The Little Things

Maybe I'm just easily pleased, but there's nothing like a few little wins to make your day. When I booked a haircut this morning, I learned my regular hairstylist is on holidays and that the only available appointment this Wednesday is with the salon's "art director." Which sounds fabulous and Hollywood-like, but it comes at a price. $95 to be exact. The receptionist rightfully took my hyperventilation fit as a sign of shock. She then said they're happy to charge what I usually pay. Yay! Now I'll be able to buy a couple of books with the savings and thus further stimulate the economy as well as my mind.

The second little win comes after yet another mail fail. I'd ordered moisturiser from online discount retailer activeskin.com.au. Surprise, surprise, the courier responsible for delivering the item lost said item. Amanda from Active Skin was very apologetic. On Christmas Eve, she arranged to send a few samples to tide me over until she could send what I originally ordered. A dozen samples arrived today and I think my parched skin will be fully hydrated for the next couple of weeks. Yay, Amanda!

Finally, the third "win" is a discovery that appeals not so much to my consumerism but more to my writing ambitions. The Australian Women's Weekly magazine, together with Penguin Group (Australia), has announced a short story competition. Stories must be between 3,000 and 5,000 words, and feature a woman as the central character. Contracted authors are ineligible. The winner will receive A$10,000 and a manuscript assessment if they've completed a novel. Entries close April 21, 2009. You must fill out an original entry form, which is available in the magazine. Full terms and conditions are supposed to be listed at www.aww.com.au/bookclub, but I must be blind 'cause I can't see them. There are great writing resources on this page, anyway.

And a not-so-little thing before I sign off: Big congrats to my CP Stephanie Kuehnert, who found a gorgeous engagement ring under the tree on Christmas Day! Very exciting! (She said yes to the accompanying big question, btw.)


see more pwn and owned pictures


see more pwn and owned pictures

Merry Christmas!

More Mail Mayhem

The postal crisis involving my Golden Heart contest entries (see previous post below) has passed. The copies FedExed by Papa Authorness arrived in Texas with more than 24 hours to spare before the deadline. Phew!

It seems I'm not alone when it comes to mail disasters. The publisher of lad mag Ralph last week lost a shipment of 130,000 inflatable breasts valued at A$200K. It's believed the boobs are adrift somewhere between Beijing and Sydney. The magazine had planned to give them away with the January '09 edition, but I guess their readers will have to make do with the articles. Read the full story here.

The postal system works in mysterious ways. I'm sure the fake boobs will get to their intended destination; so will my original Golden Heart entries. But they may take 112 years to get there, just like this postcard.

Please, Mr Postman, Where Are My Golden Heart Entries?

The Golden Heart contest is one of the most important for unpublished romance writers. Each year, the organisers receive about 1,000 entries in 10 different categories. These are whittled down to 100 entries. Acquiring editors at publishing houses judge the finalists, and the winners are announced at a ceremony often dubbed the Oscars for romance writers. In this contest, though, winning isn't everything--many past finalists have gone on to publication as a result of the comp.

This year, I entered two YA manuscripts. I forked out over 200 bucks in entry, stationery and postage fees. ("I'm stimulating the economy," I assured myself.) I airmailed the mss from Australia to the US on November 15. Usually, it takes up to seven days for mail to reach its destination. Plenty of time, I thought, to meet the December 2 deadline. If entries don't make it to RWA's Texas office by then, they're disqualified.

But yesterday, day 14 after mailing, I realised it wasn't looking good for my entries. They still haven't made it. How can this be? Did they get chucked into the seamail postbox instead of the airmail one? Did the plane's pilot make a detour in Tahiti and decide to stay? Or maybe a disgruntled postal worker delivered the mail to the garbage dump.

Ironically, the same thing happened to me about a month ago, when I had to snail-mail my final-round entry for the Golden Pen Award. The preliminary round in that comp is judged by Golden Heart finalists/winners. Somewhere, somehow, my mail went astray.

Whatever the reason, I had to take action this time.

Or rather, my dad did.

He lives in America, so he told me to email my entries and he'd take care of the rest. Despite sore, arthritic fingers and crippling back pain, he stayed up till the early hours of this morning, printed out a whole pine tree's worth of manuscript pages, collated and bound them, burnt my full mss to disks, and sent them off by FedEx. Three cheers for Dad!

Now getting to the final round in the GH means more than ever. It's one way to pay Dad back for helping me out so readily.

Six Degrees of Celluloid

Twelve years ago, when I was a cinema manager, I met visionary director Baz Luhrmann at the premiere screening of Romeo + Juliet. Last night I had one of my recurring cinema nightmares, where I relived the time smoke from nearby bushfires set off the fire alarms and I had to evacuate hundreds of irate patrons several times in one day. Tonight, Luhrmann, Kidman and Jackman (is there a grammatical term for names ending in 'man'?) open their epic film Australia in Sydney. I'll try to overcome my cinema phobia to see it. I just hope I won't need to be evacuated.

I doubt Luhrmann approved this trailer found on YouTube,
but all publicity's good publicity, right?


Tourism Australia commissioned Baz to help entice overseas visitors to our shores
in a new campaign.


Kidman and Luhrmann - together again - for Chanel No. 5.
My favourite piece of classical music, Debussy's Clair de Lune,
underscores this gorgeous ad.

Quick Fiction Fix

If you're an Aussie or a Kiwi reader, you must pick up a copy of this week's Woman's Day magazine. Inside you'll find a delightful historical short story written by my buddy, Anna Campbell. I nabbed my local convenience store's last mag this morning. Be quick!

Here she is with Harlequin Presents author Annie West (left)
at Guildford Library.

Stack of Macs

I never considered myself much of a collector...until I cleaned out my study today and realised I have a veritable Apple Mac museum.



At the bottom of the stack is my very first computer, the Apple PowerBook 180. It has a grayscale display and the memory of a calculator. (Okay, it was far more powerful, and one of the best computers you could get at the time.) The keyboard is actually one of the most comfortable I've ever used.

When the Internet age dawned, it was time to upgrade to the black PowerBook G3 made famous by Carrie Bradshaw. My then boyfriend (now husband; you can see why I married him) bought it for me. I'll never forget the day he surprised me with it--he'd opened a Word doc and typed the immortal phrase, "Meanwhile, downtown..." I started and finished my first novel on that computer.



Fortunately, I never suffered the motherboard problems Carrie endured. But then the little white iBook G4 laptops came along. They were far more alluring than a pair of Manolos. At this stage, I was struggling with a repetitive strain injury and had to use voice recognition software. The old PowerBook just didn't have enough RAM to run the program. On the iBook I wrote my second, third and fourth books.

And then came the aluminium (aluminum, for those of you in the US) MacBook, pictured at the top. I'm hoping to get a few more novels out of this little beauty.

I'm off to work on book six, but I'll leave you with more pics from the collection.

Oldest to youngest.

Mr Authorness's MacBook Pro (second from the right) joined the line-up for this one.

They just look so pretty from all angles, don't they?

The Seven-Year Itch

This week I left the company I worked for after almost seven years. Aside from being paid to watch The Bold and the Beautiful, I'll miss my wonderful colleagues.

Just because I resigned doesn't mean I won't ever see them again, though. All I have to do is hang out at YouTube. Here are two of my former workmates, Gibson and Belinda, who are also actors. Gib's in the Nintendo ads, or TVCs as they're called in the biz, while Belinda is Tall Jan in the All-Bran cereal ad.


Gibson as Cowboy Jed. The TVCs were directed by Bob Dylan's son, Jesse, and filmed in New Zealand. When Gib returned from shooting the campaign, he treated us all to gigantic boxes of Krispy Kremes to celebrate. You can also see Gibson in the Nicolas Cage film Ghost Rider.


And here's lovely Belinda as Tall Jan. (She really is tall). Belinda recently starred in the Sydney production of My Name is Rachel Corrie.

Somebody Call a Doctor!

Our government recently announced a pledge to crack down on the use of skinny models and unrealistic images in the media. Under the proposed code of conduct, magazines and advertisers must add a disclaimer to images that have been doctored. The initiative aims to address body image issues and unattainable ideals. Even the real Beyonce doesn't have a body like the Beyonce we see in touched-up photographs.

These pics from the hilarious blog Photoshop Disasters, however, don't need a disclaimer. A little tweak here, a little tweak there... Next thing you know, limbs go flying everywhere.

Miley Cyrus: Look, Ma! Three hands!



Ah, là est mon nombril vers le haut là dans les collines.
J'aipensé que je perdu il pour de bon.
(TRANSLATION: Oh, there's my navel up there in the hills.
I thought I'd lost it for good.)


Want Fanta? I think the Fantanas need a hand.


Something a little more sinister. Spot the difference in these two pics featuring Prince William.


Best-selling author Christina Dodd's now infamous cover for her novel CASTLES IN THE AIR. The heroine has three hands. As you can see, the hero is thrilled.

Rewrite Relief

I've just finished the rewrites on my paranormal YA. Yee-ha!

This manuscript has had so many past lives. The first draft--completed way back in 2004--was written in third-person past tense and just scraped over the 45,000 mark. I had a heroine people either loved or hated and, truthfully, a rather insipid plot. The ms did okay in competitions, but received an impressive number of rejections from agents. Four years and much tinkering later, the main and subplots are totally different, it's in first-person present tense, I hope my heroine is more sympathetic and likable, and the word count has almost doubled. Is it perfect? Probably not, but I can tell you it's a hundred times better than that first draft.

Many thanks to my critique crew, plus my agent's assistant, Beth, and an intern at WH, who all gave me invaluable advice.

A whole slew of craft books also helped me through the latest revision. Click on the links to see the Amazon reviews.

• MANUSCRIPT MAKEOVER by Elizabeth Lyon. I really had to raise the stakes in my book, and Lyon's chapters on characterization and structure showed just how to do it.
  
• SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS by Renni Browne & Dave King. I liked the authors' solutions to proportion problems--when you spend too much time describing minor points and skimp on the scenes that really need to be big.
  
• GMC: GOAL, MOTIVATION & CONFLICT by Debra Dixon. Work out each main character's goal, motivation and conflict, and you'll give your story dimension and direction. This particularly helped me when I was bogged down in that swamp known as the Saggy Middle.
  
• NOW WRITE! edited by Sherry Ellis. A collection of tried-and-tested exercises to whip lax writing muscles into shape.
  

So, what's next? Both me and the book will rest for a while. Then I'll dive into another YA that I've kept in a holding pattern for nine months, and catch up on all that reading...