Tag: author

Book Review Policies

I’ll post this on the book review page on my website as well.

For everyone who has asked (and those who might wish to) I review published or pre-publication work from indie authors.  My preference is for young-adult fantasy/dystopia/sci-fi but will consider other work.  I do accept e-books (actually, I prefer them).

My practice is to share the review with the author before I post to anywhere except my website.  As well as my website, I post reviews to the following sites:  Goodreads, Amazon in the UK, Canada, and the US, and Kobo and Smashwords – but don’t unless the author requests it.

My contact details are marianlthorpe at gmail.com.

Open Mike Night

Our revered and celebrated local bookstore/restaurant/cinema opens its restaurant/bar area to writers on Monday mornings.  It’s just a quiet place to write, with internet access, coffee and tea, and focus.  No instruction, no conversation.

I’ve just started attending this fall.  Sometimes people record on the chalkboard what they are working on – business writing, theses, novels, short stories, memoirs, blog entries.  I use the time to work on Empire’s Hostage. It’s highly productive: there are no distractions, and unlike working at the university library I can leave my laptop and phone on the table when I go to the washroom, or to move my car to avoid a parking ticket.

In a couple of weeks we’re doing an evening session, a salon – basically an open mike night for the writers who write here.  I’m both looking forward to it and apprehensive.  Two of the writers who come on Monday mornings – regulars – have both been nominated for prestigious national writing awards.  And I’m going to read an excerpt from my genre fiction?

But yes, I am.  While I’m in awe of writers who are writing work worthy of major book awards, I’m not one of them. I write to tell a simple story to entertain – and I hope to some extent challenge – young adults (or maybe anyone over the age of twelve) and to explore landscapes, both physical and of the mind.  I do it the best I can, and that’s what I’ll read.  And because I know this city, and the attitudes of those for whom this bookstore is an important part of their lives, there won’t be judgement, or negativity.  We’ll appreciate each others writing, regardless of genre, or publishing contract, or experience. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Editorial Services Contest – Two Days Left! (And please re-blog!)

I was gently reminded that:

  1.  I should have posted this on a weekend to reach the most possible people – so the giveaway contest has been extended slightly…and…
  2. I should have asked people to re-blog more “forcefully” (not my words!)…so…please do…:-)

Here’s the original post:

I am a lucky indie writer.  My young-adult adventure novel, Empire’s Daughter, was accepted for publication by a small press, which meant it received the entire professional editorial process, edited for story, continuity, copy-edited, etc., by two very talented editors.  Sadly the press went out of business – it’s a tough world – before Empire’s Daughter was published, but I benefited enormously and learned a LOT through the months of editing and re-writing. So when I published Empire’s Daughter through Smashwords and Amazon, it was polished to a high standard and has sold well.

This is not an opportunity many new writers get, and it’s one I’d like to pay forward.  So here’s my offer:  I will provide editorial services free of charge to one indie author in each of the following editorial capacities:

  1.  Story review – a read-through of the manuscript, suggestions for expansion/contraction of the story, voice, character development;
  2. Copy-editing – a detailed read of a finished manuscript for typos, grammar and spelling, name change errors, and the like.

Here’s how the give-away works.  First, go into this blog site and read some of my work – there is fiction, non-fiction, verse and a short story to look at.  If you don’t like my writing, then you probably shouldn’t enter. (You can, of course, it’s up to you!)  Then, either in the comments below or by e-mail to marianlthorpe at gmail.com, let me know the following:

Your name, the name and genre of your work, and whether you want a story review or a copy-edit.  All entries received in the next week will be literally put into a hat (by category) and one name for each pulled out by my husband.

And you must be an author without a book contract.  Those of you with contracts will have access to these services – as I did – so please leave this free opportunity to those who need it.  Clearly, I can’t check this, so you are on your honour on this aspect.

Oh, and the work has to be in English.  I speak execrable French and read it to some extent, but not well enough for this…and that’s the end of my multi-lingual abilities.

 

Two Verses

Lucifer, and, Terns at Hong Kong Harbour
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These two poems reflect just a little of the awe and joy watching birds has given me over the last forty years.

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Lucifer (Sterna paradisaea)

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Arctic Terns live almost entirely in light for their entire lives. They fly 30,000 km each year, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back. Their return – south or north – heralds the light, and spring.

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Land freezes;

Dawn and dusk reach to each other;

Birds flee, or huddle, silent.

Sunset and blood stain the snow:

Ice grows.

Where the world spirals and all northings meet;

And the sun is always or never,

The tern circles, once, twice, three times

Memory and stars beckon.

Light will fail here;

Sunset and blood stain the snow

Before the final dark, before

Ice and silence triumph.

The tern circles, once, twice, three times

And not again; south sings in its bones

And blood; stars set and rise.

Sunrise spirals and stretches; light prevails.

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Terns at Hong Kong Harbour

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Spare black on white, swift to frothing wake

in pewter waters; silver sweep of wing

bright counterpoint to lightning’s rake

rending the heavy hanging cloud; hovering,

holding; plunging to take the shining glide,

the curve and scale, beating upward against

the drag of wave, watching for the gleaming slide

of fish, awareness stretched and tensed and held

to dancing, diving grace.

Two Sonnets

Nassagaweya Township is where I live. Still mostly rural, it is dominated by rock and swamp and small fields, and was first settled in the early-to-mid 1800s. The lives and labour of those first settlers, who cleared huge tracts of hardwood and white pine, dragged enormous boulders to build boundary walls, and quarried limestone for rock and lime, were in part behind these two sonnets.

Nassagaweya 1: Winter Deer

Dividing wood and tangled swamp the road

Cuts survey-straight, a line drawn cleanly on

The map, unlike the trail that six deer followed

Through brush and cattail, three pairs of doe and fawn.

Their path ran crooked, keeping to high ground

Between the clumps of osier, brilliant red

Against the morning’s snow. A final bound

Brings the first doe to the road: the others, led

By her, follow, and in silent file cross

This barren space, alert, deliberate,

Unhurried; not admitting any loss

Of path or cover, valiance animate.

No survey stake or draftsman’s pen rules here:

Red osier, swamp, and wood belong to deer.

Nassagaweya 2: Rock and Water

Rock and water underlie this township,

But neither deeply; it’s rarely more than

A few feet to the rock, and every dip

Of land’s a swamp. A challenge to a man,

To try to farm this, but his chance to make

A life is here. So fields are cleared and streams

Diverted; roads are built. But rock can break

Both ploughshares and spirit: too many dreams

Of harvest awake to springtime flood

And summer drought; the skin of soil above

The limestone now like rock itself; now mud.

His sons say there’s not enough here, to love

Or prosper on: they answer other calls

As trees surround the crumbling boulder walls.

Divided Desires

I often go walking when I’m working out plot points, conflicts, or scenes, and today was no exception.  I’m reaching a fairly pivotal plot point in Empire’s Hostage, and I needed to think about it.  However, I’m also house-and-cat sitting for my sister this week, and so am close to the birding mecca of Point Pelee National Park.  And those of you who’ve read my bio on various sites know I’m also a birder.

It’s fall, not the intense migration of spring with birds (and birders) in hordes.  So I figured I could walk, look at a few birds and think about plot at the same time. Ha!  Warblers everywhere.  Thrushes everywhere.  Sparrows everywhere and all the Eastern Phoebes in the world, it seemed.  I’d walk a few paces, thinking… “if Lena does this, how will Cillian react?”  and would just start formulating a scene and ‘What’s that?  A black-throated green?  Yes, juvenile male….ok, where was I?  Cillian doesn’t like…..Now what?  Kinglet…which one…golden-crowned, should be a ruby-crowned in this bunch somewhere…”

This went on for my entire two hour walk. I can’t turn my birding brain off; it’s just not possible. I wonder if Margaret Atwood has this problem?  (Canadian writer extraordinaire and also a birder, in case you’re unsure.)

However, at the end of the two hours, I had seen a ruby-crowned kinglet along with a lot of other birds, and had more or less worked out the next couple of scenes, albeit in a very fragmented way. So once I’ve got today’s records entered in e-bird, I’ll go and write for a couple of hours. Away from the window and the bird feeders.

And now for something completely different…

Here’s a short story I wrote a number of years ago for my husband’s birthday party – his birthday is just a couple of days before Hallowe’en, so every few years we do a costume party with a theme.  This particular year it was horror stories.   You can read it on Wattpad  or on my website.

Spider

Routines and Frustrations

It can take a long time to get back into a routine, especially when that routine is self-directed.

Since my holiday earlier in September I’m having difficulty getting back into many of my routines. I’m not writing regularly, exercising regularly, or even eating as well as I was. Now I’m away from home again, staying at my sister’s house for a while, keeping her cats company for a few days of the three weeks she and her husband are in India playing in the World Bridge Championships. (I can’t even play euchre, but the cats don’t care about that. They’re just happy to have a warm body to sleep with again, rather than just the teenager from across the street who feeds them every day.)

I’m also feeling some of the frustration all writers feel unless their book is a best-seller. While some of of my friends and family have read my work (and thank you all) others haven’t. Which is fine, too – the ones that are annoying me are those who haven’t even mentioned it to me, ever, even though they know it’s been published and a second book is in the works. I can’t work out if they are too self-centred to say ‘hey, that’s great, well done’, jealous, or, oblivious. I shouldn’t let it bother me, but sometimes it does.

I’m going to take this time – four days on my own – to re-focus, remembering why I do what I do, whether it is the writing, walking or what I choose to eat or not to eat. It’s interesting for me to observe that I am still quite easily swayed by external influences (and my own inertia) – I’m not quite as self-actualized as I thought (or at least hoped) I was. An opportunity for growth.

So I’m off for a walk…always the best thing I can do when things just aren’t right.