PIVOTAL MOMENT!

TIME TO VOTE!

Voting for the final four "pivotal moments" of the New Voices 2011 competition begins on 1st November at 9 am. You have three days to make your choice; here's the lovely Charlotte Phillip's moment of change for Anna and Jack in her entry, Honeymoon With a Stranger.

Do go and support her and the other three writers who have worked so hard over the past week.

And if you entered a chapter - or two - I hope you're already polishing up your first three chapters to submit in the usual way. There were lots of really great entries and Mills and Boon are still looking for writers with that little extra sparkle. Go for it!

SMALL BLOG, BIG GIVEAWAY WINNERS!

Just a very quick blog - I'm away from base - with the list of winners of the Small Blog, Big Giveaway competition.

Check it out here -  winners

Thanks for everyone for taking part, following me on Twitter and following the blog!

FLIRTING WITH ITALIAN

A four star review from Romantic Times BOOKclub for FLIRTING WITH ITALIAN!

After a difficult breakup, teacher Sarah Gratton takes a sabbatical in Rome and travels to a rural village to find the woman who sheltered her grandfather during World War II and with whom he had fallen in love, though he returned to his English wife.

While searching for this mystery woman, Sarah meets businessman and vineyard owner Matteo Di Serrone. 

This is a heartwarming story with memorable characters. Fielding’s beautiful descriptions of the setting and the use of Sarah’s blog to her students as a way to communicate her thoughts bring the reader deep into the story.

That's my good news story, but it's a huge week for, Charlotte Phillips, who made the Top 21 in Mills & Boon's NEW VOICES competition.

Chapter Two of HONEYMOON WITH A STRANGER went up on the website yesterday and you can comments from 9 am (GMT) Friday. Do go and read her entry here and cheer her on there and follow her on Twitter at @charlieflips.

NEW VOICES FINALIST

It's been an amazing week for my finalist, Charlotte Phillips, who made the Top 21 in Mills & Boon's NEW VOICES competition

It's been an amazing week for me, too, as we've worked together on Chapter Two of HONEYMOON WITH A STRANGER (love that title!)  Her heroine is hurting, but she's not lying down and taking it. And her hero doesn't know what hit him!

By tomorrow, the second chapters will all be on line and I hope you'll take the time to stop by the website and read her entry here and cheer her on.

I have been cheering on all these brave souls who've put their work on show for anyone to comment on since New Voices launched. It's a huge step, they will have learned a lot in the process, and that makes them all winners in my eyes.

Pivotal moment? Bring it on!

SIX SENTENCE SUNDAY

It's that time of the week again - Six Sentence Sunday - and this week I've chosen six sentences from the third of my Beaumont Brides trilogy - WILD FIRE.

His touch was like summer lightning, wild fire that ran between them and as he continued to hold onto her hand, his eyes too seemed to heat from within.

They were not, as she had first thought, a steely grey, but were flecked with warm gold lights that seemed to bore into her very soul and for a moment she was certain that he felt the same charge of excitement. Then steeply hooded lids came down, cloaking his feelings.

'Guard it with your life, Melanie.'

The key was warm from his body, but his hands were cool. Long, slender fingers wrapped around her warm hand and the warmer key. Hidden layers of heat, like the hidden layers of meaning she sensed behind everything he said. 


If you want to read more, there are links for the Kindle, Nook and any other reading device (including your PC - so handy for a secret read when you should be working!) on the sidebar.


And for more details about Six Sentence Sunday click here

WHAT'S ON MY BOOKSHELF?

With the book finished and awaiting my editor's verdict, I've had a little time catch up on my reading in the last week.

First, up is the delightful Haunting Jasmine by Anajali Banerjee. 


Jasmine, struggling after a painful divorce, has been asked to spend a month taking care of her aunt's bookstore on a west coast island off Seattle.  The bookstore is full of old books that seem to be telling her things. And some of the authors drop by to help her out with the reading group and the children's reading group. And then there's the handsome doctor who appears just when needed.

The book is a delight and I'm so grateful to Nicola Marsh for telling me about it.

I think I discovered We Are Not Alone by Kristin Lamb on Twitter. It would certainly be appropriate if I had, because Kristin is a world class expert on using Social Media.

I'm scarcely a beginner at this - I had my first website in 1997 - but I have learned a ton from this book.

White Lies and Custard Creams by the lovely Susan Alison, who I met at the Romantic Novelists' Association conference in Caerleon earlier this year is just a mad romp. A gorgeous dog - of course; a lovely man; the craziest bunch of lodgers and neighbours to be found in one house, one street, anywhere. A bit of cross-dressing and a big mystery.

A lovely time!

Giles and Florence by John Harding, was a gift from a friend, a delightful surprise arriving in my post box a couple of weeks ago.

I have started it and it's the most unusual book I've read in a long time.

I am entranced by the style - the writer is a young girl who has been denied books and "stole" reading by learning letters from packages in the kitchen. She devours books but has to keep her habit a secret.

I am entranced.

MASHUP

A few brilliant links for you to check out...

Pitch and win a critique of the first 5 pages of your manuscript by LIZ PELLETIER, senior editor ENTANGLED PUBLISHING at NICOLA MARSH'S BLOG

KRISTEN LAMB on Structure - Plot Problems: Falcor & the Luck Dragon and The Purple Tornado


SARAH DUNCAN on the eternal question - how much money will I make if I get published.

ROMANTIC NOVELISTS' ASSOCIATION Regency Day

I'M DONE!

I'm done! The book has left the building - although, as always, I woke up realising that I'd missed out something I meant to put in at the end.

Never mind, once my editor has read it, there will be revisions. Between now and then I'll be making little notes about all the things that always occur the minute I have to stop concentrating totally.

I have been struggling - as always - with ideas of a title.

It has a single mother in danger of losing her job and her home; the bad boy who left the area when she was a kid (she was posh, he was poor - times have changed); a donkey (inciting incident, cute meet...); old secrets; four dogs, a one-eyed pony. Oh, and there's the whole fairy godmother thing going on.

Any ideas? Please...

The nights are drawing in, there's a nip in the air so obviously it's time to get out the knitting that's lain abandoned in a basket in a corner of the sitting room since the clocks went forward at the end of March.

I hadn't knitted in years. Who had? But then I kept seeing books with knitting heroines and I remembered the pleasure of it. I used to love knitting. But still I didn't actually hunt out my pins. But then my lovely granddaughter arrived and I found myself walking into the wool shop in the Arcade and drooling over the patterns, the yarn.

It was a whole new world. No longer were baby clothes restricted to white, pink, blue or yellow. Babies wore strange and beautiful colours. Yarn was gorgeously soft Cashmerino I went knitting crazy for a while, but then the days grew longer, the garden called and projects languished.

There's the panda jumper I'm making for my granddaughter.

The shrug for my daughter (a really difficult pattern and I don't think that is going to ever get finished. And there's a pile of patterns and wool that I bought in a rush of enthusiasm.

Would she like this cupcake hat?


She does love a hat.




Or what about this frog outfit?

Probably not. She's not a baby any more, but a a little lady. Time for that ballet cross-over I think.

Yay, to the end of the wip and hooray for knitting!