Competition result...

I hope you are enjoying a peaceful and pleasant Easter weekend. I have just made a terrible discovery -- I forgot to draw a winner for The Bridesmaid's Best Man last month. I must admit, I've got rather out of the way of running competitions in recent years, but thank you to everyone who entered this one for my 25th book, either via this blog or by email from my website.

Ta da!!!!!

I'm very pleased to announce that the winner is Eleni of South Australia.

Congratulations, Eleni. A copy of Bridesmaid will be on its way to you shortly.

I've had word from my editor that she will be sending revisions for my latest submission next week -- something to look forward to over Easter. :-) So, in the meantime, I'm trying to get as much of the Mother's Day novella under my belt as I can. I don't like losing momentum on one story, while I stop to work on another. But I know other writers thrive on interruptions.
One thing is certain. After reader feedback from Bridesmaid (mostly very positive), I will definitely be adding an epilogue to this next book. Readers love their happy endings and I must make sure I don't cut this one too short.

And I can promise you that the next two books in 2008 -- Adopted :Outback Baby and Blind Date with the Boss -- both have epilogues!!

Proof of power...

It feels as if it’s been ages since we were at Tarzali – our country home. We’ve both been busy working and I must admit, I do find that I like to get a straight run at a book without the distraction of relocating.

But there have been frustrating reasons for staying in one spot. There’s no power to our house up there. We had to get the power pole shifted from in front of the house to accommodate extensions and that took ages. Then an electrician had to underground the power from the new pole to the house and then Ergon had to reconnect the power. Would you believe, this relatively simple set of tasks has taken months? And, of course, the extensions haven’t started yet.

As I type, Elliot is on the phone to Ergon, yet again, trying to sort this out so that we can head up to the Tablelands for a few days. We don’t fancy taking the risk of having no power in mid-winter. It’s not the lack of light or heating that bothers us – we have a lovely wood fire – but no hot baths is another matter entirely.

On a brighter note, yesterday we had a lovely get-together with Ally Blake, who is visiting from Melbourne. I’m so isolated from other writers up here, it’s always great to have a writerly chat and Ally is so lovely to chat with. But we couldn’t provide the lovely sunny winter Ally was expecting. All week it’s been overcast and cold – a maximum of 14 of Thursday!! Not tropical at all!

Writing wise, I am trying to decide whether this current story needs an epilogue. Elliot didn’t like the first one I wrote, so I’m tackling another. As many of you know, I love epilogues, but does this story really need one? Should I round the last chapter off in a satisfying way and leave it at that?

I dunno.

In the literary world, I’m sure epilogues are very much frowned upon. The reader should be left to imagine the future – the more open the text the better. But fortunately, romance readers say pooh to that.

Will ponder on this some more…

P.S. The picture at the top is one of my favourite images from Tarzali. Those tree ferns are growing at the bottom of our block and I keep that image as my screen saver while I'm in the city.