Slim Fast

I couldn't resist that title... The idea is that we get as many reviews of Slim the Vegetarian Ogre up on Amazon.co.uk as possible.

If anyone would like to read a pdf file of the story (free, natch), I'll be delighted to send it to you. If you could then write a glowing fair and honest review on Amazon I'll send you a copy of the book.

Just email me on dslfr at hotmail dot com and the pdf will wing its way to you before you can say 'jack robinson' or even 'slim the ogre'!

If you like the story and have children/nieces/grandchildren/friend's child aged 7-12 who might like to write their own version, we are offering 500 free downloads of the story-builder software. The software is in English, but the story can be written by the child in whatever language s/he chooses. My youngest wrote his in French during the test phase.

Once the story is complete, the file can be sent off to be printed into a real book in as many copies as you like (one each for the grannies, aunties etc.). With Christmas coming, a book containing the creative writing of your child/niece/grandchild is a pretty cool pressie and children love the idea of seeing not only their name in print but their actual writing too. To get the promo code, just email me and I'll send it to you.

Just a word about the illustrator - Russell Young - he's one of the UK's up and coming young artists, studying at the moment post-grad at the Royal College of Art. His illustrations are just amazing; beautifully detailed and with a piquant sense of humour seen in his 'human tree', 'noses pie' and so on. Each one is a chef d'oeuvre!


PS normal blogging service on witterings French and otherwise will be resumed in my next post. You've been most understanding and very patient about my shameless writing plugs! :)

Exciting News x2

I have to report two exciting pieces of news:
1. my agent, Steve, has bought the domain names of www.floppythemonster.com and www.floppythemonster.co.uk.

This was not par hasard... I've been reading 'Plug Your Book' by Steve Weber (on my spanky new sunbed, in the sun, with either a cuppa or glass of chilled rosé to hand depending on the time of day) and it's got a ton of good suggestions. It set me thinking about a Floppy website so I checked the availability of .com and it was free. I contacted Steve and he bought up both .com and .co.uk.

All I have to do now is decide what to put on it! To get an idea, I went and had a look at the tip top Gruffalo website. You can't really get any more comprehensive than that! Quite scary really, and a Lot of Work. Good thing I've got a boy-free July coming up.

Not only do we have domain names, but our illustrator, Sybil Harris is doing a brilliant job with her illustrations. This is terribly important as you can imagine. As soon as I can (am allowed...) I'll post up a piccie of Floppy the Monster. Sybil has really managed to capture the spirit of Floppy and Emily and her images make me smile, they're so charming and funny.

Other Floppy news is that it's being translated into American English. HAHAHA I find that terribly funny for some silly reason.

2. I just checked my Technorati ranking and St Bloggie de Riviere is there at authority 119, number 38,743 out of over a million (1,187,727). The top authority is 961 (not 1 as you might expect), which is The Huffington Post. If you want to have your blog ranked and followed on Technorati, all you have to do is sign up. If you would like to understand what Technorati authority is all about, read this article which reveals all! It's something to do with 'standing' and 'influence'.

I'm excited by this because it's actually pretty high. I mean, there are 1,148,984 blogs behind mine. So like, WOW! I'm sure Steve Weber would approve. It's a step in the right direction at least.

If you have written a book, I would strongly recommend reading Steve Weber's book on plugging it. His advice works for self-published books as well as published ones. It seems now that even if your book is accepted by a publisher, he will not set about plugging it much unless you're a Big Name. It's up to you. Luckily there's a lot you can do thanks to the internet. Steve has a website too where he updates his advice with the latest news.

I'm off to subscribe to the website. (Why do I keep thinking it's Tuesday?)

Famous Author Cramp

Picture this scenario: NG discovers aufeminin.com and starts writing a blog. She describes her extraordinary childhood, her family, her move to France to study, meeting her husband, how her husband dumped her unceremoniously on her 60th birthday leaving her practically destitute and how she pieced together a new life discovering a previously unknown world of unpleasant realities.

Her blog is greatly enjoyed by other aufeminin blog readers who are entertained by her style, her way of telling a story and her descriptions of an unusual life. One of them is a 'famous author' (her description) whose husband is the publisher of her books. It's a family business, publishing around 5 books a year. They approached NG and asked her if they could work together and produce a book of her texts. What a wonderful prospect, thought NG and agreed readily although she laid down certain rules of engagement: nothing about her illness, nothing about her doctors, nothing about her living family.

The 'famous author' took NG's texts off the blog and worked them into a book format. She ignored all the rules, added several typos that were not in the original texts and prepared a mish mash of non-chronological order. Then she plastered her name in big on the front cover and placed NG's name as an afterthought further down "based on texts by NG".

You can imagine how well this went down. The 'famous author' and her husband came down from the depths of somewhere obscure (where she's well-known) called Touraine (definitely north of Avignon) to discuss the manuscript before the final version. When NG saw it she had a fit of the vapours on the spot.

To start with, she nearly died of boredom before the end of the third page. FA had reworked everything to make it 'literary' which was rather against the point of the book as NG is not French and has no aspirations to becoming a literary great (unlike poor deluded FA). She wanted the book to contain her words in her style minus the obvious errors and typos. What she got was her stories minus all humour and eccentricity but Frenchified up.

She took the manuscript and edited it all, repeated her instructions, and sent them off with their tails between their legs. So, what do you imagine they did? a) nothing; b) total edit; c) token modifications? If you guessed c), give yourself a peanut and bow to the gallery. They changed my name from puke-worthy 'ma petite fille de coeur' to 'E.D.' (extended daughter), as requested, and... um... added a few more errors - 'Barbour' became 'Barbouze' and 'lave vaisselle' became 'laisse vaisselle'. Then they sat on the text hoping that NG wouldn't press them to see the Bonne à Tirer (BAT - final version) and it could be printed as was.

Does the term 'bunch of amateurs' spring to mind? It certainly did to me and to NG who never does anything in an amateur way. Eventually, and when the manuscript was already at the printer's, they finally sent the text to NG. They were in fact obliged to because NG had to sign off on it or they'd be landed in Big Legal Trouble.

When she saw this supposed final version, her blood pressure made a quick circuit to the moon and back, and she had hysterics on the spot. They had respected none of her instructions. She decided that publishing the book in it's existing form was out of the question, so she cancelled the launch at the big local bookshop in Montpellier and the party at l'hotel Verchant.

The famous author and her husband were most put out and couldn't understand what she was making so much fuss about. I have a message from her where she complains about all the hard work she's put into 'her' book and how unreasonable NG is being. I didn't bother to reply, there's simply no telling some people. I saw the text - in 200 pages there are 600 spelling mistakes and errors, and the order is still a mess - no chronology at all.

So this is my take on the situation. FA is an attention-seeking, over-indulged diva-of-a-certain-age with an inflated opinion of herself. She is one of the most active members of aufeminin.com blogs and enjoys bathing in the glory of her readers' admiration. Her books are as boring as hell according to NG who was sent them and felt obliged to read them. Never was a duty so tedious. They involve lots of 'poor me' self-obsession and turgid introspection.

In order to cover herself with more glory and have access to an even wider potential audience thanks to NG who is not unknown in these parts, she thought she'd 'write another book' using NG's stories but castrating them into her own tortured 'literary' style. She would declare herself the author ('famous'), publishing her book 'based on the texts of NG'.

Unfortunately for her, NG doesn't do amateur rubbish and refused to sign her name to the crap issuing forth from the literary backside of the 'gentil' author, sweet FA. So it's all come tumbling down - NG got them to suggest postponing publication until November and maybe even wriggling out of the contract and trying a different publisher. One is already interested.

Warning: don't mess with NG.

What's a Writer?

Today I'm at home with my poor sick youngest. He's got a fine dose of 'flu - aches all over, temperature, sniffles. Luckily he doesn't have a sore throat... yet. There's a lot of it going around. When I went to pick him up from school last night, his teacher told me the class was decimated by the number of children off sick, and that my youngest had spent most of the afternoon resting. As he normally dashes around the place shouting and laughing, it shows he was definitely under the weather! I'm keeping him dosed up with Doliprane and hope that does the trick!

After a good lie-in, he got up and I tucked him under a cosy furry blanket and put the tele on. Not wanting to leave him, I got out my book and tried to ignore the noises emanating from the screen.

At the moment I'm reading Sol Stein's (the master editor) "Solutions for Novelists". It was recommended to me by one of the girls on WriteWords as I keep running into POV (point of view) and show/tell issues. Apparently, reading Sol's book will help me sort this out. I'm already getting the idea, but it doesn't hurt to get some expert advice on the subject. Novel-writing is actually quite technical!

So far, he's told me I basically need to seduce the reader with the first paragraph/page/chapter so that s/he'll want to continue reading. Then I have to be courteous to the reader and not necessarily give him what he wants, but keep him guessing and thus keep him interested. So if a chapter finishes on a tense note, the next chapter shouldn't follow on from where the last ended, but start off somewhere else. (I hope you're taking notes...)

He also describes a writer as someone who cannot not write. So if your day is not complete without having done some writing, then you're a writer. Do you think blog-wittering counts? I find I have to let things mull in my head for a while before I can attack them. Editing my book is, of course, a nightmare and I can't do it every day, but I'm thinking about how I can go about the editing. Do you think that amounts to 'writing'?

When I was in the throes of writing the first draft of my book, I did find that any time I wasn't writing was just time waiting when I could write. I might have been at work, but in fact I was just at work waiting until I could get home and write. If there was a day I couldn't write, I really did get very frustrated and grumpy. The boys got a bit fed up with mummy writing all the time too...

Wonder if I'll catch my son's 'flu...

Crysse Morrison comes to the Cevennes

My wonderful regular readers to this blog know that I'm writing a chicklit novel. It's at the editing stage actually, and I'm being greatly helped with this by the Chicklit group at WriteWords. Three chapters uploaded and some great comments coming in especially concerning some of the more technical aspects of novel writing - point of view (POV) and show vs tell.

The idea of going on a writing retreat has never really occurred to me until recently when the subject was raised by the WW group. We have never met but we definitely get on well as witnessed by our virtual Christmas party, and I can just imagine us having a laugh wine-tasting/visiting/eating with the odd bit of writing thrown in.

Alternatively there are commercial courses. Being fairly stuck for dosh, this is not something I would probably do, but if someone suddenly decided to chuck money my way, I may opt for a course such as the one being offered by Sharon Black in Gardoussel which is in the Cevennes.

As locations go, this is a stunner, and it's in France with access therefore, to wine-tasting, visiting and eating... Sharon is hosting the writing retreat, but it's being tutored by Crysse Morrison - a published writer (her blog) who is experienced in creative writing workshops. Looks like a great course. Check it out below:

Finding Your Voice in Writing
Cost : £395 / 570€
Dates : Sat 9th – Sat 16th August 2008
Language : English

A workshop for anyone - pure beginner or more experienced writer - who wants to explore their creativity and develop a personal voice in writing.During group sessions we’ll look at all aspects of style and narrative, including using memories, creating characters, describing settings and using dialogue. The emphasis is on enjoyment and fun, and ideas are adaptable to any genre from poetry to novels.

During the morning session from 10am – 1pm, we will do exercises on different aspects of writing, which are usually shared for discussion immediately afterwards. These are all short with a focus on enjoyment, and reading is not compulsory though most participants find it really helpful.

Afternoons are personal time for private work, relaxation, and one-to-one sessions with Crysse, who offers all participants an hour of private discussion during the week - either about work they bring or just to chat about their writing on the course.

Then a twilight session - of about an hour - just before supper as a group, but more relaxed, probably reading and talking rather than writing.

There is also the possibility of occasional after-dinner events, if the groups wants them - for example, 'Desert Island Reads' with people talking about their all-time favorite books, or 'Poetry Please' if anyone wants to read a poem they've brought or written.

Tutor Crysse Morrison is a full-time free-lance writer. Her two novels, 'Frozen Summer' and 'Sleeping in the Sand', were published by Hodder & Stoughton. She also writes short fiction and poetry, and has a regular column in Writing Magazine. Crysse is an experienced and popular creative writing tutor who has led courses throughout the world.

Price includes all course tuition, accommodation and meals. Single rooms may be available, depending on numbers, for a supplement of 100€.

Not a Translation

Having spent a glorious afternoon with half of Montpellier and NG on the beach at le Petit Travers, I came back to examine an English translation of the Verchant (hotel & domaine) website. Considering that this was done by a reputable, professional, probably highly expensive company I was frankly appalled.

Have you ever described any building as a 'venerable residence' (demeure antique)? If you read that rooms had 'safe and heated flooring and mirrors' would you realise that the word 'safe' had nothing to do with the flooring and everything to do with a locked box you put valuables in to keep them 'safe'? Just two examples and those alone should cancel any hope the translation office have of receiving full payment for their efforts.

It reads reasonably well for the most part but is just clumsy if you know what I mean. A bit sloppy too with commas missed or inappropriately placed. Considering that the text describes a 5-star hotel, you would expect impeccable English and an elegant turn of phrase. Not some translation taken from a dictionary without a passing glance at nuance or poetry.

Talking of nuance and poetry, I've joined a writer's website, WriteWords, a site which was recommended to me by Keris who was in turn recommended by Craig McGinty of This French Life. I have joined the Chick Lit group and am keen to see what I can add, and any advice the members may be able to dish out. I suppose I need to get hold of an agent first and foremost - one who can bang publishers over nose and get stuff published (as it were)!

If I can get some sort of feeling that things are moving, I may be able to get to grips with book number 2, or at least feel inspired to do the research for it. I'll be investigating five gripping events in history across the continents. Battles, uprisings, revolutions. Just five - should be quite exciting to do!

... a space to watch...

So you wanna lose weight?

I have blogged before about extreme methods of losing weight - can't find where though; it must have been in the pre-tagging days. It had something to do with getting divorced. At the height of my personal trauma, the good news was that I looked lovely and svelte... (There's always a bright side...)

Well, I've recently lost two kilos and I attribute that to two fairly drastic reasons:
1) no man
2) writing

As you may remember, if you are a fidèle reader of this blog, I got the old boot in the butt in July which meant I was free as of August when I came back from holiday having left the boys with their father to do as I liked. I thus cut down on aperitifs, aperitif snacks, wine with meals and food in general, being too lazy to cook full meals. One thing about guys is that they need feeding properly and since the food is there on the table, or already served onto your plate without so much as a by your leave re quantity, one tends to eat it. This means that you are probably consuming way more than you would usually, and unless you get off your backside big time and rush out to jog/cycle/exercise it all off, you're likely to see a surreptitious piling on of the pounds.

Writing is a time-consuming exercise and tends to absorb one's attention totally. With me, this meant being completely distracted and generally hopeless about everything to do with daily life, which made it even more difficult buying Rentrée stuff than usual because I was simply not concentrating!

Wishing to have as much time to write as possible made me cut down on pointless food preparation. The boys are generally happy with trashy food, the trashier the better on the whole, although there are limits... so they've been eating a lot of fresh ravioli and tomato sauce (previously homemade from garden toms), even peanut butter sarnies (!!) and omelettes. I console myself with the knowledge that they are eating a full meal at lunch time at school and don't really need the whole caboodle at supper. I certainly can not be bothered to spend hours not writing on preparing a scrumptious dinner only to be told that they are not hungry, don't like whatever meat it is, whatever veg it is, whatever whatever it is, and would rather have a peanut butter sarnie or a hot dog. Recently they've been getting the sarnie or the hot dog!

As for me, after the boys have finished (I sit and join them so we can chat - I'm not that neglectful!) I stuff a Ryvita or two with tomatoes in front of the computer and get to work.

The result is two whole kilos off - the ones I had put on over the past year, so I'm dead pleased and feeling very perky about slinking around again.

However, I'm sure there must be easier ways!

Fleas on Hot Plates

There's a certain amount of jumping around like a flea on a hot plate chez moi this evening.

My eldest is desperate for tomorrow to arrive because it's his birthday. He'll be 11. He knows what his present will be because it's the only one he's getting and he's been campaigning to have it for weeks - a Nintendo DS Lite. Plus a game, of course - Mario Karting. Luckily the whole family is participating in this purchase (especially just after La Rentrée which also cost an arm and a leg) because my visa card nearly had heart failure when it had to pay for it yesterday.

I went into the little games boutique in Carrouf and told the odd looking guy that I was buying it for my son, not for me. I seemed strangely out of place in that emporium dominated by young men. I also misplaced my phone and started rummaging in my bag at the till with a look of panic on my face. Thirty seconds earlier I'd had it in my hand and now it had disappeared into thin air! One of the odd young men came to my rescue by offering to ring the number for me. Luckily my phone was charged and on, and I knew the number - no mean feat. He dialled it up and my phone rang from inside the outside pocket where it had no right to be. Odd he might have looked, but he was my knight in shining armour for all of 5 minutes.

I'm jumping around because I just printed my book - all 403 pages, including Acknowledgements and Table of Contents - for NG to get her teeth into having finished this round of modifications. Actually I feel at a bit of a loose end. It's only 9pm and I'm not snucking down to work, so I can actually choose what I want to do!

The cat has been leaping around too, but that's because either he's got fleas or it's a full moon. I'm putting my money on the new moon as I treat him for fleas once a month.

The only member of the household not hyper about anything is my youngest, which makes a change...

He's just lost another tooth. Guess who hasn't a single Euro cent in her purse. I've already raided the kitty, my youngest raided his money box at the weekend to buy sweets, and I'm debating whether to disturb my eldest, in bed, to beg borrow or steal a couple of Euros from his stash. Do you think a tooth fairy IOU would wash? Oh, desperate mothering!

Writing Days

Today I've been working on my book. Gigi, in one of her comments, asked me to describe how I manage to fit writing into my days as I have a full-time job and two boys.

For example, today, I've done no housework to speak of, and gave the boys fresh ravioli for lunch (very quick!). I left them to their own devices pretty much, which suits them just fine, throwing them off the computer for a while to play outside, but basically letting them make their own amusement.

As a result, I've managed to work on my book for part of this morning and much of this afternoon. The house is a tad messy though, but should I keep an immaculate home and not write? Nah!

During the week, the boys are in bed or at least in their rooms at about 9pm. We eat together and I clear up, then I ignore the tele and go upstairs to work for a couple of hours on my book. At 11pm I come down to watch something silly on my Sky digibox for an hour (in English).

However, I am in 'book' mode at the moment. I was able to spend swathes of time on it in August, unhampered as I was either by boys or a time-consuming partner. I could come home from work, have a cuppa and get on with it. This meant I was able to re-enter the world of my characters and what they were getting up to, and maintain a double existence inside and outside my head.

Had I not had the freedom to do this in August, I would not have been able to conjure up the story world in the evenings. As it is, I'm thinking about my book all the time even when I'm not working on it; waking up early refining it in my head (and then forgetting...) and being quite obsessive really. I need to be though, or it won't get done.

I remember when I was writing it at the beginning how compulsive it was - it was all I wanted to do, and the boys had to get used to mummy being on the computer the whole time for about three months. I had had the dream, and the story was invading my head so much that I had to write it down to get rid of it. That's how the book got to be written in the first place. I started it, and didn't stop until I had an ending. It evolved out of the characters. Then it had to be refined, which has taken years, but the basic story was there.

I have another 150 pages or so to modify, out of nearly 400, so I'm not far off. Luckily no one moans when the house is a mess, the boys are happiest hanging out at home and outside and I don't have a man about who needs attention. Lovely as they are, if I have a man, I don't work on my book, hence my resolution to stay away from men until I finish.

So Gigi, I empathise with your inability to get down to writing your own book. I've been there! You'll need to go away by yourself on a retreat or something, take only your laptop and just do it! Once you're inside your story world, you'll find the momentum to carry on when you get home, hopefully.

I'm sure your ados won't mind if you ignore them for a few weeks...

Another one bites the dust

Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday to Me
Happy Birthday dear Meee
Happy Birthday to Me

Now, how old shall I be this year?

Resolution:
This year I'M GOING TO FINISH MY BOOK if it kills me!

NO MEN until I do! They get in the way, see?

I'm always perky on my birthday. Today I was so perky when I went to the Mairie and they asked me to fill out a card with my details on to keep track of the village's population, I wrote down 'Writer' for 'Occupation'.

There's daring!

The lady on the desk was impressed, and asked what sort of writing. I told her, novelist, but that I had a job too, before she started asking me what I'd published... (eek!) I'm hoping I won't be struck down with a bolt from on high... or my computer be struck with a bolt from on high - even worse!

Calling all you Parisian Clubbers

Guys, I need your help. I haven't been to a club down here in Montpellier, let alone one in Paris, but I need to know what is the most outrageous Paris nightclub that a couple of aisé 40 somethings would go to on a Saturday night.

I need it for my book, and would love to do the research myself but

1. clubbing alone when one is a lady is Not On.
2. I'm not in Paris.
3. I don't have the financial wherewithal to make repeated dashes up to Paris to find out and anyway, see 1.

NG told me about a club called the Queen Club where drag queens went and behaved provocatively and naughtily, but it doesn't seem to be like that now. The web site is very staid, and just has pictures of 20 somethings in crappy tee-shirts. Has it gone downhill?

All suggestions gratefully received preferably with a description of some sort. You can always email me at dslfr 'at' hotmail dot com.

I know I have readers from Paris and IDF. Hopefully some of you are hardened party animals who can share your thoughts with the likes of provincial ploucs like me.

Ta muchly!

Get Fiki'n

This is a post for anyone bitten by the poetry/short story bug. I might say that it doesn't really include me. My forays into poetry are few and far between, relying on the maxim 'quality not quantity'. The short stories I've tried have been based on flights of fantasy, if you see what I mean, and are not suitable for sharing other than with the person for whom they were written...

However, for everything else, there is fiki.org. I don't mean Wiki, no. This is a site for collaborative writing, not of 'fact', but of fiction. It works along similar lines to Wikipedia and entries are anonymous, so if you do decide to try out your most execrable poetry on the world, you could do it with impunity!

Come to think of it, I do enjoy writing the odd execrable limerick...

If you want to find out more, try this page from Bibliophil.org. Mike tries to explain the concept, with about as much success as me... but suggests that you need to click on the Fiki.org link to have a hope in hell's chance of understanding what on earth is going on. Once you do get the idea, it's quite fun wending your way around the link words.

Talking of writing, on a longer scale, I'm pretty pleased with my book progress. However, I am wondering if I shouldn't next time try a film script or radio play, as I seem to be happiest when writing dialogue. I've also noticed that when I'm reading a book, if there are endless reams of seemingly pointless polyfiller description, I tend to half read them waiting to get to the next exciting bit. It's a rare writer who can make the descriptive bits an integral part of the whole story. On the other hand, if the book is all mood, then naturally, the descriptive bits are important, but I do get the feeling sometimes that some writers need to make up the number of pages, so blather on about forests and fields.

Let me know if you manage to work out the Fiki circuit. As there doesn't seem to be any sort of quality control, maybe I'll gather together all my powers of concentration and try my hand at the Fiki maze. If I don't come back...

Faux Long Weekending

I have discovered an interesting fact. If you do nothing on Saturday that resembles what you would normally do on a Saturday (shopping) then you have the impression that it's Sunday. Then, on Saturday evening, instead of thinking woefully that the next day is Monday and work, you suddenly remember it's only Saturday and you have the whole of the real Sunday to go before Monday.

It's like adding a day to your weekend. You do have to be in France though for this to work, as the shops are all shut here on Sundays. It helps too if you have previously done your shopping so you don't starve during the weekend and then be desperate for Monday to arrive so you can eat again. That would rather spoil the effect.

This is my first weekend home alone since I got back from holiday, and I must say, it's amazing how productive one can be. So far I have
* tidied my trousers shelf
* sorted out clothes for charity
* discovered a yoga DVD and followed the simple exercises twice
* done cleaning and all the ironing
* worked on my book
etc...

The work I'm doing on my book is essentially chronological, but also crap-shooting. Originally, I wrote it from beginning to end. Then I added a whole section near the beginning which rendered some of the later writing obsolete because it no longer made chronological sense. I'm having to cut swathes of stuff out for this reason and also because I now dislike some of the original writing and am replacing it with, hopefully, better text and dialogue.

The main characters of the book are Eleanor - a Brit living in France (gosh, who'd have thought), John - an American businessman living in NYC (although I'm thinking of changing his name to Tarquin.... just kidding...), Eleanor's friend Krista who thinks John is a headcase, Eleanor's sister Rachel who's a right cow, John's younger brother Matthew who's a miserable bugger, and John's friend Chris with whom John meets in bars to admire arses and legs, and to chat. It's not a comedy, but it's supposed to have a decent amount of humour. I, you might be relieved to know, am not a miserable bugger, so I don't write like one!

(That was... my post on book progress thus fulfilling my statuary requirements as stated beneath the blog title to keep you posted...)

Bleh Books

The Telegraph had an article recently about abandoned books. According the article,

DBC Pierre's Booker Prize-winning novel, 'Vernon God Little', topped the list of unfinished fictional works, followed by the fourth installment of Harry Potter and James Joyce’s notoriously difficult 'Ulysses'.

I can't say I've read the first two, but I have read 'Ulysses' although it left no marked impression on me. There are books I've given up on, however.

One is 'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon. I had never encountered a Pynchon book before I was recommended this one by a guy I communicated with on the internet (as you do). He was as enthused by it as the guy who described it as:

"The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II."-- Edward Mendelson, The New Republic

Frankly, I preferred 'The Great Gatsby'. GR was densely written, in a style I hated, and totally reader-unfriendly. I couldn't get into it, tried for 70 pages, and then wondered if my life was worth wasting over such a book. So I abandoned it, and even gave the book away. Sorry Marcus!

Another book I couldn't drum up the will to finish was 'Angela's Ashes' by Franck McCourt. It was so incredibly depressing, miserable, unrelentingly dire, and with no saving graces that I thought life was too short to be reading such a litany of impoverished misery. So I gave up that one too. Luckily I had borrowed it so was able to give it back with no regrets as to my purse.

I am actually pretty tenacious when it comes to getting through books. I hate missing out on things, so feel sure that at some point, the book is going to 'arrive' and it'll be plain sailing from then on. Sometimes they do, sometimes they never get better, but at least I can say I know they don't.

I had to give up on Roger Scruton's 'German Philosophers' too. It made my head reel. On the other hand, I love Alain de Botton's books, but then they are written for philosophy wimps like me (something like 'philo pour les nuls').

Still, I can proudly say that I read 'The Lord of the Rings' all the way through, once. Wasn't the film series good though?!

Book-Tagged

Hope book-tagged me which, surprisingly enough presented me with some unexpected problems. The idea is to take the nearest book, turn to page 123, go to the fifth line down and write out the next three sentences.

My computer is next to a bookshelf with five shelves so which is the nearest? The first one I took - This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson had a blank page with only the words "Part Two" written on it. The next one - Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier had "April 1906" written on it. I was beginning to suspect a conspiracy. Do pages 123 always have nothing but section separators on them?

I continued my search. Next, I tried "Talk to the Snail" by Stephen Clarke and I struck lucky. Page 123 was full of words. Down to the fifth line and I encountered:

"And not just a token sum but their hourly salary, paid for all the time between jobs. So a film director who makes one feature film a year can get paid full-time at the hourly rate he charged while was making the film. The same goes for everyone else involved, from the actors to the guys who screw together the camera tripods."

So now you know...

Of course, had I chosen a book on classical Arabic poetry written in Arabic, just down the shelf, you wouldn‘t have been any the wiser as to what was written, and neither would I...

So count yourselves lucky!

Which Synopsis?

I am entering the Telegraph writing competition and have to send in a synopsis of my book. I have written two versions. Which should I send?

Edited to add that I'm going to send in version II, but I'll leave version I up anyway.

Book Synopsis I

Have you ever had a dream so visually real that, on waking you can remember nearly every detail? Eleanor Roberts does, becomes convinced the object of her dream – her lover, John Bosworth – is real, and decides, despite the odds, to find out if he exists…

Eleanor: Do you remember when we first met?

John: How could I forget? You stood there, in my office, transfixed like you’d just seen a ghost, then spun me a completely improbable tale of meeting me in a dream, and then just as it got interesting, you shot off like a bullet from a gun!

Eleanor: Ah yes (mistily), but it did spur you to action.

John: There was enough in that tale to peak my interest and you really did have gorgeous legs.

Eleanor: Did?

John: Do, hon, do!

Eleanor: You were able to pursue me, got me, of course, and then nearly lost me on that freezing evening when you lost your temper with my pal Krista.

John: One of those defining moments in a relationship. I had to face the fact that to keep you I’d have to deal with my demons. Which I did, with ol’ Doc Norton.

Eleanor: You did, and were absolutely ghastly while it went on, and on. I was convinced you’d been potty-trained too young…

John: From your years of training as a doc…

Eleanor: I stuck by you though.

John: Hey, it was your fault it happened at all!

Eleanor: Well, you must admit it did you good. We did get married and I did come and live with you in New York, wrench though it was from my lovely peaceful life in the south of France.

John: To a very comfortable life.

Eleanor: Yes, you are a very brilliant, successful businessman, but I would have loved you had you been less successful.

John: I know, and one of the advantages to meeting me in dream, though I can’t believe I’m saying this, was to fall in love with me first and meet the other me with money later.

Eleanor: I anguished over that one long and hard, tried to examine my motives, test myself for gold-digger tendencies…

John: Me too, to be sure I wasn’t going to find myself in the divorce courts in a year’s time with massive payouts.

Eleanor: What did you think of our match-making with your brother and my sister?

John: You mean, my miserable sod of a brother and your man-eater bitch of a sister?

Eleanor: Who else?

John: A match made in heaven, obviously. He now considers us on equal terms as he has the prettier sister. He’s welcome to her! Remember how she tried to seduce me that Christmas?

Eleanor: Oh yes, and you put her firmly in her place. That must have been a first for her.

John: Yes, but there was no competition. I wanted you and only you before anyone else nabbed you.

Eleanor: How could anyone else do for me? You’re my dream man, baby!

Book Synopsis II

Being re-written it was so crap...

Okay, here goes:

Eleanor is a 41-year old mother of two boys, divorced from her French husband two years previously and on her own since then. One night she has a vivid dream in which she accidentally bumps into a man called John Bosworth, 43, in a hotel whilst on holiday with some old university friends. The rapport between them is instant. They spend a few hours together and are just about to make love in his apartment in New York when she wakes up.

She obsesses about him and the dream to the extent that she feels she has to delve deeper and consult that oracle of all information; the internet. To her shock, she finds that he does indeed exist so off she goes to New York to tell him that she met him in a dream. The improbability of it piques his interest and when she rushes off suddenly because the subject of sex versus making love is raised, his sense of romance is awakened, sharpening his appetite for the chase. They fall in love, marry and bump along, as do we all, in their relationship.

The theme of the dream and reality runs through the book and the idea that each person’s reality is their own, in which they can live their dreams if they pursue them with determination. The importance of emotional intelligence in relationships both in everyday life and when confronted with difficult situations is a concept which is examined in their voiced thoughts as well as in conversations with friends.

Eleanor’s life had been restricted by her decision that French men are for playtime only. John found himself dating bimbos and aggressive American females, despairing of ever finding a sane, attractive, intelligent woman. They are drawn to each without knowing why but with the feeling that if they let the occasion of meeting pass them by they would regret it profoundly as a missed opportunity of immense importance.

While they agonised over superficial details, ‘Their souls had already found each other; it was just that their conscious minds needed convincing.’

The story travels from New York to Montpellier in the south of France where John spends a month with Eleanor learning Arabic and losing his temper. Eleanor discovers a darker side to John and advises him that he has a choice; to agree to deal with his anger, or go home. It’s a defining moment in their relationship and John realises that he has to face his demons or lose the woman he loves.

They marry in New York in February, after which Eleanor has to go back to France so the boys can finish their school year. Their wedding is marked by the meeting of John’s determinedly miserable younger brother and Eleanor’s man-eater bitch of a sister who discover each other; Rachel because Matthew is a serious project and a challenge, and Matthew because he is so amazed that the prettier sister finds him attractive that he feels he can face his successful older brother as an equal.

John ungraciously signs up for psychotherapy with Dr Norton but finds himself drawn into a world he’d buried deep in his psyche. The root causes of his anger emerge as he extracts the pain and anguish of his childhood. He struggles for two years, finally facing the truth.

John and Eleanor’s relationship survives, turning the dream of a sex-starved lonely woman into a love based on the reality of determination and coincidence.

Weekends at home

I was supposed to be having a peaceful time this weekend, boy-less. Their father, however, found himself stuck in Paris with a Saab that had a totally disfunctioning alarm. When this happens, the rest of the car can be in perfect working order, but you can go nowhere, even if you unplug the wretched alarm. It's anti-theft, you see. You can't even 'steal' your own car. Bravo Saab.

An extra complication is that France demanded a different alarm system from everyone else in the world, which means that instead of a nice array of coloured wires that go into colour-coded spots, the whole business is in black, so, once cut, you're buggered. Bravo Saab.

He was quoted 6,000Eur to repair the problem. Yeah, right. A financial black hole, that car, je te jure.

There was no point my having hysterics on the spot declaring that he had to fix for the boys to be away this weekend, come hell or high water - such is my life that I was just looking forward to some peace and the prospect of working on my book - so they stayed with me. No, I didn't work on my book, although I did a little on Friday, which I had off work when I didn't know I was going to have the boys. I had been planning on a book weekend, but the best laid plans...

Friday was also spent watching a video of the series 'Mine all mine' set in Swansea and Mumbles, with Griff Rhys Jones. It was a great laugh, with some lovely views of dear Mumbles. Yesterday afternoon, RA and I watched 'Love Actually' with Hugh Grant which was a right soppy, cute piece of cinema. I was a bit surprised at all these 40-something actors getting off with cute young 20-something ladies, however. Maybe a last ditch effort to pull a young chick before it looks vile, I suppose... and a good reason for Hugh Grant to make a movie with all his pals, plus a few. The line-up was terrific. My favourite was Billy Mack the aging pop star, played by Bill Nighy who obviously enjoyed himself immensely and hammed up his part to the hilt. I didn't quite get Hugh Grant as PM, although I loved the speech where he tells the Yanks to sod off and stop being such a big bully. Marvellous!

The boys had a lovely weekend too, out in the road, playing with their pals. I had wondered, seeing as it was such lovely weather whether we should go somewhere, but they always want to stay at home and play with their pals. So I think, why bother? Why drag them out? So I didn't, and they were in roaring form all weekend.

I'm just going with the flow.