One of the reasons I love living in Epping Forest so much is that it’s 30mins on the tube to central London and 30mins in a car to open countryside. When I lived in Hammersmith, zone 2 west London, it took over an hour to get to the edge of London and then you had another half an hour to get to countryside.

This weekend has been a weekend of contrasts – I know that probably sounds a bit clichéd because it’s a phrase used so often by travel magazines ‘Paris is a city of contrasts’ or ‘Africa is a continent of contrasts’ they say. I mean, you can pretty much apply it to anything – Ealing is a London Borough of contrasts from the green of Ealing Common to the hustle and bustle of the A40 and the Hoover Building in Perivale...I’m digressing.

How was mine a weekend of contrasts?

Well, Friday night I typed The End on my WIP – the Ibiza story. It’s ended up at just short of 46,000 words, which I wrote in a month, over 18 days. I’m pleased with that, but soon I need to brave my crappy first draft and go back and fix all the things I didn’t bother with in first draft before it goes to my amazing beta readers and then it may just be ready for submission. So that was a good start to the weekend.

Saturday, after writing a couple of blog posts for my latest promo blog tour for Wrong Room, Right Guy, I jumped on the tube and arrived near Liverpool Street station at a pub for a mm romance meet – or I Can’t Believe We’re Not at GRL as I like to call it. This weekend was Gay Rom Lit – GRL, which is an almost week long conference about gay romance in America. For whatever reasons there were a lot of mm authors and readers who couldn’t attend, so instead we decided to meet in London.

I really enjoyed myself. The first pub we met in was really full of men watching football on screens the size of my living room. After my nachos had arrived I went on the hunt for a fork. The cheers were loud, the amount of testosterone in the place was high and the ratio of football tops to plain shirts was very high. I left our table (in the middle of talking about gay romance and sex scenes in books) on the search for a fork. ‘I’m looking for a fork,’ I asked these two men on a nearby table. One man stood and grimaced at me. I thought he was about to punch me. His friend said, ‘He said fork, not f**k!

The first man sat down accompanied by calming motions from his friend.

I gestured to indicate a fork and explained I was in the middle of my nachos and left.

The football match progressed, the cheers became louder, and some of the mm group were a bit disturbed by the noise.

Fortunately we decamped to a much quieter pub over the road where I drank lots of tea and told my fork story about four times. I’m an author, what makes you think I’m gonna miss out on an opportunity to tell an amusing story?

I got some free books from Aleks Voinov who was clearing out his living room. I talked writing technique, productivity and anxiety (about writing and life in general) with two author friends. I went over some details about the Clacton on Sea writing retreat weekend which is now this coming weekend, and I generally had a great time talking with my mm writing family.

I lent AE Ryecart my spare Neo – such has been my evangelical praising of it that her interest was piqued and she’s going to see how well she gets on with it. When I retrieved the spare Neo from under the bed I was sad to note that the battery was flat. Completely flat. It didn’t turn on. Blank screen flat. I also remember reading somewhere that with flat batteries they lose their memory so prepared myself for it losing everything that was stored on it. Fortunately, I knew I’d already backed up all the writing on it, but it was an interesting experiment. I fitted 3 new AA batteries in the pub (the last set had lasted a year, so not bad going overall) and was overjoyed to note that it had remembered everything. One more score to the Neo, as far as I’m concerned! I gave AE Ryecart a Neo driving lesson and handed it over.

On the tube home I tucked into my Mills & Boon Christmas romance, and very enjoyable it is too. The title, as is so often the case with these I’ve found, somewhat gives away the plot and ending, but the journey to that ending is a lovely fluffy festive happy place to be, so I’m continuing to read it. It’s getting me in the right mood for my next WIP which is a mm romance Christmas novel. So that was Saturday.

Sunday, we drove half an hour into the countryside and did a 8.5 mile walk through some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve seen in a very long time. We passed through an area known as the 100 Parishes Society – which, similar to the Cotswolds, or the Lake District – is an area crossing a number of counties but united with its architectural style being basically as you’d imagine a chocolate box village. And yes, many of these villages, full of Tudor beamed houses, thatched cottages and Norman churches, are in Essex – that much maligned county.

Essex isn’t all covered in concrete! And -whispering- I actually like the bits covered in concrete – I enjoy a new town, I love Harlow’s municipal slice of the soviet bloc in Essex and don’t even get me started on Basildon new town and its Hollywood style sign. So. Much. Fun. But again, I’m digressing...So after starter and tea in a pub to fortify us for the remaining 3 mile walk, we made our way home, baked a chocolate sponge then had dinner.

Hello, and welcome to my 6th and final in a series of blogs where I discuss my thoughts on parts of Barbara Cartland's biography - Crusader In Pink. For previous posts, check out part one, part two part three part four and part five. Italics are my thoughts, all comments not in italics are from Henry Cloud’s Barbara Cartland Crusader in Pink 1979.

Moving on from Cartland’s writing tips and technique, I now come to her thoughts on the permissive society.

‘It was perfectly obvious to me at any rate that people would soon get bored to death with all this so-called permissiveness, and certainly women don’t want to go on reading about it for ever. Apart from the fact that it degrades us, most of it is absurdly exaggerated and untrue. Walt Disney always used to say that every time they made a pornographic film, he made money, and I’m convinced that every time women look at vulgar, degrading pornography, they go out and buy a Barbara Cartland.’
in 1974 Readership patterns in America were changing – fast. Books about violence, crime, and sexual permissiveness were on the wane. Women were reading more books now than men and they were tired of books written for the male-chauvinist market. What they were crying out for was romance...As she said, ‘The one author in the world with one-hundred-and-fifty virgins lying about was me.’ And with those one-hundred-and-fifty Barbara Cartland virgins, she knew that she could sweep the market...for as Barbara knew from writing them, her books were addictive, and soon there were women queuing in the bookshops for the latest Barbara Cartland.
‘My books sold because they’re true romance, spiritual and physical, while the backgrounds are unlike real life. Most of my readers are women who are having a tough time. They don’t want to read about misery, drudgery or the kitchen stove – they see that every day.’
So what did I make of this? Well, I watched a Wogan chat show interview with Barbara Cartland and Jackie Collins talking about their books. Well, it was mainly Cartland talking about why her books were proper romance, and Collins’ weren’t romance but instead were sex, and Collins remained civilised despite quite a rude onslaught from Cartland. What is clear is that genre fiction, particularly romance (and I’d include Collins’ books in that category in its broadest sense) are about escape. Whether that’s escape from a permissive society into a romantic fairy tale world like Carland’s, or from an everyday domestic world into the glitz sex and glamour like Collins’ is irrelevant – it’s both escape.

In Reading the Romance, Janice Radway found that women read romance novels with broadly similar plots (man meets woman, they encounter obstacles, they live happily ever after) again and again for escape in two different ways: ‘literally to describe the act of denying the present, which they believe they accomplish each time they begin to read a book and are drawn into its story. [And] they used the word [escape] in a more figurative fashion to give substance to the somewhat vague but nonetheless intense sense of relief they experience by identifying with a heroine whose life does not resemble their own in certain crucial aspects.’ (Radway, p90)

I’m not criticising romance novels for having a broadly similar plot – there are, after all, only seven basic plots anyway, according to Christopher Booker. The variety in reading romance after romance is the new characters, their different motivations, vulnerabilities, goals, behaviour, relationship history, how they work with their love interest – be that a person of the same or opposite gender. These, added to the location and setting and time frame when the story is told, all add to provide a rich variety in the romance reading experience.
But the reasons readers enjoy reading romance after romance, as Radway finds out, in Reading the Romance, 1984, is the comfort in knowing the story will end well (HEA), experiencing the emotions of falling in love and identifying with the female protagonist and experiencing the emotions of falling in love with the male protagonist. These combine to give the romance reader the powerful qualities of escape, in two ways, as described above. And, given how stressful, uncertain, busy and perceived to be dangerous our lives and world is now, who wouldn’t want some of that in their life?

I'd love to hear what you made of my thoughts on this in the comments below.

Until next time, Liam Livings xx (a shameless romantic at heart)

Hi, here's another great review I wanted to share for Heat Wave Astoria, this time it's from Diverse Reader. I'm pleased that James and Brad being polar opposites was mentioned because that was exactly what I was aiming for! Anyway, here's the full review:

This novella is a sweet romance that is creative and fun. I thought the heat wave in Northern Oregon was clever since it's practically unheard of. But, global warming is a thing so you never know.

The characters in play here are Brad and James. Brad is just... well... a man-slut. Seriously though, he is! He has a map where he marks where he's been and who he's shagged! Puts notches on the bed post look like a religious retreat.

James is like the polar opposite of Brad. He's content in his introverted ways. Not well versed in dating or hooking up. James is a romantic looking for forever and Brad is more of a vagabond.

Now these two aren't super lovable. Each have vices that drive me up a wall. Brad isn't nice and James kinda complains a lot... or maybe whines. I don't know there's something in their personalities that made me want to hit them with a wet fish.

Obviously being a novella it doesn't get too deep and though the characters did get on my nerves; I found the entire concept very clever. I recommend this if you're looking for something different and fun.

Buy Links: Amazon US Amazon UK AllRomance JMS Smashwords 

Here's another lovely 4 star review, this time from Books Laid Bare Books blog for my Heat Wave Astoria novella. It's so nice to see that it was felt to be steamy. I used to shy away from writing explicit content in my stories, but with this, it felt right for the characters, the story and the setting, so I'm glad it worked. Anyway, here's the review:

The weather wasn't the only thing that was hot in Astoria.

Brad thought the man in the handmade jacket that was standing in the store was pretty damn hot as well.

Brad was a slut, no two ways about it, he had a reputation and he loved it.
Even had the wall chart to prove it.
If he managed to do the gorgeous man in front of him, that would be the whole of the UK ticked off his list.
James was in Astoria for a break from the job that had sent him overseas.
He wasn't going to be away from home for long so a hook up with the hottie behind the counter seemed like a good idea at the time.
For both of the men though, this casual fling seemed to mean something more.
Could the uptight British gent have wormed his way in to Brad's heart, could the wall chart have finally seen its last sticker.
Only thing wrong with the budding relationship was that it had a time limit.
How could you fall in love when you know it has to end in a few weeks.
This book was steamy in more ways than one.

I loved the dynamic between the two men, the push and pull of the should they/ shouldn't they.....
4 out of 5 stars.
Sue x

Buy Links: Amazon US Amazon UK AllRomance JMS Smashwords 

I'm sharing another wonderful 4 star review for this sweet sizzling mm romance novella, from Jim's blog which I've also copied below. It's lovely that the descriptions of Astoria were realistic - I'd been there myself and topped up that info with some judicious googling. Anyway, here's the review:

An interesting read. Two men from different countries meet and sparks fly. The plot was interesting enough, but I found the characters a bit lacking in depth. I think more could be done towards the two main characters learning about each others' cultures. Each character's emotions could have been made stronger.

I found the descriptions of the places in Astoria fascinating and very realistic. On a whim I looked up Astoria, Oregon up in Google Earth and found it to be a real place and was able to find some of the locations talked about. I definitely want to go there.

Overall, I liked to story and give it a 4 out of 5. Would I read it again? Probably. Would I recommend it to a friend? Sure.

Buy Links: Amazon US Amazon UK AllRomance JMS Smashwords 

Once upon a time, in a land far far away (Epping Forest actually, just outside East London), a man called Liam Livings drove the length and breadth of Essex in his little sports car (often referred to as a hairdressers car, but only to those who’ve not driven one) to Colchester. He travelled to the ancient capital of England to drink tea, eat sandwiches, cakes and scones with members of the Chelmsford Chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association or RNA they’re also known. This wonderful excuse to eat his own body weight in cakes, drink a gallon of tea and talk writing with other like-minded people, was organised by Fenella Miller and Jean Fullerton, other RNA members Liam knew from the London and South East RNA Chapter, so he felt at least he'd know two people there. Liam had been a member of the RNA since 2013 and had enjoyed the chapter meetings, conference and generally being able to talk writing to others without their eyes glazing over as had been happening at Livings Towers.

Once sat, after wondering whether it really was possible to drive for an hour and a half and still be in Essex, Liam said hello to author friends he already knew, noted with a smile that he wasn’t the only man present, and settled down for the serious matter of drinking tea and waited the requisite four and a half minutes for his tea to brew satisfactorily. During this critical moment, after agreeing to share the four tier cake stand of sandwiches, cakes and scones, he struck up a conversation with a Mills and Boon historical novelist, Virginia Heath.

Virginia had recently quit her job as a history teacher to write historical novels for the biggest romance publisher in the world, Mills and Boon. ‘Go big or go home,’ was her reasoning and she’d certainly gone big, having written and contracted four novels with her publisher at this point.

Liam was at this stage up to his eyes in his MA in Creative Writing and although not wishing to bore others with the details, he explained how he was getting on, the assignments he’d submitted and added, ‘I’m the only person on the course who writes, and quite shamelessly, I might add, genre fiction. Everyone else who writes prose, writes literary fiction. I love genre fiction. I grew up on it. I love a pastel coloured book cover, if it has shoes and a bottle of wine, so much the better. My favourite book is Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes. I have no shame about loving romance and genre fiction.’

The speaker for the afternoon tea in Colchester was Victoria Connelly, who talked about ‘Getting Back to the Books’ where she explained that as an author there is always a never-ending list of things to do other than writing: promotion, blogging, social media, reading articles on the publishing industry… and that Miss Read was very much about focussing on the writing. Victoria said with self publishing authors they have the freedom to write what they want and that an important part of being an author is to always be moving forward to the next big idea. ‘You can’t make someone want to write yet it’s the best game to play when you do.’

Liam and Virginia agreed that if they had a pound for every time someone had told them they’d love to write a book but they didn’t have the time, they’d both have a lot of pounds!

The importance of actually writing the book, among everything else an author has to do, can’t be underestimated. Virginia had done just that after quitting her job, and Liam too, had been talking about wanting to write a book until in 2011 he finally sat down and wrote that book.

And that was where Virginia and Liam left things until…

At the RNA Conference at Lancaster University in July 2016, they bumped into each other again and happened to be sharing a kitchen in the university accommodation. Let’s just say that a lot of things happened in that kitchen, many things were discussed with the other kitchen inhabitants. A lot ‘went down’ as they say during that weekend (and not just wine), and unfortunately, details can’t be shared here. Suffice it to say, what happened at Lancaster, stays at Lancaster. But during that weekend over cooked breakfasts, numerous cups of tea and when naughtily sat at the back of some conference sessions whispering to one another, Liam and Virginia discussed the idea of combining their experience of writing books and editing with their publishers, what Liam had learned through his MA in Creative Writing, demystifying that and making it less academic and more practical, by using Virginia’s experience of teaching.

They also both agreed that sometimes when you want to write a book, the last thing you need to do is read about it in another book or online. They agreed that writing, like baking, DIY and driving, are all practical skills learned best by doing.

On the train journey back from Lancaster Liam reflected on his discussions with Virginia during the RNA conference.

Virginia and Liam are both residents of Essex, a county not always renowned for ‘real’ people with its structured reality shows such as TOWIE, residents with fake tan, fake hair extensions and fake eyebrows, however that’s all just for show. Essex, says it how it is. Essex it keeps it real. Essex just gets on and does it and doesn’t take itself too seriously (Basildon has a sign in homage to the Hollywood one on a roundabout as one enters the town). And as two proud Essex residents, Virginia and Liam agreed to bring this approach to learning about writing.

And so Real People Write Books was born!

During planning, Virginia told Liam off if he got too fancy or academic, Liam scoured London for a suitable venue and felt inadequate at Virginia’s design skills and they worked together to create a day’s workshop filled with activities, discussions and take away learning points so afterwards participants can Write That Book! (And stop procrastinating, ruminating, over-intellectualising about the writing process.)

If it weren't for the wonderful RNA, Liam and Virginia would never have met. Writers need other writers, as my friend and fellow author, Jean Fullerton often says, and I couldn't agree more. Writing is generally a solitary occupation so networking, chatting, drinking tea and eating cakes together are key to being a happy writer.

For more details about Real People Write Books, check out this web page including what’s included in the programme for the day, who it’s for, how much it costs and how to book.

If you have any questions please email realpeoplewritebooks@gmail.com or use the Facebook page.

Once you've paid for your place, please complete this registration page.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Liam xx

Here's a wonderful 4 star review from Bayou Book Junkie, which I've also copied below. it's so great when someone really *gets* your story and enjoys it so much:

Brad is a player, happy with filling his map with men he's been with, until he meets awkward but cute British nerd James, who at first is just someone with whom he can check four places on his map. They hit it off, bonding over their mutual love of The Goonies and Short Circuit, and Brad finds himself unable to go after anyone else after being with James and James finds himself opening up to another person, when he's always preferred to just lose himself in his computer. Soon more things are heating up than just the hot weather hitting the little town of Astoria. But their relationship has an expiration date and time is going by so quickly, will they be able to find a solution before James has to leave at the end of summer?

Both Brad and James were flawed and realistic, and while they both messed up, they fixed most of their issues with the help of some mildly meddling friends and family. They were likable and had good chemistry. 

The story is well-written and entertaining. It's told from both MC's points of view, which was odd at times, since Brad is American and James is British, so it was a bit of a mix-up of the two styles. 

I really liked the supporting cast of characters, especially Rory and the ladies that visited the store where Brad worked. They really added depth to the book. 

All in all, it was a fast, fun read. Recommendable!

Rating: 4 Stars!!! 

Buy Links: Amazon US Amazon UK AllRomance JMS Smashwords