Impoverished Miss Convenient Wife wins CataRomance Reviewers Award

I just found out that Impoverished Miss Convenient Wife won the Cataromance Reviewer's Choice Award 2009 for best M&B Historical! I am over the moon because as readers of this blog will know I really rate the reviewers at Cataromance. They read a lot of romance and try very hard to give interesting reviews. You can see the rest of the list here. Congratulations to all the other winners.

And thank you very much Donna, Ally and Julie. I am really honoured!!!!

Congratulations to Donna Alward!!!

The Pink Heart Society has reported the wonderful news that my critque partner, Donna Alward won the Bookseller's Best Traditional Romance Category with Hired by the Cowboy. The PHS also has photos of the prize.
Regular readers of this blog will know that this is the book that I convinced Donna to totally rewrite after she received a form rejection. She had orginally set the book in London, rather than setting it in Canada among other things. In between getting the rejection, and rewriting it, she wrote several other books. But the characters would not go away. They kept calling to her.
When she did rewrite, it was a total rewrite. And it became a very lovely book.
I am so very proud to have played a tiny role in Donna's success!!!
As luck would have it, she is away at a family wedding.

Ill Met by Moonlight

Last night the BAFTAs were on. Life On Mars only won the audience BAFTA. Which goes to show that there are a lot of dedicated fans out there. Philip Glenister, looking very dapper in his dinner jacket announced the winner for the Best Actress. John Sims looked very uncomfortable when the BestActor was announced. My heart went out to him. It is so hard to sit there for those few seconds before the winner of an award is actually announced.

However, I spent most of the evening watching one of my favourite films -- Ill Met by Moonlight. I happen to like it because it is a true story and has some lovely footage of Crete. We have decided that we need to go back to Crete. The movie is based on the recounting of W Stanley Moss about his adventures in kidnapping a German general. He was ably aided and abetted by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Xan Fielding and a whole hot of Cretans. It was most the Cretans who were responsible for the success of the mission. PLF is one of my favourite no fiction writers. He has a wonderful gift of the English language. His books about travelling across pre WW2 Europe on foot depict a vanished age. If you have not yet read him do. Another book based around the same incident is The Cretan Runner and it too is a wonderful Boys Own adventure story. Anyway, the film is very enjoyable -- all the more so for being based on a true incident.

When we were in Crete lo those many years ago, it was obvious that WW2 had marked the island. At the monestary, the priest told the story of how the Germans tried to take the piece of the true cross and were unable to get the plane off the ground. Shades of Indiana Jones here. The priest rapidly changed the subject when two Germans joined the tour!

Work wsie -- the wip is going fine. My crows of doubt seem to have flown for the moment and I am concentrating on getting the draft down. I keep telling myself -- the sooner it is down, the sooner I can actually work with it and make it better. I do think I was correct to basically begin again as I think the overall story will be much stronger.