erastes

It’s pouring today, a real Autumn day. There’s little chance of me getting online today – the wifi free connection is tenuous as best, but works better without a ton of rain and cloud. I’ll take a couple of pictures and compare them to the picture of the garden (dad’s that is) in spring.

I’m adapting quite nicely to not looking things up instantly, and it’s definitely helped me stay writing rather than “write 20 words then spend three hours procrastinating” What I do is put the thing I’m not sure about in block letters and highlight it in red, then I look it up later when I’m at home. For example, I mentioned a shooting-brake yesterday, then went to look that up later—and found that yes, they did have shooting brakes but they were pretty ginormous cars

and as far as I could see Rolls Royce or Bentleys. My family could probably afford either, but I’ve changed it to a tourer, which would have been an open top (convertible) number like this one.

It was a case of getting six people from A to B – I suppose at a pinch I could have them use two cars. BUT DOES IT REALLY MATTER? argh.

Other things like not knowing the correct terminology for the opening hit in polo (if there is one) e.g kick off for football, bully off for hockey - did the word “zipped” exist (as in moving around fast) and did the A396 exist at the time? (ok – the road definitely would have existed, but was it CALLED the A396?) Such mundanities are the meat and drink to a historical writer’s day. Such glamour.

How do you research? At the time like I used to? Or do you save it up like I have to do now?

No word from the agent yet regarding the Carina negotiations. Yes, I must be more patient. I noted the other day that they’d had 1800 submissions in six months and are running about 5 percent acceptance (which seems quite high) (counts on fingers, that’s…90? acceptances? Maths is NOT my strong point. Still seems quite high then, more than one release a week, if that’s so. Anyway, I am very pleased to be accepted. I don’t think I would put a full sized novel into e-book only format (or even “e-book for now, print if it does well” as many publishers are these days, but I don’t mind putting novellas into e-book, it seems a natural fit, even though I will always prefer print or print AND ebook I’m afraid.

Watch this space, heard that PD Publishing have got their ebook contract nearly sorted out, so there should be news in that direction soon!