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I’m dropping in to say I have a few posts coming up but I’m not quite ready to post yet. There was the world SF convention in Glasgow, with side tripping to the beautiful highlands, then a dash home so I could fly to the Romance Writers of Australia Conference in Adelaide on the weekend, then home again for a funeral of my awesome buddy Kaaren Sutcliffe on Monday.
I did two pitches, my first in over ten years. Lucked out on both.
I just wanted to say I’m here, I’m back, I’m busy. Robot Hearts has been proofread, but at the last minute I finally had a story that fit an idea so I wrote that yesterday and I’m just trying to see if I can get my editor to look at it, before I press print, upload etc. However, every thing is formatted and I’ve written the blurb. I need the paperback wrap but I need to finalise the pages first.
I’m chatting to the awesome Nicole tonight about her views on Destiny’s Blood and I guess the rest of the week will be spent on revisions.
I’ve been invited to the Celestial Ball event in Brisbane in June next year and I’m hoping to get the the RWA conference in Hobart in August and I’ve signed up for Worldcon in Seatle next year too. Mmmm the year is filling up.
Destiny’s Blood has been popped off to my lovely beta reader for comments. The ending was a bit rushed by I will revise when I get some comments back.
Yay! I made my goal.
I received the edits back on Robot Hearts’ short stories. I admit at first they went into the too hard basket. I was writing Destiny’s Blood and then I had Gammacon on Saturday. On Sunday I bit the bullet and it was worth it. Three stories under my belt. That leaves the remaining stories which I have tonight and tomorrow to work on. I have ideas how to respond to the editorial comments. I think I can do this. Why the deadline? I’m heading to Glasgow and worldcon on Saturday and I have already booked a proofread. Having lined up a professional I can’t stuff them around. A day maybe, but yeah must do. Great for creating deadlines. Thanks Keri!
Gammacon was well worth it. I went half with Chris Andrews on a booth. It looked great. Chris arranged for a fantasy back drop and the way he arranged the tables gave us a great footprint. Our position wasn’t great but we had a number of good book buyers. Enough that we broke even and maybe made a small profit.
This was our table just after we had set up.
This is a close up of my side of the booth, with Chris in the background setting up. Chris writes fantasy too but also useful booklets for planning novels and books on writing. They sell really well.
Anyway, this week is a roller coaster until I get on my plane.
Usually I aim to write my blog posts on Thursdays. However, this week I got a migraine. Apart from holding it together for a visit by Patty Jansen, I spent the rest of the day in bed. Friday wasn’t much of a blast either.
What did I achieve? Text of the short story collection Robot Hearts was sent to the Ian McHugh for editing. Big tick. Lots of work install for me I am sure.
Associated with that process was registering the ISBNs and the CIP entry.
Destiny’s Blood is a 40,000 words but I haven’t added to it since Thursday due to the above short story collection and migraine.
Amber Rose is at 18,000 words and same as previous.
But there is always this afternoon, after the romance reader lunch.
Large Print version and hardback version of Emerald Fire has been achieved in the sense that I have finished the read through and made corrections, created the files, registered the ISBNs and requested the covers. A little bit finicky but all necessary. I also did the CiP entry for those too.
I also wrote a short post on my Dani Kristoff page. Here
This was to announce the cover of Destiny’s Blood.
Other monumental events. The Founders’ Legacy was critiqued in the CSFG crit group and Wednesday nigh.t Despite the blood stains from at times difficult feedback, I have some ideas to go forward and that’s the value of critiquing sessions, particularly when you know you have a difficult book and that it will create divergent opinions. However, as I have a full writing schedule revisions will be a while and I have to think things through. As I was being the one critted I had this month to do some reading for fun, so I have read a few things, currently The Time of the Cat by Tansy Rayner Roberts, who took out an amazing three Aurealis Awards last month. Lucky I had a copy because I supported the kick starter. It is a clever and amusing read and I’m still working on it. Listening to audio books, I’m still in Paladin books by T Kingfisher, just onto Paladin’s Faith. I might change up my listening after this but not sure what’s next. It depends on what I have already purchased.
Viewing wise, I stayed up late to finish Bridgeton Series 3. All hail Nicola Coughlan and her perfect breasts. I love her comeback when someone tried to body shame her. People like me with perfect breasts…I am now a member of the perfect breasts club. Thank you Nicola.
If you are into crime series, Brit Box has McDonald and Dobbs, which we have binged watched. Longer format kind of like Vera but not Vera obviously. Set in Bath, lovely, clever plots and very sympathetic characters. Thoroughly recommend. I’ve also been watch old Columbo episodes and they are fascinating.
Did I mention I was popping off to the World SF convention in Glasgow on 3 August?
I arrived back from New Zealand on Tuesday evening. Unfortunately, I developed a migraine while I was waiting for my bag to come off the carousel. Annoying because I could hardly see and I was on a tight timeframe to make my flight to Canberra. Anyway, it was straight to bed for me. Luckily I was able to take some panodol when the aura started.
Yesterday was the day job and I was going to write after but took it easy instead.
Today is writing day. First up a bit of admin. I had to upload the updated version of Vorn and the First Comers, which now includes a map and the first chapter of Argenterra. I may as well make the book magnet, a book magnet. I also published for the first time a hardback book. I made this one of Vorn and the First Comers. It looks really flash. It is the first time it is on paper as it has only ever been an ebook.
I have also made two hardcopy versions of Ruby Heart, after my read through and fixing typos. There will be a normal hardcover version and a large print version with special font for Dyslexic readers. The large print is really for libraries as they are expensive to produce and I don’t think people buy them. But I could be wrong. The next one off the rank is Emerald Fire. I’m reading it through for typos and for plot and character because I have started writing Amber Rose, book 3 in the Cry Havoc series. Over 5000 words so far and it’s cracking along. I am not sure why it’s cracking on but it seems to be. I’m over 20,000 words into Lightning Strike as well. I only started writing Amber Rose because I’d left Lightning Strike open on my desktop and had to wait for Matthew to close up for me. That took a couple of days.
However, I can honestly say Keri Arthur’s recommended 1000 words a day will get you a book in three months is pretty solid advice. I wrote 1000 words a day while in NZ. I just haven’t quite managed it since I’ve been back. When I get back from aqua aerobics I will get cracking, perhaps on both of them. I do have another project but I’m happy to keep that on the back burner while I deal with these two.
I have the Regency Romance to revise and a few other WIPs but no rush as they say! Hahaha.
Finally, Awakening has a rating on Amazon. Five star. Thank you to whoever put that there.
I almost forgot. Hot off the press, I’ll be in Glasgow for the World Science Fiction Convention in early August! And I am also going to be an attending author at the Fiction and Friction Signing in October in Adelaide.
I have two books on submission:
Grandma Neebs: Through the Pantry Door, middle grade fantasy
The Founders’ Legacy: Sihem, science fiction, feminist science fiction, SF romance and could be read as a queer YA
It’s highly competitive and tough to get into traditional publishing. Nevertherless, I’m giving it another go.
I’ve just submitted my first short story submission in years. I wrote a bloody short story! And I enjoyed it. Yay me. I am still a writer. You may think what the hell she’s published books and stories what is she talking about.
Well if you don’t write for a bit or you are finding it hard to engage, which I have done, you don’t feel like a writer much. In my case, I started thinking you were a writer and now you’re just in limbo. However, I had never considered giving up willingly at all. I just felt like I wasn’t doing what I should to be a writer.
I watch way too much crime series on streaming services. Hello, Vera! Broadchurch, Midsummer Murders etc. And for the pandemic years, which aren’t really over, I have been very confined in my taste for viewing and reading too. Thank god for Audibile I say.
I’m scheduled for knee surgery on Monday and may be unable to write during May. I’ll be on sick leave from my day job too. However, I must admit that I have had ideas running around my head. This is a good sign. Now I just have to be more devoted and methodical to the act of writing. Now that the short story is done, I can get back to other projects, of which I have many.
Better get back to it. I just needed to virtue signal about actually achieving something.
I am back here again blogging. Not year long wait this time.
Since I blogged last I’ve been making a concerted effort to reengage with my creative writing.
I booked to go the Australian Romance Readers Awards in Sydney at the end of April. I’m not up for an award or anything (not having published anything in the last couple of years) but I want to reengage with the scene, with other authors, some of whom at great buddies. And it’s a great event, at a great venue and Matthew and I will enjoy ourselves.
The next thing I did was actually get out some manuscripts. I have a middle grade book I’m writing so I reviewed what I had written so far and extended the story a bit. I have a lot of works in various stages of progress. I targeted two novels that have been almost there for a while. The science fiction one, Awakenings, I reviewed and then sent to beta readers. That was a massive milestone for me.
On Saturday, I also shared a table to sell books at the Geek Markets here in Canberra. Again, this was to help me get back into my writing groove. It’s not all just about drafting, revising and editing. There’s actual promotion, selling and getting into the scene. I had an okay day. I sold books, talked about my books and answered questions about my books. I hung with fellow writers, some I haven’t seen in two years.
I wore a mask most of the time and I’d say about 30 per cent of the people I saw walking past had masks. They don’t have to wear them, but there are still a lot of Covid around. I seriously like Canberra geeks. I have now put in to book for Gammacon in Canberra in July. (I hope I managed to snag a table)
Anyhow, something in what I’ve done appears to have worked. Today, I started working on The Changeling Curse, the sequel to The Sorcerer’s Spell, a paranormal romance, very spicy. Something happened. I am sharing the covers with you below. They have been languishing for so long for me to put the words with them.
Today, I fell into writing, editing etc and entered the ‘zen’ zone. I call it the zen zone because everything around me disappears. I lose track of time. I go into the space where my story is unfolding. I feel excitement. It’s like a drug. I just want more and more. This feeling kept going. I did lose track of time. I had an appointment and shamefacedly realised that I’d been absent. I went out and then I came back and started writing again. And the zen zone came back. I am so excited by this. I have passion again. I feel like I did when I first discovered writing. It feels so amazing.
I can’t describe how happy and invigorating this makes me feel. Now instead of setting goals like ‘half hour a day on a manuscript’ I’m setting myself goals ‘take a break before you wreck yourself.’ For so long I was in a creative desert.
I’m really grateful to my writing buddy Lily Mulholland. She beta read The Changeling Curse for me and also made comments and suggested edits. These small things, which probably took her a lot of time, have been amazing. I feel like I can do this. I feel like I’m a writer again.
I could probably look back on the last month or so and see other activities that have helped me reinvigorate my passion. I beta read for two authors. I sat down with Kaaren and talked about her story. We brainstormed ideas for the plot. I said to her… Gee I feel like I’m a writer. I also beta read another story and it somehow turned me back onto excitement of creating stories. These small things were stoking the flames I think. I did not think I’d feel this enthusiasm again. I kept wondering what I was going to do with myself if I didn’t write. My future seemed bleak. Now it doesn’t anymore.
I had to share this with you all. I have my passion back. I want to weep with the joy of it. I hope it doesn’t go away again.
Here are the covers that I have had for years. I hope to get these books out this year.
I keep thinking that I’ve been doing this PHD for years and I haven’t written anything creative in ages. That’s a big fat lie!
In the early years of my PhD I put out a lot of books. I also republished books that I had received the rights back from publishers. I call bull on my thinking there.
Then, you know this is a creative writing PhD that I’m doing and I have written a novel. Isn’t a novel a creative piece of work? Well, yes, I say, it is. It may not be published yet but that does not mean it doesn’t exist.
That doesn’t count, part of my brain says…but what about that short story you wrote last year and that was published in late December? Mmmm???
I wrote a short story! I was productive! Evidence.
Okay I’m not productive all the time….right…and maybe I have high expectations…maybe I look on jealously as friends launch books and post about word counts…
I am too hard on myself. I often thing my kids are harsh critics of me, but I think I err. I am my harshest critic!
I do have manuscripts that are sitting there waiting for the final run through…They stick like a knife between my shoulder blades, sending their angry, neglected thoughts into my skin. I will get to them.
Anyway….about that short story. Crash Baby appears in Unnatural Order, an anthology published by CSFG publishing and edited by Alis Franklin and Lyss Wickramasinghe. The premise of the anthology was to write in a non-human voice or from a non-human perspective. Crash Baby is written from the perspective of a maintenance robot. The story was inspired by my new baby granddaughter and the long hours where I helped care for her in her first year. I also have lots of robot story ideas….I feel a collection coming on one day.
A first for me is that I share the Table of Contents with my partner Matthew Farrer who wrote about monster love. Here is the blurb!
Is an unlikely friendship enough to save a human and a voidbeast? Can a robot’s heart be broken? What happens to the demons when all the humans are gone? Can dishonest hearts find peace?
By all accounts a very good line up so go check it out.
It has been hectic here at Dweebenhiem! A lot happening on the publishing front.
First of all, new book!
Isn’t the cover wonderful?
Are you in the mood for a light-hearted romp through space? Forget POTUS! Take a spell from despair! Join Opi and her gravity problems. Opi Battles the Space Pirates is an adult SF romance, which features an older heroine and no explicit sex scenes.
Here’s the blurb
Ms Opeia Gayens, head of AllEarth Corp, has a problem—her company is rotten with Space Pirates. She wants to get rid of them once and for all. An unexpected invitation to dinner challenges her plans to be the bait that will draw the nasty pirates out. It’s been forever since she’s been on a date—just been Opi. Somehow, Owain McDevitt, mild-mannered, potato farmer from the planet Islay 2 is drawn into the intrigue. Yet, no one is who they seem, least of all Owain McDevitt.
Betrayal after betrayal threatens Opi’s existence and she must discover who the traitor really is before she can find her true path to happiness.
Opi Battles the Space Pirates is out on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited for 3 months. Then it goes wide to other retailers.
Some of you may recall my first long form publication was Rayessa and the Space Pirates, which was picked up by Harlequin’s Escape Publishing (digital imprint) in 2013. Rayessa had been languishing my hard drive for a number of years. It started as a short story, maybe way far back as 2002. I was writing the story for Elsewhere. At the time the first 7,500 were the longest short I’d written and it still wasn’t done. When the space pirates turned up, well I knew it wasn’t going to be a short story anymore. It ended up as a novella, then a slightly longer novella. It took it out and revised it a couple of times. I gave it to a couple of people to read with some positive feedback. I submitted it a couple of places. Once it was forwarded to the children’s editor at HarperCollins Australia. It was rejected but the rejection was along the lines of we already have stories along these lines and sorry to take so long to get back to you. Then it sat in the hard drive a little longer. Then I went to my first RWA conference in the Gold Coast (2012) where Penguin launched their Destiny Imprint and Harlequin launched Escape. It was actually at the launch cocktail party of Destiny that I clued in that Rayessa was also a romance. Chinking champagne glasses with Nicole Murphy I said that I thought I had romance arc in some of my stories. She was like ‘Dah, why do you think I told you to come here?’ The clue people was the slideshow they had playing on the walls. Science fiction scenes at a romance conference.
So Rayessa was published. Then I wrote Rae and Essa’s Space Adventures, which should have been titled, Essa Takes on the Space Pirates or better still. Essa Rescues Mum from the Space Pirates etc. Now Escape decided they didn’t want any more spate pirate stories from me when they took Rae and Essa’s Space Adventures (and also revamped the Rayessa cover). Not with this family at least. So I changed the ending to Rae and Essa’s Space Adventures so there wasn’t too much hanging. But I always had in mind to write Opeia’s story. Opeia (Opi) is the mother of Rae and Essa, the head of AllEarth Corp.
Now pesky ideas will keep bothering you until your write them down. I thought I’d dealt with Opi by writing some notes about the story in my ‘Notebook of Really Cool Ideas’ that Gillian Polack gave me when I started the PhD. It is meant as a place to park ideas so I can come back to them when the Phd is done. Well obviously Opi had other ideas.
Opi meets NaNoWriMo and viola! she is out there on paper! I tried to be more emotionally contemplative in Opi Battles the Space Pirates. My wonderful beta reader (who is a fan of the first two books) gave me feedback. I had to rewrite the beginning and the ending after that. That plot twist that I had come up with but abandoned because I was trying to address my plot addiction by being a bit more touchy feely, well I had to put the plot bit in. It’s just that type of book.
It’s fluff, it’s funny (I think so) and it’s light and possibly uplifting. (Complete opposite to the Dragonwine series). Opi Battles the Space Pirates is also longer than the first two books, just under 60,000 words, it’s adult, but not sexy, more sweet in keeping with the other two books. It features an older protagonist (42) and a space battle goddamit!
Stay tuned. Cover art is in progress. Proofreading is in progress. I’m going to self-publish this one for fun.
Just to refresh your memory, here are the covers of the first two books, which I adore. Not sure the wonderful covers sell as many books as they should, but they are pretty and swish.
Link to the Escape website here. The books are at all major e-retailers. You can also buy these books in large print format/hardcover for libraries I think. I can’t afford to buy myself a hard back version. There are some copies in libraries in Australia and the USA. Here.
However, I plan to have a print version of Opi Battles the Space Pirates. Just for fun, for a laugh and maybe as giveaways. So watch out.
Oh and the moral of the story? Don’t throw anything out. Learn from rejections. Don’t give up. Keep writing. Follow your heart…and whatever!
My indie published Argenterra, Silverlands book 1, is on promotion this weekend for 99 cents.
Argenterra is an epic fantasy novel, interweaving three romances over the three books. The story starts with Sophy and Aria and then joins up with Rae’s when Sophy and Aria are whipped into the world of Argenterra a land where everyone can use magic except Sophy. The story is YA appropriate.
Argenterra is featured among around 100 books, from SF through to Fantasy so here is your chance to do some exploring. There are some very interesting books here for 99 cents.
The link to the promo is here and you can select via your favourite retailer. For example, click on Amazon, iBooks, Kobo etc and you will see the books that are featured for 99 cents with that retailer. Links are also geocoded in understand.
Many thanks to Patty Jansen for allowing me to participate in her promo weekend.
Oathbound, Silverlands book two is still with the editor but I hope to get that our in the next few months. The Ungiven Land is close behind that.
Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing 