Toothbrush Time

The author George R. R. Martin put it perfectly:-

“Writing novels is like being asked to scrub St Paul’s Cathedral. With a toothbrush.”

The trouble is that my toothbrush is getting smaller and smaller! Time to find myself a great big new broom.

Spring Fever

Okay, time for a dose of spring fever. In my household that usually means the kitchen cupboards get a bit of a hammering and the pencils get sharpened, but this year I’ve decided to go a step further. My desk and my filing cabinet are going to receive The Treatment. Very belatedly, I admit. They are  so stacked with papers that I am frightened to do more than ruffle the surface pages. Don’t want to cause an avalanche.

My favourite place for ‘filing’ the stuff I am not yet ready to consign to the twilight zone of a drawer is on top of my printer. The cat loves it up their, preens her whiskers with her little snowdrop paws and looks exceedingly pleased with herself as the pile rises steadily up towards the ceiling.

It has got to the stage where I lie awake at night, mentally emptying the wretched cupboards, binning the equivalent of half a forest for recycling, and starting afresh with a landscape of empty surfaces and sparkling drawers. In my mind’s eye I polish each one to within an inch of its life, take a vigorous toothbrush to my keyboard to extract the ginger-biscuit crumbs and the snippets of incriminating Lindt Easter egg, and I even imagine placing on my desk a single bloom in one of those stylish Swedish vases – far away from the cat. A white tulip does it for me.

Decluttered. Destacked. Delighted.

Hah! Now I shall write my book with ease. Because that’s what this is about. The writing. It’s ALWAYS about the writing. About finding ways to make it happen. About deluding oneself with little tricks and clever devices that make the process seem easier. I know one writer who makes copious lists of very single tiny thing in the book. She only feels ready to start her writing day when she has compiled at least one new list to pin on the vast noticeboard that swamps a whole wall of her study. While another author writes her chapters by hand in an A4 book, filling only the lefthand page, leaving the righthand one for notes to herself about characters and plotlines and reminders to check things. When the content of the righthand page exceeds that of the lefthand page, she panics and flees to a darkened room.

We all do it. Find ways to trick our minds into releasing the words that are chained up inside there. So today I shall be on my knees, beeswax and binbags in hand, confident in the fact that tomorrow, at my spanking clean desk, I shall speed through the chapters faster than my cat hoovers up my ginger-biscuit if I am foolish enough to place it even for a moment on the desk.

On the other hand …. I could forget the whole desk thing and dig out the final section of my chocolate Easter egg from the back of the cupboard where I’ve hidden it. Because another wise author swore to me that she had read in a scientific journal that chocolate, like green tea, is perfect for getting the brain synapses sparking or popping or whatever it is they do.

Hmmm, a difficult choice. Spring fever is making me feverish. I shall have to lie down ….

Historical perks

One of the chief joys of doing historical research is the people I meet. No, I don’t mean the lovely ladies in Churston Library who do all they can to help me or the curator in the museum hovering protectively over his glass case of artefacts. I’m talking about the men and women who leap off research pages and beguile me.

Two such extraordinary men are Flinders Petrie – what a gorgeous name that is – and Howard Carter, both giants in the world of archaeology. The thing about writing a book set in Egypt, which is what I’m deep into at the moment, is that it’s impossible to do so without stumbling daily on to three huge subjects:

1.  The names of Osiris and Anubis and the many other gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt.

2.  The names of the great pharaohs like Rameses II and Hatshepsut who built vast monuments to their own immortality.

3.  The names of the visionary men and women who discovered so much about the gods and the pharaohs. Read More…

Diamonds in the Dust eSpecial

Here is my first foray into short story eSpecials, and I’m very excited to be entering this brave new world. This short story is called DIAMONDS IN THE DUST and is set in 1942 in Darwin when the war came to Australia. Two of the characters have stepped right out of my latest book, THE WHITE PEARL, but here they create a dramatic new life of their own that took me completely by surprise. I loved writing it.

The eSpecial is available to download in the US at:

http://www.amazon.com/Diamonds-in-the-Dust-ebook/dp/B007FMWRIO

or:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/diamonds-in-the-dust-kate-furnivall/1109230156

or: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Kate_Furnivall_Diamonds_In_The_Dust?id=Q2OhXbsPSKAC

Penguin US have created a gorgeously spicy cover for it and I hope that readers in America will download and enjoy a taste of my favourite new character – Hatti Hoot who takes Darwin by the scruff of the neck and gives it a good shake. Read More…

Publication Day in US

I am full of excitement because today THE WHITE PEARL is published in America. Yes, I do know that it’s Super Tuesday when many of the primary elections are held  across the US, so citizens have rather more weighty matters on their mind, and that makes it even more of a nail-biting time.

Authors never know what lies in store for their book as it strides forth into the big wide world of the bookstores, jostled by other books eager to catch a reader’s eye. There is more info for you about THE WHITE PEARL on this website (go on, click on the book cover), but I’ll just tell you here that it is a powerful story set in the steamy heat of Malaya in 1941 – a dark time in that country’s history. It is a tale of love and danger, a clash of choices – both moral and physical – that dramatically alters the lives of all those involved.

Each book we read changes us in some indelible way, just as today could change the future for America. I know in the US you’ll be voting in earnest, but how about a vote for THE WHITE PEARL too?