There was a moment of insight at Conflux that I haven’t spoken about yet. I was talking to the fabulous girliejones about all things writing, and the words came out of my mouth - “I need to develop a process for revising and rewriting my short stories like I did with my novel writing”. The thing was, I hadn’t realised this was the truth until I said it.

It’s clicked my brain into a new thought pattern regarding my shorts. Earlier this year, I came to accept that my first drafts of novels are more about discovery and planning than they are the actual story, and I need to look at my short stories in the same way. I need to get out of this idea that the ‘stream of consciousness’ sort of stuff that happens when a first draft flows is just that – a stream, no actual planning, probably not even really a plot or a story. The first draft will reveal to me the essence of the idea, the setting, the characters, but generally the plot needs a whole lotta work.

Years earlier, I recognised a first draft is not a novel and I worked out a complicated process to objectively study every aspect of the novel and work out what was really going on. But I’ve been continuing with just tidying, maybe tweaking, a first draft of a short story and thinking that was revising it. It’s not. Until I look at it objectively, judgementally, and consider all the aspects and whether they are actually working or not, it’s just going to be a shadow of what it could be.

I had another insight about me as a short story writer as well, just before Conflux. I’ve been approaching writing shorts from the wrong mental perspective, in that I think I’m no good at them, even as I sit down to write them. Gee, wonder why they haven’t ever been that good?

Interestingly, I’ve never had this perspective with my novels. There is one project I did several years ago which I started wondering whether I was ready to do this yet. I don’t think I was, but the concept fascinates me and I’ll undoubtedly go back to revisit it. Otherwise, when I sit down to start a new novel, it’s generally about the story – is this a novel-length concept, does the plot/setting/characters work, can I make them work or not? It’s never been about me thinking “Well, I know I’m no good at writing novels, but I’ll give it a go…”

So why start my shorts with “I know I’m not that good at writing short stories, but…”

Well, I’ve come to realise that I can write – my years as a journalist, my initial success as a novelist prove that – and after having had a dozen short stories published, I can write shorts. But in order to write the best shorts I’m capable of I need to a) start every short story confident that I can write and thus focussed on the story itself and b) revise and rewrite.

There’s a few anthos around at the moment that I want to submit to. November is going to be a break from book two of the trilogy, so I’m going to spend some time on working on my short stories to see if I can’t make 2010 even more of a bumper year for me as a writer.

So, have just had a fabulous weekend, which was mostly taken up with a roadtrip with Donna Hanson and Matthew Farrer. ROADTRIP! We’ve just had halloween food come in at work, so I managed to load up on eyeballs and bodyparts and ghost chocolate for trip snacks. Oh, and the wonderful Trudi Canavan’s 40th birthday (I want Trudi’s library. No, let’s be truthful – I want the whole house).

I learnt my lesson from last time, and so arrived at Sharyn Lilley’s place in Culcairn (the resting place on Friday night) having not eaten for hours, so ready to tuck in. And she delivered – pumpkin soup, and lotsa little pastries (my favourite was the honey and mustard one). It was amazing to see her kids – it’s been a couple of years, and they’re so grown up. Happy little chappies too. My bed that night was fantastic. Normally I have issues sleeping in strange beds, but not this time. Perhaps that was due to the late hour (didn’t get to bed until 2am, gasbagging too much) but I prefer to think it was because it was one of the snuggliest beds I’ve every been in. Just the right amount of sink, with support still there, and one of the fluffiest doonas I’ve come across.

We took off from Culcairn around 10 on Saturday to make our way to Melbourne, and stopped for lunch at Benalla. The Gallery Cafe there is a favourite of Donna’s, and it passed both my and Matthew’s test. My dish was okay, but the food generally was good. Then we wandered around the gallery itself, checking out things and the others bought up big at the shop (I wanted to buy a set of notecards I saw there, but didn’t have the money. Hopefully next time).

The local exhibition we looked at was very interesting – all seemingly inspired by what I gathered was a recent council/government decision to change a local lake. However, I couldn’t get away from what I call the wankery of some of the artist descriptions. One in particular really got to me – the artist had taken some photos, and then in his artist thoughts crapped on for ages about being alone and watched – nothing about the actual artistic process. Now, I’m prepared to go with the thought that he spied this thing, started photographing it cause it grabbed him in some way, and then as he was photographing got to thinking about loneliness, and isolation and so on. I know that sometimes, artists start work wanting to portray a particular thought or idea, but I’m willing to bet that more often, as in writing, you discover the point of the work as you’re creating. But to pretend that you had some high intellectual ideal – particularly in a situation like this where the work wasn’t actually that good and it was more luck that you got the photo at all than any real skill – really irks me.

Okay, moving on. When it was my turn to drive (we all shared the drive each day – made the trip quite easy, and also gave me the chance for my car nap), Donna decided she wanted to avoid Melbourne, and tolls, and the motorway. It took a bit of doing, but finally the GPS calculated the route. Well, it ended up being the funniest and one of the loveliest drives I’ve ever been on. At one point, when the GPS is telling us we’re just 20 minutes from our destination, we were driving down a country road so small that it was barely wide enough for the car. I looked at Donna - “I’m not wrong in thinking Trudi lives in suburbia, am I?” “No.” “You do have the right address typed in, right?” Every time we turned onto a new road, it seemed to be getting skinnier, and further from any sense of civilisation. By the end, Donna and I were in peals of laughter.

Turns out it was right – we somehow found a finger of nature poking into Melbourne that ended just a few kilometres from Trudi’s. It was a terrific end to the drive.

Was great to catch up with Trudi and Paul – this was the first time seeing them since Conjecture, thus the first time since getting the contract. Always good to have advice and support from someone who’s been there, and can pat you on the knee and go “yes, that’s the way it is, you’ll be fine”.

The party was fantastic fun – the dressing up was great. I managed to catch up with a few Melbournians that I don’t get to see much, and there was free cocktails produced by some admittedly pretty cute barmen, and fantastic music, and the game console was a massive hit. Again, it was getting onto 2am when we toddled off to bed. Didn’t sleep so well this time – not because of the foldout bed (which was quite comfy) but because the margaritas and my reflux decided not to get on with each other.

The plan was to leave at 10. Donna and Matthew didn’t get up until after that, and by the time there were showers, and breakfast, and we helped clean up, it was midday before we hit the road. Another countryside trip, this time not as much fun as the day before, although we did discover a beautiful little pub in Yea. where we had a much needed coffee (Matthew’s already thinking in terms of retreat there). Lunch in Seymour, where the kitchen at the pub kindly did a late lunch for us (they were technically closed).

On again to Culcairn, and a quick chat again with Sharyn. Then I was driving again, and in keeping with the day before my drive was the one with the adventure – a fantastic rain storm around Gundagai. Boy, did that rain pump down! Luckily, Donna and I were at that point torturing Matthew with Abba and Meatloaf, so we got through it well enough.

It was after 9.30 when we got home last night – Matthew off to do some writing to meet a deadline, which had my jaw on the ground. No way could I do that!

It was a wonderful trip – lots of laughter, and friends, and squealing over the slimy sensation of the jelly eyeballs (they were so cool, except almost impossible to open). There’s talk of a bit of a roundabout trip to or from the retreat in January. Should be a hoot – especially if Donna programs the GPS again.

It was late at night when my partner and I set out for our recon mission. That’s all it was meant to be – a last moment of training before the real assault into the wilds of the computer hard-drives to seek out and capture the until now elusive draft of book three of the trilogy.

After our final preparations – me a glass of wine, he a cigarette – the computer was set up in the lounge room and the training began.

“Here,” he said, handing me an already prepared drive. “Where’s your USB port?”

I plugged it in, and the computer responded instantly. In seconds, there was a window open, showing the contents of the foreign drive. We knew the book wouldn’t be there, but I looked anyway because strange things can happen at moments like these.

We then moved the base of operations into the office, and approached the pyramid of old computer towers. After removing the cover from one, my partner handed me the phillips head screwdriver and told me to be careful.

This computer had two hard-drives. Slowly, I removed the screws holding them into place, putting the screws carefully aside so they weren’t lost. One, then two hard-drives. He carried one, I the other as we trekked back to the lounge room.

“Which one’s the bottom drive?” he said. There was a moment of panic, before he decided it didn’t matter. I took the first drive out of the USB case, and put in the one I was carrying. Then we plugged it all back in, and turned it on. Seconds, and the window opened.

My heart skipped a beat. I recognised this drive – it was the copy of the laptop I had been using in 2007. And there was a folder called Opear – the old name for the gadda. I took a deep breath, and double-clicked.

Not it. There was a copy of an early draft of book one, but no book three.

“Damn,” I said. I was about to turn it off, when I noticed another folder called Archive. Maybe…

Two clicks, it opened and there was another Opear folder. I opened it, and there were three beautiful folders – Book One, Book Two, Book Three. Teeth clenched, palms sweaty, I opened the folder labelled Book Three and there they were – three drafts.

Our recon mission had become the actual mission.

“I found it, I found it,” I screamed, bouncing up and down on the couch.

“Don’t get excited yet,” cautioned my calm partner. “Open it. Make sure.”

I did, and I read the first line. Then I scrolled down and read the last line. It was all there. All 60,000 words of it. The draft of book three.

“Save it,” he said. “Use Windows Explorer to make sure.” I did. “Now, open it up from your computer hard drive, to make sure.” I did.

It worked. I had book three. There was much rejoicing.

In case you were wondering, here’s the current opening paragraph of the now recovered novel:

Hampton looked around, noted his arrival had not been observed and so walked calmly out of the alley. None of the people that walked down the footpath past him took any notice of his strange attire. He supposed that was because the sight of a grown man in what appeared to be white pyjamas was quite normal on the street outside a karate studio.

Needless to say, this is gonna change a lot. For starters, I’ve got a prologue to write, so it’s no longer gonna be para one.

But whee! I haz book!

Okay, maybe that’s getting a TAD ahead of myself, but still I am quite pleased at the work I’ve done over the past week and a bit.

As stated in one of the Conflux reports, Sunday morning was taken up with a meeting with my editor about book one of the trilogy. So on Wednesday, I opened up Love in Control for the first time since November last year. I was pleased that as I started to re-read it, I was enjoying it – always a good sign, I think. I’m also pleased that I was able to see both structural issues and sentence structure that I was able to tweak – nice to know that I can look at this objectively, as well as with love.

There were three things that needed to be changed or tweaked, one of which I identified myself and so I already had in mind what needed to be done. Another was quite easy, because I was sure the solution was to go back to an earlier version of that chapter (I think I got too clever, and in the end muddied the waters too much). The third one was something that I hadn’t thought of, but as I discussed it with my editor realised that not only did it give me extra ways to create tension, but I had already been alluding to this particular relationship not being all it seemed in the second book.

Ah, subconcious, you do know what you’re doing, even when you don’t tell me you’re doing it.

I did the work reasonably quickly, and then in the past couple of days have again gone over the book, slowly and carefully to make sure everything’s now clicking and to get rid of clunky language missed in past edits. So in a relatively stress-free manner, I’ve done what I need to do, and now hopefully the editor will agree with the changes.

Interestingly, on the second pass through, I felt my feelings towards the book changing. Not that I still wasn’t enjoying it, but for the first time I really felt that it was over. It’s done. Nothing’s pulling at me, screaming “Look at this, it isn’t right”. Nothing’s jumping up and down going “I’m dumb, I’m dumb”. In fact, my mind is already moving onto thinking about book two, which you’ll remember I was in the middle of re-writing when I had to stop to do this.

I’ve never experienced the sensation of feeling that my book is actually finished. I can’t decide if I like it or not.

I wish I could say the rest of my life has been going this well, but it hasn’t. Despite being super-organised about it a couple of weeks ago, I completely forgot about my car registration and have yet again let it lapse. And as for the state of the house… Thank god for domestic blindness.

Instead of such negativity, however, let me end this with the closest I’ve come to something steampunkish lately. I went to Floriade last weekend with Mum and Sister 2 and there was a travelling pipe organ, that played a wide variety of songs (it regaled us with Phantom of the Opera) via a pianola set-up. Oh, there was brass and cogs enough to satisfy any steampunk fiend. Behold, Australia Fair:

And the workings at the back (where, not surprisingly, is where most of the audience stand to listen, despite the nice front):

Again, wouldn’t post first time. Grrrr…..

My lord, that was a full-on day. There were very few quiet moments, very few times of just sitting and chatting and ability to reflect. Instead, it was go, go, go, go, go.

Got to con at 10 and met with my editor at 10.30. Always wonderful to be able to sit and talk your book, especially when she doesn’t have any majorly bad to say. “Quite smooth, just needs a few tweaks” was the general analysis. The big changes were actually something I identified myself yesterday morning. You know, you’re in the shower playing out in your head a situation about to occur (at least I do that), and I’m trying to imagine what the editor will say, and suddenly Lucas pops into my head and I realise the poor schmuck just gets pushed from pillar to post and either doesn’t react (cause of backstory stuff), or can’t react and has to wait for someone else to save him. Well, Lucas is going to get his win. I also need to clear something up near the front, and add a bit of tension to an event about half-way into the novel, but otherwise she’s quite happy with the book, and I’m a happy little author.

Strolled back into the con hotel to find there wasn’t long before my first panel – no time for lunch. Doh! Ate some food at Alan Baxter’s launch (thankfully a lot of the launches have been quite well catered this year) and then it was onto the Romance in SF panel. There wasn’t a great deal of attendees, so we just pulled the chairs into a circle and got chatting. As the last to arrive, I was voted moderator, and hopefully the conversation went well. I know I certainly got a lot of out of it, with the message not to give up on Urban Fantasy just yet – not all the heroines are the same. So, any recommendations gratefully received.

Next was the Whodunnit and it was fun. Karen Herkes did a great job in setting up the premise of the Prime Minister of Sassenhassengrumblefras going missing after attempting to scuba dive in the Todd River in Alice Springs (that joke was unfortunately lost on some of our overseas contingent). I was Natasha Badinoff, the Russian Trade Delegate who was having secret meetings with the PM, and not always about business. My bad Russian pronunciation of Sassenhassengrumblefras was considered one of the highlights of the panel. And no, I wasn’t the murderer, so rest easy.

I now had an hour off, and after grabbing a glass of wine, went to Jim Minz’ panel on epublishing. It’s always been something that interested me, and I do think that at the moment, making your book available online (particularly for free) adds to rather than detracting from sales. I know HarperVoyager have done it with Glenda Larke’s new book, will be interesting to see what the impact has been for Glenda and whether they’ll do it again. I’d love to have a chat with Jim about the impact of epublishing on the proposed PIR changes here in Australia.

After that was the Writing 101 panel I chaired, with KJ Taylor, Keri Arthur and Jim Minz. We immediately opened it for questions, and it ended up not as nuts and bolty as I expected, but got into some quite high-end writing and publishing concepts. For example, the very first question was aimed at me at how my life had changed. The answer – a LOT!

With that panel over, it was time for the launch of Life Through Cellophane and In Bad Dreams 2. It was great to see Gillian Polack so happy – she’s had a long time between drinks due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control (damn you, Hurricane Katrina!) and so it was good to see a new novel come out. I must confess that the idea of Karl being a younger man was mine. So if that seems daft, look to me and snarl. But I hope it goes well for her, and for her publisher Sharyn Lilley.

Phew! With a bit of time, I insisted to Donna Maree Hanson and Matthew Farrer that we were going to go somewhere and have a proper dinner. We press-ganged Cat Sparks on the way, and she was in the same boat as me – no lunch. Cat’s had an incredibly busy con herself, it would seem, always on hand to help friends with launches and such. It was good to sit and have a chat.

On way back to hotel, quick phonecall to hubby – he’s good, not doing as well as he would have liked in his tournament. He gave me the bad news about the Parramatta Eels – I’ll be interested to read some of the coverage, apparently they gave it everything they had.

Onto the masquerade – very small, and initially a few dudish songs. But then he obviously got the feel of the crowd he was working and on came the daggy classics, and he finished the set with Star Trekking, so there is hope for next time :)

Then it was time for the most awesome band in the universe (I feel compelled to say that, in case they find me and come after me) – Ninjaz with Attitude. OMFG, they rocked! It was one of the most sensational – I mean THE MOST sensational – rock show I’ve ever been too. Hard, heavy – screaming guitars, thumping drums. Didn’t hurt that they were pretty bloody good to look at too (as Donna told Cat – the spunk factor at the con just increased exponentially). And while the crowd was small (there was maybe 25-30 people there), the Ninjaz still did was Ninjaz do and they rocked out hard. Completely and utterly awesome. Good pick up, Cat.

After the Ninjaz was Nick Stathopolous’ birthday party. There was a slide-show of pics (created by Cat – see what I mean about her being busy?) and then a chat with Nick and some of his closest friends – Danny Oz, Lewis Morely, Marilyn Pride – before the singing of the song and cutting of the cake.

Not long after this, I piked and went home. Well, it was 11.30 by now. I thought that was fair enough. Today begins with a leisurely few hours sitting at the CSFG table – I think I might take some knitting to occupy myself. One more panel this arvo, and I’ll catch a few more, and then last chats before it’s time to go to the airport and pick Tim up.

I had hoped to do this post yesterday, but the bl*&^y internet wouldn’t work. Damn you, Optus! The sooner that contract runs out, the better!

So onto memories of the last day of Conflux 6. It started in a peaceful manner – I had the 9 to 12 shift on the CSFG table. I did take my knitting along, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I got done. I picked up a project I started some time ago – a backpack. It’s made of various panels in which you practice different types of knitting. I’m now up to the second last panel, which is good, and I’m back into knitting again. In fact, and Trudi you’ll be proud of this, I took it along and knitted during some panels. Wow!

During the morning, had a chat with Rob Hood, Paul Haines and Kathleen Jennings. Cat showed me the pics she’d taken of me and blow me down but some of them made me look half decent! Will be interested to see what publisher thinks.

Had a quick cuppa with Donna after my stint was over, then onto my last panel of the con – Twitterati. It was just Alan Baxter and I, and so it became more of a discussion with the audience than anything else. There were some intriguing ideas as to where social networking would go next – it seems we can look forward to being able to walk into a room and have an insert in our eye flash up information on the person on our retina as we look at them, an expanded face recognition thing. Never forget a name again!

After that was lunch – go the wedges! And a good long chat with Alisa and Joanna Kasper (who was a con virgin, and ended up knowing more people than me by the end, I think). Some of the timing of the panels got a bit confusing, so I missed the panel I wanted to go to on Historical Fiction. I didn’t miss Jim Minz’ last panel called “The Secret Formula to Getting Published” (surprise, surprise, there isn’t one). He was a fabulous guest.

Then the closing ceremony, in which I was surprised to be outed as a member of the Conflux committee. I was giving Karen a hand with things backstage in the lead-up to the con, but didn’t expect to be recognised as a committee member. So I guess that means that I’ve been on the committee for all six Conflux conventions – a record to beat, folks.

I kinda looked at staying around, but decided that I was done for the con. So I headed home and had a nap before going to the pick up Hubby at the airport.

Roll on Aussiecon 4!

(Apologies for this being late – wouldn’t upload yesterday for some strange reason. Anyway, this is the report on Friday, the post below it is the Saturday post).

I think I might put some imagination today into a better title for con report posts – while this one is very accurate, it’s dead boring.

Anyhoo, the first day of Conflux (apart from some extended boredom in the afternoon) was all things nice and wonderful. The first workshop on tax was looking to be a bust because the tax guy didn’t show, but then those attending got together and had a chat and we all managed to teach each other something (mine was the personal service income aspect of being a writer).

Then I had a nice chat with Alisa Krasnostein about life in general, in which we solved all the world’s problems IF ONLY THEY WOULD LISTEN TO US! Uh-um. This has been one of the best aspects of the con so far – catching up with and having great chats with folks you generally don’t see except at conventions. Onto the sword fighting workshop, which I’ve been dying to do since I first organised it with Chris Barnes for Conflux 4, but I’ve been too busy in the past (ah, the joy of committee membership). It was everything sensational that I’d hoped it would be – apart from the fact that I quite fancy myself as a swordswoman :) But it did give me a real insight into fighting with swords, and what’s involved and while it won’t impact on Balance of Power, the novel-I-had-to-put-down Battle for Odana does contain sword scenes, and it’s already proven invaluable for that. So thanks to Chris and his teacher, Andrew.

Then came the boring bit – people were in panels, or having naps, or had disappeared for lunch, or hadn’t arrived yet, and I did some work on the ghost romance poem, and then wandered a bit. Rob Hood and Cat Sparks arrived and finally I decided it was time for a glass of wine, and to sit and catch up with them, and Alisa, and Chris, and Nick Stathopolous and I met the amazing Paul  Haines and Alan Baxter. As a result of all that conversing, I missed dinner and was surprised when we were hurried into the opening ceremony.

Is it just me, or is Mark McBride a bit of a hunk? Yum… Oh, sorry. Drifted a bit there. The opening ceremony was the outrageous Richard Harland at his best, and he brought along some actors who first masqueraded as security guards sniffing out secrets in the crowd, and then one became one of the best aliens I’ve ever seen – I really hope people got pics.

After it was CSFG celebration time. Unfortunately, the Romance Gauntlet didn’t work out – the Canberra Romance writers had to pull out. But we had some good readings, including a couple from some Queenslanders. The standout by far was Simon Petrie’s zombie romance. Honestly, the man had a fine touch with humour. Can’t wait to see that story in print somewhere. I did the ghost romance poem, which I decided was a bad move – should have read a scene from my book. Silly, silly author. But still, it went down pretty well, and apparently the kids liked it, so there’s a win.

Cake, chips and dips. in the midst of this, I managed to share a plate of wedges with Donna Maree Hanson so that ended up being dinner – ah, that Conflux food curse appears to still be going, even if the committee work isn’t.

So today, I’m not going in until lunch – novel is screaming at me. But then I have a few hours on the CSFG desk, so hopefully will get to chat to and catch up with more people. My editor should be there today, so it will be good to see her and tonight, the fabulous banquet organised by Gillian Polack.

Okay, still not a good title. Will keep working on it.

Day started here at home – got up early and worked on the novel instead of going straight into the con. I think this is the first time I have voluntarily missed the morning of a convention (as opposed to the involuntary missing imposed on me by a wretched body, although I suppose no one forced the alcohol down my throat the night before, so not so involuntary…) Wrote a new chapter yesterday and now know how much work is involved in finishing, and that in doing so the word count will be okay, so that’s a relief. Good timing too, cause one of today’s events is a chat with the editor about the manuscript for Love in Control.

When I did make it in, it was in time to catch the GoH speech by Emily Rodda. It was extremely interesting – she’s a very passionate person, with clear views of what she’s wanted to achieve with her stories. She was quite open about things, and gave a very good insight into life as Australia’s premier children’s author.

Then it was time to buy lunch, and this time I got a proper one – very tasty chicken pieces, but considering the cost of the food versus the size of the serve, I think I’ll stick with the wedges from now on. Off to Dave Luckett’s book launch, where I purchased my first book of the con – I couldn’t help it, it was that good. Then some chatting, particularly with the fabulous Jenny Blackford, before I took my turn on the CSFG table.

Not a lot happening in the dealers room, unfortunately. Had a good chat with Bill Congreve. Val Toh came in, offering to sit for a while, so I took advantage to go off to the Editors and Authors relationship panel, which was good. Great to have two novel editors (Jim Minz of Baen US and Stephanie Smith of HarperVoyager Aus), to get an idea of the individual differences. It’s not all cookie-cutter stuff – that’s why you have to keep sending manuscripts on, cause you don’t know who’s gonna bite.

I wasn’t really involved in the mass book signing, although I did buy and get signed the books by Tracey O’Hara and Deborah Biancotti. More chatting, more advice, more “Nicole, next time, get an agent!” stuff. That was followed by the launch of Richard Harland’s writing website, www.writingtips.com.au, which had a good crowd because of the marketing ploy “there’s free booze and nothing to buy”. Richard knows his audience well.

Most of the convention was then at the banquet. I instead headed off for dinner with my fellow HarperVoyager authors, which was a very, very pleasant way to spend the evening. We had Japanese – teppanyaki, which I love – and there was much chatting and laughing and again, more advice. I sat next to another newbie to the novel writing ranks – Duncan Lay, whose novel just came out a couple of months ago. Duncan’s a journo, so we talked that shop, and writing shop, and there was an extended discussion on green tea…

Back to the hotel, and sitting in the bar talking with Jenny and Jo and Karen Herkes (who is doing a fantastic job of running the con) and her daughter Tara, who entertained us as only young adolescents can. Then it was home, turn the clocks forward, and into bed.

Today’s a big day – meeting with editor, three panels (one involving dress-ups), the masquerade and a performance by Ninjaz with Attitude and then Nick Stathopolous’ birthday. Expect to be exhausted tomorrow.

Yay, it’s Conflux time, and most exciting of all, I DON’T HAVE TO DO A BLOODY THING! I’m no longer on the committee, and so I’ll be able to cruise the convention, go to panels, even spend time in the bar (shock!). On the one hand, it sounds great, but on the other a little unnerving cause that means, you know, talking to people and stuff. But then, I need to get good at that if I’m gonna be a mega-best selling author.

Speaking of being an author, I feel I must apologise to the people who’ve had to congratulate me on my book deal numerous times. Because it’s been announced all over the shop, some people have had to say ‘Well done’ in a variety of forums. To them I say – sorry and honestly, if you’ve congratulated me once, don’t feel you have to do it again just to respond. I know you think I’m fabulous (and who doesn’t? :))

In between appearances at the con, I’m going to try to work on Freedom to Be. I’ve not done much this week so far – it’s been a huge week at work. The next few weeks seem clearer, which is good, cause I’ve got a fair bit of work to do to knock this story back into shape, hopefully before the edits for Love in Control arrive.