I won’t try to pretend I wasn’t excited. I was like a little kid on their birthday; I have absolutely no shame in admitting that, especially given that it was my birthday earlier this week and I was extremely excitable at work , which my colleagues coped with admirably, probably in part to the sugar based snacks I brought in for them….ah-hem… Anyway, yes, back to writing…

For me there is nothing quite like the feeling of someone who works as a professional in the publishing industry saying,  yes, we’d like to see more please. It makes all those grabbed minutes of precious solitary writing time over early mornings, lunch times and evenings – ignoring the real world because I’m buried in my own fictional one – worth it. It means that when I talk to people about how much I love writing and they look at me blankly, not getting it, I can give them a huge grin and not care. It means that when people scoff and make comments about my ‘little efforts’ or are derisive, I can  look them in the eye and tell them that I don’t think I’m wasting my time.  Ooh, if that’s how good it feels to have a full MS requested, what state will I be in if ever offered a publishing contract?

So, full MS requested, I thought I’d give it one last polish before sending off, the problem was where to get the time? I had hoped that I’d be able to go to the annual RNA – Romantic Novelists Association – Conference last weekend but for various reasons that I won’t bore you with, it wasn’t going to happen. So the weekend was free of structured activity..but what to do with the hubby, kids and animals?

My hubby kindly offered (was persuaded after some discussion/pleading/bribery) to take responsibility for the kids for all of Saturday and Sunday. So I put in ten hours on Saturday and eight hours on Sunday – usually about 4 weeks of writing time – to honing the MS (again!)  and cutting the word count. I was quietly pleased with it. I sent it off, fingers crossed..Update in the next post.

Moving onto other writing related matters, re the RNA conference, I hear it was fab, with as usual a good amount of wine being consumed and lots of fab shoes on display – obviously other writer related activities went on as well! Check it out at the RNA blog at http://romanticnovelistsassociationblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/rna-conference-2011-gala-dinner-and.html

Speaking of fab shoes – these are my friend Carly’s that a good number of us girls were jealous of when she wore them to our friend’s wedding a few weeks ago. If you love shoes you’ll appreciate this picture, plus the one underneath of some I’ve got my eye on..sshhh, don’t tell the hubby; he thinks I have too many shoes already! How does he not know that is simply not possible?

Until my next post, Happy Writing (or shoe shopping, if the pictures have inspired you)!

Nikki x

Kaspa & Fiona have taken over my blog for today, because they need our help. You may remember that I took part in their  ‘A River Of Stones’ (AROS) project back in January.

For their fantasy wedding present, they are asking people across the world to write them a ‘small stone’ and post it on their blogs or on Facebook or Twitter. Here’s a few words from them:

A small stone is a short piece of observational writing – simply pay attention to something properly and then write it down. Find out more about small stones here.

If you’re willing to help, we’d love you to do things:

1) Re-post this blog on your own blog any time before June the 18th and give your readers a chance to hear about what we’re doing. You can simply copy and paste the text, or you can find the html here.

2) Write us a small stone on our wedding day whilst we’re saying our vows and eating cake, post it on your blog, and send it to us.

You can find out more about our project at our website, Wedding Small Stones, and you can also read our blog at A River of Stones.

We also have a July challenge coming soon, when we’ll be challenging you to notice one thing every day during July and write it down.

Thank you for listening, and we hope we’ll be returning from our honeymoon to an inbox crammed with small stones, including yours.

Kaspa & Fiona

Even if you don’t have your own blog you could still write a stone and post it to them at the link above, or on facebook or twitter.

~~~:o:~~~

Muncaster Castle’s Festival of Fools is upon us again:  people with absolutely no dress sense doing improbable things with spherical objects, water and balloons – and that’s just the visitors.

As always, the event is being held over 5 days, from the 29^th of May to the 2^nd of June, and we’re running the sideshows.  We’d appreciate a helping hand, so if you have nothing better to do over the Late May Bank Holiday (and what could POSSIBLY be better than supervising Smash the Rat?) – please give Andrea a ring here at the Centre (01229 717355).

As mentioned last month, our volunteers are branching out a bit, trying their hand at cross-stitch to start with, but also considering lots of other options – rug-making, soap-making, knitting, crochet … probably even macrame at this rate.  (I can’t remember when I last saw one of those splendid macrame plant-pot holder thingies …).  Anyway, I digress.  we’re asking for two things:

Unwanted craft materials – embroidery and tapestry rings, frames and stands, surplus threads of all kinds, knitting wool, needles and patterns, material, canvas, crochet hooks, rug hooks …. you get the picture.  Also any old/unwanted art materials and supplies would be very welcome – paper, paints, pencils, crayons – whatever.

Teachers –  Do you have a crafting skill you could teach to our volunteers?  We can’t pay you anything.  All we can offer is good company, lunch and our gratitude.

Books:  For a change, I’m not asking for books – I’m advertising them for sale.   We’ve just taken delivery of a private collection of fantasy novels, about two hundred of them – and not just single volumes, but whole sets.  Among the most prominently featured authors are Terry Books, Maggie Furey, David Eddings, Stephen Lawhead, Raymond E Feist and Katherine Kerr.  Paperbacks are 25p, hardbacks 50p, and when they’re gone, they’re gone!

We know you like to be kept up to speed on the ‘other life’ of our Centre Manager – and she’s been at it again.  For one thing, she’s become an Associate Member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.  Not because she writes romantic novels, but because she occasionally reviews them on the literary website she helps to run called Vulpes Libris.  For another, at the beginning of March she fetched up at the achingly glamorous Royal Horseguards Hotel in Whitehall, at the RNA’s Annual Pure Passion Awards – where she shamelessly hobnobbed with novelists, actors and publishers, made a public exhibition of herself by walking around the National Liberal Club in her stockinged feet because she was having trouble with her high heels and kissed “David Archer“ (in real life Tim Bentinck, aka the 12^th Earl of Portland) like the out-and-out brazen hussy she really is.  (She also persists in talking about herself in the third person.)

~~~:o:~~~

(Photo of macrame plant hanger from Sheltons Macrame website … I hope they don’t mind me borrowing it.)

WINNER:  Romantic Novel of the Year.

At the 2011 Romantic Novelists’ Association/Pure Passion Awards ceremony last month, Jojo Moyes‘ The Last Letter from your Lover won  the coveted ‘Romantic Novel of the Year’ award.

The three judges of the award were Amanda Craig, author and book reviewer, fiction buyer for Waterstone’s Janine Cook and actor Jay Benedict – a regular reviewer (professional commitments permitting) on Vulpes Libris.

Today,  Jay joins us with his own, inimitable, take on Jojo’s prize-winning romance:

~~~:~~~

If romance is carried in our RNA, then Jojo Moyes must have the stuff  by the bucketload.  I guess you’re either a born Romantic, or not. You’re either wild, extravagant, fanciful, chimeric, anti-classical … or not.  And Jojo is.

The Last Letter from Your Lover is written like a movie. You can see it as you’re reading it – no mean feat. It’s a story full of flashbacks and flash-forwards; one minute we’re in the South of France, the next – London. We have time jumps and slow dissolves. We’re on a yacht, in a hotel room,  a park, train, airport – and all this is linked with passionate love letters between two people.

In a nutshell, the book is a homage to the lost art of the love letter or, as the sleeve notes put it – a lament.

Each chapter is prefaced by a real  life ‘last letter’,  from males to females, and vice versa,  wishing the recipient a Happy Birthday, or carrying a handful of words ending an affair – like the telegram from one man to his war bride simply stating: Don’t come.

We very quickly enter  a world of clipped accents, letters written with pen and ink, cashmere coats and leopard skin pillbox hats, tight chignons and navy two pieces:  the black and white early 1960s,  pre- call centres, telephone answering machines and mobile phones,  when it was impossible to  get sacked by email.

But let me back up a little …

In the prologue we find Ellie Haworth working as a 20-something journalist at  ‘The Nation’, in 21st century Britain.  ‘The Nation’ is moving its HQ to Compass Quay, east of the city, after 100 years in premises on Turner Street.  Melissa, Head of Features, wants an article to reflect these sweeping changes:  how women’s preoccupations have changed, their attitudes on fashion and something along the lines of plus ça change …

While having a rummage around in the archives, she stumbles across a battered file that  seems to be about lung disease, but as she’s about to throw it away, a letter slips out dated the 4th of October 1960. It starts:

My dearest and only love,
I meant what I said.  I have come to the conclusion that the only way forward is for one of us to take a bold decision …

And ending in:

… I’ll be on platform 4 at 7.15on Friday evening and there is nothing in the world that would make me happier than if you found the courage to come with me  …  Know that you hold my heart, my hopes, in your hands.
Your
B

Intrigued and already welling up, we’re only on page 17 out of 489.

Then, leaving Ellie in the Archives,  we’re plunged into an entirely different story, starting in a private hospital where Jenny Stirling  is waking up from a near fatal car crash.  The first thing she hears are two voices murmuring something about Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend having survived.

[detour starts] While on tour in the United Kingdom, 21-year-old Eddie Cochran died in a traffic accident.  He was set to be a massive pop star and was from America.  The speeding taxi blew a tyre, lost control, and crashed into a lamp post where a plaque now marks the spot (no other car was involved).  Cochran, who was sitting in the center of the back seat, threw his body over his girlfriend to shield her, was thrown out of the car when the door flew open.  He died in hospital the following day of severe head injuries nand his body was flown home.  But I digress.  [detour ends]

In fact,  Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend is really a bit of a red herring:  it’s Jojo’s way of telling us we’re in pre-Beatles Britain and very soon to be ‘Swinging London’.  It’s a reference for the readers and gives pop trivialists like myself something to hang a time frame on.

Jenny’s about to be discharged but her arm will have to be reset, her head aches continuously and she can’t remember much. She’s having to re-learn everything from the start. She’s  beautiful, has a foreign housekeeper – Mrs Cordoza – a successful husband, no children, and lots of money; she’s a  hostess and socialite who constantly throws parties – the perfect trophy wife in fact.  Laurence Stirling’s the rich successful industrialist husband, frequently away, cold and aloof.

In spite of her amnesia she knows something isn’t quite right but can’t articulate it.  She’s having trouble remembering her friends, her likes and dislikes and, despite the fact that everyone’s telling her she looks well and it’s ‘only a matter of time’,  she’s painfully ill at ease – especially around Laurence who constantly screams at her to call him Larry.

Confused? You would be. The end result of all this is that she doesn’t want to sleep with Laurence or Larry and  doesn’t know why. Scream at anyone often enough and you wouldn’t want to sleep with them either is the moral of that story, right?  She realizes that memories could be lodged in other places than the mind.  All over her house for a start …

After a series of dinner parties in which we meet her posse of  friends, all from the  Ealing school of comedy, Larry and Jenny are off to the South of France for a bit of R&R.  Cut to: Anthony O’Hare – our unreconstructed anti-hero who’s also a journalist at ‘The Nation’ (Tiens!  Tiens!  – Quelle coincidence….!) being sent by his boss Don Franklin to do a piece on an industrialist, one Laurence Stirling, currently in the South of France.  (Tiens! Tiens! – Une autre coincidence…!). Beginning to get the picture now?

O’Hare is deeply resentful about being there because he takes himself way too  seriously as a foreign correspondent, but he’s had a nervous breakdown and drinks, so his boss wants to give him a break and try him on what he thinks is something light for a change. If only he knew what he was about to unleash, he’d have sent him back to Brazzaville.  After threatening him with having to cover Vivien Leigh’s arrival from America instead (a fate obviously worse than death)  he soon bucks his ideas up and flies out to  interview  Laurence Stirling, who in turn, graciously invites him to stay for dinner that evening.

Bored by Larry droning on about politics to all his ex-pat friends – who make up the cast for the evening – our anti-hero turns his attentions to Jenny’s porcelain beauty and understated répartie.  However, his drinking gets the better of him,  and he manages to insult them all  by the end of the soirée.  Waking up the following morning in his hotel room in a thoroughly confused state, and remembering the night before, he writes her a letter apologizing for being an ungracious pig. He staggers out into the noonday heat – talk about Mad Dogs and Englishmen – and surprise surprise, runs smack into Jenny, in the middle of nowhere.  If it wasn’t the beginning of a life-long romance it would all be faintly ridiculous: a guy with a raging hangover sets out in a part of a country he knows not, with no car, to find a villa out of town he was driven to the night before by the Stirlings’  chauffeur in the dark?  I think not.  As it happens Larry has  flown off to the Congo that morning  and so begins a series of trysts around Antibes – in rowing boats, restaurants, and her yacht – wherever – until his expenses run out and Don starts screaming for him  to come home. (At least he’s not insisting on being called Donald.)

Jenny dubs Anthony ‘William Boot’ – out of his depth in the war zone of Riviera society – and it all ends with:

“I think,” she said, “that you and I could make each other terribly unhappy.”

And as she spoke, something deep inside him keeled over a little, as if in defeat.  “I think,” he said slowly, “that I’d like that very much.”

Back in present-day  London, Jenny is working out who she is by dint of turning out the shelves and cupboards.  The plot thickens when she stumbles across a letter tucked in a  paperback addressed to “Dearest”:

Here is the truth:  you would not be  the first married woman I’ve made love to … When we first met I chose to think you would be no different … It was for that reason that I redid that wretched button at your neck.  And for that reason I have lain awake for the last two nights, hating myself for the one decent thing I have ever done.  Forgive me. B.

She unearths seven more letters all hiding around the house signed ‘B’ – all impulsive, passionate, quick to anger and to forgive. She’s now on a major search and finally, the penny drops she’s been having an affair…..

Take him to you if you must, my love, but don’t love him.  Please don’t love him.  Yours selfishly,  B.

Larry’s mercurial moods and long silences are explained. The question is:  How long has this been going on? (If this was a movie, that would be a cue for a song …)  Was it recent?  And who’s ‘B’?

But I’m not going to spoil the dénouement by telling you everything.  This is a rollicking good read on any level – a perfect story for a movie or TV, with ‘HIT’ written all over it. It’s funny, relentless, sad – and has more  twists and turns than a basket full of snakes. It’s a character-driven piece in which everybody has plenty of development;  well researched and with great period detail. I was so into their love story that I completely forgot about Ellie Haworth’s framing narrative,  which is the biggest compliment I could pay this book.

Chapeau, Jojo …

Hodder and Stoughton.  2010.  ISBN: 978-0-340-96164-3.  489pp.

I got to go  to London ALL BY MYSELF in March, to attend the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s Awards ceremony at One Whitehall Place.  I caught a train, and travelled in taxis, and didn’t get mugged once.  (Mind you when you stand 5’8″ in your boots and fairly obviously pack a back-hander that could poll-axe a cow, it would take a brave mugger …)

Anyway, your intrepid Girl reporter had an ace time and over the weekend I wrote my School Report on it in my bestest handwriting (which came out looking strangely like Verdana12 point):  Pure Passion at the Liberal Club.

This doesn’t pretend to be a definitive record of the 2011 RNA/Pure Passion Awards ceremony.  It is, rather, a very personal (and highly idiosyncratic)  ‘view from here’ – but I hope I’ve managed to convey just a little of how (slightly) surreal, entertaining, friendly and completely knackering it all was …

MKB.

~~~:~~~

It’s hard to imagine a classier address than “One Whitehall Place” – the home of the National Liberal Club.  Gladstone laid the foundation stone in 1882 and Alfred Waterhouse’s grandiose, neo-gothic pile was finally completed in 1887.  In its 120 year history it’s seen schism,  skullduggery, decline and rebirth.  Lloyd George and Winston Churchill were such  personae non gratae during the acrimonious Liberal Party rift in 1916-1923 that the Club refused to hang their portraits (oh, the scandal …); the Luftwaffe made a nasty mess of the famous marble staircase during the Blitz and in the 1970s the plausible conman George de Chabris flogged the entire contents of the Library – 35,000 books and 30,000 pamphlets – to the University of Bristol for a derisory £40,000.

In 1985, the club sold off a substantial chunk of itself (140 bedrooms from the third floor to the eighth floor,  two vast ballrooms plus the Gladstone Library) to the adjoining Royal Horseguards Hotel, which is why, on the 7th of March this year, its marbled halls echoed with the voices of nearly 190 over-excited (and in just one or two cases, just everso slightly less than sober) romantic novelists, publishers, literary agents and assorted guests as it hosted the 2011 RNA/Pure Passion Awards.

Festivities were due to kick off at 4.00pm, so I caught the early train from the Lake District and fetched up at the New Cavendish Club (the favoured London watering hole of RNA members) at lunchtime. Happily for little cheapskate me, Katie Fforde (Chair of the RNA) and Catherine Jones (former Chair and now Press Officer) were about to head off to the Royal Horseguards early, so I grabbed a sandwich (one of Catherine’s actually …) hauled on the glad rags and the heels and climbed into their taxi – which very nearly made it to the hotel.

About a quarter of a mile from the front entrance, in completely stationary traffic, the taxi driver uttered the words no self-respecting London cabbie ever wants to say:

“I think you’d better walk …”.

Walking is fine.  I do it all the time – in jeans and sensible lace-up shoes.  Walking in high heels and a knee-length skirt is an advanced skill which escaped me years ago, so by the time we reached the hotel I was exhausted from the sheer effort of simultaneously walking in a straight line and staying upright.  I also discovered that the (insanely sumptuous) ladies’ loos were up ANOTHER spiral staircase (right), which was a staircase too far, and why I spent most of the rest of the day in that glitzy and august assemblage walking around in my stockinged feet.  Glamour be damned.  There’s nothing glamorous about crashing to the deep-pile carpet and showing your knickers to the world.

When you arrive at an awards ceremony an hour-and-some early, there’s no-one there except the Committee members – running around alternating firefighting with being charming to everyone, the helpful grunts like me – who are doing all the putting and taking, arranging and stacking, and the shortlisted authors, all sitting around waiting for their photos to be taken and trying to pretend they’re uber-cool about the whole thing.  (You failed, guys!)  So, after I’d dutifully stacked the shortlisted books on little wobbly tables, stuck ‘Pure Passion’ labels on everything that didn’t move and hidden the decorative tilework on the scrolled pillars with multiple posters, I had a chance to take in my surroundings a little more carefully.

My first thought was of Bertie Wooster, who said that the Victorians couldn’t be trusted around a pile of bricks and a trowel . . .

The NLR is pure Alfred Waterhouse – the sort of heavy neo-Gothic architecture that’s so hideous it’s absolutely magnificent.  Everywhere you look there are murals depicting classical scenes, massive pillars covered in embossed ceramic tiles, more tiles on the walls – from floor to ceiling; in fact the whole thing puts you unnervingly in mind of an up-market bus station or public convenience.  Sorry, but it does.  It’s the tiling.

There is indeed a story – possibly apocryphal, but I DO hope not – that a Conservative politician took to calling in every day on his way to the House of Commons, to use the club’s loos.  When the hall porter reeled him in one day and asked if he was actually a member of the club, he is supposed to have replied:  “Good God! You mean it’s a club as well?”

And then there’s that staircase: lined with portraits of the Great and the Good, rebuilt after the war at ruinous expense and, as anyone in the place will tell you if you stand still for longer than 30 seconds, the largest unsupported marble staircase in Europe.  I gazed at it at length, trying to work out what was actually holding it up, and in the end decided it was Art.  Well, possibly Physics too – but chiefly Art. (Joke credit: Douglas Adams.)

Gradually, the Reading and Writing Room – where the pre-Awards Reception was being held – began to fill up, the champagne started to flow and the noise levels started to rise.

The Master of Ceremonies – Tim Bentinck (David in The Archers) – arrived with his lovely and talented wife Judy (a superb milliner, in case you didn’t know - take a look). Tim was ‘fresh’ off a plane from New Zealand, and looking remarkably chipper for a man who’d just spent the last 26 hours travelling from the other side of the world.

Tim’s appointment as MC came about by a bit of a circuitous route …

Back in 2010, when I was one of the judges of the Romantic Novel of the Year Award, Katie Fforde very kindly invited me to dinner with fellow Book Fox, actor Jay Benedict and his wife and business partner Phoebe.  That dinner eventually led to an invitation to Jay to be a judge of the 2011 award, and when the RNA were looking for a Master of Ceremonies, Jay immediately suggested his old friend Tim Bentinck.  It was all very incestuous, really.

When the two of them met at the Reception, there was a totally surreal moment.  The conversation went something like this:

TB:  There’s a portrait of you on the stairs …!
JB:   I know, we saw it.

The portrait is, in fact, of Lord Melbourne – unfortunate husband of Lady Caroline Lamb, Prime Minister during Queen Victoria’s early years on the throne and a man so laid back it was rumoured he  had subsumed the whole of the Ten Commandments into just one: “Thou Shalt Not Bother”.

In fact, unbeknown to Tim, Jay actually played Lord Melbourne in a Channel 4 documentary – Queen Victoria’s Men – a role he was encouraged to pursue by Phoebe when she spotted the truly uncanny physical resemblance …

But I’m wandering off the point, as usual.

At the allotted time, we were all shunted into the stunning Gladstone Library – balconied, pillared, sumptuously appointed.  The only thing it lacked was books.  There appeared to be books, but they were all fakes of course – the originals now being safely installed in Bristol (see opening paragraph).  The Library was decked out in purple and glitz for the occasion, with large screens the better to see the awards, a public address system the better to hear them – and FOOD.  Canapes.  Dozens of them.  Followed by exotic meringues served in a darkened room, with sparklers.  It grieved me that some of the attendees didn’t touch their meringues and they were left there, unloved and uneaten.  I did vaguely wonder if I could snaffle another without anyone noticing and yelling “Pig!” … but decorum won the day, this time.

The speeches and awards were accompanied by video presentations, and the jaw-dropping facts and figures preceding the two Outstanding  Achievement Awards to Penny Jordan and Josephine Cox (racking up between them over 100 million copies, 220 books, in umpteen countries and heaven alone knows how many languages) provided all the explanation you need for why romantic fiction is on the receiving end of so much disdain in certain quarters.  It sells – and it sells massively, because it’s what people want to read.  And they just hate that, don’t they?

The awards ceremony over, hardly anyone want to leave – so in the Churchill Bar the ability to lift a glass to your lips without moving your elbows came in very handy.  Eventually, at around 7.00pm, a good number of us repaired to the One Twenty One Two Restaurant to carry on partying,  but unfortunately by then the jet-lagged Tim Bentinck, who’d held it all together heroically throughout the ceremony, was doing a passable imitation of a man who’d walked into a plate glass door, and Judy took him home for a nice long lie down in a darkened room.  They missed a fabulous meal and a lovely evening, but as none of us particularly wanted to fish the poor man out of his soup  – it was the only sensible thing to do.

And the perfect end to a perfect day?  Getting (politely) thrown out of the restaurant when the staff wanted to go to bed … and hitching a lift back to the New Cavendish in Katie and Catherine’s taxi.

Timing is everything.

~~~:~~~

The Winners of the Pure Passion Awards, 2011:

Romantic Novel of the Year: Jojo Moyes – The Last Letter from Your Lover.
Lifetime Achievement Awards: Penny Jordan and Josephine Cox.
Historical Novel of the Year: Elizabeth Chadwick -  To Defy a King.
Romantic Comedy of the Year: Jill Mansell – Take a Chance on Me.
Love Story of the Year: Louise Allen – The Piratical Miss Ravenshurst.

If you’d like to see photographs of the Pure Passion Awards – you’ll find a nice selection at the RNA’s photogallery.

~~~:~~~

On Friday, Jay will be joining us with a review of Jojo Moyes’ winning novel – The Last Letter from Your Lover.

~~~:~~~

(The two photographs of the marble staircase and the Red Tower staircase at the NLC are from pshad’s photostream on Flickr and reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence. The portrait of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, is by John Partridge and the original  hangs in the National Portrait Gallery – from whom I nicked the image.  Mea culpa …)

Click to buy

Hodder author Jojo Moyes has won Romantic Novel of the Year at the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s (RNA) Pure Passion Awards, scooping the prize with The Last Letter from Your Lover.

Both Josephine Cox and Penny Jordan, published by HarperCollins and Avon respectively, won Outstanding Achievement Awards for their contributions to the genre.                                                                                                                         …read more

Winner of the 2011 Romantic Novel of the Year – recognising the best of the year’s novels exploring the deep mysteries of the human heart – is Jojo Moyes for her book The Last Letter from your Lover.

“The book came about after I eavesdropped on some women unsuccessfully trying to decipher a text message – Later X” Jojo said. “It made me realise that all these added means of communication have actually served to make things more opaque. I feel sorry for the generations that are missing out on the joys of the love letter.”

Also honoured at the Pure Passion Awards were two of the world’s best-selling and much-loved authors – Josephine Cox and Penny Jordan. Both authors were presented with Outstanding Achievement Awards for their contributions to the ever popular genre.

In Westminster for the RNA Winter Party

Well it’s been a busy few weeks. I’ve been packing loads in around new full time hours at work and went to the, as always, fun and fabulous Romantic Novelists Association Winter Party last Wednesday.

Working in the morning and then completing a five hour round trip in one afternoon/evening, along with traipsing up and down the streets of Westminster in the bitter rain, may seem like a lot to ask for only a couple of hours in a hot room BUT it isn’t.

The opportunity to meet and spend time with fellow (published and unpublished) authors, agents and other gurus from the publishing world, is always absolutely worth it. The contacts are invaluable and it is so lovely to talk to people who understand the madness that drives us to write for pleasure/eventual publication, such as the lovely Lucy Gilmour from Harlequin Mills and Boon and the very tall and enviably pretty Talli Roland, whose debut novel is out on the 1st December. Not to mention that there is always food, there is always wine and there is always gossip and celebration; this year particularly so as the RNA has hit it’s 50th glorious year. Along with celebrating that achievement, the New Writers Scheme, which I am overjoyed to be a part of, was highlighted as a particular reason to be proud. Follow the links to the official coverage of the event:

http://www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org/index.php/activities/report/winter_party_2010

http://www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org/index.php/activities/photo_gallery/category/winter_party_2010

As for the rain lashed Dorset part of this post – well, as the weather has been so awful for the last few weekends, which has put a serious cramp in our style where walking our (not so small) puppy Jackson is concerned, it has enabled me to catch up with the word count on my…

National Novel Writing Month Style Challenge

NANO  style challenge. I now have one week to go and I am just at over 82% complete. I have circa 7000 of the 40,000 word target to go which means in total  I have written 43,000 of my 50,000 MS! It has at times been difficult and I must confess that I have not always managed to write every single day, but this has been balanced by writing 1200 – 1500 words (rather than the 816 word target) on some really good days. I am quietly hoping (okay every digit and toe is firmly crossed) that by next Tuesday 30th November, I will have hit my target 40,000 word count. It won’t be perfect – I need to refine the main male character a.k.a the hero and take a few scenes out, readjust the pace etc and multiple other things that I will discover I will want to change once I have printed out and start redrafting – no it won’t be perfect, and it will not be finished, but the first draft will be DONE.

I will have written a MS, written and submitted a short story, polished and submitted a partial MS for the New Writers Scheme and started a blog,  in just over 5 months. In other words, kept some promises that I made to myself last January when making my New Year’s resolutions. Who’d have thought? Hmm..what to do for resolutions for 2011..?

Good luck to everyone out there who has taken part in NaNoWrMo or some version of it. 7 days to go and counting. Eek!

And a shout out to my aunt Sue Moorcroft who has just had her latest novel ‘Want to Know a Secret?’ with Choc Lit published, with the most gorgeous cover imaginable. No 10 at WHSmith Travel, whoop whoop!

Take care all,

Nikki.

I joined the RNA at the beginning of 2010 through its New Writers Scheme, which provides unpublished authors with a comprehensive report on a full-length romance novel. The report covers characters, plot and the suitability of the novel for its intended audience. This scheme has a limit of 250 places and opens for applications at the beginning of January each year (but you do have until the end of August to submit your manuscript). The scheme is usually full within a month – so you have to be quick off the mark!

My novel came out of this very badly but nevertheless it was money well spent. The following points came out of the detailed critque:

• Aim at a readership that you can identify with – it’s hard to write to chick-lit for 20-somethings when you’re old enough to be their mother!
• Get to know your characters before  you start writing – my heroine had many inconsistencies in the way she acted, leaving it difficult for the reader to care about her at all
• Work out the plot in detail, again before you start writing, mine had as many holes as a seive 
• Only include scenes that move the story on otherwise the book becomes dull

Don’t submit to the New Writers’ Scheme if you’re afraid of criticism – parts of my report were quite brutal. Recognise the report you receive for what it is – an attempt to help you become a better writer and that can’t be done without honestly telling you if your novel is bad.

Of course not everyone’s work is as bad as mine! Anne, who I met at lunchtime, was given some useful advice about giving her 1950s heroine more oomph and she is now working to improve her book. About 5% of manuscripts submitted to the scheme are judged worthy of a second reading and may then get sent on to an agent. 

If you decide to submit – Good Luck! and remember, contrary to popular belief romance writing is not easy.

Today’s writing prompt: Easter Egg (not very seasonable now but remember if you’re writing for publication, magazines work several months in advance).

The X-Factor Vs. The NWS??

As I was sat watching the X Factor over the weekend (I love the auditions, bootcamp and judges houses stages but am not so keen on the live shows) it occured to me how great the premise of the show is in terms of the opportunities it gives to unknowns in the music industry.

Take out the backstabbing, drama and Simon’s high waisted trousers, and the other pet hates that people have about the show, and drill it down the core idea. It is an equal opportunity, restricted only by a minimum age and ability to get to/attend the auditions, for anyone who believes that they have a talent and wants to make it as an artist/singer/performer, to put themselves out there and be judged. First and foremost by a panel of people who know what they’re talking about, and then secondly by the general public a.k.a the consumers. The former have either managed or produced or signed people or have experience of the industry from trying to claw to the top of it themselves, and the latter are the very people that the ‘unknown’ will rely on to make and keep them successful, through buying their music and building support through fan clubs, blogs etc. 

Romantic Novelists' Association

The above was noted, and my brain then clicked into gear, the hamster upping his pace somewhat -  and I wondered if it is just me that thinks that the New Writers’ Scheme provided by the RNA is essentially the same thing. Albeit it is without the backstabbing and the high-waisted trousers, though I do think we can leave in the drama as without it there would be no fun! 

The NWS membership also provides equality of opportunities because it is open to any unpublished author who applies for membership in January, irrespective of age, race, religion etc etc until the number of allocated spaces is filled e.g. there is no qualifying criteria.

 The NWS is also a chance for unknowns a.k.a wannabe writers to be judged by (a panel of) their peers e.g. published authors etc

Here, in my humble opinion, is where the similarities lie:-

1) NWS: Your partial or full Manuscript is sent off for a First Reading Vs. X Factor: You go onto the stage for your First Audition.  

(For me there was a high level of nerves in sending off my MS which  I can only imagine X Factor auditionees also experience whilst waiting in the wings to go on for the first time….)

2) NWS: If your (full) MS is good enough, it is put forward for a Second Reading Vs. X Factor: If you’re good enough you’re onto the second round – Bootcamp.

3) NWS : If your MS is at publishable standard it gets passed onto an agent/publisher for consideration Vs. X Factor: You have now reached the judges house for consideration for the live rounds

4) NWS : The agent/editor thinks you and your work are fabulous and marketable enough to be published and pitches to a publisher/a commissioning/acquisition team Vs. X Factor: Contestants perform live in the studio backed by their mentors

5) NWS: You are offered a publishing contract Vs. X Factor: You come in the top three/win and land a contract and are signed to a music label

6) Fame and Fortune beckon??!!

For details of the NWS please go to http://www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org/index.php/join/new_writers_scheme

For the latest gossip about the X-Factor go to http://xfactor.itv.com/2010/

Would love to hear your views on my theory!

Take care, Nikki.

P.S.  Just in case you’re an X factor fan – Go Matt and Rebecca!

 

Sue Moorcroft - writer and wonder woman!

I get asked on a regular basis what or who inspires me to write. I write because I feel compelled to and if I didn’t I’d miss it – and I’d feel as if  I’d had a limb lopped off. Reading an exceptionally well written book where I know that the author writes for a living also makes me want to put pen to paper (or as the case may be, fingers to laptop keyboard).

However, I am also inspired by my aunt, writer Sue Moorcroft. Her hard work, talent and perseverance are a lesson in how to succeed for any wannabe writer and her star is firmly in the ascent.

Referred to as the ‘Short Story Queen,’ by bestselling author and Chair of the Romantic Novelists Association Katie Fforde http://katiefforde.com she is also:

-         A creative writing tutor

-         The author of a ‘How To’ book on how to make money writing romantic fiction ‘Love Writing’

-         Editor of and contributor to the Romantic Novelists Association’s (http://www.rna-uk.org) 50^th Anniversary anthology

-          This bit hot off the press; Brand new columnist at www.girlracer.co.uk 

-         Contributor to writing magazines

-         Judge of writing competitions and…

Author of romantic fiction which has been getting some fab reviews in recent times;  ‘Starting Over’ ‘All That Mallarkey’ (which is so good that I once stayed up until 4.00 a.m. to read the draft in one sitting) and forthcoming ‘Want to know a Secret?’ all published by Choc Lit http://www.choc-lit.co.uk/

A must read for every aspiring romantic fiction author

Lovely - great characters and a great place that you won't want to say goodbye to.

The most gorgeous book cover I have ever seen....

Young, fresh and funky – a great unputdownable read.

Being able to draw on her experience and knowledge of the writing world has been invaluable to me – she is always at the end of a text or email with advice and support.

As well as always being happy to answer any questions, she also introduced me to the RNA around ten years ago, which is the nicest, warmest collection of writers, agents, publishers and other industry insiders that I ever had the pleasure of knowing and meeting.

 The RNA is the only writers’ association that I am aware of that runs a ‘probationary membership’ for unpublished writers, the New Writers Scheme which again, if you are a wannabe writer, is invaluable and I would highly recommend it. 

With regards to Sue, I have only scratched the surface – so if you want to know the full story or find out about her books, please go to: - 

http://suemoorcroft.wordpress.com

www.suemoorcroft.com

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Starting-Over-A-book-by-Sue-Moorcroft/383753981053

And the NWS http://www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org/index.php/join/new_writers_scheme

Thanks!

NG

The Romantic Novelists’Association’s ‘Pure Passion’ awards went swimmingly.

We arrived at the Royal Garden Hotel in a sleek, black, chauffeur-driven car and sidled along the edge of the red carpet because it seemed a shame to walk on it, since the lady had only just finished hoovering it …

Joanna Trollope trod on my foot as she went to the stage to collect her Lifetime Achievement Award.  I beamed and nodded like an aimiable idiot at the lovely Barry Norman, because I couldn’t actually hear a word he was saying above the cacophony of 350 or so excited female voices.  I think I told the Publishing Director of Penguin Books a slightly questionable joke.  Or it could have been someone else.  Either way, it was questionable.  None of the losing authors actually tried to lynch me, although I thought one of them might burst into tears when I told her how much I liked her book.  I’m glad no-one took a photograph of Tony Mulliken of Midas PR sticking his finger in my ear – it’d be a tricky one to explain, although there was a perfectly sensible (well, okay – reasonably sensible) explanation for it.

Oh, and I got to do something I haven’t done in over 30 years:  a quick wardrobe change in the back of a black cab … en route to Euston Station from Kensington Park Lane (via Kings Cross, on account of the cabbie having misheard me …).

Oh, me lorst yoof …

PS:  To the best of my knowledge, only one person managed to take a photo of me, which was entirely intentional on my part and definitely a Good Thing.

(1) Arrived in The Great Wen early (yes, early!), safe, but slightly seasick, courtesy of Virgin West Coast’s Pendolino.  (Don’t know about you, but I find it profoundly disturbing to be watching the scenery passing, only to have the horizon vanish as you round a bend … Horizons do NOT tilt in the real world.)

(2) Got into a cab at Euston and promptly (if that is the right term) sat in traffic for the next 20 minutes.  “I thought the Congestion Charge was supposed to have sorted all this out?” I said, none-too-innocently, to the cabby … Cue Vesuvian Eruption which kept me entertained all the way to the private members Club where I was staying overnight.  Glad I wasn’t paying the for the taxi, though.

(3) Had jolly dinner with RNA Chair Katie Fforde and two friends.  We were still there at approaching midnight, something the Club (which is basically the haunt of Nice Ladies in Sensible Shoes) is plainly not used to.  Everybody else in the dining room cleared off to bed at about 9.30pm … Brazen Hussies ‘R’ Us …

(4) Had jolly breakfast with K and then hit Oxford Street prior to lunch.  Somehow found ourselves in Waterstones, where … but no … I won’t tell you What Katie Did – even though I threatened to.  I’ll just hang it over her head for Ever and Ever.

(5) Met fellow judges over another jolly lunch where we amicably (much to K’s disappointment, because she really, really wanted a nice knock-down, drag-out) agreed on a winner.  I could tell you which book won, but then I’d have to kill you.

(6)  Hailed a cab, piloted by the World’s Most Aggressive cab driver, who slalomed through the congestion in half the time of his predecessor, leaving mangled cyclists, dented wings and broken pedestrians in his wake.

(7) Boarded train for Oxenholme, where I shared a seat with a perfectly charming but clumsy Glaswegian who – before the train had even started moving -  opened an M & S salad and showered himself, his laptop, the seat and me in garlic salad dressing.  He spent the rest of the three hour journey plying me with crumble mints, by way of compensation.

(8) Arrived home at 10.00pm, smelling like a Caesar Salad.

Now I get a week off before I have to repeat the whole process for the Awards Lunch …

How they gonna keep me down on the farm? 

Cindy organized the thing like the D-Day landings.  It all went off without a hitch, the garden has been transformed, a good time was had by all, and at lunch time everyone adjourned to Mawsons of Bailey Ground in Seascale for sandwiches, chips and – of course – ice cream.

Although I speak authoritatively, I’m actually reporting all of this second hand because, I have to admit, I wasn’t actually there.  I have a talent for not being anywhere when there’s any work to be done …

On Wednesday, I’m off to The Great Wen for Stage One of The Big Adventure.  On Thursday – in a secret location, natch – I’m meeting my two fellow judges Sharon Gurney (Sainsbury’s Senior Book Buyer) and journalist Alyson Rudd to decide the winner of the Romantic Novel of the Year Award.  So, up until lunch time on Thursday – I’m open to bribery and corruption with violet and rose creams …

Stage Two is on the 16th of March, which is the far-too-posh-for-the-likes-of-me Awards Lunch at the Royal Garden Hotel.

Writing has been a lifelong hobby for me. As a child I wrote stories and plays to entertain myself, my four wee sisters and my friends. As a teenager I kept a diary and this strand of my writing evolved in my student and adult years into keeping travel journals whenever I was abroad. I’m particularly proud of the writing I did recording my travels in the Middle East, Australia and South Africa.

Throughout my adult life, writing has continued to be very important to me. It is a creative outlet and has also proved to be therapeutic during challenging times. I cannot imagine my life without it.

 It was around ten years ago that I decided to make the move from amateur to professional writer and so began a long apprenticeship. The decision to take my writing was made following my diagnosis with ovarian cancer. The deal I did with myself was that if I got through it – then no more procrastinating.

 So in 2000 I attended an Arvon Foundation residential writing course at Moniack Mhor. The course tutor was Ali Smith and the seeds for ‘Change of Life’ were sown while on this course. It began life as a short story that Smith said had the makings of a novel.

Between 2000 and 2004 I wrote several short stories, joined the Edinburgh Writers Club and attended more writing courses.

In 2004,  following the cancer all-clear, husband’s redundancy, relocation from Edinburgh  to the Highlands and during a subsequent year off from full-time employment, I found time to develop ‘Change of Life’ (the ideas and characters for the book had never quite gone away and were now clamouring for attention).

 During 2006 and 2007 the first draft of ‘Change of Life’ was completed.

 Then in 2008 I joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) New Writers’ Scheme (NWS). I submitted the full manuscript of the book and received very useful and constructive feedback. This led to a major rewrite.  Then I joined youwriteon.com, a peer review website, funded by the Arts Council. This led to further rewrites and revisions.

 And finally, in 2009, I engaged a professional editor to polish the manuscript. Entered Change of Life in the Edinburgh Writers’ Club Novel competition, judged by novelist, David Wishart, and WON FIRST PRIZE.

Also in 2009, I submitted the newly edited version of the entire novel to the RNA NWS. It was judged as one of six – out of 250, to be of publishable standard. ‘Change of Life’ was published in December.

I can understand their confusion, because on the face of it I’m not really a likely candidate, and it doesn’t help that I have (very occasionally you understand), been known to say outrageous things with a completely straight face just to spread chaos and dismay.

Nor do I LOOK like the judge of a romantic novel award. If you took a photograph of me as my normal, everyday self and asked a total stranger to guess my occupation they’d probably come up with things like bricklayer, gardener, builder or possibly windbreak.  I am not frail and fluffy:  more Isambard Kingdom Brunel  than Philippe Starck.  When sufficiently annoyed (eg: by a cat stalking my precious garden birds) my voice carries for miles.  As I rush shrieking from the house, calling down death and dismemberment on the entire feline species, people in the surrounding houses cower in terror, wondering if the end of the world has come and the Whitehaven News forgot to mention it.

The very last thing anyone who thinks they know me would expect to see on my bedside table is a stack of six romantic novels; but there they are …  nestling incongruously beside a Swiss Army knife, a super-high-powered xenon  torch and a large DIY manual.  I am a woman who can tell her claw hammers from her ball-pein hammers – even in the dark.

I was enticed into this situation by silken promises of all-expenses-paid  trips to London and being wined and dined in posh watering holes.  My immediate reaction – apart from being ridiculously flattered at being asked, of course – was “Ooh yes, I’m having some of that …!”

It was only much, much later, in the cold and sober light of reality, that two things occurred to me:

(1)  I had to read all six shortlisted books.  HAD to – as in “compulsory”.  I haven’t HAD to read a book since I was at college.  What if they were all awful and I hated them?  I mean, I enjoy the occasional romantic novel; it’s lovely to put your feet up, open a packet of ginger nuts, pour yourself a cuppa and lose yourself in a well-written piece of light fiction now and then.  But what if all those RNA members who helped choose the final six books were congenital idiots with absolutely no judgement?   I read very slowly.  I may even move my lips.   Reading six truly terrible brain-homogenizing tooth-rotters would take me forever and probably bring me out in hives.

(2)  If I was going to be lunching somewhere seriously posh I needed something respectable to wear.  I’ve lived in the depths of the Lake District for over 20 years.  My wardrobe consists almost  entirely of hairy socks, mud-splattered ancient trousers, skirts frayed from too many encounters with gorse bushes and  unidentifiable woolly objects (UWOs) that may once have been jumpers, but – who knows?  I also have a massive collection of profoundly sensible footwear – as in thick-soled lace up shoes, walking books and Birkenstocks. The only decent outfit I own is the one I wear to funerals.  No joke.

As far as Point Number 1 is concerned, I needn’t have worried.  The members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association are not, of course, congenital idiots.  I knew that really:  after all, I’ve spent quite a lot of time in their company.  True, they know how to party and some of them have highly questionable taste in shoes, but they’re very bright bunnies.  Ask Jeremy Paxman.

I’m positively sailing through the books.  As I write this, I’m currently on Book five out of six, and thoroughly enjoying myself – so much so that I’m often still reading at past midnight because I  can’t put the damned things down.  My fears of them all melding into one huge fuzzy Romantic Novel in my head were unfounded, because they’re as  different from each other as – well – a moonbeam from lightning.  Mind you, I did have a dream the other night about a stiletto-clad  21st century Italian hitwoman and her basset hound stalking the mean streets of Victorian London in search of a glazier – but I can hardly hold the authors responsible for the unhinged workings of my sub-conscious.

However, as far as Point Number 2 is concerned … well, I’m virtually a basket case.  I’m receiving conflicting advice from my friends, my mother, my friends’ mothers, passers-by and complete strangers.  Worse than that, my friends are so despairing that they’ve resorted to sending me care packages containing shoes and clothes.  I nearly sprained my back trying on a pair of four-inch heels.  I’m now the proud owner of a pencil skirt so short it shows my knees.  My knees haven’t seen the light of day in YEARS -  and they’re not about to start now, let me tell you.  I also have in my possession a sleeveless cardigan sent to me with a covering note saying “I’ve lost a lot of weight, so it’s too big on me now.”   That’s fine.  Don’t worry about my self-esteem.  It could probably do with a little mangling.

I know what’s going to happen, of course.  I’m going to get so confused by the whole ‘clothes’ and ‘shoes’ thing that I’ll be instantly identifiable at the awards lunch.

I’ll be one in her best going-to-funerals outfit.  And hairy socks.

~~~o~~~

The shortlist for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s Romantic Novel of the Year Award is (listed aphabetically by author surname):

• Passion, Louise Bagshawe, Headline Review.
• Fairytale of New York, Miranda Dickinson, Avon (Harper Collins).
• Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts, Lucy Dillon, Hodder & Stoughton.
• A Glimpse at Happiness, Jean Fullerton, Orion.
• The Glass Painter’s Daughter, Rachel Hore, Pocket (Simon & Schuster).
• The Italian Matchmaker, Santa Montefiore, Hodder & Stoughton.

The winner will be announced on Tuesday 16 March, 2010 at the Award lunch at the Royal Garden Hotel, in Kensington.

Moira’s fellow judges are Sharon Gurney, Senior Book Buyer at Sainsbury’s and sports journalist Alyson Rudd.

Anyway, here is our January contribution to the Eskdale Parish News:

Oo:—

The Centre for Complementary Care

Now look, it wasn’t my fault.  All I said in the last Parish News was that we didn’t really care if it poured with rain for our Christmas Fair because we knew we were lucky to get away with a beautiful summer’s day for our Birthday Party.  I did NOT say anything like “Let it pour, let it pour, let it pour!”.  (Well actually, I DID – but then I thought better of it and deleted the unfortunate sentiment – and aren’t I jolly glad I did?).

It did, of course, pour for our Christmas Fair, and then just carried right on pouring, with far from funny results.

However, deluge notwithstanding, we still made over £600.00 on the day, mostly thanks to a quiet and relatively dry period just after lunch when all our faithful supporters, bless their good and kind hearts, all scuttled out from under cover to surge around, buy cakes and generally hand over their hard-earned pennies.

Thank you, one and all … we really DID appreciate it.

Shepley Engineering have been weaving their metal magic at the Chase again.  NOW – for the first time in many years – the rear courtyard has gates again.  They’re beautiful wrought iron ones, with a couple of special embellishments just for us – an unusual arch featuring the dogs that are disporting themselves across the top of our roadside sign AND two sweet little squirrels, down in the corner of each gate.  DO pop up and have a look at them – they’re an absolute joy.

—o—

Now, we have some slightly bizarre news with which to start 2010 – which some of you may already know. Remember our Centre Manager?  The slightly fierce, mouthy one who always writes about herself in the third person?  Well, it turns out she has a whole other life outside the Centre in which she helps run a book review website and because of that she’s been asked by the Romantic Novelists’ Association to be one of the three judges of the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. This involves a couple of all-expenses-paid trips to London and will probably also necessitate her not only  buying a pair of respectable shoes but also finding something to wear that she didn’t claw out of the jumble.

She’s vaguely embarrassed and a bit defensive about the whole thing, so if you should decide to pull her leg the next time you see her, you might like to check first that she doesn’t have a heavy object in her hand … like a very large romantic novel.

Oo:—

My dreams of joining the Romantic Novelist’s Association in 2010 have been shattered.  Their New Writer’s Scheme (which is the only way you can join if you’re not published) is full for new members this year.  On 13th Jan, they’re full – that’s 250 places.  Full.  Wow.  It said on the website they don’t usually fill until mid February.  There must be a lot more wannabes out there this year!  I guess I’ll wait until next year.  Unless I’m published by then… I can dream…

I’m not going to get published until I make a start on this second draft.  I’ve still not started it.  I’m making the excuse that I need to get Microsoft Word on my home laptop so when I transfer from work to home (which I will do daily probably) the layout stays the same.  At home I’ve got another type of word document, which the words are compatible with, but not the layout.  It’s just an excuse not to start though.  I think I’m going to print it and work from a hard copy, then correct it on the computer after.  That’s how I used to write essays at university and it worked then, so hopefully will work now.  I just need to get my printer wired up to my laptop, change the ink and get some paper.  Not asking too much?

I’m a little disappointed with the book I’m reading.  I thought it was a real novel, but it’s turned out to be a collection of short stories.  I’m not a fan of short stories, I must prefer something longer you can really get your teeth into.  With short stories, I find as soon as I start liking or sympathising with the characters, it’s over.  Although there are advantages:I can read to the end of a story then go to sleep, rather than a novel where I say I’ll read to the end of the chapter, but something exciting happens, so I read on and say I’ll read to the next… and so on until it’s 1am and I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.  They’re good stories though. 

I’ve just realised it’s probably my slight dislike (that seems to harsh of a word) of short stories must be the reason I find it hard to WRITE short stories too. 

While surfing the net yesterday for Romance writers, I found a competition being run by Kaye Dacus.  To enter you have to write a short scene involving a lawyer proving love exists.  I have a couple of ideas floating round my head for that one.  It’s open until 29th Jan so I’ve got a little while to get my thinking cap on! 

Which is exactly what I’m going to do now.

Spend two hours reading Italian Infatuation on Friday Done. Plus finished it on Sunday

30 minutes exercise on Friday Was too cold to go out

All in all, I’m very please with myself and I feel like my two days holiday weren’t a total waste of time.  More than anything I’m glad I got on with the writing course, I didn’t achieve much, but the fact I’ve got on with it is brilliant.  I’ve decided that I’m going to spend at least 20 minutes on it a day. 20 minutes isn’t too much that it will put me off doing it, but should be enough that I get through this assignment in a reasonable amount of time.  I hope.

Because I’m going to be spending a lot of time on my writing course over the next week or so, I’ve decided I’m not going to start reading another book.  If I do I’m likely to spend time reading this when I should be working on my writing course.  I’ve lined up my next novel though: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. 

I’ve had it for a year, but know it’s such a big project to take on (it’s nearly 1,000 pages long!) that I’ve put it off before now.  Plus, if it really the greatest love story of all time, I’m bound to cry and I don’t want to be doing that on the tube!  Oh well, soon. 

As you can see above, I finished reading Italian Infatuation over the weekend.  I’m pretty happy with it.  For a 1st draft.  The story pretty much works, there’s just a few big questions I have about it.  The main one being, is there too much solo action and not enough going on between the hero and heroine.  In the Mills & Boon novels I’ve read, MOST of the action happens when the two of them are together, but I’ve got a large chunk at the beginning and near the end, where it’s just one of them.   I think the story needs it, as it’s showing the characters development, but I don’t know if it’s right for a Mills & Boon book. 

I think I need to cut the solo scenes down and develop the scenes where they’re together a little more.  Or, scrap the idea of it being a Mills & Boon novel and extend it to make it a full length romantic novel, therefore being able to keep the scenes.  I don’t know what to do.  I think while I’m thinking about it I’ll go through and correct the grammar and spelling and change sentences I don’t like. Then decide.  There’s nothing like a bit of procrastination. 

While surfing the net over the weekend, I discovered the RNA – Romantic Novelists’ Association.  And within them, their New Writers’ Scheme.  250 unpublished authors can join from January and are entitled to take part in RNA activities.  PLUS they can send a manuscript to them for appraisal.  I love that idea.  I’m thinking very hard about this.  If, there are any spaces anyway.  They hold talks every couple of months that sound interesting and a conference in the summer.  Sounds like fun!!

Well, you might like to read this sometime … Crazy Like a Fox.

It’s an abridged version of the talk I gave.  It comes, however, with a warning.  ‘Abridged’ only means it’s shorter than it was.  It doesn’t mean it’s short.  It’s only ‘short’ if you’re comparing it to – say – “Gone with the Wind” – which I wouldn’t.

Think ‘De Profundis‘, only more cheerful.

~~~0~~~

When I was asked to talk to the RNA, I thought it was a wise precaution to find out WHY we’re called Vulpes Libris. I mean, great name – even if it does sound a little like a communicable disease – but how did our Founding Fox Leena arrive at it? I knew someone was sure to ask me, so I emailed her, and this was her reply:

Vulpes Libris … let me see. Originally VL was just me, of course, and I actually I wanted to be Bookhound – but all variations thereof (bookhound, thebookhound, etc.) were already taken as Blogspot IDs. Then I thought of bookvixen or bookfox, but those were already taken in all their forms too. So *then* I thought of Canis Libris, but realised that Vulpes Libris sounded a lot nicer. And then I realised Vulpes Libris isn’t particularly good Latin, and means something more like ‘fox(es) for books’, but then I thought, ‘Pshaw, it’s not like anyone speaks Latin anymore, anyway …

So now you know … sort of.

My boss has a greetings card on her desk, above her computer, that someone sent to her a couple of years ago. On it is a photograph of a sensibly-dressed, middle-aged woman clutching an umbrella and poised to jump, with both sandaled feet, into a large puddle.  Beneath the photograph are the words:

“Have you ever noticed how often the right answer is – ‘What the hell’?”

As philosophies go it’s probably a bit dodgy, but it’s pretty much how I ended up standing here addressing a room full of romantic novelists … not a situation the smart money would have been on 18 months ago.

It started when  Leena, whom I had known on-line for many years, asked me if I wanted to join her on her new book blog – write the odd book review now and then – you know, a bit of fun -  nothing onerous …

I had no idea at the time what a book blog actually WAS, but when I clicked on the link she’d sent me, it all looked pretty peaceful and harmless and so – being a nicely brought-up Englishwoman programmed to please – I said to myself , “Oh – what the hell. I don’t mind. I can do that … for Leena.”

I wrote a couple of reviews, which went quite well, and the next thing I knew Leena was asking me if I’d mind giving her a bit of a hand with the technical behind-the-scenes stuff on account of my being so computer-literate and all.  I wouldn’t, she promised, have to do any admin or anything … it was just in case, really … So again, I thought, “What the hell – why not?”

Then, she emailed me to say “You know Phillipa Ashley, don’t you?”

All innocence she was – she can do you a great disingenuous, can our Leena …

“Phillipa? The romantic novelist?”
“Yes.”
“Yes I do … WHY?”
“Think she might agree to an interview? You could review her book, too …”
“I could?”
“I think we need to diversify …

So, I asked Phillipa.  She sort of spasmed violently, cried “I am not worthy!” and fled to hide her face in the curtains …

Twenty minutes later she was back on the ‘phone, having seen my (glowing) review of “Decent Exposure” on Vulpes and decided that perhaps she was, after all, worthy.   I think she still felt a bit like an urchin crawling in under the back flap of the circus tent on account of us being so highbrow and all (*cough*) … but she did it anyway, and that interview, with its coupled review became one of the most popular items we’d run on Vulpes up to that point.  I went on to interview Catherine Jones (aka Kate Lace) … and reviewed a couple of her books – and THEN we scared the bejeezus out of the poor woman by sending her next book, The Trophy Girl, off to our fearsome Russian specialist, the multi-lingual Kirsty – who likes nothing better than a nice piece of raw Trotsky for breakfast. Happily, the woman we affectionately refer to as ‘Comrade K’ revealed a hitherto entirely unsuspected soft spot for romantic novels – and she loved Catherine’s book unreservedly.

Leena had a clear vision for Vulpes. Put simply, she wanted to create a book blog that people would actually want to READ – and come back to, time and time again. There are thousands upon thousands of book blogs, but  relatively few of them attract any readers to speak off – and Leena wanted to be one of the few; after all, what’s the point in spending time and creative effort writing something that no-one ever reads? She knew, however, that  in order to do that she had to find herself an uninhabited little corner nobody else had colonized – and the one she aimed at was a book review site for that mythical creature “The Common Reader”. In other words she wanted to review ALL sorts of books, not just literary fiction.

When she first started the site – in October of 2007 – the vast majority of the people who read it and commented on it were fellow members of WriteWords – a site for authors and would-be authors. The Vulpes statistics had plateaued at 2,500 to 3,000 hits a month – impressive enough for a newborn blog – but it wasn’t about to set the world on fire. The arrival of romantic fiction through its hallowed portals brought in a new readership … and that was only the beginning.

We were already running successful interviews with authors and publishers but we decided to branch out a bit a try our hand at feature pieces on topics that were of interest to the book and publishing community in general. Our very first – Fox in the City – was a spectacular success. It was basically about the nature and purpose of book blog book reviews versus newspaper book reviews – and it generated a HUGE amount of interest. For one thing, it was even-handed and well researched and for another it was a subject upon which everybody had an opinion. Susan Hill’s wonderfully inflammatory thoughts on the subject were quoted, and Robert McCrum, then Books Editor of the Guardian, took Lisa by surprise by responding promptly and courteously to her email to him asking him for his views.

It was the latter – Robert McCrum – who provided us with our first big kick up the blogging ladder and it came out of the blue one Sunday morning. Robert was retiring from his job at the Guardian, and he wrote a farewell piece in the Observer.

When I logged on to Vulpes that Sunday morning I was more than a little startled to see our stats were going through the roof. After a little investigation, I discovered that the culprit was none other than Mr McCrum, who in his valedictory piece was talking about the major changes in the book world in the 10 years he had been Books Editor. One of those major changes was the rise of the book blogs.  Now he generally has very little time for book blogs and bloggers  but, extraordinarily, he made an exception in our case, linking to us with the words, “a highly responsible blog like Vulpes Libris …”

Crikey.

Since then, we’ve done a couple of equally popular what you might call “issue” pieces.

The first was a ‘drop everything and make space’ piece on the subject of Age-banding on children’s books. It became a hot topic almost overnight and, taking a wild punt, Eve (our reviewer of Young Adult books)  contacted Darren Shan to ask if he’d like a platform for his views. He came back with a superb piece on why it was wrong in so many ways and the next thing we knew the cult author Neil Gaiman had linked to it – and up went the stats again.

That’s one of the great things about Vulpes:  its flexibility. Because there are so many of us – with at least two or three of us usually skulking in the undergrowth most days – we have the ability to respond to events when they happen and as they happen. The last time we did that was this Easter, when a virtual firestorm broke over Amazon’s head. They’d been caught out apparently ‘adjusting’ their rankings system so that GLBT – Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender – books didn’t show up in searches. The immediate suspicion, of course, was that they were bowing to pressure from the uber-conservative lobby in the US.  Now, some might say that being a family-friendly site, Amazon has a perfect right to do anything they liked to protect their business. Unfortunately, they couldn’t get their story straight. When confronted with the situation, they kept moving their own goalposts. First they said it was ALL ‘Adult’ material, but then it was pointed out that books like Easton-Ellis’s American Psycho were still showing up in searches.  Many would – and did – simply shrug their shoulders and say “So what – a few gay books? If people want to read that stuff, they know where to find it …”

Well – the ‘stuff’ that was no longer showing up on Amazon’s rankings included:

E M Forster’s Maurice.
Jeannette Winterson’s Oranges are Not the Only Fruit.
Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain.
Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.
Mary Renault’s The Charioteer …

The list was endless and stunning – and a massive Twitter campaign took flight called #amazonfail. So huge was it that Amazon’s share price actually started to twitch …

Being Easter, Vulpes was almost deserted … and only Rosy and I were around – being a couple of tragic little Billy-no-Mates. Rosy thought we ought to do SOMETHING, so she contacted Anne Brooke – then an occasional guest reviewer, now a fully fledged Book Fox.   She was one of the authors affected and it turned out that she hadn’t gone anywhere for Easter either. We offered her a Soapbox, and she grabbed it with both hands, producing a terrific piece which went live on the afternoon of Easter Monday. It was another massively popular piece … and we were the ONLY book blog – major or otherwise – who could move fast enough to cover the controversy while it was still in progress.

Eventually, Amazon backed right down, said it was a cataloguing error by someone in France (that’s right guys – if all else fails, blame foreigners) and within about a week all rankings had been more or less restored.

We may never know what they were actually trying to do when it all went so horribly pear-shaped on them … but you can be fairly certain they won’t try it again. It was a real case of people-power forcing a mega corporation to back down … and we were right in there, doing our little vulpine bit, nipping the backs of their legs …

The Book Foxes come from a broad range of backgrounds with a matching range of experience, knowledge and interests and an age spread from early 20s to – well, ‘approaching retirement age’, shall we say? And I think that’s part of what makes us so successful. On paper, we really shouldn’t get on that well together, and indeed in the early days, when we were all thrown together in the Den – which is the message board where we all gather to discuss Vulpes business  – we sort of circled each other warily, scenting the air and trying to work out what manner of thieves we’d fallen among. Since then, many of us have actually met each other – and it’s fascinating how well we get on in real life, too.

We bitch, we occasionally argue and sometimes one of us goes off in a sulk – but in general, we manage to bicker our way to the best decision – because it’s informed by so many different attitudes and opinions and a genuine desire to do what’s best for Vulpes.

We’re always looking for ways to improve  … new ideas for theme weeks, which are always immensely popular … new ideas for feature pieces, publisher interviews … and we’re also always on the lookout for new reviewers.

There’s lack of XY chromosomes on the site.  It isn’t deliberate, it’s just the way it happened; but we did feel the lack of a male voice … a man brings a very different set of values and skills to book reviewing … not better, just different. We didn’t, however, want to risk unbalancing the stable group dynamic that already existed – which was an obvious danger – and additionally, of course, some men simply wouldn’t cope too well with entering a female-dominated environment.

So, we started out by sort of test-driving a few men (sorry guys – it was the first phrase that came to mind) who were friends and colleagues of the Foxes.  Alex Pheby was the first to write a guest piece for us (and we’d love him to join us on a permanent basis one day), followed by Michael Carley and Michael Ng, both of  whom are now Vulpes regulars -  time, tide and real life permitting.

Our other regular male reviewer, however, came from a completely unexpected direction – and that’s a whole other chapter in the Life Story of Vulpes Libris …

Right back  in the autumn of 2007, we were trying to think of ways of raising our profile and came up with the idea of interviewing ‘celebrities’ about their reading habits.  I offered up Harry Enfield as our first interviewee.  Harry is a Patron of the charity that I run – and I’ve known him on a personal and professional basis for about 20 years.  I asked, he agreed and his interview effectively became our passport – he  made it ‘safe’ for others to follow – although we’re frankly lucky Russell Brand didn’t sue us …

Following the success of the interview with Harry, I started casting around for another victim – and I remembered that when I wrote a short piece on my favourite romantic novels for Valentine’s Day, and mentioned Dorothy L Sayers’ Gaudy Night … we got a massive response from women (mostly of  ‘a certain age’)  saying “Oh me too …”. That started a train of thought. What, I asked myself, if I approached Edward Petherbridge?

I emailed him, explained what I was after, pointed him at Harry’s interview – and to my utter astonishment, he came straight back with a “Delighted to.  Fire away …”.

Initially, he was understandably cautious – but as we corresponded, he relaxed and the final, finished interview is STILL bringing in readers by the cartload – well over a year after it first appeared. He subsequently asked if we’d be interested in carrying an extract from his forthcoming autobiography – A Leaning Towards the Theatre – which was another big success for us.  He and daughter Dora are currently working on a joint review for us … so watch this space.

Our third celebrity interviewee  was American-born actor Jay Benedict.  He’s not as well-known to the public as our other interviewees to date,  because the vast majority of his work is done behind the scenes in post-production,  but one of his (entirely too) infrequent front-of-camera roles was as Captain John Kieffer, the US Army officer befriended by Christopher Foyle in Foyle’s War. He was only in two episodes, but they made a big impact and his interview promptly became our most popular feature ever – staying at the top of the list until earlier this year when it was finally unseated by Five Things I Hate about Chicklit.

When I first contacted him to ask for an interview, he immediately assumed I wanted him to review books for us … and was a bit taken aback when I said that no, I wanted to interview him.   But he’d planted the thought, and when I asked him if he WOULD like to review books, he jumped at the chance -  since when he’s produced a string of reviews and feature pieces in his own, inimitable, style.  He’s engaging, conscientious and a pro to the ends of his fingers, but I’m sure he won’t mind me observing that he was plainly on the other side of the planet when they were handing out the ‘edit’ buttons.  It is, he says, the only way he knows how to write.  His first review – of Marion Boyar’s bilingual version of Amin Zaoui’s Banquet of Lies - was pure stream-of-consciousness and contained a brilliant but borderline-acceptable pun about necrophilia. Happily, it suited the book superbly well and the publishers were absolutely delighted …

In another review he described incest as ‘relatively boring’. This, unfortunately, was around the time of the Josef Fritzl case in Austria, and I thought it was just too sensitive a subject to joke about at that precise moment. He took it very well, but was disappointed. He had, he said sadly, included the incest joke especially for me. How touching is that? An incest joke just for me …

Our fourth celebrity interviewee made us fear for the WordPress servers.  It took over a year to land an interview with Richard Armitage and when it finally went live his fans descended on us in their thousands.  It was a truly scary thing to witness.  Every time you hit the ‘refresh’ button, the hit counter had jumped another 20 …

Scouring the internet, I’ve seen more than a few people asking WHY he chose, and I quote, ‘an obscure internet blog’ (thanks guys) for his first major interview after biting the dust as Guy of Gisborne in Robin Hood.

It’s a fair question, and I THINK the answer to that question is also the explanation of why Vulpes Libris has become so successful so quickly. Leena was absolutely on the money when she decided to pitch the site at the common reader. Because we – the Book Foxes – are such a wildly diverse bunch, so are the pieces we write. Look at the site on any given week, and you’ll find a deadly serious and thought provoking article on the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, nestling right beside an analysis of the lyrics of Kris Kristofferson – or a review of a harrowing book about the Afghan War following hard on the heels of a lunatic piece on the Rocky Horror Show. Chicklit follows Fidel Castro follows a motor-cycle maintenance manual. Yes – we really reviewed a motor cycle maintenance manual – but that’s what happens when you let blokes onto a book blog.  The first thing you know, there are unidentified oily bits on the kitchen table.

We walk a very fine line between heavyweight intellectual and insanely frivolous – and we apparently manage to do it without alienating anyone – because all our old faithfuls – from the days when we were just a little baby blog – still pop up from time to time. In effect, we’ve somehow learned how to walk with Kings nor lose the common touch.

We also took the decision very early on to take all genres equally seriously (which doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be serious) and we treat all comers the same. We’ll consider reviewing ANY book – any genre – any form of published work,  including self-published and publish on demand as long as we think it’s interesting enough or good enough.

Lisa Glass and I are currently the Co-Admins – nominally ‘in control’ (ho-ho-ho) of proceedings. Happily, we work very well together … and our individual strengths and weaknesses seem to counterbalance each other nicely.

It CAN be a bit knackering. The Book Foxes are all people with healthy egos, large vocabularies and definite opinions, so sometimes it gets a bit lively in the den – BUT – the compensations are HUGE and they make it all worth while.

One of the major compensations (apart from free books) is that, increasingly, writing for Vulpes is like having an Access All Areas pass at a rock concert. Lisa emailed Jamie Byng of Canongate books the other week to ask him if there was any chance of an interview – and the next thing she knew he’d sent her his telephone number and said “Great. Let’s do it now.” She had the interview done and dusted inside two hours.

Remarkably enough we get very few abusive comments … In the nearly two years since we started, I think we’ve only had to delete about four comments. Mind you, one of those was an absolute corker. It was from a man who styled himself  ‘gods_messenger’, but whom we promptly christened The Reverend Loon.  He was an extreme right wing Protestant from the Bible Belt in the US telling us we were all no better than we ought to be and possessed of somewhat loose morals – if you get my drift – damned for all eternity, and well, yada yada yada …  Had he been emailing from Preston I might have been a bit more concerned, but as he was in Alabama, I didn’t lose any sleep over it. It was Jay’s review of Banquet of Lies that triggered it (of course) … and he found the whole thing immensely entertaining, especially when I told him he was the most damned of all for writing filth and consorting with women who were no better than they ought to be … etc, etc, etc …

On the whole however the people who read and comment on our posts are a remarkably civilized bunch. The only review we’ve ever posted that’s attracted less than courteous debate was Eve’s tremendous diatribe on Stephenie Meyers’ ‘Twilight’ novels. She called it – pretty unequivocally – ‘Why I Hate Twilight’. For a while after it went up, there were a few desultory comments from our regulars mostly saying “Oh yeah … absolutely agree. Reactionary twaddle” … but then Google worked its magic and the Twilighters (and anti-Twilighters) found the piece. And by golly, they’re STILL finding the bugger – four months later. There’s blood on the walls. They mostly appear to be about 13 years old, and they shout at each other in capital letters and textspeak. We could close the post to comments, but it’s just so entertaining. I’m sure they wouldn’t be flattered to know how much not-entirely-innocent-fun we’re having at their expense.

It’s also fascinating watching the list of search terms that bring people to our site. It sort of brings you down to earth with a bump … I mea, there you are thinking that people are looking for intellectual stimulus and what not and in fact, top of the league of search terms is BUNNIES.

I kid you not. BUNNIES. And not the Playboy variety – the furry, hoppy variety. Once, long ago, Eve did a coming up post – outlining the forthcoming attractions for the week – and she illustrated it with a photograph of two of her kids’ pet rabbits – cute, fluffy, baby ones. THAT’s the thing that’s bringing them in. BABY BUNNIES.

Next most popular is the nine-tailed fox image we used to illustrate a piece on Manga. Slightly lower down the listings come things like “Pictures of Susan Hill Naked”, the slightly worrying “How long can a rat live under water” and the poignant “Should children be made to keep quiet?”. I can also offer you “Manga with large-breasted girls”, “dangerous blowjobs”, “mushroom costumes”, “Mary Shelley death milk”, “Marmalade roll beaver recipe”, “Monica – Thanks for the misery”, “Pictures of hot horny slutty grandmother”, “Your writing sucks” and my personal favourite – “The big book of lesbian horse stories”.

For me – and I know for most of the others too … one of the most unnerving things is to be reminded that there are people out there actually READING what we write. It’s easy, when we’re in the den, kidding around with each other, hatching plans, discussing theme weeks … to think that we’re just having fun, and amusing ourselves by pretending to be book reviewers and journalists. Then something happens … and it all gets scary. A big-name author links to us – like Anthony Horowitz – or as happened at the time of the US elections, Reuters syndicates a review (of Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father) on their website. The Guardian books page, CNN, the BBC and the New York Times have all picked up articles and linked to them … and then 5,000 people all pile in on the same day to read an interview with an actor. It really does give you pause, because at moments like that, when you realize you’re being taken seriously – when big name publishers like Heinemann contact you – you sort of freeze up. It’s the online version of stage fright. After we found out about the Reuters post we all just sat around and muttered “My mind’s gone blank … I can’t write a coherent sentence … oh I just did …”.

And that’s part of the thrill of thing … I live and work in the Lake District – which is lovely … but it’s also a very long way from the hub of things. I seldom leave Cumbria … hell, I seldom leave West Cumbria. It’s tricky for me go anywhere that necessitates me being away overnight … but because of Vulpes Libris I don’t feel remotely trapped. It brings the world to me in a truly wonderful way … and I’m profoundly grateful that two years ago, I clicked on that link in Leena’s email and said “What the hell” …

~~~O~~~

(The photograph of the Sassy Fox seen a shop window is courtesy of Svadilfari on Flickr and is reproduced under a Creative ommons Licence.)

She’d originally started the blog as a one-woman undertaking, but soon realized that in order to create the sort of blog she had envisaged – covering a multitude of genres and offering something for everyone – she was going to need some help.  So, she drafted in her most opinionated articulate friends and the Vulpes Libris collective was born.

In honour of the occasion we’re running one or two birthday-type pieces this week, along with a review of a biography of an Edwardian genius, the confessions of a Trotsky addict and a stonkingly good interview with a Booker short-listed author. We hope you enjoy what we’ve got lined up and join in with your comments, thoughts and memories.

Happy Birthday to us.  Happy Birthday to us! Happy Birthday dear u-us … Happy Birthday to us!!

~~~o~~~

Monday finds Jackie sketching a profile of Beatrix Potter:  A Life in Nature by Linda Lear.

On Tuesday Kirsty tells us what binds her to the fascinating, infuriating, complex creature that is Lev Trotsky and why she just signed up to spend several years in his company.

Wednesday sees the first of our anniversary items as we remember the last twelve months on Vulpes, and the Foxes recommend their own favourite blogs and websites.

On Thursday we’re publishing a (slightly abridged) transcript of the talk about Vulpes that Moira gave in the summer at the Annual Conference of the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

On Friday Lisa talks about murder, outsiders and good writing with Booker short-listed author, M J Hyland.

And on Saturday RosyB closes the week by looking back on some of Vulpes’ more contentious moments and explores the thorny question of what makes a good review.

(The photograph of the gorgeous twin fox cubs is courtesy of Bugman50 on Flickr, and reproduced under a Creative Commons Licence.)