Spring 2024
I am a terrible liar, because this blog post is many, many months overdue. In my defence, I have been writing two books, and I’m pleased to announce that one of them, Inheritance, is completely finished and fully edited. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll start submitting it to literary agents. I’m optimistic that it will appeal more than Taming D'Artagnan did, although I didn’t try very many of them with that because the OH persuaded me that I should self-publish D'Artagnan.
In the long run, I think he was right, but Inheritance is a different ballgame. It’s a standalone novel (although there are some dangling threads...) and while it’s not a romantic comedy, it is funny and there is romance in it. My literary critic and wonderful friend describes it as women's upmarket commercial fiction, and the central premise is something pretty much every women has had to consider at some point in their lives: motherhood. Yes, or no?
If I find an agent, it means time to publication will be long, 18 months to 2 years, unless I am accepted by one of the two digital agents/publishers I’m also going to submit to, in which case it might only be a few months. And ultimately, if I’ve not found an agent by September or so, I’ll probably self-publish.
My talented editor and excellent friend says ‘an agent would be stupid not to pick Inheritance up.’
We’ll see. I'm a lot less naive about the world of publishing than I used to be.
In other news, earlier this year Taming D'Artagnan was put on a list and sent to various TV/streaming services in the UK. A couple of them expressed interest, and one of them (quite a big one but no, not Netflix!) asked for all three in the series. Since then I’ve heard nothing, which I’ve had to learn the hard way is almost always what happens. I had a short, effusive trip into the emotional stratosphere and a heavy, hard landing when nothing came of it. But it’s now been two years since I discovered the joy of creating worlds on the keyboard and I’m getting a bit better at managing my stress levels and controlling the manic roller-coaster rides.
Nonetheless, I haven’t completely given up on getting D'Artagnan in front of the bigger streaming services. Fingers crossed. I know exactly which actor I’d want to play him too...
And I’ve also finished a first full draft of Imogen (working title). It’s a fabulous book. I love it, and I love the two main protagonists enormously. It’s written in the third person rather than in the first as the others have been, and that took a little getting used to but I think I’ve cracked it.
I’ve printed it and it’s sitting on my desk, all 77,573 words of it. I’ll begin the redraft before the end of the weekend.
The sixth book is percolating and I am making notes on my phone, Mac and in my notebook.
As I write, I’m sitting on our terrace overlooking the formal gardens of the wonderful, capricious chateau that we are fortunate, and crazy enough, to live in. The tiny jasmine plant that I planted at the edge of the terrace about four years ago has now pretty much strangled every other plant in the vicinity and is now heading determinedly up the drainpipe. It is on the very cusp of bursting into bloom and it smells utterly heavenly... it is 27 degrees Celsius, the bluebells are all out, the pink puffball-tree is in full bloom and there are at least twenty different shades of green in my immediate line of sight.
My wonderful OH has just brought me an Aperol spritz, so I’m going to stop now and, with luck and a following wind, I’ll upload this to my website now.
