Photos for Swiss National Day, Carina Press, and The Charm of Time

retty, pretty!

Thank you all for the title suggestions last week! It took a few days of throwing words together, shifting them around, testing out different syllables and imagery, before I ended up with five or six new ideas. It occurs to me that those fridge magnets with various words and letters would be very handy for this.

One of the finalists was: A Wave of Summer Heat.

Speaking of summer, and heat -- and the Swiss National Day next Tuesday (which is apparently also Yorkshire Day!), I have a few photos!


Butterflies:

Strawberry picking:

Vineyards and the woods near the graves of Richard Burton and Alistair MacLean:

Lake views and view from the top of the Dole, the highest point of the Jura mountain chain:

ROW80 goals: things are moving! I'm ploughing through edits for The Charm of Time. I've written all the missing scenes, and have only major edits to do on the last few chapters. Then I have to go back and enter all my edits from the paper copy into Scrivener. Still hoping to finish at summer's end before my next online course starts! Especially because I've just found out about this:

Call for Submissions: We’re Open to Proposals!

by Carina Press Editorial Staff | July 24, 2017

Submitting to Carina Press has always—with a few exceptions—required a full manuscript and detailed synopsis. We’re pleased to announce that we’re living lighter this year and relaxing those restrictions. We want to see what’s been brewing in your mind and have a taste of your fresh works in progress!
This proposal call is open to any of the genres we publish in, as outlined below. Have a high-stakes romantic suspense you’ve been working on, or maybe an urban fantasy with great sexual tension? We want to read it!
Submission link: https://carinapress.submittable.com/submit/75963/open-proposal-call
Closing date: September 4, 2017(all submissions due by 11:59pm Eastern on this date)

Here's the opening of The Charm of Time, as edited to date...:

Christianne didn’t wait to see which bay the tow truck pulled her useless, unreliable car into, but jumped out as soon as the driver had pulled up before the wide double doors of the garage, and headed for the door marked Office.

The sign on the frosted glass indicated the place would be closing in ten minutes. The streets were deserted; she was the only fool still out in the middle of the old town at close to ten at night on a Wednesday.

She entered into a tiny box of a lobby that led almost directly onto a wide staircase. There was just space for a spindle-legged table holding a bowl of business cards, and an umbrella stand perched on the bottom step, above the black and white tiles gleaming in the strong ceiling light -- not fluorescent lighting. The place looked more like her oncologist’s than a mechanic’s entrance.

Both were equally unpleasant places at this hour at the end of a long and tiring day. Of all the nights for her to be stranded by the side of the road... Any night would have been frustrating, but she was so tired after her latest scans, and there was still the days of waiting to come before she found out the results. The thought of having to do this every few months for the next five years of her life -- and that if she was lucky -- was insupportable.

“There is no luck,” she muttered, and trudged up the steps. “I’ll make my own way.”

At the top, she squared her shoulders and pushed into the office, perhaps more forcefully than she’d intended. The frosted glass rattled in its frame as the door swung shut after her.

***

Here was something new. Rory looked up from where he was unpacking his takeaway Thai and studied the new arrival. He hadn’t had a customer this late on a Wednesday since that teen hockey club had had their coach break down just before they were due to leave on a cross country tour. He stayed open on Wednesdays and Thursdays because he couldn’t very well go to the gym every night, and being the only garage available at this hour brought in enough additional income to make it worth his while. Nothing on at home, in any case, not for over a year now, especially after the twins had moved away. He might as well eat his takeaway here as plonked on his sofa in front of the TV.

And the clients were marginally more interesting.

He stopped crinkling the plastic bag, still clutching a clump of chili sauce packets, and pretended to frown down at his phone as he studied the newcomer from under lowered lids.

Tall -- she was nearly a foot taller than his wee receptionist Melisande -- and about his age, though as he neared 40, he’d begun to realise that everyone looked the same damn age, except for kids and people stretched taut by face lifts. Hell, anyone younger than 30 seemed like a kid nowadays. When had he gotten so middle-aged?

This woman didn’t look as dowdy as he felt. Her shoulders sagged as she leaned over to fill out the form Melisande handed him, and her hair had that end-of-day draggliness, but her mouth was soft, and turned up at the corners -- life hadn’t given her a permanent frown. She was trim, too, though it was hard to tell under layers of winter clothing. But her legs were slim, long and tapering into ankle boots with a slight heel. He had a sudden image of her striding up to him in those boots -- and only those boots -- and pushing him back into his chair. “I’ve been a very bad boy, aye.”

He realised he’d spoken aloud. But there was a glass divider and a few metres of space between his desk and the reception area, and maybe they’d assumed he was on the phone. He fiddled with it and rustled some paper and tried to cover up his words under other misleading sounds.

Then he dropped everything and strode up to the front.

Are there any festivals or celebrations coming up near you?