First submission made!

Yes, I’ve got my synopsis, three chapters with a (fabulous!) letter out to an agent. It’s quite emotional, letting the A4 envelope disappear into into the postbox slot and hearing the ‘thunk’ as it hits the bottom of the cage inside. At that stage, my first thought was ‘Oh, God, the postbox is empty – […]

Sweating over my cover letter to agents…

It’s a cliché, but it’s damn right! The business of getting an agent, getting your book published and sold is definitely as hard, if not harder, as writing the novel in the first place. Similar to when you’re pregnant. You think being pregnant is bad (sickness, lassitude, ruined feet, stretch marks, galloping appetite, pan-galactic weight […]

Crime and Romance – any connections?

I went to an RNA London South East meeting yesterday with fellow newbie Rachel to hear Alison Joseph, author of the ‘Sister Agnes’ series, compare story structure in the two genres.

She observed that while crime and romance in the same story may be rare, there were similarities in the framework and essential elements. Both […]

Sorting out your Romans from your Visigoths, Carolingians et al.

Doing a bit of research into the post-Roman world, I came across Chris Wickham’s The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000. It’s brilliant!

From the first page, I was enthralled. Now, I’m a self-confessed Roman nut and intrigued by that mysterious time in Europe after the mid-400s AD until the […]

My first RNA lunch

As a brand new member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, I’m keen to take part in as many events as possible this year. I’d enjoyed myself (and learnt a lot) at the January and March meetings and had been impressed and touched by the very warm welcome given to not-yet-published ‘newbies’.

I was therefore looking […]