Back on an even keel and full steam ahead.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sadly, I was left to water in peace.

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

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

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

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

It's a great life (still)

Amy(?)

I'm having a ball!

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

I'm talking about the Sea.

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

Back to work.

It's a great life.

Amy(?)

A Fair Trader

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

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

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

It's a great life.

Amy

Rejection Blues - I think not!

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

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

She was right! The romance was almost an afterthought.

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

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

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

It's a great life.

Amy(?)

Inside this writer's mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

The rich tapestry of life?

Our elder daughter tore a muscle in her lower back five days ago and a six-week-old baby and an energetic four-year-old made life impossible so we've been spending most of our time there while her husband is at work. The younger daughter is having sleeping and feeding problems with the three-month-old so a division of labor seems imminent (or some form of shift-work).

My writing has slipped down the food chain a little while this is happening and walking around the house pacifying our newest grandchild has aggravated the tendinitis in my right shoulder. (It's not incapacitating, just painful)

I wouldn't miss this for the world, but I'm sure it will be better looking back than it is now.

Amy

The King is dead! Long Live the King!

The contracts for Feodar's World are signed and dispatched, the one-liner and the blurb written, and the fourteen questions of the Artwork Questionnaire answered. Now, until the edits and the artwork return, it makes way for its successor and becomes history. I will have one last chance to change things, but time will be pressing by then and I'll probably accept the edits and return to what I'm writing. The King is indeed dead.

The third book in the series about the First Family of the Blood is one of my works in progress and the enthusiasm of the publisher's response has lifted it to the top of the queue again. I've just read the first two stories to refresh my memory and am fiddling with a hard copy of the twenty thousand words already written, doing a bit of cut and paste to juggle events into a more logical progression and sharpen the beginning hook. I normally do this at the end of the first draft, but there's been more interruptions than normal in this one. (Our elder daughter has just torn a muscle in her lower back and our grandson is barely a month old and his sister nearly four, so it's all hands to the pumps to help out until she recovers - just another thread in the rich tapestry of our lives)

I sat for a long time with the email from New Concepts. Accepting their contract virtually locks the remaining books of the series to this publisher and I've already expressed my reservations about the match between what I write and they publish. My partner was more pragmatic. "Accept the contract and get on with your writing. You're wasting valuable time sitting there."

Good advice, probably.

Amy

Feodar's World

Feodar's World, the follow-up to New Blood, has been accepted with some enthusiasm by New Concepts Publishing. Their reaction to the book is good for the soul, but I'm left to weigh my options carefully before I sign the contract.

The advantages of having both books, and the third perhaps, with the same publisher have to be balanced against my perception that my stories fall outside the niche they have created in erotic romances. One reviewer labelled New Blood as mildly sensual and I have no argument with the classification. Feodar's World, has a little more sensuality, but not enough to move it into the class of the books around it at New Concepts.

I suspect I shall sign the contract because I have twenty thousand plus words written of the third book and some more interesting ideas to explore in its environment.

Amy

A Writer's World

As a late-comer to writing, I find it both fascnating and frustrating.

The creative side is great. I get up each morning filled with energy and plunge into the work in progress and have to tear myself away to eat or any of the other mundane chores of life. Were it not for my spouse, my social life would cease to exist for great blocks of time, our home would settle into the dust of disrepair and my body would become a brain and its interface with the computer. None of these things happen, which is just as well.

The business side, publishers, promotion, etc., is frustrating. I navigate my way through it like a ship entering an unknown harbor, taking frequent soundings, searching for leads towards my goals and extremely conscious of my uncertainties. The publishing world is a mass of rumors and innuendoes. Nothing is quite as it seems. Caution steered me clear of Commonwealth Publications and I survived the closure of LTD Books, but things are so tight out there that every statement has to be tested and good will is no guarantee.

I'm too pragmatic to expect change, so I'll just muddle on as before, enjoying what I can and enduring the rest.

Amy

Settling into the New Year

A detailed edit of Feodar's World is my entry point to this year's writing and I'm accumulating a list of points not adequately explained in this continuation of New Blood.

As it could be with an different publisher, I can't rely on the reader knowing the previous story and must clarify the references adequately. The whole thing is an exercise in clear thinking and is blowing away the writing cobwebs accumulated in the festive season distractions.

I enjoyed most of them.

The 100th birthday celebrations for my aunt yesterday turned into a massive family reunion with more guests than her years and she coped remarkably well with both the heat (35 degrees Celsius) and the excitement.



Our son, a soldier himself with an earned combat rifleman's badge, saw the obituary photo of my uncle and made a comment perhaps only a soldier who'd seen action might make.

The photo was taken before Jim went north to a campaign that saw half his platoon become casualties. My son identified the "braveness" of the smile as being the way Jim wanted himself remembered if he didn't make it and it clarified the picture in a way no other words could.


There are experiences that change the way we see the world.


Amy

The Festive Season

The new grandchildren are settling down, the family visits are coming to an end and normalcy lies just beyond the horizon-I hope.

I'm not sure whether it's because I've grown older or because this festive season was even more hectic than usual, but I have a guilty pleasure in its ending and the prospect of going back to a more humdrum pace, writing regularly rather than snatching the odd moment, waking less than exhausted by the pace of events and revelling in the privacy of our home once more.

In the meantime, The Romance Studio have added me to their Featured Member list for January with a interview and an excerpt from Mitchell's Valley, which you can see here.

Congratulations on surviving the festive season and my best wishes for the new year

Amy

Lest We Forget

My 83 year-old uncle died peacefully in his sleep just after midnight last Friday, succumbing indirectly to cancer. A veteran of the 2/6th Cavalry Commando Regiment in WWII, he stands tall in my memory, a big man in every sense with a merry grin that made light of adversity. We'll lay him to rest today with all the familiar rituals and take what comfort we can from them.

"Bomb Happy" was a common term just after WWII. It referred to the state of mind of many returning veterans who, having seen hardship and action aplenty, came home with the happy certainty that nothing in the future would ever seem so bad. The term was never derogatory and I knew several to whom it applied. All of them faced difficulties with the same elan, smiling at some secret memory that shrunk the present dilemma to its true size. I'm not sure I would like to pay the price they paid to reach this state, but I admired them unstintingly.

James Henderson Stacey was such a man.

Amy

Congratulations to all the Eppie Finalists

A heartfelt congratulations to all whose books made it into the finals of each and every category. You undoubtedly deserve to be there.

An equally heartfelt congratulations to the judges and coordinators. The system is demonstrably fair because I've read at least one of the finalists and, while it wasn't to my taste, it still got up and made the finals, probably on the basis of writing and story-telling.

Amy

Back to Normal (???)

Our daughter came home from hospital yesterday, reuniting the family and allowing us to step back to the more passive grand-parenting role. It was great for a few days, but we both breathed a sigh of relief when it was over.

The vegetable garden is fully planted and everything seems to have survived both the patch of hot weather and persistent smoke from the bushfires to the north and east of us so my excuse to work outside has flown and it's back to work on the next story.

This one is interesting. I'm fortunate enough to run short courses in creative writing in our adult education system and part of the exercise in showing how to turn an idea into a story is watching a scene from an entirely forgettable movie starring Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman. There is no backstory given and no explanation, just the scene in isolation. From this we develop a synopsis and outline the highlights of the story drawn from individual personal experiences. It comes a third of the way through the course, when they know what a story is and what elements it must contain and has proven successful in bringing together the work covered to this point and giving a common thread to the rest of the course.

The Better Man is my own example of the exercise and I use it to illustrate the steps needed to take a simple idea and turn it into a story. It has a synopsis and six highlight scenes written, but no more and each course I'm asked when I intend to write the complete.

When the next course starts in February, I'll be able to say "Now."

Amy

He is come

Declan Harold arrived last night at 11.35 pm. We were called away from the Christmas function and nudged the speed limit all the way to their house to take over the care of Isabella while they raced to the hospital. He threatened to arrive in the car, but they made it and he weighed in at 9lbs 12ozs. Mother and baby are doing great and we're on our way to the hospital to greet him officially.

It's a great life.

Amy

The end is nigh

Our elder daughter's pregnancy was reached full term and we are in the nervous final days before the Doctors take matters in their own hands. There's movement afoot and we are on standby to look after Isabella when Christine goes into labor. We spent the night at their home because the arrival of our grandson seemed imminent, but things settled down again and we came home again this morning.

We're off to a Christmas breakup party tonight with cell phone on silent vibrating alert, just in case.

Amy

Dad's Army

A former England player labeled the current Australian Test team as Dad's Army, so it was particularly sweet to see two of those "aging has-beens" so intimately involved in a stunning victory at Adelaide.

It went some way to balance the bad news of bushfires, 80 year-old uncles battling cancer, fellow writers involved in similar circumstances.

I am re-reading a book after a gap of twenty years and it bothers me that there are entire passages I no longer remember reading. It's never happened before and the story is gripping enough to have stayed in my mind long after the book ended. It is tempting to think I was wrong in thinking I'd read it, but circumstantial evidence is against the theory.

Perhaps it's the first sign of enlistment in Dad's Army?

Amy

Water Restrictions, Gardens and the Second Test at Adelaide

There are bushfires (wildfires in the US) within sight to the north and east, snakes are being driven into suburbia by lack of water and destruction of habitat and water restrictions have been tightened because the reservoirs are at their lowest for many years. We are fortunate in having two rainwater tanks with a gravity feed watering system for our vegetables, but hand watering is required for the rest. It takes time, but the exercise is good after a day's writing and we planned our garden for low water usage and implemented many water-saving procedures into our daily routines.

Like everyone else, we must endure.

That's a good description of the Second Test in Adelaide. Our beloved enemy lifted their game to score 551 runs in their first innings and we replied with 513. They're batting again now, with only a day to play, so a drawn game seems inevitable. It's great to see them making a contest of it, something that seemed unlikely after the First Test in Brisbane.

I played golf yesterday and drew for first place, losing only on a countback. The course was in great condition in spite of the drought and the company was good. One of my companions had just come back from a river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest and we compared notes between the coach and the barge as a means of touring. They sailed during the night and spent the days at the wharf, except for the most beautiful section of the Danube. There, they sailed during the day. One great advantage was they unpacked when joining the barge and didn't have to pack again until they left it fifteen days later.

That sounds great after a coach tour.

Amy

A Shared Responsibility

Apart from some administrative duties, the computer has been abandoned for the garden until yesterday as we rearranged garden beds, altered paths and removed weeds.. It's been very productive, very restful.

An email brought it to an end with a request to lighten the load of another volunteer judge to meet the contest deadline and I found myself plunged into another's writing for a day. It's done now and I can turn to more pleasant pursuits (like the opening sessions of the Second Test). I don't like judging. It makes me very uncomfortable and all the entries were published e-books

As writers, we share the responsibility for our books with publishers. They provide the outlet, the format and the cover art. They do an editorial audit of the manuscript and suggest improvements, bring fresh eyes to words we have read repeatedly. My limited experience of editors has been generally good. I have not always agreed with them, but I've always understood their criticisms. The authors in the entries I've judged have not been so fortunate because the level of editing has been poor generally and appalling in places. Such low standards feed the critcisms of e-publishing.

Publishers and writers must lift their game.

Amy