That moment when you realise there was no direct train between London & Edinburgh in 1846....

from BLACK'S IRON HIGHWAY FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH, 1850

... and it totally messes up your story.

Well, a little anyway.

Thanks to the somewhat belated realization that perhaps I should check whether there was indeed a direct train from London to Edinburgh in 1846 or whether my heroine is sitting in a horrible anachronism, I had some digging to to earlier this afternoon. And this is what I 've found:

The Great Northern Railway, that is, the line between Newcastle and Edinburgh, was opened either in late 1850 or at some point in 1851 (a guidebook from 1851 mentions that new connection), so in 1846 my heroine wouldn't have been able to take a train on that line. As to the Berwick-Edinburgh connection, I couldn't quite figure out when exactly this was opened (it was at some point in the late 1840s). So in the end, I decided that my heroine would take the train to Newcastle and from there the stagecoach to Edinburgh. (Grrr....)

In other news, the revisions of A TANGLED WEB are all finished; I just need to type up all my edits. I'm not yet quite happy with the prologue (should I ditch Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" or not?), but I hope I'll be able to iron this out tomorrow morning. Then I'll just need to Americanize the whole manuscript before I can send it off to my copy editor. Wheee!

Heard from My Editor Today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm hardly able to focus on the grading today -- and I blame it all on my lovely editor! When I switched on my computer this morning, I found her critique of my three novellas in my mailbox. It took me a good 30 minutes to open her mail. What if she didn't like those stories? What if she was going to tell me they were really, really, really bad and how did I even dare to send her such crap? (By now you should know how my mind works, so this mini meltdown will hardly come as a surprise to you. *g*)

Anyways, I finally DID open her e-mail, and -- oh my gosh!!! -- Bev really, really, REALLY liked the three stories. "Did I ever love working on these novellas, Sandra!" her e-mail starts. "Please forgive me for not listing everything I love about them in my critique--it would have been a hundred pages!"

*melts into a happy puddle*

So I've been singing and humming and grinning stupidly and dancing around my flat for most of the day. :-)

Let's Talk Covers!

One of the truly nice things about indie publishing is that you have complete control over your covers. You can pick a design, make sure that the people on the cover match the characters' descriptions in your story, and you can brand a series whichever way you like.

One of the major elements of branding for the covers of the new series will be a blue background. Originally, I thought I'd just use the same sky picture for all covers, but not only would this look boring, but that one picture also doesn't suit all the people I've chosen to go onto the covers.

Sooo, today during my lunch break I went hunting for blue backgrounds. I've already found some nice matches for some covers, but there is one picture of a woman that, as it turns out, is rather difficult to match with a blue background. Hmmmm. Clearly, further experiments are called for!

The Day after....

The day after sending your manuscript to your editor is always the worst because not only does even your tea cup (well, mug) look slightly battered, but you also come up with 1.000 reasons why your book project sucks, why your editor will hate it, why she will probably drop dead while reading it, why it totally would have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs (if dinosaurs had been able to read, that is).

The best thing you can do then is to stagger into the kitchen and deal with the piles of dirty dishes (including the tea mug).

:-)

Story No. 2 Finished!!!!!

Finished "A Tangled Web" (WOOOHOO!!!!). Now I just need to type it all up (= three slim Moleskine notebooks) and then finish the third story (which is actually the first of the series) over the weekend.

Insights I gained during the last few days:

• I write faster by hand. Though why this should come as a surprise to me, I don't know - after all during my late teens and early twenties I used to write these monstrously long fantasy novels (all by hand!), and one of them I wrote within six weeks.
• While first-kiss scenes are really awkward to write, second-kiss scenes are much better.
• The more you know about social conventions in the 19th century, the more difficult it is to write about love and courtship during that time, especially when your characters don't belong to the aristocracy. Hmph. I try not to bend the rules too much, though I had to bend them a little for "A Tangled Web"
• I love the heroes of this series. They're all rather sweet, especially Robbie and Lawrence from the first two stories. Alex is a bit more intense, but then he is a tough adventurer, who travelled around the Wild, Wild West AND the Far East.

I'll leave you with a bit of hero-sweetness from "A Tangled Web":

He dragged her into the hallway, where they found his coat and her shawl -- the beautiful shawl he had given her. As he had done before, he draped it around her shoulders, then kissed the tip of her nose.

"Leave the bonnet," he whispered. "I love seeing your hair."

"It's not seemly."

His eyes twinkled with mischief when he leaned down to murmur against her ear, "I dare you to leave the bonnet."

How could she resist him?

First Kiss

Freshly written scene from the WIP:

"Sarah," she whispered, her gaze dropping to his mouth. "Call me Sarah." She glanced back up at him, her expression a curious mixture of nervousness and anticipation.

"Sarah," he repeated, desire deepening his voice. He searched her eyes, and then slowly, ever so slowly, leaving her plenty of time to protest or turn her head, he leaned forward. "Sarah," he murmured against her lips.

"Yes..."

His mouth covered hers, tentative at first, but as he felt her hand glide up to his shoulder, he became more demanding. He slid from his chair until he knelt in front of her, until he could slide one arm around her, until she moaned softly into his mouth.

He took the chance to deepen the kiss, to taste her, devour her.

Oh God, he couldn't get enough of her!

Now her hand was in his hair, the other one clutching at his shoulder, kneading his flesh as if to spurn him on.

His heart thundered in his ears, and his chest expanded with all that he felt for this woman until he thought he would burst with the joy of it. Half gasping, half laughing, he broke the kiss to look at her.

Her eyes opened slowly, languid with pleasure.

"Sarah," he whispered.

She blinked. A smile spread over her face, and all at once she glowed.

Evil Author

Today, I wanted to write a few happy scenes. You know, the kind where the hero and heroine fall deeper and deeper in love and everything's just SO NICE. The kind of scene that makes readers say "Awww!" and sigh happily and all that.

But because I'm an evil author, I ended up writing a scene in which I make my hero and heroine really, really, REALLY unhappy (which is a nice euphemism for "I demolished them") and which will probably make readers cry because it's all really, really sad.

Yup. I'm short and evil.

Sometimes the Muse works in strange ways...

... and needs a pen. *sigh*

(Hey, but I've got a smiley paperclip!)