My Failed Novels: The Women of West Town series

So this eighteen-year-old budding author gets inspired yet again by something and has to write a novel.

I developed a secret addiction to Historical Romance novels during the 1980's.  They all had covers like this:

Now you know why I had to keep it a secret. Covers like these? Prolly not the best thing to feed a pubescent adolescent.

Fortunately, today, this is what the outside of all romance novels I read looks like:

Anyhow, I digress.  Just accept I had a penchant for Romance.

So, one day I was watching Dr Quinn Medicine Woman on TV and thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to write Historical Romance in the American West?"  I knew a fair bit about American History, thanks to My First Job at a living history museum.

So I gave it a try.  

Thus was born, "Adelaide", "Kathryn" and "Marinda".  (Yeah, I liked the name Adelaide. Moving to Australia fixed me of that soon enough.)

Oh dear.  I did not do a very good job of it. I'd barely finished rough drafts of the novels, but they were sad imitations of the torrid 80's Romance I'd secretly enjoyed. My novels were tepid, boring and tedious. Dull. Snooze-worthy. Trunkable. I still had a lot to learn Craft-wise.

Can't even remember much about the novels, other than one of my heroines fell in love with the town Mortician.

Ah well.  We all gotta make mistakes. These were mine.  About the only thing I learned from these novels was that I should not be writing Western Romance.  My feet are firmly planted in the nice, secure world of Speculative Fiction.

Either about this time, or soon after, the misc.writing Usenet newsgroup (and specifically Erin Cashier) put me on to the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy (OWW-SFF, or simply the 'Orkshop). Back then, it was sponsored by Del Rey and was free. Now it requires paid memberships. Still, it was worth every penny to me.

Man, I love that place! It is responsible for taking me from an apprentice writer to a journeyman.  I can't recommend it enough.  Granted, it better serves short story writers, but the workshop environment taught me more about the Craft than anything else.  I also met some really great people who went on to become really great authors.

People you know and read. OWW is The Place that Birthed This Generation of Authors. 

I cheerfully trunked those three horrid novels and got back to what I love: Fantasy.

____________________________

Her Grace has some pretty bad novels in her trunk. Don't bother asking to see them. They really aren't that good.

Wherein Her Grace Gets All Twittery

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Okay, I'm trying to wrap my head around this Twitter thing. Along with Facebook and Tumblr and a whole slew of social networking sites, it's one of the It Things, apparently.

I'm not so sure how I can make it work effectively for me.  Especially professionally.

No, I don't have my own Twitter account. I'm not game. Reasons why:

• It's rather short.  Rawther.  I'm not confident I can squish significant meaning into 140 characters every tweet, and I have no wish to sound trite the rest of the time.
• I'm not impressed with its signal-to-noise ratio.  Many tweets seem to be vague three word replies stuck to multiple hashtag conversations. Kind of hard to follow, really.
• The tweets that are interesting usually consist of a tiny url leading to something that is, actually, fascinating (and definitely more than 140 characters).  Almost makes Twitter little more than a redirection service.  Maybe that's its best use.
• I don't have the timely time to participate in a meaningful conversation.  My internet usage is sporadic. By the time I get around to reading Twitter, I'll be woefully out of date. Alas.
• Not convinced it's usefully more than a time-waster and another incarnation of gossip-around-the-watercooler.  (On the other hand, word-of-mouth networking (aka "gossip") is useful in the writerly community.  Especially if it uses the words "nice deal".)

Though I confess, I sometimes follow a couple of interesting people, sorting through their LOLs and other bits of lopsided conversations to find some really fascinating things.  Platform aside, they're charming no matter what social networking medium I read them on.

Also, some people claim it has value. As they have more experience than I with Twitter, I'd love to know how they make it work for them.

Things I would say, if I was tweeting:

• Humour for writers.  Ya gotta laugh.  http://www.epublishabook.com/?cat=10#axzz2cIpoGNEn
• Nobody with Internet access has any excuse not to research.  Go work on your Google Fu.
• Being a writer means that you are giving permission for someone to misunderstand you.

Everything else I say is long-winded.