Well its been nearly a year since I last blogged
unless you count my once every three months at the Pink Heart Society.
So what’s been happening? Overall this year has been
all about transition and learning and moving out of my comfort zone…
Writing Life:
Well
I spent the year on a learning curve…learning how to make the transition from
KISS/ Modern Tempted to Harlequin Romance.
Did
I succeed? Time
will tell when my debut Romance (Christmas Kisses with Her Boss) hits the shelves
on 1st December.
How
did I find the curve? My voice had always straddled the
two lines so for me it was the question of working out how to keep true to my
voice and true to the promise of the Romance Line. So I found the process
almost like a puzzle I needed to work out – and like with any good puzzles I
had some eureka moments and some moments of wanting to hurl my keyboard down
and give up. What I liked most was the opportunity to dig really deep for
emotional depth and to centre the push and pull around my characters fighting
emotional closeness.
What
next? Well I’ve just turned in revisions on my next
Romance which will hopefully come out in May and I have a few ideas for my next
book floating around in my head.
Non-writing Life
The
biggest change has been the new addition to our family – our beautiful dog
Dottie. I love her to pieces but it has been another transition and another
learning curve as I have never owned a dog before.
Dottie is a rescue dog – she comes from Spain where
she was abandoned on the streets and then spent time in a kennel before being
brought over here. She is a Spanish Mastin/ Shepherd cross and at 33kilos is a somewhat
large addition to the family! And that in itself has caused some issues – a lot
of people get very worried by big dogs and I’ll be honest for a while I was a
little apprehensive myself – only because we were getting to know her and we
didn’t know for sure if she had any negative learned behaviour. After all she
had to survive on the street for months.
Turns out she is the most tolerant, placid dog in
the world but with an enormous independent streak which makes walking her a bit
eventful as she will just disappear off to do her own thing. She does always
come back and she does keep an eye on where we are but she does go a long way
and I’ve had to learn to trust her process and panic less!!
Maybe that’s something I should do in my writing
life as I embark on Romance Book 3!!
I’ll keep you posted and check back later this week
for some giveaway links to my Christmas book!
Nina xx
