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 . . .

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

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.

Great results!!

Well! The Aussies have done amazingly well in the newly announced RITA and Golden Heart finals lists. My good friend and fellow Canberra Romance Writer Tracey O'Hara has finalled in the GH Paranormal section with Night's Cold Kiss. She's now excitedly preparing to fly to San Fran.

Anna Campbell has finalled twice in the same section, Anne Gracie, Kelly Hunter and Emily Gee (Kiwi). We'll be hearing the cheering from way down here come July.

On reading

The book I'm reading at the moment is not from the library. I don't restrict myself totally to the alphabetical system. A while back I read an article about Alexander Mc Call Smith's No.1 Ladies Detective Agency books, set in Botswana. My brother picked up this copy abandoned at the airport and it's doing the rounds of the family. Makes a delightful change from the gritty, gory and or smart talking, hip crime fiction books flooding the market these days. Plus the setting and cultural milieu is interesting.

I like a good murder. My local discussion group has been meeting for over twenty years. Our subject is crime fiction this term. The next book in the course is Dorothy L Sayers 'Strong Poison' starring the inimitable Lord Peter Wimsey. Very dated but still witty, clever and downright funny in places.

In between library and other books I have War and Peace on the go. It is surprisingly readable except I forget who all the multi titled Russians are between outings.

Reading

About twenty five years ago I decided to start readng my way through my local library. You know what's it's like in the library. You go back to the same authors because you can't remember that name someone recommended, or you wander up and down the aisles aimlessly browsing and not deciding.

That day I'd had enough indecision. I went to the first two or three books in the A section and took them. Next visit I took the next few. I didn't cheat if the title or genre put me off--I read whatever was there. I didn't always finish a book. Some were just too deadly but I came across some wonderful authors I never would have read. I've read an amazing cross section of styles and storylines.

My library has shifted premises twice in those twenty five or so years but i find my place and continue on.

Guess what letter I'm on at present . . . .

Tagging

Hmmm. I've been tagged, which is nice, but being knee deep in editing/ revising my two coming releases, revising and tweaking what will hopefully be my third book for Avalon, plus keeping tabs on my wip, and revising a mainstream story--whew! Oh--and managing the short story contest run by RWAustralia, plus working---you get the drift? Blogging playtime is limited.
Plus I can't figure out how to add a links section. I thought I did it but it hasn't shown up on the page. I got the photos etc up in a fit of expertise but I seem to have lost the knowledge. Oh well.

Sorry, Suzanne, who tagged me. Here's the view from my writing room window with just a glimpse of the now departed Herbie.