and they're all (well, mostly all) cousins

 shadow bound, writing life  7 Responses »
Apr 072010
 

The proofs for Shadow Bound landed today. The fourteen-day forecast is therefore for sudden squalls of insanity, the occasional seagull impersonation, an inability to discuss any topic that does not immediately relate to (for example) the placement of commas, and a general air of abstraction and sleeplessness.

Although, the proof reader has won my undying love for the following comment in her cover letter:

This was a thoroughly absorbing read. Lots of urst (please cast Viggo Mortensen or Hugh Jackman as Dieter), tension and complexities.

Heh. Heheh. I think it was only a couple of months ago I finally figured out what URST stood for,1 and now apparently I've written a book with sufficient URST to make at least one person think of Viggo.

I can live with that.

This evening, along with getting started on the proofs, I also wrote up the dedication and acknowledgements. My next task, concurrent with the edits, is to whip up some kind of character/house/tribe glossary — which I think is no bad idea, given that no less than 40-odd character and house names are mentioned in the first 60 pages. And this is a novel with actually not that many characters!

It's all starting to take shape people. Book!

  1. I'm slow on the uptake. But I know there's at least one person who also doesn't know what it means, so just for you, Mum: UnResolved Sexual Tension. [↩]

she has a face!

 announcements, journal, shadow bound  6 Responses »
Apr 012010
 

Yesterday I suffered from sponge-brain caused by a criminal lack of sleep which, I don't mind telling you, is entirely Tripod's fault, for scheduling their show so late.1 (Although when I pointed this out to them, what did they go and do but thank me for making the effort to turn up! Who thanks people for being a teasing jerk? The boys from Tripod, obviously. Sorry, Mum — their mums obviously did a better job at instilling polite behaviour.)

(Also, said show was fantastic. I realise the comedy festival has only just started, and it's a big call to make so early on, but this is my favourite show so far and may well turn out to be my favourite show of the festival. A lot of this has to do with Tripod, who are, of course, we all recognise this, brilliant. It also has to do with their special guest star, Elana Stone, whose voice in the first dragon song utterly slayed the entire audience. I do love me a strong female vocalist.)

And today Reliably Absent Yarra Trams sabotaged my attempt at a social life.

But it doesn't matter! Why, you ask? Because Allen & Unwin have released their July 2010 catalogue!

Er, yeah, that's great, Deb, I hear you say. But what does this, yanno, mean?

Well, for all of you oh so patiently waiting for Shadow Bound to become a real grown-up book, this means you are now in possession of a firm publication date2 AND, as a bonus, a first glimpse of the cover art.

Is it not pretty? And shiny?

Yes, okay, I know it's not particularly large, but I don't have a large version to hand to show you, on account of the large version not being actually finalised yet. Once I do, you can bet I'll be slapping it up on the blog for you all to ogle and admire.

  1. Oh, okay, Meandering Yarra Trams probably has some share of culpability as well. [↩]
  2. Note: due to the vagaries of the industry, a publication date of July 2010 means the book should start appearing in stores sometime in June 2010. [↩]

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:

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. [↩]

this time, it will be different

 journal, shadow bound, writing life  2 Responses »
Jan 032010
 

Well! Christmas — and 2009 — is officially over and done with. I won't say I've emerged entirely unscathed, but I and my family appear to have the correct number of functioning limbs and vital organs apiece, and my incipient lunacy has progressed slower than anticipated.

I'm counting it as a win.

Mostly, in between brief bouts with my family and decidedly less brief bouts of flying,1 I spent my Christmas editing. (Oh yeah, I know how to party. Just ask me.) Sometimes, my family helped with the editing. Like the one time I really wanted someone to say that blood did not taste all that metallic, and not one of them would. After that, since they took such glee in ganging up on me, I asked them "Well, what tastes like iron, that isn't blood, and isn't iron?"

Their suggestions included blood sausage, cranberries, and Deep Heat. None of which, you know, make for great similes.

I've made a first pass through every page of the manuscript, so all the little fixes should be taken care of and only the fiddly larger fixes remain. Oh joy. My all-time favourite blooper in the manuscript was when the character Xaver suddenly and inexplicably, for one line only, became Xander. WTF? My all-time favourite editor's note in the margin of the manuscript was this one:

a nice word – but not a real one??

Obviously my editor is a woman after my mother's heart, who is convinced I am engaged in a single-handed attempt to pervert English by (gasp) making up new words.

And now, after all the editing I've done this weekend, I think it's time for pizza. Or oblivion. I can't decide.

  1. Three out of five of my flights were heinously delayed, courtesy of Brisbane Airport — even when I was nowhere near the place! Damn flow-on effects and low-budget airlines not having any spare planes, anyway. [↩]

news from the trenches

 journal, shadow bound, writing life  4 Responses »
Dec 282009
 

First, the administrivia: I have been a most efficient and dedicated authorly creature and mailed out the giveaway books. They went out in the afternoon post of Monday 21 December (my time). So, winners, eyes on your mail boxes, and please to be ooh'ing and aah'ing over the pretty when it arrives, 'kay? 'kay.

I would like to say that my Christmas has been quiet and contemplative, but as I steal a moment to write this I quite literally cannot hear anything over the bawling and hollering of the two year old and three year old. They're not a patch on the twenty-four year old cousin egging them on, however. I can say my Christmas has been raucously festive, at least ;)

It's also involved edits. Lots of. I'm now about halfway through the first pass of edits on Pledged Book 2, whatever it ends up being called. But as I go through, I stick a post-it note against any fix that requires too much thinking or might result in a ripple of changes back and/or forward through the novel. So the pages I've 'done' usually end up with a minimum 3 post-it notes apiece, and need to be gone back to. They're starting to look like much harder work than the pages I haven't touched yet. Oy vey.

Somewhere along the line I realised I've started talking to the edits. Well, actually, that usually happens from the get-go — but I seem to have progressed to talking aloud to the edits. Can't remember at what point I started talking aloud to the edits of Shadow Queen, so hard to say whether my insanity is progressing faster or not. Probably faster. Accelerated by the Christmas lights, no doubt.

I had more to say, but the squalling has reached epic proportions and if I don't at least make an effort to intervene, I might end up caught in the crossfire. See you all in the new year!

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