Imogen Howson's Blog, page 9

Christmas, already?

November and December have kind of passed in a blur.

November I started doing NaNoWriMo, at the same time as reading sixty submissions for the Springtime Anthology.  Reading sixty submissions also meant responding to sixty submissions, and I'd made a little agreement with myself that I would write personalised responses to as many authors as possible.  Halfway through the responses and already behind on NaNoWriMo, I thought to myself that I'd planned my time not entirely sensibly.

I got my responses out on time, contracted the three novellas for the anthology (I'm editing them now, and loving them all over again, which is awesome), and sent two revise-and-resubmit requests.  I did not complete NaNo, although I do have 20,000 or so words I didn't have before (on the third in my Volcano series: Chains of the Volcano).

Halfway through November I also got the news that my dad was having some health problems.  It's serious but not terrifyingly so, and it should be all fine, but my dad is practically never ill so I was kind of freaked out.  In the same week we also heard that the son of some old friends from our former church in London had been rushed to hospital with meningitis, and was terribly ill (I mean unconscious intensive care ill).  He's in his early twenties, and had been taken ill at university.  Years ago, when he was much littler, I was his nanny.  I started working for his parents when he was about three, and when his sister was a very little baby, and they were such sweethearts.  So I was pretty freaked out about that too.  Fortunately, after a couple of days, we heard that he was recovering, and a recent Christmas card told us that he's continuing to recover and all should be well.

November, to be honest, was not a great month.  Some definite high spots were the Springtime Anthology novellas, and visiting my parents who've just moved house to a fabulously weird cottage like a hobbit hole, and having The Model Auntie stay for a few days.  Oh, and the snow, which was beautiful and surprising.  But all in all, not the most peaceful month I've ever spent.

December has been full of Christmas preparations.  Finally, this week, I reached the point of having sent all my presents to people we're not seeing over Christmas, bought and wrapped all the presents for people I am seeing (Abstract and the girls, really), and stocked the house up with the appropriate food and drink.  Hooray.

Now, on Christmas Eve, the spiced beef for Christmas dinner has been cooked, and is now being pressed and cooled in the conservatory; the presents are all piled under the tree; the stockings are hanging up in the girls' rooms; and in the kitchen there is dry sherry and Christmas-spiced mead and assorted cheeses and crackers and pickles and brandy butter and a Christmas pudding, and two glace fruit Christmas cakes made mostly by Sparkler.  Abstract is in charge of the vegetables, and the beef had to be cooked in advance, so tomorrow I'm going to mostly drink sherry and play with my presents.

Oh, and we have a new television!  Our first flat-screen, digital-enabled, oh-look-there's-no-orange-and-blue-wavy-line-moving-across-Buffy's-face television.  Abstract set it up this afternoon, and since then the girls have been overdosing on all the Freeview channels that we've never had before.

Tomorrow is going to follow the time-honoured pattern of stockings, church, then home for present opening before lunch.  Then quite possibly gratuitious television-watching.  And, for some of us, reading our Kindles.

Happy Christmas 2010.

Snow and a snow day!

It snowed all last night, by the looks of it, and this morning I woke to the news that the girls' school was shut.  Sparkler's Facebook home page was full of joyful updates from her friends.

I have some hopes that they will use the time to clean their rooms and, in Sparkler's case, get some extra revision in.  At the moment, however, Sparkler is watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Gloworm has dug various things out of the loft and is arranging them all over the sitting room.

Snow but no snow day

This morning Gloworm and I looked out of the window at the still lightly falling snow, and listened hopefully to the local radio station for the announcement of snow-related school closures.

But there weren't any, so she put on her jumper and her blazer and her coat and her scarf and her gloves and went to school.

Springtime Just Romance Anthology

I'm thrilled to announce the three novellas chosen to form Samhain's Springtime Just Romance Anthology:

Don't Call Me Sweetheart by Gwen Hayes

Love Lies Waiting by Selah March

Something Blue by Serenity Woods

These are all contemporary romances, with heroes and heroines who have exactly what I was hoping to see when I made this anthology call: sizzling attraction and lots of romantic tension. I had a lot of submissions to this anthology, and many submissions that I both enjoyed reading and that were definitely worthy of publication. In choosing the final three, I had to think about the overall theme and tone for the anthology, and in these three novellas I think I've found stories that contrast with and complement each other. Also, well, I loved them too much to let them go. The three novellas will be out as individual ebooks in May 2011, then combined for print release in spring/summer 2012. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did! (Sharing of this announcement is permitted.)

Just when I'm extremely busy…

…the cats decide to help me out.

 

 

 

 

 

Springtime Anthology update

As of right this minute, I have twenty-seven submissions to consider.  They're predominantly contemporary male/female romance, with paranormal romance as the second most popular genre and male/male as the second most popular sexuality.

I've actually read all but one (which I just got this morning) and have sorted out the ones that I want to read again.  So I should be responding fairly fast once we've reached the submissions deadline (midnight November 1st, in case you were wondering).  The date set for when all the submitting authors should hear back is the end of November, but in reality I expect everyone will hear in the first two weeks of November, if not earlier.  Acceptances will go out first, followed by the "first wave" of rejections.  I'll be keeping some submissions back, either because I'm considering offering a revise and resubmit request, or because I'm still considering them for a separate contract, or because I've passed them on for a second opinion from another editor.  So if you don't hear in the first few days, that's not your cue to despair!

As an aside, I've also had a handful of submissions that have come in headed "Springtime Anthology" but have been entirely inappropriate, in either theme or length.  This happens with all Samhain's anthology calls and I'm not sure why.  Either some authors completely misread the anthology guidelines, or they get confused and think even general submissions are supposed to come in headed as if they're an anthology submission.

The trouble is, the more we clarify our submissions requirements, the longer and more complicated they get, so the more likely it is that people will miss something out/ misread something/ get confused between different requirements.

Edited October 31st: Now forty-two submissions, still predominantly m/f contemporary.  I've read all but the latest four, I currently have two top favourites and a bunch of others I'm still thinking hard about.

Edited November 2nd: Past the deadline, and I've got sixty submissions.  That's a lot when I only need three (four at the most) for the anthology!  But any I like the look of but that don't fit in the anthology will be passed to other editors for further consideration and possible contracts.

Exercising with cats

Yesterday I got out my exercise DVD to do half an hour's exercise.  Xander, who up until that point had been perfectly happy elsewhere in the house, decided that this was an ideal opportunity to get love and attention.

When I lay on my back to do leg exercises, he walked on my tummy.  When I lay on my front to stretch out my muscles, he walked on my back.  When I did press-ups he walked under me and breathed in my face.  When I sat up and did arm stretches, he assumed I was stretching out my hand to stroke him and stood on his hind legs to reach it.  When I skipped and jumped, he tried to rub around my ankles.

When I finished exercising he lost interest and disappeared.

Making a book list

I have the great desire to track my reading (and, um, spending) on my Kindle.  I think it'll be interesting to see how much my reading (and, um, buying) habits change from what they have been with mostly print books.

The book list can be viewed here and comments are open for anyone who would like to add one!

Book-drunk and bits of news

It's the weirdest thing to have so many books to read.  Before, I've sometimes treated myself to a nice pile of books and felt I was happily supplied for ages, but I read so fast they've always been gone in a few days.

But now, with Kindle versions of multi-book collections, Stephen King's backlist, as many sample chapters as I feel like downloading, and the ability to buy others with a couple of clicks…well, after a weekend spent reading I kind of felt drunk on books!

I've just sent first-round edits on Blood of the Volcano back to my editor, with the hope that she'll approve my many deletions and a few significant additions.

I've been dieting for the last three weeks, and have lost a little bit of weight, maybe a couple of pounds?  Which is about the right speed.  My godson's naming ceremony is this weekend, and I'll look relatively svelte, I feel.  And hopefully even more svelte by the time Abstract and I have a weekend at a hotel in the Lake District later this month.

Speaking of hotel breaks, there may not be many of those in the future. We're kind of nervous about what the current government is doing with working families tax credit and child benefit.  Due to the way the child benefit is worked out, I've decided that the thing for us to do is make sure Abstract's salary doesn't go up at all (so he stays under the threshold), but for my salary to climb as much as it likes.  I haven't worked out the tax credit yet, but suspect there'll be no fixing that.

I know, I have a new Kindle, so we're clearly not on the breadline or anything.  But it's not like the child benefit gets spent on holidays abroad or private education, either.  We'd survive without, but we'd really miss it.

I made the mistake of reading a discussion about it on a parenting board earlier. A discussion which split neatly into "if you're above that income threshold you're over-privileged and don't need any benefits" (with a secondary line of "don't have kids if you can't afford them") and "I work hard to get above the threshold, why should I be penalized when scroungers/single mums/paedophiles get an easy ride".  Yes, paedophiles were referenced.  It was a super-intelligent discussion.

Tangentially, I am deeply irritated by people who throw out the casual comment "I don't like children" with clearly no idea that they're being seriously offensive.  I don't mind at all people who say "I don't want children" or "I don't like looking after children" or any number of similar statements.  But saying you don't like a whole section of the population? Hello, Mr Bigot.

I'm also bewildered that they think it's okay to say it about children (or babies, or teenagers), but you can bet that if someone said something similar about, oh, older people, or people with disabilities, or, you know, people of a different race, there'd be a shocked intake of breath all round.

Unbelievable awesome of the world

I unpacked the Kindle yesterday, plugged it in for its initial "up to three hours" charging time, and followed the super-clear instructions to connect to wifi, set the time etc etc.  It charged fully within an hour, and a few minutes later I was reading.

The e-ink is extraordinarily clear, the page-turn flicker becomes unnoticeable after a few minutes of reading, the menus and navigation are intuitive and easy to use.  Once it's in its sleek black case (definitely worth getting, both for protection and to make it more comfortable to hold) I could clip my existing book light to the case without damaging the Kindle.  I found myself angling the light to make room to turn the pages, as I have to with print books, before realising, oops, another advantage!

The Amazon Kindle forums are full of people complaining about rattling sounds and the logo at the top being distracting and the lack of a built-in backlight and the "ugly screensavers" (they're actually rather attractive – a mix of artwork and portraits of famous authors – all rendered in what look like beautiful dark grey pencilstrokes) and not being able to connect to wifi, so I didn't know if I'd find the Kindle as good as Amazon claims it is.  But actually this is a product that more than deserves the hype.  If you want an all-singing all-dancing gadget that also reads books, get the iPad.  If you basically just want to browse for books and then read them, get the Kindle.

Right now I'm reading Stephen King's The Dark Half, alternating with Wet Magic from The Essential Works of E. Nesbit (Wet Magic is a rare out-of-print book which I read as a child and have been looking for to read again since I was sixteen).  And I have a whole bunch of samples of other books to read later at my leisure.  I am very happy!