Margaret River Writers' Festival

It's been a while since I updated my blog as I've been busy with work and family, especially often looking after all my children's dogs, which adds up to five!

On Saturday 17 May 2014 I'm giving a presentation about my novel Stella's Sea at the Margaret River Writers' Festival.https://www.facebook.com/events/1431706813751714/

After my talk, which is at a morning tea at the Sea Gardens Cafe, we're all going on a coastal walk with local expert Lorraine Teasdale.

The drakaea orchid features in Stella's Sea

How to write: go somewhere fabulous

Write to escape the place you're in, the century you're in -- and take your reader with you.

Welsh sheep

I do like living in Perth, Western Australia in 2014 but sometimes it's fun to go somewhere else in time and space.

My novels I Rhiannon Books 1& 2 available free on Kindle now, took me to Wales at the time of the Roman invasion. You can visit too, if you step into the world of Rhiannon, a beautiful Celtic maiden, and her wicked slave, Rebekka.

Incidentally, it's Wales' special day today -- St David's Day.

Chepstow Castle, Wales

How to write: get involved

If you want your readers to get involved in your story and keep turning the pages until the end, you have to get involved as a writer.

When I came across this castle when out walking in Snowdonia I wondered about the people who'd defended and attacked it, and their families and friends.

Get as enmeshed with your characters as you are with members of your own family and your friends.

Give your characters lots of realistic family-members and friends and get to know them really well so that they drive the plot and help to bring out the personalities of your main characters.

In my novels, I love creating mini communities around my protagonists.

But remember a few golden rules: don’t have too many of these extras in your story, and don’t give them similar-sounding names. Even names that start with the same letter can be confusing. If your story HAS to have a big cast of characters, list them at the start or at the end of the book.

A meal I prepared for some friends: melons, raspberries, prosciutto -- divine!

Some of my novels are free on Kindle at the moment.

How to write: enchant

Enchantment is a crucial ingredient in any story.  

A Welsh toadstool, pictured near magical Betws y Coed in Snowdonia

A writer should throw in as much delight into her stories as possible. In I Rhiannon 1&2 (free on Kindle now) I sprinkle a lot of fairy dust around. The story is set in a magical Wales where fairies and elves lurk in shadows. Immortal Druids and Druidesses lead the festivals that mark out the Celtic year and bards spice the tribespeople’s lives with ancient stories told around a dancing fire. Here is an extract from Book 2:

“This Gwyn ap Nudd,” the one-eyed bard was telling them, “is the God of the Dead. It is he who is Chief of the elves we call the bendith y maumau. They live on fairy islands off the coast quite near here and are expert gardeners, growing orchids that swallow all pests, roses whose perfume, if distilled, would ensure that even the ugliest woman snare a husband, and forget-me-nots which, if pressed and dried and crushed into a powder worn on the eyelids, enable one not only to see all that has passed, but all that is in the future.”

A fairy wren from Western Australia -- magic!! 

How to write: add herbs

You have to enjoy writing to ensure that your readers love reading your stories. One way I make sure I love it is by finding out interesting things to add to the story. In my novel I, Rhiannon Books One and Two (which will be available free on Kindle soon) I added some cool stuff I’d discovered about Celts and their favourite herbs.

Rhiannon is a beautiful young Celtic woman who’s about to be married off to a horrible stinky old man (who already has a few hag-wives) to unite the tribe against the Romans who are about to invade. Every chapter title is the name of a plant the Celts loved, with the Welsh and Latin translations. In this excerpt, she’s touring the garden around her parents’ roundhouse with her mother, Mair, who tells her:  

“I planted this garden when your father and I were newlywed,” she said, her head tilted up so she could taste the air. “It’s full of old friends.”
Rhiannon looked at her quizzically but her mother did not notice. She was gazing up at the leaves of her favourite tree, a graceful silver birch planted to the right of the wooden gate which opened out onto the hillside and in to the path leading to the roundhouse. It was such a still evening, the leaves hardly stirred and the smooth trunk was flushed pink, mirroring the colour of the sky above the bosom of the hill.
“If you are dyeing linen, the bark of this tree will give you a warm brown the colour of freshly-tilled earth,” she said, her thin fingers with their ragged nails nervously patting the trunk. Privately, and with a pang that was a physical pain under her ribcage, Mair wondered how much longer the birch would stand in its place near the gate. Whenever she went to the market and bought frivolous things for her daughter from travelling merchants, she heard increasingly gory horror stories about the havoc wreaked in other parts by the Mighty Ones. Rhiannon was always pleased to see her mother if a decorated comb or jewelled bracelet were on offer and was never interested in news of the Mechteyrnedd.
Mair shivered and dug her pointed chin into the comforting, prickly wool of her cape. She’d try to give Rhiannon enough knowledge to get her by, although whether she’d remember it all or not was disputable.
“Black comes from this tree, the elder.” Mair stood on tiptoe and plucked an umbel of creamy flowers. Their perfume reminded her so strongly of happy, carefree days of past summers she couldn’t hide the tremor in her voice when she said: “In September, the black berries will come. Use them to treat colds and chills or make wine from them. And, dig up a little root if someone is in need of a purge.”
“Mair!” Rhiannon snorted contemptuously. “I’m not like you. I won’t be encouraging all the wastrels in the settlement to come banging on my door for cures.”
“Your own children may need your skills, though,” Mair said, looking up at her defiantly.
“Go on, then,” Rhiannon sighed.
Mair led her further along the circular grassed area between the fence and the house. “My cloak’s colours come from the roots of this goose grass,” she said, sinking to her knees and flicking her fingertips through the soft green tufts. “You can get reds and oranges of different strengths. Depending on the shade you want, add more or less water to the pot and boil the roots in it.” How many skeins of wool had she coloured for her family, hanks she had lifted from the cauldron with pointed sticks, coils that steamed, some like a liver ripped from a carcass, others like dew lifting from the orange fungi that grew on fallen trunks in the woods.
“Blues are similar,” she continued, struggling to keep her voice even. “You can achieve different shades by using berries of varying degrees of ripeness. And, for yellow, pick young shoots of various grasses and branches.”    
 “And herbs, Mair?” Rhiannon asked insistently. She felt impatient with her mother for kneeling in the long grass. There was no time to waste gardening. “Which are the ones I’ll most need to know about?”
“Ah, Holly is the expert for she comes from Londinium, where the Mechteyrnedd are growing herbs from all over their Empire”, she said, getting to her feet with an effort. Suddenly, she felt very old. “She knows of some and has passed on all she has learnt to me although I’ve not been able to buy any of the new ones at the market yet. My favourite is our own Celtic herb, borage, whose name means courage. See, it is growing here under this hawthorn bush and has these beautiful black-centred, blue-petalled flowers – like your eyes. Yet its leaves are quite rough.”
Mair plucked a sprig and held it to her breast. She continued: “It’s the most important herb of all and an infusion of it can give heart to a warrior. Another I love is sweet cicely, this tall, lacy plant with its bowl-shaped clusters of flowers. See how pretty the white flowers are on the stalks flecked with red. It has always reminded me of Gwyn for it has his delicacy. It adds sweetness to cabbage and its roots are delicious boiled and buttered. I love it as a plant but I rarely use it in the kitchen as it’s said to be an aphrodisiac.”
“I will never serve it to Huw, then,” Rhiannon commented bitterly.
“No, I wouldn’t if I were you,” Mair replied quickly. She flushed an ugly red. “And look,” she said, dismissing cicely and going to a blue-green leaved shrub near the vegetable patch, “here is the juniper, whose berries I crush and sprinkle on cabbage. And I rub them into the pork rind with salt before I cook the meat.”
"Mair, stop!” Rhiannon said, tearing at the juniper bush. “I can’t take in any more. I’m certain Huw’s wives never bother to flavour his meat or make a cure for his impotence – why should I? Unless you can show me a herb or a tree or a blasted insect that will make him drop dead on the spot, why should I care about any of these plants? It’s a waste of time!”  
“For yourself, child. You should know for yourself. Because knowledge makes you strong.”

 

 

How to write: love your food

Everyone loves eating great food and reading about it.

Many of us love cooking it too.

When I write, I do all three in my imagination and don't gain a kilo. But my plus-size fabulous heroine Virginia does all three and stays gorgeous, curvy and sexy.

You can meet her free in my novel Love Classified now via Kindle.

Here's a run-down of her story:

 

When 35 year-old e-magazine editor Virginia Brook answers a classified ad for a female travel companion in her local paper, her life changes dramatically.

A virgin – and a gourmet cook – Virginia is sure no man could be interested in her size 18 body but she has 12 weeks of holiday-leave to use up and decides to take the plunge and meet whoever placed the ad, hoping her fear that he’s an axe murderer is just that – a paranoid fear.

She ends up travelling around the south-west of Western Australia with handsome Magnus Winchester who only has to utter one syllable for Virginia’s body to respond voluptuously. He is beyond her wildest dreams yet he sees her very differently from the way she sees herself.

There’s more to Magnus than meets the eye but Virginia, always a connoisseur, abandons herself to the incredible pleasures of love-making, not knowing until almost the end of their journey that he is a doctor living with a burden of guilt after the death of one of his patients.

Jealousy, mistaken identities, friendship and love add flavor to their deepening relationship. Magnus proves himself a good and brave man several times during their camper-van travels but not until he and Virginia rescue and treat a horse who gallops into a barbed-wire fence during a storm does he have the confidence to take up his career again, with Virginia at his side.     

There's a lot of food in this story.

 

For starters, Magnus has a voice like chocolate and eyes the colour of caramel -- yum! 

Here are some of the delicious things they eat over the course of their lovestory:

 

* spicy chicken breast with avocado sauce, topped with coriander, cumin and paprika

* delicious canapés – green mango salad on betel leaves, prawn laksa shots, duck in crisp wanton cups, camembert with pear compote on pumpernickel, chicken and port pâté on polenta crisps

* almond and orange cake with a rhubarb and strawberry compote

* omelette (made with eggs from her own hens),toasted rye bread spread with ricotta, a side of wilted spinach

* chocolate and raspberry roulade

* classic trifle, summer-ripe peaches

* pineapple, orange and passionfruit frappe

* dill potato cakes with smoked salmon

* gruyere, leek and bacon tart

* Danish pastries bursting with vanilla custard and summer fruits, washed down with champagne and café au lait

* Welsh leek soup with gruyere cheese croutons toppedwith fresh parsley

* fish and chips by the river

* asparagus omelette 

* fettucine with basil pesto

* shrimp risotto

* creamy vitello tonnato

* veal involtini

* twice-cooked duck curry perfumed with coriander, cumin, fennel and mace and served with potatoes, rice, lime leaves and basil and blonde, fruity wine

* spinach and feta cannelloni

* coq au vin for a sexy seductress' supper

Bonne nuit, lovers!

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

How to write: setting

Setting is another important component in a short story or novel. For some novelists, the setting is almost like another character. Think of Tim Winton and his amazing ability to bring the Western Australian landscape and the sea into his books. When I read Breath I felt permanently wet and cold. 

I love setting my stories in Wales because it's where I love to be, except that it rains too much!

A beautiful setting for a novel or story. Wales again.

We all see and interact with our environment in a unique way. The way you talk about a gum tree will be different from the way I do – and both are fascinating. And if you’re a fantasy writer you have carte blanche to create a world from scratch.