In Print!!

Well, it will be by the end of the month anyway. Yes, that’s right, my book, From His Perspective will soon be available for you to read (and I’d be incredibly grateful if some of you did ;O)). After having received about 20 rejections from literary agents and because I have the patience of a gnat with ADHD I decided that I would ‘do it myself’ and publish via Amazon Direct Publishing. It doesn’t have quite the same cache as being touted by an agent as ‘the next JK Rowling’ but I am feeling pretty damned pleased with myself; if you’d have told me a year ago that I’d write a book I’d have thought you were mad!

I know I’ve been conspicuously absent just lately (I can blame that on the second book that I’m writing – this is becoming a habit!) but without the support of the blogging community I don’t think I would ever have done this. It was you guys that gave me the confidence to write and then to write from the heart and I owe all of you a huge, huge thank you for your unfailing kindness and encouragement. You’ve helped me through some very dark times and I will be eternally grateful.

Book Update

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I haven’t been around too much over the last few weeks and that’s because I’ve had my nose to the grindstone (actually fingers on the keyboard but you know what I mean. Several weeks ago I felt the thrill of ‘finishing’ my book (writing not reading) and in a fit of over-exuberance immediately sent it off to a dozen literary agents. This was followed by a nail biting wait to see if anyone would contact me and tell me I was going to be the next J K Rowling; oddly, no-one did.

However, surprisingly, what I did get was some incredibly useful advice, the most useful being that my book was far too short. As I’d only ever written short stories before I figured that 42,000 words was an epic tale – I was wrong, so now I am re-writing, improving and adding news chapters. Currently I have written 56,000 words and, somehow, they just keep on flowing and, whats more, I am still loving it!

All this means that I still won’t have much time to spend with my lovely blogging friends but I do hope that you’ll bear with me :O)

Lisa xxx

I Did It!

Morning fellow bloggers, how are we all today? I hope you’ve all had a really great week! My news? Well, here’s something that I never thought I’d say:

I FINISHED MY BOOK!

A few months ago I despaired of ever making it past 3,000 words but yesterday I hit 42,000 and the end of the story. What’s more, in the spirit of grabbing bulls by horns and striking irons while they’re hot, I sent it to two literary agents in London and I’m going to keep sending out until I can find someone to represent me.

None of this – the writing, the desire for publication, the confidence, the creativity – would have been possible without you guys. Your encouragement, kindness and support has helped me achieve something that I never thought I would be capable of. In a World where people are all too ready to bitch, moan and criticise this blogging community is an absolute haven for those of us who have lost ourselves or felt alone and it’s amazing.

I suppose what I am trying to say is

 

Lisa x

P.S. If you’re wondering why I used the Rocky gif – my husband’s name was Adrian; I think he’d be proud of me.

Why Is This So Hard????

Since I started this blog a few months ago I’ve written over 125,000 words and, for the most part, they’ve all been pretty well behaved. They pop into my head in their droves, without any real prompting and then just seem to organise themselves into something that I can hand over to you guys. We have fun together, they flow and I ebb and we mosey along at our own pace, holding hands and skipping occasionally. So why is it that, when I try to organise them all into book format they decide that they hate me and they’re going on holiday without me?????

It’s not all of them you understand, ‘nice’, ‘then’, ‘if’ and a few others hang around but, to be honest, I think that’s just sheer laziness on their part, they’ve been in my head for so many years they just can’t be arsed to move. Their more exotic counterparts however, have no compunction in sodding of to the beach the second I sit down to write anything longer than 1,000 words – why? It’s not like I don’t look after them and try to make their lives interesting; they spend their time swanning around on blog posts, flexing their muscles and throwing sly winks at the pretty little poems that live on other sites, no-one could call that onerous could they?

You would think that, now they have French words to compete with for my attention, they’d be a little bit more co-operative and make an effort to wrap themselves around my thoughts in an orderly fashion but oh no! However, sneaky I am: offering to bring ‘scurrilous’ and ‘bunbury’ out of retirement, promising to keep ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ confined to quarters, nothing will get the little buggers to work in a group big enough to warrant the title ‘book’.

Worse even than that is the way that they run around scaring my thoughts so that they panic and go wandering off all over the place. A few hundred words wrapped around a couple of interesting thoughts and there’s perfect harmony, ask for anything more than that and I’ve got anarchy on my hands! Admittedly there are some thoughts that don’t want words wrapped around them and will fight them off kicking and screaming but I really don’t see why that should prompt this kind of rebellion.

I’m not going to give up, I’ll find some way of getting thoughts and words together for long enough so that I’ll be able to wrestle them into a book but until then you’re stuck with the blog I’m afraid…..

Have a wonderful day everyone and, if you have any suggestions for placating words they’d be gratefully received

Lisa x