Just Keep At It- Author Post by Dane Richter

Dane Richter was lovely enough to write a guest post for us here and it's absolutely brilliant so if you have some time read it here

Working at a school, I am in a unique position to see young minds develop and more importantly how young people perceive themselves in what they are able to do and achieve. Earlier this year, a young Muslim girl originally from Somalia had heard from another teacher that I had written a book and wanted to see it, as she had an interest in journalism as a potential career pathway. I showed her my debut novel: Hunt for the Star to which she immediately cried out, “I could never write something like that!” This was due to the tome’s hefty 170k word length and yes, to write something that size is a daunting undertaking. I am not a fan of people who use words like “can’t” or “never” or “won’t” especially when those words are used in conjunction with “I”. I told her how I wrote my book.

After having the desire to write a book, I sat down and came up with some character names, plot ideas and a map. At the end of 6 months I had about 9 pages written - a back story which set up the plot for the current timeline. After 18 months, I had about 57 pages (I guess it’s worth saying I was doing a BA Commerce Degree at the time and most of my writing was getting done during the semester breaks). During the next year, I committed a couple of hours a night going over the work. Sometimes I would write a page, sometimes half a page, sometimes just 1 or 2 sentences, and sometimes I’d delete a sentence. It was frustrating at times especially when I had less words at the end of the session than when I started. However, for whatever reason, I judged the book to be better without that sentence and so even when deleting, my work was progressing forward. That’s the beauty of writing; you will always move forward and the old adage applies - just keep at it. In the end, those first 9 pages I wrote over 6 months were scrapped during editing, but the overall story is better for it.

2 and a half years in and I had 150 pages. I deferred my education for a year and added another 140 pages or so and could see the finish line. It took me 4 years to write the first draft and the most beneficial advice I could give her was make it routine. A little bit each day is all you need. After hearing my story, the young Muslim girl who had come into my office with “I could never write something like that” went out thinking “maybe I can write a book” and I know that was a big step for her because from her country there are certain expectations for women, and education, career and ambition aren’t  any of them.

For anyone aspiring to write a book all you need to pencil in a little time each day. Once it becomes routine, there will be fewer days when you only write 1 or 2 sentences and more days when you produce 1 or 2 pages.

A little bit about Dane

Born in 1981, Dane Richter spent his early life growing up on a farm located about an hour east of Perth, Western Australia. A love of Enid Blyton’s works first introduced him to the world of fantasy and adventure and with time, shifted to works by Tolkien, Feist and Tad Williams which opened a wider spectrum of the fantasy genre.Although a deep-seeded passion for adventure and storytelling existed, during his high school years he had an aptitude for sport, excelling at track and field. Quickly rising up the ranks of Australia’s elite, he represented Australia in high jump at the IAAF World Junior Championships in 2000. He continued athletics for over a decade with personal bests of 2.19m in the high jump and 50.46s in the 400m hurdles and although he won numerous Australian national medals, a career dogged by injury saw him missing out on the 2002, 2006 and 2010 Commonwealth Games. Writing was a passion for Dane throughout his track and field career, beginning in 1999 and finishing the first draft of Hunt for the Star in 2003. With education and sport a primary focus, time afforded to writing was limited. Dane honed his skill over the next few years with affiliations to Tom Collins Writers House and the Speculative fiction group KSP Writers centre, whilst penning a sequel, Rise of the Deceiver.Dane completed a Bachelor degree in Commerce majoring in Accounting and Marketing in 2003 and worked in coaching and education over the next ten years with a brief stint as a freelance writer in 2006, publishing 23 articles as a sports writer for the Perth metro and country based paper, Community News Group.In 2011 Dane was introduced to Hal Colebatch - a contributing author to Larry Niven’s military sci-fi series, The Man-Kzin Wars. With Hal’s mentoring, Dane got his start with a small independent press who published the paperback version of Hunt for the Star in 2012. In 2013 Dane released the ebook, which is available on Amazon.

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Guest Post: Our Favorite Thieves

Our Favorite Thieves

By Olga Godim

I’m sure you detest the thieves who broke into your neighbors’ house last summer and stole a bunch of expensive electronics. Or the pickpockets in the crowded Mediterranean market who stole your cousin’s wallet. Or the loathsome identity thieves who hacked into your coworker’s account and stole her passwords. But so many of us enjoy reading about the charismatic thieves in fantasy fiction. The list Thieves on GoodReads includes 409 titles, many of them bestsellers. Over 700 readers voted on that list. Why?

I think the difference between real life thieves and fantasy thieves is in their goals and their victims. The real thieves steal for money, from regular people—us. No ambiguity there. The fantasy thieves… well, that’s a different story. Some of them, our favorite thieves, steal exclusively from bad guys and often have nobler purposes: to save a lover, to rescue a princess, to liberate prisoners, to feed the poor, or in the extreme cases, to save their own necks. And we, the readers, cheer for them.

Seventeen-year-old Eriale, the protagonist of my fantasy novel “Almost Adept”, is not a thief. She is a magician. Sheltered and adored by her family until recently, she is on her own for the first time in her life, on a quest to prove her Adept potential. And she repeatedly stumbles into situations where she has no other option but to steal.

Her first encounter with thievery happens, when she hears a magical call for help. Gem fairies—the tiny elementals living in a tourmaline crystal—are dying. After their crystal had been cut off their mother lode, they need a magician to feed them magic. But their owner, a gem merchant, mocks Eriale, when she asks to buy the crystal from him.

Compelled to help the fairies and pressed for time—they would die if she didn’t hurry—she steals them from the merchant. She doesn’t feel guilt or remorse. She tried to do the right thing, but when he wouldn’t listen to her explanations, she did what was necessary to save the sentient beings.

Her second thievery occurs later on her journey, when she whisks a man out of a local prison, liberating him from the torturers. She is positive that whatever the man had done, he doesn’t deserve to be tortured to death. Nobody deserves such a terrible fate.

Her third thievery is a combination of revenge and need, simultaneously solving her money problem and freeing her to pursue a complex and dangerous magical task, the task that could benefit too many people to count but could also kill her. If she is risking her life for the others, the least they can do is pay her expenses, right?

In all cases, she steals to help strangers, and her victims are invariably bullies or swindlers. If she could achieve her goals any other way, she would, and the same is true for most fantasy thieves. J.R.R Tolkien and Rick Riordan, Scott Lynch and Cornelia Funke, William Goldman and Brandon Sanderson, and many other talented writers gave us the charming, roguish thieves who steal out of altruism … almost. Altruistic thievery—what a nice oxymoron. I hope my readers will root for Eriale as much as they do for all those other fantasy thieves.

Check out Olga's book

To prove her Adept potential, seventeen-year-old mage Eriale embarks on her first magical quest. She expects a glittering foreign escapade but ends up in Grumesh, the land rife with poverty and violence, where local courier Kealan becomes her only friend and ally. Together, they survive an explosion, a treacherous incarceration, and a daring escape. Sparks of interest ignite between them, but before Eriale can explore her attraction to Kealan, she discovers blood magic running amok in the city. Her priorities must change. As an aspiring Adept, she is duty-bound to find and eliminate the blood mage of Grumesh, or the blood magic will taint the entire land. No matter the cost—her life or her heart—she can’t let the vile mage win.

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Author’s Bio

Olga Godim is a writer from Vancouver, Canada. When she doesn’t work on her fiction, she writes for a local newspaper—articles about art and culture—and collects toy monkeys. She has over 300 monkey figurines in her collection. Her published fiction to date includes two novels and 19 short stories. Most of her fiction is fantasy: swords, magic, and talking squirrels. You can read some of her short stories free on her website.

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Guest Post: What’s with all the Virgins? By Georgia Bell

“People with lost personalities will suffer a great deal more than those with lost virginities.”

― Melina Marchetta, Saving Francesca

You’ve noticed, right? That you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a virgin in most YA (and NA) plotlines? Sometimes after catching a few minutes of Teen Mom, I think there are more virgins in YA than in real life. I have nothing against virgins, of course. Heck, I used to be one myself. For me, much depends on the function of a character’s virginity within a storyline. It seems that virginity – particularly for our female protagonists –typically falls into one of the following categories.

Virginity as a rite of passage. Well, let’s face it. Most of us “do the deed” for the first time as teenagers. As part of a normal developmental trajectory, virginity is embedded in our cultural narrative about growing up. For better or for worse, we remember our first time and in some way, we carry this into adulthood as a marker of something lost or something gained. Maybe both. When a main character loses her V-card, it can be symbolic of innocence lost. Of leaving childhood behind to face impending adulthood and greater responsibility.

Virginity as regret management. Most YA authors are well past the stage of being considered young adults. In fact, we typically have to squint a little to look back on our own adolescence. Given the proliferation of skilled, sensitive lovers that make up the ranks of YA book boyfriends, I sometimes wonder if we aren’t engaging in a little wish fulfillment. I mean, didn’t we all want it to be earthquakes and shooting stars? Weren’t most of us just a little bit disappointed by the reality of fumbling hands, sharp elbows, and sweaty bodies? The magic of writing is that we get a chance to do it all over again (pun intended), but this time we can get it right.

Virginity as sexual tension. Uncertainty can be hot, right? The wonder of a first kiss or first base. The wonder of wondering how far things will go and what will happen next. Sometimes a character’s virginity is used to help the audience re-experience that rush of oxytocin we all felt at the beginning of our sexual education, when things were new and unknown. Used this way, the butterflies and the nervousness function to heighten the mystery and the excitement of a first experience.

 Virginity as a plot device. Sometimes virginity (or the loss of it) is the biggest part of the story. Either the MC wants to get rid of it or someone else is hunting her maidenhead like a stag in the woods. This usually ends badly. Almost always for our protagonist.

 Virginity as purity. This is my least favorite version of the virginity trope in YA novels. Far more often than I’d like, virginity is used to reassure the audience that our protagonist is really a “good girl” – someone who is pure of heart and mind, despite the fact that she may also be a sexual being (gasp).  In this vein, virginity is used as indication of worth and value. The implicit assumption is that young women are most worthy when they are “untouched.” This is usually paired with some macho posturing that includes a book boyfriend slugging anyone who is unfortunate enough to look at our MC the wrong way. This portrayal of virginity also means that it’s quite likely that marriage will be mentioned at some point.

What did I miss? Are you sick of the emphasis on virginity in YA? Do you think it’s appropriate given the intended audience? Do you have any favorite fictional V-card moments?

A massive massive thank you to Georgia for doing this guest post for us! I absolutely loved what she had to say :P Here is a little bit more about Georgia and her book. 

After her father dies, Rachel realizes she is scared and stuck. Scared of heights, of cars, of disasters harming the people she loves. Stuck in a life that is getting smaller by the minute. Stuck with a secret she has kept all her life: Someone has been watching over her since birth. Someone who tends to show up when she needs him the most. Someone she believes is her guardian angel. Eaden is a 1,500-year-old immortal who wants to die. Drained by a life stretched too thin, he has requested his final reward – a mortal sacrifice bred specifically to bring him death. But something went wrong. Rachel’s ability to grant death has mutated in ways that threaten to upset the uneasy alliance between mortals and immortals. And utterly beguiled, Eaden discovers that although Rachel is the key to his death, because of her, he no longer wants to die. And he will do anything to protect her. Swept into a world of legends, caught between the warring political factions of immortals, and carrying the future of mortal kind in her flesh and bone, Rachel must risk everything to save her world and the man she loves.

 Author Bio

Georgia Bell, author of Unbound (All Good Things #1), was raised on a steady diet of science fiction and fantasy, courtesy of her father, a man who loved his family, fishing, scotch, and science (although not necessarily in that order). Georgia is an avid reader of young adult fiction, and a lover of good wine, music, children, and cats (although not necessarily in that order). She's currently working on Unknown, the second book in the All Good Things trilogy.

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