Narrelle M. Harris's Blog, page 68

The Outland Insitute - Earth Sandwich

The Outland Institute wants to make an Earth Sandwich AND YOU CAN HELP! We need to find someone who can take a boat to these co-ordinates and photograph a piece of bread on the deck - while back at the rooftop of Joy, 225 Bourke Street, Melbourne we do the same thing. And voila - an Earth Sandwich (courtesy of zefrank,... via Douglas Coupland's Generation A).

Please help the Outland Institute conduct this important work by reposting this message, twittering, blogging - do you know someone...

Tweeting ballarat

I've been recording my weekend in ballarat and sovereign hill via Twitter. If you're interested see @daggyvamp for tweets and pics

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Almost completely vampire-free weekend in Woodend

Tim and I went away to Woodend for the weekend. We really need to take a month off to sit quietly, read books and get centred, but still, it was nice to have a break. I did lots of things, including attempt to set fire to Hanging Rock, but more of that shortly.

First, I finished reading "How to Ditch Your Fairy" by Justine Larbalestier. What a terrific book too! Vivid characters - strong gals, lively guys, flawed parental figures, all facing challenges and working out how to be better people. ...

Good mojo

And after all my angsting, and then the character-motivation breakthrough, I finally got to rewrite that scene tonight and I think it works. I am hugely relieved.

Thank you to everyone for your words of encouragement, both on my writing blues and on the Charlaine Harris blog. You guys are awesome.

Charlaine Harris blogs about "The Opposite of Life"!!

I was going to do some subtle lead in to this post, but you know what? CHARLAINE HARRIS LIKES MY BOOK! So sod subtlety, I'm too busy doing the Dance Of Extreme Glee over here.

My publisher, Ron, just phoned - he said he was going to email me but was too excited to wait! The short version of the story is that while at Bouchercon he gave copies of the book to some writers he knew, and it turned out one of them knew Charlaine Harris, so he gave them a copy for her too. Later in the con he...

Cautious optimism

I think I may have finally unkinked the motivation in this troublesome scene. The character is furious with the wrong person. It's going to take a few minutes for them to figure out who they are mad at, and why, and then it explains *reams* of their actions in the rest of the book.

I feel a lot less gloomy, and that this is what is going on with the character. It feels fitting and right.

Oh please, muses, let this work when I sit down to write it.

One of those days

I was having trouble with a scene I was reworking last night. A whole sequence of events had left a reader thoroughly pissed off with a character, and that wasn't meant to be the reaction. So I've been working it and working it, and got to a point where there's a transition. The motivation was always a bit murky, and it really needs to be clarified. I need to move from one quite extreme state to one of acceptance, and have the person not come across as a hypocrite, or have the reader dismiss ...

Pretty things are pretty, and also VOTE!

The ever-delightful and stylishsharpest_rose   entered a competition at DIVA ( the jewellery store) to design a new range of accessories. And she got short-listed!

Visit DIVA and vote for MARY (Range one) because a) the designs are gorgeous, b) it would makesharpest_rose    happy to win and c) the winner gets the jewellery made into a range, and I WANT TO BUY THOSE DESIGNS.

 

Feeling virtuous *and* cultured

I enjoyed my weekend immensely! Friday and Saturday I spent doing a massive spring clean, going through shelves, cupboards, boxes and drawers to get rid of things I no longer need or want. I pulled out books, CDs and DVDs that no longer hold meaning or delight (if they ever did). I pulled out clothes and that didn't fit or were in poor condition. I rid my bathroom cupboard of al the out of date medicines. I got rid of all the plastic containers without lids (or lids without containers). I tos...

GaryView: The Vampire Diaries

Gary: There's one thing I don't get about all these stories with vampires in high schools.
Lissa: Only one thing?
Gary: Okay, so hundreds of things, but the one thing that really bugs me is why does anyone think a vampire would want to go back to high school?
Lissa: I don't know. To catch up on calculus?
Gary: Oh. I hadn't thought of that.
Lissa: I was joking.
Gary: But that makes sense. If you didn't understand calculus before you became a vampire, anyway. School had a pretty simple approach. A va...