My opinion

After a long absence:

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

It’s been considerable time since I wrote. Life happens and did to me. However, writing happens as well. In the past year, I’ve been writing the next book in my Dangerous Journeys series, The Ice Storm Murders. It’s in revision now, and I hope to have it in print by the end of June. During this time, I also published the audiobook of Painting of Sorrow, narrated by Virginia Ferguson. It is available on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes.

I found Virginia Ferguson through ACX, a division of Audible and together we worked on the recording, she narrating and me correcting(few indeed were the errors). When the recording was satisfactory from our point of view, it went to the engineers at ACX who passed it without revision, thanks to Virginia.

Listening to one’s own words, as to a radio play, makes the book live in an entirely new way, exciting and at times humbling. It was also an opportunity to identify some minor errors and typos that had been missed in the long revision process. Thanks to the magic of ebooks, those errors have been corrected in the Kindle version and I’m working on the print version.

In the meantime, due to a medical problem, my hip replacement, which should have happened in March is now on hold until July(I hope). I’m half-way through the treatment for my problem and so far all has gone well.

The state of the world is too awful for words, and the situation here in Ontario, with a government doing so much damage to the environment, education, science, health care, culture that it will take a generation to repair, is fraught indeed.

I mourned with the world the loss of so much of Notre Dame and rejoiced that it would be rebuilt. Below is a favourite picture from a vacation we took to Paris in 2015.

Version 2

2 more publishing lessons

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

In my last post, I detailed some of the lessons I learned about publishing while I prepared my 4 manuscripts for my new company From The River Publishing. Since then, I discovered, thanks to Joanna Penn, a terrific new tool, Vellum. By the way, if you are a writer and haven’t discovered Joanna’s website, have a look here. Lots of great information.

Vellum is a somewhat expensive, but outstanding program that takes all the worry trouble and hard work out of the final stages. It would have saved me 3 months had I read about it long ago.

Rather than struggle to format a manuscript correctly for uploading to different platforms, such as Kindle and Create Space, or to aggregators like Smashwords, I used Vellum.

The program requires a Mac and a Word document in .docx format. Input the file and the metadata, and Vellum shows you the file converted to e-pub, mobi and pdf. Proof as much as you need, input other books if you want, and, when you are ready, push the buy button, purchase the program and generate the books you need in the required formats.

If you review and want to proof further, go through the process again until the manuscript is polished and upload to your chosen publishers. Nothing more to pay, no annual fee, no rejections, no trying to analyze the mysterious messages about pagination from Create Space, just a seamless process that results in books that are ready for the buyer.

I’m working through my list again, and have finished Murderous Roots and The Facepainter Murders. Both will soon be live, as revised, on all the platforms mentioned above.

Lesson # 2? Read The Creative Penn often.

Too long away

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

There are few excuses for neglecting a blog but here are mine.

2016 was a difficult year for us. My husband’s cousin, a youngish man of 64(young from our perspective) died in the late Spring, a shock to all his family. Late in the summer our beloved dog Charlie became ill and died of a small tumour in her great heart. Health issues, since partially resolved, both our own and those of close friends, occupied the rest of the year.

But we are in a new year, and the pain of those losses is receding. Not to say the world is comfortable with a man with a clear personality disorder in the White House, but one can carry on.

My plans to become a writer of non-fiction have faltered, mainly because I write fiction and that seems to be that. However, there is a good deal more to learn about writing fiction and I am looking forward to a retreat in April with the kind friends of Writescape. Before that, I  will travel to Bermuda to visit my sister and her family. One of my journeys there resulted in No Motive for Murder, the third in my Dangerous Journeys series.

Another book, currently titled Painting of Sorrow, is under consideration by an agent. Fingers crossed.

Bad news is that my long-time publisher, Arline Chase of Write Words Inc. has closed up shop. Soon I hope to republish the books under my own imprint. so many thanks due to Arline for taking a chance on a beginning writer when she published Murderous Roots. All best wishes to Arline going forward.

Because of Arline’s retirement, I’ve been studying self-publishing both at CreateSpace and at Smashwords, where my books currently have a home. When I’m ready, I’ll reissue all four plus in the fall, the fifth in the series.

Of course, I read. Today I finished a book by a writer friend, Crozier Green. His novel of the early days of the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, titled The Little Wagons, was a terrific read. Please see the review below.

Crozier Green has written an engrossing, action-filled novel of the beginnings of the Cosa Nostra in Italy, seen through the eyes of three men and the woman they all desired. Two of the men rose from sulphur mines, graduated to the prison of Palermo and battled for supremacy in the nascent crime families of nineteenth-century Sicily. The woman, a wild and wildly-intelligent daughter of one of the bosses, manipulates both men and the officer of the Carabinieri who loved her, to gain power of her own.

The Little Wagons is suspense-full, fast-paced, well-written book that deserves five stars for its vivid characterization. Even minor characters are well-described. I won’t forget any of them soon.

The plot, involving as it does the entwined lives of four different people, is handled well. The opening description of the sulphur mines brings the reader into a hellish, claustrophobic world. The setting alone is sufficient to explain why men would do anything, including murder to escape from it.

The Little Wagons is a great read and terrific history.

That’s about it for a sunny and warm Saturday in the Kawartha Lakes.

 

 

 

 

3 Marketing Tools

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

I’ve been working this week on developing tools I’ll need to market The Child on the Terrace.

Booklaunch.io: This site offers the development of landing pages. So of course I asked: What is a landing page? Turns out it is a page dedicated to a new book, ready to embed on a website, blog, Facebook etc, with all the information needed to market. It’s easy, once the book is listed on Amazon, the booklaunch software grabs the information and the design process begins. Lots of customization all ready available, with more to come, I’m sure.

The Child on the Terrace doesn’t have an Amazon number or 10 digit ISBN as yet, so I used No Motive for Murder as the practice book. See the page at https://booklaunch.io/10202081974970941/nomotiveformurder

The aim is to make buying the book as easy as possible to someone who lands on the page from anywhere: this blog, my website, Facebook, Twitter etc.

Mailchimp Part of marketing is an email campaign and Mailchimp has thousands of users who send newsletters to their customers with information about their products along with other content the user may like.

For example, a newsletter may be simply an announcement of the release of a new book, along with content such as the first chapter or the cover art, or a short story featuring the characters of the book.

I’ve been developing a sign-up form as well as a campaign ready to send when The Child on the Terrace is released.

I’m having trouble integrating the form with my blog because it seems I may have to upgrade to get the features I want, including the sign-up form. The form is all ready to view and for sign-up on the Facebook page for Dangerous Journeys as well as on my Twitter feed @ginnywinters

Book Reviews: To generate book reviews I’ll send advance reading copies to those kind people who have reviewed my other books, contact websites such as The New Kindle Book Review and the Gumshoe Review, and perhaps ask other authors that I’ve met or corresponded with to review for me as well. Anyone interested in reviewing, please contact me by commenting below.

That’s about it for this Sunday in December. The rest of the day I’ll devote to wrapping presents, phoning distant relatives, and deciding what to make for brunch for my visiting family on Boxing Day.

Happy Christmas to all.

A May Morning

/ ginny200 / 2 Comments

Spring: the leaves popped on the Manitoba Maples along the creek back; serviceberry bushes bloomed white together with the spirea;  daffodils, mine at any rate, ended yesterday; the hummingbird returned last weekend, a few days early; the red-breasted grosbeaks returned to the feeder.

A long, harsh winter left some ornamental bushes bereft of leaves. My gorgeous Vibernum “Shasta” has growth only at the base, but the branches are green when I scrape them so I have hope. No hope for the Purple Smokebush and the Blue Mallow, I’m afraid.

Most of the roses and clematis have survived except for a little beauty—Blue Sprite clematis—that appears to be gone. But one’s never sure with clematis and it was buried deep so it may come along.

At the local nursery—Hills—I found two hybrid tea roses on their own root! I couldn’t resist and bought four: 2 dark red Royal William and  2 pink Royal Kate. They are supposed to be disease resistant and have a strong fragrance.

Writing: I’m within sight of the end of my first draft of my new Dangerous Journeys mystery with Anne McPail. This time she’s in Spain, her life endangered by her concern for a mysterious little girl.

Ontario is in the midst of an election. I see the Conservative Party is trying to position itself as the party of hope. Hope, as demonstrated by planning to eliminate 100,000 civil service jobs. A mythical number, neatly dissected by an editorial in the Globe and Mail. Hudak appears to pull these numbers from an imaginary hat. How many civil servants do you know? I can count at least three, not including the teachers, hospital workers, doctors, nurses, firefighters, police and whomever else the party fears to cut. That leaves social service, and labour and the environment, all unnecessary from its collective point of view. The ones I know are not at the top, not even managers, but workers who are on the wrong side of senior and likely to be cut first. Hope? Not too much. Read the editorial here. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editorials/can-tim-hudak-win-election-by-100000-job-cuts/article18629579/#dashboard/follows

That’s about it for this Sunday in May.

 

 

Eight signs of spring

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

Signs of spring.

1. A miniature iris is blooming, freckled purple beside the brown sticks of a miniature rose

2. Our landscaper dropped by.

3.The lawn has reappeared sporting mounds and trails created by moles, the entrances to their tunnels as big as holes at the golf course.

4.The river below our house, a stopping-off spot for migrating birds, has welcomed baffle-head ducks, loons, Canada geese, a Great Blue Heron, the returning ospreys and many gulls.

5. Returnees to the feeder include blue jays, cardinals, finches-yellow, purple and the orange variety of house finch, chickadees, woodpeckers.

6. Dogs of all descriptions and their humans have taken to slow ambles along the streets, instead of the head-long rush to get the business done before noses and tails freeze.

7. Ice has left the river.

8 The wild turkeys have left for their home in the bush.Image

 

Thoughts on Rejection

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

Should rejection of a piece of writing arrive mere hours after submission, or after months of waiting?

I submitted the same novel to two publishers, one in the UK and one in Canada. The UK publisher is a new enterprise, the Canadian one a press that has been going for years. The UK publisher rejected and notified within a day. I’m still waiting for the Canadian publisher. It’s been 79 days.

I think a month or three of waiting is preferable to a rejection by return e-mail. The latter suggests to me that only the query letter has been read and perhaps not all of that. I purchased a query letter assessment from Writers Digest and the doctored version is the one I send.

Noah Lukeman, in The First Five Pages, states  that agents and editors are looking for reasons to reject, beginning with the presentation and will only read those first five pages. If they can’t find anything there, they will move on to page 99 or read other random selections.

His book details the reasons for rejection and proposes solutions. Each chapter ends with exercises to address the problems.

So what should I do?

Take the first chapter to my critique group? Done.

Ask writing teachers to assess it? Done.

Revise and rewrite? Done.

Ask a beta-reader’s opinion? Done.

I’ve considered posting the first chapter online at Wattpad and inviting comments, but hesitate because some publishers won’t look at anything that has been published in part by others, even oneself.

Should I decide that the manuscript belongs in a drawer? Perhaps, but not yet. I have a few weeks until I want to start serious revision of my work-in-progress, and I think that I will spend them revising A Child for the Taking. Noah Lukeman’s book will be my guide this time.

PMO and the Mounties

/ ginny200 / Leave a comment

I grew up with tales of the Mounties, of their bravery and determination in facing criminals in the early years of Canada’s expansion into the West. Now, in several provinces, they are the community police as they were then.

Maintiens le droit. Defend the law.

In High River, Alberta, homes lay unlocked and unguarded; weapons, mostly, I presume, the long guns that people in farming communities keep for ridding themselves of groundhogs and coyotes. What did the people of Alberta want the Mounties to do? Leave the guns there for anyone to take and perhaps use?

Not according to Premier Alison Redford, quoted in the Globe and Mail: RCMP officers who removed guns from evacuated homes in High River were doing necessary work to secure the flood-ravaged town in a crisis, Premier Alison Redford said in response to criticism.

But the PMO(Harper) knows better. The same article: “We expect that any firearms taken will be returned to their owners as soon as possible,” PMO spokesperson Carl Vallée said in a statement on Friday. “We believe the RCMP should focus on more important tasks such as protecting lives and private property.”

In my view that is what the Mounties were doing when they removed the guns, protecting lives.

Apparently, playing to the hard-core Conservative voter trumps common sense in the PMO.

That same article in the Globe talks about the increasing tendency of the Harper government to interfere in policing decisions.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/pmo-says-the-rcmp-should-have-better-things-to-do-than-seize-guns/article12882952/#dashboard/follows/

University of Ottawa professor Philippe Lagassé, who is an expert on defence and security matters, quoted in the above article:

However, Mr. Lagassé said the PMO was walking a fine line by criticizing the RCMP’s activities, even though it clearly avoided giving a specific directive to the Mounties.

“This is not the norm,” he said. “We can say that we are starting to get into a zone where it is less legitimate for the government to tell the RCMP to follow other priorities,” said Mr. Lagassé.

Does anyone believe the PMO makes its pronouncements without Harper’s hand all over the script. Not our micro-manageing Prime Minister. Where will this need to control end?

Rainy Sunday Morning

/ ginny200 / 2 Comments

This week the peonies burst open, gorgeous Festiva Maxima, white with a hint of pink in its throat, Duchesse de Nemours , deep cream at the centre of white petals, and others, deep pink, that I planted so long ago I’ve forgotten their names. The new ones are still hiding their colour although one has a hint of the promised yellow. I planted a Japanese tree peony two years ago. As I write its candy-pink blossoms are folded in waiting for the sun to encourage them to spread their petals.
Today the peony rains have come, but not so heavily as to shatter the blossoms and smash them to the ground. Ah, even if they are broken, they are worth the heartache of their early loss for the beauty and the scent that perfumes the entire garden.

The OAC application is on its way. Of course I thought, almost at once, of an alternative beginning and a fresh point of view. Too late.

At the last Writescape Writers retreat I attended and again at the Ontario Writer’s Conference, I listened to lectures about archetypes in fiction. I’ve been looking for more information as I had questions. When did one consider archetypes: at the onset of writing, when the book was in first draft, at the end when all would be clear? The books that I have talk about the subject but not enough to satisfy my curiosity so I turned to the internet and the blogosphere.
More confusion ensued. Are there five or twenty-five or a cast of thousands. Some writers seemed to be confusing archetype with stereotype. As I understand it(so far) archetypal characters are found in all eras, across all cultures and express why a character behaves the way he does.
This site is a list of other sites that deal with archetypes, symbols, motifs, etc.
http://freepdfdb.org/doc/archetypes-in-literature-list

Jordan McCollom’s site has a basic description of archetypes and a download of interesting articles on Plotting. Find it here: http://jordanmccollum.com/2009/10/archetypal-characters-heros-journey/

There are many more, hundreds more, sites and essays and university course materials that deal with the subject. And there are always Jung and Northrop Frye to consult.

I’m at the end of writing the first draft of my current work in progress. It will be an interesting and useful exercise, I think, to review my characters with archetypes in mind) as well as symbols, motifs, etc. I see opportunity to strengthen the characters in their various roles, bearing in mind that the characters, like the rest of us, are complex and contradictory and not content to stay where i have slotted them.

Elora Writers Festival

/ ginny200 / 1 Comment

On Sunday, May 26, I attended the Elora Writers Festival, an afternoon of readings by six authors, several of them local to Elora-Fergus. One of the readers commented that the day’s readings had taken the audience on a journey from the sexy inhabitants of  Sonia Day’s garden to the streets of Budapest with Ailsa Kay. Andrew Westoll’s The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary  left some of us with hearts broken by the sadness of their fate  while laughing at the hapless author’s first day among them. Mystery writer Robert Rotenberg is  very much a Toronto man. Indeed the city plays as important a role in his books as some of his characters. Carrie Synder took us to war in Nicaragua and Terry Fallis brought us back to Canada and Northern British Columbia.

I spoke and read at two events so far this year and wanted to learn some of the methods other writers used to keep an audience engaged. Of course the methods used were as diverse as the writers themselves: Sonia Day’s funny, erotic reading, Robert Rotenberg’s engagement of his listeners as a sort of cheering section for a candidate for Mayor of Toronto, Terry Fallis’s sharing of his personal experiences in Northern B.C.

Ailsa Kay: Under Budapest http://gooselane.com/books.php?ean=9780864926814

Carrie Snyder: The Juliet Stories http://www.houseofanansi.com/The-Juliet-Stories-P1302.aspx

Robert Rotenberg: Strangle Hold  http://www.robertrotenberg.com

Sonia Day: The Untamed Garden, A Revealing Look At Our Love Affair with Plants http://www.soniaday.com

Andrew Westoll: The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary http://www.andrewwestoll.com

Terry Fallis: Up and Down http://terryfallis.com

What did I learn? The audience seemed to respond best to writers who shared parts of their lives as well as their writing.

I’m looking forward to reading Robert Rotenberg’s latest. He inscribed it for me and when I told him I also wrote,  encouraged me to “write every day”.

A fun, interesting afternoon. Don’t miss it in 2014.

Otherwise, we had  a terrific weekend staying with our friends at The Gardeners Cottage. http://gardenerscottage.ca