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.     

How to write: empathise

 So how do you find a great story? It’s like finding a needle in a haystack and sometimes it’s right under your nose and you don’t see it.

Everyone has their own way of finding a story. This is what sometimes works for me: you invent some vibrant and believable characters. 

Who might this character be by the sea in Wales? You decide!

You ask your main character what he or she wants more than anything else in the world, and then you ask your other main character what it is that he or she wants more than anything else in the world. And there you have your conflict, which is an essential ingredient in every single story ever listened to around a fire (in the days of cave men or women) or published in a book.

One character might want desperately to kill her mother-in-law because she knows her life will be so much better without her in it. The other character might be the detective who’s never solved a single case and who wants more than anything to prove to the world that he’s worth his salt.

But the murderer doesn’t want to get caught. She wants to live her blissful life, free of the mother-in-law. The detective is determined to catch the killer, or his girlfriend will leave him, he’ll lose his job and he’ll end up living under a bridge.

Characters really do come alive if they have strong motives. They might be understated ones, like not wanting to be lonely, or powerful ones, like wanting to take over a kingdom.

I bet all of you pictured the murderer and the detective in your mind while I talked about them just then. Even though I just sketched them, your imagination would have turned them into human beings. I’m suggesting this because I want to point out that motive is vital in creating a character. The way a character looks is a lot less important because the reader can fill that bit in.

All of us, because we’re human, love listening to or reading stories about other humans, or characters. It’s part of our DNA. Evolutionary biologists believe humans are the successful species we are because we’re able to empathise with each other. We care for each other when someone’s sick, we praise each other when someone’s done a good job, we laugh with our friends over a joke.

If we didn’t have the ability to empathise, we wouldn’t have been able to form cooperative societies with hospitals and traffic lights and universities and a robot exploring Mars. Stories told around that pre-historic campfire were born out of our need to empathise and bond with each other.  

If you can create at least two characters that you really care about, your readers will care about them too. If you really want one of them to overcome the setbacks and obstacles that you throw at them, then so will your readers. And if you want another of them to get his or her come-uppance, then so will your readers.

Write the story you want to read. Write for you. Make characters you want to spend time with – or characters you want to destroy in as grisly a way as possible.

I believe that very strong characters with conflicting motives drive the plot. The Booker Prize-winning novelist A.S Byatt said that she creates a novel by starting with two couples, as D.H. Lawrence did.

You can immediately see the potential for conflict, crisis and confrontation here. Two couples on a camping trip. One couple was allocated the task of bringing the fresh water and they forget. Or: two couples on a camping trip. One member of each couple are friends. The other two don’t know each other. There is undeniable attraction or hatred between them. The possibilities are endless.

But if you’re a bit stuck with your strong characters and don’t know what else to do with them apart from having them go head-to-head with their opposing motivations, read a newspaper, go to a movie, eavesdrop on a conversation and ask yourself: what if?

What if, in the newspaper article, the foreign aid worker who was freed after being held in Tripoli for three days was actually a spy? What if she was pregnant by her secret lover, a Libyan terrorist? What if, in the movie, there was a hotel in India and that, instead of elderly Brits as in the film, it was occupied by young Aussies? What if, in the overheard conversation, the guy lost his job and instead of sinking into a depression signed up for the space program?

Have fun inventing some hot-blooded characters of your own!

 

How to write: be yourself

We all have a way of speaking that is unique. Even if they can’t see you at a crowded party, if they can hear you, your friends will know you’re there. It’s the same with writing. The more practice you get, the more your special writing style, or voice, will develop.

Each of us is unique. This is me at a dinner to celebrate my PhD. The little dog was made out of paper by my daughter Lucy!

 Everyone has a different way of catching it. The way that works for me is that I imagine I’m writing for one special friend, a woman friend, who cares about the same things as me. I write to make her smile and cry and go “wow!” at the end. She’s an imaginary friend and she doesn’t have a name, but when I write I imagine I’m whispering the story in her ear.

 If you BINMAD, your writing voice will develop and it’ll be a voice as unique as the one your friends can hear.   

Here are some examples of unique writing voices:

A man once sent me a series of blank pages. This was the man who brought me narcissus, the man who took me to Boston, the man I left at Niagara by the waterfall in winter.The spray from the falls drifts some distance in the winter, becoming lighter, colder, harder as it comes to rest. It weighs down trees on the Canadian side of the border until whole branches become the rafters of rooms made of living tree and ice. Poe’s Cat, Brenda Walker. 

The grey gelding he had named John was waiting at the gate, his backside turned to the wind. The old man retrieved a rope lead looped over the fence and snapped the catch onto the halter ring under the gelding’s chin. Whispered who the good boy John who the boy? Bad morning mate. Walk back now. Made a kissing sound with his mouth.Traitor, Stephen Daisley.

He shrugged and left me. He never talked about the future and only occasionally, when drunk, would he talk about his marvellous past. A past filled with sequinned women and double-tailed horses and a father who made his living fired from a cannon. He came from somewhere in eastern Europe and his skin was the colour of old olives. The Passion, Jeanette Winterson.

I made out her shape. Wearing a white wrapper, its voluminous sleeves rolled up above her elbows, she was sitting at the little desk in the corner, writing and smoking. Her back to the room, as though saying: I don’t really inhabit this place. Her black hair, piled up on her head, a coral spike thrust through the toppling knot to secure it…“Remembering George Sand’, Michele Roberts.

Each of these writers has his or her own distinct voice. If you read them often, you can tell who’s written a passage without having to read the author’s name. Each author relaxes into their story. There’s a sense that they know what they want to tell you, and they’re eager to do so, without having to try too hard.

Each of these writers creates characters so real they could be in the room with you. With characters that your readers really care about and a story that’s exciting, told in your unique way, you’re on the way to getting published.

 

 

How to write: strong characters

Your characters need to slam up against each other and send the sparks scattering.

A re-creation of civil war at Chepstow Castle, Wales. Characters in conflict!

A good way to create memorable, dramatic characters who keep your readers turning the pages is to be sure to know, as a writer, what each character wants more than anything else. It might be a big want, such as being the first person on Mars, or a ‘little’ one, like not wanting to be lonely (though that is a serious desire and I’m not belittling it here at all). Characters can come into conflict via their competing wants. If you know what your characters desire, you’ll know how they drive, how they dress, how they speak, whether they wear scent or aftershave, what their relationships are like and so on.

For example, think of a character who wants more than anything else to find a cure for a kind of cancer. He’ll do anything it takes to find the cure, even risking his life to do so. It doesn’t take much imagination to bring this kind of character into being, and to give him a backstory (why does he need to cure cancer? His wife/mother/twin brother might have died of it? He might have it? His child might inherit a propensity for it? He wants to be famous? He wants to beat a rival to the cure?). Once you’ve worked all this out, it doesn’t take much more of a leap to know lots more about him.

The character, let’s call him Dr Dave, has a wife. More than anything else, she wants to spend more time with him but he’s always at work. You can see the potential for conflict here.

I love creating characters with strong desires. Check some out via Kindle’s great deals.  

How to write: embrace your story

My father was a country GP. When his patients asked him how they could lose weight he’d say: “Simple – keep your mouth shut.”

We all know that losing weight is much more complicated than that, but my Dad’s message was right: you can’t get fat if you don’t open your mouth.

I’m not advocating dieting at all. It’s dangerous. But I use the example of my father’s oversimplification to lead into the topic of this post. 

How do you get published? Simple – tell a great story.  Is true that if your story is utterly compelling, it’s likely to get published. It may take a while to get it to the attention of a publisher, but if it’s really good enough, it could be the next Harry Potter or Shades of Grey and you could be fronting up at the desk of a luxury car dealer to buy yourself the latest Ferrari.

But we all know it’s not that easy. Very few of us, if any of us, are lucky enough to come up with a story so brilliant that if causes a bidding war between rival publishing houses.

But we’re all capable of coming up with a story that will prick a publisher’s interest and have a publishing house editor hungrily turning the pages and advising that you be sent a contract to sign.

I do mean all. Each of us is unique. There has never before been someone like you or me in the history of the world and there never will be again.  Each of us has stories to draw on from our own lives. Stories about our family, our friends, our pets, our work, our school and university experiences, our circumstances. I’m not suggesting that each of you writes about your own life, though.

What I do believe is that your one-in-billions world view is a marketable commodity. Only you look at the world in the way you do. Only you have had your experiences. Only you speaks – and writes – in your voice.

In my life, I’ve read thousands of novels and short stories and met hundreds of creative writing students. Each novelist, story writer and student is completely different from the last and this difference is what sets you apart as a writer.

Proud to be different!

How to write: get obsessed

I wrote in my last post about finding something you love to write about and going with it, but now I’m going to suggest that you get obsessed.

When I started researching Celtic Wales, I unearthed the most fascinating stuff in cobwebby old books that hadn’t been opened for decades. I devoured all the information in them and had to discipline myself not to spew it all back in a big mess when it came to writing I, Rhiannon Books One and Two.

A wall in Snowdonia, Wales

Learning about the ancient Celtic festivals of Samhain and Beltane helped me structure the novels and fired my imagination so that I felt as if I was there, sitting by the fire, with the tribespeople. According to Wikipedia, Samhain  is a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the "darker half" of the year. It is celebrated from sunset on 31 October to sunset on 1 November, which is nearly halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. Along with Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh it makes up the four Gaelic seasonal festivals. It was observed in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Kindred festivals were held at the same time of year in other Celtic lands; for example the Brythonic Calan Gaeaf (in Wales), Kalan Gwav (in Cornwall) and Kalan Goañv (in Brittany). 

Magnificent Snowdonia

Here is an excerpt from the beginning of Book Two:
She brought the snow early, coming unseen on her milk-white mare, wrapped in a cloak of silver fox over a gown that sparkled with thousands of tiny mirrors. Gwyn, who should have been concentrating on answering the Samhain chants uttered by Edern the Erudite, couldn’t take his eyes off her when she appeared among them. He imagined some poor, eye-sore needlewoman bending over the fine linen, her mirrors making a pattern of dewy spiderwebs, her tired fingers rejoicing in their pain, glad to suffer for such a beauty as this creature was.
     She was Rebekka, he was sure of it, although her hair seemed to absorb the light from the greedy fire and shone red like the skins of the apples the Geveni were roasting in the flames of fern, gorse, straw and thornbush. Her skin was the colour of her white woollen tunic and her eyes the same vivid emerald as the evergreens that decorated all the roundhouses and the Great Hall.     
     As her delicate palfrey picked its way on fine legs across the new snow to where the tribespeople sat, close to the warmth, the flames spluttered and died. The Geveni, who hadn’t yet noticed her for they were engrossed in listening to the Druids’ commemorations of the dead, fell silent, terrified the spirits who’d returned from Summerland for this one night, the end of the old year, were displeased with something they might have done or failed to do. They all looked about, expecting to see ghosts or fairy folk. Them Who Be were as real to them as the living and never more so than on this hallowed night. That very evening as they made their way to the meeting-place, the children had seen some ellyllon on the river, paddling their egg-shell boats. Even little Nina had been sure of spying the bwbach near Mair’s hearth. This miniature, tubby, domestic creature, Mair told her, was nothing to fear. “He will protect our new roundhouse,” she promised.
     At first, the people couldn’t see what caused their big fire to die. No twlwyth tegs were trooping past in a colourful parade, their one hundred year-old children leaping, skipping and dancing ahead. And it was too late for the pillywiggins, who, mounted on bees and brandishing tiny brushes and mops, tidied the spring flowers. The warriors superstitiously rubbed the Roman skulls that dangled from their hips, Spinner held his harp more tightly against his heart. Eurolwyn, Daughter of Gwydolwyn the Dwarf wished she hadn’t been so short with the Apprentices that morning during the rehearsal of the Samhain rites and promised herself she’d try to be nicer to them in future. Dafydd clutched Mair, expecting to see their hero son, Griff Stiff Beard, brandishing his fabled dragon-bladed sword where the flames had leapt.
     Gwyn’s sharp eyes spied her first, sitting astride her bare-backed horse on the edge of the forest. He gasped and Rhiannon, sitting close, turned to where he was looking and screamed her slave’s name, believing she was dead and returned to haunt them. Augustus, at his wife’s side, holding the sleeping Nina in his arms, uttered “Rebekka” with what sounded to Rhiannon like longing.

How to write: be intrigued

If you’re intrigued with your subject, you’ll not only keep writing to the very end, you’ll have a reader who’s loving every word.

 But how do you find something that will keep you interested for 50,000-plus words: interested enough to sit at your computer day after day for months if not years?

You might have a hobby that you love: bushwalking, cooking, working out, stamp collecting, crossword puzzles, bee keeping. It could be anything. Any of those hobbies make a great starting point for a novel. You could give your hobby to your main character and see what happens. I

 

n my novel Stella’s Sea, it wasn’t until I turned Stella into a beekeeper and she came alive for me and started to take control of the plot. I’m not a beekeeper, but as a journalist, I had to write about bees and the desperate research that’s being undertaken to ensure they survive. I found out all I could about bees and the people who care for them. I spoke to scientists, queen bee breeders and a honey-supplier. I went to university labs, bee yards and a bush clearing where an old beekeeper calmed the bees with smoke before pulling out the frames to inspect his hard-working bees and their queen. The more I found out about bees, the more I was desperate to learn. It was a joy for me to write about Stella’s bees and her need to get them back in her life.

 

 

 You might have an ancestral tug to a country far away. Acknowledge it. Don’t put it out of your mind. It wasn’t until my Dad died and I took his ashes home to Wales (we live in Western Australia) that I returned to ‘the land of my fathers’ for the first time as an adult. And I was blown away by it. I didn’t want to leave. Hearing Welsh spoken, even English in that lilting way Dad had, made my heart sing. And the choirs that sound like rainstorms, the ruined castles that loom into sight unexpectedly when you’re walking along the coast or in the hills, the wild foxgloves and honeysuckle and roses, the rushing streams and leek puddings – it’s magic. I had to come back to my children, my animals, but I found a way of living there at the same time: by inhabiting a story about the place.

 

Chepstow Castle, Wales

 

I hadn’t been all that interested in Wales until my father’s death but after going there, I was starving for knowledge. When the children were at school I’d sneak hours in libraries, poring through ancient books that told of Celtic fairy stories and customs, of Romans mining that blood-red Welsh gold, of Vikings stealing up Welsh rivers in their flat-bottom longships to plunder and pillage, and spill their seed. Many of my novels are set in Wales in different historical eras and I hope to write more.

Plas Mawr, Conwy, Wales, an Elizabethan townhouse recreated

What are you interested in? Indulge that curiosity and let your wonderment fire your stories.      

Kitchen, Plas Mawr, Wales

How to write: time travel

Lots of us probably wish we could live in another era, but return safely to our own whenever things got 'hairy', or (if you went a long way back in time) whenever you got a headache and needed some quick pain relief.

One way to time travel is to write. Lots of my novels are set in historical periods I'm interested in: Roman Britain, Viking Wales,. Federation Australia.

If you do lots of research, once you have your characters and a rough idea of the plot, you really do get the feeling that you're 'living' somewhere else as you write.

A trick when writing historical novels is not to use everything that you've found out about the period in which your story is set. The reader doesn't want to feel like she's getting a history lesson. Drip little bits of information in only when it's relevant. It's fun to find out about the fashion fabrics and styles, the kinds of crockery and cutlery used to eat tripe (or whatever) but don't go overboard with these details. When writing A Hard Man to Love  (free now on Kindle) I researched 1910 Australia and also what was going on in the wider world and only added information that was of interest to the main characters, Pansy and Rex. One issue that Pansy thinks about is women getting the vote.

I can't go often, but I do love travelling to Wales. The stones have stories to tell!

How to write: mind miles

Woody Allen said 90 per cent of success is showing up.

How true!

In the case of writing, it means that if you show up at your computer and put in the time writing, eventually it'll pay off for you and your readers.

I believe almost everybody can write because everyone has a story to tell and a unique voice that makes them unlike anyone who's ever lived on this planet before.

But it's not easy to sit down and create a 50,000-odd word novel. It takes months, at least: months of stretching your imagination to the limits, and testing your resolve.

One way to keep yourself fascinated is to write a novel set in a place you'd love to be. It should be a place you'd fly to if you could: if you had the money, the time off work, the freedom from the commitments of a family...

So clock up the mind miles on your 'flying machine' , aka computer.

A village in the Cinque Terre, Italy

In some of my novels, I've visited Wales often because it's 'the land of my fathers' and I adore it, and I've also been to Italy, another favourite.

Australia is my home and I have a free novel on Kindle right now, A Hard Man to Love. In that novel I didn't move many miles away from my desk, but I did do some time travelling.

A friendly spaniel in my Dad's village of Hook, Pembrokeshire, Wales

How to write: make a room of your own

Virginia Woolf knew about the importance of having a special space.

It's a place where you can be calm and relatively unbothered by day-to-day problems. A place where your imagination can soar.

It can be a physical place, but also a mental one.

I mostly write in my garden, surrounded by my dogs, with the chooks scratching around and making that lovely contented clucking.

But to get to writing-readiness you need to be able to visit that place often, every day is best, even if it's only in your mind.

I once read a great article about writing and in it was this acronym: BINMAD. It stands for bugger inspiration, never miss a day. And it's worth remembering. If you can write every day, even only a sentence or so, you're keeping your story flickering in your imagination like a little candle. Don't let the candle go out because one day that flame might become a roaring fire that catches everyone's attention.

I wish I could take my own advice. I hope some of you might be able to.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY AND HAPPY WRITING!

How to write: LOVE it!

You're a goddess when you're a writer. You create characters and then you manipulate them. You toss obstacles in their way, you play with their emotions, you set fire to their dreams.

But in the end, you let them live happily ever after, or at least I do.

Being a writer is to experience the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

As a HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY special, Amazon has my lovestory A Hard Man to Love available for free.

Here's an excerpt from one of the scenes between Rex and Pansy. It's set in 1910, and Pansy believes she has a rare and dangerous condition that means she can't have children, so there are all sorts of reasons why these two should not be attracted to each other. And one of them is in the form of the evil but beautiful Prudence. Anyway, here are Rex and Pansy, and me having a goddess moment:

She knew she’d never feel shame for having kissed him – opened to him – in this way, no matter how well she understood that what she had done was wicked in the eyes of society. She’d never really been alive until now. His vulnerability, his beauty, his hauteur attracted her as a moth is drawn to a flame, only to burn up and die seconds later. She was that moth but she cared only that she was experiencing these few minutes in this room with him. Even if the rest of her life was lonely and miserable, at least she had this short fabulous time with him. She’d cherish these glorious few moments forever, when she felt the extent of his burning desire for her and savoured her short-lived power over him.

     “You’re a witch!” he rasped, a smile on his lips. “An enchantress! I didn’t know what a kiss could mean until now.”

How to write: hooks

Don't you love it when you read the first sentence of a novel and just know that you're not going to be able to put it down - that feeling of being hooked, and giving yourself up to it because you know you're in the hands of a master story-teller?

Once you as a writer have your characters, setting and a rough idea of a plot, make sure you have the best possible first sentence. You want to grab your reader's attention from the first word.

Here are some great sentences that sucked me into the story and didn't let me go:

My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) and almost 40 years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British security service. I didn't return safely. (Sweeet Tooth,  Ian McEwan)

The tramp stank of piss and some unmentionable human filth Gavin couldn't even bear to imagine. (Tremble, Tobsha Learner)

Despite the fact that Carol Jackson has to sit in a pram, she and her mother are going out together while mine is downstairs whispering with a perfumed woman in an animal skin. (The Hiding Place, Trezza Azzopardi)

In Melton Mowbray in 1875 at an auction of articles of 'curiosity and worth', my great grandfather, in the company of M his friend, bid for the penis of Captain Nicholls who died in Horsemonger jail in 1873. (Short story "Solid Geometry", Ian McEwan)

Each of those beginning made me want to read on. Each introduced a character in the very first sentence. A character who is already interesting. And in each, the language is simple and the situations complex, full of potential conflict an human misery and anguish - which we love to read about! Also, each has a strong and unique voice.

My novel A Hard Man to Love is free from Amazon from this Valentine's Day!

I love writing in my garden. I find it inspirational.

How to write: voice

You're unique, and so is your voice. It's one the world wants to hear. So don't be afraid to write as YOU. I start my writing day with an eggsellent breakfast courtesy of my five ex-battery hens.

What is 'voice' exactly, when it comes to writing?

Think of your favourite author, the one you turn to again and again. It's likely he or she has a special way of looking at the world, a quirky way of saying things, a uniqueness that's hard to pin down, but that makes you long for their next novel.

For me, reading a favourite author is like having their voice whispering in my ear. It feels like they're 'talking' just to me. And because their writing is so fabulous, you forget that it's writing. It feels like they're actually speaking.

New writers often disregard their own voice. They seriously 'sit down and concentrate to write a book' and forget that their voice is special. Never before in the history of humankind has there been a voice like theirs, and there never will be again.

If your writing has a stilted feel, it's because you're trying too hard.

Imagine you're writing for just one reader, someone you like very much. It could be your bestie, or your Mum, or your Grandma. Write exactly as you would talk to them. Your own voice will come through and your readers will love you for it.

My novel A Hard Man to Love is free on Amazon from Valentine's Day!!


How to write: love scenes

The most important sex organ is the brain.

Remember this when you write love scenes.

The attraction between your lovers has to be more than physical. They have to connect at a deep psychological level and your readers have to believe that they're right for each other in every way, not just because they like the way the other looks.

So set up many scenes and confrontations and affectionate wordplays between them before that very first kiss.

You'll have your readers eating out of the palm of your hand.

Having said that, when it comes to the lovemaking, you can let rip. But you need to be honest. How would these particular lovers do it? What is idiosyncratic in their personalities that might affect how they make love? What in their characters might inform what they like to do and what they don't like to do?

And don't neglect other parts of the body when you write your love scenes. After all, good lovers don't. John Updike, a master at this, wrote about the sole of one of his character's feet as he unhurriedly described their appreciation for each other, phsyical and emotional.

In my novel A Hard Man to Love I tried to build up a sizzling tension between Rex and Pansy before letting them even touch.  A Hard Man to Love is free via Amazon from Valentine's Day!

How to write: be inspired by nature

Mother Nature can weave magic into your story if you let her.

In my role in media liaison at The University of Western Australia I have the wonderful task of writing about some of the fabulous research that goes on there.

I was lucky enough to meet some amazing scientists who are working hard to save the honeybee, which accounts of one-third of what we humans eat. And some of their passion for bees rubbed off on me.

I also met other scientists who are researching the love-potion created by a Western Australian endangered orchid, the zaspilothynnus, to attract its pollinator, a tiny wasp. The orchid has evolved to look and smell exactly like a female wasp!



The pretty orchid that is a love-cheat

Bees and orchids wove their way into my latest novel, Stella's Sea. The main character, Stella, was a beekeeper until her daughter's tragic death caused her to leave the Western Australian country town where she was living. Her love of nature is the only thing that keeps her alive in the awful months that follow the death of her only child. I began writing Stella before meeting the bee and wasp scientists and was pretty bored with her. I even thought of ditching her altogether. But a wise and dear friend suggested I make Stella a beekeeper and suddenly the magic started.

How to write: conflict

Conflict is what drives a great story, makes the reader keep turning the pages. It may even make the reader go straight to the last page of the story to find out what happens.

But how do you write a story that has lots of conflict?

In romance novels, the reader knows that the hero and heroine are going to end up in each other's arms. But the reader doesn't want it to be all plain sailing.

So if you're a writer, dream up lots of obstacles and put them in your lovers' way. Obstacles could be:

* an ex, or even a current partner who doesn't want to give up the relationship
* a child belonging to one of the lovers who doesn't like the object of their parent's affections and has to be won over
* a cranky friend or family member who is jealous or sceptical about the new lover
major financial worries for one of the lovers
* the lovers' strong conflicting desires (one could be a passionate conservationist and the other a property developer who wants to clear a forest to build a housing estate).

In my novel A Hard Man to Love, the conflict arises out of  the governess, Pansy Summers', love for Anna, the child she has come to Australia to tutor, and Anna's father's determination to be over-strict with her. There's also Prudence de Brett, who's in love with Anna's dad, Rex Falkland and isn't going to let Pansy win him. And there's the awkward fact that Pansy looks uncannily like Rex's dead wife, who made him utterly miserable with her wild ways.


My garden, a tranquil place where I write stories full of conflict!