Sexy Octopus

Yes, you heard. I said sexy octopus. Right now Hoo is over on the Sisters' site being Peek of the Week. So go say hello - if you can stop drooling over his knitted blue hotness long enough. ;-)

BTW, re New Voices, can I just send out a huge woohoo to the wonderful Lacey Devlin who has been a fabulous cheerleader for all NV entrants. She's got the Wall of Fame, the badges, the cheese. People, that lady's got everything. So big round of applause for her!
Oh and you can go check out her rocking chapter because I'm not sure that lovely lady is going to put herself on her own wall (though she should 'cause she rocks!).
Misbehaving with the Retail Magnate.

Three cheers for Lacey!

Stuck

Stuck in the mire of self doubt at the moment. Working on polishing up my next sub but am doubting basically everything about it. At least the thing I'm pretty sure I've got right is the emotional connection between my characters - at least, I think I have. Famous last words huh? And if that's not bad enough, I now have to write the suckopsis and that is filling me with gloom. The ed takes my synopses very seriously so it has to be right. Another reason to stress.

I think my process is not helping me sadly. I am a pantser. Yes, I do have a vague idea about plot and characters but often the characters don't settle for me until I'm halfway through the ms. Sometimes I'll write a quick and dirty draft, realise it's utter pants while I'm editing it and then figure out a better way for the plot to go. Sometimes this takes me through several drafts before I get it right. The problem with this of course is that if I am editing a ms I've already subbed the partial of, I can't go back and change those first three chapters, which is often the part of the ms that changes the most. This happened with the last sub. In the process of editing the story, I realised what was missing from those first three chapters and hoped I'd be asked for the rest so I could go back and change it to match the rest of the story. Sadly not.

Clearly, with a process like mine, I need to finish and edit the ms completely before I send a partial. Which makes it difficult because if you're asked to revise, revisions are much more easily incorporated into a draft than a finished, polished ms. Plus there's the whole worry about expending a lot of effort on an idea that won't work at all for the editor.

Of course, the ideal for me - since I find that I can't treat a partial in isolation from the rest of the ms - would be just to sub the full straight off. Cue hollow laughter. Yeah like that will happen. :-)

Anyway, how about the NV competition? So many great entries! Going to press ahead with IT Girl at least. It would be fabulous if she got through to the next round but if not, I'll sub her anyway. But first I have to write the whole thing so I can get to know her better. :-)

Thank You Lovely Blog Friends

Today I am sending out HUGE thank yous to all of you who read my chapter in the New Voices comp. I know, there's still two weeks to go till we hear about the finalists but honestly, I'm so grateful that I almost don't care if I place or not (almost!). ;-)

To say I'm thrilled with how many people like it would be a massive understatement. Really, it doesn't get any better than having a whole bunch of people say 'yeah, we like what you've written'. Having had polarising comments in other competitions, I truly didn't expect so many people to enjoy it. I feel a bit like like Sally Field - 'You like me! You really like me!' :-)

I also wanted to say big kudos to all my fellow entrants. It's harsh out there and putting your work on the public stage for everyone to comment on is never easy. But if you've hit that submit button, shout it out with pride. Or if you're not the shouty kind of person, be quietly pleased with yourself. It takes guts to put yourself out there.

This year has been horribly frustrating for my writing. I've felt like I've been standing still and not going anywhere for a large proportion of it. And I have to say, if not for my lovely CPs and blog friends, I would have given this whole thing away. Truly, without your support, I probably wouldn't have written that chapter. So I've instructed Hoo to whip up a bunch of chocolate martinis to show my appreciation (there are a couple of virgin ones in there for those of you who prefer your chocolate unadulterated. Please help yourselves, you deserve it. :-)

Feeling Sick

You know that person who handles stress well? Who is always calm in a crisis? The one who everyone turns to when the pressure is on? I am not that person. I am the person running around like a decapitated chicken trying to squawk through its neck. Or the one quietly throwing up in the corner.
As you may have guessed, I have accidentally pushed the 'submit' button on my chapter. I swear I didn't mean to, it just kind of happened. So now IT girl is out there all by herself. Luckily she has her hero to keep her company though, hehe.

I'm not much of a 'everyone go and read my wonderful chapter, and vote, rah, rah!' type of person and I didn't want to even do an announcement that I'd entered but I suppose I kind of have to now since silence on it is pointless, not to mention telling. So by all means, if you like a contemporary, Modern Heat type of story then go and read, you may like it (though it's not up on the site yet as of 12pm NZ time). In a vague attempt at anonymity (and because I don't want to jinx my prospective pen name) I haven't subbed under Jackie Ashenden. Yeah, I'm probably the only person to sub their entry under their own name because they want to protect their pen name. Duh!

Right, so I'm now feeling sick as to what people will think, just like everyone else who entered. It required a bit of fiddling and I hope I pulled it off. It won't be to everyone's tastes but that's something I can do nothing about. I also had some formatting issues that would have made it easier to read but the site wouldn't let me use another font. Hope the stop-gap I used works! Anyway, I know it's not perfect and I'm not going to read it EVER again because if I do, I'll spot a million things wrong with it. But that's the way of writing huh?

Wow, Jackie, excuses much?? I will say that I really enjoyed writing it and as a writer, that's the best you can get (apart from a sale of course!).

This morning I told my daughter what I was doing and then, in my overly dramatic way, I said, "Everyone will probably leave comments telling me how much it stank!"
"No mummy," says my daughter, "everyone will probably leave comments telling you how much it stinks."

Moral of the story? Never fish for compliments from a nine year old no matter how desperate you are. :-)

So c'mon, anyone else enter?

PS: The chapter is called Talking Dirty with the CEO. I am a title dunce so don't hold that against it. :-)

New Voices!

I have a short post over on the Sister's blog about the New Voices competition. Think I actually may have talked myself out of it! Anyway, there's cyber drinks for all those entering and hand holding if required. Hoo is buying the drinks and offering tentacles if you need something to squeeze while you hit that send button.

Meanwhile, I'll just sit here and contemplate my chapter a while longer....sure is looking shiny....

Very Soon Sweepstakes Update

The 'Very Soon' sweepstake is nearing the end of its first week and....sorry Janet who picked the 6th. No word for me this morning. :-( So, we'll be entering the second week on Monday so fingers crossed that one of you who picked this coming week will be right.

It's not the best week to be hearing to be honest. I leave for Sydney on Monday and I'm not sure I want to know while I'm on holiday/conference. Especially if I get an R. I kind of like to lick my wounds in private and I can see it putting a huge damper on my holiday. Wahhh, poor me. Dr Jax has promised to vet my email for me just in case and I will be complaining loudly and long to Rach and Janette (be warned guys!) so that helps too.

Anyway, I have no idea what the ed will actually say, but I have come to the conclusion that Modern Heat is one of the harder categories to break into. It's not a clear cut line like some of the others and I suspect, once the line changes to Riva and they see how its selling, the editorial direction may change. Not that I know or anything, just a suspicion. They have said they want 'different'. But what is 'different'? I think the New Voices comp is an indication that they themselves don't really know until they see it. They want public input from readers about people's chapters which I guess means that they want to see what kind of stories resonate with people and which won't. Scary huh?

Well, if there's one thing that I think matters with category as it is now, it's voice. There's not much in the way of originality in plotlines in romance but the way you CAN make it original is the way you write. And of course, including what the eds have recommended like new spins on old conflicts, 21st century issues, etc , etc. The trick is to do all that within the category guidelines. Who said writing category was easy again??