How I worked through the edits of book two

So, on March 12, I had a telephone conversation with my publisher. In it, she laid out the weaknesses she saw in book two of The Dream of Asarlai. She didn’t have any issues with the story I’d presented, the way the plot developed or anything like that. Her concerns were character based, and pretty much boiled down to two things: a) we need to see more of Maggie and Lucas, the main characters from book one, and b) Mark, Ione’s brother needed to be developed more because he felt a bit plonked in there.

At the same time, my heart sank and ideas started to pop. It involved a lot of re-writing, but could also provide a whole lot of interesting developments and potential for drama.

Once the call ended, I sat down and started making notes. Solving the Mark problem seemed fairly easy to me – introduce him earlier in the story in a much calmer, more friendly scene so that we can get more of a sense of him and his nuances before he cracks its and causes his poor sister no end of grief.

As for bringing Maggie and Lucas into the story, the obvious answer lay in the very strong friendship between the two women – I just needed to up the ante a little in a couple of places, have Maggie and Lucas become Ione’s support network for that time and bam – problem solved.

The answer lay in a dramatic event that occurs in the first quarter of the book. In the earlier version of that story, that event didn’t impact on Ione that much. It didn’t take too much tweaking for it to have a major impact on her and force her to go stay with Maggie and Lucas for a while (ah, computers – even in world of magic, they’re a pain in the arse).

However, that caused another issue – this event was what initially brought Ione and Stephen together when he went to stay with her. How was I supposed to have that relationship developing when Ione wasn’t there any more?

As often happens in writing, the solution to that problem lay in the direction I’d decided to take. By having Ione more severely impacted by the event, an immediate connection between she and Stephen developed (he was also badly affected by it). It helped take their relationship from initial attraction to confidants very quickly, and meant there was a tie between them even though Ione wasn’t there. All I then had to do was play on Stephen’s good-boy nature and have him offer to have Ione back there at night time if that was what she wanted and bang – I had Ione hanging with Maggie and Lucas during the day, then developing an increasingly intense relationship with Stephen at night.

I opened up the colour chart of the scenes in book two and noted the ones where I could change setting or the other characters involved to incorporate a faster introduction to Mark and spending more time with Maggie and Lucas and then I was away. I did spend a moment to mourn Ione’s Uncle Ian, who was a feature of this book at the beginning and has now been consigned to the dustbin. Sorry Uncle Ian, but Maggie and Lucas take precedence.

With those changes done (echoed all the way through the book), I then had a change of my own to do. A scene that I had planned to put into book three wouldn’t fit, so I decided to put it into book two. That ended up being a brilliant thought – with it, the search for the forbidden texts ends on a real cliff-hanger that will, I hope, have people clammering to get their hands on book three.

That will be compounded when they read the very last scene. I’ve gotten rid of the original scene and have put in the opening scene from book three instead. It fits with the changes better, and provides yet another cliff-hanger. Honestly, I think that apart from Ione and Stephen having their Happily-Ever-After *sigh*, readers are going to be gagging for book three.

Now, to polish and then fire it back at my publisher and HOPE LIKE HELL that she loves what I’ve done as much as I do.

Croquet news

Consider the post heading warning enough.

On Sunday, something fantastic happened – NSW won the Eire Cup, the Australian assocation croqu et interstate tournament.

This is just the sixth time NSW has won since the cup was first played for in 1948 (yep, the mightiest state in Australia is actually not that good at croquet). What is fantastic is that this is the second time my husband has been on the winning team (they won in Perth in 2007).  What is doubly fantastic is that this time, he was the captain.

Let me state that clearly – my husband is the captain of a winning NSW sport team. That makes him a reasonably rare commodity (especially in croquet, where he’s just the fifth person in this position).  He is now a sporting superstar, alongside other winning NSW captains like Mark Taylor, Steve Mortimer and Wayne Pearce. We are waiting for the knocks on the doors, the interviews, the mass hysteria.

Mark Webber had a civic reception here in Queanbeyan last week. Hubby now is wondering when his will occur.

Last time the team won, they were nominated as the NSW Sports Team of the Year. Didn’t win (believe it was the cricketers) but hopefully they’ll get nominated again, and I’ll get to go as the captain’s wife.

After all, he kept assuring me there was prestige and glamour in being the wife of the NSW captain. I’m yet to see it :)

It’s taken a whole hell of a lot of work to make this happen. Angst too – being captain of a team isn’t an easy job by any means. He’s done’ extremely well and I’m very proud.

I’m just not polishing the silverware.

Finding Ada…

Because the website said it’s 24 March somewhere around the world for the best part of 50 hours, I’m hoping the fact it’s now 25 March in Australia will be forgiven :)

I first noticed this on Cheryl Morgan’s blog (Hi Cheryl) and was immediately captivated by it – with my new found realisations about women and how we are viewed and treated in the world, I’ve become all for celebrations of kick-arse women who manage to defy these things and achieve something special.

Then I started to read some of the articles, and after reading this one from The Independent in London, realised that these fabulous women are still having to deal with expectations to do with their sex rather than their abilities and are still being thwarted by it.

And it made me angry. I mean, I quite liked science at high school – had a bit of a knack for chemistry and studied biology as part of my HSC (although physics and I didn’t really get along) and one of my sisters did her university degree as a combined arts/science (majoring in zoology). I could easily have chosen to go a scientific path, and it makes me mad that at times without my even knowing it, my career path would have been hampered by the fact that I have bumpy bits and might have the gall to go and get pregnant and leave for a while or even put my family as a priority and apparently have a tendency to get emotional at times.

Okay, yes I do have a tendency to get emotional at times and yes, sometimes that’s wholy related to my menstrual cycle, but dammit I know PLENTY of men who get emotional at times as well, and it doesn’t seem to hold them back. ‘Sorry Jones, can’t give you that promotion you deserve – the blokes said you threw a tizzy over the coffee running out the other day …’

*Deep breath in, deep breath out* Anyway, back to Ada Lovelace, who wrote the world’s first computer programs and who died much too young and before her vision for what these new machines could be was realised. The idea behind Ada Lovelace Day is to celebrate female scientists.

I’m ashamed to admit I don’t really know a lot about any female scientists. I know that some of my friends and colleagues are scientists, but it’s not something I’ve ever really spoken to them about. I know there are amazing female scientists out there, such as Elizabeth Blackburn, the first Australian woman to win a Nobel prize.

So for Ada Lovelace Day 2010, my promise is that this year, I’m going to pay more attention to female scientists and when ALD comes around in 2011, I’ll have a post to write about the amazing women that I’ve learnt of and the things they do that should be lauded around the world.

A week of celebrating

* Apologies for the severe lack of photographs in this post – haven’t seen any party pics yet, can’t download pics from my phone.

Saturday night – my birthday party. I will admit that on Saturday morning, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’d been working so hard, doing so much preparation, and I wasn’t sure if I had enough food, or if the games would work, and I was stressing and wondering why the hell I decided to do this. In retrospect, it ended up being good although I do have to stop organising my own parties – someone else should do that, right?

Anyhoo, the food worked out well and people complimented the pretty spread (any table with butterfly cakes and fairy bread is going to look GREAT). We didn’t play all the party games – first was my version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, which became Pin the Man-Boobs on Fabio. The best thing about the game? I now own a metre high poster of Fabio *sigh* There was cheating, and I was pleased to see at least one book land on Fabio’s crotch. Next was pass the parcel, with several parcels going. Each round consisted of a challenge. I think my favourite was the put clothes on race. Kaaron Warren’s daughter won the story telling challenge and she was delighted with her girlie makeup.

My Marmee made (at my request) a teddy-bear cake, and it was fabulous – a gluten-free mudcake, with fluffly blue icing. My Marmee is a very talented woman – she also in just a couple of weeks pulled together a fantastic quilt for me, cleverly done with hints of blue and gold for the mighty Parramatta Eels. I scored quite well on the present front – a copy of Queen Singstar (which I believe I’ll give a burl tonight), plants, scents, beautiful bookmarks and from my sister Annette, tickets to see RocKwiz live.

Onto last night – RocKwiz. I have more than a little girl-crush on Julia Zemiro, so was looking forward to this. To our delight, Annette and I had fabulous seats – seven rows back, directly in front – eyelevel with the drumkit, basically.  I could have, if I’d pushed it, ended up on stage for the find a contestant rounds – the woman next to me went instead, and she came fifth and scored a fantastic bag. There was so much cheering and happiness that my throat was gone before the show itself started properly.

The woman next to me (Chantelle) said she’d seen Peter Garrett backstage, so there was hopes of him ripping out a bit of the Oils but no, he just officially declared the tour open (this was the first night). Then there they were – Peter ‘Lucky’ Luscombe, Mark Ferrie, James Black, Dugald, Brian Nankervis and Julia, who looked fantastic. The artists playing were Attalita from Magic Dirt and Tim Rogers from You Am I.

All was fun and lovely and great, and then in the middle of round one, Brian announced a performance by none other than John Paul Young. The crowd erupted as this diminutive man came out and proceeded to tear the house up with ‘Love is in the air’, complete with the shuffling sort of leg moves and rocking the body that I remember from Countdown. I didn’t realise until this moment that my life wouldn’t be complete until I heard JPY sing that song live. Lucky it just happened.

A new round called Contestant Karoake saw two brave souls sing first Holiday then Khe Sanh. And then at some point, Clare Bowditch came on to sing her latest single, The Start of War, only her Casio keyboard wouldn’t work and she stood there and sang a lovely little song about the trials and tribulations of technology before it got going and she could sing and wow! The song was incredible and I’ve not bought it, and the last album she put out and I’m becoming a Clare Bowditch fan.

Then today, I finished the proofs of The Secret Ones! Woo hoo! So they will go in the mail and tonight, I will celebrate again. With wine. And a bit of Queen (if I can find the microphones). To reward myself, I've pre-ordered my copies of Scary Kisses. What, you haven't done yours yet? Shame. http://www.indiebooksonline.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=90

I had a dream…

That dream was that I would have April off the Dream of Asarlai trilogy and would use this time to research some stuff for the new, all-improved Battle for Odana.

Then I spoke to my publisher on Friday.

In good news, it looks like I’ve got a title for book three – The Rogue Gadda. We are, however, still title-less for book two, and kinda want one as soon as possible. So, back to the drawing board again on that.

In not bad news but have more work to do news, the feedback on book two was – love what’s there, good read, BUT we need to see more of the characters from book one, and Ione’s brother feels as though he’s just been plonked there to cause tension. ‘That’s cause he has just been plonked there to cause tension,’ says I. ‘But he still has to be real,’ says publisher.

So I need to get Maggie and Lucas into the story more, Lucas in particular, and that means re-thinking and re-writing whole slabs of the book. Deadline for new version? End of April. So, Battle for Odana, you’re going to have to keep waiting.

On the plus side, because I’d finished the draft of book three, I’ll have plenty of time for this re-write. And I should have the proofs of book one done by the end of this week. And last night, an idea came to me, and it’s starting to play it’s way through my mind.

The wonderful Donna Maree Hanson has already read and given me some feedback on book three – you gotta love it when someone picks up your manuscript and can’t stop reading it and has it done in 24 hours. She’s going to give me a more detailed crit, but has done up an overview that I do need to consider in terms of what I’ve done in book two. I think that actually, what I though was a clever, clever idea for my antagonist won’t work at all, so I’ll have to change aspects of the end of book two.

It’s good to dig  a hole for your characters that they struggle to get out of. But sometimes the hole is too deep, or in the wrong place, and then you need to go back and put them on a new path.

Portrait of a writer, aged 40

So today, I turn 40. Yes, I’m not going to hide from it – I’m proud that I’ve reached this age with the wisdom and confidence that I have (although I could really do with less on the grey hair front – really, after 15 years of going grey, it’s now quite ridiculous).

Of course, it’s quite easy to admit to being 40 when you KNOW the response you’ll get is ‘You can’t be, you don’t look that old…’

Anyhoo, Nicole at 40 is quite a different animal to how she’s been at any other point in her life. For starters, she’s a contracted writer and is living her dream of being a professional novellist. But more than that is the fact that finally, I’ve come to a centred and strong place within myself. Sure, I’ve had bouts of self-confidence in the past, but they proved to be a passing fad and were soon overcome by the ongoing track in my mind – you’re useless, you’re worthless, why bother?

Nowadays, that track has to be played really loud to be heard, and even when it is heard it doesn’t really take – I can generally shrug it off in a day or so.

The interesting thing has been discovering all the ways this worldview has impacted on my life, and my behaviour. It’s not just about saying things to put myself down – it was in things such as putting other people’s needs and desires always before my own, not because I was a nice person as I told myself but because I didn’t believe I was worth considering. I was always the one who volunteered to do things at work or socially, not because I wanted to learn new skills or test myself or do my fair share but because I thought if I was nice and did nice things for people all the time, they’d do nice things for me. Turns out the world doesn’t work that way.

At the moment, I’m struggling with the balance between ensuring that your needs are met, as well as being a considerate and caring person. Some days I do good, some days I fall back into bad habits but at least I’m aware of what I’m doing when I do those things (eg say yes to an extra shift without thinking through the consequences) and slowly, I’m getting into the idea that no isn’t a bad word.

Best thing of all is how much I am looking forward to what will happen in my life – I want things to be good, I want to have the best life I can have and I’m ready to push myself to be everything I’m capable of being. I guess I’m now living with a sense of purpose, which is always a good thing.

So, roll on the next 40 years.

Love in Control = The Secret Ones

So, how does a novel change it’s name?

Well, in my case, it was quite a long, drawn out procedure. I sold the trilogy to HarperCollins in July under the name The Balance of Power, with the title of the first book Love in Control. The book’s title existed a long time before the trilogy title, and points quite clearly to it’s beginning as more a romance in a fantasy setting than a strong fantasy romance.

One of the first things the publisher said to me was ‘There’s been some comments about the name of the trilogy – bit too close to a big name author's book’. Well, I was quite happy for the title to be played with. One thing I know I’m not good at is titles – a lot of my short story titles get changed and when I was a journalist writing headlines – well, many many changes there.

After acquisitions, it was decided to change all the titles – too romancy, not matching the urban fantasy marketing that was being planned. I sent in some suggestions. They weren’t suitable. I sent in more suggestions. They weren’t suitable. I sent in more and said ‘That’s it – I can’t think of any more. You guys are the experts, if none of these work then you do it and I’ll be happy.’ This process took several months and during that time, the 2010 publications catalogue went out with the title Love in Control.

By the time the copyedits were being sent to the typesetter in January (so six months after the title change first came up), deciding the title became very important. It turned out that they did use two of my suggestions, although in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The Dream of Asarlai, the new trilogy title, came from my suggestion Asarlai’s Dream – HC didn’t like the apostrophe s. The book title, The Secret Ones was actually a suggestion for the trilogy title. I have to say, the reaction everyone’s had to the title of The Secret Ones is great – people really like it, which only goes to show that HC are the experts in this, and I don’t have a clue.

What all this means, of course, is that books two and three don’t have a title yet. I did have what I thought might be a brief flash of inspiration regarding book three yesterday, but of course didn’t write it down and now it’s gone. But in a few months time, the angst over titles will start again as book two moves through the production process.

Hopefully, thanks to the great folk at HC, I’ll get as good a title as The Secret Ones. Maybe some of their brilliance will rub off on me too.