The wonders of You Tube

Now you see it, now you don't...

You might have noticed a You Tube video of a couple doing the rumba appearing randomly on this blog. It was meant to go to the Other Place but turned up here by mistake, so I've sent it packing...

However, I thought I'd share this with you instead.

a) in honour of the new series of Dr Who returning to our screens on Saturday April 5 -woohoo! The Maniac Family can't wait...
b) with thanks to Persephone who found it for me
and
c) by way of explanation of strange conversation with aforementioned lovely Persephone in my comments section about a song called She's Got You High.

I have mentioned before that I use songs to get me in the right mood for certain scenes when I'm writing. At the moment I am gathering my playlist for the next book, which is going to be (I hope) a bit of a Christmas fairytale. The starting point for a book is always more joyous then the endpoint I find, because you still imagine that the ideas in your head will be realised in exactly the right way, whereas there is always a certain disappointment about seeing them transferred from your head to the page. Or that's been my experience anyway...

But this early bit, it's great fun, and I am having lots of ideas floating in and out and around my head at the moment in between ploughing on with the line edits of Strictly Love.

As my ideas float in and out, I find certain songs stick in my head as being just perfect for different aspects of the story/different character's theme tunes, and as I'm in the car rather alot I tend to listen to the same songs ad nauseam. The kids have now joined in with this, with great enthusiasm, so the playlist in our car goes something like this at the moment:

CD1 Track 1 (shouts no 3) - Worried about Ray, by the Hoosiers. Now I shared this rather batty video with you a while back, and I can't for the life of me see how a song about someone who made bad monster movies in the fifties can possibly have anything to do with the story I'm writing, but the tune is catchy and it's in my head, so maybe it will work its way in there somewhere.
CD2 Track 6 (is no 2's favourite) Your Love Alone is Not Enough by the Manic Street Preachers. It is not uncommon for you to see Maniac Mum driving her offspring between afterschool activities and for us all to be singing at the top of our voices, "When times get tough, they get tough, they get tough, they get tough..."
CD4 Track 9 (Mummy's favourite) Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones - I have a manic depressive in the story. So that should work...
CD2 Track 5 (No 1's favourite) The Other Side of the World To Me, KT Tunstall, which is the perfect song for all sorts of dynamics which I intend to be going on.
Not on any CD in the car, but absolutely spot on for one of my heroines is Bryan Ferry's fabulous Let's Stick Together - an anthem for all long term relationships if I ever heard one, and Coral's Put the Sun Back which is going to be her theme tune.

But there's been one song driving me absolutely insane.

CD1 Track 12 It's a bright, uplifting, optimistic song about falling in love almost before you know it and is just perfect for my other heroine and her love interest, but I knew neither its name nor its provenance. And as the CD player is in the car that Spouse normally drives, I couldn't find the box with the titles on either. I searched google and You Tube to no avail, and was beginning to tear my hair out in desperation. I mentioned this in passing on Marie Philips blog last week as she was talking about songs to which you can't remember all the words to . And blow me, Persephone not only found out - it's She's Got You High, by Mumm-Ra - but also found this Dr Who fest of Martha's best bits, that someone has put to the song. God, people are clever. I can't work out how to download stuff from You Tube and put it to muisic (hence my interactive experiment on the other blog) - but I think this is great.

No 1 was away all weekend on a trip to France and didn't get back till gone midnight on Tuesday. So I had a party of one and sat in the car listening to all of the above, along with Kinks live from Kelvin Hall (I LOVE Ray Davies). But I sang loudest of all to this... So anyone who was parked in a Surrey Sainsburys' car park the other night, yes, the mad woman singing to herself was indeed me...

Enjoy...

(And many thanks Persephone!)

Stop Press!

I am doing my very first book event EVER at Blackwells in Oxford as part of the Oxfringe week. So if you're in the area come along from 1-2.30pm next Monday, 31 March. I have done events for children, I have spoken about numerous other authors books, and indeed today have taken part in a Book Week at no 4's school, but nothing dear reader seems nearly as intimidating as spending fifteen minutes reading from my own work and answering questions about it...

So with any luck I shall find a suitable passage of this to read from:



And if time permits, I may talk about the inspirations behind book two, Strictly Love which though not directly inspired by this picture, certainly shares its sentiments. But if you want to know more about that (and take part in an unique interactive blogging/YouTube/music event) you can toddle over to the Other Place now for more on that...



So, if you're in the Oxford area next Monday, why not pop into Blackwell's, and if you're a reader of this blog, do come and say hi....

Sport's Relief

I'm a bit late blogging about this, but as you're probably aware it was Sports Relief Day on Friday.

I have banged on tediously before about the need for kids to become engaged in sport, which sadly doesn't happen at all at the schools my offspring attend. Indeed, no 1 is depressingly replicating both mine and Spouse's experience of sport at school. If you are crap, as Spouse and I were, and she is, you get swiftly demoralised as no one is very interested in your achievements.

I have been working very very hard to counter this negativity. Since I did the marathon three years ago, the girls have all taken a keen interest in running - no 1 like me is slow and steady but she does possess stamina, so I am dragging both her and no 2 out onto the downs again for this summer's Race for Life. We three are all also planning to do the Swimathon in April. No 1 is keen on swimming, so while I could stop her swimming lessons now on the basis she is perfectly safe and able, I am keeping them going for a bit longer, just so she gets some exercise she enjoys. I have also got her enrolled at our local gym where, hallelujah, some bright spark has had the wit to put on a programme for 11-14s. She loves it and can go at her own pace, and not feel as she normally does in school that she is bottom of the class. On top of that, there's tennis, which was my sport growing up, and looks like it's going to be hers too.

I have tried to drum in to all of them the importance of exercise for its own sake. I do agree that sport should be competitive (something sadly missing from my childrens' sport experience), but I also think that just because most of us are never going to be champions that shouldn't preclude us from making sport an essential and enjoyable part of our lives.

Since doing the marathon, which I can honestly say is something I never ever thought I could do, I have joined a triathlon club. Although I have always been a keen swimmer, I was never taught how to do it properly, and my technique sucked. Two years ago I went along as a novice and learnt crawl from scratch. I spent eighteen months in what is laughingly known as the baby lane at the club, where the brilliant coach, broke down the stroke, and built itup again, till I eventually graduated from the baby lane last summer, and can now swim 1500m crawl (not fast, true, but I can do it) without any problems.

I mention all this, because over the last three years I've discovered something about myself and my ablities to improve my fitness and stamina and technique in ways I could never have imagined before, and I wish someone had let me in on the secret earlier.

Which is why I was delighted that the school nos2 & 3 attend put on a Sport's Relief event on Friday. It was supposed to be a mile but the weather was crap so they held it indoors (less said about that the better - every hint of rain and they get them indoors.Elf and Safety insists, just in case someone slips and hurts themselves. My lot were out running round the tennis club in the pouring rain on Thursday to no harm whatsoever. Grrr!!!!).

I was pretty cross about this at first, as I had given up my afternoon to marshall, and I thought the event would turn out to be a damp squib. But hats off to the brilliantly energetic woman who organised it, each class got a fifteen minute, very vigorous work out, which they thoroughly enjoyed. It was such fun, myself and several other mums joined in. I had been swimming in the morning, but found myself able to keep up, though I was flagging by the end of the third session and my muscles still feel achy even today.

The great thing about it was though, was that ALL the kids enjoyed it and were engaged. You could see even the plumper less athletic ones really going hell for leather. It was fantastic, and just what sport in schools should be about (which isn't too say they shouldn't do organised games like football etc), because it is the first time in the eight years since no 1 started school that I have actually seen kids doing sporty stuff and really enjoying it.

So hats off to Sport's Relief, which is a good cause anyway, but is also I think on the quiet providing a really really good means for children everywhere to get the feeling for once that sport really can include them...

Another peek through the Looking Glass...

Yesterday I saw my newsagent friend, and apparently the police are now saying the matter is closed. Which is big of them. I also read this in the local paper on Thursday, where they denied they had asked him to take down any signs. (So where are they? He doesn't have them.)

They still have to tell him in writing he faces no threat of legal action in regard to this matter, but have warned him that should he put up other signs which cause offence to someone who complains the whole debacle can start all over again. Apparently (PU, perhaps you can put me right on this, because it sounds horribly depressing if it's true), if my friend for example were to write something derogatory about me, say (Local Author Makes It All Up), and I don't give a hoot (all good publicity say I), but a passerby who loves my books is offended on my behalf, he/she is entitled to make a complaint. Which strikes me as bloody silly, and more evidence of the looking glass world we inhabit.

Hilariously a barrister has offered to defend him for nothing should he need it - I say hilariously, because the barrister in question is black, although the solicitor who's volunteered the same is white. Yesterday when I was in his shop it was full of white people joshing him about his incipient racism. This is what we should all be big enough and ugly enough to be able to do.

So now my friend is in a catch-22 situation - can he resume his humorous posting about the news, or will he forever live under the shadow of risking another visit from the boys in blue for causing a myopic, one legged bandit from Mars offence for mentioning that men are from Mars and women are from Venus - given that calling a Martian a human is the worst insult on Mars?

In a world where apparently Basil Brush is being castigated for making a truly awful (all BB's jokes are truly awful and always were) joke about gypsies, anything can happen.

Personally I think we should all lighten up and learn not to take offence so readily.

And take a leaf out of my friend's book.

A notice now proudly proclaims that the IR are imposing a 25% laughter tax on anyone entering the shop, and another politely suggests that if you are likely to be offended by anything you read in the shop window, you might perhaps like to shop elsewhere....

The State We're In

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake

I've had a bit of a thing about William Blake ever since one of my English lecturers pointed out that Jerusalem is in fact a rebel song and wondered what the good ladies of the WI (this was pre the days when they barracked Tony Blair you understand) would have made of it if they'd really understood what he was on about.

I mention Blake now, because a) I think the above poem has huge relevance to the state of our nation (to my mind it's in pretty poor health) and b) I also see him as someone who embodies the spirit of what I think most right thinking liberals would value in our native Isles.

We live in very strange times. Where once (as per my previous post) it was taken for granted that the British values of freedom of speech, liberty and fair play and the ability to stand up for the underdog were a Good Thing, now it almost de rigeur for such values to be sneered at as having no place in multi cultural Britain. Mulit cultural Britain. The very phrase makes my toes curl (I much prefer Hanif Kureishi's cheery assumption on Front Page the other night that he is English). I also hate political correctness with a passion - to me it is the antithesis of free thought. Any right minded person would detest racism in all its forms, but redressing the balance by loading it in favour of people because of their race, sex or creed is just wrong in my view. I came to this conclusion twenty years ago, when working on a playscheme for kids with learning disabilties (or in those non pc days, mentally handicapped children). I made a complaint against a co worker because I saw her threaten an autistic kid with a shoe, and was accused of racism because the worker in question was black. No matter that the kid involved was also black, this was 1980s Bernie Grant Haringay, and the fact that I, a white woman, had the temerity to complain about a black woman, automatically made me racist. I couldn't have given a fig for her colour. I did, however, care that a vulnerable child was potentially at risk.

I have thought long and hard about writing this post. In fact, I have been thinking about it for nearly a year, which makes me realise how far we have let the notion of freedom of speech be eroded. We are not quite in an Orwellian world of a doublespeak, but we are not I think, far from it. Because for a middle class, middle aged white woman to write about issues of race without feeling anxious she is going to get a charge of racism levelled against her (which is what so far, has stopped me writing this post), suggests to me that to paraphrase my hero Ray Davies, it's a crazy shook up mixed up world. So shook up and crazy, in fact, that I frequently think we are living through the Looking Glass, as common sense on so many issues seems to have gone out of the window. There are so many nutty things reported in recent years I scarcely know where to begin, but one story that has really stopped me in my tracks, and made me think it is time to stand up and be counted, is something that happened to a local shopkeeper recently.

The chap in question is a wonderful example of how a newsagent can be at the heart of his community. He is vocal on local issues, supporting recent campaigns to save our hospital, and prevent Tesco's building a superstore in an inappropriate location. His shop is also a focal point for discussion and dissemination of local information. But more then that he provides us all with a huge laugh on a daily basis by writing up banner headlines every day based on the news of the day, given his own particular twist. No one is safe from his witty ripostes, and he takes regular pops at the government, the media, Islamic fundamentalists and more recently the Archbishop of Canterbury. I'm not terribly good at remembering jokes, but his funniest diatribe was about Gordon Brown becoming a suicide bomber for Hezbollah, and ended along the lines that they were all a bunch of Hammasses.

It's all very harmless, and extremely funny.

Not apparently, though, to Surrey Police. On Valentine's Day I passed my friend's shop and he had posted up a hilarious piece about the Archibishop of Canterbury's ridiculous opinings on sharia law. My friend took it one stage further and suggested that people should get discounts for Valentine's Day stonings. It was, as all his "news" items are, a joke. A passerby came in and took offence. The aforementioned passerby was aggressive and rude to my friend's wife, and also totally missed the point and thought my friend really was calling for the introduction of sharia law. He stormed into the local shopping centre and demanded that security guys come in and remove the offending posters. Getting no joy there he went to our helpful boys in blue.

In an ideal world (or perhaps, better then that, if we could revert for five minutes to Gene Hunt's world) the boys in blue would have treated this with ridicule it deserves. However, thanks to the powers given them by our busybodying government, stupid targets which mean it's easy to bully local shopkeepers, and( if local rumour is to be believed) an over zealous new police commissioner who wants to make a name for herself (not sure if the last is true), our local boys in blue covered themselves in glory by not only removing all the offending posters, but threatening my friend with prosecution under the incitement to religious hatred laws.

The police have been to see my friend five times in a period of twelve days about this very important matter. They have yet to respond to his calls for their help when twelve year old boys from a local school are abusing his wife when she won't let them read porn mags.

Although our local paper reports that the police are planning no further action in this matter they have yet to bother to tell my friend and his wife. Which is nice of them.

So inundated have national papers been by my friend's customers who have been outraged on his behalf, you may well be reading his story in next week's papers. He understandably is a bit anxious about putting himself in the public spotlight like this, but I think his story is important because it tells us something vital about the fragility of free speech in this country, and also the nonsense of so much politically correct thinking.

You might think as I live in a leafy Surrey market town the chap who has caused all this offence is a your typical middle Englander, white bigoted card carrying member of UKIP, but not a bit of it. My friend is a British Asian, and as such should be the sort of person who ought to be being held up as a prime example of how integration can and should work in this country, not being subjected to this low level bullying. He is big enough (and outrageously funny enough) to be able to take all sorts of flak thrown at him, and the flak he throws out at others is harmless and funny and not at all offensive (unless you are the sort of sad person who takes offence at anything).

In these strange times in which we live, my friend's humorous approach to often difficult subjects should be applauded not berated.

Whether Blake's vision of Jerusalem being built in England's green and pleasant land was ever a realistic one I don't know. But I do know that what my friend has just been through is an unedifying example of just how small minded and intolerant our nation is becoming. If we are ever to build Jerusalem here, I think it's time for the silent majority to make their voice heard.



In the meantime, if you feel as outraged by this story as I do, please spare five minutes to write to the Commissioner for Surrey Police to let them know. It seems to me it is too damned easy in this looking glass world for the minority to bully the silent majority. And I reckon it's about time the silent majority started standing up for itselfa bit more...

Look and Learn

When I was a child there was a very well known educational magazine published weekly called Look and Learn (a quick google of it tells me that it ran for twenty years from 1962-82). My older brother who is terribly clever used to subscribe to it and another great sixties classic, Knowledge. Of the two L&L was my favourite, as there was rather less emphasis on Difficult Scientific Topics (though I did love the stuff on astronomy) and more on my favourite subjects of literature and history. It also came with a weekly cartoon strip called the Trigan Empire, which featured the eponymous hero, the Emperor Trigo, who weekly staved off evil to defend his empire and its people from threat. Bizarrely though ostensibly an SF story, all the characters dressed and acted as if they were living in Roman times, so the result was a weird meld between ancient history and sixties high tech futuristic musings. But for all that oddity, somehow it worked...

I think that L&L was probably quite pricey because we didn't always get it, but at some point during the seventies some incredibly generous person offloaded about ten yearsworth of L&Ls on my parents so we had a veritable store to choose from. I can remember the pleasure of going into our ancient toy cupboard, and grabbing a magazine from the shelf where they were crammed while simultaneously trying to ensure the whole lot didn't come tumbling down on your shoulders, before settling down for a reading experience, the like of which I haven't had replicated in my adult life. Ever.

Until this week that is. It was Spouse's birthday on Monday, and in a total nostalgia fest kind of way, one of the presents I bought him was The Big Bumper Book of Look and Learn , compiled from the best bits. (OK, OK, I did buy it for me, as he didn't read it as much as I did, but what's the point of other people's birthdays if you don't buy yourself the occasional treat, hm?)

As we settled down to watch the other nostalgia present (Control about the tragic life of Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division, if you're interested), I flicked through the pages of the annual recapturing that flickering of enthusiastic interest that the original mags inspired in me. There were a lot of historical tales in there - including that of William Wallace, Elizabeth I, The Great Fire of London - as well as literature, L&L evidently had lots to say about Shakespeare, for example, Ancient History, Geography, and of course, the Trigan Empire. I was really disappointed when I got to the end of the first strip because I feared that the compiler of TBBoLaL might have given me just one episode, but I needn't have worried. Embedded in between the stories about Shakespeare and Pepys, a complete story emerged. A totally ludicrous preposterous story it's true, but compelling none the less. Aiens in the forms of floating orbs land on Elekton, the planet where the stories are set, infiltrate first some Trigan animals called gelfs - which look more like yaks to me - before taking over the old man who herds the gelfs and then a succession of people, until they reach shock, horror! the Emperor Trigo himself. Once they've got him onside they aim to take over the world, destroying all in their path etc etc (it must get boring being an alien invader, you only ever get to do one thing. I expect sometimes they probably just want to sit down and have a nice cup of tea. ) Anyway. All would have gone very ill for Trigo et al, except that inconveniently for the aliens, there were only three of them and one had to leave a host to take over Trigo, leaving the ex host - one of Trigo's pals - the chance to raise the alarm and sort the whole shebang out.

The sheer brilliance of the Trigan Empire, I decided on this thoroughly enjoyable rediscovery is that despite the preposterous plot, the writing was so gripping you just had to read on. The guys that wrote clearly knew how to spin a yarn. (And if you don't believe me go to: http://www.lookandlearn.com/ and find out for yourselves).

The main thing apart from the joy of The TE of course, that struck me about L&L, was the self confidence of the writing. There was no sense here of craven apologies for evil empire building, for the English to be portrayed generally as being responsible for the ills of the world, but rather a general belief (not a crowing or arrogant one either) that actually there is rather a lot to celebrate in our nation's history, which I did find very refreshing.

As readers of this blog are probably aware, history is a bit of a passion of mine, and what struck me most about L&L was the dispassionate, fair and factual way history was presented. The Wallace piece for example, rather then branding him as a cheating rebel against the English (as one might expect from Mel Gibson's Braveheart approach of all the English were bastards type approach to history), extolled him as hero, while pointing out that the English would have thought him a cheating rebel etc. Most interestingly I think from our oh so superior Political Correctness standpoint was that L&L didn't just stick to English, or even European History. There was evidently one series devoted to African history, in the piece chosenyou can learn all about the great kingdom of Kush (I did, and it was fascinating), and one wincingly called When the Redman Rode (ok, that title doesn't stand up well), about the Cheyenne warriors. Granted there is a little of the Noble Savage take on their story but it is written with a great deal of sympathy for their plight and the actions of the white man in conquering America don't always hold up to scrutiny.

I mention all this because it struck me that we could perhaps learn a lot from going back to a more Look and Learn approach to the world, particularly in history.

As well as indulging in a nostalgia fest, Spouse (who'd taken a couple of days off work)and I also spent yesterday afternoon watching Elizabeth the Golden Reign. We'd been looking forward to this as we both enjoyed the first Cate Blanchett film. But oh deary me, were we disappointed. About half my lifetime ago I studied Elizabeth Tudor for A Level history. At the time I found it frustrating because all the historians I was studying had made the classic mistake of falling in love with her, and being bedazzled by her achievements, her beauty, her status in our history as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen (I blame that Sir Philip Sidney myself, who laughingly didn't even make it into Elizabeth, but then again there was no sign of Robert Dudley either.)

My very wise and brilliant history teacher encouraged me to look at Elizabeth from the opposite perspective - not as someone who alway succeeded, but someone who frequently failed, particularly when pitted against her chief rivals Catherine de Medici and Philip II of Spain. What she had, which they both lacked though, was considerable political acumen, and she was invariably able to make disaster seem like triumph, and wrongfooted them consistently - a Teflon Tone of her day perhaps (I was always amused when TB used to talk about a middle way - Elizabeth I's own strategy for dealing with the thorny religious problems of her day).

I fear that Shekhar Kapur, director of Elizabeth falls into the same trap, he clearly adores the character of Elizabeth and her rivals are totally belittled in this film. Cate Blanchett is brilliant in the role as she was in the first film, and visually it's stunning, but the rest of it. Well it just doesn't stand up at all. Clive Owen (who I do like, but is poorly served here) is brought in as a love interest in the shape of Sir Walter Raleigh, who later married Elizabeth's lady in waiting, Bess Throckmorton. Right so far, but oh so wrong about everything else. For starters, they got married in 1591, three years after the events of the film took place. Plus as far as I can remember it was Drake who sent in the fire ships to destroy the Armada - Raleigh was doing his duty defending the coast of Plymouth.

Mary Queen of Scots in the meantime is reduced to a viperish rival (who I rather think would have spoken with a French, not Scottis accent) and the Babington Plot, which sealed her fate but may very well have been trumped up by Walsingham, the original Spymaster was portrayed as being conceived by Philip II to force Elizabeth to commit regicide, thereby giving him reason to launch the Armada. I don't think somehow he needed much reason...

Philip II of Spain, himself was shown as a raving bigoted religous zealot which I felt was unfair. As much as anything else he was desperately trying to save the kingdom his father Charles V had left him from the same fate as that which befell the Holy Roman Empire. Charles V lost his northern German principalities to Protestant princes, and Philip was busy losing his Dutch lands to Calvinist rebels. Yes, yes, I do know that the Spanish invented the Inquisition and all that, but they weren't alone in their barbarity - the aforementioned Calvinists did a fine line in taking over city states from within and slaughtering everyone unprepared to convert - it strikes me this film set out to be a grand epic of warring religious ideologies and descended into rather crude caracaturing.

Maybe this doesn't matter, this is after all only a film. But I think it does actually. Because this is a film which purports to portray the truth about actual historical events, and as such it should at least get the basic facts right (in that I think it somewhat different from the forthcoming film of The Other Boleyn Girl or the books my writing friend Elizabeth Chadwick writes about mediaeval times, because it is made clear that fact and fiction are being blended together) - and also I think it is the job of anyone portraying historical events to show them without prejudice and favour - give us all the facts and both sides of the story, then we can make up our own minds.

Which is why I suggest that Look and Learn become compulsory reading for all school children aged eight years and above. They will learn much about their own history and that of others, and with any luck, they might actually learn to think for themselves.

Watching Elizabeth: The Golden Reign on the other hand, will ensure they won't...

Worried About Ray

This isn't really supposed to be here, but for some reason I can't post it on the other blog...

This is my childrens' favourite song at the moment. And when you watch this utterly barking video and understand it really appeals to me, it may go someway to explaining my obsession with Primeval, monsters and new tv pilots about werewolves, vampires and ghosts...

I really must stop this...

... but strolling through the airwaves last night I found ANOTHER hero. A new one. Oh dear. I think I am turning into a mad premenopausal witch.

However, he also pitched up in a fabulous new programme on BBC3 called Being Human. It won't be to everyone's taste, seeing as it features flatmates who are a vampire, a werewolf and an agoraphobic ghost, but it certainly was to mine (and Spouse's).

I believe when Torchwood was first mooted, there was a suggestion that it was going to be a UK Buffytype venture. It isn't. This, however is.

Guy Flanagan as the vampire with a conscience was just fabulously sexy and enigmatic, Russell Tovey's lonesome werewolf was cute, moving and funny by turns, and Andrea Riseborough's ghost who can't leave the house was frankly inspired. I loved the bit where they'd managed to persuade her to go to the pub, and she requested to sit by the wall nearest the house as it made her feel better(and stopped her from fading).

Adrian Lester as the head of the vampires intent of renewing a reign of glory and blood last seen since the days of Vlad the Impaler (presumably) was wonderfully menacing, and the whole thing had a slick and sexy feel that Torchwood lacks (though I will admit series 2 has been much more fun then series 1).

I think this is a new series, I hope it is anyway, because it was sooooo much fun, and methinks there is much rich material to reap here.

Plus I have a new hero to ogle at, which can't be bad.

Although for all those readers (PU I am thinking of you) who are desperately hoping that I will return at some point to more serious matters. I promise, I promise. I will try to make this blog slightly less frippery based shortly.

But in the meantime ladies, I'm leaving you Guy Flanagan to ogle at...

Ashes to Ashes again...

No spoilers particularly.

But I just wanted to say.

Imaginary constructs.

I love it.

Next time someone really annoys me I shall call them an imaginary construct.

I was also pleased to see there was a big emphasis on New Romantics this week. Which was the only thing missing from last week.

And we got Rupert Graves...

And to be quite honest. I just wanted another excuse to put a picture of Philip Glenister on my blog....

As this is such fun...

And it IS Valentine's Day,I thought I'd post my top ten heroes.

I think I may have to give up on the order though because I really really can't decide. I'm also making it a rule that it's the actor as character that I really like. And because I'm being very kind and loving and attentive to you, you can have pictures too.

I'm very very sorry guys... I hope I haven't put you off this blog permanently, but you know, it is only one day of the year, and we girls do like to feel swoony on it, so I'm afraid you have to lump it.

My own hero is taking me out for dinner tonight. I am hoping that he is not going to repeat his offfence of the first Valentine's we were together, way back in the mists of time. I had left a bunch of orchids (=forever) on his car. He gave me a heart made out of dental alginate. It was so squidgy it had to remain in the plastic bag he thoughtfully provided. My fingers had that horrible dental smell, for days afterwards....

So here are my heroes then....


Johnny Depp (of course) as the Earl of Rochester




Viggo Mortenson (before he lost the beard, and IT) as Aragorn

Richard Armitage (what was Marian thinking of shacking up with Robin?) as Guy of Gisborne

Lovely Lovely David Tennant (without whom this list would not be complete) as Dr Who

Daniel Craig (the man who made all the romantic novelists of my acquaintance come over all funny after THAT shower scene) as James Bond

Russell Crowe (yes I know he's an uncouth foulmouthed bore in real life, but he was fab in this) as Maximus Decimus Meridius

Clive Owen (who isn't everyone's cup of tea I know, but he is mine in this) as Arthur

Philip Glenister (for making it possible to be outrageously non PC) as Gene Hunt

Alan Rickman (he can come and haunt me any time) as Jamie

And last, but definitely not least.

Daniel Day Lewis (run that Stay Alive bit by me one more time why don't you) as Hawkeye

Enjoy!

Johnny Depp and Pierce Brosnan make Romantic Novelists' hearts throb

As it's Valentine's day tomorrow, I had to post this. Particularly as my all time romantic hero tops the list. Ah me. Johnny Depp. I am particularly keen on his depiction of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester in the little known but brilliant film Rochester. The Earl of Rochester notorious rake and libertine, who wrote such wonderfully cynical lines as If I by Miracle can be,/This live-long Minute true to thee,/'Tis all that Heaven allows is one of my favourite literary heroes, so seeing Johnny portraying him was like having all my christmases at once.

Am glad to see most of my heroes made it into the top ten, though am deeply puzzled by David Tennant at no 10, he'd have been in my top three. In fact I was having huge trouble about who came after Johnny, but decided in the end that Daniel, David and Richard would have had to share the honour. I didn't get round to the older men, but Clint and Sean would have been slugging it out if I had, with Harrison a close third....

Apart from anything else this gives me another excuse to put a picture of Johnny on my blog. Down girl, Down...

Members of the Romantic Novelists’ Association have voted Johnny Depp as the Number One Perfect Romantic Hero in a poll to mark Valentine’s Day. According to these authors, a romantic hero should be gorgeous, deliciously sexy, intensely masculine and have a commanding presence.

‘We should be qualified to judge,’ one writer commented. ‘After all, we create these heroes on paper every day.’

The top ten male celebrities voted the Perfect Romantic Hero were:

1. Johnny Depp
2. Daniel Craig
3. Sean Bean
4. Richard Armitage
5. Hugh Jackman
6. Colin Firth
7. Alan Rickman
8. Pierce Brosnan
9. George Clooney
10. David Tennant

A second poll, taken by members of the RNA bravely admitting to being ‘over a certain age’, voted for male celebrities over fifty who’ve ‘still got it’. Remarkable for his appearance on both polls, Pierce Brosnan took the crown for the over fifties by a huge margin.

The top ten Over-Fifty Perfect Romantic Heroes were:

1. Pierce Brosnan
2. Harrison Ford
3. Ranulph Fiennes
4. Bill Nighy
5. Liam Neeson
6. Sam Neill
7. Sean Connery
8. Peter O’Toole
9. Clint Eastwood
10. Omar Sharif

For further information about the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s poll results
please contact Katrina Power at Midas Public Relations
on 020 7590 0802 or http://uk.f860.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=katrina.power@midaspr.co.uk

New venture

Well, sort of.



You may have noticed (if you notice that kind of thing) that I have just updated my profile. This is because I am starting a new blog.



I am in the middle of revising book no 2, which among other things is about four people who are learning to dance and their entangled love lives.



I got the idea after attending salsa classes a few years ago, and noticing that there were rather a lot of single men there. More women of course, and most of the women were in pairs, there for a laugh, or because their partners wouldn't get on the dance floor even if you paid them. The men on the other hand, the men struck me as in the main being out on the pull, but also often rather nervous. There was one poor chap who used to hold my hands so tightly I thought they'd break.

So it struck me that if you were a divorce and wanted to meet women a really good place to go would be a salsa class. My story had started with Mark, a dentist who gets sued by a patient, and I got his best friend Rob to drag him along to salsa lessons where they meet Emily and Katie.
Of course the minute my editor saw it she said, why don't they attend ballroom dancing lessons, and with the popularity of Strictly Come Dancing at the moment as usual she was right.

My slight problem is that I know not the slightest thing about ballroom dancing (apart from watching the ease with which my parents used to do it), though thanks to the latest series of SCD, Marie Phillips' hilarious blogging about it, and some dance steps I downloaded from the internet (I was at one point trying to rumba on my own, reading the steps of the screen of my laptop when my main computer was playing up), I cobbled enough together to set the dancing scenes at least while I was writing the book. (Current title Strictly Love. Nothing like cashing in or anything).

However I was all too painfully aware that my lack of expertise in the area of dancing would be quickly found out, and so it has proved. I am hoping to change that as I tackle the rewrites, so have got some dance dvds (hilariously trying them out with the sprogs the other week) two dancing books kindly supplied by my publishers and I have just booked a dancing lesson with a teacher who - get this - was ACTUALLY ON SCD!!! Woohoo...

I was also supposed to be going to a proper class with her last night, but as usual I got a bit domestically sidetracked and I didn't make it.

Anyway the point of all this is, that yesterday I met up with my agent and editor (and yes I am well aware how poncey that sounds), to discuss new ideas (of which more later), and my editor asked me to start a blog about learning to dance. This is purely a pr exercise, but I hope a fun one, so those of you who are interested you are welcome to join me on my new blog, http://Strictlycomedancingnot.blogspot.com which you can see on my profile. Those of you who don't, that's perfectly all right too. I won't hold it against you, and I will carry on blogging here.

I'm going to be me properly on the other blog, but I rather like the cosy comfort of being Jane here, so I shall keep it like that.

In the meantime if you haven't seen this and care about authors pay most of which is laughably low, please take time out to visit the Downing Street website to sign the petition against reducing PLR which we get every time someone borrows a book and for many of us is an important source of income.

Following the announcement that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport plans to reduce Public Lending Right (PLR) funding, I have initiated a 10 Downing Street e-petition to protest at the cuts. Public Lending Right is the right for authors, illustrators, photographers, translators and editors to receive payment under PLR legislation for the loans of their books by public libraries. More than 23,000 people are entitled to receive payment under this scheme, and for many the annual PLR payment is an important part of their income. PLR is particularly valuable to those people who receive little or no royalty on book sales — their books are more often borrowed from libraries than bought in shops. Please spare a minute to sign the petition. Click the following link (or paste it into your browser window) and add your name. http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/plr-funding/ Please do not delete this email. Instead, forward it to as wide a group of people as you can. It is in everyone’s best interests to support the work of Britain’s creative talent.

The A Team

And now for some grown up telly....


(With spoilers so if you didn't see Ashes to Ashes last night, look away!


I was a bit late coming into Life on Mars, but thanks to Mad Twin, Spouse and I were completely hooked by series 2. And devastated when it was over. How could it be over? NOOOO!!! I wanted to see Sam Tyler stuck in Gene Hunt's world for ever, difficulties in keeping that storyline going aside...

When they announced that LoM was going to be followed up by Ashes to Ashes, I immediately thought how clever was that? Take the same formula and reinvent it, by changing the time, the location and the sex of the protagonist. When you think about it, they could keep this going forever.

So I have been looking forward to the new series, particularly because it's set in the 80s, the decade I think of as my own - yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the big hair and power shoulders get laughed at now, but for me it was the decade I grew up in, and I love the music.

It's always a bit of a worry when you look forward to something that much. But luckily, the first episode didn't disappoint.

It was fab.

From the moment that poor old Keeley Hawes (aka Alex Drake) took a shot in the face and woke up on a riverboat full of Hooray Henrys dressed as a prostitute (or as Gene Hunt would say, tom), with Vienna playing, I thought woohoo!! I'm going to love this.

The cleverest thing about LoM (and they seem to have done it here as well to great effect) is the period detail. In LoM it was the browns and the flock wallpaper and space hoppers. And here it was the cavern type Italian bar they were drinking in, the clothes -oh my god the clothes were dead on the money - and my favourite the striped duvet covers and sofas, which seemed so modern in 1981.

I like all those touches.

I also like the colours they seem to shoot it in - LoM was very brown and dark and depressing, which did conjure up childhood memories of powercuts and binmen going on strike, while in AtoA the colours seemed lighter and brasher, and very cleverly fit my memory of the period. I don't know how they did that, but it certainly worked for me.

I also LOVED the way they used music - Vienna was no 1 for weeks in 1981, and the minute I heard it playing, I was transported back in time.

But the best use of music was when Alex was confronting the baddy - who in 2008 had shot her and sent her back in time, so she felt sure that facing up to him was her way back (she has an advantage over Sam Tyler in that she's read his file, so she thinks her mind is tricking her and she is fantasing about the whole thing) - and up popped Gene and his two henchmen on a boat, to the tune of No More Heroes. The A Team were back, and with what panache. Fan - bloody - tastic.

Period detail aside, I think they have also pulled off the trick of making the person in a coma who wakes up in a different time zone thing work by giving Keeley a whole set of different dilemmas to Sam.

For a start she is a police psychologist, who has been studying Sam's case, so can work out what has happened to her. But she thinks she is imagining the whole thing which leads her into some great confrontations with Gene Hunt, who kept getting cross that she was using her fingers as quote marks every time she said the name "Gene", and clearly fancies the pants of her. There were many brilliant lines last night, but the one about her giving him the horn made me choke on my wine.

I also loved her slightly insane shouting and the lists she was drawing up to work out what had happened to the evident bemusement of those around her. In fact one of the priceless aspects of it was that no one said to the strange new DI who turned up dressed as a tom, fainted when she hears the name Gene Hunt, kept ranting on about weird psychological stuff, was gloriously rude to Gene thinking he was in her imagination etc etc, excuse me a minute, but you are utterly barking. In real life she'd be committed. In Gene Hunt's world, he decides that despite her being a woman, and wrong about some things, she seemed to understand all that psychology stuff so she was here to stay.

On top of ALL of that, as if there wasn't enough going in, we also have Alex's desperate need to get back to the present for her daughter's birthday, and Gene Hunt's evident grief for Sam Tyler, who didn't do as he was told and drove his car into a river a year previously(fans will know of course, that he got back to the real world and jumped off a building). The message Alex is getting loud and clear, is stay safe and you stick with the boss. Knowing the way LoM worked, this may or may not be the right thing to do.

And of course I haven't even mentioned the gloriously spooky incarnations of the characters from Rainbow, and THAT clown from the David Bowie video. Thanks to my big sister I developed a Bowie crush in the early 80s, and I always hated that clown...

So...

As far as I'm concerned, Ashes to Ashes was a riproaring success. And now I've got another series that I can look forward to next week.

But without the monsters....

Saturday TV - it's a family thing....

Thanks to Dr Who, Saturday evenings in our house have become a family watching tv time. Which is of course a bit of a problem when the series ends.

However in the absence of the good doctor, we had Robin Hood in the autumn, which the children (who let's face it lack discernment) love. Although the last series got so silly I have to fess up I left the bosom of the family a fair few times as I couldn't cope with the stupidity of Marian not shagging Guy, the really crap way they depicted Elinor of Aquitaine as some lecherous old bint, and the nonsense of all of them ending up in the Holy Land in the last couple of episodes. Still they did have the sense to finish Marian off for good this time, and I can't imagine that even Jack can a) bring her back from the dead again and b) resurrect her from the tomb she's incarcerated in in the desert. But you never know I suppose....

With Robin Hood over we were facing a bit of a vacuum, and were all wondering what had happened to Primeval, which comfortably filled the Family Viewing slot till Dr Who was back, last year. To our delight it returned to our screens few weeks ago, complete with weird anomalies, strange creatures, and Dougie Henshall's evil missis. Hurrah, hurrah. Saturday evenings are fun again.

Primeval is of course a load of old tosh. But such enjoyable old tosh that it doesn't really matter. The kids get a bit fed up with us saying but what about X? and look behind you you idiot! when the characters are particularly dumb. And there always seems to be some confusion about whether to kill the creatures that come through the anomaly - at the beginning of the series it was a no no, because you might change time (fans of Primeval will know that poor old Nick Cutter, the hero, came back from an anomaly to discover that things had altered so much his putative girlfriend had disappeared, only for her to reappear as someone completely different) - but now they seem to be killing prehistoric animals with gusto, and zipping in and out of anomalies with not so much as a by your leave, and NOTHING much happens....

That carping aside though, last night's episode was a real roller coaster, and I had two sprogs on my lap for most of it as we wondered whether Abby was going to get eaten by a predecessor of the shark (who looked more walrus like then anything, but never mind), and whether Conor was going to stop being so wet and useless for once and actually save her (which he did of course).

We also had the fun of wondering which hero Spouse resembles. In one scene Stephen (the metrosexual foil to Cutter's maverick lead) stood facing Cutter in a bit of a stand off (there is TENSION between them you see on account of Stephen having shagged Mrs Evil ) . Which one am I most like? Asked Spouse. Given that Stephen sports as much hair on his chest as my husband does, but Cutter was wearing the exact same jacket he possesses. The children pondered this dilemma before Spouse asked which of them had his tummy - er neither I think is the answer to that. I rather suspect he resembles the walrus most....

Another enjoyable thing about it though is the intrigue - so far we know that the guy who played Martin Dear in Green Wing isn't all he seems, and is in cahoots with the woman who is trying to worm her way into Conor's affections for what nefarious purpose remains to be seen. But judging from the end of last night's episode, it's going to involve Mrs Evil.

The best thing about Saturday Family TV is that it allows you to be a kid again. So like a five year old, I really really can't wait for next week.....

Tax Exile is put on hold

... till next year anyway. Which is a shame really as I thought we could have all had a really nice time for at least six months in the Seychelles.

However, after discovering I am not seen as a persona grata vis a vis Spouse's tax, I did discover that if I was prepared to drive to our nearest tax office in Sutton, I could pay the cheque in there.

So straight after school, I took off with nos 2&4 (no 1 has dancing and no 3 has gone to a friend's)only for no 4 to flake out on me as she is coming down with a nasty cold and eye infection. Why nothing in my life is ever straightforward I don't know...

Anyway I managed to cajole her into the car, though I did have to carry her at the other end.
We made it to the tax office, which despite my having to be let in by a security guard, seemed very lax when I got up there. No one was at reception and the person who accepted my cheque wasn't going to give me a receipt. In fact, she only gave me an acknowledgement, when requested, not a receipt, so fuck knows what happens if very large cheque goes missing now...

Is it any wonder those disks went missing? And I wonder how many tax returns our safe as well (not many I suspect).

But apparently my grilling at the hands of the Obergruppefuhrer this afternoon is part of a tightening up of procedures.

Why oh why, don't I feel reassured by that?

I feel the Seychelles calling....

Only now I don't have any money to get there...

How to be a Tax Exile without leaving the country

Anyone who has to fill in a tax return will know that yesterday was the closing date for doing so, without risking a fine from HM Inland Revenue.

In our house, we both have to fill in tax returns.

Mine is simple. I earn bugger all money so for the last couple of years I have filled in the short tax return and sent it off by 30 September, thereby ensuring my friendly tax inspector works out how little tax I owe him (I earn far too little to bother employing an accountant).

Spouse on the other hand is another matter. He earns considerably more then I do and his affairs are more complex. Therefore he needs an accountant.

This year, I missed the 30 September deadline due to other pressures, but as I discovered you can now file online, I managed to get mine in a few weeks ago. (Pause for smug moment).

Spouse, who takes a seat of your pants approach to all things tax related (when he was first working he couldn't work out how to pay tax and at one time we had enough money to abscond had we so wished. Mind you, we'd never been able to come back to the country again, so it was just as well that the tax man finally caught up with him...) kept promising me he was going to sort everything his accountant needed and then forgetting about it.

It is difficult in this situation not to turn into a nagging wife, as last year on account of this laidback attitude it was muggins who had to drive to the accountants at the last minute with all the necessary info, only for some of it to be wrong which necessitated a return journey. However, as any slight mention of the TAX problem was met with gnashing of teeth on my beloved's part, I very valiantly tried to keep my gob firmly shut on the subject.

Eventually he did sit down and get it sorted, and then drove to the accountants himself (hmmm, so he was listening occasionally then), boasting that he was a week ahead of where he'd been last year. Yes, but why do we have to leave it till January in the first place????

Anyway. Nerves duly settled, I have spent the last couple of weeks trying not to mention the fact that he hasn't yet heard from his accountants. This week though, of course, it all got a bit hairy. Spouse and accountant have spoken on phone, but as per usual there are some bits of info missing, so we had a phone call early Tuesday to enquire about them. Spouse sorted that out and eventually was rewarded with tax return to check yesterday morning. Spouse being rather luddite with regards to computers, it was me downloading and printing everything off, in between sorting out the sandwiches yesterday morning. (And he wonders why I get irritated...)

Everything was tickety boo. I email accountant back to say so, he luckily has done accounts so we know how much to pay, and off I pop to pay bill before school pick up.

Only of course I forget to take my passport as security for the cheque (which is rather large) and have to go back in between school pick up and tennis lessons.

As a result of late filing online (luckily Spouse saved this year by fact of system crashing yesterday so he got an extra day's grace) we didn't have a pay slip. I found a form I thought might work from the Inland Revenue website, but wasn't quite sure. Before I withdrew obscene sum of money to pay HMG, I asked girl in Nationwide if this would be ok to use. Oh yes, she said gaily - what did it matter to her, Nationwide won't accept payments of cheques unless they're from a bank account? I duly trotted next door with obscene cheque burning huge hole in my pocket, to discover, that no, the form I had printed from the internet didn't count. I was now ten minutes late for tennis and there was a huge queue in the Nationwide, so I decided to risk taking huge cheque home with me.

Today I have tried to ring the IR to get them to send Spouse a payslip (bearing in mind that as he has his hands shoved down someone's gob for 99% of the day wasting half his life on the end of a phone waiting for some bod from the tax office to answer it isn't desperately practical), and GET THIS.... When after three attempts and half an hour of waiting I finally got through to a real live person, it transpires that I am not security cleared to get my husband a payslip. Well I never. And there was me imagining that given the cock up with the child benefit info going missing which means any tom dick and harry probably now has access to my bank accounts, and following the revelation this week that if you are rich, famous or an MP you can't file your return online because it's not secure enough, that security wasn't a really high priority at the IR.

Apparently it is. But only if you want to know something pertaining to your partner. I imagine if I hacked into their mainframe and got an automated payslip sent out, they'd probably be patting me on the back.

I think a life as a tax exile might actually be in order...

Following on from my last post...

The RNA has also announced it's shortlist for the romance prize which goes to the best category romance (books published monthly). It is fitting that in Mills and Boon's centenary year, they've swept the board on the shortlist.

I'm also really pleased to see fellow RNAers on the list - particularly Kate Hardy, who was one of the first friends I made at the RNA and who gave the most brilliantly funny talk about writing medical romances at the first conference I attended. And for those who still think M&B is about heaving bosoms and chaste kisses, go and read Julie Cohen and discover just how modern and up to date they are.

I know that M&B isn't too everyone's taste - but boy do they know how to entertain and have been doing it successfully for a hundred years, which is very neat.

And to those who would disparage the genre, I always say read Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood. The heroine writes Gothic Romances in her spare time, and describes her work as being like building castles in the air for the girls she went to school with whose dreams of riding off into the sunset with a handsome prince ended up with them having their arms in the kitchen sink. Mills and Boon give a lot of pleasure to millions of women around the world. And I for one am never going to argue with that.

PS. And to anyone who thinks a) it's easy and b)it's formulaic. a) No. It's not easy (I've tried) and b) there is no formula - the only rule I was given when I was trying to write for them was to keep the hero and heroine on the page for 90% of the time, which is fantastically difficult. I'm not a natural M&B writer, but I know lots of brilliant writers who are, and six of them are on this list, so all power to their elbow. And may the best woman win...


MILLS & BOON SCOOPS SHORTLIST
FOR ROMANCE PRIZE 2008

Thursday 17th January 2008

In their centenary year, publishers Harlequin, Mills & Boon have a full showing in the shortlist for the only prize for category romance awarded in the UK. The Romantic Novelists’ Association awards the Romance Prize each year alongside the award for Romantic Novel of the Year.

Category romance is defined as books published in a monthly cycle, which concentrate on the romantic relationship. Mills & Boon novels are read all over the world by millions of women. This year their authors stormed the shortlist, beating several other publishers into the top six.

The shortlisted titles are:
The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella - Liz Fielding
Driving him Wild - Julie Cohen
Her Parenthood Assignment - Fiona Harper
English Lord, Ordinary Lady - Fiona Harper
The Mediterranean Rebel’s Bride - Lucy Gordon
Breakfast at Giovanni’s - Kate Hardy

Fiona Harper, whose double listing is a coup for the RNA’s New Writer’s Scheme, said: ‘I'm so excited. One book on the shortlist was a long shot. Two was something I didn't imagine in my wildest daydreams.’

Unique to the RNA, the New Writer’s Scheme provides a critiquing service by published members to help writers new to the genre. Work considered good enough receives a second read and may be passed on to publishers. Fiona came through the scheme to win the annual prize in 2006 with Blind-Date Marriage.

Kate Hardy, who was shortlisted for the Romance Prize in 2006 is ‘absolutely thrilled. I've had a rough year, so this was a real bright spot. And to be shortlisted with my 25th title for M&B in M&B's centenary year is just fantastic.’

Julie Cohen, another New Writer’s Scheme graduate, is equally thrilled, as her book is just coming out in the US. Of Driving Him Wild the judging panel said: 'An unusual beginning leads into a passionately sexy story.’ Julie commented, ‘Pass the Champagne!’

Previous Romance Prize winner Liz Fielding was also nominated for an American RITA last year. The panel thought the characters in The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella were 'realistic, flawed and human.'

Lucy Gordon, who was also shortlisted for the Prize in 2006 and has won two RITAs, is now on her 42nd book for Mills & Boon. The panel felt there was ‘something special’ about The Mediterranean Rebel’s Bride.

The winner of the Romance Prize 2008 will be decided by the judging panel, this year comprising authors Zoë Barnes, Trisha Ashley and bestseller Katie Fforde. The prize will be presented at the RNA Awards Lunch on 4th February at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington.

For further information about the Romantic Novelists’ Association Romance Prize 2008, contact Katrina Power at Midas Public Relations on 020 7590 0802
or katrina.power@midaspr.co.uk

Romantic Novelist's Association shortlist

I'm a bit later posting this then I meant to be.

As you've probably gathered by now I am a fully paid up enthusiastic member of the Romantic Novelist's Association, though you would be lucky to catch me in a boa and rattling twinset and pearls. (Actually I don't know a single member of the RNA to whom such a description would apply. And we don't all wear pink either - got that?).

Anyway. This week they posted the shortlist for their annual award, and a very wonderful list it is too. I promised I'd help promote it, so here it is. I hope there's something here that will appeal to some (if not all - ok I'm a zealot but you won't be thrown off this blog for not being a fan of romantic fiction, I am nothing if not eclectic in my tastes!) of you. I myself am just about to dive into the JoJo Moyes - I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to write the reader's notes for The Ship of Brides which was shortlisted in 2005 and which I loved, so am looking forward to this one.

Enjoy!

PS The winner is going to be announced on February 4 at the RNA Award Lunch, to which this year I am rather excitingly going to go for the first time...


Shortlist announced for the
Romantic Novel of the Year 2008


The Romantic Novelists’ Association today announced the shortlist for the Romantic Novel of the Year 2008. The shortlist was selected by a panel of RNA members, who scored the books on such criteria as romantic content, readability, dialogue, characters, plot, style and setting.

The shortlist includes:

One Last Summer – Catrin Collier (Orion)
Silk and Steel – Catherine King (Sphere/Little, Brown)
The Leaving of Liverpool – Maureen Lee (Orion)
Silver Bay – Jojo Moyes (Hodder & Stoughton)
Pillow Talk – Freya North (Harper Collins)
Young Wives’ Tales – Adele Parks (Michael Joseph/Penguin)

The winner of the 2008 award will be decided by the judging panel, which this year includes comedienne Helen Lederer, Good Housekeeping Books Editor Kerry Fowler, and Chris Rushby, Buying Director of Bertram Books, Britain’s leading book wholesaler.

The 2008 winner will be announced at the Awards Lunch on February 4th at the Royal Garden Hotel, London.

The panel of RNA members said of the shortlisted titles:

One Last Summer – Catrin Collier (Orion)
“It is very moving and the complexities of love and war are explored in depth. A memorable read.”

Silk and Steel – Catherine King (Sphere/Little, Brown)
“I enjoyed this book very much. It had drama, conflict, intrigue as well as love and romance. The main character, despite all the desperate situations in her life, came through it to win in the end and she was likeable and admirable.”

The Leaving of Liverpool – Maureen Lee (Orion)
“This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. I loved the characters, the story, the way it was written. I love books from this era. Outstanding.”

Silver Bay – Jojo Moyes (Hodder & Stoughton)
“I was drawn into this story. I wanted to be a guest at the Silver Bay Hotel and savour the experiences and kinship of the characters. I thoroughly enjoyed this moving tale, with its sentiment and humour.”



Pillow Talk – Freya North (Harper Collins)
“Petra is the girl we all dreamt of being and Arlo the man we all wanted to meet. Who doesn’t wonder ‘what if…’ to the long lost first love?”

Young Wives’ Tales – Adele Parks (Michael Joseph/Penguin)
“An excellent modern romance, sharp and witty. The characters were well defined and the dialogue flowed along nicely. For me, a perfect read.”

For further information about the Romantic Novel of the Year 2008,
photographs and bios of the shortlisted authors, please contact Katrina Power at Midas Public Relations on 020 7590 0802 or katrina.power@midaspr.co.uk



Notes to Editors

Romantic Novel of the Year Award: The Award was inaugurated in 1960 to recognise excellence in romantic novels and thereby enhance the standing of the genre. Any novel which is published in the UK (or simultaneously with other countries) in 2007 is eligible for the Award.

2007 Winner: The 2007 winner was Rosie Thomas for Iris & Ruby. Recent winners include Erica James, Katharine Davies, Jojo Moyes, Sarah Mason, Cathy Kelly, Philippa Gregory, Maureen Lee and Clare Chambers. To download past winners: log onto www.rna-uk.org

Organisers: The Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) was set up in 1960 to promote respect for the genre and to encourage excellence. Full membership is open to authors who have published a romantic novel or a romantic serial. Aspiring writers are admitted as probationary members. In 2005, an RNA team beat teams from Wisden and The Economist in University Challenge - The Professionals, only going down to the Privy Council in the final. The Chairman is Catherine Jones. For more information log onto www.rna-uk.org.

Submissions: 189 submissions were received this year from 22 large and small publishers. 5 publishers submitted for the first time, and there were several first-time authors.

Judging: 90 keen members of the reading public, drawn from all over the country, with an even distribution in age groups, selected the long list of 21 titles. Each book was scored three times to achieve the long list, the criteria covering romantic content, readability, characters, plot, dialogue, style and ending. A panel of RNA members then whittled this down to the shortlist, which is then assessed by the judging panel.

Judging Panel: the panel for 2008 is chaired by comedienne, actress and author Helen Lederer, who is joined by Kerry Fowler, Books Editor for Good Housekeeping, and Chris Rushby, Buying Director for Bertram Books.

Winner Announcement: on 4th February 2008 at the Award lunch at the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington.

For further information about the Romantic Novel of the Year 2008,
photographs and bios of the shortlisted authors, please contact Katrina Power
at Midas Public Relations on 020 7590 0802 or katrina.power@midaspr.co.uk

A New Year's Fairytale (not)

It actually occurred to me after I'd mentioned it yesterday that actually the story of New Year's Eve 1983 is so funny, that perhaps I should retell it. (Mind you I am hoping here that no one who was actually at that party, barring Mad Twin, will pop out of the woodwork and remember it too...)

It was one of those funny evenings that happens when you're young free and single. I was eighteen, on what would now be called a gap year, just about to leave home for the first time to do voluntary work. Most of my close friends had spent their first term at college and we had spent Christmas catching up.

As usual at this period in my life, I fancied a bloke who didn't fancy me. I was a past master at that. Most of the time the object of my affection was in love with a very good friend of ours. Everyone was in love with her. It was most annoying. For her and us. And had it not been that she was (and is) exceptionally lovely she might not have survived her teens.

This particular object of my affection, though didn't fancy my friend, but was in an on/off relationship with another girl also annoyingly nice. That Christmas the relationship appeared to be off, and I had entertained ridiculously high hopes that he might look my way. So it was with some disappointment that I witnessed his arrival with said girl at the start of the party.

There was only one thing to do after that, and it was to enlarge my acquaintance with vodka and orange, which that night tasted like nectar. It also didn't taste of alcohol, so I didn't quite realise how much I'd had.

Oops.

So it was that I found myself pouring my woes out to a friend of Mad Twin's. Now the problem (sometimes) with having a twin is that people muddle us up, and forget which one they're talking to. Or in the case of this particular friend, he'd fallen head over heels for MT, but not for me. But I was talking to him, MT wasn't (I can't honestly remember what MT was up to, but I'm sure she'll tell me), and he sort of thought I might be a good replacement. The problem with this approach to dealing with twins, is that we are very different. And I was the wrong twin. But he kissed me anyway. In the garden where I had retreated after midnight in a moment of post countdown misery.

At the very point that he kissed me, the kitchen door opened and the poor bloke who at the time fancied me (and I didn't fancy in the slightest) saw me snog someone else I didn't fancy in the slightest. He was a bit of a depressed kind of chap, so then I went into a flat spin thinking I'd made him even more miserable. Then I looked at the lad I was kissing and thought, why???? Oh god, too much vodka that's why.

Next thing I remember I am sitting in the bathroom balling my eyes out (as you do when you're eighteen and have overdone the booze), surrounded by my best girlfriends who were doing everything they could to cheer me up.

It was at this point another friend came in the room, presumably also to do his best to help with the cheering up process.

By now I'd gone through the misery stage and was in a boiling hot rage as to why the guys I fancied NEVER EVER fancied me, and what did SHE have that I didn't?

My friend's polite question as to whether or not I was allright led to me clouting him on the nose and sending his glasses spinning across the floor. I still have no idea why (but if you do perchance happen to be reading this, I am really really sorry.), but New Year's Eve's a funny old time, and anything can happen I generally find...

After that, thankfully it is all a bit of a blur.

Till the moment that I remember best, and still makes me laugh after all these years.

As my longsuffering friends tried to get me into a car and take me home before I did anymore damage, I spotted a lamppost, which suddenly called to me. Dance round me, it said. So I did. I span round and round and suddenly I was laughing out loud, and all the misery and stupidity of the evening fell away, and I felt free and flirty and young and it didn't matter anymore that I was in love with the wrong guy, had kissed the wrong guy and the wrong guy was in love with me.

I was eighteen, it was a New Year, and anything was possible.

And it was then that it came upon me in a moment of utter clarity that I'd been setting my sights at completely the wrong target. The person I truly loved was -

Well that didn't work out either.

But hey ho, by the following New Year I was coping with the embarrasment of having snogged another wrong guy at the end of term, fancying someone else who didn't fancy me, wishing this year would be the year where I met the man of my dreams.

And funnily enough it was...

Staying In. It's the New Going Out....

I'm not a big fan of New Year's Eve. It rates far too highly as the night of the year when one has to have fun with a capital F. I have like most people I guess, far too many dodgy memories of New Year's Eve parties that have ended in tears (though I have certain fondness for New Year's Eve 1983 - which was the first time I properly got drunk and had an evening where all sorts of mayhem ensued. It ended with me dancing round a lamppost and declaring undying love for someone who had better remain nameless, though I've no doubt if he remembers the events of the rest of that evening he probably knows who he is). So now I am settling down well into middle age, the allure of a night on the tiles is long gone. And actually I quite like the fact that the two big ones have joined us at midnight for the last couple of years. Who better to celebrate a new year with then your offspring?

So last night we decided to stay in. But then Spouse in totally mindblowingly out of character style romantic hero type behaviour decided to cook me a candlelit dinner. He insisted we dress up, so I donned a slinky black number and he donned a tux. Are we having a party? asked no 4. You're not, we are, was Spouse's response. What you're having a party without US??? she said. Too right we are...

As a mother of four I frequently feel like Mrs Large in Jill Murphy's hilarious books about the Large Family, and never more so then last night. One of her books is entitled A Quiet Night In - and Mrs Large cooks Mr Large a special birthday meal only for them both to be so exhausted they both fall asleep and the children eat their dinner.

That didn't quite happen, but it was a hoot chasing unwanted offspring to bed. We let the big ones stay up watching Life of Brian - I think their education in subversion should begin young - and drank champagne and ate steak together with the kitchen door firmly shut. It was great. All the advantages of going out, staying in.

At midnight we joined the children in the lounge, let off party poppers, drank more champagne, and watched the outrageously brilliant fireworks on tv, while the sprogs jumped into the New Year by leaping off the sofa (a German tradition they got off their granny).

It was absolutely brilliant. And reminded me yet again, why after so many years together (we celebrate a quarter of a century next year... gulp. How did that happen?) Spouse remains All That.

I think I shall be going out by staying in a lot more in 2008....