Some things I would blog about if I had time to blog...

• Books I’ve read recently
  Particularly Abby Green’s Breaking the Sheikh's Rules, which has gone right into my top ten Modern/Presents books somewhere around the number one slot thanks to a combination of a really sexy hero, the most appealing and adorable heroine and the kind of setting that makes me sigh with nostalgic satisfaction. I’m not usually a huge fan of sheikh books for all sorts of reasons, but this one hooked me in on page one with its lush Irish backdrop and the horses – there was something about it that whizzed me right back to the first Mills & Boon books I ever read as a teenager and reminded me exactly why I fell in love with them. I’ve also just finished Michelle Reid’s Balfour book – Mia’s Scandal, which features another really fabulous, memorable heroine. It was - predictably - gorgeously written, pacy, sexy and satisfying, as well as being really interesting to see bits of the wider Balfour puzzle slotting into place, and find characters I’d got to know pretty well pop up in a different setting. Made me want to go back and re-visit my Balfour book, so it’s pretty convenient that…

• My author copies finally arrived!
  Emily and Luis are in the building. I, however, will not be for much longer as we are about to go on holiday, making it extremely bad timing to blog in detail about the book and do a contest. Gah! Will get to it when we get home again, but in the meantime, talking of contests…
  
  
• Mills & Boon’s New Voices Contest has just been launched.
  If you have ever harboured any ambition to write for the world’s biggest and best-loved romance publisher this is a fab chance to give it a go. My take on it is that it’s not so much about winning an i-pad or an editor – though one lucky, talented person is going to wake up with an almighty champagne hangover at the end of it all – but about being given that crucial little push to start putting your dreams in motion. I often wonder how long it would have taken me to stop faffing around and finding excuses if Penny Jordan hadn’t told me to go away and write a chapter and send it to her within two weeks, so if you’re an uber-procrastinator like me you can look on this as your call to action. Start writing over the summer, ready to put something up on the website in September (under a pseudonym if you’re shy) and take advantage of a whole lot of free and honest critiquing. (Which might hurt, but will be a taste of things to come if you get accepted!) And tied into the contest is...

• The event I’m doing at Nantwich Library on September 9th.
  I’m doing away with the workshop thing and am going for a much more relaxed, informal discussion on Everything You Need to Know About Writing a Mills & Boon Romance (And Possibly Several Things That You Don’t) so Nantwich Library is the place to be if you have burning questions about lines, love scenes, layering conflict, or anything else – even if it doesn’t begin with ‘L’. I'd really love to see you, if you're remotely thinking of coming. (I think you need to phone the library to book places - details are here on the romance is not dead website.) I’m fully intending to max up the girly afternoon tea opportunity, and am really looking forward to doing my first M&B event on home turf, in the library where I used to spend Saturday mornings sitting on the mustard-coloured scratchy carpet reading The Wild Swans (my absolute favourite book for years – I borrowed it so many times I don’t know why my mum didn’t just buy me a copy for Christmas. Sniff.) Anyway, on the subject of home turf, daughters 1 and 2 came with me last week to the launch of…

• An exhibition in our local (gem of a) museum entitled Nantwich People Past and Present. Penny Jordan and I are both included, along with a surprising amount of interesting and inspiring people for such a tiny rural market town. I am in a corner, nose to nose with Isabella Blow. And not many people can say that.

It's not the destination, but the journey...

On Tuesday* I went on the Orient Express with my mother. For her it’s been a bit of an ambition for a long time, although I think that she probably originally envisaged the train sliding through exotic-sounding stations in the warm dusk as it sped on its way to Venice, rather than past smoke-blackened northern mill towns between Crewe and York. But anyway, she’d been looking forward to it hugely; me, if I'm honest, not so much, due to the fact that my current book is calling to me in increasingly desperate tones. When she told me that the journey was going to take 3 1/2 hours each way my first thought was ‘but I could drive it in 2 1/2!’ and my second was ‘Can I take my laptop?’ I didn’t actually get around to saying either to her as that was the moment she dropped the bombshell that we had to be at the station by 7.15 am.

But it was fabulous. I mean, really fabulous. I shall never be able to stagger onto an overcrowded, grimy Virgin Pendolino to Euston again without remembering getting on board the Northern Belle, sitting down at a table laid with damask and crystal and being handed a bellini. Here’s a few pictures of our beautiful carriage (which we had to ourselves, so could giggle like schoolgirls without being overheard)

Stepped off the train at York, buoyed up by champagne and smoked salmon and slightly disorientated - it was like a kind of top notch restaurant you might find in a Harry Potter novel, where you enter from one place and find yourself in entirely another when you come out. My brother lives in York and we spent the day shopping and hanging out with him, so actually the destination was pretty cool, (specially as I got to pick up my delicious niece and nephew from school and have an hour with them before we had to head back to the Train of Indulgence) but that's beside the point. Having spent a lovely couple of hours in the company of a group of interesting, wise and wonderful women at the National Trust writing workshop I did on Sunday, and talking about the road to publication, the idea of enjoying the journey in its own right was definitely uppermost in my mind.

One of the several squillion differences between the Orient Express and the 17.09 Virgin Express service from Euston to Crewe (aside from the slightly sticky seats and the commuter with his thigh pressed right up against yours in the tightly packed carriage) is the much slower speed at which it travels, and the way that allows you to notice so much more - like the lupins growing wild at the side of the track, and the shadows of clouds moving across the big green fields of unripe wheat. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that getting somewhere quickly (ie to publication, for the purposes of this clumsy analogy, which is directed at the ladies I met who are waiting for editor feedback / trying to muster the strength and energy to start again and submit / facing the prospect of beginning a new writing project in a new genre) is not necessarily the best way. Travel slowly, indulgently, and notice stuff on the way. And don't just save the champagne for when you get there either. Celebrate the journey.

* I would have put this post up yesterday, but spent most of the day (without exaggeration) trying to work out how to get the photos I took on my phone onto my computer. Only when my husband had spent the entire evening trying to do the same did we conclude that the installation disk that came with my phone is faulty. 'Dear Samsung, you owe me 9 hours of my life back and a stress-reducing hot stones massage in a technology-free spa in the Himalayas. Could you also explain to my editor that another writing day lost was your fault, not mine. Thank you. Yours in extreme frustration and techno-loathing, India Grey.'

Weekend, and Workshop

Post birthday depression has descended, along with grey clouds and rain, after weekend of blazing sun, champagne and celebrating here in the green heart of Shropshire. Oh to wake up to this view every morning…

(...although having to drive across two fields to reach the road and getting out of the car twice to open and close gates would make the school run unbearably complicated. Would have to home educate, or better still - send the children out to work on the land while I wrote lyrical poetry based heavily on A.E. Housman.)

Anyway, back to the weekend. Some friends came down on Saturday evening and we ate outside as the sun slipped behind the hill and the fields gradually dissolved into velvety darkness. The daughters had decided on a formal dress code and had raided the dressing up box for my old University ball dresses and hand-me-down outfits from weddings past, while the men dusted off their dinner jackets. I wore a dress from years ago that had to be held together with safety pins and high heels that kept sinking into the lawn.

Later, when the cheap candles we'd bought from The Co-Op had all burned down into waxy puddles we set off sky lanterns...

Sunday morning was so glorious and green and golden that it would have been a criminal waste not to celebrate it with champagne and breakfast outside, after which we set off to explore. Acton Scott recently featured in a BBC TV series here in the UK called Victorian Farm and the children wanted to spot the celebrity animals who'd made an appearance. (The actual cottage in which the programme was made – authentically minus electricity, running water and an indoor bathroom – is also available to rent. Am charmed by the idea in theory, but as the absence of a hairdryer in the otherwise five-star appointed house we stayed in caused a minor crisis I don’t think we’ll be making a booking anytime soon)

All teenage cynicism and ennui dissolved in the face of newborn chicks and piglets and the competitive task of crushing grain in some kind of huge, clanking iron contraption that was much harder than the junior members of our group made it look. (Must look out for one on ebay – the perfect way to keep children gainfully employed and away from screen-based entertainment, as well as providing excellent personal work-out opportunity. Was reading somewhere recently about a diet that allows cakes and biscuits as long as they’re home-made, on the basis that the calories expended in the cooking makes up for the ones ingested in the eating. Feel that if you’d made your own flour first you’d definitely be allowed second helpings too.)

Yesterday, in a continuation of the weekend's impromptu Victorian theme, on the way home we stopped off at Blists Hill near Ironbridge and wandered around the shops with the stash of farthings and thre’pences exchanged in the bank there. Daughter #1 has a Home Economics GCSE module today and we bought a perfect enamel pie dish for her chicken and ham pie and ate cones of chips fried in beef dripping while looking, urchin-like, into shop windows. By now I was so thoroughly immersed in the whole Victorian vibe that I had to fight the urge to go into the drapers shop (just like the one in Cranford!) and squander our remaining ha'pennies on a bonnet trimmed with silk flowers and lace. Remembered just in time that it might cause the daughters some playground embarrassment and look a little incongruous in the harshly lit aisles of Sainsburys.

However, on reflection it would have been a justifiable purchase after all, since I’m giving a workshop on writing romance this coming Sunday at the National Trust’s Quarry Bank Mill, which is a place so steeped in Victorian ambience that it makes you want to take up sewing samplers and swigging laudanum. I'm not sure if there are any places left, but if you're in the area and would like to come along you can find out the details, and the number to call, here. (I might not have bought the bonnet, but I can't promise I won't turn up in my corset...)

If only...

...I was as well-travelled as my books, because just look where Orlando and Rachel have got to! This is my first Japanese translation, so we were all pretty excited when the postman delivered a couple of copies yesterday. The children were utterly confused by the fact that, to us, it's written backwards. ('That means people will know the ending first' commented Daughter #3 in deep bewilderment.)


In other news, had a lovely time at a workshop in Stoke on Trent library on Saturday. I say 'workshop' as that’s what it was billed as, but not a lot of work went on because we were way too busy talking. It’s an unexpected perk of the job to be able to get out and meet people who share their stories and their ideas, and if anyone from the group is reading this I’d like to say a great big thank you for an inspiring afternoon (and sorry about the Lost Workshop. Hope the printed sheets make sense!)

Actually, anything at all that gets me out of the house (and away from The Book That Will Not Work) is very welcome at the moment. Was thinking wistfully about this time last year, when some sparkle was added to the iron-grey wasteland of January and February by the rugby series launch party and the RNA awards lunch. Haven’t had a proper lipstick and mascara excuse for weeks and can feel the excess Christmas poundage solidifying as the streaks of grey in my hair widen and are matched by my skin tone. At the moment the only glamorous event on the horizon for me is a glittering scene set in Monte Carlo casino in The Book That Will Not Work - if I only I can keep going long enough to get there.


So, what about everyone else? Have you been up to anything lovely that I need to know about? (And has anyone got a ticket for the Oscars or a villa in the south of France going spare?)