At the moment i’m waiting for my camera to be posted back to me, so until then I can’t put up any blogs of my south-west tour of WA. (Sorry…but have no fear i’ll be blogging a minute by minute blog of the whole trip!! Only jokes…wouldn’t want you all to fall asleep at the computer)  None the less i’m using my free time with the re-writing of book 3…AKA Sarah’s Journey. (working title…with my track record it probably wont stay. I can write a book but can’t pick a title lol)

I finished my first draft of Sarah’s Journey in January, but after talks with my publisher Ali we have decided on some changes…some big and some small.  While I was doing my tour my mum came along to keep me company so I had help to plan out some new conflicts and themes for Sarah’s Journey. Spending lots of time travelling we had plenty of opportunities to brain storm…one time I couldn’t sleep and was rattling on to mum about different ideas…me wide awake and brain going a million miles an hour…my mum tired and probably wanting to hit me with a pillow and tell me to shut up. (She didn’t bless her…but I got the hint)

So I arrived home with heaps of ideas and planned out all the new bits, sent it off to Ali who gave the big thumbs up. (Thank god) Now in case you are wondering, the first draft of Sarah’s Journey was fine…but only if I was just after a romance story.   The wonderful Ali could see more potential.  Now I trust her judgement as Ali has been in the business for many years, with all these amazing authors she works with, Monica McInerney, Rachael Treasure, Katherine Scholes, (who has a new book out which i’m looking forward to reading) and many more just to name a few.  Quite frankly i’m just totally thrilled (beside myself in awe really) to be associated with her, Penguin and these ‘wow’ authors. Therefore i’m very open to changing whatever i’ve written and once things have been pointed out, i’m like…OMG I can totally see that saggy bit or how not important that person is etc. So it’s great to have someone in my corner, who is there to help and bring certain things to my attention, seeing as I don’t have a crit partner to help me…just my mum, but she says all my stuffs great lol!

So now the fun part of re-reading and re-working all those words i’ve written begins. Deleting…changing…adding…until hopefully a much better product is produced.  I’m aiming to get this done within two months but I’m not going to kill myself to keep that timeline.  Life happens! I’ll just go with the flow.

This is my little area for writing. It used to be the desk with my sewing machines on it…but they have been put into ‘permanent’ storage!  Lets face it…I can’t sew to save myself…just a few running repairs is the best I can manage. 

I usually park my butt in the chair, sometimes light a smelly candle and bung on some music. Although the music has to be in the background…if I have it too loud I end up getting lost in the song…and not my characters.  I have draws for ideas, my past books and future stories, RWA stuff in another and my current info next to my computer.  I have a diary of the year so I can plan out the books…need to have the seasons right.  Also water…if I don’t have water on hand I tend to get hungry and end up side tracked by food.  Writing isn’t the best job for keeping fit…hence I always wanted an outside physical job so I didn’t need to excercise. 

We are now nearly a week a way from Christmas so I wish you all a wonderful time and all the best for the new year!  I’ve done all my Christmas shopping so the stress is over for me.  Already have a few new books to read…so i’m very happy.  Also the new cover for the book should be able to be posted up soon.

Being a big fan of rural/outback books, I, like many others, have Tony Parsons’ books in my bookshelves.  The Call of the High Country, Return to the High Country, Valley of the White Gold and Silver in the Sun.  I was talking with friends on facebook about what Tony was up to as we hadn’t heard from him in a while….surely a book must be close?  So I contacted Tony and we had a chat!  Firstly, I let him know I was also an author with Penguin and we had the same publisher and secondly – and most importantly- that I had all his books!!

He was happy to chat with me and I was amazed to find out he would be turning 80 in a few months!!  So of course, being a fan, I asked him what he was working on.  Tony has just finished a 700 page book called “The Kelpie” his biggest dog book yet.  It is his forth Kelpie book and is published with Penguin, due for release in September this year.  For those who didn’t know Tony is a bit of a legend in regards to the Kelpie dog. He established “Karrawarra” one of the top breeding kelpie studs in Australia.  He was also awarded the Order of Australia Medal in 1992 for his contribution to the propagation of the Australian kelpie sheepdog.  I have a kelpie also and love her to bits, she’s so clever.

He has since passed on his stud of Kelpie dogs so they will continue on.  (I also found out from Tony that a bloke not far from me in Wagin has his Kelpies, so I will be checking them out next time I’m at the Woolorama!)

Tony is very proud of his book “The Kelpie”.  He said it is full of great colour photos, has a vet section as well as little stories about the working Kelpie.  All his other kelpie books are out of print and can fetch a penny or two on ebay.

As for another novel, Tony has written one which is currently with Penguin and he’s hoping to hear from them soon. Not bad for a bloke who’s nearing 80!  I asked him what he likes to read and he said Hemingway, and a few others but he doesn’t read while he writes in case it alters his writing.

Well that was about it for my chat with the great Tony Parsons (although we may have strayed on dogs for a while and chatting about our publishing house!).

We will have to keep an eye out for his fifth book!

Big thanks to Tony who gave me his time, all the way from QLD to WA.  Cheers mate.

We meet family in Hopetoun over the weekend to celebrate our niece’s 1st birthday.  We arrived friday night to a mess as the caravan park had huge amounts of rain a few days before and our anix showed just how much.  Hmmm….a bit of cleaning was needed but thankfully we had it sorted quickly.  We had rain most of the first day…wish I could have brought some home with us as we still have a few farmers who haven’t done any seeding yet. No hair pulling and screaming going on yet but the stress is still there…and the question about wether to seed or not!  Come on mother nature…spare us a little bit!

But our last two days were great.  This picture is where we fished one afternoon and we couldn’t have asked for a better day.  No wind!!  Amazing in Hopey.  And salmon was caught for tea.  *yes – my eating to walking ratio was blown out of the water but it was a weekend off…and it was too cold so I had to eat lots!*

Well we have booked our tickets, we are off to Melbourne and Sydney…mainly to visit family and so I can attend the RWA conference in Sydney.  I’ve never been to one before andIi will finally get to meet Bronwyn Parry and Helene Young.  Bronwyn is also up for a Romantic Book of the Year award and I’m glad I will be over there for all the excitement!  Fleur McDonald is also up for the same award….so even more reasons to be excited.  Congrats to them both along with all the other finallists!

As for my own news…at the meeting I got the thumbs up for my next book, offer will be on its way this week and then into the nitty gritty.  Book cover, title, final edits and working on the book trailer also.  I might even get back to work on book 3 if I have time.

But for now I have pumpkin scones that need cooking as I have a friend coming over this afternoon, I can’t wait!

I wanted to share these couple of cartoons from the Connelly Cartoons book I have.  Brett Connelly has done a great job drawing moments from the bush and these two I particularly like.

I can tell you how weird it is to be harvesting in the dry heat only for it to begin raining to the point headers are getting bogged.  Its a real scratch your head moment.

And the other cartoon is at the sampling hut, which I write about in The Family Farm.  Now days they use automatic spears to get the sample but when I was a sampler, at the age of 17, I used to have to manually spear a truck, which meant climbing into the back trailer into the grain.  At the start of the year you can bet many farmers have a bit of trouble getting a sample through because of high moisture, due to green grains or the other time will be after rain and the grain is wet.

Hope you get a laugh.