Spring has arrived and once again I’m faced with the uncomfortable truth that we are well and truly into the second half of this year and a lot of my 2021 writing goals are most likely not going to happen. But that’s okay. I’m currently reading a fantastic book called Trivial Grievances by Bridie Jabour, and I do like her observation that life for us (‘us’ being people in our 30s) seems to boil down to an incessant need to be achieving things. Always, we must be achieving. Whether it’s achieving a promotion or a pay rise, cooking something on-trend and delicious, reading X many new books this month, spring cleaning the house or organising the spice rack, or, yes, writing the next book. But it’s okay not to achieve anything. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine to just laze around on the floor playing with your dog all day, or just veg out in front of the tv binge-watching shows. The only thing we really should be achieving is enjoying whatever it is we are currently doing.
That being said, though I may be falling short on my over-ambitious new-years resolutions, my readers might be happy to know that I haven’t spent the whole year lolling around on the floor playing with my dog or binge watching tv (at least, not all of it). So, here’s a quick roundup of what is happening with each of my novels-in-progress:
Blackmailing Ava Darling
This is the new, stand-alone contemporary fiction novel I’ve been writing since December last year, and I am so excited that it has made it into the Publishable program with Queensland Writer’s Centre! I had to enter the first 50 pages earlier this year, and it firstly made the longlist of 25 writers, which meant I got some one-on-one feedback on my submission as well as got to participate in some great online talks run by QWC. Then all 25 of us had to resubmit our works and QWC chose the top 10 for their shortlist … of which Blackmailing Ava Darling is one of them! Now, I get to work with an editor on my book and then later this month I’ll have the opportunity to pitch it to agents and publishers (not sure how many, but hopefully a few!) which QWC will match up for me. I’m very excited about this stage, and crossing my fingers that I might be able to get a traditional publishing contract for this book! I’ll write another update once there is more news.
Great Sexpectations
Oh dear, this is the novel I must apologies to my readers about. I’m sure I brought failure on myself with this one, since I printed in Eat Pray Shag that the next book would be out in 2021. The fact is, I have this book fully plotted out, and have already written the first chunk (approx. 20,000 words). I am absolutely planning to get back to writing this as soon as possible, but currently I am focussing on getting Blackmailing Ava Darling as polished as possible in the hopes of a traditional book deal, hence Great Sexpectations has become second priority. As soon as BAD is no longer taking up all my attention I will be getting back into drafting GS, but the reality is this book will not be out until early next year (at the earliest). Even if I manage to finish drafting it by November, my editor likely won’t be able to do the copy-edit for another few months, hence there will be a wait. So sorry everyone!
Deadly Beautiful / Kalileia
My poor little YA dystopian book baby. I love this book. I think readers will love this book. Unfortunately agents do not love this book (at least, they do not love the first 10 pages). I’ve now racked up 85 rejections from US / UK / Australian agents and nobody thinks this ‘fits their list’. I’ve realised that the chances of a trad deal for this one is close to zero, so I have stopped pitching. On the other hand, I’m quite excited about the prospect of self-publishing again. The only reason I’m not hitting the go button on it right now is that it’s the first book in a trilogy, and (if you read the above 2 book updates) the chances of me finding time to write book 2 any time soon are close to zero. I want to have book 2 fully drafted and book 3 in the works before I publish this one, so that readers will have a maximum 6-month wait between books and we can avoid a Laura the Explorer situation where I over-promise and under-deliver. BUT – sometime in the not-too-distant future, this one will be making its way into the world!
Other News / Personal News
For those of us living in Sydney, it’s been a weird year. The Northern Beaches (where I live) began 2021 in lockdown, and Christmas 2020 was the first time in my whole life that I didn’t get to see my family on Christmas Day. But, the outbreak lessened, and by the end of January life returned to almost pre-Covid normalness. We got to go out! We got to go dancing! I went out in the city at night-time, and I got to go to an amazing fancy-dress birthday party. Such luxuries! But then, in late June, the Delta strain emerged. And come mid-July the whole city was plunged into lockdown again, a lockdown which now, two months later, is even stricter and harsher than before.
I feel extremely lucky that my husband and I happened to buy a house in the country just before all this happened. Two weeks into Sydney’s lockdown we settled on our new house, and we managed to escape into wine country, one of my favourite places in the world. Though we aren’t planning to stay here permanently (this is meant to be an investment house that we will rent out!) it has been so wonderful having a garden and having actual trees and land that I can roam around on, rather than being stuck in my south-facing apartment in Sydney! I also love that we have come here at the end of winter, because one of my favourite things over the past few weeks has been roaming the grounds every morning and seeing all the trees come to life with the arrival of spring. Plus the dog LOVES it here. Even though regional NSW is also in lockdown, I hope that soon this will all just be a distant memory. And in the meantime, I have house renovations to work on (we knocked down a wall! We painted rooms! We plan to do our own flooring!) and a second COVID jab to get (first one done this week, after standing in line for 5 hours). Plus I have a spring garden to tend to, which I’m pretty sure is another over-commitment. But oh well. You can’t achieve anything if you don’t try.