Mark Goodwin's SHOD reviewed

My review of Mark Goodwin's SHOD from Nine Arches Press is now up at Hand + Star, for those readers who are interested in poetry.

Happy Birthday: Sold!

Yesterday was my birthday, which made it doubly exciting not only to travel down to London for the RNA Winter Party, but also to be called by my literary agent in the morning, quite out of the blue, and told that a potential deal was on the table for the huge Tudor historical I've been writing most of the year. Transworld had only received the full manuscript a couple of weeks before, so I hadn't been expecting such a rapid response.

An astonishing phone call. And what followed was my most memorable birthday ever!

Ten minutes after our little group of novelists was due to leave our Waterstones Picadilly pre-party 'tweet-up' and move on to the winter party proper, my mobile went. I dashed off to answer it somewhere quiet, and returned glowing, to let the others know my book had sold, as part of a three book deal, to Transworld for a very generous six figure sum.

Still processing that information here. It's so exciting and such a marvellous birthday present.

Though, perhaps needless to say, my youngest kids are all busy drawing up their hurriedly revised Christmas lists.

Another Year, Another Party

It's my birthday this week, and I've never been busier. It's odd though, how time seems to expand to fit everything in. At least, most of the time. There are still days when I don't quite get everything done that I'd hoped, or drop the ball on some activity.

There was freezing fog out there today on the school run. I had been intending to travel today, to go fifteen miles down the road and get a job done that's been pending for a while. But the fog persuaded me to stay home and do it another time. That's the beauty of working from home. You can be flexible and adapt to the circumstances.

It's the Romantic Novelists Association Winter Party in London tomorrow. I'm looking forward to that, always a sparkly affair, and have my party outfit all picked out. Plus the obligatory very steep heels.

Around my birthday, I always look back to see what I've done in the past year, and ahead to guess what might happen in the future.

2010 has been a massively busy and eventful year for me in professional terms. I got involved in writing my vast Tudor historical, which is now finished and with my agent. I stepped down from the editorship of Horizon Review, and became editor of a digital fiction imprint instead. I joined the RNA again, after a lapse of several years, and have made efforts to go to events and meet more novelists, get more involved in the 'scene' - which is very different from the poetry 'scene'!

But I have a feeling I've only been laying the foundations this year, and that 2011 will see me reaping the rewards for my hard work. That's the theory, anyway.

The End of the Novel

Well, at the weekend I reached the end of my Tudor historical, which is over 120,000 words long, did all the usual twiddling and fiddling today, then emailed it off to my agent.

What next?