A publication gift to myself...

So, Becca's bride-hunting antics have been out in the world for nearly a month, now, and as yet I haven't had the papparazzi beating down my door, or been invited onto GMTV to share the secrets of my outstanding success. I believe this is pretty normal, and am comforting myself with a) the kind comments on the blog, b) nice snippets that Google Alerts keep sending me, like this tres gentil review from Red Wheelbarrow's blog (can I justify a Eurostar trip to Paris, to say thanks in person? And is review masculine or feminine and so shoule it be gentille?) and, c), the knowledge that the lack of photographers camped outside the house means I can continue to pop to the dry-cleaners without full make-up and foundation garments as recommended by the legend that is Gok Wan.

But I still haven't succeeded in finding a little gift to mark publication. I did go to Tiffany and the only thing I really adored turned out, alas, not to be a cute silver trinket but a PLATINUM pendant of eye-watering expensiveness. I was tempted by the pink handbag in LK Bennett but I didn't LOVE it enough, and I worried that it would just show up my other, less designer, accessories.

So I've bought a rocket garden instead. How cute are they? I've got for a kids' garden on the grounds that it's the easiest to grow, and also contains potatoes. Yum. I admit, it's neither sparkly, nor pink, but with the world shortage of food I feel I ought to be doing my bit, digging for victory, all that jazz. I realise this may herald the start of Middle Age, but then again, gardening is quite cool, now, isn't it? And when my friends are all paying a fiver for a single cherry tomato, I predict that I shall become the It Girl of Container Gardening, the Tara Tuber-Potkinston of South West London.

It also encourages me to get away from my laptop and fantasise about earthy men with green fingers. Or something...

Now, if you haven't entered the fab spa day competition yet, you only have until April 30.

Re: sightings, so far it seems WH Smiths are scoring highest with blogging chums (I am mightily relieved as I was sure they'd all disappeared). But I believe the book should be going on sale in some Tesco stores from tomorrow, so do pop it your basket if you're passing. Cheaper than a tub of Ben & Jerry's and lasts at least twice as long (especially in my household).

Two sightings in two days

So, the strange post-publication limbo continues. Have stopped going into the shops after not being able to find Bride Hunter in two branches of WH Smith – after seeing copies of everyone else’s books in there. ah well…

But then had two reports of people reading the novel, one on the Tube yesterday, and one in the departure lounge of Gatwick Airport today (this news delivered by text message). The Tube reader was smiling, apparently. I managed to stop short of asking what page they seemed to be on, or what kind of smile it was (wry? pleasant? or a huge grin)

I know how sad this sounds, but I am willing to bet that all authors except the stratospherically successful ones will relate to it. When I worked in television, the audience figures came back the following morning, and as well as the numbers, you often got stats too from the Appreciation Index, explaining how much viewers had enjoyed (or not enjoyed) the novel. For authors, it’s a much more gradual thing. A book may be bought, but then sit on your bedside table alongside half a dozen others. Or it could be competing with work deadlines, or an abandoned copy of Hello you found on the Tube (and the latest pictures of Kerry are hard to resist, after all). Now, if only I could get a picture of a celeb reading the book, I'd be made!

Meanwhile, I am taking a bit of a break from the latest book. It hasn’t quite been working – admitting that to myself was a toughie, but I am now excited about going in a new direction with it, and researching the subject. Watch this space!

Bits and Pieces

A while since I posted, I know, but the truth is that, after publication, things seem to return to normal very quickly. Well, I say NORMAL. It's April and yet outside it looks like January and the cat has the sulks as clearly she believes that the snow is something we have produced with the express purpose of winding her up and confusing her...

A couple of lovely write-ups for Bride Hunter. One at HotBrands, Cool Places, and the other by author Shari Low, who reviews books for the Scottish Daily Record.

And in case you're not reading comments, the book's on sale in Paris, and Eva Fernandez tells me that if it was published in Spanish, the title would be 'La caza-novias'. Which sounds VERY cool. However, I am NOT big in Dubai, as Liz tells me that she cannot log into www.bridehunter.co.uk from there - perhaps they think it is some kind of British bloodsport? But if you're not in Dubai, then there's still time to go to the site and enter the fabulous spa day competition!

Not much else to report right now. Head down writing the next book!

Coffee and Chick Lit to go, please

Ooh, my first international blog comment, from Emma, who obviously has impeccable taste (I hope you’ll forgive me repeating it, as she’s commented on a previous post):
I bought The Bride Hunter from one of the biggest bookstores in Helsinki, Finland. I read it and thought it was very good and funny, not like every other chick lit book. I hope you finish your second novel soon, I can't wait to read it!

I had no idea my book was on sale in Helsinki and it has excited me a great deal, so thanks, Emma…I do know, though, that The Bride Hunter is going to be translated into German and Russian. I did get a B in German at school, but I have forgotten most of it, sadly, so I am not confident that I'll be able to read the end result. However, I’m thinking that Bride Hunter is Der Brautjäger, which sounds very fierce, though of course there’s no guarantee that a) I have got it even vaguely right or b) the German edition will use a direct translation. On the Russian front, google suggests that in Russian it will be охотник невесты (I don’t have the foggiest idea how that is pronounced) but then I tried another site and it said: Брайд Хантер – it’s a mystery to me (ah, have just realised when I try doing a German translation, it comes up as Der Bride Hunter so I am not really trusting that site).

Still hoping it might make it into some other languages…in French, might it be Le Chasseur des Mariees? In Italian, perhaps Il Cacciatore di Sposa? Both sound like very tasty casseroles to me.

Anyway, talking of tasty things, I have more news. As an unpublished author, I dreamed of Tube posters featuring my books. Or ads in Heat magazine perhaps. But never did I imagine it would end up on coffee cups. Well, coffee wraps (I call them sleeves, those cardboard things you use to stop your hands burning when you’re carrying your drink around). Apparently they’re going to distribute thousands and thousands of these at various coffee shops in Central London, featuring the Bride Hunter website and the competition. As I don’t live in Central London, I haven’t seen any yet, but I would love to know if you have…

I’ve never come across the idea of advertising on your coffee cup before, but I can see it makes sense. You buy a coffee and take it to work and then when you’re staring at the computer screen the title works its way into your sub-conscious and at lunchtime you find yourself walking into a bookshop, consumed by the desire for a certain book…

Let’s hope that’s how it works. I LOVE coffee. Make mine a double espresso.

Fab spa day competition!

I now pronounce the gorgeous website for The Bride Hunter...launched!

(I am obviously writing this having just carried out my own ceremony, smashing a bottle of champagne against the side of a tugboat in the bath. And I just went for another look and it seemed a bit...unlaunched...so do keep checking back)

I take no credit for designing the website, though some of the content may have something to do with me (and Becca Orchard, the Bride Hunter in question)! There are love tips - including how to find your Marmite Factors, and sussing out an Emergency Exit. There's also a 2-page Q&A with the Bride Hunter on how to find your perfect match, plus a link to a truly wonderful competition to win a blissful pampering experience for you and your mates at a top London spa (I believe the clue is in the word BLISSful...but I can't be sure).

Sadly I'm not allowed to enter, but you should! The only thing that isn't on the website is an extract from the novel itself, but you can click here to download a chapter. So... What are you waiting for? Tell your mates. Get entering!

OUT and about...

The Bride Hunter is officially out, a debutante all dressed up in pink, ready to have her card marked or to sit on the sidelines like a wallflower. I'm hoping it'll be the former, of course.

On Friday night, I went to Wahaca, a Mexican restaurant in Covent Garden, to celebrate with margaritas and tostadas. We also found the book in Waterstone's and Border's. The novel looked very pretty on the tables, though perhaps not as bright as I was expecting: my friends were delighted with how it looked. It's possible that I was somehow hoping it would flash on-and-off with neon unmissability, subliminally screaming, BUY ME, BUY ME to everyone in the store, from retired colonels seeking angling manuals, to small girls looking for Jordan's pony care book. Perhaps that was a tad unrealistic.

It also gave me a chance to check out the competition. I bought one of the books, Vintage, by Olivia Darling, and have been reading it while watching the Easter snow this weekend. There was a piece about the new bonkbusters in The Times this weekend and I've already read books by two of the other featured writers, Lesley Lokko and Tilly Bagshawe, because they're both published by Orion, like me.

I really enjoyed their novels (though I haven't read their latest books so maybe I am not comparing like with like) but so far, and with only the last 50 pages to go, Vintage is the most fun. It's very fast-paced, and the three main women characters - all competing to produce the best champagne-style wine - are sympathetic yet enjoyably flawed. I really don't know which is going to win and, bizarrely, I am rooting for them all. A very neat trick by the author. There's sex, of course - otherwise it just wouldn't be a BONKbuster - but the sex isn't as much of a draw as the story. When the blockbuster novel first hit the shelves, the explicit sex felt like a novelty: I remember reading Lace etc and my eyes popping out of my sockets (I had less experience with men than with goldfish and the thought that you could combine the two was very bizarre). Now we live in a time when a couple of clicks can bring the perviest of behaviour to your own computer screen, so I am not sure that the sex is so important any more in these kinds of books. It has to be there, of course, but personally I think the 21st century bonkbuster is distinguished more by jetset locations, big egos and bigger ambitions. It's a fun change, though I'm not sure I'd want to read lots of them, back to back.

It's made me think about my book, and the way we define different genres. As well as bonkbusters, there are all the 'lit' sub-genres: chick lit, of course, plus bloke or lad (or 'dick' lit), mum lit (where the heroines are getting to grips with nappies), hen lit (for the slightly older chick), and, most recently, chick noir (where the heroines are bitchy and sharp). Chick lit, the Times suggests, is full of angst and obsessing about weight and men, and presumably the mum/hen varieties are similarly burdened by neurosis about nappy contents or HRT. I think that's a caricatured version of chick lit, but it's certainly true that the emotional side is given more attention in chick lit than in the bonkbuster.

The former are also frequently written in the first person, which makes them more intimate and more likely to dwell on doubts and fears. Bonkbusters tend to be written in the third, which keeps the reader more at arm's length. If an author is writing in the first person, I think it's more important that the reader empathises at least to some extent with the narrator, otherwise it's a very long journey, to go through an entire book that way. In the third, the action tends to switch between characters so that empathy is less critical. It's also easier to keep secrets from the reader in the third: if you hold back something from the reader while writing in the first, the reader may feel very cheated if the denouement depends on something that s/he hasn't been told. In the first, it's more likely that the narrator discovers things about herself, or her past, at the same time as the reader: either emotional truths or secrets others have been keeping.

What both must have in common, though, is a compelling story: whether it's a fight to prove yourself in a man's world, or a journey to discover who you really are.

The Bride Hunter is firmly in the chick lit category though I hope the match-making/head-hunting element makes it original. Also Becca is no Bridget Jones. She's not one to worry about her stomach or booze consumption or about whether a man fancies her. If anything, she'd prefer it if they didn't. But I'm not ashamed of the fact that I want readers to like her, even if they find her a bit infuriating at times, as she gets lost trying to help her clients navigate the path towards true love...

So - which genres do you like? And are there any you just won't consider reading?

Take a chance on me…

The big day is tomorrow. Except…well, it isn’t really, is it, because as some of the lovely blog visitors have pointed out, The Bride Hunter is already out there, on the shelves or on the tables or hopefully both, with stickers reading 3 for 2, an invitation to take a chance on a book you’ve never heard of, by an author you don’t know.

I wonder what REALLY makes people buy books? I don’t mean the automatic purchases by our favourite authors – in my case, I will always buy the new Lisa Jewell or Deborah Moggach or Marian Keyes (maybe the hardback, if I am feeling flush, or the paperback if I’m not). I mean the impulse buys – the third in the three for two that you weren’t planning to buy, and hadn’t seen advertised, or reviewed?

In my case, I do follow the tested pattern that researchers have identified: first, I’m attracted by the cover and the title. Now, I might have heard of the book already, but I am almost as likely to be curious about one I haven’t heard of.

I do have certain prejudices. I don’t much like cheeky cartoons. Or legs with no bodies. And I hate anything where the title is blood-red, with drips (I know a lot of people hate pink. I guess they won't be buying my book...). Then I’ll turn over and read the blurb. This is a crucial moment – I am put off by pretentiousness or hyperbole, e.g. ‘this all-encompassing chronicle of lives lived in tumult is this year’s most accomplished novel’ and also by any mention of child abuse, drug abuse or pet abuse (though the washed-out covers and the word 'no' or 'please' in the title normally make it pretty clear which are to be avoided if you’re not a fan of the misery memoir). I also don’t like stories sounding too similar to those I’ve already read: there has to be a hook that intrigues me.

If I move on from the blurb, then the battle is half won. But the opening page is a big test: does the first sentence grab me, do I like the style, is there anything naff or irritating in the writing? I think, in a way, it’s like a version of the way an agent or publisher looks at submissions: you’re as much looking for reasons NOT to buy as you are for reasons to add a new title to the groaning to-be-read pile back home. Of course, the grammar and spelling is usually better than in most slush piles (no offence to slush piles but amongst the gems are a lot of very odd manuscripts, including explicit Harry Potter fan fic, and handwritten pages featuring unidentified stains).

Book-buying is often a triumph of hope over experience – I love books in general, but not all that many deliver what I want. I am increasingly picky. So when I read those first lines, I am looking to be seduced and charmed and to fall in love, but also doubting that this could be The One because I have been disillusioned so many times before.

I am still talking about books. Honest.

Anyway, that’s my route. I could – and occasionally, do – spend hours in a bookshop perusing and entering an increasingly trance-like state until I am past the state of actually being capable of remembering my PIN. And so I leave, dreams intact, but with nothing to read on the train except London Lite.

Of course, the whole process is very different in supermarkets, where the book selection is so much smaller, and the atmosphere less conducive to reverie. There I am more likely to take a chance on a novel because it’s not that much more expensive than a glossy mag. Best of all are libraries because it’s all FREE! But then that’s overwhelming too because you’ll never read all the novels you’ve picked up, and then you’ll put them in a corner and forget about them and the fines will end up costing you as much as a shiny new book would have in the first place.

I think I am now obsessing, aren’t I? time to go and lie in a darkened room and accept that this is about fate and chance. I also have to stop looking for Signs. This morning’s sign was that although the cat threw up her breakfast, she did it on the tiles (easy to clean up) rather than the floorboards (which have massive grooves, impossible to clean) or the carpet (just don’t go there). Obviously this is a Good Sign, because there is a direct correlation between where the cat throws up, and how many people are picking up The Bride Hunter at this exact moment.

Moving swiftly on. How exactly do you choose books?

First real life sighting...

...courtesy of Mad Mutha, in my comments! Seen and bought in Waterstone's, hoorah (thank you, MM)...And it's also in stock at various websites. So I guess this is it.

Actually, I have found a new way of torturing myself. You go to the Waterstone's website, click on Check Availability, and then fret about why stocks are low at Hatchard's Piccadilly and the Nugent Shopping Park in Orpington (I don't think, much as I would love to, that it's because it's sold out there!).

This way madness lies, I know, because the temptation might be to go back tomorrow and ask why there are so many greens (suggesting lots of stock) and why no-one's buying it. Must find some distractions...

But...anyone else seen it yet?

6 days to go...

It's all very (worryingly?) quiet on the Amazonian front. In the meantime, I have been working on my second book, and having, well, I wouldn’t describe it as writers’ block, but I had some problems to solve with pace, which hopefully I have solved.

Here is the novel…cute, or what? (I have used some Photoshop filter to make it look arty and blur the plot as a) it might still change completely and b) I wouldn’t want some hot shot Hollywood director nicking my marvellous story and turning it into a movie starring Keira Knightley, would I?)

I have, Blue Peter style, taped two pieces of A4 paper together for my storyboard. The pink notes are the love story. The green notes are the sub-plot (which actually dovetails very closely with the love story). The dark orange notes are significant flashbacks, and the lighter orange bits at the bottom are ongoing thoughts about locations and themes and imagery – well, imagery sounds a bit pretentious but my heroine in this case has a feeling that in life she’s always an understudy, so I want to remind myself of this as I go along.

The Bride Hunter seemed to flow when I was writing it: I had a slight wobble re: what happened in the middle, but it really did work well. I guess I was hoping it would be the same with every book I wrote, but alas this new one is trickier. I am hoping this is because I’m learning…and yesterday I had the breakthrough thanks to a friend of mine who suggested changing the order of the book and, bingo, I feel I’m back on track. I now begin with a flashback/prologue, which isn’t always the best idea but here I can see it working. My heroine does some quite odd things in ‘real time’ and the flashback should help to explain why she’s doing them so that the reader doesn’t completely go off her.

Oh, and this is the stuff that hasn’t made it into the director’s cut. In my bin, alongside the new brand of Frusli bar I found in the supermarket the other day: Orange and Cocoa Nib. Yum. This played a very important part in the process, I can tell you.

So there we have it. plotting in action.
Lots of love,
Amy

Charmed, I'm sure

It's blowing a proper gale here in London - the weather to curl with a good book. Instead of which, I have been trying to write a good book, and failing rather. Instead of this I re-arranged the kitchen cupboard and threw out some Lloyd Grossman pasta sauce with a use-by date of 2006. This is virtually an heirloom.

On the downside, my amazon rating is down to 176,781 (it'll probably have slumped even further by the time you read this). But on the plus side, I got a huge box delivered this morning and IT'S MY BOOKS. How pink are they? I explained to the delivery guy what it was and he was almost as excited as me (even though he was worried about getting a parking ticket as I rambled on). And the book is also Pick of the Month on the Orion website. Now, OK, Orion are my publisher so perhaps they are biased, but it's still cool, n'est-ce pas?

I think I might buy myself for publication day, to mark the momentous launch of The Bride Hunter on an unsuspecting (and probably largely indifferent) public. It would be nice to have something to remember the occasion by. I am currently toying with a charm bracelet - metaphorically - and though my aspirations are Tiffany, my budget is more Bombay Duck. I thought perhaps I could buy a new charm for every book, though as I currently have a two-book deal, and publishing is very precarious, the bracelet might end up looking very sparse. Any other ideas?

Publishing People Part One (and why your characters aren't really real)

Forgive my absence over the last few days. I have had to tear myself away from checking the amazon rating (which has gone up to 10,000 and down to 90,000 at various points) to spend time with some of the people who made my book happen.

When you’re writing, you’re on your own. Well, apart from your characters, and contrary to what some delusional writers say, the characters AREN’T REALLY REAL. They don’t do anything without your permission, they don’t live outside your head, they don’t talk to you.* When I was writing The Bride Hunter, I did feel that the characters became very vivid in my mind very quickly, so that I could easily work out what would be their authentic response to a situation…but I still knew that I was the puppet-master and I could take them where I wanted and do nasty things to them (all to help them ‘grow’ and simultaneously to make the reader want to turn the page) . I worry about writers who think their characters talk to them.

It's completely different when readers (and so far I only have my editor, my agent and various family members to go on with The Bride Hunter) say that the characters SEEM real. That is something every author dreams of.

This is what it’s really like – Author Julie Cohen has recently uploaded a photo of her Post-it plotting door – and I used a similar technique for Bride Hunter, where I worked out roughly what was going to happen, and used Post-its to put the scenes in the most dramatic order.

Anyway, that was a bit of an aside. So the other night I went to meet a lot of the people who make the book real. Now, before I got my first deal, I had no idea who most of these people were or what they did, yet I was fascinated by the mysterious world of editors and agents and so on, so I thought it might be fun to describe the main dramatis personae. I shall be describing the different roles in separate posts over the next week or so. Hope I don’t get it wrong: my career could depend on it.

Let us begin with…

The Editor: often this is the first person you meet after your agent calls to say a publisher is interested in your work. In the world of commercial fiction, your editor will, nine times out of ten, be a woman, and probably be extraordinarily glamorous. In fact, the editor is usually way more glam than her authors, because she has to be very persuasive and elegantly professional in meetings/lunches with influential buyers from bookshops and supermarkets etc. If you are able to write full-time, then she will definitely be better turned out than you are, because while you are sitting at home in forgiving track suit bottoms, comfort-eating biscuits because you can't find the right way to finish a sentence, your editor is negotiating high level deals over rocket salad (without ever getting a leaf stuck between her teeth).

She will also have impeccable literary taste (well, the fact that she paid company money for your book is the ultimate proof). She probably did English at Oxbridge. If you're lucky, she is like your big sister (even if she's ten years younger than you), explaining the ways of the publishing world with the same no-nonsense yet compassionate tone that a big sis uses when advising you on Boys and Periods. She will treat your story with the same respect: making suggestions but not killing your style. The best editors (and I count my lucky stars in this respect) will push you like a sports coach, so your personal best really does get better each time, even though there will be moments when your brain suffers from the writing equivalents of cramp, tennis elbow or groin strain.

How to spot them: Designer clothes (though possibly last season's, as salaries in publishing are notoriously low) OR arty signature style a la Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. High heels OR, if she's a little more old-school, then that Ms Jean Brodie style sexy blue-stocking look. Excellent lipstick. Slightly tired eyes (all the Touche Eclat in the world can't disguise the particular kind of red-eye induced by reading so many manuscripts). One shoulder (usually the left one) lower than the other, from hauling said manuscripts home on the Tube.

* it is possible, of course, that I have been doing this whole writing thing quite wrong. If so, can someone share the secret of communing with the fictional world, as I have a feeling that it would be an awful lot quicker to write a novel if the characters did their own thing and all the author had to do was listen to the disembodied voices and transcribe them.

I've scored!

Not in the sexual sense. Someone has bought The Bride Hunter on amazon.co.uk. Yes, this morning during my daily (what do you mean, you check it more than once a day, you liar?) surf, it had hit the heady heights of 40,222 sales rank. This means it was, briefly, the 40,222th most popular title on the site.

Go on, Mum - it was you, wasn't it? Even though you've already read it.

Is it too early for champagne?

Science of Love Part 1: Voles and OCD

The main character in The Bride Hunter, Becca, is a psychologist turned headhunter turned match-maker – and I wanted to incorporate real science and psychology in her ‘bride hunting process.’ That doesn’t mean that the book reads like an Open University textbook, but every now and then Becca explains why she’s doing certain things.

The research was astonishing. Did you know there were people out there who sniff your sweat under laboratory conditions? They monitor your pulse-rate when you’re ogling Becks or Brad. All around the world, scientists are putting our love lives under the microscope.

Now, I was definitely no scientist at school – I never could work out the difference between conduction and convection – so the precise science behind this isn’t completely clear. And I do apologise in advance if I haven’t quite got it right. But amongst the most fascinating stuff I found out was (with links to the research if you want to know more):

• love stimulates the same parts of the brain as snorting cocaine
• romantic love is only a whisker away from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• opposites really do not attract – instead, we’re much more likely to choose someone who looks – and thinks – like us.
• love really does make us blind to our partner’s worst faults.
  

The strangest stuff of all was about prairie voles. These little critters are among the 5 per cent of mammals that are actually monogamous – and apparently it’s all down to a gene which makes them receptive to a hormone, vasopressin, which makes animals (including humans) feel a warm bonding glow. After a while, they associate this glow with a partner, so keep coming back. Or something. So, if we can crack the same gene in humans, maybe we could turn playboys into stay-at-home guys who do the ironing just to make you happy, girls.

So there you are, much more useful than your mother’s advice about never dating a man whose eyebrows meet in the middle. Right, 4B, now for homework, I would like you to carry out some hands-on research with the opposite sex...

Lots of love,

Amy

Self-googling Part 2: The Joy of Feedback

So yesterday I was talking about the terrible form of self-abuse that writers indulge in – googling themselves and their books. I worked out the other day that it’s all about feedback. If you do almost any other job, then you get feedback all the time. My boyfriend works in the construction industry and every night when he gets home, he'll tell me all about the latest crisis over scaffolding or curtain walling (eh? I still don’t know what this is but it is VERY serious). They have lots of meetings where people thump tables and get cross. And then they all make it up over a beer. Very alpha male. Every day has its triumphs and disasters. He is never in any doubt about how he’s doing.

Contrast that with me. I haven’t been a full-time writer for all that long but what I have realised is that there are many, many benefits of this dream come true. The ability to work in tracky bottoms. The freedom to choose your own working hours. The lack of a commute. The fact that you are doing something you love.

The downside: no feedback. I have NO idea how I am performing from one day to the next. This is disconcerting: as humans we need feedback. We have it from birth – would we ever have gravitated from nappies if someone hadn’t been cheering us on and rewarding us for using the potty? Would you show up for work on time if you didn’t have a boss breathing down your neck and threatening a terrible appraisal if you’re always late?

Well, authors (and in fact, most people who work from home, especially mothers of young children) don’t get that feedback. I write my 1000 words a day (this seems to be the industry standard among authors) and I am so close to it that I have no idea whether it’s good or rubbish. Most of the time it feels rubbish, to be honest.

Of course, you do get feedback on the book when you send it to your agent or publisher – but that’s after six-nine months work without any sense of whether it’s a turkey or a triumph. Yes, you also get phone calls and emails when there’s good news on sales or whatever. And I do understand why publishers aren’t in touch all the time – they have important things to do like have meetings (where they DEFINITELY don’t thump tables) and discuss literature and choose covers and read other authors’ manuscripts and a million other things. But now I think of it, maybe publishers are missing a trick by not employing people as ego-strokers for authors. At a push you could give this role to the work experience person. If there was a rota to ensure that every author received a weekly email or quick phone call saying ‘you’re so talented’ or ‘how do you do it?’ or even an occasional ‘step on it, girl, that book won’t write itself’ then our productivity would increase dramatically.

But until this happens, we are looking to cyberspace as a boss-substitute. Thumbs up or thumbs down? That’s why I go on lovereading. Or on amazon. Or on Waterstones, because the store organised for some advance copies of the book so readers could review the book early.

*OUTRAGEOUS PLUG ALERT WARNING* I was so thrilled when I saw that people liked it: in fact, when the first review appeared late last year I was convinced it was someone I knew posting a fake review for a laugh, because I hadn’t realised that advance copies had gone out. *OUTRAGEOUS PLUG ALERT ALL CLEAR*

But on the downside, still no-one has bought a copy on amazon (you can tell because if they had, there’d be a ‘rating’ showing how you compare with the other squillions titles available via the site). Which makes me very nervous.

Have you ever emailed an author? Or posted a review? I hadn’t, before I became a writer myself. I do it all the time now – and I am always thrilled to receive a reply, or alternatively cheesed off if I don’t hear back. Go on, if you love someone’s book, drop them a line. We all need the feedback…
Tomorrow: the Science of Love Part One.
Lots of Love,
Amy

18 days to go: Think Pink

My publisher, Orion, sent me the very first copies of The Bride Hunter last Friday – and it looks even more as gorgeous in the ‘flesh’ as it does as a computer image (which I attach here as the weeny pic by my profile doesn't do it justice). I fell in love with the cover as soon as I saw it, even though I’ve never been that keen on pink books. I guess it’s the fact that it’s such a lovely shocking pink, rather than a feeble girly rose pink. And the image was so simple and so striking – it’s the perfect Spring accessory, even if I do say so myself.

These last days before publication feel very weird. There’s no way of knowing how the book’s going to sell (if, in fact, it’s going to sell), whether everyone else will like the cover or the story itself. I spend an awful lot of time googling myself and the book title, seeking clues to its likely fate. With more than 200,000 books published in the UK every year, the risk of literary oblivion is quite high – so I am keeping everything crossed.

On the plus side, I have hit the heady heights of Number 5 in the Lovereading charts, based on the number of people who’ve downloaded the opening extract. On the negative side, no-one has bought the book yet on amazon.co.uk. Having now studied the Lovereading charts extensively, I am pleased to be holding up well against Diaries of an Internet Lover (typical phrase: “beautiful French stallions with fixations for performing oral sex”) and The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker (typical phrase: “being spanked by his overweight dominatrix partner”). What I particularly like about the Lovereading site is the little icons that tell you what to expect in the book. Both of the two titles above feature this one:

This signifies 'provocative prose' (and I DO love a bit of alliteration with my erotica). What's fun about this icon is the way it's like those funny pictures which change as you look at them. Depending on your predilection, this could either be a tight black corset with a pair of disembodied boobs spilling out over the top. Or a heart in a corset. Or a pair of buttocks in a corset. OR, if feet are more your thing, perhaps these are two lace-up kinky boots with chubby, sunburned knees at the top. I think, to be fair, that it's probably the heart in a corset but on balance I prefer the idea of the knees, don't you?

The Butcher one also features a heart with headphones, meaning that it's available as an audiobook. Having read some more of the extract (and the typical phrase above is actually rather tame), I can see that some readers would definitely prefer the 'hands-free' experience while 'reading' this particular book.

Now, if you have found your way to this blog by searching for either of the typical phrases on Google (oh, I can imagine the web traffic trebling as I type), then you are probably barking up the wrong tree. Neither domination nor French stallions feature in The Bride Hunter. Though there are some very nice rutting deer in it. And lots of French artisanal bread.

This lack of smut may explain why I have slumped to number 9 in the charts.

*OUTRAGEOUS PLUG ALERT WARNING* You have the power to change this, however. Go on, download the first chapter. You might like it!

*OUTRAGEOUS PLUG ALERT ALL CLEAR* So, 18 days left. I am fighting to reduce the instances of self-googling to one a day, while making a start on my second rom com. This one is less rom than com, as it features a heroine who does not believe in love. If you’ve ever watched a Richard Curtis movie, you’ll probably be able to guess that she may change her mind in the course of the book. But that’s half the fun, surely. We all want to believe that Mr or Ms Right can be life-changing.

My own particular Mr Right is currently mashing potato for dinner so I shall stop there. More tomorrow,
Lots of love,

Amy

Men you'd like to pop the question to?

So, if I'm writing about men and love, I guess you might like to know where I am coming from, hormonally speaking. This survey from the Romantic Novelists' Association was published a few weeks ago, but what better way to celebrate a new blog on a rainy London afternoon than to think about HUNKS. These are the men voted as the top Romantic Heroes by RNA members (who range from extremely glamorous Mills & Boon romance writers, to people like me who write with uncombed hair and in unironed tracky bottoms). So here is their Top Ten. You will realise soon that I am not in whole-hearted agreement...

1. Johnny Depp

Nah. Not for me. I've always found him a bit...ferrety. Then again his recent donation to Great Ormond Street hospital after they treated his daughter for kidney failure, has elevated him way above the average Hollywood egotist. But despite the general fabulousness of this action, I still think he's too pouty. Some photographer has obviously told him to pucker up every time he poses and frankly it doesn't turn ME on. Whereas I always put my tongue to the roof of my mouth when I have my picture taken as it seems to reduce the incidence of hamster chin.

2. Daniel Craig

Getting a tiny bit warmer. I once read a description of him as a Human Nik Nak (a corn snack available in a variety of flavours: my personal favourite is the Spicy Nik Nak). But he definitely had a certain something in that shower scene in Casino Royale. As himself, though, I get the impression that he's a moaner.

3. Sean Bean Girls, girls, what are you thinking? So far I'm really not feeling the lust. I mean, he looks like a cartoon of beefcake. Look at that jaw. And the hair could do with a wash. OK, I did find some cropped hair shots on google too, but they just emphasised the fact that the part of his face below the lips is the same size as the bit below them. That's not normal, is it? I have just looked in the mirror and it's definitely not normal.

4. Richard Armitage

He hasn't really registered on my hunk radar. OK, so he smoulders somewhat, but that costume makes him look like the bloke on the motorbike who hangs out with Matt Allwright on TV's Rogue Traders. And I don't fancy him either.

5. Hugh Jackman

I am really beginning to worry about myself. The thing is, last time I checked I wasn't a lesbian, or even especially bicurious, but with the exception of a very slight tremor over our Daniel, it just ain't happening for me. Hugh is nice enough but if he was serving me my Merlot on a Friday night I wouldn't take a second glance.

6. Colin Firth

Yeah, OK. I probably would. He actually seems to be improving with age - and part of me thinks he might be the total opposite of all the buttoned up, prissy, pompous farts he plays.

7. Alan Rickman

No, No, NO! Why? Have my fellow novelists been reading too much Harry Potter slash fiction? He looks like the nice chap who sells undercoat at my local hardware shop.

8. Pierce Brosnan

I didn't like him as Bond, but he looks quite a laugh here. And I like him most because of his wife.


These pictures were in the Daily Mail earlier this year. He looks like Timmy Mallett, bless him, and she is - shock horror - actually plump by normal standards (rather than the 'plump' that movie stars suffer from, which involves going up from a size zero to a size two), yet he still loves her to bits. To read some websites and the Mail, you'd think this was an act of self-sacrifice on a par with donating your heart and lungs while still alive to a random stranger. It's not. It's just really rather real and romantic.

9. George Clooney

Mr Nespresso himself. What a smoothie. Probably my favourite so far. Any man who can still look attractive in a portrait rendered entirely in jellybeans has to be something special.

10. David Tennant

Last but definitely not least. I *heart* David Tennant. Have done ever since Casanova. Proper lush. Even in this off-guard picture, with a proper grump-face, he is very sexy.

***

Takes all sorts, I suppose. But I am surprised at how off-side I am. Perhaps it's because I am a rom-com writer so I like my chaps to have a bit of humour, that element of offbeat imperfection. But where is Damian Lewis (a man who achieved the seemingly impossible by managing to seem attractive when playing Jeffrey Archer)? And Matthew Macfadyen? And his Spooks successor Rupert Penry-Jones (who, fact fans, is the son of the long-suffering Marjory from To the Manor Born)? There is no justice in the world.

So who is right? The others - or me?

Welcome to my world...

In the olden days, February 29 was the only day every four years when women were allowed to take their love lives into their own hands and snag themselves a husband…

So it feels right that this is the day I should set up my blog. My debut romantic comedy is published on March 20 – and I’m going to use this blog to talk about my favourite subjects: love, men and dating. I’m also going to chatter excitedly about the book, and fill you in on all the research I did on match-making and the science of romance while I was writing The Bride Hunter.

So I'd like to propose that you come here often. You'll discover:
1. why you should always go somewhere dangerous on a first date
2. my top first date locations
3. how to apply the rules of head-hunting to finding yourself a partner

Not to mention a VERY exciting competition.

Lots of love,
Amy