LIVE FROM LANCASTER...

Excitement is high this week as I’m blogging live from the Romantic Novelists’ Association Conference, which this year is being held in the spacious, leafy grounds of Lancaster University. For those not familiar with Lancaster, it’s a historic city found in the North West of England, boasting a canal and imposing medieval castle. Originally a Roman fort, apparently Lancaster Castle stood as a bastion against the forces of marauding Picts and Scottish clans.

Today, however, this Scot is looking forward to spending a fantastic weekend with friends, as I signed up early to attend the best networking event of the year – the Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) Annual Conference.

So what makes the RNA conference so special? For me the answer’s three-fold.

Firstly, year on year the organisers offer a packed programme of talks, lectures, expert panels and

Rae, Gill and Jennifer

workshops by best-selling authors and publishing professionals at the top of their game. What a fantastic opportunity to learn what’s hot (and what’s not) in the business.

Secondly, attendees, whether published or unpublished, may opt for appointments with literary agents and editors, who provide advice/pointers on the first chapter of their novel. Critiquing gold for aspiring writers like me!

Finally, writing’s a solitary occupation, although being part of the RNA means it never truly feels that

way, and so I revel in the chance to meet up with ‘old’ friends – our own Gill Stewart and Jennifer Young are here – and to make new ones too.

So what’s happened so far?

My first choice of workshop was presented by award winning duo Liz Fenwick, who’s highly successful novels are set along the rugged Cornish coastline, and Brigid Coady, marketing professional and winner of the prestigious RNA Joan Hessayon award, who took an insightful look at author marketing, exploring the need to identify your brand, your plan, your goals. I was scribbling wildly - plenty food for thought there…

Liz Fenwick and Brigid Coady
(photo with thanks to Marie Macneill)

Next we gathered to be officially welcomed by Eileen Ramsay, our experienced RNA Chair and Jan Jones, writer and conference organiser extraordinaire.

Welcome over, it was down to business with the first of three industry appointments. Where else could an unpublished writer be granted such an amazing opportunity to have their work read and critiqued by industry professionals?   - Did I mention I love the RNA?

Today, Saturday, is also busy. With such a fantastic line-up of speakers, I feel like a child on Christmas morning, greedy to grab it all, but eventually plumped for sessions that include Alex Brown and her editor, Kate Bradley discussing what it takes to create a commercial novel; a workshop with Fiona Harper, using Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany’s as a case study to ensure the pace of a story keeps zinging along; viewing of a documentary that takes us into the multi-billion dollar romance fiction business in America; speed dating to find a critique partner… a few glasses of wine at the sparkling gala dinner!

With such a crammed itinerary there's little time left to explore Lancaster further but visiting the castle and learning of its legends has given me a taste for the area. Yet again the RNA conference is a winner, and, if the rumours of late night kitchen parties are true (I couldn't possibly comment), then Lancaster is proving to be the perfect location for writers to create tales of their own.

Hello Summer Reads...

One of the innocent pleasures of summertime must surely be donning shades, pulling low a sunhat and becoming lost within the pages of a great book. So whether relaxing in the garden, chilling in the park or unwinding on the beach, we hope there’s something for everyone in our picks for summer 2016.

Please enjoy and remember to share your recommendations too…

Rae – I knew exactly which novel I wanted to read in preparation for our summer reading recommendations, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. A novel that has garnered so many brilliant five star reviews that I wondered if it could ever live up to the hype. I needn’t have worried though, as the story of French sisters Vianne and Isabelle, different in nature yet each determined to do what they believe right, acting bravely and for love, as a part of the Resistance during the Second World War, does indeed merit a sparkling five stars. It’s a while since I’ve discovered myself holding my breath as I read, and that happened numerous times as I was transported to wartime France, cheering on Vianne and Isabelle – just wonderful. 

Linda - Imagine the scene … you want a holiday, indeed you need a holiday, but things are against you – no holiday entitlement left, no cash, too many other pulls on your time. You want to feel warm, well fed and watered, and be in wonderful company. Well, fear not. Michelle Heatley’s debut novel (can’t quite believe it is a debut novel as the writing is so lyrical, so assured, so masterly) Fish Soup will transport you to a Greek Island. There, you will almost hear the characters breathe, cry, and laugh. You will see the boats in the harbour, the olives, the sun-bleached houses, and you will smell the herbs, the fish, the lemons and heat on parched earth. You will taste the sweetness of butter-soft onions, and ripe, luscious, tomatoes. You will have to be careful you don’t cut your fingers on that sharp knife that sisters, Chloe and Isa, use to prepare the ingredients for the fish soup Cecilia is teaching them to make. Chloe and Isa each have their demons and every ingredient they use is linked in the most wonderful, poetic, way to their emotions. Cecilia, too, has had her troubles in life but she is older and has come to terms with them and is in a perfect position to help the sisters. I was with them all on that Greek island, a fellow holidaymaker sat in the corner, a glass of wine to hand, listening to them all, watching.

If I have one reservation about this book it’s that it didn’t say, Fish Soup – A NOVEL, in the title. I would hate to think that some might think it is a cookery book and not pick it up. If that’s the case, then they are missing out on a wonderful, escapist, summer (or any other time), read.

Michelle Heatley is a true wordsmith and this book an absolute delight for the senses.

Gill - Summer Reads. I’ve chosen two very different books as my recommendations, both of which I enjoyed very much and both of which in my personal ratings list I have given five stars.

The first is Katie Fforde’s A Summer At Sea. This is a delightful romance which had the added interest for me of being set just a few miles away from my new home! The characters are as lovely as we have come to expect from Fforde – well-rounded, warm and likeable. The story is perhaps a little predictable but this is a romance so I don’t think we can really quibble about that. The setting is idyllic and beautifully portrayed – a summer on an old-fashioned puffer boat sailing around the west coast of Scotland. Really, what’s not to like?

My second choice is very different. Jane Lovering’s I Don’t Want To Talk About It is not only much darker, set in autumn and winter with a heroine facing serious personal problems, it is also full of unexpected twists and truly wonderful comic one-liners. And it has not one but two heroes, both delicious in their very different ways. It also has a delightfully memorable child character in the person of 8-year-old Scarlet who brings the story and the characters together. Altogether an excellent read.

Jennifer - I’m scratching my head a little here. It wasn’t until after I promised a few words on ‘summer reads’ that it occurred to me. I don’t read that much in the summer. Either I’m too lazy (yes, you can be too lazy to read) or I’m too busy making the most of the weather. Winter is my reading time — curled up by the fire with a bar (or two) of chocolate…

I read on planes and in airports, though, and I tend to use that time to read books in my favourite genre — romantic suspense — written by my friends. So maybe now is the time to look back at a couple of the books that sustained me through the dull bookends of my last holiday. 

Helena Fairfax’s The Scottish Diamond is a follow up to Palace of Deception. They have the same hero and heroine but the first is set on his territory, somewhere in the sunny Mediterranean, and the second on hers (and, incidentally, mine) in rather colder, greyer Edinburgh. The stories are very different and yet Helena manages to develop the relationship between her hero and heroine alongside the action.

Gillian’s Island is by Canadian author Val Tobin. At least this has a holiday feel, being set in a resort which the heroine has been forced to sell to the man who becomes the hero. And there’s nothing fluffy about it. The heroine, Gillian, in particular is a complex and unusual character but Val carries the trick of a spiky, introverted protagonist off very well indeed.

They may not be traditional summer reads but they topped and tailed my recent holiday nicely.

Jennie - The English saying ‘If you want to get ahead, get a hat’ sums up this fable-like story translated from the French, beautifully.

I read it a couple of years ago and immediately insisted my husband read it too. It’s not so much a summer read as an all year round uplifting read.

The blurb reads:  A charming fable about the power of a hat that takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride through French life during the Mitterrand years. Dining alone in an elegant Parisian brasserie, accountant Daniel Mercier can hardly believe his eyes when President François Mitterrand sits down to eat at the table next to him. After the presidential party has gone, Daniel discovers that Mitterrand's black felt hat has been left behind. After a few moments' soul-searching, Daniel decides to keep the hat as a souvenir of an extraordinary evening. It's a perfect fit, and as he leaves the restaurant Daniel begins to feel somehow … different.

It’s a book that encompassed everything I like by taking a nostalgic, witty and humorous - somewhat satirical it must be said - look at life.

I rarely wear hats but if one like this ever came my way I’d wear it forever!

Neil - As I am not much of a reader, a photography magazine here or there, I asked my other half what she plans to read as her head is never out of a book when we go away on holiday.

Audrey has decided to read Stuart McBride’s The Missing and The Dead. McBride is an author originally from Aberdeen and writes in and around the area. Over to Audrey…

McBride is a new author for me, however it’s the 8th book in a series and I only hope I will be able to follow the plot line.

I decided to pick up this book as it’s based around Macduff and the outdoor swimming pool area, which piqued my interested as last summer on a family outing we stopped at Tarlair, which is what the swimming pool is called. A group of locals are trying to rejuvenate the area, as it has lain derelict and forgotten for some time.

The book follows the career of Acting Detective Inspector McRae who has been given a "development opportunity" in rural Aberdeenshire. A young girl’s body is found which means the Major Investigation Team must head to the area, where personalities clash in order to find the murderer.

I am looking forward to hopefully being gripped and unable to put the book down.

Happy reading.

Summer Sun

Balmedie Beach

What happens when a photographer that struggles to sleep finally has a period of settled weather, an alarm set for 0230hrs to catch the sunrises. Although it is not uncommon for me not to need the alarm.
Destinations are usually the beach and this week a trip to Dunnottar and Stonehaven to catch first light. The beauty of the lengthening days means that even in the middle of the night it is still rather light allowing for some fantastic shots.

On a few occasions I have been surprised to find other like minded soles out and about taking photos at strange hours of the day.



Stonehaven Harbour at First Light



Pink Skies at Balmedie Beach



The Merkat Cross at the Castlegate, Aberdeen



Reflections on the River Dee

Short and sweet this week concentrating on the photos. Preparing for my summer holidays so look out for lots of photos of the West Coast Scotland.

The Dangers of #1LineWed by Jennifer Young

There’s a trend on Facebook just now, one that affects writers only and one that I tend to approach, if I approach it at all, with extreme circumspection. If you’re a writer, or even if you only follow writers, you’re bound to have come across it.

It goes something like this. “Go to page 7 (or whatever) of your work in progress. Then post 7 lines/sentences from paragraph 7.” There’s something similar on Twitter, too. On #1lineWed you’re encouraged to post a single line from your current work, picking up on a specified theme or including a certain word. 

They aren’t promotional posts; just a bit of fun, with the added bonus of showcasing your work. (But no buy links, okay?) Nobody comments, nobody criticises, nobody suggest improvements. They just repost them or retweet them or ignore them. No stress, no strain.

So why don’t I jump at the chance? Why, when I’m tagged in one of these, does a little bit of me die inside? Could it possibly be because the seventh sentence on the seventh page of my latest book (I’d love to say it’s my seventh, but it isn’t) isn’t exactly world-shaking. It’s: “Tom, let’s go”.

The reasons I like and dislike this little game are not just related: they’re the two sides of the same coin and the currency we’re dealing in is a writer’s insecurity. The craft of writing requires attention to every single word. To get it right, each syllable has to be spot on; and the words need not only to be the right ones but they have to be in the best possible order. 

A single sentence picked at random from your novel can expose you, horribly. And even if you have a sentence that doesn’t just work but you’re proud of, the sentences before and after it can let you down. Most of the sentences I see are pretty good. Some of them aren’t so good. But taking a sentence of your own in isolation? That can hurt.

That makes it a good thing. It means I have to look at anything I post with an intensely critical eye. More often than not I end up changing it before I post. (There aren’t many rules in this game so I think it’s okay to post something edited.) By the time I’ve wrestled with seven lines (or whatever) I can have spent a long time getting it right.

That’s the down side: it makes me realise just how difficult it is to get every single word right. If I spend an hour on 129 words over seven lines, how much time do I need to spend on 70,000 words over 200 pages? I don’t have that time. I don’t spend it. But maybe I should. 

Maybe, after all, I’m turning out slack, sloppily-written work which would benefit from hours of polishing. And maybe, if I had to polish to that level of gloss…I’d never finish anything.   

How To Get Beyond Procrastination

I am a master at procrastination. I’m a Master of Arts, as well, but we won’t go into that. (Bit of a Mickey Mouse degree, really.) My Oxford dictionary says procrastination is to “defer action”, “be dilatory” and “postpone”. It is all of those things, and it seems to me to only occur when you’re supposed to be doing something that you HAVE to do. I mean, you wouldn’t defer the pleasure of reading a new book by a favourite author, would you? Not unless you’d promised yourself a treat after you’d finished doing this incredibly hard task at which you’re - er - procrastinating.

So, procrastinating is putting off something which you really ought to do. In the case of writers, it’s frequently a deadline. In the case of the pre-published writer with no deadline, it rarely occurs, because writing is something done purely for enjoyment. If, however, you are enrolled on a scheme such as the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s excellent New Writer’s Scheme, then you have a deadline, to submit your nurtured baby for a critique, possibly a second read, feedback - and who knows? Possible publication. This is an excellent training ground for the exigencies of the published life.

Sadly, this argues that procrastinating means you’re doing something you don’t like doing. Actually, most of us do like it. It’s just that it’s incredibly hard work. It isn’t simply sitting down at the keyboard and copy typing 2000 words a day. You’ve got to think as well.  The sensible advice is, of course, to plan every inch and tittle of your story to the last full stop, then you probably could sit down and copy type it, but even if you have prepared a proper outline and/or synopsis, story-telling is organic. Situations and characters appear out of nowhere. Sometimes you greet them with an air-punch and a shouted “YES!”, frightening the cat. Sometimes you just wrinkle your brow and say “How the hell did that happen?” And then you have to stop and think about it, and then, yes - you’re procrastinating. Wandering into the garden to deadhead the roses (did that yesterday), writing a guest blog (doing that today), dusting - what? Dusting? Well, maybe not.

I haven’t really helped, have I? When it comes down to it, if you’re procrastinating so much you’ve completely lost interest, I’d stop. Even if the hot breath of an editor is on the back of your flinching neck. I’ve done it. Told my editor this story isn’t working and could I start again. That made the deadline even shorter, but it worked a lot better. And the nearer you get to that deadline the less procrastinating you do because you haven’t got the time.  As with writer’s block, about which I’m not sure, you just keep going. All right then, go and make a cup of tea, deadhead the roses, write a blog. But Come Back. And just write. Go on, you know you want to really.

PLOTTER/PANTSER DEBATE – Part One Hundred and … by Gill Stewart

When it comes to writing, I’ve always considered myself a Pantser – one of those people who write by instinct, into the mist. I start with a character or a couple of characters, a setting … and off I go. If during, or at the end of, the writing process I feel there is a problem with some section I’ll mull it over, perhaps let a critique partner have a look, and try to change it – again by instinct.

Part of the story plot spreadsheet - will it work?

Now, thanks to my editor and friend Claire Watts, I’ve decided to try a new approach. I don’t know if it will work, or if I’ll repeat it after this initial experiment, but I’m going to try plotting. It's sort of backwards-plotting, as I have already written the book, but it's a start. I'm breaking down my current wip into detailed scenes, analysing each one, and trying to see if that way, objectively, I can pin-point what is and isn’t working.

It’s really amazing when you start to see where the holes are in your story. And then of course you think – why couldn’t I see that before? Obviously a genius or a natural-born storyteller would do this automatically. Someone like me needs more of a hand – or maybe just a kick up the backside. I’ve been so concerned about making my writing realistic that I’ve sometimes forgotten that I am a storyteller and that The Story Comes First. Commercial fiction, which is what I write, must work first and foremost on the level of the story. And I realise that sometimes I’d been forgetting that …

So far I’ve broken the work down into 98 scenes, although some of those are linked so it’s probably more like 40 - 50 scenes. Now I’m analysing each one. When you start writing notes to yourself like ‘what is the point of this scene?’ or ‘check this actually works?’ you feel you have finally got to the nub of what you need to do. The next question is – can I do it?

My main concern is that this process will change my writing from being (I think) deeply felt but sometimes drifting, to feeling manufactured. I definitely don’t want manufactured! What I’m aiming for is deeply felt but properly focussed. Has anyone else tried this approach? Watch this space for how I get on!