Facebook Page - The Gribble's Gift

I would like to UPDATE everyone - It has been nearly 14 years of me telling people my book is coming, it is coming, it is coming, well it is so close now I can taste it. I am just getting the front cover to print in the colours that I would like and then everything is good to go.

So in preparation for my novels release I have set up a new Facebook Page called The Gribble's Gift. The aim of this page is to let people know the how's and why's of how I wrote the book, the reasons, the ideas, as much info as I can remember. I will also be able to let people know where they can purchase a copy of my book or get their e-book copy. If you are interested then please follow the link and I will see you there.

Facebook Page - The Gribble's Gift

I HAVE A FRONT COVER

LOOK! I am soo pleased.

Andrew McIntosh kindly produced the following front cover for my soon to be released novel

The Gribble's Gift

Posters of My Illustrations

They have finally arrived. I have been drawing some illustrations for my book The Gribble's Gift which will be self published in 2019. I decided to get some A3 posters (350grm) printed and here they are. When I have my website set up I shall sell them through it for

$10.00 each .

 

Botanical Bazzar

I was soo pleased to be able to display my models at the Botanical Bazaar at the Paradise Parklands at Nerang, Qld. Aust.

It is the first time I have displayed my work even though this is the fourth year the show has been on. I was soo amazed at the numerous exhibitors and the amazing ideas that people have to help humans and the planet we live on.

I was soo pleased with the reaction I received concerning my miniature models. Soo many people were also interested in my illustrations and the story I have written (The Gribble's Gift) which shall be self published in 2019.

The Gribble's Gift novel

UPDATE - 2020

My novel is so close to being published I can taste it - I am just making sure the colour of the front cover is exactly how I would like it. SO in preparation for its release I have started a new Facebook Page especially to let people know the why's and how's of how my novel came to be a real life book. Please click on this link to take you to the Facebook Page - The Gribble's Gift,

Hello, This is the title for my first, of three, children's fantasy adventure novels. I am self publishing this book and it is soo close to being published after eleven years. YAY!

I allowed life to get in the way but I have knuckled down this year and have only two more images to draw. While I wait for the front cover to be illustrated (by someone else) I decided to have my manuscript edited just one more time just to be sure. An author only has one time to catch a persons interest. There can be no mistakes. It is not like I could go back to people and say, "Sorry about the mistakes. I have fixed them now. Do you want to buy my book again?" The answer would be NO!

Facebook Author Page

I am pleased to let you know that I have finally set up a Facebook Author Page. As time goes by I shall add more info to it and hopefully people will start asking me questions.

Click here to be taken to the Facebook Page.

Illustration of a Forest

Illustrations for my book The Gribble's Gift.

The illustrating of book is an individual thing. I do not consider myself an illustrator, even though others do. To me an illustrator can make drama, emotion, action come alive on the page. I am not able to do that but even though I can not I seem to be able to do something. And something is better than nothing.

First, I have decided to pay for a professional artist to do my front cover. That is a story in itself and I won't bother telling it here. So I decided to concentrate on the internal images.

I am presenting you with the final version, the last of twenty-one versions, of of an image of one of my characters walking along a branch in a huge ancient forest. Hope you like it.

CRAFT SUPPLIES FOR SALE! To sell or not to sell?

CRAFT SUPPLIES FOR SALE!

With three craft room's you can imagine that I would have some 'things' hidden in them that I do not actually need and as I am on the hunt for money I thought  "Why not sell some of it?"

Why am I on the hunt for money? Good question, because I have finished my fantasy novel (finally, it has only taken 8 years). Anyway because there is not a fairy or a witch in site in my novel, only creatures I have invented, I thought (after talking it over with a well known author) that it would be a good idea to have some drawings (illustrations) that could be sent with it to the agent I have chosen (granted they do not know I have chosen them put I will put it out to the universe if all goes to plan... well you will know the rest one day. Anyway this is the reason I am on the hunt for money. Illustrators, good ones, are not cheap and as I consider it soo very important to have an illustrator that can be the advantage, a benefit,  a reason for someone to pick up your book and read it, buy it, hence it is worth the money a person has to pay to him or her.

So far I have been able to have some posters made up by Aaron Pocock.

With this in mind, I started selling "stuff" through Facebook Groups. This was successful to a point. If any of you have had dealings with Facebook Groups you will know how difficult it is to snag a sale. I consider it like fishing. You happen to put up a post at the same time a person just happens to be looking through the group and just happens to see your post and just happens to be wanting what you are selling. And then there are the RULES! I'm not very good at following rules and I suppose I should have known that I would, eventually, not be able to put up with it so hence I started my own Facebook Page to sell my craft supplies. In the end I choose not to do this either because of the shear amount of time it took to earn a couple of dollars. I deleted everything I had done and went back to my job of maintaining fish ponds.

Now I have not completely given up my idea, as I still want an illustrator, but I am going to have a go at selling everything at a BIG craft show. So I have to package everything up (which is a lot) see how much it will cost to get a stand in a BIG craft show and see if, at the end of it, I will actually make some money if I sold it all. Few! I will let you know how I go.

 Well I am back to tell you that all things were put on hold because the roof of my craft room gave way. If you would like to read about it click here. So anyway the stuff I do have left has been put up on shelves and will have to sit there for a while as I have a school to go to with my models, I have a couple of shows to do and get three of my models ready for a three month display at Lollipop Land.

Bundaberg Write Fest 2014

I have just returned from the Bundaberg Write Fest presented by Bunderberg Writer's Club. I had a fantastic time.
This is the third time I have been to the festival but it was the first time I was in a position to go to the Meet and Greet.
It was lovely to catch up with people and, of course meet new ones. One of the people I met was Louise Cusack.

Louis Cusack and me - Nicola Tierney at the Bundaberg Write Fest May 2014

 Louise presently is promoting her Shadow Through Time trilogy. They are eBooks and are available here.

Louise was my teacher over six years ago. In 2009 she convinced the the Gold Coast Council to run a 'Write that Kids Book.'  Sixty people applied but only sixteen where chosen. I was one of the lucky ones.
She looked at my work and said, "Yes, very nice BUT!" and told me to work on it. The next year our group (some people did not carry on through to this year) applied for a grant and asked Louise to teach us again. In 2011, we became the Prana Writers.

I have now been involved with Prana Writers of the Gold Coast for six years. They are a lovely bunch of people. I have been involved with many people, in many situations and committees but nobody like these. They are so supportive of everyone. They are like the family people dream of and this support has definitely paid off because several of them are published in one form or another.Also Prana Writers have published the e-book The Coral Sea Monster which raises money for the Children's Hospital. They won the State and National awards.
On the 10th May 2014 Prana Writers launched the Gold Coast Anthology - Undertow.
I am sure that when Lousie and the Gold Coast Council started on this journey they would never have thought we would go this far. I can't wait to see what we will do in the future.

One Saturday I went to Scott Baker's talk on Making Book Trailers That Buzz.

Scott Baker at Bunderberg Write Fest

I found this talk very interesting. He showed trailers he had made and we all wanted to know when the movie was coming out. We were astounded that it was going to be a book. I found the subject of colour fascinating. How to look at the emotion of watching book trailers and how to work out what it is you want to say.
His newest book is The Rule of Knowledge.

In the afternoon I went and listened to Jacque Duffy and her talk Capturing Kid's Interest in Chapter Books.
This was very relevant to me as I am writing a chapter book. I found it interesting. There is such a vast array of chapter books. She went into how they were thought of, written and for whom. Fascinating! She also had a display of a huge selection of books and I shall be purchasing a couple of them.
Her newest book is The Bear Said Please. 

Image used from Miss Marple's Musing Blog.

On Sunday I was chosen to attend the masterclass held by Jo Butler editor and former fiction publisher of Harper Collins.
This was very interesting hearing about the industry from someone who is inside it. I also had the opportunity to talk to Jo, on a one to one basis (as did everyone else who attended the class) about my Ebony story. This was something very special.
I'm sorry that I didn't get around to taking more photos.

Prana Writers Gold Coast Antholgy

Prana Writers Gold Coast Antholgy

I am pleased to annouce that Prana Writers, who I am a member of, have released the Cold Coast Anthology webpage.

The idea is to encorage people to submit their written works and the chosen ones will be published.

http://goldcoastanthology.info/

There is also a facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/GoldCoastAnthology#!/GoldCoastAnthology




One of the many images people can choose to write a story about. Come and see what else there is.

Visit by Love That Book

Prana Writers Meetings

On the 27th April 2012 it was my turn to organise/run the meeting for the Prana Writers.
Amanda presented two talks. One was Creating Our Bio's which was very interesting as I am looking at doing one for myself.
The second talk was about the 10 steps to writing an opening scence. Which is very useful when an author gets a blank page.

Tom then gave a talk about the Theory of Comedy which is interesting because I would like to write comedy but I'm not a funny person and so I don't write funny.

After lunch we were very fortunate to have Benette from Love That Book, an independant book store, accepted our invertation to talk to us.

Benette from Love That Book

Her talk was very interesting about how authors can get their books into a book store and what happens to it afterwards. It gave us all a lot to think about.

We also had to say a type of goodbye to one of our memebers/friend in that Bridgette and family are leaving to live in Figi for a couple of years. She still wants to keep in touch online but we will all miss her.

Bridgette (holding cake) and us.
We will miss you!

Prana Writers Win

We won and we have the awards to prove it!

As mentioned in my previous post Prana Writers won the Write A Book In A Day Competition. We are the National Winner as well as the Eastern States Winner!

This award or should I say awards were given out by the Royal Children's Hospital.
Visit Prana Writers blog for more information. Click Here.

On the 24th November 2011 the group (less two members who were unable to attend) was prented with the awards at the Gold Coast City Creative Juices Networking Event. The members of the team that participated in the project were presented with a certificate and a T-shirt.

Prana members Angela Sunde presentated a power point presentation on the creating of the winning entry (The Coral Sea Monster). She went through the many processes that the group needed to complete in the one day. It was not until the beginning of the day did the members even know what it was they were to write about.

Tom Betts gave a presentation on how the Prana Writers came into being. He explained how a group of sixteen came together three years ago when the Gold Coast Council ran a Write A Kids Book workshop with Louise Cusack. The next year eleven of us decided to apply for a grant and employ Louise again. This year those eleven became known as Prana Writers.

It was a wonderful night and I am soo proud of our group.
Below is an exert from the judges report on The Coral Sea Monster by Prana Writers.

'The Winner of the Open Section this year is the most beautifully illustrated as well as the best written story of the bunch: ‘The Coral Sea Monster’ by Prana Writers. The team was given the challenge to include a podiatrist, a sheep shearer and a sea animal in their work, as well as to employ the setting of a motorway and the theme of love. The result is an amusing and engaging story of a 13 year-old sheep-whisperer, Jack, whose hopes of competing in the shearing event at the Ekka showgrounds are shot through when a truck overturns on the motorway into Brisbane, blocking the traffic in both directions. The truck in question is carrying a sea monster, of course, and Jack and his new found friend, a teen podiatrist (yes, there is such a girl!), set out on a fun-packed adventure to save the sea monster from the clutches of Lionel Measly, the greedy Ocean-World curator who hopes to make a million out of the endangered species. A competition like Book-in-a -Day challenges all of its competitors to take an imaginative leap, to work together against the ticking clock, to produce something extraordinary and new. ‘The Coral Sea Monster’ is a delightful example of the best kind of new work this competition is capable of producing. Congratulations to team members Tom Betts, Rob Brown, Margaret Choinski, Rebecca Fraser, Janis Hanley, Kerry McGuicken, Helen Stubbs, Angela Sunde and Amanda Worlley, as well as to the children at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, to whom this team’s sponsors directed their funds. You are all very worthy winners!'

Congratulations of a job well done and may we all go from strength to strength in the coming years.

WE WON!

                             WE WON!
or should I say the Prana Writers won the National Awards for the Write a Book in a Day competition.
Unfortunately I and two other members were away at the time the other members of the Prana Writers were competing in the competition.

It is amazing, on the one hand, that our group has pulled off something so brilliant and distressing on the other that I was unable to be there to be part of it. I was on a two week trip up to the Gulf of Carpentaria. I enjoyed myself immensely and I was able to complete an awful lot of writting on my story but still ...

http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/wJW1Tgd1N2rlVWNln-mh_Yj8iNrauNayehWz1aUXEht-aZYejvnvZf5nISdr5wDV_i5InDahMzfiJw4WBNFsXwFUYuJgqFmt6w/Write%20a%20Book%20in%20a%20Day%202011/Prana%20Media%20Release.5.pdf

I have included the link for the press release of our groups success. Before the group knew of their success they had decided to re-edit the story The Coral Sea Monster with a view of self publishing it and donating some of the profits to the Royal Children's Hospital as a matter of course. Now that the group has won, that will definitely be happening.
The three of us that were unable to be involved in creating this fine story have been asked to review the story once it has been polished up by the eight members who came up with the story in the first place.

It is an amazing accomplishment by the members of the group and I congratulated them all on their achievement.

Write A Book In A Day Competiton

I thought I would share with you something rather special. I am involved with a writting group called Prana Writers. The group entered a competion called 'Write A Book In A Day'. The idea of the national competiton was to raise money for a hospital. We chose the Royal Children's Hospital. We raised $940.00. Our book is called The Coral Sea Monster.

Anyway the good news is that Prana Writers has been shortlisted to win. If we win (which we will find out today - the 3rd November) the book will be printed and half the profits will go to the hospital. I think that goes for two years (but don't quote me on that.)

I will keep you posted.

Brisbane Writers Festival

I was VERY fortunate to be given a free ticket to attend the Brisbane Writers Festival. I attended the talk on 'Publishing in the young adult & children's market.'
There were five speakers.
Farrin Jacobs - International Editorial Director, Harper Collins Children's Books, New York,
Emily Rodda - Five time winner of the Children's Book Council of Australia of the Year Award.
Tristan Bancks - One of Australia's most popular and successful writers for young people.
Kristina Schulz - Children's Publisher for UQP.
Gaby Naher - Literary Agent. (Sophie Hamley was suppose to be the guest but had to pull out due to sickness).

The whole experience was well worth traveling from the Gold Coast to the Brisbane Art Gallery. I learnt some new things. After three years of learning as much as I can it is amazing that there are still 'things' to learn.

A couple of weeks ago I had asked the universe a question and that question was 'How do I protect my rights?'

A week later I received (out of the blue) a free ticket to the Brisbane Writers Festival and I knew I would get my answer. I thought I would get it from Farrin Jacobs but it proved not to be. I received it from Emily Rodda.

The answer was to NEVER give up my copyright. It MUST be stated in ANY contract you are to sign that 'you (the author) are the sole owner of the copyright of the work you have produced.' Those words will not appear in that exact way but that is what it means. Your contract MUST say that you have the copyright of your work.

Writting & Illustration Workshop

Yesterday I went to a Writting and Illustration Workshop put on by Angela Sundae, author of Pond Magic.
It was amazing. I now know why I write novels. Illustrating a book is complicated, difficult, amazing and any other words you could think of. There is soo much involved when you get down to the nitty gritty of it.
Luckily you can be either an anuthor or an illustrator or both. I think I'll stick to being an author. That's the easy bit.

The only dissapointing thing about the whole day was that four people did not turn up. That in itself is their loss but there were six people on a waiting list who missed out and who could have been there.

My trip to nowhere and back again

I'm back. I know you did even know I'd left. When I have more time I'll put up some photos of what I have done and where I have been for the last two weeks. I've had an amazing time and have seen  and done things I have NEVER done before. ALWAYS a positive thing to do to move away and move up from where you are now if you want to change your life and move it in a different direction. (Something I'm attempting to do. Move my life towards my BIG dream)

While I was away I worked on my story. I wrote every day for 5-6 hours and a few days ago, the 15th August 2011 at 5.12 pm I could finally say THE END!

Of course that is only on paper. I am now transcribing my snakes and ladders gibberish onto the computer so that I can eventually print it and send the whole lot off to a friend of mine so he can go through the grammar.

I will then fix whatever it is I'm told to fix. I will in the meantime create a synopsis, a cover letter, a list of potential pictures with their locations, a time line of the story and a break up of each chapter.

I find it VERY beneficial to go away like this and be able to sit and go through the whole story from one end to the other. In my case because I was changing points of views in some chapters, removing some characters and replacing them with someone else. Ensuring that all my chapters flowed. Combining some chapters, splitting others up.

I am extremely pleased with my story and I know that later I will sit back and say struthe I should have done that better but at the moment I am extremely pleased with it.

For the next three weeks I have to build as many small miniature houses as I possibly can because I shall be at the Gold Coast Show and I am allowed to sell my houses for the first time. I shall be creating houses that are less complex and thereby will be a lot cheaper. I am also going to create basic bases so that people can create their own house. They will be sold for $50.00. When the show is finished I shall be putting them on my blog to see if anyone is interested in purchasing them.

I will see you later I have work, work, work to do.

Writing Stories for Children - How the heck did that happen!

Writing stories for children - how the heck did that happen?

Words. Words. Words. It all their fault. They are an amazing thing - words. They can destroy people and they can keep people alive. They can make you cry or they can make you laugh and they can change your life.
The words that changed my life were:-

'If you continue to do the things you've done in your past, you'll continue to get in the future, the things you have always gotten.'

Author unknown 

If you are like me then photos
catch your eye. Isn't he cute!

Since reading those words it was as if I could see a map laid out infront of me and I didn't like where it was heading. I hadn't like the road I had been on since I was 17. I just didn't know how to get off it. Then in my late 30's those amazing words came into my life and they frightened me. It meant that if I was going to listen to them, act on them, I would have to go against everything I knew, everything I did and everyone in my life who liked me the way I was.

In my journey to today I have found out many things but one of those things is that people don't like change. They like comfort and in comfort comes complacency, boardum, apathy and a lack of understanding of people who don't want to run with the sheep any more. Hence as I deliberately experienced 'things' I had never experienced before, people who I classed as friends, who liked comfort, dropped off and new ones were picked up. It is the way of things even if it is not understood at the time.

As I tentatively, slowly experienced one brand new thing at a time it enabled me to leave that road behind and head off in a completely new direction. Now fifteen years on I am now in an amazing part of my life. A life I thought I would NEVER have and as hard as I look I can not see that old road that I thought I would never be able to leave behind.
(Click Here if you would like to read more about how I decided to start writing stories for children)
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Writing A Story - How I came up with the idea

Ths post is about writing a story and how I came up with the stories that I am writing. I'm writing two at the moment (Story 1 & Story 2). I don't actually want to go into the details of what my stories are about as they are not published yet but still I think the processes of how I came up with the ideas within them might be interesting to some.

The General Store and Me

From time to time I had come up with little ditty's that I would write down but I never took them seriously until one year (along time ago) I made a model of a General Store. (Story 1) It was created in a time when everyone had gone away on holidays and I was left to run my parents waterlily nursery. Every night I would set the log fire ablaze, put on a Miss Marple video (starring Joan Hickson, my favourite) and make my model. When I created the main character, who lives in my imaginary forest, I had to consider what did he do. How can he move within his store and his house that sat on top of it. I must admit I got a bit carried away with it all and in the end I even gave him an astronomy tower (because I like looking at the stars, the universe). It sits on the very top of his house. It even has actual miniature star charts of the southern hemisphere. I also created a vege patch and as I thought of his life I realised that he wouldn't have time to tend it so I made it overgrown with weeds. You can see the little dove coup he has standing in the middle of it by clicking onto the link How to Make Picture Tubes. which can be found on the page labeled Information for Free & Sale.
(Click Here if you would like to read more about Writig A Story - how I came up with the idea)
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