Weekly goals 31-3-25

 I ended up going up the line on Saturday after all, so my writing time this weekend was a little limited.  I did almost finish the chapter I was working on, and I've written a whole lot of bits and pieces for later in the book.  I do feel like it's taking too long to get my main characters to meet.  I'm over 10K into this book and they haven't even seen each other yet.

Which is always the thing that happens to me when I start at the beginning of a story - I take 10K or so to find the actual start of the book.  Although, I'm not entirely sure that's the case this time.  I feel like everything has been happening quite organically up until now.  Just slowly.  I guess we'll see how it all turns out.

So my goal this week is to keep going, get some more words down.  It's only a couple of weeks until Easter and my 10-day writing marathon to try and get this finished.  The more I get done in advance, the better.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 28-3-25

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

I was going to be heading up the line for a day or so to catch up with some old colleagues, but my ride has fallen through, so I guess I'm staying home now.  Which is actually fine because I can get more work done on my book.  I've been a little naughty and written some pieces from later in the story during the week, mainly because the prompts for the daily flash fiction competition I do lent themselves to those sections of the book.  This little flash fiction thing I do is very useful for exploring parts of the story and the voices of the characters in little 1000 word or less chunks!

Other than that, I have nothing planned except my usual gym time and chores.  I've been feeling a little unwell for the last couple of weeks - nothing specific, just feeling off - and I think it has a lot to do with how little sleep I've been getting, so hopefully I can clock a few extra hours in bed.

I went to a really cool, innovative show on Wednesday and to the orchestra on Thursday, so it has been a busy week of activities already.

So that's probably enough to celebrate this week.

What are you celebrating?

Books I've Read: The End of Men

A friend lent me this book, saying they thought I'd enjoy it. It's something I probably would have picked up myself if I'd seen it, just because of the tite - I consider it aspirational - but I hadn't come across it.  And boy did I enjoy it!

It was written pre-pandemic, yet so many things that happened, especially early in the book, resonated so much because of what we went through in 2020.  This is actually the second book written pre-2020 I've read since the pandemic that eerily echo the reality we lived through.

In this book, a deadly new virus first come to light in Scotland.  One doctor identifies the salient feature of this particular illness is that it only affects men.  But when she tries to alert the authorities, the scientific and medical community, the world at large, she's dismissed and being an hysterical woman.  And by the time the world catches up with what she'd been trying to tell them, it's too late.  The virus has spread too far to contain easily and men around the world are dying in droves.

The book uses the perspectives of a shifting group of women who are left to deal with the consequences.  These are all very different women with very different skills and interests and come from all walks of life.  Through these various different eyes, we get a very good idea just what challenges the world might face if all the men - well, most... 10% of men in this world are immune - disappeared.

There are the initial stages of the plague where women are forced to face the fact their husbands, brothers and sons are likely to die, then the grieving that comes when they inevitably do. But what's more interesting is the society that develops in the wake of the pandemic, a society where all the roles usually taken by men are filled by women.

There are so many fascinating things this book delves into - global politics where all the world's leaders are now women, the workforce where suddenly all the heavy manual jobs men traditionally do have to be done by women, what happens to love and sex when there are so many more women than men.  Even little things, like redesigning seatbelts in cars so they are more effective for female bodies and re-thinking what families might look like.

I really enjoyed this book and found it incredibly thought provoking. Especially with having a real-world version of this scenario in the very recent past.  It made everything hit home that much harder than it probably did when people read it back in 2018.

So I'd recommend it.  My 13-year-old niece heard me talking about it when I was reading it and decided she wanted to read it too.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Set in a world where a virus stalks our male population, The End of Men is an electrifying and unforgettable debut from a remarkable new talent that what would life truly look like without men?Only men are affected by the virus; only women have the power to save us all. The year is 2025, and a mysterious virus has broken out in Scotland--a lethal illness that seems to affect only men. When Dr. Amanda MacLean reports this phenomenon, she is dismissed as hysterical. By the time her warning is heeded, it is too late. The virus becomes a global pandemic--and a political one. The victims are all men. The world becomes alien--a women's world.What follows is the immersive account of the women who have been left to deal with the virus's consequences, told through first-person narratives. Dr. MacLean; Catherine, a social historian determined to document the human stories behind the "male plague;" intelligence analyst Dawn, tasked with helping the government forge a new society; and Elizabeth, one of many scientists desperately working to develop a vaccine. Through these women and others, we see the uncountable ways the absence of men has changed society, from the personal--the loss of husbands and sons--to the political--the changes in the workforce, fertility and the meaning of family.In The End of Men, Christina Sweeney-Baird creates an unforgettable tale of loss, resilience and hope.

Weekly Goals 24-3-25

 I finished Chapter 6 yesterday, but I think I'm going to change the ending.  I didn't get as much writing done as I would have liked,  but I knew that was going to be the case.  I'm not too worried about it.  It's only about three weeks until Easter and I'll have 10 full days then to immerse myself in this story.  Very much looking forward to that.

So the goal this week is to just keep the momentum up.  Write another chapter or two.  Fix the ending of the one I wrote yesterday, to start with.

I'm still waiting on a few people to finish reading A Stranger to Kindness, so that's kind of on hold right now.  My goal is to finish the new now, then to start querying Stranger while I let the new one rest.  Feedback so far has been very positive.  Everyone seems to love my boys almost as much as I do.

And that's about it for goals this week.

What do you want to achieve?

Celebrate the Small Things 21-3-25

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

I have a few things on this weekend, including seeing one of my favourite musicians play in one of the most beautiful venues there is in Wellington. So looking forward to that!

I haven't had a chance to get much writing done this week, but will try to get chapter 6 finished on Sunday before I go to the gig.  Not too big a job, I don't think.

I don't have much else to celebrate this week.  It has been a quiet and rather boring one, to be honest.  Hopefully more exciting things to talk about next week.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Take Me With You When You Go

 

I read this one a couple of years back, but decided to revisit it because it has some things in common with the book I'm currently working on.  It's also a really good book.

It's epistolary in form - the whole book is told through a series of emails between the various characters.  Which makes it a little "tell-y" in places, but the things the characters are telling each other about are so engrossing, it almost doesn't matter.

Ezra wakes up one morning to discover his older sister is gone.  She leaves him a secret email address in a place she knows only he will find it, making him promise he won't tell anyone else about it or where she is.

Ezra and Bea have grown up with just their mother - their father left before Ezra was even born - and their mother's new husband who abuses them.  Their mother turns a blind eye to her husband's cruelty, devoting herself to his needs while ignoring the needs of her children.

Finding himself alone with this cruelty and neglect, Ezra soon flees the house too, not running as far as Bea, but getting away from a place he feels is increasingly unsafe for him.  Meanwhile, Bea is figuring out how to live on her own in a new city without any friends or family.  As she becomes more comfortable navigating life on her own, she admits to Ezra the real reason she ran - not away, but to.

The things both Ezra and bea discover about their family and themselves rock their worlds to the very foundations, but maybe being torn apart like this is exactly what they both need to be able to find a way back to one another.

As you probably already know, I'm a sucker for a sibling story.  Love sibs that fight, who love, who pull apart and come together.  Most of my own books deal with some kind of sibling relationship, even if it's a subplot to the main story.  So this book was right up my alley to start with.  Add to that the fact it's written by Jennifer Niven and David Leviathan, and it's a double whammy.  I've loved all Jennifer's books, and David is a YA legend.

This one had me on the edge of my seat too.  I was so worried for Bea and what she was running toward.  And so worried for poor Ezra, left behind with those awful people. And then nothing turns out the way you think it might, which was refreshing too.

I enjoyed the email format for telling the story.  It felt very immediate and relatable and the various other voices that came in from time to time made for a nice change.

So I'd recommend this one.  Especially if, like me, you love an angsty sibling relationship story.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

From the New York Times bestselling authors of All the Bright Places and Every Day comes a story of hope, family, and finding your home in the people who matter the most.

Subject: You. Missing.

Ezra Ahern wakes up one day to find his older sister, Bea, gone. No note, no sign, nothing but an email address hidden somewhere only he would find it. Ezra never expected to be left behind with their abusive stepfather and their neglectful mother - how is he supposed to navigate life without Bea?

Bea Ahern already knew she needed to get as far away from home as possible. But a message in her inbox changes everything, and she finds herself alone in a new city - without Ez, without a real plan - chasing someone who might not even want to be found.

As things unravel at home for Ezra, Bea confronts secrets about their past that will forever change the way they think about their family. Together and apart, broken by abuse but connected by love, this brother and sister must learn to trust themselves before they can find a way back to each other.

Weekly Goals 17-3-25

 I had a pretty good writing weekend and finished chapters four and five.  I feel like everything is moving more slowly than I want it to, but I think it will work.  The situation Devon is in does unfold slowly and I feel like it's realistic, the way it's happening.  Hopefully, anyway...

So my goal this week is to keep working on it.  I know I have stuff on this weekend so I won't get the full six or so hours I had this weekend, but hopefully I can finish chapter six during the week and move on to chapter seven.

I submitted my query and first five pages of A Stranger to Kindness to a contest in the hope of getting some good feedback on them.  I've had really good feedback from this contest before, so fingers crossed.  I'll wait until after that's finished to start querying.  Plus, the MS is still with a few readers, so I'd love their feedback before I start on that journey.

Still no update from my publisher on a date for Standing Too Close coming out.  I emailed again at the end of February and haven't had a reply yet.  I'm going to give it another week, then I'm going back to them again.  Even if they are backed up in editing, I like a long lead time to get my publicity and reviewers lined up, so they could give me a date toward the end of the year.  I just need to know what it is.

And that's about it for me this week.  What are your goals?

Celebrate the Small Things 14-3-25

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

It has felt like a long week, so I am looking forward to a couple of days off.  I don't have a lot planned, other than writing and gym stuff, so that is a good thing.

I've had some good feedback on the first part of the new book which is encouraging, even if writing in order and posting chapters as I write does feel weird.  It's too early to know if this approach will make editing easier at the end or not, but we shall see.  I am definitely looking forward to getting back into writing it over the next couple of days, so that's got to be a good thing!  I feel like I'll be on track to actually maybe finish the whole thing over Easter, which was the plan.  All things going as planned of course...

I've picked up another regular class at the gym, so I'm now teaching both Tuesday and Thursday mornings, which is good.  I'd like one more regular class, preferably an hour-long one, but I'll have to wait and see if one comes available.

I went to a premiere last night and saw The Rule of Jenny Pen.  It was excellent and actually quite scary.  Disturbing, anyway... Especially since I think I'd blanked out the fact there's a puppet in the film and I really, really don't like puppets.  Ventriloquist dummies are the worst, but this puppet was damn creepy!

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've loved: There are Rivers in the Sky

 

This one was loaned to me by one of the members of my book group - the one who probably knows me and my taste in books the best.  So when she said she thought I'd like this one, I listened.

And she was right.

I did, indeed, love this one.

It's a sprawling, epic novel that covers centuries and history and interweaves stories from different eras, starting with ancient Mesopotamia and finishing around 2018.

There are three main protagonists, Zaleekah, a hydrologist living in London in 2018, Narin, a young Yazidi girl living with her grandmother on the banks of the Tigris as it is about to be dammed, flooding her village, and Arthur (real name King Arthur of the Slums and Sewers), a Victorian pauper who grows up to be one of the British Museum's leading experts on ancient Mesopotamian poetry and script.

As you'd probably expect rom a book with "rivers" in the title, rivers and water are central to the story, from a drop of rain falling into King Ashurbanipal's hair to the Thames and Tigris rivers winding their way through history.  That aspect of it reminded me of a writing exercise I did at school, where we wrote a story from the POV of a water molecule, following it through history and the various different lives it could have touched.

While all three stories were interesting, I think I enjoyed Arthur's the most, maybe because the book followed him from birth to death, giving us the most complete picture of him. The other characters we only saw for short periods of time, like snapshots of their existence.

Just how these three people could be linked does not become clear until the very end of the book, although it's teased at throughout.  I felt like the eventual resolution was beautifully underplayed - not made into the big, melodramatic moment it could have been.

I loved this book.  As a kid, I went through a period of wanting to be an archaeologist, and this tickled all the parts of me that love the mysteries of ancient civilizations.  I know a little about the region and the history and even the poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh, that's central to the story.   But I know even more now.

I loved the way real life characters and events wove through the fictional story - particularly when Charles Dickens showed up in Arthur's storyline for a bit.

I have no idea how anyone could go about writing a book like this, with so many threads and timelines and histories weaving through it.  The very idea of it boggles my tiny brain.  But it works so well here, every piece of every story compliments a part of one or both the others.

So I'd recommend this one highly.  It's complicated in the very best way, but also has fabulous characters you can't help but care for.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.

In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.

In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.

In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.

A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”

Weekly Goals 10-3-25

 I had quite a good writing weekend and managed to finish chapters two and three and make a start on chapter four.  I'm just not 100% sure what I'm writing works.  I initially thought Devon would end up living on the street because of a big fight or something that made it impossible to go home.  But the way it's happening is more of a slow fade as no one cares if she's there or not.  Which is fine except her personality is such, I don't think she'd give up the safely and security of a house, even a house that's indifferent to her presence.

So something needs to happen.  Something that makes it impossible for her to go back.  And it needs to happen in chapter four or it will be too late in the book.  I already wonder if I've let things meander on too long.  So what is that thing?  I don't want it to be big or dramatic, necessarily.  Just something that would be the catalyst for her deciding living away from home would be preferable.  Let me know if you think of anything.

So my goal this week is to get through a couple more chapters.  Finish the one I'm on, and hopefully write another.  Once I get Devon out into the streets, I feel like the book will get easier to write because there's so much scope for things to happen to her. Even before she and Arlo meet.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 7-3-25

 

It's the end of the week, so it's time to Celebrate the Small Things.

What am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

And I have absolutely nothing I have to do this week.  No social engagements.  No teaching at the gym.  No urgent chores.  What a luxury!

I've almost finished the second chapter of the new book, so I hope to get that tied up and posted for my CPs to look at.  And if I can get through or close to through a third chapter, that would be great too.  I've written a handful of journal entries for Arlo. but at this stage, I'm not sure exactly where or how they're going to slot into the book.  It feels weird to have them in there at the start, before Devon meets him, but if I don't have them there from the start, it might be weird to have them suddenly show up.  I guess it's a way to foreshadow what's coming up and to give some insight into who this kid is before he becomes a part of Dev's life.

And now that I think about it, maybe he's aware of her before she's aware of him...

Hmmmmmm.  Things to think about and play with.  This way of writing a book feels weird to me.  I'm so not used to starting at the beginning and writing forward.  I'm not even sure where I started is actually the beginning!

What are you celebrating this week?

IWSG: March 2025

 It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for the Insecure Writers Support Group!

The awesome co-hosts for the March 5 posting of the IWSG are Ronel Janse Van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, and Liza @ Middle Passages!

This month's question is an interesting one!

If for one day you could be anyone or *thing* in the world, what would it be? Describe, tell why, and any themes, goals, or values they/it inspire in you.

It's going to sound weird, but I think I'd like to spend a day as my cat.

From my, albeit limited, perspective, she has the perfect life.

She always has food in her bowl and clean water to drink and doesn't need to do anything to get it. It's just always there. Maybe a little later than she'd like on some days, but most days, the bowl gets filled at 5:30am and she has the luxury of not sharing that food with anyone else. She can leave it there all day, popping in now and then to snack on a bite or two, or she can wolf down half the bowl in one sitting and know there will still be some left for later.

She sleeps for much of the day, moving between patches of sunlight, shady bushes, and in the evening, my lap. And then, exhausted by a day of sleeping in interesting locales, she snuggles up in bed for a good night's sleep with my partner and me.

In between naps, she likes to patrol the fence around our property, checking that everything is secure and the only other cats allowed on the property are ones she sanctions. There are three - a very pretty ginger tomcat we call Marmadude, a gray cat that likes to sneak inside if the doors are open, and a black one with a heart-shaped blotch on its white nose.

Marmadude acts like a suitor, coming around for my cat's affections. She just hisses at him and dives through the cat door. He sits outside, pining and blocking the way so she can't come back outside. The other two are less frequent visitors and tend to just pass through on their way to other exotic neighborhood locations.

It would be so nice to spend a day with nothing more pressing to do than find the perfect spot to sleep. And to sleep so much. I probably only get about 4 - 5 hours' sleep a night, so the idea of spending as much time napping as the cat does is very appealing.

And who doesn't want to be able to spring nimbly up trees and onto fences with the grace of a ballet dancer? Or to be showered with love and affection by everyone who comes into your orbit? But only on your own terms... If you don't feel like being loved, you can give the person offering the cold shoulder and just walk away without any ill effect or hurt feelings to contend with.

I think that's what I love the most about my cat. The way she can be both the most snuggly, loving little furball, and the world's coldest bitch - usually within the same 10-minute period - and still have everything she values in life at her fingertips.

What or who would you like to be for a day?

Weekly Goals 3-3-25

 I got a bit of writing done this weekend and finished the first chapter of the new book.  I'm calling it Street Smarts for now, but will no doubt change that later on.  I decided to try something different this time around and attempt writing the book from start to finish so I can post chapters for my CPs as I write them.  I'm hoping this might make the ridiculous amount of editing time I spend on each book a little shorter.  We'll see...

My CP liked the first chapter, so that's good.  I'm a good way through the second one, but I already feel like it's taking too long to get to the moment the book really starts.  But at the same time, I think we need to see enough of Dev's life, figure out who she is, before she ends up on the street.  So we'll see.

So my goal this week is to keep up the momentum on this book, to finish the second chapter and make some headway on the third.

what are your goals this week?