Real life romance (and New Voices)

Sorry to have been so absent - I will write a long, detailed, many-pictured blog post soon that covers my fabulous time at the Romance Writers of Australia conference.

But I DO have a good excuse. On arriving home from Sydney I immediately launched into last minute panicking (and packing) prior to leaving on a one month holiday to the UK and Croatia. Getting everything sorted at work, and the house half-decent for our house sitter, took up a stupid amount of time.

And then... on the Saturday afternoon before we left (our flight was 1am Sunday), my boyfriend and I took our dogs down to the park for a walk. We read the paper, ate fish and chips, and the dogs ran around in circles. Then I look up - and my boyfriend is on his knee, with the most incredible ring (box upside down). I cried for about a minute, so he had to ask me again... but of course I said yes.

It was at the park where we first met 3.5 years ago. He'd intended to ask me in Croatia, but thought that I'd want to be able to share it with my family and friends before we left. Plus he wanted the dogs to be there.

So I'm feeling incredibly happy, and incredibly lucky.

The last week has been a bit of a blur, can't quite believe I've been in London more than a week! But my visit to London turned out to be very timely, as I was able to attend one of the New Voices workshops. It was this afternoon in East Sheen, which is absolutely nowhere near where I'm staying with my sisters. So I was super brave and battled the tube strikes to take a combination of buses and the overland train to actually get to the library - and even be on time!

The editors gave a great overview of how to write for Mills & Boon, and I even got to take home some books - yay! It was great motivation to sit down and get my new chapter together and enter New Voices, which I'll do over the next week or so.

I've been very absent from blogland the past 10 days, I can't wait to read everyone's entries - it looks like competition will be fierce!!