Why Am I Here?

I'm here because I want to blog! I used to blog. In fact, I've had a blog for years under my real name but just recently I realised that blogging under my own name wasn't such a good idea. My colleagues all knew I had a blog. Any of them could have read it. I never actually mentioned where I worked or exactly what I did but...well, after a while I started to get paranoid. My posts were normally about every day life but then something happened at work which affected my every day life so I started mentioning it in my blog. Then my blog turned into a kind of daily moan about everything that I felt was unfair. Then, I stopped my blog. Partly because I was bored with hearing myself moan, partly because I'd lost the will to blog and partly because I changed jobs and was worried my new colleagues (who love to google everyone they come across) might read my blog, particularly if I was still moaning about work related issues.

Nearly five months on and I'm ready to blog again - but under an assumed name! So what am I going to blog about? Anything I feel like blogging about. I'm a writer so I'm bound to talk a lot about writing. I also like to talk about my favourite tv shows - Stargate, CSI, The Unit, 24, Battlestar and many, many more.

I might even talk about slightly more boring things like study because I sat an exam on Friday. Exam number five of 14. I think, no, I know, I mucked up 22% of it but I'm hoping I did OK in enough of the rest of it to pass. So far I've passed two. I get the results from the next two on August 1st and then the result from Friday in early September. I have two more exams in November, three in May 2007, two in summer 2007 and the final two in November 2007.

But for now, back to writing. I've been writing since 2001. So far, I've been aiming at Harlequin Mills & Boon but I also have several ideas for chick lit or mainstream novels down on paper and want to write a crime novel. I currently have three requested fulls sitting on editor's desks and I'm in a kind of no man's land - do I keep on writing what I've been writing for the last few years or is it time to try something different? I haven't had a form rejection letter from M&B yet (touch wood). So far I've had four full requests and each rejection has been a personal letter detailing exactly why the ms was rejected, and most importantly, each rejection has also included a comps slip with a request to send more directly to the same editor. So, she's seen something in my writing. She's been encouraging me. I appreciate that. But I've never actually written anything else. Maybe I'd get the same encouragement elsewhere, from publishing houses publishing a different genre.

It is said that you should write what you like to read. While I still like to read romances, recently I have found myself leaning more towards a kick ass type heroine - more like Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum and JD Robb's Eve Dallas. So, I'm toying with the idea of writing that crime novel. I think I'll warm towards the idea even more in September when Janet's "How I Write" book comes out.

Until then, I'm happy playing with an idea for a Mills & Boon Modern Extra, just in case the editor who has my current requested full sends me another one of those comps slips that I'm told are like gold dust!

So, let's get writing!