reviewing and revising my story plan in line with the editor's advice and then I will be kicking off with 1k a day. I will keep you posted on what I hope will be an easier book to write than the last one!

Happy New Title

Happy New Year all! And apologies because I know it's halfway through January already (how did that happen?),  but blogging had kind of slipped into a comfortable it-hasn't-been-that-long sort of place in my head.

Sorry!

I had a fabulous Christmas this year, not only had the small one reached an age (4) where she really understood Christmas and Santa and all the twinkly wonderfulness of it for the first time, but it was also a big Christmas year (my other two children are from a previous marriage and so we share Christmases - this year was mine so I had a lovely houseful!). With DH home over the break I also had time to try out a couple of new things I've been wanting to give a go for a while.

One is fast-drafting - in its truest sense it involves writing a full first draft of a novel within 2 weeks by using strict word counts and abandoning your inner editor, a concept developed by Candace Havens, see here for more details. I watered it down somewhat by simply writing without looking back and editing as I went, without strict aim regarding wordcount. This was a big thing for me as I usually go back over everything daily, tweaking and fine tuning, and I know this limits my first draft productivity.

The other is writing hot. I have only ever written sweet romance - my couple get to have a bit of intense snogging and then the hero slams the door with his foot and we cut to breakfast - that kind of level! Not really sure what's held me back (thought of my mother reading it? - a bit maybe), only that I've always been quite satisfied with a happy ever after without the need for any detail in love scenes. (I am a huge fan of Jill Mansell, her stories have never needed a hot sex scene for me to love them.)

However.

I've nonetheless been curious as to whether I could write hot or not. And so over the Christmas break I combined my two wonderings and tried to fast-draft a fairly hot romantic novella. Writing sex was a whole new world. How hot is too hot? I check in with the DH, who is at first interested in the whole concept, but as I feared it turns out to be on an FHM kind of level as he is bemused when I tell him about the kind of language used (no coarse descriptive words etc) and the fact that it has to convey emotion and development in the romance. If left to him I fear the story would turn out to be worthy of Loaded or Nuts.

Soon-to-be-16-year-old son isn't fazed and advises me, pound signs in eyes, to 'write porn under an assumed name.' Even my teenagers have heard of Fifty Shades. Sigh.

Fast drafting seemed to work in that I got a full draft in a couple of weeks, however the editing stage which normally isn't too intensive turns out to be monumental. I've given myself a couple of weeks to drum it into some kind of shape and I have no idea if the end result will find a home although I've got a few places to try and pitch it.

In other, proper, real-stories-that-I-might-actually-get-paid-for news, I now have a name for Alice and Harry (the much-hated Book #2 which I called The Date Pool, because it is about an office betting ring). I am thrilled to announce that it will be called 'All Bets Are On' and I have to say I love this title and wish I'd thought of it myself.

I am also thrilled to bits to announce that I am heading into 2013 with a new two-book contract, and I am currently putting together some ideas for a new story to submit to my lovely editor.

So that's it. I feel very busy, but in a good way. Hope 2013 brings you all that you could wish for too.

Second Book Syndrome

Yes there is a proper name for the way I've been behaving and feeling these last few months working on Book #2! The whinging that 'I suck', the endless rewriting of scenes, the feeling that the story/characters are just not sparky/engaging/funny enough. I sweated blood over the wretched thing and for the bulk of the time I really wasn't feeling the magic.


Second Book Syndrome is apparently notorious among people who are writing their first book since receiving a publishing contract. In a nutshell it's the fear that you will be a one-book-wonder, that you will never replicate whatever it was that made your first story good and saleable. It's documented! Which in some way should make me feel better about myconstant moaning and self-criticism about Book #2, which I call The Date Pool and my lovely editor calls 'Alice & Harry'. As I wrote it I could imagine my editor reading through it, shaking her head sadly and saying 'she had so much promise...'

Although technically The Date Pool is my third book for Mills & Boon, the second one (The Proposal Plan, release April 2013) was actually written before the first one and was initially rejected (are you with me?). Therefore, The Date Pool is the first thing I've written since being offered a contract. This is the first time I've actually had an obligation to deliver and the first time that I've had anyone apart from myself to let down. And I think that is at the hub of it.


 If you Google it, there are TONS of poor souls out there, just like me, who have struggled with their second book. And if you've stumbled on this post because you are Googling it, just like I did, in the desperate desire for some snippet of advice that will magically provide the answer, I'm really sorry to tell you that there is no amazing cure. What I can do is tell you what I've learned from the last six months in the hope that it will help in some small way.

Firstly, know that you are not alone and that all the people I encountered who blogged about their experience did come through it with a finished book.

Secondly, the nearest thing I found to a solution boils down to one thing: DISCIPLINE.

Set yourself a daily word goal (mine was 1k) and do not give up until you reach it for that day, even if you are still fiddling at three in the afternoon and your house is turning into a pigsty.

Keep going. Even if you think you are writing total crap, keep going. Because most of the time, it will turn out not to be total crap. Some of it might be, but you can weed that out when you've got yourself a full draft to revise. I definitely turned a huge corner when I managed to type THE END. The work was by no means done, I still had loads of revisions to do after that, there were scenes that needed ditching or rewriting and lots of dross to cut, but making changes was so much easier than writing from scratch. And the advantage of having invested all that angst and effort into getting to the end of a full draft was that I really knew my characters well by then. Revisions were much easier as a result.

I said to DH as I finally handed it in after the last few tweaky revisions, 'I'm actually pretty pleased with the story now.' 'Great,' he said. 'Because you've done nothing but moan about it for the last four months.' O_O

I am not the only one at Chez Phillips who was pleased to see the back of this one!

And so it is with enormous relief and excitement and happiness that I am able to announce that The Date Pool (that name will SO be changed!) has been accepted and is scheduled for publication in August 2013.

Thanks everyone for all supportive comments and kicks up the butt during the last six months. X

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!