On turning Seventy

This morning I exercised my newly acquired privilege under the current water restrictions of watering two hours later than those younger than seventy, standng in full view in the front garden hand watering with a hose, hoping for the dramatic arival of authority to interrupt the task.

Sadly, I was left to water in peace.

Other than that, turning seventy has been a non-event. I don't feel any different. I still face the future with excitement, certain it holds many more challenges to be faced and overcome. My move to popular fiction still holds a delicious sense of uncertainty (my Friday Pitch to Allen & Unwin expires on January 18th. If I've not had a response by then, it has failed and Plan "B" comes into operation).

The Fair Trader, at Shadowrose Publications, is still in limbo because the publisher is back in hospital again (she spent most of September there). When she wrote apologising for the delay, my response was "Bugger the book, get well first." I hope she took it to heart.

The Widowmaker, at Whiskey Creek Press, is still on schedule for a May, 2008, release and I'm looking forward to the edits when they arrive. They will decide whether Whiskey Creek form part of Plan "B" or not.

I really enjoy edits. They're concentrated learning...and I have so much to learn.

It's a great life (still)

Amy(?)

I'm having a ball!

Rewriting the opening story of the Marrak family saga as is pure bliss. I'm back in the world I knew intimately for fifty years and was the background of my life almost since birth. My father loved it, returning whenever possible.

I'm talking about the Sea.

I've enjoyed writing romance, there are still four books to be released under Amy Gallow's name, and my future books will all carry a strong romantic theme, but it's great to live the story as well.

Back to work.

It's a great life.

Amy(?)

A Fair Trader

This is my preferred cover mock-up for the Shadowrose release of A Fair Trader. I like it because it refers to the opening words when Ruth, the heroine, is watching the sun sink into the western horizon and hoping to see the fabled green flash as the last rays of the sun is refracted through the water.

In forty years seagoing, I watched the sun disappear below a watery horizon in every kind of weather and have a very healthy scepticism about the "flash", but I sailed with people who would swear they'd seen it and were quite offended when I laughed.

Ruth didn't get to see it either, but I don't suppose it mattered to her at the time.

It's a great life.

Amy

Rejection Blues - I think not!

This year I had six books accepted and two released so the first rejection of the year didn't loom as large as it might have done.

It was very courteous, praising my writing style for smoothness and readability, but regretting that the story just didn't draw her in.

She was right! The romance was almost an afterthought.

In 1997, I grasped the chance to retire and try my hand as a full time writer and chose to write romance. My first contract came in 1999 and the publisher required a female pseudonym for marketing and Amy Gallow was born. Since then she had done quite well, publishing four print books in Australia and having seven books accepted in America, with three already released.

I will miss her, but my stories have shifted incrementally from simple romances to the complexity I enjoy and I fear she has written her last book.

The pirate series will come out under my own name and I will return to the First Family stories and rewrite them as the science fiction/fantasy they really are.

It's a great life.

Amy(?)