I can write anywhere…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Even here.

This is where I have been for a couple of days. Had to go with husband who had a work related retreat.

Terrible hardship, y’know. I mean, who could possibly WORK in surroundings like these? And me with a deadline – which come hell or high water, I will meet – in another four days.

Awana Hotel and Golf Resort, Genting Highlands, i.e. in the cool mountain air…

Below: on the balcony of our room
Below: view from our room
Below: and the room the suite

Below: the art-deco shower recess…
Ah, life is so tough sometimes.

And bliss is…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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When I was a kid growing up on a pint-sized farm in Western Australia, I thought shoes were a grown-up horror. Bare feet were bliss.

Ah, those hot summer days feeling the dust under one’s toes, those cold wintry days of slopping along the long shallow ditch through the cow paddock pulling a home made “boat” (actually just a shaped piece of wood with a nail at the pointy end) behind me on a piece of knotted string… Ok, so I’d emerge with blue toes at the end, and have to race back to the house to get warm again, but that was half the fun.

At school, we’d take our shoes off the moment we hit the bare earth of the playground and not put them back on until the bell went to bring us inside again. The boys often wouldn’t even do that much. They’d sneak inside without shoes and at the end of the day their soles would be black because those jarrah board floors happily gave up some of their ingrained generations of oil…

Of course I paid a price for all that. I have two scars on the top of my feet still clearly visible nearly 60 years later. Whatever scars I had on the soles have long been worn off. The other price I still pay. I grew up with broad feet, typical of people who run around bare foot in their growing years.

As I have small feet otherwise, finding shoes to fit has always been a problem.

Today I walked into a shoe shop, wasn’t intending to buy anything, truly – I was just waiting for my husband – and I found a brand of shoe that fitted me beautifully. And they had my size. Fifteen minutes later I walked out with three pairs of shoes that fit. And look good. And made with leather uppers. And they weren’t expensive either.

Now that is bliss.

More on the problem of recap…

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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…i.e. reminding the reader what happened in Book One, The Last Stormlord. (Yeah, I know, it hasn’t even been published yet, but as I am finishing up Book 2, I have to think about this now.)

Every writer would love their readers to be SO impressed by their book that every word remains imprinted on their mind till the day they die. Alas, it doesn’t happen like that, not even remotely.

Looking at what my beta readers forget is humbling. It is in fact easier to look at what they remember. Characters, the main ones, stay with them, but not the minor players, no matter how well you draw them – unless they are really odd or pivotal in some way. The world stays with them, especially some parts of it. Everyone retains a vague memory of the story line but how much is so variable I can’t even generalise as to the amount.

Different people remember different things with startling clarity. Particular scenes affect different people in varying ways. Some remember things that even I’ve forgotten!!

What particularly universally disappears from their memories is the magic. I don’t mean the broad outline, but the subtleties. My beta readers kept making comments like, “But can’t character A get out of this sticky situation by doing magic type B?”

Er, no, ‘fraid not. Character A is a rainlord and they can’t do that. Only a stormlord can do magic type B. (I guess it didn’t help that there is a rainlord character in Book 1 whose magic is aberrant.)

So I know that in Book 2, and probably Book 3 too, I have to somehow subtly remind the reader just what the difference is between a rainlord, a stormlord, a cloudmaster and a water reeve.

That’s one of the very important reasons that one has beta readers, bless ’em.

BTW, Marina made an interesting comment about synopses versus other forms of reminder here. In answer, I mention the possibility of using a glossary this way. I am still debating the idea of a glossary for book 2. (Book One did not have one). What do you all think?

I have added a poll on the sidebar. It allows for multiple answers. If your answer is the last choice, please feel free to give an alternative in the comments!

We progress!

Posted on by October 12, 2023
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Yeah, yeah, I know. Almost a week since I last posted. My bad and all that. But I am busy with Stormlord Rising. Which is coming along nicely, thank you.

(pix above is from the Oz cover…)

In the meantime The Last Stormlord moved on to proofreaders – two of them – and my editor tells me that they both told her they thought it was a terrific story. Love those sort of comments because they come from people under no obligation to make a comment at all!

And in other bits and pieces: Husband was off climbing Mount Kinabalu. Well, he didn’t actually get very far. It rained, and rained, and rained, and the whole party in the end came down off the mountain without conquering the peak, or even seeing it. Still, the trip was more about setting up a programme for research with Sabah Parks, so it was still a success.

I miss Sabah.

And my day yesterday? I went to the local hospital for a check-up re my ulnar palsy. I had an appointment for 10.30 a.m. I finally left the hospital at 5.05 p.m. In other words, I spent the day in the waiting room (too afraid even to sneak out for a cup of coffee, let alone lunch, for fear I’d be called). Am I complaining? No, not really. That’s free medicine, and I saw a lovely specialist. You can’t have it all for nothing.

What’s the worst thing about writing the middle book of a trilogy?

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Actually, the worst thing is exactly the same, no matter if it is book 2 or book 3.

It’s how to remind the reader of what went before.
Too little, and you have them mystified.
Too much, and you bore them to tears.
Too poorly executed and you end up with silly conversations or paragraphs of recap or masses of flash backs.

The toughest thing is always, always, always to get it just right.

In fact, I don’t think you can. Why not? Because no two readers are the same. Someone has a photographic memory and doesn’t need to be reminded at all. Same with the guy who just put down book 1 and immediately picks up book 2.

Other readers have lousy memories and don’t remember anything, or they let a couple of years lapse before they get around to reading book 2.

How can you please everyone?

You just have to take a stab at it.
In the past the fashion often seemed to be to write a synopsis of the previous book(s) and include that at the beginning. No one seems to do that these days. I must admit I always found such synopses incomprehensible. I much prefer to have necessary info inserted discreetly as I read. Bits here and there.

And believe me that is tough to do.

More on this tomorrow.

Flying fish?

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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True stories, not fantasy this time.

Imagine this. You are flying a commercial jet to Rhode Island, U.S., descending to land but still way up in the air – and your plane gets hit by a fish. That happened in 2000. A fish strike, a thousand feet up.

And what about this.
Back in the days of “Confrontation” when Indonesia embarked on a bizarre “invasion” of Malaysia. A few hapless Indonesian soldiers were caught trying to cross the Straits of Malacca. The coastal patrol boat that caught them put some personnel in their boat and began to tow them, invaders and boat and guards, to shore in Malaysia.

All of a sudden one of the Indonesians keeled over, dead.

There was a post mortem. A strange object was removed from the throat of the dead man. It was identified as the sharp snout of…a flying fish. Death by fish strike.

And the “flying” fish that hit the jet? Dropped by an Osprey.

Pix: an osprey taken by me at Virginia Beach.

THE NORAMLY FACTOR

Posted on by March 13, 2021
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Something good has come out of the Malaysian government’s decision not to go ahead with Noramly’s nomination as Director General of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency ( a decision that has nothing whatsoever to do with him or his competency or experience or anything of the things that you might think would count).

We have found out how many supporters/friends he actually has – people who are dismayed that he wasn’t given a chance. People who knew he would make an excellent Director General. There has been a flood of emails from all over the world – from USA to Latin America, Australia to Europe, from one of Japan’s top nuclear scientists, from other Asian countries, from the Middle East, from people who worked for him in the Agency before, from people who work there now.

He is truly an international scientist of stature and it’s good to know that there are so many people in the field who still believe in him.