WOW!!!

So - Elle looked totally, totally beautiful. The Doctor looked wonderfully handsome. Neither of them were nervous. Neither of them ever stopped smiling for a minute all day. The Toyboy Trucker and I have now got the most wonderful, kind, gentle, funny and amazing son-in-law in the world. The bridesmaids were sensational. The best man was a star. The weather was warm - it was partly cloudy but the sun shone brightly all afternoon, and despite the dire forecast there was no rain, and no wind at all. The stately home venue was out of this world - and the whole day went like a dream. No, it was even better than that - it was a living, breathing fairytale.

Take back all I've ever said on this blog about the whole thing being way, way OTT and a huge waste of money - it was simply breath-taking. It was the best day of Elle and The Doctor's life - and of mine. Everyone there (over 200 of them) said they'd never experienced anything like it!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your support - you were absolutely right - those outlaws who opted out simply don't know what they missed - and to be honest we didn't even notice they weren't there. It was the most blissful - um - counting on fingers here - 20 hours of my life...





Will just post a few pics today - like this one of Elle sharing a joke with her lovely new in-laws - but as these are ones I took, there were huge gaps in the proceedings when I couldn't get at my camera (the actual ceremony and the reception and the speeches etc) - and the official ones won't be available until Elle and The Doctor are back from Hawaii in May - there possibly won't be any of me in the m-o-t-b frock for a while (phew!) but I think they give some idea of what it was like... An absolute dream come true... Huge sigh of happiness...


Elle and The Doctor had planned it down to the last minute detail - it wasn't simply a wedding, it was a true celebration of their love and a fusion of cultures and an entertainment event no-one will ever forget!!!



From the second The Doctor and his family swept up the drive in a cavalcade of cars all bedecked with red and gold ribbons and playing bhangra music, on to me helping Elle into her dress, both of us amazingly calm and happy, through the heart-stopping moment when The Toyboy Trucker walked Elle so proudly down the aisle of the 16th century wedding room, all through the beautiful, emotional and very personal marriage service, through the champagne-and-Pimms reception on the terraces and in the glorious gardens while the official photos were being taken, on to the Indian banquet Wedding Breakfast (in a fabulously decorated dining room awash with red and gold, masses of flowers, and the most gorgeous HUGE garlanded Ganesh - all this, I must add, presided over by an ex-Blues and Royals toast master in full regalia and complete with his Buckingham Palace ceremonial sword for cutting the fabulous three-tiered, three-flavoured chocolate wedding cake!!!),



then the amazing moment after the meal when the black curtains, all twinkling with thousands of white pin-prick lights, swept back to Elvis's "Viva Las Vegas" to reveal a full-blown casino! There were roulette wheels and black jack tables and fruit machines - and proper croupiers - and everyone was given a starting $100 to play with!!!




Then there were two bands - one bhangra, one rock - and then, when it was properly dark, a spectacular twenty minute firework display (certainly the most amazing display I've ever seen!) in the grounds with more champagne and strawberries. And then, when we all thought we couldn't manage any more, we all swept back into the ballroom and danced until dawn to the rock band while waiters circulated with huge bowls of chips, hot bacon rolls, nice veggie samosas and things like that - and of course cake, cake and more cake... Then we all staggered off to our bedrooms (everyone stayed overnight) to emerge bleary-eyed a few short hours later for a Full English...


Oh, and this final pic is a clutch of Mates From The Estate just about to bombard Elle and The Doctor with confetti...

And, in case you were wondering, apart from a few tears when Elle and The Toyboy Trucker first walked down the aisle, I didn't cry! I even did my reading and a small speech in the reception without faltering, and just think I was far too happy to cry... Awwww - it was truly the Best Day Ever - and I don't think I'll EVER come down to earth!

Four Days and Counting

Just back from The Final Fitting of THE DRESS which is now hanging, swathed in a white protective carrier, on the back of the bedroom door. I'm actually surprised I can see to type as I'm still moist-eyed and soggy. I sniffed bravely as Elle stepped into it, snuffled not-at-all-bravely as the fitters all fussed around nipping and tucking, then howled uncontrollably as she finally swept into the showroom.

O-M-G. All those years ago when Elle was tiny and she'd teeter around the bedroom in my shoes and a net curtain playing weddings I'd hoped that one day it'd be the Real Thing. And now it is. And she looked so beautiful (of course I'm TOTALLY unbiased) - and that's without the hair-do and the make-up and the additional tiddly accessory things... She'll blow them away... She looked radiant and calm and just so HAPPY. The dress is sensational - just right for the princess wedding she's always wanted -and so is she... Elle, if you're reading this, I'm SO proud to be your mum.

Then there were the bridesmaids to final-fit, and me - and the whole place was awash with net and silk and frou-frous of every imaginable type. And despite us being in crack-of-dawn Tuesday morning scruffy-ish hair and minimal slap, I think we all looked wonderful. And in FOUR days time it'll be the Real Thing. FOUR days!!!

On Sunday the boys had their final suit fittings and they were transformed too. And yes, I cried - again. Writing has been abandoned, emails have gone unanswered (sorry!), all normal life is on hold until After The Wedding. I'm wallowing in every joyous minute of this. And it's all gone wonderfully to plan - except for the weather forecast of course - and they might be wrong about that (and even if they aren't it's the one thing we can't alter so I am not going to worry about it - honest)...

There is one other minor hiccup which I'll gloss over in as few a words as possible as I've done my stomping and swearing and ranting and screaming in private. The Toyboy Trucker's family have decided (at the eleventh hour) that they won't be coming.

I'm not going to expand on the reasons why or how I feel about it because the blog would probably explode - but suffice it to say the "family" table will now look a little bare... As I have no family it was all down to my in-laws to wave the flag for our side. Something they all seem unable to do now - despite all having replied to their invites in the affirmative. I'm hurt, Elle's hurt, The Toyboy Trucker is hurt - but hell, that's families for you. I'm actually glad today that I haven't got one.

All our friends, some of whom are travelling immense distances, Elle's friends, The Doctor's friends and family (who will be there in supportive force, bless them) and the entire estate (and you should see some of their wedding outfits - amazing!!!) will more than make up for the ill-manners of my outlaws (who you'll be unsurprised to know I have now excommunicated for ever). And it's their loss - and all the more food and drink for the rest of us.

And as everyone told me there'd be at least one hitch, and everything else has gone smoothly, if the lack of family support is the hitch then so be it. We won't miss them - but I have a feeling they may well miss us in the future.

Am now going to help Elle pack her trousseau (isn't that a lovely old-fashioned romantic word?) for their honeymoon - they're off to Hawaii for three weeks and I'm not in the smidgiest jealous (hah!) - and practice walking on my killer heels again and try to rehearse my in-service reading without bawling...

Four days to go!!!!!

April Fool?

I've always thought it was highly appropriate that my only child should have been born on April 1st. Nature, not content with giving her a slightly skewed mother, made sure she had a birth date that everyone else would snigger at...

And I couldn't even use the old adage about "April Fools jokes are only valid until mid-day" as she was born at 9.20 a.m. Duh!

So, we spent her childhood informing all the playground bullies and those prissy little girls with angelic eyes and vitriolic tongues that you get in every mixed infants class, that being born on April Fools Day was A Good Thing, A Happy Thing, A Funny Day, A Day When Everyone Becomes A Prankster - sort of like an early comic relief...

Mercifully, Elle has always been a strong-minded and very grounded child (amazing given she has me as a mother) and has long since risen above being labelled an April Fool. Now she enjoys sharing her birthday with such mixed luminaries as Philip Schofield, Otto von Bismark, David Gower and Ali MacGraw - and being April 1st babies doesn't seem to have harmed their careers.

When Elle was little we used to make the most of the day by throwing childhood parties that were a cross between a circus and the Edinburgh Fringe. You didn't get in to our caravan (another story!) unless you were dressed up in something amusing and could tell jokes.

So - Happy Funny Birthday, Elle, have a wonderful day, enjoy the meal tonight - and I'm really sorry...

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!!!!!!!