C-c-c-coooold

Hello lovelies, what's new?


Me, I am in hibernation, staying inside where it is warm. Mind you I had a shower last night and steam rose from my skin so it's not as warm in here as I'm pretending. But it's warmer than out there. And there are blankets in here.
I seem to have completely forgotten how much colder it was in Leeds, London, Scotland and New York a year and a half ago. But the buildings in those places were better insulated. Except for the haunted castle in the Scottish High Country. Now THAT was cold.


I have two weeks left of my semester break from University, therefore am finishing up work on my Certificate IV in Small Business Management (which I snuck in, during the break). I  passed all my assessments, just have to finish my Business Plan now.
I've been working on my website which I think is coming along well and will be unveiled within a couple of weeks and as soon as I post this blog I'm changing the background to match the forthcoming website so that's all rather exciting.
I've been doing some copy editing of sales and marketing documents which has been an interesting experience - interesting in a good way because I've been learning new things as I edit! Coolies.
And I'm currently doing a manuscript appraisal of a novel and am happy to say I'm really enjoying it. It makes the job a lot easier.
Plus I've formatted a few books for eBook distribution lately and I love seeing them up and being purchased and reviewed. I feel like their success is partly my success - even though I only had a small hand in it. I'm proud of them. 


Oh! And the video shop has NOT been robbed for a third time yet, so that's nice.


I'm currently reading The Carrie Diaries: Summer in the City and am getting a kick out of meeting Samantha and Miranda when they were younger. Looking forward to seeing what Charlotte was like as a teenager. Will soon know!
I also just downloaded the sample of a new indie eBook, Restless Spirits by Jean Marie Bauhaus today.

"A paranormal investigator becomes the subject of her own investigation after stumbling into the crosshairs of a malevolent spirit. Finding herself a ghost and imprisoned in a house that's haunted by the spirit's other victims from across the ages, Veronica "Ron" Wilson discovers an afterlife that's full of surprises, the biggest of which is that ghosts can still fall in love. "

I have a secret passion for paranormal investigator TV shows so this sounds right up my alley. It's half-price on Smashwords at the moment so go check it out!

I just watched Lemonade Mouth, and have a new favourite Disney Channel movie and soundtrack. How funny is Wen? Great character. Disney Channel movies are not necessarily Acadamy Award worthy, but they're always fun and I love them all. 

My zombie novel is coming along slowly - very slowly - but it's coming along. Writing's taking a bit of a backburner at the moment. I'm grossing my out trying to find just the right, evocative words to describe a decaying corpse. Yeah. I'll be doing a writing class next semester so hopefully that will help get me back into the habit.

There you go, that's me lately. Not much to report really. :)

Hope you're all well!

Love Sairz

Happy Easter and enjoy your noms!

Happy Easter everybunny!

I hope the Easter Bunny finds you at your house and delivers lots of sugar-coma inducing noms.

The Easter Bunny looks tired so if you see him around perhaps offer him some coffee.

One year when I was a kid, the Easter Bunny hid all our eggs and bunnies (weird to be giving people replicas of yourself to EAT, right?) outside, so all my sister and I found were the tinfoil wrappers. Birds, possums and our dogs had a VERY good easter that year.

Hope you take some time off from whatever you're doing and enjoy your break. I'm planning on sleeping for three days! Maybe then I'll have caught up. Maybe.

Be safe on the roads!

Love

Sair

New Year Decision Making

Happy New Year my lovelies!

December 31 2010 for me was filled with less potential death by drunken stampede in -16c weather in Edinburgh and more singlets and shorts, bean bags and camping chairs on the back deck as the 40c weather in Melbourne Australia slowly cooled to a balmy 20c. There was possibly one-million LESS people in attendance this year which was nice. And yes I'm talking LITERALLY one million people.
How was your New Years?

My resolution for 2011 is simple: To stress less. In 2010 I was a bit of a stress head and I vow to make 2011 much breezier.

That said, it is January 3rd and I am stressing. I took December off from writing, as a bit of a holiday, as a month where I didn't think to myself whenever I watched TV or goofed around "Hey - you've got work to do! You should be writing!" and knew that when January came I would crack the whip and get back to it.

But I have a problem, you see. What do I work on? The rewrite of a middle grade contemporary comedy with a spattering of magical realism or the first draft of that dystopian I've been itching to get stuck into?

At the moment they both feel huge and hard and overwhelming so I have been content seeing friends, visitng the fam, going to work and discovering fab new TV shows and books instead. I mean, technically I AM on my University holidays after all...

Sairz

What I've been doing and stuff.

Hello Blogosphere, it is I. Sarah. I just realised today how very long it has been between posts, because in class we’re working on blogs and I had a quick squiz at mine and *cough*…so here I am.

Interesting stuff, actually. We're looking at digital publishing and as well as setting up blogs for the class, we had to rewrite a short story we had already written, but as 5 text messages, and look at how the different technology changes the way the story is told. And it did change the story. You should try it. Except YOU should use a good phone that doesn't make you swear because it keeps turning off mid-text message and moving the cursor so you're typing in the wrong place. You should use a different phone. Learn from me.

Anyway, that was just today. The whole rest of the time I was on mid-semester break for what felt like forever (not a complaint) and my exam went awesome (thanks for asking) and it’s not like I was just lounging around in my pyjamas all winter holidays (yes you American and British types! It’s winter and cold and rainy and very hard to get out of bed because I don't have central heating and the air outside of my doona is c-c-cold!) and technically that wasn’t much of a lie about spending most of my days in my pyjamas because, well, I was in my tracky daks (track suit) for a lot of it. But I wasn’t bludging. I was WRITING. I finished my first draft of an MG called What’s so cool about Carrie (Working Title) within the first four days (sing hallelujah! Sing it…haaaaaallelujah) and while giving myself some space away from that so I can crack the whip and slash pages, characters and kill all my darlings with no remorse when I’m not so attached to it, I got to work on the second draft of a YA book I wrote two years ago, which is now called The Kiss Off.

Two years was enough time for me to get out my butchers knife and hack the bejesus outta that book and feel good about it. The only problem with hacking the bejesus out of your first draft is you may end up with only about 30 pages that you’re going to keep and a whole bunch of awesome characters who need a brand-spanking-new story.

Which is what I did. Actually, what I’m still doing, I’m in the middle of the big ‘oh no she didn’t’ climax but don’t have the time or energy to finish it just now cos I’m back at Uni and working (hard for the money…so haaaaard for it honey) and this whole not finishing my book thing is frustrating. You know? Cos as soon as I finish The Kiss Off, I can get back to What’s so cool about Carrie? and get something off to my agent. I’m looking forward to finished drafts. Oh yes I am.

In other news, I just recently discovered Australia has an Ice Hockey league so I have found my sport of choice. I am not a sport fan, but I am an ice hockey fan, oh yes. Go Melbourne Ice! Can you imagine what the mascot looks like? I haven’t seen it yet. Do you reckon it’s just like, a snowball? Or a block of ice from the freezer tray?

I’ll keep you posted. If I remember.

Pretty much that’s been my last month. Writing, working and some ice hockey.

Thought I might share a teeny tiny snippet of what I’ve been working on since I’ve been working pretty hard. This is from the YA novel: The Kiss Off.

My protagonist, Poppy and her friend Vanya are helping their other friend Mads get ready for a date.

So we were in Mads’s room, Van and I scrutinizing every top she owned and Mads was kind of pacing, forehead furrowed as she glared at herself in the mirror.

‘I’m hideous.’ She said, throwing her hands in the air in defeat. ‘Why am I doing this to him?’

‘What are you talking about? Doing what?’ I asked.

‘This. Tonight, why am I subjecting Dev to the hideousness that is me.’

‘Oh shut up Mads,’ Vanya said. Mads crossed her arms and huffed.

‘I’m with her.’ I nodded at Van as she tossed another top into the “hell no” pile in the corner.

‘You’re pretty and nice and sweet and he likes you. You don’t have anything to worry about.’

‘And you can hardly notice the pimples anymore,’ Vanya said helpfully. Mads gasped and slapped her hand to her chin. I pulled it away and clasped both her hands in mine, squeezing them reassuringly.

‘And you’ve got us there to help you.’

For a moment she seemed to be settling down, but then she pulled her hands away, strode to the other side of the room and declared: ‘I’m not pretty, I’m horrible, I’m hideous, I’m disfigured!’

‘What are you talking about?’

And that was when she whipped her top off. Just like that. She pointed to her boobs. Her naked boobs. This was new.

‘Um, Mads,’ I started.

‘I like this one!’ Vanya threw whatever top she was holding at the time at Mads’s chest. It happened to be her gym uniform. Mads threw it to the “hell no” pile.

‘Look at them,’ she said. ‘Look at the left one, it’s growing as big as a porn star’s but then look at the right. It looks like my dad’s boobs!’ I didn’t exactly want to, but since she was being so demanding about it, I checked out her boobs. I looked from the left to the right and back again.

‘They look fine to me.’

‘They’re not fine!’

‘What do you think, Van?’

Vanya huffed, shook her head, bent at the waist and squinted at Mads’s boobs.

‘You say the left one’s bigger?’ She asked.

‘It is!’

‘I don’t think you have to worry. The other one’ll catch up.’ Van stood up and crossed her arms with a nod.

‘And besides, Mrs. McCleary said it’s perfectly normal to have one boob bigger than the other.’ I reassured her.

‘You see it too, then?’ Mads looked panic stricken. ‘That the left is bigger?’

‘No!’ Vanya and I both shouted.

‘You don’t?’

‘Your boobs are fine, Mads.’ I told her, picking up a baby pink singlet from the “maybe” pile. I handed it to her slowly. Thankfully, she clutched it to her chest.

Vanya held up Mads’s vintage electric blue MotoCross jacket, and we had a winner.

‘I think that’d look good with some long necklaces, don’t you?’

See you erm…sometime before the end of the year?

Sairz

Characters always LOOKING at each other

It was serendipitous timing, when Nathan Bransford posted his latest blog about writing tics, because that's something I've been thinking about a bit while working on a book revision.

Though this is a big revision, so it's more "writing book from scratch" for the most part and I'm not actively looking for my writing tics, but it made me think about what they are. And as all writers do, I have a few.

Mine are different to what I thought they were going to be though. How do I know for SURE which words are showing up in my manuscript more than others?

I created a word cloud with Wordle. Mine has a lot of LOOKED, LIKE, AROUND and BACKs in it. Yeah, okay, my characters look at each other, look at the floor, the wall, into the distance, I understand why there's a lot of LOOKing. Much of this is probably unnecessary and I'll be hacking away at it in my next pass. AROUND probably follows many of the LOOKs, but LIKE? And BACK? It'll be interesting to see what sort of context all of those BACKs and LIKEs are in.

My Word Cloud looks pretty kick ass, I just don't know how to save it to show you. Any clues?

In the meantime, back to my revisions! I'm on mid-semester break at the moment and spending it being as productive as I can. Spending most of my holiday in my writing cave keeps me out of the FREEZING cold weather outside, so I think I've made the right choice. :)

Ciao for now,

Sairz

The Fires, reading and what the BLEEP should I write

My mini holiday to relax in a cottage and take in the history of the Gold Fields has been postponed due to the horrendous heat of yesterday (46 degrees Celcius) in which half of regional Victoria has gone up in flames.

"Poor me", right? I don't get to have a holiday. It's okay, I'm not that shallow. I can't believe that last night while I was hanging at a friend's house, and while I was sleeping I was blissfully unaware that houses, hundreds of thousands of acres of bush land, and worse still - people - were burning.

I'm in Melbourne at the moment, the highway back to my home was closed off at one point, but I think it's open again now. My family are seriously thinking about making a fire plan now. We should have done it long ago. However, if you're not home when there is a fire (i.e our kitchen fire mid last year) there's really nothing you can do about it, nothing you can save.

I feel for the people of Boolarra and Yinnar who are now surrounded by more fire - even in Churchill, where my Uni is. Churchill was under threat earlier today and I don't know how it's going now. My thoughts are with everyone living and working down there.
I haven't been back in the area since November, and I can't imagine what I'm going to find. I have a meeting on campus on Thursday, so I better prepare myself for the devastation. I feel for the animals that couldn't get out. I know there are a lot of wallabies and rabbits in the area.
Fire would be a horrible, horrible way to go.

Okay, let's shake it off. Shake shake shake, get onto a nicer topic. And of course, that would be writing.

I'm doing my head in at the moment as new ideas are flooding me and I'm getting so confused as to which is the best one, which one I want to write first.

Do I write the one about the Aussie girl who through a serious of circumstances gets swept up into Hollywood and the tabloid feeding frenzy?

How about the one about the girl who's twin brother is a huge gamer, and when he dies she decides to infiltrate the gaming world and try and win the championship he was so close to winning?

Or the one about the twelve year old who's family move a lot, and she doesn't have any friends - except for a stray dog that she meets in her newest town, that teaches her and those around her a lot about friendship and love?

Oh! Or the year 12 student who's finding her friends growing up too quickly, driving, moving out, having sex, and she's determined to make the most of her last year of her youth - and she's certainly not going to fall in love!

What to do what to do...

Well what I've decided to do is block my ears and say: "Nar nar nar nar nar" and read.

I went to Borders today - always an expensive exercise - and have a bunch of new books to start reading. I'm reading about 5 at the same time at the moment which sort of proves where my head's at. It's all over the place.

Ah well. What I'm reading today are:



I know, aren't I naughty? Are you there God I believe is the YA most banned book ever, for its racy content. It was written in 1970, and I'm gonna say their definition of racy writing is a bit different to ours today. For instance, Gossip Girl is not banned.

And TTYL was banned for awhile there, too I believe. It's a part of writing for YA and younger that I hadn't thought about, censorship. It's something I tend to do to myself, which I shouldn't. But that's a topic for another day. When I've finished these, I look forward to sinking my claws into:



Sink my claws into. Get it? Get it? I know. I amaze even mySELF at my sheer Dad joke abilities. It's a gift, it really is. How gorgeous is that cat though?

My parents have a ginger cat. Well, technically he's mine, because his mum was mine and she had kittens, so he and his sister are mine. But they live with my parents. Anyway, he's ginger and has a bit of a lion's mane like that and thick furry trousers, as Georgia Nicolson would say. So we named him Booffie because that's what he is. We should have called him Sir Drool-a-lot, because that's what he does. The point I think I'm trying to get at is he looks a bit like that cat, Dewey.

Okay, that's all for now. Gonna get to my books!
Sairz

Nearing the end...and stalling at the finish line

Hmm.
This is really weird.
I've nearly finished my book. I'm so close I can smell it. I'm a mere 2,000 words to the deadline (I'm gonna go over by a couple, up to 5,000 words) and my writing ability is petering out.

It's not like I don't know what's going to happen. I do. But something's happening that I'm having a hell of a time getting down into the computer, and out of my head.

Doesn't help that the wind is gusty and the nights are frickin freezing, so I can't/won't go for my mental health/inspiration strike me now, walks.

I still have two full weeks until my self-imposed deadline is up, but it's not like I want to wait until then to get it done if I can do it now.
And I haven't even been doing important stuff, when not writing. I've been watching loads of TV, reading books, surfing the net...by God I sound like an honest to goodness writer, don't I?

I've come to the conclusion, that I'm prolonging the end, because I don't quite want to let go yet. I like Kaley, and Maiyuki's heaps of fun, and Travis is an all around nice guy and Coby is your lovable but very very stoopid teenage boy. And I really can't see there being any more to write about these characters after I've typed 'The End' on the last page.

It's not like I don't have other ideas and characters to fall in love with...but I'm not ready to make new friends when I like the ones I have. However flawed the writing about them may be. :)

It's a weird sensation. One I'm sure I'll get used to over time, but this is my first novel that I'm absatively going to finish, dammit. So yeah. Weird experience. My word count has petered down to 500w the other day, none yesterday and about 800w today.

I frustrate myself.

Okay. Venting over.

I'm going to Melbourne tomorrow until Sunday and I have this whole big social life planned. It's exciting. Drinky-poohs and then tipsy bowling tomorrow with the girls, movie with a girlfriend on Thursday, movie and dinner with a social group (meeting new exciting people - scary, but awesome!) on Friday, going to the Zoo with a friend on Saturday and then seeing Wicked on Saturday! Then brunch on Sunday and homeward bound, to fall in a heap.

And I will write, and try and squish in another couple of friends in there as well. I don't get to Melbourne much, so I wanna fit everyone in!

It'll be fun.

Keep well,

Sairz

Shiny and new: My first post

Well,

Here goes it, it's my first blog, it's 11:52pm on a Tuesday night and I should probably be tucked up in bed. I was gonna go for one of my favourite "mental health walks" but the wind is blowing with just a bit too much of a chill so I've decided to stay snug indoors.

Plus I wouldn't want the wind blowing through the trees to make me kill myself. (Have you seen the Happening?)

Actually it's minutes before Wednesday in the first of 3 glorious weeks of holidays before semester 2 of Uni starts, and I have no finite plans tomorrow so may as well be a night owl. What the hell, right?No - wait, I do have some plans. 2 plans, actually.

One:

Buy hangers.I don't seem to have enough, here on Res at Uni. I end up with clothes all over the floor and then divide them into clean and dirty. The dirty I bung in the washing machine whilst the clean get hung up. Voila. Tidy room. However, when the NEWLY clean washing arrives back in my room (not by fairies - they don't work here) they stay in the washing basket because I don't have anything to hang them on. Then newly dirty washing ends up on the floor and on top of the clean washing in the basket and the cycle reverts to the start again.So yeah. I'm buying new hangers.

And Two:

Keep writing my fantabulous YA novel 'Life was cool until you got popular'.It's coming along really well, I have to say. But I'm getting myself confused at the moment cos when I get stuck on important scenes (and I was stuck on the MOST important scene for 2 days) I'm just plodding ahead with writing other scenes, some of which I want to pop in somewhere before the part I was writing. So I'm getting myself confused a bit as in - so Kaley and Mai are going to the open mic night, but is this before or after that whole non-date thing with Harvey...and should Kaley be the sugary sweet Kaley or embarrassed get-me-out-of-here Kaley when she goes to talk to Travis? (It'll make sense if you read the book) Anyhoo, I'm getting myself confused and having to tweak bits I've already written, so that the stars align and I have a coherent first draft.I'm over the 30,000w mark now, which is uber exciting, because the goal is 40,000 words. I'm writing it with the hope of getting it published in the Allen & Unwin "Girlfriend Fiction" range of books, which are 40,000 words. If I put in everything I WANNA put in, I might just go over the word limit though. Hmm.But anyway. I sent queries to two big NY literary agents today, which is exciting. One is the agent for Janet Evanovich (they'll so get my sense of humour) and the other sounds really impressive and like we'd be a good fit too. So we'll see how they pan out. Meanwhile, I have a couple of other agents I want to apply to as well, for when the time comes that I'm rejected. I'm slowly slowly getting used to that part of the writing process. I'm just starting to get into the swing of sending them off anyway. Can be an expensive process when you're not getting paid, mind you.

I go through phases of being strong and confident enough to send it off, and of being a bit too shy and with an attitude of "why would they want ME?"The question should be: Why WOULDN'T they want me? I have ideas coming out the wazoo, and I've been writing for a good sixteen years...yeah, that's about right. Since I was eight. So I've sure had the practice!And I've had a couple of publications too. I'm just waiting for that ellusive one I get paid for....I've also had a nibble by an agent, but unfortunately, not a bite. Hell, I wasn't ready then, anyway.

So that's me in a nutshell at the moment. With less than 10,000 words to go, and just under 3 weeks until my deadline. Self imposed deadline. Semester 2 starts Monday 14th July. I really feel I can do this. Novels aren't as huge and scary as I thought they were. And they're heaps and heaps of fun!

For now, I leave you with a taste of one of my favourite websites: http://www.ihashotdog.com/

How funny are they?! I swear - when you're feeling down go to that site or http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/ for funny kitty pictures and you'll come out of it in a MUCH better mood.

There's more where they came from. But for now...

G'night!

Sairz