Please feel free to look around - you'll find information about the group's work, our group diary as well as the writing diaries of individual members.
Once again we had a lovely time at Penny's on Tuesday, this time at her new house in Nantwich. The heat could have been a little less oppressive but even a hugely successful Mills & Boon author can't control the weather!
Iona's doing well. She's been asked for revisions on her manuscript so that sounds promising. Fingers and toes are firmly crossed. Mind you, the toe crossing is making wearing new shoes somewhat difficult!
The biography that Richard's writing is drawing to an end now and he has another project on the back burner waiting for his attention. He asked if anybody knew of a good commercial lawyer in the Nantwich area but sadly, none of us did. Anybody?
Shirley and Joan and still writing their crime novel together as well as their individual HMB romances. One's targeting Tender while the other's writing for Medical, although I'm afraid I couldn't tell you who is doing what. Maybe a comment from one of them will clear that up.
Iona's daughter had loved Kate's children's story so it seems it's just a matter of finding the right agent now. Not the easiest task in the world, as any writer knows, but I'm sure determination will pay off in the end.
As for Penny, she has more than enough work to keep her going for the moment. What with the Neroli book she's writing for HMB and the third in the series of her WWII Liverpool based saga for Harper Collins, the deadline for which is looming dangerously close, I've no idea how she's ever going to find time to get herself sorted in the new house. Still, there's no hurry, I suppose.
As always I came away from the meeting feeling more enthusiastic than ever. Just being with other writers, especially such a lovely bunch of them, really makes a difference because try as they might, friends who don't write just don’t understand when you say that you have characters speaking to you in your head! Barmy? Of course not, but they seem to think so.
What a wonderful evening it was for Richard and I! Both Iona and Penny had bought champagne with which our engagement was celebrated! And out of some beautiful glasses that were, if my memory serves me well (it doesn't usually but there's always hope), Polish. Or was that Hungarian? Or Romanian, even? Wherever, the were gorgeous and said to be lucky so let's hope some of that rubs off on the future for every group member.
The evening was pretty much dominated by discussions related to the process of becoming a HMB author and what we could expect if we're lucky (determined?) enough to be accepted. I suppose it's only natural being a 4 of the 7 members present are targeting HMB and 1 -- that one being Penny, of course -- is already one of their authors. The two remaining members write children's fiction (hi, Kate) and biographies (hi, Richard) and may have felt a little left out at times.
Chris, Carole and Christopher weren't present this week. Christopher had been working on a biography in Wales and Carole's away on her hols but where Chris was, nobody knows. If you're reading this, Chris, you were missed :-)
Apart from working on their individual HMB stories, Shirley and Joan are also writing a crime story together. We all agreed that they're incredibly clever to be able to do that but they found it quite natural and something that, as sisters, they've done since they were very young. Penny suggested they use their personal blogs to write about their experiences of writing together as she (and the rest of us agreed) felt that it would make interesting reader for other writers considering following the same route.
Come on, girls. Get blogging :-)
As always, a good time was had by all and once again a huge thank you to Penny for giving up her time for us.
A blatant nudge to anyone browsing here in the direction of Sharon's Blog to share her happy news. (And Richard's too of course, although he won't get to wear such a great dress...)
Huge congrats to both of them, and a bottle of something suitably sparkly at the next meeting I think.
I'm the vacant one at the back who enjoys throwing what the Americans would call "a spitball" at the meetings. Well, we can't have everybody agreeing all the time, can we? Occasional bursts of inspiration pepper my almost permanent block and this extends as much to my blogging activities as my writerly ones, hence my late arrival here. This is much to the chagrin of Sharon of course, whose hard work setting all this up on her old noisy laptop disrupted my sleep patterns for several weeks but certainly didn't deserve me turning up late to the party. Apologies all round.
Well I finally managed to get around to writing something I just hope you weren't expecting anything profound as I'm currently hiding from my laptop via, housework and ironing!
The problem is the ironing is nearly done and my laptop's calling me so I guess I'll have to give in, boot the beast up and get on with it.
Ah well, there's only so much ironing a person can do, but it has helped to smooth out my thoughts!
Feel like I'm joining everyone else after a long hike over rough terrain, and given my almost pathological aversion to exercise that's no mean feat. In our house we are currently experiencing some extreme technological difficulties, which makes connecting to the internet a little less easy than sending smoke signals from the top of an active volcano. Frustrating? Just a bit. Especially as there's a teensy weensy chance that I could get an email from the lovely editor I've been dealing with at HMB at some point....
Now I love my computer in the same way as I love my car, ie. they are both excellent ways of accessing shopping opportunities. But I have no idea how either of them work, which is why I am in open-mouthed awe of Sharon for setting this whole thing up. As far as I'm concerned the internet works through a combination of advanced electrical engineering and pixie dust, and we seem to be fresh out of dust. If anyone has any more scientific suggestions as to what the problem could be I'd be only too grateful to hear them.... If I can get back online, that is.
Anyway, before I disappear back into offline isolation, hello to everyone in the group. Oh, and get back to the writing instead of hanging around on here you bunch of slackers.
Last night we had our writers' group meeting at Penny's house. It was the first meeting I'd managed to get to so far this year so I'd been looking forward to it and was relieved when my health held out, even though I'd been struggling during the afternoon and wasn't entirely sure I'd make it.
There were so many faces I hadn't seen since either New Year's Eve at Penny's or longer. It was good to catch up.
Penny was her usual inspirational self, full of fun and giggles. And it was probably mostly down to her comment that I'm not focused enough that I decided to do some serious writing time management so today I downloaded an alarm clock programme and decided that every day I'd give myself a set time where I'd write. Today I wrote from 11:30 - 12:30 and managed to get 1,202 words down in that time. I turned off email and my web browser so that I wouldn't be distracted and decided that any research could be done after my allotted hour and filled in later. It worked :)
I am far more focused on actually finishing a story this time, though. It will happen! It will, honestly.
Luckily I'm one of two members who isn't worried about rejection. My philosophy is that if it doesn't sell, what's changed? My life will remain exactly as it was. Nobody will have died because of it and no other tragedy will have occurred. And there's always another story. One day they'll buy one... I hope :-)
Finally, a big GOOD LUCK to Iona who's been asked to submit her entire manuscript for the Mills & Boon Modern line (that's Harlequin Presents in the US). No doubt she's banging away at her laptop right at this minute, getting that last chapter finished.
