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Hello, Monday! Well, actually it’s already Tuesday where I am, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Allie for having me, and to thank you all for reading.

Ok, let’s start again. Hi there, my name is Yvonne Walus (pen name for erotic romances: Eve Summers) and I’m a Polish South African New Zealander, which at least gives me something to talk about at parties (when I'm not talking about erotic romances).

My love affair with language began when I was four and composed my first poem. I didn’t understand why my parents made such a fuss: it was just some rhyming words about “the flower of white dew”, and I was willing to create many more, if it made my mom happy. Over the years, I must have made my mom very happy indeed, with self-made poems for every birthday and Christmas.

My road to publication was somewhat trickier, though. For a very, very long time, publishers did not make a fuss over my manuscripts, and I didn’t make them happy at all when I sent anything more. I suppose my heart wasn’t really in it, anyway, because at the time I was a shy person who valued her privacy and would suffer embarrassment to see her name in print. I kid you not!

I will never forget my first publication: I sent seven poems to a start-up literary magazine, and I got a reply (it was snail-mail in those days) that they would love to publish them all. My husband tells me I screamed for a long time and then phoned the whole city, but I think he’s exaggerating.

After the poems came first-person travel accounts and short stories in local magazines, slowly to be replaced by glossy international magazines. I won a few short fiction competitions and I grew bold enough to think I could write a novel.

Because I’m a fan of Agatha Christie and logical puzzles, I chose to write the cozy mystery genre. The novel took a few years to complete. “I have a day job” was my standard excuse, but to be blatantly honest, it was hard work to write 65,000 words on one plot, and the words showed it.

Nevertheless, it was my book, my first book, and I was as eager to share it with the world as I was shy about it.

The world didn’t want it.

“Add more detail,” suggested one of the more helpful agents. I added more detail: descriptions of rooms, the weather, that sort of thing. I simply had no clue!

After two years of approaching every publisher who existed in 1996, I re-read the manuscript. I blushed. I blushed some more. Then I set about correcting the writing style:
· I got rid of all the eyes that were “flying across the room”.
· I did a global search on “ly” and deleted every single adverb.
· I replaced fancy style with simple writing.

By the time I reached the last page, I knew. The book was a dud. Although it read a lot better after the changes, it still lacked sparkle.

I waited a few months and went over the manuscript again. I added some tension, removed the weather and the room descriptions, polished the writing style.... It still didn’t work.

(Please come back tomorrow to see how I did manage to turn the manuscript around....)