I'm back, and I bring my Nanowrimo novel with me! Yes, I've decided I'm going to do Nanowrimo again this year, and hopefully keep up my two-year winning streak. I'm a little bit late in posting this, as I've been frantically finishing my coursework this past week, but now that uni's over I can focus more on writing.
So, here it is: my novel and a short excerpt. I had a horrible time writing the synopsis. For some strange reason I had a very clear idea of the way the plot was supposed to go, but the minute I tried to put it down on paper, I couldn't do it. I thought the idea behind me novel was so simple, but apparently I was wrong.
Anyway, this is an idea I got in November or December last year, after reading Lauren Kate's Fallen. I think what originally frustrated me was the love-plot that the novel focused on. In essence, a girl dies and is reborn over and over, and an angel who's in love with her keeps seeking her out to make her magically remember that they're soulmates.
This got me thinking about the whole 'destined for each other' thing. I've always been rather unconvinced by the 'soulmates' idea that seems to be so popular in fiction and film, and lately it's started to really actively annoy me.
It struck me as pretty unfair that you should be born over and over again and yet get no choice as to who you're forced to fall in love with. If all that ties you to one person is the memory of a romance in a past life, is it not rather tyrannical to insist that you have to love them in the next life too?
Every once in a while there'll be a slump in the television shows on. You know what it's like; every time you switch on the television there's some stupid reality show about cops training dogs to sniff people's luggage at airports, or aspiring chefs trying to impress a panel of fat, overpaid foodies with their ridiculously sculpted creations not nourishing enough to keep even a small child from starvation. (Don't get me wrong. Masterchef is a lot better than many of the television shows out there, and at least it's creative and constructive, but ten minutes of it makes me want to go to sleep. Although I suppose it's better than making me want to stuff my face...) Naturally, you find yourself going back to more old-fashioned forms of entertainment; for me, that's often reading book after book inbetween schoolwork. Making a serious dent in your To-Read list is great, but there are times when television is indispensable as a way of just unwinding.
That's where Offspring comes in. Last night, here in Australia, a new drama series aired on Channel 10 which I think has a lot of potential. After a myriad of fairly average grunge-city cop shows and the gritty Underbelly, it's a relief to finally see a more down-to-earth drama series produced in Australia....
Had one wandered up a remote London road one gloomy Tuesday in 1957 one might have observed Mr Feathercott making his way home, his impeccably trimmed whiskers drooping in the chill evening air.
On the other hand one might not have; for Mr Feathercott was a singularly unremarkable character, with his wilting whiskers and his crushed bowler hat. Mr Feathercott, alas, was the last of a race of rather ordinary Victorian gentlemen, now nearing his seventieth year, and with no notable achievements in his long life to single him out for fame and fortune. Born to a dying race, Mr Feathercott had lived much of his life in obscurity. He had once brushed the hand of celebrity with his overly large nose when he had, after the unfortunate drowning of his elder brother (unfortunate insofar as it brought his heretofore ignorant brother into some sort of renown) come to a moderate inheritance. Moderate it was indeed, for ‘moderate’ was a word which could be applied to Mr Feathercott from the tip of his frayed bowler to the toes of his unpolished brown shoes.
Had one wandered up a remote London road one gloomy Tuesday in 1957 one might have observed Mr Feathercott making his way home, his impeccably trimmed whiskers drooping in the chill evening air.
On the other hand one might not have; for Mr Feathercott was a singularly unremarkable character, with his wilting whiskers and his crushed bowler hat. Mr Feathercott, alas, was the last of a race of rather ordinary Victorian gentlemen, now nearing his seventieth year, and with no notable achievements in his long life to single him out for fame and fortune.
Mr Feathercott's Business chronicles the lives of the Feathercott family - Mr Feathercott, his wife Esther, and his three daughters - over the course of the '50s and '60s.
Life in the Feathercott household follows a well-defined and inescapable order. Mr Feathercott, the aging academic, spends his life pondering Mr Dickens and snoozing in his favourite chair by the fire. His dissatisfied wife Esther, twenty years his junior, has long ago faded into the throes of middle age yet she cannot forget the encounter with a handsome ginger-whiskered man more than two decades ago.
But times are changing, and Mr Feathercott's carefully ordered world is being systematically eroded piece by piece. His daughter Maud, newly wed to the charming and devastatingly handsome Peter, cannot wait to escape to Chicago with her husband. Elizabeth, the eldest daughter, is busy raising a family and caring for her own husband, but she finds herself unconsciously drifting towards music stands and record stores when the soulful tunes of the King of Rock 'n' Roll are heard. And as for Gladys, the Feathercott's youngest daughter - well, nobody speaks of her, save in a lowered voice as if afraid that the gossip will spread on telepathic thought waves.
Useless, archaic and mildly irritating, Mr Feathercott's world will be turned upside down. And it all begins with an encounter in a deserted pantry...
Chapter One
Destiny has your soul.
What if there was a place where there was a somebody for everybody? In the kingdom of Stillvalley, everyone has a soulmate - whether they like it or not.
But when one young farm girl appears to flout destiny and reach her sixteenth birthday without her soul's mate, danger threatens to cloud Stillvalley and destroy it from the outside in. The King's Wards are slipping, allowing contingents of the kingdom's most deadly enemies, the elves, to enter by stealth and destroy Stillvalley.
Only Alunah, the farm girl who managed to escape destiny, can save the kingdom now. Accompanied by a poacher called Wren and armed only with her handy sickle, Alunah must travel to Stillvalley Castle and consult the most famous witch in the land. But Alunah's quest to find her soul's mate and save the kingdom will change the way she views the world forever. Loyalties will be tested, fears realised, and nothing in Stillvalley will ever be the same.
Chapter One
INEVITABLY, when starting up a blog or anything of the kind, I end up writing a lot of rubbish that generally begins with "Well Now" and "I can't believe".
But this time I've vowed it's going to be different.
