Italia! Toscana!

I spent the weekend in Tuscany with the girls and am now sitting here all depressed that I am now back in cold and rainy London! It was an amazing weekend full of fun, food, laughter, food, sightseeing, food, sunshine, food, horseriding and food. Yes as you can tell food played a HUGE part in our long weekend. We are all foodies so we did navigate the Tuscan countryside by meals and ice cream stops. So here are few photos of the weekend...
The Girls at the restaurant in Certaldo Alto

First night dessert... Red wine ice cream and poached pears

La Canonica, Certaldo - where we stayed

The horses they breed there... aren't they pretty!

Video Interview!!

So way back when at CRS39 I did my first on camera interview with Zane Lewis. I did it with Digital Rodeo and I can now announce that the interview is now up on the website!!!
Go here

And if you could let me know what it is like because it keeps freezing on my system!

AND THE WAITING IS OVER... FOR NOW!

Yes a letter arrived from Mills & Boon today. The envelope was on the floor and luckily was nice and slim and was not my manuscript being returned to me. Instead I had a two page letter REQUESTING the full manuscript with some suggested revisions. The suggestions made complete sense but at the moment I am just celebrating and after the weekend I will start on the manuscript.

Blimey yet another step on the long road... and it will be awash with champagne!

Still Here... Just.

Yes I'm still here. Hanging in there by my finger nails. I spent last week relaxing somewhat with big sis and chilling before this week when my new contract started. But my plan of getting stuff done on the weekend took a hit. First Saturday I helped friends move house. Actually I cat sat for them while they moved house. However little Archie is a tadette demanding and would only stay calm if I was holding him which put pay to doing some radio prep work.

Then on Saturday night I started feeling less than well, up all night shivering and with stomach cramps. Lovely! Which wrote off Sunday. Grrrrr.

Yesterday was the first day on the job. Bonus was that I now have a 25 minute train journey to and from work and I managed to write 1000 words!! YAY! Can I do this again today? Fingers crossed.

Soundtrack of My Life!

I nicked this meme off the lovely Liz Fenwick

If Your Life Were a Movie…What Would the Soundtrack Be??

So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…because you’re not!
7. Stick the soundtrack on your mp3 player and listen away during the day.

Here goes:

Opening Credits: Mists Of Down Below - The Duhks

Waking Up: Songs of Our Time (Philologicak Walts; Satellite Moon; A Happy Song) - Flanders & Swann

First Day at School: The Finer Things - Steve Winwood

Falling in Love: Take Me For Longing - Alison Krauss & Union Station (blimey!)

Fight Song: Bartenders, Etc... - Dierks Bentley

Breaking Up: Old Virginia Block - Devon Sproule

Prom/Dance/Ball: How Do I Live? - LeAnne Rimes

Life’s OK: King Of The Road - Roger Miller :-)

Mental Breakdown: Full Blown Addict - Billy Don Burns (I'm not honest!)

Flashback: Through The Morning, Through The Night - Robert Plant & Alison Krauss

Getting Back Together: Come Tomorrow - Townes Van Zandt

Birth of Child: I Still Miss Someone - Johnny Cash (obviously a pointer to my childless state)

Wedding: She Couldn't Change Me - Montgomery Gentry (I see this ending in divorce!)

Final Battle: You Don't - Sara Evans (I'm not seeing a Happy Ending...)

Funeral Song: Inside Your Heaven - Carrie Underwood (OK that is freaky but good to know I'm going up!)

End Credits: Please Daddy - John Denver (I'm making no comment)

Blogging at The Pink Heart Society!

Yes it is that time of the month again! I am am blogging over at PHS... admitting to my failing to write. However since I wrote the post I have written another 1500 words!!

Partial Query

I have bitten the bullet and queried M&B about my partial, it is over three months and I just thought it would be better to know than not to know. That and making a faux par last night after the M&B panel discussion, when a M&B editor overheard me making a joking complaining to someone about not having heard... ho hum.

The panel discussion was great and afterwards I bought some of Matt Dunn's books. Have already finished 'The Best Man' which I throughly enjoyed. And I took the bus to Oxford... excellent service and all for £12!

Oooo Oxford!

I am off to Oxford in a bit for 'The Mills and Boon Centenary Debate: How Heroes and Heroines Have Altered in the last 100 Years' and I am going to try the Oxford Express to get there... supposedly they have fancy seats, wifi and power points for my laptop. I am taking the laptop and see if I can do some writing.

I will let you know how it goes.

Moving On...

Now I have done the cathartic ranting about my journey home we can move on...

This week has been busy busy already, I have a voice over job due tomorrow, also a job interview, I'm off to the Oxford Literary Festival on Thursday for a talk sponsored by Mills & Boon and then I'm blogging at the Pink Heart Society on Saturday. Blimey and in all of that I have to do some writing...

On the writing front I am trying to get back to writing 'The Artist and The Ugly Duckling'... it is a bit of a struggle but if I look at lovely photos of Lucas (aka Gerard Butler) I get some inspiration.

I am also re-working an old story, actually less re-working and more a new story with some hints of an old one. It takes my idea and collides it with a Dickens novel. We'll see how it works out I just need to do the first chapter for a competition I am entering.

AND... I am writing a short story, completely unrelated to anything vaguely romantic.

ARGHH!! I need to get back to it!

The Journey Home - Part Three

Where were we? Oh yes Chillis... drinking margaritas and telling our life stories but still stuck in Chicago O'Hare. Now it was my deadline which was heading towards us very fast. It was 10.30am in Chicago... and I had to be in Newark for a 8pm flight (well 7pm Chicago time) so with check in I had maybe 8 hours. You wouldn't think this was hard to do but considering my previous flight problems I was beginning to get worried.

We headed towards the gate for our midday flight, all still on time. Yes! I might actually get a cup of tea with Anna at Newark airport. As the snow started to fall in Chicago I started to relax... little. Which was a foolish thing to do as suddenly the flight time changed to 1pm. NO! This could not be happening! I got to the desk and when I started talking to the staff it became obvious that 1pm was the time they would make a decision to fly AND not the actual take off... ARGHHHHHH!!! This is when everything welled up in me and I started to cry. I asked the guy if I could transfer to a UK flight as I sobbed
"I just want to leave this f...ing country!"
I love the US, I really do but I just wanted to go home.

It turns out they couldn't do that so I phoned BA... to be told if I missed my flight from Newark I would be classed as a no-show as my internal flights hadn't been booked through them and I would have to buy a new ticket home! This was the same if I wanted to fly out of Chicago!! All for the joyous price of £900 ($1800)!!! I was gobsmacked. As I struggled to get my head round this, Annabella phoned to say there was a flight to White Plains which was leaving and her husband would drive me to. I raced to the gate to find we could only go on stand by. As I realised this wouldn't work either I started back to the original gate promising Annabella I would call her if the Newark flight status changed.

Around this time I completely lost it. I phoned my parents and howled down the phone at my Dad, incoherent. At which point he passed me to my sister who told me to reserve a ticket with BA and wait to see if the Newark flight went. Through tears I agreed and then phoned BA. I reserved myself on the last flight out of Chicago to the UK, I had until 5pm that day to pay for it, it was now 1pm.

1pm decision time. And this is when the loveliest airline person decided to actually give us information... they were boarding us at 1.15, we would push back at 1.45, de-icing the plane and then we would take off (maybe) at 2.30pm. What to do?? They couldn't get my bags off the flight, should I stay in Chicago and spend a lot of money or take a chance?

I phoned Annabella to let her know the new status... she had already given up on the White Plains flight and was heading straight for me. I needed someone here on the ground to help me make the decision, she was the voice of reason... if the Newark flight didn't take off I still had time to get the Chicago flight... what did I have to lose?

So that is how I ended up on the flight to Newark, Annabella and I back of the plane with our fingers crossed... you have never heard such whoops of glee and applause as we ACTUALLY TOOK OFF at 2.30!! The flight attendants gave us free drink when they heard what had been happening and the cheering as we landed did get us a few looks. Annabella wanted me to meet her husband which I did and after that I kissed the floor of the terminal building. Yes I did! All very papal.

And so that is how I made it to my flight with 2 hours to spare... the great thing was I now had two people in New Jersey who were worried about me. I had to text both Anna and Annabella that I was actually on the flight. It might have been a horrible two days but I had met a new friend. And anyway I was on my way home... what else could go wrong??

See this is where I should have never relaxed... as it transpired the storms that had battered Newark and started this whole thing were now speeding across the Atlantic with us. This meant a bumpy but very short flight due to HUGE tailwinds. It also meant that we were in for a bumpy landing... if we could actually land. At this point I became a very bad flyer... if we had to divert due to high winds I would have had hysterics right there and then. We strapped ourselves in and came into land with the plane waving, about a foot off the runway the pilot suddenly pulled the plane back up and we were climbing again!!! *SOB*
We came round again and we landed ten minutes later... THANK GOD!!

And then my luck changed... off the plane and through passport control in TEN MINUTES! My bag was the first one off the plane and I could see it as I was coming down the escalator... and so I was from plane to Heathrow Express in TWENTY MINUTES! And so home... to my bed. The marathon journey was over.