Storybook Perfect

Always quirky, sometimes sweet speculative fiction

Month: March 2012 (Page 2 of 2)

Fever

March 9, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Xander is in the throes of his first fever. When he was four months he had a mild cold but no fever, and now ten months has passed without a single illness plaguing my poor boy, but late last night he got hot and clingy.

The doctor this morning was HELL. We have a great doctor’s clinic nearby where you don’t have to make an appointment, just show up and wait. Most of the time you’re only waiting 10-15 minutes which you usually wait at a doctor’s office even when you have an appointment anyway. Today was an hour and a half in a packed waiting room with a baby who just wanted to cling and cry.

It’s not an ear or throat infection, his nose isn’t running and he doesn’t have diarrhea so it’s just a random fever. Even though I know it isn’t something to panic about he’s just so sleepy and clingy and sad that it breaks my heart.

Get well soon my little prince!

Post-nap Ritual

March 8, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Obviously reading is important to me – not many writers aren’t passionate readers. I am trying my best to pass this passion on to my son as well. He has a large collection of books already at the tender age of 14 months. It’s a mix of all my old favourites (like Graeme Base and Rudyard Kipling) and some new finds from the local bookstore.

We usually read a book together when he first wakes up from a nap, while he’s still quiet so he won’t tear the paper pages in his enthusiasm.

This afternoon I was exhausted so we napped together and when I woke up I was alarmed to find him not lying on the bed next to me. Panicked I ran through the house looking for him and was grateful to see he was safe and sound in the nursery, seated on the floor pretending to read a book with a couple more on the floor. He flashed me a huge grin when I came to the door as if to say “Finally mummy, you’re up, now help me read this.”

He certainly knows his routine ;p

Chatting With Dad

March 6, 2012 / / 5 Comments

I had an interesting chat with my father. After he read my post regarding perhaps not entering my work in progress in the Vogel awards (due to it not being the sort of genre that usually wins) we discussed the whys and why nots and eventually started to talk about the viability of self-publishing as an option versus my desire to see my books in traditional print. Some people self-publish their first book and with good marketing make it a hit and use that popularity to entice a publisher to accept their next novel. Others have a few traditionally published novels but then have problems with publishers and decide to self-publish the rest of their works since they already have a fan-base.

Either way, with self-publishing you need to have a strong marketing ability. You need multiple platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Linkedin. It all looks like so much to do on top of writing and taking care of a child, but it’s what you need to do if you want to make it.

Of course having a supportive family like my parents and my husband makes things much easier, but the pressures of limited time, lost sleep and finances still loom, shaking their figurative fists at me. As it is I have to get up before my family to find time to maintain my website, do my blogging and write my work in progress. I stay up after my husband and child have gone to bed sometimes too just to fit in time to write. I take my opportunities wherever I can, stealing them during Xander’s naps or moments when he’s quite happy to just sit and play near my feet.

What someone who wants to get published really needs is determination. Determination to find that time and use it productively. With so much to do, be it the writing itself, marketing, platform creating or all your usual daily tasks you need to be able to find and recognise that 10 minutes that you normally may have wasted looking at things you want on ebay and instead use it to build that platform or get down a few more ideas for the next story.

Ten minutes shouldn’t be too hard to find, where can you find your first ten minutes?

Chiyogami

March 4, 2012 / / 2 Comments

I originally planned to make my own design for my website but – as I mentioned in my earlier post busy few weeks – I was given no choice but to start my website a month earlier than planned or miss out on an opportunity to pay a lot less for my hosting, so I ended up choosing this cute theme for now.

To be honest I hadn’t even thought about what my design would look like, so when the site went up I was left clawing my brain for ideas. I remembered on a trip into the city with a good friend going to Eckersley’s art and craft store and seeing some lovely chiyogami (fancy origami paper which is usally silk screen painted featuring a repeated pattern, also known as yuzen for the dyeing style used) featuring goldfish. Being a japanophile I wanted to buy them at the time, but couldn’t justify buying the paper, no matter how beautiful the image without having an actual use. Now I have the perfect one!

I plan to use the goldfish pattern for my background and am thinking a maneki-neko in the header perhaps, but I’ll need to play around with it before I put anything up online.

In regards to the pattern I chose I always used to be obsessed with cherry blossoms, I still am, but my interests have broadened. While I was in Japan I saw a beautiful kimono with a goldfish pattern. For some foolish reason I didn’t buy it and I regret that decision rather frequently. Ever since then I’ve been a bit nutty about goldfish patterns. I’m even considering using the pattern on my business cards.

It’s interesting how a regret can create a passion like that… Do you have any similar stories? Oh and keep an eye out for my new design (but don’t hold your breath).

Smells Just As Sweet

March 1, 2012 / / 0 Comments

So why Storybook Perfect for my blog name you ask?

The answer is bizarrely simple. My first novel (the completed manuscript you will hear me talk about almost without cease) is titled Storybook Perfect, and when you aren’t quite confident enough to use your own name for a domain, you need to figure out something else.

It was on my husband’s suggestion I used the novel’s name for the website. I like how it promotes my first completed manuscript but also sounds like the sort of blog a writer of fantasy would run.

The novel’s title itself is a nod to the fact that at the start of the novel the main character, Yui, regularly laughs at herself for expecting life to work out perfectly just because it seems like the world she has found herself in is like out of a story. Later, she and her companions have a chance to see they actually could have endured a great deal more than they did and, in a manner of speaking, they did have the golden ticket after all.

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