Well, I did get past Chapter 5 eventually, but it was a struggle right to the end!  I finally sent the book off a week or so later than my original deadline which wasn’t too bad when it felt as if I had been writing it for ever.  I’m still not sure why that particular story never clicked, in spite of moments thinking that it was just about to, and frankly I was desperate to get rid of it in the end.

It’s been great to have a couple of weeks away from it, including  a trip down to London for the Jubilee holiday, but since I came back I have been braced for my editor’s comments.  I was convinced I would end up having to rewrite the entire book, or possibly to be told to give up writing altogether (a recurrent fantasy, based on the absence of choice and responsibility like most fantasies), but in the event, of course, things weren’t nearly that bad.  In fact, there were lots of things she really liked about the book, much to my surprise, but the main problem she identified was with the motivations of the hero and heroine at key points in the story.  Of course this is exactly right, but sometimes you really need an editor to point out the obvious.  She also thinks the three girls who share the house, and who will each have a story of their own, drink too many vodka and tonics – clearly a case of being a little too close to life!  And there was me trying to be different by making them enjoy vodka instead of gin …

Doing revisions is always a bit of a drag, but the points she makes are all line referenced, rather than those infuriatingly vague comments like ‘lack of pace’ or ‘needs more tension’ which mean you really do need to rewrite the whole book.  So tomorrow I will sit down and work my way through her comments point by point, and hope that will be it!  I am actually quite keen to move on to the next book, the second of the trilogy.  I’ve done a synopsis and a chapter outline while I’ve been waiting to hear about the first one and I feel much more upbeat about this one (easy to say at this stage, when I haven’t started writing yet!)  Just as well, as I only have seven weeks to write it – it’s due to be finished by the end of July (actually, I wish I hadn’t worked that out now …)

I am having a good time name-checking various friends in these books.  I never name heroes or heroines after people I know, but the secondary characters are a different matter.  So Lara and Celia made cameo appearances in the last book, and this next one will feature Isabel, who wanted to be the woman in the hero’s past that he has never got over.  Unfortunately this means that she has to be dead, but she says she doesn’t mind!  Another friend gets to have the hero’s domineering sister named after her, which will only be funny to those of us who know what she is really like, but it will keep me amused while I’m writing it.  Anything that helps make this an easier book than the last one will help – keep your fingers crossed for me!