Sorry for not blogging much lately. I have been pretty busy, what with one thing or another...

I've been trying to do a regular writing stint each day, towards a weekly total of 8000 words. Not massive by some people's standards, but enough so that if I keep chugging along at this rate, I'll reach my deadline on KISS IT BETTER fairly comfortably with time to spare for a good edit. Which it'll need!

This week, I've also been prepping an excerpt post for LUST BITES in Friday. This is a bit from IN TOO DEEP. I find it very, very hard to choose excerpts for these sorts of thing. I can never pick out a piece that seems to be standalone, and yet a good sample of the book. The bit I've chosen for Friday is pretty naughty stuff, so I hope anyone who reads this, will nip along and read and hopefully leave a comment. There will be a prize!

I've also been hanging about on Twitter quite a bit, something of which I'm unashamed. I love Twitter and I love my buddies there. I originally started tweeting as a way to have micro updates to this blog [see right] but inevitably, I got hooked into Twitter itself and the interaction with other Tweeters... But it's easy to do, and not too taxing on the grey matter. Just like chatting with a bunch of buddies, really.

Have been doing some reading and DVD watching too. I'm reading the Belle De Jour memoir and at the same time, watching the telly version on DVD. In some ways they're very different, but in others, the essence is the same. Am enjoying both. Belle is a very good writer. I didn't read the blog very much at the time the entries in the book were posted, but I like her conversational style. Dare I say that in some ways, it reminds me of my own first person writing?

... for being a rubbish blogger.

It's the usual excuses. Busy trying to engage with the old WIP and not doing so great. Trying to come up with some ideas for new book proposals. And generally feeling a bit rough and under the weather. The latter is nothing serious, nothing to worry about... just basically the knackerage of old age and damp weather produce aches and twinges.

Still slogging away with KISS IT BETTER, which you'll see by my counter is nearly a third done. I really need to buckle down and crack on with this though. Time is flying by, and the deadline of 1st December is fast approaching... along with Christmas!!!! Agh!

Proposals-wise... well, it's always a struggle. I am so crud at coming with new ideas! Have a few bits and bobs slowly coalescing, but my agent would like to be sending stuff out sooner, rather than later, so must try and focus on that too!

Keep watching my Tweets on the right, by the way. Even if I'm not doing full blog posts, I mostly twit on a bit, several times a day! :)

Well, in spite of spending way to much time Twitting and reading tweets yesterday, I did manage to rack up a very respectable 1K words of my latest WIP, a short story on the theme of Liaisons for the next Black Lace short story collection. It's been a tough one to come up with something for, but I've finally managed to develop an idea and I'm actually starting to have fun with it. Am up to about 1.8K with it so far, so nearly a third done.

I'm pleased with this progress, because I wasted a helluva lot of time yesterday, not only with Twitter, but also following various blog dramas and reading reviews of books I haven't even read yet. I thought the whole day might end up being a washout, but curiously, in the evening, I thought 'sod all this!' and just opened the file and got stuck in. :)

More good news is that Alice is doing well today. Her sore leg is much less inflamed and clearly responding well the the jumbo steroid shot. She's cheerful and relaxed, and as always the case with steroid intervention, she's eating like a horse, bless her!


It's a gorgeous day today, here in West Yorkshire, but I'm indoors watching the MotoGP, and later probably the football. I don't foresee a huge amount of writing being done today, but have done a little 25o word chunk already, and have been thinking of a few plotty bits, so it's not going to be a total washout.

I've been a useless blogger lately, haven't I?

It's not as if nothing whatsoever is happening in my life. Stuff is going on, but I'm in a sort of blogging lull somehow, and not finding it easy to find even my sort of anti intellectual content. My mind seems to be taken up with trying to corral my book and story ideas, attempting to bring order to the disorder of my 'to do' lists, my business accounts, my massive amounts of paperwork and my TBR piles, and generally plan for and anticipate RWA. So there's a disappointing amount of brain capacity left over for interesting blogging and musing... at the moment.

However, I've found a little bit of a solution. Sort of...

On the right hand side of the page, beneath my little clock, you'll see a widget called Twitter updates. This is a kind of micro blogging thingoid, that's just a snapshot of what I might be doing at any given moment... so if there's no new post in the main blog, you might see a little mini entry there instead. It'll probably be something daft, or pretty meaningless, like 'am staring into space, doing nothing'... but at least it proves there's a living person here on this blog... sometimes! LOL