one year on

 shadow queen  7 Responses »
Oct 302008
 

This time last year, I could not shut up about how a Real Live Editor had contacted me, and liked my book, and might even buy it. My wondrous friends and family bore with me without a single complaint, without even a single snide, "Yes, Deb, WE KNOW."

Frightened of jinxing myself, I didn't actually talk about it on the blog overmuch. The clues were there, just sorta buried. For instance, here I mention the phone call, and here I talk about how bad I am at waiting, and do you notice how in both instances I'm implying it's all to do with the new bed? Oh, I was lying, lying through my electronic teeth. A fortnight later, I fessed up to signing with my agent, but it wasn't until the ink was dry on the A&U contract that I confessed the book deal proper. Because although it was becoming increasingly remote, there was still the possibility that I was making the whole thing up.1

Last night, I wrote my acknowledgments, and tomorrow the book is going to print.

Which means this little beast is now truly out of my hands.

Do you know, I think I might celebrate. Drinks all round!

  1. It is worth noting that, although the cheque for the advance didn't convince me it was all real, the editorial process did. No one is that thorough on a manuscript that isn't going to print. [↩]

then there are the days you (almost) come out even

 shadow bound, writing life  2 Responses »
Oct 292008
 

After much procrastination, both before and during the session, and some 1200 words revised, a particularly muddy section of the second novel of The Binding is now officially fixed. The first draft had Amalia1 being evil, when really she's just impulsive and spiteful, so now all the evil occurs at her brother's instigation. This works much, much better, and quite frankly I'm not sure why I didn't realise that first time around. Who knows. Writers is nuts, after all.

Of course, 1200 words revised only puts me slightly over halfway towards today's have-to target, and only a smidge over one-third of the way towards today's would-love-to target. That would be because I still have lots of catching up to do.

Spawn and Brutus2 are visiting, you see, and by golly are they timesinks. Yesterday while I sat writing, Spawn emptied the cupboard, one hairclip at a time, narrating each object all the while. Hair clip! Hair clip! One two many hair clip! Medicine, for sore! Soap! I never realised I had so much in that cupboard, to be honest. Once she'd done all of that she dug out my shoes and my bag and said, That shoe, that bag, find choo choo train now?

We took her to see model steam trains on the weekend, you see, and we haven't heard the end of it since. She was so insistent that on Monday night we found ourselves at the local train station, watching trains come and go, for over an hour. I suspect the people at the station were starting to wonder if we didn't have a television and this was our next best cheap entertainment option.

This pic is totally unrelated to the post. I just visited the zoo recently, and who doesn't love otters. If you can count three, there's nothing wrong with your eyesight

This pic is totally unrelated to the post. I just visited the zoo recently, and who doesn't love otters. If you can count three, there's nothing wrong with your eyesight

  1. I realise that none of you, save for my beta readers, know of Amalia, but I have enough trouble as it is talking about books that have no titles [↩]
  2. Incidentally, there's a new girl at the dayjob who, on hearing me talk of Spawn and Brutus, gave me a horrified look and said, 'They're children? I thought you were talking about dogs!' [↩]

and we're back

 administrivia, journal  9 Responses »
Oct 282008
 

If you were thinking I'd been awfully quiet over the past couple of days, that would be because my webhost was experiencing technical difficulties, otherwise known as HOLY CRAP WE DESTROYED THE INTERNET. (Or at least the bit where your website lives. Give us a sec…)

They did not use those exact words, but I think we can all agree they probably should have.

Of course I had lots of brilliant ideas for blog posts while I couldn't blog them, and now I have forgotten them all. This does seem a tragedy. Since the webhost had to do some serious restoring from backup, it is also possible some parts of the website have been borked. Please to be letting me know if you find any.

I definitely remembering finding the Stuck In Customs blog via StumbleUpon,1 and have been oohing over the pretty pictures ever since. Technically I stumbled upon the Iceland tag, which immediately started me thinking about whether I should move to Iceland, but the whole thing is brilliant.

  1. if you're curious, you can gander through scribblefly's stumbleupon for more whimsy that took my fancy [↩]

photos!

 journal  Comments Off
Oct 242008
 

Some little while ago (by which I mean I forget precisely when), my cousin travelled to Africa, and spent some time volunteering at an orphanage. These are two of my absolute favourite photos of her time helping out at the Kilimani Nursery.

Is it the shorts? Is it the single shoe? Is it the way he has his hands folded? Or is it the sublime expression on his face?

Is it the shorts? Is it the single shoe? Is it the way he has his hands folded? Or is it the sublime expression on his face?

I utterly adore this image

I utterly adore this image

These are the sorts of photos which make me spend all my money on travelling, sooner or later.

it's the end of the world as we know it

 shadow bound, shadow queen, writing life  5 Responses »
Oct 222008
 

My editor sent back the proofs with a few queries and additional suggested changes, so I spent yesterday slicing and dicing words and chapters.

LOTS of markup. To my surprise, however, this was a quick page to get through. Go figure.

LOTS of markup. To my surprise, however, this was a quick page to get through. Go figure.

Some I've-lost-count-pages later, it is done and all the chapters are of much less variable proportions. Subconsciously I must have known what I was doing, since I didn't have to chop any scenes to get the chapters to line up, but consciously I suspect my chapter formation process is along the lines of "How many pages since I last inserted a page break? Can't remember. This'll do. What do you mean I can't have a 300 page chapter followed by a 3 page chapter? The 300 page chapter has scene breaks, after all…"1

Thank the lord for editors, is all I can say!

Today, my brain feels like mush, but it's straight back to revisions on the sequel for me. I am having a dreadful time resisting the urge to start the revisions again from the first page each time I do an edit-pass on Shadow Queen and figure out some new writerly tic I need to eradicate. For example, I suspect I have an aversion to joining words so deep-seated it makes my eternally patient editors and proofreaders weep with frustration. Um…oops?

  1. Some authorial exaggeration is to be expected here. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story is what I say. [↩]

i can see a lot of life in you

 journal, writing life  4 Responses »
Oct 192008
 

My immune system is at war, and it appears to be a protracted siege rather than a single onslaught. I was ill on Friday, fine yesterday, and ill again today. This is not my idea of a rollicking good time, let me tell you that much! While ill today, I managed to watch Peter Jackson's King Kong (which, no, I hadn't seen before now) and I will say this much of the movie: was it, in actual fact, seven millennia long? I think dinosaurs evolved, rampaged and died during the screening of that movie. Granted, the illness may have been screwing with my timesense, but even so. EVEN SO.

Tab-closing:

I discovered this awesome photo through Stephen Fry's twitterstream. Which reminds me, my cousin took a couple of humdinger photos while she was over in Africa; must see if she'll let me post them on the blog.

I dropped by Elizabeth Bear's blog this morning, for the first time in ages, to discover this post on outrage and cynicism.

Telling people who are outraged that their naivete is mockable is the moral equivalent of telling a teenager with a desire to become an artist that they're better off getting a secretarial job than trying for a scholarship, and they should plan for disappointment. Of course they're going to be disappointed. Life is about disappointment.

Living life well is also about doing something about that disappointment. And trying to stop people from making the world better makes us into people who suck.

Word.

And now, since I am feeling betterer enough to blog, it's time to try and get some work done on the novel.

pondering the deep questions

 journal, novels, shadow bound, writing life  6 Responses »
Oct 182008
 

Oy vey. The start of this novel really is problematic. I would cry "What was I thinking?" except I suspect the answer is that I wasn't thinking. Or rather, I was thinking too much, and not finding the answers I needed, and therefore reduced to feeling my way. I'm hoping that once I sort out the opening chapters, it will start to flow a little more smoothly. At least the retaliative catch-up strike is proceeding apace, yesterday's virus notwithstanding.

Right now, the television is blaring about Kath & Kim — The American Version, the circularity of which makes me cringe. I have never understood the American urge to take a successful tv show, staff it with American writers, cast and crew, and reshoot it. Is it meant to be an homage? Is it meant to sanitise American television of anything non-American? Is it related to the publishing trend Justine was talking about a couple of days back? Do other countries do this and I'm simply not aware of it?

And why oh why does Australian tv feel the need to air our original series back to back with the American remake?

I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled

could it be…?

 journal, shadow queen  3 Responses »
Oct 152008
 

October has come along and plumped itself on the couch and has been watching TV solidly for days, and where is the cover art I promised you, you might be wondering?

The answer is: I don't yet have the green light to post it.

However, if you were so inclined, you could wander over to the galleries of the fantabulous Les Petersen, where you would find a picture titled Shadow Queen which, yes, would be the artwork forming the basis of the cover. In fact, this way, you get to see the artwork without all those distracting things like names and titles ;)

I have spent today launching a retaliative catch-up strike on the novel, and at last feel like I'm making some headway. Here's hoping it continues apace, and I don't get stuck again!

insert witty title here

 journal  4 Responses »
Oct 142008
 

I'm back! Did you miss me?

It's been a strange and (sadly, for the sake of my deadlines) largely but not entirely unproductive little while. Here, have a quick, incoherent, and utterly non-linear recap:

I met a girl by the name of Emma, and discussed with her the wondrous situation she enjoyed of being ungoogleable.1 I then spent the rest of that evening marvelling at Emma's inattentiveness when — after listening to her mobile phone ring, to ensure she had given out her number correctly — we received a call from none other than Emma, opening with the phrase… "Hey, I just had a missed call from this number. Who is this? Oh! You! Yeah, did you need something…? Then why did you call…?"

I often found myself in front of awesome trees. Seriously. Look.

this tree is totally made of win

this tree is totally made of win

I found myself captivated by a ute bearing the sticker "UTERUS"2 and spent probably far too much time trying to work out just what, exactly, the ute's owner was trying to convey with this epic fail of a pun.

This snippet of footpath graffiti also captured my attention.

it's the singular but glaring grammatical issue which intrigues me

it's the singular but glaring grammatical issue which intrigues me

I walked into a bookstore with a $20 voucher, and walked out with $80 of books. I wanted to walk out with $140 of books, but restrained myself. The mathematically canny will already have worked out that the actual amount I should have paid is $60. In actual fact, owing to the fact that the gift voucher in question was apparently rare as hen's teeth, processed differently in different stores, crashed the system once, and accidentally cancelled once, I may have paid $20, $40, $60, or any combination thereof. We'll see when the credit card statement arrives, I suppose.

  1. To truly understand this, you'd need to know her surname, which I shan't share with you because imagine my horror if I suddenly made her googleable? It would be a travesty! It wouldn't happen, because that is the magic of her surname, but you'll just have to trust me on this one. [↩]
  2. I did take a photo, but I won't inflict it on you as the bumper sticker was too grainy, owing to the fact that I was driving at the time and couldn't spare a great deal of finesse for the fine art of photography. Oh yeah, photographing while driving. I live on the edge. You know it. [↩]

colour me boggled

 journal, shadow queen, writing life  5 Responses »
Oct 032008
 

Google Alerts had a lovely surprise for me this morning: Infinitas is listing my novel as available for pre-order!

Of course I couldn't resist a quick search of the other Australian bookstores, which turned up a pre-order page on the Dymocks site, and a pre-order page on Booktopia as well.1

I would like to claim I have been calm and unaffected by this news, but I would be lying like a lying thing.

In other news, don't be alarmed if the blog lapses into quietness for the next little while. I have a friend visiting this weekend, and then I am hieing myself out of town for a week in an attempt to get some serious writing done.

See you on the other side!

  1. ETA: The Booktopia page appears to have vanished, for reasons unknown. Oh well. [↩]