BIG NEWS

I'm going to be PUBLISHED!!!!

I'm going to be eBooked, Kindled, iBooked, PDF'd!!!!!!!!

I'm afraid - especially after that big opening - I'm going to be a bit vague on the details for now; I don't want to say too much too soon, just in case... well, you know... the realist in me always expects the worst.

But this was the point of starting a blog in the first place, following the journey from being unpublished, through the writing, editing etc, to final product. So, hopefully, as the hard work starts over the next few weeks, I'll be able to share my thoughts and feelings about the process.

The story in question is the one I mentioned here, about tagging it as Romance, so I guess that gamble paid off.

So far, I've signed the contract and emailed it back to the publisher. And I've spent a lot of time grinning. If you've seen me in person, you can probably vouch for the grinning! And right now, I'm just waiting for confirmation that the contract has been received. I just hope I haven't tempted Fate by posting this, but I couldn't wait any longer!!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I haven't jumped around for a while!!

I'm going to be PUBLISHED!!!

Time travelling

Since I'm now looking at Romance markets for some of my stories, I thought I'd do some research into the genre. I was amazed at the variety; practically any genre can have romantic leanings, apparently - including westerns, horror and suspense.

The one that intrigued me the most was time travel, because apart from The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger I can't think of another example within fiction, and I'm not sure she deserves a whole genre for one book. I'm sure you'll all be able to correct me and list hundreds (please do!).

The problem with time travel stories is that there are many ways to tie the plot in knots so it doesn't make sense - I'm sure you must have wasted hours of your youth, as I did with my friends, discussing the Back to the Future trilogy - although I don't remember anything glaringly obvious in The Time Traveler's Wife.

One of my mum's favourite films from years ago was Somewhere in Time, with Christopher Reeve. It's a lovely film, a tear-jerker, perfect for wet and windy Sunday afternoons. But - just a slight but this time- the opening scenes put my head in a proper spin. An elderly woman approaches Christopher Reeve and says something along the lines of "My love, please come back to me".

This makes Reeves curious, and he goes off to investigate this woman and discovers a picture of her when she was younger. He falls in love with this picture (as you do!) and decides to travel back in time to meet her.

Now, it's that opening paradox that jars slightly. If he'd just looked at this woman, called her crazy and not given her another thought, he'd never gone back in time to meet her, which means she wouldn't have spoken to him in the present because he would have been a stranger. Which means, there would be no film,... so I can kind of understand why they did it.

Anyway, that was a very long-winded way of saying that you really have to think about your time travel plotline! I'd really love to read your comments on this - I could talk time-travel for hours. Just give me a moment to pour the wine!!

The way my stories write themselves

I've just finished the first draft of a short story.

Originally, I had a 24 year old man coming home from a year of travelling to find his mother has just died. A couple of days later and this man is now 19 and housebound. How does that happen? I have no idea.

My ideas form so subtly that it takes a while - musing on the bus, or while trying to get to sleep - for the actual characters to form. When I started writing the 24 year old version, the words plodded along - there was a lot of conversation, a lot of catching up with old friends and family, and a brand new niece, but not a lot was happening. I'd hoped the mother would become important, but I just couldn't bring her to the fore.

Then suddenly, I started again. New, blank piece of paper, and the 19 year old sprung out and steered the story with his snide apathy, quite unlike the amiable character I'd assumed for him. Now he's chain-smoking and argumentative despite the fact he's reliant on people to help him move around the house. Oh, and the mother is now missing, not dead.

Essentially, it's still the same very vague idea of familial relationships. Practically, it's totally different. I love writing!!

Short story in progress

It was all going so well. I had the title (that always comes first), I had my character and his voice. It took a while to work why he had the voice he had, but it came to me in a flash of inspiration. A small amount of research later, and I was sure I could carry off this idea!

So far, so good.

I had the other characters scuttling in from the side-lines and making themselves indispensable to the plot. Fantastic, I thought, this is going well. Done by Sunday... I thought.

Then what? Nothing!

After days of rampant writing, of waking up in the night to make notes, it was all flowing so well. Then... my two main characters are sitting at their kitchen table - father and son, an awkward relationship - in an awkward silence. The mother/wife has gone missing. The police are involved. Father and son are staring at a piece of toast...

Can you sense the tension? Can you hear the emptiness of their relationship? I could. I can. But... then it all stops. I have no idea where to go next, how to get them up from the kitchen table and to the end of the story. I know what happens then - titles and endings, I'm brilliant with those; it's just the pesky bit in the middle that has me tearing my hair out.

The truth is, I paused. I stopped for a day or two because of work and other busy-ness (as opposed to business, which it technically ought to be, but looks wrong) got in the way, and then my pen didn't want to start again. It's not writer's block, it's much less severe than that, it's writer's blip. But that's annoying enough when you're in the zone and everything's flowing.

I'm hoping by writing about it here I'll kick start myself... I hope!

My niche?

In this post, a couple of months ago, I bemoaned the fact that I didn't seem to fit the current market. I wasn't mainstream enough for the mainstream; I wasn't experimental enough for the experimental market; I definitely didn't fit a genre.

Not long afterwards, I submitted a piece of work - I took a risk and suggested it might work as Romance/Contemporary. Now, I had no problem with Contemporary, because it's set today; but Romance was more of a gamble because it's not a happy-ever-after piece that I assumed Romance readers required.

Then - then! - it occured to me that if I marketed at least some of my work as Romance, I'd immediately be challenging, daring and surprising - the words that confused me so much in my last post - within that genre.

Have I - eventually - found my niche?

Oh, and if you're wondering, the gamble paid off and I've had some positive feedback on my submission; although I'm not sure whether they agree with the Romance/Contemporary tag yet. I'm hoping I'll have some news about it in the next couple of months!

Welcome!

I have thirteen followers!!! Yay!!!

So, a big welcome to my brand new followers Maldita, Melissa and Robyn! At the moment, I can't figure out how to follow people from Friend Connect - is it possible?

Please have a look around my blog and make yourselves at home. Sorry I haven't tidied up, but I wasn't expecting visitors.

An insecurity too far?

This is my post for this month's Insecure Writer's Support Group.

I've been hesitating over writing this post, for reasons that will soon become apparent.

I'm insecure this month - and last month, to be honest, but I chickened out of writing about it - about my blog. And, yes, I'm aware this will come across as a Please follow my blog post; but it's not meant that way - hence the hesitating (and initially writing something else that didn't ring true, deleting that and writing this).

I look at the blogs I follow, and the blogs I continue to discover through IWSG, and they all seem to have lots of followers; some of them are younger than mine, and yet they have hundreds of followers. I'm not going to admit how many I have, but think of a number and chop it into little pieces and you might be close.

Okay, so that's enough self-pity. Now for some self-help:

Problem 1. I have a blog, but I have nothing to say. The point of this blog was to document my expanding writing career. I started it in July 2010, when I was being quite successful - this year has been less so. My current novel is being read by some fantastic readers which means I don't have any joys of editing posts to write; I'm buried in research for publishers, which is tedious enough to do let alone talk about; I have no new projects.

Problem 2. Possibly people view my blog because they think I'm a proper writer (ie. published) and quickly realise I'm not. From a networking point of view it's like Tom Cruise befriending the guy who played  fourth- man-walking-dog in Eastenders last night.

Resolution 1. Perhaps I need to go back to the original premise, which was to record for myself the twists and turns towards success, and ignore the stats. (I've written before about my love of the stats; it's turning into a poisonous relationship.)

Resolution 2. For my part of the bargain, maybe I can slightly change the focus - I could include more links, more snippets of useful information, more... erm... I'll give it some more thought.

Thanks for reading - and apologies for the self-pity. Normal service resumed soon!