Miscellaneous Updates

Red Shoes

Today I am wearing brown boots. I apologise. But since I dug a glass splinter out of the ball of my foot (insert sympathetic wince here) last night, I'm thinking you'll excuse me. I would say my red-shoes-to-ordinary-footwear rate of success is running at about 40%.

I can do better.


Reading
I'm loving The Night Before Christmas. So far the stars of note are Jill Shalvis and Kathy Love - their stories really shone. Jill surprised me, but Kathy delivered just what I was counting on.

I'm a forgiving reader, not prone to bemoaning the 'state of the the romance novel industry', but for me, romance reads fall into two categories. The ones where you enjoy the fantasy, but when you leave the story you sigh to rejoin reality, and the ones that remind you that you're right to believe in love, dammit. Kathy's stories remind you that love is out there, it's real and it's wonderful.

I've surprised myself by enjoying a short story anthology so much. Perhaps it's really what suits my current existence.... Must try some more, and see.

Any recommendations? (Yes, Sela, I'm asking you.)


Durham
I'm posting this from Durham, Tuesdays being my MA day. And how I love Tuesdays. I'm going to have to muse on this some more, and blog about it properly.

Today the sun is shining on the Castle and the Cathedral, the air is cold, and the students are smiling.

And the river is full of rowers with exceptionally defined musculature.

I'm married, I'm thirty-one, and I'm ogling undergraduate rowers.

I'm going to hell.

Or maybe I just appreciate the beauty in life.

Yes, that's it. Not lech: artist.


Submissions
In case you haven't already worked it out, blogging is currently my displacement activity of choice, to distract myself from the fact that I sent a partial to a mainstream UK pub yesterday. I would be entirely unsurprised by a "romantic suspense - are you mad?" rejection (mental note:- must restock my emergency supply of Haagen Dazs Pralines and Cream icecream in case of rejection), but I can't be the only thirty-something woman who still shivers at the thought of Mary Stewart's heroes, and longs for more Brit-bred RS on the shelves.

Here's hoping.