Cate Ellink's Blog, page 17

Saturday Search - Astrology

Astrology was one of the first 'alternate' things I was familiar with, I think. I've always known my star sign even if I was in trouble for reading about it! I think the widespread awareness of astrology comes because astrology has always been in mainstream newspapers.

When I was a kid, Dad brought the newspaper home after work. If the stars were for that day, it was mostly over by the time I saw them, so there was no future prediction, which made them innocuous reads - I wasn't having my future foretold.

As I got older, I read more about my sign mostly because I exhibit so many of the traits of my sign. It gave me a sense of being understood. It explained away some of my oddness (compared with others - I was the only one in my immediate family of this sign).

As I got older and mixed with more people and found more people interested in astrology, the signs themselves were only the start of astrology. There were rising signs, full natal charts. It was like a science trying to understand what it all meant, what's more, it was so aligned with astronomy it shocked me.

I love the stars. I love looking up at the constellations, watching for shooting stars, looking at their movement across the sky. I have a tiny understanding of astrology, but there's this whole incredible depth to it that I haven't gone into - and since I think it might take forever to learn it, I might leave that to the experts :)

I do like reading a daily interpretation of what the stars and planets are doing and what that might mean for the energy we feel - that's kind of cool!

I read about astronomy and check out the ISS, and solar flares, comets, moons, galaxies, etc.

The universe is the most incredible space. No wonder we use it to try to understand our place.

How are you with astrology?

Wildlife Wednesday - Leaf Like A Book

I have a Bird Nest Fern that has spores on the underleaf at the moment. I was outside looking at it, when I realised that it looks like a book! I can't tell you how many times I've looked at this and taken photos of the spores, but just not in this way! It was like those optical illusions when the image 'flicked' and you saw something different. Well the midrib of the leaf flipped and I saw the spine of a book, the spores like text, so tiny I can't read it.

Anyway, that was my wildlife madness for this week :) Oh, no it wasn't...

I found a lizard doing acrobatics to sneak in through the flywire gauze sliding door and get inside. There's the tiniest of gaps, and if the small lizard twisted and wriggled and squirmed, it could sneak through while a big lizard stood guard and encouraged it. Of course when I had my camera, no lizards did anything of the sort. They sat smiling at me with faces of innocence...but I know! I just have no proof...smart buggers.

Team Player ARRA Finalist

A crazy thing happened the other day and in my mad excitement, I haven't posted about it.

TEAM PLAYER was nominated in the ARRA Favourite Erotic Romance category for 2017. You can find the full listing of finalists here.

Other nominees are:
Egomaniac by Vi KeelandMack Daddy by Penelope WardSapphire by JA Low

Booktopia are the fantastic sponsors of the award. So if you want to check out any of the other finalists, have a look at Booktopia, let me give you the links for the other erotic titles:
Egomaniac
Mack Daddy
Sapphire
Team Player.


JA Low, me, Donna Gallagher, Cassandra Samuels, and Diane Cassar.JA Low and I are flying the Aussie and the threesome flags :) I met her at the ARRA-organised Wollongong Writers Festival Sex On The Beach talk in Nov 2016, so to be nominated with her is such fun!

When you're nominated for an award, it's an odd feeling - well, for me anyway.

To have found a connection between my story, my weird imagination, and with readers is incredible.

I know some people who nominated me will be friends, and in a weird way that concerns me, but I hope they haven't just nominated Team Player because of friendship. I hope something about the story resonated with them. I hope it means that Charlie, Lyle and Hannah and their odd relationship was believable. That they liked the people in my head enough to wish them the best, to hope that they have a future, to cheer for them when people might jeer.

This story was born from some confused thoughts after I'd finished Deep Diving. Cooper and Samantha from Deep Diving are heterosexual, and while I was writing that story, I was thinking a lot about relationships with elite athletes and how they might work and how they may affect life beyond the professional one. At the same time, Australians were talking about the same sex marriage debate, which (I felt) was being used as a political tool, which annoyed me. Then I began to wonder about how that might affect someone playing professionally in Australia, especially in a male team sport where to date, no playing athletes have 'come out'. One guy came out after his retirement, which was an incredible thing because he opened up a dialogue and he was a tough player, so it vetoed the 'wimpy' gay male stereotype. I also enjoyed writing Lana, with multiple characters, so I was keen to explore that more. All these thoughts rumbled around in my brain and Team Player came from those.

And it's a threesome story where I didn't want a submissive female character. I wanted a relationship where the three characters held equal roles in the dynamic. I wanted a strong woman who knew what she wanted. I wanted a woman who wasn't blackmailing or conniving, but somehow connected with these two men. I wanted to show a solid relationship that could sneak by public scrutiny, but in doing so, I needed to show how difficult those choices are, without jeopardising the dynamic.

It was a struggle to get what I wanted from my head to the page. I had lots of help from my writing buddies to get things clearer. For all that hard work to be recognised by readers enjoying the story, and then going to nominate it as a favourite erotic read, is beyond incredible. It's humbling, it's exciting, it's wonderful, and it's terrifying.

This writing caper has days that are gold, mixed up with days of black despair and everything in between, but it is the best job in the world :)

Saturday Search - Runes

I fell into Runes in my 20s and I’m not entirely sure how. I hadn’t wanted to look at Tarot or anything clairvoyant, but deep down I knew Runes would be safe - I’ve no idea how I knew that. Or maybe it just came because I had heard ‘bad’ things about other devices and I’d heard nothing of Runes. I don’t know, and ultimately it doesn’t matter. But down that rabbit hole I went!
A few books, some searching, lots of reading, and I needed a set of Runes. But none felt right. So I went and made my own. I lived in a flat without a garden as such, but I’d made a little one along my part of the back fence, and through the fence grew a pivot. Armed with a little saw, I chopped off the branches that poked into my yard, then cut up the branch into rounds for my Runes.
My raw, crudely made RunesI let these dry in the sunshine for a bit. And then I wrote my Runic letters on my tree branch. I always intended to burn the marks on but I never have. I use the same Runes today, without changing a mark! And yes, I know Privet's not a plant I should have used, and I know it's better if they're stone - but these are mine, and that's the most important thing to me.
Although the Runic alphabet bears little resemblance to our alphabet, I felt I had a connection to these letters and I learned what they meant from a book, or ten! In the beginning, I had no understanding of intuition being linked with what I was doing. I thought it was something I had to learn, study, and then pass my daily test as I read my spread. 
I used the Runes mostly when I couldn’t decide something or couldn’t work something out. I’d sit quietly and think of my problem, then pull three (usually) Runes and work on what they meant and how that may relate to the issue I faced.
I refused to use them to ‘tell’ the future. I wouldn’t use them to read for others - in fact, I doubt anyone knew I read them. 
I made a raw silk bag with a leather drawstring in which to keep them. I kept them as natural and basic as I could. I kept the readings focussed on understanding myself and my issues.
You could say they were a tool in helping me decide my life. As a kid I’d often flipped a coin to know what I wanted (and if it fell the wrong way and I had to do best of 3 or best of 5, then I knew what I truly wanted!), and I guess this was the next progression. Something that dug a bit deeper into my psyche.
Have you ever used Runes? How do you use them?
Here's a website with more information if you're curious - https://norse-mythology.org/runes/the-origins-of-the-runes/ 

Sunday Story - romance genre

We've had Valentine's Day, where there seems to be a flurry of reporters having their dig at the romance genre, and this always gets my brain working. But I've also had chats with reader friends who have got my mind going too. So, I need to blog to sort my head out a bit (again!).

I'd never read by sticking to one thing. I read eclectically, picking up anything that grabs my attention. I read award winners, things off a shelf that no one recommends, things friends recommend, or hate. I've belonged to a Book Club for years and read whatever was set for the month. I also belong to a Classics Book Group and read the book that we've chosen there too. I read Mum's books, Dad's books, my books, my sisters' books, friends' books. I have been known to visit someone and pick up a book, and then ask to take it home to finish it. I'll devour anything.

So, in 2006 when I started to write towards publication, deciding what to write was a bit tricky because I read so widely. I didn't quite understand the 'boxes' that publishers put books into, or why these boxes were important. So I straddled boxes. And not sub-genre boxes. I went for the big boxes - like straddling literary and genre.

I learned that you couldn't  straddle boxes because no one knew how to categorise your story, which meant you couldn't be shelved or found by readers. This doesn't sound like a big deal, does it? But when it boils down, publishers don't but your books if they can't market them. Now that I finally understood that, I had to find where I fitted.

I ended up in genre and romance, largely because I could get a lot of help to learn this genre.

Having not been a romance-only reader, I struggled to understand the conventions - actually I still struggle with this.

In broad terms, romance requires a HEA (Happy Ever After) or a HFN (Happy For Now) ending. No cliffhangers, the romance has to be 'concluded' and it has to be a happy conclusion. That seems to be the only real and abiding 'rule' for the genre.

But there are other things that the genre wants. These are:
an emotional journeycharacters need to changelanguage needs to be emotivethe inner workings of the character(s) minds needs to be showna journey for the romance to follow - which usually includes a 'dark' moment where you think things will never work outI've struggled with some of these, and still struggle with others.

Emotion took me an eon to understand - well, I knew what emotion was, but getting it onto the page correctly was an almost impossible task for years.

I don't like depicting the inner workings of a male mind because I'm not sure I know how that works, and I fear that I do it in a 'female' way.

I hate the 'dark' moment. I feel like it's a total and complete fabrication. I try to have something, but I cannot 'invent' something to make it as gutting as some authors do.

So...when I hear people say that romance is 'a bit much' or that it's 'formulaic' or that I write well enough to 'do something decent', I get a bit of a burr happening. I don't really know what they mean, and when I question them, they often can't really explain what they meant and they back track a little.

But I think it's these genre conventions that many non-romance readers don't like/understand.

Emotions aren't an easy thing to discuss/face/write/read. A large part of society is focussed on ensuring that we know how to be XXX (whatever emotion here - eg happy, sad, angry, grief-stricken) in the 'right' way. This seems to be a huge industry. And from what I can tell, everyone has a different and unique way of expressing and dealing with emotion. I think that's why so many writers can write about love, and so many readers keep reading it - there are a bazillion ways to 'fall in love'.

But, falling in love is 'soppy'. It's an emotion associated with women. It's an emotion associated with softness, vulnerability, and for some, a time when they let their guard down and were damaged. For some it has lovely memories, and others it hurts.

I think this is why there's backlash against the genre, and it's often not seen as a legitimate form of storytelling.

The formulaic comment, I think applies to the fantasy aspect of romance. It's not written true to life. It's written to tap into higher emotions than we often feel. It exaggerates the good and the bad, yet it always ends well...often after a huge 'pit of despair'. Not all romances do these now, but the stereotype carries over.

And the 'write something decent', I think means literary, but I may be wrong with that. Maybe commercial literary would cover it. But that's a hard market to write for, because the trends change so very quickly. If I wrote what was selling now, by the time I finished, the trend woudl be passed. Literary takes a style and a genius that I have yet to perfect.

I'm happy in romance...my kind of romance...where I don't 'fit' all the rules, but I still find readers and publishers who like my stories.

It's taken me years to learn my craft. Years to understand the intricacies of the genre and the readers' expectations. I don't expect to ever know all of it, but I bend my mind trying to keep on top of it all.
I will probably always get annoyed at those who criticise my choice using cliches that, to me, are ambiguous. I'm not so much annoyed at the criticism, more annoyed that you can't articulate what you mean and have chosen to use, what I feel are, derogatory terms that I've heard many many times before. I'll try to bite my tongue and I'll try not to snarl, but my writing is important to me. This is my career. I am a romance writer.

Saturday Search - gemstones

Samples from my grandparentsI've been a collector of rocks, shells, soil, bugs and odd stuff for as long as I can remember. I suppose it began with shell collecting, which Mum did whenever we went to the beach, and developed. I distinctly remember her parents bringing me rock samples back from Mt Isa when they'd holidayed up there, and I would have been under 10 years old when that happened. These are probably my oldest rock samples in my collection.

Thundereggs Gypsum (maybe)I've always collected interesting rocks. But a few years ago, I found a stunning piece of gypsum (I think) in a dry creek bed in central Qld. I think it's one of my favourite pieces. I've bought bits too. When I was in 5th Form, 17 years old, we went up to Yeppoon on holidays and I bought a "thunder egg". I've also bought a piece of amethyst.

Moss Agate, small bowlI've always wanted to own rocks as jewellery. In my teens, there was a crazy for those coral necklaces (pink mostly) but I wanted a brown one made of rocks. They didn't exist, but Mum found one some years later and bought it for me. Then I've bought small opals and black pearls when travelling around Australia.

Agate, large bowlOver the years, I've also collected small gemstones as I've seen them and 'felt' that I needed them. And then I've found some rock bowls, and some wooden bowls, and I've a few of those too.
Black pearls
Lately there's been more gemstone jewellery available (I don't know if I've just found it, or the internet has opened up this interest market). I seem to be collecting more and more gemstones.

AmethystAnd now there's this whole industry of using gemstones to 'help' with life. It's really quite phenomenal. When I look at my collection, I'm rather attracted to the colours black, white and light blue.

Black: generally black stones are protection stones. They protect you from negative energies. They also indicate death, earth, stability. Black conceals.

White: purity and cleanliness. Kindness. Openness, truth, wholeness, completion. White reveals.

And technically, black and white aren't true colours but reflection/adsorption of all colours.

Blue: sky, ocean, space. It's a cooling and calming colour. It depicts space. It's about solitude, peace.
My collection case
Now, I own more colours and I like picking them up to help me think. Sometimes I'll pick up a particular stone and carry/wear it for the day to help me with whatever I need to do. I don't really know what the gemstones mean, if I have to know I need to look it up. But I don't need to know what someone tells me they mean, I just let my intuition pick what I need...it's been working for me for many years now, so no point changing a good thing!
Some stones, rocks, sticks, nests and soil
Are you into rocks or stones?

Saturday Search - Colour

There have been heaps of studies done about colours - the best ones to make dentists, doctors and hospitals calming. To ensure you move fast in travelways. That you eat well in restaurants. There've been studies done in wildlife too about why colours attract/detract. It's always been something I've read about. Not something I've brought to my life.

I do muted pallettes. Yellow seems to be a recurring theme in these photos I've just grabbed that I've used on here before. But I do navy, black, yellow, grey, pastels. The colours that allow you to hide in plain sight.

There are a thousand reasons why, and I won;t go into those here or you might be reading for ages! But I'm not comfortable standing out - although yellow is sort of a stand out colour, isn't it?

When I was a kid I wore bright yellow, bright green, red. I wore apricot/orange. I wasn't quite so muted. I don't know when I began to fade to the background, but in high school sewing, the clothes I wore were muted - beige and pale green or olive were a couple of things I remember making. So it was sometime between being 8 or 10 and 15. Puberty.Which is probably when my skin erupted, so that makes sense.

Anyway, I began to notice this recently. I have 'home' clothes that are quite bright - but I don't go out in them. I get changed before I go out.

Then I noticed when I was in my favourite shop (it's sort of a mixed hippie/weird shop), that they had these awesome cotton pants in bright green and purple, but I didn't buy them, I went with the black and grey ones. When I got home, it nagged at me. Why did I change my mind? What was wrong with purple and green?

A friend rang and in our rambling, wild conversation, I told her of my pants dilemma. We laughed about it. We laughed about me fitting in and not standing out. About how I now lived on the coast where wild things happened and I could indulge my inner hippie because surely no one cares on the coast. But...they do...don't they?

So, I thought about it some more. I caught a train up to Sydney and when I was daydreaming out the window, I noticed that when I was a kid, there was a "dress code" of what you could wear to work, to the shops, to church, etc. And I'd had that drummed into me and although I didn't like it, it was what you did, or mostly did!

I was a rebel in that I wore trousers to my grandfather's funeral, when skirts were the done thing. I wore trousers to lots of things I was supposed to wear skirts or dresses to.

I'd been to a friend's wedding (I was maybe 18 or so) and I had what I thought was a smart black suit and a green shirt/jumper. I remember sitting at this table with her friends who were discussing everyone's clothing and who was 'appropriate' and who wasn't. I learned that you never wear white to a wedding as you upstage the bride. You never wear black because that's for funerals, and never a suit because that's even worse and certainly for funerals, and never green because that's a sign of jealousy. Holy cow! I broke so many dress rules I was a disaster.

But rules have relaxed now. People wear anything they want. And so, when my friend came to visit, we went to my favourite shop and there were no purple and green pants, but there was a pair of rainbow pants with dragonflies on them. She dared me. I can't back down from a dare! So I own these. At home, I team them with whatever colour I want. The few times I've been brave and worn them out, I've gone with a white top. The first time, a mate told me I 'looked like a yes vote' and I didn't want to clarify what he meant by that. The next time, an older lady told me that I made her happy - not just because I chatted to her, but because of my smile and my happy pants!

She's right, they do make me happy. When I'm having a blah day, I drag on the rainbows and every time I take a step, I have to smile at all that colour.

They remind me that Mum used to wear purple a lot when she was sick, because it made her look healthy and people would say how good she looked. And I think that's important.

We need to wear whatever colour makes us happy, makes us feel good, makes us look good, makes our day.

So I'm going to try being brave and wearing bright colours out. Bright colours make me smile. They make me happy. And the world needs to be a happier place!

What's your colour? Do you wear your favourite colours out?

(Author buddy, Lily Malone is in one of the photos here in her pink beanie - I love that she has that and that she wears it with pride and a beaming smile!)

Saturday Search - Meditation

I can sit quietly, in awe of nature, any time you want me to. When we got a Wii game thing, the only one I was good at was the Zen mediation where I got expert level first go. I'm good at sitting still, lost in my own thoughts.

I thought that meant I was good at meditation...and maybe it does. I'm not quite sure where meditation and mindfulness overlap. Or if meditation has been commercialised to the point where you're not expected to find your own path.

Doubting I knew anything about mediation, I started to read more about meditation, also mindfulness. I began listening to meditations conducted by people. I downloaded some apps. I kind of lost my way a bit. Some meditations were just too fast for me. Some voices made me laugh at their exaggerated sounds - as if they were trying too hard to be deeply soulful or something. Some of the apps just had too much in it, or too many add-ons I didn't need, or cost too much. I resent commercialisation of things we intrinsically know.

Lately, I've gone back to my thing. Sitting silently in nature. But in the past, when thoughts of the day-to-day things filled my mind, I didn't find meditation all that restful or deep or whatever the books told me it should be. So now I've begun to use some of the techniques that I've read about - the ones that worked for me, or resonated within me.

I welcome whatever random thought flits through my mind, give it some love and send it on its way. After enough of these have past, I feel my mind give a big sigh, and it gets into deeper stuff. Sometimes I solve problems in my story (whatever one I'm writing, or some I've written in the past that are in the files but not finished. The one called Past Lives, which led me down this rabbit hole has been given a lot of thought and is bubbling waiting to be rewritten...soon!). Sometimes I can order my thoughts about the world, or whatever issue is bugging me. Sometimes I feel like a domino falls in my brain and I have this chain of thoughts that I follow like Alice down that rabbit hole. I've no clue where those thoughts are taking me, but I'm more than comfortable in my mind, so I'm happy to roam anywhere, discover anything.

Meditation, for me anyway, is about finding my calm place. The place where I can think, dream, problem solve, create. The place where the noise of life quietens and I can be me, be with me. I like it. I like taking myself on this journey into my mind.

Do you meditate? What is meditation for you?

Wildlife Wednesday - Eel-tailed catfish

There's a local rockpool I like to swim in, and sometimes snorkel, especially when I have kids with me as there's no chance of losing them in a rip to sea when I get distracted!

There's an outlet to sea at one end and in December, I saw movement there - a huge thing that darted back inside. It was a glimpse out the side of my eye and I was sure I was seeing things. But I waited, and this guy popped his head out. Lordy, he wasn't attractive! I reckon anyone in that pool woudl have been out had they known he was there.

I came home to find out what he was. Half eel, half catfish was what my mind said.

And I found an eel-tailed catfish! What do you know? My guess wasn't too far off at all.

I haven't seen him again - too many tourists - but now they've gone home, I might have to go for another snorkel, even without kids!

Have you ever seen such a critter?

Sunday Story - Fairy tales and Fantasies

I've had a couple of conversations lately about romance and fairy tales and fantasies, so I thought I'd try to order my thoughts here.
Just in case you're new to my blog, my mind doesn't seem to work like most people's so my musings here may be totally weird. I'm okay with weird, that's how I've always been! :)
Having said that, you've probably worked out that I'm not all that keen on the popular fairy tales and probably have some odd reasonings, so here goes.
Cinderella seems to be one of the most loved fairy tales. It gets transferred to romance stories, and linked to female fantasies. I'm not a big fan of Cinderella. No one could explain how everything but her shoe returned to normal at midnight. And how did no one at all recognise her? Then it just annoys me that a fairy godmother gave her a night out, rather than a fair go. Why couldn't she have given Cinderella a decent life of her own, rather than dress up and play pretend (yes, I know, no story if she does that!). And how could her foot be so rare no one else fit that slipper?
Snow White and Sleeping Beauty are both a bit odd because the girl's asleep and the prince sees her, falls madly in love, kisses her/takes her home, and breaks the curse/spell. The girls are inactive, and the guys fall for beauty, not even knowing the girl's character. Sounds pretty risky to me! And, is it only me who thinks necrophilia?
And talking of fetishes, there are some great bestiality stories - The Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast. Fall in love and kiss a critter, anyone? Is the Pied Piper paedophilia when he leads all the children out of town? Hansel and Gretel's another fetish one, just not sure where it falls - paedophilia, cannibalism, sadism could all work.
I'm a fan of Babes in the Woods, where there's kidnapping and abandonment, but then rescue by animals and a kindly grandma who loves the kids and rewards the animals' kindness. 
When you look at it, we tell children some beastly stories, that possibly get them ready for the harsh reality of life... but are they also helping to create future sexual fantasies? 
One of the most popular female fantasies seems to be where she does nothing and her perfect man falls in love with her and saves her - does it sound like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella? Can it be the very popular Pretty Woman and/or 50 Shades of Grey?
There's a universality to stories, especially fables and fairy tales. There's also a universality to romance, and also fantasies. Even with sometimes huge cultural differences, similar themes exist. How does that happen? It's an odd thing, universality.
I've no answers today, just random musings. But what interests me in my musings is that I prefer the story that's not about romance. The romances make me ask questions, and doubt the characters, or their intentions and/or motivations. This is quite possibly why I can't seem to write very romantic stories, no matter how I try. Maybe my universal theme is kindness and familial love, not romantic love. Not so great for a romance writer, hey?! :)
Do you have a favourite fairy tale? Does it link to your life/writing/fantasies/fetishes?