DB Tait

So, it’s been a long time and a lot has happened. I decided to turn my life upside down and move from the Blue Mountains, where I’d lived for twenty years, to Melbourne. I’ve been here now for 16 months and I love it. I loved the mountains too, but I needed a change. I’d been thinking about it for about 5 years and in true Taurus fashion it took me a long time to make the decision. But once it was made bang! I was packed up and on the move. That’s another Taurus trait. Once the decision is made the bull goes full steam ahead. Now I live in an apartment a few kilometres from the centre of the city with no garden. Quite a change from my Blue Mountains house and my flower garden.

Do I miss it? Yes and no. I’ve been back to visit a few times and don’t regret the move but do acknowledge what a beautiful part of the world the mountains is. I don’t miss my garden but then again I have a thriving balcony garden with some roses, fuchsias and geraniums.

Have I been writing? Again, yes and no. For the first 6 months or so I did nothing but have down time and spent it as a tourist getting to know my new city. Then reality intruded and I had to get a job. So now I’m back in the criminal justice system working with incarcerated men. Three days a week which is just enough. It’s full on work but I am enjoying it.

I dabbled with some old stories and half written manuscripts thinking I could do a short cut by finishing some and getting them published. But I realised I’m not the same person now as I was when I wrote them. All this was crystalised for me when I read this article about staying on the bus. I’ve written two and a half novels in the Dark Mountain series so why was I off flirting with other bits and pieces? The article made me look at all my work with a critical eye. I think there is really only about four half finished novels that I can really do something with out of the close on twenty that are in various stages of completion. It feels good to discard the rest. Well, at least keep them in a folder that I’ll probably never look at.

I’ve started the third Dark Mountain novel tentatively titled Midnight Deception. Set in the Blue Mountains still with Julia and Dylan as the main characters and with a little help from Margaret from Festive Deception. There are lots of ideas floating around and my writing muscles are a bit stiff but about to get a work out! Stay tuned.

You can read about my books, Cold Deception, Desperate Deception and Festive Deception here.

Let’s welcome Sandy Vaile and find out all about her latest release Combatting Fear available now! Take it away Sandy!

How far would you go to save a child that wasn’t yours?

Mild-mannered kindergarten teacher, Neve Botticelli, leads a double life. At home with her paranoid father, she is a combat trained survivalist who lives off-the-grid.

When self-made billionaire, Micah Kincaid, storms into town in search of his four-year-old son, Rowan, he’s pushy, entitled, and stands for everything Neve despises.

But something far more sinister than a cheating estranged wife, is lurking in rural Turners Gully, and it has its sights set on little Rowan’s inheritance. It turns out there is one thing Micah and Neve can agree on, and that’s keeping Rowan safe.

As they work together to free Rowan, they glimpse beneath one another’s guises, and realise that falling in love could be even more dangerous than hunting deadly criminals.

Hi, I’m Sandy Vaile, a motorbike-riding daredevil who isn’t content with a story unless there’s a courageous heroine and a dead body. When I’m not devising horrible things to do to fictional characters, I write procedures for high-risk industrial activities, mentor new writers through the Novelist’s Circle critiquing group, judge romance writing competitions, present literary craft workshops, and write the odd articles and blog.

Persistence is the key to success

I wear many hats each day, like mother, wife, writer and auditor, but the one I’m most passionate about is persistence. It’s an understated, slightly shabby hat that is stitched together with determination, and fashioned by resolve. I don’t believe you have to be the best or trickiest or luckiest, but you do have to stay focused and never give up. Ever!

J.K. Rowling once said:

It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

Persistence is something I’ve practiced since my dad insisted that I get straight back on after falling off my pushbike. I guess the theory behind it is that if you face your fears head on, you are more likely to overcome them than if you skirt around them, worrying and building them into Himalayan-sized phobias.

Embrace failure

Unfortunately, failure is a part of life none of us can avoid, so I’ve learnt to embrace it, and use it as a learning tool to make me stronger. I don’t go looking for it, but I also don’t let those failures define me.

Without persistence I wouldn’t have triumphed over the many hardships in my life, like moving out of home at the age of sixteen with little parental support, or being bullied at high school, or having a serious motorbike accident.

We all face difficult times, just remember that nothing in life ever stays the same, and even those unpleasant times will pass.

One such lesson, came from losing my job. It motivated me to change my career path from Chef to office administrator, which led to my current role in quality management, without which I would never have found the work-life balance that enables me to pursue fiction writing.

Practice makes perfect

I have had lots of opportunities to practice persistence, because nothing ever goes to plan, but I keep taking baby steps towards my goals.

It’s not that I don’t feel afraid or dread failure, but I won’t let those emotions hold me back. When I stood in front of my first audience of 70 at the Festival Fleurieu, I could barely breathe enough to speak. But I had practiced plenty, took note cards with me, and took a leap of faith. To tell you the truth, I’m terrified every time I have to do public speaking, but a little thing like fear is not going to stop me doing it.

You see, it’s only by pushing past my comfort zone, that amazing things happen. I grow as a person, meet incredible people, and get to do things I never thought I would. And so it was after I’d been writing for several years, finished two manuscripts, and received many rejections. The publishing industry was in turmoil with the popularity of eBook, and then a death in the family knocked me for a six. For a while there I could barely put pen to paper.

And that is when I received an email from Crimson Romance saying they wanted to publish my book!

So remember, success has nothing to do with luck or being remarkable, we can all be successful if we persist no matter what.

I’d love to hear about the adversity you’ve overcome, and what qualities you admire in fictional heroines. Leave a comment on this blog and get 1 entry to win the “Combatting Fear” eBook. Subscribe to my newsletter and get 3 more entries.

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Buy “Inheriting Fear” here…

Sandy is on tour!

Thanks to ARRA members for nominating Festive Deception in the Best Romantic Suspense category for 2016. I was astonished! The awards are in late February in Melbourne. Not sure I’m going even though I’d love to!

I’ve just been reading Anne Gracie’s blog post about writing on demand. I’m an intermittent user of this method – writing first thing on getting up, then making an appointment to write later in the day – and her post made me think why I don’t use this method more often. Procrastination is my biggest obstacle when it comes to my writing practice. I even procrastinate about tackling it. The mind (well, my mind) is such a wondrous and largely unknowable thing.

Today I’ve been trying out different methods for plotting. I’m about to do an Aeon Timeline course which I hope will be useful.

I’m an aspiring plotter. I’d love to have a whole outline with major scenes and a timeline all worked out before I start writing. Alas, this is not my process, even though I’d like it to be. I generally write about twenty thousand words then sit down and try and work out the way forward from there. I need to get the characters to walk around and interact with each other before I know what action they will take. I wish it wasn’t so, because after 20k, I spend ages in despair trying to work out ‘what next’. It’s as if the characters delight in setting up the problem and then stand back as if to say, ‘Over to you. We’ve got you going, now it’s up to you …’

Which I wouldn’t mind but the problem they set up is often quite tricky. That’s when I pull out beat sheets, write odd scenes on sticky notes and pin them on my notice board, write a vague synopsis that doesn’t make sense, and generally try any planning method for getting me to move forward.

The obvious question is ‘Why not just write?’ Well, yes. Why indeed. Then I circle back to writing in my journal and as Anne says, ‘doing a Dorothea’.

At the moment, I’m writing this post longhand in my bullet journal (not exactly at the moment, but you know what I mean). I’m using a fountain pen with green ink. Lately, I’ve gotten a lot of pleasure writing longhand. If I’m having trouble getting words on the page, hand writing seems to help. I splurged over the Christmas holidays and bought another fountain pen (I like Lamy) and some different coloured ink. So at the moment my hand writing is in green and purple.

I’m not reading romance at the moment. Not sure why. I seem to want to read more crime. I have two books on the go at the moment, The Notorious Mrs Clem: Murder and Money in the Gilded Age by Wendy Gamber (a scholarly history of some aspects of post-Civil War reconstruction using the backdrop of a murder) and A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch an historical crime novel set in 1865 London. I’ve just realised they’re both set in the same time period but in different countries.

I’m listening to Melody Pool and Laura Marling (and wish I had tickets to see Bruce Springsteen); watching Lewis, (although I think it should be call Hathaway given his presence in the series), old episodes of Silent Witness and No Second Chance (a French adaptation of a Harlan Coben book) on Netflix.

I’m also expiring from the heat. We are about to have about a month of temperatures in the early thirties. I’ve lived in the Blue Mountains for almost twenty years and I’ve never experienced weather like this. Usually, when we get hot weather it always cools down at night. Not lately. As I type this, there’s a downpour outside. It’s humid and tropical.  But that doesn’t stop the bush fires. There was one in the Megalong Valley and one in Leura yesterday. Both not very serious but one of the factors of summer up here.

Phew! Just had to save and close down my computer because of a brief but fierce storm. Now I’m bathed in sweat. I can hardly wait for autumn! I’ll just have to dream. 

At this time of year, there’s always a rash of round ups about the year that was. People write about the best books they’ve read, the best films and the best television shows. And then there’s the plans for the coming year, a raft of New Year’s resolutions and a general sense of taking stock.

Who am I to buck a trend?

Except for the resolution part. No resolutions for me. I never keep them, so I’ve given up making them.
So, books. I read 78 this year which is down on previous years and indicates I’m watching far too much TV. But television is so good! More of that later.

My favourite non-romances are (in no particular order):

The Whites by Harry Brandt
Fall by Candice Fox
Eden by Candice Fox
Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found by Francis Larson
Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
Life or Death by Michael Rowbotham
You by Caroline Kepnes
Livia Lone by Barry Eisler
The Trespasser by Tana French
The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography by Edmund Gordon
Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner.

I’ve listed romances separately because … I don’t know why. Just because.

First Star I See Tonight by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
The Summer Bride by Anne Gracie
Unmasking Miss Appleby by Emily Larkin
Sleepless in Manhattan by Sarah Morgan
Scoundrel by Moonlight by Anna Campbell

Goodreads has a little breakdown of my books and you can see my Christmas novella Festive Deception was the least popular with other Goodread readers but the highest rated (sigh – the curse of the self-published author – discoverability). The longest book was A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara which in some ways I should have put on my list, but it was so flawed and drove me mad even though I couldn’t put it down.

I read less romance this year and more crime and thrillers.

I did watch a lot of TV. TV is the new cinema for me, full of great writing and acting. I’m a great fan of Sally Wainwright so I watched (and re-watched) Scott and Bailey, Happy Valley and The Last Tango in Halifax. Homeland, Trapped, Midnight Sun, Black Mirror, Sense8, The Fall, Bloodline, The Crown, Glitch, The Honourable Woman, Broadchurch, Vera and when I was confined to my couch for four weeks with my leg elevated, pumped full of antibiotics, I watched cosy British crime like Miss Marple, Foyles War and Poiret. Truly, I don’t know how I got any reading done. I certainly did very little writing.

Partly this was because I was ill for a substantial part of the second half of 2016. In the first half, I started a novel and wrote a Christmas novella (the afore mentioned least popular of my Goodreads books. Don’t let that put you off. People do like it.)

After I got back on my feet in October, I then went to the USA for about a month. That was great and I came back rested and refreshed even after witnessing the crazy American election. It was a weird experience getting on the plane in Sydney with the pundits saying Hillary had a 95% chance of winning, then getting off the plane fourteen hours later in LA to see she had tanked after the FBI letter was released. So, 2017 will be a year when we all will be living in interesting times.

I’ll be re-engaging with my novel, another Blue Mountains crime with romantic elements about a forensic psychologist and a serial killer who is not all he seems. I also have a mainstream romance on the go and I’ll probably write another Christmas novella. I did enjoy writing Festive Deception.

So, what about you? Was 2016 a bit of a disaster for you? What’s coming up in 2017?