Smoking!

So I have a fabulous friend called Ana, and she drew my wonderful cover art that you can see on the left of the page. I've never actually met Ana in person - she is in Columbia and I am in Wales - but we have been talking online for over six years now. When I put out a plea for a cover design for Cardiffella, Ana was the first to offer and I happily accepted.

I gave her a brief description of my main character, and she'd read a few excerpts that I had posted on Facebook during the NaNoWriMo challenge. The cover you see was the very first design that she came up with, and I fell in love with it. She had drawn Ella almost exactly as I had pictured her, and as for Muse... well, it's uncanny how alike she is to my original 'Muse' (my cat, Belle). Needless to say, Ana is now my personal (and unpaid, by the way, that's how awesome she is) illustrator.

Anyway, I finally got around to sending her the whole draft of the novel as she had mentioned doing some more sketches for me. This is her first offering:

Ana seems to doubt her skill, but I think she perfectly captures the whole feel of the story with her drawings. The novel is predominantly a comedy. Yes, the underlying theme is a romance - it couldn't be anything else when it is loosely based on Cinderella - but if I were pushed into giving it a genre, I'd lean heavily towards comedy. This particular scene is just after Muse sets fire to the kitchen - on purpose, mind you. And you might think that a cat couldn't possibly set fire to a kitchen, but seeing as Muse is a fairy godmother and can talk, I think you'll agree that she's no ordinary cat...

Definitely one of my favourite scenes to write! And it goes to show how well Ana knows me by picking something that was one of the highlights of the story. I loves my Ana, I do, I do!

*grins*

All About Ella

Name: Eleanor Gibson

Nicknames: Ellie, Ella

Age: 24

Hair: Black, shoulder length, naturally curly, inclined to frizz.

Eyes: Two (both of them blue)

Height: 5'1

Weight: 9st 4lbs / 130 lbs

Occupation: General errand girl at Cardiff Mode, the premier modeling agency in Cardiff, Wales.

Most Likely To Say: Mine's a double; crap.

Least Likely To Say:  A lady never swears; A drink? No thank you, I'm strictly tee-total.

About Me: I swear far too often, at least, that's what Muse says, anyway. Of course, Muse is my cat, and what do cats know about swearing? Still, I guess I should probably try to curb my urge to curse. I've been called clumsy - especially lately! - but usually I'm quite steady on my feet. Unless I've had a bit too much vodka, of course, but that goes without saying. Muse says I should drink less frequently, and choose wine as the more ladylike option, but again, she's a cat, so I tend not to take too much notice. Unless she's talking about fashion, that is. Considering she's feline, she's given me some amazing tips on my wardrobe...

I really enjoy my current job, despite the fact that I'm surrounded by beautiful Amazonian Goddesses. I suppose some people would find that a bit intimidating, but not me. Of course, it helps that I'm best friends with both the head photographer and the make-up artist. The girls know that they can't be horrible to me or they run the risk of panda eyes and unflattering shots . Of course, Jake and Danny would never be so unprofessional, but the girls don't know that, do they?

Aside from my best friends, and my talking cat, I also have a great dad who lives near by, and I see him several times a week. Oh, and an ex-stepmother. Unfortunately.

Well, every girl has her problems...


More character profiles coming soon!

Yay!

For those of you that don't know me very well, I am a technical dunce. Seriously, when it comes to anything done on a computer, I am a complete ninny. I usually get there in the end, but the end can sometimes feel like it takes forever.

I have tried, over the last year or so, to format the mess that is the first draft of Cardiffella. As you can imagine, the speed that it was written meant that spelling errors, typos, and general formatting went right out of the window. Plus the fact that I only had basic Wordpad to use to begin with meant that my first draft was a complete dog's dinner (as we say here in Cardiff). Anyway, up until yesterday I was completely overwhelmed by the huge task that awaited me. Aside from adding the extra ten thousand words that I need before I can submit to a publisher, I needed to make my draft readable.

Now, I don't know what happened today, but I awoke with a renewed determination to not let Word beat into submission. I have spent the last few hours going through my manuscript with the aim of correcting all of the spelling and typos - at least, those that Word helpfully highlighted to me at any rate - and, through a great many trials and errors, doing all those pesky formatting things that have to be done in order for me to have a professional looking manuscript.

I now have a manuscript with real chapters (instead of seven chapters of ordinary length, and half of the book falling under the heading of 'Chapter Eight' *shifty*), page numbers, author name and book title on every page, and the text itself in double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman.

*faints*

I'm inexplicably chuffed to beans with myself! All of the tedious stuff that has frustrated me for so long has been done! Now all I have to do is edit in those last ten thousand words.

Guess I'd better crack on with the writing then, eh?

The Journey Truly Begins

So I can barely keep up with my normal blog, but I figured it was about time I put some serious effort into not only editing my debut novel, but spreading the word on a larger scale. I wrote Cardiffella in a crazy month back in 2009. It was for the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge, in actual fact. Never before had I committed myself to a month of insanity - and believe me, promising to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days is insane - and I never thought I would complete it. Despite huge computer problems, life throwing me curve balls, and a last minute panic writing surge of over ten thousand words, I surprised myself and finished it.

That's right, I finished a novel.

Of course, it's nowhere near ready for submission, so technically it isn't finished at all, but I have a solid foundation, and all I need to do now is finish constructing the final building. I have the walls and the roof in place, and many of the windows, but it definitely needs decorating, and adding those final few touches that makes a house a home (if you know what I mean).

I'm a bit of a ditherer, as well as the Princess of Procrastination (hence the title of my main blog), so adding this new blog to my list of things that I need to do is rather daunting, but nobody gets anywhere in this life unless they put the work in first. Realistically, I don't expect to be updating a great deal for quite some time. My main aim at the moment - in between that crazy thing called life - is getting the book ready for submission. I'm not sure when I'll be ready to submit the manuscript - quite apart from editing and polishing, I don't know if I'll ever be brave enough to actually send my baby out into the big bad world - but if and when I do, this is the place to be if you want to help me drown my sorrows when the rejections come. Which will be fab! Even better, when I finally (or if I finally *snort*) get a publisher, we can have a party!

This is definitely a whole new journey for me, and I hope many of you will join me for it!