My worst habit is… Being Bossy! I am my mother’s daughter.
My day job is… Mum, writer, cleaner, housekeeper, taxi driver, bum changer, dishwasher, washing machine, need I go on.
Plotter or pantser… Pantser! I try to let my characters write the story for me. Less work that way.
It’s a bit daggy but I love… my fiancée. Even when he can’t aim, puts the kids to bed in their clothes or feeds them meat for dinner with no vege. He’s still my man and I wouldn’t be where I am without Doug!
I write… A bit of everything. Hot contemporary, regency historical, westerns. I write whatever comes to mind at the time. Part of being a pantser.
Find out more about Bronwyn here, and go to the rants page for her blog.
Bronwyn is the lucky last Blog Bite for 2009. Thank you to all the wonderful members who braved the blog bite and to everyone who supported the blog by visiting or posting a comment. If you’d like to take a bite of the blog in 2010 send Anita an email. Remember, this is for any member of RWA, pub’d or unpub’d. Blog Bites will return on the 8th January with none other than me in the hot seat 
For now I’d like to wish you all a magical and safe Christmas and health, happiness and contracts in the coming New Year. Anita
Selling Synopsis Winners
Romance Writers of Australia Inc is pleased to announce the winners of the Selling Synopsis contest, as judged by NY Agent Ethan Ellenberg. The contest was managed by Sandii Manning.
Congratulations to all our winners!
Romance writing contest invites aspiring authors to “make this year your
writing year”
The Clendon Award, an annual writing contest in which aspiring romance
authors submit an entire manuscript to be judged by devoted romance readers, is now open for submissions for the 2010 award.
The award, administered by Romance Writers of New Zealand, is believed to be the only contest in the world where every entrant’s full manuscript is read and given detailed feedback. Entries are judged by between three and eight romance readers, depending how far they progress in the contest. Finalist manuscripts are judged by an editor at Harlequin Books in New York, the world’s largest publisher of romance and women’s fiction.
Seven of the previous 11 Clendon winners and a further 11 former finalists
have gone on to have international writing careers, including New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh, and popular Australian Mills & Boon authors Melissa James (previous winner), and finalists Bronwen Jameson, Trish Morey and Maxine Sullivan.
The contest was founded by Barbara and Peter Clendon of Barbara’s Books, the specialist Auckland romance bookstore, after they realized that most people who start writing a novel never manage to finish it. The Clendon Award was an incentive to writers to get to “The End”.
“These days, we have a small army of dedicated volunteers who collate, read
and judge the anonymous manuscripts, all hoping to discover the next
international star,” says Barbara Clendon, whose bookstore continues to
sponsor the award.
Romance Writers of New Zealand president Abby Gaines, herself a former
Clendon Award winner and now a Mills & Boon author, says the Clendon Award is a great opportunity for women to go after what’s often a long-held goal.
“Many women say they hope to write a book one day,” she says. “RWNZ’s theme for 2010, our 20th anniversary year, is ‘Make this year your writing year’ – do it now! Deciding to enter the Clendon Award is a great incentive to jump in and write.”
The 2010 Clendon Award closes 26 February. Manuscripts must be between
40,000 and 110,000 words. Full details, including the entry form, can be
found on the Romance Writers of New Zealand website,
www.romancewriters.co.nz.
For additional information and interview please feel free to contact:
RWNZ President, Abby Gaines, email abby@abbygaines.com , website www.abbygaines.com
RWNZ Publicity Liaison, Sue Knight at sueknight@ihug.co.nz,
Romance Writers of New Zealand Inc.
PO Box 10264 Dominion Rd, Mt Eden, Auckland 1024, New Zealand
http://www.romancewriters.co.nz
Bright Star is the new Jane Campion film about the love affair between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, starring Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw and the RWA blog has passes to give away.
London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year old English poet,
John Keats, and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, an outspoken student of
fashion.
This unlikely pair started at odds; he thinking her a stylish minx, she
unimpressed by literature in general.
It was the illness of Keatsʼs younger brother that drew them together. Keats
was touched by Fannyʼs efforts to help and agreed to teach her poetry.
By the time Fannyʼs alarmed mother and Keatsʼs best friend Brown realised
their attachment, the relationship had an unstoppable momentum. Intensely
and helplessly absorbed in each other, the young lovers were swept into
powerful new sensations, “I have the feeling as if I were dissolving”, Keats
wrote to her. Together they rode a wave of romantic obsession that deepened
as their troubles mounted. Only Keatsʼs illness proved insurmountable.
In earlier days, before the advent of emails and texting and instant messaging, lovers used to write love letters. Inked emotion on parchment or perfumed paper. A keepsake to treasure forever. And possibly a keepsake to betray you.
We’ve lost some of this with the instant communication that occurs in our world today. No-one is ever really absent. Most people can be reached at anytime via mobile or online.
Does this mean the angst and the longing has disappeared and the love letter has also disappeared?
When I was an angsty teenager and went to New Caledonia on a school excursion, I wrote a love-letter to my then-boyfriend entirely in French. It seemed the thing to do.
In my early twenties after moving back to New South Wales from one of the Southern states, I sent a letter to the lover I’d left behind, though it was more a ‘lust letter’ than a ‘love letter’.
But with instant communication, I’m more likely to make a quick phone call or send an email than pen a letter.
I wonder how Keats would have coped in the 21st century?
We have five in-season double movie passes to giveaway to ‘Bright Star‘. To enter, write a short love letter in the comments. It can be to your hubby, your boyfriend, your pet…whomever you like. All entries will go into the draw but you must write a short love letter to be eligible. You have until Wed 23 December. Look forward to reading them.
Oh no, I’ve started something here. I’ve been working on a YA Steampunk mss and editing has turned out delightful, I’m learning so much going through this time. Yesterday I opened another folder with an earlier mss that I love, love, love. As I read through I could see glaring mistakes, things that needed fixing, and then the thought came up that “hey I can actually fix this”… so now I’m concentrating on the steampunk but on the side I’m starting to fix and twiddle with things in my other story.
Have you ever tried to juggle two projects at once? I sat in on a workshop two years ago given by Kevin J Anderson, mega selling, super awesome SciFi writer. He has written/published over 98 novels so far, and he spoke of how he goes about his writing day. He gets up in the morning and goes for a walk, taking his tape recorder (microrecorder actually) with him and dictates a chapter out and about. When he gets home he works on fleshing out another novel, then in the afternoon after the dictation has been transcribed (he’s made a bit of money so he can afford to hire a typist) he goes through the edit. Then that night he works on the plot for the next chapter. Sleeps on it then gets up in the morning and goes again.
I don’t know if I could be that organised. I hope one day I can, but my day starts off like this:
2am someone’s crying, get up and pat them back to sleep.
4am roll over in bed and squash a child who’s snuck in beside me.
4.20 am still awake as child kicks me in the middle of the back searching for warmth with freezing cold toes.
5am get up and start mucking about with current WIP
5.02am one or many children awake and bouncing around the house looking for breakfast/something to drink/eat
5.07am Chuggington dvd starts up, kids are singing and eating and making lots of noise.
6.00am the christmas tree has fallen over mysteriously again – goblins are blamed.
8am some semblance of normality restored to my home, time to edit.
15mins later another disaster has struck, put computer away until later
try to sneak 5 mins here and there during the day, succeed sometimes, fail miserably most others
8pm, time to edit… open computer file, start scrolling down…. it’s quiet, peaceful….. hubby shakes my shoulder, there’s drool on the keyboard and I now have ASDF imprinted backwards on my forehead… go to bed it’s 10pm
One day I shall have the organisational skills of Kevin, but for now I’ll just take any and all chances I have to work/type/edit/dream about writing. Christine Wells said when I first met her that if I really wanted to write I would take every spare minute I could to do it. She’s right, I do.
High Five Winners
Romance Writers of Australia Inc is pleased to announce the winners of the High Five contest, as judged byVictoria Curran. The contest was managed by Deb Bennetto.
#2 Jennifer St George
#3 Doreen Sullivan
#4 Bec Sampson
#5 Sharon Francesca
#6 Melissa Smith
Congratulations to all our winners!
A few weeks ago it was time for the annual SE Qld Christmas bash. Our hostess, the self-described ‘quiet and demure’ Sue Webb and her family deserve a round of applause as about 16 RWA members landed on their doorstep with food, drink and chairs in hand. It was fantastic to see the group made up of both old and new RWA members.
The afternoon started with a ‘get-to-know-you’ activity, and then some party games… egg and spoon races and dunk-the-pen-in-the-bottle – yes, the photos below do have an innocent explanation – followed by eat, drink and be merry time. As you would expect at an RWA gathering, this was accompanied by a steady stream of chatter *grin*.
A sweltering hot Brissie day didn’t stop the festivities – but the dark grey clouds, rolling thunder and lightening did. Many thanks again to Sue and her family for a wonderful day.
Anita Mack
Michelle Woods
Vicky, Michelle, Justine, Nicky
Maddy Neels
Denise & Anne Marshall
Maddy, Bec, Chris, Michelle, Vicky
Tracey Travis
Michelle de Rooy
Tina Clark
1. My worst habit… (besides eating the darkest chocolate I can buy) is lack of confidence in myself as a writer. This is a constant battle and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy/habit. No matter the number of great reviews I get for my books, there’s always that doubt that Astrid-the-writer is not ‘good’ enough. Most authors I speak to have this doubt. The secret is to accept the fear, but do the writing anyway and to ignore the internal critiquer.
2. My secret skill that is no longer a secret… I am a contortionist ‘extraordinaire’, a skill I have developed through my years of rescuing lost, injured or abused animals. This makes for some challenging times and some interesting skills. The last kitten I rescued had taken refuge in the chassis of my car – I had to get flat on to the floor of my garage and belly slide under the car to feed it and allow it to get used to me. I did this every hour for a week before it was confident enough to come out and then brought inside to become part of the family – at 3am on a Saturday. This incident ‘the kitten who borrowed my car’ is going to be included in a non-fiction book I am writing about my life with animal rescue. (I wasn’t able to use my car for the week the kitten took it over as his home, which meant I had to arrange for home delivery of food, etc. Fortunately, I live in a small country town, so this wasn’t a problem and everyone thought it was a huge joke). The gallery page on my website has some pictures of a few of my rescuees.
3. Currently reading… I usually read several books a week and often I read more than one book at a time. I tend to read non-fiction when I am writing a book, so that I don’t get distracted by another author’s story or style. But I always ‘veg out’ at night with a novel. I read/review/interview authors as part of my editorial role for the webzine The Specusphere, so I have various stacks of ‘TBR’ books. Right now I am reading:
The Grail Enigma by Laurence Gardner (Gardner has written many books that are fascinating insights into history and how it has been ‘edited’ to suit the regime of the times). Conspiracy Theory? Who said that?!!!
The Queen’s Bastard by CE Murphy (an alternative Elizabethan fantasy/romance).
The Neon Rain by James Lee Burke (my favourite crime fiction writer). Burke’s characters are wonderfully drawn, even the villains are ‘redeemable’!
4. Plotter or pantser… I am both. I like to write fast (panster-mode) and get the basics down in first draft (no one reads MY first drafts) and then I go back and layer plot and character (plotter-mode). I often find that when I am in the creative trance, I type stuff that I am not sure ‘fits’ into the story, but my subconscious knows what it’s doing (I have learned to trust it and not to delete it from the text) and so, by the end of the book the ‘unknown’ scenes and characters that appear have fitted seamlessly into the narrative. My latest release (Starlight) is an example of this ‘automatic’ writing, where the characters and plot evolved, despite my input. If readers are interested in how Starlight came about and some interesting stuff that happened, plus a discussion on the creative process and the philosophy behind the book, please go to my website and click on writing tips/pushing the fictional boundaries:
5. I write… speculative and sensual romantic fiction (futuristic, fantasy, sexy space opera, paranormal) – all romance with a twist, plus I have some non-fiction published, or in the pipeline.
You can find out more about Astrid here.
If you’d like to appear in a Blog Bite in 2010, email Anita.
Today we welcome Stephanie Mayne to the RWA blog for a guest post on her recent trip to France:
As writers, it’s our job to notice the minutest of details; the sensory differences that make or break lovable characters or deliver believable scenes to our readers. Paris, France is sensory overload for me. It’s a big enough city to spend weeks on end making like a flaneur, trying to capture precisely what it is that is just sooo French, and still have more to come back to and discover.
If I were to draw up an ‘Only in Paris’ list it might include:
1. The romance section of super bookstore FNAC is called ‘Sentimental’
I found two of our author’s novels translated for French readers in September this year.
Yvonne Lindsay’s
and Carol Marinelli’s
2. An entire department store floor devoted to artist supplies.
Paint, brushes, canvasses, drawing pads, easels are stocked on an entire floor of C&H on one of Paris’ main streets; rue de Rivoli.
3. The newly released annual version of the national dictionary is advertised on a billboard on a main street in Paris.
The new words included in this edition include: e-book, geek, BMX and bruschetta
The French love their language.
4. Three aisles of dairy in the local supermarket.
What can I say? Morbier was the star fromage this visit – a roquefort-style creamy layer sandwiched between semi-soft cows milk cheese.
5. Queueing on Saturday morning for Laduree macaroons or at Pierre Herme for the city’s best mille fueille.
Thank you to our guest blogger, Stephanie Mayne.
Sigh, I’ve always wanted to go to Paris but so far the closest I’ve managed is Noumea.
Diane
Diane Curran
Kiki
Anita Joy
Monique Wood
Sandie Hudson
Natalie Hatch
Imelda
kellyethan
Eleni Konstantine
