Progress Friday

Hey beautiful people!

Today's an absolutely fantastic & gorgeous day! The reason I'm in such high spirits - no, not TGIF, but here's what's happened:

A little while ago, Decadent Publishing sent out a call for submissions, urging in-house authors (and even authors not yet with them!) to consider writing some stories for some specific lines there. One of them is Western Escape - a multi-author, small-town community line of stories with a Western theme, set in fictional Freewill, Wyoming. Stories in this line can be set in contemporary Freewill, or in the historial, 1880s Freewill (and you can even time-travel between the eras! How cool is that?)

Anyhow, because this one uses a common setting and community, the editors require that any author considering writing for this line submit a proposal with blurb and detailed synopsis (GMC, plot, conflict, resolution) and if this gets approved, then the author starts writing the story, submits it, and the editors decide if they'll take it or not.

Now, ever since I saw this call for submissions go up (and, again, poked and prodded by some of the peeps over at Decadent!), I've been toying with the idea of a story set in Freewill. Indian-origin heroine who has ties to Mauritius; multicultural setup akin to my upcoming 1NS over there... On an insane impulse, I put a proposal together last weekend and sent it off...

And got the reply today - the editors want to see the finished ms. This in no way implies they'll take the story, but to me, it's one foot in the door anyhow, and I'm over the moon!

Those of you who have been following my career or who know me from my writing debut about 6 years ago know that my preferred theme/idea to write about is heroines who have the same cultural background as I do (and let's make a point here - culture and religion are not the same thing, in case anyone wants to point out and/or ask why I write about Indian culture when I'm a Muslim woman!).

Shania, the heroine in this story, is British with parents who hail from Mauritius. Grayson, the hero, is from Freewill, though he moved to Boston and then New York.
When the story starts, both find themselves in Freewill, and... *wicked grin* I'll make you wait a little before I unveil what happens then (though of course we all know these two will fall in love - it is a romance, after all!)

The title for this one is Transient Hearts. Look to the meter on the right to catch my progress on the WIP every week during March now.

Other good note of the week - I've been poked and prodded (yes, here too!) to showcase the cover art work I've been doing so far. So check the aka Cover Designer page on the blog - it features a slideshow of the covers I've done. I'll be adding to it as I go along.

So that's how I go into the weekend - on a high, and on the need to work out the story's plot in minute detail so I can outline the story to give me a working flow draft.

What have you got planned for the weekend? Good things, I hope :)

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Six Sentence Sunday - Walking The Edge: Snippet #1

Hello beautiful people!

Six Sunday is back on this week, and as from today, I'm gonna share quips from my upcoming novel, Walking The Edge, a romantic suspense/thriller coming out with Noble Romance Publishing on June 27.
So, you might be wondering what the story is about? Here's the blurb to put this week's Six in context:

Walking The Edge
The next step might be the last...

A woman without a past
Left amnesiac after an accident, Amelia Jamison struggles as her instincts slowly rise from the depths of oblivion, leading her to question her life as the wife of a cold, manipulating and distant man. Wisps of a dream show her another man she may have known intimately, but is he a memory, or a figment of her imagination?

A man with too much information
After many aliases, today Gerard Besson is simply a police commissaire in Marseille. When a mysterious woman starts to follow him, he is suspicious - and intrigued. But things aren't what they seem, and as he reluctantly gets closer to her, dregs of his painful, buried past emerge and make him question her identity.

Each seems to have led several different lives
But neither is prepared for what awaits them when they cross the fine line between knowing your true self and that of your alter ego.
Danger is the name of the game, and as it catches up with them in the French Provence, both know they better be ready for the inevitable fall.

And here are the Six opening lines from the book! Enjoy!


"...London. Oxford Street:
Thursday December 13, 1.24 p.m.

There's a man following me again.
She didn’t know why she felt so certain of this. Selfridges teemed with shoppers in Christmas buying frenzy, and bustling crowds swarmed around her.
Someone was watching her though. She knew. ..."


And FYI folks - Six Sunday has moved to its own website now! Catch the new look, and this week's list of posters, here.

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Progress Friday

Hey beautiful people!

Check out the fabulous cover Noble Romance has granted me for Walking The Edge! Edgy and totally spiffy, innit? Fiona Jayde, the talented cover artist, hit the nails right on the head with this one. The cover sums up the story remarkably - showing off that suspenseful edge and the roiling, hot fiery colours harness the turmoil in that plot! Note also the image of Marseille at the bottom. I am totally stoked by this design!

On to the week's progress now. Hampered in my stride for the past 2 days, since I came down with the 'cold of the century' that's left my brain as mush. If I try to concentrate too much, my forehead erupts in blinding pain, so you can see how that's conducive to writing, innit?

Still, quite chuffed as I have hit a pretty reasonable word count - 5,817 words, for 3-4 days of work. And that's only like 1-2 hours a day. Where in the past I used to think that I'd need hours of uninterrupted time to slug through, well, turns out it's all in the determination you bring to the table and the keyboard. Like I had mentioned on Monday, a little here and a little there add up to making a whole quite quickly.

I'm 12% through on this WIP now, which I've titled Against The Odds. So far the characters are talking to me like we're BFFs - let's hope we don't turn on each other a la Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie in the future.

So, weekend up ahead... I hope to get some writing done, because I'll be dumping the kiddo off to my mum's tomorrow through to Sunday, as my stepson won't be coming over this weekend. Can't wait for the break (yes - before you gasp and go shame on her!, let me tell you I fully take the responsibility of being an imperfect and perfectly-flawed mum!)

What have you got planned for this second weekend of June?

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

PS  - Side note: jump on here Sunday, when I'll start putting up quips from Walking The Edge as part of Six Sentence Sunday!