The mansion will have to wait.

I have had to downsize my plans on what to do with my first royalty cheque from e-luv. After hearing how much it will be, the mansion in the South of France has been put on hold and instead I will be using it to pay a month's rent on my sparsely-furnished bungalow in a once-fashionable suburb of Wellington.
Still, the cheque does mean that I've earned around £1.25 an hour from writing the book, so technically, I am a professional author. Even if I do get paid less than my son, who delivers pizzas.

Email of the day

Hello,
just been reading your blogspot....I wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading your book, best one I have read in months. I was introduced to this book by my sister who had it selected for her by her 3 year old daughter because she liked the cover. As it was a library book, I am forced to return it...so now I will go straight to Amazon and buy myself a copy.
Hurry up with the sequel, I am a greedy and impatient reader. Got to go, my youngest is being traumatized by a sticky bagel.



Fiona

How not to write a book

I have started work on the e-luv sequel and it is, quite frankly, brilliant. Actually, it's currently known as re-luv, which means that Clare Weber won the naming competition from a few weeks ago and I forgot to mention it. Anyway, progress would be a lot quicker if I could avoid the following habits:

* Jumping out of my chair every time I write a line I think is really good and reading it out to whoever is in the room. And then sulking if they don't laugh.

* Taking a break every 5 minutes so I can check the latest football news as well as seeing who has visited this blog.

* Deciding that writing is just too hard and that staring vacantly at the screen is far easier.

* Spending hours compiling music playlists, often around a pointless theme such as "songs by 80s bands with insane haircuts".

* Checking emails every couple of minutes. Despite the fact I know there won't be any, because if there WAS one, I'd already know thanks to the "new mail alert" sound.

Re-luv will probably be in the shops around July 2015.

Person of the Week

It's sexy sex writer, Emily Dubberley, who read e-luv and said "I thought the whole book was ace. Read it in one sitting - it is very funny/poignant/well written".
This is particularly good because Emily is a proper writer who has written loads of books, founded a sexy sex magazine and somehow manages to write for the Guardian AND the Daily Star.
Check out her websites here and here.
I also like the fact that her name is very difficult to say 5 times quickly.

Why I love Google

My latest e-luv Google session, which is basically a desperate search for praise, has returned the following results:

A South African man whose favourite books are 1984, Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird and...ummm... e-luv: an internet romance.

A woman who snorted on the train home to Glasgow as she was reading it.

An embarrassing Metro article that I've been trying to forget.

A list of new books in Vancouver Public Library (January 7-13 2007), which includes e-luv.

A list of ifyourcuteimsingle's favourite books

A Canadian man giving one of the more serious reviews the book has had.

A mixed bag of emails

A mixed bag of emails awaited me this morning. The first was a very nice start to the day - a note from someone who had read e-luv:

Dear Mr Roberts
I got hold of your book via The Guardian and I have to say it was the first book for a long time that made me laugh out loud. Excellent.

Then things took a downhill turn, as I opened a FORM REJECTION EMAIL (it was the "Dear Mr Dave Roberts" bit that gave it away) from a publisher, whose name I have not deleted, thus probably ruining my chances of ever getting a deal with them:

Dear Mr Dave Roberts,

Many thanks for sending your proposal for us to consider for John Blake Publishing Ltd.

Judging by the details you have provided, your book sounds a very interesting and insightful one and you must have felt great enjoyment and satisfaction in writing it. Although I have no doubt it will prove a popular read when published, I am afraid that due to a recent shift in demand we are looking to commission in specific genres that we publish. Currently we are focusing on our popular culture and sports biographies over the forthcoming months. With this in mind, we do not feel that this proposal is quite right for our list on this occasion.

I am sorry that we could not provide a more positive answer but I would like to thank you for thinking of us. I wish you the very best of luck in finding success with the publication of your book in the near future.


Yours sincerely,

Vicky McGeown


Editorial Assistant

But THEN, a much better one, from a publisher I sent my book about teenage misfits supporting rubbish football teams, saying he was going to make me an offer next week.


So, a good start to the day. But I am about to meet my mother-in-law for the first time, so that could all change. She has flown over from the US and I am frankly terrified.

A bizarre turn of events

Some of you will still be in a state of shock at this vitriolic post from the author of Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You, Sean Thomas (shown here with one of his millions of women).
There has now been a dramatic turn of events.
You will recall that he took exception to my saying that his book was rubbish. This was based on reading the prologue which really was a bit rubbish, so I didn't bother with the rest. At a loose end last Sunday, I decided to read a bit more.
Now, you have no idea how much this hurts to say, especially given the knobbish way he behaved, but I have to give credit where it's due and I thought it was really good. Laugh-out-loud-funny, poignant, honest and hard to put down - especially when he's talking about his internet adventures. You even end up quite liking him. And the final line is the best I've read since e-luv's.
I would grudgingly recommend it to anyone.

e-luv: the movie - the update

I have discovered how film production companies work. You hear nothing from them for months, followed by a flurry of activity, before hearing nothing again for the next few months.
Anyway, I just got an email from the producer who has e-luv "in development". She sent pages and pages of notes, packed with words like "beats" and "3-act structure".
They have come up with a fantastically inventive way of shooting it, which I'd better not describe here. Not because I'm discreet, but because I'm paranoid they'll google e-luv and find this site.
Things seem to be progressing nicely and the next step is getting funding, which means that the full script needs to be written. Luckily, they have someone who is doing that, so I can just sit back and take all the credit (if it goes well) or whine about how I could have done better (if it goes badly).