Kris Pearson's Blog, page 15

Waiting... waiting...

How long is long enough? (How long is a piece of string?) And in case your thoughts are sliding in a slightly grubby direction, bring them back here this instant!

I’m talking about waiting for publication. In my case I was extremely lucky. The publisher I targeted so keenly never quite wanted to buy my books. They liked my voice. They asked for revisions. They gave me tips and pointers. They asked for the full manuscripts from the three-chapter partials and query letters authors have to send. They entirely lost two full-length books. I have a lovely apology letter from a senior editor after I yet again queried progress on one of these - having patiently waited a year. I was told that the person in charge of my submission ‘no longer works for this company’, and I got some PDQ service as a result of that. And I still had the book turned down because it was considered not quite suitable for the line they were buying for.

Just like these sparrows waiting for dinner on one of our trees, I was left waiting...waiting.

 Eventually I’d had enough.

So why do I say I’m lucky? Well, all of this frustrating process gave me a great deal of practice and improved the various stories quite a lot. It meant I learned a heap. And I built up a body of work.

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The One Piece of Paper Method

I’ve joined a rolling blog with a group of other authors. Thank you Shirley Wine for inviting me to take part and provide this week’s instalment. Your super-sized rural romances are great reads, and I love the sound of your up-coming Prodigal Sons series.

Okay, I’m supposed to be tackling A Writer’s Process. This sounds a bit too grand for me because my ‘process’ involves one sheet of paper. Or maybe two if the first one gets so scruffy I have to rewrite it. Oh – and the back of a page from a big calendar, so maybe three.

I write in my head. I write in my head ALL THE TIME. It’s a wonder I don’t have traffic accidents or burn the dinner or come out with pieces of my characters’ dialogue instead of sensible answers to people’s questions. And it’s not until I have the whole plot of a novel satisfactorily swishing around in my brain that I put fingers to keyboard. To be honest it doesn’t even happen then. I’ve found it a great help to know exactly who I’m writing about, so I’ll probably go off to the royalty-free photo sites next and see if I can find ‘my people’. I hate reading books where the couple on the cover looks nothing like the pair in the book.

Once I‘ve found my people I buy their photograph and make a collage on the back of the big strong calendar page. And I pin this onto the curtain beside my desk. It’s a very nice linen curtain with enough pattern to hide the pin-holes!

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Going Spanish

I'm having a new adventure. Who would have thought these were the ratings for one of my racy romances?

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Painting. Writing. Persisting.

You know I said last week that we’re being electronically pursued?  I now have an almost-finished Spanish website. Already Amazon has found it and is sending me advertising in that language. Very fast!

Anyway – painting.  I used to paint quite a lot. Here’s an example. It’s around eighteen years old, and because my original paints weren’t top quality, some of the colours have definitely faded and it’s gone a bit strange. Never mind. It proves a point.

This is a pond and waterfall we built in our garden. Full of optimism I stocked the pond with tropical water lilies. Brilliant the first year (when I painted this.)  Disappointing the second year. Dead the third year, because Wellington just isn’t warm enough to grow tropical water lilies. We now have nice ordinary white and red ones which are beautiful and dependable.

Take a look at the spiky green and white plant up the top near the two big rocks. It’s a variegated yucca and as old as the painting. Talk about persistent. Every New Zealand Christmas it throws up an enormous stem of beautiful creamy flowers. So much effort goes into this that the main part of the plant dies. BUT smaller rosettes growing around the edges take up the job. Somehow they decide amongst themselves who does the flowering work next time. Persistent in the extreme...

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Big Brother (or Big Daddy) is watching us

I’m so glad I wasn’t poor Prince Charles having my tampon call to Camilla recorded and reported to a breathless world. Or any of the politicians who had their cell-phones monitored by the US Government and are now wondering what unwise things they’ve said. The best they’d get off mine would be discussions about curtains and books and gardening...

But someone is keeping an eye on me – just as they’re keeping an eye on you. And they’re doing it very skilfully.

I’m not enough of a geek to get into this deeply, but have you noticed what’s happening? Eighteen months ago I published The Boat Builder’s Bed – and was promptly besieged with ads and emails for boats and sailing gear of all descriptions. The same thing occurred with Seduction on the Cards – casinos and poker tournaments every day. This has happened with every book I’ve written.

It’s research that really gets things going. I write pretty much what I know, but there are always facts I want to check or a little something that would add extra zing to a story. I’m especially keen to find my heroines pretty underwear, and it’s very nice having a look at what’s available. I’m probably not going to buy it for myself, but Kate would look lovely in it – and Matthew would admire her wearing it.  And strip it off her pretty fast...

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Writing for an international market

First—of course!—a very happy New Year to you, and a heartfelt wish that people in countries like Egypt and Syria will find some peace in 2014.

Sometimes it’s good to be down here at the end of the world, far away from such terrible conflict. I’m a Kiwi. I speak ‘English’ English, or thought I did. My Dad was born in England and his parents sailed out from there early last century. New Zealand in 1905 still had a small population and an awful lot of trees and sheep. Many of our Maori people had been horribly mistreated, and their tribal lands had been taken over as farms for the European invaders. We still have trees and sheep in abundance, and these days there are so many cows we’re one of the world’s leading dairy producers, despite our small size.

Dad’s mother was a formidable woman—a schoolteacher who produced six children, and continued to teach school in central Wellington even though they lived miles away on my grandfather’s rural poultry farm. There was ‘a girl’ to look after the children still below school age.

Here's a photo of them taken in 1918—my auntie Gertrude, always known by her second name of Rona. My grandfather Thomas. Dolly (Dorothy Agnes). Jack with his incredible hair, and my dad, Arthur Horace. In front we have my grandmother Agatha and the little boy who became my uncle Dick. Peggy was still to be born. That’s a lot of years between the oldest and youngest, isn’t it! And how great are some of those names?

Welcome to Wicked Wellington

This won't be a proper blog - you're probably too busy to read one and I'm possibly too busy to write one today. So I thought I'd share my lovely city with you instead.

I was out doing my final curtain job for the year this morning, and realised I'd be close to one of the harbour lookouts, so I took the camera because it was such a gorgous day. Is it any wonder I choose to set my books in this pretty place?

Wellington is built around a nearly circular harbour, with houses perched in some fairly ambitious places. The two white towers silhouetted against the water belong to one huge rambling creation by one of our local architects. Ian Athfield lives and works in what is practically a small village - and has raised the ire of neighbours and town planners alike, but photos I've seen of the interiors look pretty amazing. The hilly area on the other side of the harbour is Oriental Bay (down low) and Roseneath (up high). Christian's house in 'The Wrong Sister' is here, and that's where Kerri in 'Seduction on the Cards' wanted to live - if she could ever save enough of her fast-disappearing money.

OMG - Reviews!

Is it fun reading reviews of your own books? Almost always – provided you have a thick skin. Let me say very quickly that I don’t go trawling through all the available reviews. You could easily go mad that way. But now and again, while checking how my books are ranking, of course I’ll have a look.

The reviews can be so diverse. Sometimes you wouldn’t believe two people were reading the same story. For instance, for The Boat Builder’s Bed (which has around 1000 reviews on Amazon.com and Amazon.uk combined, and an average rating of 4.5 stars) I found these:

‘What a well-crafted story. Intelligent, beautifully written. I feel guilty that it was free but I won’t hesitate to pay for the next one.’ Bless you, dear reader!

And...

‘It is one of those bad romance novel. If you are really bored you can use it to fill time, but no literary value and nor too good of any plot.’

Sigh.

Resisting Nick has certainly drawn some differing comments, too. Graham said ‘What a pleasure it was reading about places I’ve visited.’ But there’s a solitary one-star on Amazon baldly stating ‘This is not New Zealand. The author is meant to be from Wellington but got the facts wrong – the beach house is at least an hour away.’

A challenge and two gifts

Welcome to my first-ever blog entry. I thought I might tell you how I started writing novels.

We were having coffee in our conservatory some years ago; Philip and I and our friends Jamie and Ann Selkirk. Jamie had been best man at our wedding because he was Philip's flatmate in the dim distant past. Then, with great foresight, he went into partnership with Peter Jackson. Yes, that Peter Jackson. When this conversation took place they were in the early stages of shooting the Rings trilogy. (He eventually got an Oscar for editing them.)

I'd always written - mostly advertising. I'd always wanted to write something a lot longer. So, after chatting about how the films were progressing, I said 'I really want to write a book'. Instead of soothing platitudes about how good he was sure I'd be if I ever got around to it, Jamie challenged me outright. "Do it !" he said. "Don't just think about it. Do it. If Peter and Fran hadn't had the courage, the movies would never have been started."

Humph! That put me in my place. So there was my challenge.