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Short story sale
I keep forgetting to mention that the Australian Woman’s Day magazine has bought another of my short stories 
It may not be published for some months, but I’ll tweet and blog when I know which edition it’s coming out in.
The story’s working title is ‘Echoes of Daniel’ (thanks, Jenn, for brainstorming that!) and it’s a romantic suspense – and yes, it was a challenge writing a romantic suspense story in 1500 words! But a fun challenge, once the idea came to me
Still here! (And there….)
Despite all evidence to the contrary on this blog lately, I am still alive. Life’s just been doing the up and down thing, so my brain has been somewhat distracted.
The major news is that, after months of struggling with it, my publisher, agent and I have decided that the book I was drafting and redrafting and redrafting – the third Dungirri book – just isn’t going to work at this point. Yes, that was a hard decision to make, and I know some readers are going to be disappointed (part of me is, too), but I know that it’s the right decision for now. It took me some days to come to terms with it; it’s very hard to let go of a book and characters that I’ve been working on for a long time! However, my plans now are to power on with a brand new book – new characters, new setting, new story – but at some stage, once that’s finished, I probably will write the third Dungirri book – although how, when and where it will be published I don’t yet know.
Now I’ve got past the disappointment stage, I can confess I’m feeling excited again – I’m no longer struggling to push a story uphill, and I can enjoy the thrill of starting a new idea. While I haven’t actually written a heap of the new book yet, I have the beginning, and the hero and heroine have been taking shape in my mind. I like them They’re not perfect; they each have some flaws or edges that should make them interesting. I think I’ve also worked out the initial crime and the person behind it, and yes, that will keep my protagonists on their toes! No news on publication date, yet, but probably mid-late next year. (I know, it’s a long wait. I’m sorry about that. But since I have major surgery ahead, and we can’t guarantee how much concentration I’ll be able to focus on writing in the next few months, we can’t commit to earlier than that.)
The weekend before last, G and I went for a long drive, partly to visit an area which I wondered about for the setting of the new book. Plus, we like driving through wilderness areas. By the end of the day, I’d decided that the setting wasn’t quite right for this book – I envisage it further west – but we had a lovely day out, anyway.
We drove north and a little west, up to the tiny community of Torrington, where we drove down the main road:
and conversed with some of the residents:
(The road through Torrington is also a common, where the cattle calmly graze.)
We then wound our way through the eastern edge of the Torrington Conservation Area (not quite a National Park, but similar):
which is granite country, rugged and rocky:
Then on through the rolling hills of the tablelands, up to within coo-ee of the Queensland border:
We then travelled west along the Bruxner Highway for a half-hour so, before turning south and coming home via Ashford and Inverell – but the wind was chilly, so I didn’t hop out and take any more photos!
Although the Torrington area is a wonderful place, this new book is telling me that it wants to be set further west. So, I’ll probably have to plan another trip or two soon; perhaps a couple of nights away, to revisit some places I’ve been to numerous times before, but this time with a writer’s eye.
in the meantime, I’ve got two new characters to get to know even better… and I’m thoroughly enjoying that!
ARRA nomination & internet woes
Today’s quick post has great news and not so great news.
The great news is that Dark Country is a finalist in the 2009 Australian Romance Readers Awards , in the Favourite Romantic Suspense category. The ARRA web page has the full list of finalists in all the categories.
And, to top it off, I am a finalist for the Favourite Australian Romance Author of 2009 award. There’s some pretty wonderful competition though – and huge congrats to the other finalists!
* Angela Verdenius
* Anna Campbell
* Anne Gracie
* Christine Wells
* Denise Rossetti
* Keri Arthur
* Paula Roe
* Stephanie Laurens
* Tracey O’hara
ARRA members are currently voting to determine the winner – if you’re an ARRA member, don’t forget to check your email for the link to cast your vote. The winners will be announced at a gala dinner in Sydney in May. Many thanks to those who nominated me and Dark Country in the nomination round – I’m delighted to make the finals.
The not-so-great news is that we’re having internet connection woes, and will probably be offline for a few days. Our internet box has to be replaced, but they apparently disconnect the old one when the new one is shipped – and it will take probably three days to get here. So, we’ll be internetless from any time now, until it arrives. I can connect via my iPhone to check emails and do the basics, but it’s tricky to read and write on the small screen, so I’ll only be doing urgent things. On the bright side, I hope this will take away some distractions and give me more focus to write!!
Knit 1, Write 2
January 25 for my last post? And now it’s Feb 6th… my, how time flies when there’s a deadline looming!
There’s not a lot of news to report from here, since my butt is firmly in my chair, day after day after day, gradually making progress on book 3. Some days are good, some days are frustrating…. at some stage in my writing career, I may actually learn the lesson that those frustrating days could well be a sign that I’m approaching a scene the wrong way. Yes, 2,000+ words went out the window the other day when I realised, after three days of struggling with a scene, that it was simply all wrong and needed deleting. Sigh. I’m not a fast writer, so tossing out a large chunk of words is always painful. However, the new scene worked much better.
I do take breaks from the writing – making cups of tea, bringing the dogs in from the run, taking the dogs for a walk, giving dogs tummy-rubs, and their favourite – playing biscuit-games. (For my US readers, biscuits=cookies.) Tansy, being a smart bundle of energy, likes the games with running in them, and is always trying to anticipate when I’ll give the order to ‘come’. Jaffa, aka The Princess Dog, is slowing down, due to her seizure medication, and possibly just her temperament. Her favourite biscuit game is ‘I’ll just sit at your feet looking adorable, and you give me a biscuit.”
We’ve had a lot of summer rain, so everything is looking very green – the greenest I have ever seen this district. Most of the trees around here are stringy-bark eucalypts, but there are peppermint gums (eucalypts) and box gums as well, and the box gums are flowering, white blossoms high in the canopy attracting a constant buzz of insects. The native blackthorns are also flowering, and as we have a lot of them, it’s a delight to see the haze of tiny white blossoms as we walk around the block. They’re quite straggly bushes, but the bunches of flowers are lovely:
And yes, I do think it’s a lovely coincidence that the title of the German edition of As Darkness Falls, coming out next month, translates to ‘Black Thorns’. The translator probably didn’t have such a pretty image in mind when coming up with the title, however 
If you’re wondering about the title of this post, it’s because one of the strategies I use to keep my butt in my chair and my brain focused on my book, is to knit while I’m staring at the screen. As mentioned before, I’m not a fast writer. Some people write quickly, get a ‘dirty draft’ down, and then go back and polish it – sometimes revising it multiple times. I write slowly, spend a lot of time getting each part right, and therefore do a great deal of staring at the words, thinking how best to express the mood of the characters, and weave together the plot elements. So, for me, knitting something uncomplicated is a good way to help the concentration process – it keeps my hands busy, and away from the mouse and the temptation of clicking all over the internet (or even just over other files on the computer), and it relaxes the restless part of my brain, with the simple, repetitive rhythms, and just the sheer pleasure of holding beautiful yarns. It also dramatically reduces any desire to get up and go and clean bathrooms, spring clean the house, or any of those other procrastination devices that afflict restless students and workers.
I usually keep my knitting ramblings over on my textile blog, but just to pretty up this post a little more, here’s a photo of second shawl I recently knitted from a pattern I designed:
(It looks more complicated than it is – the lace pattern was easy rhythmic knitting, and so suited to knitting while writing! I did take a few breaks, though, earlier in January, to write up the pattern, and after test-knitting by some friends, the pattern’s now available on Ravelry, the big knitting community.)
Okay, now that I’ve had a short break to communicate with the world beyond my computer, I’ll go and wash my breakfast dishes, and then get back into the writing. The current knitting is another shawl, in a rich dark red wool – dramatic shades for a dramatic scene!
New beginnings
It’s hard to believe that it’s 2010 – and we’re already well into the second week of the new year. ‘Two-thousand and ten’ or ‘twenty-ten’? I’m not sure which is going to be what I’ll say – out of habit, I’m still doing the ‘two-thousand and ten’, but ‘twenty-ten’ is two syllables shorter
I hope everyone had a joyful Christmas season, and that 2010 will shape up to be a wonderful year for you all.
The year isn’t my only new beginning lately. I’ve been working on book 3… but I was struggling. I was behind after the medical dramas, it took some weeks to get my concentration back to normal – and then the book still wasn’t working, every word and scene a battle. On December 28 or thereabouts, as I was thinking about the book, the thought occurred to me… ‘what if I changed it?’ On December 29, at around 1pm, I opened a brand new Word document, and started all over again. Same premise, same characters, but a different beginning, leading to some key differences in the plot.
Sometimes, you have to know when to start again. Tough as it was to throw out a heap of work (okay, it’s saved on the computer, just ‘thrown out’ in my mind), the structure of the story simply wasn’t going to work as it was. It’s now much better, much stronger. The heroine – a new character to Dungirri – is active from page 1, and in danger from about page 6, which is a good way to start a story! I’ve also found a better way of dealing with some of the challenges of this book; the hero, Mark, was a secondary character in the previous two books, and is – or rather, was – a politician. Yes, I know – making a (former) politician heroic is a tough ask! I do like Mark as a character, though – I’ve always seen him as a man of integrity, dedicated to serving his community, and with many layers beneath the courteous surface. The new structure sees him introduced in the book in chapter 2, but as a hard-working grazier, out in the paddocks, rather than in any political role. We see him, too, through the heroine’s eyes, and she doesn’t know him, so she sees him as he is, the man behind the public face.
I’m so much happier with the story now, and on the right track with it. However, it’s due in at the end of February – so things are going to be quiet around here for the next two months, while I take inspiration from Nora Roberts’ hard working example and discipline myself to write, write, write!
Sometimes a writer’s just got to do what a writer’s got to do….
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