RWA Conference 2015 stories galore first review

I came home from the conference with thirteen novels by thirteen authors I have yet to read. I will review them as I finish. I am not very generous with my stars but if I like it I like it and only my childhood favourites get the five star treatment on sentimental grounds.
My reviews are based on
1 - believable characters
2- a plot that keeps me turning the pages
3- the structural integrity of the prose (gain marks for a good knowledge of pronouns)
4- a time line that holds up to scrutiny
5- seamless integration of world bulding/back story/technical details

Without further ado, I present:

Turtle Reef by Jennifer Scoullar

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Turtle Reef is a love story, not just between people but of the land, the sea and the animals and the environmental elements that make a place so special.
Jennifer Scoullar has written a lovely diorama of a beautiful part of Queensland and filled it with interesting characters and an engaging plot. Her prose is well structured and the pace is just right for a love story.

I would recommend this novel to anyone who loves their stories filled with panoramic views and plenty of sugar.

Monday's child is fair of face

I was trying to work out how to hyperlink in my text today so I could link directly to another blog but I haven't worked it out yet so I shall have to do some thorough investigation tomorrow. Sometimes I g to blogs and they have a swatch of gobbledegook and they say cut and paste this swatch and it will hyperlink but it never has so I must be doing something wrong or they could actually give some instruction for the uninitiated like me.

My daughter came home after school and informed me her brand new saxophone had disappeared from the school music store room. She only had it a week and I was immeasurably upset by its disappearance. I began tracking down phone numbers and trying to find if anyone else had picked it up by mistake instead of their own sax but to no avail. I am hoping it will be returned by band practice in the morning. I spoke to the school reception and told them of its disappearance and was later told that the music department head was attempting to call students who may have accidentally taken it. If I was in that mythical realm where writers are rolling in cash and living the high life I would not bat an eye at losing a trifling musical instrument worth the equal of two months of household income but alas alack I live in the reality of writer making not one cent living on a shoe string so the loss of such an item puts a long term serious pressure on the budget. I laugh when I am asked how much money writers make.

I told people on FB that the saxophone was missing and I have been overwhelmed with the wonderful supportive and kind statements that have been written over the past few hours. it has helped to ground me and settle me down and be calmer and less reactive. I am so grateful to those wonderful people. 

I am going on a writing retreat in the not too distant future and thankfully I paid for it before I became completely broke on my self imposed year of 'leave without pay to chase the elusive book contract' and help myself recover from all that surgery and my daughter get back on her feet. I am very much looking forward to a weekend surrounded by writers in an environment where I don't even have to make the bed. I have been reading about others on writing retreats and their excitement and enthusiasm just pours through the pixels.

I wrote a review of a book this week and put in some positives and one negative statement. The author wrote to me and asked me to clarify the negative after thanking me for the positive. I said I would reread the novel to check my impressions and then i wrote back to the author to say I was wrong about my negative. I had overlapped books I was reviewing and put the negative about the wrong book. This was a fabulous interaction because it shows how easy it is to make such a mistake and also how it can be rectified. I was so pleased the author contacted me and after I corrected my review I went and purchased another of the authors books (which I enjoyed even more than the first one).

I have been editing a novel today and only glimpsed at my story a day prompt and I am ignoring the 38 week challenge and mid week BB for the time being so I can finish this novel. Only a few chapters to go and I am enjoying rereading the early parts.
That is all my writing thoughts for today. Have a love day whatever time it is with you. Hugs.

Hobbits precious

rant rant rant rant

a book is not a film

a film is not a book

a writer must use words to describe everything from feelings to actions to events and has to balance between too much description and not enough

a camera operator and a film crew can use visuals and sounds not available to a writer to produce the same effects and impact


20 pages of description of a characters outfit translate into 2 minutes of film time


an 8 hour read translates into a one hour film



films are not books and books are not film and the two tell stories in very different ways


a film will never be the same as a book

there are some things a camera cannot translate from the text
there are some things that a camera can do which cannot be done in text

a good director can draw out the true essence of the story in a book to make the film a satisfying rendition of the book, a poor director will ruin it for the book fans but may gain some new fans for the story


when readers realise that the movie version is NEVER going to be an exact duplicate of the book then there will be peace on earth and all good things will come true...


so I tried to do a picture of Tom Hiddleston as Loki, just because I am a bit of a fan, but I could not get his face right so here is his body.

I didn't sleep well last night or the night before and I had to go out of the house this morning WITHOUT a cup of tea to purchase milk and then I missed a conference and it was late before I managed to draw anything so my whole day has been out of kilter and I am out of sorts. I did have a lovely lunch with friends and I am very grateful for the cooler weather here on the south coast of Australia but I need to sleep early tonight I suspect. I shall try the face again later when I have slept.
several hours later I am so excited. A PB idea I was trying to turn into a manuscript has finally loosend out of its chunks and clunks to be a much more smooth flowing smile inducing story. Read it to neff and numbertoo and it seemed to work for them. ReviMo here I come.

Sunday again,relaxing with friends.

I like this little lizard. http://www.sharkbay.org/Thornydevilfactsheet.aspx that is the address for a good site for kids to find out more about The thorny dragon or thorny devil (Moloch horridus)which is also called other names. Wikipedia has a good page too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorny_dragon I am enjoying rediscovering our amazing flora and fauna for this sketching challenge and adding a Holiday flare to them. I can't imagine being able to catch a thorny dragon nor adding a bell to it's tail. Speaking of dragons,I am looking forward to seeing the desolation of Smaug in the coming weeks and trying to avoid any mention of it by the doomsayers. I wonder sometimes why people expect entertainment to also be academic literature?
I have seen a lot of reviews, scathing reviews of books and films over the last year and it puzzles me. Why were they going to the movie in the first place? Why did they buy the book? Were they working for the united nations and looking for a way to change the world or were they wanting a bit of escapism and entertainment? I know why I went to see the Hobbit. Firstly because New Zealand is beautiful and Peter Jackson's work is visually delicious, secondly because the actors are gorgeous, thirdly because I have a huge crush on the character of Thorin, fourthly due to the entertainment value of a bunch of oddballs setting off on a seemingly impossible quest, fifthly because I wish we still had eagles that are big(that bit always makes me cry because I remember eagles that were much bigger than the ones we have now but people shot them), sixthly because the music is sumptuous and sends tingles down my spine and finally because I get to step away from all the day to day concerns of my life for three hours and follow an epic journey of the imagination.
In the past few years, or even the decade I have read the Twilight saga and seen the movies. I read all the harry potters and own copies of all the movies as well as all the books. I had five copies of the first book because we all read at different rates and no one was willing to wait for anyone else to finish. I read the twilights to my daughter as her bedtime story for weeks and she loved the books. I read and purchased several Dan Brown's and those fifty shades as well as more than a thousand other books and videos including all the George RR Martin winter is coming(Maybe it is George's fault we are having climate change?). I estimate that during my lifetime I have read fifteen thousand novels which works out to be one novel per day per week for forty years. I could read fluently by four years of age and my favorite memory of primary school was being able to sit in the library corner and read because I always finished the work well ahead of any other child and my reward was to read. I can usually read a novel in a night and know it takes eight hours of reading out loud to get through a Narnia or Harry Potter. So I am under estimating my number of books because my tally only included books I read for myself and does not include text books for the many many many courses I studied, nor does it take into consideration the hundreds if not thousands of children's books I read to, well, children.
I don't like poor writing. I don't like that poor writing is published and there are no gatekeepers halting the flood of substandard prose. I am saddened that the new generations are being encouraged to feast only on graphic novels and not encouraged to feast their brains on beautiful words that will fire the imagination and encourage thinking.