Wednesday, April 23, 2008

That was fast!


Well, here it is already. My cover for Strings Attached.
What do you think?
To read an exerpt go to my website. http://www.elisabethrose.com.au

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Covers

My Wild Rose Press editor tells me my cover for Strings Attached will be available in 3-4 weeks. Knowing the vagaries of cover art and despite having filled out a form re my characters' occupations, hair colour, important items or objects in the book etc, I had a sudden awful thought that the artist may do something connected with puppets.
What a nightmare that would be!

Apart from the fact I detest puppets in any shape or form, my book is about music. My heroine is a violinist and my hero a photographer.
My Avalon cover, as you can see, is beautiful. Avalon covers are. They have wonderful artists and I'm looking forward to seeing what appears for Coming Home. Have to wait till about June, perhaps for that one.

In the meantime help me send thought waves to my TWRP cover artist. No puppets, no puppets, no puppets . . .

Monday, April 21, 2008

Reading, crosswords and increasing your vocabulary

My 82 year old Mum is very good at Cryptic Crosswords. I'm not bad either. Our local paper has two cryptics and a quick each day plus a nine letter Focus anagram word puzzle so there is plenty to practise on.

Today's Focus letters are EET
HOP
ENL
Find words with O in them of 4 letters or more, and the 9 letter word. 14 words is Good, 18 Very Good and 24 Excellent

Writers need a big and varied vocabulary and doing crosswords is a good way of expanding the archive.
The best way of expanding not just your vocab but your knowledge base is to read--LOTS. And in a wide variety of genres. By that I don't mean romance genres, I mean all sorts of books.

Try this fun site http://www.freerice.com

Monday, April 7, 2008

Conferences and costs

Conferences are a terrific way of boosting flagging writing energy. Here in Australia we have our national Romance Writers of Australia get together in August. This year we're in Melbourne at the luxuxious Langham Hotel on Southbank. Travels plans and bookings are being made, workshop sessions mulled over and chosen, pennies saved.

One year my aim is to make it to the US for the massive American version. Next year may be the one. I would love to have gone to San Fran in July but the dates are awkward for me in regard to my teaching terms. Washington is a couple of weeks earlier--much more doable.

Then, of course, there is the cost of any international travel for us in Australia. The US exchange rate is good at the moment so that's a bonus but still . . .
Today I'm attending an info session by our local government Arts grants body. Missed out last time round, this time I'll be better prepared.

If you're thinking of attending a conference--DO. If you can't afford it at the moment--look for a grant to help fund the travel or the accommodation or both. Every little bit helps. Try to get along to any workshop sessions on offer or the smaller regional conferences the RWA branches hold in the US. You won't regret it. You'll learn a lot, you'll meet like minded, friendly people and you'll be immersed in the world of writing for hours or even days.
And it's FUN.