{"id":1384,"date":"2015-11-09T17:47:58","date_gmt":"2015-11-09T15:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/?p=1384"},"modified":"2015-11-09T17:47:58","modified_gmt":"2015-11-09T15:47:58","slug":"french-kissing-with-an-accent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/?p=1384","title":{"rendered":"French Kissing with an Accent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lynne<\/a><\/p>\n

The lovely Lynne Shelby is with us today. Tell us about your writing cave, Lynne …<\/em><\/p>\n

For years I wrote anywhere \u2013 on a kitchen counter while cooking, in the car while waiting for daughters to come out of ballet lessons, in the staff canteen at work \u2013 but when my eldest moved into her own flat, what had been her bedroom became my Writing Room, and it was here that I wrote my debut novel, \u2018French Kissing.\u2019 There\u2019s still a bed in the room (eldest daughter does still visit the \u2019rents and sometimes sleeps over), but it\u2019s disguised as a chaise-lounge with cushions and throws, and makes a great place to sit (or recline!) when reading through a typescript.<\/p>\n

\"4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I made my wooden writing desk myself from a kit, only discovering after I\u2019d built it that it was far too high for me (or, bizarrely, anyone of human proportions) to write at. The thought of sawing the legs shorter and managing to keep them level was somewhat daunting, so the solution was to acquire a high bar-stool to sit on while I write (I won\u2019t repeat the comments this seating arrangement suggested to friends and family, but most of them featured wine), which also gives me a great view out over my garden. I live in a town, and most of my stories are set in cities, but I when look out of the window, I see flowers, trees and birds \u2013 and the occasional urban fox (It\u2019s no coincidence that some crucial scenes in my WIP take place in the garden of a London house).<\/p>\n

\"desk\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In easy reach on the window sill, is a small bookcase (made by my father in a school woodwork class over 80 years ago) which contains notebooks (I can never resist a notebook with a beautiful cover), a dictionary, an \u2018A to Z,\u2019 and a much-thumbed thesaurus given to me by my then boyfriend, now husband, when I was eighteen and he was nineteen (he knew I wanted to be an author).<\/p>\n

On my desk is my laptop, a box of index cards on which I\u2019ve noted my characters\u2019 age, appearance and so forth, a loose-leaf folder containing research notes, and that most vital tool for a writer, a coffee mug that is refilled very many times throughout the day. In the morning my desk looks tidy and organised, but by the afternoon the smooth wooden surface has disappeared beneath scribbled sheets of A4, newspaper cuttings, reference books, and a scattering of pens and highlighters.<\/p>\n

\"5\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To the right of my desk are bookshelves containing books by some of my favourite authors (the moment I put a paperback copy of my own book on my bookshelves was wonderful and quite surreal), and various objects like rock crystals and sea glass, that I\u2019ve brought back from my travels. There\u2019s a small carving of a bear that came from Alaska (we didn\u2019t see any bears, but we did see whales), a horse from Iceland (where we saw many herds of small, sturdy Icelandic horse) and a stone owl from Rhodes, which took up temporary residence on my desk when I was writing a short story set in Greece. The wolf is there just because I like wolves, rather than because it is attached to a memory. As is the dragon. The statuette of the Eiffel Tower (a souvenir of my first ever trip to Paris) was on my desk when I was writing \u2018French Kissing,\u2019 and makes a guest appearance in the book.<\/p>\n

Directly behind my desk is a chest of drawers with a mirror on top of it that reflects the light from the window and makes the room bright and airy. The chest of drawers is empty apart from some decades-old typescripts that I can\u2019t bear to throw out (Well, you never know when a paragraph you wrote years ago come in useful for a new story), and propped up in front of it is a cork notice board where I pin up images that inspire my current WIP, such as photos of my story\u2019s location or postcards or pictures torn out of magazines. When I\u2019m writing my first draft, the noticeboard also gets covered with post-it notes as I think of details to add to chapters I\u2019ve already written, have a sudden idea about a plot twist yet to come, or make a note to remind myself of something factual that I need to look up.<\/p>\n

\"noticeboard\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As a writer of contemporary romance, I also get inspiration from the images I\u2019ve hung on the walls of my Writing Room. Just inside the door is a picture with the famous quote \u2018When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew.\u2019 The romance theme is continued on the opposite wall where there is a small poster of one of Jack Vettriano\u2019s passionate couples, and Klimt\u2019s \u2018The Kiss.\u2019 \u00a0There is also a poster of the Eiffel Tower – Paris is definitely one of my favourite cities.<\/p>\n

\"quote\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are still times \u2013 train and plane journeys spring to mind \u2013 when I write in other places, but I write best when I\u2019m in my Writer\u2019s Cave, with my laptop, perched on a bar stool at my giant-sized desk.<\/p>\n

And here’s a little info about my guest:<\/em><\/p>\n

Lynne Shelby writes contemporary romance because that\u2019s what she most likes reading. She enjoys travelling and is inspired to write by the many wonderful foreign cities she\u2019s visited. Her debut novel, \u2018French Kissing,\u2019 which won the Accent Press and Woman magazine Writing Competition, is available as a paperback and e-book from Accent Press and Amazon.<\/em><\/p>\n

And you can find out more about Lynne here:<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/French-Kissing-Lynne-Shelby\/dp\/1783758139\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1442237113&sr=1-1&keywords=french+kissing+lynne+shelby<\/a><\/p>\n

Website: http:\/\/www.lynneshelby.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Twitter: @LynneB1<\/p>\n

Facebook: https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/LynneShelbyWriter<\/a><\/p>\n

Thanks so much for dropping by Lynne – and sharing your writing space!<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lovely Lynne Shelby is with us today. Tell us about your writing cave, Lynne … For years I wrote anywhere \u2013 on a kitchen counter while cooking, in the car while waiting for daughters to come out of ballet lessons, in the staff canteen at work \u2013 but when my eldest moved into her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[499,117,497,496,498,105,47,360],"class_list":["post-1384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-accent-press","tag-contemporary-romance","tag-french-kissing","tag-lynne-shelby","tag-paris","tag-romantic-fiction","tag-the-romantic-novelists-association","tag-writers-cave"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1384"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1393,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions\/1393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.georgiahill.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}