This is what happens when I edit for eleven hours then try and write a blog post.

I just spent eleven hours editing, which is a bad idea.. and now I'm here, don't expect anything special...  

Eleven hours is a long time to spend going over the lead up too and the climactic chapters of any book, and the end of Tellan isn't exactly 'happy.' Needless to say, I've been tidying war, and blood and guts and stuff since 10am and I feel like my brain has turned inside-out. 

It'll be worth it in the end!! (beta readers better be ready.)

things I've done in the last few days include: bringing a character back to life (not necessarily.. I just decided not to kill her right now), removing two very well woven-in sub-plots, and revoking my hatred for full-stops 

I've had well over 1000 people accidentally stumble upon this blog now. 100 of those visited the last two updates.. admittedly a good portion of those people were probably unwilling internet trawlers googling pictures of that guy I blogged about ages ago (they were then assaulted by my mostly-incoherent rambling) but hey, cool! For that I am honoured.

Tellan in physical form?

So I'm heading back to the capital tonight (which to me means I'm going to spend all day procrastinating whilst my bags lay about unpacked). I'm happy to be going back to my room in the basement of a 'Warwick castle' but a bit depressed to leave the warm wood-fire and good (real) homey, Wai-itian, food.

Anyway, I had the opportunity yesterday to have half of Tellan printed and bound which, of course, I took. So, thanks to my mother and the office staff at Waimea college I can now hold the first 50,888 words in my hands. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day carrying the thing around in a glad-bag then slept with it beside my bed. It may only be half of the book, but there is something magic about having some of Tellan in physical form. I am now doubly inspired to cut what needs to be cut from the second half and and get that printed too!
In the meantime I've already drawn all over the first half, and its now sitting in my window awaiting some quality time with a red pen. I was very honoured to be graced by the presence of faux-sister Gayle Hay, while I printed this beauty...

As if I needed more inspiration, I'm seeing Christopher Paolini tomorrow night and I have bagged me a few new readers. (they don't know what they're in for.)

I'M BACK. school is out, Tellan is in.

SO  school is out for the semester and I can tell you that I am more than ready for a break and some quality Tellan time. I feel bad for the poor fools whose exams are still looming. I also feel bad for my lack of blog love and the pitiful edits I have accomplished during semester time...

I’m back in ‘sunny Nelson’ (which is funny because last time I checked it’s been monsooning for 48 hours and there’s a lake in my driveway, not to mention the thunder storms and power loss) and I’m tidying Tellan because aside from cat cuddles and tea, I haven’t really got much else to do. It feels a smidgen unusual being assessment free but it’s nice to escape all of those looming deadlines…

(It might have been a bit irresponsible of me to jet off to Auckland the last weekend of school but hey, Gaga is my queen. Went to dance my toes off at her concert in the vector arena for my 21^st celebrations and let’s just say I’m glad I wore flat shoes.

Had the time of my life!)

But now im back, study is over and I've had time to think about my word count, matters of fantasy fiction, get my ticket for Christopher Paolini's chit-chat and talk to people about the bookish things that consume my day-dreams.

The word count?… Tellan, that splendiferous little pile of joy I penned over summer, was officially word counted at 123,546 words (I was aiming for 90-100,000. I failed). I've knocked out probably 10,000 of those between studying and classes. I'm proud of myself. I am moving some small twists over to book two, only major issue that’s going to create is that my protagonist might not find some itching truths till a later date than expected. I did try to add a scene whilst resolving this issue...
so yea,
Step backwards there. (two steps forward one step back, get there eventually) 

since most of the book has been 'tidied' and is looking a bit more ship-shape, i should have a clean draft ready for mid-July. Ambitious? perhaps... but i wont rest till its done ;D

Matters of fantastical contemplation? Lets be honest, I didn't need to wait for my exam to be over for this one to truly take root. Talking about books and writers has been one of my biggest forms of procrastination! 

I like to enter conversations (arguments. And often with myself) regarding the amazeballs world of fantasy fiction and with it all those topics that give me food for thought... I don't pretend to be an expert just another observer amidst the masses (I know someone must agree with me).

Anyone else ever annoyed by things that Characters in fantasy don't do? I always knew I couldn't be alone in this, and then recently this link (Lytherus.com by guest author Lev Grossman) popped up on my twitter feed and whammo, I was pleased. This link is marvellous, so read it. 

Its all so true.. and not necessarily limited to fantasy or the size of the list.  
Number 2 (as an example) has got to me before ... I don't mean to say that writers should ensure they incorporate their characters pee-schedule into each page, lets be honest no one really wants to read about it. But it can think of so many stories where characters have sat on a horse for eight hours or run from one city to another and never needed to take a break to pee... or eat, or remedy the serious chafing riding a horse in a dress might evoke ("#7. Suffer chafing issues).... I don't think its good for you.

Number six strikes me as being uncomfortably true. ("6. Meet a non-white person and not subsequently discover they’re from the Burning Lands Far to the South or something like that.) 

Then there's number 20 ( " Get eaten by a dragon. Come on, if dragons were real they would eat _everybody_.) I totally agree... 

I think some characters just need to be a tad more awkward (human) sometimes.. like number 15, ("15. Sneeze at an awkward moment.)

I suppose a lot of the other points come from the fact that fantasy has adopted traditions, conventions, laws I guess you could say. 
I watch/read a lot of interviews (with authors and fans alike) and recently I have stumbled upon too many saying things like; "this can not happen in fantasy," "this is wrong because and elf wouldn't do that," "A dragon with two legs is not a dragon, this is wrong..."  I had to ask myself the question, why not? fantasy is fantastical right? who says there are limits? who decides what is right for an elf? has anyone actually met and elf? If I decide that my elves are purple and live inside a volcano is that wrong? I certainly don't think so.. Personally I believe that if you want to say a dragon has two legs and six eyes then fine. A dragon has two legs and six eyes. Its fantasy, you can do what you like. It's not based on fact. Granted a lot of fantasy is based on myth or legend, but should that mean that we must create limits on ourselves in the world of fantasy fiction? 

On a completely different note, I just watched 'Brave' and loved it! I couldn't help but think that they had made some very accurate horse noises.. and the hair! I may be biased as an archery loving red-head but I thought it was brilliant. 

alsoooo got my ticket to see Christopher Paolini next week, expect a dedicated blog post :D
Just got to get these babies back to Wellington!

p.s, don't know how I made this weird s*** happen to the post. Blog was determined to be awkward. I stayed up late trying to fix it.. and failed, so WOOHOO, weird text. I don't know what I did... that includes the gaps. *shrugs* 

daily ramble.

I may be guilty of being a lame blogger recently. Editing -as I've said countless times- just doesn't seem to be an interesting topic to blog about.
Saying that, my leave-of-absence could very well have been influenced significantly by what has been re-named 'the bitch-chapter.' It's one of those super-long but unfortunately necessary, slightly political and over-read chapters, Located conveniently in the centre of the text... It took me a rather long time to find the precious hour or three necessary to 'tidy' it. Heap some assessments on top of that as well as a sudden immersion into an actual social life and suddenly I am a busy lady. Not that that's any excuse for being a lame blogger.

So after my last post I asked people to give me something to blog about (this goes for this post as well. Anything bookish just lemme know). One of my wonderful flat mates said that she liked to hear about the writing process.
There's little more to say than 'my process is chaos.' A semblance of some kind derived from an unholy amount of raw material, an untidy pile of plans, notes, notebooks, songs, chapters and drawings. It's organised chaos. The best kind of chaos.
My process for the draft was this as well as a series of plans... endless plans, experimental conversations and a bunch of structural diagrams that were pinned to my wall. I had ever chapter planned on paper before it was written. These plans were mainly bullet-points and key-ideas.. then there was this triangle thing that I drew... I did a lot of research into chapter structuring, then cam up with my own little laws (e.g, each chapter had to end with and ending, a reflection or a cliff-hanger). For the book as a whole I had a few questions that I kept referring to, for example; what does the character want? How am i going to make that difficult? how am I going to make everything else difficult? Then I had fun with character studies by writing a 'journey' for each of them. What their purpose was, what they wanted, what they would get and how their part in the story would end. Adding layers was the fun part... there are several mysteries within the book that can be solved if the reader can collect all of the clues. I tested this out on some friends (complied the clues and presented them) they were able to figure out some rather important info that my protagonist doesn't even know yet.. that was entertaining.  

(If you don't want to hear rambling there are some fish over there somewhere ---> )

Back to character.. because that's an interesting topic. One of my pet hates in YA fiction is when you come across characters that are 'normal' or 'perfect.' They aren't fun to read about.. In fact they're boring. I attempted to weird mine up a bit. I mean in 'real life' there's a wee bit of crazy in all of us. I'm a bit crazy -or so I have been told- were all a bit crazy.... Perhaps some of my characters are too-flawed, I couldn't really say. I like them I suppose that has to count for something.
There has to be a mention here of my absolute favourite character. Carver. Who has some serious and possibly repressed emotional issues due to a range of factors that he could not control, weird family things and all that hooey... His flaws made him fun to write about. I really only wanted to mention him because he is -as I said- my favourite, and that seems to stem from his issues more that his perfection. Flaws in my opinion are up there with redeeming qualities in bad guys. Every person has their flaws, things that shape them, annoying habits etc.... There's no relate-ability  in un-flawed characters. which brings me full circle back to the weirdo's. We need some weird in our literature people.

Another random character insight- or rather insight to an insight. My favourite scene in Tellan includes a rare glimpse into the mind of the books most 'misplaced' character. Here enters Gambola. In said scene she merely sits beside the protagonist and asks some questions while another character sings -then forgets how- chuck in some rain and melancholy, blah, blah. I keep thinking that If i took her from that scene and sat any other character in her place the whole chapter just wouldn't work. The balance she creates -with the weird workings of her mind- makes it.


Saw hunger games at last. The whole ordeal made me quite nervous. Not gunna lie. I always get rather anxious when they turn a book I've read -and enjoyed- into a movie. The hunger games books are good, devour-able in a single day and easy to get lost in. I liked Suzanne Collins' strong female character/s. It isn't very often that we get those.
I discussed heroines with a friend recently. Its good to see a world where the females are not utterly useless. I feel like I should point a finger at Fantasy fiction in general here. Too often are we seeing world based on a collision of Tolkein and Medieval- earth -depicting the females as hopeless damsels or just ridiculous and naive. Again. At risk of sounding like an angry feminist...
Collin's did well reversing these roles and the movie did well depicting it. I liked how Katnis got to save Peeta, for once a female protagonist stepped up and saved her man-friend.
I considered the first hunger games book a considerable amount better than the other two, but look forward to seeing the second and third films!

peace. x

Computers, virus' and WRIT101. The survival guide.

Murphy's law; The supposed law of nature, expressed in many humorous popular sayings, to the effect that anything can go wrong will go wrong.



Or; when you don't back up your book for four days your computer will die...
Which did in fact happen.
I casually went to check my emails and my poor laptop had turned itself inside out, was thoroughly munted and had basically decided that it was confused and screwed beyond fixing... There are harsher words I could use.
I had a small scale panic attack, threw my computer to the flat mates and held my breath.
The initial decision was that the mother board was destroyed... Then Mr Geoffrey managed to rescue my hard-drive!
So it's all OK. The baby is safe.
Three days later and my computer is OK, restored to factory settings and wiped, but alive. (In some ways it's nice to have my computer back to it's factory settings. I feel like I have a brand new computer.) Turns out the whole ordeal was a small flock of pesky virus' that had infiltrated almost everything...
I came so very close to losing half of my book. Of all the days to go up s**t creek, my computer chose the day four days after I had decided to put my data stick somewhere else... in a 'safe place'.
I should also mention that in the hours following my laptops demise, I rushed madly around the flat and couldn't find said data-stick. The thing had hidden itself just to further mess with my head.
lesson learnt.
I will back up my work every day and I will never put my data-stick in a 'safe place.' When it comes to the book this sort of thing just isn't funny. I don't know what I would do if I lost the book. There would be tears for sure. There were a few tears....
BUT IT"S OK.

WRIT101. Had my first class at Uni, it was brilliant. Three hours talking about writing then we had to write a literacy autobiography. Not many people will apply the word brilliant to a first class in which they were required to write an essay but I had a good time. It's a tiny class, there are about twelve of us, but I feel like its going to be fanfriggintastic. That could change. Watch this space.
When I got home the temp flat-mates decided to have a short story competition... not entirely sure how that came about, but they all sat down and wrote stories which I have to judge at dinner. I told them I might post the best one on my blog. An extra reason to watch this space.

On the book front things are going splendidly. I'm chewing through the beast bit-by-bit and having a tidy. In about 20 chapters time i'll be looking for some more readers. keen?