Happy Hens

Elle had her Hen Day/Night on Saturday - and here she is with her bridesmaids, all of them looking (in my immensely proud and totally biased m-o-t-b opinion) every inch as glam as The Pussycat Dolls. These girls are total stars. Close friends since childhood they are (in no particular order) a nurse, a police officer, a paramedic and a residential social worker.

We had such a brilliant girlie day and night - the day being pampered at a spa (I LOVED it! The facial was sublime - and I'm now addicted to the pool-side heat beds...), and then a surprise night out in Oxford (complete with loads of pink frous-frous - which I think I loved more than anyone!) organised by the bridesmaids, with a fabulous meal. Then, having taken over the centre of Oxford in a 40-strong can-can kicking conga line, us older ones returned home and let the girlies continue their celebrations at their favourite night-club.

This is my beautiful Elle all dolled-up with loads of embarrassing Bride-to-Be paraphernalia. Yes, of course I cried...



This post is going to be mainly pics of The Big Night Out - so thought this one was quite amusing too. This is Vee, me and Em-Next-Door-As-Was before we left for the restaurant. Not as glam as The Pussy Cat Dolls, but hey...



We all wore Little Miss T-shirts with suitable slogans on the back - this is mine...


And a by now slightly squiffy bride-to-be complete with compulsory and even more embarrassing head-gear...


And one final pic of the bridesmaids all looking amazingly gorgeous considering the number of champagne cocktails they'd managed to consume in a scarily short space of time...



As I'm now completely obsessed with wedding preparations - 12 days to go! - my blog posts will probably be even more dazed and confused than ever - at least until after Easter. Today Elle (who has just about recovered) and I are off to the florists to make sure everything is organised - then we're hoping to have a quiet mum-and-daughter lunch somewhere calm - tomorrow we sort out the bridesmaids shoes (being dyed to match the frocks), on Weds it's Elle's birthday so The Toyboy Trucker and I are taking her out as it'll be her last singleton birthday, Thurs is the photographer, Fri the caterers, Sat is the Final Frock Fitting, and Sun is the last fitting of the Boys Suits... Soooo a nice leisurely week...

Oh, and as I am supposed to be a writer - my token writerly comment is that somewhere in amidst this excitement I AM writing Midnight Feast...

Green Eyed Writer?

Before I know whether or not I'm still a published novelist, I thought I'd jot down a few other writerly things that have happened recently while I've been off in Bad Blogger territory. Because IF it all goes tits-up with the prospective new deal I know I won't be able to mention the word "writerly" for months...

There has been yet another German deal. I am so delighted with the way things are going in Germany - so, it must be said, are my bank and the Inland Revenue and everyone else I owe money to... This time it's for yet another book-club deal for Love Potions (Sommernachts Zauber). The last one was to supply a large on-line book club, while this one is a hard-copy, magazine type one - and again, it was a lovely surprise. Still can't quite believe it. And the German version of Heaven Sent (Sternenzauber) is out on April 1st (not as bad as it sounds as April 1st is also Elle's birthday - so we don't make jokes about it - okay???) so it'll be interesting to see if it does as well as Love Pots. Me, the bank and the Inland Rev sincerely hope so...

There's also been a deal for Happy Birthday this week - not in Germany, but with a UK indie publisher who are going to do a 10,000 copy print run for cheapo bookshops. I know a lot of Proper Authors are horrified by this sort of thing - but I ain't proud. Okay, these deals don't bring in much money for the author (sob!) BUT they are vital in getting the books into readers' hands - I did a similar one with Hub Bub and sold loads AND got lots of new readers to boot and shifted a lot of my backlist as a result. And to be honest, it'll just be nice to see Happy Birthday on a shelf...

The magazine outlets seem to be dwindling by the minute, don't they? I've sold another story to YOURS (THANK YOU Womag!), and have another couple almost ready to go to them, but with the recent demise of of the fiction slot in Best, the markets are getting fewer and fewer. I'm going to have a go at something for My Weekly and People's Friend - and may well bite the bullet and see if I can manage to write whatever it is that Woman's Weekly wants at the moment. Must say here that I did have a hissy fit while reading something in a story in a recent WW - because it was WRONG! WRONG!! WRONG!!! It was SO wrong factually that I felt like dashing off a letter to the editor - but fortunately my sense of self-preservation prevented me putting fingers to keyboard just in time. After all, a wannabe contributor slagging off a) another author and b) the ed's clear oversight in checking the story's background, probably wouldn't endear me to anyone, and I'd hate to be thought of as green-eyed...

Mind you, I am. Jealous I mean. Yes, of course I'm genuinely pleased when my friends and fellow-writers are successful, and I'm really happy to share any info I think might help anyone trying to be published - BUT - it still doesn't mean that I'm a Nice Person. I'm not. I can get catacylsmically (sp?) jealous of others' successes if I think they're undeserved. I gnash my teeth and swear a lot - and yep, I've had plenty of those "my books are better/as good as hers and yet my career bobbles along in the mid-list while she soars into the literary stratosphere being lauded and fawned over..." moments. Oh, yes, I have quite a few moments of sheer unadulterated HATRED while ensconced here in the back bedroom... It's lovely.

Oh, and meant to say - again - that everyone who writes magazine stories and/or features should register with ALCS - the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society -you don't have to be a novelist, ALCS will collect royalties on anything you've had published, either in books or magazines (think they're currently going back to 2006) - so dig out all those back issues, and they pay out either in Sept or March. I've just had a unexpectedly lovely amount appear in my bank account for all sorts of royalties collected across the globe for my UK magazine work.

And as this is now Friday lunch time - and The Meeting To Decide My Future took place yesterday - and I haven't heard a PEEP from my agent I'm now going to slink off into a dark corner and gibber.

Wedding Count Down...

Well - I've had a lovely two-week non-writing gap doing very, very little - except drafting four new outlines for the next four books because I'm now OUT OF CONTRACT and therefore unemployed and need a new deal pdq but am not overly-optimistic (I'm never overly-optimistic...) - and my agent is meeting my editor on Thurs for prelim talks - so it's all very tense chez Jones at the moment.

Which is why I'm glad I've got the wedding stuff to distract me. THREE weeks on Saturday - and such gorgeous spring-like weather at the moment... However, the long range forecast for Easter is not looking good - cold, windy, wet and possibly snowy is being hurled around on the met sites... That'll all play havoc with me fascinator - not to mention the silky sleeveless m-o-t-b frock. I WILL NOT worry about the weather just yet. And yes, I know we had a white Easter last year and it was lovely - but I really, really don't want one this year, okay?

Anyway, tomorrow we whisk Elle and her bridesmaids off to Gatwick, where they then fly to Majorca to catch a cruise ship to drift round the Mediterranean for 5 days of hen-bliss. Jealous? Moi? What do you think???? The other hen weekend is at the end of March and involves a spa - so I think I'll be okay with that. I quite fancy being pampered (I've never been to a spa or even had a facial before - is that a terrible admission??? - so it'll be a whole new experience).

Last weekend The Doctor had his stag do. It was very funny - apparently. They had a boys-doing-boys-things party first - go-karting, clay-pigeon shooting, quad biking etc etc. Then all dressed up as clowns (my dad would have been SO proud) they did the town. The Toyboy Trucker seems to have forgotten everything that happened after about 1a.m. and he came home without his wig (that's his stag-do wig, you understand, he doesn't need a toupee just yet...) and looking very pale... The Doctor took three days to recover...

Sadly there are no photos. Or that's what they all tell me.

Anyway, everything else is all coming together nicely. The seating plan is done (and what a minefield that was!), the menus sorted for those who are veggies, vegans, think tomato sauce is daring etc, the final frock fittings are on the 27th (DO NOT ask if mine fits at the moment!), the speeches are written (by me - AND Elle and The Doctor have asked me to do a reading in the service so I've written that too and I know I'll bawl all though it...), and accommodation has been sorted for those who need it.

All I need to do now is find a lovely personal "thing" to give Elle and The Doctor on the day. They don't want presents, and I've got my clever friend Jane to embroider a personalised wedding card, but I need a little keep-sake thing... All the websites seem to be much of a muchness - photo frames etc - so any/all suggestions will be more than welcome.

Done It!!!!!!

Moonshine is done!!! 25 chapters, 315 pages - all done! Written, delivered to my agent and my editor, checked, line-edited, revised, sent back - and today it's been accepted. On Friday it goes for copy-editing and out of my sight until the proofs. From today - now - this minute - I am a Moonshine-free woman!!! I've bloody done it!!! And I met the deadline! And I'm SO happy!!!! And totally exhausted. Tomorrow I shall do nothing but wallow - then I'll catch up on all those unanswered emails (sorry!), and the blog, and maybe the housework (or maybe not) and then I'll start writing the synopsisisisisi for the next two books - because (gulp) I'm now out of contract... Can't say any more now as my eyes won't work and my fingers have atrophied and I'm falling asleep at the keyboard - but I've done it!!!!!!!