Stuck in the middle with you

So here I am.  Being a bad blogger.

I do have an excuse.  I was wiped out for an entire week by a horrible bug.  On the upside I lost 10lbs in a week and have spent the last two weeks trying to eat my way back to happiness.
On the downside I lost valuable writing time.  And valuable reading time.  Honestly I couldn't even read a book in the week that I was sick.  I spent the week sleeping with a haze of Diagnosis Murder playing in the background.  A girls gotta love Dick Van Dyke.

So that means my cruise ship story has suffered somewhat.  The not-so shiny partial has skipped its way off to my editor, along with a note saying "chapter three is rubbish, isn't it?"

And I've almost reached the midway point in my story.  Trouble is, I keep going back and looking at what I've written.  I don't normally do that.  I normally write my way to the end and then go back.  Changing things, bringing scenes forward, pushing scenes back.

What I always discover (or more importantly what my critique partners always discover) is that things that are in my head haven't translated their way on to my page.

I'm very guilty of this.  I expect everyone reading my stories - critique partners and editors alike - to switch on and fully engage their telepathic powers.

Because I know it should be on the page.  I know how this story is going to pan out.  The fact it hasn't appeared on the page - to clarify it to everyone else - is just a minor discrepancy.

So I often get a little comment inserted by a critique partner saying "What??????"

Ooops.

I feel as if the cruise ship story is kind of in this place right now.  I think I've taken until Chapter Five to reveal my hero's deep dark awful secret conflict.  And yes, I do know it should be obvious from Chapter One.  Or at least the seeds should be planted there......and right now, they're not!

Oh dear.  So I'm stuck in the middle.  Because there is no point going on until I go back and sort all this.

So everyone singalong with me

"Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you."

The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award

So, thank you Rachael Johns for this award.  Now I need to think up 10 random facts to share with other bloggers.  And since I've done something similar, I really need to find 10 different facts....

1. My book that is due published in September - It Started With A Pregnancy, is really the book of my heart.  To sum it up, a diabetic midwife falls pregnant and starts to freak when she realises she can't control her diabetes the way she used to.  Been there and done that.  Twice.  For someone who has spent their life knowing when a hypoglycaemic attack is about to hit, and could usually always avert it, to have a total change of condition and have NO signs of oncoming hypos is/was terrifying.  I could have normal, rational conversations with people with a blood sugar of 1.2 (normal is between 4 and 7, hypo warning signs usually show when it drops under 4).  Even my family were freaked by it.  And for a control freak like me, well....
2. I'm a trained nurse and health visitor.  I've worked in medical wards, orthopaedics and coronary care.  I've also worked as a District Nurse and as a health visitor I was addicted to the smell - yes, the smell - of newborn babies.  You really didn't want me near your child!
3. My favourite kids were the ones who refused to do the assessments.  The ones who threw the bricks off the wall instead of building a tower.  The ones who you tried to coax to say five single words and all they would say was NO.  The ones who wouldn't draw a circle or a cross but would look you in the eye and take the crayon along the wall.  I like kids with spunk.
4. As a student I was once asked to put cream on someone's APRON.  I was working in the ward from hell, with the Sister from hell, so I pulled the curtains, armed with my tub of cream and thought "Wherever the apron is I'm going to get it."  The poor patient had cream from the top of their forehead to the tips of their toes.  Incidentally, the APRON is the roll of fat that hangs over your belly!
5. I once auditioned for ballet school in Glasgow, but wasn't really sure I wanted to go.  I did ballet, tap , modern and jazz dancing until I was 16.
6. I used to be a good girl.  At school I was known as a goody two-shoes.  I've never done drugs and didn't start drinking alcohol until I was 19.  Please note, I said used.
7. My radley bag collection (from the last post like this) has unfortunately grown.  I now have 18 bags, and a suitcase (which isn't that great!).  All the bags are absolutely essential and none of them I can do without.
8. I wrote my first Mills and Boon when I was 17.  It was a medical and was called Hidden Love and involved a typewriter and that horrible tippex white paper for whenever you made a mistake.  Funnily enough I got a standard R, as it would now be known, and took myself off in a huff for a bit.  I didn't write my next one until 2009.
9. I'm taking my beloved and my kids to Eurodisney this year at Christmas and we are going to stay in the Disney Hotel at the park entrance, all with my M & B advance!
10. I have two wonderful critique partners for whom I am extremely grateful.  Nancy (Sheandeen on eharlequin) and Rachael Johns, both take a bow.  I am not going to forget that I couldn't have got published without you!

PHEW!!!!!!!!!!  All done!

Now, I would love to pass this on to others.  Feel free to download the pic and participate!

Waiting....

The revisions are finally finished and have flown off to Mills and Boon again.  But I really felt as if I couldn't post a picture of the flying books for a THIRD time.  That would have been really lame.  So, instead I found a nice tranquil picture, to try and show a nice, calm, patient, waiting attitude.  But those of you who know me, know that that's never me in million years.  (Incidentally, this is actually wallpaper.  Would be a nice feature wall in a room somewhere, but since my beloved has just decorated our bedroom with a lovely red feature wall - pictures on facebook! - I think I might not be able to suggest it!)
This is me...

So, now comes the question of how long you wait.  Incidentally SO appears to my favourite word in a manuscript, Rachael Johns found a multitude of them that had all passed me by... Therefore I have to say thank you to her and my lovely critique partner Nancy (AKA Sheandeen on eharlequin) for their help in the past week. 
What do I think about the revisions?  At first, I have to admit, I wasn't sure.  After all, I was tearing 'my baby' apart and putting it back together again.  At one point I really didn't like my characters anymore, and would have hated to be stuck in a lift with them.  However, things moved on and I learned to love them again and I do think the story is stronger.  But is it strong enough?  Here's hoping.
The competition for today is HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WAITING?
Most of us will have heard of Soraya Lane, who got the Call recently after around 8 months.  Maisey Yates had a 20 month wait all in.  However, the lovely Wendy S Marcus, returned her revisions on the Monday and got the Call at the end of the week!
I know that another blogger Janette has been waiting a while too.  So the question is everyone, how long has it been?  Move over, there's plenty of room on the waiting bench!