Confessions

Now, I think this is supposed to be a bit tongue in cheek, to be honest, but in preparation for Harlequin’s 2008 Romance Report they’re conducting a survey.  Check it out and see what you’re prepared to confess!

Saw my first live basketball game today

Where have I been all my life, you ask? Well, the thing is, to my limited knowledge, basketball hasn’t been a very big sport here in New Zealand. Obviously that has changed quite dramatically because even my old girls’ grammar school (which back in my day fielded swimming, netball, tennis and athletics teams) had a basketball team in the schools’ tournament I went to today, but traditionally New Zealand’s focus has been on Rugby (Union and League), Cricket, and Netball (with equestrian sports, swimming and athletics out there too.)

Okay, let’s roll back the clock a bit, I’m getting ahead of myself. The youngest child and I travelled to the North Shore Events Centre today to watch a friend, from down country, play basketball. She plays for the New Plymouth Sacred Heart College team (and very well, too!) As both my kids are netballers the concepts of basketball generally escape me (and I didn’t think to check up on rules etc before going to the game,) but wow, what a pleasant surprise to watch a few games in very active and physical play, and even better to see our friend’s team beat their opposition by 20 points! Yay!

So, I’m a convert. Heck, who doesn’t want to watch a sport that lets all players have a go at goal and where you can run between two squishing opposing players and get given penalty shots, or stand right in someone’s breathing space and restrict their movements and not be pulled up for over defending or obstruction. And some of those shots! Wow!

All I need now is someone to direct me to a site that clearly explains what all the umpires little hand movements mean and what the rules of the sport are.

Any suggestions anyone?

17 year olds aren’t supposed to die

A good friend of one of my kids passed away suddenly this weekend. We’re all stunned and grieving. If it had been a car crash or an illness, maybe we could have accepted it better, albeit with no less sorrow, but it was one of those horrible freak accidents that defy description.The ripple effect has been massive. And I can’t begin to imagine how the parents of the dead boy feel, or his siblings.

When we first heard the news today I have to admit that I fervently hoped that the news–from the other side of the world–was someone’s idea of a very, very bad joke. Tragically, that wasn’t the case.

One young life was lost. A thousand hearts are bleeding.

I never thought my kids would have to cope with this sort of thing. We never did when I was growing up. Maybe I grew up in some sort of Utopia–an alternative reality where bad things didn’t happen to good people, but why then do our children have to face this now? Today? I hate it, and I feel so helpless. I just want to wrap my kids in a safe secure bubble where bad things won’t happen to them and as a parent I feel so impotent that I know I can’t stop these horrible things happening in their lives. I feel incredibly blessed that my kids still have their arms wrapped around me–both seeking and providing comfort on this horrible, horrible day.

My kids’ high school (which is closed for school holidays right now) is opening tomorrow, armed to the teeth with grief counsellors as they struggle to come to terms with why a student inexplicably passed away on an international school trip. There’s no blame. There are no fingers to be pointed.

We can only celebrate the life led by a lost boy, and from what I can tell he left much to be mirthful about in his wake. And we can celebrate that our own children are safe–for now–and try not to feel guilty about that.

Out with the old…

What is it that makes some people hoarders and others not? Is it a genetic trait that some might clear out their wardrobe periodically–turfing out clothing/shoes/accessories that haven’t seen the light of day for 12 months or more? If so, why then have I skipped that gene.

In our area, at least once a month, a contractor puts big pink plastic bags in letterboxes for good used clothing, bric a brac, etc. In my hoarding manner I’ve been collecting them with the intention of bit by bit sorting through some old clothes and getting rid of them (okay, to be honest, when I tidied my office I found three bags. I didn’t really know I’d been hoarding them too, truly!)

Last night (and don’t ask me why, because I really don’t know) I spent a few hours going through my drawers and wardrobe ruthlessly casting out clothing. Okay, I say ruthlessly but seriously there was alot of history (and at least five different clothing sizes) to be gone through. I filled THREE huge pink sacks with clothing that went back–dare I say it–twenty years. And even worse, I still kept some items that went back a tad further (like the dress I wore for my engagement party) because I just couldn’t bear to throw them away.  Oh, and there’s a sack of shoes, as well–not all mine, thank goodness.

The little bag to the right is a neighbour’s. Obviously the kind of person who clears things out on a regular basis as it is teeny tiny next to the bulging bags I put out under cover of dark.

I felt quite virtuous when I went to bed last night but have to admit that when I backed the car out the drive this morning and saw the bags I did feel a distinct pang of loss and wondered if I’d done the right thing. Now I’m listening out for the truck that comes around to collect all the bags. I wish he’d hurry up. I have visions of going out there and bringing it all back inside (only my bags, of course!)

So I have a few questions for you:

Which are you? Hoarder or not? And if not, have you ever thrown out something you wished you’d kept?

UPDATE!!!!!

You know, I wouldn’t have believed it but no more than an hour an a half after my last post someone had stolen my clothing and shoe bags. Stolen, you ask sceptically… oh, yes, stolen. Every other bag in the street is still there, every other bag in every neighbouring street is also still there. What is not there are my bags! Go figure. I suppose, theoretically, since I no longer wanted the stuff I can’t say they’re stolen, however they were put in marked bags for collection by the Child Cancer Charity, so in my book, yes, they were stolen.

And here’s the evidence!

 

Should I be outraged or take this as a compliment?

Insufficient Research Bugbears

There’s nothing worse than when you’re reading a book and the author has you lost in the world she’s created and her characters say, think or do something just instantly yanks you out the story.

I had this today when reading an author I hadn’t read before. Interestingly the storyline was very similar to another book I tried to read this week but the storytelling of that particular novel didn’t grab me and that book’s on the to be passed onto someone else pile, unfinished. The big difference for me was the way in which this author told the story and she had me hook line and sinker into the flow of the character’s reunion and conflict, until she made the error of insufficient research exposure by suggesting that because the hero was one of twins that explained why his ex-lover had given birth to twins–his twins.

Now, I suppose it’s a fairly common assumption that a man influences the birth of twins, and yes it can if he’s from a familial line that produces fraternal twins, and he passes that legacy onto his children. However, he doesn’t determine whether or not his wife bears twins. Even if he’s a twin himself. This is a bugbear of mine as our family learned all about twins when my dh’s sister-in-law carried twins. Twins run in her family. She released more than one egg at ovulation, therefore when two were fertilised at once, she conceived, carried and delivered two beautiful babes instead of just one. Now, identical twins are a different matter. In this, the egg splits into two after fertilisation. But again, even if the father is a twin or not it has no bearing.

Reasearching this information in lay man’s terms is really easy either using the internet or libraries, or even a call to the nearest Multiple Birth Society in your area. But when I, as a reader, am yanked out of a story because author intervention uses a twin scenario incorrectly I am really disappointed and it spoils my reading pleasure of the story.

Okay, so now I have that off my chest, I’ll finish the book because I love the way this author has set everything up and how her characters are developed and I’m thinking all the time, how is she going to resolve this?

And it leaves me curious. What is your biggest insufficient research bugbear when reading a book?

Story Collage

Today I collaged my latest manuscript (working title Billionaire’s Blackmail Bride).

I’m fairly new to collaging and while I’d read about it before in a Romance Writer’s Report (Romance Writers of America Monthly Magazine) and was tempted to give it a go I never did anything about it until attending the Romance Writers of Australia conference on the Gold Coast last year. Barbara Hannay led the workshop on collaging and it really worked for me on so many levels. In fact, Rossellini’s Revenge Affair was the first book I collaged and I was a few chapters into the story already when I did my cutting and gluing exercise.

Now, I’ve always loved pictures and I’m a hoarder from waaaaaay back, so finding enough magazines out there for collaging is a simple matter of going to the right storage drawer unit in my office and trawling through the pages until I find the pics that speak best to my story. They say that collaging is a subconscious exercise, but I think I tend to be more specific than that. Maybe one day I really will let my subconscious fly and see what happens. But anyway, for this book I already had pictures of my hero, Luc Tanner, courtesy of a department store advertising brochure, my heroine, Belinda Tanner (nee Wallace), from a women’s magazine, and an idea of the setting. For the rest, the pictures came to me. I’m about a quarter of the way into this story and I feel quite confident that the collage won’t change too much at this stage. But the excellent thing about collaging is that you can shift or change or glue over anything that doesn’t work.

When I collaged my continuity book for our Diamonds Downunder continuity (Silhouette Desire Jan 2008 to Jun 200 I just couldn’t get a handle on my hero. Eventually I glued over my hero twice! But when I found the ‘right’ guy, I was off and running. Most women’s magazines don’t seem to have a lot of pictures of the kinds of suave, sophisticated or handsome (maturish) guys that I picture as my heroes, so I went looking through modelling agency websites. The best thing about these shots is that you get to see your hero in all guises–happy, sad, serious, intense. Whatever you need. Yay for male models, I say!

Anyway, in a nutshell this book is an Amnesiac Runaway Bride/Beauty and the Beast story, and while my picture of a runaway bride (top centre) is a little faded and blurry I realised that this is a good thing because Belinda doesn’t remember her marriage at all. It was intriguing as I flicked through magazines today and found that rather than having pictures appeal to me, it was words that jumped out. Now, all my collages usually have some wording on them somewhere, either relating to theme or character. In this case it was a phrase in the middle of an article that jumped out “Ever felt like you were living the wrong life?” I nearly shrieked with joy at the ‘Eureka!’ moment those few words ensued. And then, straight after that I found a page with the words “lives changed forever–TWICE”. Again, another one of those perfect moments of synchronicity.

So, for anyone who has never tried collage as they’re writing before I really recommend you give it a try. At the very least you’ll let your inner kindergartner out to play for a while. At best you’ll have a wonderful pictorial map for your story to prompt you through the flat spots, to inspire you through the mad runs of words and to give you something to drool over when you just want to take a break. I usually collage onto a coloured foolscap sized folder but you can choose any surface or size or texture you want for your background. So let it rip!

Have any of you collaged? Share your thoughts.

Googling is great!

The other day I googled my name. It’s been a while since I did that and I was really surprised at the results. In the past, my name would come up on relatively few sites, along with my namesake in Scotland (actually, that should be namesakes because there’s more than one of me out there apparently… scared? you should be :-)!)

But this time there were pages of me. I tell you, it’s all rather daunting. Anyway, one of the delights I discovered while googling was this cover:

My first book, THE BOSS’S CHRISTMAS SEDUCTION, will be released into the UK in November this year together with a book by Sandra Marton! I’m just over the moon with excitement and I absolutely love the cover. Oh, and did I mention SANDRA MARTON!!!

So tell me, have you googled yourself recently? And what was the best surprise you found?

Happy First Birthday Pink Heart Society!

 

First of all, mega congratulations to the wonderful editors of the Pink Heart Society–Ally, Jenna, Natasha, Nicola and Trish–and big thanks for providing fantastic procrastination activities on the PHS blogsite for the past year (most particularly Male on Mondays <swoon>).

Second, I want to say a big happy birthday to the little pink dancing guy! In honour of your very special first birthday I’d like to give you a New Zealand delicacy–one that has delighted birthday boys and girls the length and breadth of New Zealand for many many years, one that is a staple ingredient in homesick Kiwi packs to be distributed to homesick Kiwis around the world–the iconic Cadbury Pinky Bar!

You can savour the delicious milk chocolate coating, delight in the subtle flavour of delightful caramel and all while you allow the delectable pink marshmallow filling to melt in your mouth.

And you can enjoy all that knowing the Pinky is low in fat (but we won’t talk about the sugar content ) and is available in treat sizes too (so you can enjoy just a bite-size every now and then.)

What better way to celebrate your special day! Happy Birthday! (can’t be said too often when you’re only one year old)

Good luck to all the treasure hunters! It’s going to be a great PHS month!

 

 

 

You Had Me At Halo

Amanda Ashby’s debut book, YOU HAD ME AT HALO, had me from the first page.

Amanda’s writing style is fun, fresh and fast paced and you just have to keep on reading because as you see things from Holly’s point of view you keep wondering ‘how on earth is she going to resolve this?’

To give you an idea, this is the back cover blurb:

Holly Evans has just seen her body laid to rest, and if it had been up to her, she wouldn’t have chosen that particular polyester dress for the event. Still, she could live with that (so to speak), if it guarnatee a quick jump to Level 3 of the afterlife, which she hopes will feature both reruns of Friends and reunions with long-lost loved ones.

But Holly has some mortal baggage to unload first, starting with the matter ofhow she died. yes, she drowned in her bathtub under suspicious circumstances, but she did not kill herself. Holly had too much to live for, from her recent promotion to tkaing the next big step in her relationship. OK, her life had a few loose ends, but whose doesn’t? Holly’s heavenly shrink isn’t buying it. He says she has to return to Earth to straighten things out. The problem is, she’ll need to borrow someone’s body to do so, and the body in question belongs to none other than computer geek Vince Murphy. Oh, and although Vince was supposed to have vacated the premises, he aparrently never got the memo.

Now Holly has 48 hours to resolve her issues while sharing arms, legs, and…other things with a guy she barely noticed while she was alive. But the real surprise is what life has to offer when you have only two days to live it.

Now, I’m not normally a ‘race-out-and-buy-it’ fan of chick-lit/young adult/woman’s fiction. I’m a died in the wool romance reader be it contemporary, historical or romantic suspense (so call me boring, I don’t care :-P) but every now and then I like to step out of my comfort zone and read something new. Having ‘known’ Amanda through RWNZ for years I was really keen to read her first book and, wow, she hasn’t disappointed this reader.

Published through NAL, ISBN: 978-0-451-22135-3, if you enjoy humour, relationships–heck, life!–look for YOU HAD ME AT HALO. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. Here’s an excerpt.