Renae Kaye's Blog, page 20

Unproductive Monday

I’m a list maker.  I always have been.  Shopping lists, to-do lists, birthday lists. I have spreadsheets keeping track of my money, of the rain that falls, and most recently, of my word count in my WIPs.  I made myself a goal to write an average of 1200 words per day for the days I am not editing.

Each month I fail.

I’m not upset by this – it’s a goal I'm working toward.  The key word in my goal is the word average.  Some days are better than others for writing.  For me, Mondays and Tuesdays are the only block of time I get uninterrupted when both kids are at school.  You would think that those days are the best for writing – but no.  On those days I seem to run around and do all the other things I need to do for my Real Life.  Mondays I seem to spend getting the house back into order from the weekend. 

Going by my word count, Mondays are unproductive.  But I must remind myself that life is about balance.  On Mondays, I don’t score high on the word count, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t done anything.  So today I’m giving you a glimpse into other things in my life that continue to be productive, even if my word count is not.

Another hobby of mine is my backyard vegetable garden.  So on this unproductive Monday, here are some of my other more productive projects:

My chooks

For those who don’t know, “chooks” are the Australian term for chickens or hens.  I have three who we named Polly, Lucy and Sparkles (yes, my 4yo named her).  So despite the fact that I didn’t write that scene I need to, my chooks still laid me two eggs, ate some bugs and made me some fertiliser.
My citrus trees

I have four citrus trees – a meyer lemon, a navel orange, a blood-red orange and an imperial mandarin.  I am flush with vitamin C at the moment. So much so, I am throwing them away since I cannot find enough people to give them away to.  Today I pulled four oranges, two lemons and seven mandarins off the tree. 

So, yes – I have been productive.  My garden is thriving despite it being winter and I must remember that life is not only about the written word.  Next Monday I will show you more.

Cover Reveal - The Blinding Light

I’m very excited to introduce you to my next novel: The Blinding Light.

Blurb: Jake Manning’s smart mouth frequently gets him into trouble. Because of it, he can’t hold a job. Combined with some bad luck, it's prevented him from keeping steady employment.  A huge debt looms over him, and alone he shoulders the care of his alcoholic mother and three younger sisters. When a housekeeping position opens, Jake’s so desperate he leaps at the opportunity. On landing, he finds his new boss, Patrick Stanford, a fussy, arrogant, rude… and blind man.

Born without sight, Patrick is used to being accommodated, but he’s met his match with Jake, who doesn’t take any of his crap and threatens to swap all the braille labels on his groceries and run off with his guide dog unless he behaves.

Jake gets a kick out of Patrick. Things are looking up: the girls are starting their own lives and his mum’s sobriety might stick this time. He’s sacrificed everything for his family; maybe it’s time for him to live his life and start a relationship with Patrick. When his mother needs him, guilt makes his choice between family and Patrick difficult, and Jake must realize he’s not alone anymore. 

So, are you excited too?

It’s taken a long time to get Jake and Patrick’s story to you.  It seems ages ago that I sat down in front of a blank page and began piecing together their lives.  Jake is such a sunny (although snarky) character – nothing gets him down.  He’s been cleaning up after his mother and raising his sisters his entire life.  A housekeeping job should be a cinch – right?

Patrick is a man hiding behind his blindness – until he meets a man who doesn’t give a shit that he’s blind and tells him to lift his game.  There are so many places in this story that my jaw dropped and I told Jake that he can’t say things like that!  You can’t threaten to force feed a man just because he doesn’t want to eat!  You can’t go around hiding a blind man’s sex toys from him!  And it’s really rude to call your employer “Patti-cake.”

(They didn’t listen to me.  My characters never listen to me.  Rather like my children).

I’d like to say thanks to Bree Archer for giving me such a great cover, and of course all the people at Dreamspinner Press.

I post a link (hopefully next week) when the book hits Dreamspinner's Coming Soon pages.

Now I just have to wait for the release…  31 days and counting…

My favourite quotes from Loving Jay

So it was many long moons ago that I first sat down and wrote those words that started it all:

I was going to miss my train.

Yes, for those who haven’t read Loving Jay, those are the first words of Chapter One.  They kick-start the story of Liam and Jay and were written on a blank page back in April 2013.  That’s how long ago I started that story, and wow – what a journey I have been on since then!

It took me ten weeks to write Loving Jay and every single word has come from the depths of my brain.  Sometimes I would blink and then stare at the screen in bemusement, thinking, “Did I really just write that?”  Other times it was squirreled away in my head for weeks while I found just the perfect spot to drop that dialogue into.

So now I wish to share with you my favourite quotes and moments of Loving Jay.

For those who don’t know, the story starts with our MC, Liam in denial about being gay.  There’s only one problem with that – he has the biggest crush on this beautiful guy he sees on the train each morning:

And missing the first train of the morning also meant I didn’t get to see Jay. But I wasn’t going to think about that. Because I am not gay. I don’t notice other guys; I don’t drool over them; I don’t look forward to seeing their handsome face each morning; I don’t dream about them every night; and I definitely don’t get a hard-on thinking about one particular face. Nope! Not gay here at all.

Much.

Oh, poor Liam.  He is in the midst of a major crush:

On that day he’d sat down next to a white-haired lady and they’d spoken in soft tones and laughed the whole way home. I felt like tripping the old dear as she got off the train.

Any man who contemplates tripping a granny because she talked with his crush is a little bit more than in love…  Liam is just my hero.

But I want to tell you a secret.  I secretly love Jay more.  But he doesn’t always make the right fashion choices:

“Ah, Jay?”

“Hmm?”

“We’re friends now, yeah?”

“Umm… I guess?”

 “So, in the tone of friendship, I’m going to ask you a really hard question. Okay? I just don’t want you to get too upset.”

“Ahh….” Jay was holding his breath and looked terrified—rabbit- in-the-headlights terrified. He was wide-eyed and tense. But I just had to ask. Friends helped friends, didn’t they? Before he could conceive too many terrible scenarios, I ploughed on.

“You’re not going to wear those pants all day, are you?” It took a second to sink in, but I watched avidly as he deflated, slumping dejectedly in his seat, and nervously picked at the material on his thigh. Watching Jay’s overreaction to every situation he found himself in was more entertaining than prime-time TV. He didn’t disappointment me.

 “Oh my Gawd! Are they that awful? I knew I just shouldn’t wear them. I was debating for ages this morning whether to wear them or dump them. They just cost me the earth, you know? But I didn’t want to toss them without wearing them at least once. I don’t know what made me buy them! A moment’s insanity maybe? I knew Tara—she’s the receptionist at the radio, you know—would tell me the truth. Oh my Gawd! I’m so embarrassed! Tell me straight, are they so bad? Like barf-in-my-bag bad?”

I looked at him solemnly. “Dude, even when M.C. Hammer had the bad taste to wear those pants he at least didn’t wear them in red tartan.”

It took me a while to think up the most atrociously bad pair of pants I could imagine.  I hope it worked.

Then, when Jay is in the hospital, Liam gets a look at his pajamas:

My eyes ran down his body, taking in the flannel pajamas he was wearing and it momentarily distracted me from my task. I cocked my eyebrow in query at him. “Smurfs?”

He smoothed the material down self-consciously. “Little blue men with squeaky voices. What’s not to love? And of course most of them had to be gay. There was only ever one Smurfette after all.”

 I ignored him, figuring we could discuss the queerness of Smurfs another day.

I remember writing this scene and sitting trying to figure out what sort of PJs would a drama queen wear?  My five year old son had a great pair of PJs covered in Smurfs – so I chucked them on Jay. 

Okay, I admit it! So I love Liam as well.  His sense of humour is very dry:

“I’m just trying to think who I would call if I needed to be bailed out. Which person could I tell I had been arrested for public indecency along with a gay man who had no pants on?”

 “So, did you decide who you would call?”

“My brother, Dale. He owes me.”

“Yeah? What did you do for him?”

 “I dated his wife.”

Liam’s thoughts on meeting Jay’s sister for the first time:

And besides, if she yelled at me too much, I could just pick her up and push her through the cat door.

I wish I could do that to lots of people.

Liam and Jay are perfect for each other (obviously!)  They have a lot of fun and laughter.  And of course, sex, so I need to put in a saucy scene:

“Liam, darling. If you take this lovely big cock of yours and in your terms ‘erection, insert, and thrust,’ believe me, I will be screaming so loud that I won’t know if I feel like a girl, a guy, or a bloody blue-ringed octopus. I do know, however, that I will feel absolutely, fucking great. Your neighbors will know that I feel great. I’m pretty sure that I will feel so great that they will call the cops to report a murder taking place and you will need your brothers to bail you for public disturbance.”

I chuckled. “Have you seen my neighbors? I think it would have to be gunfire and a missile to make them give a shit about anything other than their own lives.”

Jay smiled coyly and ground against me. “If you provide the missile, I guarantee I will provide the gunfire.”

I groaned at his sick joke. “Oh, shit, that was bad, man.”

Who said sex couldn’t be immature and fun?

The fun doesn’t just come from my MCs.  I wish all workmates could be like Chan:

I shrugged. “As I said, I accidentally outed myself this weekend. I may as well go the whole shebang and tell everyone else now.”

Chan grinned evilly at me. “Does this mean you’ll start wearing pink shirts and calling everyone ‘Darling’?”

I flipped a finger at him. “You are so judgmental. I’m going to dob you in to your brother.”

A look of alarm crossed his face. “Fuck no! My brother may be as queer as a three-dollar note, but he can bench press his own weight. But forget about me—I want to know how you managed to accidentally out yourself. How does one do that?”

 I ducked my head in chagrin. “I unintentionally called my boyfriend ‘babe’ in front of my parents.”

Oh.  Dear. 

However, I did managed to get a couple of digs into the opposition over football:

“The fruitloop would be John, here. He is the only stupid one in the family who would dare go for a team like Port Adelaide. All the rest of my family goes for a good, old-fashioned Western Australian football team. But John had to be different and pick Port Adelaide.”

 “Hey!” John was used to the good-natured ribbing he got from me for his choice of interstate team. “Watch your mouth. I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing that stupid purple color of your team.”

And for the record, I love wearing purple as I scream for my team.

We do get serious in the book.  But not much.  This is Liam thinking about his relationship with his homophobic father:

I’d disappointed him in life, too. He was disappointed that I chose Accounting at university, not Engineering like him. But he still loved me and had forgiven me. I’d disappointed him over and over again by not being able to have enough courage to drive a car. And he’d forgiven me.

I’d deliberately chosen to go for another football team, rather than his beloved Eagles, and he’d…. Well, okay. Maybe he’d never forgiven me on that one but there has to be a line drawn somewhere, and backing a different football team was just going too far.

But deciding to be gay, even when I didn’t really have a choice in the matter? That was way before that line.

I tried not to give away any spoilers in this post, but just in case you were wondering: YES!  OF COURSE MY GUYS GET TOGETHER IN THE END!  So I’m not revealing anything by giving you my favourite paragraph of all time.  This paragraph is just warm, gooey caramel syrup on vanilla ice-cream.  It’s delicious and melts me:

He’d smiled at me with devotion and I had responded with a look of complete adoration. And the photographer had snapped the picture, capturing that instant—two men gazing at each other, utterly in love. Jay loving me, and me… loving Jay.

So what’s your favourite quote?

Renae's thoughts on shopping, smiling and brain orgasms

I’m a scary person.

I’m a very scary person. In fact, people have been known to duck down aisles to avoid me seeing them.  It's not (I hope!) because I am so terrible looking or have bad breath or anything visual.  It's because I do this strange thing of actually TALK to
people.

Yes, I know.  Weird, huh?  I actually talk to people beyond the hi-how-are-you-today-fine-thank-you realm of words.

In my small pond of supermarket shopping, there isn’t much choice but Coles, Woolworths or the independent chain of IGA. 
I shop at IGA just to be contrary.  I don’t like big brand monopoly, so my dollars go toward “keeping the bastards honest” as one political slogan once said.  Plus there are two other reasons I shop at IGA, rather than Coles or Woolies. 
 
Firstly, because of brand choice.  It sounds strange, but there's actually more choice at IGA.  At Coles you either buy the Coles brand, the Coles Premium brand or the other tomato-and-onion-flavoured crap brand that no one likes and that gives you heartburn for days.  Not much choice after all.

Secondly, I like knowing where the items are on the shelf.  I tried shopping at Woolies once – for a good six months I stuck it out. Each week I went in they had moved the items around so that I could never find the item I wanted, and I ended up walking out without ever locating or buying it.  It’s a wonder we didn’t starve.

Anyway (sidetracked much?) my local IGA is small and employs a great team of young people – mostly under the age of twenty-three.  These people are usually studying at university, taking a gap-year, or some are just trying to decide what to do with their lives.  Yes – it may surprise you, but I do stop to talk to these people and ask them about themselves.

I am essentially a cheery person.  Once at a mother’s group, we played a game where we had to write a few adjectives to describe each of the other people in the group.  Guess who scored the adjective “bubbly”, from nearly every single person? 
Yep!  That was me.  I talk.  I like to talk.  I like to make people smile.

My shopping trips are usually long winded.  I stop to chat to the staff in the store: New boyfriend yet? I like the new hair! How did the exams go?  Have you found a new place to rent?  When is your husband back from working away?  I also stop to tickle the toddler who is making her mother’s life miserable, whining for a lolly.  I play aisle tag with the woman who is shopping in the opposite direction to me, laughing as we cross each time.  I playfully tell the elderly man that I still have my learner plates on when it comes to managing to make my trolley roll forward and that he will have to watch out for my bad driving.  They all smile.

One staff member of our IGA was a bit of a tough nut to crack.  His name is Sean – he’s in second year university, doesn’t have a girlfriend and blushes madly when I talk to him.  The first day I said hello to him, he scuttled away in fright, and probably went home and told his mum about the strange woman in the store who spoke to him. The second time I saw him, I asked him what his name was because he wasn’t wearing a name badge.  He stammered and stumbled and scuttled away again.  The third time, I greeted him with a “Hi, Sean!” and watched him frantically try to remember if he knew me or not.

The sun broke through for me on the day I turned down the aisle where he was working, and he glanced up. It was a small glance, just to see who was entering his aisle, but he stopped, looked back at me and smiled. He even managed “Hi” without my prompting.  Success!

That was over a year ago. Recently I was shopping and ran into him as he stacked fizzy drinks.  He looked up with a happy, genuine smile and said, “Hey!  How did the book release go?”  I laughed and gushed about how fantastic the reviewers of my book were, and how nice people were being about my little story.  I consider Sean my success.  It took a while, but now I can say that I can put a smile on someone’s face.

Smiling is important. It releases “happy hormones” into our blood steam and makes us feel good.  It’s a brain orgasm.  I like orgasms – all types of orgasms.  I like causing orgasms.  (Dirty minds much?)  I like to make people smile and laugh and have fun.

Today someone told me he loved my story, Loving Jay.  He said he read it on the bus, on the train and while waiting at the train station. He said he laughed out loud, pinching his nose and trying to stop from snorting in public.  He laughed while he told me this, and smiled broadly.  That made me smile and laugh in return.  Brain orgasms all around – the best way to be.

What books mean to me

I can’t remember the first book I ever read.  In fact, I cannot even remember my mother ever reading to me.  But somebody must’ve, because I had a love for books before I even hit school. Being the youngest child in the family, I’m sure that there was someone who regularly read to me, but I don’t remember it, and I find that rather sad.  It would’ve been a lovely memory to retain.

What I do remember, is going to the library with my mother.  I must’ve been either four or five, because I wasn’t yet in school, yet all my brothers and sisters were, so it was just Mum and me.  Our library was on a steep hill and I would race up the wheelchair access ramp, then clatter back down the steps and tell Mum to hurry up. Walking into that place was bliss. There was a hush about the library that a quiet house cannot replicate.  I would dash to the children’s book boxes and rummage through, looking for my old friends within them.

A story my mother likes to relate is of going to the library with me as a child.  She tells us that she had to give me thirty minutes warning, because there would always be tears and tantrums from me.  I never wanted to give the books back, so she needed thirty minutes to persuade me to show her where I had hidden my precious treasures.

As a child, I grew up on Disney books and fairytales.  Cinderella was my utmost favourite.  I still have the book that showed me
Cinderella, and I now read it to my children, hoping to instill the love of fiction into them.

By the time I was nine I had read all The Famous Five books that my library carried, plus all of them in my school library too.  By ten I’d read every single Judy Blume book I could find. By the time I was eleven I was onto Dolly Fiction paperbacks.  
 
When I was thirteen, in desperation to keep me occupied at her house, my sister gave me my first Mills and Boon novel to read – Rise of an Eagle, by Margaret Way.  I still have that book.  I keep it for the memories.  It was wonderful – it was Cinderella for grownups.

But what did books mean to me?  It meant a life for me beyond my four walls of my bedroom.

You see, looking back on my childhood, I was extremely lonely and very isolated.  How can the youngest child of nine children be lonely? It was because of extreme allergies, something that twenty-five years ago we were struggling to understand.

Let me put it into perspective for you.  In the skin-prick test, if your reaction to the allergen is more than 1mm, they say you are allergic.  If it is more than 2mm, you should seek specialist treatment.  On my first test, they were unable to measure more than 11mm because it was merging into my other reactions.  I was allergic – highly allergic – and my top five reactors? Dust mite, horses, grasses, cats and dogs.

What a pity I grew up on a horse farm.

My mother didn’t believe in medication, so in order to survive my teen years, I locked myself in my room and never came out. 
Dramatic? Definitely.  Did it save my life?  You’d better believe it.

The written word became my best friend.  Those people between the pages of my book I was able to have a conversation with. They were nice.  They didn’t cause me to cough, sniff, wheeze, cry or any of the other reactions that simply talking to my family in their horse-covered clothes would bring on.

They were my sanity.

Those nights that I struggled to breathe, not wanting to go to sleep because I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up in the morning? 
Those books sat with me.

It wasn’t until I was eighteen and sought medical help for my condition that I appreciated how bad I was. I’ve gone through years of desensitization programs, and swallowed thousands upon thousands of anti-histamine tablets.  Now that I can control my environment, I can own cats and birds.  Horses are still bad though – one hour is the maximum time I can spend at
my sister’s house, and a simple walk through her stables sets me off.

Being able to string together a couple of paragraphs and put it in a book for another person to read? It's like passing on that gift that was given to me all those years ago.  It’s paying forward.  I like to think of someone in a dark place in their lives, being able to open a book – perhaps my book? – and survive their darkness until the morning light comes.  So if you are struggling, open a page and lose yourself for a while.  The stories are always there.  Some make you cry.  I hope mine make you laugh.  But survive.

Writing my family

Write what you know. Write what you love.
 
How many times have we heard similar statements?  People are always saying to write what you love and the readers will love
it too.  But at the same time, write what you know.
 
When contemplating a new story, I always think I would love to place the characters in an exotic location, but in the end, I write what I know.  I’m not a big traveller by any stretch of the imagination, so most of my stories are set in Perth, Western
Australia.  Rather boring to me, but I hope it is exotic to others.
 
Write what you love.  That’s easy.  M/M romance, with a touch of humour and definitely a HEA.  I did write an m/f novel once….  It’s still lingering in my computer.  Maybe one day I will dust it off and submit it to a publisher.
 
Write what you know.  When it comes to fleshing out one of my characters, I always try to think, “Why?”  Why would a person think this way?  Is it because he has read a book?  Is it because he once met a person who told him that?  Is it his experience in life?
 
To me, family is the biggest influence on my life.  I come from a large family and their experiences and opinions bleed into
my life on a daily basis.  Sometimes this is good, sometimes bad.  When I write my characters, I tend to place them into family situations as well. It’s what I know.  It’s how I experience my life.
 
Recently I was reviewing Goodreads and noticed that my novel, Loving Jay was sitting at #3 on a list.  Oh – not a “best of” list
(be still my heart!), just a list of books where the character has a large family.  I laughed because, I guess to most people, a family of five boys is a large family.  I never stopped and truly appreciated this, because my family has this beat by four kids.  
 
My character of Liam is the fourth of five boys.  I wrote this deliberately because it influenced dramatically how Liam thought of himself.  Liam had been brought up in a household of men and masculinity with very little feminine frills.  His father was anti-gay
and made no attempt to hide it.  His mother, despairing of ever having a daughter, had subtly suggested his whole life that his “role” was to find a girlfriend, get married and have grandchildren for his mother to fuss over.  His brothers were doing the right thing – one married with a baby, one married, one just about to get married.  Liam felt lost as being gay was seen as a bad thing, and not being able to bring home a girl for his mum to adore was playing on his mind.
 
This is how I see my life – my brothers’ and sisters’ failures and successes are all lined up to judge me against.  Liam judged his life on the fact that he could never bring a girl home or have children.  He judged himself a failure because he couldn’t play football – like his brothers.  He couldn’t keep a girlfriend – like his brothers. He wasn’t straight – like his brothers.
 
Surprisingly enough, it’s not Liam’s family that my own family is most like.  My family is reflected more in Jay’s.  Jay only
has two older sisters, but the family gatherings are a sight to see.  In the book, Liam is invited to Jay’s family dinner. 
In attendance:  Jay, Grandma, Mum, the two sisters, the brother-in-law and the two children.  For three minutes the family sits and eats politely, before wham the table explodes.  The next thing each person at the table is holding two conversations at once, everyone is talking, insults are being yelled, stories are being related, kids are being told off, recipes are swapped.  Poor Liam is completely shocked and sits there in silence until he realises that Jay’s brother-in-law is also sitting quietly, simply eating his meal.  Ignoring the shenanigans of the family, the two men sit and calmly discuss football and allow the others to continue their shouting matches.
 
Yeah – that’s my family.
 
I can still remember the shell-shocked look on the faces of my boyfriends I would bring home to meet everyone.  I would go around the room and introduce him to the eighteen people in attendance at the meal, then while he was still reeling, I would whisper that he was lucky that some of my siblings lived in the country and weren’t there as well.  And then I would go back to holding two conversations at once.

My Writing Process

So who do I have to thank (blame) for my inaugural blog of last  week?

With all the information flowing through the web, I wasn’t really thinking of doing a blog since the whole three people who would read it already know my views on things.  And then this persistent person who I’d never met in Real Life told me it would be a blast.  I sighed, thought about it, sighed some more and then it hit me – maybe there will be more than three people reading my blog.  Perhaps, there will be four!  Or maybe even five!

So I wish to thank Beany Sparks for inviting (making) me to write a blog and giving me the opportunity to be the next stop in this Blog Hop:
  http://www.beanysparks.com/blog.html

 You can catch up on some of the previous blog hops here:
 Khul Waters:  http://khulwaters.wordpress.com/
 Ellen Cross:  http://vampyangel291197.wix.com/ellen-cross#!blog/c112v
 Evi Asher:   http://eviasher23.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/my-writing-process-blog-tour/

So the rule of this blog hop is I have to answer four questions.  So here goes…
 
1.  What am I working on?

Oh.  My.  God. 

Have you ever heard someone biting off more than they can chew?  (Picture me waving my hand furiously).

So my debut novel Loving Jay is released in < gulp> four days.  I am ever so nervous but excited at the same time and I’ve been setting up my website and talking to 101 people about it.  The book is a wonderful, light-hearted comedy featuring Liam - who doesn’t even know if he is gay or not - falling for lovely, vivacious, make-up wearing, drama-queen Jay.  Dreamspinner have been absolutely wonderful by giving me this opportunity to publish, and my lovely, lovely editor didn’t laugh (too much) at my first attempt at a manuscript and helped me whip it into shape.  Thanks Liz!

At the same time as nervously chewing my fingers down to the quick, I’m up to the editing stage of my second novel: 
The Blinding Light . This one will be out around July/August and features smart-aleck Jake who takes on a housekeeping role for grumpy Patrick, who is blind.

If that wasn’t enough, hot on its tail is my rural m/m novel The Shearing Gun which is set in country Western Australia and features a lot of sheep, along with two hot, sexy guys. 

I am making my big announcement here, so don’t blink:  I have just signed my fourth contract with Dreamspinner Press for a novel called Safe In His Arms.  Yes – you heard it right!  Somehow, I’m going to be able to bring you my romantic, erotic tale of Casey and Lon.

So if that wasn’t enough, I’m also furiously writing my next m/m novel for you all, entitled Shawn’s Law.  I love romantic comedies and Shawn is my adorable Aussie bloke who often falls victim to Murphy’s Law.  He knows all the paramedics,
emergency department staff and auto-break down service people by name, and seems to have a knack for finding Australian fauna that bite. I’m hoping to have it finished by the end of May, so look for my announcement that it is done.  If you don’t see it, you have my permission to bug me about it!
 
2.  How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I’m not a path blazer by any means.  I love writing about everyday guys who you could possibly meet down at the local supermarket or at the train station.  I write in order to make my readers smile.

I’m different though, because my characters all live in (or near) my home city of Perth, Western Australia. So if you want a giggle and want to know what it's like to live in my wonderful city, pick up one of my books and have a read.  There aren’t that many Perth-based books out there!
 
3.  Why do I write what I do?

Easy.  To make people laugh.

After the birth of my second child, I fell victim to the dreaded PND – Post-Natal Depression.  And it sucked badly!  I am determined to never walk that path again if I can help it. So each time I think I’m getting a little morose, I find something to make me laugh.  I believe that Laughter (yes – with a capital L) can cure a whole range of things.  And if it doesn’t – what harm has it done?

And of course I’m a romantic at heart, so nothing but a HEA will do!
 
4.  How does my writing process work?

With a concept.

A random thought will hit me from the blue and next thing plot bunnies are multiplying like rabbits.

For example, with Loving Jay, I had the pleasure to befriend a guy who is unashamedly gay from the top of his well-gelled hair to the tips of his beautifully polished, blue fingernails.  One day I thought, “I wonder what’s the reaction of a ‘normal’ straight guy to this flamboyant peacock when they meet him for the first time? I wonder what would happen if a normal straight guy didn’t even realise he was gay until he saw this vibrant, brilliant man and was wildly attracted to him?”

So I put them both on paper – I gave them names and physical forms, and then I pushed them at each other and sat back to watch what happened.  Truthfully, I don’t plan what is going to transpire – I’m along for the ride as much as the reader is.

As a mother to two young children, my writing is fractured, flowing with the wants and needs of the family. My children don’t know I’m in the middle of a very hard love scene, so I’m constantly interrupted in order to make vegemite sandwiches, attend to a bee sting or even just to see what they have drawn (with crayon on the wall).  My characters have been wonderful throughout the interruptions – even when they’re going at it hot and heavy, they just take a break and wait for me to return.  I find the breaks allow me to solidify my thinking and find that elusive word I was missing.

I am completely jealous of authors who write that they listened to opera in order to get them into the mood for writing their period drama.  The background music to my books is usually Sesame Street and Peppa Pig. But somehow, without planning a single thing, my books have developed into being.

 
So, now that you are all caught up on the news, I hope you will stop by again and visit.  Next Monday, we will have another wonderful Australian debut writer participate in the blog hop:  Nic Starr.  Nic is familiar to many readers as she is prolific with her reviews from her site:   http://someonehastosetabadexample.wordpress.com/

She has been writing as well as reviewing, and Dreamspinner will be publishing her first novella in July/August 2014. 
Stop by her blog next Monday and meet her so you can tell everyone you knew her before she was famous!

 
Another great Australian author to publish her story with Dreamspinner in July is Michelle Rae. Please stop by and be introduced to her as well:  http://www.moralfortitude.com/

The Emotions of Editing

So you’ve sweated ever so hard over your manuscript, writing and rewriting, burning the midnight oil, ignoring your family, and even writing your novel while you should’ve been working.  Finally it is finished!  Yay!  You send it off to the publisher for consideration.  You sweat bullets for weeks over the reply.  Then suddenly – acceptance!  Celebrations!  You’re going to be a published author!  All that hard work and now you just need to sit back and wait.  Right?

WRONG!

I never knew that it was going to be such a rollercoaster of emotions between that contract signing and the release date.

Of course, each author will handle things differently, but for me, the emotions of editing my precious novel were surprising.  I can only comment on my own experiences, and as I only have one publisher (the wonderful people at Dreamspinner Press), others may find it different.  But for anyone who has ever thought of publishing a story, or is waiting for your first edits to hit – watch out!

The first emotion:  Impatience.

For me, I was like a kid waiting for Christmas Day – I would check my email ten times a day, stare at the calendar and count down the days, alternating between excitement and dread.  When writing and publishing, you seem to either be flat out busy, or waiting.

And waiting.

It was a good four months between signing on the dotted line and those first edits to hit.  Some days I’d dance in the car park at the thought of my book being published. Other days I’d be biting my nails thinking that it was all a big cosmic joke.  And still I counted off the days.

Then one day I received an email from the lovely woman who was to be my editor.  I was so excited and rushed to reply, only to hesitate before sending that email. OMG!  Should I be cool and polite, like a professional person in the workplace? Or should I be me? – daggy, hyper-excited and a total nutcase?  This woman didn’t know me and whatever impression she had of me would be solidified from this initial email.  Should I “pretend” to be a down-to-earth, coolly collected and sensible?  Or should I be me?

The second emotion:  Uncertainty.

Oh, dear – how was I going to pretend to be someone else over what would probably be a long standing relationship?  I was seesawing between excitement that something was finally happening to my book, to uncertainty about what was coming and how I should act.

In the end I figured that my editor could just roll her eyes in front of her computer all the way on the other side of the world if she needed to.  I was going to me, no matter what.  We began our correspondence and got to know each other.  I told her I was a total newbie at writing, so I would need lots of help and explanations.  She told me that I needed to trust her and that what she was doing to my story was to help me.

I did trust her.  I did know that it wasn’t personal, it was an experienced person trying to show me where I was going wrong and how to get it right.

And then she sent me the file.  I had tried to prepare myself, but I couldn’t stop the wave of emotion at opening that document.

The third (fourth and fifth) emotion:  Devastation, disbelief, depression.

I began to scroll through the corrections. Logically I was telling myself that it wasn’t personal, but that initial look is at your first edits is terrible. That manuscript that you sweated over? Those words that you stayed up to 2am writing?  That scene you
missed your mother-in-law’s birthday for?  They are all wrong!  Wrong order, wrong tense, wrong meaning.  Wrong wrong wrong!

I was wrong.  I was hopeless.  I was a failure!

So I did what I always do – I ran and hid myself in a book.  I closed down the computer, picked up my Kindle and immersed myself in someone else’s problems and fantasy world (with a little bit of hot sex thrown in to keep me interested).

It took me a while, but I finally psyched myself up to look at the document again.  I had to remind myself a dozen times that I (a) was an adult, (b) had signed a contract to do this, and (c) wanted to be an author.  
 
The sixth emotion (which I know isn’t really an emotion):  Learning.

Using Track Changes, I began to work through the edits.  Some were easy (e.g. you need a comma here).  Some were amusing (e.g. I think you meant to say “He chuckled” not “He chucked” which would totally change the meaning of that sentence).  Some were frustrating (e.g. American readers will not know what a flat white is, you will need to explain it somehow).

Some were confusing, but I diligently accepted that my editor knew better than me and I changed what she said needed
changing. I struggled to understand some changes, but I tried to remember the why for my next book.  Sometimes I could see immediately that the sentence worked better her way, other times I just shrugged and decided I wasn’t too fussed about it, and
if she thought it worked better, then so be it!

Hours passed.  Days passed.  My back became sore, my wrist ached from using the mouse so much, coffee became my best friend.  I slogged on through.  I read my story again and again.  I vowed that I was changing the title of my book from Loving Jay to Hating Jay.  I could nearly recite the dialogue in my sleep.

I ignored my housework, dinner was prepared and thrown on plates in the five minutes snatches I allowed myself, and I forgot
what my husband looked like.  I became focused and diligently gave my all to the task.  Finally, when I was sure that I could not improve it in any further way, I emailed it back to my editor.

The seventh emotion:  Relief followed very closely by Mental Exhaustion.

I gave a rapturous sigh and crashed, emerging from my writing room and making pancakes for the kids.  I had done it!

I don’t mean to imply that was it for editing, for there followed several hundred emails back and forth while we thrashed out
problems, discussed Australian vs America slang and tried to find a way that was acceptable to both of us.  Then there was second edits where another editor had a look at our work and put her two-cents worth in.  But the main bulk of the editing was done.

I spent several days catching up on RL (i.e. Real Life) and sleep.  I found that I’d forgotten to water some of my plants and they had shrivelled during the week of editing. I did endless loads of washing and remembered to call my mother.  But in the back of my mind a new emotion was growing.  It was a recognition that those edits, no matter how tough, no matter how confusing, no matter how awful it was to take that first peek at that document, those edits were needed.  Those edits strengthened the story.  Those edits made my work better.  Those edits were necessary.

The eighth emotion:  Satisfaction, happiness,  approval.

I smiled and sighed that I was still alive.  When my editor emailed me with that final email, saying that my edits were being handed off to the next department (galley), I emailed her back and thanked her profusely (or at least I think I did – I’m going to have to check).  She had done a fantastic job and must come across some really moody and stubborn authors in her time, but she survived me and I survived her.

At the end of it all, there is a great story – well edited, funny and heart-warming.  And I get my name on the cover of this book, and she gets no recognition apart from the thankfulness of the author and a paycheque in the bank.

So at this time, I’d like to thank Liz – job well done! – and tell everyone that editors do a fantastic job under some tough  conditions.


Despite the emotions that I’ve run through with the edits of my first novel, do you want to know something strange? 
I’m coming back for more.  I’m still writing. I’m still sending off those manuscripts to the publisher with fingers crossed and heart all hopeful.  So I’m here to tell you if you are struggling with your edits, that you do survive.  
 
Then, as you, the proud parent and author of a fantastic book, wave goodbye to that story that you have nurtured from
conception through to publication, you cry a bit. That story is gone, it’s over, you’ve done the best you can and now it is
about to be set upon the world.

You take yourself back to your writing room and you look at the calendar.  Hmm – the next lot of edits should be coming Friday…  And you wait with impatience, ready to start the rollercoaster again.

Watch this space

My inaugural blog will be hitting this spot on Monday 14th April, 2014.

Watch this space...