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

Test Cricket

For half the world at least, Test Cricket is a complete mystery, for the rest of us, it's an addiction.

Our favorite foes are in Brisbane for the first test of the Ashes series and my writing has taken a serious hit for the first three days. The result is almost a forgone conclusion now and my interest has waned a little. Perhaps my writing tempo may recover.

It's a strange game. We love beating the Poms, but we admire them individually. Flintoff, the English captain, was arguably the most admired man on the field yesterday as he toiled to lift his team to competitive standards.

Let's hope he succeeds.

Amy

Let the Writer Beware

A friend of my elder daughter received a provisional acceptance from a Kiwi publisher and asked for my advice. I went to their website and navigated my way through all the information and came away undecided. There's nothing directly questionable, but they've been in operation for two years and have only one book avaiable to booksellers.

Writers, particularly beginning writers, are very vulnerable. I managed to navaigate away from Commonwealth Publications (now the subject of a class action by those who didn't) but have wasted enough time on those who stroked my ego to have paid my dues in this area. It comes down to never accepting what you're told without checking.

The organisation in question may well be genuine, just a little more honest than most, but question marks always need to be resolved before you commit your work.

Amy

The Longest Journey

The motorcycling story is on its way again, renamed, with large sections rewritten to reflect the criticisms. It's part of my search for a different publisher, one which reflects more closely my preferred level of sensuality.

It's quite difficult to step away from a publisher where you have found acceptance because there's comfort in dealing with the familiar and I have no real complaints of New Concepts, we're just not suited.

I've gone back to my work in progress, re-reading it from the beginning (82,000 words now) and settling myself back into its environment. I'm enjoying the process, which says something.

Hopefully, it will make the next ninety days a little less daunting.

Amy

Romance Writer at Large

That's the title of my page at The Romance Studio. I think they've done a great job, but I may be biased. Have a look and judge for yourself.

They have a copy of Mitchell's Valley on the 26th of this month in their Book-a-day giveaway.

I was interested that their review highlighted the complexity of the world building in New Blood. It is a common feature of all its reviews, yet I'd merely followed the logic of the original premise, each feature leading inevitably to the next. It's one of the downsides of creating new worlds that they must be able to work.

Amy

Swings and Roundabouts

After the rejection of Beyond the Barriers, it was pleasant to come across the following review for New Blood at The Romance Studio

Amy

New Blood
Amy Gallow
Paranormal romance
Available from New Concepts Publications ISBN: 1-58608-857-2
March 2006

Dael is part of a Hive, a group Mind of elite rulership. As such, she and the others of the Blood incarnate in flesh, take over control of the body. Telepathy and Mind control are just two of their amazing abilities. The Blood cannot function without flesh bodies, because essentially they are just mental constructs. Each individual chosen as a host body gives up control for seventeen years, but is granted untold wealth and social power as well as an extended life span for their sacrifice.
When her host body, Samara, is kidnapped, Dael is astonished to find soothing words spoken telepathically from the kidnapper, who is a Commoner, not Elite. Then she is excluded from the group Mind and fears exile equaling her death. In actuality, Samara has been removed, not kidnapped, by a henchman acting on the orders of another Mind, Peter, whose access to her mind she has allowed.
New Blood is an intriguing tale with a massive amount of complexity in its world building. I had to truly concentrate from the first sentences in order to understand this world, which is very detailed and fascinating. While some readers may find it requires concentration to understand this very new and different fantasy world, it is definitely a tale worth reading.
Overall rating: Four Hearts
Sensuality rating: Mildly sensual
Reviewer: Annie
November 6, 2006

Rejection Dejection

Rejections are part of a writer's life and, no matter how nicely they're couched, they hurt.

This one began with a list of the things the editor really enjoyed before it reached the stumbling block about motor cycle racing and the hero's motivation to ride the "Widowmaker", a bike with a radical suspension and a habit of killing its riders. She knew very little about the sport, as would most of the targeted readers, and found my descriptions confusing and his motivation unbelievable.

This highlights the difficulty of describing something you know very well to a group who are likely to know nothing. From my perspective, I verged on over-explaining.

The hero's motivation is a more vexing question. Is it my familiarity with the sport and the people who follow it that makes it believable to me? Or is there a more basic problem?

I reread the manuscript yesterday pondering those questions and am still no closer to the answers.

Amy

A Century Young

Yesterday we drove down to have lunch with my life partner's aunt, who will be a hundred on January 3rd. She's an amazing woman. One of the genuinely nice people you meet along the way. Her daughter was there too and we looked through photograph albums, recalling the past and sharing memories when she was a single Mum raising a daughter on her own.

Her story makes you realize how lucky most of us are

Amy

Overdue

Our trip away allowed the accumulation of maintenance tasks around the house and in the garden and the better weather has provided a window to get them done.

There's gates, a wrought iron fence, the facia and the external windows to paint. The garden beds need weeding and mulching. We'll do most of it ourselves (with the help of the family) and be ready when the real summer comes. The work in progress is almost done and it will need to sit for a while before I start rewriting so the timing is good.

The spectre of down-sizing to a town-house, or something similar, has raised itself once more and we will have many discussions in the near future. Maybe this time, we'll do something about it, because we both realize it will have to be faced some time.

Probably not.

Amy

The Wee Small Hours

I got up to work because of a bad dream that needed time to dispel before I could sleep again.

It, the dream, is an old friend. A recurrent theme from my past, my subconscious drags out when I am worried about something else. Knowing why doesn't make the dream less real, nor solve my current dilemma, but writing allows me to escape for a while even if elements of the dream work their way into the story.

As in my currrrent story, where the hero has just realized an unpleasant fact he can share with no one, which is difficult because his companions are telepaths.

I don't worry too much. There's always the rewriting stage to remove irrelevancies created in the wee small hours

Amy