Advance copies of book one of King Rolen’s Kin have arrived. This is the moment when writers call their family members and proudly open the box from the publisher, so everyone can Ooh and Ahh.
Now I’m madly sending out copies to those people who helped me along the way to publication.
Of course not all family members were impressed.
Sassy cat had to investigate to see if this was a good place to sleep!
Filed under Fun Stuff, Nourish the Writer, The Writing Fraternity
One of my writing friends asked for a writing craft blog post about how not to waste time surfing the net and reading blogs when you should be writing. While being aware of the irony of this, I got into the spirit and confessed to having a LOL Cat addiction.
I actually think LOL cats is evidence that the world is not a terrible place. The news gives us this skewed view of the world full of disasters and politics and sport. But there are all these people out there taking pictures of their pets and coming up with funny captions, which proves that the world is not all death and disaster.
Here’s one that I just love. I think you have to be a cat person to really appreciate it.
Having been way too over committed recently, I thought others could learn from my mistakes. So I gave the ‘writer and time management thing’ some thought, and did a post over at the ROR blog on the topic.
Filed under creativity, Fun Stuff, Nourish the Writer, The Writing Fraternity, Writing craft
‘The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable. The whole is so dry and airless, so lacking in pace, that whatever drama and excitement the novel might have had is entirely dissipated by what does seem, a great deal of the time, to be extraneous material. My thanks nonetheless for having thought of us. The manuscript of The Left Hand of Darkness is returned herewith.’
Filed under Fun Stuff, Publishing Industry, The Writing Fraternity
If you are a young writer who is looking for feedback on your work, showing your parents and friends is all very well but, unless they are writers, they won’t be able to give you the feedback you need to help you develop as a writer.
If you are serious about your writing craft, then join a local writing group. Look for one that specialises in your genre. If you’re writing speculative fiction (fantasy, SF and horror) then Visions Writers is great. They have an on-line group for everyone and meet in person in Brisbane city, so that’s handy if you live in South East Queensland. Grace Dugan joined the Vision group when she was 15 and went on to be published by Penguin.
The Queensland Writers Centre run a Young Adult Master Class series, specifically aimed at high school students who want to develop their writing skills.
It is also great to have goals and submitting to a competition is a good way to get motivated to finish the story. Who knows you might win or get noticed by the judges who are often editors. So there is the Somerset College novella competition. On the Ipswich Literary Festival site there is a list of writing competitions for people under 18. There is also the Voices on the Coast Literary Festival, which has competitions, although theirs is closed for this year.
And there are markets in Australia for spec Fic short stories. ASIM is a regular magazine which has a good turn around time for submissions. Here’s the guidelines. And here is the Specusphere web zine. And here is Inspillers which lists current markets, competitions, magazines
Here’s an Australian Spec Fic site with lots of news and reviews. If you want to know what’s doing well in Australia by Australian authors in this genre, take a look at the Aurealis Awards page.
And if you are interested in the craft of writing the ROR site run a writing craft post every Sunday, just put in requests. The latest one was on agents.
Lastly, if you are keen to write, talk to your school or local library about bringing a published author in to run workshops. The Redlands libraries have had me run three workshops in the last month, How to write a Book Proposal, Writing Dark Urban Fantasy and Pitching your Book.
Writers are a friendly supportive bunch. We are all united by a passion for writing and our love of the genre. Feel free to ask questions.
If you’re a writer, you probably dream of getting published. I know I did. (And yes, it really does feel as good as you imagine it will, the day the editor rings you up and says ‘I want to publish your book.’)
But it is really hard to get your book past the gate keeper. More publishers are saying they don’t take unagented submissions and it is hard to get busy agents to look at your work.
One way to get your work in front of an agent or an editor is to Pitch your Book at an event specifically designed for this. Pitching opportunities occur at conferences and festivals. On Saturday I ran a Pitching workshop to help people prepare for what can be a very nerve wracking experience. And I promised to provide a list of pitching opportunities. So here they are:
There are online pitching opportunities such as:
To pitch in person attend conferences. These vary from year to year. I know the Brisbane Writers Festival has had pitching opportunities. So check out your local writers festival and see what they are offering.
Childrens and Young Adult Conference
New York and Algonkian Conferences
Here is a UK agent’s blog dedicated to the art of pitching.
And keep an eye on the agent and editor blogs. They often offer advice on pitching. Every now and then and agent will announce that they are open to pitches via their blog, so it is worth finding s few you like and following their blogs.
Kristin Nelson from Nelson Literary Agency.
Nathan Bransford from Curtis Brown.
So that should be enough to get your started. Let me know if you have any questions.
Meanwhile, there were some questions about agents, so I’ve done a post here, for anyone considering approaching an agent.
On Saturday I ran two workshops, Proposal Writing and How to write Dark Urban Fantasy. The attendees asked so many questions about the publishing industry and the craft of writing that I kept saying I’ll put a link on my blog. So here is the post with the links to all those sites we talked about. Hi People (waving madly).
Getting feedback on writing.
You’ll get feedback from a writing group, preferably one that concentrates on your genre.
A lot of the attendees were writing speculative fiction (dark urban fantasy, fantasy and SF). So here is a link to the VISION writing group. They meet in person in Brisbane, but they also have an online group where you can swap industry information and ask questions.
There’s also Romance Writers of Australia for those who are writing paranormal romance and dark urban fantasy. If you drop by the Authors page, you’ll see Keri Arthur (Best Selling Dark Urban Fantasy Writer) is a member. The authors are listed alphabetically and you can see what area they are published in on the right. RWA has a paranormal e-list for writers of this genre.
You could do Year of the Edit with the Queensland Writers Centre. They also run Year of the Novel which is on the same page.
Then you could get your manuscript appraised by someone who knows the genre. The Australian Writer’s Market Place is a great resource for finding publishers, agents, competitions and manuscript appraisers.
You could also apply for a mentor through the Australian Society of Authors. A mentor will guide you through the process of writing and give you feedback. Here are last year’s successful entrants who won a mentorship. The Competition is run every year, so watch out for it.
To get your work noticed:
You could enter competitions (you’ll find them in the Australian Writers Market Place) but here are a few.
Varuna runs a number of programs such as fellowships and mentorships.
The QWC is offering an opportunity for children and Young Adult writers to work with editors from Allen & Unwin. And this is their page for general compeitions and opportunities.
CYA Conference (Children & Young Adult writers) often runs pitching opportunities as well as a competition for both published and unpublished writers.
Bundaberg Write Fest is run each year and often has an opportunity to have your work read by and agent/editor.
There’s the Text Writing Competition for YA and children’s books.
The Ipswich Writers Festival aren’t runnign their competition any more and Voices on the Coast and Somerset Literary Festicval competition are for children who write, not for children’s writers.
Steampunk
The workshop attendees were also intrigued by the steampunk genre. Here is a link to Richard Harland’s post about how to write steampunk. And here is a link to Richard in his outfit, about to set off on his book tour. Here is a link to a post I did on the topic, complete with steampunk dalek!
Editing
I did a post recently onthe editing process and here it is.
E-Books
I did a survey on e-books, who is reading, who is writing for them. Here’s the results. There are links through to several other posts on e-books.
So that is it for now. If there’s anything I’ve missed let me know.
I have already confessed to using Lord of the Rings as my comfort movie, when I’m too sick to think straight or I just want to ‘vege’ out on the couch.
The other day at work, Brendan put me onto DM of the Rings. Now if you have ever read LOTR, or seen the movie and you’ve played D&D, then you will love this comic.
Created by Shamus Young, a software engineer and D&D player, the premise of the comic is — What would really happen if Tolkien had been a Dungeon Master, trying to get his friends to play his story as a D&D game?
The characters spend their time looking for loot and fights, or trying to seduce attactive passing females. Having had the experience of working with a lot of young males on their stories, this strikes me as pretty accurate.
Which raises the question, are our fantasy novel about honourable heroes way off the mark? Has Joe Abercrombie got it right with his disreptuable characters, who are all out to get what they can? Do we want more realistic fantasy books?
My friend Richard Harland is riding a wave of success with his YA steampunk, Worldshaker.
There is something very alluring about steampunk.
Long before I’d ever heard of the term, I was a fan of books from this era. I read Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer to my children. Dickens was a staple of my own childhood and Sir Author Connan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was one of my comfort reads. Another of my favourites is the satirist, Saki. I read his Sredni Vashtar in my early twenties and never forgot it.
Jules Verne, HG Wells, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker were all writing steampunk back before the term was coined. For movies which set out deliberately to mine this genre, think Wild Wild West, The League of Extraordinary gentlemen, the Prestige and Sherlock Holmes.
For a list of contemporary writers who have dabbled in this genre look here. I think Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast could be added to this list. His setting and characters were very steampunk.
Here’s an article on ‘The Victoria Steam Exposition … a celebration of a growing subculture called steampunk — which unites Victorian era esthetics and futuristic inventions with modern literature and fashion.’
There is even a steampunk magazine, for those of us who can’t get enough of the genre.
So what is the allure of steampunk?
Perhaps the Victorian era looks romantic to us because enough time has passed for those maiden great aunts, who never worked or married because women of their station could not marry below themselves or disgrace their families by working, have all died out? Perhaps it is because this was an age when it looked like science was going to solve the world’s problems and the world was still a place where wonders would be discovered. It was a time when a tennis player could be so incensed by the quality of the tennis at the Olympics that he could jump the net, pick up a racquet and win a gold medal.
For those of you interested in writing steampunk, Richard has done a post about it here.
I could not resist this steampunk dalek!
Has steampunk caught you unawares? Have you been reading it, without realising that it was a subgenre, like me?
Filed under creativity, Fantasy books, Fun Stuff, Genre, The Writing Fraternity
The wonderful thing about being a writer (apart from doing something you love) is meeting fellow writers. Sometimes you read their books before you get to meet them. I met George RR Martin at the Glasgow World Con and suffered one of those embarrassing ‘fan girl’ moments where I gushed madly about how I loved his books. And other times you meet them, then read their books. This creates a strange dissonance because you can hear their ‘voice’ in your head as you read. This happened with Maxine McArthur for me. I met her at Aussie Con 3.
Today I want to thank three writers. When Solaris emailed me asking if there was someone who could do a testimonial on book one of King Rolen’s Kin, I madly emailed a couple of writing colleagues. Trudi Canavan (knitter, manga fan and writer) was able to squeeze mybook in her crazy schedule.
Jennifer Fallon was scrambling to pack all her belongings and move from Australia to New Zealand, but she was such a trooper, she agreed to read the book and give me a quote.
I ‘d never met Gail Z Martin but I had read her books. When Solaris bought my trilogy I ordered all their fantasy books and read them to familiarise myself with the publisher. (I’m such a girly swot!). So, when Solaris said they were asking Gail to read my book I was thrilled.
So there you have it, 3 great writers,supporting a fellow writer!
Filed under Fun Stuff, Nourish the Writer, The Writing Fraternity
This is a satire on on-line gamers. The first season of The Guild was financed by fans. It is sweet and insightful as well as sharply observant at times. I have four sons. They play on-line games. I teach at the college which specialises in teaching computer game design, so it is filled with gamers.
This series made me laugh aloud.
The Guild is an example of what can happen when a bunch of talented people get together and a studio isn’t standing over them telling them what is commercial.
The show was written by Felicia Day,
an actress who turned an addiction to World of Warcraft into a sitcom pilot. Now there’s a comic, issued by Dark Horse.
Go Felicia!
Filed under Characterisation, Fun Stuff, The Writing Fraternity
