back in my day…

 journal  2 Responses »
Jan 312010
 

During the recent edits on Shadow Bound, I tripped over my outdated grammatical education. Namely: did you all know that the plural of roof is ROOFS?

(North Americans please to be looking away, since you have always known this, because for you this has always been true, and thus my perplexity may in turn perplex you.)

Okay, back to those of us who were taught that the plural is rooves, such as (apparently) Kiwis or Australian children pre-1980's,1 I have one thing to say about this new development: DO NOT WANT.

Australians pluralise elf and hoof to elves and hooves respectively — why have we decided to make roof an exception to this rule? WHY? It's not as if English needs yet another rule that only applies sporadically, is it?2

Sigh. Too bad I wasn't consulted in the vote.

  1. for the record, my grammatical education was decidedly NOT pre-1980's. Which means one of two things: I owe the majority of my grammatical er, excellence, to my mother, or I went to a school that was a little slow on the uptake. [↩]
  2. No, I have nothing of actual merit to say on this issue. What did you expect? I'm a writer. I'm allowed to posture dramatically over grammar, aren't I? [↩]

i'm not afraid of a little chemical reset

 journal, shadow queen  4 Responses »
Jan 282010
 

My circadian rhythms responded to Tuesday's punishment by waking me up at 5:29 both yesterday and this morning. Oh, circadian rhythms, this means war, and you're going down. (At least no one has greeted me this morning at work with a horrified expression and the diffident, "Are you OK? Do you need to go home?" which I normally earn after a day or so of interrupted sleep patterns.)

Today I am going to do something I don't often do: link to a review.1 Mainly because that bit down the bottom, all in capitals, is the entire content of the email Karen sent me directly on finishing the book and, well, it's my favourite summary of Shadow Queen ever. And now you can all enjoy it too :)

Speaking of Karen, she also has smart things to say about the author's position in the whitewashing fracas, as does Justine.

And Caitlin Kittredge has smart things to say about the "write every day" mantra, and how that works for her. And how you can make it work for you.

  1. That was it. Quick, wasn't it? Didja catch it? [↩]

public holidays. i'm damn sure we need more of 'em

 journal  Comments Off
Jan 262010
 

Today being a public holiday in Australia, I had exactly one thing planned: to sleep in.

You can imagine, then, that waking up at 6:22 did not thrill me, and waking up again at 7:18 after a valiant attempt to ignore my first foray into consciousness for the day wasn't any better.1

So I did the only thing I could possibly do, under the circumstances. I decided to punish myself. Once and for all, I would teach myself that on mornings when a sleep-in is planned, then by gosh and by golly, sleeping in will be had. Or, at the very least, a thorough lying in.

Which is why I got up, had a shower (because, you know, sleeping in can be done while clean and fresh — particularly if you're going to be awake for it), made sure the blinds were most firmly shut, and climbed back into bed with a very dim bedside lamp2 and a book and stayed there for five hours.

I considered, after all that strenuous reading, forcing myself to take a nap for good measure, and I'm not entirely ruling out the possibility for this afternoon's list of activities, but for now at least I am confident that I have got the message across. I am judging this based on the fact that I feel all sort of glorious and drowsy and … oh, yes, that's the word. Relaxed.

  1. Normally I can manage better than this at sleeping in, but my uterus was suffering today, and apparently it didn't want to go through it alone. Bloody needy bit of plumbing is all I can say. [↩]
  2. If you're trying to punish a body for unearthly and illegal attempts at wakefulness, dim lighting is imperative [↩]
 Posted by at 4:41 pm

shadow bound, the wordle

 journal, shadow bound  6 Responses »
Jan 232010
 

So, it's probably a touch mean of me to tease you all with a wordle of Shadow Bound, since it won't be published and available to read until much closer to the middle of the year.

But I'm going to do precisely that.

Gee, can you guess which two characters get mentioned an awful lot?

 Posted by at 7:37 pm  Tagged with:

awake: not a patch on asleep

 journal, writing life  Comments Off
Jan 212010
 

So I told myself, when I finished the edits, I would not write a word, not a single word, before Saturday. Five days off. Obligatory and compulsory and well-deserved.

But you know what my brain is? Contrary. Because I barely made it through two days before this girl spoke up inside my head with the first line of a novel. Yeah, I'll just tack that idea on to the list of the umpteen novels already waiting in line to be written, shall I?1

So instead I give you people a video I was sent today which made me laugh.


Nobody's looking for a puppeteer in today's wintry economic climate…
  1. Through a monumental effort of will, I have not actually started writing this new novel — because the faerie novel needs finishing first, and because I really do need a bit of a break this week. Conscious but very little more and all that. [↩]

gotta tell you: liking this doing-nothing schtick

 journal, shadow bound  3 Responses »
Jan 192010
 

Today I bring you: a title!

Book 2 of The Binding — which I have previously been referring to by such monikers as Book 2, Pledged, the rest of Matilde's story, and "that effing car-crash of a narrative" (you know, when I'm feeling particularly affectionate) — shall henceforth be known as Shadow Bound.

I'm very happy with it, and not only because pretty much every title I could think of with Queen in it started to sound dreadfully, er, steamy. So going with Shadow for the linking element? Good thing. (Titles. They're hard.)

In other news, today, in stopping to let me board, the tram stopped directly under the insulated point, and couldn't start again. The driver tried all sorts of strange and mystical things like peering at the roof, adjusting the side-view mirrors, sitting down so heavily in his seat that he rocked the tram (not enough), and even jumping in his cabin to rock the tram (not enough). After all his efforts failed … we had to get out and push. PUSHING TRAMS. I have never heard of such shenanigans.

Makes for a good story, though, there is that.

books happen

 journal, shadow bound, writing life  Comments Off
Jan 172010
 

Lookit!

Just as I was saying that I was coming to the end of the deadline crunch, and thinking about how glorious it would be to read new stuff, I caught up with a friend for dinner the other night and she leant me:

BOOKS! (All my friends are enablers of the worst best kind.)

It is all part of her ploy to bring me to the YA scene, because I happened to express my love for the voice in YA books — if you're looking for whippy narrative tone, with sarcasm and cleverness and sly internal observation all wrapped around blunt honesty, YA is where it's at — and now she has given me homework. The best kind of homework ever.

Naturally, I started reading them on the tram on the way home. There was, after all, a solitary tram ride to be endured, and, well. It goes without saying, doesn't it? This was not the wisest weakness I've ever indulged, because at that point I had STILL not finished the edits1 — but tonight, not half an hour ago,2 that last is no longer true. Edits are done, the corrected manuscript has been mailed to my editor and agent and is therefore officially off my desk, and I am free to enjoy my all-new all-YA reading feast guilt-free.

  1. which, between time constraints and wacky hijinks involving the Accept All Changes button while miles from the latest backed up copy, were, yeah, dragging on a bit… [↩]
  2. I have spent the intervening half-hour looking for icons of Mr Earbrass, or images that could be made into icons of Mr Earbrass, but to no avail, alas alack [↩]

i swear, one day, i'm actually going to finish them

 journal, shadow bound, writing life  Comments Off
Jan 132010
 

My Goodreads page shows me as being in the middle of a modest slew of books, which is not untrue: they're all books I've started and not yet finished.1 But whenever my workload gets intense, I have this habit of returning to familiar ground, reading-wise.

So lately I've been re-reading, and my books of choice for this Christmas are Jane Austen's — Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion to be precise. I never can tell which of the two I like best, and whenever I read one I inevitably read the other within a month.

This time, I'm going to follow that up with a little Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, which was one of my Christmas presents, just as soon as I finish the edits. Which may be too much Austen and Austen-imitation even for my taste, but what the hell. I'm up for it!

  1. I never used to read multiple books at any given time. But things change. [↩]

i'm actually craving vegetables now

 journal, shadow bound, writing life  2 Responses »
Jan 102010
 

Ugh.

For the past … week? has it only been a week? … I've been pulling in 15-16 hour days, between the dayjob and the edits, and the few hours left over afterwards are for scarfing down some trans-fats and/or melted cheese, commuting, and nowhere near enough sleep. I tell you, I am not built for this sort of routine.

My favourite manuscript pages in this whole process were the act breaks. Do you know what they are? FREEBIE PAGES. (I'm gonna write manuscripts with fifty-gazllion acts in future, just so I can have lots of lovely, do-nothing-to-me freebie pages.)

Luckily, as of today I've all but finished the edits on Pledged. The first pass to take care of the line-edit stuff is done, the tags I stuck throughout the manuscript to mark bigger fixes have all been taken care of, the edit letter with its structural problems has been ticked off. I even made a little "It followed me home! Can I keep it?" note in the margin over that made-up word :) Now the only thing left to do is a final sweep for repetition.1 Which is none too soon, really, because the pressure's on at the dayjob and I could really do with a just a smidge more sleep. Like, you know, a decade or so.

One thing I did manage to do in the past few weeks was go to the movies, wherein I was treated to a trailer for Clash Of The Titans. The tagline of which, in a stroke of utter lunacy, is: TITANS WILL CLASH.

To which I say: tagline writers, you have just committed a tautological crime against humanity. STOP THAT.

  1. I tell you, if one of my characters looks, glances, gazes, stares, glares, or fixes their eyes on something ever again, it'll be too damn soon. [↩]
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