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Archive for the ‘Writing retreat’ Category

This is meant to be my writing time

Posted in A writer's life, Cake decorating, SF romance, Writing retreat, Young adult, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »

The best laid plans are meant to be tramped upon and splattered against the walls. I thought I was going so well and then I don’t know what happened. I fizzled. I lost confidence. Maybe I can blame the Hashimoto’s. I have energy which is great. I don’t have hypers but I have had a couple of crashes in mood and energy despite the meds. The meds are great though. I thought they worked well for energy but not the brain. My brain feels more calibrated though.

I’m off to write with some friends today for about a week. I thought I’d have more done but um I haven’t. I’m progressing things and will be on track before heading back to work. I’ve started some reading for the PhD, mostly Mills & Boon books with some retro which are so fabulous and interesting. Really I mean it. I met with the wonderful Doreen Watt who has an amazing collection way back to the beginning of Mills & Boon and she has a service where she helps people by supplying that ‘missing’ book as well as an amazing database. I’m just back ground reading at the moment to give me ideas on where to focus for the Feminism in Popular Romance research.

One of the reasons I’m at a confluence of indecision is probably the three projects I have on the go. The YA romance is in the final stages of revision, although I have some late feedback that has challenged me. I need to think on it. The Regency Romance is clear in my head and a chaos vortex on the page. I jumped a few chapters when I last drafted it and now I have no idea what is supposed to go there. And it’s messy as all hell. I dictated a lot of it and it’s full of wrong words (misheard by the software) and I’m not sure I want to play in that sandpit right now. That leaves the SF romance to complete drafting. It was my plan to work on this after finishing to draft the Regency, but um …I only read through the Regency draft and got some feedback on the opening. It should go in the too hard basket.

So for these writing things I like to have a project in mind so it should be the SF romance…I’ll settle on that then. Even though I haven’t read it through. I’ll just have to push on.

Meanwhile, I have the editor working on Argenterra and the edits are coming through. Egads! I’m going to try self-publishing this story has  been close in submissions and wasn’t taken up and after 13 years trying to sell it and reworking it over and over, I’m going to push it out there.

I have been working on a guitar cake. Photos later in the week! And I’ve picked up a discarded craft project, a granny triangle rug. I’ve done no housework and I’ve not prepared my study for the Phd.

Mmm maybe I’m not so slack after all. I did take the evening off to watch Jupiter Ascending though! Love it. I know people (particular friends) hate this movie but to a SF romance lover and a paranormal romance reader it’s a fab meld of everything.

 

PS. The other me, Dani Kristoff, is a finalist in the ARRA awards for Spiritbound.

PSS.I am very sad about the passing of David Bowie and Alan Rickman this week. I haven’t been able to even watch stuff about Bowie. He was an amazing artist and I’m just so shocked and saddened.

 

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Getting back on task

Posted in A writer's life, Dragon fantasy, Dragon Wine, Regency romance, Writing retreat, tagged , , , , , on January 26, 2015| Leave a Comment »

This Australia Day weekend Russell and Kylie hosted a writing retreat. We usually  head off in January for a couple of weeks for a long writing retreat but events (work, $ and availability) conspired against us this year. I managed to get a day off so we could have a four day weekend.

Since my mother passed away on January 5 I have been flat emotionally and haven’t engaged in my usual activities. I’ve not cleaned Dweebehiem in a while and I’ve not really written anything either. I was able to put a few revisions through on book 3 of the Dragon Wine series as I had already marked them up on hard copy. So it was with delight that I headed to Double K ranch (Russell and Kylie’s house) to write.

At the last minute I decided to work on a dream project, something that had been at the back of my mind for more than ten years. It is a Regency Romance tentatively titled Tainted Lady. There is a lot of Regency Romance out there so I wanted to come at it with my own angle.

The heroine of this story, Matilda is a respectable widow, who has some issues in her past. She’s been a recluse since giving birth to her daughter at aged sixteen. Her daughter Sophia is now sixteen and ready for the marriage mart. Although her lovely sister-in-law is going to chaperone Sophia, Matilda must socialise as well at her brother’s home. Enter the hero, Sir Richard, who is a widower and a man who likes passionate women, particularly French ones. Now they get to make the sparks fly, as the nieces and the daughter are all angling for the eligible widower.

The issues I want to look at in this novel are to do with the results and issues left behind from indiscretions, particularly where the girl is not at fault and how a traumatic event can shape a life and deprive someone of their liberty, even if it is only socially. So Matilda has a history that she wants to keep private, whereas Sir Richard wants to discover it. Somewhere along that ends up in a love story.

I had hoped to get 20,000 words done. I could have aimed higher than that but I do have issues with RSI and I have a busy week at work from tomorrow. I’m set to meet my goal! I’m so excited about that. I have a scene to do that will take me past that so as it is still early in the day I may exceed my goal.

The rest of the year will be focusing on finishing the Dragon Wine Series but I think I’ll be able to tinker with Tainted lady in my spare, spare time. I have no idea if I can pull of the Regency Romance novel and I know I have a bit of research gaps in there, but I am going to try it anyway.

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Half Moon Retreat- June 20 to 23

Posted in Writing retreat, Zombie Apocalypse, tagged , , , , , , on June 22, 2014| 1 Comment »

warning-there may be typos!

Well we have no internet so that makes me more productive and so I’m writing this blog post wihtout an intenet connection because I’m waiting for the potatoes to bake.

David Dufty from the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild organised this retreat in Braidwood. However, we’re not quite in Braidwood but near it. It’s called Half Moon Retreat and it’s on a big property about 7 kilometers out of Margarlowe, which is about 13 kms from central Braidwood. It is three kms from the gate to the house. We are in deep. The house is large. It’s got a huge living area that could accommodate a country dance.

It is a great writing space with floor to ceiling french doors all around. Matthew and I arrived at night so we caught glimpses of stars, the full Milky Way in all its glory but nothing prepared us for the morning. The house is sitting on a ridge with spectacular views of wooded hills and scrub around us. There is some interenet but you have to sit by the water tank to catch a glimpse of it. And tonight, it is too darn cold and dark to try and get a connection.
There are five bedrooms in the house, three double rooms and two bunk rooms. We are in the room with an ensuite, which is lovely. We’re the only couple so that makes sense to me! There is one huge bathroom that’s the size of a bedsit. It’s huge and I’m guessing that everyone has to share that one. A bit of a disadvantage but it is still a fabulous house. We believe part of it is original and transported there, an old weatherboard place and the huge living area is built on as is the three quarter deck.

Last night and today as we had people coming and leaving we talked about writing goals. David likes to have a bit of structure and as he organised the retreat we are up for that. My goal was to write 10,000 words on my wip and then do some reworking and maybe outline my next novel, which is The Changling Curse, the sequel to The Sorcerer’s Spell. So far I’m on track as I’ve written 10,000 words today and put on the roast lamb!

I took a break in the middle of the day to walk to the river. I explored the property keeping to the graded road as there are mine shafts apparently. I found an old ruin, just the chimney and encountered a kangaroo, a few wombat holes, the river eventually which was amazing. It was still and quiet and the bird calls were amplified in that space that it sounded so loud and surreal. There was was another ruin of a miner’s cottage by the river too. I made my way back, loving the bush around me and day dreaming how much Matthew and I would like a place like this. It.s so quiet and picturesque that we cuddled on the verandah and watched the quiet grey hills and glimpsed the sunset while we were restocking the wood for the fire.
I like retreats because they make me focus. We have gathered to write and the expectation is there and that is great for me because I don’t shirk. I was hoping to be working on my new novel but I’ve been slack so I’m finishing one instead.
The day before  we came here I broke my laptop and the document I was working on is open on that one. I’m hoping that when the repairer looks at it I can retrieve if and then put the two documents together.If not Ill have to rewrite that little section I worked on during my writers date on Tuesday.
So as I have reached my word count, tomorrow will be about rewriting the ms and fixing things. You see I had a flash of insight that I needed to make the relationship between Earl and Nea more than about sex so I’m going to work on that and generally tidy up.

Here is a few selfies of us.

Selfie with some of the gang

Selfie with some of the gang

That's us (ignore scary guy in the middle. Thats the Dweeb)

That’s us (ignore scary guy in the middle. Thats the Dweeb)

 

 
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The living areas with the windows and sun

The living areas with the windows and sun

Some of the view and the house

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Fascinators and Writing Retreats

Posted in Geeking out, Writing, Writing retreat on March 12, 2014| 2 Comments »

I am currently studying millinery at CIT in Canberra, particularly Traditional Hat Blocking 1. It’s fab and I love it. I will do a post later on my first piece, a Fascinator. I am rather partial to  hats.

On the Canberra long weekend, we had our first writers’ retreat at Dweebenhiem. Formerly, we called them Donnacons, but as this one is at Dweebenhiem and host by Matthew as well as me, the nickname is (wait for it) Dweebenhiemcon. A bit of a mouthful. Technically, this retreat was organised by Nicole Murphy and Cat Sparks and they did most of the organsing. I mixed things up a bit by inviting a number of local writers to pop in for a morning, afternoon or as long they wanted.

I was a bit behind in my work so the first day was finishing off a revision, which I’ve sent of on submission now. And the next two days were spent drafting the first 6750 words of a new project. I’m meant to be working on that right now, but I’m overdue for a blog post and I have Chaos Bound by Rebekah Turner to finish reading upstairs, so I’m doing this instead.

The weekend was an intense affair. It was like having a party from Friday to Monday. Friday Cat and Nicole arrived as our houseguests and they were dropped here by Kaaron and Tehani, so we had dinner and a few drinks. It was so much fun. Then the next morning the writers arrived and then we had dinner and more drinks on Saturday night, same again Sunday and Monday, which might have been quiet, we celebrated Nicole’s birthday. Phew! Hectic. Nicole had organised different people to do lunch and dinner. Saturday the lovely Kimberley brought lunch, Sunday Shauna made delicious pumpkin soup and Kylie and Russell made roast lamb for dinner. Leife brought tiramisu! Which we ate before the roast because we’d be too full otherwise.

The fridge started to fill up but Matthew said it wasn’t a real retreat unless there was too much food. To celebrate on Monday we had pizza and cake and champagne. I’m hoping at least some of the retreatees got some wordage done. Poor Matthew was out for day one, laid up with a headache. I caught him a few times playing a game. But he assures me he did do some writing.

Cat Sparks put up photos on Facebook and Flickr. See the stream here.

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