Shadows is in the catalogue!
Very exciting moment for me today… Shadows is listed in the Text Publishing catalogue for January-June 2012!
You can check it out here: http://textpublishing.com.au/ (And see what other great titles Text is publishing in the first half of next year.) I’m under YA.
(The cover concept is pretty much what the final artwork will be, with a few minor tweakings. Once its finalised, I’ll be plastering it all over this site 🙂 ..)
Official publicity won’t start for few months yet, but I just had to share… Speaking of which, I also did my first blog interview last week with a friend of mine in the UK who’s set up a new book blog as part of her journalism studies. Again, it’s a tad early for publicity, but it was a great experience – and Courtney asked great questions!
You can check it out here (it’s a very good blog and worth visiting regularly): Lost in Fiction
An update on Shadows
A quick update on where I’m at with Shadows (because, yes, this blog is meant to be me posting about my own writing and not just other people’s.).
It’s funny. I can write about other author’s work quite easily, but as soon as I start thinking about posting about my own, I struggle. Part of that issue is my morbid fear of sounding like a tool…
Anyway, some really great stuff has been happening that I want to share, so I’ll get over myself.
I had a quick trip to Melbourne a week ago and had the chance to meet the team at Text. It was everything I’d hoped it would be – and more. Had a brilliant editorial meeting with my editor, who knows Shadows inside and out (it’s always exciting when someone knows your characters as well as you do). We really clicked, and I’m so grateful for the constructive feedback she’s given me.
I met everyone who was in the office, and then had lunch with my editor, along with the senior editor who first loved Shadows (and to whom I’ll be forever grateful) and the lovely publicist who will be spreading the news about Shadows when publicity starts next year. (We’re still on track for a June release.)
When I met up with my sister-in-law afterwards she said I looked like a kid on Christmas morning. (And yes, I know the hard stuff is ahead. And yes, I know I’ll be a wreck when the book goes out for review, and the week it goes on sale. So I’m going to enjoy these exhilarating moments when they come along…)
So now I’m back home, putting aside my first draft of Haze (Book 2 – about three-quarters down now), to work on revisions for Shadows. Structurally, we’re all good, so I’ve got the luxury of time to go back over the prose and make it as tight as it can be. I tend to write quite quickly, which means I don’t often linger over words or phrases. Having the chance to do that now is a real gift. It’s those small touches – bringing in more visual imagery when setting scene, chopping out extraneous words etc. It might only a word here or there, but it makes all the difference to the polish.
In other news, the concept for my cover is almost sorted (thanks to the very talented WH Chong), following a collaborative process involving myself, my editor and my agent. I’m loving the concept and can’t wait to see the final design.
OK. That’s it from me for now.
Big news…
Big news… After many years, and many stories, I have signed a two-book deal with Text Publishing. Huge, HUGE, news for me. 🙂
I’m writing a YA paranormal thriller series with the working title of The Rephaim, and the first book, Shadows, is due out mid 2012.
So, I’m loving Text, I’m loving my agent Lyn Tranter (Australian Literary Management) and I’m trying to get my head around the fact I’m finally going to be a published author.
I’m planning for this site to become my official blog once the first book is out and I’ve got book-related things to write about… But in the meantime, I’m just going to put my thoughts down as they come to me along the way (and probably only tell a few friends about these posts to start with. Let’s face it they’re the only ones who’ll be interested at this point.)
A bit about the journey to date…
I’ve been writing creatively for 16 years. I’ve completed six manuscripts and have a folder full of (increasingly positive) rejections.
In late 2008, I signed with the indomitable Lyn Tranter, who has been incredibly supportive of me. She signed me on the basis of an ‘other world’ fantasy series I was working on at the time (which I’m still very committed to, and hope to finish one day). We came close to a publishing deal about 18 months ago with that work, but it all fell in a heap at the final hurdle.
Like all rejections, I took it well….. NOT! I had a little weep-fest, played yet another round of Am-I-Just-Kidding-Myself on the wheel of torture… swore a bit, drank more red wine than usual … and then remembered I love writing and there was no way I was going to stop, even if I never got that elusive deal.
So… I’d had this idea bouncing around in my head for a while, but I kept shoving it aside because I was working on the other series. Any hoo (as a good friend of mine would say), one weekend I decided to just have a little play with a scene or two.
For the first time I didn’t worry about what people in my life would think if they read it, because I was just writing it for me. And it was fun! There was violence and swearing and smart ass dialogue and a bit of sexiness… And it just flowed.
Long story short, I wrote 50 pages that weekend. When I reached 90 pages, I thought I better tell Lyn what I was up to. She loved it, told me to go for it, and a year later I had a new manuscript that I loved. I shared it with some friends who share my reading tastes and read a lot of paranormal fiction, and got some fantastic feedback (yes, that’s you Place, Michelle, Sarah, Elise and Kate!).
And now it’s going to be published. And I still can’t quite believe it.
Of course, this is just the start of the hard work. There’s editing to be done, and marketing, and all the other interesting stuff that comes with publishing a book these days, but my sleeves are rolled up and I am so ready for it…
