Queensland Baby! Goodreads Giveaway, New Books Available, and My Last Chance Prayer

Hello from beautifully sunny Queensland!
Yes, that's right, I've left the (not so cold now) weather of Melbourne, and flown the two hours up to Brisbane for the annual Caleb Christian writers conference!
Have been working my little backside off trying to get ready for this conference for the last few weeks, as I'm actually getting a table and selling books! My first physical event as a bookseller. Pretty exciting, no?

I have a lot of little things I want to cover just to keep you all updated, so I'm just going to lay it out.

GoodReads Giveaway:

First of all, big thank you to everyone that entered the Goodreads giveaway for the hardcopies of The Five Day Writer's Retreat. Over 1,000 people entered! It was really amazing.
I've sent out the five copies, but apologise to the winners in the UK, as it won't arrive until early December. 

I am sorry that only 5 people could win the hardcopies. However, to make it up to the rest of you, I'm offering 50% off the Smashwords' electronic copy of the book. This can be used by absolutely anyone until the 10th November, 2013. All you need to do is go to Smashwords and use this coupon code:

WD79W

 

You are more than welcome to share that around. I appreciate the support, and want to share the fun.

 

Colostrum - A Handbook of Spiritual Antibodies for New Christians.

 

I've finally published my father's first book! It's available as an ebook at Amazon, and soon will be coming as a hardcopy (I'm testing out Lightning Source rather than Createspace for it, and will give you a full report on the two once I get the proofs and hardcopies of Dad's book). 

Dad's been an Anglican minister for over 30 years, and has put together a handbook of the worst heresies that tend to shipwreck new believers. From experience he passes on the spiritual antibodies needed to fight these diseases. 

It was so much fun editing this book for Dad, largely because it was just so... Dad! Reading it is just like listening to him speak. I could even imagine his gestures and facial expressions. It is colloquial, and excited, theologically sound, and sensible. Highly recommended for all new believers, and would make a perfect baptism present. 

If anyone would like a review copy, sign up for my reviewers' list just on the left hand sidebar of this blog to always be offered free review copies, or send me an email at b.greentr@gmail.com.

Prayers, Please!

Finally, tomorrow night is the Caleb Dinner, where the winners of the Caleb Awards will be announced. My Christian Young Adult Supernatural, Sally Hunt Vs. God is a finalist in the unpublished manuscript section. To be honest, if I don't win I don't mind in that I get control of my manuscript and can publish it myself. However, at some stage I do want to be a Hybrid Author, with a combination of traditionally and self-published works. Largely, I want to see the difference and how well traditional publishing now compares. This would be a great opportunity. 

Also, just knowing my writing is of winning standards would be nice.

In a similar vein, I've entered the first chapter of After The Winter, the 1920's historical romance I did as my first draft for NaNoWriMo last year, into the Harlequin 'So You Think You Can Write' competition a few days ago. Little did I realise that if I get through to the next round, I need to submit a full manuscript by mid October! I have 50,000 words, but I never actually completed the first draft. So, pray that I do get into the next round, and then that I can get the manuscript written to a high enough standard in just a week! 

 

If you want to read the first chapter, check it out at: http://www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com/manuscripts-sytycw-2013/after-the-winter/

If you were wondering what my ROW80 goals for the next week... well, you can probably guess now. Intensive romance writing!

 

Anyone that will be free in a week or two to do some quick beta reading, I would love you long time!

 

Stay tuned for updates!

KOP: Guest Post - Blog Optimisation: Get Noticed

Today I've got a guest poster to give you some great tips for getting your blog noticed. 

I actually met Sean at the Word Writer's Getaway back in October 2012. His mother was just launching her first book, Motive Games (great read for young adults, and some not so young adults :D It won the 2011 Caleb award, the prize I'm trying to win this year). Sean and I got talking about blogs and he offered to help me out as I was building up 100 FD. So I can highly recommend him if anyone else is interested in fixing up their sites. 

Hope you enjoy this insider post:

Hey, my name is Sean and I'm a young Canadian living in New Zealand helping people get their projects the attention they deserve. I've never gone to school for graphics or web programming but have 3 years experience with new media and graphic design. I helped 100 First Drafts with some small little adjustments in November. I made some small adjustments that while subtle, make a difference.

Sharing and the desire to share is something that makes us human. Blogging is a very popular method of sharing. Search engine optimisation and web design are skills I use to help people share more effectively with their audience.

If you have a blog and want to share with people, here are three simple tips.

(More information can be found at MozBlog on increasing blog traffic and I recommend SEObook's blogger's guide for detailed SEO tips.) 

#1 Purple Cow

In Seth Godin's book Purple Cow he presents the idea that nobody notices a brown cow in a field but EVERYONE notices a purple one. Use your blog to do extreme, exaggerated or just plain whacky things. Why do political extremists have a larger following than those who are open to compromise and cooperation? It's because the extremists are more entertaining. Even if you do nothing to make your website more easily found by search engines, if your content stands out, your blog will stand out. Whether you're writing 100 first drafts in a set time frame or making a blog for your pet emu, remember the purple cow principle.

#2 Know your audience

If you are chasing the dream of going viral, or just want to quickly grow your subscriber base, the easiest way to do this is to share with people who also like to share. Sometimes changing up the medium is a great way to accomplish this. Do a video, or info graphic instead of just a bunch of text as these are easier to share.

Image from seomoz.org

#3 Participate with your readers

Find where else your readers like to spend time on the web. They probably don't just read your blog but dozens of others. Try subscribing to other blogs and participating in online communities. If you don't know where your readers like to hang out, you can use a web-based tool like Google's DoubleClick Ad Planner to help. Once you know where your readers are, go and join them. Standard social etiquette applies of course. People hate and resent someone pushy with an agenda. A good rule is to contribute when it makes sense and build a reputation in the community as someone trustworthy and only recommend your blog at appropriate moments. If you annoy people here you can seriously hurt your reputation as a blogger.

If anyone is wanting some consulting or work done on their website or blog you can reach me at sean@maplekiwi.com.

Thanks Sean! Now I'm going to find me some cows to paint :D

  

Quick Update, OCD Writing Challenge and ROW 80 Check In

Quick Update:

 

On the weekend I started re-editing Sally Hunt to submit to the Caleb Writing Competition. Does there ever come a stage when you don't look at your own past work and despair? Okay, I have to admit, I have seriously enjoyed some bits, but the beginning was not quite as good as I remembered.

 

So, if you have been wondering where I've been for the past few days I've been madly trying to edit the entire book when I get home from work. Have re-written a good bit of the first and fourth chapters, and fixing up typos etc all the way through. Currently still only up to chapter 11, but it is definitely getting better as I go through.

 

So, bear with me as I recede from sight for a few more days to get it finished. It will be great to put in a much more polished work than it was last time (which was quite a few edits ago!).

 

To keep you entertained while I'm busy and not posting, I've got another challenge for you!

 

 

OCD Writing Prompt:

 

Okay, so I mentioned last week I had signed up for pinterest to develop a photo board for my 1920s romance.

 

I forgot to add a warning - Pinterest is super addictive!

 

So, I thought I'd just go through and give you a writing prompt based on one of my favourites that popped up:

(originally pinned at: http://pinterest.com/sstamatis/funny/)

What I want you to do is write the introduction scene for this character.

 

Have fun!

 

 

ROW 80 Check - In:

Have been editing lots, but not getting any of my posts done! However, for a week I'm happy with that.

Have just posted on Personal Fitness Base Camp last week's Half Marathon Training and a discussion on recovery.

 

And I've got one volunteer for the 8 Hour Diet, but it is still open if anyone else wants to give it a try as well! Just go to my 8 Hour Diet post and leave a comment for a free copy of the book.

 

Caleb Writing Competition and ROW 80 Check In.

Courtesy of pear83 at stock.xchng

For those of you who don't know, I finished my very first complete first draft a year ago. Wow, only 1 year?

I hurried the completion in order to enter it into the Caleb Writing Competition, a Christian writing comp for unpublished manuscripts.

 

While I didn't win, I did get some very good feedback on my Sally Hunt book 1, which I implemented.

 

I had thought of sending the manuscript in again this year, but when I checked a month ago, I couldn't find the page for this year so assumed they weren't running it. I then forgot about it.
 

Well, last week a good friend emailed me saying 'I thought you might be interested in this:

http://www.omegawriters.com/wp/?page_id=270'

 

Yup, the link to the very writing competition I had been meaning to enter!

 

So, I'm going to try my luck again. Sally Hunt is in much better shape, and I still have 11 days to polish her off a bit further.

 

If there are any other Australian Christian writers out there looking for a foot in the door, why not give it a go?

 

 

ROW 80:

Last week was definitely not one of my better weeks. But I'm blaming that largely on work. I literally did 9 days worth of work in 4 days. Not doing that again, team target or not!

 

I did write half a post for Personal Fitness Base Camp on the 8 hour diet. I'm still not completely convinced about the validity of the claims of the diet (eat whatever you like 8 hours a day and still lose weight!) but I'm going to be offering two free copies of the book to readers who are willing to test it out for two weeks. So check in at PFBC later this week if you are interested.

 

I also wrote half a post for 100FD on the next in the KOP series. Will be posting that probably tomorrow.

 

So, have a long way to catch up. Still planning to do at least 1 post/article per day for 5 days. Might not get to do it at lunch time, now that I have to look like I'm working more, but will try to stop working before I get completely brain dead so I can do my work when I'm at home.

 

Finally: if anyone has some free time in the next week and wants to proof read a chapter of Sally Hunt and make suggestions, just let me know!

Georgette Heyer, Queen of Gore?

When I started writing this particular series I'm working on now (currently titled Castle Innis, as that is where the first one is set and I can't think of a better general descriptor), I was afraid that I was getting too gory for the genre of historical romance. However, I was reading Georgette Heyer's 'The Spanish Bride' today (keeping in mind that Georgette Heyer is THE regency romance writer, I think she actually created the genre) and I came across this section:

p.171

'A couple of round shots crashed amongst them, the second knocking the Spanish guide's head off his shoulders. His body stood for an instant, with the blood spurting up from the severed neck, and then fell, while the head was tossed through the air to bounce on the ground and roll away till it was stopped by a boulder. Someone laughed, and was clouted into silence by his comrades.'

Seriously, I have not made that up, you can check it yourself. And I know, that image could have been taken straight from a movie like 300 (except for the anachronisms, obviously).

So, have decided I'm not going to worry so much about how much bloody detail I put in, because it is going to be hard to beat that!

On how my writing is actually going:

As I was sick for a large part of this week and got almost nothing written on the second book in this series, I spent this weekend going back to the first book which I didn't complete and working on that (as well as sleeping, curling up and reading, and generally still recovering, though I did go for a jog today beside the river which was nice. Will see how much I have to pay for it tomorrow).

Got 2,000 words done Friday morning, 5,000 yesterday and about 5,000 today. And yes, I admit I said that I thought I had about 10,000 more words to write. However, having written around 12,000 words, I don't actually feel that much closer to finishing! But still, at least it doesn't feel rushed.

I also received the feedback from the reviewer of my first ever novel which surprisingly was really informative and useful. For beginning Christian writers, I am recommending the Caleb Writing Competition (yes, I have just worked out how to put links into my posts. Cool, huh?), which for their unpublished section offers the winners publication and everyone else gets a full report on their story. It also has a published section, but I'm ignoring that for now, for obvious reasons.

My report came back stating that there were a few things to fix up (which they outlined and I full agree with) and after that they would definitely recommend it for publication. Yah! The competition is run by Omega Writers in conjunction with Even Before Publishing, an Australian Christian publisher. Omega Writers group is sponsoring the Word Writers' Getaway, which I am going to not just because it is in Queensland and I could seriously do with some sun, but as my first foray into the world of Christian writers (beyond academics). Is in October, will post more about it when I go. 

So, slightly heartened that they liked my work and thinks it has potential. Now just got to get myself back into writing the mega numbers again. Tomorrow starting again on Book 2 (though book 1 still not finished, but closer.)

Tip for today: Hansom Cabs were not invented until 1836, so not very useful to reference them in a book set in 1790. D'oh. Learn from my mistakes, children, learn from my mistakes.

(Hackneys are the vehicles of choice at the time for general taxiing. Kept trying to think of the word but for unknown reasons kept coming up with 'Turnkey' which I knew wasn't right, or even related.)

This message has been brought to you by the amazing knowledge of Wikipedia. 

Good night.

Buffy.

The Unposted Post

So, I wrote up my blog entry earlier than usual yesterday and while trying to get the internet to work through my phone, I saw that I had an email from the writing competition I had entered which started all this. 

I hadn't even been short-listed.

In a few days/weeks I'll receive a review as to why and I'm sure there will be good reasons, but of course it came as a bit of a let down. Now I know all writers great and small get rejected for ages and ages. However, like every other beginning writer, I also believed that I was the one exception. A competition, in such a specialised field as unpublished Christian Young Adult works in Australia, and I managed to finish my first story just in time to enter. How was that not a sign?

So I took the night off last night to think about it all, the time I'm giving up to the challenge, and the possibility that none of it will ever lead anywhere. Would I keep on doing it knowing that?

Well, I might not continue for the whole five years if the first 20 novels get absolutely nowhere I might rethink giving my every waking moment to it. But, overall am actually okay with it. Now that I've finished the other two stories in the series, there are a few things I'd like to go back and change and I can now do more work on it, etc.

It does mean, though, that I'm going to be starting the long, painful process of trying to find a publisher. I've thought about self-publishing, but for this one I think I'll see if I can find a traditional publisher first. If it doesn't come together, then I'll looking into flogging it myself.

As you can tell from the lack of entry for yesterday, got side tracked from posting my blog entry by trying to work out the implications for my writing of not even getting short-listed.

But for your reading entertainment, I present, Yesterday's Unpublished Blog Entry! (applause).

First news for the day: the whole concept of 'wordless time' seriously works. Took a few days to really kick in, possibly because I was more than usually worded out. But this morning, sat there staring at a computer screen for almost two hours (well, got 3,000 words written, but it was hard). Then, while walking to work suddenly I found I was following my main characters' dialogue in the next scene. Of course, the moment I fully realised this I broke the flow and I didn't have anywhere to write it down, but came back home after work (had to catch bus as was bucketing down, go Melbourne) and have just sat down for 45 minutes and I think I've got it all.

Am now stuck with a bit of a dilemma. Happened to just kill my bad guy halfway through the book. Knife to the throat, was an exceptionally good shot, but people can be exceptionally good shots in books, which is something I like. Writing 'they practised knife throwing every day until they were a master' is so much easier than actually spending every day practising knife throwing until becoming a master. It just glosses over all the days they had a bit of a flu, so didn't really feel like it, or their mum kept pestering them to do the washing up. Have often wished I could just write my life. Think there might have been a few movies based on this premise, a John Candy (?) movie, Delirious, comes to mind, showing my age. Though they never seem to do a very good job of it. As much as I love the Inkheart series (which I do, very much), I feel giving people the power to read things into creation could have so many more possibilities than they actually used it for. Like seriously people, you are being attacked by the bad guys, so instead of writing and then reading 'main bad guy fell off his horse and broke his neck and everyone else got spooked and left' you write a giant into existence quite a way off from you, that takes a while to get there, and then kidnaps a whole lot of them and kills good people as well as bad accidentally? That is the best solution you can come up with?

On the converse side, while writing my Sally Hunt series, I did have to fight the urge to make her just do everything perfectly all the time. What did she do after school? She sat down and studied. No she didn't! No average teenager comes home from school and starts studying right away. Writing in all the fluff that we do everyday: she made herself a cup of tea, noticed a catelogue sitting on the kitchen bench so flipped through deciding which bedspread she would buy if she were looking for one, then decided she might just brush out her hair, she then realised that she should put her uniform in the wash, and got distracted looking up video clips on YouTube, is actually a lot harder to write than the things which are harder to do like 'sit down and study'. Weird, huh?

Well, that's my bit of philosophy for the day, you can make of it what you will. Point of all that was to say: Wordless time works, but now I have to figure out how to continue a story with a dead bad guy, and no it's not the kind of story where I can just bring him back to life, which is totally cheating by the way. Dead is dead. Otherwise you just kill off all emotional attachment to death (okay, not great use of 'kill'). The two options I'm playing with right now: go back and expand out earlier part of book to make this the end - end, or then have my main characters come into contact with the agents the bad guy had been working for, and they become the new even worse bad guys.

But don't worry everyone, by the time any of these books actually get published, I will have changed them all so much that this won't be a spoiler alert.

Completely different note, was just reading some more Amanda Quick while eating my dinner (not recommended, 'she made it come out my nose!') and I think I have found why I'm not doing so well writing the romance part. Please read the following exert out aloud, in the most serious voice you can, it is from Amanda Quick's 'Lie By Moonlight' (I can't even say the title with a straight face!)

'Breathless from the reckless flight, Concordia looked back towards the fiery scene. The light of the moon bathed the landscape in an other-worldly glow... Concordia felt the stranger's hard body shift slightly behind her...[she] was intensely conscious of him crowded behind her in what could only be described as an extremely intimate manner.'

First of all, a main character called Concordia Glade? Seriously? Second, she's a school teacher for orphaned young ladies, and has just found out they are about to be … how shall I put it, taken to London to be more profitable, and decides she must save them all. While doing an excellent job of it, the mysterious dark stranger turns up to rescue them all, without any transport (or plan, apparently) so has to jump up on the back of her horse. As good rescue attempts go...

And I don't mean to be rude, but riding away from guys who plan to rape and sell you into the sex slave trade with a mysterious man AND four teenage girls, is that really a romantic setting? Have you been near a man with four teenage students? The giggling itself is enough to kill any possible mood.

But the main problem with my romance writing is that I'm writing my story from the man's point of view, which just happened by accident. So, I have 'wow, she's really, really beautiful, I want to save her' but it's interspersed with a lot of 'wow, look at that really cool gun, is there anything here I can blow up?' Oh well, when first draft is finished and I'm working on re-doing it, will get some test subjects to see what they think. If it doesn't make it as a guy's action book, will go back, take out the guns, add in more moonlight, and see how I go.

Yours,

Buffy.