We have a winner!

Jacqui won the This Morning photo competion with 53% of the vote!

This is her winning photo. It'll be displayed in the window of the This Morning 'Hub' room.

Huge thanks to everyone who voted!

Photo (c) Jacqui Elliot-Williams

Someone I know is going to be on TV!

Noooo, it's not me.

It's my cousin, the very talented Jacqui Elliot-Williams!

Back in the summer of 2009 I wrote a blog post about how very talented Jacqui is and how grateful I was for the gorgeous author photos she took of me.

Well guess what?

She entered a photograph of her family into the 'This Morning' photography competition and she's only gone and beaten 12,000 other entrants to become a finalist!

The final is going to be aired, live, on Friday 19th November and viewers will get to pick which photo they like best.

I think Jacqui's photo is, without doubt, the winner (okay, I haven't actually seen the other finalist's photos yet but I bet it is!) and if you happen to watch This Morning on Friday, and agree with me, please do vote for her!

Having seen my own publishing dream come true I'd love nothing more than for my cousin's talent to be recognised and rewarded. She's got a very busy life with a husband and three kids to look after and she puts every spare bit of time she can wrangle into her photography.

Vote Jacqui!

I'm not dead I'm rewriting...

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

I thought I'd neglected this blog in the past but - really - no updates since 19 July? Shocking!

So yes, while my blog has slightly decomposed over the last few months I'm very much alive.

The truth is that, while my editor loved the changes I made to novel 2 while I was at the writing retreat in Ireland in the summer, she felt that it needed a bit more work before it was ready to move on to the copyediting stage. Work that has involved me removing two fairly central characters and jiggling the plot around a bit to make it stronger without them.

I've been slogging away at the rewrite since August and it hasn't been easy. I haven't had to rewrite a novel before - 'Heaven Can Wait' didn't need more than a few tweaks here and there before it went press - so it's been a whole new learning experience. It's also been the longest I've ever worked on a novel. It'll be two years in December since I started this book.

If coming up with the idea for a novel is like meeting the man of your dreams and getting started on the first chapter is like falling in love I'm currently at the 'moving in and realising he leaves wet towels on the bed' stage. What I mean is - I can still remember why I fell in love with this novel originally but we've spent so much time together now I'm fully aware of its flaws.

So what's this rewrite? A holiday somewhere tropical to try and reignite the romance? Surprise breakfast in bed? Probably more like couples counselling (not that I've ever been). Tough, tricky, frustrating but, if you get through it successfully (and now is not the time to tell me you got divorced after couples therapy!), you're a little bit more in love at the end. And proud - proud that you worked hard and got through a difficult stage.

I'm over a third of the way through the rewrite now and I'm feeling optimistic. The first 30,000 or so words were always going to be the most difficult as the two culled characters featured heavily in them and, although I've still got 50,000 words left to go, I feel like I'm on the home straight.