Sarah Barnard's Blog, page 11

New Year’s Resolutions.

I don’t usually make any. My New Year’s Resolution for as long as I can remember has been to not make any. Part of it has been a large dose of can’t be bothered, and part more to do with a lack of drive to change anything.

I’ve never smoked, don’t need to diet, and really can’t be doing with joining a gym or similar fitness thing. There’s been no real point to making any sort of resolution for me. Until now. This last year has been a race to keep up with life, and changes in daily routine – or lack thereof. I’d settled into a steady pattern that had become so comfortable that I wasn’t writing. Then things got mixed up and the routine was lost, but I still wasn’t writing.

So, time to get that writing harness back on, and change the pattern again, and why not do it now and call it a resolution? Now is a good a time as any other.

OK then, what is a “Resolution” exactly? And how can I make this work?

noun
1a firm decision to do or not to do something:
she kept her resolution not to see Anne any more
a New Year’s resolution
(From the Oxford Dictionary)

A firm decision. Got that. For me, for it to work, it has to be measurable, ongoing and consistent. It also has to have a goal, an end result, a target to aim for. I’m thinking of that old management favourite; S.M.A.R.T.

Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
Assignable – specify who will do it.
Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved, given available resources.
Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

Specific: I need to get back into writing every day. I have a couple of books in mind, and I have 1 in particular I want to see finished. It’s a YA/Teen story and it could be fun.

Measurable: My resolution is to write a minimum of 500 words Every. Single. Day. Starting as soon as the kids go back to school on January 7th.

Assignable: Well, that’d be me then. Can we use “Accountable” instead? This is why I’m blogging my resolution, so you can cheer me along, or nag if you prefer. That’s why there’s a word counter thing on the side bar there on the left. Please feel free to nudge me in the comments or on Facebook if I don’t update it.

Realistic: 500 words every day is well within my capabilities and it’s a small goal I know I can fit in every day, even if I have a stupidly busy day. Just half an hour and I can do 500 words.

Time: Or Target, that’d work for “T” too. My goal here is to see the first draft of a new novel by Easter. 500 words a day should produce that with ease. I should be thinking about edits and book covers over Easter Eggs.

Wish me luck…

It’s here, have you got yours?

Broken Promises.

At Kobo Books.

At Amazon UK.

At Amazon US.

And, of course, you can buy direct if you prefer, just click the button below.

 

Promises will be Broken.

Those of us who have read the rest of the Portal series already know how this ends. We know what Sam is going to do, and we know how it happened.

Broken Promises is the story of Why it happened.

For the first time since he appeared at my car window my head was beginning to feel clear.

I had simply accepted so much, taken him at his word. He had controlled my life, dictated what and when I ate, where I slept and who with. How much of that was his use of the magic fogging my mind and how much was my simple gullibility, I am not sure. I would like to blame him for it but I suspect that at least part of the blame was mine to bear. Each time he was absent for a few days my thoughts would clear as if a veil was lifted. I would plan what to say to him, I would sit and knit as I rehearsed it all in my mind. I was going to ask him to let me visit home, I would come back to him, I would promise. He was going to see the truth in my eloquent words and he would open a Portal and I would walk through.

Then he would appear at my door with a meal and the planning and rehearsal vanished like smoke and I said nothing. It was as if he waved away my mind as he came close. I did everything I could to please him but it was never enough. Whatever I did, it was never enough.

We knew Sam had been hurt when she came home in The Portal Between, but only now do we, and Kate, find out what happened to her, what Ametsam did to cause her rage and pain.

Broken Promises is dedicated to anyone who has escaped, is escaping, or is still within, an abusive relationship. I seem to have known more than my fair share of people in that situation, or maybe there are more than we realise.

I wish you all the help and strength you need to rebuild the life you deserve. Even on the darkest days, stay strong, there is light to be found in time.

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A love story

“I’m reading a bloody love story but I know how it ended. I don’t understand. I just don’t get it.” Kate finally looked up and Lily saw tears.

“It’s complicated,” Lily explained with a small shrug.

Saturday. Broken Promises is coming.

The ebooks are lined up and ready, but the print edition is having some last minute tweaks so may not be quite ready for Saturday, but it won’t be far behind.

In the meantime, over on the Kobo site (Click here)

It’s all ready, and Well done!

I just have to hit the buttons, release the files, and Broken Promises will be available for sale.

You know, even after 8 years and 7 books, release days still give me a thrill. There’s still that buzz of nerves and excitement.

Elsewhere, around the world, people are finding the last few words to reach 50,000 and declaring themselves Winners of NaNoWriMo. Well done to each and every one of you. That’s one hell of an achievement. Some of you will carry on writing, some will offer your books for sale at some stage, and some will bask in the brief glow and then go back to the day job. But you all wrote a 50,000 word novel.

Wow.

Broken Promises began life as a NaNo novel, back in 2006, and I hated it once the month was over. I shoved the manuscript in a folder on my old computer and it only got saved by accident when I bulk copied every file from the hard disc to sort out later as the old computer threatened to die and take all my work with it. The blue screen of death was menacing my Portal people!

Thankfully Broken Promises escaped that catastrophe and languished on a USB flash drive for years until I dug it out to0 see if anything could be salvaged.

The moral of the story? If you hate your NaNo novel, or any of your writing, don’t throw it away, don’t delete it. You may, one day, come back to it with fresh eyes and think it’s not as bad as you thought. There may even be a gem hidden there, waiting for an editor to find and polish with you.

If you’ve won NaNo already: Well done!

If you’re still writing: Well Done, you still have a few days, race for the finish line!

If you tried and gave up, or have little or no hope of finding that total of 50,000 words: Well done! You tried, you wrote, you started something. There’s always next year.

A Full Moon: Broken Promises, new release.

Only 5 days to go, counting down the days now, and there’s a lot of work to be done before next weekend.

A quick question though… Are you impatient enough to grab an ebook so you can start reading straight away? Or will you wait to hold a paperback in your hands, knowing the weight and solidity of paper is a bit special?

How about another teaser….

The moon was very full and so bright I could see her through the clouds. It was cold outside but the car stayed warm.

The windows were steaming up but I didn’t wipe them, there was nothing to see outside but rain and trees. The woods were a place I’d always gone to think and be quiet, ever since I could remember. I’d spent a lot of my teenage years here, but not sitting in a car. I’d built a shelter once but it got pulled down. I’d been soaked to the skin, got blue with cold and had sex for the first time, all in these woods. They were a safe place for me, a place where life-turning events got pondered and worked out in my head. I had parked as close to the old oak as I could get. I’d always loved that tree.

It was so big, so old and just, well, magical. It was like the apple tree in the first Narnia book. Do you remember that? The tree that grew from the apple?

As a child I was sure this oak tree should show me the way to another world, another life. As a teenager I had sat beneath its branches and dreamed of being taken away from my life, dreamed of a fantasy existence somewhere else. Little did I realise. How could I have known?

Broken Promises, coming in 5 days. Where will you read yours?

A long road

Sam was 29 when she began to discover who she really was. Her first steps on that road were interrupted by a charismatic man who promised her a new life, with no strings attached. He offered her a dream, he handed her an open door to run from the pain she had in her life at the time. He made promises, and then he broke them.

Shall we start at the beginning then? It does really depend on where you decide it started I suppose. Does it start with my birth? I suppose it could, but then it would be a very long and very boring tale to tell and to listen to, or read. It could start the day Kate walked into my class at school, maybe the day I had sex for the first time, the day I gave birth. It could start at any point in my life. But it is really a culmination of all those and other times and places which made me who I am today. They all focused, all came together one dark autumn night a couple of years ago.

Broken Promises is the story of what happened before The Portal Between, but told by Sam after The Portal Sundered, and before Child of the Portal.

Broken Promises: November 30th 2013

At last the day is coming, the final edits are done and the book is close to ready. Just the last read through and checks to be done and it’ll be good to go. I’m thinking the last day of November would be a good launch date. It’s the final day of Nano, a day when novels are finished and writing battles won. A day of crowning yourself a Winner and call yourself a novelist.

November 30th.

Sam tells her story, explains what happened in the years she was locked away on the other side of the Portals.

Broken Promises.

It was the first day back at school for all the children after the long summer holidays and Kate had a couple of hours to herself, but she simply sat at the kitchen table with a large mug of tea. Cradling the warmth in her hands, she let the heat spread calmly through her.

Kate startled at a knock on the kitchen door. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Wearily dragging herself from the chair, she slowly pulled open the door.

“Lily, come in.” Kate’s voice was tired and flat. Lily frowned in concern. Perhaps this wasn’t the best time.

The events of the past few years had changed Kate. Lily could see rawness and fragility in her friend which hadn’t been there before. There was grey in her hair and lines on her face etched there by pain and grief. They matched Lily’s own smattering of grey which wove through dark hair that still held copper glints in the right light.

Broken Promises will be available in ebook formats and in paperback.

A connection broken

With her magic gone, Lily came to rely on her awareness of the seasons, and her hard won understanding of human nature. She was still formidable, even without the magic.

She was also still very much in tune with her own life and the connections shared with others. It wasn’t magic, not really, but she retained an uncanny knack of knowing when things were wrong, when lives were changing.

So, early one Thursday morning, barely after midnight, she knew something was wrong.

The dream was gentle, without any real form or purpose, and she didn’t remember any of it when she woke. What woke her, as the alarm clock flashed 1:30am, was the bleed of scarlet that flooded her sight, obliterating any dream there had been. Startled, she woke as it flowed black as pitch and she felt the connection tear from her.

“Who died?” she wondered, shaking, shivering. “Who left me?”

Just a snippet from Lily’s later years. Not sure yet whether it might make it into a book, I suspect not.

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Life after NaNo.

For eight years I entered, and won, the NaNoWriMo challenge. Eight years in a row, 50,000 words in under 30 days.

It started on the back of a dare, at a rough time in my life, and I am forever grateful for the events, and the people, that made me sit down and write that first novel. The Portal Between was that first book, and it forged a path to the rest of that series, a whole new world, and a foray into sci-fi. It opened possibilities and made me walk a path I wouldn’t have dared to walk otherwise.

For the first seven years it was a huge amount of madcap fun. November was a race against the odds, losing myself in words and places in my own head, and talking endlessly with my writing buddy until stupid o’clock while we frantically tried to outpace each other. She usually won.

From eight years I produced five published books, and others at other times. But five books from eight Novembers, that’s some achievement. I’m proud, very proud. I loved NaNo, and encourage anyone to give it a go. It’s an amazing thing to do.

Then last year, in March 2012, I moved. I ended up 200 miles away, in another country. Yes, Wales is a different country to England. My seven year writing buddy and I began to drift apart to some extent. 200 miles, a 5 hour drive, is enough distance that those weekly get togethers we used to have were no longer a possibility. We had the internet and still chatted online most days, but even that was waning, and it’s just not the same as bantering over a cuppa, face to face. Our lives just weren’t as close as they had been before the move. Still, we tried last year and 2012 marked my eighth win. The NaNo site says she didn’t. She appears to be participating this year, I’m not.

I’m done with NaNo.

I loved the heady days of racing for that elusive word target, I loved the late night/early morning word wars. I loved the close companionship of competition. But that’s gone, and NaNo is no longer fun for me. So, I’m bowing out while the winning streak is intact, and while I can still look back and remember the fun, and the buzz.

For me, life after NaNo has a different pace, a different shape, and I’m finding I quite like it. I may try it again one day, but I suspect not.

To those taking part this year: Good Luck! I wish you all the best, may your words flow like water (or coffee) and may you fly over that finish line with joy in your heart and blisters on your typing fingers!