The story that made me blush

I'm back in Britain today, visiting Linda King's Excuse Me While I Note That Down... blog, and I'm talking about the story that made me blush to write it!

In other news, I'll be attempting a personal best deadlift at the gym this morning (a feeble PB, but one nonetheless) and hopefully editing/additing my WIP. I actually made it to halfway yesterday, until I realised that I'd lost the voice again, so I'm going to have to go back and figure out why that keeps happening.

How are your current projects going?

Happy Monday!

I hope you had a great weekend. I listened to some great music and sat out in the sun drinking Pimms and cider - a very British summer!

And now I'm back to sharing my soul, and the soul of my stories.

Today, I'm over at Elizabeth Seckman's Use Your Words... blog explaining how much of myself I put into the character Gypsy.

The end of the first week

I've made it to the end of the first week of the tour, and I'm only a little behind with following up the comments. I hope you're enjoying hearing about the stories, and what goes on in this head of mine.

Today, I'm over on Julie Flanders blog talking about Portrait of the Painter, which is the home of a character I can never quite let go of.

Today, #2 son has a day off school (those teachers apparently need more training!), so I'll be trying to entertain him. Luckily the sun is shining, so we've got plenty of options!

The tour will take a break for the weekend - it'll be back on Monday. Have a great weekend!

Going to South Africa...

Today, I'm going due south to visit Murees Dupe on her blog, and talking about my story Open Windows - a short and sweet post today to match the story... well, the short part, you'll have to decide for yourself if you think the story's sweet.

In reality, I'm going to be out on a training day learning about some cool fitness equipment that our gym won't be getting. Still, I work with some great people so it should be fun... apart from the envious silence on the way home!

Thanks for all the comments on my IWSG post yesterday - I'll get around to commenting some time today hopefully. Just when I need to be at home with my computer 24/7, I get super busy!

I hope you'll pop over to Muress's... and drop in and say hi when I get home.

The circle of insecurity

I'm taking a break from my blog tour to drop in on this month's IWSG. If you want to take part, click on the logo in the side bar somewhere over there on the right to take you to the linky list to visit other members and to sign up for yourself  --->

So, I'm currently in the middle of edits and rewrites - and this is the little voice in my head:

"This novel's great... this novel's terrible... actually it's not bad... no it really is terrible..."

Sometimes I love it - the voice is compelling, there's tension and conflict. The characters are unique and interesting. And boy, I'm using fantastic vocabulary. I'm a genius!

And then, at other times, I think the story sucks, the characters too bizarre to be identified with, the premise is silly, someone must have told this story better and with more depth than I'm giving it, I'm not making my point clearly enough.

And all of this can happen within a few hours. The morning goes well and the words are flowing - but then I stop for lunch and suddenly I'm writing the worst novel in the whole of human history.

It's okay though, because tomorrow it'll be great again. It's a circle after all...

It's Kyra's turn...

I'm over on Kyra Lennon's blog today, which is virtually my second home. Kyra is so super supportive of all her bloggy friends, and is always the first person to offer her help.

I'm also really excited that in a couple of weeks' time, we'll be having our joint book signing/book reading/awesome charity fundraising that Kyra has organised single-handedly. No doubt you'll hear more about that between now and then, and also quite a lot about it afterwards too!

These are the great badges I've had made for the occasion. And if no one wants them, I'm going to pin them all over Kyra and take lots of photos!!

Kicking off at Christine's place

Today I am mostly going to be drinking coffee with a friend and gossiping in the sun, while That Sadie Thing goes off on tour.

Today I'm over on Christine Rain's blog talking about Tasting the Grass, which was my first ever story to be accepted, a whopping 19 years ago. While I curl up into a tiny little ball and bemoan the passing of time, why not pop over and see what I have to say!