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It has been a glorious day here in my part of the UK.  I’d been sitting in my favorite cafe typing, well also watching the world go by.  Secretly, I was eyeing up a couple of hunky builders, while drinking my latte. Even though I was not trying to attract either man, I was still thinking that I wish I had worn something nicer.  And that led to me thinking about body image.  And do we really look as we think we do?  Or maybe it should be, how we wish we looked vs. how we actually look. There is...

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Have you ever had the experience of knowing you should be working, but the intoxicating presence of somebody, a light, a warmth that stops you from doing any work at all?  The feeling is very much like a teenage crush, intense and addictive.  You spend time waiting for them to show up, like a kid waiting for the ice cream van. It is akin to the hook of a story, that just wants you to read one more page, reach the end of one more chapter. It is the feeling that you know you should be somewhere or do something,...

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Always a good family time, I hope you are having a great Mother’s Day.  It is a good time to make it a little special for your mum.  Flowers? Chocolates? A good book? How will you be celebrating Mother’s Day? In the UK we have already had Mother’s Day, but it is always nice that you can think of it again for the second time.  So what will your day look like? A family meeting?  Maybe lunch out; that is always popular here. I could not resist mentioning the gift of a good book, and a little mention of our...

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I always had a love-hate relationship with edits; I guess we all do.  In one and the same time; your edits are the thing you most want to see, you have the expectation that your writing is flawless, and dreading that what you have written has more holes than Swiss cheese.  Like it or not we are too close to our work to see the flaws we need the extra eyes to give a clear cynical view of our stories. So, the day comes, and the e-mail is there from your editor you take a deep breath hoping for a...

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Are you the kind of person that works on weekends? Or do you think of writing like a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday, kind of thing?  I have always been a bit work-obsessed and find it hard to separate work time, from chill time.  I find getting the balance between work and home, quite challenging sometimes.  This weekend I have a pile of scripts to review and some promotional work. I love my job so it doesn’t feel like work at all, and it is totally my choice to work the way I do.  Especially with my writing, I...

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You can’t avoid the topic of sex when you work in a romance publishing house. I try not to talk about it too much in blogs because I don’t want folk to think that is all we talk about here.  But for a couple of reasons, this topic came up.  There are a few parts to this, so I hope you will bear with me. Ric told me of a discussion he had with a BVS published author, no names, she asked if her new story was sexy enough. I thought this an interesting topic for a few reasons.  How...

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