Ros Clarke's Blog, page 34

All I Want For Christmas is… KARAOKE!

Well, I don't but my heroine loves it!

Go on, you know you want to have a go:

Oddly, when I was writing the story, I kept changing my mind about which song Anna would sing. Last Christmas was top choice for a while (check out the cute office Christmas party video for it in that link). It was only when I was checking youtube for karaoke versions to post that I realised just how appropriate the lyrics of All I Want For Christmas are for my story. Another happy coincidence! And pleasingly, Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber both agreed to star in the promotional video.

All I Want For Christmas

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Last night, Anna Gardner was the life of the office Christmas party—right up until she threw herself at gorgeous advertising executive playboy, Hugh Munro. Again. Last year, Hugh let her pretend their passionate kiss never happened, but this year he's determined to make Anna admit she wants him as much as he wants her.

Except, Hugh doesn't know the office party is the only night of the year his friend lets her hair down. That every hour she's away from the office is spent caring for her sickly mother. That her mother's condition, early-onset Alzheimer's disease, is hereditary.

When Hugh finds out what she's been hiding, he's forced to do some serious soul-searching. It's not fair to Anna or her mother for him to get involved casually, but casual relationships are all he knows. Can he prove to himself—and to Anna—that she's all he wants for Christmas?

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All I Want For Christmas Is…

COVER ART!!!

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Look, it's real!

Last night, Anna Gardner was the life of the office Christmas party—right up until she threw herself at gorgeous advertising executive playboy, Hugh Munro. Again. Last year, Hugh let her pretend their passionate kiss never happened, but this year he's determined to make Anna admit she wants him as much as he wants her.

Except, Hugh doesn't know the office party is the only night of the year his friend lets her hair down. That every hour she's away from the office is spent caring for her sickly mother. That her mother's condition, early-onset Alzheimer's disease, is hereditary.

When Hugh finds out what she's been hiding, he's forced to do some serious soul-searching. It's not fair to Anna or her mother for him to get involved casually, but casual relationships are all he knows. Can he prove to himself—and to Anna—that she's all he wants for Christmas?

 

And a weird coincidence. When I Christmasified the website a couple of days ago, I wanted to include a romantic photo. I searched my favourite stock image site, found one I liked that reminded me a bit of the couple in my story, played with it in photoshop and uploaded it. See them there on the left hand side of the screen (sorry, if you're viewing this on a small screen, you probably can't see them). Look familiar? Yup, completely independently, the cover artist chose a picture of the same couple to use! She's wearing different clothes and her hair colour has been edited, but it's definitely the same couple – I checked on the stock image site!

All I Want For Christmas is… HUGH

The hero of my story is called Hugh Munro. My editor thinks he is a bit like Hugh Grant. I had someone a bit more like Hugh Jackman in mind. But there are plenty of Hughs to go round. Who's your favourite Hugh?

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All I Want For Christmas Is…

FIVE days to go so I'm starting the countdown now.

The story so far

It's been a crazy few days. Two weeks ago I finally got round to writing the Christmas-themed short story I was hoping to submit to Entangled Publishing. I'd been chatting on twitter with one of the editors there about the submissions she was looking for and deadlines for getting them in. I agreed with one of my writing group that we would both write stories for this, read each others' and submit them. She was much more organised about it than me and had both submitted and sadly been rejected before my story was even finished.

Anyway, I got 10,000 words down on the screen. It wasn't one of those stories that flowed naturally and I wasn't sure that I even liked it that much. But I sent it to my friend and another reader and they both made some great suggestions to improve the characterisations and the pacing. And then I emailed it off, with no real expectation of anything than another rejection.

The next day I heard back from the editor. She liked it! But she wanted a couple of changes. I made the changes and sent it back.

On Wednesday last week, I heard from the editor who had been assigned the story and I received the contract to sign. Wow! That made it feel really real. I signed the contract and sent it back to the US on Thursday.

On Friday morning, I got my story back from my editor. With 504 comments. On a 10,000 word story. I climbed down off cloud 9 pretty quickly when I opened that document. Admittedly, a lot of those comments were correcting to US spelling and punctuation, and a lot of the others were very minor changes. I worked through as well as I could, but it was hardgoing.

By Saturday, we'd got it down to 208 comments.

Then 50-something.

Then half a dozen.

And finally, about ten minutes ago, NO MORE COMMENTS. EDITS ARE DONE, folks.

Normally, they wouldn't work so quickly but because this is a Christmas romance, there is a very tight deadline to meet. It still has to go to the copyeditor and then the proofs have to be checked. I've no idea about cover art and I'm not even sure if the title has been agreed yet. But I think it's due out next week! I've a feeling that this week is going to be another whirlwind introduction to yet more aspects of publishing which aspiring authors never get told about. Stay tuned!

Very exciting news

I've had a short story accepted for publication by Entangled Publishing!

It's a Christmas themed story so I think it will be coming out very soon indeed. Watch this space.