Sara Jayne Townsend's Blog, page 29

WIP Update – March 2013

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

Time for an update on current Works in Progress.

I’ve got several things going on at the moment. The most progressed WIP is the horror novel. It’s been to beta readers, I’ve had feedback, and I have recently started work on Draft 4.

This novel, in summary, is about a group of live action roleplayers who unwittingly unleash a lich on the world during a game. Said lich wields powerful dark magic, and leaves death and destruction in its wake. And it sets about raising an army of zombies, as sort of a sub-plot. Anyway, on the whole the feedback was fairly positive. All my women beta readers love my main female character – she’s a crack shot with a shot gun, she’s ace with Resident Evil, she takes out many of the real-life zombies and she saves the boy.

There are some plot holes, and some characterisation issues, and these I am working to fix in the current draft. But I’m feeling pretty confident about this one. This one will be finished before the end of this year. In fact, I’m aiming to have it out on sub before 2014 dawns.

In the meantime, there’s a second project – a collaboration with Hubby. Now, he’s not a writer. But after more than 25 years of running D&D games, he’s pretty good at plotting. And he’s a musician. This new project is a crime thriller featuring a young female bass player, against the backdrop of the music scene in the late 1960s. We start her off at the Monterey Festival in 1967, and then bring her to London. This project is at an early stage. We’ve been doing a lot of the plotting together. And I have started doing some of the writing. But there’s a long way to go yet, and since I’ve never collaborated with my life partner on a writing project before, it’s somewhat uncharted territory.

And what of Shara 2? Well, that one’s still languishing in a drawer. I got a bit discouraged after the crit session. Every time I get it out and review how much work there still is to do on it, I get depressed and put it away again. And DEATH SCENE has not exactly been flying off the cyber-shelves, so it’s not as if I have a long queue of fans impatiently waiting for the further adventures of Shara Summers.

Nevertheless, she has one or two fans. And I would rather like to get this one finished. So perhaps I’ll finish it for you. You know who you are.

This does make three WIPs on the go at once, however. And talking about them doesn’t make them any closer to being finished. It’s time to get back to the writing.

What I’m Doing At EasterCon

The schedule for this year’s EasterCon – otherwise known as EightSquared Con – has now been confirmed. I am very excited because I shall be doing my first panel.

There has been some last minute shuffling due to confusions in availability, but I can now confirm that this is my schedule:

Saturday 30 March, 12pm – Genre Get Together (Fantasy)

Sunday 31 March, 1pm – Head to Head Panel:  Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker.

The Genre Get Together is billed as an opportunity for fans to meet authors and get books signed. I’m currently having recurring nightmares that all the other authors involved in this will have long queues of adoring fans waiting to talk to them, whilst I’ll be standing there alone like Billy No Mates.  So, if you’re going to EasterCon, and you’ve got a copy of SOUL SCREAMS or SIBLINGS or anything else with one of my stories in, do come along and get it signed. Even if you don’t, just come along for a chat, and stave off my nightmare.

The panel has been a last minute change, but I am immensely looking forward to it. Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker – two greats of gothic horror fiction, and I could talk for hours about these two writers. Finding things to say really won’t be a problem. More of an issue is the need to refrain from hogging the panel.

It goes without saying that there is much, much more to look forward to than just my panel debut. There are all the usual pleasures of a Con. Spending hours in the bar with fellow spec fiction fans, conversing cheerily about much geekery. The wondrous things for sale in the dealer room. The chance to meet other – more famous – writers. The chance to catch up with all the fellow geeks I only ever meet in person at conventions.

And, let’s not forget, the first episode of the new season Doctor Who, which is always broadcast on the big screen at Eastercon and is one of the Con highlights.

I am already bouncing up and down in anticipation. Four more sleeps!

RIP James Herbert

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

Today’s post was going to be an update on current WIPs. But on the way home from work today, I learned news that rocked my world. The news came to me via my Twitter feed, which I was checking on my phone on the train home, as I usually do. Say what you like about Twitter, it’s the best place to go for the real news. The important news.

And the important news today – more important than trials and political scandals, more important than the fact that it was Budget Day – is that James Herbert has died. It is not an exaggeration to say I was shocked by this news. It is not even an exaggeration to say I was devastated.

James Herbert was Master of British Horror. In the 80s, when I first got into horror in a serious way, he dominated the shelves along with Stephen King. I have read many of his books. I have an entire shelf of them in my library.

I am not the only person affected by this news. Looking at my Twitter and Facebook feeds this evening, many people I follow are all saying the same thing. James Herbert informed their adolescent reading habits. James Herbert turned them on to reading, and writing, horror. James Herbert is among the greats, and the world will not be the same without him. Most people, it seemed, started off with THE RATS. I have to say I didn’t get on with this particular book, which as I understand it was his first published novel. It wasn’t the first James Herbert novel I read, and by the time I got to that one I was in my early 20s. It seemed to me to be a book largely preoccupied with describing – in graphic detail – people having sex, followed by said people being eaten by rats while they were cozying in the afterglow, and not much to the novel beyond that. I’ve said before that I’m the sort of person who skips the sex scenes, in search of something more interesting. In this case people being horribly eaten by rats was more interesting, but after three or four scenes of this it started to feel a bit ‘samey’. So, no, THE RATS was not my favourite Herbert book. There are plenty of others, though, that I would rate up there as amongst the best horror novels every written. HAUNTED. THE GHOSTS OF SLEATH. THE MAGIC COTTAGE. CREED.

And then last year I read a James Herbert book that blew the rest of them out of the water. That book was NOBODY TRUE, and if you’ve been reading my blog for a while you may recall I wrote a glowing review (found here in case you haven’t been).

I have never met James Herbert personally, in spite of going to two Cons in recent years where he was Guest of Honour – generally someting else interesting was happening, or the queue was just too long. I’m now rather regretting that I didn’t take the time to stand in that queue, to get a book signed and get the chance to tell him how he inspired me as a horror writer, and how I devoured his books when I was just discovering my calling as a horror writer.

In spite of that, I still feel that I’ve read so many books of his that I knew him. And news of his death feels like a personal loss – a bit like losing an old friend.

Only yesterday I was contemplating buying his newest book. ASH. I decided against it at the time, my TBR pile being already so vast I shouldn’t add to it until I’ve managed to get through some of the books in it. Now I feel the need to re-read all the James Herbert books on my shelf, and go out and buy all the ones I haven’t read yet. I might even re-read THE RATS. Maybe the passage of time will make me like it more.

Goodbye, Mr Herbert. The world will not be the same without you, and you leave behind a hole in British horror fiction that no one could ever fill.

Monday’s Friend: Daisy Banks

Today I am pleased to welcome romance writer Daisy Banks to the blog. Welcome, Daisy!

DB: Hello, it’s great to be here on Sara-Jayne Townsend’s blog. I hope my answers to her questions help to give you an idea of the kind of writer and person I am.

SJT: When did you first know you were destined to be a writer?

DB:  That’s a tricky question to answer. I do know I spoke my first stories into a tape recorder because I was too young to have learned to write. Older family members have said I started telling the stories when I was aged about three. I suppose the clue I’d write was there, but no one in my family noticed it at the time. I did have several teachers who enjoyed my stories and the plays I wrote with a friend while I was in primary education; perhaps that was another clue to what lay in the future. Then I hit the adolescent phase and moved to poetry. I love poetry but I am a terrible poet. It’s probably for the best I gave the poems up. After I graduated and went into special needs teaching a long time passed before the call to write hit me.

I discovered I wanted to write while going through a very unpleasant illness. My first efforts had much room for improvement. I joined critique groups, read as much as I could in my attempts to gain a better understanding of how to write in a way readers would enjoy. I am learning still and trying to improve my skills with each story I complete.

SJT:  I went through a stage of writing bad poetry as a teenager, as well. Who would you cite as your influences?

DB:  Anya Seaton, Jean Plaidy, Mary Stewart, I read and loved them all in my youth. Tolkien remains a major influence. I love his use of language, the way he created such a detailed magical world. There are lots more books and authors I’ve enjoyed reading, really too many to list.

I love Anne Rice’s work and many of her books are on my bookcase. I also enjoyed Douglas Adams creations, what an imagination the man had.

I enjoy many e-book authors too.

SJT:  What advice would you pass on to beginner writers that you wish someone had told you when you were first starting out?

DB:  If you want to be a writer, it’s not just about the writing. There are other requirements too. Be prepared to work as a publicist, even if you’re shy, a web designer unless you’re rich enough to hire one and to blog too. Some people can do all those things quite effortlessly, for others such as me each one is a challenge in its own right. I always find it surprising people might want to know about me rather than about the stories.

Research the market and think of where your story might fit into it. I think that’s a vital part of understanding publishing. Even if your book is the story from your deepest heart, or a tale you’ve worked on for a long time, you do need to remember publishing is a business and you have to treat it as one. You may be lucky and fill the publisher’s requirement at the time, or you may not. The spark of fate, luck or the will of the gods hits us all. Be patient, sometimes you can wait for weeks, even months, to hear from a publisher, but I once had a reply from a senior editor to my email submission in less than five minutes. Now that was a shock. Sadly, they didn’t take the story.

Another important thing is to grow a hard hide, and be prepared for rejection in all its forms. Rejection is what I think most people find the hardest to deal with, it’s made my eyes water more than once, but you have to push through the disappointment and continue. I’ve known several would be writers with wonderful skills and glorious imaginations, but their first rejection flattened them like they’d been hit by a runaway steamroller and they never tried again after. If you want to write, you have to be stubborn, not easily dissuaded from your goals and let the stories drive you onward.

SJT:  When it comes to your writing projects, would you describe yourself as a meticulous planner, or a ‘seat-of-the-pantser’?

DB:  I’m a pantster through and through. I wrote in more depth about this on the All Things Writing blog in February. http://allthingswriting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/daisy-banks-author-of-timeless-talks.html. It took me a while to understand that’s what my kind of writing was. My stories come to me as pictures in my mind. They have all begun that way. I follow where the pictures lead me and only when the bones of the story are done do I go back to edit and develop. I did end up with a list of rooms for my story TIMELESS published by Lyrical Press, http://lyricalpress.com/timeless/ because the house the hero Magnus Johansson lives in is so large, but that’s it for notes overall. Sometimes I’ll start writing a scene from the end of the story and work back to the beginning, some people find that way of working very strange but I’ve done it more than once. I did think if I wrote a very long story I might need more in the way of notes, but my latest finished ms which I am about to submit is very long and I didn’t have a list of notes.

SJT:  What things help you get in the mood to write?

DB:  I think people make assumptions about writers. They seem to imagine we all either sit freezing, rubbing our chilblained hands around a flickering candle in a garret, or we lounge at desks surrounded by books and bash away at computers in a frenzied blur. Maybe some writers do work in those ways, I don’t.

My current home, a converted chapel in a country village, is an interesting place to work in. For one thing, I can’t see out of the windows on the ground floor, they are all stained glass. If I want to admire the view, I have to go upstairs. I work at my table in the kitchen, a good place to work as it’s close to the biscuit jar, always warm in winter, and the coffee machine steams close by. Often I listen to music as I work, frequently classical though that tends to be background noise rather than something for inspiration.

My latest story, Your Heart My Soul with Liquid Silver Books which you can pre-order here for immediate download on release day, the 25th of the March, was inspired by a piece of music. The Fishermen’s Friends, a Cornish group who specialize in sea shanties, perform the song, ‘Bully in the Alley’ as part of their repertoire. The song gave me shivers and the first image for Your Heart My Soul, and once I had the picture of the girl and her man waiting, the story rolled on. You can listen to the song here on UTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi0kBpw4r_w

There are times when I use incense to help me link to the mind of the character I’m working with, or I might use a picture to help me think in their mindset. Pictures sometimes help me if I’m floundering, but mostly the images are in my head. I don’t like interruptions and I leave the house phone on answer. The best days are those when I discover I’ve been writing for several hours yet it feels like only a short time. I love those days.

I do get days where I need a break from one story and then I’ll work on another, or edit chapters. Mostly there isn’t a day goes by where I don’t write at all.

SJT:  All your stories seem to be about romance.  What is it about this genre, in your opinion, that has lasting appeal?

DB:  Love and the force of it on the emotions is a fascinating subject to write about. Generations of writers have explored love and its abiding power. I guess I’m following in the footsteps of others. I have been a romantic since I can recall, I enjoy happy endings to stories, but I also appreciate pathos and tragedy, all involve love. Fashions change, they come and go, but the depth of love between lovers is something that fills me with awe. Kingdoms won and lost for love, fortunes the same, family ties broken for love, journeys across the globe, all for love. I can’t think of anything stronger than love. I know there are people in the world who will claim there are emotions or forces that are stronger. I happen to think they are wrong. Love encapsulates all that is best in us, or sometimes the worst, and that is one of the reasons I enjoy writing about it so much. When I write about love, there are no fixed boundaries. This is such a wonderful and special emotion, promotes selfless acts of devotion, but equally its power can cause devastation. When love strikes a heart it can and often is overwhelming. I find love an amazing thing to write about and of course, it’s great fun too. You can find all my stories on my web site here. http://daisybanksnovels.yolasite.com/

 SJT:  What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

DB:  I read. Perhaps dipping into a story I know, like visiting an old friend, or I may read a new story. If I’m not writing I spend some time critiquing for people and I do enjoy a visit to the local market town, or a meal out at my local pub, or seeing my friends. I enjoy time with my family and visiting my sons, one who lives in London the other, who lives closer to me. I do like to travel. On a wider scale, I try to visit a new country whenever I have the chance to travel. I’m hoping to be able to return to the USA next year and that will be a thrill as I’ll be able to visit some of my friends there.

Many thanks for having me on your blog Sara-Jayne. I’ve enjoyed answering your questions.

Bio:

Daisy Banks is from the Black Country, the heartlands of the Midlands in the UK. She is proud to count as her ancestors the people who lived in the narrow, blue brick-paved streets, who delved for coal or worked metal. A legacy to be proud of. Daisy is married and spends her time writing now that her boys are adults. She loves traditional romantic songs and ballads. She is interested in art and architecture, enjoys travel, and occasionally cooks a meal that doesn’t stick to the pan.

She is the author of:

YOUR HEART MY SOUL with Liquid Silver Books.

TIMELESS with Lyrical Press

FIONA’S WISH with Lyrical Press CAPA Nominee 2012

A MATTER OF SOME SCANDAL with Lyrical Press

WITCH’S MARK with NCP

Chapters

(Cross-posted on WriteClub blog)

I am a big fan of chapter breaks. Every story I’ve ever written, bar those less than 10,000 words, has had chapter breaks.

When I am reading a book, I like chapters. I particularly like short chapters. I hate stopping my reading session in the middle of a chapter, because when I come back to the book I have to hunt around the page to work out where I got to last. A chapter break makes it so much easier to find your place. Most of my reading is done on the train, going to and from work. Short chapters make it much easier to work out where to stop. When my train is ten minutes away from its final London destination, I will check and see how long the next chapter is. If it’s short, I can get one more in before it’s time to stop reading and get off the train.

Short chapters are also good when I’m reading in bed. It’s getting late, and I’m tired, but if I’m enjoying the book and the next chapter is only five pages long, I’ll probably read that one before stopping. And maybe the one after that. If I’m looking at 20 more pages until the next chapter break, I’ll probably stop there and turn out the light, no matter how much I’m enjoying the book.

No chapter breaks in a book really bugs me. For all the aforementioned reasons, this is one of my pet peeves. Much as I enjoy Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’ series, none of the books contain chapter breaks and it drives me crazy. Lindsey Davis, on the other hand, knows how to write a chapter. Her books about Roman informer Marcus Didius Falco have short, snappy chapters. In fact, she has been known to finish a chapter after one paragraph.

It was pointed out to me recently that my novels always have short chapters. I don’t think this was intended as a compliment, but I saw it that way. Yes, I love short chapters, for all the reasons above, and there are even more reasons to love short chapters when I’m writing them. As I hate putting down a book in the middle of a chapter, I also hate finishing a writing session in the middle of a chapter. Sometimes it’s unavoidable – like if I’ve started a chapter but I don’t know what happens next, so I have to stop and come back to it later. But on the whole, if I come to my WIP with my chapter plan, I know what’s supposed to happen in the chapter when I sit down to write it. My chapters are, on average, 1500 words long – often less. If I’m on a roll, it is possible for me to get that many words written in my hour-long early morning writing session in Starbucks.

Some writers like their 20,000+ word chapters. Some claim to hate chapters completely, preferring to let the narrative flow in unending waves. But I am much more likely to finish reading your book if it has frequent chapter breaks. If I get to page 50 and there’s been no chapter break, there’s a good chance I might abandon it right there. So of course I write short chapters – my writing reflects my reading preferences.

So what about you? Whether you’re a writer, or a reader, what’s your take on chapters?

Monday’s Friend: C D Brennan

Today my guest is writer and fellow traveller C D Brennan. Welcome,  C D!

CDB:  First, I want to take the opportunity to thank Sara-Jayne for having me today. My fellow Lyrical sisters have been my greatest support in the promotion of my debut romance. And I’m very happy to now have Sara-Jayne’s acquaintance – a Londoner that can keep me close to all that is British, which I adore – from the Tetley’s tea to their crazy Premiership.

SJT:  When did you first know you were destined to be a writer?

CDB:  To be honest, I still don’t know. Is it my destiny to be an author? My undergraduate was in Creative Writing, so maybe even way back then I had a glimpse of my future. But that was twenty years ago, and I have had many fancies in between, for I’m a dreamer. I wanted to be a helicopter pilot and a professional sailor, and for a time a cowgirl. Now that I’m older, I can look at it in perspective and know those weren’t meant to be (although I had a fair crack at a couple of them). For one, I now have a fear of flying. Probably not the best quality for a helicopter pilot.  But I have been thinking lately that this series was meant to be, and the last 15 years of my travels was the perfect research for the Love Where You Roam series.  So everything comes together, in its own time.

SJT:  Who would you cite as your influences?

CDB:  Wow, that’s a hard one. You’d think it would be easy, and for some writer’s it is, they love a certain style or voice of a particular author, but for me, I soak up small details of many writers. The Love Where You Roam series is based on characterization plots. Take your hero and heroine and place them in different situations, even if that means an altered environment created by the other, and see how they evolve, and ultimately how the other is a compliment to themself.  I’ve drawn from YA writers for their character growth, classic romance novelists for their plotting and development, and (may be surprising) fantasy for the great way the writers are able to incorporate description into the story without it being too heavy and slowing down the pace.

SJT:  What advice would you pass on to beginner writers that you wish someone had told you when you were first starting out?

CDB:  Being an author isn’t just about writing anymore. It’s about promotion and networking and social media and website administration, and getting yourself out there, which takes an immense amount of time, and ultimately for me, takes time away from the next book. Because I am juggling another job and a young family, it currently takes me almost a year to write a book. Far too long. Because making your way as an author requires a backlist, which means many books for sale. You can earn a living by having numerous books out there over a period of time. But if you are willing to keep going with it, one day it will be worth it. As I reckon a job as a writer is a great job to have.

SJT:  It’s nice to have a fellow traveller on my blog.  What are your favourite places in the world?

CDB:  Sweet divine, where do I start? As photograph images and memories passed through me at this question, there was one that kept replaying. Mountain tops. Mt McKinley in Alaska, Mt Kenya in Kenya, Ben Nevis in Scotland, Croke Patrick in Ireland. Not only did I want to see the country, but I must have wanted to see the country from on high. Great views.

I have great memories of times with other travellers at the Cinque Terra on the west coast of Italy, Trevi Fountain in Rome, a train ride from Prague to Krakow, the Masai warrior dance at our safari camp in Kenya, a moose eating the bush out front of our kitchen window in Alaska (and opening scene in Book 3), the castles in Bavaria, sailing the Whitsundy Islands in Australia. So many, I probably have missed a million.

But mostly, my favourite places that I travelled are the places that I lived because of the people that made the experience that much sweeter, that much more memorable and personal. It wasn’t just visiting, it was home. It was delving into everything about that culture and living it.

SJT:  I know how a mixed-up accent confuses people.  Have you ever had people mistakenly guess where you’re from?

CDB:  When I moved from Ireland, my husband and I travelled through the States on our way to Australia. We stopped in New York, and while sharing an elevator ride with a couple of businessmen, they tagged me straight up as Irish. I had read somewhere that the more a person assimilates into a new culture, the more likely they are to pick up the colloquial language. When I lived in Ireland, I embraced everything about it, and I thought it was the place I would find love and live forever. Obviously, not meant to be after meeting my Aussie husband, but after a couple years in Scotland, seven years in Ireland and another five in Australia, my accent is a mutt of a dog. I tend to pick up phrases that I like, mostly slang, that has stayed with me all these years.

But a funnier story is my Australian husband now in Michigan. Americans, bless them, are not good at picking foreign accents, so most folk we meet think he is from Texas. LOL.

SJT:  Your book is set in Australia, so perhaps this location inspires you.  What it is about Australia that drew you to write about it?

When I wrote WATERSHED, I was currently living in Australia, in a small rural mining town in Queensland called Mount Isa. So the bush setting was all around me, and Queensland was then being tormented by flooding, which is relevant to the story.

But even before that, while backpacking through Australia in 1995, a woman sat next to me on a Greyhound bus journey from Rockhampton to Townsville, about an 8 hour drive normally, then add another four hours for the bus experience. As most travelers would understand, a spare seat next to you on these trips is a God-send, more space to stretch out and put your things. But, as fate would have it, another writer Margery Smith sat next to me and we chatted for almost the entire trip.

I had been in Australia for a month, working my way up the East coast, and even though it was a beautiful coastline and plenty to do (The Australian hostels were like motels with pools and BBQ facilities), I felt it wasn’t the Australia that I had hoped for. I wanted the true and gritty experience, not one polished and packaged for tourists. I mentioned my disappointment, and within moments my traveling companion offered that her daughter lived on a cattle station just west of Rocky (Rockhampton), and would I be interested in working as a jillaroo? Would I ever!

After my sailing trip through the Whitsunday Islands to see the Reef, I backtracked down to Rockhampton and then west, where another bus journey plopped me down at some dusty turnoff in the middle of nowhere. Thus, the opening scene of Watershed. Even though there was no romance for me personally at the Bloomfield Station (just a few hours east of Alpha, Queensland), I fell in love with the lifestyle and landscape, the people and animals, the fresh air and hard work. Ironically enough, I ended up marrying my own Australian country boy I met 10 years later when we were both living in Ireland.

SJT:  Any other projects in the works?

There are four planned books (perhaps more?) in the Love Where You Roam series. The series follows women as they travel, backpack and work in faraway places, and in those adventures the woman finds love where she roams.  Like in many journeys, the heroine’s path is not only physical but spiritual as they grow and change in their new environment. Ultimately, they find a place where they belong.

The series is tied by characters and concept. The heroine that stars in the following book of the series will make an appearance in the previous book. In Book 1, WATERSHED with Maggie and Gray, we also meet Lizzy, a jillaroo and friend to the Stewart’s that own The Gemfields. In the next book, A STONE’S THROW, Lizzy travels to Scotland where she meets the debonair but elusive, Hamish Skene.

Lizzy lives and works in a Hotel Pub in the small town of Bridge of Allan, Scotland. One of her coworkers is Sophie, a university student studying to be a linguistics teacher. She travels to Alaska in the next book, currently titled DUSTING OF LIGHT, where she meets a rugged native Alaskan. An Aleutian mother and Russian father, he is striking in appearance and mannerisms. I say “he” because I don’t have a character name yet. I might do a contest on my FB or my website for fans to choose a name. I have already started writing the book, and it’s a bit annoying to always use “Aleut” in place of his name. LOL. I was using “Alaska” but that got way too messy, as you can imagine.

Author Bio

Having traveled and lived all over the world, C D Brennan now talks with a strange accent, a mix of distant terminology, a blend of culturally cute but confusing euphemisms that leaves everyone looking at her with a blank stare. Luckily, her Australian husband (who she met in Ireland) and her two Aussie/Yankee sons have no problem understanding her – well, except for the word “NO”.

Now settled back “home” in Michigan, she enjoys reliving her glory days by writing about them. She considers the last fifteen years abroad the perfect research for her Love Where You Roam series; matchmaking women and men from different cultures, even different hemispheres, helping them find their true one across oceans of difference.

As destiny plays a hand in all the stories, Cd Brennan truly believes that what is for you, won’t pass you by. She hopes to inspire others to get out there: “Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” [Mark Twain]  And of course, fall in love.

Get in touch with her at www.cdbrennan.com.

Blurb from ‘Watershed’

She left home to find herself…and found love along the way.

Maggie isn’t looking for love on her backpacking trip through Australia. She’s got enough man troubles back in Ireland. Australia is her escape, a place of adventure where she can create memories to last a lifetime.

But some memories won’t be left behind.

Gray is ready to quit hiring backpackers to help with the work on his remote Queensland cattle station when Maggie turns up. She’s just passing through, but the connection they forge during the long nights herding cattle won’t be so easily cast aside.

CONTENT WARNING: A strong-willed Irish heroine, a stubborn Australian hero, and oceans of difference to bridge for love.

A Lyrical Press Contemporary Romance

Excerpt

“In Ireland we have the Banshee.” Maggie broke Gray’s daydreaming with a start. “She is the omen of death and the messenger from the Otherworld.”

She continued in a whisper. “Often she appears an old hag. Folklore says she may also appear as a stunningly beautiful woman.” Maggie raised her brow at him, her eyes twinkling with fun.

Gray threw his head back and laughed, and she joined him. There was no shaking her. He decided he wasn’t going to best Maggie, and for the first time in a long time he was content with that.

He shifted so she had to settle against him. He heard her sigh as he wrapped his arm around her. They sat watching the fire, listening to the sounds of the bush settle for the night. It was peaceful and, Gray had to admit, romantic. He smiled, fulfilled after a long day’s hard work, some good bush tucker and a beautiful woman by his side. He had almost worked up enough courage to kiss her when she shivered, wrapping her arms around herself.

“I’m going to sleep.” Pulling off her trainers, she climbed into her swag. “Goodnight.”

Social Media Links

www.facebook.com/cdbrennan2012

www.twitter.com/CdBrennanauthor

www.goodreads.com/CdBrennan

www.pinterest.com/CdBrennan2012

Buy Links

Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Watershed-ebook/dp/B00BNDFJX6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362277880&sr=8-1&keywords=Watershed+Cd+Brennan

B&N http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/watershed-cd-brennan/1114744167?ean=2940016262345

iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/wayershed/id593848163?mt=11

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Another Rung of the Ladder

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

The illustrious Mike Carey, in a talk to the T Party writers’ group, once told us that success in his writing career did not come from one big break – instead it was a series of fortuitous small breaks. Success comes gradually, with each new milestone worth marking off. There are a lot of significant milestones over the years that I decided were worth celebrating as I forge the road of my writing career. The first professionally published story (1989). The first novel contract (2009, for SUFFER THE CHILDREN). Seeing the first novel cover. Seeing the finished book for the first time was exciting, even though it arrived as an email file and not a print copy. Holding the first print book (2012, SOUL SCREAMS) for the first time was equally exciting. My first ‘proper’ signing session, at the BFS open night, for the paperback version of SOUL SCREAMS was a thrill.

All of these things have been significant milestones, to me, in the journey from Writer to Author. They mark the way to writing as a career, instead of just a hobby.

Another First Milestone has recently come my way. This year’s EasterCon (officially titled EightSquaredCon) has published their list of ‘Attending Authors‘. And I am on it. That’s very exciting – I’m normally in the regular delegates list.

I’ve also been asked to participate in a panel at EasterCon. This is my first panel, and a big moment. Since the schedule’s not published yet I’m not going to say too much about this, but needless to say it marks another ‘First’.

From being very young, the only thing I ever wanted to be was a writer. As each milestone is achieved and I check it off my List of Dreams, I move the goalposts a bit and set it ever higher. The Ultimate Dream is being able to make enough money from the writing to quit the day job. That might never happen, but setting the smaller goals in the meantime means that with every little goal I check off, every step of the ladder I take, I’m just that little bit closer.

Women in Horror #4: Sarah Connor

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

For my fourth and final post on Women in Horror, I’m looking at the heroine of the TERMINATOR films. OK, maybe this is more science fiction than horror, but it’s a series that deals with horror themes. Machines take sentience and try to destroy the human race. The second film opens with apocalyptic scenes of a nuclear blast, an empty playground, machines crushing piles of human skulls in their wake. And it’s the second film I want to focus on, the film in which Sarah Connor becomes a kick-ass heroine.

Sarah Connor



When we meet Sarah in the first TERMINATOR film, she’s an ordinary American young woman. She works as a waitress, she goes to college, she laments with her flat mate about not being to find Mr Right. And then her life changes when she learns a cybernetic entity from the future is hunting her down, and will not stop until she’s dead. The reason she’s being hunted is not for something she’s done, but something that will happen in the future. When the machines rise up to destroy humanity they almost succeed, but one man leads a band of human survivors to victory. That man, John Connor, is Sarah’s son – the son she hasn’t conceived yet.

Aided by the man that her son sent back in time to help save her – a man who turns out to be the father of her son, conceived the one and only time she sleeps with him (yes, let’s not dwell on that paradox too much lest our brains explode), Sarah manages to escape from the Arnold Schwarzenegger-shaped cyborg, though her rescuer is killed in the process. The end of the film shows her alone and pregnant, driving through Mexico, knowing the Hell of the future that is to come and burdened with the knowledge that the unborn child she carries is the last hope for humanity. That’s got to change a person.

It’s the second film in which Sarah becomes a lean mean fighting machine. Eleven years have passed. Her son John is a hellion, placed in foster care because Sarah has been sectioned. Caught trying to blow up an electronics factory and ranting about the machines that were going to destroy humanity, she was deemed to be mad and locked up in an institution. In her first scene in T2, she is doing arm lifts on bars in her cell room, bulging biceps clearly on show and wearing the expression of a woman who is completely sane and in control of her faculties. Linda Hamilton took her role as Sarah Connor seriously, engaging in a gruelling workout routine before the second film, to demonstrate the hardcore survivor that Sarah had become in the years since the first film. Eventually breaking out of the mental institution with the help of her son and the Arnold Schwarzenegger cyborg who’s now a Good Guy – the cybernetic assassin from the future who’s been sent back to kill John Connor as a child is even more devastating and unstoppable than the first one was – Sarah goes after the electronics engineer who will develop the computer chip that will directly lead to computers gaining sentience – the cataclysm that marks the beginning of the end for humanity. On the way we learn just how tough this woman has become. She has all manner of contacts around the country, stashing weapons and supplies with all of them. And her only motive is to do what it takes to survive – long enough to raise her son to adulthood and ensure he grows into the man who will save humanity. Sarah Connor is a self-taught bad ass. Once she came to terms with her fate (can’t be easy finding out just when and how the world will end, and that you’re going to survive to suffer the aftermath), she set out to learn the skills she would need to survive.

John Connor is presented as the most important human ever to live, because he’s the leader of the human survivors and he takes them into victory. But John would not have become the man he does without Sarah – so in one sense, she’s the most important human in the world. She’s the one that saves humanity, because she turns John into the leader he needs to be.

As far as female role models go, you don’t get much better than that.

Monday’s Friend: Luke Walker (interview)

Today I am pleased to welcome Luke Walker back to my blog, to tell us all about his new novel ‘SET.

SJT:  Welcome, Luke. It’s Women In Horror Month!  Tell us about your favourite women in horror?

LW:  So many to choose from. I love Beverly from Stephen King’s IT. Same with Rose from King’s Rose Madder. Cass from Alison Littlewood’s A Cold Season was a great character. You really get into her head and heart while she’s trying to work out what’s happening with her son. Going back a while, Mina Harker from Dracula was much more interesting than any film adaptation of her character. And obviously Geri Paulson from my first book. J

SJT:  You write about your own women in horror.  The main character of your new book, ’SET, is a woman who’s lost a child.  Tell us more about the book.

LW: ’Set (short for Sunset) is the name of the world between life and death. The book is more of a dark fantasy than straight horror. My first book, The Red Girl, was out and out horror so it’s nice to have something a little less dark for this one. Anyway, it’s about a woman named Emma who’s contacted by an angel and demon to help them sort out a blockage in death. An old guy, recently dead, is leading a rebellion against what he sees as unfair death. This means that while people are dying, they’re not moving on to Heaven or Hell. And that means the halfway place between our world and the afterlife, ’Set, is growing in an effort to reach the dead. Eventually, it’ll reach the living world. The soul of Emma’s stillborn daughter is somewhere in ’Set and she has to work with Heaven and Hell if she wants to save her daughter and everybody else.

SJT:  The death of a child is a very emotive topic.  How did you come to write about this?

LW:  I wanted a female character who’s strong and determined for the most part, but who’s dealing with a terrible grief and anger. Obviously they’re negative emotions, but they’re also powerful. I wanted someone who’s trying to do some good even though she’s motivated by that strong negativity.

Emma has been through a bad relationship and then a horrible experience. Once she learns what’s happening, her thinking is more how can I help my daughter’s soul than anything bigger. As the plot progresses and the stakes get higher, she has to develop that idea.

SJT:  Do you think it’s harder for men to write about women and vice versa?

LW:  I’m not sure. I like writing about either. As long as the character fits the story, I’m happy. I’ve read fiction from men with a female POV that I’ve felt was lacking just as I’ve read women writing about men that didn’t work. With one of my books (not ’Set), a female friend told me, generally speaking, women tend to think their way around problems while men think through them. At the same time, a person’s actions also depend on the situation as well as gender. For example, the scene my friend referred to featured a woman trapped in a house with a potential threat at the front of the house and no keys to the back door. She briefly considers breaking a window but knows there’s no furniture she can move by herself that would be big enough to break a window. While a man might smash the window without much more thought, the woman knows she has to find the key.

Like I say, I’m happy and comfortable with writing about either gender and from either POV as long it’s the right one for that story. Whether or not I get it right is up to the reader.

SJT:  In order to scare one’s readers, the horror writer must deal with things that they themselves fear.  Do you agree with this?  Do you write about things that scare you?

LW:  Fear can be one of our most personal emotions. One person’s terror is another person’s indifferent shrug just like one person’s offensive joke is another’s harmless giggle. Some people would rather chew off their own hand than be anywhere near a snake. And some people are probably scared of the person scared of snakes chewing off their hand.

It’s a personal thing. For example, I HATE going to the dentist. Teeth give me the creeps. Plenty of people reading that will think it’s stupid to feel that way, but it doesn’t change a thing for me any more than it would change another’s feelings if they were scared of clowns.

At the same time, there are universal fears. We’re all scared of something happening to a loved one. Everybody’s imagination kicks in when it’s late and your child or spouse is still out and you can’t get hold of them, when the phone rings in the middle of the night, when you’re in bed and there’s a noise outside. Whatever your background, things like scare everyone. And it’s interesting to note none of those examples are supernatural. They’re all real-world fears, and that’s the stuff that works on everyone. So while I love using the supernatural as a springboard for plots and events, I like to contrast it with real life issues. Probably why my characters are always in a pub.

SJT:  What’s the scariest story you’ve ever read?

LW:  If we’re talking novel, Stephen King’s Pet Sematary is up there. King nails the whole something happening to your family thing and puts it with a creepy, desolate feel that comes from the story’s location. And for short fiction, Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, which I read when I was about ten, is creepy as hell. The thought of being bricked up like that. . . in the dark. . .alive. . .brr.

SJT:  Yes, that concept scares me, too. If you had the opportunity to start your writing career over again, would you do anything different?

LW:  It took me a long time to understand that while writing is an art (or at least, it can be), publishing is a business. Publishing doesn’t care if you feel that you’re a writer or you could be one if only you weren’t spending all your time watching TV or on Facebook. Publishing cares about how well you write and how focused you are. While I never had the problem of talking about writing while not actually writing, I wasn’t focused on the business side of it until a few years ago. With that in mind, I should have been more focused on what I was writing instead of just thinking selling my fiction would take care of itself. So writing a long sequel to a book I hadn’t sold wasn’t my best idea in terms of business. Nor was writing a too short sequel to another book I hadn’t sold. While all my earlier writing helped me improve to the point I’m at now, I wish I’d been more aware of the professional side of writing.

SJT:  Apart from the release of ’SET, what else have you got lined up this year?

LW:  One of my short stories will be published in Vol 4 of Postscripts To Darkness which is out near the end of the year. The story is called Echidna (and funnily enough, also features a female MC). I wrote the original story a few years back and it was a little ropey, to be honest. Amateurish is probably the kindest thing you could call it. The crime/thriller author Jennifer Hillier read that version and really liked it. I had her in mind when I went back to it to see if I could improve it. As it turned out, I could.

I’m hoping a horror novella I finished recently finds a home. It owes a bit to HP Lovecraft and was a lot of fun to write. Other than that, planning and writing another book, and maybe the odd short story.

SJT:  So with your name, are you a Star Wars fan, or do you get annoyed when people call you Luke Skywalker?

LW:  I’m 35 so I’ve heard that joke approximately nine billion times. For what it’s worth, I came out before the film. Also for what it’s worth, my dad named me after Paul Newman. And no, I can’t eat that many boiled eggs.

BIO

Luke Walker began writing stories as a child and hasn’t stopped since. His fiction now is a little darker than it was back then. The flying teddy bears are out; horror, fantasy, death, suffering, pain and more horror are in. He is currently working on a horror novella and a full-length horror/mystery.

Luke is in his thirties and lives in England with his wife, two cats and what his wife thinks are too many zombie films. The cats are fairly blasé about the quantity.

To learn more about Luke and his writing, check out his blog, Die Laughing.

Women in Horror #3: Ripley

(Cross-posted on the WriteClub blog)

It might have been over 30 years ago, but few films measure up to ALIEN.  A masterful blend of suspense, science fiction and horror, this film about a group of space explorers who encounter a terrifying alien predator still measures up to the test of time and has audiences on the edge of their seat. And its main character is another inspiring  female role model.

Ripley

Rumour has it that Ripley was written as a male character. In 1979, when this film came out, no one really took seriously the idea that a woman could be part of a space crew – even in science fiction. Let alone one as resourceful and enterprising as Ellen Ripley. But someone decided, early on in production, that a man would not go back to rescue the ship’s cat, when all the rest of the crew were dead and Ripley, as sole survivor, is trying to get to the escape pod. This was an integral plot point, as the alien gets into the escape pod whilst Ripley is in the ship getting the cat.

Another story goes that all of the characters in ALIEN were deliberately written to be genderless, so that any of them could be equally played by a man or a woman.

Whether or not either of these stories are true, I don’t know, but the fact remains that Ripley is a leading lady who does not shag anyone, doesn’t cook and doesn’t actually do anything different from the men. Except she keeps her head and therefore survives when the rest panic and get killed. In the decidedly misogynist world of Hollywood this is a rarity, even in the 21st century, and at the end of the 1970s it was pretty much unprecedented.

The second film ALIENS goes a step further and explores the concept of Ripley as a woman. Having been in suspended animation following the events of the first film, she awakens to discover that she has been lost in space for decades and that her daughter, left behind on Earth, has grown old and died in her absence. Thus she becomes particularly protective of the young orphan girl, Newt, the only survivor of a colony that has been attacked by the alien. Feeling guilty about not being there to protect her own daughter, Ripley takes on the responsibility of getting Newt out alive. The image attached to this post is one of the best portrayals of Ripley in this context – carrying the girl in one arm, whilst wielding a bad-ass gun in the other. And she has a cracking aim with that gun, even one-handed.

Ripley remains one of the best heroines of both horror and science fiction of all time. It’s rare that actresses are offered such a wonderful role, and it is testament to Sigourney Weaver’s talent that she was able to bring Ripley to life in such a human way.