Some of you might have heard me complaining over on Facebook or Twitter last week about trying to paint over the dark red on my office walls to improve the general feel of my little den where all the magic happens (okay, sometimes the magic happens at coffee shops too, or in my garden). Well, plenty of you asked what colour I was trying to paint over the dastardly dramatic red (don’t get me wrong, I loved the red, but it’s too aggressive when you’ve got to sit in the room all day. It was fine when I was only in here a few hours a week because I was working full-time in London), and others asked whether they could see my office. So, without further ado, here’s my shiny new office, and a walkthrough by the author herself.
Here’s the corner of my office where I do the most work. Excuse the perspective, it was taken with a wide angle lens to fit everything in. As you can see, I’ve gone for a nice combination of a sort of milky latte colour with a feature wall painted in a lovely dark mulberry. Three of the walls in my office are the latte colour, so there’s plenty of light in here now. My office window faces almost due north, so light was an issue when I had dark red walls. My desk is huge, I know, but I love space and neatness. I can’t work surrounded by mess. Yeah, there’s lots of bits of paper on the desk at the moment, but it’s all promotion notes / lists, notepads with to-do lists or story notes to type up. It generally gets tidied away as soon as I’m done with it.
My Lost Boys poster now has a beautiful black wooden frame. I’ve had this poster for around, oh, 15 years or more, so it was about time it received a little love. Before it was naked on the wall. I had to trim it down a bit to get it into the frame, but it still rocks. My bonsai is looking a bit weedy, but that’s because I forgot to get my sister to water it when I went to Tuscany in July, so it got a little parched. It’s growing new leaves now. I can’t believe I’ve had it 6 months without killing it. My family bought it for me as a get well present after my ear operation. I also bought a new corkboard to go with my new office. Much bigger so I can pin things to it more neatly. Before my blog tour schedule was flapping over the edges. That’s my new beast of a PC in the corner behind my huge monitor. Say hi to it… it helps make the magic happen.
Clustered to the left of my PC, between the speaker and my printer, is my collection of small anime figurines. There’s a 00 Gundam, a Tyki Mikk, a VF-25 Messiah, a Sephiroth, and two Allelujahs… plus a kitty I got in Japan because it reminded me of my cat.
In the cupboard beneath my desk is all my book swag. Lots of signed book cover postcards, bookmarks, keyrings, magnets and the like in there. If you ever break in, you know where to look for the swag now. Speaking of swag… here’s my new improved bookcase.
I’ve moved all the CDs that used to take up all the room on my bookcase, so now I have plenty of space for my paperbacks, mostly paranormal romance books. I don’t have all my paperbacks out, but do have my series there. I also have a lot of e-books, probably about twice as many as my books, hence the small number on display. Yeah, the top shelf is full of my books. The ones on the right hand side are all for giveaways. Below that are books by Sherrilyn Kenyon, Christine Feehan, Gena Showalter, and a few others. The third shelf down is all manga books. Fourth shelf is Lara Adrian’s Midnight Breed series along with J R Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and Keri Arthur’s Nikki and Michael series, plus others. Fifth shelf down houses my D.Gray-man manga and some Bleach manga. Love them both. It also has some Morganville Vampires books that I’m yet to read. Bottom shelf is yet more manga. Sensing a theme? The books on the shelves with my anime / manga related toys are all my books on writing fiction.
I think that concludes the tour of my office. Now you’ve seen where I work, it’s probably taken some of the magic out of my paranormal romance novels. lol.
If you have any questions about my office… comments are always welcome and I do answer them!
