Sandra Lindsey

but at the moment my writing seems to be split into two distinct parts - the actual writing part, which happens in the evening and currently concentrates on Cariad, and the planning part which happens throughout the day (but mostly at lunchtime) and currently concentrates on Forever. I guess my "grand plan" is that when I've finished writing Cariad, I'll be ready to properly start on Forever.

Today I realised that Forever does have a HEA - at least for one of the characters, and there's more hope for the other main character than I thought there would be... which is good news, I guess. I was mostly concentrating on figuring out the structure of the book, since the story spans several centuries and it can be very easy to do that sort of thing really badly.

Of course, the HEA comes with its own extra lump of research needed. As if I didn't already need to do enough!

Oddly enough, it's where I iron out a lot of plot holes... something about relaxing and having a good soak gets me mulling over whatever's in my mind; and this evening it was The New Thing.

Ok, so I'm going to have to give some kind of names to these stories - at the moment there's "Cariad" which is my welsh farmers, "Friends" which is - well, about two friends, and in some ways kind of a nothing of a story. I need to think about it some more. And then there's "Forever", which is the one without a happy ending, and which I was thinking about tonight.

I was left pondering two things - first, a terminology question: Is "sugar daddy" a term used within the context of talking about gay relationships, in the same way as het relationships (obviously, only a certain *type* of relationship!) or is there a different term? I have a feeling it's the same no matter what flavour of relationship, but still. I'll have to do a bit of googling methinks...

Secondly (and far more crucial to the plot): assuming that a person could, in 17th century Tuscany, purchase a specific burial plot, could he then pass it on to his heir in the event that he doesn't use it e.g. if he dies & is buried abroad?

Oh, I love how my brain likes to niggle away at the details!

So this morning I sent off my first proper short story submission – it’s not any of the stories I’ve mentioned here before, mostly because it was just an idea of a setting and character types until I read an open call for submissions for an anthology which it would be suitable for… the part I got wrong in this scenario was not finding out about the anthology until 2 weeks before the deadline…

But I am so chuffed that I did manage to write it, and it not be complete trite. I’ve had a couple of late nights (3am or so) this week due to doing this, but I got it finished (first time I’ve managed that – I have tried writing things to submit for anthologies before now but always ran out of time) and I submitted it. I hope I did get all the formatting right, I read the instructions so many times that I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve been reciting them in my sleep!

I decided the best course of action was just to try and forget that I’d sent it. Which worked for all of four hours, when I realised that I’d have to make sure to check my junk mail folder – pesky spam-filters often send stuff there which they shouldn’t – and then, when I got home from my day-job I had an e-mail reply acknowledging receipt and letting me know when I should hear back by…

…and since then I’ve become convinced that it really is the biggest heap of rubbish ever written; or if not that, that my style of writing is atrocious and I’ll get a response along the lines of “we like the idea, but please go off and learn to write before submitting anything more to us” (but probably phrased more politely). *groan*

Mostly I want to just give myself a good slap and tell myself to grow up – if it happens, it happens, if it doesn’t, learn all you can from it. *sigh*