Vampires, Werewolves and other things going bump in the night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hello again

We took a break after the wedding (we needed it) and then I settled down to serious writing, finishing the first draft of the third book in the First Family series.

I surfaced a few days ago to find life had gone on around me (It's always a surprise), the silence from one of my publishers had taken on a deathly tinge and the submission period of another had stretched a month beyond the normal response time. The latter is not unusual. The response time for Feodar's World was seven months (the file went missing on somebody's computer) and an early submission to Harlequin took nine months for a response.

It's a writer's life.

Ending a draft is always a time of evaluation. Questions like "Which publisher do I want to target?" "Do I like the direction my writing has taken?" "Which story line do I feel like exploring?" tumble through your mind, trying to displace the world you've just left. If they didn't, you wouldn't be able to approach it again with fresh eyes when the time comes.

I always try for at least a month between drafts. It's not easy, but less time than this hides the flaws in familiarity and I fall into the same mind traps.

Wish me luck

Amy

It was a Great Day

Our younger daughter was married on Sunday in a small Yarra Valley winery.

The ceremony was conducted in the open air, on the lawn overlooking an ornamental lake and we had a long lunch afterwards, sitting at a single long table, Italian style, and eating superb food from noon till after five pm. A gypsy girl sang and then led the guests in an impromptu belly dance. The bride was beautiful, as only a bride can be, and the groom ecstatic.

Everything was perfect because it suited the characters of the two people involved and a bus was provided to take the guests to their homes to allow complete relaxation and enjoyment of some excellent wines.

I can't remember a wedding I've enjoyed more.

Amy

Pay Day

Some publishers pay royalties quarterly and some every six months and the sad reality of the publishing industry is the uncertainty about anything coming at all. Not only do people have to buy books, but the publisher has to receive the monies from distributors and the distributors from booksellers, a chain of events that slows the process to a crawl. One other imponderable, is the survival of the publisher themselves and I've been caught by the demise of two so far. (it's a risky business for small publishers)

Coincidentally, this month all my royalties are due and the first one arrived today, a small one. No matter, I know that publisher has survived another quarter. I must now wait to see if the others have been as lucky.

It's a great life.

Amy

Poor Poetry

It is a common reaction of poets, even poor ones like me, whose only skill is the bush ballads of my father, that reading one poem causes an itch to reply and we fiddle with words until it's satisfied.

A fellow author penned a poem in praise of werewolves and posted in a group we both follow and my partner found me muttering to myself as I stared at it.

Here are my first three verses (with profound apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

You’ve heard the song of the Halflings. My brothers they are not we.
They yowl at the moon in mindless lust to tear at a hairless throat,
And the law of the pack is not for them. My brothers they are not we.
They slaughter the weak to earn man’s despite in the guise of our furry coat.
Then cow from the light as half bred curs. My brothers they are not we.

We spurn the claim of the Halflings. My brothers they are not we.
Not half, nor quarter, nor even a tithe; not fit to plunder the forest trails.
Or the steppes of the endless East. My brothers they are not we.
By night, they turn from our rightful prey to snuffle at woman’s tails
And mate with the hairless weaklings. My brothers they are not we.

We reared the twins in the hills of Rome. My brothers they were not we.
Gave them the strength to rule the world, but the blood it thinned in time,
And they fell to the Huns who followed our trail. My brothers they were not we.
They took our name for the U-boats who braved the Atlantic’s rime,
And harried the plodding convoys. My brothers they were not we.

There's more unfortunately, but I'll keep them to myself.

Amy

To Travel Hopefully

I'd always believed this to be quotation of Lord Byron until I researched it for a book and found it attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson and he added "is a better thing than to arrive and the true success is to labour." at the end.

It's a good description of the third book about the First Family of the Blood, especially the addendum.

Like the second book, it picks up from the end of the last story and continues, this time with Jack and Rachael, before changing direction to follow another character into another development of the Family. All three of these books have been written the same way, becoming voyages of discovery rather than journeying from one known point to another.

I'm finding it a fascinating way of writing, all the more so because I'm working on another story at the same time which has been plotted and outlined to death and written as episodes out of sequence for eventual joining together. (I believe most movies are shot this way and only joined up at the end.) I'm having fun with both stories and enjoying the comparison of writing methods without thinking either is necessarily the best. A case for "horses for courses' it seems.

Happy Australia Day to all

Amy