Another Na-No-Wri-Mo

So another Halloween has passed. I’ve posted a couple of pictures for you.

Now I’m into Na-No-Wri-Mo and am counting down my 50, 000 words for November. Since I have never won this goal, I am determined to finish my Steampunk novel I have been working off and on for the past few years. Hopefully this year it will get finished! Wish me luck for no distractions and for will power to get the job done! I need it!

I must say, I have planned a little bit better than past years, My Preptober wasn’t as intense as it could have been, but I did make a more user-friendly calendar that is targeting my hours available more positively than in past years. With two big birthday parties to celebrate and my first Society of Children’s Book Writer’s and Illustrator’s (SCBWI) conference to attend all day next Sunday, on top of work and home duties, it will be an intense month. I have already knocked off the list of events, my Ten Penners meeting yesterday (which we discussed and worked on Na-No-Wri-Mo), and my daughter’s uni exhibit that was very interesting and entertaining last Friday night. One proud mummy here.

I’m very excited to be attending the SCBWI conference next week. I booked a spot for a manuscript appraisal and at the moment I’m very interested in the feedback. However, next week, I will probably have a plethora of emotional states running through me in anticipation! We shall see.

Have a great week everyone! – Marion

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Hello NA-NO-WRI-MO

Well for yet another year I am attempting to beat the 50,000 word goal for Na No Wri Mo! Or National Novel Writing Month, which is actually worldwide these days! This year, dare I say, I am determined to get there!

For the last couple of weeks, I have been trying to tie up loose ends that may keep me from getting distracted. It’s not the best month, honestly, the month before Christmas! Year end preparations for work or school, thankfully my daughter is in uni now and we don’t have those end of year commitments. My daughter and I had fun making cute Halloween biscuits and giving out lollies to the trick or treaters tonight as you can see from our photo’s.

I think my state of mind will be more focused now, as long as I keep away from the television and Facebook! Lucky for me I have finished season 3 of Lucifer and binged on The Vampire Diaries over 4 or 5 weeks, didn’t realise what I was missing! Now I’m in the middle of Downton Abbey, but I can put that aside to write and catch the rest later.

So please wish me luck as I step into November’s abyss of words and make my creation of 50K plus words of pretty OK reading. If the goal is achieved, I will be happily editing over Christmas and looking forward to sending my baby in the the big wide world for the New Year! I just love dreaming. Now to make it a reality! 🙂

Catch up time.

A bit of a catch up … it has, yet again, been quite a while since my last blog post but I have been busy, though not all writing. Here’s some of my highlights.

29^th April I went to my first Supanova! I had a ball! I made sure to catch a couple of the presentations, one of which was Alan Tudyk from Firefly. He was great entertainment. Love seeing all the cosplayers in their wonderful creations. Hopefully next time I will be in costume too! I bought a couple of T-shirts for my daughter and also made a special stop to see author Samuel Colbran. Of course, I bought his book ‘Lake Merrin‘ which I am currently reading.

 

On the 2^nd May, fellow Ten Penner, Jill Smith and I made a visit to Burleigh Heads State School, with our mascot Plinko to chat about the writing of stories in our latest anthology Mystery, Mayhem and Magic. The kids were fabulous and the librarian Janina was a delight. Thank you Janina, so many happy memories there.

 

15^th June, Incredibles 2! I took my daughter and her boyfriend to see the 18+ session at Pacific Fair. The night time, adults only session was a great idea for Event Cinemas! We sipped sweet cocktails, whilst enjoying the DJ and watching big kids play in the jumping castle before seeing the movie with no screaming kids. And it was a very good movie!

Wednesday 29^th June, I won tickets from GC Weekend Edition to see the Australian movie Brothers’ Nest featuring Shane Jacobson and his real life brother Clayton. It did have dark undertones but it wasn’t as dark as I thought it was going to be. The pace was slow, but intriguing, it flowed well and I don’t think it warranted a quicker pace because of the unwinding of the story. The writing was good and the acting was good. It was rather disturbing but as one lady mentioned to me afterwards, “it was nice to not listen to an ocker accent from an Aussie movie. They just spoke plain Australian English.”

If I paid for the movie, I don’t think I would have been disappointed but the movie isn’t up there on my great movie list. There were some sad parts in it and for once I didn’t cry but my daughter, whom I dragged along, did shed a few tears.

The ending was great and had a couple of surprises as the events unfolded. I would give it a 7 out of ten.

 

On the 7^th July which should have been our Ten Penners meeting at Broadbeach library, we were kicked out by the library for one of their famous Writers Block sessions. But being avid writers of more than one genre, most of us turned up to see the gorgeous Ally Blake give her talk about Romance writing! I loved her session. She has a wonderful conversational tone in her presentation and struck a heartfelt cord among most of us! I also had the opportunity to meet Ann Brady from the UK. Another children’s author she is delightful and joined myself and fellow Ten Penners for a chat over lunch at Pacific Fair after the workshop session.

 

21^st July, I had a lovely windfall at the Gold Coast Writers Association meeting at Fradgley Hall Burleigh Heads. I won 2^nd prize in the raffle – 3 books! “Flirting with the Moon” by Andrew McDermott and also his publishing guide “Yes You Can Publish Your Book!” The Publicious guide to self-publishing. Publicious is his publishing company and he was once our GCWA president. The third book “Inspire Your Fire” creative innovation through authorship by the current GCWA president Ocean Reeve and also a book publisher under his own name! Lots of talent here at GCWA.

 

 

I’m looking forward to reading these boys books but Andy’s Flirting with the Moon I had already bought a copy at last month’s meeting and devoured within a week, so I passed this one on to my friend Kate. Look out for my review coming up soon, it’s a wonderful read.

22^nd July, our Gold Coast S.C.W.B.I. meeting at Crafted Coffee upstairs in The Kitchens, Robina Town Centre. I love getting together and chatting children’s stories with this group which is co-ordinated by the lovely Angela Sunde.

 

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I also had the chance to catch up again with Ann Brady a children’s author from the UK who is visiting her daughter. Jo Sandhu, and Candice Lemon-Scott pictured here with me.

So that’s my catch up, hopefully I won’t take as long with the next post. Have a beautiful winter. Marion 🙂

A feature spot for me!

After a lovely creative morning with my fellow Ten Penners on Saturday, I have had quite a few cute little stories brewing in my mind. However, as usual, housework & gardening prevailed and today (Monday) I was bookkeeping again! Silly work always gets in the way.  😛

This afternoon though, I checked my email and wow, what a surprise! I am being featured in Pass It On (PIO). A fabulous ‘weekly, on-line, interactive, networking e-zine for those involved with or interested in the children’s writing & illustration industry.’ It’s a subscription e-zine so many of my friends and relatives won’t see it but I am so chuffed to be in there! Chatting about what I have done as a co-ordinator for my writing group The Ten Penners, a support group for adults writing for children, which is part of the Gold Coast Writer’s Association (GCWA). I love my group and love talking about what we are up to. After producing our third anthology Mystery, Mayhem & Magic last year, we are getting back to basics this year, with fun creative exercises and stimulating homework challenges. We always say we are the fun part of the GCWA! 🙂 And that is exactly how it feels.

So after an exciting end of the day. I think I should celebrate a little with some creative writing just to sharpen things up. I am hoping to get one little project of mine, up and out into the world this year. Wish me luck!

Have a beautiful week everyone!

Marion

Christmas socialising …

I had such a lovely weekend!

Saturday, my daughter and I volunteered yet again to set up the Christmas Tree on stage for Nerang Celebrates Christmas. We’ve done it so many times now, it’s like a given that we will do it and we do it with pleasure. Waking early and watching a shower come down before we arrived made it a little steamy but thankfully that was all the rain we had that day! It turned out to be glorious and the choir who practice so hard, could certainly give every other Christmas Carols event a good run for the money. I think they excelled even more this year!  To top things off I even had a job as cameraman, taking a prime spot in the front of the stage to film. I had so much fun!!

Sunday, I went to a S.C.W.B.I. meet and greet and had a ball meeting new and old friends!

Thanks Maria for taking me in the group photo, it was lovely to meet you and had lots of fun taking selfies. Only one of mine was good enough to show here. I look forward to seeing yours!

Merry Christmas!

Marion

At last, a launch.

Today we had our highly anticipated book launch and it was good! We had lots of fun dressing up and supplying custom crafted book marks, and lollies as prizes.  I am loving my cake toppers with our logo and book cover, very special.

A big thank you to Gold Coast City Libraries for supplying tea, coffee and biscuits.

We are all looking forward to a little rest, there have been mammoth efforts all round. I really have a great team to work with. If you wish to purchase a book, I will have a shopping link on my blog soon but The Ten Penners have a page to place an order and pay by credit card through PayPal.  You can also buy direct from your favourite author, Bookface Pacific Fair, Big B Burleigh Heads, Amazon and Kindle.

RRP $19.95

But for a short time you can buy from the authors for $15 .00.

Now after all this hard work, I will be  participating in Na-No-Wri-Mo. Hopefully this year I will make the 50K word target!

Wish me well – Marion

What a week!

It really has been a big week. To start, on Monday, Jill, Elli & I went to visit grades 2 & 3 at St. Joseph’s Catholic school at Brackenridge. We had a ball and the children submitted their colouring in pictures. There are so many good ones it will be hard to pick a winner! The lucky winners will receive a copy of The Ten Penners new book Mystery, Mayhem & Magic! If you or rather your child would like to be in the running to win a copy be sure to download a form Plinko-Colouring-In-Competition-2017_Booklaunch.

Entries must be received by email by the 1st November, 2017.

We now have our book for sale in two book shops.

Bookface at Pacific Fair and

Big B Books at James Street, Burleigh Heads. Yay!

To finish my busy week, tomorrow we will be at The Lanes Halloween market on the corner of Bermuda St & Nerang – Broadbeach Rd, Mermaid Waters. 3pm to 9pm. Come and say Hello! pull up a hay bale and listen to us reading from our book!

More signing!

This morning we added more signatures to our first batch of books. It’s almost complete needing only Elli’s signature.  Which we will get when we do our school visit on Monday.  It’s not always easy to get everyone together at the one time with busy lives and family commitments but in the end it gets done! Hopefully when the rest of the books arrive we will all be together cracking a celebratory bottle of champers! Now we are off to the Gold Coast Writer’s Association meeting to announce our book launch on 4th of November at Broadbeach library. Yay!

Just unpacked!

What a grand feeling it is, to open up a box full of your own books! I love it! Tonight my fellow Ten Penner, Louisa and I opened our first delivery of our books. Wow, they do look good! Even if I do say so myself 🙂

Let’s kick off the blog tour!

As one of the original Ten Penners and co-ordinator of the group, I am pleased to announce our upcoming book launch and kick off our big blog tour!

My blog host today is the lovely Dimity Powell.

A very talented author of several books. I am very humbled that the blog tour is starting with Dimity interviewing me!

This is such an exciting time for any author and when you have a group of eight ladies who all have very different writing styles on offer, well, we all just get that little extra excited. I can’t wait for the book launch! We have a colouring-in competition for the kids and the best of their age category will win a fully signed copy of our book Mystery, Mayhem & Magic! We will be dressing up with a little cosplay from our characters inspiration and having some light refreshments too.

It sounds like a party? It is! It’s a celebration of seeing our hard work develop into a tangible paperback. And we are proud to be launching at Broadbeach library on the 4th November 10.15 am to 11.15 am. All our pre-sale books and books sold at the launch will be $15.00 (not the rrp of $19.95!).

Mystery, Mayhem & Magic is an anthology of amazing adventures for young readers!

The blog tour plan is as below:

15/10/17 Sunday -Me! Marion Martineer – https://marionmartineer.wordpress.com Dimity Powell – author The Fix-It Man http://dimswritestuff.blogspot.com.au

16/10/17 Monday– Yvonne Mes, http://www.yvonnemes.com

Elaine Ousten – author Mystery of Nida Valley https://elaineoustonauthor.com – author Lindy Standage

17/10/17 Tuesday – Jill Smith – https://authorjillsmith.wordpress.com

Candice Lemon-Scott, author https://candicelemonscott.com.au

18/10/17 Wednesday– Kate Russell – https://katharinerussell.wordpress.com

Teena-Rafa Mulligan – In Their Own Write https://intheirownwrite.wordpress.com

19/10/17 Thursday –  Julie Baythorpe https://juliebaythorpeauthor.wordpress.com

Gretchen Bernet-Ward – Thoughts Become Words https://thoughtsbecomewords.com

20/10/17 Friday – Robin Adolphs http://www.robinadolphs.com  interviewing Louisa Wright

Artelle Lenthall http://www.journeygirlontheroadtopublication.com  interviewing Sharron Alexiou

21/10/17 Saturday – The Ten Penners https://thetenpenners.wordpress.com

We will also be attending the Gold Coast Writers Meeting at Fradgley Hall, above the library at Burleigh Heads 2pm to announce our book launch.

23/10/17 Monday – Aleesah Darlison – author of Fox and Moonbeam – Greenleaf Press http://www.greenleafpress.net interview Elli Housden

28/10/17 Saturday – we will be reading from our book at The Lanes, Halloween market, cnr Hooker Blvd & Bermuda Streets, Mermaid Waters, click here for details.

Special Announcement – book giveaway!!

There will be a giveaway copy of Mystery, Mayhem & Magic! At the end of the blog tour those who have left a comment on this page, or on any of the other hosts’ pages during the blog tour, will be in the running to receive a free copy! The announcement of the winner will be at our book launch at Broadbeach Library on the 4th November.

So, please make a comment to be in the running! Good luck!

Don’t forget the kids colouring competition! Colour ‘Plinko’ our mascot, for children to send in via email. The winners will be announced at our book launch on the 4th November at Broadbeach Library. Please book through this library link to help us with catering refreshments!  You can download the book launch & competition form here.

Thanks for visiting me today, now go and see what Dimity has to say! – Marion 🙂