Nicole R. Murphy's Blog, page 10

The Census Meme

So it seems America has just released it's data from last year's Census and this has brought about a meme with people going back ten years to note where they were at this time.

As it's just one day before my 41st birthday, this seems a good time for me to do it. So, jump aboard [image error].

March 10, 2011 – I live with my husband in a three-bedroom villa in Queanbeyan, just outside of Canberra. I write full-time, and am currently working on the sequel to the Dream of Asarlai series, being published by HarperVoyager in Aus and NZ. I'm also currently working on losing weight and since September last year have lost more than 11 kilos. Slow but steady, as they say. I'm less than a month away from my second ever overseas trip (the first was last year, to New Zealand). This year I'm going to America, with visits to LA and San Francisco, and attending the RT Convention.

March 10, 2001 – I live with my husband in a tiny two-bedroom house in Sussex Inlet, on the NSW south coast. We've just moved here, having sold the flat in Sydney. We've been married fourteen months and it's not been an easy year, with his health severely deteriorating. I came close to a breakdown and left teaching and now my focus is on my dream of being a writer. I've had a couple of short stories accepted and I'm shopping around my completely unrevised but completed first manuscript (oi, but I cringe at the memory). Hubby is setting up an office to work in on the mainstreet, which has a lot of space he's not using. In the next few months, I'm going to turn that space into a second-hand bookstore and a place to sit and write.

March 10, 1991 – I'm about to turn twenty-one. I'm in my first year as a teacher at St Nicholas of Myra Primary in Penrith – teaching kindergarten. I have my own flat, and I feel very grown-up and fabulous. This is gonna fall apart a bit – within twelve months, I'll be back with my grandparents, trying to start adulthood again. I'm getting to the end of my first season playing with the Penrith Cricket Club and despite the fact I can't play FOR SHIT, I'm loving it. Am dealing with some massive self-esteem issues and as a result, have panic attacks any time a guy looks at me – not helping.

March 10, 1981 – About to turn eleven and I'm in my last year of primary school (elementary for the Americans) at St Anthony's in Wanniassa, Canberra. This is the year I discovered writing – up until now, all our writing had been reports or 'What I did on the holidays' stuff. This year, a new thing from New Zealand called 'process writing' was introduced to the school and we were encouraged to write what we liked and then learn to revise and edit it. My first story was Thunder King – the story of a boy and his horse, which won five Melbourne Cups and three Caulfield Cups and killed lions in its spare time. The next was a saga of me and my friends, all grown up and with jobs as air hostesses, flying around the world, having adventures and falling in love (yes, even at that tender age, I was writing romance).

March 10, 1971 – About to turn one. I live with my parents and my one-month-old brother in Penrith. I'm already walking, and causing my poor mother all sorts of stress in trying to deal with a sickly baby (actually, at this point in time my brother's still probably in the children's hospital in Camperdown, having been born very premature) and a toddler. In a few months, I'm going to cause the first major family emergency. I was jumping on the lounge, Mum was bottle-feeding bro and she had a pot of boiling water by the side of the couch to keep his bottle warm. She takes the baby in the kitchen, I fall off the lounge and into the water. The scars on my arms are now barely noticeable, but when I started school they were the cause of much conversation.

So, that's the census of my life. Hope I get to read other people's [image error]

A catch-up

Been a while, hasn't it? On the one hand I think – meh, nothing much has happened. On the other hand, lots.

This week has been the week for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine's issue 50. I've got a story in it – my first fiction publication in ASIM, which I'm chuffed about. I'm proud of the story too – a different sort of thing for me, dark and a bit moody. Also, it has an illustration. I LOVE it when my short stories get illustrated. The only bit of story art I have on my wall is the original of an illustration done for a story from Enchanted Realms II (wow – that was a LONG time ago). I'll have to see what I can do about getting a copy of this piece of art.

So this week was about proofing, and signing contracts. Also, there was a sudden plea from the ASIM mothership and as a result, the fabulous Rowena Cory Daniells and I interviewed each other and that will be appearing in ASIM 50 as well. Yep, readers will be overdosing on me.

On Saturday, I visited Infinitas in Parramatta and Galaxy in Sydney to meet the punters and sign some books. Unfortunately, no one bar family and friends came, but still I had a wonderful day catching up and particularly getting to talk industry with some booksellers. So thanks to Tim at Infinitas and Mark as Galaxy.

Workwise, I ended up not getting everything done that I planned for last week – apart from the excitement of ASIM, I got a bit of a cold and started running a fever and decided to take it a bit easy in the hopes I'd fight off full-blown cold formation. Judging by how I feel today, my attempts were unsuccessful. Still, I did get to read two fabulous books – Changeless by Gail Carriger and Afterlife by Merrie Destefano. Both very different – one a steampunk urban fantasy set in the reign of Queen Victoria with a hunky werewolf and one of the greatest female characters EVER; the other a futuristic urban fantasy with questions about resurrection, immortality and just what would you sacrifice for the ones you love.

Last night, we went to see Billy Connolly at the Opera House. He was so funny, so natural and with a strong sense of the ridiculous and justice. However, he had to terminate the show early and abruptly and we're all sure was vomiting the moment he got off. I'm sure Billy feels worse today than I do.

Went to see the Terracotta Warriors yesterday – forgot my pre-booked tickets, so I'm considering the extra I paid to see them a donation to the Art Gallery. Didn't see much of initial bit of exhibition – what a crowd! But then I managed to get pretty up-close to the actual warriors themselves. Remarkable to stand just a metre from something and realise it's approximately 2230 years old! Hope I look that good at that age.

So this week is about working on Hope Lost (I want to have the draft done by the end of March), and finishing the judging for an RWA contest.

Oh – and getting a Kindle [image error]

Appearances and writing update

Haven't written much about Nicole the writer lately, so here's the story at the moment.

Next Saturday, I'll be signing books in Sydney. 11am at Infinitas in Parramatta, 2pm at Galaxy in the city. Bring along (or buy there) your copies of Secret Ones and/or Power Unbound. I'll have bookplates for you to take to put in Rogue Gadda, when it comes out. And I'm prepared to sign anything you want to bring along.

In fact, I'm going to put a prize on offer, at each location, for the WEIRDEST thing anyone brings me to sign. So get your imagination going [image error]

Hope to see lotsa folks there.

I've been getting excited about the month of April, because I'll be attending two conventions. April 6 to 10 I'll be at the RT Convention in LOS ANGELES!!!!!! 2.15pm on Wednesday 6th I'll be at Club RT and I'm planning to have some copies of my books there for people to snaffle. I'll have the bookplates as well, for the folks who will need to wait to get their hands on the Dream of Asarlai books.

Then April 21 to 25, I'll be at Swancon as an invited guest. So far, the only confirmed thing is that 9am on Saturday morning, I'll be running an abridged version of my Turning Up the Heat workshop, helping to create sizzling sex scenes. It's part of the Romancing the West stream that's being run that day – I'm so thrilled to see an Australian SF convention embracing the romance side of the genre. But I'm sure there will be times I'll be able to sign books or chat over a drink in the bar [image error]

***

Now, onto the writing. The paranormal wing of the Romance Writers of Australia is currently running a Book in a Week/ Book in a Month (BIAW, BIAM) to encourage us all to set targets and get writing. My targets for this week were to finish Future Found to get to my readers, work on the proofs for Rogue Gadda and look at some erotica novellas that I've been thinking of submitting.

Well, Future Found went to my readers on Monday, and I've got just one little thing to tweak in the proofs and they'll be done. I started writing a new novella idea that isn't quite coming together yet, but I think has potential. I haven't looked yet at the main novella that I want to sub, so will do so today.

This week, the plan is to return to the draft of Lost Hope (book two of the People of the Star trilogy) that I abandoned at the end of January to work on revising Future Found. My plan is to have that draft written by the end of March. I won't have a wordcount aim for this week because I have to go back to revise some of what I've already written, thanks to how Future Found worked out but hopefully I will be increasing on the 55,000 words already written.

I've also got some reading to do. I'm judging for the RWA this year and have some stories to get through, and I've got some beta reading to do for a friend who's reading Future Found. I'm also thinking of going to the CSFG short story crit this week, although time may be against me for that.

I head up to Sydney on Thursday and won't be home until late Monday/Tuesday (unsure about that yet) so that might upset some of the work plans. I hope not.

Onwards and upwards!

Howling at hormones–an update

So yesterday I went to see my doctor. It was ACTUALLY to get my thumb checked out – more than three weeks after injury is still having issues and I wanted to make sure it wasn't major and how to treat it.

So I discussed what's happening with my cycles, and how I'm feeling and we've started to take some action.

a) I'm back on the pill. It's a little weird – I ditched the pill as my contraceptive of choice because I didn't like how it flattened out my emotions and rendered me completely neutral about everything (people who know me well might be surprised to know I can be MORE easy-going, but on the pill it was the case). Will be interesting to see if it manages to shave the edges off the lows without taking away the highs this time. Using a Mirena (a type of IUD) was mentioned, but if it comes up again I'll say no to that. I don't have a problem with IUDs (I had a Mirena before I convinced the gynaecologist to just do my tubes already, I wasn't having kids and it certainly had an easier impact on my hormones and emotions than the pill did) but the problem with never having given birth is that in order to insert it, I need to be knocked out and I would prefer to avoid a general anaesthetic if I can (I REALLY don't react well to them). Being on the pill will also bring my periods back into regularity, which helps.

b) I'm going to have my iron levels and thyroid tested, just in case. Also, I'm going to have an ultrasound to ensure that this change isn't a physical issue with my uterus. This is the place where I find myself saying 'I hope it is just menopause'.

I've realised that I've gotten slack on taking my vitamin b pills, so I'll get back into that. And getting some sunlight too.

Doctor wasn't as sure that I should say no to HRT in future as I am – she didn't believe the breast cancer in my family is really close enough to warrant huge fears (closest is paternal grandmother). I think I need to do a bit more research on what is happening and what are the best ways to deal with it.

Dear Menopause…

Yeah, I see you. No, don't you dare try to duck into that shop! You and I are going to have a little chat.

Oh puhleaze, as if I wasn't going to work out what's going on. I was supposed to disregard you, only being 40, and blame all this on something else, right? Did you really think I wasn't going to notice my cycles go up the creek after nearly 30 years of clockwork regularity? Did you really think I was so ill-educated that I wouldn't notice the emotional swings, the sudden lethargy, the HOT FLUSHES  and think I was just a bit run down? And yeah, I've cracked onto how I now get a cold with every period as you run my immune system down – you aren't going to leave a single part of me unattacked, are you?

So, let me state for the record how this is going to go down. I know you're coming, and you ain't gonna dilly-dally. You're going to get here and you're going to get here fast. And when you do, you aint' staying that long. Do whatcha gotta do and then GET THE HELL OUT OF MY LIFE!

You are NOT going to take the next decade slowly but surely creeping into my existence. You are NOT going to take a couple of years to play with my hormones, shuffle them round like cards and tweak whatever part of my system has you most intrigued this month.

In and out. That's how it's going to be.

Don't mess with me. I'm a peri-menopausal woman, and there's NOTHING in this world scarier than that. Except earthquakes. But man, put me in a room with Gaddafi at the moment and I'd friggin KICK HIS ARSE!

Yeah, I'd be right scared of my overuse of capitalisation. Right scared.

Nicole

PS – Don't you dare try to tell me to just get myself some HRT and it will be fine. You KNOW I can't take that shit, not with my history of breast cancer. So just do the right thing.

Thoughts on Borders/Angus and Robertson

So yesterday, the news came through in Australia/NZ that RedGroup Retail, the largest booksellers in Australia, were going into liquidation.

I've read a bit, watched last night's Lateline program (here) and so far my conclusion is – this is a mess and it's just the beginning.

There's so many aspects to this. First is the stores themselves. I was really excited when an A&R opened here in Queanbeyan – great, a bookstore just five minutes away! Then I started going down and I couldn't find the books I wanted. They'd only carry books already assured of being sellers, or by names. I've now gone into several A&R stores, and I've noticed that in the company owned stores this is a real issue (Note – the franchise operated stores appeared to have much more flexibility and choice and thus better stocking).

My favourite bookstore in Canberra has become Borders. I've never had issues finding books I want there, it's always busy and buzzing and from the author standpoint they've been extremely supportive of me.

But overall, I have to say that the stores didn't stock well, they didn't sell well and books aren't just a normal retail item – they're more about a relationship than anything else.

Then there's the online thing and in Australia I think it's still more about online selling than e-books cause while they're taking off, it's not to the same extent as America yet. Paypal have said that in the past twelve months, online purchases from Australia have increased 70%. With the Australian dollar hovering around parity with the US, that's not surprising. Even with postage, it often turns out cheaper to buy from Amazon then Australian online retailers. Then there's free postage from places like The Book Depository. There's no doubting that it's impacted brick and mortar retailers.

My answer to that was that bookstores then have to work on building the business beyond just selling – create the relationship I mentioned earlier. Except on the Lateline program, the owner of Gleebooks (major independent bookseller in Sydney) said that with the advent of Google, the position of bookseller as point of information has declined. People can find out what they need to know and where to get that information themselves.

A comment I've seen online is about independent bookstores making themselves part of the community to survive. Maybe that's the answer.

Then Lateline talked about the impact of major chains like KMart and Big W, who now account for a third of booksales in Australia. The problem for me as an author is these chains generally will only carry people who are a name (although there are exceptions – Kirstyn McDermott's debut Madigan Mine ended up in the local KMart).  Go there and you're seeing Bryce Courtney and Nora Roberts and Stephanie Meyer and JK Rowling and not a lot of diversity. So we don't want them to end up taking over the physical bookselling in Australia.

And THEN people have brought up parallel importing and the impact it's had with booksellers not being able to import cheaper books. When I think about Angus and Robertson and how they had massive tables of cheap books they'd bought in through remainders and stuff, I wonder if that's the argument people think it is.

Finally, there's the costs of books in Australia and yeah, they're high and something needs to be done.  It's been said some booksellers are blaming publishers for not responding to the dollar pressure and dropping the costs of books in Australia, but then maybe because of the structure of the industry it wasn't possible. Particularly in publishing, which has always been a low-profit industry.

The conclusion – the publishing and bookselling industry is seeing an upheaval and I'm not sure that any of us know what the final result is going to be. I'm finding it hard to put aside my self-interest in all this – I want to be paid to write books and I want people to buy my books. How do I do that, while other people get the things they want – viable businesses, reasonably priced books.

Perhaps the business model for us writers is going to change – perhaps we'll be staring out electronically, building our name and audience and only the biggest and brightest will get actual physical print runs. A shame – I'll miss not having my actual book to hold (although emailing an electronic copy to contest winners will be a HELL of a lot cheaper than mailing physical copies).

The sad thing right now is that there are currently 2500 people out there who are suddenly unsure about what their employment situation is going to look like in a month or so. To them, I say – best of luck. I hope this ends up being a situation that moves you into a new and happy phase of your life and not one that makes things difficult for you.

Rom-com cliches–good or bad?

The fabulous Jenny Cruisie, on her blog, pointed out this list of 24 rom-com cliches that must be retired from EW.com and found several that she thought shouldn’t be retired.

I decided to have a look myself and see what I thought of it all, being a lover of romance and the rom-com myself. First, my thoughts on cliches. I don’t automatically subscribe to the theory that all cliches are bad. Sometimes, the cliché is so true that it’s the best way to show a particular idea (some of the below cliches fit into that). Sometimes, a cliché can be done so well that it rises above itself and becomes a magical moment (some of the below have achieved that too). So I don’t hate something just because it’s a cliché.

Now, onto my thoughts:

 

So, the cliches I’d absolutely get rid of: Media Mavens, Blooming Wallflowers, The Lonely Montage, Ridiculous Proofs of Love, PDA, Wet Climax and Quirky BFF

Cliches only to be used if done brilliantly – Last Minute Sprint, Love at First Fight, Bad Influence Buddies

Cliches to be embraced – Do You Believe In Magic?, Mischievious Dogs, Working Girl Needs Balance, Mr and Mrs Right In Front Of Your, Easy Sex, Schlubby Guy Pretty Girl (although turn it around sometimes), Fake ID, Top of the Stairs Moment, Eating for Two or Three, Egregarious Girl Bonding, I’ve “Nothing” to Wear, Singing into Objects.

Things I don’t think are cliches – Clumsy heroines, bad drivers.

Now, to get onto my own romance writing [image error]

 

More on making the characters suffer

So after writing the blog last Thursday, and then spending the rest of the day thinking, on Friday I sat down and started writing it.

Was going well – got it written, and didn't have to change much else in the book. Yay, says I.

EXCEPT – in the process of researching how this would work, I came across the truly nasty thing I could do. Awful. Horrendous. Extremely doable.

And I turned away. 'Nah,' I said to myself, 'what I'm doing is horrible enough.'

Except it's not. It's neat and it's easy and comfortable for me, but it's not the true test of my character that I need.

So today I sit down and I take out what I wrote and I go back in and write the REAL thing that will happen to her. And it's gonna be bloody awful, and she'd going to be traumatised and it's going to involve a lot of changes to the rest of the book but I'm going to do it because I want the characters to prove themselves as worthy.

I'm also going to do it to test myself – can I step outside the zone, let my books and characters be everything they need to be? Can I write this well enough?

Time alone will tell.

Making the characters suffer

Yesterday, I finished making all the changes that my colour charts told me needed to be made to Future Found. Wow, thought I. I'm almost done. Need to look at words, sentence structure, spellcheck, read it aloud but the heavy lifting is done.

Then last night in bed, I had a bit of an epiphany – I've been too easy on my protagonists.

That's not to say that nothing's happening in this book. There's a serial killer, a series favourite is having a truly crap time and there's some real shake-ups politically and socially in the bardria. The two protags also have some issues to deal with – both of them at different points have someone trying to choke them; one gets cheated on and then cannot trust the other; a pet is almost killed and a father jailed for threatening some babies. But they're not – you know – SUFFERING.

They manage to deal with all these things relatively easily cause while they're difficult and hard, they're not life-changing. That's what I need – something life changing.

The problem with that is one of the protags is a guardian and as anyone who's read Secret Ones and Power Unbound can tell you, the guardians are pretty tough to hurt. Really, if you're going for them, you're going for the kill – you won't survive going in there half-cocked. But then, it's too easy to go for the non-guardian.

Of course, I'm focussed here on physical suffering. Maybe mental suffering would be enough?

I've come up with an idea that works well in the storyline, but I don't think it's – nasty enough. But how to get nasty with someone with that much power?

More thinking is required, I think.

Revising Future Found

So after some false starts, lack of enthusiasm and a sprained thumb, today I've fallen head-first into revising Future Found, book one of the People of the Star trilogy (sequel to Dream of Asarlai – DoA).

I started the process with a colour chart and one thing immediately became clear – there wasn't a lot of excitement at the beginning of the book. I ummed and ahhed a bit over it – it's the first book of a trilogy, I told myself. It's introducing new characters, a new storyline, so it's not going to be all blam, blam, blammity blam. Except I thought about it some more – maybe I need to consider the various plotlines I've got going and see if I can't use one of those to spice things up a bit.

What I've come up with isn't blam, blam, blammity blam but I think it matches the way the books of the DoA trilogy start – with action, something going on that needs to be dealt with, something that you know is going to impact later on.

As I read, I noted a variety of places where storylines either needed to be developed or where the transitions had gotten a bit clunky. Apart from the new beginning I've now got, I've got at least three more scenes that I need to write, and so I'm happy about the 100k word length I finished with (I'll be aiming for this book to be around 110k, like the DoA books).

I've also not actually written the last scene. I've finished the story, but I now need a scene to transition the reader from the Happily Ever After of book one into the new relationship and events of book two. Although having written that, it occurs to me that I might already have written it, but it's not actually at the end of the book…

I do love this problem-solving aspect of revising.

Last night, I went to bed and it came to me that I'd done one of the scenes wrong. The way I'd done it was fine, but it wasn't right. It was the lazy way to do things. So I've changed it. Will be interesting to see the impact it has later on. Oooh, something's just come to me about that too…

As I was doing the colour chart, I wondered about a couple of scenarios. In DoA, I decided to put in scenes from Asarlai's point of view, so that the reader would know information the characters didn't. However, I found myself in a similar position with this series in that I've got a character who's making plans that the others don't know about yet. Do I do the same thing? I wondered. I don't want this series to be a cookie-cutter version of DoA, but to have it's own style while keeping the things that people love about the first series – the world, the characterisation, the fast-paced narrative, the romance, the building of danger and need.

I asked on Facebook if people preferred to know what was going on or to find out at the same time as the characters, and the overwhelming response was to find out at the same time.

I kinda feel that I should now apologise for what I did with DoA.

More thinking and an insight – putting the Asarlai scenes in there was actually the easy solution. Like say popping up in the middle of Hide and Go Seek, grabbing the seeker's hand and drawing them over to where the others are hiding and saying 'no, there!'. As I write the new series, it's taking more thought to sprinkle the necessary clues within the text while making them integral to that particular moment.

Ah, a challenge! Just what every writer needs.

I'm enjoying this. I don't have to do as much macro-level changes as I have in the past cause I'm getting better at the whole devising of plot thing. It's now getting more about how I make that plot as interesting and real to the readers as possible.