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Thursday, July 31, 2008
Random further updates and the latest addiction...
http://twitter.com/imogenhowson
I did resist for a while, honest. But it's so much fun. So now, until I fix the blog layout to make it tidier, the left-hand sidebar will be filled with messy-looking random snippets of my life. You can even update from a mobile phone, which means I can send mini updates to the blog while I'm away on holiday. I know, I know, I need to cos my fan base is just so demanding. Um, yeah...
Since winning the Elizabeth Goudge Award with the first two thousand words of A Cloak of Feathers, I've been working busily on adding some more thousands of words. And it's going, I think, okay. I've now reached the stage, though, where I need to take the hideous slurry of the first draft, type it up and edit it into something a bit more coherent. I've learned from experience (thanks, Nanowrimo 2005) that if I just keep frantically shovelling more first-draft-y chapters on top of each other it all falls to pieces for lack of a proper foundation. So my word count is going to (discouragingly) drop over the next few days while I force the first draft of the first couple of chapters into something foundation-like.
The Model Auntie was over last week, and she asked if I knew where it was going. And I was able to tell her confidently that I knew what was going to happen in about the first quarter of the book, and I knew one key scene about halfway through, and I knew the basic external conflict. And, yeah, that's it. Which is fine. I used to think I was a plotter, but no, not so much.
Right now I'm drinking coffee before I put on the requisite amount of makeup to go and stare at my face for half an hour while I get my hair cut. The Drunk Auntie graduates from beauty therapists' college tomorrow, and Abstract and I are going to her graduation dinner and ball. With, apparently, an Abba tribute band - how cool is that? And I'm wearing my favourite blue dress again, so I'll be fully expecting some kind of award to come to me. What do you mean, my sister will be the star this time?
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Update from a hot sunny place (yes, England, and no I'm not being sarcastic)
What have I been doing rather than updating this blog?
Well, it's the summer holidays, so having outings with the girls and making the most of the hot sunny weather! I hope it stays like this for our holiday in Wales and camping at Greenbelt later in August.
We've also:
- Had a picnic with the members, plus families, of my housegroup. I made cute little raspberry and strawberry jellies in pots, but it was so hot they turned into not-so-cute soggy berries in warm juice within about an hour of coming out of the fridge. The girls and Abstract joined in a game of football - age-range of players about one and a half to forty, played in a wood with trees and branches all over the place, and various little boys who had tantrums if they didn't get enough time with the ball ("they're all picking on me...").
- Been to Abstract's uncle's funeral. Which was, obviously, very sad - he died recently of cancer. But as funerals go, it was good. After a very short service at a little chapel, we all got on a specially chartered steam train and travelled to the middle of a wood. Then his sons, nephews, one son-in-law and one nephew-in-law carried the (biodegradable cardboard) coffin further into the wood, to where he was going to be buried. There's going to be a rowan tree planted on his grave. I have to say, I was taking notes for my funeral. Oh, and on the way there Sparkler mentioned that if she dies she'd like to be an organ donor. I'm very proud - although obviously I hope she doesn't die until she's so incredibly old that her organs will be of no use to anyone!
- Our friends C and J came to stay for a night, with their mad little four-year-old son, E. At one point he came plaintively into the kitchen and said, "I'm thirsty." His mother offered him milk, water, juice, then said, "Which would you like?" To which he answered, "Cake."
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| Monday, July 21, 2008
Bad and disobedient daughter
Yesterday we were eating lunch. I'd made cheese toasted sandwiches, Abstract had heated up baked beans and made a pot of tea, the girls had...well, stopping playing in order to eat was their contribution to the family meal.
Halfway through lunch we ran out of milk, so Abstract asked Sparkler to get the carton of milk and put it in the jug.
She did.
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| Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Fun with spam
You know how spam emails sometimes try to personalise the subject line to make you think they really do know you and understand how you need to 'change your bedroom life' or 'make her defiantly [sic] come back for more'?
I admit, sometimes I have got a frisson of anxiety when I've seen an email headed: 'immihowson, danger for your family' or 'you are overdrawn immihowson'. Not a huge frisson, you understand, due to the fact that no one ever addresses me as 'immihowson', but still...
Now I'm in charge of the Samhain submissions inbox, though, to my delight, I'm getting the same emails, but addressed to 'editor'. I defy even the most paranoid of men to believe an email entitled 'You need it bigger editor'. My favourite so far has been 'What a stupid face you have here editor', but today's is a close second: 'We caught you naked in the shower editor'. Threatening, no?
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| Monday, July 14, 2008
Conference Notes: Part Four - Selected Highlights
There are detailed notes on the sessions popping up all over the place, so I reckon no one needs me to type up my own scribbly A4 pages for their edification. But I wanted to throw out a few of my own conference highlights:
- Winning the Elizabeth Goudge Award. Like, duh, you think I wasn't going to mention that?
- Meeting Harlequin Mills and Boon editor Joanne Carr. She doesn't acquire for Luna, the fantasy line, nor did she have guidelines on it. Which was what I expected, anyway, because it's primarily US-based, and it's one of the single-title imprints, rather than category, so it's a bit specialised. However, Joanne was extremely helpful, and I did come away with a bit more information than I had before, so it was fine. And I got to do a manuscript pitch for the first time in real life, which is obviously an excellent habit to get into.
- The talk by Joanne Carr and another Mills and Boon editor, on the cliched openings and plots they see most often, plus lots and lots of the most fascinating information on what they like to see in terms of plot and characters. It was all relating to Mills and Boon, of course, but it's information and techniques that can be applied to all types of romance books - and, goodness knows, non-romance books as well. I also want to note that the two M&B editors were two of the most intelligent, articulate, poised, confident and attractive women I've met, and my opinion of M&B as a company has soared.
- The talk by Julie Cohen on pacing your novel. This was interesting and informative. And again, I came away with pages of tips and techniques. And a brilliant system to apply to currently written manuscripts, to check that the pace is doing the right thing throughout: ie. that you're not giving the reader indigestible lumps of backstory that go slowly for pages and pages, and then skipping brightly over that all-important first kiss.
All the meeting people, chatting, networking etc etc was also, of course, fabulous. I noticed a funny thing, though, on my journey home: by the time I'd reached the end of my journey and had to get a taxi from the station to my house, I'd completely run out of any kind of social ability.
When I was in the taxi, the driver, making conversation as they do, said, "Nice weather, isn't it?"
Anxious to be polite, even though my brain was kind of dead by then, I said brightly, "Oh yes!"
To which he laughed. Vaguely, in the back of my mind, I was aware that laughter was surely not the normal response to what I'd said. I then realised that, far from being nice weather, the sky was completely overcast and it was, in fact, starting to rain. I then realised (yes, I know - imagine slow seconds ticking by) that he had been saying it sarcastically.
I'm not sure if I did anything else obviously peculiar, but I feel that my whole manner was less than competent. When the driver dropped me at home, and I'd paid - and tipped him, I'm glad to say - he wished me a nice visit and asked me if I needed to book a taxi to take me back to the station. To which, of course, I said no thanks, I was home now. At which point he looked surprised. So I think, not only did I come across as completely unable to identify either a) sarcasm or b) nice weather, I also appeared to be so clueless he thought I must be visiting for the very first time.
I put this down to the unusual amount of meeting people/chatting/networking etc I'd done over the conference weekend. Clearly, I have a finite amount of social competence, and after four days I've more or less used it up!
I would also like to point out that, after being fed on huge, delicious meals at intervals throughout the day, it was really hard to come back to the house where I'm the main meal-provider! Abstract cooked Monday evening, of course, and made enough for the next day, but after that I found myself in my usual position of house chef. And it was very little fun.
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| Thursday, July 10, 2008
Conference Notes and the Elizabeth Goudge Award: Part Three - Photos
This is a photo of me ready to go to the conference on Friday morning. These grey trousers and black boots pretty much saw me through the whole conference, teamed with different shirts.
 On the other hand, this is a photo of me very late Saturday night, taken on my camera phone in my hideously fluorescent-lit room. I swear this is not how I look in natural daylight. Or when, you know, I haven't won a trophy and cried and had five glasses of wine.
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| Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Conference notes and the Elizabeth Goudge Award: Part Two - Saturday evening to Saturday night to the early hours of Sunday morning...
Another day, another instalment. First, I realised this morning, a little to my horror, that I described Kate Johnson as having 'blonde hair [and] curves'. Which is perfectly true, but it suddenly struck me that 'curves' is often used as a euphemism for, um, plus-size. Which is emphatically not how I was using it. And you can check for yourself how elegantly slim and glamorous Kate is by looking at the photos on Liz Fenwick's blog, here, where Kate is in the pictures of the author panel, wearing a pink skirt, and here, where she's wearing her green conference dinner dress. And note the shoes - both times!
A quick mention of other blogs covering the conference. Mark Thornton, the owner of the Mostly Books bookshop in Abingdon, has lots of photos of the bookstall he ran during the conference, plus a photo of me receiving the Elizabeth Goudge trophy from Catherine Jones. The angle rather obscures my blue dress - it got chilly that evening so I was wearing a little black cardigan - but I think you can see how happy I look! Mark Thornton also includes a list of other conference-bloggers. So go and see.
So, to return to Saturday evening. Clutching my trophy in its little bag, I had my fifth glass of wine of the evening in the company of lots of other authors, and spent a long time chatting about six hundred different things. Around midnight the bar shut and we all dispersed to our little student rooms (small and basic, but scrupulously clean and each with a nice little en suite shower room).
Once I was alone I became convinced that the whole evening had been a dream, and that I'd wake up Saturday morning with no trophy. So I decided to apply the classic test to find out if I was dreaming: I pinched myself. Unfortunately, by this point I'd had so much wine that my skin had gone numb, so I couldn't feel the pinch. So I tried pinching myself really hard. Nope, still couldn't feel it. A little worried now, I tried some other tests. I read a boring safety notice on the wall, and was reassured when I could read each word and they didn't change into something else halfway down (which is what normally happens when I try to read things in dreams).
So, feeling a little more convinced the trophy wouldn't disappear in the night, I made myself a coffee and decided to take a photo of myself with the trophy so I could send it via my phone to Abstract. I did this, it worked, and I got a text back telling me I was clever, which I am. So then I decided I would also let my mother know the good news, and send her a photo too. I know her phone can accept photos because she has videos of their pet goats on it.
I sent the message, drank my coffee, read a bit of Nell Dixon's Blue Remembered Heels (her latest from Little Black Dress - it's loads of fun and apparently sold out at the Mostly Books conference bookstall!), and went to bed. Unbeknownst to me, at this point my mother had received, not all of my message, but only half of it. So, at approaching one o'clock in the morning, she had a photo of me clutching a silver trophy, plus the message, I've won the elizabeth...
This told her, as you can imagine, just enough to be exciting, but not enough to actually tell her what I was clutching or what I'd won, or what it meant. And I'm sorry to say that she was so intrigued and curious that she then couldn't sleep until four o'clock in the morning. So I feel maybe this was not the action of a good daughter.
After unwittingly ensuring that my mother wouldn't sleep all night, I did go to sleep. And had, first, insane scary dreams about serial killers, and then a totally peculiar dream where it was my job to help my nephews shave their legs and dress up in women's clothes. My nephews are all in their late teens, over six foot, and not - as far as I know - remotely interested in cross-dressing. I think at one point I was actually giving them advice on how to shave their bikini lines. The details of that are, mercifully, blurred.
When I woke up in the morning my first action was to look for the trophy. And, bless it, it was still there, standing shinily on the desk. Even better, there were no serial killers or cross-dressing nephews.
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| Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Conference notes and the Elizabeth Goudge Award: Part One - Friday to Saturday evening.
I got back from the RNA Conference yesterday.
To start with I want to wave and send special thanks to people who made my conference a better time. Stephanie Cage, who found me right at the beginning when I was feeling lost, and who looked very pretty in a little flowery outfit. Nell Dixon, who is just as much a sweetie as she comes across online, and who was wearing a tee-shirt saying You're just jealous because the voices are talking to me. And who has had an amazingly successful year, so it was inspiring just to talk to her. Also Kate Johnson, who looked like the perfect advertisement for romantic fiction - blonde hair, curves, cutest shoes in the world - and Lynne Connolly. Partly because it was great to talk to them and partly because hello, they're, like Nell, Samhain authors so they're obviously some of the best people evah.
Also Sahndre, Tansy, Ann (all of whom I spent lots of time with, talking about a hundred different topics), Naomi, Jenny Haddon, Katie Fforde, Catherine Jones, Jan Jones, Aleka, Mark, Joanne Carr, and about fifty other people whose names I did take note of, honest, but they've now fallen out of my head. Despite the name badges, I did a terrible job of remembering people's names, specially as lots of them have pen names which are more famous than their real names. I remember your faces, though, really! I've been having a great time going through my old copies of Romance Matters and matching people up.
It was my first RNA conference, as well as being my first conference ever, and thinking back over it I feel as if I had a bit of a charmed-life experience.
The conference as a whole was a model of fabulous efficiency on the part of the organisers, Jan Jones and Roger Sanderson, so any problems were very minor. But I sailed happily through, mostly oblivious to even any of the minor problems.
I loved all the food they gave us - including full fried breakfasts every morning, huge urns of tea and coffee served several times a day, and one delicious lunch of salad, warm poppyseed rolls, prawn and crabstick marie rose followed by thickly iced chocolate cake. And I was starving each meal time - they do say your brain uses up huge amounts of calories, but all the same I don't think I'm going to weigh myself this week.
My room was a little haven of peace and quiet. My shower was boiling hot - in a good way. Apparently there was a rather rude barman in the bar, but I was served by a charming young woman instead so I never met him. I got a leetle hungover, especially on Sunday morning (Why? you ask. Just keep reading and you'll find out!), but nothing that breakfast couldn't cure.
But the point at which my world became so wonderful I really thought I might be dreaming was on Saturday night.
I'd heard about the Elizabeth Goudge Award some months before. It's awarded annually, at the conference, and is only open to conference attendees. Each year it's on a different theme, and entrants have to write a short story or the first chapter of a novel on that theme.
This year you had to write a first chapter - less than 2,000 words - on the theme 'To Have and To Hold'. Which, to be honest, was less than ideal for me. I really struggled with the theme, and I also found that to write a first chapter which works well on its own is much harder than writing a short story, because it not only has to be, in a sense, complete in itself, it has to also look as if it will lead into something even more exciting.
However, I eventually worked out what I was going to write about, and I wrote. And rewrote. And changed the beginning. And changed the end. And changed the beginning back to what I'd had to start with. And then cut, and cut, and cut in order to keep it to 2,000 words.
And sent it off in a big brown envelope to Catherine Jones, the RNA chairwoman and one of the judges for the award.
I did allow myself a little happy daydreaming of myself in my favourite blue dress winning the award, but as conference time got nearer I told myself I was simply setting myself up to be disappointed when I didn't win.
But when I got to the conference dinner and, halfway through my lemon cheesecake, Catherine Jones climbed up on her chair to announce the finalists, my heart started pounding and I put down my spoon with cheesecake still on it.
Remember, you probably haven't won. You wrote fantasy, which isn't popular in this country. If you haven't won it doesn't mean you're no good.
She started off by saying there'd been a high standard of entries.
That's fine, even if I don't win I can comfort myself with knowing we were all good.
She then read out the first of the six finalists, who stood up, and we all clapped.
I could be one of the six. I know it's good enough. It should make the six -
Then she read the title of the second finalling entry: A Stolen Cloak of Feathers.
That's mine. That's mine! I stood up, suddenly shaking, tears prickling my eyes. People smiled and applauded. I sat down again, looked at my cheesecake, realised I couldn't possibly finish eating it.
Catherine finished reading out the finalists, then moved on to the third-place winner. And I have to apologise for not taking in any other people's names from this point, so although I remember faces I simply can't remember who placed where.
Then she read out the second-place winner. The lady across from me smiled at me and said, "It still could be you," and I shook my head and said, "No, no, don't."
Then Catherine moved on to saying something about the winner. She said it wasn't something she normally liked, she said she and the other judge had loved it...
This could be me. No, no, you're one of the six. That's good enough. It doesn't matter -
..."A Stolen Cloak of Feathers by Imogen Howson."
I stood up, stunned, hands to my face. Everyone clapped, I started to make my way up the room to the chairwoman. Halfway there I began to cry, and heard a kind of collective murmur of sympathy and oh bless hers. And then it's kind of blurry. Catherine hugged me, someone took a picture, someone else said congratulations, I said, "Oh, it's my first conference!" and waved - I don't remember, but possibly the silver trophy and possibly just the bag it lived in - at everybody.
Then lots of people hugged me and said well done and gave me good advice and told me to delete Stolen from the title - to which I said, consider it deleted (they were very important people so I figured they knew what they were talking about). I phoned Abstract and the girls and they cheered over the phone. Then we went to the bar and Tansy bought me a drink and I had a good, good evening.
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| Thursday, July 03, 2008
Sports day and RNA conference
Yesterday was Gloworm's school sports day. She was in two races (sack and skipping, with both a sack and a rope that were too short for her, for goodness' sake), so I spent an hour and a half mostly watching and applauding other people's children running up and down.
I know it's a sign of a very confused person to be nostalgic for something you never experienced - and that possibly never existed in the first place - but I couldn't help wishing for a sports day in the style of Elinor M. Brent Dyer's Chalet School, where the non-athletes or non-interested could make Joey Maynard fall off her chair with laughter by doing a dress-up-in-wellies-and-crinolines race, and where the whole thing would get called off early because some outrageous scamps had set fire to the Chalet.
In other news, I'm insanely excited and busy packing for the RNA conference, which I'm going to tomorrow. Tomorrow! I'm hoping to get away with just two bags - my dress for the Saturday night conference dinner is a fabulously uncrushable one. Sparkler helped me work out which shoes to wear, gave me input on my earrings and necklace, and did my nails for me. And then I did the washing-up today and chipped the polish off the ends, so my favourite personal beautician is going to fix them for me later - after which point any washing-up will have to be done by someone other than me.
My mother and I finally went for my birthday-present shopping trip the other week (my birthday was in March, hence the use of the word finally) so I have new clothes, too. If I remember I'll get Abstract to take a photo of me in some of them tomorrow, for narcissistic display on this blog.
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