How to Experiment on Your Friends #2 - or - What NOT to do Four Days Before Your First Conference

Dale Whistler’s “Night Wings” Austin.

We woke on Tuesday CD-5 (Conference Day minus 5) to yet more hot, sunny, humid weather. (Damn!) Today, we were bidding farewell to our friends Dave and Janet in Houston and embarking on the 3 hours or so drive to Austin. After a delicious breakfast of cinnamon toast (why have I never discovered cinnamon toast before?– yumm-ee!) we loaded the black Ford Escape and backed out of our friends’ drive. Dave was at the wheel and I planned to relieve him later, probably after a comfort break somewhere along the road.

My husband is blessed with a fine sense of direction – something he has developed through working with maps in his job as a geophysicist. Even when the sun isn’t shining, he always knows what direction he’s facing, and he only has to glance at a roadmap once to remember what route to take. So, it was with a minimum of fuss that we found ourselves on I-290 heading toward Austin.

The traffic was light and the road was easy. The scenery was pleasant rather than spectacular, with lots of ranches, grass, cattle and some wildflowers. We were too late to see the Texas Bluebonnets, unfortunately, but there was still color along the roadside. We stopped for gas and a rest at Giddings, and I took the wheel. I’ve driven in the States before, and we also once lived in Italy for three years, so driving on the wrong (!) side of the road holds no terrors for me. US drivers are mainly courteous, law-abiding and forgiving, and if you can survive Italian roads (which I LOVE) you can survive anything, so we continued calmly on our way. I did hand the car back to Dave before we entered Austin though – I’m not so good in unfamiliar cities!

We had left Houston a bit earlier than expected, and so arrived in the city of Austin before lunchtime. After trying unsuccessfully – and frustratingly – to find somewhere to sit and eat a sandwich along the Colorado River (plenty of parks and jogging tracks, but nowhere obvious to stop with a car) we finally parked close to the Government building, and ended up eating in an Irish Pub. The food was good, and there was a very nice atmosphere, but it did seem odd coming all the way to Austin Texas only to eat in an Irish pub!

After lunch we found the home of our next set of friends easily enough, following the instructions they had given us. We settled into the lovely guest room they had prepared for us and relaxed over a drink. I made my request for access to their computer and printer, which they very generously granted, and offered to repay them by delivering the new-and-improved version of my conference talk. They had the extreme good grace to look appreciative. But before that came the Great Bat Watch That Wasn’t.

In Austin, as we had learned from our friends in Houston, the Congress Avenue Bridge houses a huge colony of Mexican Free-Tail bats. I love bats, and this seemed like a great opportunity to see the colony. Our friends agreed, and so after taking us to supper in the Hyatt in town, we walked the short distance to Congress Avenue Bridge. There we waited for darkness, hoping to see millions of bats stream out over our heads.

 Waiting for the bats under Congress Avenue Bridge.

To cut a long story short – it was the wrong time of year. The mother bats give birth in June, and the babies were too young to fly. The mothers stay close when their pups are that small, so all we saw were a few bats reflected in the infra-red lights of the trip boats which sit under the bridge. That, and Dale Whistler’s impressive “Night Wings” bat sculpture at one end of the bridge. Oh well, maybe another year!

The day following our unsuccessful bat stalk, our friends took us to the beautiful Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Centre run by the University of Texas. It was another wonderful outing and worthy of a post all by itself. But I need to get back to my conference preparations.

Wildflowers at the Lady Bird Johnson Centre.

Dave and I spent that afternoon working on my talk. We decided which headings I should cut, and which slides. Dave is good at manipulating slide shows – he does it all the time for his own talks. Once we got the time down to what we thought was right, and Dave was happy with my slides, I took the flash drive containing my text into a quiet room so I could concentrate on re-working what I was going to say. I’ll tell you now – it does nothing for a stomach already full of the jitters to find that instead of copying the Word files containing your talk, what you actually copied was only the shortcut off the desktop. I think my shrieks of dismay and horror could probably be heard back in Houston.

Thankfully, I still had my printed notes, the ones I had used on Set of Friends #1. All I had to do was retype the entire thing on this borrowed computer, save the proper files to the flash drive, and print out a new set of notes. God bless our Austin friends Arnie and Margit for supplying me with alcohol and sympathy, as well as the use of their machines, while I tapped away, two-fingered and alone, for most of that afternoon. NOT what I had planned on doing four days before my first ever conference!

I will also say though, that this mini-disaster (well, it felt like disaster at the time) was actually a good thing. Having to re-type the entire talk helped drive the content deeper into my mind. By the time I’d finished typing, I was pretty happy with the text, and when I finally delivered it to our wonderful friends, I was also very happy with their responses. No extra changes were forthcoming – now, it seemed, all I had to do was enjoy the two days of vacation left before Conference Day itself!

How to Experiment on Your Friends #1

In my last post, I said I would let you know how my first ‘public’ run-through of my Rhemalda Publishing ‘Got Stories?’ conference talk went. I was pretty nervous, even though I would be delivering it to good friends. Apart from a few poetry-reading competitions at school (years ago now!), and my little talk at the King’s Envoy book launch last year, I hadn’t done any speaking in front of an audience. The poetry competitions were not too stressful because I was only reading what was printed on a page. And the talk I gave at the book launch was pretty easy too, because I was only telling people about myself and my writing. But at the conference, it would be different. I would be putting myself up as someone qualified to give advice to other writers – advice that might actually be used. How scary is that? I felt it was a huge responsibility, and something I had to take seriously. Yet I also wanted to keep it lighthearted, and hopefully, fun. For me, as well as my audience!
In that respect, I had the best helper anyone could wish for. Not only does my husband Dave have a mischievous sense of humor, he is also experienced in giving talks like these. He had helped me put together a series of slides to illustrate my talk, and had also sometimes helped me see things from a different angle. So far, so good. But although I was happy with the slides and the headings I’d chosen, and also the text I’d written, I hadn’t yet put them all together in front of an unsuspecting yet expectant audience.

On the day I’d chosen to deliver my maiden speech, we spent a very enjoyable time in Houston. We went out in the car and my husband showed me all the places he’d worked when he’d been there on business. For those who have never seen it, Houston is VAST – over 6 million people live there, I was told. I had expected the place to be rather industrial and not very attractive, but I was pleasantly surprised. Much of the newer architecture is in an older style, and lends the city an almost quaint atmosphere. After some welcome lunch we visited the new Hall of Paleontology in the Museum of Natural Science (awesome!) as well as the Cullen Hall of Gems and Minerals. Stopping off for refreshing margaritas ended this excursion on a suitably alcoholic note. Well, a bit of Dutch courage never went amiss!

Hiding in the shade waiting for supper to cook!

After yet another delicious meal in Dave and Janet’s back yard (yes, sitting inside the sprinklers again!) I could put it off no longer. Gathering my notes in one hand and my courage in the other, I prepared to enter the lion’s den.

I had asked my friends to be critical, and to let me know if I needed to alter anything about my talk. I watched them while I delivered it (trying hard not to actually read my notes and mainly failing) and was pleased when I got either a smile or even a laugh in the right place. Whoo-hoo, I thought – this is going well! Until I finished, of course. No, I have to be fair. The talk did go well, and my audience was appreciative. I was pretty pleased. But once we began the post-mortem, it became clear that changes would have to be made. For one thing, the talk was too long. Rhemalda wanted 15-20 minutes, and I had gone on for around 35 minutes. I also had too many slides and too many small headings. Something would have to be CUT!!

But that would have to wait until we got to our next set of friends, who lived in Austin. They, I knew, would have a computer that I could load my talk and slides on to, and a printer so I could print out my new, improved – and shortened! – talk. Little did I know things would not turn out so simple!   

Build-up to a Fantastic Conference!

 Today I’m posting the first of a short series of blogs surrounding my attendance at the Rhemalda Publishing ‘Got Stories?’ conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, on June 16^th 2012. It was one of the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences of my life so far, but more of that later.

 When I first learned of the conference from Rhemalda, my immediate thought was – “I have to be there!” My second thought was – “Can I afford to be there?” After all, it’s a long way from the UK to Utah, and it would incur a certain amount of expense. My third thought, however, (and this was the clincher) was – “Can I afford not to be there?” The answer to this turned out to be a resounding “No!” so the decision was made.

Much of my strong desire to attend the conference stemmed from a slight feeling of disconnect from Rhemalda and my fellow authors. I felt such a long way away from everything, being in the UK. This was silly, really, because the US is such a huge country and many of my fellow authors hadn’t had the opportunity to meet face to face with Rhett and Emmaline either. This conference would give those of us who could make it a wonderful chance to put actual people to the Facebook profiles, email messages, and grainy, intermittent Skype images that was all we’d had to work with so far. I knew I would forever regret it (and be extremely jealous of those who did attend!) if I didn’t manage to go.

After a conversation with my lovely husband Dave, who often travelled to the States on business in the past but rarely does so now, we agreed on a schedule for our visit. We have several sets of friends in the US, and as it would be silly not to include as many of them on this trip as we could, we decided to fly out the Sunday before the conference and spend a few days relaxing. It wasn’t easy as we had to organize our flights, hire cars, dates and times around when our friends could be free, but we finally achieved the juggling act. We settled on flying from London Heathrow (our nearest airport) into Houston, where we would stay with our first set of friends. Dave has often described Houston to me but I had never been there, so I was looking forward to seeing the place and where he used to work.

I am not a big fan of flying because I often suffer from motion-sickness. If I get it bad, it can affect me for two or three days, and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to enjoy our visits. But as we had decided to make the most of this US trip, and had booked some holiday after the conference as well as before it, we had also decided to fly out in more comfort than usual. Yes, we were going Business Class!!

The plane was a Boeing 777, and the Business Class end was even more comfortable than I had anticipated. I’ve never yet been able to sleep on a plane and the allure of fully-reclining seats was a strong one. I felt I was being cocooned in a little individual pod of comfort and once I settled myself in, I actually began to feel excited about being on a plane. Big change for me!

The 9 hour flight went extremely well. There was hardly any turbulence (which is usually what sets off my motion-sickness), the seat was ridiculously comfortable, the food and service were excellent, and the personal entertainment center had more TV shows, movies, music shows, and games than even a ten-year-old child could exhaust. Plus I had my Kindle, and had recently started reading Karen Amanda Hooper’s Tangled Tides. What more could I wish for?

We landed in hot and humid Houston (it was around 99°, whereas the UK had been about 16° and drizzly!) at around 1.30 pm. That’s 7 pm UK time. We collected our hire car, a black Ford Escape with thankfully efficient air-con, and drove to the district of Houston where our first set of friends lived.

We had already decided to try staying awake until 9 or 10 pm, so we could acclimatize as quickly as possible. Our friends helped enormously by providing us with a fabulous supper in their garden, although I only survived the temperature by sitting right next to, and sometimes actually inside, the spray from their garden sprinkler, and we retired to our very comfortable guest room feeling no more than slightly wearier than usual. I slept well although I did have minor anxieties, because I’d asked our friends if next day they would listen to and comment on the talk I intended to give at the conference: Fantasy World Building. I knew they’d be gentle with me, but I was still dreading how it might go.

Find out how it went in my next post. J 

THE TANGWYR HAS LANDED!

The Tangwyr Arrives!

 

Remember that post back in January? The one about the metal artist who sent us photos of a tangwyr he had created just from the picture on the front cover of King’s Envoy? Well, I am excited to announce that the creature did finally make its way to my house, and in time for my birthday!

Apologies to anyone who has already seen this on my Facebook page – but it’s such a fabulous thing, I just had to post it here too.
Yes – the tangwyr has landed. Its creator rang us up one day in early March to tell us that he had finished the sculpture, and that he would be very happy to come and install it for us. So we fixed a day, and he arrived with the creature in his truck – a truck that also carried the huge metal head of a horse. Good job it wasn’t a unicorn, or I would have had that off him, too!

Gorgeous horse-head sculpture

We had already decided where the tangwyr would go, and Dave helped assemble and steady the platform that would allow the artist to reach the relevant branch. He was able to carry the beast by himself, and it was installed quite simply by attaching it to the end of a long steel pole. It moves slightly in the wind, which I love because it gives the creature life.
The artist has lacquered the underneath of the tangwyr, but not its head and back. The back of it will continue to go a lovely rusty color, which matches well with the book cover, while its undersides will retain that gorgeous steel-blue of naked metal.
I simply adore it, and it sends shivers down my spine each time I see it. I still can’t believe this impressive creature came out of my head.
Now – if only Drum, Sullyan’s magnificent warhorse, would also turn up on my doorstep, my dreams would be fulfilled!



Coming in to land ...

TO PLAY, OR NOT TO PLAY?

The other day I was chatting with fellow writer Rachel Summerhill, when she asked a question that got me thinking. The subject of our conversation was my novel, King’s Envoy. Rachel had just finished it, and had told me she would post a review on Amazon and Goodreads. I was thrilled, of course. It is always lovely when someone takes the trouble to record what they like about a novel, and say how eagerly they are looking forward to the next book in the series. This is what we writers thrive on – the knowledge that others have taken as much out of a novel as we put into creating it. It’s not necessarily an ego thing (although it might be for some). What it’s really about is knowing you have made a bond, both physical and spiritual, with a complete stranger. That, to me, is still a very special feeling.

But that isn’t what got me thinking. In her email, Rachel also asked me various questions about the plot and the characters. Very interesting questions. She made some assumptions, based on what she’d read in King’s Envoy, about how the story might continue. They were questions I didn’t want to answer (sorry, Rachel!) because I didn’t want to spoil her enjoyment of books two and three. But they did get me thinking. They made me recall an earlier review I’d received, where the reviewer mentioned a feeling of the reader having been “played”.

At the time, I wasn’t sure whether this comment was a negative, a positive, or simply a statement. I didn’t really give it too much thought. Rachel’s plot questions brought it back into my mind and I began to wonder if any work of fiction can be created without the reader being played.

After all, isn’t that what mystery novels do? What thriller or murder novel would entertain so well if the reader wasn’t constantly being deceived, or pointed in the wrong direction? Even the gentlest of period romances have an element of playful misdirection . The heroine is going to marry the dashing hero – Oh no! He’s turned out to be a bounder, or worse, already married, and she’s left nursing a broken heart. Even Agatha Christie wouldn’t have sold half so many novels if the perpetrators of all those foul murders had been easy to spot, hiding behind the butler.

I will be honest. When I was writing my Artesan novels, this issue of deliberate misdirection was not uppermost in my mind. It was only once the series was finished that I realized it was, in essence, a mystery thriller. It came as a surprise to me – I thought I was writing an epic fantasy adventure! It just goes to show how important it is for a writer to read. So much can be absorbed simply by reading the work of the masters.

On Editing ... A Door Called Sally.

Some of my fellow Rhemalda authors have blogged recently on the subject of editing and, with the second book of my Artesans of Albia series, King’s Champion, nearing this process, I thought I would add my own thoughts.

Being a British author in an American publishing company brings its own unique set of circumstances when it comes to edits. As I am also a freelance editor, proofreader and writing mentor, I have experience of this process from both sides. Does it make having my own work edited easier or harder? The answer is that I don’t really know. No one likes to see their precious text covered with red, or have someone tell you that a certain scene doesn’t work, or that you have failed to spot a glaring typo in the sentence you’ve read a hundred times. Yet maybe I can take this process easier than some, because I have personal experience of trying to be diplomatic when dealing with other writers. I know that the process isn’t personal, and that my editor is trying to help me make my novel as clean and as good as it can be. And I do know how hard it is to spot your own mistakes! A case in point was when I first decided to design and have printed some King’s Envoy bookmarks and flyers. How many times did I check and recheck the wording on the files before I sent them to the printer? And how ticked off was I when they came back, and my mother instantly spotted the “h” missing from the word “publisher” and the “g” missing from the middle of “engaging”?

Very ticked off. Seriously – very!

So, if an experienced proofreader can still miss typos, a good, impartial editor is invaluable.

Yet there is leeway for discussion when your edits come back, especially if your novel, like mine, is set in a particular historical period.

My Artesans of Albia series is set within a completely fictional fantasy world, yet for inspiration I drew heavily on the English Medieval period. There are no machines in my novels, no guns or engines; people rely on horses for transport and swords, bows and knives for defense. The nobility live in fortified manors or castles, wealthier citizens in towns, the ordinary people in small villages. Health care is basic, with drugs being purely herbal, although procedures such as blood transfusions are just coming into use.

 Ok, you are thinking – what does this have to do with editing?

It all comes down to terminology.

If you follow a certain trade, you will use terms that most lay people will not understand. For instance, how many people today could name all the parts of a sword? How many of you know what a tang is, or a quillon? Yet a swordsmith or blacksmith would know these terms intimately. The same applies to the various sections of a castle – it’s no good someone telling you there’s a fire in the bailey if you run with a bucket of water to the keep.

This issue of long-forgotten, or specialized terms came up for me once the first round of King’s Envoy edits came back. Two in particular caused some confusion. The first was the word “midden”, and the second was the term “sally port”. For those of you who don’t know, the word “midden” means a dung heap. It can apply equally to what comes out of a horse’s stable or to the unusable leftovers from a kitchen. It is, quite simply, a pile of refuse. This is where the differences between UK English and US English come into play because although it’s an old word, I believe more UK readers would recognize the term than readers in the US. As it was not vitally important to the story, and I didn’t want to make my readers keep reaching for their dictionaries, I was quite happy to substitute this word and use “dung pile” instead.

However, the term “sally port” is a specialized term relating to castles and fortified manors. Simply put, a sally port is a small door either to the side of, or actually let into, the huge doors or gates leading into a fortified building. It would be used when a small number of people, on foot, wanted to enter or leave. The word “sally” can also mean a charge or sortie (as in battle) or to go forth, as in an excursion. The term is derived from the Latin “salire”, meaning “to leap”. (Who says fantasy novels can’t also be educational? J)

In this case, I felt justified in sticking to my guns and asking for the term to be kept in the novel. As the photographs show, I also managed to find a living example of a genuine sally port in the ruins of a small castle in Pembroke, Wales, UK.

So, although the editing process can often mean change, it can also be useful for highlighting what is important, or what needs to remain.

Expect Unusual Excitements!

You would be forgiven for thinking that having your first book published is the epitome of excitement, that it doesn’t get any better than that. And, in many ways, you’d be right. Before my Artesans of Albia series was accepted by Rhemalda, I spent many years believing nothing could top being offered a contract, and then seeing my very own creation, my book, displayed on a bookstore shelf. Don’t get me wrong – that was, and still is, one of the best moments of my life. But, of course, the excitement doesn’t end there.

There’s the entire exciting process before the book is ready for publication – editing, cover design, layout, etc – followed by reviews, a book launch and, hopefully, the thrill of fan mail. There’s a bit of stress involved there too, of course, but on the whole, the process is exciting, especially the nearer you get to completion. For some reason, I didn’t consider any of these things when I was dreaming my dream of publication. I guess I thought I wouldn’t have much involvement in the cover design and book layout stage; I imagined the publisher would have their own style and that I, as the author, would have little or no say in how the book looked. It’s one of the many perks of signing with a small press rather than a large, impersonal one – you get much more say in these important decisions, and it was my first unexpected excitement.

There have been others along the way and they will probably be subjects of other blog posts. But my latest excitement was the most unexpected of all, and I can still hardly believe it happened. It resulted from a casual stroll around an antiques centre following a nice walk with  my husband, Dave, back in the summer. The UK has many of these centres – they sell traditional antiques such as furniture, items of silver, old paintings, etc, but they also sell architectural salvage, such as old stone urns or statues from people’s gardens, as well as “kitchenalia” and jewelry. In fact, you can find almost anything. Outside this particular shop, mounted on the wall high above my head, as if it was flying, was the most gorgeous metal owl. Sculpted in rusted iron, it is, to me, a thing of incredible beauty. It was a bit pricey though, and we left the shop without buying it. Imagine my excitement when I found that Dave had bought it for me for Christmas! He is just so lovely (Dave, I mean. Well, and the owl too.)

After I had opened this wonderful present on Christmas Day, Dave proceeded to tell me the story that went with it. As a way of advertizing my book, both of our cars carry flyers in the window depicting the King’s Envoy cover. When Dave went to visit the workshop of the artist who made the owl, in order to collect mine, the artist saw my flyer. He was instantly drawn to the depiction of the tangwyr, the strange flying predator on the cover, and asked Dave all about it. He said he liked to create strange and wonderful creatures in metal and that my tangwyr would make an excellent sculpture. He said he might make one later in the year. In fact, he was so taken with the idea that he made his sculpture within two weeks, and sent Dave some photos of it. Because Dave didn’t want to tell me about the owl, he had to wait until Christmas to show me these incredible pictures. To say that I was amazed and excited would be a huge understatement! 

So it seems that being an author and having a book published can lead to all sorts of wonderful and exciting things. I feel so proud that my tangwyr creation, brought to life initially by the talented artist Eve Ventrue, should have led to its existence as a striking and beautiful work of the metal smith’s art. I simply have to have one, and have high hopes for my birthday in March. Watch out for another blog post then!