The reviews pour in...

100 Stories for Queensland
The chart rush was a smash hit, both in the UK and the US, and the book has recieved rave reviews by many...

Take a look at this one by Jeniffer Poulter as posted on Good Reads

This collection is a remarkable assortment of stories across numerous genres with something to suit, no matter what your tastes, age, or background. The stories have been drawn from around the world and all over Australia. A smorgasbord and it is all for a very good cause, helping Queensland's flood victims rebuild their shattered lives...more

*as an aside, this review marks the losing of my review-virginity, and Jeniffer's description nailed my story perfectly. Excuse me while I do a little happy dance.

100 Stories Amazon Chart Rush

100 Stories for Queensland

(which one of my stories appears in, hehe!)
will be released in paperback on Tuesday, 17^th May

What is a chart rush?

Readers are invited to purchase a book on Amazon, in a nominated 24-hour period, with the intent to capitalise on the volume of sales to move the book up the Amazon best seller list. The higher up the chart it is (we’re aiming for a spot in the top 100) the more visible it becomes to other readers who may go on to purchase it.

It’s all about exposure and the more people who come across 100 Stories for Queensland, the more books we sell and the more money we raise.

If you can’t buy on the day, you can add it to your wishlist. Every little bit counts.

Retail Price

The book retails online for US$19.99 and ₤9.99. The paperback will be available for sale through this site in June when eMergent Publishing’s printer, Lightning Source International, opens it’s Australian press in Melbourne.

100 Stories for Queensland is listed here at Amazon and Amazon UK.

 Go forth and publicise
Please feel free to copy the graphic for your website, Facebook or twitter and spread the word far and wide. Lots of authors have already changed their Facebook here.

Join our Social Network

You can join our Amazon Chart Rush Facebook event or official fan page for updates on our progress up the charts! We also tweet at @100stories4qld. 100 Stories for Queensland is also listed at Goodreads.

*The above information is sourced from 100StoriesforQueensland, courtesy of Jodi Cleghorn

A hiatus...

3 years in the making...

The first draft of my current WIP took all of six months to write. It was rubbish, but in all fairness I was a stay at home mum running two businesses, studying at uni externally and trying to juggle a family that appeared to be coming apart at the seams.

The second draft took 12 months. Again it was rubbish, but much less the filthy stinking rotting sludge of the first and more a discarded food wrapper kind of rubbish. The reasons the second draft took twice as long as the first were numerous. Due to the epic failure of one business and the ginormous stress of the other not being worth the money it could earn, my husband and I decided to sell up and head north. We did that, with two toddlers in tow, and only our dreams of a fresh start to sustain us.

The third draft took a further 12 months to complete while we settled into our new home. It was slightly better but not much. By this time I had found a trusted critique partner and with her helpful comments I quickly made the changes.

The fourth draft was the quickest of all, I completed it in one month. The circumstances surrounding this epic achievement were ideal: I had a deadline, my foray into full time study (who doesn't work better under pressure? ) I had my mother visiting for a month (so a full time quality babysitter that didn't mind if I stayed buried in my work way past the agreed knock off time) and I had one of those rare bursts of creative energy that carried me through (most of the time these bursts of energy tend to peter out after the chocolate runs out but not this time!).

At the end of this month I was happy with the final product and I was ready to set it aside for 12 months to mull it over while I completed my degree. The plan was to launch head first into the final draft/line edit upon graduation. It was a great plan.

Very rarely do things go according to plan.
I graduated over two months ago. Despite the copious amounts of notes scribbled in notepads, saved in numerous word documents on laptop and hard drive, scribed as blog posts and mumbled into the Dictaphone app on my iPhone, the fifth and final draft is nowhere to be seen. In fact it has escaped so far over the horizon that I don't know if I have the energy to chase it down.

The biggest problem, the reason for my procrastination, my excuses for stalling? This blog. Writing competitions. Short story submissions. Secondary projects. Facebook. New manuscript ideas. Other Writers and their awesome blogs that eat into my creative time. All of these things I have pursued instead of starting the re-write.

Also...
There are a few bare faced truths that I have had to face.
1. I hate the manuscript.
2. I think it is complete rubbish.
3. I want to put it on the scrap heap and start again.

Of all of these truths, I have come to terms with the first two.
1. I still love the premise, characters and setting.
2. I am a much better writer than I was when I started 3 years ago.

The third truth is the one I am having trouble with.
I just don't know how can I start again, completely from scratch. Every time I sit down to write, my brain freezes in fear. I panic.  My heart all but stops. I have hit a very famous brick wall.

Writers Block
The trouble is, it is not the words that don't come, my characters are alive and well in my head.  Honestly, they talk to me all the time, asking me when I'm going to get my act together and write their story, telling me tidbits about their day, forcing my hand to scribe conversations they've had with their mother, brother, lover. I have the Who, What and When down pat.

The thing that won't come is the HOW.  And the thing I don't know is WHY are they talking to me and WHERE is the story going?

This is a problem. I have brain stormed, I have drawn charts, I have broken the original manuscript down scene by scene, I have dissected the characters until I am blue in the face. And still I cannot for the life of me work out the best way to tell the story.

What all of this ranting means.
I have not written so much as two words toward the new manuscript. And I have a time limit. You see a set myself a new deadline, to have the final draft ready by my 33rd birthday which falls in three short weeks on the 30th of May. Also, I hoped to be ready for query by my husbands 40th birthday, the 1st of July, only eight very short weeks away. If I don't do something soon, I will miss my deadline. Sure this will not cause too much damage to the greater time continuum but it will damage me. I hate to miss deadlines, I hate to ask for extensions. Besides, I know the chick giving out the extensions, she's not very nice to slackers, regardless of their circumstance.

So this glorious Sunday morning- which is mothers day by the way and yes I was spoiled very much by the gorgeous Cat and Thing 1 and Thing 2 outdid themselves with hand made cards and gifts- I have decided that I will no longer let anything interfere with the production of the manuscript. 

I am putting all other projects on hold, I am cutting myself some slack and I am going to bury my head in PLOT resurrection. I will not be blogging, facebooking, twittering, short story writing, beta reading or doing anything else remotely unrelated to the emergence of Silken Threads.

Please bear with me, I will be back, I just cannot say when...

Hungry for more...



Katniss & Peeta - who will you choose?


The Hunger Games

There's no denying I am a huge fan of YA, I also love SciFi and SpecFic and everything else considered slightly nerdy. I have no excuses to offer for being so late to the game. I can only say -
 I am HUNGRY for more!!!!

 

I have just now finished reading the first book in

The Hunger Games Trilogy

and I am HOOKED.

Katniss Everdeen is my new teen hero, the Peeta and Gale love triangle has set my heart yearning and if I could sink a lethally spiced syringe into President Snow's fleshy white neck I would do so with pleasure.

The Capitol is so not the kind of place anybody would want to live, the Games are a sick twist in a warped dystopian nightmare life and District 12 sounds as depressing as soggy socks in a snow storm, but man alive - sign me up!

Like any great work of fiction there are faults to be found and criticisms to be made, but I am going to surpass them all. My blood is still pumping from the exhilarating adventure of the Games and I am still gripping the edge of my seat in a hovercraft flying high over segregated landscape of Panem to come down to a level where I may want to shoot that feeling with a silver arrow through the heart.

Now that I have that off my chest 

 I am off to seek out the second book in the trilogy,

Catching Fire

Happy Reading

The Editing Process - How to make paper piles.

Finally dear readers
Today we begin chapter 2 of The Writing Book. Originally the plan was to achieve one chapter of Ms Grenville's book per month. I do not choose to dwell on how long it has actually taken. I suggest neither do you. Let's move onwards. By now you should have a nice sized pile of  little stories, snippets of action, conversations and dialogue or simply random thoughts. I know I do!


I would just like to take this moment to say how excited I am by my progress. Jax appeared out of nowhere, threw me full force into her world and then blew up the dock we were hanging out on. This character lept of the page and took over my life but now I have regained control. Although I can't wait to see where she takes me next I have asked her to be patient and first let me deal with Silken Threads.


Anyway...today will blossom from Kate Grenville's 'The Writing Book' exercise: Chapter 2 - Making Piles.


We will be exploring  my current WIP Silken Threads

The Big Cut
In chapter 2 Grenville asks us to make piles of all the exercises we have completed from Chapter 1. Now I have done this with Jax and set them aside. Seeing as I am now back on track with Silken Threads I decided to continue forward from this point, and seeing as I have 100,000 words already, I figured pile making was as good a place as any to start.

It has been painful, it has been wicked and  surprisingly, it has been inspirational. Although I reached a devastating revelation a few weeks ago, where I thought Silken Threads was a no-hoper, I have been given a new lease of life and I am surging ahead.

In three weeks I have cut the MS to pieces. Literally, I printed it out, took out some scissors and started hacking. It was cathartic. What I ended up with was not, as you may be now imagining, a pile of shredded paper, but five neat character profiles and the idea for six interconnecting novellas!

I know right?
So I have my piles, now what do I do with them?  Next Grenville suggests looking at the similarities in the text, in other words, seeking out the underlying themes. Seeing as I am working with an almost complete manuscript, my themes are pretty well established, so instead I broke down the entire manuscript into individual scenes. Yes, I did that.

I have 211 individual scenes!
You would think that is a lot of action. Amazingly I found my first big problem - it's not.
A large portion of the scenes are inactive and do not move the plot forward - this in itself is a huge revelation, but of the good kind! At last I have somewhere to start!

The next step...
Now that I have these piles (and large gaping holes in the plot!) Grenville suggests I work out some sort of order: to arrange what I do have in a way that allows the underlying themes to shine through. Taking a deep breath, I am now about to plunge myself into the crazy, chaotic world of PLOT MAPPING. Yep, I going to get out my sticky notes and my markers, I'm going to set up my pretty pink pin board and I am going to create an ARC to be reckoned with.

I will be back sometime in the not so distant future to report back - if I don't resurface sometime in the next week, please don't panic, I am probably just getting my groove back!
copyright 2011, TBell

The love affair we call writing...

Over the weekend I was fortunate to spend time away with the girls. Amongst the clouds in a mountain chalet we talked, laughed, cried, drank and ate. My cheeks hurt from smiling and my heart is warm with the kind of love only girlfriend's can supply (my liver is a tad sore too but don't worry mum, it's water all the way from here).

A wonderfully nurturing child/husband free weekend was had by all and amongst the tears and laughter a few insights and epiphanies were revealed...

On Sunday morning one of my favourite girl's, MermaidMeg, sat us down and gave us all a tarot card reading: some were funny; others spot on and mine - well take a look for yourself.

Tarot Reading - 10 card spread.

1. The Signifier - Ten of Swords - The darkness before the dawn.

2. Crossing Card - Three of Swords - A painful state that does not allow for blindness to continue.

3. On The Surface - Three of Cups - Seeking emotional connections / new beginnings.

4. Crux of Issue - Four of Pentacles - Let fears of self go to unblock creativity and allow confidence to flow.

5. Past - Queen of Wands - The superwoman - Let go of the ideal.

6. Future - Ace of Pentacles - The release of past energies will make way for success and prosperity.

 image sourced tarotoftrees.com

 7. Development - Death - Something must come to an end, new life by letting go of old.

8. Response from others - Ace of Cups - Outpouring of feeling, upsurge of raw emotion.

9. Hopes and Fears - Ten of Cups - On going contentment and permanence in the realm of the heart.

10. Outcome - Two of Cups - The beginning of a new relationship or project, renewal of one that has undergone difficulty.

What this means to me...

At first glance this reading appeared to be about my personal relationships with actual real humans. I contemplated for a moment running off to have a wild, passionate affair with an incredibly handsome man that would cook, massage and serenade me (all in that order) but then I remembered I loved my husband, our children and our life together - and considering my question was directed at my writing career - I was forced to look deeper.

Now I think many a writer would agree with me when I say writing a novel is like embarking on a love affair. It is euphoric one moment and the next you are swept into the depths of despair only to be lifted up again by a chance encounter with a new character or a stunning moment of clarity. My journey as a novice novelist would slip into this descriptive concept without missing a beat.

As you may be aware, I have struggled recently to attempt the fifth edit of my MS. The reason I have struggled is because I have decided after 3 years work that I do not like the final product. This is a somewhat crushing revelation and  I have even contemplated (deep breath) giving up!

And I am loath to say I have also flirted with new characters in entirely new worlds. These flirtations have given me the rush I was missing, the glow of first love, but alas I found myself staring out over the mist covered mountains and yearning for my first love.

With that in mind
I took a second look at the Tarot reading. I think it is clear that I am indeed wallowing in the depth of darkness and it has come as a great sigh of relief to know the dawn is coming (insert here a song and dance routine from a really bad but nostalgic 90's music video).

I was already beginning to toy with a new concept for the old manuscript and I have even spent the last month breaking the story down scene by scene and re-plotting several characters journeys.

My MysticTarot has given me faith in pursuing this course of action and I would like to say, as a writer, to all other writers, you have to take inspiration where you can get it - oh and having a little faith in yourself helps too.

How to make up a lost day...



http://www.justwritegifts.com/



Today is Thursday

I missed my WordsOnThePage session yesterday. I spent the day instead at DreamWorld with my beautiful children and some lovely friends. Last night as I crashed into bed exhausted but with a smile on my dial. I vaguely thought about getting back up and doing some late night writing but...

The next thing I know

It's morning and I slept through the entire night in incredible peace. Thing One and Thing Two were so exhausted from all the fun, they did not stir once. I did have a teeny tiny moment of self flagellation but then I remembered the fun we had and I got over it. I figured I would put it behind me and start fresh today. What didn't get done yesterday, can be done today, no biggie.

The How to of How To's
The only way to make up for a day lost is to simply move forward.
I can't change time (although that would be an awesome trick to have in the party tricks hat),
I can't create time (add that to the list of most wanted tricks, check),
but I can be flexible with my time.

Now enough babble - I have some writing to just write....