Sale
February 12, 2011 at 10:53 am | Posted in Uncategorized | 8 CommentsTags: cowboys, equilibrium, sales, writing
Thanks for all your comments about titles guys, it was interesting to see how everyone approaches them, from a writer’s and a reader’s perspective. I ended up calling the story “Equilibrium”, for reasons that will hopefully become obvious once I’ve got an official blurb to share with you. It definitely satisfies my need for the short and the snappy, and like I said, it even has something to do with the story, so it ticks the boxes on all counts, yay.
Happily I will have an official blurb to share with you eventually, because Dreamspinner have accepted it, with publication slated for June. I am very, very happy about this, since it will be my first novel-length publication, and it’ll be available in paperback as well as ebook. Very exciting!
Original snippets ahoy!
March 2, 2010 at 10:09 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 CommentsTags: cowboys, snippets, writing
I am terrible at updating this thing. I’d say I’ll get better, but I probably won’t, let’s face it.
February was not a good writing month for me. Life took over as it often does, and I wrote hardly anything. But it’s March now, and so that gives me an excuse to forget February and have a really productive March instead. I’m still plodding on with the cowboys story, which I think now has a name, possibly. *shifty eyes* Since I haven’t looked at it for a week or so, I’ve been reading it over, and I’ve decided to post some snippets, to keep me motivated. Now, bear in mind that they’re first draft snippets, but for all that I think they’re pretty clean draft-wise, and I’m fairly certain both scenes will make it into the final draft in some form or another. I apologise in advance for any typos or awkwardness – I can’t see any, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. These have not had the fine-tooth comb treatment.
So, some scene setting: Australia, present day. Our first hero is Michael, a vet from Sydney who has decided to move to the country to start a new life. Here he meets our second hero, Ryan, an ex-mounted policeman who is back on his family’s cattle farm after a few years away for family reasons. Ryan has stock horses now that he’s not a copper anymore, and competes with them with an eye to building himself a nice little stud farm with his prize-winning mares.
In this first snippet, Michael’s sister Jen is visiting him, and Ryan has invited them to the farm, ostensibly so that Jen’s horse-mad son can look at his horses, but really so that he can spend some time looking at Michael. Natch.
January 24, 2010 at 8:04 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
Tags: cowboys, research, wips, writing
They say you learn something new every day.
Today’s lesson: how to pregnancy test a cow. My life, honestly.
However, as I just said to empty_tea, if getting my main character to stick his hand up a hundred cow’s rectums is going to get him laid, then so be it. It’s all for a good cause!
Saviours and saints, devils and heathens alike
January 23, 2010 at 12:47 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 8 CommentsTags: cowboys, research, wips, writing
It’s noisy in New Zealand today. I’ve got diggers in the next door neighbour’s yard, my landlord dismantling the fence at the back of my place to allow a digger in there. Diggers to the left of me, diggers to the right. I’m waiting for them all to STFU so that I can get some writing done. Theoretically I could go to the library to write, but I really can’t be arsed. Although I should, since my goal for today is 3000 words. But honestly, I doubt I’ll reach that, so I’ll be happy with 1500 after a week of nothing – yay for self-defeating low expectations.
These days I have a little folder full of bookmarks for research, and it occurred to me the other day that it would be pretty easy to guess what I’m working on at the moment just based on them. There are links to websites with info on:
Campdrafting
Tentpegging (if you look at the link you’ll see it’s a sport, not something where you take your partner away to the bush to play with sex toys 😉 )
Australian stock horses
The design of Australian stock saddles
The NSW Mounted Police
Cattle stations/cattle farming in Australia
Agriculture in Australia
Various events being held in northern NSW country towns
Horse stud farms
Australian place names of aboriginal origin
Australian geographical name derivations
I’ve also got saved on my hard drive documents on how to castrate calves and lambs, worming cattle, veterinary involvement in large animal farming in Australia. There are definitely no prizes for guessing what the story’s about, although hopefully when it’s done all these links won’t be all it’s about.
Another thing that can be said about all that is: god bless the internet! One of the tentpegging rule books even has a diagram with the layout of the field, for god’s sake. How on earth did we all find this information when it wasn’t at our fingertips?
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Meredith Shayne 