One MASSIVE edit later…

Maybe I was a little previous in suggesting that I had ‘finished’ Making Whoopee when I last updated this news blog. I assumed in that optimistic, post-delivery glow that the first draft was quite the most brilliant masterpiece ever.

Not quite true… For a start, the manuscript towered as high as a shoebox on my desk because it was so very loooong – and that was printing two pages per sheet. Eeek! There was a cast of hundreds, plus horses and dogs, some of whom I had clearly forgotten I’d ever invented by the time I wrote the end of the book, because they got ‘lost’ en route there. And I’d got my many tight and interwoven plots in such a twist that at times there was just far too much going on at once – a great carnival of hunky men, girls in love, marriages in peril, event horses flying fences left right and centre, oodles of seductions, high farce and low morals. It all needed calming down a bit. Writing through the night with two small toddlers to look after and a secondary business to run by day can make for a somewhat dizzying take on life, and I knew I owed it to my readers to unravel it all and knit it back together more tightly.

Hence a very long, tricky edit has ensued from early September. I ground five pencils down to stubs scribbling changes here, there and everywhere, constantly sharpening and rubbing out. Throughout October, my eraser crumbs and vast floating paper mountains infuriated passengers on overcrowded trains the length and breadth of Britain as I dashed around to literary festivals, where I must have waffled on in a demented fashion about ‘the writing process’ while pencil shavings fell from my pockets. In the end, I hid myself away far from family and friends for a week’s isolation to finish the edit in a non-stop marathon of eighteen hour days, which has put the book into much better shape. I’ve just read it again and - phew – can happily declare that it far less confusing, although still in need of a lot of loving pruning, and I want to create at least one more draft. I’m taking a short break to vacuum up the pencil crumbs before starting that but, trust me, this one will be perfected, tightened and ready to roll as soon as possible. With so many familiar characters in there from previous books, I want to make sure I get it absolutely right and that readers old and new are caught up in the action from the start.

At home, the family is thriving on fresh Somerset air and busy lives – Dora, now almost three, is the storyteller, who delights in acting out very long narratives involving vast numbers of animals, and at eighteen months, Winnie is the action-lover who clambers aboard her rocking horse at every opportunity and pelts back and forth like Pippa Funnell on a mission. Thanks to word getting out about how good he is, Sam’s teaching schoolmaster dressage lessons non-stop, with new clients phoning each week, even amid this the wild weather and the ever-shortening days. The horses here are fabulous, and Sam makes it such fun to get it right and try out all those flashy moves. Being so in demand makes it hard for him to find time to ride his competition horses, but we know that the work-life balance will get there eventually, just as I daydream of liberating my lovely mare from her woolly coat and mud and exploring the local lanes with the girls in tow on shaggy Shetlands. It will happen!

For now, my mind is all wrapped up with Tash and Hugo, Faith and Rory and the new characters in Making Whoopee that I have been living with for the past year and who I’m now rather reluctant to let go…

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FINISHED IT!

The first draft of ''Making Whoopee' as it's now entitled, is with my publishers awaiting a verdict. All is therefore being crossed here in Somerset, and after a couple of decent night's sleep. I'm feeling almost human again. It was a labour of love towards the end because I was writing through the night several times a week, and I was completely wrapped up with it and the huge cast of characters including Tash and Hugo, the Lime Tree Farm mob, Rory , Faith and some of the Lodes gang and a few new faces. It's an unashamedly big, loved up, fun, fast and furious bonkbuster with a very warm heart, and I really hope it appeals to all my readers. It should be out next summer.

While I await the inevitable list of rewrites and edits that will be needed, I have time to finally reply to the lovely emails I get through this site, which are always so welcome and are a great motivation to write faster, but which I neglect appallingly when I'm finishing a book. I must also tidy my study, which looks as though it's been occupied by a mad woman throwing paper around for six months (oh...it has), and finally tackle my accounts, groan. Most of all, I'm going to spend some more time with Dora and Winnie, who have got far too used to having a mother who appears occasionally to make coffee, looking like a zombie, muttering incoherently about cliff hangers and plot twists.

I'll keep this blog updated with my publisher's reaction to the book, and also details of Love Hunt in paperback, which will have a whole new jacket look. Finally, I'm going to be at a few literary festrivals through Sept/Oct, so I'll post up details anon in case any readers feel the urge to see me stand up and blither cheerfully about my writing.

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CHARITY AUCTION!

Last year, I took part in an eBay charity auction in aid of Autism Speaks, a brilliant organisation that funds essential research into the medical causes of autism. This year, they are hosting another auction and a signed copy of Love Hunts is up for grabs. It's such a great cause, that if any visitors to my site want to help (and get a personally dedicated rollicking good read into the bargain), please follow this LINK to the auction.

Other news is that I am writing as fast as my fingers can pound the keys to complete the latest novel, which links the Lodes books with Tash and Hugo, and a new character called Sylva who is part Ivana Trump, part Jordan and great fun to create. It's still a constant juggle to get the time to write around a young family, the dressage schoolmaster business and other commitments, but I'm getting there. I've even gone back to my old habit of working through the night on occasions, although I am pretty spaced out the following morning and find myself doing things like signing cheques with a row of kisses and taking Dora to nusery school only to find it's a Saturday. I look forward to having a full first draft in the bag and finally getting out of the house for more than ten minutes at a time. I hear it's been quite sunny...

In the light of all this, I've removed the 'Day in the Life' section from the website because it was terribly out of date and referred to a time when I had no children or business partnership, and the biggest worry each day was walking the dog. I'll rewrite it with a more realistic break-down when I find time (ha ha!).

Meanwhile, here's a picture of our most recent arrival at Dovecote Stables. He's called Digby...

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The new website is live, hooray! I think my designers have done a great job (both uncannily called Andrew S), and while we will continue to tweak and perfect this, I now have a much easier way of updating this news section in particular which I hope means that I can keep readers more up to date with what is being written and coming out, plus all other news.

As I write, Love Hunt is finally, finally out in the shops and selling well, thank goodness. The book-buying market is terribly sticky right now (or should that be credit crunchy?) and of course changing times mean that publishers are juggling formats, all talk is of hardbacks dying out and eBooks ruling the roost. But, for now at least, my latest novel is a big, glossy, colourful chunk of fun with real pages and hard covers to hang onto when the action hots up...

I am writing the Tash/Hugo revisted novel whenever I can, but this is currently pretty tough as I squeeze little moments with in in between preparing accounts for my two businesses of writing and running the dressage centre, promoting LH, and lots of family commitments. Very sadly, my darling father died last month after what is generally termed a 'long battle with cancer'. It was certainly a battle and as enemies go, cancer is one of the Top Trumps in the evil stakes, a vile disease that makes no sense - at least not to this daughter of a man who was until so recently a fit, active, lion-hearted and fiercely clever charmer who had never smoked in his life. We all miss him horribly, and it's still only jusy sinking in that he's gone.

So please forgive me that writing has taken rather a back seat, because it really is hard to be jolly and romantic and upbeat in the face of such immediate and real loss - and I am also acutrely aware through several chats with my publisher/agent and some pretty damning Amazon reviews that I need to stay positive and avoid writing too much dark, heart-wrenching stuff or creating characters that are too complicated or damaged. It seems that being upbeat and positive and funny is what sells my work best, so I am planning to be as wise-crackingly witty as I possibly can in finishing the latest work. It will provide a great antidote to all this national gloom, and I know that my dear Dad - who read every one of my books and was hugely positive about them all - loved the funny bits best, so that's a great legacy to try to live up to.

With any luck, the book (currently given the working title 'Mounted Games' but in search of a much better title to go public with) should be finished this summer and out next year. Meanwhile, Love Hunt won't come out in paperback until early next year - so grab it in hardback while you can if you want to take advantage of current price-cuts.

On the home front, Winnie will be one next week and is currently a fast-crawling missile who is trying to wobble to her feet with the aid of the furniture, Mummy, the dog and anything else she can grab. Dora, who turned two in February, is a complete chatterbox who appears to speak fluent Swedish interspersed with the odd word we recognise, and seems to be following her mother's footsteps into story telling because most sentences begin 'Once upon a time..' I will figure out how to post photos into this section soon and they can beam from the site with their pink cheeks and toothy smiles.

Finally, my other 'business' away from book-writing - the dressage coaching yard that Sam and I run in Somerset (www.dovecote-stables.co.uk) - is at last getting up to full speed, with new clients trying out the dressage schoolmasters each week and coming back for more. The horses are just fantastic - two fairytale Spanish stallions and two geldings, one Portuguese, the other a jet black Friesian beauty. They are amazing to watch and work with. We hope to host two-day and four-day clinics very soon as well as the individual lessons - and I have threatened to start running writing courses alongside these, although I'm not sure how many aspiring novelists would appreciate workshop sessions in a barn surrounded by horses...

For now, I promise that I will stick to my main task, get my head down, write as fast as I can and think happy, happy thoughts. Please do feel free to email me through the 'Contact section' if you have time - I love to hear feed-back and I do always try to get back to everyone that makes contact, although I apologise that it can sometimes take me a while. More news soon.

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Another year has flown past between updates. Many apologies for being one of the tardiest bloggers around. That’s the side effect of two children under two, a book in the pipeline and a new business to run. I used to think I was pretty hot at multi-tasking until I found myself juggling nappies, accounts, manuscript, hoofpicks, computer keyboards, dog lead, Thesaurus, frying pan, digital camera, calculator and a Maisy Mouse jigsaw. Life’s never dull, but I am shamefully lapse in updating anything…although I do have a new book coming out soon, hooray!

My next novel, Love Hunt, has been with the publisher since April of this year – and will finally hit the bookshop and library shelves in April 2009. One reason for this long delay is that Hodder have given me a completely new cover look – very sumptuous and sexy, I am delighted to report. Please see the Love Hunt page under the menu heading ‘The Lodes Chronicles’.

My brilliant web designer has also assured me that before long we will get our heads together and completely rethink this website so that I will be able to make a few changes myself from home, update the news more regularly, add in dates for signings or readings, post photographs etc. I hope that will make it much more up-to-date and user friendly and will reward the patience of those visitors amongst you who come back repeatedly to check book news, or who take the time to email me personally. With all that multi-tasking going on I have been embarrassingly slow replying to emails, but please bear with me – I do get there eventually.

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It has been well over a year since I last updated my news page, for which I hang my head in shame. To those of you who have emailed to politely request an update, many thanks for the timely prods! I am finally on the case…

If 2006 brought a sad end to my marriage and an unexpected new love in quick succession, 2007 sprang even more surprises with a new baby and new home. I did admittedly see these coming; something about losing sight of my feet warned me of the former, the ‘For Sale’ sign outside my cottage and frequent trips to poke nosily around remote farmhouses augured the latter.

Dora (officially ‘Dorothy’ after my magnificent grandmother) was born in February. She is a buoyant, blue-eyed, giggly tornado who we utterly adore – and she has changed life completely. Trying to write with Dora in situ is rather like trying to play the piano in a zoo’s monkey enclosure – fun and incredibly distracting. I have been persevering, however, and am nearly finished – but more on that later…

Dora’s arrival seemed perfect timing to look for a fresh start somewhere new – Sam and I felt like a proper family at last, not just two evacuees from sunken marriages clinging together in the storm of bitter divorce battles and financial pressure. The village where we lived is a wonderful place filled with many friends, but it was also a painful reminder of past memories and hopes, filled with ghosts – and gossips! I should know, as I have always been one of them. I was quite happy to be the focus of the scandal radars briefly when Sam and I got together – it seemed just desserts – but after a year had passed, we felt increasingly hamstrung by the ongoing moralising and elbow-nudging of a few individuals. So we sought a fresh start away from that, where we can be known simply as ‘Sam and Fiona’.

In August, we left our idyllic yet tainted corner of the Cotswolds for an almost-undiscovered haven of undulating green tranquillity in the South West. The Blackdown Hills are Somerset’s great secret, more secluded than the Quantocks or Mendips, less wild than Exmoor – but with a breathtaking beauty all of their own. It is utterly spellbinding here, and we were so lucky to find a dewy-windowed, white-washed farmhouse that fits us perfectly – along with a stable yard that Sam hopes to build into a specialist base for coaching riders on our own Spanish dressage horses. I feel I am living one of my childhood fictional dreams; the only difference being that in my teenage dreams I just got to hang around with the gorgeous horseman and ride all day – whereas in real life, I have to write Walker fiction ten to the dozen to try to catch up all the time I lost having a baby and moving house.

And I’m almost there! At the time of writing this, Love Hunt (formally Going, Going Gone) is finally at its rewrite stage, getting ready to be put into production for publication next year. It revolves around the scattered clues if a treasure hunt set by a local auction house, during which my characters find love and romance, enjoy the thrill of the chase and compete for the ultimate prize – a happy ending.  After this, I plan to write an Oddlode book that finally sorts out Rory’s disastrous love life, and that brings him into contact with two old characters I have been longing to bring back - Tash and Hugo. Watch this space!

For now, I must get back to Love Hunt and tie up any loose endings ready to deliver it to my editor for the New Year. I have to hurry; 2008 could bring all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, but we already know one that’s on its way. In May, Dora will have a baby sister or brother. Onward and upward!

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It has been over a year since I updated this website - shame on me! Many apologies to all those who have continued to check in, and to write to me via the email service - plus all those newcomers who have stumbled upon the site and found it trapped in time. I do try to get back to everyone who
contacts me eventually, but rather than update individually, it makes sense to finally write some news.

My latest book, Four Play, is due to be published in hardback in October of this year. Starring the character Dilly from previous Lodes novels, it is a breathless whirl from heartbreak to match-make to true soul-mates in three months. It was a wonderfully cheering book to write, and I put another book - Going, Going, Gone - on hold in order to do so because I decided that I wanted to write a more straightforward and heart-lifting romance.

The past year has been one of huge change personally. Sadly, my marriage ended last summer, and writing during the difficult and stressful months that followed was very hard at times, but Four Play was a great antidote to the gloom and will, I hope, prove just as enjoyable escapism for my readers.

Even more happily, as I wrote the story of two characters inevitably falling in love with one another, I found myself going through the exact same process in real life. It just goes to show that love can be right under your nose where you last expect to look for it. I hadn’t imagined that I could find happiness so quickly after such heartbreak, but I couldn’t be more thrilled that I have – and it has certainly helped restore this romantic novelist’s faith in happy endings.

Meanwhile, I am now writing Going, Going Gone again and hope to have it finished by the end of the year, ready for publication in summer 2007. At its centre is a treasure hunt held by a local Lodes valley auction house, and at least one character stands to find a lot more than money waiting for them at the end of the trail.

At home, all my menagerie of animals are healthy and well – the foal that was born last year is now a strapping grey yearling, full of mischief. No doubt he will appear in a book in the not too distant future, along with all the other sights and sounds I pick up as I nosily dog-walk and hack my way around the village for inspiration…

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As I write, Tongue in Cheek is a fortnight away from publication and I have just received two cardboard boxes of advance copies that bruise my shins ever time I cross the hallway. They will soon be distributed amongst friends and family, who very loyally read my books whenever they come out, even those who find the sex scenes highly embarrassing and secretly far prefer Ruth Rendell.

I’m currently plotting away at the next novel – provisionally entitled Going, Going Gone – about a treasure hunt that takes place in the Oddlode Valley, with a huge cash prize. When I came up with the idea, I hadn’t anticipated how complicated it would be to weave a plot around a set of cryptic clues. I now lie awake at night thinking up ever-more complicated riddles which not only guide my characters towards the treasure, but also involve them in one another’s lives and loves. It might be something of a hair-tearing challenge, but it’s great fun, particularly revisiting favourite characters from the previous books.

At home, we’re awaiting the birth of a foal, which is causing even more sleepless nights and excitement. My lovely liver chestnut mare, Flossie, is just weeks away from foaling, and the poor love is the size of a whale. I will soon have CCTV set up in my office, so that as the big day approaches I can stay up at night writing whilst keeping a close eye on her. No doubt there will be a lot of distracted spelling errors in the first draft of GGG, although I promise I will try to correct them all before it ever goes to print.

Finally, I have to say a big thank you to all those of you who have taken the time to email me from this website. I had no idea I would receive so many messages, full of news and views and some very kind comments. I really appreciate hearing from readers. It’s the best incentive a writer could get to hurry u

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The start of 2005 marks the launch of fionawalker.com. Hooray! I have wanted a website for ages, but am far too much of a Luddite to know how to go about it. It was top of my 2004 Christmas list and I am about to unwrap it – a present from my husband. As I write this, he is crouched over his computer at the opposite end of the cottage shouting ‘write 150 words for the “news” page and I can get this thing to go live.’

That was 86 words. Just sixty or so to go and we’re online.

More news is obviously needed. Now that Tongue in Cheek is edited and in production, I have a big meeting with my agent and publishers in a fortnight to go through the plot of the third Lodes novel. I am in the midst of planning it, and it’s going to be about –

Oops! I have, as usual, exceeded my word count. More news soon, I promise. It’s time to unwrap my Christmas present at last…

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