Remember me?

Yep - I've been slightly absent in blogland this last couple of weeks. Been trying to force my current mss (OHHN) into submission.

A lovely writing buddy (Hi Cath) pointed out that although written in quite a lovely style, it had NIL conflict. That's right my lovelies... NADA, ZILCH, NOT A SINGLE SMIDGE of good reason why my gorgeous hero and his delightful leading lady shouldn't buy a house with a white picket fence and live happily ever after.

So I've been brainstorming ways to torture them a little more. I've hopefully given them pasts and present probs that make falling into love and HEA not quite a simple as boy meets girl, boy likes girl, girl likes boy and they say 'I do.'

It's meant that I've done a lot of rewriting, adding and deleting. Gosh it's painful when the wordcount goes up and then rapidly down again, but I'm sure it'll mean a stronger mss in the long run.

In the meantime... I'm still WAITING to hear from M&B about the partial I sent in May! I'm at the stage, where I sort of wouldn't mind an R cos at least I'd know where I stand. I thought being able to send straight to an editor's desk would mean the process was quicker - but apparently that's a fantasy. Oh well... I've started thinking about my Maverick and his Christmas Fairy's conflict so that I can enter the new contest if I still haven't heard on my partial by then!!

Right... thanks for listening to my rambles. Hope you are all well and happy and that next time I'll either have meatier news or an interesting craft thing to discuss!

For all those off to the Aussie conf this weekend - have a BLAST! Am sooooooooooo jealous I won't be there. Especially since I'm up for an Award Sat night. Who wants to drink cyber wine with me and hang out on Twitter to see how I go?!

Day Six and a whole load of rambles!

Day Six

Word Count: 856 (although I may add a few more after this post - who knows!)

Fave line of the day: Really hard to pick cos I'm not particularly fond of ANY OF THEM today but...

Pushing aside these disturbing thoughts, she climbed the stairs, braved the shadows in the attic and curled in the fetal position on the single bed, only to tear back the covers moments later when her nose spasmed at the smell of smoke.

Word Count Thus Far: 6623

Now for the ramblings...

*My new friend Janette (whom I met at the RWA Perth Roadshow) has just started a blog - check it out at Tales of a Romance Nerd. Don't you just love that blog title?

*I'm finding it hard to switch off my internal editor - harder than hard, almost impossible. I keep wondering whether I've got the setting right and it's not a simple case of finding all the Edinburgh's and replacing with the name of a made-up smaller town, because this will change the WHOLE essence of the story. But I'm worried about using Edinburgh, because a) I wanted a small-town feel and b) I fear I don't remember Edinburgh in enough detail for what I want to describe. 

*I LOVE writing beginnings of stories. They just seem to flow so nicely for me and the characters really speak to me... until I hit about 10k... and then nothing seems right and the characters suddenly turn into two-dimentional cardboard cutouts!! ARGH!! 

*My hero is proving very obtuse. In almost 12k  I've had about 1000 of those words in his pov and although he's been talked and thought a lot about by the heroine, he's been absent for at least a third of the words so far. Is this too much (for Superromance?) I keep asking myself this question and getting different answers. 

*On a totally random note... I made the most DELICIOUS dessert yesterday night. I wrapped whole, peeled and cored apples in a piece of shortcrust pastry, sprinkled with sugar and baked in the oven. Served hot with ice-cream this was possibly the yummiest Apple Pie-type dessert I've ever had. Go on... try it... you know you want to!