SOLD

Remember my Christmas Fairy story from WAY back!? The one with the taunted hero and his gorgeous but damaged employee?

CARINA PRESS want to PUBLISH IT!!

OH MY GOODNESS!!!

Excited is an understatement.

I loved writing this story and can't wait to share more about it and my journey to its publication as it happens. I don't have many details as yet, just that it will be released this December!!

Thanks to all the lovely people who read my blog for being so supportive in the past and keeping me going when things got tough.

xox

Rach!

Good-bye Cam and Peppa!

Well... I asked for speed in my last email and I got it. A speedy R delivered to my inbox tonight.

As far as R's go it was nice. The editor said that my full had been passed onto Bryony Green (senior ed for Modern Heat) but that she'd regrettably decided to pass on the mss. There was no mention of underdeveloped conflicts or not enough emotion. I was praised on my 'wonderfully accessible and engaging voice' and told that there was a lovely bond between my characters and the sensuality WAS there just NOT ENOUGH.

Interesting enough the ed suggested I may like to try my voice on for the Romance line and see how it fits. Interesting because over the past few years I've had times where I've really wondered if I'm fitted to Modern Heat. I think my voice is young, sassy and flirty enough but I'm not sure I'm really confident with that push-the-boundaries level of sensuality. Love reading it but always wondered if I actually did it justice in my own writing. Well... apparently not.

I'm not gonna say I'm not disappointed. Of course I'm gutted. But on the bright side, I have passed many landmarks during this sub. I got revisions on the story and I know it got passed up the ladder, so I figure I must be doing something right.

Onwards and upwards hey? Once I work out where the heck that is...

Second Guessing!

SIX WEEKS. That's how long I've been waiting since pushing send on my full mss to M&B.

That's nothing you say. Some people wait two years to hear back on a full. So, logically I know I should sit back, start a new book (which I have) and forget about the old one. But the thing is the editor I've been working at is SUPER SPEEDY! She's getting quite a reputation - lol.

I heard back on a week after sending my partial, ten days after sending her the first 33k and the longest anyone I know has heard back from her on a full is five weeks. This was my benchmark until a friend said they'd heard of someone who heard back after SIX weeks.

But six weeks it now is for me and still nothing. I alternate between a number of best-case and worst-case scenarios.

Perhaps its a definite R but because she's such a lovely ed, she's working out the best way to let me down gently.

Perhaps they're just really, really busy at the moment in Richmond.

Perhaps she's drafting up another revision letter.

Or joy of joys, perhaps she's passed it up the ladder for further approval. (of course I know that even if this is the case, the other eds might not like it).

But it's driving me batty. Email checking is a constant obsession. I can barely eat dinner without getting up to go and check. If a child wakes me up in the night (which is a frequent occurrence in my house), I log on and check my mail. Hubby's so used to it now, he's given up asking me what the hell I'm doing with the laptop in bed at 3am in the morning. It's even affecting my writing cos after every sentence I write, I check my email - NOT good for the word count!

So... I'm guessing I'm not alone? Please tell me there are others out there who second guess what waits mean!?

Goss!

Ahh... that got ya didn't it? What woman doesn't love a good gossip sesh?

My goss might not excite you as much as a good scandal though! The news is that last week, Thursday to be precise, I sent off my full mss to the editor I'm working with at M&B. Got a confirmation back that day and immediately began to quake in my fluffy pink slippers!! Trying to NTAI but you know... it's really rather pointless even trying.

In other news... today is Mother's Day down under and hubby has banished me from housework and told me to read all day!! Ahhh... the hardships.

I'm reading one of my auto-buy authors - Lisa Jewell. Her eighth book 'After The Party' is about what happens after the Happy Ever After of her first ever hero and heroine. I'm only a little way in but loving it!!!

So on that note, Happy Mother's Day to all those mummies out there!! I'm off to read.

Love my Sony eReader!!!

I can't believe it's almost been TWO weeks since I last updated - shocking!!

I had a bit of a reading break between finishing the first draft and reading it over in two sittings (like to do this so I can see if it's working as a whole before being nitpicky and pulling it apart) but didn't read nearly as much as I'd hoped! I read a fabulous Blaze by Sarah Mayberry, some brilliant stuff by my CPs and Lost Dogs and Lonely Hearts by Lucy Dillon.

I was really, really, really tempted to look at my mss but forced myself to stay away for at least a week. I NEEDED distance to look at it objectively! Then yesterday morning I downloaded my mss onto my lovely Sony eReader so I could read it like a real, proper book.

Sure I love reading other people's books on my eReader but this is what I love most about it. Reading my own finished product!! I'm lucky to have the Touch edition which means I can annotate as I read.

So thanks to my beautiful eReader, I've now read through my whole mss and am starting on the edit.

Plan is to finish the edits, let it sit another week, then read over one more time to polish before subbing.

I told the editor mid-May - so YAY - looks like I'll make the deadline!!

Is it only me who feels like this?

Have just finished the rough draft of my mss. I say 'finish' very loosely cos I still have to go back and revise the sex scenes as requested by the editor but there's a whole book to work with now.

I'm stoked, don't get me wrong, but reading back over the last few chaps I wonder if it's lacking the buzz, the pizazz, the flair of the first half of the book?

I'm definitely a beginning girl. LOVE LOVE LOVE getting to know two new characters and writing the beginning of their love story... but towards the end, I start to doubt EVERY single line I write. Is there enough emotion? Is there too much emotion?

WHAT THE HELL is EMOTION?

What I want to know is is this a Rach-curse or does everyone get to the end of the book and think they've just written 50k of utter rubbish!?

Onto less heavy pastures. The delightful, supremely wise and ever talented Jackie Ashenden nominated me for the 5-5-5 Blogger Award!

This is: 5 questions, 5 answers, 5 blogs to tag.
So here goes:

Question 1: Where were you five years ago?

1. I was in Kojonup, having only just moved there and having just come back from gorgeous holiday in Queenstown, NZ.
2. I had one hubby, one child, one dog and one cat.
3. I knew I wanted to write but looking back (oh hindsight) knew absolutely nothing about writing.
4. I had just bought my first laptop - unfortunately due to the Rach-computer-curse, I've lost count of how many there's been since then.
5. I had just decided I wanted to write a non-fiction book about breastfeeding.

Question 2: What is (was) on your to do list today?

1. Finish rough draft of novel - check! (if I forget about the sex scenes that still need fixing)
2. Make a shepherd's pie for dinner, which my kids will turn their noses up at - check!
3. Get my legs, lip and brow waxed - fail (my friend the beautician forgot our appointment)
4. Contact the stupid College of Teaching about my registration renewal - fail (who wants to waste a kidfree morning on the phone to them?)
5. Change and wash the bedsheets which I try to do every Friday - fail (but hey it's only lunchtime)

Question 3: What five snacks do you enjoy?

1. Cake- anything but fruit cake! Became a fiend when I was pregnant with High Maintenance.
2. Diet Coke - like Jackie, drinks are snacks to me. I allow myself one can a day, unless its a naughty day - like today.
3. Chocolate -need I say more?
4. Cereal - don't much like it for breakfast but in the evening it's fabulous.
5. Popcorn - especially from the movies or freshly popped!

Question 4: What five places have you lived in?

1. London.
2. Newcastle, England.
3. Sydney.
4. Perth
5. Kojonup

Question 5: What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?

1. Travel more - first stop Hollywood where I want to set my next book.
2. Buy my unromantic hero his own supermarket. If I were a billionaire he could probably retire, but that'd kill him.
3. Fly my best school friends to England to see Amy.
4. Send my boys to fabulous schools.
5. Y'know? I'm finding this question hard... don't know if being filthy rich would suit me?!?!

Oh hang on... thought of a proper five! I'd get a live-in cleaner, cook, gardener, personal fashion consultant and buyer, hair-dresser and beautician!

Nominating 5 blogs: Ooh this is tough... especially cos a lot of my fave blogs have already been nominated. Luckily I lurve LOTS of blog people.

Becca J Heath

Cathryn Brunet

Leah Ashton

Mira Lyn Kelly

Christina Phillips

I'm in LOVE!

Okay perhaps infatuation is a better word.

I was gonna write a post about the hero I've been brainstorming for my next mss and how utterly divine he is but that I'm having issues with setting his conflict directly against my heroine who is also very strong to me. But I was only playing with this mss while tring to NTA the sub that was currently sitting on someone's 'desk' in Richmond.

Anyway I've heard back on my sub, which was just over the first half of the novel. I heard back in a WEEK, which is why I'm in LOVE with the editor I'm working with. She's so kind and yet professional and helpful in her letters and she really MUST get some type of award for her speediness! Really, she must.

But you're probably all dying to know what she said, right?

At first my heart beat wildly and I almost died without reading the rest. She opened with something along the lines of my mss having strong elements but NOT QUITE achieving that elusive emotional complexity and sexual tension that I'd achieved in the partial. ARGH. Fighting the urge to slam the laptop shut and bang my head against the wall, I jumped to the end of the letter to find my fate.

Bottom line was despite a number of revisions on what I sent, she STILL wants to see my full.

Am excited by the fact I still have a full request and hugely daunted by what I must do in order to sub it.

The revisions all make HUGE sense. Everytime I read a revision letter I find myself thinking - of course! Why didn't I see that?

But once again - as seems to be the case with a lot of revision letters doing the rounds lately - I was relying more on convenient plot devices than following the true nature of my hero and heroine.

So now... it's kinda back to the drawing board. Allowing my heroine to feel angry about seemingly being used for sex and my hero to really feel the guilt and betrayal of his late wife while feeling immense attraction to the heroine!

Wish me luck! And I promise I'll try to write less self-centred posts in future!

LoveCats and progress!

First things first... I sent my revisions on my partial off to M&B. Am sooooooooo nervous and really have absolutely no idea whether I nailed them or flunked out, but time will tell.

I'm back to sitting on the NTAI couch and I'm trying to work out whether the second time you sub the same (well technically) partial, you get to buy more shoes or if it's a once per manuscript type of thing.

Thoughts?

While I determine what to do next, I've been blog surfing. What better way to spend time I don't really have?

Anyway some friends of mine (along with some friends of theirs) have started a fabulous new blog for readers and writers who LOVE category romance. Head on over to LoveCatsDownunder - there's loads of prizes to be won during their first week on 'air.'

If the prizes aren't enough to get you running there, this pic should do it. It's just one of the fabulous pics they've got of cats and animals!

Wanted: Insurance Know-It-All!?

Good news is I'm slowly climbing out of the puddle of woe I was in after receiving my first real revisions. Hopefully all the stress and lack of sleep is good training for if I ever actually get published.

The lovely editor I'm working with has given me the go ahead on my thoughts for revision, but there's just one itty bitty problem.

INSURANCE!

That's right... my heroine prangs into the hero's swish, red convertible and in the original incarnation she's 'between insurance companies' and therefore stressed because he's annoyed about his car and she's about to tell him she can't afford to fix it.

Problem is the heroine needs to be BEYOND REPROACH and let's face it, anyone who doesn't have insurance is a bit of a ninny! So I need her to have insurance just not want to claim it for some reason.

The heroine is saving for/pursuing IVF as a single woman and so she needs all the dosh she can get. However from my understanding excess, no matter what kind of car she prangs, will be maximum $500 or something. There was the option that she doesn't want to claim because she wants to look irresponsible for the IVF treatment but in Australia single women are legally allowed to do IVF, so I don't think this would be an issue either.

Still ... without the insurance issue, she has no reason to feel indebted to the hero and therefore the next bit of the plot doesn't work. If the next bit doesn't work, neither does the next and so on and so on. Besides... the editor liked the car prang and what the editor likes we give her!!!

So... am desperately hoping that someone out there knows a bit about insurance. Is there any way around my little problem!? Will pay oodles of cyber chocolates to anyone with a solution :)

Maverick Millionaire, Musical Mistress!

Thanks to everyone who helped me brainstorm a new working title for my manuscript. Piecing your suggestions together I've come up with:

MAVERICK MILLIONAIRE, MUSICAL MISTRESS

Yesterday the title seemed a problem, today that hurtle seems nothing compared to the revisions I'm facing. I've now got a tincy wincy bit of an idea why published authors always make cringy comments on their blogs, Facebook accounts, etc when revisions land in their inbox.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good challenge so I'm facing this thing head on but I'm only just beginning to realise the significance of each little thing in a book. If I change one seemingly small thing, it amazes me how it has a domino affect on the rest of the book.

It seems I finally got the internal conflict right in this submission, but all the changes the editor has suggested means taking out a LOT of the things that highlighted this conflict so well. So now I'm really exercising my brain trying to think of other ways to highlight this core conflict. It hurts my brain.

So... I just wanna take a moment to cyber toast all my good published writer friends, who still go through this kind of stuff on a regular basis. Thanks for slogging away to write books that captivate us and really hit the spot!!