July 20, 2008 | about me
On Wednesday, 23 July, USA Today-bestselling paranormal romance author Kathy Love, romantic suspense author Anna Louise Lucia, and I will be appearing at the Public Library in Rumford, Maine, from 6.30-8 pm. We’ll be talking, reading, and signing our latest books, so if you’re in the area, please come by and see us!
July 20, 2008 | about me
Sorry for being bad blogger. I’m in the bosom of my family, and all things internet are pretty slow here in this bosom as we only have dial-up.
Anyway, the flight was fine if tiring. I was pretty peeved on arrival; although the airline staff in the UK had assured me that I could get my pushchair on the gate in the US, in fact they put it in the hold and it came out with the baggage, which meant that I had to carry a cranky 30-lb toddler and two bags through the entire airport and through passport control, with no help.
But all aggravation was worth it, and we’re happily here now and Fecklet is having a brilliant time running around everywhere yelling “Go! Go! Go!”
July 8, 2008 | Uncategorized
Off to USA tomorrow morning. With toddler. Have packed up everything and cleaned house for house-sitter but am dreading flight. If you don’t hear from me by Friday I’ve most likely been lynched by fellow passengers for being too noisy.
July 7, 2008 | social life?, writing
On Saturday I whizzed down to Chichester for the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference. Originally I’d planned to only go on the Sunday, because I was giving a workshop on pacing, but my husband had an unexpected night off so I begged the lovely organiser Jan Jones to let me come for Saturday night, too, and stay over. And she let me. (Yes, I plied her with chocolate.)
Romantic novelists en masse are wonderful. For one thing, we are strangely obsessed with shoes. For another, we think nothing of talking about heroes all night and when we are together we drink more than is humanly possible. Well, in any case, I do.
I was thrilled to see my friends and colleagues…there are far too many to name-drop about. Besides, I was far, far too drunk. (I don’t get out that often, you know.)
Brigid Coady won third place in the Elizabeth Gouge award. She rules. Nell Dixon and Anna Louise Lucia sold out of their books at the bookstall. They also rule.
I seem to remember drinking much champagne very late at night and then staggering across a field. And the next day I had a hangover of epic proportions. Fortunately Jane Wenham-Jones spoke in the morning about writers’ bottom and her hilarious body wrap experiences in Egypt and I laughed most of my headache away. I also went to Kate Walker’s talk about author websites, and Kate Hardy’s talk about using local history in your novel. Useful and fascinating, both of them. I also wheedled Kate Harrison out of her handout on “Botox for Writers”, even though I couldn’t stay for her talk.
I gave a talk about pacing which involved photographs of my closet door. And I came home with lots of lovely lovely shiny new books to read! (And a lighter purse.)
Anyway, being amongst romantic novelists is always a life-affirming experience. They are warm, friendly, talented and generous and I feel privileged to be part of the group.
Plus, man, can they drink me under the table.
Tags: Romantic Novelists' Association
July 4, 2008 | about me
Happy fourth of July!
Husband, Fecklet and I are going to a farm park to see the animals and ride on a tractor, that is if it doesn’t rain. Fecklet, being half American and half British, will be celebrating the independence of one half of his heritage from the other half. Husband, being a typical British male over-fond of loudness and big pretty things exploding, will not be allowed to play with fireworks because the last time he did he sent a rocket zooming past my ear and straight into the house.
Hope you have a great day whether you’re celebrating or not.
July 3, 2008 | about me
I have finally got around to posting an account of what happened a month ago, when a crack Romantic Novelists’ Association team took on the Eggheads on BBC2’s quiz show. Check it out on my news page, here:
http://www.julie-cohen.com/news/
It was an extremely exciting and fun day. I’ll be sure to let you all know when it’s being aired…as soon as we find out!
Now, I am going back to my brand-new Chapter One, Version Three. I have Prince William on the first page. Hopefully he won’t mind guest starring in one of my novels.
Tags: Eggheads, Prince William, Romantic Novelists' Association
June 30, 2008 | Honey Trap
Hee hee hee…Honey Trap is in stock on Amazon.
Tags: Honey Trap
June 29, 2008 | the web
A cool link for today: a woman who takes pictures entitled things like “Death by Oreo”.
Make sure you hit the “next” button underneath the photo so you can scroll through the gallery. My favourite is “Death by Life Saver”. I would like to see this exhibition.
In my own life, have started chapter two and my friend Ruth, after some brainstorming, has found me the perfect model for my next hero. Ruth, you rule!
June 27, 2008 | writing
Scrapping the whole beginning (it was only about 2000 words) and starting again actually worked really well. It’s not that I changed the structure of the chapter, or even essentially what happened; it was all about the mood. It even came down to the first sentence. Changing a few words and an image made all the difference between a character who was not behaving as I wanted her to be, and one who was.
My original first sentence was:
Sunlight crowbarred its way between my eyelids with all the cheerfulness of a gang of Mafiosi.
And I changed it to:
Sunlight beat against my eyelids with the relentless good cheer of a gaggle of girls on a hen night.
You would hardly think that such a change would make a big difference to the flavour of the whole chapter, but it really does.
Now I just have to figure out what happens in the rest of the book.
June 26, 2008 | writing
It was, indeed, crap.
I’m starting over.
June 25, 2008 | writing
So yesterday I started my new book.
I would like to pretend that everything about writing is sweetness and light, but it is not. I didn’t feel like starting. I felt like sitting in the back garden in the sun and reading. Or doing laundry. Or buying food so my family and I don’t have to eat random bits of cheese and strange things in tins. Or blogging. Or any one of a million displacement activities that would stop me having to think, really hard, which is what you have to do when you start a book.
It’s so easy to get it wrong. You can start in the wrong place or make the heroine wrong or put the focus on the wrong character or name someone the wrong name. Once a book has started, you’ve made some choices and you’ve got some momentum, but at the beginning, there is still so much to decide.
Some people find this exciting. Me, I often want to hide under a rock.
The first chapter of Girl from Mars came so easily to me. Ditto the first chapter of Honey Trap. I had to change them in revisions, but I knew where I wanted them to go. But thinking back, to make myself feel better, I realise that I had no idea how to begin One Night Stand and thought it was really boring, and that I began Married in a Rush in a way that I thought would never work, but actually in the end it did. Both times I figured, “hey, WRITE CRAP and fix it later” and in the end, I didn’t have to fix those beginnings much more than I have to fix any beginning.
So yesterday I WROTE CRAP. And it was crap, let me tell you. Very little direction, very little character for the heroine. I started writing it in third person and then three pages in, realised that wasn’t going to work so I rewrote it in first person. Then I took a walk to pick up the Fecklet from his child minder and realised I’d made the heroine REact in the first chapter, rather than ACT. I’d put more attention on the secondaries than on her.
Then I tried to explain it to a friend of mine and I realised that though the chapter is supposed to end on quite a dramatic event (well, actually a very dramatic event) I’d left out all the drama and build-up.
Essentially, today and tomorrow I get to fix all the crap I wrote yesterday. And hopefully it will be better. But if I hadn’t written it to begin with, I wouldn’t have anything to improve.
June 23, 2008 | Uncategorized
So this hay fever is totally evil.
My sinuses are so clogged that whenever I swallow, my eardrums bulge. The whites of my eyes are constantly red. Various drugs, while having little effect on the symptoms, have transformed me into a walking, sniffing, bloodshot zombie.
The only preventative technique that seems to actually work is to wear huge celebrity sunglasses at all times. And this, of course, makes people look at you as if they think you’re trying to impersonate Posh Spice or someone, even in your baggy jeans and man’s sweatshirt.
Plus it’s really difficult to use a computer indoors whilst wearing sunglasses.
Anyway, enough moaning…here’s something cool. If you buy Writing Magazine this month, and turn to Margaret James’s article about “Sizzling Sex,” you can read about me talking about “hard, throbbing lollies”. Hee hee hee…
