Australian Romance Reader's Convention

This is an exciting new venture for Aussie romance lovers. The inaugural ARRC will be held in Melbourne from Feb 20-22, 2009. I received the registration form and brochure yesterday and it looks like being a blast! Plenty of name authors have already signed up to talk and sign books or just be there to chat to readers and each other.

Dh and I are planning a fun weekend away in Melbourne. What a good excuse!
Here's the link for information
http://www.australianromancereaders.com.au/

War and Peace

ABC 2 showed War and Peace last night. A 3 and a half hour marathon starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda who sounded and looked rather out of place as a Russian. What a massive cast. The battle scenes were extraordinary and remember this is pre computer enhancement. There must have been tens of thousands of people re-enacting the cavalry charges and infantry fighting. And the winter scenes! Absolutely freezing, struggling knee deep in snow with horses and artillery when Napoleon was forced to retreat from Moscow.

Seeing that movie made me pick up the book and continue my marathon read. I can put faces to the names now and some of the characters are clearer. All the Russian officers seem to be Princes or Counts and it gets rather confusing especially with their triple barrel names. It's a surprisingly accessible writing style though and I am enjoying it. I haven't reached the part where flighty and beautiful young Natasha pledges her allegiance to Prince Andrew, he goes off to fight the French and in the interim she is swept off her little feet by the caddish womanizer Anatol. Audrey Hepburn was so young and lovely in the role. I'm looking forward to that part.

Short story

I've just been notified that my entry in a jazz short story contest run by magazine Jazz Planet , has been shortlisted. Woohoo! Don't know how many entries went in or how many are shortlisted but hey . . . making the first cut is great. The winning three authors will be notified by the end of July.

This isn't a romantic story at all. I've been married to a jazz drummer for thirty five years, my son is a bass player and my brother's 3 children are jazz musos as well--I've had plenty of experience to draw on.

New Sale

A lovely surprise this morning waiting in my Inbox. Avalon love my latest submission. This will be book number 3 for them and I am absolutely thrilled. The release date is April 2009.

I'm not sure whether the working title "Stuck" will . . .umm. . . stick ( sorry) but that's what the book is about. My characters become stuck in all manner of ways--physically, by mental attitude, lifestyle, work choices. The hero is a single dad trying to handle daughters-- a rebellious 12 year old, a sweet 5 year old--plus a kitten, and the sophisticated, upwardly mobile, child averse heroine.

The Painted Veil

I've finished the book now and can report that the movie quite dramatically changed the relationship between Walter and Kitty from the original. They both chart Kitty's growth both in maturity and emotionally but the movie turns the marriage into a late blooming love affair when it never is in the book. Interesting. Basic events remain the same but the movie fills in a lot of detail, particularly to do with the cholera epidemic-- treatment, causes, cultural impediments etc--which is very interesting and adds to the story, really. We learn much more about the character of Walter through his work. In the book Kitty comes to admire him greatly for his skill and compassion but says several times she could never love him.

I think this is a case of a movie enhancing a book but adding the love affair part was probably a marketing device. Kitty's spiritual awakening isn't such a drawcard perhaps!

Books and films

My book group has devised a course of meetings where we read a book and see the film version for comparison. Our first one is The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham.

I read a lot of S Maugham when I was in my twenties. Absolutely loved his depictions of the British colonial life and his succinct sparse prose which cut straight to the heart of his characters revealing all their weaknesses and foibles. His short stories are wonderful. He deals with life's basics--love, loyalty, hate, fear, greed. Emotions which cross all boundaries of time, culture and race.

I enjoyed The Painted Veil as a movie but hadn't read the book. I'd forgotten just how good a writer he is. So far, the movie is a very faithful rendition. Naomi Watts and Edward Norton are easy to picture, as I read, in their roles of Kitty and Walter Fane. Similarly the countryside of China is beautifully filmed and having been to China twice I can visualise the sights and sounds, see the local people. Some things in rural China won't have changed very much since the 1920s.

Some book/film transitions are woeful eg I couldn't bring myself to watch Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Couldn't get my head around the concept of Nicholas Cage having anything to do with such a wonderful book. From the snippets I have seen it seems the story was absolutely gutted.

So far so good with The Painted Veil.

Anyone else read and seen it? Or have any other pet hates/loves?

Release date at last

Waiting for the release date of your latest baby is tough. All those months and months of rewriting and editing on top of months and sometimes years of waiting for a response to a submission and all that after the hard slog of writing the thing in the first place! Just when you think everything is good to go --more waiting while the book goes into the production phase.

E-publishing is faster, of course, than the traditional print firms. The lead time for my Avalon books is by necessity nearly a year whereas the complete The Wild Rose Press process has taken place within a year from submission to e publication.

It's all good exciting stuff and quite by chance my next two releases happen within a week of each other in October. The 17th for Strings and the 24th for Coming Home. And my birthday is right in between on the 19th!