'H' is for Heart vs Mind

(This blog post is not about Valentine’s Day. I just wanted to make that clear, cuz you know, everything else on the planet is about V-Day right now and there is the word ‘heart’ in my title and it would a be a totally natural thing to assume and so on… Not that I have anything against V-Day really, but I’m more of an every-day-should-be-the-celebration-of-your-love type of girl and… I’ll shut up now, cuz like I said, this post really isn’t about Valentine’s Day.)

So.

I may have mentioned before that I am a romance novel fan (= read ‘addict’) and, being one of those, I realize it is shameful for me to admit this: I have not read J.D Robb’s In Death series. Technically, the In Death series is not romance - they are futuristic crime novels, stocked in the crime section of the library - but, we all know who J.D Robb really is and it is certainly shameful for a romance fan to admit to not having read the Nora Roberts’ Eve-Roarke love stories. 

My problem is this: I tend to get obsessed with book series. I steer clear of novels belonging to a series unless I am able to purchase or borrow all of them and read them in the right order. It has so happened in the past that I borrow a book from the library without realizing it belongs to a series. If it is the first of the series it’s okay – I usually find a way to get hold of the others (or I don’t bother if I’m not that into it). If the book is not the first of the series (and I don’t hate it), it drives me nuts to realize that it’s part of a series! Because then I feel left out. There are characters and back story that I missed out on, and even if I do get a brief explanation of events past in the later book, my reading experience feels incomplete.

When I first read Twilight (Yes, I am a fan. Go right ahead and judge me.), I was living in Tanzania, where there is no Amazon or Waterstones or equivalent for me to could get the books I want. I was literally losing my mind, I wanted to get a hold of New Moon so bad. There was excerpt of New Moon at the end of the copy of Twilight that I read (borrowed from a friend), just the first chapter and it enticed me further until I. COULD. NOT. WAIT! I went to India a few months later and bought all four books first chance I got. 

A friend gave me Nora Roberts’ Tears of the Moon as a present and I actually kept it, unread, for two years before I could get Jewels of the Sun and Heart of the Sea and then read them all in the right order (funnily enough I liked Tears… the best of the three). 

So yes, I have a tad bit of OCD when it comes to book series.

I was wary of starting the In Death series because from what I knew of it (Futuristic! Mystery! Epic love story between female cop and super-hot super-rich Irish guy!) I knew I would LOVE it. There are forty-something books in the series = not so easy to track down in libraries or buy on Amazon with my first-job-out-of-Uni pay check. I kept hearing about it in the various romance reader blogs that I frequent, but I somehow kept restraining myself from grabbing Naked in Death at the library.  

And then… Last week I did a search of Judith McNaught on the Dear Author website (I was trying to decide if I wanted to buy A Kingdom of Dreams – still haven’t made up my mind) and I found this article on Memorable Romance Book Moments. One of the readers commenting talked about a scene in Naked in Death where Roarke keeps Eve’s jacket button in his pocket. Now, even though I am not a big fan of Valentine’s Day, I am what one might politely refer to as a ‘hopeless romantic’ (I prefer the term ‘hopeful romantic’) and the button thing made me incredibly curious. I finally gave in to temptation and picked Naked… at the library last week.

I read it on Monday. On Tuesday I searched my library’s online catalogue and found they have the second book Glory in Death and, as luck would have it, they were open until 8 pm that night, so I could go grab it after work. 

The thing about my library is that it’s situated inside of the mall on the high street. I have only ever used the mall entrance, but I have been aware that there is another entrance from the street. On Tuesday at 7 pm, the mall tends to be closed. I walked all around the humungous building but every single door was locked. I walked round and round, freezing my (ahem) backside off in my inappropriate-for-the-weather tights, and finally gave up and got on the bus home. 

And I did not get Glory in Death!

You might wonder why I’m worked up about this. I can simply wait for the weekend and pick it up, it’s only a matter of three more days. I’ll tell you why I’m worked up: I’m going out of town to visit my sister this weekend and so my next library trip will not be happening until next weekend. A whole week and a half away!

You see why I tried so hard not to succumb to the lure of the In Death series all these years?

Sigh.

It’s gonna be a long ten days.

(Although, I did check the online catalogue of my sister’s library and they have Glory in Death. Question is, do I give in to my obsession and get Book 2? Or will that result in the obsession spiralling wildly out of control so that I buy the next one and then the next, and eventually end up spending my rent money on all 40-something novels and then reading them holed up in my loft without food or sleep or sunlight and losing my job, leading my sister to admit me to a psychiatric institution where I spend the rest of my days muttering random facts and dialogues from romance novels?)

(The) Good and The God-awful

(Yeah, I know I cheated a little bit there with the title. Oh well!)

Two things happened yesterday when I got home from work, one good and one bad. Let me start with the bad. And by bad, I mean Aaaarghh!

So I get home and I’m all exhausted and trudging up the stairs, almost tripping over a package on the stairs (my landlady kindly leaves my post on the stairs), and I enter my dark room and drop my bag and the parcel on the bed before turning around to turn on the light and Aaaarghh! There was a GIANT spider in my room!

It was as HUGE!!! I am not exaggerating. It was about an inch long, half an inch wide, disgusting black colour with long twitchy legs… *shudder*

I stood there staring at IT for five minutes, panicking, wondering how to get rid of it, contemplating grabbing some clothes and finding an alternative location to spend the night, cuz did I mention? I have a deathly fear of those dreaded beings known as insects. Deathly! I actually prefer autumn and winter to spring and summer because of all the bees. But apparently there are giant spiders in autumn… *shudder again*

I finally decided I had to do something to get rid of IT, because unless I throw it out the window or kill it dead, I knew I would never be able to sleep again, at least not it that house. I went to get a broom, but as soon as I re-entered the room, the THING apparently finally registered the presence of a human in the vicinity and it scuttled sideways into the bathroom. (I hate things that scuttle. In fact, I hate the word ‘scuttle’. Almost as much as I hate the word ‘scurry’.)

I was certain it was going to disappear in there somewhere so that I can then wonder and worry and forever live with the sensation of things crawling up my leg. But thankfully, it stopped at the outside edge of the shower cubicle and stayed put. I then stood there staring at it for another five minutes, because getting rid of it would involve closing the six foot distance I was maintaining and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to manage that without a couple years of therapy first.

I ran downstairs to my landlord’s place (with the broom – causing a lot of hilarity, especially after I explained the situation) and my landlord’s daughter (who’s my friend) and her younger brother came back up with me. I thought the boy would be able to sweep IT into a piece of paper and throw it out the window, no problem, because boys are good at stuff like that right? But no, the boy was almost as nervous as I was and he managed to prod the THING so that it scuttled again and disappeared! And then he ran away.

(Boy, I have lost my respect for you.)

My friend and I squealed (hey, that’s what girls are supposed to do, and we got our part right) and jumped up and down convinced it was crawling up our legs. And then my friend’s Big Brother bounded up the stairs. We were still squealing while he calmly located the THING nestled in my bath mat, squashed it with his slippers, tipped it into the toilet and flushed it off.

(Bless your heart Big Brother! You are a true knight in… er, sweatpants, and may you live a hundred happy years with your princess and the little princess.)

After all that, I shakily sank to my bed and noticed the package I had dropped there earlier. And this is the good thing that happened yesterday. And by good I mean AWESOME!

A couple of weeks ago, the fun Minxes of Romance blog did an ‘author spotlight’ on the really cool Mills & Boon Modern/Harlequin Presents author India Grey. Now I read a lot of M&B, but I only have a handful (okay, two hands full) of favourite romance writers whose books I will actually spend my meagre funds on. India Grey is definitely one of them.

(I remember the first book of hers that I read – ‘Taken for Revenge, Bedded for Pleasure’ – and there was this one scene in it involving a glass window in a skyscraper/penthouse place. Oh. My. God. If I have ever read a more intense scene I cannot remember it anymore.)

It was a fun interview, where India talks about her writing process in that witty, self-depreciating way that authors do that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy toward them. My obsession with author blogs/websites started fairly recently (after I joined twitter and started stalk–uh, following all of them) and I am still quite amazed at how down-to-earth they all are. I mean, they have husbands, children, pets, some have other day-jobs, they have kids falling ill, kids breaking limbs, and all manner of distractions going on. It’s quite amazing they manage to write any books at all, much less write good books.

So anyway, the Minxes blog post also involved a giveaway – and like any broke bibliophile I do love a good giveaway – and I WON!

The package that had arrived in the post contained the following:

There are three reasons I am thrilled about this: 

1.  India Grey Books! Two of them! And her first set of connecting M&B’s no less!!

2. With American covers! I used to get those a lot back home, but of course I haven’t seen any since coming to the UK.

3. Chocolate!!!

I cannot wait for the weekend to read these. I plan on doing a marathon, one after the other on the same day. That should be a fun five hours!

‘F’ - For Love or Money…

Every time I sit in front of the laptop with the intent of writing, I decide to read some of my favourite author blogs first, for inspiration. The brilliant writing advice, those publishing stories, their editor-deadline tales of frustration (that make me go green with jealousy) – all absolutely motivating stuff for a wannabe writer. Only downside is I get so caught up in the advice (and the day dreams about one day imparting my own writer-ly wisdom) that I tend to forget about actually writing… 

Anyway, one of my favourite writer blogs is that of Sarah Duncan. Besides being the author of many fabulous books, Ms Duncan is also a Creative Writing teacher, and her articles portray her experience as both (at least in my mind). She writes about any commonplace activity, or some event that occurred recently, and somehow makes it about writing. But more about that some other time. In fact, I think I’ll do a post listing my favourite blogs and websites for wannabe writers.

So about Sarah Duncan, I recently read this one post by her where she talks about how she prefers people who buy her book, whether or not they read them, to people who read her books by borrowing them from the library – and I had an epiphany: Authors have to sell their books, that is how they make their living.

Okay, it wasn’t that I didn’t already know this. I have had those day dreams too where I am a best-selling author raking in the dough and negotiating movie deals. In my more lucid moments I have thought about the fact that I could get published but that doesn’t mean my book will be bought by anybody or that my publisher will want me to write more books. I knew all of those things, but the epiphany I had was purely from a reader’s point of view.

Now I am a bibliophile, which means not only do I like read, I want to own and keep lots and lots of books too. Unfortunately, my fresh-out-of-Uni-first-job-wages don’t allow for that. I let myself buy one, maybe two new books from my Amazon wishlist at the start of each month, and then a few more from a charity shop or library sale if I happen across one. It took some work to stop the impulse book-buying but I remind myself of the student loans often and somehow manage nowadays. Overall I try to avoid WHSmith and avert my eyes when walking past Waterstones, because it’s just too sad when I see books I want but can’t afford.

I love – LOVE – some authors. I have to find and read all of their books, I know exactly when the next one is coming out and I consider myself a proper loyal fan. But! More often than not, I try to borrow their books from the library, or I get them at a charity shop (got a Wilbur Smith for 40p last week!) and if I absolutely need to read a book and it isn’t available at the library, I will buy it from Amazon, used and cheap whenever possible.

I was somewhat happy with this arrangement.

Now I feel bad! Ms Duncan’s blog post made me realize that I am not exactly doing my favourite authors any favours by borrowing their books, or buying them for £.99 at Oxfam. But I can’t do anything about that either.

I have this list, of all the books I borrow from the library every week, with titles and author names, and I add a little asterisk at the end of a title if it was an AWESOME book or a hash symbol if it was a really good book. I hope to someday own those books marked with the asterisk. And that’s the best I can do right now.

Ms Duncan does conclude that post by saying she might have to rethink her attitude because those who read her book, by whatever means, are more likely to tell others about them and increase her readership, which might make more people buy her books.

I suppose that is something I can do too, recommend books, and write those reviews I keep planning on…

'E' is for Ever Ever After

(Like the Carrie Underwood song.)

I devour romance novels, and then I sigh and smile over them hours after I finish them. I have been known to shed tears at the end of Nicolas Sparks’ novels, and happy tears after many a Mills & Boon. If I see a couple holding hands on the street or in the tube, it brightens my mood, and I watch proposals and first-dance videos of complete strangers on youtube, and sigh over those too.

Yes, I do all of those things. And while you may think that qualifies me to be called a ‘hopeless romantic’, I prefer to think of myself as a ‘hopeful romantic’.

And why not?

Love does exist in the universe. Sure, divorce rates might be going up, but there are also those couples celebrating their fiftieth anniversary. So what is wrong with believing in love?

And what is wrong with being a romantic? Isn’t it a good thing to be an optimist? To expect the best in people?

(I’m having a bit of a vent. Can you tell?)

I am a romance writer and my big dream is to be published by Mills & Boon one day. It is what I am working towards, have been working towards for over a year now and I do not appreciate people rolling their eyes at this! If you don’t read’em, if you know nothing about’em, then you don’t get to have an opinion on them.

So there!

Okay, I’m done.

In other news, my M&B manuscript stands at about 18000 words and I’m feeling pretty good about it right now. The plan is to finish by the end of this year and then send off the partial and synopsis early next year. Hopefully, that’ll work out.

In the meantime, there’s this competition by Harlequin (American version of M&B) - very coolly named 'So You Think You Can Write' - which asks for the full manuscript rather than the usual first chapter or whatever. The final date is the 15^th of December and while to even dream about having a complete and polished MS within the next five weeks sounds mad, I’m going to try anyway. Good luck to me!

Also in the meantime, I’ve decided it’s time to try and make this blog a proper one, like I had originally intended it to be, and talk about stuff other than myself and my writing. Lately, I’ve read some good books, some mediocre ones and some horrendous ones, and I’m going to try my hand at writing reviews for them. Just my humble opinion as an avid reader. So watch this space, dear invisible readers of my blog!

Doing It Right vs Getting It Done

1. Piano lessons

2. French classes

3. Cycling 

4. Classical dance classes

What do all of the above activities have in common?

5. Violin classes

6. Driving classes

7. Typing lessons

8. Shorthand lessons

9. Welsh lessons

10. Scrapbooking

How about these?

Well, let me tell you. These are all stuff that I began at some point in my life, but did not continue. In my defence, I had to give up the piano because my O Level exams were coming up (that was eight years ago), and I did not like the violin teacher for longer than two classes. I can type well enough, even if it is with one hand, so I didn’t think formal lessons would be of any use, and shorthand was so darn boring! The scrapbook isn’t going anywhere – I’ll get back to it someday, eventually; and I am quite certain that the Universe does not intend for me learn to drive.

See? I told you I was good at excuses; I do ‘defensive’ very well too. But I’ll be damned if I let this blog go off like everything else I’ve listed above and make an excuse for that too.

Almost a month since my last post, but hey, better late than never. So here I go, without further excuses...

I have a problem. Several, in fact, and all to do with my Endless Novel, which has now turned into my Mills & Boon New Voices competition entry. When the New Voices dates were announced, I decided that since my Endless Novel was almost half way done, and I only needed a couple of chapters for the comp, I would start a brand new one for it. It would feature one of the secondary characters from my beloved Endless Novel, and it would be so much fun to create that gorgeous hunk’s story! Then I found it was very hard to let my mind wander between both tales (yes, I know ‘real’ authors write two or more books at once all the time – hmph!), so I decided to enter the original story after all. This way, I figured, even if I got nowhere with the competition, other entrants and even published writers would have commented on my entry and I can use all that advice to make it even more fabulous and then send it to M&B the traditional way.

I went back to my EN and re-read all the parts that I had written. (Oh, by parts, I literally mean random chunks from all over the story. I wrote a synopsis and chapter-by-chapter brief in the beginning, and since have been writing any portion that catches my fancy. Not chronologically, I mean. Is that normal?) And this is what I discovered: I SUCK.

Okay, not me, my MS. I know I’m pretty good. My MA 2^nd semester portfolio still makes me cry every time I read it – I’m THAT GOOD (and not at all modest – but hey, I have precious little to be modest about, so what the heck?). So anyway, having come to the realization that even I wouldn’t publish my EN if I were an editor, I decided to start over. I like my story, I like my characters, and I really wanted to give them another chance.

The start was good. I took some good bits and pieces from Draft-1, freshened it up and – I suppose I was having a good day – I managed to write 2500 words in one go. Felt fab. Couldn’t wait to get back to it. But then! Haven’t written a word since, and this was like three weeks ago.

There is this amazing TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert where she says, among other things, you must do your part by showing up and putting your pen to paper and let your muse do the rest, which it might or might not. I love the idea of making my muse a separate entity (remember Gerard?) so that I won’t blame myself and wallow in self-recriminations when I don’t/can’t write. Show up, she says, and so I did. I sat at my laptop and tried. I typed whatever came to mind. I have read in other writer’s blogs and stuff that you must keep writing, even if it is crap, because you can always edit it later. But you must keep writing. I did that, I went on for maybe 200 words. Then I read it back and deleted it. This went on for a while. And then I gave up.

My problems all come down to this: I know I can write. I’ve done it before and I amaze myself anew every time I read one of my old writings. For me, re-reading my past work is like eating chocolate – it lifts me up and puts a smile on my face. Best of all, it makes me believe I have it in me. But how long must I wait for Mr. Muse to strike?

Should I have kept at the drivel? Just kept on writing for the sake of writing something? This doesn’t make sense to me. Because every time I try it, I just end up frustrated and doubting myself. I can’t stand to keep any of the crap I write, so I backspace big time and in the end have nothing to show for that time.

New Voices begins in less than a week and my entry is nowhere close to being ready. I had intended to write two chapters by this time. I thought I’d spend my final week polishing it and getting someone to read it to pick out typos. And here I am, ready to pull my hair out and dreaming longingly of Gerard darling…


Why does it feel like I'm making excuses again?

Chocolate: Nature’s way of making up for Mondays...

or just a really bad day.

I didn’t forget that yesterday was my blog day. I even wrote 400+ words of meaningless crap. But then I couldn’t find the time to edit and publish it and today, re-reading revealed a whole new degree of crappiness. So I decided to start over.

I’m not in a good mood. I’m sick and tired and if I could find the strength for it I would crawl to the Co-op across the street and buy two armloads of chocolate. Normally, the mere thought of it would give me a surge of energy just adequate to attempt the feat. The fact that it does not today is an indication of just how awful I feel.

Okay, just opened my desk drawer hoping to find some left-over dark chocolate from last week. Only bits of silver foil here of course, the words ‘chocolate’ and ‘left-over’ rarely feature in the same sentence for me.

London is in a bad mood too. Unfortunately, this can’t be fixed with a giant slab of chocolate.

I have been in a state of disbelief since yesterday morning. The riots started on Friday and I read the news online over the weekend (I don’t have a TV) but it wasn’t until yesterday morning that I watched the videos on the news websites and saw the fire, the stoning, and the looting. Streets of London – the civilized capital of a developed nation – the site of what looked like open warfare.

‘Lawless’ is a word I associate with the Wild West, and that era was a long time ago, to see the word tossed about in the news articles is frightening. This might make me sound naive, or ignorant, or like I’ve been living under a rock, but I honestly never imagined something like this could happen in this day and age.

Protests happen, so do riots, I’ve seen it on the news before. Buses set on fire, broken shop windows, and then the police descend with their protective gear and batons. Tear gas, some folks beaten up, a ton of arrests, and then it’s done. Violence is always meaningless, but usually, there is at least a reason for the madness.

There was a reason for this – an event that isn’t even clear yet to the average Londoner, an event whose details are still sketchy and varying depending on who reports them. That reason doesn’t matter anymore. Those looters on the streets with their hooded jackets? Seventy-five percent of them – probably more – don’t even know that ‘reason’ ever existed. They are simply opportunists taking full advantage of a ‘situation’ – making it worse, driving it out of control. Sad that that many disgusting opportunists exist in the city.

There is a video on the news websites: an injured boy sits on the side of the street. Another guy goes to help him up. And then a second guy goes from behind and opens the bleeding boy’s backpack. A few more join him, like vultures they pick through his stuff while he weakly tries to shrug them off. Grabbing something out of the backpack one guy walks off. The rest of them wander off too, the hurt boy is forgotten.

That incident pretty much sums up the situation. Pretend to care about a wronged man and his family, stir up trouble, and take full advantage of the ensuing chaos with no regard for the law and no thought to the innocent.

I have only lived in London for five months, but I’ve come to love the city. What’s not to love? Beautiful, vibrant, bursting with history. Loads and loads of libraries, the best shopping. Lovely people, funny people, crazy people. Right now, where I am, it is still all of those things. Hard to believe, just a little way off, a few tube stops over, where all the sirens are headed, is a London I hadn’t imagined would ever come to exist.

This post was meant to be about chocolate.  

‘B’ is for Bibliophiles and Blogs

(I’m finding this very awkward, and it’s only my second – technically third – post. I’m determined to keep it up though, for now.)

So I find there are a lot of people on this planet who like to read, and a ton of them have blogs.

Interesting...

As any self-respecting wannabe-writer, I too adore books. I love to read, I love to buy and collect books, I practically salivate in Waterstones, and a trip to the library in the highlight of my week – too bad about the 10-books-at-a-time limit they have going on though.

I once saw this mug in a gift-shop that said, ‘I’d rather be reading’ – and that sums up my state of mind, at all times. This can be a tad inconvenient when I forget all about my endless-novel, and the 1000 word deadline I set myself, and instead read all three books from a series by Nora Roberts in one weekend. By the time I finish, its 6.30 pm on Sunday and of course there’s no time to get any writing done that day so I might as well start (and possibly finish) the new Mills & Boon on my nightstand before bed.

And I can read anything. (Well, anything fiction – not that I am against non-fiction, but I tend not to pick one up at the library or a bookshop unless someone recommends it). I just finished a ridiculously brilliant short story collection by Margaret Atwood (Good Bones) and I am currently reading Anita Shreve’s Strange Fits of Passion. Next on my shelf is a lovely M & B by India Grey – one of my favourite M & B writers. 

I used to think my obsessive reading habits were abnormal, until I came to the UK.

I grew up in Tanzania. Until junior high I knew maybe five people who liked to read, in the whole school. In high school there were more, but not one of them read with any degree of obsession. In college, in India, there was one other guy that I knew of and could exchange books with. I developed this identity then, as ‘the girl who reads’. Friends teased me about it, they bought books as gifts for me for every occasion, and gently rebuked when I was lost in my novel and not paying attention to something more important.

So yes, I thought I was unusual.

In those years when I was growing up in Tanzania, books were something of a novelty. Our school library was severely limited and there was only one store in town that sold books – not a bookstore but a stationary shop that happened to stock a few novels. They had Archie comics, Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, and the Sweet Valley Series – all of which were perfect for a while, but then I grew out of them and the options were limited to my dad’s little collection of ‘grown-up’ novels – mostly spy thrillers and Wilbur Smith.

Things looked up when some nice people in the States donated their old books to charity, which then arrived in Tanzania in ships and were sold on the pavements. Most of these were academic books – a lot of algebra and geography – but sometimes, if you scour very diligently, you could find a Sidney Sheldon or a Danielle Steele, or one seller with a dozen or so Mills & Boons. About three times in a year, my Dad drove my sister and me to that one street where they usually had the best of the fiction books. Of course there was no fixed price for them and my sister and I, being terrible at our poker faces, would get very excited when we found a certain amazing book and make its price shoot right up. Dad, conveniently, was a good haggler.

It got to a point when I was desperate for books. I used to look at all those lovely online book stores that were only available to ‘residents of the United States and Canada’, and dream of the day when I could have books delivered to my doorstep!

(All of this might sound quite medieval, but it was just about a decade ago!)

But here! In the UK!! Every other person on the tube has a book in their hand, so much so that I forget my own book whilst twisting my neck in strange ways to read their titles. And the book stores! They are everywhere! High street ones, independent ones, charity shops and the amazing Amazon!! (Forgive the multiple exclamation points – this subject tends to excite me.)

And bibliophiles are all on the World Wide Web, talking about their ailment, which is apparently quite widespread. I am a little sad about losing my exclusive claim on ‘the girl who reads’, but it is also flippin’-fantastic to read these blogs with books reviews and author interviews and all things books!

(Give me a minute while I count the number of times I used the word ‘book’ in this post.)

(Twenty-two.)

Anyway, speaking of blogs, this one has become something of a journal, hasn’t it? I suppose I have yet to find the style and rhythm for it as a blog. The 500-word thing is also shot, but that can only be a good thing. I think I will now make my minimum 750 words.

Oh, and ‘B’ is also for Bittersweet Chocochips. In case you’re wondering about the title of my blog, well, I really can’t explain it myself. Just put it down to my love for dark chocolate, baking and unsubtle metaphors.