The road to publication-Tricia McGill

Ah, what a rocky road it is. There aren’t many writers who can tell you their first completed manuscript was picked up by an editor at the first attempt. I fear that if they do tell you this they might be telling fibs.

Each writer’s personal journey is different in so many ways from their fellow authors. In each journey there are many hurdles to jump and lessons to learn along the way to publication.

The hardest to take at the start are those pesky rejection letters. But then we learn that each one is really just another stepping stone and when all is said and done they just reinforce our desire to write and our determination to pass the publication milestone (that depends of course on the level of our desire to see our books read).

While sorting through old letters and papers the other day on one of my spasmodic tidy-ups I came across my first valued critique. This four page document was written by a lady I never had the good fortune to meet, but her words of wisdom set me on the road to eventual publication. Her name was Leticia, and unfortunately although I have hunted high and low I cannot find the personal letter that accompanied this critique so cannot recall her surname. If by any chance Letitia should happen on these words someday I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for the encouragement she gave me to keep going along my rocky road. The wording went something like this: “Unfortunately I am not a publisher of fiction but when your husband walked into my office with your manuscript in his hand and asked me if I would be kind enough to read it, I could do nothing but agree to his plea. He assured me you were a wonderful writer and had been disillusioned by one or two harsh rejections. I can see why you are a romance writer as you have your own love affair going.”

Not word for word, but you get the picture. Leticia actually worked for a medical journal publisher but that didn’t deter my husband who had more cheek than I would ever possess. To him a publisher was a publisher, so that was that. So, some time later the critique arrived. I can’t remember if my husband picked it up or if it came by post. Leticia went into the marketing problems I had with this novel, then went on to give me her honest opinions on each character and how I could improve them, how I could change my story to make it more marketable. As I said at the start, this was over four full pages. But it was the words mixed in with the first few paragraphs that were uplifting.

“Well, in line with my remarks, serving the bad news first, the good news for you at this moment is that I found your writing very impressive. You show a real talent and the ability to become an even better craftsman as you go along.”

Well, that was all I needed. I was off, scribbling like mad (I had not acquired typewriter or computer at that stage). Of course there were many more hurdles to cross and mountains to climb but that one letter was my personal catalyst. 

Next step was to join a reputable critique group. One of these groups and the best was the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild, where I met fellow Books We Love authors Margaret Tanner and Cheryl Wright along with many other talented writers who taught me so much.

In case you are wondering which of my books was that first scribbled manuscript, it never did get published in its original state, but ended up with many changes so that it was unrecognizable from my first effort which was called “Trip to Paradise” and as Leticia warned me the title was the books' main marketing problem. I notice on looking through published books on the internet there are currently many books with that name or Paradise in their titles, but I guess times have changed and my characters’ mildly romantic trip to Far North Queensland way back then is not what they mean by paradise now.

The sad part is that my husband died before my first book was published but I dedicated it to him. Without his perseverance on my part and his faith in me it might never have happened. He was the wind beneath my wings.

You can find all my Books We Love books here:

http://bookswelove.net/authors/tricia-mcgill/# 

Or read excerpts on my web page: www.triciamcgill.com

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Angel's Flight by Juliet Waldron

Angelica is a Patriot heiress, stalked by a brutal, fortune-hunting British officer. Forced to trust Jack, the mystery man who pledges to take her on a dangerous war-time journey up river to her Albany home, she expects to encounter brigands, Tories and Indians. What she doesn’t expect is to lose her heart along the way.

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Living in a Make Believe World by Roseanne Dowell

I live in a make believe world. Okay, not literally, but vicariously through my characters.  I decide where they live, name their towns, or sometimes I let them live in a real city/town.  I prefer small towns, maybe because I’ve always wanted to live in one. I especially like towns with Victorian houses and apparently so do my characters, because I use them a lot.  I often say I must have lived during the Victorian era, probably as a mean old nanny. I’m sure I wasn’t the lady of the house, and by house I mean mansion. Queen Anne Victorian homes are my favorite. I love the round turrets, all the gingerbread, and wrap around porches. It was always my dream to buy one and restore it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be and I’m past the point of wanting one now.

Back to my make believe world. I’d like to say I choose my characters, but truthfully, they choose me.  Although I do get to name them, but if they don’t like the name, well believe me, they misbehave until I change it. And, yes, that’s happened several times. Just because I like a name doesn’t mean they do. The last time it happened it wasn’t even a main character. She was only in the story for a short time, but boy was she stubborn. She refused to talk to me and anything I wrote was garbage, better known as dreck in the writing world.

As I’ve said previously, I write many different of genres, from Women’s Fiction to Romance to Mystery and even Paranormal. Most of my books are a combination of romance and another genre. As a reader, I’ve always favored mystery and romance, so it only made sense to combine them.  Mine would be classified as cozy mysteries. I also love ghost stories – not evil mean ghosts though. One such story is Shadows in the Attic and another Time to Love Again. I’ve always been fascinated by ESP, hence my story Entangled Minds – previously published as Connection of the Minds.

My character’s ages range from their mid-twenties to middle age and into their seventies. Yes, seniors need love, too. Geriatric Rebels is a favorite.  It’s fun working with different characters, and I especially like when they add a bit of humor. I really form an attachment to them. Once a character chooses me, I make a character worksheet. I need to know everything about them, not just what they look like.

I love creating them, picking their careers, anything from housewife, authors, teachers, floral designers and interior designers. Sometimes their careers play a part in the story, sometimes not. The character in my work in progress (WIP in the writer’s world) is a former teacher. It’s not a big part of the story, but it’s something I needed to know. She’s a real character in the true sense of the word. She came into being in a previous story, All in the Family. It started out with her having a small part, but Aunt Beatrice Lulu (ABLL) grew into a big part of the story. Once I finished that book, she popped up again and demanded her own book. Problem is, she takes fits and goes into hiding every so often, which is where she is at present. Sometimes she pops up for days of writing. Other times, I get a paragraph or two. I’ve never had a character do that before.

Oh, I’ve had writer’s block a time or two, but once I’m over it the writing flows. Not so with ABLL.

  It’s also fun describing my characters, their hair and eye color, height, even their weight. I usually know the beginning and end of  my stories. What happens in the middle is as much a surprise to me as it is to my readers. ABLL is full of surprises. What that woman doesn’t get into. So even though she goes into hiding, it’s generally worth it when she reappears. I’m not sure where she came from, but I’m sure enjoying working with her. Okay, I’ll be honest, a little bit of her is me, a little bit my sisters, and even my mother. She’s a combination of all the people I love and it’s so much fun living in her make believe world.

The Often Futile Efforts to Tame the Unmannerly Poor, by Diane Scott Lewis

In my research for my 18th century novels, I often find interesting, and downright bizarre historical details.

The Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded in 1691 in London. While concerned with brothels and prostitution, it also insisted that the poor (because the rich would never behave in such a way) needed instruction to tame their lewd and blasphemous behaviors.

In league with the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the organization concerned itself with the morals and manners of those creatures who were less fortunate, and therefore, easily led astray.
Since the Revolution of 1688, England believed she had a special connection with divine providence, and must live up to that standard. Reformer Josiah Woodward opined that: “National sins deserve national judgments.”

In Bristol, England, a local “manners” society started prosecuting people for swearing and other indecent behavior.

People were beaten and put in pillories for these infractions. A woman was arrested for “Disorderly Walking.”

In 1704, Bristol’s poor were referred to as “lousing like swarms of locusts in every corner of the streets.” The indigent were morally contaminating the urban environment by their very appearance.

Workhouses and infirmaries were tasked with taming the poor. In one workhouse, groups of pauper girls were stripped, washed and given decent clothes, because outward changes led to inner ones. Appearance, behavior, and moral worth were all the same. They were then sent to hard labor. The girls’ emotions and personal feelings were never a consideration.
If the poor became ill, they couldn’t enter the infirmary unless they had clean clothes, because only respectable paupers should be healed. Charities were relied upon to provide these items. Inside the infirmary, no smoking, dice or cards was allowed as the people should be removed from corrupt influences. Patients were exposed to daily prayers, and some establishments had Biblical texts painted on the walls. Every ward had Bibles or prayer books, ignoring the fact that the majority of the poor couldn’t read.


St. Peter's Hospital (formally the Bristol Mint)

Hospitals and infirmaries were expected to cure the underprivileged of extravagance, cursing, and contempt of authority. Unfortunately, there was no mention of the cure of bodily ills.
Charity schools taught religion and compliance, but little about how to improve your lot in life.

The indulgent upper classes believed that everyone should know and remain in their proper place. The poor would stay poor, but should work hard and behave themselves. If work was difficult to find, and people starved, they should never swear about it and still attend church every Sunday, or they’d end up in gaol. 

The reason the lower orders were so ill-behaved was attributed to England’s liberal freedoms.
The Bristol society of manners eventually withered away when no one bothered to attend meetings anymore.

Clergyman Josiah Tucker called the poor brutal, insolent, debauched, and idle in their religion. He claimed that England was so careful of personal freedoms that “our People are drunk with the cup of Liberty.” His sermons became so damning, that he was followed in the streets by pauper boys who hurled insults at him. The refining of the poor obviously wasn’t working.

 
Resource: Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Bristol, by Mary E. Fissell, 1991

For more on the turbulent eighteenth century, check out my novels:
http://www.dianescottlewis.org

The Art of Craft by Victoria Chatham

I’ve just come back from my old hometown of Stroud, in Gloucestershire, in the UK. Development has drastically altered the face of the town, but the basics don’t change. The High Street is still as narrow but thankfully now pedestrianized. Imagine this with two way traffic, including buses and trucks.

Stroud itself nestles at the convergence of five valleys in the Cotswold Escarpment. The valleys were termed the Golden Valleys, due to the industry that once thrived there. So what does this have to do with art and craft?

Laurie Lee, the author of Cider With Rose, lived in the Slad Valley. Jilly Cooper, Joanna Trollope and Katie Fforde also live in and around Stroud. Katie Fforde particularly, uses Stroud for her settings. While writing is a craft with which all authors usually have a love/hate relationship, it is more generic art and craft I’m thinking of today.

One definition of craft is the skill in doing or making something, as in the arts or an occupation or trade requiring manual dexterity or skilled artistry. That being so, I claim to be a crafter for having knitted a tea cozy as a Christmas gift for a friend last year. Now, I had not knitted anything in well over twenty years and I know for a fact the last tea cozy I knitted was Christmas, 1965. So how does this tie in to my old stamping grounds?

The Cotswolds were once famous for their sheep, a mostly white breed useful for both meat and wool and which is now on the Rare Breeds list. It is said they grazed the hillsides before the Romans arrived. The hills they grazed on got their name from the old Anglo-Saxon for sheep pens, or cottes, and wealds, meaning a high windswept place.

I doubt the wool for my tea cozy came from any such sheep, but the trade is commemorated today in Stroud by this piece of statuary at the top of the High Street.

Pubs such as the Wool Pack and the Ram and the annual Tetbury woolsack races all have their roots in the wool trade which began in the Middle Ages. At one time water from the River Frome powered no less than 150 mills along the valley bottoms. These mills have now been repurposed, most recently Ebley Mill which is now the home of the Stroud District Council.

As transport by road was so difficult, time consuming and costly, the advent of the canal system made a huge impact for local business owners. The Cotswold Canal system extends for 36 miles, and rises 362 feet above sea level by a series of 56 locks along its length. The link between the River Thames and the River Severn was via the Sapperton Tunnel, once the longest canal tunnel in England at 2.17 miles (3.49 kms) long. It is no longer navigable due to the roof having collapsed in several places but it is hoped that it will one day be restored.

The art of craft in this tunnel is in the brickwork and the architecture of the portals, Daneway at  the west end of the tunnel and Coates shown here at the east end.

A large part of this canal system has been restored, but canal work parties formed entirely of volunteers tidy towpaths, fund raise and commemorate their work with these colorful murals beneath a bridge. This panel depicts the Cotswold sheep and a hot air balloon. Ballooning is popular in the area.

Whether it is a mullioned window set in a 15^th century hall, an ornamental ironwork lamp above the gateway leading into the churchyard or an oak lock gate, the art of craft abounds in this part of the world. I love it there and am always sad to leave. Now I'm back in Canada it's time to return to my craft, so it's back to the keyboard and my work in progress.

Find out more about Victoria Chatham at:

www.bookswelove.com/chatham.php
www.victoriachatham.webs.com
www.facebook.com/AuthorVictoriaChatham