Missing in Action

I've been a little quiet on my blog of late. Of course I have an excuse, but I think it is quite a good one.

Back in August I e-pitched to Harlequin as part of RWA's national conference. Seriously, while I desperately wanted a positive outcome, that litle red devil in my head didn't think I stood a chance. I was thrilled when the request came back for a partial + synopsis. The only catch was I needed to start the story further along.

Oh my gosh!!! I reread the request a good half a dozen times looking for the catch, or the word I'd misread. Once I'd convinced myself it was real, it hit me. Start the story further along. Ummmm, where? I struggled with that decision. I thought of 3 or 4 places I could re-start it. I didn't want to screw the opportunity up, so I took a while analysing and thinking, and finally made my decision.

As a result, my hero and heroine meet in a totally new way, and quite important elements have been changed as a result. But I think it is a much better story for it.

So I have been rewriting my first 3 chapters, and am now well on the way to having them shining. Will let you know once they have been sent off, but for now I need to pick up that polishing cloth and get back to work.

Eerie Weather

A combination of a strong cold front moving north, strong gusty winds and a heavy silt load at Lake Eyre from Queensland's flooding rains earlier this year, have together created one of the countries biggest dust storms.

Hitting Sydney early yesterday morning, it reached here (Brisbane, Queensland) later in the morning. Within 30 minutes we went from blue skies, to a dark eerie glow... car lights needed to be switched on, as did lights within the house.

The air was strong with the scent of red bull dust, evoking memories of when I worked in the outback. Even though I closed the house up, a thick orange layer of dust has still managed to coat everything.

The photos are taken from the same spot on my deck.

12 months on...

It has been one year since I decided to get serious about my writing. I'd lost my day job, and with little chance of finding another that would allow me to work around being a full-time mum, my husband and I agreed this was the time to put my writing first.

To get the ball rolling and just see whether 'published author' was a pie in the sky fantasy, I entered RWA's High 5 competition - for unpublished category writers. Turns out my entry seemed to have a good plot idea, great voice and a lot of potential.

Today I was having a bit of a 'down' day with my writing. So I dug out that entry (a different ms to the one I'm working on now), and reread those 5 pages. What a great pick-me-up to realise maybe my writing isn't as good as it is going to be, but it is certainly better than what it was.