Thursday 27 September 2018

Romanov - Nadine Brandes | A Cover Reveal

In my last post, I answered a question about who my favourite author was, and I said Nadine Brandes. Her books have made their way into three of my school assignments and ahhhh, I love all of her writing!!! *flails* I really need to start using Goodreads properly so that I can officially rave about all of her books and give them all 5 stars… Every. Single. One. Of. Them. (And other books, but y’know, Nadine!)

I’ve also just finished all of my preliminary exams, so what better way to celebrate than to HAVE A COVER REVEAL OF HER NEXT YOUNG ADULT BOOK, ROMANOV? *flails and runs about crazily*


So, you know the story of Anastasia Romanov? She's written a standalone Historical Fantasy Retelling of it. And knowing Nadine Brandes, it will be stellar!

If you’re still doubting me and saying that is can’t be thaaaaaaat epic, well, you are wrong. Look at this!


The history books say I died. 
They don’t know the half of it. 
Anastasia “Nastya” Romanov was given a single mission: to smuggle an ancient spell into her suitcase on her way to exile in Siberia. It might be her family’s only salvation. But the leader of the Bolshevik army is after them…and he’s hunted Romanov before. 
Nastya’s only chances of survival are to either release the spell, and deal with the consequences, or enlist help from Zash, the handsome soldier who doesn’t act like the average Bolshevik. Nastya’s never dabbled in magic before, but it doesn’t frighten her as much as her growing attraction for Zash. She likes him. She thinks he might even like her… 
That is, until she’s on one side of a firing squad…and he’s on the other.


How is that not epic? Plus, once you know Nadine Brandes, you’ll want it without any further blathering from me. 



Nadine once spent four days as a sea cook in the name of book research. She's the author of FAWKES and of the award-winning The Out of Time Series. Her inner fangirl perks up at the mention of soul-talk, Quidditch, bookstagram, and Oreos. When she's not busy writing novels about bold living, she's adventuring through Middle Earth or taste-testing a new chai. Nadine and her Auror husband are building a Tiny House on wheels. Current mission: paint the world in shalom.





Plus, she’s such a lovely person, and she is sooooooo real. Even when she’s struggling with things, she is enthusiastic and is always out to make you feel better. (Or at least, that’s my experience!) You can check her out more on her: Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, Twitter, Website, Youtube. (Stellar lady on all of these, guys!!!)


AND GUESS WHAT GUYS? You can preorder Romanov already! *flails forever* And Nadine has put all of the links together so that you can manage it easily! So, to preorder, just look HERE. Other than that, it will be released on the 7th of May, 2019. (Add it to your calendar guys!!!) But yesssss, the more I’m looking at details in how to publish and edit and different tips, the more I can see how much these preorders mean. Think about how amazing it makes release day for the authors and for the publishers!


Okay. Now to the cover. Let’s see if you can guess what it will look like.

I had assumed it would be something like her latest book, Fawkes. (Five stars from me.)


And her other books (ALSO five stars) had beeeeeautiful covers designed by Kirk Douponce:


What about you? What are you thinking?


*silent anticipation* (Just kidding. We’re all screaming.)


Let’s see what it actually looks like…


*deep breath*











AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *flails even more foreverly*

It’s so different to the other covers, but so pretty.

It just looks super fairytale esque and all of the magical swirls and little starry dots and the (soon to be) gold foil and the general colour and the picture of Anastasia and the way it’s all linked together and the really traditional Russian look and allllll of the prettiness. And, like, ‘Not even royal blood can stop bullets.’ I mean, how epic can you get??



So hopefully, after all of that, you are desperately wanting to preorder this beautiful book, and add it to your 'want to read' list on Goodreads and generally join me in flailing about this epic book!


What’s your favourite part about the cover? Is it what you were expecting? FLAIL WITH ME.

Saturday 22 September 2018

The Get to Know Me Tag | Writers' Addition

Yep. You read the title right. Today I am completing a tag. And it could be worth doing seeing that I like getting to know people! Thank you muchly Savannah for making this tag, and thanks Jane for ‘tagging’ me in it. So, without any further blathering from me, onwards with the questions!



Vital Stats And Appearance


Name: Jessica Penrose

Nicknames: Not all that many these days. I mean, my pen name is J.A.Penrose, most people call me Jess, a fair few call me The Jess, and some call me Legolas. Nicknames don’t tend to stick to me.

Birthday: A well guarded secret. But sure, whatever. 16th of November

Hair colour and length: Brown, and 4-5 inches past my shoulders.

Eye colour: Brown

Braces/piercings/tattoos: None.

Righty or lefty: Righty. But my handwriting is equally appalling with either hand, so, take your pick! (typically right though)

Ethnicity: I am an Aussie. Somewhere back in the family tree there’s some Scottish and Cornish, but I can tell you the entire history of the Penrose family in relation to the properties in the area and at what point we owned what and which great great ancestors sold to who.



Firsts


First novel written: Ashes. No, that was not the book’s name, but that’s what it is now. Twas actually a collaborative thing, but it kept on deteriorating and blegh. Then again, it never reached 50K, but I suppose it was the first one I tried.

First novel completed: Uhm… *goes to check* Ahhh, yes. Sweep, the first book of the now being fixed and replanned Survivor Trilogy. Gotta love some nice sci-fi time travel stuff.

Award for writing: I have a habit of winning the writing section in the local Gunnedah Show, and getting good marks in class? :P I’ve made a profit of around $50 all up of my winnings. *nods wisely* Very good at this. But I haven’t really entered that many writing competitions, so, no.

First publication: Erm, I’ve had musical compositions published in anthologies before, and I’ve published some things online, but not actually fully published, no.

Conference: I live in Australia. We are very short on these. But I really want to go to one! *sobs dramatically* Particularly when all of the writerly people I know in U.S are going to Realm Makers.

Query/Pitch: Hoooopefully once I get out of school I’ll be more available to get around to doing this. Or at least once the workload has dropped a bit.



Favourites

Novel (that you wrote): Favourite?? That’s just mean. I love them all. Ugh. Sorry. Pick between Chosen by Fire (fantasy with some really fun world building and magic and ideas) or Flightless. (fantasy that was amazing to write) (and I plan to edit and tear apart this year. Ack!) Chosen by Fire needs to be re-written, cos it didn’t turn out too well, but I love it all the same.

Genre: Speculative Fiction. Mainly sitting in Fantasy and Dystopian. (or both)

Author: But…I LOVE ALL OF YOU GUYS. Agh. Nadine Brandes is amaaaaazing, but so is Jill Williamson, Jaye.L.Knight, Brandon Sanderson… UGH.

The one that I can say I ‘know’ the best would be Nadine Brandes though. *flails*

Writing Music: Sooooo, every story I write has a different playlist, but they are mostly made up of songs by Antti Martikainen, or are from the Kaladin soundtrack. Pandora’s music is epic too.

Time To Write: Heh. Whenever I get the chance. Typically though, due to school, I write whenever the sun isn’t around. Either early in the morning, or in the evening. On Saturdays I tend to churn out words fairly consistently.

Writing Snack/Drink: *sips chai tea* Chai, everyday. NaNo months tend to result in the boxes running out…

Movie: Soooo, I have a little thing: I don’t actually watch many movies? Most quoted one would most likely be Prince Caspian though. *nods* We’ll go with that.

Writing Memory: Hmmm…I think probably back when I was around five, my siblings and I built this huge tree fort. We dragged dead trees to make walls and generally make it really good. Like, walls that were 3 meters high, areas to shoot our bows from, traps, working doors, a sparring area, etc. Only issue was that I was five. And my brother was about twelve, and my sister fourteen. Soooo, I had a major disadvantage. Thankfully though, I became the scribe. I wrote down all of our adventures in a little notebook, including misspelling some crazy words that turned up. Gotta love it when you, ‘Were thron in the dunjeons.’ (Thrown in the dungeons.) But yes. That was fun to write. Many adventures of our crazy family.

Childhood Book: Adventure books were my thing. Famous Five by Enid Blyton and Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome were some big time favorites. But also, there were fun fantasy adventures like the Gorgie Tanner books by Justyn Walker. All of those were good.



Currently


Reading: Sacred Rhythms, by Ruth Hayley Barton, and The Enclave by Karen Hancock.

Writing: At the moment, I’m kinda rewriting parts of Flightless to make them more consistent and fill in the worst of the plot holes and fix as many spelling errors as I can before moving into properly editing it. Mostly, I’m actually plotting for my next NaNo Novel, Stormwielder, which I plan to say some more about at a later date.

Listening to: My playlist for Stormwielder. (Yes, I have made a playlist and haven’t finished plotting yet. Go me!)

Watching: Nothing. Although, when I’m distracted, I tend to watch birds fly past. Very dramatic little things. *happily stares out of the window*

Learning: A lot. I mean, mostly about people, and how stubbornly they can stick to beliefs that they know are wrong. (Amazing how many straight-A students get to exam week and are certain that they are going to fail. But there is no logical reason… *taps chin thoughtfully*)



Future


Want To Be Published: Yessss. Very muchly so. One day. Ideally before I’m in my 50s. Or 40s. Or 30s…

Indie or Traditional: Traditional. Most of my audience is overseas, and Indie Publishing is a pain when it comes to that.

Wildest Goal: Oh my word. Uhm… Probably to hear from someone that my writing has changed their lives. I know that so many books have helped me, and I really want to be able to do the same for others.



Tag over?? What? Hopefully I answered those questions sufficiently. Anyone who want to do this tag who hasn't already, feel free to! It was lots of fun.


What's your favourite writing memory? Do nicknames stick to you?


Saturday 15 September 2018

Inspiration's Origin

I’ve decided that today calls for a prompt. After all, prompts are useful, fun, and can result in entire stories born.

Or more often, (in my case at least) hours wasted getting distracted by interesting writing prompts that have nothing to do with me needing inspiration, and everything to do with being highly distracted on Pinterest…Oh well. :D


Despite what I was just saying about getting highly distracted by prompts, they have been good to me in the past. Here are a couple that ended up sparking ideas…




This one resulted in the actual plot for what will hopefully be my next NaNo Novel… (Shall tell you more closer to the time)




I haven’t talked much about the story for this one, but Immortal Hero came directly from this little prompt, and it was lots of fun to write. Hoooopefully I’ll get around to rewriting it someday.




Last, but not least, is the one for my rather morally grey character, who is yet to be put in a definite story. Really want to include him somewhere, but we shall see. *pats him sadly*





Sadly, for every one of that I use, there are proooobably a good 15 that are just distractions. :P But hey, keeps the imagination going.

Now for the prompt of my own creation that I wish to give to you today…





Have you come across any decent prompts lately? How do you get your story ideas?

Thursday 6 September 2018

The Art of Show Don't Tell

There are a few different things that people seem to struggle with in writing. One of these things is Show Don’t Tell

I reckon that everyone has heard this term before, and I’m pretty certain that everyone struggles with it at times. It’s a trap that everyone slips into. I’ve been helping out some school friends and other writerly people with managing to identify telling and replace it with showing. I also felt that it could be a worthwhile thing to write a blog post about so that other people can look at it a bit more. 

There’s a lot of articles out there on Show Don’t Tell, and hopefully I’ve drawn off the best of them to present what I think is the most widely accepted view by a variety of writers and readers. 

I’ll also be including a list of these different websites and resources that have super duper helpful articles on this at the end of this summary. 

Now onwards to delve into the art of Show Don’t Tell!



“In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."
~ C.S.Lewis

What C.S.Lewis wrote in 1956 still applies to us today, as many people will note. Writers are regularly talking about, ‘Show Don’t Tell’ and how invaluable it is to writing, but it is kinda hard to actually know what that means, and how we can do it. 



The Difference Between Telling and Showing

Telling is giving the bare basics of the information to allow the reader to know what’s going on.

Showing is bringing to life those bare basics to allow the reader to experience what’s going on. 


There are four main types of telling that I see commonly in writing, and they are: emotion telling, action telling, description telling, and information telling.

‘John was sad.’ -emotion telling. 

‘John ran away.’ -action telling.

‘John had blond hair.’ -description telling. 

‘John had been a fighter in the third war of the twelfth sector of the ANL Corporation in 2032.’ -information telling.

To turn these into showing, you need to do a few different things:


Emotion Showing

When you’re trying to show a character’s emotion, you need to try and write about the symptoms of the emotion. Think about a person's posture when they’re dealing with an emotion. Their thoughts. Their internal sensations. What they’re doing at the time. Their voice. How they view the world around them. If you say some of these things instead of the emotion, the readers will know what the emotion is, and will be able to visualise it better. 

Let’s look at John being sad again.

John hunched over his desk, sniffing slightly and trying to stop his lip from trembling. Why did they go? We’re meant to stick together…friends. A dull ache pressed against his chest and his heart lodged itself firmly in his throat. Get a grip. It's not that big of a deal. A hand landed on his shoulder, but he kept staring down at the scratched surface of the desk. 

“Something wrong?”

He forced himself to swallow the lump and look up through a film of tears at his teacher’s face. He blinked a few times, sucking in a shuddering breath. “No,” he gave him a wavering smile, “It’s…it’s fine.” He bit his lip, mentally willing the tremor in his voice to go away. “Fine. Honestly.” There. That sounds more confident.

That is considerably more interesting than just saying that, ‘John sat at his desk and felt sad about his friends abandoning him.’ Why? Because it was elaborated and removed the telling word of the emotion’s name, ‘sad.’ 

A good way to see if you’re emotion telling is to see if you’ve used the name of the emotion somewhere in the section. If you have, that’s a fair sign of emotion telling. 


Action Showing

Main way you can look at this one is elaboration. It’s actually somewhat difficult to define just as is. Rather, it’s complicated and involves many different details to create the effect of showing action instead of just telling it. More about elaborating and allowing the readers to see, to be honest. 

Again to John.

John’s feet pounded against the ground and he spared a glance over his shoulder—his heart in his throat. They were catching up. Jerking his head back around to face forward, he skidded across the ground a few meters as the traffic lights turned green. His heart thudded an irregular beat in his chest and he sucked in a deep breath, running across the road, starting and stopping as the cars continued roaring past.

Again with this being far more interesting that the told version of, ‘John ran away because he was being chased. He got away because he ran across a road while the cars were moving.’ Suddenly, we can see the detail. Not in such an extent that it clogs down the story, but enough that it allows us—the readers—to visualise it fully. 

Using words and phrases such as, ‘was,’ ‘had been,’ ‘had,’ ‘because,’ ‘since,’ and ‘when,’ are all defining red lights that should warn you that your excerpt probably has action telling. (Same goes for their relatives in the present and future tenses.)


Description Showing

Also called ‘woven description,’ this is something that people tend to find difficult. How can you describe your character or place when you can’t specifically say everything? Basically, your readers don’t need to know all of that…at least, not in one hit. 

For characters: 

Weave in those descriptions naturally. You want the readers to know that John has blond hair? Feel free to have him shove blond hair out of his face, or look through a haze of blond strands.

John fell to his hands and knees and looked up through a blur of blond. His gaze met the pair of eyes as vividly blue as his own and he swallowed. Not here. Not now. He tore his gaze away, panting. The grandeur of the palace loomed over him, trying to swallow him. Always second best. Never good enough. He blinked, and the eyes were gone again.

This way it seems natural and isn’t just randomly mentioning that he has blond hair. As is, John has been described in a bit more detail, and it seems somewhat natural. 

Let’s move onto the place that John was in…

For places:

Also, weave in those descriptions. You want the readers to know that the room was large and well furnished? Seeming to be well looked after by years of care? Cold and unfriendly? Let them know casually, don’t have John stand there for a solid ten minutes mentally describing every little detail. Just mention what matters. 

John looked up to glare back at the room, trying to force away the oppressive air enveloping him. Polished bronze glinted at him from the banisters and portraits stared down at him, their gazes disapproving. He shook his head and pushed himself up from the carpet, casting his gaze over the ebony and glass. Where did he go? He kicked a cabinet and a resounding, thunk, broke the silence of the room.

This way, we can see what it looks like as well as seeing what’s going on in the plot side of things. Plus, it is far more interesting to see John interacting with the room, rather than just observing it. He point of view on the situation allows for the entire room to be more of a manifestation of what’s happening to him. Had he been happy and there of his own will, we would have described it differently. 


Just by weaving your description into the story, it instantly makes it more reader friendly then great slabs of description that no one really knows what to do with…aside from possibly skip over. 


Information Showing

Information telling, is often called an ‘information dump.’ As it is, we want to try and weave that information into the story itself. To be honest, this is one of the types of telling that I come across the most. It seems to like to turn up in most stories, and is really painful to get rid of. Why? Because it seems very important and necessary. 

Hello John! Let’s look at some info dumps in your life. 

John stopped outside the Museum, tingles running up and down his skin. The simple, box-like building was said to be one of the most secure places in the world. It had a regularly rotating guard, over a thousand security cameras, a laser maze, voice recognition security, DNA scans…the works. It had been erected in 2022 in order to protect the only remaining plant that was left on earth. Over five hundred million dollars were spent on building it, and all of those who made it were killed a few weeks after its completions. No one could get in or out without being registered. 

John had spent years studying it and wondering if he could get in. After all, it isn’t all that hard when you know what you’re doing to break into a high security building, at least not for him. He actually knew what he was doing, not an amature like the rest.

As you can see, that was a lot of words just telling us about what the building was. Did we need to know all of that? No, not really. 

Had we not been told much about the Museum for half a novel, but kept getting hints and desperately wanting to know, you maaaay be able to get away with it. As it is, we want to avoid this sort of information telling. 

Quick ways of spotting it are basically when you explain something. If you’re explaining much more than basics, then it is most likely info-dumping. Instead, try to show events. Instead of having John thinking about all of the protective layers, maybe have him watch a recording of someone trying to break in, and him experiencing all of the security layers. 

Again, showing is all about experiencing. You want the readers to experience, so you show it to them. 



There you have it. Those are what I can find as the four most common—and deadly—cases of telling in people’s writing, how to recognise it, and how to avoid it. 

A quick recap: 

Emotion telling is identifiable by locating the emotion names (sad, happy, scared), and able to be fixed by instead describing the emotion’s physical, mental, and internal effects. 

Action telling is identifiable by explanatory words and phrases (‘was,’ ‘had been,’ ‘had,’ ‘because,’ ‘since,’ and ‘when’), and can be fixed by elaborating on exactly what is happening instead of just stating it happening. 

Description telling is identifiable through chunks of description that are not woven in to make sense (John had blond hair), and can be fixed by instead weaving it into the text and having the character interact with the item of description or have a reason to focus on it aside from just for the sake of description.

Information telling is identifiable by a dump of information that is explaining something to the reader (purpose and function of the Museum), and can be fixed by allowing the reader to experience it for themselves. 


Finally, here are some helpful sites and resources to look at that help with it:

The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression - Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi



Now you’re all ready to go out and tackle Show Don’t Tell for yourselves! 

Any other thoughts about Show Don’t Tell? Ideas? Tips? Feel free to share below!