The Lion

For their loyalty to her cause
She rewarded them.
Before her throne they knelt, heads bowed,
Respectful,
And sapphire light engulfed them.
For moments they knew bliss and then -
Changed eternally -
They emerged into new life.
Free together they enjoyed the novelty,
Discovering what it was to be,
And in their play they trespassed,
Using gifts that did not belong to kill.
Rent from top to toe by claws designed for giving,
A fissure opened to allow a shadow in.
Multiplying like the darkness,
The creatures grew from the once proud ones sin.
Blue flame flickered now in colder fury,
Cursing the favoured for their one ill fated action.
Shamed to look upon each other they scattered,
Seeking distance to fill the void they had created.
Yet hope still glimmered if they paused to find it.
Redemption lay within their grasp,
If not their sight.
To rid the world of shadow and to heal it,
To end the wrong they caused and make it right.
Until that day they must wander,
Knowing neither warmth nor sleep nor food nor love.
Denied all that makes life precious,
Persevered from death until they can make good
Their fall and once more roar in union together.

On to the next

I heard today that I didn't make it through to the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Here are some possible reasons:-

1. My reviewer doesn't like fantasy

2. My reviewer doesn't read anything without pictures

3. My reviewer didn't have time to read all its submissions and started accepting and rejecting randomly

Ah well, it doesn't matter anyway. A rejection is just another step closer to an acceptance. On to the next one (competition, agent, publisher). Good luck to everyone who got through!

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award

Valpot introduced me to this amazing competition last night. Amazon.com, in association with Penguin USA, are offering 5000 novelists the chance to be discovered. Through a six month process, their novels will be read and reviewed and narrowed down from 5000 to 1000 to 100 and then to the final 10, at which time ordinary customers will have the chance to read all 10 entries and vote for their favourite. The three authors with the highest votes will be flown to New York and wined and dined at an award ceremony where the grand prize winner will be announced. Up for grabs is a publishing deal with Penguin USA, a $25,000 advance, promotion through amazon.com and a HP media suite. The runners up get some cool prizes as well, and of course all this publicity on amazon.com is going to help your career prospects no end.

Reading the details on amazon.com, I got the feeling that this is an opportunity too good to be missed, but thanks to my procrastination (a subject for another post) I don't have The Mark of the Wolf in a suitable condition for submission. Entries are open until the 5th November or until 5000 entries have been received. Valpot persuaded me to sign up last night, so I now have seven days to submit my novel or lose my registration number. Can I wrestle 120,000 words into shape within that time? With several gallons of diet coke and no other commitments, I might. Who needs to sleep anyway?

Of course, Valpot has already entered, which leaves an ethical question - should we compete against each other? What happens if we both get down to the final ten? I would be thrilled if I did, and even more so if Valpot managed to hit the top spot, whether I got knocked out at the first round or not. However, this is all moot as it is highly unlikely that I will have anything to submit in the first place.

Does The Mark of the Wolf really have to be 120,000 words long? Maybe it would be just as good at 50,000.

Feeling overwhelmed

33 days to go until I fly out to New Zealand and I am feeling totally overwhelmed with work. I want to plan out what I'm taking to New Zealand and get the trip in order, I want to get all my Christmas presents (bought and made) sorted before I go away, I have 3 friends birthdays this month and two family and there is Lily's baptism of course. I have paintings to finish and my art work to promote and sell and last, but by no means least, I have my writing to do. Til the Moon Fails has to be finished, The Mark of the Wolf has to be edited, and there are a couple of other projects that need my attention. Whether or not all these things are humanly possible, I don't know, but I will never get them done while I am stuck in this brain freeze of overwhelmdom. I've tried blocking things out, and even letting things go, but I am still buckling under the pressure of this self imposed burden. You know the old saying, 'You are your own worst enemy'? Isn't it funny that even when you know all the things you are doing wrong, it is really hard to stop doing them and change your behaviour.

September

I can't believe it has been so long since I last posted! September is flying past. The start of the month was exciting as I got a couple of acting gigs and got to stay in a 5* hotel, which was very nice. I've also been throwing my energy into doing a lot of painting in a hope to supplement my (as yet non existent) income from writing. The painting is going very well and I am really pleased with the results. Because the pictures are turning out well, I am finding it very satisfying and rewarding, unlike my writing at the moment unfortunately. I'm working on The Mark of the Wolf and it is tough going. I've forgotten what it is like to write with abandon, enjoying the thrill of the work and satisfied with the outcome. It can't be like that all the time, of course, but it seems to have been a long time since it was like that with me. I feel like I'm doing lots of work with very little result and even though I know what I want the result to be, my work keeps on falling short of it by a long shot. That's life though, isn't it.

The Mark of the Wolf

I'm working on revising The Mark of the Wolf at the moment, heading towards the final draft. I have all these ideas in my head about how I want it to be, and I hope I can bring all these threads to bear successfully in the final draft. I've been reading TMOTW again before I start work on it and, despite all its faults, I am enjoying it. I think the characters are good and the scenario interesting. However, I keep on feeling that it is the action that takes place off scene that is the more important stuff. A lot of the scenes are based very much in the mundane and the everyday, with the characters often referring to something exciting that has happened but that we, the readers, didn't get to see. One of the things I will have to do in this edit is shift the perspective and show those scenes which weren't shown before, and leave much of the everyday to the imagination. This might make the final draft look very different from the original (on the surface) but the book that was struggling to break free from the confines of the ordinary was there all the long. I think it is going to be good - really good. I'm very excited about it.

Printer Problems

I was sending out query letters to agents for The Mark of the Wolf and, this just shows you how long it has been since I last got a submission package ready, I ran across a problem with my printer. Well, my print cartridge to be more precise. I printed out my letter head and it is a brown/sepia tone and it came out red. The display on the computer told me I was out of black ink, but the colour cartridge was over half full. I changed the black cartridge and printed another test page. Again it came out red. I played around with the image and changed the lettering to black and, even with this, it came out with a faint red line around the words. I printed out a test page and it was also red. The conclusion I came to was that I have run out of the other colours in my colour cartridge leaving only red ink. I didn't know this was possible (I don't remember printing predominately blue and yellow pictures) but I am very disappointed that the printer is telling me I have so much of my colour cartridge left when it is only red ink! I would have changed it if I had a spare cartridge. It will be a waste of all that red ink, but I don't print red that often (obviously, otherwise I wouldn't have so much left!)

This is a WRITING blog!

Ok, I know I haven't posted a lot about writing recently, I do apologise, but it is because I have been working hard (although not hard enough) on getting Til The Moon Fails finished and every time I finish a section I keep on meaning to publish a picture (remember how Mulder used to announce the news?) but then I forget and then I've finished another section and it seems too late to post about it... anyway -

News on Til The Moon Fails - I hope to finish it this week (before Sunday 8th July). I've heard that before, I hear you groan. Yes, I know, the deadline for this book keeps on stretching and stretching, and the weird thing is I have only about 3/4K more words to write. I just don't want to say goodbye to these characters, it is so hard wrapping up their story.

Once I've finished Til The Moon Fails, I am going to tackle The Mark of the Wolf with a vengeance. I want to have it all shiny and ready for publication before the end of August so that I can start sending it out to agents again. I might get a professional editor to look it over before I do that, but either way I want it to be finished before September. It would be great to have it sent out to a few agencies before I go away in November.

As regards other writing - at the moment I have my hands full with these two projects. I know I can be more prolific, but at the moment I'm struggling to get the energy to drag myself from my bed to my writing chair.

So, when it comes to this blog, I will try to bring it back to being strictly about writing. If I have any random thoughts on TV programmes and movie stars, I will try to keep it to another blog (possibly my myspace blog - and yes, I have way too many blogs to keep track of!).