Then and Now

Wow, so it's been a while since I blogged. My last post was back in 2015. So much has happened in that space of time that I feel like a completely different person.

David and I started our journey with Bluewood Publishing not really knowing where it would take us or for how long. We had never met in person, only worked side by side online within another small publishing company. We incorporated our company in August 2009.

Now it's August 2023 and we are in the process of winding up the company. It is a very bittersweet process, because we both have this weird sadness that comes with the end of an era, however we also have such an amazing sense of achievement and pride.

We have always operated with honesty and integrity, sometimes putting our authors before ourselves, because that's why we moved into this space - to help others achieve their dreams.

We have formed some amazing relationships with authors who have come and gone through the doors since our inception. I have watched some of those authors go on to get contracts with other publishers and do amazing things. I feel very privileged to have been a part of their journey.

Personally, this journey has seen me form friendships that I feel confident will last as long as I do. From here in New Zealand, to the UK, the US, Canada, and Finland, I am a beautiful part of this international ring of writers who inspire me all the time to continue my own craft.

With the closure of one door comes the opening of another. I will continue to write. I will continue to edit and help others. I'm making a shift back to ME, and it feels good.

Watch out world, a new chapter is beginning!

Celebrating another five star review

Okay, just bragging today... nothing else.

Reader's Favorite have been kind enough to give me another two reviews for my books.

A Diamond in the Dust came up with a fantastic four star review which says some very kind things about the story, including a brief discussion about genre. I always pondered, when I wrote this, what genre it fell into - and now someone else has had the same train of thought. Definitely not just a contemporary romance!

https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/a-diamond-in-the-dust

I also got a whopping 5 star review for Beside The Brook, which I'm, obviously, ecstatic about. With the reward of 5 stars comes the privilege of being able to tout their silver medal on my cover graphics, and physically on my print books. Thanks Reader's Favorite!

https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/beside-the-brook

 

That moment...

I think I'm turning into a skeptic as a reader. I find it harder and harder to find a book that grabs me. Walking into the library or a bookshop can be daunting, because how do you choose a book - just one book? I wonder if it's my work in publishing, and as an editor, that has made me so analytical of the finished product, but whatever it is, there is one moment which makes it gratifying. It's that moment when you know, regardless of what it is that sparks it, that this is the book for you.

I remember a friend giving me a copy of The Hunger Games to read. I'd heard a lot of build up about the movie, and of course I'd already seen merchandising showing Jennifer Lawrence playing the lead. Having already seen Jennifer in The Burning Plain and Winter's Bone, and X-Men was a 'coming soon' feature, Jennifer was already a personal favourite, so I knew I had to see this movie, and naturally I like to read the book before I see the movie. Sometimes it's the other way around, but not very often. I think once you've seen the movie, the book becomes somewhat less of an enigma, because the characters have already been brought to life before your eyes.

I'll admit, the thought of a book in which kids kill each other kind of turned my stomach, right up until the games began. Even then, Katniss was written in such a way that you just couldn't imagine her killing anyone. Until the point... (look away if you haven't read the book or seen the movie, I'm about to spoil it)... the point when Katniss finds out that Peeta has joined an alliance. For me, it was a light bulb moment and I knew I was hooked. It was all on! Katniss had been betrayed and it was only right that she should fight to win.

There's a Gerard Butler movie I remember that does almost the same thing. For the first half of the movie, you're rooting for Gerard's character. He basically gets talked into pleading guilty for a lesser charge to something he didn't do, and he goes to jail for it. He plots to seek revenge on those who did him wrong, which seems fair to begin with. So, as the viewer, you're with him. But when he kills a young member of the attorney's team, someone who inadvertently got caught up in the plot, suddenly your loyalties switch sides. Well, mine did, anyway. I'm not sure if that's what the writer intended, but certainly by the end of the movie the 'baddies' have become the 'goodies'. It's very cleverly done in my opinion.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to witness someone being 'hooked' by one of my books. It happened right before my eyes. Her expression kind of glazed over while she was reading and she became oblivious to everything else. She'd been successfully transported from real world to my fictional world. For a writer, that's pure magic. It makes the whole process worthwhile.

A congregation of characters

I was wondering what would happen if all my main female characters came together in one room... How would they interact? Would they be similar in mind and like so that they would all immediately like each other and get along?

So then I started analysing them. Of course, in the real world, women who are completely different, from opposite walks of life, do strike up friendships, so it's hard to know, really, whether my characters would be friends or not. I guess the real question I was asking myself was, as a writer, do I write all my characters similarly, or are they completely contrasting?

Let's find out...

We'll start with Cassie, my first and probably most beloved character to come to full fruition in a book. I have to be careful here and not write any spoilers - I don't want to give anything away to potential readers, so I'll try and stick to character traits rather than what they've been through.

Cassie gets along with most people. She's a people-pleaser. Family oriented with strong basic values, she's still learning to put herself first, but after much hardship, she's getting her life back on track. She was pregnant at a young age and married young, so a career has never been high on the priority list and money has never been an issue.

I'm going to skip to Alex from Alexandra the Great next, for one simple reason: she has already met Cassie. It was a natural progression for me, because both stories briefly involved hospitals, and the setting and timeline were easily matched for the two characters to come together. Alex and Cassie are very different in one respect - Alex is career focused and manages her own business, but they are similar in background: they both have tragic pasts and many hardships that have been overcome. Is that enough to make them solid friends?

Kirsten from Beside the Brook is younger than these two characters. She hasn't come from a tragic past, but a normal, straight-laced family with solid values: values she carries with her and is not afraid to voice. Her flaring red-haired nature gets her into hot water sometimes, but her heart is always in the right place.

Adrienne from A Diamond in the Dust is also very sure of herself. She knows what she wants from life, but unlike Kirsten, she tends to be a bit more secretive about that. She's strong: she's beat the odds. She knows life is precious and she's very resourceful. Given the right circumstances, she might give Sarah Connor a run for her money.

Then there's Jess. She had her life ripped apart early on and her heart never really mended. She put up a wall so that it wouldn't happen again - to focus on building a business, a grand home and a stately life. She's proud of who she is and the people she lets inside the walls. Her 'family' is her rock but she's very careful about who she lets in. She's fiercely loyal and would do anything to keep those she loves safe.

Last but not least there's Briley. She likes to look for the silver lining in any situation rather than focus on the negative. She comes from solid country stock, where a spade is always called a spade, but she feels a little bit like the black sheep of the family because she left farming behind and chose instead to live in the city. Like Cassie, she married and had children young, so a career or money has never been the focus of her life.

I'm sure from a reader's perspective, there's some similar flavour to all of my novels, but I'm not sure whether it's within the characters I write or rather just my general style of writing. I can't answer that. Only my readers can.

I think my characters have enough in common that they would certainly be able to converse and have a good time all together. There is huge potential there for friendships. Let's just leave the rest to the imagination...

Gone with the Wind...but not forgotten

Okay, so I'm in my forties and I've never seen, or read, Gone with the Wind.

There's something delightful about the Christmas period when old movies come out of the woodwork to grace our television screens, and New Years' Day this year saw me sitting in my sleepwear, coffee in hand, magically no ads except the odd infomercial to interrupt, watching Katie Scarlett O'Hara telling her story of the Old South and her rollercoaster relationship with the infamous Rhett Butler.

So, laughably, my husband and I chortled over how bad the acting was, but, like anything else, the whole movie world has changed so many times through the years between when this was made and now that it can easily be excused. It's easy to compare it to a 2013 blockbuster, but when you think of the restraints of movie making back then, it really would have been quite spectacular. The scene where Scarlett goes looking for the doctor when Melanie is in labour was so 'extra' intensive, I'm sure it would have been quite ahead of its time. All those injured soldiers lying wounded and dying on the ground...

Like many stories from its time, Gone with the Wind is filled with drama, tragedy, loss and heartbreak. Scarlett's character is compared to the transition of the South, representing the change of Georgia before, during and after the war. I'm not sure if this is what the author had intended, but like all classics, it has been analysed, or maybe over-analysed.

As a movie watcher, I was disappointed by the end of the story. Rhett leaves, completely indifferent to what happens to Scarlett or their relationship. He's given up, had enough, thrown in the towel. As for Scarlett, she's a little less disappointing, but still not resolved. She's worked out she doesn't really love Ashley - he's not what she had built up in her mind over all those years she pined for him. She actually loves Rhett and was too blind to see or acknowledge it, and they were both too stubborn to just say it to each other. A common character conflict that has seemingly endured through the decades of storytelling, translating directly through to modern rom-coms, romance novels and contemporary romance. What got me is that ALL the threads of the story are completely left hanging. Scarlett decides she must go home to Tara once more to sort herself out and work out how she will get Rhett back. Everything from there on finishes with a question mark in my mind. For a start, how will her sister react? Scarlett stole her husband for her own gain and that thread was never resolved in the movie (I can't say if it was in the book, having not read it). What will become of Ashley? Yes, he has a business to continue and a son to look after, but didn't Scarlett promise Melanie she would take care of them both?

As a writer, I love this ending...it provokes the reader/viewer to ask these questions and think about the possibilities, long after they've finished reading/watching.

I was initially surprised that Margaret Mitchell only ever had one novel published...but as a writer, if I could write one book, a book that was translated to the big screen like this one, its characters brought to life and remembered as real people, I would be happy.

Writers Love Reviews

As the title suggests, I'm all abuzz right now about reviews. These little gems are precious stones to a writer, and seemingly quite hard to come by these days. I've been amazed how hard it actually is to get a review, although, given the number of self-publishing authors, and amount of reading material on the market, it shouldn't be surprising.

So, I'm going to shout out about this site:

http://www.readersfavorite.com

Not only is their service free, provided you don't mind waiting, they guarantee to give a review. That's better than any other site I've found so far. So many sites have disclaimers that they don't guarantee to review your work, and so many sites do not even reply to authors when review requests are submitted.

They don't, however, guarantee a good review, so I think myself among the lucky ones who have been given a fair and glowing appraisal of my book:

readersfavorite.com/book-review/13136

I'll take my four star review, thanks Readers Favorite!

Happy Birthday, Helen

Such a funny moment this afternoon when I logged into my Writing.com account and found an email from Wattpad, with "Happy Birthday, Helen" in the title.

For just a moment I was very confused. Then it all fell into place.

When I set up my Wattpad account online, I decided that Paulette and Helen should have two separate accounts, therefore Helen should be considered a different person to myself. When I pondered what her birthday would be, the first thing that came to mind was the birthday of someone I used to know...someone I've pondered for a long time about being the protagonist of a story hidden in the recesses of my mind yet to be written.

Just this June passed I in fact attended my High School reunion with this story in the back of my mind. Returning to the scene of the crime, I had hoped to stir up the feelings enough to write the story. It was an uncanny feeling, sitting in the car with my husband, right on top of the very ground where the boys' dorm of my boarding school had once stood. I snapped a few photos, but it was a 'going through the motions' type of scenario, because nothing pictured vividly in the back of my mind even existed anymore. Just grass where we once used to line up for dinner, and concrete where the cool waters of a ground-in pool used to entertain us on the hot summer evenings. And behind me, my husband - representing my life as it is now, and everything that has happened to me over the years in between then and now.

What I realised more than anything on that trip, was that although we all told each other "Oh, you haven't changed much since high school", because physically we recognised each other, even painted with more than a few more years' experience on our faces, we really have changed. Twenty-odd years, between high school and turning forty, includes so many milestones. Study, work, relationships, marriage, children...all have moulded us into what we are now, and while we may retain our basic personality traits that make us recognisable to those who knew us from 'yester-year', we still have changed.

It was then that I realised my story would be different. My main character might recognise her protagonist when she sees him, but they will not know each other. It won't be like they were sitting under a light on the tennis courts when they should have been inside doing their homework (Yes, Mum, that's possibly why I didn't excel as well at school as you hoped I would, but I promise it was probably one of the worst things I did with boys then!). They will be strangers. It won't be a memory of something that never happened in High School that she had hung onto all these years with regret that will suddenly bridge the gap and make them fall into each others' arms like it was yesterday. That would be cheesy and disappointing to the reader, and I certainly don't need that.

So, thank you Helen, for sharing your birthday with the person who made me reflect on this. I hope his life has been as rich as mine (and Helen's!) to this point. Oneday, unless I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I'm going to imagine just what did happen to him in the twenty years since I saw him last, but like many of my characters I pluck from real life, he won't be recognisable on the page!