D.B. Tait's Blog, page 3

Best reads for 2012

I read 90 books in 2012. These were my best reads for the year. Four out of the 13 were Australian women writers and only one literary fiction. I’m going to join the challenge in 2013 to see if I can increase that.

While I have only one Sarah Mayberry, one Joanna Bourne, one Tana French and one Anne Gracie, I could have put more since all their books I read this year I enjoyed. I also enjoyed some Marion Lennox category romances but not quite as much as the others. Five thrillers out of 13 indicate where my interests lie.

 

Moonlit Encounters from TWC Press

I belong to a writers group called The Coven. So named because when we get together we cackle a lot. Last year we thought we’d publish an anthology of our work. All of us are published (including me as my alter ego Keziah Hill) so we thought we’d do something a bit different.

Little did we know how much we’d bitten off! It wasn’t writing the stories as much as the organisation of the publication that was quite a daunting task.

We formed ourselves into a co-operative (which took forever but luckily Shannon Curtis was a terrier with a bone and wouldn’t give up) and call ourselves TWC Press. At the moment we’re only publishing our own work.

Our first anthology is call Moonlit Encounters and is available from Kindle and Smashwords. Soon it will be available from other digital outlets like Barnes and Nobel, Kobo and iTunes.

It makes a great Christmas gift for you or your loved ones and is currently on sale for 99c until the twelfth day of Christmas, 6 January 2013.

Here is what you’ll get.

A diverse collection of short romantic fiction from eight different authors, from different genres, for all readers.

A Victorian woman must choose between family loyalty and a chance at love…

With a little help from a sexy neighbour, a nurse must find strength in vulnerability…

A medieval warrior struggles with his duty when a healer captivates him…

Convincing a cynical workaholic to take time to smell the roses is more challenging than this talented empath could imagine…

A curious voyeur discovers getting involved can be dangerous…

Her family’s happiness is at risk unless this widow puts her trust in a stranger…

An independent ranger learns that wolves come in all guises, and secrets can be deadly…

Jilted in a foreign country, a woman struggles with trust and a second chance at happiness…

Contemporary romance, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, steampunk romance, historical romance and romantic comedy all make this an anthology for everyone!

Survival

She notice his smell first. Even before his sly, shifting eyes and twitching legs, the sour smell of fear and desperation rolled off him in waves. He wasn’t bad looking. Pretty blue eyes. That always surprised her. She wasn’t sure why but somehow a good looking paedophile seemed odd. Stupid really. Good looks or bad had nothing to do with being fucked up.

She was sure he’d have usual story about being molested by his father/uncle/man-next-door. She didn’t doubt it was true. Most rock spiders had some kind of horrible early life. But the really interesting ones didn’t. They had functional families, no poverty or sexual abuse and still ended up wanting to fuck children.

Most of the time they were a lot more articulate than your run of the mill rapist or murderer. Which was a pity, since their sanctimonious, whiny justifications were a torture to listen to. If one more told her little five year old Jenny or Johnny had wanted it and after all, it was their fault for being seductive, she’d arrange it so they’d go into mainstream instead of protection. They’d last two seconds. Crims were sentimental when it came to children. They don’t mind if you rape and mutilate your girlfriend, but drawn the line if you do the same thing to your child.

The last time a rocky got “mistakenly” placed in mainstream the righteous brothers cut off his dick and stuffed it down his throat.

“You know you’d be at risk if you go into the main.”

He shifted in his chair and avoided her eyes.

“It was an offence against someone underage.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said. “She told me she was seventeen.”

“But she was twelve.”

He darted a quick look at the papers in front of her and shrugged. “How was I supposed to know?”

“Look,” she said, taking her glasses off and rubbing her stinging eyes. “You’ll have to go onto protection. Let’s go through these questions and you can get your stuff and settle in.”

“They told me protection’s just as bad as the main. I could still get flogged.”

A lot more could happen to him than a good flogging.

“If you think you’ll be at risk, you can talk to the wing officer in the morning. Let’s get this finished, shall we?”

She asked all the standard questions about suicide, health problems and next of kin. He could barely speak now. She’d seen it before. Fear was coating his vocal cords, stiffening his muscles. His pretty blue eyes were dimming. In the next year he’d age ten, if he survived at all. She started gathering her papers.

“What will happen to me?” he whispered. His voice sounded like the wind across a dry, desolate plain.

She stilled and stared at him. “Two things could happen. You’ll survive or you won’t. Which will it be?”

He lifted his eyes to hers. No fear now, just empty and flat. He was a quick learner. Show nothing, feel nothing. He had a chance after all.

 

Copyright Deborah Tait 2012

Entertaining the Irrational

Astrology is my other non-writing major interest, along with gardening. My theory is that everyone needs something irrational it their life, so astrology is my little area of nuttiness. Like many things nutty, it can be useful to generate ideas about aspects of your own or other people’s personality traits. It’s a great method for examining archetypes which can be a useful tool for creating characters.

I often work up an astrological profile for my characters using either Time Passages for Mac or Solar Gold for the iPad.  Years ago I studied astrology so I have a working knowledge of chart analysis but I’m not a professional astrologer.

But I know enough to work out what my characters will be like astrologically.  For example, if I need an alpha male with a core of protectiveness, I might decide to make my character a Capricorn Sun in the tenth house of career but with Moon in Cancer in the fourth house of domestic spaces. Coupled with Saturn in Cancer in the fourth house (but not conjunct with the Moon – let’s not go overboard with torturing the poor man or his heroine) I would have a man with strong sense of who he is in life and where he is going, but with a craving for a space to express true but repressed emotion. With Mars in Gemini and Venus in Sagittarius my hero could probably charm the socks off most people particularly since his Jupiter in Aries trines his Venus in Sagittarius.

Sounds like gobbledygook, right?

All the plants, houses, aspects and elements have particular meanings within astrology. So, for example, most people know what their star sign is, that is, what sign their sun was in when they are born. I am a Taurus. If you were born between 21 April and 20 May in any year, you are also a Taurus. That can help if you just want a broad idea of what your character could be about. Taurus people are patient and reliable, warmhearted and loving, persistent and determined, placid and security loving but on the not-so-plus side they can be jealous and possessive, resentful and inflexible, self-indulgent and greedy.

Me? Never!

But everyone knows someone who is supposed to be a particular sign but seems nothing like what a say, a typical Taurus is like. This is where aspects between planets, and where the plants are placed in houses becomes important. The zodiac is made up of twelve signs and twelve houses. You can find a description of the houses here   and of the signs here You can also click on the links to get a run down of particular signs. The plants are in aspect to each other.

How they all interrelate is what makes up a unique chart. My friend S, who was born three weeks after me and is also a Taurus, couldn’t be more different to me. She is disciplined to the point of pleasure denial, quite spiritual, always eats healthy food (gasp!) and is rake thin (double gasp!). When I looked at her chart I saw her sun in Taurus is in the twelfth house of mysticism and seclusion, hidden things. She has a fine aesthetic sense and a love of beauty like most Taurus people, but when I think of a symbol for her, I think of a stained glass window. Spiritual, beautiful and hard to see in or out of.

Currently I’m writing a romantic suspense and my hero, Dylan Andrews, was born on 16 January 1976 at 12 noon. This gives him a Capricorn sun in the tenth house of career, Aries ascendant, Cancer moon in the fourth house, Mars in Gemini and Venus in Sagittarius which are opposite each other.  He’s a complex character with lots of challenges in his chart. Thank god he has a Cancer moon or else he’d been unbearable!

The poor love has Pluto in Libra conjunct his descendent in the seventh house which squares his Moon in Cancer in the fourth house which is opposite his Mid-Heaven.

Love might destroy and transform him. That’s what we want in a romance don’t we?

Some useful blogs that I read regularly on astrology are:

Donna Cunningham’s Sky Writer

April Elliot Kent’s Big Sky Astrology 

Jo Tracey Astrology (an Aussie gal)

Moonkissed by Jessica

Astrosparkles on Facebook is also good fun.

Both Donna and April have ebooks for sale that provide some good, basic introductions to astrology.

Do like astrology? Do you entertain the irrational in your life?