Simple pleasures

At this time of the year, with the weather mostly grey and a long slog of the day job still ahead, I'm not at my best. A time for appreciating some simple pleasures. I don't have time to spare for complicated ones! 
So: -

• The first cup of tea of the day - which is what gave me the idea for this post
• Very slightly but progressively lighter evenings - noticeable when I go for my afternoon gallop 'around the block'
• Looking at the sea - part of the gallop
• Things beginning to happen in the garden - the green shoots of bulbs now a few inches tall. Actually the garden is weird at the moment - mild weather so I have honeysuckle and rosemary flowering. I also have a visiting blackbird who has enjoyed stripping the berries off the pyracantha. He's welcome, but I worry that the neighbourhood cats might enjoy him in quite a different way.
• That mild weather - I hate the cold
• The company of friends - last week it was meeting my local RNA Chapter and celebrating the launch of a debut novel that is going to be a mega seller, this week an unexpected dinner out.
• My stash of Christmas chocolate
• Finally finishing the ironing!

Not a long list, but one to be grateful for.
One of those recommendations you get for the start of a new year is keeping a gratitude diary. I don't have one of those, but the blog is a good substitute. I won't be doing it every day though!

So many plots - and no time. At all.

Writers' Block is fairly well known - when a writer finds he/she cannot write for some reason. At the moment I appear to have whatever the opposite is - Writers' Avalanche?

I have ideas coming from all directions and none of them have any hope of being written in the foreseeable future, because, you guessed it - the day job. Until the thesis is finished I won't be writing anything that doesn't have lots of  'howevers' and 'It should be noted ...' and footnotes in it. And that won't be stopping until August.

I suspect that the aforementioned avalanche is my mind playing tricks with me - because it knows it is quite safe from having to deliver on any of this stuff, it is wandering around having the most tantalising fun it can think of. As a result, I have:

Regency assassins, including a lady poisoner. And don't anyone mention that I don't actually write historicals

A contemporary series about a shadowy security agency - to be fair, that one has been knocking on the door for some time. One of the episodes is partially written.

Another contemporary series about female friends setting up businesses in a small town - no suspense in that one. I may have a few pages of that, courtesy of a retreat day that the Welsh RNA Chapter held before Xmas. Well I had to write something, didn't I? And I really did not want to take the thesis. It was meant to be a day away from the thesis, and it worked - except I now have this new series ...

Another contemporary of a group of strangers thrown together on a package holiday. That doesn't have any dead bodies in it yet, but the plot is yet young ...

Something with clowns, because I snuck off for a day out over Christmas to the Clown Exhibitions at the Art Gallery on Bristol. I am now waiting for that idea to surface.

I have a horrible feeling that when I am finally free, all these ideas will evaporate like mist in the morning. Even so, I have at least three more of the Riviera series to go, some of them in various states of being written. And there are two stand alone contemporaries, partly done, one featuring second time around lovers, with added serial killers. I also have a partial of a mildly supernatural that has two romances and three separate villains. And there is that old manuscript that i uncovered the other day and started to wonder about un-picking ...

Ahhhhhhhh!!

The brain is a wonderful thing - but right now mine is supposed to be focused on the day job.

I'm sure it's all a plot. Or too many plots ...



 

2019 ... What if?

Well, the first question is - where did 2018 go? It only seems five minutes since it was New Year's Eve last year!

One way or another 2019 is going to be a big year - and that has nothing to do with politics, I hasten to add. The day job, a.k.a the PhD, has to be completed, so that is the first priority. Actually, it's the only priority. At the moment the thing is a MESS, but I am working on it. I hope it will get better, soon.

Once that is off my hands, and it will not be until August, I'm afraid, I can get back to some writing again, which will be a relief, as I have sooooo many books all lined up and demanding to be written. I think it is a plot, or a trick of the mind, or something. As I know there is no hope of writing any of them now, they are buzzing around like bees on a buddleia, Enough for about the next twenty years or so. Once the day job is finally wrapped up, all of them will be off into the sunset, I bet you. Won't see the little blighters for dust. All there will be is a pile of obscure post-it notes that don't make sense. I bet that too.

I don't do resolutions - all those more or lesses - you know, eat less, exercise more. I do have hopes though. And there is something about a brand new year.

Potential, and maybe just a shiver of excitement? Possibilities?

Time for that classic writer's question - What if?

New adventures? Maybe. I don't have plans - 'cos PhD, but it would be nice to do some new things this year, even, just maybe, have a proper holiday?

Who knows? Except that before you know it another new year will be rolling around?

Life's like that.

Make the most of this one.

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Good wishes for the holidays

Just a post to wish everyone 

A Very Happy Christmas

And if you do happen to get a new electronic device in your stocking, or you're looking round for something to read by Boxing Day, then just a reminder that What Happens at Christmas is a romantic suspense - a different kind of Christmas read, and if you fancy some sunshine, Summer in San Remo is in the Choclit bonanza sale at the moment. Just a hint, if you haven't read them yet!

See you in the New Year!

Romantic Suspense for Christmas

Reggie with one of my posh postcards.
He was very impressed,
and it's not easy to impress a unicorn. 

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.


What Happens at Christmas ... well ... that's a bit complicated ...

I wrote the Christmas romantic suspense by accident. It wasn't in the plan. When it went to the publisher it was called To Have Your Heart - a variation of which eventually became the strap line for the cover.

The title What Happens at Christmas was my publishers' suggestion, because a Christmas book has to have Christmas in the title, doesn't it?

Actually it was quite apt, as what happens in What Happens at Christmas does have to stay secret. But the only problem for hero Drew is that it got a bit too secret, and now he's looking for the girl of his dreams, and she seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth ...

I had fun writing the book, and I loved giving Devlin, from Never Coming Home, a cameo role, and I have to admit I fell for Drew in a big way - my unexpected and accidental hero. I also enjoyed setting the book in a beautiful part of my native Wales - the Brecon Beacons. I had to arrange a freak snow storm, because you have to have snow in a Christmas book too, but that's the thing about being a author - you even get to arrange the weather.

The book is out now in e-book, paperback and audio, with a male narrator, which is a first for me, but as a lot of the book, including the opener on the roof of a train, is written from Drew's point of view, it makes sense.

If you're looking for something a little different in Christmas reading, you've just time to get your hands on a copy. If you do, I hope you enjoy it.

You can see all the options HERE

Why I'll never write literary fiction.

Let's face it - I don't have deep thoughts, or a message, or anything like that. I don't even manage to have a theme. I like telling stories. Beginning, middle, end, so I'm stuck with genre fiction. And quite happy, actually. It's what I like to read. I've never got on with highbrow stuff.

I might one day venture into non fiction - the day job, when it is done, has possibilities to be a piece of popular history, if I have the energy to do it, once the thesis is finally finished, and some publisher thinks they want it, but that's a long way away.

I like distinctive locations, and a plot, and a love story and a happy ending. Literary fiction doesn't have to have any of those, so I really wouldn't have a clue what I was doing.

It's the love story that drives the thing, for me. I might murder a few people along the way - all right, maybe a lot of people - and the course of true love never does run smooth (thank you, Mr Shakespeare, or whoever wrote the plays. I'm researching that at the moment as a side issue to the day job, for a very much in the future plot for a romantic suspense. But I digress...) And there is usually a dark moment, before the end, when Hero and Heroine don't look as if they will get together, but then they do. And it all ends happily. That's my contract with the reader. Uplift. And probably a wedding ring.

I have to confess though that I have had a few thoughts lately about killing off a hero or heroine before the end of a book. I don't know where that evil impulse is coming from, or whether I'll ever act on it.

If I did, would that make it literary fiction, d'you think?

Publication day X 2

A book release is a red letter day and this week I am having two, as the paperback of What Happens at Christmas was out on Saturday and the audio version is out today from Isis Publishing.

I've featured in the Choc-lit Advent calendar - if you haven't caught up with that yet - check out the Choc-lit twitter feed. A clue every day and a chance to win a daily prize and something big (lots of books) for the overall winner.

There is an interview on the Female First website, all about the inspirations for What Happens at Christmas. The ones I can identify, that is.

It all started with a lunch with some fellow authors, and there was no alcohol involved ...

The link for the interview is HERE

What Happens at Christmas is on special offer on the Choc-lit Amazon page, if you have not got your copy yet LINK

It has been quite a week.

And what's next?

Well, the next book in the pipeline should be another in the Riviera Rogues series, set in the South of France, once the day job is finally put to bed.

According to Jamie Dornan and Matthew Rhys, Barry Island is the Welsh equivalent of St Tropez, so for the location for the one after that, all I have to do is open the front door. Not sure about the weather though ....

Jamie and Matthew