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| Weeeellllll..... |
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| Did...did you just call me MELONCAP? Pffftt! |
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| I feel like this most days!! |
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| A BRILLIANT PREMISE FOR A PRESENTS, NO? |
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| LOLCAT, FTW! |
Tuesday, 15 May 2012
It's a LOLCATS Kinda Day!
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Free Books, Free Books!!
Roll up, roll up!
My lovely CP, Sally Clements is at it again.
For today and tomorrow only, she's giving away copies of not one, but TWO books.
Catch Me A Catch, a brilliant story about love and chocolate (how can you resist?) is FREE until Friday 11 May, and The Morning After, a wonderful friends to lovers story is available for TODAY ONLY!
Click on the links below for your free copies. Go on, you know you want to ;)
Catch Me A Catch - Amazon.com
Catch Me A Catch - Amazon.co.uk
The Morning After - Amazon.com
The Morning After - Amazon.co.uk
Maya x
My lovely CP, Sally Clements is at it again.
For today and tomorrow only, she's giving away copies of not one, but TWO books.
Catch Me A Catch, a brilliant story about love and chocolate (how can you resist?) is FREE until Friday 11 May, and The Morning After, a wonderful friends to lovers story is available for TODAY ONLY!
Click on the links below for your free copies. Go on, you know you want to ;)
Catch Me A Catch - Amazon.com
Catch Me A Catch - Amazon.co.uk
The Morning After - Amazon.com
The Morning After - Amazon.co.uk
Maya x
Friday, 4 May 2012
Knuckling Down & Personal Goals
Also known as "The Angst of Book 2" or the "I-have-to-do-this-all-over-again?"
As you can probably tell by my woeful word count on Damion & Reiko's book, I didn't reach the expected target of 27.5k by 30 April. In fact I fell far, far short. Eeeeeep!
Since I don't want to be a one-book wonder, I guess I need to get my butt in gear.
This week hasn't been too bad. Despite being bone tired almost every single night and with DS's 7th birthday celebrations thrown in, I've managed to get a few thousand words done. The book is shaping up nicely and I'm really excited about where I'm going with this one!
But, no more excuses, especially since we have a long weekend in the UK this week, plus I've set a personal deadline for subbing the partial to my editor, so I need to get a move on.
Here's where I need your help, blogger friends. I'll be disappointed with myself if I don't meet my 15 May deadline, so if you see me lurking about too long on Twitter (come on, a girl needs her tweeps!) or posting pictures of hunky hunks on Pinterest, feel free to kick my ass!
As you can probably tell by my woeful word count on Damion & Reiko's book, I didn't reach the expected target of 27.5k by 30 April. In fact I fell far, far short. Eeeeeep!
Since I don't want to be a one-book wonder, I guess I need to get my butt in gear.
This week hasn't been too bad. Despite being bone tired almost every single night and with DS's 7th birthday celebrations thrown in, I've managed to get a few thousand words done. The book is shaping up nicely and I'm really excited about where I'm going with this one!
But, no more excuses, especially since we have a long weekend in the UK this week, plus I've set a personal deadline for subbing the partial to my editor, so I need to get a move on.
Here's where I need your help, blogger friends. I'll be disappointed with myself if I don't meet my 15 May deadline, so if you see me lurking about too long on Twitter (come on, a girl needs her tweeps!) or posting pictures of hunky hunks on Pinterest, feel free to kick my ass!
Have you set yourself any personal goals this month? Or waiting on sub? Either way, I wish you the best of luck. And if all else, we can always...
Have a fabulous long weekend!!
Maya xx
Thursday, 19 April 2012
A Week Made Of Awesome!
The last seven days have been by far some of the best days of my life! In fact, April has been pretty great to me, starting with a little snippet of good news at the day job in week one and getting The Call in week two.
This week came with news of my release date and book title!
Yes, folks, Sasha and Marco's story has a title – THE PRICE OF SUCCESS!
The title so fits them so perfectly, I got goose bumps when I first saw it. These two battled heart-breaking tragedy and fought so hard not to go under and thoroughly deserved their HEA in the end!
THE PRICE OF SUCCESS will be a UK December 2012 release (just in time for Christmas!) and I'm beyond excited that I get to hold my book in time for the holidays!
I'm now off to pray to the cover fairies and hope I haven't spent my good news quota, lol. If you have news to share, I'd love to hear!
Maya xx
This week came with news of my release date and book title!
Yes, folks, Sasha and Marco's story has a title – THE PRICE OF SUCCESS!
The title so fits them so perfectly, I got goose bumps when I first saw it. These two battled heart-breaking tragedy and fought so hard not to go under and thoroughly deserved their HEA in the end!
THE PRICE OF SUCCESS will be a UK December 2012 release (just in time for Christmas!) and I'm beyond excited that I get to hold my book in time for the holidays!
I'm now off to pray to the cover fairies and hope I haven't spent my good news quota, lol. If you have news to share, I'd love to hear!
Maya xx
Thursday, 12 April 2012
My Call Story
I’ve dreamed of this day for sooooo long, I can’t even tell you. Well, I suppose you want all the deets, right?
Ahem, here we go.
My older sister gave me my first Harlequin Presents when I was thirteen years old (I reminded her today and she cried!), and I fell head over heels in love with them. So much so, I tried to write one shortly after that. It went horribly wrong when my hero couldn’t decide which identical twin sister he wanted, so proposed to them both, lol!
Fast-forward to 2005, my maternity leave was drawing to a close after having Child 2 and the heartbreak of leaving him to return to work was tearing me apart. I started writing again as a coping mechanism, mostly at work (hope my ex-boss doesn’t read this!) to take my mind off missing my kids. Of course, any writing was always going to involve Harlequin Presents. I started to like what I wrote, and even dared to think I could be published, so I sent off my first three chapters! The form R winged back faster than lightning, lol. By then though, I'd been bitten by the writing bug.
My next one got another form R. I joined a few writing groups, and made some wonderful writing friends and tried to hone my writing. I also joined the Romantic Novelists Association, and sent off my third to their writing scheme and received encouragement from the mentors. Although that third story got an R, it was an R with notes! Then came the Instant Seduction Competition. My ms didn’t place, but I got a letter from the Senior Editor requesting the full! I was thrilled!!!
Alas, after two long years, that ms was also R’d but I received a long encouraging letter from the editor which spurred me on. I decided to enter the Harlequin Presents Writing Competition 2009. Two wonderful things happened – I met a great bunch of women who later became my CPs! And even though I didn’t place in this competition either, another Senior Editor asked for the partial of a different story. I sent it in August 2010 and got a request from Lucy Gilmour for the full ms in November. I hadn’t quite finished the story, so I eventually sent it to her in January 2011. She sent me revisions 9 days later! I returned them to her in February.
Unfortunately, that ms didn’t quite make the cut and the revised full was rejected in June 2011. Knowing I was close but not quite making it was, as many writers can attest to, heartbreaking. I was DETERMINED to get the next one right, so I asked Lucy for guidance.
She asked for two different first chapters, chose one and asked me to work on it. I sent three chapters in and started on yet another story as I waited for feedback. I got feedback but I felt in my gut that the newest story was much stronger. When Lucy contacted me in January 2012 to ask where the story was (oops!) I had to own up and say I’d started a new one instead. She asked for the partial, came back to me a few days later and asked for the full. Four weeks after that, I got a 5-page revision letter! It was daunting to say the least but I’d come too far go give up! Lucy and I agreed on a 3-week turnaround and sent the revisions in on 26th March.
Yesterday afternoon, I received an email from Lucy to say she wanted to discuss my ms with me. I told her I’d be free after 9am this morning. My phone rang at 9.56am (yep, I checked). I said “Hi Lucy” before she even got a chance to say hello. She laughed and said, “I was going to say this is Lucy Gilmour from Harlequin Mills and Boon, but I guess you already know that.”
I laughed, I babbled, I was mainly incoherent and didn’t let her get a word in. I stopped talking long enough to hear the words, “My Senior Editor, Joanne Grant read your story in 90 minutes and didn’t even take a break for lunch because she loved it so much.” I stopped breathing until I heard “…so we’d like to offer you a two-book contract.” There was a lot of OMGs and thank yous, one or two, “I don’t believe it” and definitely a thousand “I’m so happys!!”
Lucy was very gracious through all my babbling and eventually extracted herself from my cyber hugs. I hung up to find my husband grinning at me. He hugged me and said, “I knew you would do it. Very well done.”
That’s when the tears started.
Ahem, here we go.
My older sister gave me my first Harlequin Presents when I was thirteen years old (I reminded her today and she cried!), and I fell head over heels in love with them. So much so, I tried to write one shortly after that. It went horribly wrong when my hero couldn’t decide which identical twin sister he wanted, so proposed to them both, lol!
Fast-forward to 2005, my maternity leave was drawing to a close after having Child 2 and the heartbreak of leaving him to return to work was tearing me apart. I started writing again as a coping mechanism, mostly at work (hope my ex-boss doesn’t read this!) to take my mind off missing my kids. Of course, any writing was always going to involve Harlequin Presents. I started to like what I wrote, and even dared to think I could be published, so I sent off my first three chapters! The form R winged back faster than lightning, lol. By then though, I'd been bitten by the writing bug.
My next one got another form R. I joined a few writing groups, and made some wonderful writing friends and tried to hone my writing. I also joined the Romantic Novelists Association, and sent off my third to their writing scheme and received encouragement from the mentors. Although that third story got an R, it was an R with notes! Then came the Instant Seduction Competition. My ms didn’t place, but I got a letter from the Senior Editor requesting the full! I was thrilled!!!
Alas, after two long years, that ms was also R’d but I received a long encouraging letter from the editor which spurred me on. I decided to enter the Harlequin Presents Writing Competition 2009. Two wonderful things happened – I met a great bunch of women who later became my CPs! And even though I didn’t place in this competition either, another Senior Editor asked for the partial of a different story. I sent it in August 2010 and got a request from Lucy Gilmour for the full ms in November. I hadn’t quite finished the story, so I eventually sent it to her in January 2011. She sent me revisions 9 days later! I returned them to her in February.
Unfortunately, that ms didn’t quite make the cut and the revised full was rejected in June 2011. Knowing I was close but not quite making it was, as many writers can attest to, heartbreaking. I was DETERMINED to get the next one right, so I asked Lucy for guidance.
She asked for two different first chapters, chose one and asked me to work on it. I sent three chapters in and started on yet another story as I waited for feedback. I got feedback but I felt in my gut that the newest story was much stronger. When Lucy contacted me in January 2012 to ask where the story was (oops!) I had to own up and say I’d started a new one instead. She asked for the partial, came back to me a few days later and asked for the full. Four weeks after that, I got a 5-page revision letter! It was daunting to say the least but I’d come too far go give up! Lucy and I agreed on a 3-week turnaround and sent the revisions in on 26th March.
Yesterday afternoon, I received an email from Lucy to say she wanted to discuss my ms with me. I told her I’d be free after 9am this morning. My phone rang at 9.56am (yep, I checked). I said “Hi Lucy” before she even got a chance to say hello. She laughed and said, “I was going to say this is Lucy Gilmour from Harlequin Mills and Boon, but I guess you already know that.”
I laughed, I babbled, I was mainly incoherent and didn’t let her get a word in. I stopped talking long enough to hear the words, “My Senior Editor, Joanne Grant read your story in 90 minutes and didn’t even take a break for lunch because she loved it so much.” I stopped breathing until I heard “…so we’d like to offer you a two-book contract.” There was a lot of OMGs and thank yous, one or two, “I don’t believe it” and definitely a thousand “I’m so happys!!”
Lucy was very gracious through all my babbling and eventually extracted herself from my cyber hugs. I hung up to find my husband grinning at me. He hugged me and said, “I knew you would do it. Very well done.”
That’s when the tears started.
OMG!!!!!!
IT HAPPENED!!!
THE CALL...THE CALL...
I GOT...THE CALL!!!!!
(story coming soon, as soon I catch my breath!)
THE CALL...THE CALL...
I GOT...THE CALL!!!!!
(story coming soon, as soon I catch my breath!)
Monday, 2 April 2012
Sprin Clean & A Challenge!!
So I finished my revisions and whizzed them back to the editor's inbox last week *cue Alleluia chorus and huge sighs of relief*. Of course, once I'd breathed that huge sigh of relief and uncoiled myself from the foetal position of sheer exhaustion, my mind started to churn...will she like the changes I made? Did I change too much? Too little? Have I absolutely cratered the story with my suddenly-not-so-clever ideas? Will she...won't she...
Baahhhh!
It's out of my hands now.
There's absolutely nothing I can do but wait and see what the editor thinks. What I *CAN* do is fiddle around with my blog (ta-daaaa) and work on my next story!
I must say I'm loving the research stage of Damion & Reiko's story. Reiko is turning out to be a very interesting heroine with a very sad past. But she's also feisty and has the hallmarks of a kick-ass heroine destined to give Damion, my staid, don't-touch-me French aristocrat, nightmares, lol! It also features an older man as a possible love interest, something I've never done before, I don't think.
Here's a picture of her. Isn't she divine?
I've also made a Pinterest board for this book which I absolutely LOVE!
And now for the challenge of actually getting off Pinterest and writing this story! The idea is to write half this story by 30 April. That's 25k (or in my case, since I *always* exceed the word count - 27.5k). So that's...*counts on fingers, gives up, reaches for calculator*... just under 1k a day for the next 28 days.
I think that's infinitely doable, don't you?
So, what d'you say? Would you care to join me?
Baahhhh!
It's out of my hands now.
There's absolutely nothing I can do but wait and see what the editor thinks. What I *CAN* do is fiddle around with my blog (ta-daaaa) and work on my next story!
I must say I'm loving the research stage of Damion & Reiko's story. Reiko is turning out to be a very interesting heroine with a very sad past. But she's also feisty and has the hallmarks of a kick-ass heroine destined to give Damion, my staid, don't-touch-me French aristocrat, nightmares, lol! It also features an older man as a possible love interest, something I've never done before, I don't think.
Here's a picture of her. Isn't she divine?
I've also made a Pinterest board for this book which I absolutely LOVE!
And now for the challenge of actually getting off Pinterest and writing this story! The idea is to write half this story by 30 April. That's 25k (or in my case, since I *always* exceed the word count - 27.5k). So that's...*counts on fingers, gives up, reaches for calculator*... just under 1k a day for the next 28 days.
I think that's infinitely doable, don't you?
So, what d'you say? Would you care to join me?
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