September Release. Find more titles at BWL HERE |
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September Release. Find more titles at BWL HERE |
amazon - B&N - Smashwords - Kobo |
Find this and all my other books on my Books We Love author page |
Just when we think life is getting
back to some sort of normalcy, the gates on our life slam shut, and once more
we are in lockdown here in Victoria as well as some other states, as the virus
spreads its ugly wings. When I get down in the dumps, which is not very often,
I think of the fantastic years when my husband and I would pack our caravan and
head off to parts unseen. Thank heaven I kept a pictorial copy of all our
journeys. Usually about July when the weather is at its cold and dullest here
in Victoria, we would go north or west in search of the sunshine. I still dream
of those carefree days, lolling about in some tropical haven, or walking miles
along a beach that seemed to go on forever, where it seemed that no pair of
feet had trodden before. Being close up to a dolphin at Monkey Mia WA, or face
to face with a Cassowary in a Queensland rain forest are memories to cherish.
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If you’ve been following my posts, you know I’ve been blogging about the flowers we grow in our garden. This time, I thought I’d talk about another lovely feature – the small pond we have on our back patio that the birds really love. It’s positioned below a Mugo pine so it’s easy for them to hop onto the bar and dip their heads to reach the trickling water.
Our bird bath seems to attract
as many birds as a feeder would and it’s a lot less messy! I of course add
water every day and my husband will regularly replace the water or add a shock
of chlorine to clean it. It’s important to keep the water clean as birds will
poop in it. As they get heavier either by bathing or drinking, they instinctively
get rid of any useless weight which makes them more efficient flyers.
We’ve put rocks in it so the birds have a place to stand although they seem to like drinking directly from the fountain feature. As it turns out, birds love dripping water and find the sight and sound of moving irresistible. Also, it’s best to keep the bird bath out of direct sun so the water doesn’t get too hot or evaporate too quickly. Anything can work as a bird bath really, as long as it's not too deep. Or if it is, put lots of rocks in it as we have done.
Okay, this has nothing to do
with bird baths but the trees in our yard attract a lot of other birds,
including this peregrine falcon feeding on a robin on the lower branch of our
blue spruce several years ago. We live close to downtown - sometimes they nest on the office buildings. Sorry for the picture quality, I took it with my
phone as I didn’t want to run into the house to get the camera.
https://www.bookswelove.com/donaldson-yarmey-joan/
Rejection: the act of rejecting; the state of being rejected; a thing rejected.
Rejection slip: a note from a publisher rejecting the accompanying returned manuscript.
Like most writers I have received form rejection slips and form rejection emails telling me politely that the publishing house is unable to accept my manuscript. An example: Thank you for considering ECW. Unfortunately, Controling (sic) Her Death is not right for us. I wish you every success in finding a home for your book.
However, I have also received emails and letters giving me more details about the rejection and adding a few encouraging words about my manuscript.
Dear Joan,
Thanks for submitting Controlling Her Death: My Mother's Date With Suicide to Coach House Books. Our editors noted that there's both an immediacy and a poignancy to the prose that draws the reader in from the first page.
Sadly, however, we can't offer to take it on for Coach House. We can publish only a few novels each year, and we have a surfeit of exceptional manuscripts. This leaves us in the unfortunate position of being unable to house many of the fine manuscripts we receive. We’re sorry to say that we aren’t able to fit your work on our list.
We wish you all the very best in finding a good home for it.
Sincerely,
Coach House Books
Dear Joan Donaldson-Yarmey
Thank you for submitting your manuscript The Nursery to Ronsdale Press for possible publication. Our readers have now made their reports, and I am sorry to inform you that they have recommended against publication.
After reading your excerpt our principal editor noted, "This is well written and has a great opening, but I find that it moves too slowly and that her memories-at least at the beginning-are the sort of thing that has been often written about. There is little sense of excitement or the strange. The Stone Angel does something similar, but with more verve.
We wish you well in finding a publisher for your manuscript.
Yours sincerely,
Publishing Assistant.
But
a rejection, however nicely worded, is still a rejection and it is hard to
accept. In the beginning of my writing career I went through a three day
grieving process each time I received a rejection letter.
On the first day I would feel totally depressed. I would question why I was
writing, who did I think I was trying to write a novel? I would decided that
this would be the last day that I wrote anything. I would wallow in self-pity,
shed a tear in frustration, and even kick a door.
Day two would bring anger. Anger at the publisher for rejecting my manuscript.
Anger at the months it had taken me to write the seventy-five thousand words.
Anger at myself for not having written a publishable novel. I would try to
figure out how to change it to make it better.
Day three brought a realization that maybe a different publisher might like it.
There is the saying: right idea, right publisher, right day. With a renewed
enthusiasm I would send it out again and again. I would decide that no one
could take away the fact that I had written a manuscript, that I had had the
nerve to send it to a publisher.
We
writers are supposed develop thick skins. We are supposed to detach ourselves from
our work. We are supposed to realize that we are not being judged, that our
intelligence, our sense of humour, our sex appeal, and our character are not on
the line. What is being judged is just that one piece of writing we have done.
But it is a piece of writing that we have written, that we have spent hours at
producing. Sometimes, it is tough not to take a publisher's rejection
personally.
But the point is to carry on. With multiple submissions being allowed if
one publisher rejects my manuscript I have the two or three others to look
forward to hearing from. Sometimes I can have two manuscripts and two or
three short stories out in the 'please publish me' world at one time. And when
I finish one novel, I start another so I am engrossed in it to spend
much time worring about the previous one.
The difference between being a success or being a failure is quitting too soon.
And we all know of famous writers whose works were rejected many times before
being accepted and becoming best sellers. Here are a few of the rejections
letters:
"You’re welcome to le Carré
– he hasn’t got any future."
"For your own sake, do not publish this book."
A publisher wrote to DH Lawrence about his novel Lady
Chatterley's Lover.
Maybe rejection letters make us better writers, maybe they make us better
people, or maybe they just annoy us. Whatever our reaction we have to remember
that, with publishers receiving thousands of manuscripts each year, being
rejected is just one part of the whole writing process.
All novels are populated by characters and those characters need names. With writing historical novels, or novels set in other countries, characters' names require a little more attention. Are the names appropriate for their era or country?
As an author of historical romance, I have most of my work done for me as all I need do is Google the popular male and female names for any given year and go from there. Please note: Google is a starting point, not the be-all and end-all for any type of research. Visiting cemeteries, especially historic ones like Highgate Cemetary in London, the final resting place of Karl Marx and George Michael, can be fascinating. Visiting a country churchyard is always a voyage of discovery, especially you wander amongst the older headstones.
Because my settings are mostly English, I can pinpoint the county my characters populate and run a list of names for that area. My next Regency romance, Charlotte Gray, is set mostly in the New Forest in the county of Hampshire, England, so I researched both first names and surnames from that area in the early 1800s.
Once I have a list of names, I consider how easy those names are to pronounce and if the first and second names not only fit together but also suit my characters. Into that mix, I must consider the intricacies of the British peerage if I include lords and ladies in my books. Burke’s Peerage is an invaluable resource for this.
People were often named for the trade in which they were skilled like the English surnames Smith, Baker, Archer, and Tyler, or after the towns or countries from where they originated like York, Hamilton, or French.
First names were often handed down from father to son, mother to daughter, which could get confusing if you had a long line of Edwards or Marys and even more so if, like the boxer George Foreman, all his five sons were named George. Today it seems anyone can name a child anything and sometimes seems more by fancy than reason.
What I find frustrating is when I come across a name in a book and have no knowledge of how to pronounce it. Here again, the internet is a useful resource, especially www.howtopronounce.com. Type the name in the search field ‘and listen to the result. If you are using an invented name it is only fair to your reader to qualify it in some way for the reader to easily understand it.
Names, whether real or imagined, need to be a solid anchor for readers to identify with characters and, hopefully, come to know and love them.
Victoria Chatham
Deadly Mixture (published August 1 by BWL publishing) takes my readers back to Pine County. As with all my books, the research took me a number of unexpected places, in geography as well as content.
For the uninitiated, Pine County is 1,400 square miles located just an hour's drive north of the St. Paul/Minneapolis urban area. The journey quickly leaves behind the urban centers, then suburbs, taking us past farmland, then into Pine County's forests, lakes, swamps, and rivers.
I've interviewed three Pine County sheriffs who've pointed out the unique police issues facing the rural sheriff's departments. The first issue is police response time. There are nights were only two deputies are assigned to patrol that huge area. If they respond to a crime or car accident in the farthest corner of the county, it might take them 45 minutes to respond to an emergency in the other corner of the county.
Many residents are trying to escape the hubbub of the urban areas. They seek the solitude, but expect all the services available in the urban and suburban homes. Police response time is one issue. There are other trade-offs as well. You lose the anonymity of the city and enter a community where people know their neighbors and look out for each other. The other side of that coin surprises many people who relocate to "the boonies." Your neighbors get to know you. They bump into you at the grocery store. They also know what you do, have done, and may do at some future time.
A widower friend started dating a year after his wife died. He had breakfast the morning after his date at the local mom and pop restaurant. He was surprised when the waitress asked about the restaurant where he'd taken his date the previous night. Someone else asked about the movie they'd seen, and a third person expressed his disappointment that my friend was dating so soon (one year) after becoming a widower.
I try to capture those issues in the Pine County books. The teens in Deadly Mixture are trying to escape the prying eyes of the community. They use an abandoned hunting shack to escape what they see as the oppression in their dysfunctional families. A series of unfortunate choices throw them into a deadly mixture of truancy, drugs, and death.
Sergeant Floyd Swenson is back, as is his girlfriend, Mary. Other regulars include Pam Ryan, freshly returned from maternity leave, and Sandy Maki. I've introduced a new character, C.J. Jensen, a veteran cop hired to cover for Pam's maternity leave. C.J. (Charlene Joy) is rebounding from the recent death of her husband. Her basset hound pup, Bailey, brings some humor and another set of challenges to the small sheriff's department.