Louise Cusack's Blog, page 9

Sneak peak at the making of my 'Shadow Through Time' trilogy

I've received lots of positive feedback on this series from the time publishers were first looking at the opening book Destiny of the Light to the point where the Doubleday book club selected them as their 'Editors Choice' – comments on the originality of the fantasy world I'd created, the realism of the characters, and the fact that the books weren't dense with difficult-to-remember words or concepts.

I'd like to explain how this evolved.  When it comes to characterisation, 'real' people...

Destiny: the journey of a trilogy

On 15th February, (in two short weeks) my "Shadow Through Time" trilogy will be released as eBooks by Momentum Books, a division of Pan Macmillan, a full decade after the first book was released in print form by Simon & Schuster Australia.  It's taken time and patience, but I never gave up hope that these characters and their stories would one day find an International readership.

I've written a lot in the last decade, fallen in love with new characters and new settings, but my first love...

Shiny new book covers

Is there anything more exciting for an author than seeing their book covers for the first time?  How about seeing those same books get a second lease on life with brand new covers?

I'm in author-blissland gentle readers because my Shadow Through Time trilogy is about to be re-released as eBooks with shiny new covers which I just adore!  Momentum Books have done a sterling job of capturing the heart of the books: romantic fantasy that's a cross between Alice in Wonderland for grownups and...

Happy New 201Two

Last day of the year.  It's traditionally a time for people to create resolutions for the coming year, but I'd like to suggest something that comes first:

Gratitude

Whether 2011 was a great year or a crappy year for you, I'd like you to take five minutes out to be grateful for what's going well in your life right now: for what's beautiful, what's honest and what's good.  A rowdy child's laughter.  The purr of a cat.  The soft colours of sunset.  A beautifully sculpted sentence – yours or...

Writers: protect the work

Even writing mentors have their own mentor and I saw mine on the weekend.  She cares about me and she also completely understands the fact that marketing books has changed enormously in the fifteen years I've been published, but the one piece of advice she gave me was the same thing she's been saying to me for twenty years, "Louise, protect the work."

What she means by this is do the book first, then everything else second.  I'm an intelligent woman so you'd think I'd be able to do that. ...

Writers Online: Authenticity vs Spin

I was chatting to a girlfriend this morning about authenticity, and we were discussing the challenge of sifting through recommendations on the internet when you're looking to buy a product.  Some are obviously written by genuine customers giving their honest opinion, but some look so effusive you have to wonder if the person or company who's selling the product has snuck in and posted it themselves, then maybe gone to their opposition's product and posted a bad review!  But wait, it gets...

Book launches with benefits

What makes a book launch memorable?  Well I've been to more than I can readily remember, but the ones that stand out in my memory were the ones where the writer included their family and friends in their celebration (because a book launch is as much about WooHoo! as it is about selling books).  I went to a great one last Friday night at Dymocks in Bundaberg.  We were helping launch Sandy Curtis's new thriller "Fatal Flaw", and here's a pic of romance author Helen Lacey and I holding our...

Camp Twitter vs Camp Facebook

No need to read to the end.  I'll tell you straight up.  I've fallen hard for Twitter.

In the brave new world of social networking it's a bit of a love triangle, with those of us who want to engage with our readers picking our platforms.  And I'll freely admit I stuck with Facebook far longer than I should have.  We could have parted company while we were still on civil terms.  But I was too "I don't get Twitter," to even try it, so I hung around at Facebook with my personal profile and my...

The hidden value of critiquing

What can you do if your manuscript has a problem you can't pin down?  Simple.  Critique someone else's.

The benefit might not seem obvious, especially when you're busy and it feels like you're wasting time helping someone else, but trust me, you're helping yourself.  Writers are notorious for not being able to edit their own work successfully (let's face it, that's why publishing houses pay editors to work on our stories).  But what you might not know is that the easiest way to find your own h...

Writing in the zone

I'm writing in the middle of a thunderstorm.  There's a coconut palm between me and the thrashing grey ocean, and huge heavy branches are tearing off and crashing to the ground.  Coconut are thudding to earth.  And I'm in my study, tapping on my keyboard, lost in another world.  The wilder the wind gets, the more my characters connect with what's happening to them, as if my anxiety level about damage is leaking into their reality, affecting their nerves.  And things are happening in the...