Third AWW Challenge Book - Matilda Is Missing

Matilda Is Missing by Caroline Overington was a fabulous read and I will definitely be glomming Caroline's backlist, all of which sound as unique and fascinating as this one.

Here's the blurb:


Garry Hartshorn and Softie Monaghan were never love's young dream. Not even on their wedding day. 
Softie was sophisticated, a career woman, who owned a nice apartment overlooking St Kilda Beach. Garry had a few rough edges, plus one failed marriage and an assortment of jobs under his belt. 
But Softie's body clock was ticking, and Garry wanted children … 
So they got married, and produced the only thing they ever had in common. 
Matilda. 
Now, two years later, their golden-haired child is at the centre of a bitter custody battle. Both parents insist that her well-being is the only thing they care about. 
Yet, in truth, Matilda was always the one most likely to become lost.

What I LOVED:


Aside from the fact Matilda Is Missing is quite different from the books I usually read, I adored the subject and the way the story of one custody battle was told by a man very closely involved in another battle - that of his wife vs his son's ex-wife. His wife is a cracker of a character, who goes to extremes beyond what most people would but she loved her grandchildren so you could understand where she was coming from.

ALL of the characters are I feel sympathetic, bar one man perhaps who we get hints about throughout the book but do not find the truth of right until the very end.

The voice of the novel was very easy and enjoyable to read.

The plot and the way it me told had me turning pages right into the night. It was a meaty and relevant subject to write about.

What I WISHED THERE WAS MORE OF:


In one word, closure!! I guess I'm a happy ever after girl and I'd have liked to have known what happened to the characters in the end. The story of the narrator and his wife's battle to see their grandchildren was loosely tied up but it was all very sudden and therefore maybe not realistic or satisfying (but that is MY opinion and many others probably disagree). The main story of the custody battle over Matilda doesn't reach a satisfying closure and although this annoyed me on one level, on another I think I understood why the author left it like this. It's a realistic story - I have no idea if it was based on an actual case or not but it very easily could be and the sad fact is, such custody battles are often never resolved to satisfy everyone.

General thoughts:

I found it interesting that the two main characters (Matilda's parents) don't actually have any point of view space in the book. Maybe this was deliberately done - without getting into the heads of either of Matilda's parents it was easy not to become too close to them and side with one or the other. In that way, it was a challenging read - I wanted the best for Matilda but both parents had their pros and cons and I didn't know who/if I should barrack for.

I'm not sure how you'd classify this book in terms of genre, but it certainly makes you think and therefore I believe it is the type of novel many people - across different ages and genders - would enjoy!

Theory on Thursday with Liz Fielding

One of my favourite category romance books of ALL TIME (yes, it's THAT good) is Liz Fielding's The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella (In fact, I'm going to reread it really soon). Since reading that book, I do my utmost to keep up to date with what Liz puts out and I'm never disappointed. So, I was VERY excited to hear that Liz had put out a romance writing craft book and even MORE excited when she agreed to share some with my Theory on Thursday readers. So, without further ado (and no more fan girl moments) here it is...

Liz Fielding's Little Book of Writing Romance

Begin your story at a moment of crisis, a point in time when your character’s life is about to change for ever.

— Mollie Blake’s Writing Workshop Notes from Secret Wedding by Liz Fielding

Mollie Blake is a woman who knows what’s she’s talking about. Well, obviously, I created her back in 2000 for my novella,The Secret Wedding and she’s come with me on the adventure of writing my Little Book of Writing Romance.

This little book is a primer, an entry level aid for the writer who has a story to tell, but is struggling to get it out of her head and onto paper. To quote the theme song for the movie of Erich Segal’s bestselling book Love Story, “How do you begin…?”

I know how that feels, I’ve been there and this book is the distillation of the things I’ve learned over twenty years as a published author.

It’s the book I wish I’d had when I was starting out.

My purpose has been to explain, in the simplest terms, and using examples from my own work, how to make the transition from the story in your head to words on paper. How to write a compelling opening — I have deconstructed an opening scene — deepen conflict, write honest emotion, hopefully with a touch of humour to leaven the mix. How to write crisp dialogue, develop the romance, add a little sizzle.

The primary purpose of a romance novel is to elicit a positive emotional experience for the reader. Make her smile, make her cry, make her sigh with pleasure. To put it in a nut shell, to give her a good time.

To achieve that, you must give her characters she will care about, with whom she will be happy to share hours of her precious time, characters who, no matter what their faults may be — and perfection is so dull — are likeable.

To write their story you will have to know your characters intimately. For this, you need to do more than fill out a character worksheet with all their physical characteristics, their birth sign, their place in the family hierarchy, the names of their siblings.

Of course you have to know what colour eyes and hair your hero has, how tall he is, how old he is — ditto your heroine — before you begin. Making a note of these details and pinning it up so that you can check them when you’re in full flow a hundred pages into your manuscript is a sensible precaution. (You may think you couldn’t possibly forget these vital statistics but you will.)

These are, however, no more than the basics.

To come alive on the page, your hero and heroine must be more than two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs that you move around the stage. You should not be asking yourself “what can I make them do next”. If your characters are blood-and-bones, heart-and-soul real, you will know what they would do, just as you instinctively know what someone close to you would do in any given circumstance.

You may hear authors talking about characters who “take over” the story. That is not because the author is not in control of her characters, but because she has created three-dimensional, living, breathing people, men and women she knows so well that her writing brain is flying ahead of her fingers on the keyboard.

To truly know your characters you must understand not just what they look like, where they went to school, what they do for a living but see them living in their own world, having a life before you write Chapter One.

Download my book and I’ll show you how I do that :)

Liz Fielding is the author of more than sixty romances and has been nominated seven times for the Romance Writers’ of America RITA® award, winning twice with The Best Man & the Bridesmaid and The Marriage Miracle. She has also been nominated three times for the UK’s Romantic Novelists’ Association “Romance Prize”, winning with A Family of His Own.

She has also received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times BOOKclub magazine

A full list of her books is available at: Liz Fielding's Website

Liz Fielding’s Little Book of Writing Romance is available as an eBook download from Amazon.

I've got this book on my Kindle and I cannot WAIT to get stuck in :) Has anyone else read it yet? I'd love to hear your thoughts?!

Why I love writing for Harlequin!

Last year my biggest dream came true - I signed first with Carina Press (Harlequin's digital imprint) and then with Harlequin for the imprint MIRA Australia.

Harlequin have been my dream publisher since I really started focusing on romance in 2006. Why? Because they know ROMANCE!! Harlequin are THE BIGGEST romance publisher in the WORLD and also one of the biggest publishers full stop. They not only keep up with new publishing trends but they are often the ones setting them. They have a huge distribution network and ensure their books are well placed in book shops to reach loads of readers.

My stories are very much romances - they focus on the hero and heroine and their journeys to discover true love! All my novels have active secondary characters and the longer ones have additional plots beside the romance but the ROMANCE is what makes the book. So what better place for them to find a home than with Harlequin?

However... there's another reason I'm so very happy to be with Harlequin. It's about the chocolates and the champagne!!

When I signed with Harlequin Australia for Jilted (Mira, June 2012), I received a lovely bottle of champagne in the mail and a congratulations card from the team in Sydney. THAT made my day almost as much as getting the original call. I took a photo but still haven't cracked open the bubbly. I'm thinking I might do that the day I get to hold a copy of Jilted in my own hands.

Now if THAT wasn't generous enough, today I got a beautiful box of chocolates - Happy Valentines Love Harlequin! I haven't heard of any other publisher who is so generous with warm fuzzies like Harlequin is and I'm PROUD and HAPPY to be one of their authors.

 

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY to everyone. I'd love to hear what fabulous gifts or gestures YOU got!!

Embrace Your Process!

Over the course of the last fourteen years - yep, that's how long it took me to achieve my dream/goal of publication - I've written five100k+ single title novels and seven shorter length straight romances. You think in that time, I'd have perfected SOME kind of process, but I think I'm only just finally coming to grips with how I write. Finally coming to accept that if my rambling airy-fairy way of planning and then writing from start to finish without too much stressing about content works for me, then I should embrace it, instead of read about the processes of other writers and strive to achieve what THEY do.

I have high ambitions of keeping a bible for each book. But my notebooks generally become a massive mess, holding snatches of conversation that come to me before their time/place in the book and little scene/chapter notes that I write as I go along. I don't keep them, they are THAT bad by the time I'm finished with them. Occasionally I choose celebrity pictures of my hero and heroine, but just as often I rely on my own imagination. I only do an outline/synopsis beforehand if I'm entering the wip in a contest (not really happening at that stage anymore now I'm published). Otherwise I start with a tiny seed of an idea - in the case of JILTED (Mira, June 2012), it was a runaway bride coming back to a small, close-knit town ten years after leaving their golden boy. From that seed, characters and conflicts grew and a few key scenes/turning points dawned on me along the way. I don't even worry TOO much about the whole GMC - if I've got a tincy idea, I just let it flow.

And then I start at page one. Actually, I usually like to come up with a good working title before this - for some reason, my writing never kicks off until I've got the right one! And then, I sit down at my trusty lap top and start tapping away.

I'm a HUGE word count watcher. I need to know constantly how far I've come and how far I have to go - this constant watching probably slows me down a bit, but I've learnt that's just what I do.

Each day when I sit down to write, I MUST reread the previous day's work. And, throughout the course of my writing, I often have to go back and reread the previous few paragraphs before writing another sentence/paragraph. Sometimes (shock-horror), possibly once or twice a wip, I have to go back and read from the start. I've found this ensures that I keep the same tone/voice throughout - helps remind me who the characters were that I've started with. And of course, emotionally they have to change, but other things need to be consistent - their likes/dislikes, mannerisms, dialogue, etc.

I've also found that writing everyday DOES help me get into the habit of writing even when my muse is taking an extended holiday. This means that some days what I write isn't as mind-blowingly brilliant as what I wrote the day before, but I figure at least I've got something to work with.

Although I read back each day before writing, I don't edit each chapter as such as I go on. I prefer to get the first draft down quite quickly and then let it sit for a week or so (depending on deadlines) before going back and cleaning/livening it up.

So, that's my process and it works for me.

So, I hereby solemnly promise that when I read blog posts about other writers' processes in the future, I won't sit there and jealously wish their process was mine.

We all write in strange and wonderful ways... which is why we end up with such a diversity of great fiction on our shelves.

Theory on Thursday with Jennifer Scoullar

Another fabulous Theory on Thursday this week, with new Penguin author Jennifer Scoullar. Jennifer openly shares about her recent editing experience with her debut book (our in July) Brumby's Run. Jennifer's account is fascinating whether you've recently been through something similar or are looking ahead to what the editing experience might hold...

‘We edit to let the fire show through the smoke’ - Plotnik

On the fifth of January I received editorial notes from Penguin for my upcoming novel, Brumby’sRun.  An expert, in-house structural edit with a major publishing house, was for me the vast unknown territory between submission and publication. I had some idea what to expect, and in some ways was looking forward to the experience.  Fellow rural author Karly Lane had commented to me, ‘I LOVE editorial reports- my first one was the most amazing writing experience I’ve ever gone through. It’s amazing how just a few questions can spark your imagination and send you in a whole new direction’ Another writer friend of mine, Jewelene Barrile,  said ‘I want that revelation of a brilliant editor taking my ideas and polishing & resetting them in a way that opens my eyes to the craft of novel writing forever more.” Sounds good, doesn’t it?

             But I must admit, the report put me into a spin. The first thing I noticed was how well the editor knew my story – almost better than I knew it myself. It was disconcerting to find this person fluent in what had been, up to now,  my own private imaginary world.  More than that, she could pick when I’d hurried a scene or missed an opportunity to deepen a characterisation.  It was uncanny! She started me off with flattery, talking about the evocative descriptions of the High Country, the heartfelt bond between the twins and their horses, and the beautiful brumbies that almost steal the show. She was happy with structure, with pace, with point of view. So far so good, though I could still feel a but coming.

             Once the buttering up process was over, we got down to the nitty gritty. ‘As you’ll see in my notes below, most of my observations relate to character – I often found myself wanting to know more about a particular character, or wondering how their behaviour would affect others.’ Then she gave me a detailed character breakdown, and her thoughts on how to fix things. There was no direction, just endless questions. ‘We know Faith is Sam’s anxious, loving upper-class mother – but how well do we really know her? There’s a great opportunity in the early chapters of the book to develop a deeper relationship between Faith and Sam, and I’d love to see more of Faith throughout the novel. What drives Faith? What does she do for a living? What makes her happy? How is her relationship with Sam? We get the impression it’s bad, but why?’ And so it went on – almost 4,000 words of it.

             She finished with ‘This may seem like quite a lot to think about at this point, Jenny, but there’s no rush’. (I had three weeks!) ‘I envisage that the next step from here would be a minor redraft, depending on what strikes a chord for you in these notes’.

             The first day I just read the report over and over, feeling thoroughly daunted.  The next day I wrote two thousand new words and then deleted them. The next day I reduced the report to its essence, to dot points, and started a redraft in which I tried to address the very valid issues my editor had raised. Things began to fall into place.

             Text editor Mandy Brett talks about ‘The character of the relationship between editor and author, in which power see-saws in quite a freaky way. You are a taskmaster who issues deadlines, criticism, demands, sanctions. You are also a servant whose principal task is to make someone else look good and not be observed doing it.’ http://meanjin.com.au/editions/volume-70-number-1-2011/article/stet-by-me-thoughts-on-editing-fiction/  This is so very true. Such a privilege to have someone who really cares, help you release the full potential of your story.  

             Editor, novelist and reporter Arthur Plotnik once said, ‘You write to communicate, to the hearts and minds of others, what’s burning inside you. And we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.” By the end of the redraft my manuscript was vastly improved. It’s strange though. In some ways the process I went though is still as mysterious as ever.

Thanks so much Jennifer, that was fascinating. Sounds very similar to the experience I just went through with JILTED. When I saw the initial report, I almost died but now I think my editor is a GOD!!

Jennifer's book Brumby's Run (blurb below) and I can't wait. You can check out Jennifer's webpage, like her on Facebook or follow on Twitter.

Brumby's Run tells the story of Samantha Carmichael, a young woman whose life is turned upside down when she discovers she was adopted – and that she has a twin sister, who is now critically ill. With little warning, Sam finds herself looking after her newfound sister's farm, high in the Victorian Alps. What starts as a daunting challenge soon becomes a wholehearted tree change, as Sam grows to love the property and the locals – especially handsome mountain cattleman Drew Chandler. But is Sam's sister ready to really accept her into her life? And can Sam truly leave the city behind?

Guesting at Down Under Divas

I'm chatting with Sami Lee today at the HUGELY FABULOUS Down Under Divas blog and I'd love some visitors (hint, hint)!

I'm talking books, writing and my Top Five movies, men, drinks, etc - of which you may be a little surprised/shocked!

Hope to see you there.
x
Rach!

There's Something About Nora!

I just finished reading Nora Roberts' latest - THE NEXT ALWAYS. Verdict? I LOVED it. Why? Now that's gonna be a little bit harder to explain.

THE NEXT ALWAYS is the story of Clare and Beckett - the first in a new Nora trilogy :) which is fabulous cos I'm hanging out for the next two. Clare's a widow and Beckett is a single guy who has had a crush on Clare since high school. Oh and Clare has three young boys to her dead husband. And that's about it in terms of conflict. Seriously - the BIG C that we all strive for, the BIG C that is the subject of many a romance writing conference, the BIG C that many of us have been reject for - is that she's been married before and he maybe feels a little bit like he's stepping on his dead school mate's toes.

That simple conflict is not even really developed to its full potential - at the beginning of the book, Clare is a little nervous but more than happy to move on. She doesn't think twice about accepting Beckett's advances and is simply overjoyed that she has it inside her to love again. I guess both characters do have growth - Claire has the learning to love again thing and Beckett realising that he wants the whole shebang that Claire brings with her - but none of this is very strong.

There's a bit of an external plot point that causes discomfort for these two but I wouldn't say it really threatens their relationship.

And this is what has got me flummoxed!!

I really enjoyed this book but the plot wasn't anything special or unique and there was definitely not a strong conflict, however I kept reading because I loved how the book made me feel. I loved the characters - Clare and Beckett, her three boys and the secondary characters which will soon have their own romance stories. I also loved the slight paranormal element - no, there weren't any vampires or witches or wear wolves, but there was a ghost in the building Beckett and his brothers are renovating. The ghost's story was beautifully done!

HOW does Nora sustain a book for 300+ pages with no real conflict, yet have me reading late into the night wanting to finish it?

Anyone got any answers? I'd love to hear them!