The Naxos audiotapes were wonderful and introduced me to Georgette Heyer who was a writer I had never bothered with previously. After finding her, I then found the refreshing and worthy Lucinda Brant and who has featured in Amazon’s Top 100 for a few weeks now. All in all, I owe Naxos a great deal!

Please enjoy my fun post on my first ever engagement with Georgette Heyer and feel free to respond!

Villainy…

I decided to take Gisborne far from the familiar canon and set him upon an entirely different path. A fiction upon a fiction if you like. To do his position within the time frame justice, I needed to read. A lot. However, as I say in the author’s note at the beginning of Gisborne: Book of Pawns, historical commentary about the 1100’s is highly contradictory and thus I took whichever fact suited the needs of my characters.

Perhaps this is wrong. Perhaps one needs to go back and back through one’s research to find that most primary evidence from a commentator at the time who might have noted the thoughts of monk or master at arms, prelate or professional archer. Thus surely one then has the most definitive context for one’s story.

But then why haven’t historians done the same thing? And if they have, why do they disagree? Why is there so much conjecture over such things as bathing and cleanliness, ships, foodstuffs, fabrics and riding styles? These are merely a few that spring to mind.

I think there are two kinds of historical fiction writers. There are the purist HF writers who are in fact historians themselves. People like Dorothy Dunnett, who is and shall always remain my all time favourite. And many sterling others like Elizabeth Chadwick and Sharon Kay Penman whose narrative backbone is historical fact in its most exciting and articulate sense.

Then there are writers like me – HF writers that I take much pleasure in reading but who are softer with their fact, their stories character-driven within a historical scenario.

Whichever category historical fiction writers fall into,  I shall go on accepting both. Putting aside my own style, as a reader I enjoy the experience of both types of fiction. I don’t prefer one or the other. In both instances I rest easy in the knowledge that each writer has been loyal to their timeframe and not taken the facts lightly.

A painter will always paint in the style which is right for him. That is not to say that he has ignored the very foundations of his art.Perhaps one can say the same of historical fiction writers.

What do hist.fict readers think?

A week ago, I attended a masterclass of stumpwork embroidery in a shop called A Stitch In Time.

In fact I saved no stitches at all. I had hundreds of stitches to accomplish before the piece I was working on would be finished.

It will take AGES!

It’s a project that Master stitcher Jane Nicholas has designed for her new book on moths and butterflies: The Life-cycle of the Swallowtail Butterfly. The pressure in these classes is normally quite extreme with masses of homework that must be accomplished each night before we move onto new elements the next day in class and this class perhaps even more so if we hadn’t been fortunate enough to get an extra day for the class. We were thus able to take a breath and relax a little.

The challenge of this latest design is a caterpillar in vibrant lime green Au Ver a Soie silks, with navy and red stripes and obscenely small little red dots; another caterpillar (smaller) in navy, red and white with microscopic red dots; a chrysalis in green-tinted gold kid leather. And a butterfly whose wings beggar description: all in two shades of yellow, black, blue and red. The silks used are as fine as cobwebs, threads called Cifonda and with which I have a love-hate relationship.

We’re a loud and sparkly lot in the class: laughter, story-telling, eating morning and afternoon teas and wonderful lunches, celebrating birthdays, keeping up our flagging energies with bowls of jubes and jellybabies at the end of the day. We come from all parts of the island for this series of classes – some have been coming since 1994. It’s like a meeting of old scholars.

We joke that we’ll be doing this when we are on zimmer frames and looking at our work through glasses as thick as the bottoms of beer bottles. But the reality for me is that my sight has deteriorated massively since that first class many years ago. I hope I can keep going, hope that my stitches remain fine and small because there would be nothing worse than my work becoming less rather than more. Defeats the purpose of all those years learning.

But if not, never mind … the lifelong friends I’ve made will just have to fill the gap.

My mother went to a small Quaker school called The Friends School for all of her academic life. In her time it was an intimate campus but now it is the biggest Quaker school in the Southern hemisphere. One of her favourite classes at that time was art and she showed some dexterity and facility.  The images below are from her sketchbook which takes pride of place in our family treasure chest. I always thought it was such a shame that she never followed up on her ability after leaving school before the war. I think the images speak for themselves.

It was and remains something special for me. In its time, I would cut out memorable quotes and stick them in a little notebook to cart around when I was ‘faraway’ and homesick for family and place. I suspect he was a local vicar or even a psychologist but the whole page would be on a particular subject each week and I would invariably find some sort of inspiration in many of the things he said. Here’s just a miniscule selection of the pieces in my notebook:

‘The more you rely upon yourself and the more challenges you accept, the faster will your feelings of self-confidence  develop.’

‘… if the outlook is wintry just now, well, Spring isn’t far behind.’

‘And talking about the Fairy Godmother’s gift at a christening: Bestow if you please, the gift for enjoying life – for that is only the assured happiness.’

‘Keep your priorities intact but have a second place where happy thoughts predominate.’

‘Do you remember that I once wrote about the value of keeping a scrapbook – things you’ve heard or read – that inspired or encouraged you?’

Of course mum, at 86, no longer takes English Womens’ Weekly which does still exist. And I remember towards the end of her subscription, the Man Who Sees finally retired from his column. It was inevitably a sad moment, and I suspect this many years later, that the gentleman with such clarity of thinking may have passed away. But isn’t it lovely that in my battered, exploding ‘This and That’ notebook, I have a mine of gentle texts for support in both the good and the passing ordinary times?

The other night my OH/farmer husband and I had the complete reverse.

We trotted off to a family wedding and just to show the transformation that had to be made, this is us normally:

The effort required for me to scrub up to mingling standard was HUGE!

1.30: Bath in some nice smelling oils.

2PM: Nails, cracked and broken on right hand as am right-handed everything. 45 minutes to do whatever you do to make hands smooth … exfoliate, that’s it! Then use cuticle oil, shape nails and paint with clear nail polish.

3PM: Wash hair. Use stuff called Morrocan Oil to smooth strands. Blow dry.

3.30PM: Put hair in whopping rollers to give body.

3.40PM: Begin facework, or what my father-in-law used to say was painting the masterpiece and what my husband says is using polyfiller! By 4 PM, the face had as much work as was reasonably possible.

4PM: Dress. The first time I have worn a dress for 12 years. My God. It’s like a wearing body armour! I slipped on the most sheer pantihose, gorgeous fine black Schiaparellis that have been in an unopened packet in my chest of drawers for 20 years. Then the pearls and finally the killer-diller shoes with toes as sharp as a stilleto. (Dagger, that is.)

Ventured out for photos and Pup immediately jumped up from behind and put claws straight through my treasured Schiaparellis. Oooh, Dog!!! Fortunately had bought another pair of very ordinary sheer tights the day before, just in case. Frantic rip-off of laddered tights and mad pull-on of new ones.

4.15: Mother arrives for me to tweak last bits of her.

4.30: Lock dogs up, race down to car, having packed:

glasses, camera, lippy, green stuff to take away the red flush I always get at functions, mints, my goodluck charm, a vintage white lawn hankie

all in a tiny clutch that is supposedly fashionable. Don’t the designers realise that when one reaches a certain age, one must pack glasses at the very least? That’s the clutch full! Mine barely closed.

The night of course was wonderful and it was really thrilling to wear red carpet clothes but like any Cinderella, everything turns to pumpkins and mice the next day and my feet would have done the Ugly Sisters proud!

PS: I managed, by judicious online shopping in NZ, London and Italy to bring in my outfit (shoes included) at $A200!

Writing Out the Grief

Melissa A. Smith

A common question people ask a writer is what made them decide to sit down and start writing in the first place. For me, it was grief.

While in high school, I wrote. I had taken journalism and the teacher loved my writings. Two pieces of my work had been published in two different school publications. I was also asked to join the staff for the school paper, but declined. I just didn’t like writing the things wanted for a paper. I liked creating stories to take you places. Inventing new worlds and people to live in them. I stopped writing after getting out of school and didn’t start again for several long years.

December 2008 had started like any other December before it. I was out shopping for those perfect gifts for each member of my family, and loving every minute of it. By my side was my shopping partner. My mom. My best friend. This year was a little different, as we made our rounds trying to get most of her shopping done earlier than her normal pace of slow (she was known to be out shopping as late as Christmas Eve), because she was set to have her final knee replacement surgery on the 19^th. That day was also the last day of work I had before school let out for Christmas Break.

We had almost done everything she’d wanted to have done, done. But there were still a few things to gather, like stocking stuffers and things of that nature. She went in for her surgery and everything went great! The last time she’d been in the hospital, for the first knee 6 months prior, she’d contracted hospital-acquired pneumonia. Her doctor, wanting her to be healthy for the rigorous knee therapy that follows two days after surgery, released her the following day. The 20^th.

Wanting to forgo giving you all the details, I received a phone call early on the 21^st. A phone call no one wants to get. My father, who’d awoken to find his partner for the past 34 years gone, couldn’t make that call. The responding police officer had to do it for him. Pneumonia had taken her from us.

So started my decent into grief.

We were supposed to do some shopping before I took her to physical therapy that day. We were supposed to do a lot of things during my break, because she too had it off for recovery.

Instead, I had to help my dad organize a funeral.

During the year and a half that followed, I read over 230 books. All while working full time and tending to a family.

It was the start of summer vacation in 2010 when I’d run out of books to read. I dove into spending time with my boys and vegging at the pool daily. I thought it had been long enough, and maybe the grief wouldn’t be so sharp. I was wrong. Without having someplace for my mind to wander, to live in, I was a mess of tears.

It was then I’d woke up in the middle of the night, leaving a dream that made my brain buzz. I tried to shake it off, leave it where I found it. In my dreams. But it wanted to be let out. So I sat down in secret and started writing.

At first when my family noticed my switch from books to the computer and all my constant typing, they asked what I was doing. I lied. I told them I was writing to my sister who lives in Texas. At first they bought it, but as the typing went on, they were puzzled as to why I didn’t just call her and talk to her. Again, I lied. But this time I said she’d asked me to write down some things about our mom.

While they still were puzzled by all the clicking going on at the keyboard, they left me alone.

Three months later, I’d written and finished my first novel. Cloud Nine. During that time I also started on another story which I finished and released four months later.

While writing started out as therapy for a grieving soul, it is now something I must do to keep all the exciting characters quiet. I love it! I only wish it could have developed without such dark beginnings, but nonetheless, my mother would be proud.

******

This is one story from Indie Chicks: 25 Women 25 Personal Stories available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble

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Also included are sneak peeks into 25 great novels!

My young adult paranormal romance, Cloud Nine is one of the novels featured.

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I went to the kitchen shop and replaced some of my aged cooking utensils, to the bathroom shop and bought new loo brushes, to the carpet shop to get samples so that we can replace our damaged carpet, to the hairdresser’s to track down Morrocan oil, to the newsagent’s to buy glue to stick down the tape that binds embroidery hoops ready for next week’s Master Classes.

Then took lunch to the farm for OH who was foot-paring today.

And that was my mistake.

He was in the farmyard close by the barn, opening gates.

‘I need your help to move the barn paddock (all paddocks have names) mob to the yards.’

‘But I haven’t got my boots.’

‘You won’t need them. Take the ute, I’ll take the four-wheeler.’

So I parked my car. Hopped out, walked daintily across damp grass looking down, seeing water stains gathering on the shoes. Sighing. Climbed up (like a rock wall for me) into the ute, and took off into the paddocks after OH. We rounded up the flock and began to drive it toward the yards … not so bad, shoes might dry, and the dust inside the ute mightn’t leave too many marks on my pale blue shirt.

Got to the yards and the mob did the time-honoured thing of stalling at the gates, thinking ‘yes, no, yes, no’ and making a break past us. Stopped them.  Back to the gates. Realised that I would have to get out of ute to start making appropriate sheep-moving noise: ‘Hut, hut, hut, HO!’ Whistling, clapping hands. (The kelpie pushes with a  little too much force so we only use her right inside the yards). Sighed as I jumped down onto sheep poo. Hopped from pad of grass to pad of grass, cursing OH, sheep and life.  Doesn’t he realise how much I love my JP Tods? Stones, dirt, manure … gee thanks, darl!

All done.

He and the contractor began work and I took myself off home, climbing the cream carpeted stair and forgetting to look underneath my shoes to make sure they were clean.

Left a trail of sheep poo all perfectly imprinted with the JP Tod rubber stop marks.

It’s sooo lucky we’re getting new carpet!

Bells ring when I read Michelle Muto’s story of how she came to be published. I often say of my books, when I see a wonderful spike upward in their sales, that they remind me of the little engine that could, puffing up the hill and saying ‘I think I can, I think can.’

That is exacly what Michelle’s books have done. And then some!

Read on…

THE MAGIC WITHIN AND THE LITTLE BOOK THAT COULD

That’s what I’ve been calling The Book of Lost Souls, the book that started my path to publication. I’ve always loved to write. I’ve always loved the way imagination and words blend on a page, the way they transport a reader to faraway worlds, or right next door, where witches live. From the time I was very young, books were an amazing world to me. There was no greater joy than going to the library with my mother whose love of books knew no measure. When I was very young, my mother read to me every night. As I grew older, we’d talk about the books we were reading.

Even as a young child, I knew I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. But, writing wasn’t what paid the bills. I got a regular job and life went on, although I still dreamed of writing. My father always told me to believe in myself and to never give up on what I firmly believed in. A few years after his death, I took up writing again. My mother, who was now ill and who had moved in with my husband and me, was happy to read what I wrote, or to set the table in order to give me a few more minutes of writing time.

And so I wrote and edited and revised. Just before the book was ready to send to agents, my mother died. I set the book aside. Writing was too painful, too full of memories.

But, the stories in my head wouldn’t let up, and so after a few years I started writing again. This time, I wrote about a teen witch named Ivy and her life in a small town, and I quickly fell in love with the story and the eclectic group of characters. I think of it as Buffy meets Harry Potter. When I typed the last line, I actually felt a pang of sorrow—I didn’t want to say goodbye. Ivy and her story became The Book of Lost Souls, and after polishing it up, I sent it off to agents. Plenty were interested and requested the full manuscript. Unfortunately, most of them thought the book was too light. Too cute. Too Disney. They offered to read whatever else I had, as long as it was darker. Darker sells! Or so they said.

So, after two revisions for two separate agents that eventually didn’t pan out (they said the book still had a lighthearted feel to it that wouldn’t appeal to publishing houses), I set The Book of Lost Souls aside and started working on an outline for a much darker book.

It was around this time that the economy began to collapse—hard—and I was given the pink slip on Friday the 13^th, right after I had completed a project that saved the company $400,000 annually. Say goodbye to eighteen years of loyal service! Suddenly, writing a darker, more dystopian book about the afterlife on top of losing my job seemed too much to take. Still, I recalled my father’s wisdom of believing in myself even when no one else did. I wrote and finished the next book, Don’t Fear the Reaper, in about seven months.

Still unemployed despite literally hundreds of applications, I began to worry we would lose our home or deplete our savings before I found a job. My career in IT was gone—off shored as they call it. I also wondered if I’d ever see any of my books published. I was so close to getting an agent so many times. Agents wrote back: You’re a strong writer. Or, The Book of Lost Souls is a great story and is well-written, but it’s not for me.

Nearly every morning, my inbox was filled with rejection letters from jobs and agents, yet I tried to stay positive. I kept repeating my father’s words to believe, to never give up. For every rejection, I sent out twice as many applications, twice as many query letters. I just tried harder.

I had been querying Reaper for about three months when I got an editorial letter from one of New York’s biggest literary agencies who’d had The Book of Lost Souls for nearly a year. A year! But, the letter was so enthusiastic about the story and my writing that I sat down and made every last revision they suggested. I turned it in and waited. Months went by. In the end, they rejected the story—not because they didn’t love it, but because in the year and change they’d had the manuscript, another client had submitted a proposal for a story about a teen witch. Conflict of interest, they called it.

And that was that. My novel, the book that was finished, was dumped for someone else’s book that hadn’t yet been written. Somewhat angry and depressed, I set The Book of Lost Souls aside. Again. By now, I was at the end of my rope. I was still unemployed and out of unemployment benefits. The only work I could find was the occasional short-term computer job, some tech writing gigs, or dog-sitting. Nothing full-time, and certainly nothing we could count on.

If the near-miss with Super Agency wasn’t enough, I found myself running into similar situations with Don’t Fear the Reaper. Now, agents were saying, Too dark! But, you’re a talented writer and we’d love to see other work. Or, You’re capable of incredibly incisive scenes—the opener is still one of the best things I read all year. And, my personal favorite, In this economy…

It was then that I learned about self-published authors such as Karen McQuestion and Amanda Hocking. I decided to go indie as well, starting with The Book of Lost Souls. What did I have to lose? A lot if I didn’t figure out a way for our household to stop hemorrhaging money. The only problem? I had no idea where to start. I sent an email to Ms. McQuestion, in the hopes she could point me in the right direction. She was so incredibly kind! Not only did she reply, she sent me a wealth of information on self-publishing. Today, she shares all that information on her blog. I’m incredibly grateful to her.

I got a cover I could afford with the help of another indie, Sam Torode. Two editor friends went over my work. Finally, I formatted the book and the rest is history. I uploaded The Book of Lost Souls in early March, and it’s been getting consistently great reviews ever since. As for being too lighthearted? I receive emails all the time from people who love that the book is funny, upbeat, and clean.

Within my first five weeks of self-publishing, I hit three best seller lists on Amazon. Me. An indie author without a publicist or a big agency or publisher behind them. Just me, my computer, my loving husband, and the devotion of two dogs at my feet.

I’ve been asked if there will be a sequel to The Book of Lost Souls. The answer is yes. Two more books, maybe a third. I just haven’t thought that far out yet.

And the other, darker book? After some revisions, Don’t Fear the Reaper debuted in late September 2011. On its first day, the book reached lucky #13 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases, Children’s Fiction, Spine-Tingling Horror.

I’m only sorry that my parents aren’t here to see this. I took my father’s advice and my mother’s faith and reinvented myself. I still dog-sit and take on small computer jobs and tech writing gigs to help keep us afloat financially. But one day, I hope that my hard work will pay even more of the bills. Until then, I’m at peace with the way things are.

Henry Ford once said, “If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Great advice. And so, The Book of Lost Souls, the book that nearly wasn’t, became the little book that could. I’m a firm believer that hopes and dreams are something to hold onto and fight for. Believe in the magic that is you. Keep your dreams close, and set your imagination free.

I’d like to dedicate my section of this anthology to readers everywhere—words alone cannot express how much I appreciate you believing in me. You’re every bit as much a part of the magic as Ivy herself.

So, thank you, Dear Reader. Sincerely. Because, every author with a story to tell writes with you in mind.

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Createspace: The Book of Lost Souls Don’t Fear the Reaper