Blogging away etc

Today is my day for Tote Bags and I blogged about the Harlequin editorial podcasts as they are one of my procrastination tools.

Realms on Our Bookshelves tagged me and I responded with 8 facts about me. Realms as you may know is a European website that allows readers to discuss books in their own language, even though they may have read the books in English. The women who run the site are dedicated to the romance genre.

Currently the Aga is off as it is about to have its service. This makes the house colder.despite the recent decline in oil prices, it remains too expensive to run the central heating. The fire in my study is working well and the room becomes quite cosy. I have not succumbed to throwing the index cards into the fire and my board is looking quite pretty. My daughter thinks I should have photos but that is too much like hard work. The proof with the board will be when the revisions hit.

The code for the board is blue = hero, pink = heroine, yellow = relationship, green = anything else.

Using the Board and croquet's history

I went out and purchased my bulletin board -- a lovely blue felt cover board, a box of push pins (called toggle pins by the lady in the shop) and a set of coloured index cards. I did map out my story and I did see where the holes were. Thus far I would that it does help.

I had thought that I would have my characters play croquet or possibly pall mall. However, I then began to do my research. Contrary to many text books, pall mall and croquet's only relation is that they were played with mallets and balls. Pall mall is more likely to be a precursor of golf. Croquet is probably more like a cousin than a direct descendant.
Despite being popular with Charles II, pall mall fell out of fashion in the 18th century and disappears from English society. Croquet appears in the 1850s.
Croquet seems to have to been developed in France, brought over to Ireland in the 1830s as Crookey and then brought to England in time for the Great Exhibition of 1851 where Jaques of London displayed the first complete set. Jaques as a company dates from 1795 and still sells some of the best garden game equipment around.
Anyway, I decided that as the story is set in 1837, it is probably best if they play bowls. The first bowling green in England dates from 1299. Lawn bowls remains a popular game today. Hexham for example has a lovely bowling green.
Does this mean that people who reference pall mall in Regency books are wrong? It was not a popular sport, but people have had a tendency to like to hit things through hoops. As for me, I am sticking with bowls.

Upcoming workshop and editing plan

Next Friday -- 10 October, I will be going up to Berwick upon Tweed to give a two hour workshop on writing romance as part of the National Year of Reading. Apparently the ticket sales are going well. So I guess it won't be just the librarian, my daughter and I...
Anyway, I am looking forward to it, but also feel a bit like I have just emerged blinking into the sun after doing my revisions (or more accurately rewrite)
I have also started revising/editing my Governess one. I am going to try to be methodical about this one. I am tempted to get a Story Board and a stack of index cards. Is this a procrastination technique or merely a reaction to not having seen a huge hole before I submitted the Viking?
Or will I get the cards, decide that it is too much like hard work and go back to the method that works for me? Because my books tend to be about 15/16 chapters long, it should in theory be easy to divide the board up my way.
Several of the big flaws with the Viking -- were the hero/heroine leads, and the laying of way too much pipe. In other words I over complicated the back story and made the main characters react to events rather than cause them. Characters in a book make their lives happen. Would I have realised this with index cards?
I know that such measure are not good when I am writing the first draft. There is really very little that can come between a writer and the blank page. Writers eventually have to write. But after that, lots of things can be done. I figure that I might as well give it a go. I know several writers who swear by such measures.
In other news:
The honey has been harvested -- 22 pounds. It was a poor year. The beehives now have to be made ready for winter -- with mouse guards and the annual treatment for varrora.
The pumpkins are about ready to be harvested as are the tomatillos. Tomatillos are green tomato like fruit that are used in making green chile sauce. They are very sharp in flavour and very easy to grow. The chile crop is decent this year but again because of the lack of light, the plants did not fruit as well.
And I have started to have fires in my new fireplace. Instead of having blue hands as I type, the fire now crackles merrily. Of this could lead to procrastination -- stirring the coals, putting more fuel on, burning index cards etc etc.