NEED A SECOND OPINION?

A couple of months ago I had one of those wretched nights when you know something unpleasant is going on in your body. Although I was very feverish and thought I must just have one of the vicious viruses going around, I needed a ‘second opinion’ from my doctor. I will always be very thankful for that decision. Within a few minutes she had rung the ambulance, inserted an intravenous drip and given me a shot of morphia to ‘tide me over’, as she put it, for the fifty minute trip to the hospital. One not-so-small kidney stone had caused a blockage which had caused an abscess which had caused my whole system to be poisoned.

Have you ever thought of authors needing a ‘second opinion’ on their manuscripts before they are submitted to an editor or agent for that most important decision? Some writing their very first novel may need a third, fourth – even fifth opinion. So who can writers consult for those opinions?

I was very fortunate to have a very knowledgeable doctor who immediately realised the gravity of my situation and acted accordingly. But I certainly needed those folk at the hospital who did those vital tests needed for the ‘third opinion’ hospital doctor to ask the specialist, the urologist, to give the fourth opinion and order the correct treatment he had been trained to give.

And what about the people who have been asked for opinions on another writer’s sweated over efforts to present the story they have taken a long time to finish. How should they respond?

My doctor knew I was very sick – which incidentally I did not know at the time – and acted appropriately to help me. I am so glad she had been well trained to know what needed to be done. So writers need to be careful who they ask to read their manuscripts. Family members and good friends may be okay for that ‘first opinion’ but not be the best qualified readers for the second. They can say whether they enjoyed your story or not, but because of your close relationship may not wish to hurt you if they do not think it is a good story. Some may also be too hesitant to point out problems in your fiction writing technique. I also hasten to add that it may not be wise to ask some friends with writing experience to read your efforts, especially if they are not readers or writers of your particular type of genre. I have also discovered that writers only of non-fiction – yes, and even editors too of non-fiction – are not always the right folk to ask to check your fiction manuscript.

And there is another problem for those of us who know other published authors in our genre whose books we like and would like to pluck up courage to ask. Most are so busy they rarely have time to read whole manuscripts sent to them – especially by beginner writers. Over the years there have been published authors who have started their own businesses as manuscript assessors. There usually is a charge of course because these writers are using their own writing time to try and help others.

One such author I know of is Jeanne Marie Leach.

She has her charges listed on her website. For example, she offers what I think is a very fare first offer:

No charge for basic read of first 5 pages – which determines extent of editing necessary.

Do click here and check out her website.

Omega Writers in Australia has one free manuscript appraisal up to 50 pages each year as part of their help for their members. Other writers groups and organisations also offer help in various ways. It is VERY worthwhile being a member of a good writiers organisation.

There are thousands of folk writing novels, including Christian Fiction. Being just a reader who wants to become an author is not enough these days –perhaps it never was? The competition to get our books out there to readers is fiercer than ever today. To have any chance to be successful in having readers be so blessed that they rave about our novels, we have to seek to achieve the highest standard we can. Attending workshops for writers, studying “how to...” books are essential for anyone who wants to write a novel.

Whatever you do, please recognise that especially if you have had little training for writing a novel of any genre, you most likely need at least a ‘second opinion’ to make it the best you possibly can before trying to find a publisher – or also self-publish of course.

I have tried to help other writers over the years but like many other published authors, there have been too many times I hate to have had to say, ‘Sorry, I am afraid my own commitments right now schedule right now does not give me enough time to do your manuscript justice.’

Please leave a comment about any other authors you know of, and especially any you have had personal experience with, who currently can offer help with fiction manuscripts.

Mary Hawkins is a best-selling inspirational romance author.
Over the years she has enjoyed mentoring writers and trying to share what she has been learning about writing novels. She has enjoyed many speaking appointments and has presented workshops at various writer's groups, including Romance Writers of Australia and in recent years at the Word Writers events in Queensland sponsored by Omega Writers and Wombat Books. She lives in Tasmania with her husband Ray, who is also a published author of the 31 Day Devotional books and a contributor to the ICFW Friday Devotions. She is currently trying hard to get back into completing her 18th manuscript as she continues to recover from septicaemia. Mary's novel, Return to Baragula, is the first book featured on the Australian Christian Readers Blog Alliance http://acrba.blogspot.com.au ncing in November.

WHY MY BARAGULA SERIES? (Book Giveaway!)

Writers are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas from?”
There have been many times for most of my books I simply have to answer, “I really have no idea!”

Another question of course is, “why do you write series?” Usually I have to smile. The truth is that the only series I deliberately planned were my historical Heartsong Presents books that were later released by Barbour Publishing in the 4-in-1 volume called “Australian Outback.” Not even when I wrote my first Baragula book did I plan it as the first one of a series!

And actually, the Great Southland series kind of “happened” too. To start with, when the editor asked me about my writing an historical after several contemporary Heartsongs, I thought I would be smart and simple to use information from my own Pedler and Telfer Family Historical Association published books where all the research was already done for me. Then the editor told me, “but being an Australian historical we’d just have to have convicts, Mary.”

What he didn’t realise was that both sides of my family migrated from Scotland and England to South Australia in about 1838 and that was the only Australian state who never had a convict settlement! So I had to do heaps of research to find out what the convict situation was several years before then. I discovered very quickly I had a huge battle with the plot I thought up fitting in the under 55,000 words for Barbour’s inspirational romance book club. In the end, so many minor characters needed their own story told and the only way was to tell them in other books.

Because I had that problem of word length, for my next book I wondered if I could write a much longer book. And I do know where the “idea” for that first book came from! Several years before this our daughter graduated from Senior High School. In Australia that is the last year of schooling unless going on to university or into other tertiary education institutions. “Schoolies Week” has become famous for the thousands of teenager school leavers who descend on the Gold Coast beaches in southern Queensland.

Apparently most of the locals and law enforcement agencies do not look forward to what happens during those hectic, frantic partying days on their doorstep! I was thankful our daughter did not want to go. But my writer imagination kicked in. What if she, a young Christian had gone with some of her friends who did not share her standards? What if she had become caught up in the “Sun, Surf and Sin” there? What if. . .? What if. . .?

And so Return to Baragula was born. But when it was written – and revised and revised and revised – as happened in my Search series years before, other minor characters just had to have their stories told too in Outback From Baragula. I am really excited that I have just signed a contract for Book Three, Justice at Baragula, which will be released in April 2011.

So, as well as the first anniversary of our ICFW blog, I personally have much to celebrate and would love to giveaway a copy of Return to Baragula to someone who reads this blog post and leaves a comment here. Oh, and you can check out the video trailer for this book on my website -http://www.mary-hawkins.com/

WARNING: Unfortunately my Baragula books are no longer available in most shops overseas. This means you have to obtain a copy direct from my publisher or through my own website and we have to charge you postage on top of the price of the book. So, I am offering a Baragula book as a giveaway. Don’t miss your chance to win Return to Baragula at no cost to yourself.

To enter the draw, just leave a comment about book series you have enjoyed, ask a question or simply say you would like to win a copy - and don’t forget to leave your email address. The winner will be announced on Sunday, November 28.

"Void where prohibited; the odds of winning depend on the number of entrants. Entering the giveaway is considered a confirmation of eligibility on behalf of the enterer in accord with these rules and any pertaining local/federal/international laws."

Mary is a best-selling inspirational romance author. Her 19th title will be released in 2011. A Queensland farmer’s daughter, she became a registered nurse before going to Bible College. She and her minister husband have three adult children and five grandchildren, enjoyed nearly 46 years of ministry including church planting in Australia, two years in England, three short term mission trips to Africa and now live in Tasmania, Australia's island state.

Launching That Book

When my first book was released, it never entered my mind to have a book launch. Sure, the following year for the second book I did have a book signing at a local shop owned by a Rotarian friend. Seventeen titles later over the next ten years or so, I still never gave a thought to having a “Book Launch” for any of them. In fact, I had never been present at any other writer’s book launch either.

Then we moved to Tasmania and I became a member of the Society Women Writers Tasmania. One of our writers who met with us each month announced the launch of her book and so I attended my first book launch ever. When my eighteenth title, Return to Baragula was published in 2008, there was amazement when I confessed I’d never officially launched a book. So, with the encouragement and help of my SWWT friends, Mary had her first book launch, followed a year later by one for her second book in the series, Outback From Baragula.

I have been to other launches since then and in the last couple of months there have been two. The one last June was for a beautiful children’s book, Potato Music, by a local award winning author, Christina Booth. If you are interested in the fascinating story how this book came to be written, I did share about that on my own blog. Here I would like to tell you about the launch I went to a couple of evenings ago.

The author, Marilyn Quirk (url) had taken three years to research and write her non-fiction book, Tasmania. . .an island far away. She spent many, many hours searching for information, interviewing descendants to write the true stories of migrants of many different nationalities. At least these stories have been recorded for their descendants, for generations to come, but the difficulty she had in tracing public and personal historical records of all kinds and in all places was a wake-up call that these precious memories are so quickly being lost. It is an invaluable reminder to all Tasmanians, in fact all Australians, what caused men, women and children to leave their homelands. Both good and bad experiences in their own countries brought them here. Both good and bad things happened in this country while they tried to become part of a different culture with often a different language.

Right now, immigration and asylum seekers are hot topics here in Australia. With a Federal election now only four weeks away, it has become even more controversial as increasing numbers of smugglers try to reach our shores with boatloads of people hoping to find refuge and a new life here. Whereas in the past, migrants have come mainly from Europe and Asia, more recent refugees to Tasmania have come from Africa. Even though modern communication links us around the world so rapidly compared to centuries ago, this is still a new “Island Far Away” from all that was familiar – whether hated or loved. We need to all remember that with “strangers.”

Every book launch I have been privileged to attend here in Tasmania has been different – including my own – and I am wondering what other writers as well as readers think about book launches. Two launches, including my first one were held outdoors as part of a National Trust properties annual Fair. I’ve heard of one organised by a well known local doctor, farmer and then state politician who hired a hall, had about 500 people present, an orchestra etc, etc. The one this week had many descendants of migrants present, including the local city Mayor who launched the book. His own family had migrated from Holland after World War II.

From my own two launches, I realise it is important to plan one that will be particularly of interest to targeted readers of a particular kind of book. Mine are aimed at the Christian fiction market, so the last one as part of a local church’s Fair was far more successful!

I would love to hear from writers and especially readers about book launches they have been to or heard about. What worked? What didn’t?

And hopefully in days to come, I too will be able to put some of your hints into practice at another book launch!

Truth STRONGER than Fiction?

Mary is a multi-published Australian author, especially in Christian romance novels. After being published by Harlequin Mills and Boon medicals and Barbour Publishing with inspirational (Christian) romance in America, her most recent novels are being released by Ark House Press, a Christian publisher in Sydney, Australia. Book One in this new series, Return to Baragula, has been released in America with Book Two scheduled for 2010. The third in this series, Justice at Baragula will be released in Australasia in 2010. Read more about Mary and her minister husband on www.mary-hawkins.com

Already amazing stories are coming out of the tragedy in Haiti. There are stories of miraculous escapes, rescues, people who risk their own lives searching for survivors in the rubble – like the young man who risked his own life to dig a tunnel for days to reach his next door neighbour’s little girl many days after the earthquake, but also stories of people driven by desperation to looting, rioting, grabbing and doing what they can to survive. In the weeks, months and years to come there will be many, many more stories in our newspapers, magazines, on the news, TV documentaries. However I can’t help but think of all the other stories that will never be told simply because no one bothered to record them. Sadly, only a comparatively few of the multitude of good and the bad events from these days will anyone in generations to come every know. Some of course over time may be best forgotten perhaps but shouldn’t families at least know their own families’ personal stories? After everything that can be is restored once more, how many of the survivors and rescue workers will eventually write down their own private experiences for their children and generations to come.

Over the years my husband and I have talked about how sad we are that our elderly relatives never wrote down their stories for us, our children, grandchildren and the generations to come. Strange as it may seem to many in this modern era of communication such as the world has never known before, in this day of the I pods, internet, email – even blogs! – we are in danger of losing permanent records. How many of us print off an email from a friend that once would have been in a letter form? One hit on the delete button and that information is lost, gone.

A couple of years ago I had the privilege of sorting out cupboards in my mother’s house before she had to go into a retirement home. My sister and I found a wealth of old letters she had kept going back to the late 1930s after she and my Dad left their parents and families in South Australia to start a new life thousands of miles away in Queensland. There were even several from one of my grandmothers to my sister and I, written in her own hand-writing. We have always been glad that a few years ago my mother was persuaded to write down the story of that very difficult trip from Eyre’s Peninsula across the harsh outback of New South Wales. Of course, over the years we’d heard some of the stories like the time my eldest brother, then only six months old nearly died of heat exhaustion in that harsh January which I’ve recently discovered was during one of the worst heat waves ever recorded. Also some years ago, I managed to use a mini-recorder and get my father’s brother to tell me some stories of my Dad who died when I was sixteen years old. Now somehow I have to transport that old cassette to a CD – or should it be an MP3 disc nowadays!

It is a cliché we all know that ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’ Many novelists have been told by readers – yes, and even editors especially – that an incident the writer knows really happened is considered too ‘unbelievable’ in their novel. I believe truth can be not only ‘stranger’ it can be even ‘stronger’ than the novels we try to write! But the truth does need to be recorded faithfully by eye witnesses.

Have you encouraged your family members to write down their personal experiences for the sake of future generations? Have you written down your own? And let us never make the mistake of thinking or saying ‘my life is too boring.’ For those who love you, who are related to you, in years to come it may bring you and your circumstances alive for them – yes, perhaps even the difficult days and the seemingly ‘boring’ times!

Interview and book giveaway: Mary Hawkins, Return to Baragula

I'm delighted to have the opportunity to interview my dear friend and ICFW blog member Mary Hawkins. Mary has published eighteen books and lives in Tasmania, Australia. Today we're giving away a copy of Mary's book, Return to Baragula.

RETURN TO BARAGULA (Ark House Press, 2008)

Emily Parker's actions as a teenager not only impacted her own life but the lives of others.

Now, six years later, she returns reluctantly to her home town of Baragula only to discover the man at the heart of those actions, Matthew Davidson, is the community's respected doctor.

While Emily's faith is now severely weakened by all that has happened, Matthew's life has completely turned around since he committed his life to Christ. His personal relationship with God is tested when he discovers how his behaviour when a non-believer hurt so many, especially Emily, and feels responsible for her hardness of heart towards the Lord.

Disease attacks the community while danger from another source threatens Emily and her family. Through it all, will Matthew and Emily's faith be strong enough to forgive each other and put the past behind them?

Return to Baragula is set in the beautiful Hunter Valley, an area known for its vineyards. What led you to choose this part of Australia as the setting for Return to Baragula?

Yes, this beautiful part of New South Wales, about two hours drive north of Sydney, is noted for vineyards but that is only one small part of the whole area. The western section of the valley alone covers more than 18,000 square kilometres of National Parks, cattle country, vineyards, mountains and rich green river flats, capable of growing almost any crop, as well as supporting thousands of merino and cross bred sheep. You might like to check this in more detail at Hunter Tourism

However, as much as we love this region the main reason I chose to create a small village west of Scone towards the beautiful Barrington Tops mountain range is because it is in an area I “know” and love as we lived in the Hunter Valley for over twenty years. Also, our son was a forester in the Barrington Tops mountain area and helped me with research.

The prologue in Return to Baragula could be considered edgy. How important do you feel it is to show your characters struggling with real life issues?

Essential. Although this is fiction it has to show real people in real situations and the particular one highlighted here far too many young people can find themselves in. I considered it very important to try and show how a young, committed Christian can feel and be affected after yielding to temptation. I also thought it necessary to show how a non-Christian in this day and age may not comprehend the pain that a Christian may go through when this happens.

I would hope that most readers would not actually think this “edgy.” What happened is certainly not told in what I consider to be explicit language but I did need to show the depths of emotion of both characters. When writing this book I struggled just where to start Emily and Matthew’s story. I considered the contents of the prologue told in the way I have very important to show the changes in both of them years later when Chapter One commences. The choice they made when young was a major catalyst for what happened not only to them in the years that followed but also to those they loved.

What do you hope your readers will take away after reading Return to Baragula?

I believe that a novel’s primary task is to give the reader an entertaining and enjoyable read with a story that makes them not only think but keep wanting to turn the page to see “what happens next.” Certainly I try very hard not to “preach” just show through the characters how faith and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ should affect the choices we make in life.

Having said that though, especially as the targeted readership is women, I was delighted to hear of a man telling other men at a meeting they should encourage young men to read it so they could catch a glimpse of how they should behave in certain situations. I would so very much like to think not only young Christians might realise clearly how their behaviour can have very far-reaching results over many years but also how attitudes of others in church life towards them may hinder or help their relationships with God.

Return to Baragula is published by Ark House Press. Please share with us what it's like working with a small Australian publisher.

It is certainly “different” in several ways and I have enjoyed working with them. To start with, being in the same time zone is an advantage for contact via mail, email and phone calls – although I do try hard to keep all that to a minimum as much as possible because I know how busy they are. For this first book with them I did not have quite as much input but have had more with Book Two in the series. It was good to use the Australian English spell check again and not worry over much about terminology that may be considered too “foreign” by an overseas editor. I've also been able to have more input into the covers than with my other two overseas publishers!

One of the biggest differences has been the increased personal promotion I have been trying to do. Ark House have local distributors for both Christian bookshops as well as the general market. STL distributes their books in North America and I believe Ark House does all they can to get their books into both Christian and secular shops. But the fact remains they are still “small” in the over-all Christian fiction market especially and trying to compete with larger, well-established publishers is not at all easy. Like all publishers these days they do encourage their authors to do as much promotion as they can. In other words, they are really no different in that than every other publisher whether big or small!

Outback from Baragula, the sequel to Return to Baragula, was released in Australia in March 2009. Do you have a US release date for Outback from Baragula? Where can we purchase Return to Baragula and Outback from Baragula?

Ark House is still sorting out the US release date in 2010 with their distributor for Book Two so until then it is only available through Australasian shops, direct from Ark House or autographed copies from myself. I do have Pay Pal on my website but do need of course to add postage for different parts of the world and ask that I be contacted first for the total cost.

Do you have any Christmas traditions?

We usually spend Christmas with our children and grandchildren. Blending my family and my husband’s was not easy in the early years of our marriage. Remember our Christmas is during the hottest time of the year in Australia. In Sydney Ray was always used to the traditional hot roast with several choices of meat, but I was used to a Christmas closer to the heat of the tropics and usually when the grain harvest was hopefully finished on our farm or with still several days to go around the Christmas period. My mother in those early days only had a wood fuel stove that of course heated the house so made a hot meal in the middle of Christmas day unwelcome. So Ray and I had to decide what traditions we would set for us and our family. Being in ministry meant preparing for Christmas Day services and so was easier to decide to follow my mother’s pattern of cooking everything possible the day before and having a massive cold salad with every trimming imaginable!

A Christmas tree and decorations with significant meaning to us and our family are always important. I even bought a new one in Texas several weeks back to remind us of our time in the US this year.

Please share your Christmas traditions with us. By commenting on today’s post you can enter the drawing to win an autographed copy of Return to Baragula. The winner will be announced on Sunday, December 27. Please leave an email address [ ] at [ ] dot [ ] where you can be reached.

"Void where prohibited; the odds of winning depend on the number of entrants. Entering the giveaway is considered a confirmation of eligibility on behalf of the enterer in accord with these rules and any pertaining local/federal/international laws."

To learn more about Mary Hawkins and her books, please visit her website.

Narelle Atkins writes contemporary inspirational romance. She resides in Canberra, Australia with her husband and children. To learn more about Narelle, please visit her website.