#Pimpmybio

Pitch wars has come around again!

I've kept this nice and brief, but here is a little about me and my book:  

I live in the south island of NZ, halfway between the sea and the mountains.  I grew up in the country surrounded in horses and sheep and all things wild and outdoorsy. My appreciation for four-legged creatures, wood-fires, ice-cold lakes, and the rugged coastline probably comes through in my stories.

I am a history nerd. I love old things... I recently acquired a degree in Archaeology with minors in Art history and Classical studies.  I marathon history docos. Hard.

During the day I work in a fancy shoe store. As a result I have too many pairs of shoes (yes you can have too many pairs of shoes).  I’m saving for my next big move—I just haven’t quite decided what country I want to move too yet.

I love art. I draw pet-portraits for people in my spare time and paint big pictures of ladies with crowns. Naturally, I’ve drawn plenty of my characters. My archaeology degree taught me to appreciate maps, so I have lots of them as well (they are available on demand).

I also go nuts over theatre and music. I play a few musical instruments, try my best at singing, and have spent a lifetime on the stage, dancing, acting and generally making a fool of myself. 

I have a cheeky horse called Sian. She is in fact a horse, even though some like to call her a pony. I also have a lap-cat named Sanzha.

I read books like I breathe air. I’m constantly searching for new things to read. Please, please, send me your suggestions I favour fantasy of all kinds (bonus points for swords, arrows, villains, boys, horses, and magic).

I work hard on my stories, and I’m 100% happy to pull them apart and stick them back together. I appreciate good criticism, and I’m not going to get offended. I’m here for hard work, good advice, and do my best to improve my MS. I don't shy away from all-nighters, re-writes, or ruthless culling. I'm open to it all. 

The story I’m bringing to the table is my YA fantasy, TELLAN.

Tellan involves assassins, spirits, a blue and silver tiger, a boy who can talk to wolves, magic, love interests, a lake, a prince, a boy with the enemy’s accent, a sword, and a riddle.

You can stalk me on instagram where I am constantly pestering cyber-space with pictures of my cat and pictures of things I made. If nothing else, it will convince you that I am a little bit mad, and not as funny as I think I am --> https://instagram.com/hashtagjennifer/

A thing I made! Look at it! Look at the thing!

This is just a little something I made earlier this year--it was cast from a wishbone that I salvaged from a sunday roast, and made in the brazier in my parents back garden (I may or may not have been wearing slippers when handling molten metal, and I may or may not have accidentaly got dew in the molten metal--don't do that, don't ever get water in molten metal. Holy. Shit.)

Anyway, that's all, just wanted to share because I was super proud of the thing I made. Look at the thing! 

Music for writing. #3

I thought I would share some more songs from my writing playlist.

These ones are for epic moments... particualarly, Two Steps from Hell. They are a fav of mine to write to. So epic. Such wow. I often dive into the parts of my playlist with epic beats and no words (The Scott Hemsey song here is exempt from this, of course) when I'm working on something that requires a lot of guts. It's easier to block out the sounds of my house, and to focus on the writing. 

:) 

Short ravings of a pet-portrait artist.

I'm gearing up for another literary contest, polishing off one book, and thinking about another. I just thought I'd share some of the non-book-related things I've been doing lately... Because I havent been sharing anthing lately. 

For the last year, I have been a part-time pet-portraitist to earn a little extra cash. It was a rare, odd-occasion business until about three months ago, when it grew into something else entirely... 

Now don't get me wrong. I am a drawer, and I will leap at any oppurtunity to draw someones pets--especially if i'm being paid to do it--but there are a number of things you can always count on when dealing with people, and pictures, and animals... 

1) They're going to send you the blurriest, tiniest photo they have as a reference. Usually a picture taken from a distance on an old flip-top phone. 

2) It's either a tiny photo, a blurry photo, or the most impractical photo in the universe, with an animal bent into a shape that just does not convert well into a picture. It'll be your fault if it looks weird. 

3) The pictures you work the hardest on will always be the least appreciated. 

4) When you're really super busy, and you're just finishing a massive order, someone is going to send you another three requests. 

5) When you have shit-all to do, you've got no drawings to do either. 

6) You're going to get really sick of finding pencil shavings in your socks. 

Thats all. Here are some old instagram montages of un-rotated, terrible photos of pet drawings. 

A story about how irresponsible I am.

If you're on here, wondering why I haven't written about Tellan--or anything--in ages, then I’m very sorry. I messed up. 

I entered Tellan in a competition in Feb (which I will talk about in another post). Then, after entering did one really awesome, final tweak of the entire MS, including a shiny new first chapter (yes, after entering, I edited the book...). I then decided to put Tellan aside and wait for the competition critiques before editing or querying it.

My hard-drive imploded.

It didn't just ‘break,’ it self-destructed. It sent everything on it to the world of the irretrievable. 

Luckily I had back-ups. Right?   

They also imploded...

I can only conclude that some horrible, malicious, writer-hunting demon decided to really ruin my year. For some, ungodly, reason, the 'Tellan' folder was not on my back up device… or online. And for some even more ungodly of ungodly reasons, the Tellan files I'd emailed to myself were also gone (my phone was deleting my emails, which I had noticed, and not addressed…).

What a mess... 

In sheer frustration I shelved Tellan and worked on another WIP for a while, telling myself that I would find a way to recover my long-lost edits.

(*book*)

At some point I remembered a fateful day in April, when I was sitting in my living room reading—and tweaking—the new first chapter. I looked up and saw my keys and a flashdrive, sitting on the counter and thought, “oh, maybe I should chuck these files on that? Just in case things go tits-up?” But then I slunk lower into sofa, and, in a pool of laziness, didn’t do it. WHY, dammit!

I have now, after several months and a lot of heartache, re-written the shiny new chapter one... Which, of course, will never be as good as I remember it. 

So yeah, make sure your back-ups are like, working… and then back everything up again. And again. And again. And again.