Speculative Fiction & Behind the scenes of publishing

Let me draw your attention to two very different blog posts.  One is about speculative fiction. If, like me, you wondered what 'speculative fiction' means, have a look at Matt Teal's blog at http://penumbraezine.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-is-spec-fic.html


It seems speculative fiction is a very wide field which is good for the many writers who straddle two or three genres.

And here's a worker bee behind the scenes of a new publishing house (well, the company is new but the directors and workers are all very experienced)


Something a bit different for everyone to chew on.http://musapublishing.blogspot.com/2011/09/hey-cool-whats-that-like.html

Musa Publishing

On 1 October I'll be posting a lot more about this company, but since it doesn't 'officially' open till then, I'm just going to post its logo to whet your appetite.

Oh, and I forgot to say: 5 days and counting till THE date. Have a look at musapublishing.blogspot.

Never Rains But It Pours

The picture is me - up, up and away.

We authors spend a lot of our lives bending our heads against the lash of the rain from rejections - rejections from agents, rejections from editors.

Then suddenly we end up submitting to just the right publisher and we're accepted.  At last our existence, our years of tap, tap, tapping at midnight, our pretense that we never heard the phone or the kids creating mayhem is finally justified. And for a short time we get to walk on air or drink a bottle of bubbly or whatever our pleasure is. Then we usually stop and think, "Huh. Now I have to submit to a publisher's every whim. I'm going to edit and edit and edit, put up with covers that make my stomach turn and send ridiculous PR photos out into the world." Sometimes being accepted is every bit as terrifying as being rejected.

Then once in a blue moon it hails acceptances.

Okay, so I've had a couple or so acceptances recently. And guess what - the whole boiling lot of them want to publish me within a six week period! Uh huh. That's not terrifying, that's mind-blowing. The work involved in a chunk of edits plus the embarrassing marketing "Love me! Buy my book! Buy my next book!" drama can only be described as horrendous.

In the week before Christmas, Musa Publishing will e-publish "THE SECOND SON," under their Clio Historical banner. THE SECOND SON is a Regency which is the prequel to my hardback published with Robert Hale Ltd called "COMING HOME." BUT to complicate the issue, last month I was contacted by Robert Hale who are entering the scary e-publishing arena and will publish COMING HOME as an e-book. And they want to do that in the first week of January 2012. You're confused? Imagine how confused I am.

Then The Wild Rose Press have come up with a publishing date for LETHAL REFUGE as a paperback. You guessed it - it's on 13 January 2012. And just for good measure, in the last week of January the new Musa Publishing will publish another Regency of mine, MR. MONFORT'S MARRIAGE under the Aurora Regency label. More about Musa in another blogpost. But let me tell you, there is an efficient, hungry publishing house.

And as a family we have two birthdays in the second week of January.

So Christmas might be offsite this year. Alcoholic? Probably. Well organized? Not likely. Gotta book a restaurant NOW.

Claytons Conference

If you look up the word 'Claytons' in a dictionary you'll see that it is the name of a non-alcoholic drink designed to look like whisky. The color is the same and it's bottled in bottles that look like authentic whisky bottles. Claytons was marketed as "The drink you have when you're not having a drink."

So in the southern hemisphere, anything called "a Claytons" is not the real McCoy.

The Romance Writers of Australia recently held their annual conference, and those of us who couldn't get to Melbourne held our own Claytons Conference online. It mirrored the genuine conference right down to contests, prizes and cyber bubbles. (Last year a group of Cinderellas had a Claytons Conference too, and those who stayed in touch afterwards formed a group called the Basefook Fiends. Well, it's a nice change from the endless Facebook "friends," isn't it? Our intrepid leader is Tonia Marlowe. Look her up. You'll be impressed).

This year we devised text for cartoons, wrote 100 word stories (most of which were unpublishable not because of their standard but because of their ribaldry and improbability but by God, they were great), chatted online with bemused overseas authors and editors unused to Aussie humor, and generally had a great three days. Out of it all came inspiration for a few, perspiration for most, and exasperation for those with fingers not fast enough to nail the chatroom speed. Heck, I thought I was a fast typist. Forget that idea. I got left behind in the rush. One young woman who just had TWINS for heaven's sake, won nearly every prize going in between dashes to the bathroom. Talk about on a roll.

So for writing groups everywhere, if you can't make the nationals, think about having an online Claytons group of your own. All it needs is a bunch of enthusiastic people with no need for sleep, some writing talent and a wish to hone their craft under pressure. Enjoy!

New Zealand bush - Lethal Refuge

Thursday, June 09, 2011

My romantic suspense (Lethal Refuge) that I'm doing final edits for now, is set in the Auckland area of New Zealand. I've downloaded a couple of images of the area where it takes place. It's called the Waitakeres i.e. the Waitakere Hills outside Auckland. Okay, hard to say, huh? It's a Maori word that's pronounced "Whytackuray." That's the closest, as a European, I can get.

In Arthur Lydiard's coaching days (the great runner coach), good runners used the Waitakere Hills as an exacting weekend run. Hills like you wouldn't believe, not too much traffic if you start early enough, and bushland as far as the eye can see, dotted here and there with houses. That bushland is very, very thick. It's not like the Australian bush for example where you can see through sparse groups of gum trees. No, it's more like Canadian bushland. Believe me, you can easily get lost in bushland in New Zealand.

In LETHAL REFUGE, Celie runs away to evade a killer and ends up going round in circles in the Waitakere bushland. She comes very close to being killed there; in fact someone is killed, but it's not Celie.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

FOREVER FREED Release Day & Giveaway

Coming Home

Here are a couple more images of places in my Robt Hale Ltd book 'Coming Home.' The first is the hill above Oporto (Porto) where the English/Portuguese heroine, Juliana, walked in her attempt to book a berth on a ship sailing for England. The Douro River flows down to the sea and Juliana walked beside the river for part of the way.

I saw the Douro five years ago and let me tell you, it is a very impressive river, no mere trickle in spite of the arid inland of Portugal.

The second image is the docklands of Porto, still unchanged today. This is where Colly booked them a passage together and where they sailed from.

And finally, here is an image of the very last sight of the land of Portugal that Juliana saw as they sailed to Portsmouth.  All immigrants the world over will empathize with Juliana's emotions as the land faded into the distance.

Coming Home - Regency published by Robert Hale Ltd

Trying to sell a hardback when everyone else is downloading great stories for $5.99 is hard going. Coming Home is still struggling along, selling a few here and there. It is by far my favourite of the books I've written so far, because it is deep and not all the impressions you get are up front. Some you have to delve for. I enjoy books like that myself so that is the way I wrote Coming Home.

I thought you might like to see a couple of images of the places the hero and heroine, Colly (short for Colwyn) and Juliana go through on their journey 'home.'

The book begins in Porto, (Oporto) Portugal and ends in Dorset.

Here are a couple of images of the landscape Colly and Juliana travel through before they get on board the ship bound for England.

The arid one depicts the typical arid surroundings where the Peninsular Armies, both the Allies and the French, sweltered and persevered for six years. Colly and his friend John Trewbridge who appears in my book The Second Son, soon to be published by Aurora were only two of many thousands of men who were subjected to an unfriendly, parched land far from home.

The second picture is the route Juliana took home from her work at the hospital each day when the heat of the day had gone and dusk was settling. She walked through the brick roads from the centre of Porto out to the cooler district where she stayed in a guest house suitable for young ladies. Rather than live near the hospital, she wisely chose to escape the smell and the fear and decided to live as far away as possible from Sao Nazaire.

Now I hope that tempts you to dip into the book!

Lethal Refuge

I got the cover today for my e-book with The Wild Rose Press which will come out shortly.

Now the cover artist, Kimberlee Mendoza, created EXACTLY what I wanted. I didn't want any clinches with the clinchees in various stages of undress; and I wanted the cover to engender fear and suspense.

I think she did a great job, don't you?

The amazing missing blogpost

Okay, I've looked into why a perfectly good post disappeared off my blogsite. There were about nine replies to it, which makes it even more irritating. And in spite of all the explanations, there isn't one that stands up.

WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY POST ABOUT THE NEW ZEALAND SETTING FOR MY BOOK COMING OUT WITH THE WILD ROSE PRESS OH BLOGGER?

Did you get the feeling I'm exasperated?

YES!!!!!

My romantic suspense has been contracted by The Wild Rose Press. This is the one whose working title was Trust in Time.

Now it's LETHAL REFUGE. Much more oomph. The title derives from the fact that the heroine has been sent to a safe house organised by the New Zealand Police. But someone knows exactly where she is and is intent on shutting her up - permanently. Why and how? Read the book when it comes out.

I'm pleased that TWRP is so complimentary about the book. This is one of those things you write that you really, really believe in. It's odd, but when you're writing a book, sometimes you get chills up and down your spine. Something tells you: this is the one. I felt like that about Coming Home and I feel like that about Lethal Refuge. It's a sort of a zing that gives you the impetus to keep writing on and on after 2 a.m. when the whole neighbourhood is asleep and you're writing by the light of your screen so as not to disturb the family.

Some time soon I'll post more. At the moment I shall just bask.