Romy Sommer

Head on over to the Minxes of Romance to read our big announcement.

Now updated with the pictures I wasn't able to upload last week thanks to a dodgy internet connection... On Monday I left Greenwich, and with a day to kill in London before heading to Cambridge with my brother, I spent the day going up and down the river taking hundreds of pictures of buildings along the Thames. Tuesday was spent in idle content with my sister-in-law in the quaint and quiet village of Horningsea outside Cambridge. I needed a lazy day to recover from the excitement of the RNA conference. On Wednesday I met up with my oldest and dearest friend and we headed back into London, where we visited the rare few sights I'd somehow managed to miss in all the years I'd spent in London: Harrods and Hyde Park Corner. That evening we had a Girls' Night Out, meeting up with another high school friend for a magnificent Thai dinner and 'Hair', the Broadway revival showing on the West End for only a few more weeks. The show was incredible, and the energy of the pe...

Once again, I've been adventuring rather than blogging, but here, at last, is my take on the last day of the RNA conference. The first talk I attended on Sunday morning was by far my favourite of the whole conference: Sarah Duncan's talk entitled 'Mind the Gap: how to get your manuscript across the publishing divide'. Sarah presented ten points that are essential for hooking the reader, and ended by looking at how to add Pizazz to your writing. Her talk was dynamic, easy to follow, and she illustrated every point in ways that made the talk memorable. After a coffee and breakfast / snack break I attended Adele Geras' talk on 'Young Love' and writing for the young adult market. I enjoyed the talk, though with a combination of tiredness and the fact that I have no immediate plan to write for teenagers, this was the first talk in which I didn't take serious notes. Then back into the large auditorium (which was packed!) for Joanna Trollope's key not...

Though I'd left the gala dinner reasonably early (and still sober) the night before, it was an effort to drag myself out of bed and back to Queen Anne Court on Saturday morning. I should have planned my holiday for before the conference rather than after, though waking to my first ever book review (and such a fantastic one) did give me some impetus. Another hot and sunny day began with jay Dixon's talk on Adding Colour to your Novel, which covered exactly that: the meanings and uses of colours, especially important in historicals. jay's tips on making use of colour associations, and carrying a colour through your novel (for example, to represent a secondary character) really stuck with me. Sadly I then had to miss Nell Dixon's talk on Believable Secondary Characters as I had an appointment to meet the editor from Mills & Boon who requested a new partial from me after last year's Presents contest. (Sadly? I met my editor!) The interview went well, with the editor...

For me the third day of my adventure, but really this was the first day of the RNA's 50th anniversary conference: the Industry Day. The day (in fact the entire weekend) was blessed with sunshine, though the sultry heat was occassionally overwhelming. The speakers of the day were mostly publishers and agents, giving us writers the insider view on publishing - fortunately not all doom and gloom. Again and again the message was reinforced: even though fewer titles are being bought and publishers are taking fewer risks, a good book still has every chance of being published. After registration and Katie Fforde's welcome introduction, we were straight into the first talk of the day, by Charlotte Bush and Rob Waddington of Random House. The major gist of their talk was the importance for writers to understand their market. Next up was David Shelley of Little Brown who spoke about changes in the market place, including the rise of supermarkets and digital, as well as current tre...

[Okay, so anyone who knows what day of the week it is will know I'm a few days behind, but please bear with me - I'm having so much fun!] My first full day in Greenwich was actully spent doing touristy things, and I was blessed with a gloriously warm and sunny day in which to do it. I wandered through the market and then visited the part of Greenwich that I'd somehow missed on nearly half a dozen previous visits: Maritime Greenwich. Christopher Wren's complex of buildings are grand and awe-inspiring. The chapel and Painted Hall (a dining hall built for retired sailors) are both incredible in their detail and sumptuousness. Most of the buildings are now occupied by the University of Greenwich, but one is used by the Trinity College of Music. Words cannot describe how it feels to stroll passed, with the Thames glistening silver on one side, a fgraceful tree-lined avenue on the other, and to hear the sounds of beautiful music drifting down from the windows above. I...

I'm here! When I get the chance I'll upload a few conference photos. I'm actually going to start this series of blogs at Day -1: my flight. I flew to England on Wednesday, on my first ever day flight. What an amazing experience! It is unbelievable to be able to look down on Africa from such an unusual viewpoint, seeing rivers and mountains. Perhaps the most awe-inspiring part of the journey was flying over the Sahara. For the first time I grasped the scale and the sheer desolation of this desert. For approximately 4 hours the plane just flies and flies and below us was nothing but a constant sea of sand, broken only by the shadows of the couds beneath us and the lines that edge the windswept dunes. Sunshine over the Sahara, over the Mediterranean coastline, mountainous islands in the sea of blue, the Alps with sno-covered valleys that seem untouched by humans, the fields of Frnace - and then, as we hit the channel, a solid blanket of cloud - both below and above us. ...

Today is release day! You can now download Let's Misbehave from www.thewildrosepress.com for your reading pleasure. As you read this, I'm currently in mid-air on my way to London to attend my first ever romance writing conference (the RNA's 50th anniversary conference at the University of Greenwich). If you'd like to find out more about Let's Misbehave , visit my alias' blog at http://raesummers.wordpress.com . From tomorrow until Monday I'll be running a contest there, and you could be the one lucky winner who wins a free copy.