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Off to New Orleans

Posted in General excitment, New Orleans, RT Convention, Travel, tagged , , , on May 9, 2014| 2 Comments »

So my bags aren’t quite packed, but my darling man bought a keyboard cover for the iPad Air so I can take it instead of the heavy laptop. I’m so excited by that. He is awesome. I didn’t have time today to go shopping but Matthew went after work.

Tonight my children cooked me a late birthday/early mother’s day dinner, with prezzies. Homemade lasagne and flourless chocolate cake with coconut cream/chocolate frosting. It was great to see them and I’ll miss them while I’m away. Matthew is staying here holding the fort, having horror movie nights, hopefully not eating too badly and enjoying the cold. I understand that New Orleans is warm. Yay, I had to totally rethink my wardrobe, but I’m quite prepared to shop!

I’ve printed out the stuff I need, now I just need to organise what I’m taking with me. Not easy to do when you’re on the computer.

I injured my knee in the move in November and have a torn tendon. Everything had been going fairly well, not hurting, able to walk, except these last couple of days it’s flared up. Now I have to get on a plane for 15 hours with a bad knee. I’ve bought a knee support and just hope I won’t need to buy a walking stick. Eek!

I’m looking forward to the RT Convention and the shopping and eating, except I believe I’m now allergic to fish so I have to be careful. I love fish so you can imagine not being able to eat it is going to be tough. The other night we had chips from the local takeaway and I reacted to them. I’m getting more and more sensitive.

I’m taking Invoked, my current WIP with me to work on. I’ve not done much in recent weeks except on writing dates, with  my mother being deadly ill over Easter and then family coming down to say their goodbyes, but mum rallied, but is still exiting this life, just more slowly. I really thought she was leaving and I went through all the saying goodbyes, the crying, the grieving and now I have to adjust to her being still here, but also with a different personality. It’s just plain odd, but the brain injuries do weird things.

Anyway, it’s time to cuddle my man and leave this computer be. I may blog while I’m away, it depends on how well wordpress and ipad get one.

Waves!

A shot of me and Cat Sparks

A shot of me and Cat Sparks

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Canberra Writers Day

Posted in Conflux Writers Day, Editing, Networking, Writer conventions, Writing, tagged , , , on April 10, 2014| 4 Comments »

The wonderful Nicole Murphy and her team of volunteers put on a wonderful day last Saturday (April 5), presenting the inaugural Canberra Writers Day and the Aurealis Awards. The venue, University House, particularly the Great Hall, had wonderful charm. There’s this long gold fish pond in the quadrangle that I’d love to take home to my place.

Conflux Inc with Nicole at the helm put up bid to run the Aurealis Awards for two years in Canberra. Nicole wanted to make it worthwhile for people to come up for the ceremony and thought up a professional writers day.

The first thing I have to say is that both events were very well run. Nicole and the team were excellent. That’s pretty awesome for a multi stream event. Also, I know it was hard financially as there was absolutely no sponsorship money to be had for either event. That’s pretty tough going. I did note that Escape Publishing put an ad in the Conflux Writers Day booklet. Awesome.

I had a full day and I presented a talk. The plenary sessions were pretty amazing. Joanne Anderton, Kaaron Warren, Ker Arthur, Ian McHugh. All of them had inspiring and interesting presentations on their processes, their journey.

Joanne blew me away with her writing process and her copious notebooks, all so clean. Mine are NOT clean but I do have a similar weakness when it comes to notebooks and pens. I do much less thinking though. But then Joanne is an amazingly talented author and bloody hardworking.

Kaaron shamed me most terribly with her talk on using the minutes when you don’t have hours to write. I’ve known Kaaron a long time and I’ve always admired her talent but also what a devoted mother she is and how family focussed. She’s an inspiration.

Keri talked about her journey to becoming a published author and a New York Times best seller. Her story was a amazing. She persevered when many would have given up. Thank you for the inspiration Keri.

Ian McHugh talked about submitting work, write and submit and repeat was my take away message. Ian always inspires me with his focus and the stories he writes.

I went to the shorter concurrent sessions, which were 20 minutes long. I gave one myself on ‘You are not alone’ the value of writing relationships. It was about writing groups, writing buddies, writing dates and writing retreats. But I ran out of time, which surprised me and I forgot to talk about the really good part of writing retreats- the socialising (read drinking and talking crap). Someone came up to me afterwards and thought I was going to talk about relationships in writing, you know science fiction with romance. I laughed so hard. I would have loved to talk on that topic.

Craig Cormick was awesome.  I have to reprogram my head to say I’m going to win at this writing gig. Marcus Armann talked about Evernote and Scrivener and I’m now tempted to buy the later writing program, particularly after catching Phil Berrie with his word frequency proofing/editing talk. Scrivener has analytical tools that does that stuff. I’m always repeating myself when I don’t want to.

Russell Kirkpatrick sorted his mob into top downers and bottom uppers in the world building sense. He’s definitely a top downer, planning his worlds and then writing the story. I’m quite near the other end. To me it’s story first with an idea of the world, but often I build as I go.

Chris Andrews talked about blogging, which was an excellent session. I learned something. See Chris!

The lovely Shannon B Curtis talk about using Microsoft Word to navigate our novels. That was also very interesting.

The Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild had a table selling books (theirs and others) and I bought a copy of Joanne Anderton’s collection, The Bone Chime Song and other stories and lost it. (so if anyone found a copy. It could be mine).

Overall it was great to network with people and also see the new faces. Again I didn’t get around to everyone to chat.

Congratulations to Nicole Murphy and the team for a wonderful event.

 

I didn’t take many photos during the day, except this one of Russell Kirkpatrick. (Happy birthday Russell for tomorrow!!!).

Fantasy author, Russell Kirkpatrick, presenting at Conflux Writers Day

Fantasy author, Russell Kirkpatrick, presenting at Conflux Writers Day

PS I’ll have to write about the Aurealis Awards in another post. My time has run out this morning. I decided to get up early to write. Though technically writing a blog post doesn’t count as writing.

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Author spotlight interview with Glenda Larke

Posted in fantasy, Interviews, Writing, tagged , , , , on April 8, 2014| 4 Comments »

One of my favourite people in the world is Glenda Larke. Not only is she a wonderful, knowledgeable and interesting person, she is an exceptional author. I’m so pleased her next book is out (or coming out) that I thought it would be a good idea to interview her.

Your new novel is coming out, Lascar’s Dagger. Can you tell us a bit about it?

It’s the first book in a trilogy, The Forsaken Lands.

It is set in a fictional world, evocative of our 17th to 19th centuries when the expansion of the Dutch and British East India Companies led to colonial wars and aggressive expansion. The wealth of Asia fed the prosperity of Europe at the expense of Asian freedom.

In my fictional world, a lascar arrives from the East with a magical dagger — and nothing is quite the same again…Image

Glenda, tell us a bit about yourself (where you live, how long you’ve been writing, previous publications etc)

I’ve spend most of my adult life abroad: Malaysia including Borneo, Austria, Tunisia–but now I’ve returned to Australia to live, not too far from where I was born. I started to write fiction when I was a kid, but my first published work was all photo-journalism articles (travel and nature). My first novel was accepted for publication when I was 52.

Since then I’ve had three trilogies and a standalone published. The standalone, Havenstar, was the first published, and — weirdly — has garnered the most passionately enthusiastic reviews and the least negative ones, yet has sold the least copies.

Glenda, what do you find so attractive about the fantasy genre? In what ways do you find it fulfilling?

It enables a writer to explore all facets of humanity with greater ease than any other genre. For example, within the pages of The Lascar’s Dagger, a reader will find cultural misunderstandings and irrational prejudice; the tragedy of arranged marriage; the greyer areas of murder and piracy; misuse of inherited power; religious compassion and spirituality alongside evil, sanctimonious self-righteousness; sacrifice, bravery and honour; battles and … Well, you get the picture. In a fantasy, anything can happen. The secret is to make it believable.

Have you had any feedback from readers about your fantasy worlds and if so what have they said?

Each of my trilogies is very different from the next. The Isles of Glory is more of a kick-ass swords-and-scorcery. With intelligent, aquatic aliens.

The Mirage Makers is really a story about an individual stolen from her culture and family, rather as children of Australia’s stolen generation were, and how she exacts her revenge — and the cost involved. All with mirages.

The third trilogy, called either the Watergivers or the Stormlord trilogy,  is about the preciousness of water and understanding what it takes to live in a desert nation and survive. With magic. And pedes and ziggers…

Some readers have loved them all; others have favourites. As I said above, everybody raved about Havenstar. Probably the least popular of all was the second book of The Mirage Makers. Some people found that very difficult to read because it reminded them of their worst memories of highschool!!

What are you working on at the moment?

Book Two of The Forsaken Lands. Publication is scheduled for January.

What is your writing process? (planner, panster, write every day, write sporadically, writers block etc).

Not much of a planner. Or rather, I plan like mad, then never follow it because I think of better ways to tell the story. I write anytime, anywhere – literally. In the past that has involved sitting on  the floor of crowded Asian airports, or the deck of a fishing boat chugging up the Kinabatangan River, or in a study so untidy I can’t find anything…

I do find that as I grow older, my ability to write for long hours has diminished. Writer’s block? I write anyway, knowing it’s mostly rubbish, throw it out and try again. Until I get it right.

What do you prefer — drafting the story or revising and reworking?

Reworking & revising, because that’s the fun part. That’s when you decide that maybe, just maybe, this particular story is not crap after all.

What part of writing do you find hardest?

Almost everything?

It’s self-torture. Nothing comes easy. You pick yourself up off the floor and try again. And again. The weird thing is that I never thought of myself as a masochist — yet I must be, because I would do it all over again. Every bit. And still believe I enjoyed myself.

What do you plan to work on next?

Book 3.

You write under different names. Does maintaining these identities (blog, twitter and facebook) it take a lot of time? Do you have any tips for those of us who write under more than one name?

Well, I do double up a lot. My webmaster set up a system whereby I can send blog posts on writing/publishing straight to my website. My tweets go straight to Facebook.

Changing my name was at the request of my publisher at the time. They thought Noramly was too difficult for readers to remember. If I were to do it again, I’d start with the name Larke.

There are only two reasons to use different names: 1) because books flopped and a change of identity seems a wise strategy, or 2) because you write several different kinds of books. For example, Melody Silver for romance, Morgan Sheild for fantasy and Mike Storre for military sci-fi.
You can find Glenda on the web

Blog:
http://glendalarke.blogspot.com.au/

Twitter: @glendalarke

Website: www.glendalarke.com

Facebook: The Glenda Larke Page
 http://www.facebook.com/groups/105625628881/

 

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Finding focus

Posted in To do lists, Writing, tagged , , on February 13, 2014| 2 Comments »

So after being a time fritterer (see earlier post), I’ve got into a rhythm. I  have been writing for days and I don’t feel guilty anymore about not being focussed. I go back to work on Monday, but I can do so without being ashamed.

I finished a revision of two novels. One being 35,000 words and the other 57,000 words. Compared to one of my fat fantasies, they are small, but still a lot of work.

As you see from yesterday’s post, I’m back onto another MS, Emerald Fire, which I haven’t opened in two years and only partly drafted. When drafting that I wanted to make sure I could do something, that is, complete the plot. Then I realised it was missing something, the people interaction so I put it away with the intention of going back to it. As Ruby Heart hasn’t found a home and it’s the second part of that, there wasn’t much hurry.

I’ve decided this is to be my writing year, but I note in the schedule that besides the day job I have two overseas trips planned. It’s starting to get crowded. At least the Aurealis Award judging is done. Then again I realise I did say I would do the accounts for Conflux and present at the writers day. But both of those are relatively small things. Mmm actually I realise I committed to doing something else. Sigh. Crazy in the head.

I also sat down and wrote up my to do stuff on my white board. I have set myself the task of writing at least two more novels in the current series. Cough. Oh dear. I’ve left one off. Make that three! That’s a 35,000, 56,000 and a 80,000 word novel. I also have a wishlist in there of at least commencing either a Scottish historical or Regency Romance, but there is no hurry on those as they are dream projects that I would like to tackle, rather than what I think I must tackle. I also have a couple of MSs to revise in my pipeline, but they are on a as needs basis. And if by any chance I do all those, I have some other projects in the pipeline and bugger Into the Dark Glass is to be revised/rewritten and I completely forgot about that. MMMM.

So really, I’m not really looking around for something to do. I find the white board helps me focus on what I need to do. Then again I have ignored the thing on many occasion. Last year I knew I was going to be terribly busy so I bought a scheduler to put on the wall to map out everything (like a white board but with days). I was so busy I didn’t even open it and now it is rubbish because it was for 2013.

Anyhow, I’m taking the day off today and going visiting. I’ll be back in the grind tomorrow, or this evening if I have any oompf left. As I live with a writer, he perfectly understands if I am attached to my laptop. I love it.

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Emerald Fire

Posted in Emerald Fire, Ruby Heart, Steampunk, Writing, Young adult, tagged , , , , on February 12, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Emerald Fire is the sequel to Ruby Heart (currently looking for a home with trusty agent). This is a young adult (maybe) steam punk, Victorian gothic horror, romance (yeah!). I don’t normally posts bit of my work, particularly first drafts, but I’ve just opened up Emerald Fire, which I started two years ago. After  that long a break, I still love the opening.

Edit: Ah alas. I had to take it down. I realised that it contains spoilers. So sorry.

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The time fritterer

Posted in distractions, Writing, tagged , , , on February 5, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I am usually a focussed person who gets things done. But I seem now that I’m on holidays to see time just fly past without me achieving anything. I thought these holidays would be spent industriously writing up a storm, churning out novels and revisions, but I must be a lunatic.

We moved house. Still not settled either. We have tradesmen doing repairs, which can be disruptive.

I was reading for the Aurealis Awards and had a hard slog at the end.

I’ve started weaving. Trudi Canavan came up for the weekend to give me lessons on my table loom. I love it. Here is some sample shots. The first is a log cabin pattern Trudi got me to do on my knitters loom or ‘fixed heddle’. It was so much fun.

log cabinOnce Trudi had me reading the pattern we set about to work on the table loom (after she and Paul meticulously rejuvenated it-the loom was given to me and it’s pretty old).

sample scarfBecause this table loom has four heddles, I can do twill patterns. Trudi set me up to do a sample scarf with different patterns. Cough, it’s riddled with mistakes, but the colours work well together.

loomThis one is a shot of the loom. It’s all quite new and exciting for me. I only do short sessions on the loom. I use it as thinking time (which is probably why I’m making mistakes). However, I am starting to understand the workings of it.

I bought a table from the recycle shop at the tip and am currently fixing it up. Photos below.

the beginningThis is what I bought for $50. It took almost all day to fetch a trailer, drive back, then find help to unload it and take the trailer back. No wonder I was knackered. Anyway it’s nice and solid.

Next thing you know I have to sand it.

the start of sandingsandingmid

And today I bought some stain. It’s not a perfect match. I was tossing up whether it was maple or cedar stain, but as it is quite old and varnish darkens over time. You see I don’t want to redo the legs. However, I believe the match is not quite there but I’m in the I don’t care phase. I’m not a perfectionist, obviously. Now I will wait to see if I leave it as it is or I sand it back and try a different stain or sand and restain the legs. Eep!

sanded

I went to Sydney to see some friends for a few days. However, I did read some Georgette Heyer.

I’ve been babysitting one day, doctor’s appointments for ear and now knee. These are passion killers for creativity.

Oh and I bought Season 1 and 2 of The Paradise, which I tried to keep to one or two episodes a day, but um…can’t. All done now. I can resume my normal life.

I forgot about the heat. The office is almost set up, but during the heat wave it was unbearable and I don’t want to run two aircons at the same time and I was too floored by the heat to come upstairs and bring my lap top down.

Enough excuses. But honestly I don’t know why time is flying. I think it may be a fatigue thing. If I was truly inspired I’d be writing a way like a mad woman.

I thought I got rid of my distractions, but today I’m going to an information session on millinery. Sigh. This is meant to be my writing year, but I’m planning a course to do.

Anyway, I’ve spent probably two hours revising a manuscript. And I’m here again ready to start. Well, gee, look at that. It’s lunch time.

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The hard slog

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on January 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I’m still on my writing retreat.

Writing,writing, trying to write. I can escape if I want to but that’s counter productive. I’ve been looking forward to this retreat, the time to dedicate myself to writing and hanging with other writers who are very cool and who I count as friends. I’m not going to slack off no matter how tempting.

But sometimes focussing is hard. Sometimes writing without stuffing one’s face with chocolate, lollies and shortbread seems impossible, no matter how upset the stomach gets later. I’m doing it though. Writing and stuffing my face with junk.

I have to rest my wrist though and dab on the anti inflammatory cream. I certainly don’t want a dose of acute RSI back.

It’s currently hot across all of southern Australia, even here in the mountains at 35.2 degrees C. We’ve shut the door and put on the aircon to help us through the day.

I was hoping to push through to 70,000 words today. I may make it. I’m nearly at 67,000 words. If I do, I may break out the knitters loom and warp it up.

Catch us on the FWOR blog.

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Not quite mid-way on the retreat

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 10, 2014| 1 Comment »

So it’s officially day four of the writers’ retreat and I have a few observations about myself.

I don’t have too much trouble focusing. In fact, I zone out and miss out on the conversations around the table, particularly the ones about me.

I cannot write anywhere near as fast or as much as I used to. I don’t know why that is. There is RSI, which limits me to about 5000 words a day. However, I’m finding even that hard for some reason.

I have a plot summary for this novel I’m writing, but at times it is not very helpful. I have to invent stuff and then today I found that I had left out a portion of the novel because it was going to wrap up too early. I sort of knew instinctively that I was rushing things  around chapter 7, but when I looked at where I was at today I was certain I had. So I’ve been back there, expanding scenes. I’d completely left out Emmett’s point of view from about chapter 8. He’s important to Sage, and he’s the other point of view character, so smack me on the butt. I guess I got caught up in what is happening to Sage. When I’ve finished the story arc, I’ll have to go back and look at the pacing and the balance of action and character. This has been the most challenging thing I’ve written and I really do want to finish the draft. I think it’s going to be fab. I hope it’s going to be fab.

Nicole Murphy and I were chatting this morning and she said we aren’t normal. Writing 5000 words a day was not normal. 2000 to 3000 words was more normal for a writer. I’m like, but we used to write 10,000 words, 9000 and 8000. Yep, says Nicole that wasn’t normal, either.

The point is my hyperactivity button is broken. It won’t engage. I don’t have the head space to write 10,000 words. I’m finding pushing to 5000 a day a bit draining and really, really hard. Perhaps it’s this book. I don’t know.

But 5000 per day for 10 days will yield 50,000 words and maybe the end of this book. Technically, we have 12 to 13 writing days on this retreat. We usually bugger off for at least one of them for a Kirkpatrick tour.

I’m also trialling revising a draft of another book in the afternoons, evenings. So far this is working out okay. I’m not doing a lot, but I’ve started and that’s usually the hard part-opening up the document and starting the revision/edit. I want this particular novel out to beta readers this month.

Enough of my whinging!

A new interview will be along soon.

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NanoWriMo

Posted in NanoWriMo, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged , on November 2, 2013| Leave a Comment »

I’m jumping on the bandwagon with NanoWriMo too. I’ve not signed up yet, but November is usually productive for me. The tax is done. Christmas is looming. Now if I didn’t have this uni work to do, I’d be acing it.
However, I do have uni work to do. It is writing though so that’s kind of awesome.
I had hoped to finish Into the Dark Glass (first draft) this year, but I didn’t. I’m about 35,000 words in and I’m polishing the first 20,000 words, which I have hand it. Better get to it.

Happy writing

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