Bookcase-Staircase

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Now this has got to be the most fabulous idea EVER for saving space.

It's a combined bookcase-staircase. You can see the whole thing here.

If it was my house, I think I'd probably end up living just on the stairs.

Cambridge Chapter Lunch

All writers feel the need to procrastinate from time to time, and what better way than to meet up with people of similar needs for lunch?



The Cambridge Chapter of the RNA comes in terribly handy for this sort of thing.





You get informed, writerly chat, the chance to catch up with friends, nice food - and you don't even feel guilty about it afterwards.


As you can see, it proving too difficult (even after moving a very nice couple's table a foot to the left) to get everyone in one picture, I resorted to group photos.

Viggo was robbed!

Sometimes I really don't understand my fellow members of the Romantic Novelists' Association.

They recently took part in a poll to find our favourite celebrity hero - and Viggo Mortensen wasn't on it!!!

It's true - I have scrutinised the list, I have checked out photos (just in case he was in disguise, you understand), and he simply isn't there. How? I know I voted for him. I based my hero in Stage by Stage on him. Forget Arwen, I'd give up immortality in the blink of an eye for him.

So, sorry Viggo, you were robbed, but at least it means I get to keep you all for myself, right?


Oh - if anybody would like the top ten celebrity heroes list, it's here:

Members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association have voted Johnny Depp as the Number One Perfect Romantic Hero in a poll to mark Valentine’s Day. According to these authors, a romantic hero should be gorgeous, deliciously sexy, intensely masculine and have a commanding presence.

The top ten male celebrities voted the Perfect Romantic Hero were:

1. Johnny Depp
2. Daniel Craig
3. Sean Bean
4. Richard Armitage
5. Hugh Jackman
6. Colin Firth
7. Alan Rickman
8. Pierce Brosnan
9. George Clooney
10. David Tennant

And in the over-fifties category:

1. Pierce Brosnan
2. Harrison Ford
3. Ranulph Fiennes
4. Bill Nighy
5. Liam Neeson
6. Sam Neill
7. Sean Connery
8. Peter O’Toole
9. Clint Eastwood
10. Omar Sharif

Cambridge - and an Awful Warning...

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Ran away to Cambridge on Saturday to have lunch and a catch-up with my friend Elaine. Slight disappointment that the balconies at the side of the Galleria weren't open, but we sat as close to the window as we could get upstairs and were rewarded by a nice view of the river and a surprising number of be-sweatered punters. Being as how this is early February, I do hope they stayed in the punts...

Elaine is a reviewer of some note, so I have lent her my copies of the RNotY winner Pillow Talk by Freya North and the RNA Romance Prize winner Breakfast at Giovanni's by Kate Hardy. (If you're there, Kate - she loved the title!) And before the royalty-police start tutting, the amount Elaine routinely spends on books keeps the bank managers of various independent bookshops very happy indeed.

I made it home afterwards without incident (except I did have to let my belt out a notch following the sticky toffee pudding), but poor Elaine - well, you need to read about it here. Suffice it to say that neither of us are going anywhere near that really very nice Lakeland shop on our next excursion to Cambridge.

RNA Awards Lunch 2008

What a lovely day! Having had to get up at stupid o'clock in order to be able to park at Cambridge station, I arrived at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington High Street in plenty of time to help turn this



into this.















In no time at all - or so it seemed - we were having pre-lunch drinks, toasting the shortlisted Romance Prize authors

and the Romantic Novel of the Year finalists






and then there was lunch and catching up and more catching up and then Trisha Ashley awarded the Romance Prize 2008 to Kate Hardy for Breakfast at Giovanni's.
Once the ecstatic applause for that had died down (and Kate made a speech which brought a lump to everyone's throats), we moved on to the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Comedienne Helen Lederer
had us laughing within seconds of taking the microphone. She then summed up all the shortlisted books before announcing that the winner for 2008 was Freya North with Pillow Talk.


Two wonderful books. Two worthy winners.

2008 RNA Romance Prize shortlist

No shortlists for months, and then two come along at once!

Today it is the turn of the Romance Prize, which is not only administered by the Romantic Novelists' Association, but you actually have to be a member to enter your book. The Romance Prize is for shorter-length fiction where the story is concentrated on the central relationship. This makes for a nice, tight story as is proved by this year's 'best six'.

What is even better is to see lots of my friends on the list: lovely Kate Hardy, fabulous Liz Fielding, supremely talented Julie Cohen and fellow NWS award winner Fiona Harper.

See you on the 4th February, girls!
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2008 RNotY Shortlist

.The 2008 Romantic Novel of the Year shortlist has been announced here

Congratulations to all those on it. It looks to be a reasonably varied representation of the best in current romantic writing. I'm looking forward to reading my way through it.

The Romantic Novel of the Year is administered by the Romantic Novelists' Association. The winner will be announced at the Awards Luncheon on 4th February. Can't wait!
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I love libraries!

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Well, isn't that splendid! Those nice PLR people are going to give me £107.94 for all the times people have borrowed Stage by Stage this year.

I do love libraries.

Happy New Year !!!

As the year ticked from 2007 to 2008 and the cats grumbled at my feet about the nasty loud bangs outside, I was editing my Regency work-in-progress at the kitchen table.

Start the year as you mean to go on, that's what I say.

Merlin and Archer agree (being as how I'd given them extra cat bics), but they could have done without the fireworks.

Happy New Year to all !!!

Christmas Poem

Anyone want a Christmas poem? I wrote this a considerable number of years ago when the kids were at primary school. Home-made Nativities just hit the heart, don't they?


 Angel Hems by Jan Jones

Today the sky is dark, clouds lie in wait
I’m sewing tinsel for an angel hem
The first drops hit me as I reach the gate

At school and wonder why it’s always them
Who’ve lost their gloves and bags and by the way
We should have had our stuff - I try to stem

The flood of petty grievance of their day
And shield them from the rain slant-driving down
As Mary shielded Jesus in the hay

Did she know then that he would wear a crown
Not like my son’s, all glitter and gold paint
As fits a King, but thorns and greeny-brown?

She must have known, but put aside the taint
Of things to come by calling him a boy
Like any other. Oh no, not a saint -

Just Jesus bringing visitors and joy
Just Jesus asking questions to make sense
Just Jesus with a woolly lamb his toy.

To make the barn they’ve borrowed someone’s fence
My daughter’s tinsel snags the cardboard stall
.... the Natal magic smooths away pretence


Small wonder that He railed against the call
From Christmas, Easter is no time at all.


(By the way, there's a special term for the form of this poem. I can't remember what it is for the moment, but I'll look it up and post later. Unless anyone else gets in first, of course!)

Longlist for the Romantic Novel of the Year 2008

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Excellent! The RNA party season has started already!

The longlist for the Romantic Novel of the Year 2008 has been announced. Shame there aren't more of my pals on it (partisan, moi?), but I do spy my chum Kate Lace in her debut outing in her new persona (she's more generally known as Catherine Jones, or "mine's a large red, please").

Next will be the Romance Prize (category romance) shortlist, some time in the New Year. And then the RNotY shortlist announcement in mid-January.

And then the Awards Lunch! I'm salivating at the very thought.
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The End

Done it. Wrote 'The End'. Oh, the relief.

Not Being Distracted

Nope. I know I've got this lot to deal with, but there's only one chapter to go until I've finished the first draft, so nothing Christmassy is being done until I've got the hero and heroine to their happy-ever-after.

And then I'll have all that writing, posting, buying, wrapping, stirring, decorating time to revolve in my head how the heck I'm going to unpick the wretched thing to make it into the book it's supposed to be.
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Mobile technology?

Whilst browsing racing prints for my Regency work-in-progress, I came across this one by Henry Alken from 1802.

Look closely at the leading jockey. Is it me, or is he trying to text and ride at the same time?

As Louise Allen commented to me, convincing proof of time travel!

(PS You can click on the picture for an enlarged view)

The perils of forgetfulnes

Aaarrgghh!

Never, repeat never, forget to take your reading glasses with you to the library when you want to do some research.

I have just written an entire strand of of my only-two-chapters-to-go-until-I-reach-the-end Regency based on the assumption that Lady Jersey owned racehorses.

Wrong.

The tiny black abbreviation Ld stands for Lord not Lady.

LORD Jersey owned racehorses. Lord Jersey who wouldn't in a million years have inveigled my hero into investigating a tiny matter of race-fixing.

No prizes at all for what I'm thinking right now.
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