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This blog is the often amusing, sometimes dangerous den of two British writers of contemporary and paranormal romance, and urban fantasy. Most of our stories are based in the UK and our heroes and heroines are passionate Brits - yes, passionate Brits exist! Come on in out of the cold, pull up a chair and see for yourself...

Thursday 22 January 2015

A writing slump, "the ring", and a new infatuation (which I hope is temporary).

It's been a funny month for me. I've found it ridiculously hard to get going this month in most areas of my life, as if my mind and body have just gone, "Nope. I ain't getting back to work, not yet - I need a longer break."

On the writing front, well, it's certainly happening, but at a pace about 66% slower than I'd like. I write 500 words and then I stop. It's like my brain chooses to shut down after just half an hour or so of writing. It's not fun; it's not productive, but there seems to be not a lot I can do about it at the moment. I've spent many hours analysing it and trying to come up with a solution - maybe it's burnout, maybe it's distraction, maybe it's writer's block - and I've come up with nothing, because it doesn't feel exactly like any of those things. There's a chance that it's partly grief, but I don't really want to talk about that. And grief is such an elusive bugger it doesn't a hundred percent feel like grief either.

I have hit the 10% mark with Disgraced. Like I said, I should have hit 30% by now, but it's just not happening. The story is there, but writing anything feels like trudging through mud. However, I usually post an excerpt for readers every 10% or so, so here is the first one...


Ooooo ... exciting, huh? Yes, I did - I got very excited about this excerpt :) Despite what I've just said above, I am still confident about getting the book out to you by the end of April. I'm just going with it and trusting that somewhere in here, I know what I'm doing and it'll all work out.

Other non-writing things

I will not harp on, again, about how I've just got engaged to my ten-year partner, but I did promise you all a look at the ring. Well, I've taken over ninety pictures of the ring and I'm not one little bit ashamed of that :D

I've included one mosaic picture for you to see, and two pictures where I managed to catch the diamond's "glow"...

Glow #1 (unfiltered)

Glow #2 (unfiltered)

All taken under natural light, then put into a mosaic, then filter added to soften the edges of overall image.

In other non-writing news, I have been replenishing my make-up. This sounds very boring, and I was expecting it to be very boring, but I haven't really even LOOKED at make-up for twenty years (all my old make-up that I threw out was twenty years old - I barely ever wear the stuff, which is why it lasts so long), and my gosh! Make-up has changed a lot since I last shopped for it! The variety now seems even greater than it was then, and I found myself lost in this massive sea of beautiful craziness. A lot of high-end brands have upped their game, too, in the last twenty years, taking out a lot of nasties from their ingredients, and the selection of natural make-up (from smaller, unknown cosmetic companies) has also grown. It remains really hard to find natural / (mostly) organic make-up that actually looks good and stays on, but there are some successes if you bother to take the time to look and try them. I have also become rather infatuated with make-up palettes (from any brand, high-end or drugstore; I'm not being fussy in this instance) - they're so PRETTY. When did that happen? Make-up used to be so boring to look at - not any more!

Anyway... yes, bye-bye twenty-year make-up; hello new pretty world of bad-for-my-pocket fun.

Back to writing... 

Look out for the blurb and cover reveal for Summer's End on 13th February, hosted by Hot Tree Promotions. While there's an outside chance I might not get this book written this year (it's last on my list of three), I do want the cover and blurb out there - it's very motivating for the writing to have it out there.

So, this is my plan: chill out, relax, don't worry. Everything will work out eventually, because it always does.

Have a great rest of the week and weekend, everyone :)

Dianna xx

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