Nessun Dormitory

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Oh – too brief my little trip to France. Even the problems of the great freezage did not weaken my love for my adopted home. We lumbered our possessions back into our UK rented house grateful that there were no floods, ice or power cuts. There was no heating because the modern state of the art wi-fi thermostat system had suffered an “Electronic anomaly”. And there was me thinking it just did not work. A while later the auto fire alarm system developed a “signalling issue” and activated the “tamper threshold” on the theft alarm system. Stuff is trouble. More stuff is more trouble. My stuff and jargon decoder is at critical meltdown. 


I left the return booking a little late and there were no cabins on the 2300 service from Caen to Portsmouth. That meant a night in the “reclining chairs”. Deep joy! For a few extra pounds or euros you can buy a kit comprising of eye shades, a small blanket and an inflatable plastic pillow. Gilles and I gazed into each other’s blindfolded  eyes and puffed into our stubby inverted nipple nozzles. My Romantic novelist DNA flipped towards a public love scene where two lovers – perhaps fleeing from her crazed aristocratic family of sword wielding knights, attempt to escape on a Brittany ferry to find love in a Portsmouth concrete housing block. Realizing that members of the family had boarded, their one chance to cement their love before death was in a reclining chair, surrounded by iPod playing  bleeping electro-geeks, a snoring drunk with a body freshness issue and some leather clad English biker who wanted to talk to his mate about his chain lube. Oh yes – public sleeping is a whole new game. Luckily there was a coffee machine a and a door to the outside deck. I would have kissed my lover in the moonlight if there had been any moon and if he had woken up. And they say Romance is dead! Now – looking for a link to Pavorotti singing “Nessun Dorma” (no one shall sleep) I saw on the you-tube menu this truly inspirational moment which many of you will have seen before. Even so – please allow yourself a pure surge of surprise and joy and watch this clip. You cannot tell a book by it’s cover – except mine. 


On the doorstep at the English house there was a soggy frosted parcel containing the hard copy of “Knockout”. Wow – it looks like a book that a proper writer person could have written. Rosina  had ordered me a copy to proof read. Oh no – can I face reading it again?….




Emma thinx: Read to a child. You can cover a book by it’s telling.



Snow way!

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Defiance

As the last snow melted I sat in my garden this morning with a cup of coffee feeling the sting of the sun on my face. The furniture is re-assembled and dry. Beneath the snow a hyacinth proclaimed its defiance. New buds were green on the fig tree We are such little things – with all our vanities and petty brief lives. Whatever becomes of us, Nature will win and all our defeats and victories will be nothing.  It is a comfort is it not?

Madame! Of course it never freezes here

I’ve been having a KDP free day. I shifted about 1700 copies of the “serious” short story “Sub Prime” and 800 of the Romance “Knockout”. All in all now I have shifted some 10,000 copies of this book – the majority for free. I am not a marketeer or any kind of business person. To be frank, I am happy even if the book gives pleasure to just a few readers. I have never wanted to charge any money for “Sub Prime” because it is an unashamedly socialist story about exploited powerless people. The fact is I guess that in my old bed-sit “sincere” writer days, if I had sold 10,000 books I would have been able to work for a year – yes if I had sold them! The fact is that a Mills and Boon “title” used to sell about 7,000 copies before it is pulled off the shelves and pulped. I guess those days are gone. My own mistake is to have pushed out a single book without a series or stable of similar books already off the production line. If you just have the one book, so much effort and promo to get it noticed will create nothing but a brand vacuum. My advisors and I do clash a little over this. My view is that free days are great if it leads on to sales…..if. 


Amongst the many regrets of my life is that I have always scrapped all the manuscripts that came back as rejected. I have always figured that the next one would be worthwhile and someone would like it. The danger was  I may have been tempted to waste more time on the rejects rather than trying to improve. You think that posh educated experts must be right about you. You learn these lessons too late. I hope these rather dour words may get to you if you are a younger struggler out there. Do not throw it away just because a few publishers and agents sneer at it with remarks about inconsistent genre targeting etc. Soon enough you will have run out of time, your energy will be failing and younger better writers will be nearer those golden control buttons. My heart felt advice to all writer/marketeers out there is  – get a bus or truck licence.


I hope I don’t sound too miserable – I am not. I would like other writers to tell me their take. I really would like some feedback on where you guys as writers think we are going and what are realistic ambitions? 


Emma thinx: If the snowball gets too big you can’t see the glacier.



The Price of Love

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Water meter counting the litres in the ocean



The room in which I am typing this little epistle is warm. It was not always thus. Shortly before my arrival home in France it had been minus 11 degrees – just ask my plumbing. The water supply into the house was frozen so there was no water. Fan heaters, gas space heaters and hair dryers were employed until water reached the meter, which kinda exploded. A sweet guy from SAUR turned up and fitted a new one. The water advanced slowly through the house. The air temperature reached a positive number. Radiators burst, frost sparkled on the inside walls. We travailed with spanners and buckets. I dreamed of oysters and moules marineres. We ate cold tinned ravioli. Wonderful neighbours arrived with heaters and advice. We plugged in heaters and blew the electrics. We warmed on the advice. Invitations flooded in. I longed for daylight. Outside it was minus 7. Inside I reached absolute zero. Gilles was Gallic and shrugging his way through the “comedy of life”. He is calm and sometimes I hate him. Around midnight we went to bed.


I was dreaming of water – great waves of gushing running water – maybe purging my anger, maybe purging me of the morally equivocal life I’ve led. Maybe dumping 931 litres of freezing water through the ceiling….Yes, the water had reached the upstairs bathroom and found a detached flexi-pipe. I ran downstairs through a downpour of water and got to the inlet valve. I glanced at the new meter which had started at zero. It read 931 litres. Well – it’s always nice to know the size of a problem! Water was about 2 inches deep through the entire ground floor. Gilles arrived and commented on “La comedie de la vie”. We swept, scooped and sponged the night away. Around 7.30 am the daylight I had longed for arrived. We surveyed the ruin. I suppose it is a comedy really…….


Today, the world’s most helpful and kind plumber arrived to replace radiators. I have spoken of this guy before in a previous blog.  He is an old school craftsman and gentleman. If you live in the Saintonge area I cannot recommend him too highly. Soaked furniture and possessions are slowly drying out. We are alive, fed and have a home. 



OK – It’s St Valentines day tomorrow. In the Super U hypermarket at Saintes there were not whole sections of the shop dedicated to cards, red velvet heart shaped cushions, teddy bears and special red roses. The main special feature was fat duck livers. In Walmart in the UK the merchanisers had gone mad. I reckon that the first guy to market heart shaped Valentine double dipper recession burgers in a red ribboned box will clean up. The ASDA (UK Walmart) brand have marketed a smart price budget Valentine card for 7 pence, (11 US cents). I guess that this was a tongue in cheek exercise to publicise their Smart Price no nonsense pricing. If so, I take my hat off to them. If Gilles has even thought of buying me one there will be no further blogs for a while unless I can post from prison.


Several days in cold water, ice and propane gas fumes have diminished my normal romantico flame and passion. Tomorrow is another day and I wish you love.


Emma thinx:  Don’t throw cold water on a flood of kindness.











Pistons on La Piste

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It is snowing here in Southern England. Two issues occupy my brain.
1) Will it be snowing in the morning and will the school be closed?
2) Will Gilles and I be able to slither the car to the Brittany Ferries terminal at Portsmouth in order to cross the Channel so that we can go home to France?

Come what may I am going home! Sunday morning hot baguette and oysters for lunch with wine ….Nothing will stop me! I will crawl through the snow living on nothing but the huge cask of brandy around my neck like a St Bernard mutt. (I love dogs and always think that mountaineers should have the rescue brandy round their own necks). 


There is always much controversy over reverse parking and driving skill in the benda fender gender agenda. My sexy French lover, Gilles is an executive high earning occasional car driver. I am a minimum wage full time bus driver. If he offers to drive in the snow and ice – yup, he’s got the job. Would I ever say anything…….? Do you think I would ever offer a single word of guidance…?


Emma thinx: Love has no end – only endings.

A Right Old Pickle

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Heaven and Hell in a jar



“Can ya tell’em at the school he’s got a tempracha,”  came the voice of intercom mom from floor 23 of the tower block.
“Is that an’ igh tempracha or a low tempracha,” I ask.
“Woh – dunno for sure dear – but ee’s right poorly.”


I trudge back to the bus. It is Friday. The chances of intercom mom having a thermometer seem unlikely. Her boy is a right little sod and secretly I must admit I did hope that if she did have one, she had inserted it up his bottom. I think he attends about one Friday in each half term. At the school I informed the staff. As I swung the bus out of the yard I’m sure I saw them dancing in my mirrors. 


However, let me get back to the real business and glamour of my life as a best selling romantic novelist. In my last blog I raised the issue of pickles and a lady apparently had not encountered pickled onions. You know, we always think that everyone is like us. When you are a kid you think that your family is normal. I never forget when I first went to a friend’s house and found that not all parents hated each other. I was astonished. 

You never know when you might need a pickle



Now I think about it, you do not see many pickled onions in France. You do see cornichons (dill pickles) and one just cannot eat dried pork saucisse without them. But the pickled onion is probably almost as iconic as British fish and chips.  Most fish and chips shops still have a huge jar of pickled onions on the counter. It was my first ever experience of the impulse buy. Mr Henry Papadopoulos, the Greek fish and chip shop guy, plopped an enormous crisp vinegar soaked onion on top of my battered cod and chips (fries). Oooh, As my mouth blended the acid onion crunch with the crisp batter and the soft hot white fish sprinkled with salt, I experienced a deep physical joy. Soon after I discovered sex and I think it was only that that saved me from addiction and a life in the chippie. Incidentally, if you do eat a pickled onion, make sure your lover has one too. Greasy, salty gum-sucks are OK but unilateral pickled onion can slow things.

I think the goldfish might be dead.



 Before I get away from the fish and chip issue I must make a major statement. The best fish and chips I ever ate were on the pier at Santa Cruz in California. As I sat in the open air overlooking the Pacific Ocean, an enormous pelican decided to dispute possession with me. Those birds are killers!


I’m sure there are all kinds of pickles out there unknown to Brits. In Texas, somewhere near Fort Hood, I found a quaint “old time western” shop selling cactus pickle. I wonder if anyone else does pickled boiled eggs? I received some as a gift at Christmas. Chip shops often sell them but they are just so acidic that my poor old tubes shriek at the sight. I’ve dotted a couple of pickle pics around the text just to excite you all.


And finally, some readers will not have encountered the quest of Kathy Lynn Hall to raise money for Wounded Warriors. She has written an e book, “The Great Twitter Adventure“, the profit of which will be donated to the fund. It sells at only 77 pence in the UK, and is a first rate read! The above link is for for Amazon UK. Here is the Amazon USA link. Come on guys….99c or 77p…




Emma thinx: If you think you’d give your right arm for something, remember those who’ve given theirs for you.











Oxymorons Run Amok in Free Sales Orgy

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You know that insecure feeling when you come downstairs after the party, slithering on a wine soaked crushed samosa that obviously missed the eloquent mouth of some unknown drunk, who at the time, was the wittiest and most flattering intellectual in the world? For a moment you gaze around wondering how cobwebs could possibly suspend so many popper streamers until you remember that the spiders have had several months of freedom to weave silk ropes that could catch an anchor chain. And all because the lady is a novelist and does not do dusting. She also does not do ironing or checking of sell by dates on mundane produce. How can a pickled onion be out of date? Who did not know that 2007 was a vintage premier cru champagne year for bloody pickles? 


This is a long way to explain that I had a bit of a party and that I know my life is being sucked into a femaelstrom of microwaved Swedish meatballs. Apparently Edgar Allan Poe first introduced the masculine form of the word into literature. I must start to get a grip. I get up in the morning in my furry dressing gown and check my sales, my blog comments, my facebook likes, my triberr karma rating, my Amazon chart position, my twitter re-tweets and my Goodreads reviews. I am become  Electro-Fem, a Joan of Story Arc, a Romantic Grovelist at the keyboard shrine. Then I put on my woolly pully and go out driving my bus. Good job all the other motorists don’t know that the huge vehicle in their rear view is being driven by a neurotic self doubting ego maniac on a cobweb and pickled onion literary guilt trip. This life would not have happened to Jane Austen.


Oooh – I’m glad I got that lot off my chest. The party was on account of having some 3,000 folk reading my book Knockout! by Saturday. By the end of the weekend I had shifted 8,000 books. Of course, they were all free on Amazon’s grand KDP Select Adventure. My serious “mined from the sorrow of life” prize winning etc. short story Sub-Prime had shifted 328 copies. You know, I always bear in mind that I sell the Romance for 77 pence in the UK which is less than a candy bar. When it became free, there was an exponential increase in interest. And I bet you that someone who got it for nothing reviews it and says it is a soppy formula written load of sex, cops, robbers and slobbers. (Oooh, I love it!) I do hate it when people miss the point. As I hover on the publish button, Amazon have just started tweeting me as a “mover and shaker” and I’m still high in the rankings with sales increasing if anything. Does this make me feel secure? Of course not. See my thinx today. My future sense of security rests on the continued real sales.  I think there might be a few bad hair-trigger days.


 Somewhere in the fog of the party, an intellectual goatee beard type is reading the sell by date on my pickle jar and asking me what year it is. “Look”, I exclaim, “I’m an artist – how the hell should I know?”


Emma thinx: From the ground you see the mountain. From the peak you see the drop. 

Kreatures of Kreation

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Firstly let me thank Jo VonBargen for nominating me for the Kreativ Blogger Award. At my primary school I was appointed deputy blackboard monitor. Since then few accolades have come my way and I have searched in the desert of broken dreams ever since for that high. Oh – OK – I’ve been scribbling romance and I’m in double purple 3 glasses of wine on empty stomach mode.  The regulations require that I list 10 things about me that one would not suspect. Oh dear, does this mean that I must submit to a warm bath of ego while my readers sponge my back. Ooooh – here goes then:


1) I play the trombone. Probably this is why I can be a little brassy. It certainly explains my love of Wagner.
2) I am not quite absolutely totally a fully pigmentally challenged natural blonde. 
3) My favourite undergarment is my salmon pink and black lace basque.
4) I have a RYA coastal skippers ticket.
5) I have a Class 1 Heavy Goods (semi-trailer rig) licence in addition to my class 1 bus licence.
6) My ex husband called to say he was marrying a pole-dancer. Turns out she is my age, lives in Poland and loves to tango.
7) I am allergic to cats.
8) In France people think I’m Belgian on account of my accent and love of chocolate.
9) When sensitive English friends visit us in France I have been known to serve rabbit and tell them it is chicken.
10)  My favourite position with my sexy French lover is… on the back of our tandem going downhill.


Gilles bought me my basque by mail order from a lively national company who provide lingerie and all manner of toys. They boast that their products are delivered in plain wrappers by their own couriers. I was at home when the doorbell rang and a large tattooed man handed me  a package. With a wink he explained in a gruff confidential stage whisper – “Ere y’are Sweet heart – here’s them naughty knickers.” – I was quite shocked.


What a week-end. I’ve been free on Amazon KDP Select  and Rosina keeps phoning me with updates. In the end I gave up and made leek and potato soup. To me it seemed a bit bland so I added some anchovy paste…..Ummm – well, we ate it.


The weekend stats have all sorts of astonishing aspects. If you are thinking of going for this KDP deal you might be interested. Breakdown of figures by Tuesday I hope.


The second regulation for this award is that I choose a further six Kreativ souls. Here is my list:

1) Claude Nougat – La giornalista piu intelligente in Italia.
2) Jack Durish – historian who is improving my general knowledge
3) Magda Olchawksa – for her informative and varied posts about the Creative Industry.
4) Yvonne Lewis for being the only other person on Earth to admit to loving Carousel and Oklahoma
5) Craig McGinty for This French Life – the best ever resource for news and info for expats in France
6) Julie Kemp for Empty Nest Insider – Intelligent writing about a variety of interesting topics.




Emma thinx: Elation and deflation have poetic relation.









Free Market Slaves

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If you look at my previous post you might have gotten the idea that I am a sex fuelled hedonist. Well, if not I’m gonna try and try until I make it there. It’s only lack of book sales that is holding me back. 


But let’s talk about the “new capitalism” which is the buzz on the economic block. I hear Euro politicoids talking about “Fairness” as if the concept had just arrived on their desks with all the kick-ass imperative of a memo from Rupert Murdoch. Before all the social class, religion, nationalism and wealth difference poisons and divides kids – they know about fairness and justice at the age of three. Just try telling a toddler he took his brother’s chocolate biscuit when he knows his sibling took it himself and framed him.


 So – how is it that something so atavistic, so recurrent and ingrained in mankind has been subverted and lost in our teeming world of worshipped and applauded greed? I heard PM Cameron today declaring that Europe was falling behind the productive capacity of China. Oh no – maybe our systems of democracy, health and safety, social care, civil rights, conditions of work and wages are holding us back? Dear me – there is the answer then. Let’s all race to the bottom. The finest time of Britain and the Empire was when slaves were bartered for gold,  children started work at the age of nine and life expectancy was 25years. At least it would get rid of a few rival novelists on Amazon.


A few months ago a case of “human slavery” was discovered in the UK. There was wailing and a general gnashing of teeth. The political class were astounded and outraged. However, it was not a surprise to some of us. If you want another story here is a link to a terrible tragedy in 2004. At a time of my life when I was  destitute I went to work as a turkey process hand. It was tough. Let me say that again – it was tough enough to break your bloody heart.  I wrote a story because fiction is far more powerful than “News” because that happens somewhere else. The girl in the story is unattractive and therefore could not work as a prostitute which is the fate of most trafficked females. That does not mean she won’t be used and raped by her “masters”.  The story is “Sub Prime” and is as true as a story can be. Ironically it is something of a best-seller although I have never wanted money from it. I have published it with an audio track, read by a dear friend.  I cannot read it myself because it makes me cry so much. 

This week-end Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th January, “Sub-Prime” is free on Amazon, along with its MP3 audiobook that will also play on the Kindle (I have also have a free romance novel on the same promo).


Click here for my FREE books on Amazon USA
Click here for my FREE books on Amazon UK




Emma Thinx: Keep the bones out of the bonus


Writing the Sex in the Text

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Shall we talk about sex? Oh OK – if you really want me to. I write Romance. Well – love and sex actually. In “Knockout” there is a story but it is a story about a sexy woman going headlong into a passionate sexathon with a beautiful guy. They do it in her bed. She does it all on her own. They do it in his bed, in Paris, several other places and they do it on a boat. They kiss and caress the burning totality of each other’s lips. They adore each other’s skin and musk. She craves the untiring hard knot of his controlling, urgent muscles. He longs for her abandon, surrender and softness They eat highly flavoured food and breathe the garlic of shared ecstasy. They drink champagne and lie naked in the warm open air almost as a sacrifice on the altar of lust. Oooh….if I don’t stop tweaking the knobs I’ll have to jump in a cold bath. And just think – it was me, a middle aged working woman who wrote it.

self portrait

 The basic reason why I write this kinda stuff is that I love it in life and I love it in fantasy. I know it may be a brazen to say that, but it’s true and if I’m honest then in my writing about sex I’m not short changing my readers. When I write a sex scene I am there and willing it on. Actually, it’s writing itself.


There are technical problems in writing about sex. The big one (Oooh steady on) is the line between artistic, pornographic, anatomical, purple and naff. Different generations and cultures have different levels of frankness and taste. In the supermarket today I noted that I could present myself for chlamydia venereal disease testing while I was waiting for a new batch of granary wholemeal bread to reach the shelves. All those intimate swabs quite put me off the idea of a nice buttered crust.  I was reading some supermarket Romance where the young lady presented her sexual arousal by way of her “dampened swath”. That brought me out in a fit of the giggles. I figured if things didn’t gel with the guy at least she could wipe down the kitchen worktops. In another similar epic, the young lady exposed her “creamy crevice” – so far this is the worst image I have ever encountered. Well, at least there is some classy alliteration. Finding the words, the euphemisms and the poetic passion of human juice is not always easy. Just this morning I encountered a curly triangle of love. Well, I suppose if your car broke down you could prop it up in the road to warn other drivers of an obstruction. It’s all about context is it not?

knobs and shafts

When it comes to the male side of the park, obviously a female can only guess and ask a lot of questions. My lover man is never shy. His only complaint is that males only get to ride one wave while  females can stay in surfing all day. – (Hmmm – depends on the quality of the water). Males provide more vocabulary problems. I have a few dislikes – such as swollen manhoods. It always makes me think of those old naval war films where they wear 10 layers of clothing under a duffle coat.. Luckily, my readers are mostly female and factors such as size of hands, width of shoulders and tone of voice can excite more response than shafts, lengths and pulsating needs. For fun I googled “knobs and shafts”. Not quite what I had in mind. With males it’s just so easy to get lost in engineering. 


But here is the core of the issue. People like sex. Even people who do not want actual full contact sex are interested in it. Sex is us. We are born what we are and half the world has the opposite set of bits. 

And then, of course there is love. Oh Love, oh love, love, love. This purest thing, rejoicing in the pollution of its own sense, losing focus so as to see nothing but the other. It is where the ego both asserts its power to give and shrivels in a humility of powerless longing. Our love finds expression and escape in physical sex. Cold sex is what my friend the poet Oscar Sparrow describes as the “gaping gash of loveless love”. Getting this blend right is the work of the humble hack Romance writer. 

“Knockout!” my romance novel on Kindle is FREE on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th January if you want to check out how I deal with these tender literary parts.

Amazon USA
Amazon UK


Emma thinx: Love me – love my love.







Offside Clap-Trap

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Driving my bus this morning in the rush hour traffic, the commercial station favoured by the kids squeezed a news flash between an advertisement for a diet plan and a promo for new low prices at Burger King. And the news was…..David Beckham is gonna stay on with L.A. Galaxy. He spoke in his familiar London accent of his hopes to captain the British Olympic team at the forthcoming GAMES. (I will be hiding in France). He seems a decent guy to me but the fact that this small matter filled UK air time testified not to him but to the power of FOOTBALL. Yes, FOOTBALL, FOOTBALL, FOOTBALL,FOOTBALL and more FOOTBALL. I know that in certain areas of the ex-colonies this noble game is known as SOCCER. 
Portsmouth fan



The game in itself is a reasonable entertainment to me. Some very nice male legs are exposed. The repetitive use of jargon and cliché is a genuine comedy of the “Victory is not about getting the most goals” variety. Last week I heard a team manager comment, “They had a couple of exceptional players. It was them that won it for them, not the team.” Ah, I’m glad he explained that.

Southampton fan



All this stuff is harmless enough. Recently vile racist chanting has marred the game and the level of spiky mockery between groups of fans is quite distressing.  I suppose it’s all a form of externalised nastiness that real life suppresses. Just imagine some unfortunate office worker who made a small mistake suddenly being surrounded and jeered at. Surely most of us sing more when we are winning In the UK, I have been living near to Southampton whose team is the sworn deadly enemy of the nearby team of Portsmouth. Babies at the breast are told that they are either “Saints” or “Pompey”. I guess it’s all about tribalism too. I have added a couple of images of fans of both teams. I cannot imagine why David Beckham wants to stay in the USA.


Emma thinx: We only win when we’re singing