Ramblings of an Australian Writer

It's the end of the week, and I feel very much as if my brain is "argle blargle wargle." You see, I haven't had much sleep, and there's been a few reasons for this. They include the weather, joint pain, my cat deciding to be a LOUD conversationalist at silly o'clock in the morning, and finally, my Nano novel.

This is going to be the novel that ate L. J.'s brain, I can just tell. I've hit the point in my targeted wordcount that I have to keep extending it. I'm over 75K words now, and this morning, mum said to me, "Are you nearly finished it?"

Oh, how I laughed. LAUGHED, I tell you. And then I sighed, because the joke's on me, really, as I have to wear my fingers to the bone, typing uphill both ways in the rain and snow and drought... you know how it goes. Basically, I'm tired, so I'm a bit dramatic and a touch sleepy-hysterical, which is of course, the best time to write a LJ post! Y/Y? Y.

Anyway, I've neglected blogging for the healthy pursuit of gardening, which is more in the nature of the pursuit of agony and fear of the summer sun burning all our plants. Subsequently, two giant outdoor umbrellas are on their way, because I can't figure out anything else that works to shade everything. I've tried just about everything else, hit Gardner Google, and mum suggested the umbrellas, so that was the winner. I like the idea a lot because when it's not summer, we can fold them up and store them in the garden tool nook, so they're not out all the time.

In October, though, I had a lovely weekend visit from my good friend and fellow author, meredith_shayne. We went all over the Adelaide Hills and down into the Barossa Valley, bought a lot of things, tasted a lot of amazing wine, and had a great time. It's been a while since we've had the chance to hang out together, that little thing called the Tasman Sea is a bit difficult to drive over! So that was terrific, all in all.

Then in November, there was a visit from another old friend and fellow author, vayshti, an Adelaide expat, so we spent a lovely day together in a different part of the Adelaide Hills and then went to a brunch with some of the members of the South Australian M/M Group at a great cafe in North Adelaide called E For Ethel. (Best toasted cheese and ham and tomato sandwich I've ever eaten.)

There's been a lot of other things of the less exciting and happy kind too--I was diagnosed with acute bursitis, and had a very painful injection of corticosteroids for that, followed by long sessions with my pain clinician, aka, physiotherapist. Mum had lots of various tests and so on as well, so November has been a mixture of medical things and writing and gardening. Suffice to say, that now the garden is looking pretty amazing, and my left shoulder is achey as opposed to agonising. And I haven't yet hit the point in my book where I know I'm nearing the end.

To conclude, a couple of photos. As ever, click to see full size!




1. Meredith and her birthday present from me--a plush Captain America shield. 2. The Giant Rocking Horse in Gumeracha, one of the places we visited when Meredith was here. 3. Robyn Walker and I, up in Mt. Torrens in the hills. 4. The quirky awesomeness that is E For Ethel cafe.

More later! Hope everyone is well. <3

I have been quite slack in keeping up with my blog these last few weeks--all I can say is that I've not been 100% and my back has twinges which render me useless for a day at a time, so things have been stressful. However, there are some things happening that I want to share with you all, so here we go!

The Romance Reviews Year End Splash Party continues, so pop along to join in the fun and win great prizes!

The Rainbow Awards Pre-Party and 7th Anniversary giveaway is on and "City of Jade" is one of the wonderful books being given out today. Enter here or here.

Liam Jones, a character from The Archangel Chronicles, had to discuss his police rap sheet over at Cate Ashwood's blog. Liam makes his debut in The Wind-Up Forest, along with his brother, Declan, a group of Venatores and new angels and demons and monsters. To read a little about Liam, head on over here!

Ice enters serial at Less Than Three Press this month, so if you're keen to read about vampires in Antarctica in the future, then head on over to LT3 and sign up for serial, here. There's a whole collection of wonderful authors and their vampire stories available now, too, as LT3's vampire collection is available for order and preorder, so do check it out.

And last but certainly not least, I recieved the cover art for The Wind-Up Forest. Anne Cain is a genius. I love this cover SO MUCH. Behold the beauty! click to see the full size image.

Link of the Now: Has to be one of my favourite blogs, Messy Nessy Chic. Go, read and lose yourself in the wonderful things that she posts, about life in Paris, interesting finds from the internet, travel, food, fashion, abandoned places, history, and so much more.

And now back to Nano (and waiting for my groceries) I go!

May was a good month, wasn't it? Well it certainly was here on my blog! I had loads of awesome guests come and chat about all kinds of things, do giveaways, and there was the wonderful Blog Hop Against Homophobia as well. Lots of people to meet, books to read and stuff to talk about. Pretty awesome.

Part of the interviews I did involved asking everyone a variety of questions, (obviously!), but there was one question that I asked everyone I interviewed - if you were a plant in the next life, what would you be and why? Such a wonderful variety of answers, I thought I'd recap the month with everyone's answers to that question, with a link to each interview. (I'll link guest posts at the end.)

And if you want to comment and tell us what sort of a plant you would be in the next life, then please do! The more, the merrier!

Q: If you were a plant in the next life, what would you be and why?

3/5 C. R. Moss. "I'd be an oak tree. Sturdy, beautiful, able to offer shelter to wildlife and shade to people. :)"
4/5 Kim Fielding. "Lavender. It’s pretty and useful and smells nice, hardly any pests bother it, and it can live quite a long time under difficult conditions. It’s not fussy. Who doesn’t like lavender?"
6/5 Hayley B. James. "Oh! What a fun question! I think I’d want to be a lilac bush. I love the smell of lilac flowers."
10/5 Helen Pattskyn. "LOL! I would love to be a belladonna atropa. They’re quietly beautiful (brown flowers that become big black “berries”) and only slightly poisonous (assuming you’re not a small child)."
12/5 RJ Astruc. "I have some lucky bamboo on my balcony, and I love it, it’s so cool and curly. So that’s what I’d go for. I’m going to pretend, of course, that I’d grow that way naturally, and not have to suffer lots of splinting and twisting in the growing process…"
16/5 Leora Stark. "Lavender. I am obsessed with it. I'd be so relaxed all the time!"
19/5 Jacqueline Brocker. "What I'd like to be; daffodil - I just love them so much, bright and always cheerful. But this is not me so much, so I'd probably be something a bit quirkier like, I dunno, a snapdragon. ;)"
20/5 Meredith Shayne. "A cactus, because I'm a bit fleshy, a bit prickly, and hard to kill."
24/5 Megan Derr. "Venus fly trap. They're ominous and cute all at once. I love playing with those things whenever I go to zoos and gardens. I would totally dig being a Venus fly trap."
27/5 Clare London. "A sweet potato. I like the contrast of cute and sensible :D."
29/5 Marie Sexton. "A lily, because they’re gorgeous, but they’re also tough as hell. They grow in bad rocky soil without much water. That’s impressive."
30/5 Blak Rayne. "Strange question indeed! LOL A cedar tree. Cedars keep the bugs away, they don't shed because they don't have needles, they can grow very big, and they smell nice, plus I love their bowed branches."

Guest posts without mention of plants or next lives:
2/5 Caridad Pineiro.
15/5 Ella Jade.
22/5 Margie Church.
25/5 Jamie Samms.

And what would I be? Well, I'd be rosemary. Because rosemary is hard to kill, doesn't need a lot of care or attention, is adaptable and is great in cooking and in hair care. And it smells nice and relaxes you.

June has started and with it, I broke a toe and got a cold, so I've been feeling pretty sorry for myself. (And not at all rosemary-ish.) Good news, though, is that No Surrender, No Retreat, book two in the Archangel Chronicles has a release date of JULY 25TH, so that's very exciting.

And finally, I'll leave you all with this Kickstarter project link, to make a documentary from footage that was filmed while Andy Whitfield (Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Gabriel) was dealing with his hodgins lymphoma. The doco seeks to raise awareness about cancer as well as be a testamonial to the life of Andy Whitfield.

Be Here Now: The Andy Whitfield Story.

The Archangels novel has gone through so many title changes, it's ridiculous. So, as it FINALLY has a title, thanks to the genius 4am brain of meredith_shayne, here's the thirteen titles it had before achieving it's current title. (I'm sure there were more than thirteen, fyi, just that these are the ones I kept a record of!)

In order, from oldest to what it is now, finally, fixed! And I bet both meredith_shayne and jerusalemorbust breathe a sigh of relief, as I've been bemoaning titles to them both for... um. Months. >_<

1. Silver and Gold.
Chosen because Gabriel's power manifests as silver light and Michael's manifests as gold light.

2. Unexpected Destinies.
Yeah... no.

3. Craving to Entwine.
Saying it out loud made me cringe. A blog that my Noble editor Bonnie linked to had a piece about how if you can say your title out loud without wincing or cringing, that's the one to use. And it's true. This... was not the one to use.

4. Masquerade of Stars.
Doesn't fit this first novel, but it does fit the final novel in the trilogy so at least there's that.

5. The Coming War.
Which sounds good, but the story is about more than an approaching war.

6. Flying for Lovers.
Also made me cringe, but might be reused for a short story or something. Something that isn't so plotty as this.

7. Hope Remains.
Cringeworthy.

8. In Silver and Gold.
I recycled and added a word and decided... no.

9. Uprising.
This was a solid contender for quite a while. I actually went back to it after discarding title #10.

10. Wings of Desire.
Which is a really awesome German film, and I love it, film and title both, but it didn't really feel right to me for this book.

11. Genesis.
Suggested by meredith_shayne, while we were brainstorming, and I liked it but it still didn't really feel right.

12. Angels Speak in Dark and Light.
Too close to one of my all time favourite novels, Creatures of Light and Dark by Roger Zelazny for me. So, no.

13. No Quarter.
HALLELUJAH. It immediately resonated with me. This was meredith_shayne's 4am brainstorm, and her thoughts matched mine as soon as I saw it. No quarter is given in wars/battles between angels and demons; no quarter is given in love, when it's the possessive, primitive sort of love that Michael and Gabriel have. It's also the title of a Led Zeppelin song covered by Tool, the first verse of which fits *perfectly* the whole tone of the novel. And I quote:

Lock all the doors, and kill the lights.
No one's coming home tonight.
The sun beats down and don't you know?
All our lives are growing cold, oh...
They bring news that must get through.
To build a dream for me and you, oh.

So, a million thankyous, meredith_shayne. I shall build a temple in your honour.

Oh, and also, the word count of No Quarter is currently 52465 words. I am so close to finishing the first draft. I'm aiming to have it done by the end of the weekend. Then I will ignore it for a week and work on City of Jade, then go back to it and start fixing it into a readable second draft. But being so close... it feels awesome. I'm quite pleased with how the feathery kids have turned out!

Today's Thursday Thirteen is thirteen things I can't do without. In a general sense certainly but definitely in a writing sense. So here we go, in no particular order.

1. MS Word.
Sad but true. If there was no Word with its nifty track changes feature, I'd be flailing trying to find a program that did everything that I wanted it to.

2. Dropbox.
This is an awesome tool to back up your files. Having had the blue screen of death and panic over losing works in progress, Dropbox is that extra insurance to ensure peace of mind for backing stuff up. I wish I'd had this years ago too when I accidentally deleted a 50K word novel and nothing I tried could recover it. Sad face.

3. The internet.
Oh man, the internet. The internet has made researching so much easier. No more getting a headache trawling through microfiche in tiny, stuffy little rooms. No more hunting for books only to find they've been stolen or 'lost'. No more going through periodicals and discovering the article I really need has been torn out. The internet has also made social networking so much easier, made the whole publishing and promotions part of writing more accessible and easier to understand. Sure, the internet can be a great time waster but it's also a tool and an awesome one at that.

4. Google Earth.
Google Earth is... amazing. The clever clogs who invented it have made plotting destinations and the like so much easier. Plus, clever clogs who know how to code such things have made overlays that you can load up in Google Earth and learn all sorts of things. For "City of Jade" that I'm working on, I was pulling my hair out trying to find a good map of the Silk Road in 1131AD. I stumbled on a Google Earth board where a very clever gentleman had made an overlay that covered the Silk Road and it's offshoots with notes and photographs for each point that a traveller or merchant would stop at. The overlay covers the Silk Road up to 1500AD and the data on this overlay is truly amazing. In short, when writing something that you need to know destinations, locations, surroundings, Google Earth is irreplacable.

5. Music.
Music is my life. I have so many playlists for pairings, stories and the like, it's not funny. I find writing to music incredibly rewarding and I'm more productive with music playing in the background while I'm writing.

6. Notebooks.
For all that I use Word, Google, the internet, etc, I have several notebooks with scribbled notes and details that come to mind. I also use them for things that I might otherwise forget. My notebooks are fairly illegible as my handwriting is atrocious!

7. Sleep.
Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Generally, yeah. I have problems with sleep schedules based on medications for things I don't like talking about (how's that for nice and cryptic?) so my sleep is always broken. I don't remember the last time I had an uninterupted eight hour sleep. On a good night, I get five hours then it's up and medication time. On a bad night, it's up every second hour. I tend to try and write a bit in these periods, but writing definitely works better after I've had a good amount of sleep, even if it is broken sleep.

8. Books.
Someone once said that writers are readers and it's so true. I love my books and I love reading. All being well, my birthday present to myself this year will be an e-book reader. Reading broadens everything, I think.

9. Roleplaying.
I know this isn't something that works for everyone, but I've found roleplaying a character I've created and am not 100% confident with to be really helpful. It puts the character in situations that I don't necessarily think of, talking to other characters that I don't have any control over. Figuring out how my character reacts and interacts in these situations is enormously helpful to me.

10. Editors.
A good editor is worth their weight in gold. I've been very lucky to have some amazing editors and my writing has improved so much because of their assistance. So, thank you to the wonderful women who have edited my work. You're awesome.

11. Coke.
My beverage of choice! With green tea a second.

12. The bathroom.
You're probably reading this and wondering what the bathroom has to do with anything. The bathroom has come to be nicknamed the Room of Wisdom, aka the RoW. And why? Because whenever I'm in the bathroom (and I'm not the only one who has discovered this inexplicable phenomena,) no matter what I'm doing - brushing my hair, brushing my teeth, changing cat litter, whatever - I have an idea for something. Or I think of a way to write myself out of a corner if I've written myself into one. I do not know what the esoteric power of the bathroom is that it has this effect, but it does and consistently. Cue eerie music!

13. Writer Friends.
People to bounce your ideas off, who bounce ideas back, who can give suggestions and help you out when you can't see out of the box of your own ideas. Invaluable. And you guys who've done this for me - thank you. You're awesome.

To meredith_shayne. ♥