Ally's Winner

Carolin, who posted eloquently in the comments section of the Pink Heart blog about a number of things in her 'well' that have inspired her creativity, is the winner of Antonides' Forbidden Wife.

Mitch and Micah thought that she could have included Golden Retrievers among her inspiration, but they loved the idea of her twenty-year engagement (go read the post!), so they forgave her the lack of Goldens.

I found all the comments really interesting -- and a little scary, as in Michelle Styles's recollection of the drunken Icelander who tried to abscond with her son. Yes, that would make a book opening, Michelle. But I wouldn't want to relive it all the time! At least confining it between the covers makes it manageable.

Ditto Kate Hardy's tale about her baby daughter's illness. It's interesting that we use romance fictioin to 'escape' the difficulties of life quite often. But at the same time we also use it to exorcise the grittier moments of our own lives.

I'm glad to know that Sid and Kate found Melody's quilts inspiring. And I will see about making Sid my version of his very own personal quilt (a dead tree in winter quilt, eh, Sid?) for his sleeping comfort.

I would love to hear more about the bits and pieces of your lives that have inspired you to do something creative. So don't stop here. Keep sharing, please.

Maybe next time we can talk about 'inciting incidents." Or is that a double positive? Things that inspire that initial, "I think I'd like to write a book about that" (or poem or short story or knot garden or quilt) moment.

Who wants to go first? Well, Michelle already did with her drunken Icelander. But who else has a good inciting incident?

Micah and Mitch are tussling over the treats. They want another contest. Hmmm.

The Trouble With Charley

My editor is going to love Charley -- if I don't kill him first.

Why? Because she's always telling me I should write faster, get books out more often, etc etc etc.

But that means, what? Spending more time at the computer. Working my fingers to the nub. Not to mention my brain.

I have resisted. The well of inspiration is not a gusher around here. It's generally more of a slow steady trickle -- with occasional plugs.

That was all pre-Charley.

Charley, I suspect, has ADD or ADHD or one of those acronymns that I can never get right but that means he has the attention span of, say, a chicken.

Rooster, Charley says. Attention span of a rooster.

Yes, well, whatever you want to call it, Charley needs to be kept busy. Left to his own devices, he does not stay on task.

He is easily distractable -- especially by anything with a keyboard wearing pink, red or purple.

While I'm pausing for thought, trying to figure out which Greek saint's feast day we're going to be celebrating in chapter seven and trying to use the internet to find it out, Charley won't wait.

He is busy making notes in his little black book about which girly laptop he wants to ring next.

I didn't even know he had a little black book.

Everyone has a little black book, he told me. Only now they call it an address file. Liz Fielding's sexy "Liz Machine" is in it now, and Kate Walker's new RED Dell Mini may be next.

More trouble is brewing on the horizon, too, because Kate Hardy is expecting a new laptop whom she intends to call Seb. He has already asked Charley if he wants to go out trolling for chicks!

I hope Kate gives Seb a few rules before she unleashes him on his peer group. I'm thinking Charley may need a curfew and it won't help if Seb can come in any time he wants.

I'm not sure Kate mentioned if Seb was another of those sleek black laptops like Charley. I'm just hoping he's not that Lamborghini yellow one Charley spotted this morning. I don't need him having a case of laptop cover envy.

The only way I've found of handling these energy bursts of Charley's is to make him work. He finished chapter six this morning and is working his way through chapter seven.

I tried to stop there and think a bit about the next scene, but Charley didn't want to quit.

Once he's on a roll, he won't settle down. He just wants to keep writing and writing and writing (which is why my editor will love him).

When I say I need a break or to go to the grocery store or think about where the story goes next, he starts prowling the internet looking for new girlfriends.

I suggested yanking out his wireless card. It's what I used to have to do with Old Wonky when he either spun his hourglass forever or got seriously overheated. But it won't work with Charley. His wireless card is built-in.

I'm thinking he needs some games to play. Got any suggestions? I'm not sure he's a spider solitaire kind of guy. He might need something a bit more, er, action oriented than that.

Something with guns and spies and going undercover, Charley says. And girls with keyboards (goes without saying). Ideas welcome.

In the meantime, I know what I'm going to do with him tonight. I'm going to send him downstairs at 8:00 to watch the premiere of the third season of Burn Notice.

Only problem there is that I won't be upstairs thinking. I'll be downstairs, too, watching it with him.

What's in a Name?

A few days ago Kate Hardy said she was stuck in her current manuscript because she hadn't got her hero's name right and thus he wasn't cooperating.

People who don't write probably think that's daft.

It's not. Trust me.

I have had heroes who flat out refused to say a word because I didn't know their names. They just stood there, defying me to guess who they were. And finally, when I got it right, they opened up and eventually I got a book out of them.

Jared Flynn from my novella, Marry Go Round in With This Ring, was a case in point. He absolutely refused to do a thing until I figured out his name.

Lots of us have been tossing names at Kate for her quintessential English banker hero. Got any ideas? Go see Kate on her blog and tell her.

I'll be curious to see who he turns out to be.

In the meantime, I have something of the opposite problem.

Not Demetrios. I know his name. I know what he does for a living. I know a lot of his backstory and he's cooperating nicely. He even got off the street corner last night when I found him a good reason to leave and a means of doing so.

But he has a brother, George. George is a physicist. A reclusive brainy physicist.

George, against all odds, is destined to be my next hero. At least that's what my editor and I have agreed on. This was not, let me assure you, my idea. But apparently some people, editors included, think George can be a hero.

Probably he can be.

But he's got his work cut out for him. And so do I.

So I'm trying to get inside his head right now -- even as I work on Demetrios's book -- because I know I'm going to have to do some heavy-duty thinking about this man (and probably replay Kate Walker's master class in Alpha Heroes) before I get to grips with what situation is going to bring out the hero in George.

You're going to meet George's ex-wife, Sophy, in Christo's book, One-Night Mistress, Convenient Wife. I figure she has something to do with George being heroic, but I don't know what. If I don't start thinking about it now or I'm going to be in trouble when I need to start on his book.

So what do you think a physicist named George with an ex-wife named Sophy is likely to be confronted with that will make him pull up his socks, get out of the lab and act like a McAllister hero?

All suggestions seriously considered, believe me.

Just don't tell me to change his name. One of the problems of linked books is that names stick -- and authors are stuck with them -- and the most unlikely people become heroes and heroines because of it.

What's On Your Book Shelf?

Liz Fielding posted a list of "the top 100 books" put out by the British National Endowment for the Arts.

She got it from Kate Hardy. Kate got it from Michelle Styles. Michelle got it from Amanda Ashby. Amanda presumably, got it from someone else. Or maybe she actually reads the literature put out by the National Endowment of the Arts.

Anyway, the National Endowment people say the average reader has read 6.

I've read slightly over half.

I don't remember a lot about most of the ones I've read. Quite a few were read as part of lit courses I took, not because I was enthralled with them. But some I genuinely loved and went back to read on my own again. And again.

Others -- let's be honest here -- I hated.

And I had a heated discussion with The Prof about Madame Bovary (as always), since he loves it and I hated it. Ditto Gone With The Wind (well, he didn't love it, but he thought it was worth reading).

He said, "It's an American Madame Bovary."

And I said, "Exactly."

And he said, "They're anti-heroines, Madame Bovary and Scarlett O'Hara. You're not supposed to like them."

And I said, "Why would I waste time reading books about people I don't like?"

So, I'm a philistine. Get over it. He has. Sort of.

Anyway, here's my list. The ones I've read are in bold. Read it over and let me know which ones you've read and what you think of the list.

By the way, the comments (go to the link and scan to the bottom) over on Liz's blog are well worth reading -- as well as Liz's own comments on the ones she's read. So check them out.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (first time I read it I was too young and bored. Then I reread it and loved it.)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (yes, indeed, some of us haven't)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (and yes, there are actually romance writers -- well, one anyway -- who haven't read Jane Eyre)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (does it count that I've read five of them and have the rest? I'll get to them someday)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (amazing book)
6 The Bible (probably not all of it, but most)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (yes, you can be a romance writer and not have read this)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (we read a lot of Hardy in school)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (loved it!)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (does half count?)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks (bought it for my dad)
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (ah, teenage angst)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (still not a big fan)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (hated the movie, won't read the book)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (like Hardy, we read Dickens till our eyes fell out)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (from a long line of dust bowl Okies, it cut a little close to home)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (loved it)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (loved it)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (over and over to my kids and never got tired of it)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (all the Anne books! Yes!)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (loved it!)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (memorable, moving)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (I told you we read a lot of Hardy)
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (hated it)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Breakfast at Giovanni's

The lovely talented Kate Hardy, who writes faster than I can read, also writes wonderful books.

She writes Medicals for Mills & Boon, and she also writes M&B Modern Extras, or as they are now called, Modern Heat. And some of the latter are coming out in America as part of the Presents line.

One of them, Breakfast at Giovanni's, on Monday won the Romance Novelists' Association prize for category romance!

Kate's book has been retitled -- something about an Italian Boss, I think. Personally I love the title Breakfast at Giovanni's. But I think marketing feels it doesn't 'fit' with 'The Presents Promise."

Personally I wish they'd 'promise' more variety in their titles. Many of the books do. They aren't as cookie-cutter as critics -- or marketing -- would like you to think. But you'd never know it from the sameness of the titles.

Anyway, I'm thrilled for Kate who, as you can see here, looks a bit stunned and 'who me?' when they called her name.

And yes, that's the lovely Liz Fielding, whose wonderful Secret Life of Lady Gabriella was also short-listed for the prize, sitting far to the right. (So you can see how stiff the competition was).

Congrats to all who were short-listed -- and special congrats to Kate for walking away with the Betty Neels' Bowl which will be hers for the year.

Channeling Kate Hardy

No, not really.

But as I said last week, this must be what it feels like to be Kate Hardy. Or Nora Roberts.

I suppose I should have left out the period between those last two sentences (or sentence and fragment), putting in a comma instead so Kate could be in the same sentence with Nora, which she likes.

But then she's in the last sentence with Nora, so I hope she's happy now.

Anyway, I'm writing buckets every day. I no longer stop and mull. I don't ruminate. I don't weigh. Words spill out. They may not be good words yet, or the right words, or the words I'll eventually end up with.

But they are words.

And they are getting through this story.

So, hooray for them. And hooray for these people, PJ and Ally, whose story must really want to be told.

All I can say is, Seb and Neely better be paying attention so they can see how it ought to be done. None of this shilly-shallying around. No whining. No taking their football and going home. Or their blueprints or whatever they were messing with when last I saw them.

Enough about them. They had their chance. They blew it. Or they and the editor didn't play well with each other, and so they aren't getting their chance right now. Maybe later. Well, definitely later. Probably. Er, um . . .

I don't care. Sufficient to the day is the book I'm working on. I'm just going to enjoy PJ and Ally -- and these blissful days when writing is, as they say (though I really rarely believe), "easy and fun for me."

At least it's easy and fun for PJ and Ally. And those few other authors who make it seem effortless. Which at the moment is me.

Who'd a thunk it?

I just wish I didn't have 5 days left to finish it all up. I could bask in knowing what I'm doing a bit longer if I had more time.