Words and Pictures

At the moment we have a friend from England staying with us. This is his first visit to New Zealand, and we are enjoying the opportunity of showing him the local sights as well as places further afield we love to visit. One of the great things about doing this is that it makes you look at familiar places as if you’ve never seen them before.

Last week we spent a few glorious days in Sydney, and it was great to look at this city we love as if it was our first visit.

We took lots of photos – although we already have plenty! 

There is a saying that a picture paints a thousand words, but words can also paint magical pictures.

About half of Driftwood is set in Sydney and while I haven’t experienced any of Juliet’s problems or had someone try to kill me, there are a number of elements and snatches of scenes included in the book that are places I’ve visited or things I’ve seen. When I read those scenes it brings back the incident I witnessed, or alternatively, when I visit a place I’ve included in Driftwood it reminds me how I used it in Juliet’s story.

Alex takes Juliet to dinner in Darling Harbour – this is a favourite spot of mine and while the restaurant they visited doesn’t exist, there are heaps of good places to eat in Darling Harbour.

In another scene Juliet watches a street entertainer in Circular Quay – I’ve since cut back this description, but the little I’ve left reminds me of his act and I can still see him clearly.

One of the chapters ends with Juliet watching a bride and groom in the gardens close to the Opera House. I watched the couple I describe posing for their wedding photographs by the harbour, and I sometimes wonder where they are now, and hope they are as happy as they were that day.

The New Zealand sections of Driftwood are set in Auckland, Christchurch and the Tasman area at the top of the South Island.

Juliet’s view from her home of the Auckland Harbour is the one we had at the time I was writing the book. The scenes set in Christchurch are ones I remember vividly, and with great sadness, as some of the places were badly damaged in the earthquake in 2010 and the severe aftershock in February 2011.

The Nelson and Abel Tasman areas of the South Island are outstandingly beautiful and we’ve spent many happy holidays exploring the beaches and walking the tracks through the National Park.

If you’re interested in seeing some of the places, I’ve been working on a board using photographs I’ve taken during visits, and I’ll be adding more images over the coming weeks.

Lies of the Dead - Cover

I'm really excited that my latest book Lies of the Dead is just about there and thrilled to unveil the cover created by the talented Andrew Brown of Design for Writers.

Unlike Driftwood and Lives Interrupted I had absolutely no ideas for the cover of Lies of the Dead, but working with Andrew makes the process incredibly easy. He asks a lot of questions about the plot and characters, important (poster) scenes, my own likes and dislikes, and then he goes away and works his magic.

Lies of the Dead is set predominantly in Cornwall which is an area I love. Writing those scenes has allowed me to wander through villages, along beautiful cliff walks and feel the sand under my feet on the glorious beaches. The setting of Poldrayth is fictitious but it is based on a real Cornish village to allow me to play around with the geography a little.

What would you risk to find the truth?

How well do we know those closest to us? When Liam kills himself, his older brother Tom needs to know why suicide was the only answer.

Tom's search leads him, and his sister Andi, to a criminal world where their ideas of right and wrong don’t exist, and where people aren’t who they claim to be.

Liam’s legacy of deceit is dangerous and when Tom and Andi and her twin daughters are threatened, Tom realises that truth may have too high a price. 

Thanks a million Andrew for a wonderful cover - drumroll

Matariki

At this time of year in New Zealand it's the celebration of Matariki – the traditional Maori New Year.

Of course we also celebrate New Year on the 31^st December/1^st January, and as there is also a large Chinese population we have festivals to celebrate Chinese New Year, as well as Matariki events.

I’m fascinated with our obsession of changing habits and making goals on a specific date because it’s a New Year. I think having several different dates emphasises the point that we can make goals and change behaviours at any time.

I’ve blogged about making goals before, but it seemed a good time to post about a few of the things I've learned. The major thing has been to make one goal at a time, which is a good reason not to confine them to New Year.

If our goal is about big behavioural changes, then we’re more likely to succeed if we concentrate on one change at a time.

Ask yourself what you really want to change? What skill you really want to improve? Or what skill you’d like to learn? 

Take some time and really think about what you want out of life. Now is a good time as the papers and magazines aren’t full of celebrity goals that can sway our thinking.

When you’ve come up with your goal, write it down. I find the act of committing it to paper makes it more real.

Now break the goal down into smaller more manageable tasks you can measure and set a time period for achieving.

In the past I’ve tended to choose a number of things I want to change or do, and then I get bogged down trying to keep them all. Making one goal at a time and steadily progressing towards it allows me to focus on what I need to do. 

I’ve also found it useful to tell someone about my goal. Usually just one person, again it’s about making it real, but also about choosing someone who recognises why that goal is important to me, and will remind me about it in a supportive way.

Many companies have a program of continuous improvement. I’ll leave aside the fact that many pay lip service to it, but I think about it in respect of my goals. Things aren’t going to change overnight, we will probably find ourselves reverting to old habits, but concentrating on one goal, breaking it down into bite size pieces and giving ourselves the time and space to achieve makes success a lot more certain than a New Year’s Eve scattergun approach.

Start now - get out a piece of paper and think about something you really want to achieve.

If you're interested in finding out a little more about Matariki here are some links: 
http://www.matarikievents.co.nz/
http://www.mch.govt.nz/nz-identity-heritage/matariki

http://www.newzealand.com/travel/media/features/maori-culture/maori-culture_matariki-maori-new-year_feature.cfm

A Perfect World

Every day I pass a billboard, actually I pass a number of billboards, but this particular one is at a set of traffic lights, so I’ve had time to study it.

The picture is supposed to represent an office. You’ll understand why I say supposed as I describe it.

Two glamorous ladies sit either side of a gleaming white desk enjoying a cup of coffee. They look as though they’re ready to model the latest designer labels rather than a day at the office. I know the desk is white because other than a laptop on one side, and an Apple keyboard and monitor (no computer!) on the other side, the desks are bare. Apologies, I forgot to mention the vase of flowers.

I’ve worked in many offices, and never have I seen one that looked less real than this. The keyboard and monitor are stylish, but useless without a computer and where is the work they're supposed to be doing? I'm also pretty sure I’d knock over the vase at some stage while working.

The billboard shows a perfect office, but I’ve never yet seen one in reality.

Whatever the genre of your book, one of the most important things to get right is setting. It doesn’t need endless paragraphs of description. A few judicious words in the right place will paint a scene for the reader, and not just any scene, but the one you want people to see.

To me setting covers a number of points, though some may be more important than others at any given time. 

Where am I?  The genre will give some pointers. 

• Fantasy – am I in a different world, or a different version of earth. 

• Sci-fi – is it a different world, or a future version of earth? How far in the future? 

• Historical – what point in history? What country?

If you have a mix of genres then setting becomes even more important. Think Cadfael - historical murders.

If your setting is contemporary, there are still a huge amount of options. 
New York, London, Sydney.....
City, small town, rural, coastal.....
Hospital, fire station, school, university.....

The list is endless. 

The location makes a difference to our view of the characters. Do they live in the rush of a large city, or the comparative peace of a rural setting? Do they love where they live, or are they there under sufferance? Why?  

Time.   What time period does your book cover? In a contemporary setting even a year or two can make a difference to the technology your characters use, or the landmarks they might see. In my first draft of Lives Interrupted I had Kate looking at a memorial that wasn't actually on the embankment until some time after the year the book was set.

What season? This may, or may not be important to your plot.

It’s crucial to get your setting right. The poster I mentioned at the start of this post doesn’t show any type of office I’d recognise as being ‘real’. 

There’s a lot to be said for writing what you know. You don't have to let this restrict you, but if you're not familiar with the setting it will mean researching to get it right.

If you set your book in a different country think about the lifestyle, what hours people work, their food, and how they talk. Even though Australians, Americans, Canadians, South Africans and New Zealanders all speak English, they sound different. They use different words, and some different sentence structures.

If you set your novel in a hospital, and you’ve never worked in one, you’ll need to get to know someone who does. The same goes for setting a book in a university or police station, or anywhere else that works in a very specific way. There’s a reason why John Grisham writes legal and courtroom dramas. 

If you get things wrong in your setting, you can be sure there is an expert out there who will see all the errors.

My husband always quotes the start of the film Top Gun when making this point. The inside shots of the cockpit, and the outside shots of the planes making the manoeuvres don't match up. I’m not an expert on aircraft and can’t tell the difference, but I know what a real office looks like!

Yes, we’re writing fiction, but it’s got to be as real as we can make it.

‘Words have meaning and names have power’

A lot of years ago I had a short-term work contract at a university in Wales. To be honest, I don’t actually remember much about the job, but what I do remember is the large database of student names.

The full name of each student was captured, and while there were some interesting first names, there were many more unusual middle names.

Names tell a lot about a person. They are generally a good pointer to age, famous celebrities of the time, and in the UK they are also an indicator of social status. They also say a lot about the parents.

A few of those names have stuck in my mind. One male student was named after several famous soccer players – his father was obviously an ardent Manchester United fan. Among the females was a Tamsin Tinuviel and another girl called Arwen, their parents would have been fans of Tolkein, or at least had read Lord of the Rings.

Before Gwyneth Paltrow named her daughter Apple, I knew a lady called Brie.

Choosing names for my characters is something that takes time, and the names are often changed several times as I get to know the characters.

In my current novel, Lies of the Dead, the names of the three main characters never changed. I think that is a first for me.

The oldest of the three siblings is Tom. He is pragmatic and reliable, and (to me) this name fits him well. I didn’t look up the origin or meaning of the name, so I may have it completely wrong, but for me it suited him totally.

Andi is the middle sibling, her name is Andrea but she shortened it to Andi as a child, hoping it would make her mother love her more. How sad is that!

Liam is the youngest of the three. He is always called that, though we discover early on his full name is William, which he hates.

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says, ‘What’s in a name?’  I think the answer to that is everything.

‘Words have meaning and names have power.’ 

‘Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.’ W.H.Auden

Mixing Business and Pleasure

This world of ours seems to get more frazzled and frantic on a daily basis, leaving us with less time to spend on what's important, if we let it.

It's often difficult to put work out of our mind and just enjoy the moment, as so many articles and magazines tell us to do.

Working full-time and writing novels doesn't make that any easier either (not that I'm complaining!), but this week I've managed to mix pleasure and writing business on a couple of levels.  

I have a number of writer friends, and at the moment I'm beta-reading a novel by one of them. Reading often feels like a guilty pleasure, as when I'm reading I think I should be writing, but this week I can tell myself it's work.

I also belong to a Writers Group and on Sunday we're having our monthly meeting. We usually meet mid-week after work, but this month we're getting out of Auckland and meeting at the home of one of our group who lives further afield. 

With this in mind, and because work has been especially frantic the past few weeks, I decided to take the opportunity of a weekend in Raglan. A great mix of downtime and writing, and with the two extracts we're critiquing I've had more reasons for reading!

Fascinating Phrases

Although companies talk a lot about using 'Plain English', I think it's still as far away as ever. On the positive side a lot of it makes me smile.

A sign on a door says, 'This door is alarmed.' Every time I see it, I wonder what's worrying the door.

In an email recently I came across this gem. This document was socialised. I know people socialise their dogs, but documents!

Another one was 'obtaining a rate via a skeleton' - hmm, that paints a vivid picture.

In the past couple of days I've heard two phrases that always irritate me.

'Almost exactly' and 'almost unique'. 

I won't bother with the rant, it is the weekend.

What funny phrases have you come across recently, and what are the misuses of words that irritate you most?