Wet Kissing Hairy Hunks In The UK - Moustaches for #Movember @RUSHHairBeauty @HitLitPRo

RUSH to show off my book

Vanity, thy name is Emma. Today was salon day. Beauty creating fingers pampered my follicles. Anyway - grey is closer to blonde than my brunette ever was. I'm maturing towards the target of my true self. 

I have wonderful hairdressers at the RUSH Hair and Beauty Salon in Southampton. These guys are like personality heart surgeons. You go in as a tousled tramp and come out femme fatale. Good job I had an old ASDA carrier bag in my pocket to protect my new goldilocks from the latest Atlantic gale.

We are now 11 days into Movember. In our house things are getting hairy and it's time for a snog report. I've always loved a good snog. An interesting fact is that unfaithful men and women will have extra sexual intercourse with the betrayed partner (due to increased arousal stimuli)  but withdraw from kissing them. It's obvious really isn't it. Kissing is far more intimate and - well - the other stuff is just shameless lounging by the gene pool with a spreading warmth of wine in your belly. Oooh - writing about kissing brings out my inner sun.

So - when the touch of true love gets hairy - does the emotion keep flotion? My response is that the old boy still snogs up fine. His response is that it pushes bristles up his nose and loses the moment. I tell him that orgasm is a sneeze in the soul for a woman. He tells me that in that case, for a man, it's a runny nose.

That's why only women can write romance.

Get the book on Amazon Worldwide - all proceeds to Movember

Emma thinx: If it's right, the erogenous zone is you. 

Escape To Love - Cover Reveal

It's been a while since I've been here. My only excuse is that I have been writing. It started out as a novel, but in the way of the universe, gravity drew it back from that cloud of gas and cooled it into a 10,000 word story. So much editor's red ink has been spilled on this desk that the office looks like a crime scene. 

There is also a full length novel on the slipway, so I have felt free to indulge my passion for shorts in "Escape To Love". I have drawn upon my own South London life and experiences. It is a story of love, set in a landscape of urban deprivation and social disadvantage. A woman on the run from an abusive relationship with no one but her handicapped child as a companion, stumbles into a life changing moment. Decisions must be made and so often in her past she had been wrong. It is a story about trust and the blinding nature of lust and passion. 

Now, I do like a bit of Do It Yourself. I've done my own cover. Even more demanding, I'm doing my own audio book. Usually, I chicken out and get Oscar to do them. In this case the "voice" of the story is so much that of the woman, that there is no way out. Well, I could have hired an actress, but all the ones I know personally were busy either singing in "Les Miserables" or collecting awards from The Queen.

Oooh, I must tell you about my Lez Miz experience. It's a lovely lovely film. I went on Saturday and went into sob overdrive. The film is so long and emotional that I'm sure that my excess tears were diverted to my bladder. During the scenes of waifs singing in heavy wet wet tinkling splashy releasing rain near the end, believe me - I knew their pain. (Now, style purists, tell me that adjectives have no effect!) When I got home, the movie soundtrack haunted me and I dived onto You Tube. I found there a little gem which just kinda says something about genuine people and their hearts.You know, I loved the folks in this clip and if I had to have a picture of an audience, it would be them. 

My Emma Thinx today is a lift from Escape To Love. It kinda sets the tone.

Emma Thinx: Love is hands up when no one has a gun. 

Une Passion Parisienne

There is  often a conflict in my mind between the artistic and the commercial. Recently I have been working on some poetry and videos to publicise my next book and my last one. Poetry was my first teenage expression of myself as a writer. I remember how I used to look at drab terraced urban houses and watch the red of passion bleeding out into the grey pool of everyday. The folk who queued with me for tube trains and buses had known first kisses, and shared with me the aching expectation of wholeness that LOVE, and only love, would bring. 

Like many women, I have known the desert and the jungle of love.  Somewhere deep down in me has always been the defeatist clerk, telling me to forget the Romance and warm my lips on the cold bottom line. I think this voice is in a lot of us. It is the reason I write  Romance. When I wrote "Knockout" I took my readers to Paris to some moments I had lived myself. A week or so ago, I completed a video in which the text is taken from the book. It's not a sell. It's a truth of my life just a little overdressed.

Emma thinx: Love is letting go, but get a grip on him first. 

A Romantic Love Poem From My Heart

OK, I went down to the water and jumped in. Well, not quite. I went down to the river and made a bit of a film. I had decided to write a poem after many years abstinence. Then, never content to do something simply, I shot some video, did an audio track, badgered some fabulous young innocents into being actors and musicians and splashed it up on You Tube. The footage is from my beautiful home town at Saint Savinien in France.

Now the reason for all of this is that I am writing a novel in which the heroine re-finds love after a long period of both sexual and emotional uncertainty. She looks back to first love as a way of recapturing a standard by which to measure her current feelings. In order to write this up as well as I can, I needed to get my own mind back to that place. As a young writer, I wrote many poems. I was a short story writer who enjoyed poetry by true poets. All the same, when it comes to love, nothing works like poetry. I believe this is because in times of emotional overload we cannot provide any objective view of our own state. Poetry scores by taking the love victim outside of themselves by talking to them about what is inside them. I think this makes sense. I am always in love at some level. I don't think I could write Romance if this were not so.

Here it is then; my poem from the shoes of my heroine through the eyes of my own life. 


Emma thinx: Love gets better, but seldom stronger.

Autumn In Saint Savinien

Anything I can babble on about today is quite pathetic as I watch the drama along the east coast of the USA. My heart goes out to all those affected. We are so weak and small when Nature bites.

I heard the news today - Oh boy, they're gonna sell New Scotland Yard. Yes, they are going to sell the iconic HQ of the Metropolitan Police, the centre of Detective Inspector Anna Leyton's world. Who would buy it? Perhaps a couple of Mexican drug cartels have the cash? Sometimes I cannot believe what I hear. Earlier this week they sold Admiralty Arch to a hotel chain. We have already sold our energy and water companies, all our public housing, our railways and airports. All our automotive brands have gone and all our ships are built abroad and mainly sail under foreign flags. Maybe there'll always be an England but for sure, we'll have no democratic control over it. You know what will control it don't you....yes MONEY. 

Sold! Perhaps her majesty may pass.

For Sale. No parking issues for owners

Still, why should I care today? I am at my own home in France. As far as I can tell, the French resist all attempts to lure them into the total fluidity of globalised moneydom. In my village, you need the local accent to buy a baguette. They tolerate me because I am a cranky old Doris who knows enough local people to be seen in public kissing clinches. 

sun sets over CharenteMaritime

So, I went out with my camera and took some postcard shots of autumn in rural France. Although I'm fairly much in work ethic melt down, I have been writing. Just between us I'm getting to that lovely state with my current book where I'm kinda in love with the hero. This sent me into a frenzy of poetic remembrance of past amours and you'll soon see the ripe fruit. 

Today was calm and mellow with the river full and reflection rippled. The shots are from the river bank at Taillebourg. This place is truly paradise.

Emma Thinx: Romance is not a love story. It's a fictional truth. 

Emma's Dilemmas

When I was at school, deep deep down, I wanted a badge. Many other girls had sports teams badges and there were badges for prefects and monitors. My one ascent to power was when I stood in as a deputy lavatory monitor but I was not given a badge. My temporary position gave me the power to eject loitering girls from the toilet area and report any incidences of cigarette possession to the Authorities. I was ready to betray every friendship in pursuit of a badge but no one offended and my chance slipped away. 

But now, at last I have a badge. I have become an editor. Thanks to Loveahappyending.com I have started to edit a regular feature on writerly topics. Smoking and loitering will be permitted. If anyone knows where I can get an official editor's lapel badge, please please please Miss, I want one so much!


Emma thinx: You never grow taller than the shadow of childhood.

Oh Autumn - Love Child of Spring

Oh juice! Oh fullness; Oh grown love-child of Spring !

Season of mists and mellow novelists; Ah yes Autumn it is. Cold arrows of rain drench my heroine's passion as I sit here trying to write about rising sap and hormone inspired springtime lust.  I always find it easier to write during the actual season where my characters are. Trouble is, it would always be Spring or Summer. All that northern writhing on rugs in front of open fires has always seemed hazardous to me and you have to be careful about where you catch sparks and chilblains. 

Torn wings of toil, mortal beauty in the last sun.

England is the most wonderful of countries. Yesterday I cycled to the country town of Stockbridge and sat in the warm sun watching an alien tweed clad upper class world go by. I stopped and watched the last late cygnets in the river Test. Four deer startled and ran through the sun dappled woods where the bluebells will bloom in May. I long for them now and for their prophets - the snowdrops. 

Today is cold and the last swallows fill their tanks before hitting the gas pedal and heading south. Geese begin to gather at the starting line. Soon enough it will be out to work in the dark and home in the dark. Perhaps I should strategically place a furry rug in front of the open log fire and do some research. No fire - no problem: I could paint some flames on a radiator in the lounge I guess.

Willows overhang a sun warmed river Test. 

In these last days of pseudo summer I took some pictures. Once upon a time I could have done a poem but that gift voucher is long ago spent on frippery, anger and hoover bags. 



Emma thinx: If it's going, let it go. Just keep hold of the string. 

My Starter Starz

Winners have no mercy 

Recently I found myself being a sweet old grandma playing pooh sticks with my (step) grand son. If I had realised that he could not swim I would never have thrown him in in the river.(Well, he is 17). Luckily he was saved by some Amazon trolls who lived under the bridge. From now on I'm sticking to twigs.

This incident gave me the impetus to embark on my "Pass The Book" campaign. It is a simple enough idea. I give a reader a book, they read it, comment upon it if they wish and then pass it on. 

Starter Star Super Nurse Kate

Readers are encouraged to send in photos of themselves with the book and prizes will be given for the most unusual locations. Once the book sets out, no one knows where it will go. The great river of literature will sweep them on to the foaming passionate seas of Romance. On the other hand, it might get left on the bus and tossed in the bin. Other copies might find their way to the libraries of wealth soaked Oiligarchs, Princes or the give-away bins outside junk shops. The great thing is that anyone can see the track of the text by logging on to Pass the book Hall of Fame. You can see where your book has been and also where it ended up after you. 

Starter Star (Education Angel) Maid Marian

There is a copy for a blog reader anywhere in the world. If you would like to be a Starter Star, leave a comment indicating your interest on this post. A random reader will be selected on 5th August. The winner will receive their copy by snail mail.


I must give credit to Debra Hamel and Gypsi Phillips for coming up with the Pass The Book idea.


I know there are drought sufferers out there. If only I could send you some rain I would. All the same, Great Britain has resumed its normal summer pattern. We did not win Wimbledon or the British Grand Prix. It is ennobling to live in a land of tradition. Bradley Wiggins is leading the Tour de France....


Emma thinx: Golfer's Nirvana - a whole in one. 

Gather Thee Rose Buds

 As you will know, I spend a portion of my life at the wheel of a bus. Another portion is dedicated to general mother hen coop behaviour and a huge floral purple chunk is lavished on Romance writing. This has always created problems of identity and to some extent fear. In the back of my mind was that one day I would be driving a bus load of rugby club stag night revellers and that one of them would have read my book and would seek to discuss that naked outdoor scene. 

Lord  Lucan

And so it was that I did something rather naughty. Normally such things bring me pleasure but today I have to confess. The photo on my website and blogs was not me. I bought it from an agency and I have no idea who she is. Of course, she is not beautiful and sophisticated like me - although a goodly number of anonymous gentlemen have been very drawn to her, seeking friendship and small amounts of money for their plane fares. If you look at the photo today - yes - that is me. In the end I figured that since in a year I had not met any drunken stags who had read a book, I had been worrying about nothing. When I wrote the book and brought it out, I had no idea what would happen and knew nothing about modern publishing. Sending off stories to faceless editors was easy and for all they cared I could have been Lord Lucan. In fact, I think that would have been a great gimmick.


 Putting all that aside, something quite remarkable happened to me. I was invited to join an online literary group of writers, reviewers and publishers. Going under the title "loveahappyending.com", they have been in business for a year and aim to showcase and support authors and readers for mutual benefit. They held their first literary festival 'A Summer Audience' at Tetbury on 16th June. I met some fantastic and energetic people. At the end of the session they announced their choice of new authors - and I was one of them along with Ali Bacon and Carol E Wyer. This was a big WOW moment for me that dwarfed the responses of my passionate heroines. Being chosen is such a great thing. Everyone was so welcoming and I felt wanted straight away. Whatever happens in my writing career, this will be a top moment for me.  To see my author page on their platform click here.

The Love A Happy Ending Team

The group is an astonishing mixture of styles and genres. There is everything from crime to spiritual healing. Until now I have had very little exposure in the UK and I look forward to joining in all the activities of the group. I would like to thank all the guys who fixed the food, arranged all the logistics and made the day so enjoyable. I'm hoping to introduce some of the elements of publishing that I have learned the hard way by marketing in the USA.  Everybody loves a happy ending. 




Emma thinx: The happiest endings don't. 

Beached Wail

It is that insecure first Wednesday. All in all life is good since I am alive and in France. As for the writing - well, I wish I could claim great success. These days it is very important for me to try to remember that I have been at this game since my teens. Sadly that is about 35 years. I also try to remember that the "writer" is someone other than my whole being. In here there is a woman who goes to work, talks to neighbours, shares lives with children and grandchildren etc etc. Once again I find myself  hammered by remarkably spiteful critics - all of whom arise from free book days. I do pose the question to myself that if I am that bad, would I be worth attacking with such vehemence? It  is all very much of a puzzlement to me. Why are there no readers who just kinda find a book OK, not bad, quite entertaining, undemanding but not life changing? If a free book is so bad that you can only face a few pages, why would you spend half an hour pounding it when it has not cost you anything and, by your own admission, you have not read it?


This problem of the free book critical wave appears to strike many writers. Dotting around the forums I find writers who were doing well until they went free but now have had to pull their books, change their names and titles. So far I still have more likes than not but it is something I am watching carefully. The real problem is that I do not think anyone involved in publishing knows where to go. I often feel like a complete innocent longing for those simple days when I typed out stories for magazines, sent them off and sold about one in five. At least dealing with editors meant that they made sense and knew their readers tastes. If they did not like the story they did not buy it. They did not waste time telling you how bad you were.  The internet and celebrity mags largely killed the print market for stories. The affairs of the stars trumped any invention of the old story hacks. 


And finally about reviews, recently I checked out Hitler's "Mein Kampf" on Amazon because I was going to buy a copy for a young student of history. A guy had done a puffed up (Aren't I clever) review stating the grammar was incorrect in the translation from German and had accorded the one star of his lofty judgement. The truth is that the the translation does a brilliant interpretation of Hitler's atrocious grammar. The guy was a murdering dictator - not a budding author likely to be grateful for a grammar lesson from the underlings who transcribed his rantings. I must be one of the only people ever to have been cheered up by Adolph Hitler.

Figures in an unwritten book

I still want to write but the writing always gets shuffled to the bottom of the pile both by the business of life and to some extent the discouragement of it all. The same story wanders about in my head but will not form. They are like strangers on a huge beach, unknown to me, always walking away with backs turned. They have a life and a story in their faces. I took a picture of them on my local beach....


Emma thinx: Relax: all the sand will run out long before the time.

With A Cast of 50,000 - The Valley Of The Trolls

I'm a troll

We've been together for a year now - just you and me. Well, it's better than drinking alone I guess. One year ago I was certain I knew nothing. Today I know everything there is to know about uncertainty. I had just launched "Knockout" - my genre Romance pulsating with animal lust, lusty animals and International Locations. To some extent I have come in a complete circle. At that distant time I realised that I was saying goodbye to 35 years of serious writing. The slush piles of the Great Gatekeepers had felt the weight of my A4 gravitas. The bin-men of south London had kept pace with my output and the scorn of editors. Employers had failed to appreciate my creative day dreaming. The dog shampoo sales stats from Manchester got lost in the post modernist white thrusting buttocks of yet another dystopian philosophical tract. My writing career had arrived at the genre milestone simply because I was too poor even to starve in the attic. Perhaps - just perhaps, one could actually make some kind of income as a writer?


At first it was all about blogging and networking. That is how we met. The book went out onto all the platforms and we struggled with different formatting and "American" grammar. A few dozen kind souls looked at the blog. Now and then someone bought a book. We were priced at 99 cents. Each sale was like a birth. Now and then a kind soul would enjoy the book and give me a decent review. At that time I was able to write and live in France. I was a humble little mouse, building my literary burrow.


Firstly then the blog. I regard this as something of a success story because the readership has grown without any corporate stunts. The help and support of indie writers has boosted the readership to a total of 2,500 per month. For the first 6 months I set myself the goal of blogging every day.  Although I'm ever popular with Russian males, most of the traffic is random hits from people clicking on photographs. The fact is that the blog has sold very few books.


I arrived in the digital budget hotel with just 2 items of luggage. One was a short story "Sub Prime" and the other a genre "supermarket" book about cops and slobbers. I had decided a few years before to ditch everything of the previous period - i.e. my life. We used to live in a Capitalist system. Now life is Capitalism. Every single thing is commercial. Everything is bottom line. This is a born poor/stay poor world unless you can pull off the deal and get your hook to hold up in the sky. Dear old "Sub Prime" is the last footprint of the way I wanted to write. 


"Knockout" bumped along the bottom all through 2011. It was so far on the sea bed that only flat fish and readers fitted with sonar could detect it.  I believe we were at about number 60,000 in the Amazonian Ocean of a million digital books. This appalling figure means that 900,000 books have no significant sales at all. 

Course of the Amazon

Then came KDP Select. We knew that other writers had gained visibility by offering free books. This was our chance to get a hook up into the blue sky. We hurled it up - and it stuck behind a fast moving cloud. We topped several categories and reached the top 300 of all books. So far we have given away 50,000 books. A success story perhaps? Well - it rather depends on what happened next. 


Our first free run in January 2012 led to a sustained sales period over weeks. People were buying and enjoying the book. Reviewers on the whole were very positive and we were beginning to see some hope of some income after months and months of day and night  promo work through every conceivable media and cyber hang-out. I had also returned to the UK, grateful to get work as a bus driver.  I must also add that my actual book and story writing had stopped. Quite simply the endless jingle jangle of click this and check that has destroyed my inner calm. I tell Gilles that I am going through the Zenopause. 


Our second free run in early March was a similar success with a sustained sales afterglow. I began to notice hits by very negative reviewers as the book went back for sale. I have a policy of not commenting on reviews but surely if you are going to criticise a book - you should have read it properly or indeed, merely have read it to some extent.


Our third free run was in mid April. Clearly things had changed. Now, I'm not much of a musician - but I do have a natural sense of algorithm. Amazon have changed the deal so that you need to do ten times the traffic of free sales to get the same advancement up the sales charts. Visibility means sales. Sales means visibility. Almost the minute we came off the free deal, the negative reviews came in. Perhaps I am paranoid but can you really slam a book on the basis that in "real life" a woman would not risk her career for forbidden love? Come on guys! The book is a light sex infused escapist Romance, not a career development manual. 


So - 50,000 potential readers have the book. On the basis of the last free run we gave away about 5,000 books in order to sell about 50. It is quite clear  that in the current format KDP Select is not for me and I will not do any more free days. I know people only grab the book because it is free, but if I had sold one tenth of those books, I would not be working all day driving a bus - at least for a few months. I also think there is a great difference between the free reader and the person who looks at your book, samples it and then actually buys it. In the long term it is probably counter-productive  to put your book into the hands of people who would never like it or choose it. 


Here is the problem though. During my last free run, I was one of 15,000 free books on that day. There are now so many free books that no one is ever gonna have to buy one again. Soon there will be a plug in external memory for e-readers and all free books will be scooped as they come out. One day our unfortunate children will receive only our digital libraries of unread free books as their inheritance. Well, they won't have jobs to keep them busy.

Emma at the Oracle

I am not an Amazon hater. They have enabled me to publish at little cost. The lending library feature provides some income, albeit small. All the same, I feel like a supplicant at the feet of the priestess of Apollo as she interprets the gas emissions at the Oracle of Delphi. No one knows what is going on. Each time the oracle pronounces, the mob charges off to the latest Klondike. Each time a Romance novelist writes a blog, the historical imagery becomes more tangled. Soon there will be Amazon soothsayers and experts. Amazon lobbyists will offer special insights. And they will all be right - until the oracle emits gas again.


Oooh - I do go on. Thank you all my lovely readers who have sustained me during the last year. How was it for you? Please dear friends - let me know how you are getting on with KDP Select?  My own future is gonna be a lot more proactive. I want to get to the readers who want to read me and will pay a few cents to do so.


In the teeming millions of creatures being swept down the Amazon to the sea, I will no longer be  a speck in the universe washed onto the shifting sands of broken metaphors. Who said I was a purple crap writer? I really do love you guys out there.


Emma thinx: Don't big yourself up. Big yourself within.

Going For Gold

Heavy Sabre

There are three types of sword used in the sport of fencing. They are the foil, épée and sabre. My readers will probably suspect that I have not done a lot of fencing. However, I am very well acquainted with the noble art of parry and riposte since I used to be the bus driver for a famous public school. One of my missions used to be driving the fencing team around to equally famous public schools so that the young gentlemen could duel with each other.

 Now, as you will know comrades, my sympathies and background are somewhat proletarian. The accents and demeanour of the young blades and their masters seemed almost from a different planet. They exuded wealthy effortless self confidence and played esoteric japes in Latin with their peers and instructors. I always felt I should have disliked them. In reality they behaved towards me as absolute gentlemen and when food was served they ensured that I was treated equally. When packed lunches were provided, I received exactly the same. When they got off the bus they cleared every item of litter and thanked me for my service. Every time I got home I had to go to my secret naughty drawer and fondle my copy of the communist manifesto just to relieve the tension.

Plus ça change

Olympic Torch

And the point of all this is to announce the arrival of the new Olympic sport of sabre rattling. As the London 2012 games approach on the anti aircraft radar, our News bulletins are filled with accounts of battleships, snipers, commandos, missiles, and socket repelled grenades. In the air helicopters, Euro fighters, Tornado attack jets and AWACs planes will circle and hover over the city. Soldiers in masks practice kidnap and hi jack operations on riverboats. Thousands of extra security staff are being recruited and trained to say "No!" Oooh - it's come a long way from a few sexy Greek boys doing a bit of running and hurling their shafts. I know all this stuff is necessary but it does bring home to me the actual nature of the world we live in. Like everyone I will be watching our pure boys and girls attempting to defeat the drug fuelled ugly foreigners. Luckily I will be in France and their cameras are programmed to ignore all competitors other than their own. Even the 100 metres is a solo event. We Brits are not like that of course. Please please let us get through the coming ordeal with nothing more than a few dreams, prides and records being broken.

When I wrote "Knockout", the Olympics were just a TV news item showing a lot of cheering important British folk with glasses of champagne and lots of glum looking foreign important people. It was at that moment that I decided to write an account of the darker aspect of sport and corrupt gambling. I called an old friend at Scotland Yard and asked for some inside info. He asked me if I was free for dinner and what I was doing afterwards. I tried to work on an objective account of serious international crime but in the end everything got kinda mixed up with love and sex. It was much the same story when I came to write the book.

Emma thinx: Is there a gold medal for Nationalism?

Collidescope

Stepping up to the job

Oh dear - I've been a bit peaky you know. Some new virus from outer space has been withering me bronichals if you will excuse the expression. It's not that I need a pick-me-up, it's more a case of needing a crane. I knew when I signed up for the gym that it would all come to no good. How many times do you hear that so and so famous sporty sparty athlete has had to pull out of events because they have a sporty sparty virus? Huh - and what type of person do you meet at fitness centres? Yes - it's sick athletes passing on their bugs. When did you ever hear of anyone pulling out of competition because of chocolate? When did you ever hear of a virus that singled out wine merchants or foie gras manufacturers. I would rest my case but it's a bit wobbly.

We are not amused. Obama was far more fun than this.

What got me back to the keyboard was of course Her Majesty the Queen. She's been on the throne for 60 years. Now, what a waste of a career. Anyone who can sit on the same seat year after year with no hope of getting any further should have been a novelist. Today she gave a speech to Parliament and they gave her a stained glass window. Now what sort of gift is that?  You can't just put it on e-bay  tagged as "unwanted gift".  Where would you put it?

Schism of prism

The speaker of the House (of Parliament) John Bercow, gave a speech first, welcoming the Queen's speech. Oh dear - oh no -PM Dave did not like it! Bercow called her "The kaleidoscope Queen".(Police outside fought with crowds to hold back Freddie Mercury fans). But no - he meant Her Majesty. Obviously he set the wrong tone. The Tower of London is being prepared. Heads will roll.

Queen of Romance

One demi-royal was in fact a novelist. The step-grandmother of Princess Diana was Barbara Cartland who is probably the most successful writer of all time. Her Romances sold at least a billion copies and in her lifetime she published 723 books. I wrote to her about 35 years ago asking for the name of her agent. It is beginning to look like she was too busy to reply.


Now let's cheer you up. Dear old Oscar has been in an online Arts mag (The Altered Scale) featuring all manner of music, performance and general fusion. I checked out the event and came across a group that are pure sexy grunge dirty blues that absolutely grips me. I wanna write love and sex like this music. The artists are called "Purgatory Hill". This moooosic howls pure celestial bestial luvstuff.


Emma thinx: If you have to set the tone - avoid the purple concrete.

Bi-Polar Bare

A while ago a lad on the bus was chatting to me about his girlfriend. The mere fact of having obtained such an asset positively changed his demeanour. Instead of his normal monosyllabic grunt and slouch he became a young gent. His acne receded and was transformed into vocabulary.


About ten days ago he did not come out to board the bus to go home. Unsympathetic teenagers grew restive in my mirror. I cranked up the music but that brought complaints from the headphone wearers. At the last minute he appeared being led by a teacher. His tear stained face was swollen. It was over. Over. Over, with that terrible brick wall finality of a dead hamster in the palm of a young hand and the rest of mortality. The vocabulary acne inversion flipped like the magnetic poles of the planet in history.

Yesterday, they got back together. Compasses started to work again. GPS systems stopped talking backwards. No one should feel insecure. It won't last.


I've been giving away books on Amazon KDP. I am one of the more successful donors of the American literary world. However, in the UK, the natural sense of cool reserve and dissimulation prevents the accepting of gifts from strangers. I have the feeling that if I were to tour in my white Rolls Royce cabriolet throwing bank notes to the crowd, they would run after me handing them back. Probably I would get a ticket for littering. 

blueprint for a question not yet asked

Then the unthinkable happened. I started to sell books. Maybe after all I was a writer. I exchanged my life and personality for  sales figures. Some days I see myself as a pie chart, other days a block graph. Yesterday I had that corporate spreadsheet feeling. Personality and self image issues - surely not!
As I looked out from my window yesterday into the cold clear dusk I saw a tree reflecting the direction of life, albeit very simplified. 


Today sales dipped a little. A reviewer thought I should give up and drive a bus or something. The GPS is talking babble. I think I'm too old for acne. Insecure? Me?




Emma thinx: Whatever you've put in someone's life today - they're already passing it on.

Biting the bullet

Mystery headless man in white spotted at crime scene

I diesel droned the bus by the police tape that closed the block of flats and the shopping parade. Regulars might remember my little moan about derelict buildings and the vision of children. Well, the area is closed because of a shooting. Various young men have been arrested and the judicial processes set in train. Gowns and wigs will be televised. Pronouncements will be boomed in posh voices about violence and the protection of  decent society. No one is surprised. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday are lottery days. This time....this time!!! Such things can happen anywhere I know. Circles are vicious. Cones and spirals can take you up or down. I'll leave it to you to judge the general direction. 


Now - I've spent several months in a dilemma. When your name is Emma that can tear you in two. It's not that I have not been writing - it is more that I've been uncertain as to the direction to go. To be frank - I am under frilled to be a Romance writer. I am a real person with tubes, follicles, on lazy/writing days occasional armpit and leg fur and the beginning of a tummy. Well actually - quite a mature tummy. Maybe it is time to write that gritty Earth moving novel about poverty and greed set against a backdrop of boiling revolution.  A young peasant girl gives her only remaining kidney to save a dying investment banker who once tossed her mother a dollar to buy the baby milk that saved her life.  He falls in love with her but with both her kidneys gone, she dies. Oooh - I've told you the story now so there's no need to bother. By the way - she sold her other kidney to pay off her dying father's pay day loan and a new winter jacket for the elderly three legged dog they rescued from the burning barricades.


So - I have actually scrapped most things I have been doing. The fact is that I love the escape of Romance and the its ability to blend sex with glamour and true love. Good sexy romance can educate women and men a little too!  (My theory is that if a few of the angry young Kalashnakids had a bit more sex they'd be a bit more mellow).  If you think kids get told it all at school - think again. The facts sure ain't the whole truth. It's gonna be Romance with all the sex-joy-love-passion power I can muster. I've been writing the story in my head for a while and things might go a bit quiet for a few weeks. 


Now -let's talk serious bus driving. I am a full bodied Lycra clad righteous planet saving eco green cyclist AND a bus driver. You know, the real problem here is the way we manage traffic. Basically we are savages. I've never had any sort of impulse to injure a cyclist but driving long, wide and heavy vehicles in crowded tense situations is difficult and stressful. Big trucks and buses do not mix with bikes! Why do we think they should??? Now I've upset the  the cyclists.  Guess I might be the subject of a flatwa. You gotta laugh.


Emma thinx: When in Romance. Do!

Writing the Sex in the Text

Shall we talk about sex? Oh OK - if you really want me to. I write Romance. Well - love and sex actually. In "Knockout" there is a story but it is a story about a sexy woman going headlong into a passionate sexathon with a beautiful guy. They do it in her bed. She does it all on her own. They do it in his bed, in Paris, several other places and they do it on a boat. They kiss and caress the burning totality of each other's lips. They adore each other's skin and musk. She craves the untiring hard knot of his controlling, urgent muscles. He longs for her abandon, surrender and softness They eat highly flavoured food and breathe the garlic of shared ecstasy. They drink champagne and lie naked in the warm open air almost as a sacrifice on the altar of lust. Oooh....if I don't stop tweaking the knobs I'll have to jump in a cold bath. And just think - it was me, a middle aged working woman who wrote it.

self portrait

 The basic reason why I write this kinda stuff is that I love it in life and I love it in fantasy. I know it may be a brazen to say that, but it's true and if I'm honest then in my writing about sex I'm not short changing my readers. When I write a sex scene I am there and willing it on. Actually, it's writing itself.


There are technical problems in writing about sex. The big one (Oooh steady on) is the line between artistic, pornographic, anatomical, purple and naff. Different generations and cultures have different levels of frankness and taste. In the supermarket today I noted that I could present myself for chlamydia venereal disease testing while I was waiting for a new batch of granary wholemeal bread to reach the shelves. All those intimate swabs quite put me off the idea of a nice buttered crust.  I was reading some supermarket Romance where the young lady presented her sexual arousal by way of her "dampened swath". That brought me out in a fit of the giggles. I figured if things didn't gel with the guy at least she could wipe down the kitchen worktops. In another similar epic, the young lady exposed her "creamy crevice" - so far this is the worst image I have ever encountered. Well, at least there is some classy alliteration. Finding the words, the euphemisms and the poetic passion of human juice is not always easy. Just this morning I encountered a curly triangle of love. Well, I suppose if your car broke down you could prop it up in the road to warn other drivers of an obstruction. It's all about context is it not?

knobs and shafts

When it comes to the male side of the park, obviously a female can only guess and ask a lot of questions. My lover man is never shy. His only complaint is that males only get to ride one wave while  females can stay in surfing all day. - (Hmmm - depends on the quality of the water). Males provide more vocabulary problems. I have a few dislikes - such as swollen manhoods. It always makes me think of those old naval war films where they wear 10 layers of clothing under a duffle coat.. Luckily, my readers are mostly female and factors such as size of hands, width of shoulders and tone of voice can excite more response than shafts, lengths and pulsating needs. For fun I googled "knobs and shafts". Not quite what I had in mind. With males it's just so easy to get lost in engineering. 


But here is the core of the issue. People like sex. Even people who do not want actual full contact sex are interested in it. Sex is us. We are born what we are and half the world has the opposite set of bits. 

And then, of course there is love. Oh Love, oh love, love, love. This purest thing, rejoicing in the pollution of its own sense, losing focus so as to see nothing but the other. It is where the ego both asserts its power to give and shrivels in a humility of powerless longing. Our love finds expression and escape in physical sex. Cold sex is what my friend the poet Oscar Sparrow describes as the "gaping gash of loveless love". Getting this blend right is the work of the humble hack Romance writer. 

"Knockout!" my romance novel on Kindle is FREE on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th January if you want to check out how I deal with these tender literary parts.

Amazon USA
Amazon UK


Emma thinx: Love me - love my love.

Roboscribe puts her love on the line.

Production line

It's coming isn't it. Just as I get to be a writer, the geeks come up with Roboscribe. Just as I got good enough with a glass of wine and a cleaver to be a TV Masterchef, the genre starts to fade. One Foodmeister gets arrested for stealing cheese and wine and another gets kicked out of his job with Sainsbury's. Probably the only thing left is to be the first Romantic novelist in outer space. Come to think of it though, there are already plenty of weightless novels.


This little tirade was brought about by a message in my inbox inviting me to buy some software with which to write and perfect my novel. Wow - now all I'm waiting for is a programme to do the typing and print it out. I was a little worried by the typos in the advertising blurb, but perhaps they did not use their own stuff - or worse, maybe it was wrote by a human bean. I will confess that there is a little devil in me that is tempted to spend my £9.99 ($15) and have a go......should I? I have tried working with Mills and Boon/Harlequin editors so I have walked on that wild side without shame......and publication. How did I know they would not run a book where the female heroine drove a double decker bus? One day a multi billionaire gorgeous Italian guy gets on, brushes her cheek with a wad of erotically scented cash and asks to be swept away. She stops her bus, rummages in her locker for her dustpan and brush and tells him with a knowing wink she is the woman if that's what turns him on....Can you imagine how I felt when I got that rejection letter?


Oh - how terrible it is to be a famous author. This is often the complaint of old school angst and closet writers. Just imagine how ghastly it is to be constantly in touch with your customers! Well, actually NO! As a mere worm in the pantheon of scribbling I love to hear from readers. A couple days ago some folk got in touch and told me they had done a review of my book.  I would like to say thanks with all my heart and to assure the reading world that I just love to chat with them. 


Emma thinx: There's no formula for love. It's chemistry Stupid!

Insecure? I'm not sure really.

Actually I was feeling relatively secure as I sat down to write my blog. Then an 85 mph gust of wind hit a tree just to the right of my office window. Several tons of wood split from the trunk and destroyed my neighbour's garage and a good portion of the house roof. The rest of the tree now leans towards my very position. Now, I've always maintained that any sense of security in this world is misplaced. We are helpless creatures of no account, clinging to our fragile capsule of individual conscious time. As dear old John Keats wrote for his own epitaph "Here lies one whose name was writ in water".  I'm OK with the water, but I wonder if I could have it 50/50 with a decent brandy? Of course,  John Keats did not have the benefit of the Insecure Writers' Support Group.  The course of English Literature could have been so very different...


Insecurity as a writer is of course another thing all together. I mean, who is not a writer? Any time I tell someone I've written a book I find that they have already written several or believe that they have a host of unwritten brilliant narratives ready to wow the Readerverse. So - who would bother with me?  Um - well - there are always the critics.


When I first launched "Knockout" I came across a lady who offered to review books. Her verdict opened "I knew at once that I would hate this book." All the same she carried on in what I can only assume was an orgy of masochistic self loathing. "The characters were unrealistic since no Police Inspector would just fall in love with some guy." She followed it it with the suggestion that "The writer is clearly a foreigner with no idea of England. (I am a Londoner) Names of places in London are used as if it were a guide book."  The critic then turned to the matter of a restaurant menu which she felt was a poorly designed combination of dishes.  Finally she declared that the character of a Police commander was "unrealistic since such a bombastic character would have been brought up before some kind of employment tribunal".  I thanked her for her kind efforts but some small part of me wanted to say that it was a Romance where rather larger than life characters behaved rather "Romantically" in a world of unsuitable menus and horrid bosses. I could also have said that the Police Commander was based on someone I knew and if anything, underestimated his odiousness. As a final salvo the lady opined that the choice of the name Freddie for the French/American male hero was a ridiculous pun on a sitcom character called "Freddie the Frog" of whom I had never heard. 


The choice then was whether to accept all her criticisms and not publish or kinda stick to my self belief that, although not high art, it was not that bad. Perhaps some of you guys will let me know.


I think I'm in my 35th year of more or less continuous rejections. I suppose my confidence wavers as I wait for the letter. By now I feel utterly secure in my prediction of the outcome. I know there is a novel from 20 years ago possibly in a slush pile, still out there somewhere. Some rejections have become treasures. A famous poetry editor wrote back to me to say that my work was ghastly but that he loved my covering letter. I felt validated and secure. It was the only time. I have always taken comfort from the notion that all the GREATS were rejected, cut their ears off and ended up in a pauper's grave. The only problem is that this is not true. 


If I'm being serious I would say that all the years of rejections have never stopped me from trying and have convinced me that I'm unlikely to please any publisher/agent. This realisation is my freedom and I am secure in it. My good friend Oscar Sparrow, the poet, has recorded the supposed world's worst poem. People get in touch with him just to say they love it. If you wanna hear the sweet sound of heroic failure here is a link. By the way, the "world's worst" poet Theo Marzials was a huge success in his own life-time!


Emma thinx: The trouble with insecurities is that they tie you down.