So it's thirteen days till Christmas, and the count down till the end of the working year has begun. I'm two days off finishing my seventh year of music teaching. At the same time, I have slowly begun to write the new project I was working on in September through October, before my husband and I were robbed. I lost the entirety of what existed of this project. I'm now 7000 words into it again, and slowly working myself back to the point I was at before.
The story, of course, won't be the same. But I think that it will still be good, I hope.

In the meantime, our items have made their way through customs without too much trouble. Australia has allowed my traditional sword in, so that's good news. Unfortunately, we were fined for five fruit boxes that somehow made their way into the country amidst our luggage. At first, I was confused by this. But then I realised that these were the boxes from the garage that the moving company had promised to repack. Once I knew that they had accidentally neglected to repack them, I contacted Ausmove right away about it, and they arranged payment of the bill for us. Good job, Ausmove.
By the way, want to know how much it costs to incinerate a fruit box? $25 AUD per box, apparently. Imagine if it had been fifteen and not five boxes!

The next step will be to get Peyton, our dog, safely to Australia. This will take a few steps. We go to the North Island for a bit, while she stays in the South Island with a friend. Then she will need to fly out from Christchurch in early January. I will pick her up from the airport on the morning of the ninth, God willing. She's so little, it does make me a little nervous to send her on a long flight. But I hope that she will forgive me for the trauma later!

My list of students for next year has grown again, so it looks like I will commence my eighth year of teaching without any worries, even though I will have an entirely new location in a new country.

In the meantime, things seem to be tracking okay for a January release of my fifth book. I look forward to continuing writing in a new environment, with fresh inspiration.

Things continue to go interestingly, leading up to our move. We're now out of our house and boarding with family, which is pleasant. Unfortunately, before we moved out of our house we came home one night after church to discover our window had been wrenched open and all our valuables had been gone through. The thief took a number of things of my husband's (which the school largely replaced, as they were items such as a school laptop), but dismally, no one could replace my laptop or the work that I had had on it that I had failed to back up over the past five months. You know how it is - you tell yourself that you'll do it the next day... and the next... and then I learnt my lesson the hard way. Never neglect to back up your work, writers. You just have no idea what might happen.

The other week, we were up to the next stage of moving - selling my car. My husband and I went on a date, planning to meet the prospective buyer in the afternoon. Then when we came out of the mall, we discovered someone had done a hit and run on the very car we had been planning to sell... and of course, they'd left no trace of themselves. Sigh. Anyway, we've sold one of our cars now, and the other one - for obvious reasons - is at the repairers.

Our items have arrived in Australia, where customs has asked the first question - about my sword. I'm hoping they'll remember the department of home affairs allows traditional swords into the country, but in case they don't, I've gently reminded them.

In the midst of all this, my publisher is aiming for a January release date of my fifth book. I'm looking forward to this, although it is involving some work on my side to make sure things are ready. There's heaps to keep track of in this time.
If you want to make sure you're not forgotten in the middle of all this chaos, subscribe yourself to my newsletter, where you'll hear swiftly about the release when it happens. If you've already subscribed yourself, thanks!

In the meantime, tally-ho! And hopefully things continue to track in a positive direction...

I may have neglected my blog these past few weeks, but I have some excellent reasons. Besides being robbed and having my car hit rather badly at the local mall, I and my husband have also been working towards some more positive changes. We're immigrating to Australia.

I haven't written much about Australia on this blog, so perhaps this may seem somewhat surprising. I had the privilege of living in Australia for four years during my childhood. My happiest memories are there. I love the warmth in Australia, as well as the terrain and the wildlife. While New Zealand is beautiful, Australia has always felt more like home to me. It's a place that I have an affinity with. My husband and I had discussed moving in the past, and in recent times, we settled on the idea of moving to Queensland.

My husband began applying for jobs and landed an excellent one at a Christian School in the small town of Chinchilla - otherwise known as the Big Melon (because it has a giant slice of watermelon in it - and because it's the watermelon capital of Australia). I have ten music students lined up for next year so far, and I'm looking forward to teaching more and meeting the locals through this. It will be good to have some space around the move though, especially as my fifth book Consort to the Shadows is due to drop in January.
Chinchilla is on the frontier of the outback, so to speak. It has red soil and large numbers of kangaroos. I was fascinated by the parrots and roos that can be readily seen in various parts of the town. The town itself is well equipped - it has several supermarkets, at least ten different places to eat out, three different clothing stores, multiple churches, a classy library, a pleasant cinema, and a very necessary pool. Just outside Chinchilla, the weir is a beautiful swimming spot which shows off the outback wildlife. 

I've always found Australia an inspiring place, and I'm looking forward to posting more about our time over there on this blog, along with my writing updates. All the Australian updates will happen under the heading "Kiwis in the Outback". I picked the title because it sounded interesting. I have to admit, I'm not as Kiwi as some. I'm fully Dutch-blooded, and I have Australian citizenship as well.
It will be interesting to see if Australia affords me another opportunity to get my books printed in my own country. Australia certainly has a bigger market and several large book factories that may make it easier to get Rafen printed locally as well as internationally. New Zealand's isolation has always made it difficult for me as an author to promote my book.

Anyway, that is the update for now! Stay tuned for more news about Kiwis in the outback. I'm sure I'll have some interesting stories to tell - encounters with snakes, kangaroos, and storm cells alike. The move happens officially in early January.
​Australia, here we come.

I had the pleasure in recent times to take a trip to Queensland, Australia, where I met a writer whom I've been friends with for some time but only ever had contact with over the internet. On the last night my husband and I spent with Russell Proctor in Brisbane, we had a rather fun discussion about villains in storybooks and fantasy books, and how some villains simply monologue too much and move as tools of the plot. During this time, we absolutely flogged Lord Voldemort from the Harry Potter series, as he is a perfect example of this.

It's important when you're writing a high stakes story to have a convincing villain. Therefore, the villain should behave as any logically minded but terribly evil person would. If he has the main character in his power, he should either attempt to kill the main character immediately or have a good reason for not doing so. In my opinion, there is typically only one reason that is good enough: the villain should be afraid of the main character's growing strength. This is the only reason that will prove satisfying to a reader. In other words, the villain might hold back because he is afraid of getting hurt. And then he should have his minions severely weaken the main character so that he, the ultimate villain, has a better chance of finishing him off on the first attempt. 

In my opinion, villains shouldn't monologue. But unfortunately, authors do need to have an interesting way of doing their exposition. Sometimes having the villain chat for a couple of paragraphs is a good way to reveal his plans and raise the stakes. But this should never happen in the presence of the hero, unless the hero has fooled the villain into thinking he has sided with him. If it does happen in the presence of the captured hero, it only slows down the tension. The best villainous monologues will happen in third person narration, when the hero is in a different location from the villain, and the villain is coming up with some nefarious plan elsewhere. Then, once he's finished talking about it - which shouldn't take long - he simply needs to get up and do it. There shouldn't be any delays. 
Again, there are exceptions to this rule. If you want a lesser villain to look incompetent, you may want him to delay his plans. But the Top Dog Villain must command complete respect in the story. If he is not powerful enough and smart enough, it will lessen the glory that we accord to the main character, who must defeat him. And if it lessens the glory accorded the main character, it lessens overall reader satisfaction.

While Russell and I were chatting about this, he mentioned a website called "If I were an Evil Overlord", which is a great summary of the main tropes authors can fall into when depicting villains. Full credit for the discovery of this website goes to Russell Proctor in this blog post.

Here are some of my personal favourites on the long list of tropes to avoid:

One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.

I will not gloat over my enemies' predicament before killing them.

The artifact which is the source of my power will not be kept on the Mountain of Despair beyond the River of Fire guarded by the Dragons of Eternity. It will be in my safe-deposit box. The same applies to the object which is my one weakness.

When I employ people as advisors, I will occasionally listen to their advice.

I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.)

Despite its proven stress-relieving effect, I will not indulge in maniacal laughter. When so occupied, it's too easy to miss unexpected developments that a more attentive individual could adjust to accordingly.

If it becomes necessary to escape, I will never stop to pose dramatically and toss off a one-liner.

If the hero runs up to my roof, I will not run up after him and struggle with him in an attempt to push him over the edge. I will also not engage him at the edge of a cliff. (In the middle of a rope-bridge over a river of molten lava is not even worth considering.)

And here's the link to the website, so you can peruse it yourself.

Lastly, here is Russell Proctor's Amazon page, in case you want to find out more about him as an author. 

Happy writing!

This week, my illustrator and I have nearly finalized the cover for part two of book five in The Fledgling Account series.
I don't want to give away too much about this book, but I'm happy to now reveal the title.

Book five will be called Consort to the Shadows.

I'm quite happy with this title, because it is something that people will be able to pronounce. I've heard all sorts of variations of my book titles before: RAY-fen instead of RAH-fen, The Sea Onion Wolf instead of The Sianian Wolf (that mistake nearly made it into the New Zealand Herald!), and The Fourth Runny instead of The Fourth Roo-NIGH. So hopefully no one is going to have any trouble with pronouncing Consort. I'm pleased to say that all my other titles from this point on are going to be in plain English as well, which is great. I've learnt my lesson the hard way.

Consort is an interesting book, not least of all because it will now be told in two parts. Some of you might remember that Rafen suffered a rather dreadful hand injury (with compliments from the Lashki) at the end of book four. Well, you might want to remember that, because that hand injury is very critical to what direction Consort goes in. 

The word "consort" is an old one, often referring to the spouse of a monarch. However, it can be used as a verb as well. Consorting with villains and scoundrels is never the best occupation, but Rafen is obliged to do some of this in the second part of book five, which is why the book has this name. However, there are other people who consort with the wrong folk as well in both parts of this book. Richard meets an unlikely ally, which pretty much makes him a consort to the shadows, and a few people that you hoped might know better make some rather poor decisions regarding how they treat their sister, spouse, country, and world's future, etc. This book also focuses a lot on the desire to know one's future - and whether or not inklings or visions about what might happen to us are actually helpful. 

Lastly, this book contains a dragon with a lot of attitude. 

I'm not ready to reveal full covers yet, but let me just reveal to you the lettering of part one. The font is called Captain of the Pirates, and it's a good one!

This week, I had a nice surprise in the post - books three and four have arrived! And here's some photos. 

I have to say that I love these second editions. The books feel nice and solid in the hand; the matte finish is way more pleasant to touch than the gloss finish; and the covers are such a success. Looking at the second edition next to the first edition books, you can see that the first time around I gave the cover designer much more complicated concepts to work with. With the second editions, the cover designer and I went as simple and striking as we could: one central image, which is repeated throughout each book at the chapter heading. I've also come to realise the background colour is very important as well and really lends something to the feel of each book. The cover designer and I carefully worked on each background colour, making sure it complimented the central image and the book's content.

It's a great feeling to hold my four paperbacks again, and it's so thrilling to see them looking great. I'm looking forward to my next book release, which actually won't be that far off. I have met the editing deadline for book five, and it is now with the publisher for typesetting, formatting, and so on. The cover is already designed and will look great alongside the other books in the series.

Book five was originally a huge 176,000 words. However, the publisher has asked me to split it. Hence, my seven book series is actually going to become an eight book series - although both parts of book five will be labelled as part one and two of the same volume. Hopefully this spreads out the fun, rather than diminishes it. 

For those of you who might want a second edition copy of Rafen, I have several signed copies up for sale. Contact me through this website or through Facebook to secure yours. Alternately, you can buy it through Book Depository or Amazon. Happy reading!

In March of last year, I parted ways with Permuted Press and began a new chapter with Burnett Young Books. And at last, we have all four paperbacks available again through Burnett Young. Here are the links!

Rafen

The Sianian Wolf

Servant of the King

The Fourth Runi

Yes, even book four is available now apparently. Additionally, book one and book three are available on Book Depository in their second editions, for those of you who live in the Pacific. And I'm working on getting BD to list The Sianian Wolf and The Fourth Runi. 

The other good news is that I'm going to be seeing an edited excerpt of book five (Consort to the Shadows) soon as well. Consort has made slow progress because it is such a tome - 170,000 words. In fact, my publisher is even considered splitting it into two volumes. I did try to shorten the book, but unfortunately, there's so much action in it. And I couldn't just take some of the action out, because then there would a hole in the plot. For example, in this book you will meet

A dragon

A new people group

A community of mutinous pirates

Some rebellious slaves

The Lashki's closest henchmen

The Lashki's... diary??

And much more. You'll also get a peek into Richard Patrick's miserable soul. And some more people will die. I honestly couldn't cut out any of this material. My best hope is that you will enjoy it.

Lastly, I've just seen a cover for a short story that will be published alongside The Fledgling Account series. I look forward to revealing this cover when the story releases! There will be four of these short stories. These are their names:

Phoenix Child

The General's Flight

The Prince's Lie

The Taming of Sherwin

These stories include a little new information and tell stories of some The Fledgling Account's secondary characters. Reading them will be a chance to get to know character like Richard Patrick, Elizabeth Ridding, Jacob Aneurin, and Sherwin a little better. They are about five thousand words in length, and you'll be able to read them in one sitting.

So that's the update for The Fledgling Account! Stay tuned for new releases and more information on these new short stories that will be coming with the series.

Publishing contracts are great. And it's fabulous to get one. The feeling of signing your first publishing  contract is, hands down, amazing.

However, the feeling of being stuck in a publishing contract can be one of the worst for an author. In recent times, I've seen a few authors in this situation, struggling to get out of a contract they no longer want to be in.

So in the light of that, I thought I would write a quick blog article about what to look out for in a publishing contract.

1. Territory.

Your publisher will outline the territory in which they wish to hold the rights to publishing your books. Typically, since the advent of ebooks, this means they'll have the right to publish you over the whole world. Sounds good, right? 
Sort of. It also means that if your publisher is taking a long time to promote you or is only interested in promoting you in one country (or in their home town), you don't have the option of taking the reins yourself and printing and selling your work somewhere else too. It essentially means your publisher holds the monopoly on where you're going to be selling books.
I got caught out with this in my first publishing contract, but in my second publishing contract I asked for print rights to be reserved for me in my area of the world - the Pacific. My publishers have both been in America, and this normally means that my likelihood of ever printing the books in my home country and seeing them in bookstores there would be nil. However, if I reserve the rights to print them here in the Pacific, I have options left if they're not selling well in the USA.
Rule of thumb: try to avoid letting your publisher have publishing rights for you the world over. Unless they're amazing and are going to promote you absolutely everywhere.

2. Subsidiary rights.

Subsidiary rights are all those side products your book might generate in an ideal world. Lego models, Braille editions, large print editions, and so on. A publisher will usually try to do a grab bag of all of these things, including film rights. My advice is: don't let them. Try to negotiate with them so that you retain some of these subsidiary rights. If that doesn't work, get them to raise your royalties on them. Why? Sale of subsidiary rights can have big earning potential for an author. J. K. Rowling became rich when she sold the rights to an American edition of her book to Scholastic. And she became richer when she sold the film rights. I'm not saying that you're J. K. Rowling. If you're anything like me, you're not anywhere close to that. Which means you need all the financial help you can get, like most authors.

3. Time frame.

I've lucked out on this a couple of times, unfortunately - but I would advise that you nail down the publisher's time frame and release dates in the contract if possible. Otherwise, who knows when your books might be published? And in the meantime, your rights are tied up, and you're probably not even allowed to submit work to another publisher. So nail down your time frame.

4. Option.

You might be worried about job security, so you're happy to include an "option" for the publisher to obtain your next sequel. They'll be the first to have dibs on it. But what if you discover down the line that your partnership isn't working too well? Make your publisher work for the books that you've spent half your lifetime on. Don't let them have the option.

5. Copyright.

Be careful of this. You don't want your publisher to wind up possessing your copyright for the next seventy years. Make sure it's put in your name. Additionally, you might want to think about:

6. Out of print termination.

This is a standard clause in a publishing contract, referring to a time when rights will automatically revert back to the author should the books go out of print. The trouble with today's modern age is that the books will never go out of print, because there will always be digital copies. Make sure you get this clause changed. Ensure that it says something about sales falling below a particular threshold guaranteeing a return of your rights. Otherwise you could be stuck with a publisher that's not working to promote you at all. You might be selling one ebook every two years... but you're still stuck.

7. No obligation to publish.

No obligation to publish? What the heck is that? It means precisely what it looks like: if the publisher decides they don't want to publish your book, then they're not publishing it - even after you've gone to all the work of getting a contract. The one that I've had the privilege of seeing personally even said I would have to return my advance to my publisher if they decided not to publish me. My advice: work on getting this clause heavily edited or removed. If they won't remove it, make sure some rigid conditions are put on it so that it's more likely it will never be used.

And there you have it. Just a few of the pitfalls you can come across in a standard publishing contract. If you've received one, congratulations! It's a huge achievement. Now make sure that you get the rewards your work deserves. This is a business partnership. You don't have to be enslaved in any way by your contract. So get some legal advice or an experienced author to read it through with you and don't be afraid to make some changes. A long negotiation period is probably a good thing.
It might mean a happier business partnership. 

Obviously, the term has hit me, because I haven't written for a while. Additionally, we had all our single-glazed windows replaced with warmer ones, which was nice, but a noisy process. Painting still needs to be done, and the house doesn't look quite as tidy as it normally does. I'm trying to ignore that at the moment.

In the meantime, the EU has changed their GDPR policy. This means that I have had to include a Privacy Policy on this website - which I hope makes sense. I used a template to help formulate it, so I assume I've done it right. But even the template seemed faintly mystifying to me. And I have to ask you all whether you like Cookies. Which seems like a stupid question, because everyone likes Cookies. Yet in the internet world, Cookies are seldom what they seem. And they do things on websites that Cookies don't normally do. Cookies, in the internet world, are still a great mystery to me.

I have become very tired of all the messages in my inbox about all the websites I have subscribed to updating their privacy policies. I suppose it is a good thing. But right now it's very tiring.

I have a rather large pool of creative writing students at the moment, so that is interesting. But it seems to be going well. The things they write about are always intriguing. Last year, I had a student write something of a modern Romeo and Juliet set in a high school. It even ended with the main characters getting married later on, in their twenties. Very romantic. I'm glad they didn't weirdly kill themselves at the end, because that would be a strange story for a primary school student to write. Although, one of my students did write a story about a neurotic slime man that nearly gave me nightmares.

Anyhow, it must be time for a Cookie, by now, surely. I hope the presence of all the new buttons on my website doesn't put visitors off!

Going back to work this week has been rather a challenge, I have to admit. However, it is fun to be teaching again, and my creative writers seem to be rearing to go. Some of them have already written miniature chapter books before meeting me and are trying to share them with me. It is difficult to explain to them that I don't have time to read everything - and my time is probably going to be limited to what they produce for class.

That's one of the interesting things as an author - lots of people try to get you to read their stuff. I had someone who interviewed me for a newspaper email me for a whole year afterwards, trying to get me to read his book and help him find a literary agent. And while it's sort of flattering, one has to get good at saying no, because one simply can't read everything. I always want to be able to help people, because I remember being in the unpublished situation when nobody wanted to read what I wrote. It is rather awful. But I'm beginning to understand I can't help everyone, especially if I want to make the help that I do give to the group I've selected be the best quality it can be. 

Perhaps the most exciting thing that happened this past week was the arrival of our new board game, which I had the privilege of playing with some good friends in Hamilton some time ago (they also owned other amazing games, like Merchants and Marauders). I've wanted this particular game, however, for a long time but have only just gotten around to buying it, because it was $100. Very expensive. 
Nevertheless, I succumbed to temptation and purchased it over the internet a little while ago.

Now, my husband and I did a similar thing with the board game Ticket to Ride. Unfortunately, we ordered it through a third party on Mighty Ape, which meant that when the courier delivered the package to the wrong door, and it never showed up, we never, ever got a refund. Goodbye $70. Then we went and bought the game at Whitcoulls. Goodbye $100. $170 spent on Ticket to Ride so far. Ugh.

So when the courier lost Small World in the post, I was hopping mad. I phoned Courier Post NZ immediately and said quite clearly that I wanted to see the package that very day - or the money. One of the two. I'm not wasting money like this anymore.
My insistence and promptness meant that we got results this time, and a very apologetic courier showed up two hours later with the package which he had just, you know, dropped off at number 33 by mistake, you know? Not sure why that happened, heh heh. 
I let him live and I took the package. 

Small World is similar to Risk except that you fight your opponent with a fantasy race. The game has a seemingly endless supply of attributes and races that you can combine many different ways.
For instance, depending on how you turn over the attribute badges and the racial banners, you could wind up with pillaging halflings, flying skeletons, beserker giants, wealthy ratmen, and so on. Also, the board has many beautiful colours. I dunno how, but this somehow makes it worth a hundred dollars.
See for yourself.

Lastly, the board comes with a turn marker, which means that you never play for longer than ten rounds before figuring out who has won. That certainly makes it look much more attractive than a three hour game of Risk, after which the loser goes away and reexamines their life for the next week.
This game is nearly impossible to buy in New Zealand. No stores that I know of stock it. You can get it online, but you know... some courier might deliver it to number 33 for no reason.

But if you get hold of it, it is worth it. Enjoy the pictures!