Apparently

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Which is a bit of a bummer as I don’t really like Stephen King’s books. (Too modern for me.)

Ely folk festival

Clearly Ely is the cultural centre of the UK, because not only does it host photoshoots in the tearooms and the m/m meet happening here in September, but this weekend was the Ely folk festival.

Despite a lot of improvement in my shoulders, I’m still not up to dancing yet, so I went along as one of the Riot’s musicians, and now sport a lovely bruise in the crook of my elbow from a full weekend of bodhran playing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fame! (Still no fortune, though.)

Much to my surprise, about a month ago the editor of Out magazine contacted me to say “how do you fancy doing an interview?  We’d send someone over to talk to you.  And can you find us some other female authors of m/m fiction who could come along too?”

After being duly gobsmacked and panicking about what a stylish New York reporter would think of the state of my house, I emailed the authors in the UK I knew about, and asked whether they’d like to come and be interviewed too.  Whereupon Out emailed me back saying “actually, we only want one.”

Which is how come (to cut a long story and three days of frantic cleaning short) last Thursday Erastes and I were interviewed for Out magazine by Cintra Wilson.  If I had only had the sense to Google her, I would have been even more intimidated than I was, but (perhaps fortunately) I didn’t have the sense, so I didn’t know I was being interviewed by a doyenne of popular culture in New York, and I was only mildly and generally intimidated by the thought that here was someone of much greater sophistication than my own.  Read the rest of this entry »

All About Romance votes “Shining in the Sun” a Desert Island Keeper

LOL!  I got the entire contents of this post into the subject line 🙂  But yes, after a day spent entirely on getting Rose ready for her Prom, and finally waving her off about a half hour ago, it’s just marvellous to come home to such a wonderful review as this:

All in all, Beecroft delivers a romance that is complicated, emotionally satisfying, and thoroughly compelling. I’m fairly certain that Shining in the Sun is her first foray into contemporary romance, but I have to say that I’m very much hoping it’s not her last.

From Katie Mack at All About Romance, who has chosen it as a Desert Island Keeper.  Thank you so much Katie 🙂    I’m particularly happy (in one of those perverse writerly ways) to know that although she found Darren hard to like, she couldn’t help understanding and sympathizing with him.  Coolness 🙂

UtH is driving me mad

How long is this novel going to take?  It’s 82,500 words long already and only on chapter 12 of 20.  It is the giant life-sucking project of DOOM.  How many times must the characters explain to each other what the other characters explained to them?  How many times must Sumala and Flynn break out of the same prison, only to be thwarted in their plans of escape before they actually decide to do something other than just go home?  Why must I be so acutely conscious of the amount of editing this is going to need when it’s done?  Why can’t I have it finished now so that I can get down to the editing?  Why can’t I have it finished now so I can write “Whirlwind Lads” or that piratey one which doesn’t yet have a name?  What happened to the days of squeeing over actors and actually having fun?  When did all this get so damned serious?

Frustration, thy name is “Under the Hill.”  I can’t believe this was originally only going to be a novella!

New Ely_meet LJ community

I’ve set up a community on LJ where we can discuss all the things that might be involved in the m/m authors and readers meeting in Ely.  Hopefully it can be used to arrange car shares and anything else that needs to be arranged.  If you think you’re going to be coming, please join the community at http://community.livejournal.com/ely_meet/ and chip in with suggestions for things we can do to fill 4 hours.

I’ve never been to a con, so I don’t know what people are expecting, and currently we have a room and nibbles.  Anything else is up to you!

If you’re interested in coming to the m/m meet-up

please visit my Live Journal where I am running a poll to decide the best date.  The choices are Saturday 7th August 12-4, or Sunday 12th September 12-4.

Judging from my last entry, there’s plenty of interest – more than enough to make this worth while. Quite a few people, however, have pointed out that August is a bad month due to holidays. That’s true for me too! So I’ve provisionally booked the venue for two dates, one in August and one in September, with a promise to come back and firmly book it once I know which date is the best for all of us.

If you’re interested in coming, please fill in the poll. I’ll keep it open until the end of Monday and get back to the venue with a firm booking on the Tuesday.

Here’s that link again to the poll on my livejournal

So how about that UK m/m con, then?

On the grounds that I might be paying for the venue and nibbles, I reckoned that I could get away with looking for somewhere near me.  So I’ve just come back from Ely library, where I discovered that I can hire a large function room with chairs for 50 people, a large table to sit around and a kitchen where we can make tea and coffee for £5 an hour.

My thoughts are – lets set a date in August for all the m/m authors, aspiring authors and fans who live in Britain and fancy a get together to come to Ely library, where we can have refreshments, mingle, chat, exchange books and possibly plan on doing something more ambitious next year.

We can easily afford to pay for the room for 4 hours.  We could even have a couple of short talks punctuated by tea breaks, and then hit the town for pizza.

But that’s getting ahead of myself.  If I was to hire the function room in Ely library one Saturday or Sunday in August for an embryonic British m/m con, would anyone come?

Dear Author talks about authenticity in historical romance

In a very interesting post here

Why Accuracy in Historical Romance Matters

and then tops it up by interviewing Erastes, Lee Rowan, Charlie Cochrane, Josh Lanyon, Kate Rothwell, Bonnie Dee and me over here.

In which I successfully occupy the middle ground again.  And why not?  I happen to be one of those people who like both PotC and Master and Commander for different reasons.  As long as you know what you’re getting when you go in, why not have two different forms of pleasure instead of one?

I was going to say something profound at this point, but it was too hot, so I couldn’t manage it.

It is too hot

It is especially too hot to be cleaning the house, yet that is what I’m doing.  (Well, actually what I’m doing at the moment is having a tea break, but in general I’m cleaning.)

Have some gratuitous Bad Romance:

because I don’t see why I should be the only one suffering with this as an earworm for the past three days.  Maybe I should adopt it as my theme tune 🙂