MagnifiCat the novel | Danielle de Valera

Archive for the ‘MagnifiCat the novel’ Category

Celebrating the Winter Solstice in Summer down under

Posted in Australian authors, Australian writers, books about cats, cat lovers, cats, Christmas, Christmas down under, Danielle de Valera, Dropping Out: a tree change novel-in-stories, e-books, Far North Coast of NSW, Fiction writers, hippies, Indie authors, MagnifiCat the novel, north coast of nsw, posts about cats, Short stories, stories about cats, tagged Australian Christmas, Cats, Christmas, Christmas down under, Christmas in Australia, Danielle de Valera, far north coast of NSW, Fiction writers, hippies, indie writers, north coast of nsw, stories, the writing process, Wrting on December 22, 2016| 7 Comments »

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found it strange celebrating a winter solstice festival in the middle of summer. As Christmas approaches and we swelter here in Australia, praying for rain on Christmas Day so we won’t be bathed in sweat while eating the Christmas dinner, we find ourselves looking longingly at pictures like this.

Oh, how we wish …

All’s fine with me, up here on the Far North Coast of New South Wales. To anyone who bought Dropping Out, the collection of linked short stories I put out in early October at https://www.amazon.com/Dropping-Out-change-novel-stories-ebook/dp/B01LXF9QEB I’d like to say thank you.

And so I currently have a little cat fairy tale called “Perversity” going free at: http://www.catsstories.com/perversity.html If you’re in the mood for a cat fairy tale, this 700 word story could be for you. The story’s zany illustration (below) was done by my daughter Tara Sariban.

While all’s well with me, my old cat seems to be failing.

He’s fourteen, and for some months now, he’s been losing weight. I know animals tend to lose weight as they grow older; a device nature has to lessen the load on the heart, but his weight loss came on suddenly (since the end of August), so it’s a cause for concern. I’ve had various tests done on him, and he’s due for a blood test for FIV (feline HIV) and feline leukemia on 3 January. He’s seems well and happy, and he’s eating well, so at this point, it’s a bit of an unknown.

I plan to spend the first six months of next year putting the scenes for the sequel to MagnifiCat (https://www.amazon.com/MagnifiCat-Animal-Fantasy-Danielle-Valera-ebook/dp/B00H0ORWQY) into the right order.

After that, I’d like to spend some time finding a title and cover for the Brisbane novel I hope to put out in 2018. Because it’s a long work (108,000 words, at present), I’ll start content editing it in the second half of ’17. That way I’ll have plenty of time to pull the whole thing together, line edited, copy-edited and proofed by September ’18. I’m a tortoise at everything I do, I need all that time just to get all the various processes right.

For the rest of this year, though, I’m not planning to do much at all, except catch up with a lot of things I’ve been avoiding doing on the internet. If you’ve been working hard all year, I hope you too find time to kick back and take it easy.

Merry Christmas, everyone! And a safe and happy New Year.

Dani

Read Full Post »

Martin Norman, artist

Posted in Agents, books about cats, cat lovers, cats, e-books, Fiction, fiction authors, Fiction writers, fine art, Indie publishing, MagnifiCat the novel, Martin Norman, Marty Norman, social media, US artists, tagged books about cats, fine art, MagnifiCat the novel, Martin Norman, Marty Norman, US artists on August 10, 2014| 1 Comment »

Back in the 1970s when my son was two, his father gave him a large book entitled The Cat Catalogue. This was a most comprehensive book. A4 in size, it covered each breed and contained chapters entitled ‘The Cat in Literature’, ‘The Intellectual Cat’, etc. At the beginning of each of these chapters was a full-page, black-and-white drawing of cats, each by a different artist. Out of all the drawings, the one that caught my eye was the drawing entitled ‘The Artistic Cat’. It was done by someone who signed himself Marty Norman.

When literary agent Rosemary Creswell retired without having placed my manuscript MagnifiCat with a traditional publisher, in spite of her enthusiasm for the work, I began to think of publishing the feel-good animal fantasy myself. Whenever I thought about the cover of the novel I was planning, my mind would return to the drawing by Marty Norman, which I’d seen in The Cat Catalogue. Luckily, I still owned the book – but how to find the artist? The book had come out in 1976. More than thirty years had passed.

This is where the web came in handy. But if you think I simply Googled the artist’s name and the rest is history, that didn’t happen. I couldn’t find Marty Norman. If you Google him today, you ‘ll find him easily, but in 2008, he was about as interested in the web as I was. I searched and searched – I even tried Facebook but I still couldn’t find him. There were a number of entries that might have been him. Eventually, I settled on one with a bio and dates that fitted my conception of the artist and sent him a Facebook internal email, explaining that I wanted to use the drawing from The Cat Catalogue for MagnifiCat’s cover and asking his permission. No reply. Seems he was as uninterested in Facebook as I was.

Years went by. I searched the web for an alternative image, but none came near the drawing by Marty Norman. I was obsessed, a lifelong problem of mine. I went back to searching for him. By now it was late 2011. With a friend’s help we tracked down a painting that might’ve been his in a gallery in, I think, New York, but there were no contact details for the artist. Although very different from the drawing I was obsessed with, the painting had the same surety of line that characterised Norman’s drawing for The Cat Catalogue. (See below.)

I didn’t let the very considerable difference in style put me off. After all, good artists — and this guy was good— were supposed to be versatile, weren’t they? Besides, all that time had gone by; he was bound to have changed his style. I wrote to the gallery, explaining my dilemma and asking them to forward my request to their Marty Norman. No reply.

By now, I had definitely decided to publish on the web. I stepped up the search, going back over the ground I’d covered in the past. In the Friends Facebook section of the person I’d thought might be the Martin Norman I sought, I found someone I figured was the son. In desperation, I wrote to him via Facebook, stating my problem. Wonder of wonders, he wrote back to me! His father was the artist I sought; he’d pass my email on to him, I would hear from his father shortly. In due time, Marty wrote back. Yes, he was the person, and he would let me use the image. And so the deal was done.

Even today, I don’t like Facebook, and only go there if there’s a notification in my email, but I have to admit I would never have found Marty Norman in those days without it.

Norman’s enjoying an illustrious career. There’s a great photo and bio of him

at: http://www.saatchiart.com/martynorman Check it out. Below are two more examples of the work he is doing today:

Dark Matter (painting) Prisma 4 (drawing)

If you’re interested in seeing more of Norman’s fine art, it can be viewed at:

http://martynorman-art.com/ or at the saatchi link above.

Read Full Post »

And Now for Something Completely Different

Posted in Australian writers, books about prison, Canadian prisons, Canadian writers, Carol Middleton, e-book frmatting, e-books, Ed Griffin, Editing, Far North Coast of NSW, Fiction, fiction authors, Fiction writers, Indie authors, Indie publishing, inmates, jail, Kindle, MagnifiCat the novel, north coast of nsw, prison, prison reform, prisoners, Publishing, Self-publishing, Short stories, social media, the novel, Writing, tagged Australian writers, Busting God, Danielle de Valera, e-books, Ed Griffin, Fiction, indie authors, Indie publishing, MagnifiCat the novel, short stories, Writers on May 19, 2014| 7 Comments »

A few days ago I was surprised to receive an email from Carol Middleton, an Australian award-winning writer, and a reviewer for the prestigious Australian Book Review. In the email Carol invited me to join the Writing Process Blog Tour, in which writers are invited to reply to four questions about their writing process and then pass the baton on to another writer/s.

Many thanks to Carol for inviting me to contribute to this tour, which in its construction is like a chain letter but nice. You can see Carol’s Writing-Process Blog published Monday 12th at http://carolmiddleton.com.au/wordpress

Here goes.

What am I working on?

Having put my first novel out on Amazon and Smashwords last year, I decided to try to get myself a bigger presence on the web by putting up a short story a month in 2014. Being the digital klutz that I am, it took me three months to learn enough to put up my first story Busting God, now available at: www.amazon.com/dp/B00J8ZIE8S. I’m now working on formatting my second story Remains to be Seen, which follows the fortunes of Busting God’s hero as he tries to recover from the post-traumatic stress caused by his participation in the Vietnam War.

I’m a tortoise, very slow at everything I do, and not very comfortable on the web. However, I’ve decided that having a higher profile there will help my novels eventually, so I’m nailed to the cross of formatting these twelve short stories for the remainder of 2014.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

How to answer this question? My short stories were published in such diverse places, ranging from Penthouse to Aurealis to the Australian Women’s Weekly. Each time I adapted my basic writing style to suit the market — I was a single parent and I needed the money. My only novel published so far is MagnifiCat: www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0ORWQY — a strange little animal fantasy about a family of cats who find themselves on the poverty line in a small country town in New South Wales, Australia. In it I aimed to produce a kind of Wind in the Willows for adults. To what extent I succeeded is hard to gauge. The novel’s definitely not satire; it’s more like a fairy tale for adults, with an underlying heavy core that makes it adult fiction, though I plan to release a children’s version of it in 2015, minus the alcohol and the angst.

Why do I write what I do?

In my case there are two answers to this. The short stories were written either for money — publication or competition money — or to add to my literary CV. In the novels, however, I get to please myself. And I notice that what comes though in all of them (I have another four in various stage of development) is a desire to nail down a particular time and place that’s now long gone. You could say I’m obsessed with transience, and writing about these places is my way of trying to keep them alive in people’s memories after they’ve disappeared under the bulldozer of progress. My Queensland novel is set in Brisbane in the early 1960s; MagnifiCat is set in Byron Shire in the mid-1980s, and somewhere in the dim future, should I live that long, I’d like to write a novel set in Brisbane during WWII. It’s as if I’m saying to readers, Remember how it was. Don’t forget this.

How does my writing process work?

I write first draft material in the morning, while I still have some contact with my unconscious. Editing, a completely different process requiring a different part of the brain, I can do any time. I never work after dark unless I have an editing job or a manuscript appraisal for another writer and the deadline is looming.

To me, producing first-draft material is like digging semi-precious stones out of the ground, while editing is like polishing those stones into something people might find beautiful or useful. Basically, I want my writing to entertain, to make people happy. At the risk of sounding overly ambitious (or merely quaint), I’d like it to give people hope. Life can be tough sometimes.

The writer I’ve asked to continue the Writing Process Blog Tour on Monday 26th is Ed Griffin, a Canadian novelist and prison reformer. Ed taught creative writing in prisons for many years. He blogs at:

prisonuncensored.wordpress.com

Check him out on Monday 26th.

Read Full Post »

A Drop in the Digital Ocean

Posted in Amazon, Australian animals, Australian humour, Australian writers, cat lovers, cats, e-books, Fiction, fiction authors, Humour, Indie authors, Indie publishing, Internet, Kindle, MagnifiCat the novel, Publishing, Self-publishing, struggling writers, talking animals, the novel, Writing, tagged animal lovers, Animals, Australian animals, Australian writers, books about Australia, cat books, cat lovers, Cats, mi on December 8, 2013| 8 Comments »

Anyone taking a casual look at the novel I’ve just put up on the web might be forgiven for thinking I need therapy.

But though the cats have the spotlight, many other Australian animals feature in this fantasy for adults — a porcupine policeman, a python bank manager, a kangaroo in the milk delivery business, etc. etc.

Aside from all the animals, though, that slide, hop, glide through this novel, and despite my determinedly lighthearted approach, the book’s theme of life below the poverty line gives it gravitas. It’s not as innocuous as it seems.

But enuff about the novel. Maybe it’s merely a drop in the digital ocean, but because I’m such a klutz digitally, I’m just happy to have survived the experience of getting it up there.

Take a look. It’s available in both e and print form. It’s certainly unusual.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0ORWQY

Read Full Post »

Come over to the Dark Side, Luke/Adventures of a Newbie Indie Writer, cont.

Posted in adversity, Australian humour, Australian writers, Book designers, e-books, friends, Humour, Indie authors, Indie publishing, Luddites, MagnifiCat the novel, Publishing, Self-publishing, struggling writers, true stories, Writing, tagged Australian humour, book designers, e-book publishing, Humour, Indie publishing, indie writers, POD publishing, self-publishing on November 10, 2013| 2 Comments »

In the bush outside Casino, musing on the vagaries of life, and human nature in general, accompanied by two bovine mums. The new calves are just out of the frame.

Last week I went to Casino to celebrate the Melbourne Cup with friends. For those of you who don’t know about the Cup, it’s the foremost horse race in Australia; everything stops for it. I don’t know one horse from another, but it’s good to catch up with old friends and see what improvements they’ve made on their 240 acres since I was last there.

I had another reason to be glad I was in the bush for a few days: the first morning I was there I received an email from the POD designer – she’s holding my book to ransom until she receives the remainder of her fee. Which is not a lot, I might add. This is unusual in the industry, thank the Lord – the e book designer sent me 3 different versions of my novel and an invoice the next day with a month to pay.( I paid him 48 hours later – I have figured out how to use PayPal.)

The print book designer and I have had a rocky time (we were both starting out). So, as I say, I was happy I was among friends when I received the email confirming what I already suspected but couldn’t bring myself to believe.

My November deadline, has perforce, moved to 11 December — too late for anyone wanting to buy hard copies for Christmas, unless they’re prepared to ship the book using Amazon’s exorbitant Priority Paid option.

Along with the ultimatum, the designer gave me her bank details. Alas, I haven’t yet learned how to pay someone overseas in this way, where, I understand, certain extra bits of arcane information are required. It was on my To do list, but what with editing and proofing the novel, it got pushed to the back burner. Into the nearest town that has a branch of my bank, obtain a bank cheque, and send it by registered post. It will take at least 10 days to reach the US.

When the designer has received the money and sends me the POD version (hope hope hope), it would be madness to go to press without seeing the proof. (We’ve been though two, so far.) Even using Amazon’s priority paid shipping option, I will lose another 6 days. If there are formatting errors that require fixing, I wonder what happens then?

Even if the book is ready to go, and I sure hope it is, I will lose another six days while I wait for the last lot of print copies to arrive. In my youth, I would’ve lost a lot of sleep over this. Now I just chalk it up to the aforesaid vagaries of human nature and move the date to 11 December. Just to be on the safe side.

It’s a weird situation, and I have no feelings against the designer. It’s not her fault I haven’t yet conquered overseas internet banking. And she did have a hard time with me, I know that. Remember, I’m the one who didn’t even know how to save attached files forwarded to me as downloads. (I thought you saved them under View, and wondered why I couldn’t print or forward them to anyone.) In my defence, though, I had a bit of a hard time myself. When you’re both learning, these things happen.

Life’s funny, and far too short to waste a lot of emotion on a thing like this. It’s very small hiccup in the overall scheme of things. It’s even funny, if you can just see the humour. Fancy being so awful that someone felt driven to this measure. It’s a kind of distinction, I suppose, but one I could well do without.

Come over to the dark side, Luke, with me and Danielle de Valera.

Read Full Post »

Beginnings

Posted in anecdotes, Australian writers, Autobiography, Children, early learning, fathers, Fiction, fiction authors, Fiction writers, Indie authors, MagnifiCat the novel, true stories, Writing, tagged anecdotes, children, early learning, encouragement, fathers, Fiction, MagnifiCat the novel, true stories, Writing on September 25, 2013| 2 Comments »

It’s strange the way things pan out in life. My career as a writer almost didn’t happen.

I was in 3rd grade in primary school, slowly getting on top of things, when we were sent home one day with instructions to write our first composition.

I trudged home, very unhappy. My career as an even halfway-coping schoolkid was over. I knew I’d never be able to write a composition.

My mother was in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal. Unusual for him, my father was also home; there’d been very few ships in port that day. When he saw me slumped in misery at the kitchen table, he asked me what was wrong.

I said, “We have to write a composition about trees, and I can’t write compositions.” and I began to cry.

My father put down his newspaper and said, “It’s okay. Whatever the subject is, you just talk about it.”

“Talk about it?” I wailed.

“Yeah,” he said, “like how they’re green and leafy and they give people shade. Do you like trees?”

Of course I liked trees. I practically lived in the loquat tree up the back.

“Have a go,” said my father, returning to his paper.

I sat there, chewing the end of my pencil, and tried to write as if I was talking about trees. That half-page took me the best part of an hour.

“How’d it go?” said my father, who must’ve been watching my progress from behind his paper. He read through what I’d written. “Not bad,” he said. “But it needs something.” And he dictated a line about leaves dancing when the wind blew; something quite poetic. “Slip that in somewhere,” he said.

I rewrote the piece, placing the line he’d dictated where, I hoped, a teacher was least likely to notice the extra zing it put into my dreary effort.

By the time the English teacher came into the room carrying our exercise books three days later, I very much regretted using the line my father had written. Now, it was all too late, as she began to deal with each composition in turn, from worst to best — a tried and tested form of torture even when your conscience is clear, and mine certainly wasn’t. Eventually, there were no exercise books left but mine. I was convinced she’d saved mine ‘til last because she intended to expose me before the whole class. Why had I let my father talk me into adding that line about leaves in the breeze?

To my surprise, she pronounced my composition the best, and read it out to the class. I felt no elation, though it was the first time I’d ever come first in anything. How, I asked myself, was I going to continue this run? My father was leaving in a few days for a job at sea. What on earth was I going to do?

Inevitably, we were given a new subject to write about. I trudged home and sat at the kitchen table. Nothing came. I felt like the girl in the fairy tale who was supposed to spin straw into gold. Or else.

In desperation, I decided I’d pretend to be my father. Clearly, I had no talent for writing, but he did. Okay, Dad, I said to myself, what have you got to say about pets? And I began to write.

I was stunned when that composition also came first. Around me, there were boys in tears, boys who hadn’t been able to get even four lines onto the pages of their exercise books.

I knew how they felt.

It was pure chance my father had been home that day.

Read Full Post »

Putting a Face to this Author

Posted in Amazon, Amazon KDP, Australian animals, Australian writers, cat lovers, cats, e-books, Far North Coast of NSW, Fiction, fiction authors, Fiction writers, Indie authors, Indie publishing, Kindle, MagnifiCat the novel, manuscript appraisals, Publishing, Short stories, struggling writers, Writing, tagged Australian animals, Australian authors, Australian editors, Cats, e-books, editing, Editors, Fiction, fiction editors, indie authors, Indie publishing, MagnifiCat the novel, manucript assessments, manuscript appraisals, Patrick de Valera Manuscript Development Services, Publications, Publishing, Writers, Writing on July 30, 2011| 20 Comments »

Before we go any further, I suppose it would be a good idea to let you put a face to this writer, let you know who you’re dealing with, as it were.

This is one of the few photographs I have in which I look even halfway presentable. It was taken in Brisbane in 2010 (I know it’s almost seven years ago; I’m harder to photograph than a yeti) at the 50th reunion of agricultural scientists who graduated from Queensland University in years in ’58-’62 approximately.

What’s a person with a B. Agr. Sc. and a major in Plant Physiology doing writing fiction and editing/assessing manuscripts? It’s a l-o-n-g story …

For more, click on the About section above. For information about manuscript assessments or editing, please see: http://patrickdevalera.com

and click on Manuscript Development Services in the menu bar.

Read Full Post »

On Writers, Writing (and Life in General)

Archive for the ‘MagnifiCat the novel’ Category