Where to get an ISBN

When I made a ebook yonks ago, I got an ISBN number for it which, I'm sure, helped my sales. I was actually sent ten ISBNS so if I ever need one again, I hope they're valid for life.
I paid £60 plus VAT for all ten.
The address: Standard Book Numbering Agency
Woolmead House West, Bear Lane,
Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7LG.
Website
I know this is one of the things that worries self publishers but I found the agency very friendly and helpful so please this post on.

My Book Shelf

Thanks to Calistro, I've discovered Book Rabbit. Such fun and so distracting. You upload a photo of your book shelf and highlight up to five books and then you might get a free book. You can also meet other book shelfees. I've 'met' Leatherdyke and Caroline and ... oh, God - better go back and check who else so that I can nose around their book shelves.

Don't tell Caroline that my lovely first edition of In Search of Adam, has a small dog bite in the cover. I've trained my dogs to bring the mail to me but one of them, Jessie, hasn't grasped the letting go bit yet.

Feeling Tense

I've got my report back from Real Writers. If you haven't tried them I can't recommend them highly enough: www.real-writers.com
Following their editorial advice, I am strongly considering giving my three protagonists, who were originally all written in the first person present, different tenses. This would really help to give each women a different voice. The one I feel most empathy with, Lucy, a scatty mother of three - I have two children but often the pirate counts as another - so I will probably go for her being in first person present. Mel, the airforce wife, might be in first person past and Cassie, an ex-traveller, in the third person. So, I could write the whole book in three different ways which will keep me very quiet for a while.
Actually I have a fourth option which would be to give up and write a novel with one protagonist in the third person. This would be the most sensible one.

Oh, pass me a gin.

Goodbye Housie!

Well, nearly. We got our marching orders a couple of weeks ago. I suspected we might when the landlady starting her three month checks to make sure we weren't growing weed. Lots in the garden, of course, and if there was any of the other kind, I'd have had it with my Asda wine instead of crisps. Might of lost some weight then.

So, we have been offered a key worker house by the local earl or lord - landowner who owns thousands of acres of land with farms and farm cottages. Quite fancy being Lady Chatterley (sp?) but the pirate wouldn't make a good gamekeeper on account of his occasionally poaching.

Meanwhile, we have to have prospective tenants being shown around this house by She Who Must be Obeyed. I have decided that I am a nudist and will exercise my civil rights and be naked when prospects call. I'm trying to persuade the pirate and the thug - the Prince of Darkness being on holiday in Turkey. They are none too keen but I think it could be fun.
I need to know the form. Do I shave? Wear a pinny? I could be cooking and hot olive oil splashes worry me. Maybe there's a blog I could visit? Do let me know please.

Got a cold in my doze

I'm in bed. I have a cold in the doze. After soldiering on all week ( can you smell burning martyr?)at 2.56 pm, I decided to have a little lie down and edit. Except as you can see I'm not editing or rewriting or whatever the painful process is called.

Being in bed has reminded me of my grandmother who, when she was sick, used to say, 'Your grandfather's had me in bed all week' or ' I've been under the doctor since Tuesday.'

Great post by Clare over on the Novel Racers blog about rewriting. I agree that getting it all down is a must but do you stop to correct mini faults? I always have a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes and now that I have started reading my work out loud - if you haven't tried this already, you'll be amazed how much it helps - the mistakes slow me down. They hinder the flow.
I've been reading aloud to my old dog, Archie. He worries about me when I do this and licks my toes - strangely relaxing.

Time for more Lucozade and paracetamol and then a little nap before Britain's Got Talent. I'm too old to fancy the plumber so I'm voting for Gin.

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

Here's a picture of a duck - something I don't give at the moment.
Actually that's not true if you read my day in the life of...

5 am
I keep waking at silly o'clock. I should use the time to write but I play with Hammy instead. Hammy, not handy. Do behave. Hammy is a Syrian hamster and we're buddies. He can't have a playmate you see, because Syrian hamsters fight if housed together. They do manage to breed but after hitting the hay - and instead of a ciggie - they try to kill each other.

8.30 am
Drive to pick up my dentist's dogs. Only two more walks and I've paid for my six top teeth to be crowned. After being head banged by a German Shepherd a couple of years ago, my old set are on the way out, you see.
Reversing round a corner I hit the bit underneath the front bumper (?) and a bit of it is dragging along the ground so I lie in the road, under the car, and pull the whole thing off. And now my son's 'age 14' persil white shirt, which I been so pleased to find fitted my size 16 top, is covered in black gunk.

1.00 pm.
Nearly hit Duck, his partner and their kids who are, inexplicably, waddling in the middle of the road. Blow horn, wind down window and shout but they reply that they like being in the middle of the road. Apparently, according to their edition of the highway code, it's ducks, horses, people and then cars. I get out, in my white and black shirt with a stream of cars behind me, and try to coax the little ducks into a nearby field. Success!

1.15pm.
Drive on a few yards and there's the fox, strutting his stuff in his new coat of the latest spring colours - Fizzy Peach Pelt. He's sauntering over to the field where the ducks went. He's trying to pretend he didn't see them go in there - but he did. They're all going to die and it's my fault.
I stop the car again - more beeping. Can't they see I'm on a mission of mercy here? I run after the fox, shouting and clapping in my white and black shirt and a face that's red all over. And the ducks fly - even the babies who I guess must be teenagers from their language.

Can't write any more. I need a drink and a little lie down.

Bat Whispering

I like bats, I really do, but not in my bedroom. Not in my bedroom at 3am.
It was a bit spooky really. I'd spent most of the evening with the living room curtains open, watching bats swoop down and up again in the twilight. Very graceful and soothing. Not soothing though, when one is in your bedroom and tapping you on the shoulder. Apparently the shoulder touching bit can't have happened. It was my imagination says the pirate, or too much gin. Bats have sonar and stuff. Well what made me wake up then? I'd thought it was a very big moth at first. A very big, black moth. Then as my eyes adapted, I realised that one of the garden bats had obviously thought that as a keen admirer of his species, I'd like to get closer to one. Oh, so wrong. I pulled the duvet over my head and screamed at the pirate, 'There's a bat in here. Get it out but don't hurt it! Now, now, now!' With the duvet still over my head, I could hear him - the pirate - swearing in Cornish as he banged his knees into the bed leg.
'It's gone now' he said.
'Are you sure?' I said, still under duvet. 'Did you actually see it go out of the window'
'Well, no but it must have done.'
Of course I've spent this afternoon sitting up in bed tapping away - I have done housework and good mother stuff this morning so don't you start - but I'm worried. Worried for the bat and for me. Suppose it's all pleated up behind the door waiting for night to fall and the moon to rise and...I better have some Calpol with my cocoa tonight and sleep under the duvet again.
Fiona, the Bat Whisperer.

Editing - define?

Thanks to Captain Black's advice to make up a story board to help visualise my m/s, I've discovered that I've had January last for three months and that at least one of my chapters is out of sync.

I am also getting distracted by Rowan Coleman's great new book, the Accidental Wife and Kate Furnivall's The Russian Concubine which I finished in three nights by going to sleep at 2am. Well I haven't read a novel for six months because every waking moment was full of pet facts for that book.

Now, in the two daily hours I've allotted myself, I'm trying to go back and edit Sitting Pretty. This is tricky because I started it three years ago. Don't ever do this. Get on and write your book as quickly as you can because you and your writing will change and then, like me, you won't know where the hell you are.

I am supposed to be editing but I'm adding and this book is going to end up at forty chapters instead of twenty seven but maybe that's okay because it's written from three POVs so I think that might be allowed by the gods of publishing and if not:

May be in the second edit, I'll see how to cut it down???

This is a long post, I know but am I getting there? In the following - (chapter 5 unedited and chapter 5, edited), One of my three POV's, Lucy, has just been told that her husband, Max, has been killed and she's now waiting for her children to come home from school. I've tried, in the second edit, to set the scene. Is it working? You see I tried to write something light and fluffy but it's getting darker and have I made it even harder for myself to find a publisher? Please ignore grammar in the text - I wouldn't send it out like this - promise.

Sitting Pretty/Chapter 5/first draft

How do you tell three children that their father is dead? Or rather how do I tell three children because I never do the hard things. Max does them. Max complaints if the garage over charges us. Max makes excuses for me if I miss a dentists appointment or if I’ve double booked a lunch date. How would he explain my death to them? Oh God, I can’t do this. I can’t even explain Max’s death to me.

The police had wanted to call someone. They said I shouldn’t be alone. But there was no one I wanted in the house with me.

************************
Sitting Pretty/Chapter 5./1st edit.

‘How do I tell them? What shall I say?’
That’s twice in one hour that I’ve talked out loud to myself but then an hour ago the world was different – normal – and so was I.
How can this room, my drawing room, look exactly the same as it did this morning? In front of the fireplace, the afternoon sun is throwing a prisim of coloured lights like jewels - sapphire, jade and diamond - on my grandmother’s old silver fireguard. Above the mantelpiece the black marble clock that Max and I had bought home from a holiday in Italy, ticks slowly and loudly.
This morning, when I rushed in here to grab my watch which I’d left, as I always do, on the footstool by the chesterfield, I’d barely noticed anything in the room. Now I study every detail, the spider gently abseiling down from her web in the corner above the French windows. Shimmying down a strand of white gold until she reaches the sun warmed wood of the floor and then purposefully walking across the carpet and out of the door.
So how do you tell three children that their father is dead? Or rather how do I tell three children because I never do the hard things. Max does them. Max complaints if the garage over charges us. Max makes excuses for me if I miss a dentist’s appointment or if I’ve double booked a lunch date. How would he explain my death to our children?

The police had wanted me to call someone. They said I shouldn’t be alone.

Having a little lie down

Before I waffle on, huge congratulations to Annie who has just sold a short story. Way to go!!!

I'm sorry that I have been such bad company and haven't visited my blogging buddies for a while. I will be bestowing the dubious pleasure of my comments again soon. After I've had a little drink and a nap.

Because of my ineptitude, I had thought my deadline was May 7th and to get IT finished on time, I've been a tap, tap, tapping almost every day for six months. My children have been sitting outside in the road, getting the dogs to dance for money and the pirate has been on his computer looking for a Thai bride.

It was last Saturday,that I checked the contract and discovered that the deadline was April 30th. Of course any sensible person would have read the contract word for word but sensible is not in my vocabulary. Felt very, very ill. Anyway I stayed up for almost three nights with the help of that Rocket coffee(not made from rocket leaves -- it's stuff you buy in aisle 6 in Asda -- and dark chocolate. Finally sent IT off in a zip at 5am on deadline day.

I've had a lot of help with IT, most especially from Lane who I am not allowed to thank so I won't.

I know it's only non fiction but I've learnt a lot which I can apply to my fiction writing and I am going to bore you to death with my theories -- when I've had my little drink and nap.

PS. No it's not me but I'm flattered that you thought it was. You did think it might be me didn't you?

Do Try This at Home

Very interesting coffee morning question over a the Novel Racers blog today.

http://novelracers.blogspot.com/

The lovely K.Imaginelli, http://therevisinglife.blogspot.com/
asked the methods we used to describe our settings and scenes before putting them down on paper. There were lots of good answers which I know will help me. I hope too, that my answer helps. It does work for me although I still find it all much harder than when I was ten and was going to write the best pony story ever. Of course when I wrote it, it was pile of pony dung!


Day Dreaming Descriptions:

I expect this is a well know technique but it's new to me:

Think about the scene and what is going to go on in that scene for a couple of minutes.

Put your favourite relaxing music on - no lyrics.

Do all the deep breathy stuff.

Now, when you're fully relaxed, picture the scene in your head again. Or fall asleep :)

Death by Paper

Jessie's consoling Bramble after I've been eaten by 700 pieces of paper which, it is becoming increasingly apparent, are covered in gobbledy gook.

Perhaps this is what the landlady was worried about? Thank you, by the way, for your kind thoughts on our visit by She Who Must be Obeyed - the inspiration for the old biddy in the The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I thought my stress levels would go down now it's over, but I fear I've hit the Nutella.

It could all be so much worse though, and for that I must thank my writing buddies who are helping me with my book. I.O.U.

What's your favourite stress buster? Keep it clean, I'm too old to read about high jinx in the hot tub.

Oh God, Oh God. The landlady is coming round tonight. We've been here five years and she's suddenly started doing these three month checks.

Now, either she thinks I'm growing cannabis - if I was, I'd of smoked it all today with the stress of her visit - or she wants to make us uncomfortable because she could get a much higher rent with new tenants.

I thought she was coming on Wednesday night so I spent three days herding up the little nests of male socks from their watering hole under the sofa. I de-fluffed, de-cluttered and de-connected the tumble drier as we're NOT ALLOWED to use one here.
Knickers long past their sale by date were hidden away and rogue coffee mugs cultivating an important new strain of penicillin were swept up by the armfuls. We hovered and washed the living daylights out of this horrible 1970's box and then I took the dogs to the woods and walked in the coldest of rains for over an hour.

'You got the date wrong', the pirate said when we dripped in, 'as usual.'

Oh God. Oh God. It's tonight and Tilly, my imaginary maid, is off visiting her mother . We're in for it now.

Writing Non Fiction

When I got signed to write a book about petsitting, I thought this is going to be so easy and fun. After all I've been caring for pets for nearly fifteen years. I know stuff. Pet First Aid - don't snig. Ask yourself who you would rather give mouth to mouth to - a fallen down drunk in Reading who's been eating kebabs or a sober Staffie? Quite.

Five months later and I am drowning. So much organisation and for a dyslexic,it's a nightmare. And my text - reading it is like wading through mud. My deadline is May 7th which is why, along with the Prince of Darkness and his teenage diabetes, I am an unreliable blogger. I find myself reading my blogging buddies posts and thinking, That's interesting, I'll reply to that and either I get the letters the wrong way round in the verification code thingy or I just stare at the screen until my head hits the keyboard and I wake up again before crawling up the stairs to lie down next to pirate's cold shoulder - literally.

Come on, dopy tart, get a GRIP!

PS - If you do ever have to give mouth to mouth to a dog, it's actually mouth to snout. I know how much you really wanted to know that.

Write what you know - and what you are...

If I've been a bit quiet, forgive me - I've been having more problems with the Prince of Darkness and his diabetes.

I went back to my creative writing class last night. There was another new girl to take the heat off me - hurrah! 'Sa-man-tha has written an en-tire script!' I was very nice to her, you'll be pleased to hear. No dark glares from me. No Siree.

My chick lit which started out funny - or so I thought - has got progressively darker. Annie, our tutor, tells me that whatever you try to write, your true self always comes out sooner or later and you know, I think she's right.

Here is a bit of my chick lit gone sour:

As I turn the ignition, the radio barges into the silent jeep and Boy George sings, changing his lyrics just for me; ‘I’m a chameleon, I come and go, I come and go…’
The tiny muscles around my jaw and cheeks tighten as my tear ducts tingle and if I’m not quick, I’m going to cry so I fumble in my handbag until I my fingers wrap around the mother of pearl handle. With my free hand I push up the sleeve of my sweater and, very slowly, draw a thread of scarlet along my upper arm among the embroidery of old white scars.

Exquisite pain.

Carefully patting my skin with a tissue so as not to stain my sweater, I heave with relief. I’m okay now but I really am going to be very late for the dog walker. The tiny sliver pen knife lies bloody and accusing on the passenger seat so I throw it back in my handbag.

I started the wretched book not just because I love to write but because I thought I might make a bit of dosh and get off benefits but, according to Mr Stephen King - and he should know - only 5% of published writers make a living. Well you could have mentioned that before Mr Stephen King. But now I've started I can't stop. I'm an addict, God damn it!

Drunk and Blind

Tonight I went to my second creative writing class. The pirate signed me up for it which amazed me as he's usually in a frenzy of indifference about 'girlie stuff' Apologies to any men reading this - he's a peasant, I know.

The class, held in a crumbly school in the middle of flipping nowhere, was made up of seven of us - me, stuttering, fat mum and six attractive, witty and very writerly other people. They had all done two courses before with the same tutor, a very large and I've decided, not very lovely, blonde American woman - Annie.

I got lost on the way. It was really dark. Well, duh. It is still winter. I am not good at driving in the dark - I can't see. So I arrived late and flushed and Annie immediately started reading some of my novel which she'd asked me to bring.

Quoting: '...admiring his willy in the mirror tiles and farting loudly...' God I was so embarrassed. And then she said in her lovely American accent, 'Fi-ona has written an en-tire novel! I squirmed while the more worthy people stared at me, in a rather cold way I felt. 'Fi-ona has a rather earthy style.' I suppose she meant that I have a low literary tone.

I think I'll have to have a drink before I go next week but then I'll be blind and drunk and I might end up finding myself in a really quiet place to write.

By the way, the picture of the puppy on my lap has nothing to do with anything. I just thought you might like to see how tiny he is! Six weeks old and he's staying with me for a week. Auntie Bramble - a very small terrier herself - is sleeping happily next to him after spending the day trying to kill him.