Getting my ash kicked

Rightiho, I'm back, and I know you're all burning to hear how my ski trip went. Well, no broken bones, which is always a bonus, especially when you're as bad a skiier as I am. The scenery was absolutely stunning, both on the slopes and in the village, a direct contrast to the French resorts I've visited where the mountains might be gorgeous but you'll be staying in a concrete block surrounded by other concrete blocks.

The Trummelbach Falls, ten cascades inside a mountain that form the main defiles of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau mountain glaciers.

Lager Hell and Special Hell, our main tipple last week.

I'm the one on the left.

Overlooking Lauterbrunnen and the Staubbach Falls.

The North Face of the Eiger, under which we skiied (note: under, not down)

Mountainside near Wengen.

Unfortunately the holiday was marred by the very selfish eruption of an Icelandic volcano whose name I won't attempt to spell. Unless you've been living in a hole you'll have heard about the travel chaos this has caused in northern Europe, with pretty much all flights being cancelled wherever the ash cloud hit. I'm reliably informed this is not because of visibility issues (come on, how do you think planes fly at night?) but because of several historical instances of plane engines getting clogged with ash. What you don't want at 30,000 ft is for all the plane's engines to fail. You really don't. Look at it that way, and not flying suddenly becomes the better alternative.

Anyway, since I was up in the Swiss Alps, this necessitated a journey of nearly 24 hours by bus and ferry. I frigging hate buses, and ferries are even worse. Travel sickness, quite apart from the stagnant boredom of coach travel, is unpleasant for even a short length of time.

So in case you're wondering what it takes to get home when your flight is cancelled, here's a little run down of my Saturday.

0515: Alarm goes off. Ski rep has organised travel for us with bus leaving at same time as if we were taking our flight, which might be less painful if I'd been able to get to sleep before midnight. Anxiety about 24 hours of coach-sickness plus likelihood of actually being able to get on ferry, despite assurances of booking, don't help with sleep either.

0600 First at breakfast for possibly the first time in my life. Mainline coffee and actually manage porridge and toast. Can't usually eat early in the morning as tiredness makes me feel quite sick, but am also aware this will be the last actual meal I'll get for a while.

0630 Board coach.

0640 Realise have left passport in pocket of suitcase now buried in coach hold. Add 'will I be able to get my passport out before we get to the ferry' anxiety to the rest.

0830 Having slept most of the way so far, wake up to buy food at last service station before Geneva airport. Realise have Swiss francs and British sterling, but no Euros, yet will spend about 12 hours travelling through France. Buy bags of junk food to sustain self.

0900 Arrive Geneva airport to meet refugees from Serre Chevalier who will be sharing our coach. Said 'fugees include Jonny the Hyperactive Ginger Kid (had to be ginger, didn't he? Give them a bad name, Jonny) who has definitely been eating Energizer batteries and doesn't stop talking or kicking seats for the next twelve hours.

0930 French-Swiss border. Renew panic about passport, but turns out they don't really give a fig and we just drive right through. Put on headphones and listen to Flight of the Conchords radio show.

1000 Get text from Easyjet: Your flight has been cancelled. Helpful, as it ought to have taken off at 9.30.

1100 Realise that have taken seat on left side of bus for journey that runs east-west during the morning, then south-north during afternoon. Why does this matter? Well, where's the frigging sun? Bus does not have air conditioning but rather vents that blow uncooled air just behind seat in front, ie onto absolutely nothing.

1200-2100 Time blurs into one great big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. Read some of book (carefully, mindful of travel sickness). Swallow vast quantities of travel sickness pills. Drink pints of water. Eat crisps, chocolate bars, Haribo and the occasional tuna sandwich, which is all I can really find to eat, especially once we're into France and every other item of food contains poulet or jambon. Begin to seriously crave fruit and vegetables. Visit various service stations where French staff treat us with contempt--possibly because we're clearly English, or possibly because that's how they treat everyone. Bus is still fecking baking, but then I never got to use the hot tub at the chalet, so I suppose it's nice they've given us a sauna to travel home in.

2130 Arrive Calais, and disembark Swiss bus to wait for English bus which is on its way over from Dover. Am still not sure if it arrived empty or not. Suspect it did, which is a ludicrous waste considering the people who must be desperate to come south across the Channel.

2140 Retrieve passport from bag. Relax tiny bit, but am still not convinced abut making 2310 ferry on which we're apparently booked. Calais absolutely freezing, especially after hyper-heated bus: am wearing two t-shirts, sweater and ski jacket, plus gloves and scarf retrieved from suitcase. Consider digging through case for salopettes too but am mindful of Fecking Boiling status of last bus and don't want to spend rest of journey wearing sauna suit.

2150 Jonny The Mad Ginger Kid is now literally climbing the walls of the foot passenger terminal. Then wrestling with his dad. Like, really trying to knock the guy out. Wonder if Jonny's mum will have left home when they arrive back.

2155 Foot passenger terminal like refugee camp. Have been checking Twitter all day and hearing depressing stories of passengers stuck without any form of onward travel in Europe, or even worse overseas where they've got no chance of travelling overland. Realise we're actually quite lucky.

2156 Hear through Twitter that Dan Snow is bringing Dunkirk-style flotilla of rescue ships to Calais on Sunday. Consider hiding until then so will have legitimate excuse to tell Dan Snow he's my hero.

Dan Snow, we heart you!

2200 English bus turns up. Says Mayday Travel on the side, which makes me laugh hysterically for a bit.

2215 Passport control consists of putting name and date of birth on a list passed down the coach, then getting off to show my passport to some bloke who looks at it for about half a second before waving me on. Border between France and England appears to be one of those metal barrier things they use to keep crowds from rushing the stage at concerts. Phone informs me we're now on British Summer Time. Is black as night and freezing outside, so that seems about right.

2240 Flashing sign implores me: Important Pets Must Be Declared Here. Wonder if this means unimportant pets don't have to be declared.

2241 Suggest Jonny the Mad Ginger Kid is declared as pet. Mild hysterical giggling from rest of party.

2300 Bus rolls onto ferry. Am immediately seven years old again on camping trip to France. Hated ferries then, too.

2310 Find bar on ferry. Ferry begins to move, or maybe that's the combination of sleep deprivation, travel sickness and lager.

2330 Phone begins to lose both signal and battery power. Probably shouldn't have been Tweeting all day, but desperately needed to keep contact with Real People and a Real World outside the Sauna Coach.

2350 Change watch to UK time. Is now 2250 and feel I have back-slid a little in my achievements, especially as still have 2310 in my head as Very Important Time to catch the ferry.

2350 (UK time) Ferry docks. So tired and cranky is all I can do not to shove over party of school kids blocking access to Mayday Travel. Collapse into seat and go straight to sleep.

0010 Wake up as absolutely freezing and noise from outside incredibly loud. Skylight is open but am in window seat and can't reach to close it.

0020 Rest of party realises why bus is freezing and noisy and attempt to close skylight is made. Unsuccessful. Wish had actually got salopettes out now.

0030 So tired fall asleep anyway.

0130 (ish. Probably. Losing definite track of time now) Arrive Gatwick. Drag cases to pick up point for car park and nearly fall asleep again.

0135 On way to find loo meet hilariously optimistic ski party looking for check in. Try not to break down in hysterical laughter.

0145 Car park shuttle driver informs us we're among first passengers to arrive at Gatwick for two days. Flight ban expected to continue until at least 1pm Sunday, but we all expect it'll be longer. Tells us test flight came down in Andover yesterday. Pretty glad not still waiting for flight.

0200 (maybe. Really can't tell any more) Arrive car park. Aim suitcases at boot of car. Fall into back seat. Sleep.

0330 (possibly. Can no longer even focus on arm, let alone watch) arrive home. Hear Demon Puppy barking from outside and realise with rush of homesickness that I haven't missed her at all.

Talk amongst yourselves

I shall be leaving the Demon Puppy and Somme-like back garden for the north face of the Eiger! Well, not literally, but some ski slopes nearby. Back next week.

Shoop, shoop!

Blog on hold

for a week, while I'm in sunny Cornwall. Well, Cornwall, anyway. Where I shall have no internet and not even much phone access.

Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Back, and new beginnings

So, I'm back from another lovely few days in Port Isaac, including a trip over to Padstow for the traditional and frankly bonkers May Day celebrations, which as far as I can ascertain are like Morris on speed, and seem to necessitate dressing up the Demon Puppy in a red neckerchief.
(I was going to upload more pictures, but for some reason my computer is having some sort of hissy fit over them--wouldn't read the memory card, and then when I transferred them via my laptop and a USB stick, wouldn't let me save the edited image (it needed to be rotated 90 degrees). Wouldn't let me save it anywhere, with any file name. I ended up screencapping it, copy and pasting, cropping and then saving as a totally new image, which is just ludicrous, and not a process I'm about to go through with half a dozen pictures of Padstow filled with umbrellas).

Anyway. Now I'm back, and I've spent the week thinking about a new story.

My attempts at publishing romantic comedy have, so far, been utterly woeful. I think maybe one request for a full manuscript has been the highlight. Therefore, for the last three or four years I've been concentrating on the stuff people will actually pay me for, ie paranormal erotic romance. And chick-lit mystery, but that's stalled recently due to the fact that nobody actually bought the damn books.

However, my romcom brain keeps ticking over. There are abundant ideas in my head for new stories about people who aren't vampires and who don't have to solve murders. One of these has been percolating over the last few weeks, and I really want to make a start on it. However, I find it very difficult to write something if I don't have the right beginning. It's like playing the first chord of a song: if it's not right, I have to start again before I can go much further. Occasionally, I can fool the story with a dummy start that lets me progress past the first few chapters, but quite often, as with one poor story languishing on my hard drive, I can start it upwards of a dozen times and still never get that first good, clean chord.

Either way, I need to get this story started, because it's burning a hole in my brain. How to begin? I really need that first chord...

Stars, swords, and fake Kate Winslet

Well, I'm back from Center Parcs, and to a massive great big shiny dollop of lovely news: the first review for After The Fall is a Gold Star Award from JERR! I'm so happy, because I really loved this story, and practically nobody bought it, but at least now I know someone other than me and my editor liked it!

Now, to celebrate, I'm going to post lots of holiday pictures. I know, I'm just too kind. My friend Alysia was determined to photodiary every minute of the trip, starting with (and I'm not kidding) a picture of the cat boot as we loaded it up. Thankfully, the rest of the pictures were a bit more interesting!

The lovely woodlands outside our villa.

One of the many lakes. As you can see, we had glorious weather.

The Three Musketeers (I'm the one in the middle, having a bad hair day). Foil Fencing was so amazingly fun--and amazingly hard work too! Aside from the mask and the glove, there was that sexy blue body protector, which was dense enough to stop the point of a foil, and so definitely dense enough to make me pretty damn hot. And under that, an even sexier plastic bra type thing, because even with the body protector there are certain bits that need more protection! By the end, we were all roasting hot, but learning to stab someone with a sword was definitely worth it.

Silliness abounded, especially on the 'Wreck of the Walrus' play type thing by the crazy golf course.

This was directly after fencing. See what a natural I am? I can even fence with a golf club!

"I'm on top of the world!"
"No, I'm on top of the world, you're Kate Winslet."
"Oh, okay then. I'm flying!"
"Better. Although you do know this isn't a real ship, don't you?"

"Land ho!"
"Who're you calling a ho?"

This is me, apparently getting very excited about making tea.

We had our own sauna. I really miss the sauna!

This is Trevor the Squirrel (Alysia named him, in case you're wondering). After posing pathetically outside the patio doors, we let him in...and see what happened...





After a while, Trevor just wandered in when he felt like it, and took monkey nuts out of the packet.

The girls decorated the place for my birthday, and although you can't really see it very well here, the candles on the cake each burned with a different coloured flame, which is ridiculously neat.

My parents came up on the day for my birthday. See how the wrapping was all coordinated, even down to the butterfly motifs? Love that, Mum!

Archery, or perhaps me trying to be Susan from the Narnia films (mostly in the hope that Prince Caspian will turn up, because, yum). Unfortunately, despite this not being the first time I've tried archery, there's one thing I always forget to do. Well, okay, there are two. The first is that I always forget to be any good at it. The second is that while I'm trying to remember to be good, I forget to keep my arm flexed, and therefore the bowstring thwacks my inner arm at somewhere between 40-110 mph.

See? It was originally a lot more purple.

(It's actually surprisingly hard to take a picture of your inner arm).

Turkey Day

Even though turkey should really be a Christmas thing (you don't get Ebeneezer Scrooge buying the Cratchits a ham, do you?), I wish a happy Thanksgiving to anyone who celebrates it. And leave you with this wise insight from Anya:

"To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It's a ritual sacrifice, with pie."

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 4.8, "Pangs"

(image from http://www.distantocean.com/2007/10/bush-turkey-rel.html)

Be a good blog

ETA: If you're looking for something to read while waiting for the blog to resume--I know, it's like waiting for the next episode of 24--I do actually have a Changeling Press novella out on Thursday. It's Spaceport: Courtesan, and even if you don't buy it, you simply must admire the bee-ee-ay-you-tiful cover.

Galleys, edits and covers

So, I finished the galleys for Still Waters, which should be in print at the end of March (yay! woo! etc!), but that made a hole in edits on Kett's book (I was sent the galleys a month ago and, er, forgot until about three days before they were due in).

But I'm steaming ahead. Well, puttering anyway. I'd like to get it finished before I go away on Monday (here, for five days), and hopefully get some distance from it so I can read through again with fresh eyes.

I have a small stack of books to take with me (I save up books for holidays), including the first of Colleen Gleason's Gardella Chronicles. But I'm mad with the publishers, Allison and Busby, for giving the UK release such a bland cover:
See? What does that tell you? It's a romance, sure. But so is everything else on the shelf. There's nothing on this cover to make me want to know more; and, crucially, nothing that tells me what the book is actually about. The USP of this series is that it's both paranormal and historical. But the cover tells you absolutely none of that. Compare it with the original Signet release:
Corset? Stake? Maybe it's a historical, maybe it's got vampires in it! Ooh, maybe I'll pick up this book and find out more! It's a much nicer piece of artwork, and it actually tells you something about the book too. Added to which, with the 'headless lady' type of cover you don't get the, "But she looks nothing like the chick on the cover," irritation. Actually, this is worse with heroes, I think, because they're never quite right for the hunk between the pages.

Anyway, rant over. I'm looking forward to reading this, and my other books too, which include Jasper Fforde and Daily Life in Ancient Rome. Can't say I'm not diverse.

Where I was last week

Shamefully, I only took a few pictures, mostly of the riverboat trip we took on Sunday, at the Aldeburgh Food and Drink festival (many Yummy Mummies and lots of organic meat). However, they came out rather beautiful, so I thought I'd share some.

There were a couple of these barges sailing up and down the Alde River, which starts near Snape, winds towards Aldeburgh on the coast, but is separated from the sea by a shingle bank. It goes back inland and finally flows out to sea not far from Felixstowe.



The river is quite wide at Snape, and it was explained to us that a wave (the river is tidal) flooded nearby fields in the last century, creating an area of marshland that's frequently underwater, and is now a haven for wildlife (and birdspotters!).



A flock of birds, who seem to be forming an arrow!


And finally, before we even left the house. Jack really wanted to come with us!

Still Waters locations part 2

Okay, after searching two hard drives and several shoeboxes in the garage (where I also partook of a little light beating-the-crap-out-of-the-punchbag), I found the photos I was looking for. Back when I was working with an analogue camera. Ahh, the good old days of 2004.

This is the first Sophie book set entirely in England. although the Cornish might argue that fact, since Cornwall used to be regarded as a separate country, with its own language and its own flag (which is still used sometimes, as is its Cornish name, Kernow).

I also made a couple of maps (heavily borrowed from Google maps) , for those of you who haven't got a clue where in the hell I'm talking about. (If you want to see them bigger, right-click and open them in a different window--Blogger will open them in this window if you let it).

And yes, for those of you who do know where Cornwall is, I know I've included Devon in half these maps. Deal with it.





Tintagel, looking down the path to the cove. This path doesn't look so bad, but trust me when I say it's so steep my lungs were burning by the time I'd climbed back up. There is actually a Land Rover Defender service to carry tourists up and down so they can see the castle. Sophie mentions this service, which Luke reckons is for wimps, but she likes the sound of--not only because her beloved Ted is a Defender too.

Tintagel Head, seen from Port Isaac, through a typical sea fret. And yes, that is as cold as it looks. I can tell you from experience how bitterly cold it is standing up on the headland with the wind slicing through you. Imagine living in a dark age castle there (the dark ages being when King Arthur was supposedly born in that very castle, now sadly almost completely obliterated).

Tintagel cove. First look at the cave on the left--that's known as Merlin's cave (yes, that Merlin). It goes all the way through to the other side of the headland like a tunnel, and when the tide is out you can walk all the way through.

Now look further left and up at the walkway between the mainland and the 'Island'. Those tiny, tiny little dots are people. Pictures can't possibly convey how high that is, how jagged the rocks below are, how loud the crashing waves, and how completely terrifying it is to someone as frightened of heights as I am. Even once you reach hard rock again, you climb up more steps, carved into the vertical rock face, until you get to the very top of the Island.

The top of that Island is also a setting in Still Waters. Okay, I'm not really sure a helicopter could land there, but that, my friend, is what they mean by poetic licence.


Back to Port Trevan, or Port Isaac in real life. The street known as Squeeze-ee-belly Alley, which I showed a picture of below, ends by passing under a couple of cottages. This is me standing there in the narrowest part of the gap. I know I have giant man-shoulders, but they both touched the walls as I went through.

Crystalline turquoise waters, a tiny cove near Port Gaverne just around the headland from Port Isaac. This tiny little cove always reminds me of something out of the Chronicles of Narnia (I think it's the Voyage of the Dawn Treader I'm thinking of, where they find a beautiful pool with the statue of a gold man in it. When they try to hook it out with a sword, the sword turns to gold on touching the water. The statue is actually a man who dived in and turned to gold. Why I think of that when I look at this, I've no idea--but that's the power of imagery for you).


Pretty pretty views, with imminent death just behind you in the form of those falling rocks. Honestly, there are so many ways to die around here--the water and the cliff are spectacular enough--that it's a wonder I didn't pop off more characters in Still Waters.

Aha! The cave! I found the picture of the cave! The tide here is, obviously, well out, but when it's in it completely covers the floor of the cave. I truly don't know how high up it actually goes (you can only see the place by walking there when the tide is out), but in the book I had it high enough to drown someone a few feet from the ceiling.

The little dog there, by the way, is Honey, the real-life Norma Jean, trotting along behind my dad.

St Michael's Mount, on the south coast of Cornwall. The causeway here is only visible and safe to cross when the tide is out. Twice a day, the mount becomes an island, only accessible by boat. The island is inhabited by the family who own the castle at the top, and villagers in the cottages at the bottom. I took liberties with the island when I used it as the setting--both in Still Waters and Ugley Business--for the home of Angel's friend Livvy, by putting an Elizabethan palace there instead of a medieval castle. Still, I can't think of a more fantastic setting for the wedding at the end of the book, can you?