It Must Be Love

Photo taken using Fun Fotos

Wedding fever has hit lately, as I've had the privilege to help out a friend (not much, just offering a finger when needed lol) leading up to her special day. The wedding took place on Friday, the only beautiful day in ALL of April! (I've decided they bribed the weather gods somehow). They took nine weeks to plan the whole thing, and it all went off splendidly. Within the last week they also asked a friends sister if she could do a photobooth, which was fantastic and has created some brilliant memories. Now I'm not one for big, lavish expensive weddings (though I've got nothing against them, if you can afford it go for it!). To me it's about having the people you love and who love you involved in a day to cherish and remember. It's those special moments, like my cousin calling me Mrs Jolley for the first time and me going into fits of gigles. Or the groom, not overly loquacious by nature, saying something so desperately loving and romantic it makes tears well in everyone's eyes.

Okay decent grub helps and good quality photos to assist the memory as time wears on, are a must, yet sharing  such an emotionally rewarding day with friends and loved ones is what it's really about to me. So congratulations to my dear friends Melissa & Glenn, for letting us all share what was a wonderful day and joyous celebration of your love and happiness. X M

Titanic

Two blog posts in two days. For a woman who you're lucky to get a post out of once a month this is a great achievement! So what's brought on this rash of posts? Well tonight I'm going to a friends hens night and we will be dining only 1/2 a mile away from the great ships berth.

I happen to live in Southampton, yep, the place where the doomed liner set sail from. Despite this link, Southampton has been relatively quiet when it comes to this association, despite the tragic loss of life felt by it's community. Finally after 100 years there is a museum worthy of the legend that is the Titanic, a multi-million pound interactive endeavour that was opened on the 10th April, the day the Titanic left Southampton. Prior to this the only museum about the Titanic Southampton had was in an ancient woolshed across from the Isle of Wight ferry terminal. Not really up to James Cameron standard, me thinks!

Where is all this Titanic talk leading you ask? Well I read/saw something a few years back that has stuck in my mind, I can't remember the source, but the idea has been growing recently to become a new book. Apparently the wives of the White Star vessel's crew were left with nothing on the deaths of their husbands forcing many into the world's oldest profession. This to me has the making of a story, something outside the myth of the Titanic, but inextricably linked. 100 years ago Southampton lost many souls to the sea, but the legacy lives on stronger than ever as the new Seacity Museum reminds us of chivalry and heroism in the most tragic of circumstances. X M

Balance... What's That?!

Bewitched? I wish I could wiggle my nose that well!

If you're after great insight, you've come to completely the wrong place, I was kinda hoping you could tell me. I'm a mother of two, wife of one (this isn't BIG LOVE folks) and though I don't have a paying job to go to, like many of the writers I've met online, I still don't seem to have the time to do everything I want to do. My time management sucks. There are far more people in this world who have a crap load to do and get it done with time to spare, but I'm not one of them. I've really learnt to cut down on my social networking, a necessary evil if you're trying to advertise an upcoming release. If I write at night, I feel like I'm neglecting my husband. I can only write during the day on one of the three afternoons my son is at nursery. I've got a TBR (To Be Read) pile that is constantly increasing, yet is necessary in developing my knowledge of the romance genre and writing in general. So where does that leave, I've got no friggin' idea?! I just keep plodding along, getting new words down when I can, editing old words during the breaks, and praying for those immensely rare moments when I don't feel guilty because I need to do dishes or vacuum. (Thanks to my husband for a few hours of that over Easter). So no plan to improve my sucky time management, just a hope that I'll get that place one day, when the magic fairies leave the house sparkling and I rock out 3000 amazing words in an hour to spend the rest of my evening day being the 50s/60s housewife I was born to be. Martini's anyone?

Cover Art

I'm rubbish at blogging, mostly because I feel like I'm cheating if I don't write at least three paragraphs. That makes today a cheat day! Instead for your viewing pleasure here is the cover for my debut story, due for release May 2012.

Thank you to the lovely Mina Carter for her work on the cover. Also a big thank you to the wonderful Deadra Krieger for navigating me through the editing process. X M

It's Valentines, let's talk MOVIES!

So I was just over at my friend Faye's blog, and she mentioned movies, so that got me thinking?! Dangerous, I know, but sometimes I can't help it. I like movies. I'm very much a comedy, kids and action kinda gal, I pretend to be intellectual sometimes and push to a drama, but that is a rare thing, and usually only by accident.

Anyway I was thinking about romantic films I love and that inspire me, especially in my writing.

"The Quiet Man" features John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and they are fantastic. She is everything I want MODERN heroines to be, okay maybe she's slightly more stubborn than I'd like, but she's fiesty and knows what she wants. As for Duke, he's a man's man, fighting for the love of his woman, but without throwing a punch (well that's his aim, it doesn't work out too well for him.) Bonus points for kissing in the rain, and dragging a woman across the beautiful Irish countryside for five miles!

"It Happened One Night" One of the originally road movies, a spoiled heiress goes on the lam from who father, who is opposed to her marriage to a wealthy showboater (he gets it annulled). Whilst trying to return to him she meets a journalist who sees the scoop of a lifetime in her story. What neither of them expects is to fall in love along the way. A originator of things that are now considered cliches, like Ellie teaching Peter how to hitch, by hitching her skirt and showing some leg, and Peter putting up the Walls of Jericho (see picture) to protect both of the virtues. Bonus points for Clark Gable taking the bottom out of the underwear industry, by not wearing an undershirt!

"Brief Encounter" You just can't help feeling for the couple in this doomed love affair. It all starts off so innocently, a bit of grit in the eye provoking their meeting. But this happily married (to other people) couple, fall in love anyway, though doing their darnedest to fight the attraction, and remain 'decent' people.  It's all so incredibly understated and real, and a love story, not a romance. Thank you so much Fi, for introducing me to this story. Bonus points for it's dignity and class... and trains. Trains are sexy!

So after getting this far I've realised this will be an installment thing! So we've done old school this time, maybe next time musicals, or more modern films, we'll see. But in the mean time, what are your favourite romantic films?! I'd love to know. X M

The CALL story!

So, I'd been checking my email fairly regularly since early October when I sent 'Feral' to Jackie Moore, an editor for Breathless Press. (Jackie gave me third place in a 'Pitch Your First Page' contest run by the Let's Talk Romance blog.) After almost four weeks (BP has a two-four week response time for normal submissions, this is EXTREMELY quick!), I contacted Jackie. It turned out she was 'tantalised' by my story but she needed to show it to her senior editor. More waiting. I emailed again, the lovely Jackie informed me it didn't fall into her department, but under her recommendation was passed onto the paranormal senior editor.

As the Christmas buzz settled in, I resigned myself to not hearing about the fate of 'Feral' until after the holiday season. Hey it was okay if they didn't want it, just getting this far was such a huge accomplishment for my first little story. So imagine my surprise when I awoke to an email Christmas Eve morning from Deadra Kreiger, asking if 'Feral' was a one off or part of a series. Umm, whatever you want it to be?! After some toing and froing of emails, I informed Deadra that I would relish the opportunity of making 'Feral' a series.

Nothing. (I know now that it was some ridiculous hour where Deadra lives and she would have gone to bed.)

So I waited, checking my phone for emails almost constantly. Then early evening, whilst sitting in the bathroom while my kids had a bath, I checked my phone again. And there it was "Thank you for choosing Breathless Press as a potential publisher for Feral." OH BUGGER IT'S A REJECTION. Wait read a bit more. Blah, blah, blah. "We're pleased to inform you that BP would like to offer a contract." Cue running around the house screaming for joy, my bewildered children sitting in the bath, my lovely husband dropping the dishes he's doing to give me a cuddle and tell me how proud he is of me.

So there you have it! I'll be entering the editing process soon, wish me luck, and THANK YOU Breathless Press for seeing some potential in me and my story!

Finding Yourself

I've just been crying my way through the special features on the final Harry Potter film (yes I'm a geeky emotional girl. Sue me!) and as per usual when I think of the magnificence of these stories I get to thinking about Jo Rowling, how she works and her immense talent, tenacity and imagination. It also got me thinking about how she'd written EXACTLY the kind of story I would want to write, had I one tenth of her imagination.

Jo's world building has been so immense that she knows everything about her characters and the world they live in. Now I don't think, actually I KNOW I don't have the faintest idea of where to begin to create a world with that depth, but I do like the idea of the secret world hiding in plain sight (a la Harry Potter and Stephanie Meyer's Twilight) as these are places you can escape to, but you also feel could be just around the corner. My first story 'Feral' incorporates the idea of 'others' living amongst us incognito, and when I decided I was going to give this writing lark a go, it was always with a paranormal edge (Joss Whedon and Buffy have a lot to answer for!). Unfortunately, coming up with original ideas and characters has been slightly less easy, as you know anything with witchcraft is going to be likened to Harry, and anything with vamps is going to be... well let's just say Twilight isn't the only one in that parade!

To date my writing attempts have been limited to romance, for no other reason than, it's what I know! I know about love, I've been in love a few times, all of whom were very good boys/men. I am fortunate not to have a horror story or a bad break up. I also know attraction in it's many guises, and that physical attraction won't necessarily relay to an emotional or mental connection. I know these things so I attempt to write about them.

The question is do I stick to what I know (and don't read nearly enough of), or do I get thinking and make that leap to fantasy/paranormal Teen/YA (which I read more of), but is definitely a saturated market at the moment?! So 'Who am I?' who the hell knows, but I'm having fun finding out!

X M