Shhh... don't tell

Shhh...!

I have a confession but it is just between us. It could get me into a bit of trouble… come a bit closer so no one can overhear.

So here it is… sometimes I’m thinking about writing when I should be thinking about something else. Shhh… don’t tell anyone.

I know it is bad. I feel guilty, really I do. But when my mind wants to think about stories I can’t stop it.

Here is an example. Yesterday I was in a meeting and I was paying attention. Honest, guv. When suddenly I realised that I’d spaced out for a small amount of time and was thinking about why my heroine was acting like such a brat. Shocking. I told myself off and concentrated hard on the meeting but ten minutes later I had a brainwave about her actions which came into my brain on the back of a thought about risk management.

Bad brain!

You see my issue. It isn’t my fault. It is my brain. It isn’t wired quite the same way.

Remember it is on the QT. Shhh… don’t tell anyone.

Swag - What Works for You?

Swag – or promotional items given away at events – is a topic we’ve been discussing recently on an email loop I belong to, and when I attended the RT Convention in Kansas City earlier this year I was amazed at the all the different things on offer.  The creativity of some authors was astounding and I came home inspired, wanting to try out some ideas of my own!

There was, of course, the usual array of postcards, bookmarks, pens and key chains, but it was fun to see how varied you can make them so that they stand out in the crowd.  It also quickly became clear to me that badges (the metal variety with printed logos etc) were extremely popular with US fans.  I hadn’t thought to bring any because they’re not big in the UK, but if I go to the States again I most definitely will!

It was an eye-opener to see what else could be done to promote one’s book – bags (really nice shoulder ones as well as the usual little carrier bag types), plastic glasses, T-shirts, mugs, rulers, tape measures and little booklets, to name but a few.  Collector’s cards were intriguing and then there were the sweets and chocolates – always a favourite with me :-)  I particularly liked little chocolate bars printed with the author’s book cover.

But do swag items really work when it comes to selling books?  After a recent conference I attended here in the UK, I talked to some of the other attendees and they said they would just go through their ‘goody bags’ and throw away most of the promo stuff unless something caught their eye specifically.  That means a lot of it is for nothing, but you might just be lucky and be the one who has designed something that catches a reader’s interest.  So can you afford NOT to do it?  I don’t think so.  And at some conferences, like RT, the readers get to help themselves from promo tables so presumably they only take home things that appeal to them?

For my new novel (a young adult contemporary romance which makes a change from historicals) I’ve had fun creating some promo material with the help of one of my daughters.  We’ve experimented with various things and I’m considering some other ideas as well, but it all takes time and money so even if it’s fun, I guess it’s best to think carefully before jumping into something.

What are your favourite types of ‘swag’?  What would you definitely keep and what would you throw away?  And does any of it make you actually buy the book?  I’d love to know!

Finishing... At Last

In the corporate world they like to do psychometric tests, one in particular is the Belbin Team Test. This is meant to help you understand what types of people you have in a team so you can understand if you have a good balance.

One of the personality types is that of a completer/finisher. Every time I have taken this test I score very low in the completer/finisher role. I think once I even scored zero. Supposedly I’m a great Resource Investigator (i.e. networker) but give me something to finish? Not so much.

Of course, one of the biggest pieces of advice you can be given about writing is finishing what you start. This obviously gives me a few problems. I launch into new stories in giddy excitement only to splutter to a stop halfway through. Then begins the hard slog to reach the end. And as finishing things is obviously against my nature it is hell.

But this week I did actually finish something. It has only been five years since that initial giddy start but I never gave up hope that somehow, if I just had the time and motivation, I would finish that story. And I have. Admittedly it is a rambling pile of nonsense but it is a finished rambling pile of nonsense which can be fixed. Hopefully before another five years pass.

Do you have problems finishing things? What techniques get you through?

First (Fictional) Boyfriends

As my most recent novel was wending its way through the publishing process last winter, a few women working at Simon & Schuster in Canada grew rather fond of my modern-day hero, Rob. They even created this Tumblr post, which made me laugh. And the concept of having great taste in one's fictional men got me thinking of all of the heroes I'd fallen in love with myself in the books that I'd read. Far too many to count.

Then I started to wonder: Well, who was the first?

Because surely the first love, with fictional men as with real ones, would leave some discernible mark on the memory and be something special.

My first thought was that it would have to be someone from L.M. Montgomery's books: Kenneth Ford, from Rilla of Ingleside, always a favourite of mine; Barney Snaith from The Blue Castle, or the more obvious Gilbert Blythe. Gilbert, with his swoon-worthy good looks and good-natured charm. Gilbert, who says things like: "I have a dream. I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true..."

And yet...and yet, the more I sat and thought, the more I realized it was none of those, because before I'd met them in the pages of their books my heart had already been captured by a man who'd won me over by degrees as I had watched him grow from boyhood, from a farmer's stubborn son into a patient, quiet homesteader who always seemed to be there at the moment he was needed.

Almanzo Wilder

"Laura's dread of strangers came over her and the open door ahead seemed a refuge from their eyes.
      She did not notice a touch on her coat sleeve until she heard a voice saying, 'May I see you home?'
      It was Almanzo Wilder.
      Laura was so surprised that she could not say a word. She could not even nod or shake her head. She could not think. His hand stayed on her arm and he walked beside her through the door. He protected her from being jostled in the crowded entry."

Of course I'd noticed him before that, and it wasn't the first time that he had rescued her (nor would it be the last) but with that simple question, 'May I see you home?' towards the end of Laura Ingalls Wilder's book Little Town on the Prairie, Almanzo Wilder laid claim to my heart. He was my first.

I suppose you could argue that he's not entirely fictional, since he and Laura were actual people, but Laura took enough liberties in writing her Little House series of books that I feel like he counts. And he set the bar so high, in my view, for all of the heroes who tried to come after him that many never did make it. A fictional man might have all the right lines and a great set of abs, but if I couldn't picture him driving a small two-horse cutter twelve miles in a blizzard that froze the thermometer colder than forty below, just to bring me back home to my parents, then I wasn't interested.

Which helps, I suppose, to explain why I never had much time for Heathcliff, and why my own heroes all tend to be quiet, dependable men.

Who was your first great fictional love?

Book Covers

There was a summer fete in the church hall near us in London. It was a jolly affair with face painting for the kids and Pimms for the adults. As always I headed straight to book stall, forever looking for the lost gem. I struck gold with the cardboard box on the floor. On my hands and knees I fell into a time warp to my teens...

I prefer the older Le Carre covers...what about you?

The Pan covers of these DuMaurier title were rather buxom...but fun

Haven't read either of these two before...but couldn't resist them

Unfortunately they had none of the Victoria Holt novels that I remember were so much a part of my teenage years. What books were you reading in your teens and do their covers pull you into a time warp?

All Together, Now...

I've been Hopeless at remembering to post when it's my turn these past couple of months, mostly because I've been on tour for the publication of The Firebird and as a result I've been hopeless at remembering where I am and what day of the month it is at any given moment...

I was meant to post last Sunday, but I thought I'd sneak in now (with my apologies) to share this photographic piece of history snapped in London on May 16th of this year, when for the first time EVER, all of us were in the same spot at the same time, at the Romantic Novelists' Association's annual Summer Party.

A momentous occasion indeed, and luckily my son was on hand with a camera to capture it.

Left to right, that's Christina, Anna, Liz, Brigid, Me (Susanna), and Julie.

ALL IN THE SAME PLACE!

OK, maybe no one else is as excited about this as I am, but I'm sharing the photo with you anyway. And I promise I'll be here on schedule, next time.

Time Travel

McFly! McFly! McFly!

I’m currently sorting through the detritus of my life as I prepare to rent my flat out and it has been like travelling back in time. You see I’m a hoarder. I can’t let things go ‘just in case’. I’m also paranoid about throwing out bills and receipts in case the tax man will need them. As a result I am unearthing receipts from dinners and cinema trips from years ago with people I no longer see.

But the biggest time travel moment was finding notebooks with bits of stories, ideas from years ago (some back when I was a teenager). As I read those bits and pieces I am transported back to a different part of my life. Reminding me of what I’d been thinking then. Hazy memories sharpened by biro strokes. It also shocked me how much writing I was doing before I considered myself 'a writer'.

I found my teenage poetry and the beginning of my first novel in one notebook. The heartbreak of University in another. And then fast forwarding ten years to a miserable nine months I spent at the job from hell… I’d been obsessed with Buffy and was playing around with writing a book. There in the notebook was my idea for a book on witches. Charmed meets Sex and The City. I hadn’t realised how much I’d written of it.

And then there were the snippets of ideas, revisiting past characters and with it the past me. And in between all those writing notes there are also ‘to do’ lists, shopping lists and packing lists for holidays and trips. I looked down one list for my first trip to Nashville and suddenly I was there again. Happy, bouncing, agog with it all.

I have taken those notebooks and stored them in a plastic container to protect those nuggets, those parts of my past. I have set aside a small section of them that hold stories that I want to revisit so I can spend this summer working on them.

I might not have a DeLorean with a flux capacitor but I do have pen and paper.