Progress report
I hit my first major milestone with Haze (Book 2 of The Rephaim Series) this week: I finished the first draft. 🙂
There’s a huge amount of work to come – structural edits and hours and hours of fine tuning – but it’s a good feeling to have it all down and see that the plot is doing what it needs to.
There are new characters to spend more time on – characters mentioned in Shadows, but who don’t turn up until Haze. (And yes, I realise this is only of interest to the handful of people who have read drafts of Shadows at this point.)
I’m also working on the final round of edits on Shadows, which is now scheduled for release in very early July. I’ll confirm the actual date in coming months.
Okay. Back to work.
Fan girl moment
So, I met Claudia Gray today at her book signing at Black Cat Books at Paddington. Total fan girl moment.
I really wanted to play it cool, you know, one writer to another, but every time I meet authors I admire I turn into the amazing grinning woman who talks too fast. (Not that you can tell from this photo…And no, I didn’t plan on getting this shot, hence the lack of discernible effort with my hair.)
I’ve been a fan through the Evernight series (reviews over on Other Worlds) and have been looking forward to her latest release, Balthazar, for months. I finally bought a copy this week – and it’s now signed. It’s next on my reading list (unless another library book arrives and takes priority in my reading schedule).
Claudia was lovely and very generous with her time with fans. She was off to Dymocks in the city straight after the Black Cat event, where I hope she met another bunch of appreciative readers.
Booky bits and pieces that make me smile
In lieu of having something deep and meaningful to say this week, I thought I’d put up photos of some of the fun (mostly) book-related stuff from my shelves.
- Harry Potter bookmark, pre-dating the movie franchise! This was given to me in 2000 (I think from Angela Wingkee – who is now Ange Carr – when we worked together).
- Bookmarks made by the very creative Michelle, as part of my “reading/blogging kit”, which also included tissues, Mentos, a notebook and band-aids for paper cuts. (There was a “fantasy” bookmark as well, but my dog ate it. Seriously.)
- This is a cute set of illustrated Tolkein poems (from The Hobbit and LOTR). I was sent these back in my journo/book reviewing days (for an LOTR anniversary). The pencil is there to show how small they are.
- A wonderfully tactile hand-made notebook, brought back from Buenos Aires by the very thoughtful Miss Heather.
- Funky stone paperweights from Oxfam (which say “urgent”, “not urgent” and “don’t forget” on the back). They could easily double as weapons. Not that Oxfam would approve of that use, of course.
- Beautiful hand-made bookmark from the very talented Bec, complete with antique button and vintage fabric.
- My personal favourite, and most kitsch: a Russian doll set featuring images from the LOTR films on hand-painted wood. Classic. Apologies, but I can’t remember who gave me this…
