Keanu Reeves | lgflannigan

Happy New Year! Five months in and this is my first post in 2018!

Besides being busy with renovating and working, I’ve been enjoying coffee and cake with friends and family. And we’re still loving living in town and being five minutes from the sea.

Here’s a photograph I took yesterday evening. Warmish sun, a gentle breeze and the sea lapping at the shore. What more could a person want…

After making the decision to self publish Ordering Flynn Matthews in 2016 I’ve not bothered sending any work off to agents or publishers, however this January, after much nagging/encouragement from my gorgeous friend Jenni (newly signed with an agent!), I joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s New Writers’ Scheme. It’s allocated on a first served basis and the membership allows unpublished authors to take part in all RNA activities and also submit a manuscript of a full-length novel for appraisal. I have one ready to send however a casual comment about Scotland from my lovely friend, Tina, after a Reiki session, had a new idea spinning in my head. Now, a few weeks later and 35,000+ words in I’m thinking I’ll have it finished by Aug 31st deadline. I suspect the only thing that will hold me up is the synopsis which usually takes me as long to write as an 85,000 word novel.

I’ve also joined the newly formed RNA Bristol Chapter – we first met in March and they are a wonderful friendly bunch of authors who are willing to share their experiences to help each other especially us newbies. I’m looking forward to our next meeting on 21st July. Ooh and we meet at River Cottage restaurant in Bristol. Great venue and delicious food.

This month I have published the third and final (sorry Nicki!) novel in the Addicted Series, Working Flynn Matthews. To please one of my readers (Nicki) there will some more extras posted over on the Flynn Matthews website soon!

And if you haven’t read any in the Addicted Series yet, get over to Amazon now where they’re available for only 99p each. Plenty of 5 star reviews on all three! Thank you to everyone who has bought them and an extra thanks to the people who have found the time to leave reviews, they help in raising the profile of each novel 🙂 so it’s much appreciated.

A big thank you to my family and friends for their continued support for my writing. You’ve been amazing!

Anyone who knows me well is aware of my love for Keanu Reeves and today I saw a trailer for a new movie he’s in called Destination Wedding. The story of two miserable and unpleasant wedding guests, Lindsay and Frank, who develop a mutual affection despite themselves.

The Matrix is in my top 5 movies and I liked John Wick however it’s good to see him free from blood and not holding a gun. Most people say he can’t act, I disagree. Bim Adewunmi in her article Why I love…Keanu Reeves says it better than I can:

Reeves is somehow reassuring, with an enviably serene manner. This makes people see him as wooden, but I think it’s actually more about a man who likes to measure his movements; a movie star who understands space.

And I love the way she describes his walk: rangy and relaxed, but precise; the gait of a man who never needs to hurry.

Back to the movie coming out late August. He’s playing opposite a woman of his generation and not a young twenty something. How novel is that. I love Winona Ryder, especially in Stranger Things. I tend to write stories about younger people but watching the trailer for Destination Wedding got me thinking that at least one of my novels should be about similar aged characters to me. I have plenty of ideas 🙂

Anyway, here’s the trailer:

My mind is bursting. Chaos reigns. Fleeting thoughts of the things I need to do: ~~Keanu Reeves,~~ finish proof reading OFM, again, write extra OFM fics, market OFM, read ‘how to’ articles, go to work, see family, contact friends, meet up with friends, tidy the house, help decorate the house, catch up with The Night Manager. And then there’s all the new fiction ideas that continue to write themselves in the dark recesses until I grab my notebook and scribble them down.

And there’s the moment when asked a question on a course that I search the chaos for an answer to find nothing. Nothing I tell you. Nothing at all in all those thoughts. Why? Because it’s not part of the chaos, it’s nothing to do with the things I have to, want to do. Not good when you’re meant to be ‘in the room’ and not miles away working through the list. All eyes on me waiting for the simple answer that never comes.

Today I am fortunate to be back in the room, my room. I’m proof reading OFM again for grammatical/punctuation errors. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve done this. I’m still finding errors. Surely I eradicated them last time? There has to be a grammatical goblin, a punctuation Puck sneaking them back in, sniggering as they do it.

As I work through the list – perhaps there is order in the chaos – I pull on that part of my female brain that is hard wired to multi-task but come up empty. Looking back it’s probably never been there. I do try. I mean I have four novels on the go for heaven’s sake but am I working on them all at the same time? No. I spend the majority of my time in my head. Perhaps that’s part of being a writer. Has the chaos got away from me though? Does it need to reigned in, just a little so I can move forward? Maybe. Or perhaps I should take heart in these words taken from the book of I Ching,

Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd…

The brilliance is coming folks 😉 Ordering Flynn Matthews, the novel, out soon in digital format, along with a new website, extra fiction and fan forum.

Perhaps, as it’s Shakespeare Week I should have gone with a picture of Midsummer’s Night Dream with its chaos and I did mention Puck after all. So why is there a picture of KR? It’s relevant, honest, he gets a mention somewhere, I think!