Amy's Amblings - the passing thoughts of a writer (Beware, insanity may be catching)

2011-12-27T12:51:00.000+11:00

What's Happening Now?
I'm collaborating with the Director on the screenplay for the full feature film of "The Widow-Maker" and my learning curve is nearly vertical as I switch from writer to storyteller, re-evaluating every aspect of the story and learning to tell it in a new medium. It's fascinating and I'm having a ball condensing the story into 120 pages of screen play, identifying the essential story points of Lexie's battle with the demons of her past as she matures and grows to meet the challenges of falling in love with a man who does dangerous things. I even made a pun to the Director the the motorcycle called the Widow-Maker was only the vehicle for Lexie's journey to maturity. I'm not sure how he took it because he's in Brisbane and I'm in Melbourne and the screenplay bounces back and forth between us electronically (He probably just groaned and carried on).

After sitting on my top bookshelf for a month, I took down the initial draft of "Coasting" and read it through, marking up the areas that needed re-working. The second draft is finished now and I'm working my way through it to ensure its continuity and flow.(It always amazes me how much changes between drafts)

2011-12-02T11:03:00.001+11:00

My annual contest is running at Coffee Time Romance. If you go to

http://www.coffeetimeromance.com/ContestPage.html and scroll down the page a little you will find my alter ego. David Andrews has given you the chance to win downloads of all the books on our combined list, plus a $25 voucher on CTR.

Have fun, and good luck!

2011-11-25T10:23:00.001+11:00

I'm on a nostalgia trip at the moment, having printed out a hard copy of my first published book-length story. It won two national contests before it was released in 2000, has been printed under license in China, In the UK as a large print book (hard cover and paperback) and released in the US under another name "Mitchell's Valley" with the locale shifted from the Victorian High Plains to Sacramento and the Sierra Nevada mountains. The reviews have been good rather than enthusiastic and I'm considering submitting it under its original title "Mitchell's Run" with the locale reverting back to Australia.
The story and character never quite fitted the US, even though I did my resarch thoroughly, and it's never been released as an e-book.
Saltwater Press, the original publisher, is sadly long defunct now, but I owe much to Diane Colman and I've managed to have all her books of mine rereleased with different publishers except this one, so I've taken the time out from writing the third book of The Alliance series to review it.

These are the three covers so far, the one in the centre being the hard cover large print version.

2011-11-16T08:22:00.001+11:00

The Alliance was reviewed by Regina of Coffee Time Romance and she liked it enough to award it four coffee cups.
This is what she had to say:
Peter is a human that has managed to survive long past a human life span. In doing so, he has set himself the grim task of fighting a group of humans who he feels do not have humanity’s best interest at heart since they are set on taking over human colonies and adding them to the Federation.
Dael is a nearly immortal alien who has taken a human body and become Peter’s mate.
Karrell, Anneke, and Jean-Paul are the children of Peter and Dael.
Gabrielle is Karrell’s wife.
Jack is Karrell and Gabrielle’s son.
Rachael is a Federation agent.
Kamran is a man who is the child of a “spacer” and a peasant. However, he aspires to be much more.
All of Peter’s children must go on 60 missions for the Alliance that he has created to keep the Federation from getting too much of a foothold on human worlds. This is to help them learn, and to help humanity. Anneke is on a current mission on a primitive human planet when she discovers that some Federation agents are about to be killed. While the denizens of this world are cognizant of space travel, they themselves do not have space travel. Keeping one step ahead of those that could harm her is made possible by being able to slip into a place called Limbo. However, at the moment that is not possible since she has decided to rescue the Federation agent Rachael, and does not want to give away where she is from. Keeping Rachael and herself alive and out of the hands of Kamran who is hunting them is easier said than done though. Will she be able to do so? Also, will she be able to lead Rachael where she, and her father, Peter want her to go? Is Kamran truly the enemy, or is he something more? What are his plans for the primitive planet he was raised on? Is the Federation truly the enemy? Will all of Peter’s machinations and manipulations using his children and their powers make the universe a better place? So many questions and only time will reveal the answers.
I truly enjoyed The Alliance. The world building is extraordinary, and the relationships detailed and well thought out. All the characters relate well to each other and in ways that make sense. With as many plots and subplots as there are throughout the story that is a miracle! There is plenty of suspense as well making this book so much more than just a science fiction story, or even a romance. In fact, it puts me more in the mind of a space opera, similar to authors such as Catherine Asaro, and Kay Kenyon. I do wish I had read the first book before this one since I feel as if I would have a better handle on the whole universe, but despite this I found this book to be a very well written science fiction romance. I suggest that you read the first book first though unlike I did so you can follow the storyline more easily. If you enjoy plots, and subplots, romance, suspense, multiple characters, horrible bad guys, bad guys that turn into good guys and unique worlds then you definitely want to pick up a copy The Alliance.
Regina
Reviewer for Coffee Time Romance & More(I think I like her.)

2011-11-12T16:53:00.001+11:00

The first draft of Coasting is finished (I suppose I should call it the eleventh draft, because that's how many times it's been written from beginning to end) It ran to a little over ninety thousand words this time.

I've added photographs of the two ships that inspired the tale. I'd sailed on both of them by the time I wrote the first draft and used them as the skeletons of the Kooyonga and Dargo, just as I used some of the people I'd met over the years of seagoing as skeletons for my characters.

Those shipmates, who read the early versions of the tale, were certain they recognized individual characters and invariably named them. They were always wrong, but it did show how well I'd captured the archetypal characters that populated the coastal shipping industry in the mid-seventies.

I've printed out a hard copy and it sits on the upper shelf of my bookcase. In a month, I'll take it down and read it from beginning to end and then the hard work of crafting it into a finished story will begin.

Wish me luck.

2011-11-02T11:06:00.000+11:00

After fourteen years of sometimes faithful service, I have retired my old computer and disciplined the new one into something approaching my needs, welcomed a new grandchild, designed and test run an online writing course for our local adult education system (whether they take it up will be their commercial decision, but the trial went very well) and returned to a story I first wrote in the mid seventies of last century.
"Coasting" has an interesting background. I'd returned to sea-going after eight years working ashore for Lloyd's Register of Shipping as a ship and engineer surveyor (the period covered the birth and early years of our three children) and had two short stories published in men's magazines (sadly long defunct now).
Buoyed by this success, a writing life beckoned, but engineers do not make decisions without proof of potential success and I set myself the task of writing a novel length manuscript. Logical as ever, I chose to write about something I knew very well, life at sea on the Australian coastal ships.
My first attempt ran to a little over one hundred thousand words, every one typed on an old portable typewriter perched on my knees on watch in the engine room of various ships. The first draft finished, I reread it carefully, acknowledged its faults, did a little cut and paste, and then started again at the beginning.
I stopped when I had ten complete versions of the story and did some hard thinking. I had three school age children now, a challenging, well-paid career and a nervous wife, so I put thoughts of a writing life away and focused on what I had trained myself to do. My eldest daughter, who'd read the story in its various forms, grumbled (I think she saw a lot of herself in the heroine), but that was all.
Coming back to it, thirty plus years later, was a shock. It was amazing how much of it I'd forgotten. I read the ten versions and started planning the eleventh with the skills I'd developed since 1997 and in eighteen published stories.
I'm seventy-five thousand words into it now and am having a ball.
The photos above were taken on a similar ship to one in the story. (The sea was a little rough that day.)

A Chinese Curse

2011-06-22T09:08:00.003+10:00

"May you live in interesting times" is said to be a Chinese curse.

I have avoided war, famine, flood and fire, watched earthquakes and tsunamis from afar, but, on a personal level, my life has been just a little too interesting of late and and I long for a quiet period of "steady as you go" living. It's an unlikely prospect, alas, but I can dream.

On the up side, the edits for "The Alliance" are almost done and all is ready for its release on July 7th by Eternal Press.

The second book of the series sees Peter's children and grandchildren join the struggle, recruiting others into an alliance that will curtail the Federation's freedoms.

I have the usual number of submissions current and some look prospective, especially a favorite of mine, and am deep in the research of others.

A New Year with new books

2011-02-19T07:29:00.005+11:00

We all have periods when our lives seem to spiral out of our control and demands exceed our abilities. I am, hopefully, emerging from one to the news of a contract for the second book of The Alliance series at Eternal Press, to be released in July, and the cover art for "Her Brother's Keeper" at Whiskey Creek Press, to be released in April.

Gemini Judson has done a great job, don't you think?

The back cover blurb reads:

A brother par excellence, comforter, protector, mentor, guide, working overseas to support her and his mother, everything a brother should be and rarely is—or a lover beyond her dreams? Drawn into a web of intrigue by others, Heather’s quandary intensifies as Richard returns to Malaysia when a long-time friend of his father’s suffers a heart attack. The strands of the web begin to tighten when she is sent to join him by the plotters with the intention of compromising her in a drug deal. Richard hustles her out of the country and goes to ground to untangle the matter. Forced to rely on piecemeal and contradictory information, Heather can only guess what is happening to the man she grew up with as a brother, but is now the core of her existence
Amy
Romance with a touch of reality - or vice-versa?

November Contest

2010-11-02T21:19:00.003+11:00

They're running a contest for me as my alter ego, David Andrews, at Coffee Time Romance.
Pop in and read the nice things they've said. There's a twenty-five dollar voucher and downloads of my books up for grabs.

2010-10-07T16:27:00.002+11:00

After a decade of writing as Amy Gallow, thanks to my first publisher's insistence that only women could sell romance books, Eternal Press will release the first book under my own name, David Andrews http://www.eternalpress.biz/book.php?isbn=9781615722136 and I admit to being excited.
A science fiction/adventure/romance about an immortal dynasty of telepaths and their opposition to tyranny in all its forms, I'm quietly proud of it.

Different ships- different tally bands

2010-10-04T14:12:00.003+11:00

An old saying that is part of the culture of the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy, and probably all the national navies that were once part of the British Empire. It acknowledges the cultural differences that can separate two identical ships in the same navy, part history, part personality, part circumstances.
"The First Born" is being published under my own name and that small difference has infected the whole process so far, giving it a different feel to the fourteen previous books under Amy Gallow.
It will be interesting to see how far the difference manifests itself, especially as I have four other books planned as David Andrews.

A Good Companion

2010-07-14T10:30:00.002+10:00

I began writing as a relaxation over thirty years ago, an hour's escape each day from the pressures of a 24/7 career and there were times when I owed my sanity to the practice. I kept a journal too, a lightning conductor where I could write the thoughts it was impolitic to say aloud. Reading my early prose is an education in the way I matured, both personally, and as a writer, through the years.
When I sought feedback by entering competitions some twelve years ago, I found myself with a contract to write five books for a new Australian publisher in fifteen months and a new name, Amy Gallow, because every woman knows that men know nothing about romance. (The name came from my wife's middle and maiden names, proving I knew a little, at least). Fourteen published stories later (Whiskey Creek Press will release "Her Brother's Keeper" later this year)I dusted off some of my earlier ideas and received a contract from Eternal Press for "The First-Born", a science fiction fantasy of time travel, love and some speculative musing over the obituary of a WWI veteran.
It is the first in a series and the first under my own name and you can read more about it and me at http://www.davidandrewsauthor.com
Amy will continue to write romance, with at least one WIP approaching completion.

Another good year?

2010-04-26T07:50:00.004+10:00

I released three books in 2009: "Snow Drifter"; "A Soldier's Woman"; and "A Fair Trader". I've begun this year with five submissions and they are all ticking down to their response dates. Two represent the next stage in my long term planning as a writer and I am understandably nervous, having gone for a while without a rejection. Both were triggered by the uniformly good reviews for the 2009 books, but I wonder if I've not taken a step too far. Only time will tell.
Where next?
That depends on the two.
Rejection without feedback will send me into analysis of the stories and writing, to see how each can be improved while I continue writing at the level where I am successful. I already have two projects at that level and one of the adult education courses I conduct is due to start mid May.
Acceptance will shift my focus to a new level of story and a set of projects waiting to be started.
Either way, I will continue to learn a craft that fascinates me.
Amy
Romance with a touch of reality...or vice versa?

A Best-Selling Author?

2010-01-18T10:03:00.003+11:00

"A Fair Trader" has crept into the bottom of Whiskey Creek's best sellers for January.
Technically, this makes me a best-selling author, but I doubt that the change in circumstances will go to my head.
I won't know the effect this has in terms of royalties until mid-May, nor the cause for its elevation to this status until even later. My publicity contract with Heartfelt Promos is still running and I see its effects by web searches (Google now has twice as many returns for my name, but some of them have been generated by my own and other's efforts. The interview with "Cat" Johnson is a perfect example).

The middle of next month will see the next round of royalties and there will be time for Eternal Press to have returns from their distributors as well as books sold directly. I can then make a judgement of their value to me, as opposed to the revitalized Whiskey Creek Press.

"Her Brother's Keeper" is in the final rewrite stage and I will have to make a decision about where to submit it soon. The romance is good, the lovers engaging, but the intrigue has grown perhaps too complex for Harlequin, reflecting my personal knowledge of the environment.

That aside, it's a good yarn, told with verve and authenticity, and I suspect it will do well with reviewers.

The 1802 historical romance needs only the loose ends tidied before it is ready for the rewriting stage. Its length is a problem, currently ninety thousand plus words, and I will have to think more when it is done.

That leaves the story set in the Australian coastal shipping of 1970 or another venture into the contemporary offshore oil industry as my next story...a decision for the future?

Amy
Romance with a touch of reality...or vice versa?

Reviews and other things

2009-11-06T06:32:00.004+11:00

By November 16th, I will have released three books in four months: "Snow Drifter" and "A Fair Trader" from Whiskey Creek Press and "A Soldier's Woman" from Eternal Press. All have garnered excellent reviews and I admit to being pleased, flattered and grateful that other people have enjoyed my writing efforts. "The Widow-Maker", my previous book at Whiskey Creek Press, performed just as well, even attracting a film rights contract, yet book sales reflect none of this and I suspect that the fault is mine.

I am abysmal at promotion because I'm not really interested. I have a real hunger to write, and to write well, to share my love of complexity and adventure, but, approaching seventy-two, my financial dreams are limited. A new monitor for my creaking computer, the costs of a research trip to some location that interests me and I haven't already visited. (I've been to writer's conventions, so they're no longer on my wish list.)

I earn more income from the adult education writer's classes I conduct, but I suspect I would do them even if they paid nothing because of the pleasure of opening other minds to the joy of writing.

I enjoy some promotional activities--the blog radio interview with Cat Johnson was a ball, even if I was as nervous as a kitten--the occasional chat via some writer's blog, answering reader's comments, etc., but, my current venture with Heartfelt Promos aside, I've made a value judgement on how I want to spend my time and writing wins hands down...

Countdown

2009-09-17T09:51:00.003+10:00

In a little over a week, we're off to spend ten days with a grandson I haven't seen since he was three months old. He lives in Sydney, while we are in Melbourne and too many things have been allowed to gt in the way of visiting him and his parents. Some we had no choice about, but others we did, and I regret missing so much of his life.

For the rest, my coordinator duties for the annual competition at EPIC are winding down, I survived the interview on blog radio "What's Hot In Romance" thanks to the skill and generosity of Cat Johnson (you can listen to it here http://www.blogtalkradio.com/search/amy-gallow/) and my current WIP is on track for a November submission. (about the time Whiskey Creek Press release "A Fair Trader" - see above)

"Her Brother's Keeper" (my WIP) has passed through a number of name changes as the story itself changed and I'm still uncommitted to the present title. It began as a teaching tool for the writing classes I conduct in the adult education system here - a common story we could use to illustrate various stages in writing a novel, and was never intended as anything more. A simple, linear, story generated from a scene in a movie staring Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman that owed nothing to the tale told by the movie and began as a means to show how a simple idea could be developed into a story.

Over a period of three years and ten courses, I added more and more until I had thirty thousand words written in fragments and had fielded innumerable queries as to why I didn't complete it for publication. A passing moment of weakness made me agree it should be finished and then the fun began.

More when I've finished it...

It's a great life.

Amy

Post-natal depression

2009-08-15T10:39:00.002+10:00

I have never suffered real post natal depression, but would be the last to denigrate what is a very serious problem. As a writer however, a similar malady strikes everytime I release a book.

My literary pregnancy begins in earnest with the arrival of the contract, and, as in real life, my joy is diluted only by the realisation that some time will pass before the book becomes a reality. My pre-natal exercises of editing, proofing, cover art, etc., increase my anticipation of the happy event proportionally until the book is released. Then comes the flurry of promoting, posting of excerpts, chats, interviews, competitions, etc., etc., etc...

After that, things settle down a little, not unlike the establishment of regular feeding patterns with the new child and a return is made to the current WIP...only to find regular work patterns disturbed by a vague anxiety leading to restlessness and reduction of daily output. This problem increases exponentially as the first royalty reporting date approaches and a delay, or silence, from the publisher becomes exceedingly painful.

With two books released in the last month, and another due in November, I am not looking forward to the next six months

It made me very grateful for Zollyanna's reviews of "Snow Drifter" and "A Soldier's Woman", particularly her final paragraphs:

Snow Drifter
Amy Gallow is a bright and talented author always gluing you in your seat until you finish the story. The characters pop right off the page into whatever room you are reading in. I will definitely read any other book that Amy Gallow writes. She is a wonderful author who can sweep you off your feet and into a whole new realm.

A Soldier's Woman
Amy Gallow never ceases to amaze us with each and every one of her books. She is a bright and very talented author. Her characters keep you riveted to your seat making each word seem to come to life. I am very, honored to read each one of her books that come across my desk.

Post-natal depression or not, it's a great life

Amy

Promoting Books

2009-08-01T15:14:00.002+10:00

I have published five e-books, with two more releases scheduled before the end of 2009, and found promoting them the least rewarding of my activities, if one judges by royalty statements and website traffic. All five were received enthusiastically by the publishers, garnered good to excellent reviews, and I used the traditional means of promoting, posting excerpts, chatting, interviews, RT adverts, blogs, presences on the web via Yahoo groups, Myspace, Facebook, etc., etc., etc., but the most significant factor in sales has been the dwell time on the front page of the publisher's website. It outweighs the effect of every other activity by so large a factor, it is embarrassing.

This leads to two opposing conclusions, either my efforts have been so badly directed as to be totally ineffective, or the traditional means of promoting are nonsense and nothing works beyond having enough books released that they promote themselves by their excellence and the fact that readers keep tripping over them on the web.

My first five books were all in print and the publisher did the general advertising etc, allowing me to hold local events, book-signings and the like, and dabble with conferences and my magazine short stories required no effort on my part. It spoilt me for the "real" world of E-publishing.

In case the first of the two opposing conclusions is the right one, I have signed a six month promotional deal with an affiliate of Coffee Time Romance and will observe the process with considerable interest.

Wish me luck!

Amy

A Soldier's Woman

2009-07-28T17:19:00.003+10:00

The final edits are done and everything is ready for Eternal Press to release it on August 7th and I must admit to being quietly pleased with the final product.

Blurb
Having lost her father in the Falklands Campaign, it takes a very special soldier to overcome Megan Ryan's distrust of all things military, especially when Michael Davidson returns from Afghanistan to usurp her hard won position at Davidson's Machine and Tool. Only the seriousness of the position holds her there as they battle to save the firm, both at home and in Singapore.
After prolonged tension catapults them into his bed, the ultimate confrontation at the Lim mansion, leaves Megan with two impossible choices.
Lose Michael to the SAS or follow her mother's footsteps and become a soldier's woman.

I love researching my books and this one was no different.

Singapore was home territory for so long that it needed very little effort, and Oliver's Hill was equally familiar, as was the engineering firm. This left only the SAS and my search introduced me to some very generous souls who shared their knowledge freely, giving me a glimpse into a hidden world.

The Special Air Service was the brainchild of then Major David Stirling in the middle east during WWII and their name was chosen to confuse German Intelligence into believing there was a parachute battalion being formed in North Africa. After an initial false start they combined with Ralph Bagnold's Long Range Desert Group to perfect a very effective tactic of appearing out of the desert in armed jeeps to attack German garrisons.

The Australian SAS copied much of the tactics of the British 22 SAS after the War and adapted them to the different cultural imperatives of Australia, serving with distinction in Borneo, Vietnam, East Timor, Iraq and now in Afghanistan. There is a love/hate relationship between them and the regular Australian Army, where they are referred to as "The Swanbourne Polo Club", or the "Brown Hats" (Swanbourne is a suburb of Perth containing the SAS headquarters and the SAS wear beige berets.).

One regular soldier in the airborne infantry battalion illustrated this perfectly when he asked "How many SAS troopers does it take to change a light bulb?" When I looked blank, he answered "A whole squadron. One to change the bulb and the rest to applaud."

The tall poppy syndrome is alive and well in the Australian Army!

Following the muse

2009-07-11T07:11:00.004+10:00

My current WIP is taking me on a fascinating journey. It began with a teaching tool I've used repeatedly in the Adult Education courses, a means of providing a common connector to a group of disparate would-be writers in developing a story from a single scene in a forgettable movie starring Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman. In the process, I've written a dozen or so scenes from the story to illustrate how to begin, develop, sustain and complete it. Of necessity, I've kept the story reasonably simple, but my last group of students challenged me to write the whole story and, in a moment of unusual weakness, I agreed.

I began by joining the dots, connecting the existing scenes into a continuous narrative, but the character of the hero kept eluding me. I couldn't quite see how he came to be as he was and went searching into his background for an answer.

A memory came to me of a transit lounge conversation in the early hours of the morning, some ten years after Vietnam. Our plane was delayed, we were tired and bored and my companion on the journey had drunk more than was wise. He'd been involved in covert operations during the conflict, but didn't speak much of their details, concentrating instead on how he was recruited and trained. An astute individual, his descriptions of the methodology and the individuals involved kept me interested and successfully passed the time until our plane was ready.

Vietnam was too far in the past to be of value to the story I was writing, but the effect of the passage of time on my companion wasn't and I had the environment that moulded the hero into the man he was.

Storytelling presented a problem. With so much to be hidden until the right moment, a simple narrative from the heroine's point of view was inadequate, and the normal(?) balance of heroine/hero not much better. I'd already passed the thirty thousand word mark and was loathe to discard the lot so I went searching for another point of view that could carry the story and found it in a secondary character.

I'm now back at the thirty thousand word mark, having re-written the beginning to capture the changes in the heroine and introduced the thoughts and actions of my second point of view. Other than a very general picture, I have no idea where the story will go from here...and it's fascinating.

It's a great life...insane or not.

Amy

Snow Drifter

2009-06-23T10:27:00.003+10:00

July is almost here and I'm gearing up for the release of Snow Drifter.

The first step was revamping my website, http://www.amygallow.com/ . I'd updated it along the way, adding books as they were released, reporting the progress of The Widow-Maker from book to film, but it no longer reflected my writing and it was time to change.

What I'd forgotten was amount of work involved for an amateur like me.

It took two days of experimentation, false starts and simple mistakes before what I'd designed could be seen in my web browser, let alone on the web itself, and another day before the website was successfully loaded onto the web. Since then, I've grown cross-eyed looking for errors and can only hope I've caught them all.

Yahoo group, Coffee Time Romance, etc., etc., etc., are next...then the preparation of excerpts for each of the groups I belong to...

With A Soldier's Woman coming out in August, I can't see me getting much writing done for a while.

Still, it's a great life.

Amy

Chaos

2009-06-08T10:42:00.002+10:00

Our home bulges at the seams with children and adults. Our eldest daughter has returned home with her two children while their house sells and she reorganizes her life as a single mother after ten years of marriage. The children struggle with the effects of the change and she is as prickly as a hedgehog (an Echidna to fellow antipodeans).
Our second daughter struggles with a two bedroom house and returning to work as a teacher part- time with two children under five and needs what help we can give.
In the midst of this, edits arrived for "A Soldier's Woman" with a forty-eight hour deadline and jury duty beckons mid month, all making the completion of "Her Brother's Keeper" a matter of snatched moments.
I suppose the next crisis will involve the second round of edits and those for "A Fair Trader".
Looking backwards at our parents' lives in their seventies, it all seems so impossibly serene, but I suppose we should be grateful that we are both healthy enough to manage and still so involved in life as to feel the need to try?
It's a great life.
Amy

A homily from long ago

2009-05-13T08:58:00.002+10:00

Back when I was young and we exchanged autographs between friends rather than sought those of celebrities, it was the practice to inscribe some small homily before your signature.
One I remember well:
In a life that's mainly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone;
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own.
One of our children is going through a difficult time and I am proud to see the truth of the above demonstrated by her siblings as well as us.
None of our children are meek, their battles growing up were the stuff of legends, but their aid when it's needed is unstinting.
I am proud of them all.
It's a great life!

Cover Art

2009-04-22T20:39:00.004+10:00

As writers we are at the mercy of many different people, publishers, reviewers, readers and the rest. If we are lucky, we have two staunch friends, our editor and our cover artist in giving our books their best chance of success.

Jinger Heaston created the cover for "The Widow-Maker" and now for my two upcoming Whiskey Creek Press books. I'll let you judge her success.

I'm a little biased. I think they're great.

Thank you Jinger.

"Snow Drifter" is due for release in July this year, but you'll have to wait until Nov/December for "A Fair Trader"

In the meantime, Eternal Press, propose an August release for "A Soldier's Woman."

"Once more into the breach..."

2009-04-02T20:58:00.002+11:00

We returned from our holiday refreshed, having walked for miles along windswept beaches, clifftops, through the bush, and around Warranambool, Portland, Port Fairy, etc.
A new contract with Whisky Creek Press was waiting and a release date of July 09 for "Snow Drifter" added to our pleasure. Plus, there was an intriguing response to one of my general fiction submissions that could mean anything.
"A Fair Trader" now has a projected release date of Nov/Dec 09, so this year promises well.
It's a great life.
Amy

An ideal holiday

2009-03-19T20:48:00.002+11:00

We are taking a rest from baby-sitting and all the other multitudinous duties of grandparents and having nine days at Warrnambool with no television, no Internet and no writing before the school holidays and other events double the intensity of our lives.
It is glorious in prospect and starts in three days.
It's a great life--truly!
Amy

A Conumdrum

2009-03-06T21:40:00.002+11:00

Two of Amy's submissions have been successfull and a third looks promising, which, given my non-New Years ponderings, creates a problem that will have to be solved before publication--is she to have another life or another name?
My two non-romance submissions are still current and success in either would have its effect, but, for now, I am marking time.
An unusual state for me.
It's great life.
Amy

New Year's Resolutions

2009-01-02T09:18:00.001+11:00

I never make New Year's resolutions!

That said, the dawning of 2009 coincides with several changes in my life, each bringing its own decision and any disclaimer on my part will be ignored by one and all.

The sales of "The Widow-Maker" have been disappointing and New Concepts may praise the quality and writing of the three books of the First Family of the Blood series, but their returns have been below average because they are very technical for romances. It is hard not to make the connection between the two and New Concepts agree that future sales for Amy Gallow will be affected.

Amy still has three submissions live at two publishers and there will be the temptation to use another pseudonym if these are successful, but that does little to determine the future for the three WIPs in my computer.

All suffer the same disadvantages as my New Concepts books in being the type of stories I enjoy writing rather than middle of the genre stories that sell. It may be time to bid Amy adieu and thank her for her assistance in learning my craft as a writer. (She introduced me to some very good editors.)

To everyone else, I wish the very best of the New Year. I hope you survive our present financial difficulties with as little harm as possible.

It's a great life even so.

Amy

A Hectic Period

2008-12-17T08:58:00.002+11:00

I opened the fist draft of "The Countess and the Privateers" after letting it sit for almost six weeks and was immediately struck by an anomally that would be immediately apparent to any professional seafarer with a Merchant Marine background, a poor beginning for my return to writing general fiction. It set the tone for my reading the story again, because it required most of the first chapter to be re-written.

I'm still largely satisfied with the story, but acknowledge the need for a major re-write to straighten out elements of the plotting because the story developed as I wrote it, going off in unanticipated directions at least once, and, at ninety thousand words, some of the changes affects what went before.

I'm glad now that life has been so hectic with family matters since the beginning of October. We've seen relatives not met for many years, others for the first time, farewelled others for the last time, changed cars and plans for the future, taken on projects for the New Year outside our normal life, and generally had one of those disturbing intervals that change lives and outlooks.

I managed some writing and sent off two further submissions, completing projects rather than beginning them, which means a return to "The Countess and the Privateers" with a clear horizon--unless one of the submissions bear fruit. (Two have passed the seven months mark and are scheduled for reconsideration in the New Year)

I wish you all an enjoyable festive season.

Amy

Time for an update

2008-10-01T07:09:00.002+10:00

A visitor to this blog recently read every post, which was very flattering, but it made me realize how lax I've been of late and how frequently I've left my news unfinished so I thought it time to rectify the omission.

We now have six grandchildren. Ella Joan joined us a little over two weeks ago at 9lb 60zs. She has dark hair (so far) and is remarkably placid for this family.

My sister has recovered from her stroke and has returned home with only minor disabilities.

The screenplay of The Widow-Maker is proceeding well, according the Spirit Rider Productions, and the book has been entered in the "Eppies" this year. It also has another review. This one from Verbena, of The Long and the Short reviews. She gave it four and a half book symbols and I've included it here in italics.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting in this book because of the title. I must say that it’s a good read. The author presents a very measured pace that is easily followed. The story takes place in an Australian motorcycle race setting. It was unfamiliar to me so I had to read slowly in order to understand the surroundings. Someone familiar with that setting and scenario wouldn’t have the same problem. It’s an easy read that will leave you with a satisfied feeling. It works out for all in the end. I do like that kind of ending.
Lexie Douglas comes from a small island off the mainland of Australia. This return, forced because of her father’s birthday, is bittersweet because she left family and lifestyle behind years ago. You begin by not being sure about Lexie. But as her past is revisited here and there during the story you start to appreciate her for who she is, a fighter over coming her own fears and life experiences. You’re with her as she starts seeing her family in a different perspective and starts changing her own attitude. You’ll come to admire her as I did.
Glenn Smallwood catches her eye at one of the social events she’s paid to entertain at. Their paths cross again and again. He continues to impress her with his steadfastness. They both find that they quite simply have quickly fallen in love. What I find interesting is that I couldn’t tell you what either looked like, because it’s like people that you know and love. You no longer see them as beautiful or what color eyes they have, instead you see them with your heart. You will see both these characters with your heart. You will admire them and feel the deepest of satisfaction with the story and the way it ends as I did. This is a very pleasant story and I recommend it to you.

The first draft of The Countess and the Privateers is finally complete and I am mulling over the comments from an agent before I begin the rewrite/polishing.

The love of my life joins me in the seventies in a little over a week and has opted for a hot air balloon ride to celebrate (the other choice was a tandem parachute jump--which we will save for the eighties), followed by a champagne breakfast at a Yarra Valley winery.

It's a great life.

Amy

Doing the "right" thing sometimes makes you feel bad

2008-09-08T22:05:00.002+10:00

In the thirty years we have lived in this house, many things have changed and we are soon to have renters on either side of our suburban quarter-acre block. The house to the south has been rented for some time, with different people in the front and the back.

The tenant at the back was a young unmarried mother with two children who loved to play her music loud at inconvenient times and she had a black tom cat, the only survivor of two she owned, who loved the sunny spots in our back and front yards as a refuge. He was quite nervous and making eye contact with him always caused him to shift elsewhere. We have no pets at the moment (we enjoy our children's instead) so we respected his need for privacy.

Three weeks ago, she did a midnight flit, leaving the place in a shambles (we know the owner, who has spent almost a fortnight repairing the damage and cleaning up the mess) and left the cat behind. It became obvious she was not returning and checks with all our neighbors showed that no one was feeding the cat, plus there was evidence he was subsisting on the local bird life.
As cat people, we were concerned, but we have very young grandchildren in our house at frequent intervals and the chances of successfully adopting the animal were slim, so we called the local council and a ranger came. We trapped the animal with his hunger and he was taken away--most probably to be put down.

Each time I walk in our yard and see his favorite places empty, I feel guilty.

Abandoning animals is an offence in Australia. Just at this moment, I'd like to see it punished with the death penalty. (Nonsense, of course, but I feel bad.)

Distractions

2008-08-10T09:35:00.003+10:00

Satisfying as it was, the film rights contract, is a tomorrow task, and my present WIP has taken too long and had too many interruptions. The latest one my computer.

It is fourteen years old now and I have upgraded components only as required to do whatever task I needed, the last addition an external hard drive to free up some space on C drive for the insatiable appetite of Windows. Every morning I had to spend fifteen minutes clearing up clutter before I could start.

The temptation was to start all over again with a new computer, but this one is organized precisely as I want it and the cost of a new one would make too great a hole in my writing budget.

When I shut everything down for some routine maintenance (cleaning fluff from cooling fans, cards etc.) I considered my options.

The motherboard was still capable of the routine writing tasks, aided by recently added graphics and sound cards, although it was at its limit with 2 Gig of RAM, and the only avenue of improvement lay in the hard drive--at 10 Gig, it was struggling.

A second-hand 120 gig drive was sourced and the contents of my present drive "ghosted" onto it before fitting. A day of reorganisation followed, mainly undoing the economies forced onto me by the small hard drive and my computer now amazes me with its speed and reliability, most of my manual maintenance tasks now automated.

Barring family distractions, I now have no excuse.

Back to 1802!

It's a great life.

Amy

Soul Music

2008-08-01T07:28:00.002+10:00

Soul music is a little different for writers.

A little over a week ago, I signed a thirteen page contract allowing an independent Australian Film company, Spirit Rider Productions, the film rights to The Widow-Maker. Last night, I received two emails from them. The first told me work had started on the screen play and the second is below

Hi Amy,
I just wanted to thank you again for giving me the opportunity to develop your novel The Widow Maker into a feature film.
I hope that I can do it justice for you and your fans.
Kind Regards
Brian
Spirit Rider Productions.

That's soul music to a writer!

We spend hour after hour at a keyboard, often tired, frequently distracted, trying to grasp the elusive idea that sent us there and craft it into readable prose. Our partners indulge us without quite understanding the why of it, children and grandchildren shake their heads at our strange obsessions and, eventually, the royalties start to trickle in. A good review or two is a boost. as is the praise of editors, but nothing quite satisfies the hunger to do better that grows with every published book.

I've been writing seriously now for almost ten years and am as mystified now as to the imperative that keeps me at it as I was in the beginning. (It certainly isn't the financial rewards.)

Brian's email and the ones from satisfied readers are the closest explanation.

It's a great life.

Amy

Never Volunteer!

2008-07-12T12:37:00.002+10:00

This golden rule is engraved deep into the psyche of every service person, yet I seem to observe it more by breach than observance and have seldom regretted the act.

My latest fall from grace saw me judging nine entries from a writing competition for unpublished authors and they were a mixed bunch. The hardest thing in these tasks is tempering criticism with encouragement and imposing neither your voice, nor your style, on others. The gross errors (over-writing, dialogue tempo, poorly realized images, etc.) are easy, but how do you tighten writing where the voice and the style are the antithesis of yours? Do you fall back on generalities,which are useless...or give examples, which are misleading at best.

I did my best with them all (one took eleven hours and it was only twelve thousand words of synopsis and first two chapters) and hoped that my imitation of Solomon was not too frayed at the edges.

As an aside, isn't it odd how certain tasks call naturally for quotations from the Bible? It seems to fit the act of judgement better than the Koran, or the Analects, or the Vedas. Shakespeare, and certainly Machiavelli, don't quite cut the mustard, but my correspondence in this venture have been peppered with Biblical quotes.

It's an odd life.

Amy

Some stories....

2008-06-29T09:09:00.002+10:00

Some stories write themselves, the words and ideas flowing effortlessly onto the page, and I've been fortunate in that respect. Others attract every form of disaster known to mankind and the current one is a perfect example.
It's troubles began in mid ocean, when it morphed from romance to general fiction and doubled in length. This required going back to the beginning and recasting the introduction of additional characters to provide subplots etc. Then the impending arrival of another grandchild was confirmed and tasks which had been pending became urgent and our babysitting racked up a level, especially when another daughter went back to university. Then personal medical problems for both of us intervened and had to be dealt with and adjusted to in the middle of the temporary insanity that set me seeking an agent.
The latest calamity came when my sister suffered a TIA (mini-stroke) that escalated to the point where her entire personality was wiped. (It was heartbreaking, sitting at her bedside, being recognized time and time again, her knowledge of me never lasting for more than a second) Thankfully, she has taken the first tentative steps on the road to recovery with the partial recovery of her power of speech (single words so far, but every one sounds great!)

It's a great life...sometimes

Amy

Wherefore art thou....?

2008-06-15T11:51:00.002+10:00

No posts for a while because of family dramas etc., and initializing the search for an agent to represent my writing in the US.

I began writing seriously in 2000, having played at it since 1997 and have published six print books and seven e-books, all, more or less, category romances of sixty thousand words. The reviews have improved more than the sales and I've had three publishers fold on me--which highlights my lack of expertize in this area, even if I've learnt to write publishable prose.

Succumbing to the blandishments of a fellow writer, I began my search for a suitable agent and quickly learnt this is almost as difficult as finding your first publisher, especially as I'd like to shift from romance to general fiction with the story about privateers/pirates in 1802. Fortunately, my insanity (the only excuse I have for wanting to write) has progressed to the obsessive stage and I am persisting. The general longevity of my family gives me hope that I will succeed eventually--after all, I'm only seventy.

It's a great life (I think...)

Amy

Out of the Writing Cave

2008-05-24T08:10:00.003+10:00

In our house, cooking is a rostered activity. We take turns, each of us cooking three nights of the week and we go out on the seventh and dine with friends.

Thursday, we pick up one of our granddaughters from her kindergarten and is one of my nights, so I decided to try a slow cooker we'd inherited and never used to produce corned beef (with no cabbage!). The instruction book was written by a dyslexic with writer's cramp and consisted primarily of recipes in a sparse, masculine style designed to conceal rather than reveal their secrets, so my first task was to decipher from these some concept of the function of the four position switch on the side of the cooker. The next was to adapt my tried and true recipe for corned beef to this new implement.

I wasn't sure I believed the instruction book's claim that it was impossible to overcook anything in this appliance and the cooking time recommended seemed impossibly long (12-24 hours), but there'd be six hungry mouths to feed and under done corn beef is not desirable so I accepted it and decided to check the condition along the way.

I was wise. Four hours before the meal, the meat was cooked!

I switched off the cooker and prepared the rest of the meal on time, switching on the cooker half an hour before. Surprisingly, it was a great success. The bay leaf, two cloves, brown sugar and malt vinegar had been intensified by the lesser liquid quantity, and, if carving required the delicacy of a brain surgeon, the white sauce hid most of the results and every plate was cleaned.

I've typed some notes and pasted them on the inside of the instruction book for future reference and am looking at their recipe for Irish Stew as an encore in a month or two.

The weather is good, so I have a day's work in the garden, a collection run for a charity and a bike ride planned for the weekend, then it's back into the cave and into the acrid gun smoke of a naval battle in 1803 as the story nears its climax.

It's a great life.

Amy

Back on an even keel and full steam ahead.

2008-05-17T10:55:00.002+10:00

I could extend the nautical allusion further, but won't.

I'm still waiting for some of the responses, but they are no longer at the forefront of my mind, which is focused once more on my writing. I'm still not sure what distracted me from writing to waiting, but, whatever it was, has passed now and I'm back to my routine of checking my inbox only in the morning when I start writing and last thing at night.

I've a further submission to polish and send off before next week and the end of the 1802 story is just over the horizon, figuratively as well as actually. That will leave only the epilogue, where one of the main characters gets his final comeuppance. (The scene is based on a real event and I'm looking forward to writing it.)

Beyond that, I've a list of jobs to complete around the house, some furniture to make for one of my grand-daughters and my long anticipated return to playing golf--a torn shoulder tendon from traipsing around Europe with too much luggage has taken a long time to heal.

It's a great life!

Amy

Waiting

2008-04-23T11:44:00.002+10:00

When I first considered writing professionally, I foresaw my impatience as the greatest problem.

It had been different in my "real" life. There, logical step succeeded logical step, the time-frame fixed and dependable. Obstacles were overcome as they arose, a simple matter of identifying the required steps and then taking them as I rose to the top. I could even chose the point at which I stopped.

Writing is a little different, but I developed strategies to cope with its uncertainties and they work-most of the time.

This is not one of them.

There's no particular reason why. The responses I'm waiting for have potential, but are not life-changing, yet I am struggling to maintain my focus on the work in hand and find excuses to check the inbox and relevant websites obsessively.

Like everything, it will pass and I will settle down again to my working routine, but it would be nice to understand why?

It's a great life (I think)

Amy

Out into the sunshine once more

2008-04-17T07:51:00.004+10:00

The approaching release of The Widow-Maker has dragged me out of my writer's cave and I'm blinking owlishly as I consider how to promote it. The failure of Shadowrose imposed a hiatus on my releases and I'm a little our of practice.

Our grandchildren are not happy. I was away a lot when our children were young and compensated by writing an ongoing story with each child the hero of succeeding chapters and their children are old enough now to demand their own chapters and I was in the midst of the latest.

Simply Romance Reviews are reviewing The Widow-Maker and I am guest blogging there on May 28th and there are the opening excerpts at Yahoo's Romance Excerpts Only and The Romance Room. (The latter are runing a membership drive and contest with a swag of downloads etc as a prize)

It's a great life.

Amy

Shadowrose

2008-04-13T18:23:00.002+10:00

I sent off the final round of emails to all the contact points I had for Shadowrose, setting out a cutoff date for May 1st, 2008 with a heavy heart, not because of my personal disappointment, but because I like Patricia Fuller and wish her well. It was fortunate that we only got to the intent of exchanging contracts and events prevented it from happening, because it makes what follows simpler.

There are other irons in the fire and I'm back to waiting for responses and the advent of The Widow-Maker at Whiskey Creek Press.

In 1802, my four adventurers have encountered a small fleet of dories making their way to the Azores after the sinking of their Portuguese nau (a small vessel of the type that carried the Portuguese to every corner of the world) mother ship by a Right Whale blundering south to breed. (there were still a lot of them in those days)
The Portuguese were challenging two hundred years of Spanish control of the off-shore fishing, so both sides of the encounter were very wary and I've had to brush up on my spattering of Portuguese.

It's a great life

Amy

New England Whalers

2008-04-04T11:52:00.002+11:00

One of my characters in 1802 is a New England whaler, something of a prodigal, separated from his family by an unhappy love affair. Researching his background has been fascinating, particularly the practice of calling in at the Azores outward bound to pick up a cheap crew of hard-working Portuguese in preference to American seamen. (It seems the philosophy behind Flags of Convenience have been around for a long time.)

Jedediah Pike began life as an example in a writing class I teach in the local adult education system. His first name changed to Zebulon, he was part of an alternate beginning to the infamous "It was a dark and stormy night..." that Snoopy found so addictive. He's grown a lot since then, gained his master's certificate and sailed a blockade-runner through the English Fleet four times. Captured by the British, he's been released to captain the same ship on a voyage to Jamaica, evading if he can, a fleet of privateers turned pirates.

Jed is not the main character, but I've grown to like him and he provides me with an outside perspective of my Half-pay Lieutenant and his Countess-the hero and heroine.

It's a great life.

Amy

Thoughts on mortality.

2008-04-03T09:56:00.002+11:00

I am not naturally morbid, even a heart attack in an isolated location hardly troubled me in that sense, but a memory ambushed me yesterday and made me think on the subject.

My uncle survived the Kamikaze attack on the HMAS Australia at Leyte with a broken neck undiagnosed for several months. He later broke it again diving into shallow water at St Kilda pier and then contracted, and recovered from, tuberculosis. Years later, he told my aunt he was feeling a little off-color in the afternoon and laid down to rest. When she went to wake him for tea, he was dead.

I was feeling a little off-color myself yesterday and decided to give writing away for a while and lie down to rest. Standing by the bed, the memory of my uncle's demise came unbidden--I'd not thought of it for many years--and I paused.

I'm not afraid of death, I disposed of that old bogey many years ago, but it would be damned inconvenient!

It's a great life.

Amy

Another one gone into the world

2008-04-01T10:07:00.002+11:00

The Widow-Maker galley proof is finished and the Errata sent back to Whiskey Creek Press, with it goes my last chance to change even a single punctuation mark.

I remember reading some comparison between books and children and thinking at the time that the writer must be childless. Ours come back for help and advice continually, but books, once the galley is done, remain immutable. Something I learnt when I started writing seriously and the first one was published.

The first glorious reaction passed quickly and then I started to see the mistakes, partly because they existed and partly because my writing had developed in the twelve months between galley and publication. I found it difficult to read each of them after the first few times and this feeling persisted with each of my books until recently (C.S.Forester wrote of having the same problem, so I was in illustrious company). I can read even the earliest now without having the overpowering urge to correct them as I go.

I'm worming my way back into my current project (it's had more interruptions than most) and will soon be immersed in the world as it was in 1802.

It's a great life.

Amy

The rich tapestry of Edits

2008-03-22T13:05:00.002+11:00

The edits for The Widow-Maker arrived in my computer inbox at 1:02 am, Good Friday morning, accompanied by a request I respond to them by 10:00 am. Fortunately, I was up at 6:30 am and opened the inbox, which gave me three and a half hours to the deadline.

Given the time out to trade authorities on capitalization, I made it by ten minutes (The edits were not onerous and I'm a fast reader) and remain satisfied by the results. I doubt the haste was the editor's fault and I have no doubts of the expertise applied to the manuscript, but I was extremely fortunate so little needed to be changed.

Usually, I like to enjoy edits, analyzing their thrust and storing the information for later use. I've done that since with these and have a few more tidbits to add to my store of knowledge.

I've been very fortunate in my editors and New Concepts abdication of that role means they are off my list of publishers - which is a pity.

It's still a great life.

Amy.

A leap of imagination

2008-03-17T14:37:00.002+11:00

My writing cave is not air-conditioned and this is the fifth day above 37.8 C (100F) in a row and I am writing about January 1803 in the North Atlantic and the act of visualization that takes me there is getting a little more difficult each day.

It puts me in mind of a January in the North Sea, one of the rare days when we saw the sun, and I was walking aft from the foc'sle on a British crewed tanker. Photo-chromatic glasses were not common in those days and mine had reacted to the sunlight by turning dark and the men on the bridge were certain I was taking the mickey out of them by wearing sunglasses. At the time, I was wearing thermal underwear, a thick cotton track suit and three pairs of overalls under my wet weather gear and had just passed through the shivering stage to actually shuddering. The wind had been from the east for several days and the air temperature was around twenty below. (add to this, I'd flown from Xmas in Australia only days before) I spent another month on that ship, working on deck most of the time, and remembering what it was like to be warm was extraordinarily difficult.

Part of my military service was a snow survival course designed by sadists. We spent ten days clad only in working gear with only the normal ration packs for food and had to move twenty miles across bush country without maps (I seem to remember I actually volunteered (obviously very young and foolish at the time)). I can't remember being so cold for so long as those ten days, but our training must have been good, because there wasn't a single case of frostbite, other than chapped ears.

I'd hoped those two memories would help my visualization, but the sweat is still trickling down down my chin and dropping on the folded towel I use regularly to wipe my hands and protect the keyboard.

It's a great life.

Amy

A pause in time

2008-03-11T16:23:00.002+11:00

The cover art for The Widowmaker made it to the Coming Soon page of Whiskey Creek Press and I stopped for a moment to reread the story, for the edits must come soon. It is fifteen months since I submitted the story and almost exactly a year since the contract came and I last read it from beginning to end. I found the usual number of overlooked errors, noted each of them and moved on, knowing they would be my part of the editing process if they were overlooked.

Still, with the apparent failure of Shadowrose continuing, it's nice to see movement on another story.

Writing a historical slanted more towards general fiction in challenging. It removes many barriers, but opens up new sources of criticism. I'm finding it very rewarding.

Amy

An act of love

2008-03-09T11:46:00.002+11:00

A writer friend quoted an Australian survey about the length of coitus, published apparently to reasuure other Australian, or to quash any unreal expectations in others. Some of the findings were amusing.

I commented in her blog and think its worth repeating here:-

"What are we measuring here, the physical conjunction, or the thousand moments of tenderness that turn it into an act of love?"

I am a strong believer in the school that says 99% of great sex happens between the ears, particularly having had one partner for the last forty-seven years and taking the act out of its emotional context is impossible for me.

Thoughtfully

Amy

The Widowmaker - Front & Back

2008-03-04T20:35:00.005+11:00

The "Widowmaker" is not due for release at Whiskey Creek Press until May and, as they are now splitting their monthly releases into two, one part at the beginning and one part at the middle, it may not even be until the middle of May. However, it now has a front and back cover.

I think they're both great and the aerial view of the Phillip Island circuit adds icing to the cake.

Thank you, Jinger.

Shoulder to the wheel and nose to the grindstone etc...

2008-02-26T11:35:00.002+11:00

It felt odd, reverting to snail mail submissions, but I sent one off yesterday, complete with sae and irc's, and set my computer to remind me when a response is due. (the latter is a largely pointless exercise, but I always do it.)

That out the way, I returned to my WIP and started worming my way into the story again, following the voyage to the point where I left it, assuming the cloaks for the four disparate characters who carry the tale.

One of them reminds me of Toby Meares, from the "Callan" series long ago. It is fun imagining the circumstances that would produce a similar character in 1802, although he seems less of an anachronism than I expected.

The cover art for "The Widowmaker" is not yet finalized, although I know I'll be pleased with it, my last two cover artists have been great to work with, and the edits for the story should arrive soon(another interruption to the WIP).

It's a great life.

Amy(for the moment)

Fancy Free

2008-02-25T08:13:00.002+11:00

A fellow Antipodean with an offbeat sense of humour and a very engaging writing style has a new release at Ellora's Cave. I'll let her tell you about it in her press release.

Responsible Romantic Heroes Use Condoms

Some readers prefer heroes to use condoms while others say the dose of reality kills all the spontaneity and romance. It’s a debate that repeats all over romance land—to use condoms or not to use condoms—since, after all, it is only fiction…

New Zealand erotic romance author, Shelley Munro took this a step further in her upcoming release Fancy Free, the story of an accountant who inherits a condom company. When Ms. Munro caught an Air New Zealand flight from San Francisco, she came across an advertising article about a new condom on the market. The ideas flowed and by the time she landed in Auckland, she’d outlined her plot for Fancy Free.

It’s not every day a girl inherits a condom company, and to say accountant, Alice Beasley is astonished and out of her depth is putting it mildly. For an almost virgin, she needs a quick education in all things condom because her inheritance is in danger. Someone is intent on sabotage and playing nasty, trying to destroy her new company.

Alice is suddenly getting down and dirty with charismatic James, the factory manager, all in the name of business, testing new condom designs. The sex is hot. Mind-blowing. It’s a dark thrill and an erotic journey. Yeah, it’s a hard job but a girl’s got to do what a girl’s gotta do.

The testing turns personal. Alice wants James. She craves his talented touch and sultry kisses, she desires passion and physical pleasure on a permanent basis but first she must convince bad boy James to give up his fancy free ways.

Note: condoms were tested and a few harmed during the writing of this story.

Fancy Free releases on 7 March 2008 from Ellora’s Cave www.ellorascave.com and is Ms. Munro’s eighteenth release from the pioneer erotic romance publisher.

From the time Shelley Munro was a little girl living in New Zealand, she wanted to be a detective. She read all the Famous Five mysteries by Enid Blyton before graduating to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Her favorite television viewing was Scooby Doo where she, in her invisible guise, helped Scooby solve the crime.

As happens with children, Shelley grew up and boys distracted her from childhood dreams. She found one she really liked and married him, traveling the world at his side until returning to settle in New Zealand to write hot and spicy tales for Ellora’s Cave, some of which contain the odd body or two.

Publishing Notes:
Title: Fancy Free
Author: Shelley Munro
Publisher: Ellora’s Cave
ISBN: 9781419913341
Release Date: 7 March 2008
Genre: Contemporary erotic romance
Setting: Present day New Zealand

Adventure into Romance with Shelley Munro
http://www.shelleymunro.com
shelleymunro@gmail.com

It, and her blog, are well worth the time.

Amy

Anniversary Presents

2008-02-23T07:41:00.003+11:00

It's our forty-fifth wedding anniversary and I am gloating over a personal present on the right, the initial run of the cover art for The Widowmaker at Whiskey Creek Press. The far background behind the motorcycles may change, but already the cover artist has done me proud.

The real anniversary present is the forty-five years we've already shared. Add three children we consider friends, five grandchildren (with the prospect of more) who've stolen our hearts all over again, and a relationship that has weathered life's storms remarkably well, considering our faults. (largely mine, of course)

We'll celebrate by baby-sitting one of our grandchildren while our younger daughter celebrates her own anniversary (our children have Machiavellian minds), and tomorrow we'll go out, just the two of us, and have afternoon tea at a favorite place.

In the meantime, I have edits, a WIP and a submission to prepare.

It's a great life.

Amy

The Final Ritual

2008-02-18T08:29:00.002+11:00

Our friend has gone.

We attended the final ritual of her life last Thursday and it was no surprise to find how many lives she had touched with her grace and personality. A "Preps" teacher at a prestigious girl's school, she came into our lives when she became our neighbour, attended plays with us, became part of the "Birthday Girls".

They handed out jellybeans, an integral part of her classroom, and we all took one thankfully as her final reward for good behaviour.

As always, she gave generously.

Amy

Fare Thee Well

2008-02-11T08:23:00.000+11:00

A very gracious lady left this place yesterday, putting aside a body that could no longer sustain her spirit.

She will be missed.

A Fair Trader

2008-01-28T11:44:00.000+11:00

A Fair Trader is yet to be released but it already has its first review at Simply Romance Reviews

Shari thought:
SRR GRADE: A-
The last night of a cruise is suppose to be the most memorable; or so Ruth is told. Being escorted to dinner by the Chief Engineer, Matthew, might be just the thing to make the night memorable. Ruth is ready to throw caution to the wind and go forward with the one night, no strings attached, cruise affair and she thinks that Matthew is too. But duty calls and Matthew has to work into the night and neither have the chance to say goodbye. They both leave letters for the other but the letters never find their way to their final destination. One night of promised passion turns into five years of "What happened?"
Ruth is in town for a conference when a group of men enter the bar as she is reviewing her notes. One voice takes her back to a time five years ago when she knew who and what she wanted. Would Matthew recognize her? Would they pick up where they left off? And what happened to the letter that he left for her and she gave to a friend of his? Will that night of passion that was interrupted finally conclude?

A Fair Trader by Amy Gallow was entrancing. Ms. Gallow's attention to detail made you feel as if you were an invisible bystander witnessing everything unfold right in front of you. You felt Ruth's fear, love, doubt, and anger like it was your own. It was a really enjoyable read.

I've decided to add Shari to my Xmas card list.

Amy (?)

Realization

2008-01-23T08:23:00.000+11:00

The encouraging response from Allen & Unwin had a strange effect. Its measured praise for my writing told me I'd reached the end of the beginning after ten years of effort and must step up a level and realize my cast of characters and story concept as I've never managed before.

I'm back into the creative stage of the story, re-examining every step of its journey, pondering the motivations and testing their truths. Later, I'll look at the storytelling itself, ratcheting up its excitement, pruning the indulgences.

Oddly, there's no impatience. I know what I have to do and it will be finished when it's finished--and not before.

It's a great life!

Amy (for the moment)

Onwards & Upwards

2008-01-19T11:53:00.000+11:00

A friend suggested "onwards and upwards" as my motto for 2008 and it took an encouraging response from Allen & Unwin (after two days of minding energetic grandchildren) to make it seem right. I'd read the material submitted to them only the day before and was appalled at its faults (telling rather than showing, jumping POVs and inserting information the character had no way of knowing--all proof that submissions should be carefully planned rather than impromptu, as this one was).

A friend, a very gracious lady, appears to be losing her sixteen year battle against cancer with the recent appearance of a new strain, both aggressive and invasive. We can do little except stand on the sidelines and applaud her courage in this new battle. Her passing will be a loss to all.

Other than that, we are deep in house maintenance, installing a pressure pump and watering system from our rain water tanks and a recycling system for some of our "grey" water to the ornamental garden. Add some baby-sitting commitments while our children settle into the new working year, and our bed is quite inviting at the end of the day.

For all that --- "Onwards and Upwards!!"

Seventy is just a number, and battles can be won as well as lost.

Amy (?)

On turning Seventy

2007-12-30T12:36:00.000+11:00

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!

2007-12-16T08:59:00.000+11:00

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

2007-12-11T15:04:00.000+11:00

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!

2007-12-07T17:38:00.000+11:00

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(?)

Inside this writer's mind

2007-11-24T09:38:00.000+11:00

A writer friend asked the question in her blog, "What's it like inside your mind?" and it started me thinking.

She spoke of characters from her stories, as did some of the comments, roaming around, falling out of bed, using items from her other stories, but none of this rang true for me.

The creative process fascinates me. An idea is triggered by some stimulus and my thoughts become restless, probing for connections, testing their strength, discarding weakness, in a logical progression...until, often quite abruptly, it will leap back to an earlier connection and follow an entirely new path to a totally unexpected result.

The closest physical analogy I can draw of the process comes from a description by Edward de Bono (I think he was writing of Water Logic). He postulated a beach full of octopi, dumped in a random order, their tentacles seeking connections and forming synapse-like patterns in a blind, gestalt-driven search. Thinking of any one octopus stimulates it, driving it to a more frenzied search, individual tentacles lashing, it's primitive mind cataloguing each contact and remembering their nature. This produces a ripple effect among the other octopi and soon they're all thrashing about until they reach a result that produces a feedback surge to the original octopus and a path is formed between the original idea and this new outcome.

Like all analogies, it fits only where it touches, but it gives me a good working model, and that's enough.

It's a great life.

Amy

Coffee break over. Back on your heads

2007-11-16T18:16:00.000+11:00

The above is the punch line for a very old joke-one I first heard in secondary school-but it's very appropriate.

We came back from our trip to visit our latest grandson and found ourselves baby-sitting two other grandchildren whilst our eldest child, a daughter, celebrated her anniversary with a game of golf, a meal and the theatre. Today was spent cleaning the house of its two weeks accumulation of dust, catching up with friends, mail, etc., and reformatting a manuscript at the request of a publisher.

Tomorrow, all things being equal, I will open up my current work in progress and start reading it, immersing myself afresh in the situation, worming my way into the characters.

It's a great life.

Amy

A sobering thought

2007-11-09T08:32:00.000+11:00

We visited a 94-year-old uncle yesterday. An ex-seaman who sailed on the Murmansk and Malta convoys, he was on the Queen Mary when she sank the cruiser Curacao in mid Atlantic whilst carrying American troops to the UK in preparation for the Invasion.

His mind is alert and sharp, but his body is failing, leaving him bed-ridden and practically blind.

We talked of old times, Jack Dempsey's bar in New York, ships we knew, etc, but the effort soon exhausted him and we had to leave. Time and distance will soon separate us again and this may have been our last meeting.

I will regret his passing. He is the last survivor of his generation of my family, but I couldn't wish him to stay, locked in partial darkness with only his memories to exercise his mind.

It's a great life (Sometimes)

Amy

A lesson learned

2007-11-07T10:25:00.000+11:00

My second review of Feodar's World and my royalty statement from New Concepts came yesterday and each reinforced the other in suggesting the series started with New Blood should have been a single book directed at another market entirely.

I'll suspend work on books four and five until I've used the lessons learned in writing a series on the Marrack Family series about pirates/privateers and the contemporary romances with Whiskey Creek Press and Shadowrose have appeared. (Hopefully The Countess and the Privateers will establish me in another genre in the meantime)

At some time in the future, I'll withdraw New Blood, Feodar's World and Rachael's Return and then rewrite the whole story of Peter and his creation in a single volume, probably 300,000 words plus.

In the meantime, our visit with the latest grandson is going great. We had a great trip up from Melbourne, spent two days at Binalong(Where "Flash" Johnny Gilbert is buried and near the family home of "Banjo" Paterson, of "The man from Snowy River" fame)

It's a great life

Amy

Some memories never die

2007-10-28T11:09:00.000+11:00

A blog entry of a writer friend brought back a memory I thought I'd safely buried and the bitterness of it was as bright and new as the day it happened.
It was the at the height of the anti-Vietnam rallies and I was caught in the traffic jam outside Victoria Barracks in Melbourne, my car stopped alongside a tram stop. Standing, waiting for a tram, was a senior ranker, a sergeant I think, and the medal ribbons on his breast included three for personal bravery. I didn't know him personally, but his unit badges proclaimed him a fighting soldier from a battalion that had covered itself in honor in Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam.

The demonstration was proceeding noisily down the other side of the street, one of the major Melbourne thoroughfares, and a group broke away from the main stream and, evading the police cordon, approached the soldier. One young woman, grubby in her frenzied support for a cause she may have barely understood, spat in his face.

Anonymous in my civilian clothing, I eased the car door open, prepared to go to his support, but he dealt with it magnificently, regarding the young woman with quiet contempt while the spittle dribbled down his face. The police intervened at that moment and led the group back into the stream of people.

"Can I give you a lift, Digger?" I asked, shamed by my inaction.

"No, thank you. I'm just going to the station." He waved aside my apologies for the incident. "Some of my friends died to give her the right to do that. I honor their memory."

The tram came and he got on and stood wiping the spittle from his face with a handkerchief as it pulled away.

The next day, the Army issued an order restricting the wearing of uniform to within the precincts of the Barracks.

For myself, and the rest of us with personal experience of Vietnam, we understood the protesters better than they thought and the young woman was just an unfortunate side effect of their frenzy, but turning the Australian uniform into something to be hidden from sight hurt.

Even after all these years, it still does.

Amy

A guest has arrived

2007-10-26T08:09:00.000+10:00

Our younger daughter's garage is being dismantled and replaced because the structure had become dangerous and this left a gaping hole in their fence so their border collie has come to stay with us until the fence is replaced.
Indigo has spent at least half her life with us, for our daughter and her husband lived here until they could afford their own home, so the house and yard are familiar. She's a typical Border Collie, excitable, full of energy and hasn't an enemy in the world. For ninety percent of the time, she can be controlled by voice, but the other ten percent ranges from embarrassing to hilarious and her daily walks are exciting. She'll run till she drops chasing a thrown stick (she has no interest in balls)

Fortunately, there's lots of bike track, ovals, parks and gardens nearby and at six a.m. (her preferred walk time) not too many people around.

I'm not sure whether I'll be glad or sorry to see her go home next week. Walking a dog like her is much more strenuous than simply walking and we come home afterwards and both collapse for a time.

Life without Indigo will certainly be different.

Amy

The Sneezing Season

2007-10-23T08:11:00.000+10:00

It's a worse than usual year for hay fever and I am a woeful sight, subsisting on antihistamines and still miserable.

It is only the last ten years when it has affected me and I'm not sure whether conditions have worsened or I have deteriorated, but I suspect the latter. (The increasing concoction of medication that comes with age is possibly a factor as well.) I'm quite certain that if I took a family pet to the vet in the state I'm in, they'd take a look at my age and suggest it might be kinder to put me down now rather than let me suffer. We're kinder to our pets than to ourselves. (I am joking...I think)

Oh, to be at sea again, hundreds of miles from the nearest land, in mid Atlantic, like my heroine from The Countess and the Privateers. She's not suffering from sore eyes, running nose and sneezing so often her ears ache.

The progress has picked up a little since I realized I had to involve Talleyrand and Fouche` to justify the efforts made by the villain to capture the ship. I am continuously amazed at how neatly historical facts suit this story. It is almost as if my subconscious had been storing specific knowledge to trigger my imagination.

It's a great life, hay fever or no.

Amy

The best laid plans

2007-10-14T10:39:00.000+10:00

Mid October is approaching and the WIP, The Countess and the Privateers, another slight name change, is languishing at thirty thousand words, its wordage creeping rather than growing.

There's nothing wrong with the story, I'm still as excited as I was in the beginning, and the plot is developing very nicely. The problem lies outside it, in a family trauma not affecting me directly, but still very distressing to those I care for. Like everything else, it will pass and, hopefully, leave no lasting scars, but my concern for them keeps tugging away at my concentration and I find myself staring into space rather than writing.

Worse than that, the normal uncertainties and delays of a writer's life seem suddenly mountainous and I find myself seeking reassurance wherever I can. Intellectually, I know this is merely a knock-on effect of the other, but the needy brat, who still populates a distant corner of my mind, is screaming for comfort and won't be hushed.

It's a selfish reaction in giving comfort to others for a part of you to call, "Me too!"

It's back to 1802 for me, where the privateers are gathering,

Amy

A Soldier's Woman has a new home

2007-10-03T07:52:00.001+10:00

Shadowrose Publications have accepted the Americanized version of A Soldier's Woman and are looking at Snow Drifter, which would bring the last of my Australian published books to the US.

Mitchell's Run made it as Mitchell's Valley. A Fair Trade will be released this month as A Fair Trader and The Widowmaker will come out at Whiskey Creek Press in May 2008. It will be great to see them tread a broader stage, because I enjoyed writing every one of them.

It's a great life!

Amy

Rachael's Return is out

2007-09-23T08:27:00.000+10:00

I emerged briefly from my troglodyte writing cave to find New Concepts had released Rachael's Return and this banner will appear on The Romance Studio website.

I spent a few moments happy dancing around the cave and now it's back to 1802 and an exciting voyage to Jamaica, battling privateers turned pirates and treachery on board.

It's a great life

Amy

Time to Focus

2007-09-20T16:38:00.000+10:00

The edits are done for Rachael's Return and A Fair Trader and the former is due for release this month with A Fair Trader to follow within the next thirty days. I've submitted a partial of The Countess and the Pirates to Samhain and have four weeks (on past experience) to complete the manuscript.

That means Focus, Focus, Focus.

All the time-wasting habits must go to the wall. Yahoo groups will get a single glance during the morning hour of administrative duties, as will my fellow author's blogs and nothing more. I hope the world doesn't end in the next four weeks, because I mightn't even notice.

See you sometime mid-October.

Amy

The number of the Beast and other things

2007-09-08T13:33:00.000+10:00

Mitchell David, our second grandson, joined the clan on Wednesday evening around 6.15 pm. He weighed in at 6 lbs 6.6 ounces and Shelley, our daughter-in-law, noticed the conjunction of sixes into 666 and wondered if it was an augury of some kind, then she looked at Mitchell David's paternal line and wondered no more. Both are doing well and are home already.

Rachael's Return has cover art now and it is the first example I've approved unconditionally since my days with Rocky River Romance and I can tick off another family name from my list with our first granddaughter satisfied. (The family is growing faster than I can write)

A Fair Trader has reached the edits stage with the accolade of "the cleanest manuscript the editor has ever worked on". This is the very nice lady who called me a "Wordsmith", so she's definitely on my Xmas card list.

It's a great life.

Amy

Coming Soon

2007-08-26T13:52:00.000+10:00

Rachael's Return, the third book of the First Family series has made it to the "Coming Soon" page of New Concepts Publishing. There's no artwork yet and no indication of when, but it's good to see movement.

Feodar's World, the second book received a mixed review at Romance Reader at Heart. The reviewer, Julie, chose it because she'd read Mitchell's Valley and loved it enough to want to read what she thought was my first sci-fi story. It is neither my first, nor is it predominantly sci-fi, although the setting is a space ship initially.

I always knew making each book of the series stand alone was going to be difficult because the concept of a world created by a dying veteran of WWI, the French Foreign Legion, WWII and Korea where he and the family he creates there, become telepathic immortals with the ability to translocate physically is not quickly explainable and the plot is complex.

Julie found it confusing from page one, but she was generous enough to recommend it to anyone who'd already read New Blood.

Whiskey Creek Press are still releasing The Widowmaker in May 2008 and Shadowrose publications are anxious to release A Fair Trader soon and are looking at the other books of my backlist.

My work in progress has gone through a couple of name changes as the story develops, but seems to have settled down to The Countess and the Pirates. It's going well and I hope to have the first three chapters to accompany a query letter soon.

"The best I've written so far."

2007-08-19T12:22:00.000+10:00

I'm deep in the initial chapters of a new series about pirates and the women who love them. It opens with the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 and the heroine is returning to Jamaica after her first season in London. The temporary peace with Napoleon has thrown a flock of privateers out of employment and they have reverted to piracy, etc.

The story's going great guns and I'm enjoying the writing so much, I made the above comment at breakfast, only to have my partner smile knowingly and remind me that I say this with every new book I begin.

Stephen King, in his very readable book, "On Writing", admits to the same feeling, so I'm in good company.

Its a great life.

Amy

Wordsmith

2007-08-14T06:36:00.000+10:00

When I first started writing professionally I came across "wordsmith". It wasn't familiar so I looked it up in the dictionary.

Wordsmith: a fluent and prolific writer with a talent for words; a professional whose vocation is writing; a journalist.

It gave me a goal. More than anything else, I wanted to be a wordsmith!

Yesterday, an editor who knew nothing of me beyond my manuscripts described me as a 'Wordsmith" and, influenza virus or no, I felt good. It was, to me, the ultimate professional accolade.

As an aside, it seems Shadowrose Publications may release my early books taken off the shelf by the demise of Rocky River Romances, starting with A Fair Trader, the Americanized version of A Fair Trade. I've done the artwork questionnaire and am waiting for the edits.

More later.

Amy

Four, and definitely counting

2007-07-29T10:24:00.000+10:00

Shadowrose Publications offered a contract for A Fair Trader, the Americanized version of my Rocky River Romance book, A Fair Trade and I accepted it. This will be my fourth contract for this year and I have two possible additions in the pipeline. To say I'm a little elated is a major understatement.

Sleep last night was an unattainable illusion beyond a few catnaps and I was up early toiling away at administrative tasks such as updating my website and spreading the news. This is the last of those tasks before I open my WIP and get down to my real work.

It's a great life

Amy

A Great Day at the Office

2007-07-24T10:34:00.000+10:00

I began writing as a detailed planner, my engineering background demanded it. I’d take an idea and play with it until I could see its potential and then build a structure to present all its elements in a logical pattern, with mini climaxes dotted a precise intervals, subplots initiated and carried forward to their culmination, everything in its precise place. Only then would I start to write. (I tell the story of using a very complex project planning software, one I used professionally and taught others how to use effectively, to plan one story, complete with critical paths etc, and it’s true.)

These days I’m more likely to begin with a character, a general idea of how I’d like him/her to develop, and dump him/her into a situation I think might provide this development. I then write forward with the only goal of having my character react naturally and let the situation develop, making me as much the observer as the reader and probably with less idea how the story will develop(which requires a gigantic leap of faith on my part).

What happens next always surprises and delights me. A some point in the story, nearly thirty thousand words into it in this case, everything clicks together and I have the complete structure in my mind.(Not the details, just he structure.) My reaction is always the same. I sit grinning like a fool, then get up and prowl around the house, hugging to myself the feeling of success, until I can sit down at the keyboard and begin turning it into reality.

The two thousand words, I’d struggled to produce each day to this point, flow onto the screen so easily I’m tempted to keep going, but I don’t. I have a life away from the keyboard and it deserves my attention.

The end of the first draft beckons now, (from thirty thousand words in the future) with its final skim through before I put it aside and begin another manuscript and go back to the struggle until its time to return and do the hard work of crafting my creation into a readable whole. (It usually takes me twice as long as the first draft to achieve this and I have one waiting for me.)

Back to writing for me.

Amy

Critique Groups

2007-07-17T11:08:00.000+10:00

I joined an online critique group a few days ago, my first foray into this area. I've always been wary of such things, partly because I'm not a natural joiner and few of the group forays I've previously made proved worth the time they consumed. (I find writing time precious and anything that competes with it has to pass stern tests)

I made my first critique too quickly, I should've read more of the previous crits first, and, because this was the writer's most obvious weakness, I chose to "show" rather than tell.

It was not well received and I wondered initially if it were worth the effort I'd put into it..

My second crit was more cautious (not in content, but in approach). The writer was much more competent and it only needed minor errors highlighted, but I'd discovered a basic fact about these groups--doing a crit requires much more trust than offering your work for one. (you can choose to ignore another's words)

It was a moderately long passage and I finished the crit(using their recommended method of inserting the comments direction into the text using capitals) and then I sat and read it several times (It is a measure of my focus that I still missed a simple typo that turned "think" into "thing"). Still not satisfied, I put it away for several hours and enjoyed the visit of all, bar one, of our grandchildren. After tea, when they'd been bathed and gone home, I sat and read it again. It was the balance between highlighting effectively what I saw to be errors and the method I had to use to achieve this that bothered me the most.

In the end, I sent it off and returned to my real work, Kayelle, having forgone five, possibly six, hours in the exercise.

It's a great life (but I sometimes wonder)

Amy

Works in Progress

2007-07-16T10:00:00.000+10:00

My current work in progress is the fourth story of the First Family from New Blood. It has the feel of a good story, particularly as I'm attempting a different structure from the others, but there are many more judgement calls to be made and each one has taken time. Achieving some success with the previous stories in this series has raised the bar considerably.

There are times when the work creeps forward as I juggle possibilities, sometimes even stalling as the moment of decision looms. Other moments have me jumping from place to place in the manuscript and writing furiously as a decision opens up unforeseen possibilities and I hurry to record them. Always my internal editor questions, demands excellence, derides foolishness and taps an impatient rhythm on my shoulder.

In the beginning there was occasional applause for this piece of writing or that from this conscience figure. Now, the best I can expect is grudging absolution and a demand for more and better writing.

It's great life.

Amy

Workaholic Blues

2007-07-14T09:52:00.000+10:00

I was not always a workaholic.

The malady grew, undetected, through the years, parallelling my increasing responsibilities, until it became so much of me I had to arrange a physical separation between my work and my home life. The strategy worked most of the time, but there were outbreaks to be curbed.

It is more difficult now. My office is only a few steps away and writing has a tempo imposed by the release of new books. This makes it easy to impose self deadlines to meet some imagined advantage of keeping your name in the public eye, especially when the failure of a publisher reduces the body of your work available to readers. There's a terrible temptation to work harder, write faster, to replace those books in the market.

Marketing is another excuse. Small house publishers, the ones likely to take a chance on emerging and makee-learnee writers like me, do not have the funds to promote their books and the burden falls to the author. I've gone through the initial stage of frenetic energy, interrupted by trips to New Zealand and Europe/UK, and have settled to a level of measured effort directed as intelligently as I can, although the prime requirement still seems to be a sufficient body of work in the public domain to sustain interest.

I guess I'll just struggle along, trying to balance the conflicting demands of my family, my muse and commercial realities.

It's a great life. (I think)

Amy

The Demanding Muse

2007-07-10T20:04:00.000+10:00

There are moments in writing when the muse needs wooing, others when she teases and tantalizes, but the toughest are when she demands total effort and is satisfied with nothing less than your best.

The fourth story of the First Family series creeps forwards, ideas tested and discarded. Six thousand words trashed because they led into a blind alley. What remains is good, but my muse demands more, forcing me to dig deep into all I've learned since I began this mad obsession with writing.

Kayelle, the heroine of this story, is twenty-two and younger than the others. Headstrong, willfull, hungry for life, she frets at restriction and is impatient with delay. Jean-Paul, on the other hand, is wary of his attraction to this beautiful child, particularly as he finds himself doing uncharacteristic things, his emotions taking charge and tempting him into what seems in retrospect, little better than rape in his eyes.

Kayelle doesn't see it that way.

I'll leave you and get back to the problem.

Amy

Recycling is Hell

2007-06-28T10:13:00.000+10:00

I'm back in the fourth story for the First Family series and my mind is made up. No more attempting to recycle the stories of my failed Australian publisher. If the two submissions I have in at the moment work, good. If they don't, too bad.

They were good stories, written for Australian readers and a time capsule of my writing style at the time, but Americanizing them and updating their style is surprisingly hard, particularly the style change. It's not just changing telling to showing, the characters themselves no longer ring true and it dates the storyline. Coming back to the present, so to speak, was such a relief and the unnamed fourth story is flowing along with only the story problems to occupy my mind.

This is the major change in my writing style. I know my characters, I know my background and I record their activities. It gives an immediacy to my writing and I experience the story as it happens, just like the reader.

As I've said before.

It's a great life.

Amy

A comedy of errors resolved

2007-06-26T08:45:00.000+10:00

I sent off one of my WIPs yesterday. It was a rewrite, requested by a publisher, of a story first submitted in 2001 and subsequently published in 2002 as a print book in Australia by Rocky River Romance, which has subsequently closed it doors.

With the rights returned to me, I Americanized the spelling and jargon to find it another home and sent it off with a query letter to a US publisher. It came back within a week, just before we went to Sydney for our granddaughter's birthday, with a surprising run of editing suggestions and a request to see the edited version. When I opened the manuscript file, I found I'd accidentally submitted the original manuscript from 2001 and the comments related to my 2001 writing style. I'd gone to the trouble of renaming the manuscript to prevent confusion, but in the rush to finish everything before leaving for Sydney, I'd clicked on the line below and sent the wrong manuscript.

I sent an email explaining my error and that I would be away in Sydney for some time before I could respond, especially as two of the editing suggestions, still relevant to the updated manuscript, really interested me.

Back from Sydney, re-energized by the break, I put everything aside and plunged into the rewrite. It has been the most difficult writing task, I've attempted so far, and I struggled because the story had changed so much from its 2001 version that applying the editing principles contained in the publisher's suggestions was like applying them to a different language. I hope my efforts satisfy the new publisher, but I have no confidence in them. I even toyed with putting it aside for a month or two, but decided against it. Perhaps I was wrong?

Amy

"We be Pirates, by God"

2007-06-14T09:51:00.000+10:00

We're back from Sydney after a great time with our granddaughter (They grow up so fast!) and snatching a few moments to follow a discussion about pirates in the NCP group.

It started me thinking and I came up with a story idea about a Royal Navy Lieutenant, put on half-pay by the decommissioning of ships after the Treaty of Amiens, returning to his home in Jamaica and setting up as a trader to gather intelligence about the privateers turned pirates by the peace. 1802 lies outside the golden age of piracy, but there was a brief flurry of activity in this period which saw some quite horrific acts of piracy and it gives a lead in to the Lieutenant's family history in the trade for a possible series.

It would be nice to read a story of pirates that bore some resemblance to truth.

I've put it aside for the moment to concentrate on my two WIPs

It's a great life

Amy

Vampires, Werewolves and other things going bump in the night

2007-05-30T10:52:00.000+10:00

Amid the rash of polls, blogs and other things about were-creatures and the like, one author wondered about the shift from demonizing such creatures to making them sexy and attractive-think of the shift from The Big Bad Wolf of the Three Little Pigs and Red Riding Hood to the countless heroes of shape-shifter romances and from Bram Stoker's Dracula to current vampires.

I think the answer is simple. When we feared these creatures, we demonized them. Now our healthy skepticism has revealed them for the figments they really are, we pity them and start conservation movements. The first step of any conservation movement is to popularize, casting the target in a favorable light to gain wide spread support.

Logically, the Devil must be due his day in the Sun soon, then we can expect the most misrepresented of them all to appear, although God as a sex object takes a leap of the imagination.

Global Warming shrinks in comparison.

It's a great life.

Amy

PS We're off to share out granddaughter's birthday in Sydney. See you in two weeks time.

"Foreign" writers

2007-05-25T08:48:00.000+10:00

An editor was lamenting in the Epicbiz Yahoo Group about the standard of English in the submissions he received from "Foreign" countries and others joined in with horror stories of the submissions they'd received.
While I sympathize with them, I was in the middle of Americanizing one of my stories and muttering to myself about the changes it imposed--American English is sometimes painful to the rest of the English speaking world.(Its passion for simplification often robs it of subtle nuances)

I toyed with the idea of responding to him with a submission and having a little fun with his guidelines (they were a little obscure in parts) purely out of annoyance, but better judgement prevailed ans I went back to my task.

He's possibly a very nice man, writing out of frustration more than real thoughts, and may even regret his careless use of the English language to define "Foreign" writers, but he was unwilling to forgive lapses in others, so he can't expect them himself.

Back to work for me

Amy

Busy, Busy, Busy

2007-05-22T07:06:00.000+10:00

The demise of Rocky River Romance/Saltwater Press freed four books as the rights reverted to me and I'm busy finding them a new home, Americanizing the spelling and colloquialisms to make the stories more readily accessible to US readers.

One of them, Snow Drifter translated very easily, being part set in Aspen, the second is more difficult and I was tempted to take the Americanization further and relocate it as I did with Mitchell's Valley.

It's great, applying the several years of learning to stories I enjoyed writing, but it is also intense. I end each day with a stiff neck and an ache between my shoulder blades.

New Concepts has Snow Drifter and I'm waiting for their response while I work on the others.

It's a great life.

Amy

Web Traffic

2007-05-15T11:17:00.000+10:00

It is bizarre what brings traffic to a website.

I received a huge boost when Saddam Hussein was hung, mainly from people searching for gallow, with or without the pendent s. The word is still responsible for a higher proportion of visits than any other source.

This type of information brings you down to earth with a thump.

It's still a great life

Amy

Feodar's World has landed violently

2007-05-13T08:41:00.000+10:00

New Concepts released Feodar's World today, rating it both sensual and contains violence. The latter puzzled me a little and I had to go back over the story to find the violence as I'd thought I'd skirted around the issue rather well.

The isolated acts of violence are referred to rather than described, but are integral to the story. It will be interesting to see how they rate Rachael's Return which has more violent acts and two battles integral to the secondary love story between Kamran and Helene. They had to be there to make sense of the story and I've presented them as non-confrontationally as possible without losing their reality.

It's a delicate balancing act. I hope I succeeded.

Amy

A pleasant surprise

2007-05-02T12:02:00.000+10:00

Melanie Grant, from Essence of Romance, a subscribed data base of books, contacted me and my books are now listed with them. It's always great when something comes out of the blue like that. I'd just negotiated an amicable truce with my current heroine, by doing precisely what she wanted, and she'd emerged from her trailer to give me another chance, so the story was flowing again. Along comes Melanie and I now have their banner on my website after a pleasant and painless exchange of emails, complicated only by the time differential between Melbourne and Washington.

It's the second time in less than a month where some reputable organisation has contacted me about my books and I'm feeling a little pleased with myself.

It's a great life.

Amy

I'm in trouble

2007-04-29T22:44:00.000+10:00

One of my work in progress characters has figuratively decamped to her trailer and is refusing to come out an play her part in the story.
"No way," she says. "I'm not doing that."
Since I've started creating real characters and plonking them in situations so I can record their activities, this happens more frequently. My mind runs ahead to plot twists and turns and I start feeding in the necessary circumstances only to be faced with mutiny. This time by the heroine.
She's sulking in her trailer as I write and I have to go back over the story to find out where I wandered off the track she'll accept, or where I created the personality trait that sent her to the trailer.
If I grovel a little, she may even tell me.
Amy

Shuffling along.

2007-04-22T16:54:00.000+10:00

Feodar's World has shuffled up the coming soon queue and may be released soon. I've included the one-liner and blurb for your interest

Love freed her people from the tyranny of distance, reuniting them with their kin, but there was a price.

From lonely commander of a scout ship to liberator was a larger step than Gabrielle knew, but Karrel was there and she took it, starting a new era for wandering humanity. One planet triggered the change and paid the price, becoming Feodar’s World and their son returned to become its liberator with an epic voyage against the odds to reach the Treaty Port and Rachael to start yet another cycle.

The First Family from New Blood continue their exploration of Peter’s reality, gaining a beautiful recruit and embarking on another quest against tyranny.

I finished the setup of a Myspace page to celebrate and you can view it here. Please feel free to add yourself as a friend.

Amy

"There was movement at the station"

2007-04-19T07:57:00.000+10:00

I write that with sincere apolgies to "Banjo" Paterson of "The man from Snowy River" fame, but The cover art for "Feodar's World" has arrived and I can see the scene within the story (small details excepted).

Add Whiskey Creek Press announcing "The Widowmaker"'s release date, May 2008, and there's definitely movement at this station.

I'll leave you to admire the cover while I away to do a happy dance around my writing room.

Amy

Happy Easter

2007-04-08T20:57:00.000+10:00

Our eldest daughter went up to Castlemaine with her family and we had the job of feeding their animals while they were away. A new cat complicated the issue, so we had to sleep at her place to keep it company (fortunately only ten minutes drive away).
Our younger daughter had a family lunch today so we went from one daughter's home to the other with me trying to complete the edits for Feodar's World and write the one-liner, blurb and fill in the artwork questionnaire for Rachael's Return in between.

The new cat is five years old and has been retired by a breeder. She's a lovely gentle little thing, slowly coming to terms with her new home. Last night (our third night sleeping there) she decided to join us for the first time around three a.m. In the beginning she stayed at the bottom of the bed, but gradually crept up until she was curled between us. Then a little higher and eventually on my pillow. She experimented with under the bedclothes but woke me up when she decided it wasn't for her and wanted to go in the valley between us again. We'd rolled together and there wasn't room, but this didn't daunt her. She wormed her way into the gap and applied a gentle, remorseless, pressure until the gap widened to her satisfaction, purring contentedly, even as I clung to the edge of the bed to stop falling on the floor.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep well after that, nor get much work done today.

Such is Life

Amy

I weakened

2007-04-03T19:49:00.000+10:00

I try to wait a month between the completion of the first draft of a story and my return to it, but Rachael's Return, the third story of the First Family series started in New Blood, slipped under my guard and I rewrote some parts and submitted it to New Concepts early.

I signed a contract with them today, so it wasn't as disastrous as I feared.

My work in progress is flying along in spite of today's diversion and I'm playing with the idea of a fourth story in the First Family series.

It's a great life.

Amy

Busy Days

2007-03-29T07:23:00.000+10:00

I chose a new story and began the first chapter, then received the edits for Feodar's World from New Concepts and we went on a boat trip on Westernport Bay, visiting a decommissioned submarine and the seal colony at the Nobbies, a rock formation at the western end of Phillip Island. We went very close to the rocks and were downwind so it was both malodorous and noisy, with seals swimming around and under us the whole time. We went elsewhere to eat because I don't think any of us could have faced a barbecue in such company.

The edits were great. Lots of thought provoking comments on my writing style and effective suggestions on how to improve it. I love edits, because I'm aware how much I have to learn and have taught long enough to read between the lines.

The new story is rolling well, one chapter down and the complications emerging. I'm looking forward to a good days work.

Wish me luck

Amy

Educating Rita

2007-03-22T08:26:00.000+11:00

We are subscribers to three amateur theatrical groups and go to 10-12 productions every year. Lat night it was Willy Russell's "Educating Rita" presented as a "two-hander" (only two players).

It was great. The staging was imaginative, filled with subtlety, and the performances were crisp. We left the theatre eminently satisfied.

It was a great antidote to thought because our younger daughter heard me discussing my dilemma about the next story for Whiskey Creek Press and threw another story into the mix. It is set in 1972, the year I wrote it, and tells the story of a young dancer, living in Brisbane, becoming involved with two men in the Australian Coastal Shipping Industry. It was the first novel length manuscript I ever produced and was written ten times on a small portable type-writer as I learnt how to write. It's her favorite, (mine too, I suppose) because every character was drawn from life and set in a world I knew intimately.

Like Rita, I've been "educated" since then and am a better writer, so it is tempting to go back.

Amy

Quo Vadis

2007-03-20T20:25:00.000+11:00

The literal translation of Quo Vadis is supposed to be Where are you going and that's exactly how I feel at the moment.

Rachael's Return and The Widowmaker are behind me for the moment. Where do I go next? I've sorted through my works in progress and sifted my story files pondering the question.

Whiskey Creek Press publish general fiction as well as romance and I'm tempted to try my hand in a different field. There's a couple of offshore oil industry tales in my story files that nag for attention, but I have a contemporary romance completely plotted, with the first chapter written.

The result is me reading all three stories and thinking hard. The safest course is the contemporary romance, but ...

Wish me luck.

Amy

Whiskey Creek Press

2007-03-19T06:44:00.000+11:00

The first draft of Rachael's Return sits temptingly in my computer and I resist its charms by reviewing a manuscript already submitted, but now overdue, pondering two things. How can I improve it and where do I send it next. Enter Debra Ann Womack of Whiskey Creek Press with contract in hand. She has a pleasant, businesslike manner and I am prepared to love her instantly.

The Widowmaker is a contemporary romance set on Phillip Island, near Melbourne, Australia, and revolves around the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix on arguably the fastest racing circuit in the world. We went down there to research the story and had a marvellous time visiting the haunts of my youth and great changes that have occurred since then.

So I face acquainting myself with another publisher, another editor, knowing I will learn much from the experience, and looking forward to it.

Amy