Spellbound on Southbank

Last weekend, critique partner Lisa and I attended the annual Romance Writers of Australia Conference, which was hosted here in Melbourne in Southbank.

I haven't written about it sooner because the minute I arrived home on Sunday night, I hit the ground running at the computer, not due to a burning desire to write romance fiction, but to finish off the powerpoint presentation I was due to give at work the next day. Since then, I've worked a long and demanding week, with no time to draw breath until this weekend, when I finally had a chance to put my feet up and relax and catch up with friends.

As usual, the conference was absolutely filled with wonderful things, some expected, and others surprising. To write about it all and do it justice would fill the length of a category romance novel, so I thought I'd summarise the highlights in point form:

• One Enchanted Century cocktail party on Friday night - excellent finger food and lovely bubbly... met some new friends from Brisbane. Three fun ladies with whom we shared some lively conversation and a few laughs throughout the weekend. Hope to see more of them - in person and in print - in the future.


• Words of wisdom from Barbara Samuel, Margie Lawson, Anna Campbell, Anne Gracie and Jenny Hutton, amongst many others.


• Informal conversations with a few HM&B authors... very encouraging, down-to-earth people. Inspirational.


• Lisa's fantastic 'High Five' win!!!! She looked every inch the glamorous romance author as she collected her award - see her blog for the pictures.


• Tips on how to read the rejection letter! I have quite a collection of these, so this workshop was very pertinent - more about this in my next post!!!


• Fabulous frocks on some fabulous women.


• Excellent accomodation and yummy breakfasts at the Travelodge.


• Endless cups of tea in our room, processing each day's events.


• Preparing for 'The Pitch' with Jenny Hutton - write, re-write, un-write....


• Attending 'The Pitch'. A bit nerve-wracking, but generally a very positive experience.


• Met an incredibly humble, inspiring, aspiring author who works as a pilot, whose manuscript finalled in the Golden Heart this year.


• Met many other aspiring authors... the future of romance writing.

All in all, a wonderful experience. Thank you RWA for providing such an inspiring conference for published as well as unpublished writers.

Winter by the beach

Just got back from a wonderful week away at Rosebud.

Rosebud, what a beautifully evocative name for this special place on the bay side of the Mornington Peninsula. It's named after a ship that was shipwrecked off the coast there, many, many years ago.

I'd say the defining feature of our time away at Rosebud is always sleeping in and lazy mornings in pyjamas until noon, when we finally emerge from the house and go looking for things to do. In Summer, it's almost always the beach, whereas in Winter, we have to get a bit more inventive.

It was a rainy week, this time, and we had one outing to the Ashcombe Maze, but it turned rather dark, rainy and cold while we were there. We explored the place, found all the fairies and almost all the gnomes, but it wasn't as pleasant as it could have been on a fine day. The man-made landscapes there are quite breathtaking.

I always, always take my laptop and write late into the night, or catch up on reading that I have less time for at home. Sometimes I take a notebook to the beach so I can write down ideas that come to me. Supervising children playing on sand, or swimming (in the warmer months) does lead to a lot of pondering, and from that can spring some gems of ideas, which have to be captured before they vaporise.

Artist Date

Well, it wasn't really, not in the way Julia Cameron advises (a day spent indulging in something to replenish creativity). But it was the first day I'd spent at home with time to write for ages!

I finished chapter 6 today. Sent it off to AbFab, who advised some minor changes. It was the chapter when my hero and heroine have dinner together. They haven't seen each other for twenty years and their lives have just intersected once more. Libby doesn't quite know why she's let Hugh drag her to this fancy restaurant, where she feels like an outsider. She doesn't know why she's there, yet she is, and this is the beginning of their journey. More complications will arise out of her decision to open the door and let him into her life. I don't quite know what these complications are going to be... Well, I have a few ideas, but for me nothing quite works like putting it on the page.


In the name of research, I had to delve into music from the 80's and into exotic cut flowers. I had in mind an amazing arrangement of Heliconia as a way to enhance the setting for this important scene. The images I found were striking, bold, and exactly what I was looking for. They come in shades of green and yellow, but the most spectacular images I found were stunning reds.