One Shore Thing is One Finished Thing

Phew! The final chapter of One Shore Thing is now completed, and I have therefore typed the words "The End" and updated my word counter accordingly. Now it's off to get its CP's viewpoint and won't be touched by me for a few days while I get on with my proofreading job.

It feels really good to get this novella finished. Of course, it's always a great feeling to type "The End" on a piece of work, but One Shore Thing is a bit different to what I've written before. "The Little Shop of Dreams" from Fall in Love: An Anthology was something I started, ooh... about five years ago now, and was originally meant to be a full-length book. In the end it got put in a drawer, only to be reworked last year as a novella and entered into a contest. Haunted Hearts, on the other hand, was always meant to be a full-length book. It was also started around five years ago, but was something I mainly wrote for myself (the 'book of my heart', if you will) and its targeted publisher pretty much changed with the moon :)

One Shore Thing, on the other hand, is a novella that I was essentially contracted for. Not officially contracted, but the premise of two novellas based on a summer theme, as opposed to an autumn theme (as in Fall in Love) was something Nell and I had talked about last year. She proposed the idea to our editor at Moonlit Romance and we were given the green light. So this time I was writing something to a different beat. This time I started the piece as a published author who'd essentially had a proposal accepted and was writing to fulfil the agreement.

And it feels really good to have done it :)

In other, v. v. exciting news, I am proud to announce (although many of you will already know) that Nell's book Marrying Max has made the shortlist for the Romantic Novelists' Association's Romance Prize 2007! You can find out more about the award by clicking here.

Congratulations Nell!!!