Help! This title isn't working!

OK, that is not an attention-grabbing metajoke about titles. My blog site is genuinely doing something weird. 'You request cannot be fulfilled', it says, when I try to type in the title bo-- oh. Wait. Maybe this is metaphorical, after all. Anyway, if I were sensible I'd stop right here and check whether this will post, in case I spend hours writing and then discover I've lost it all. But I'm not. I'm going to write it anyway. (Ever feel like you're really not trying to be metaphorical, but the bloody metaphors WON'T LEAVE YOU ALONE?)

I can't remember what I was going to blog about now. :)

Was it the Stonewall party? Yes, maybe it was the Stonewall party. Which was fabulous. I don't have any photos of the actual place, because I didn't have any pockets and therefore no camera or mobile, but I do have this:

Hmmm, it's very small. It wasn't meant to be that small (obviously today is not a good day for me and techonology*) but you can at least see that we were really overdressed and enjoying it. But then, if we are occasionally overdressed we make up for it by always being immensely overeducated...

Also, we got congratulated by the hotel staff. That was fun. If slightly awkward, in a how-do-you-explain-that-yes-you're-in-a-wedding-dress-but-actually-you-haven't-just-got-married? kind of way. 

And since then... well. Work goes on. It went quickly for a while and now it's going slowly again. As I explained to a friend of mine, it's like watching a video on youtube - if you fast forward you have to wait for it to catch up with you before you can go on watching it. So while I'm not actually stuck, I'm wading a little bit. Although I'm generally quite excited about the book, and I'm not complaining. It's going to be long, though. I'm on 80,000 words and only two-thirds of the way through. 

Anyway, I'll keep you posted. If this posts. Here goes...

* Or typing. 

A glimpse into the glamorous life of an author...

...i.e, me.

On Tuesday I had a launch party for The Broken Road (I know, I know, only two months late) at my local Waterstone's. It was a fantastic evening - I saw so many of my friends there that I started to feel like I was at my own wake (in a good way) - but the best thing about it was: the CAKE.

As an incentive, I had promised everyone in the publicity that there would be CAKE. (Yes, in capitals. It's just not the same when it's in lower case. Believe me. I am now stuck in an eternal caps lock that is specific to the word CAKE. I am going to have to avoid the topic entirely in my next novel or face major problems with my copy-editor.) And that the aforesaid CAKE would have a sugarcraft lynch-mob on it.

The CAKE was not a lie.

And... for those of a squeamish disposition, look away now. (Or rather - sorry, you should have looked away a few seconds ago. Oops.)

Yes. A sugarcraft medieval lynch-mob. Don't you wish you'd been there? Made, I hasten to add, not by me but by a great artist of CAKES called Jackie Grover.

And here, if that photo wasn't enough, is a close-up - just in case you didn't catch their expressions...

I could add more pictures. There are a few of me cutting it, and probably a few blurred ones of me reading, or brandishing a glass of wine and grinning like an idiot. (Or maybe, on second thoughts, after all that wine it wasn't the world that was blurred...)

Anyway. I had a fantastic evening. I read and talked about myself and signed copies of my book and generally had a lovely time.

But really, I just wanted to show you the CAKE...

The glamorous life of a writer...

I was a little bit fragile last time I posted... I won't apologise, though, as I feel like it's important to share these things. Mainly because when I'm having a crisis of confidence it cheers me up no end to know that someone else is feeling bad. Hopefully that works for you, my lovely readers, as well - meaning that moaning and whining are in fact providing a useful public service. Wait, what do you mean, that's just me? :)

However. Thankfully things are looking up. (Or, as I mistyped that initially, "looking yup". I rather like that.)

So, NaNoWriMo, plays, love affairs, and books all end. But hey. Here is something which will always, always cheer me up. Yes, that's right. Lunch.

Especially lunch at someone else's expense. And especially lunch at my agent's expense.

In this case, wood-pigeon, twice-baked goat's cheese and thyme souffle, white chocolate and chestnut tart, and coffee. And wine, of course. Although not too much of it because I had to catch the train home and didn't want to doze off and wake up in Hastings. (I have nothing against Hastings but it's right at the end of the train line.)

And it was lovely. The food, obviously (see above) but also the company (my hopefully-soon-adult-book-agent*) and the conversation (about me)... We were talking about my grown-up novel, The Two Lives of Edward Leigh, which I sent off months ago and managed to forget about - only to get an email a few weeks ago which said that she was really excited about it and could we meet for lunch? Cue great jubilation in the Collins household. And added to that, the agent in question worked with me on The Traitor Game before it went out on submission and was a wonderful, incisive, tactful editor - so I was (and am) really pleased that she's interested in Edward Leigh. Now I just have to redraft it...  

That was Wednesday. And on Thursday I was at the Bloomsbury Christmas party - Quality Street, pretzels, satsumas, wine - chatting to my editor and copy-editor and lots of other nice people. (The big names included N. M. Browne, Celia Rees, Mary Hooper, Mary Hoffman, Mark Walden, Gareth Jones... and possibly lots of other lovely writers whom I met too late in the evening to remember clearly. My apologies if you're one of them. You were lovely, anyway.) It was fantastic. I came home on Thursday night feeling very glamorous and exuberant. Just those two occasions made up for many long weeks of slaving away alone over a hot computer.

And I'm not, contrary to appearances, just saying that because of the free food.


* Fingers crossed. If I manage to implement all her terribly sensible suggestions. Watch this space... :)