Character Profiles: Les Gillespie's Gold

Over the past few days I have been working on character profiles for Les Gillespie's Gold. This is a departure from the way I wrote KUNDELA. There the people seemed to come from nowhere and their character was developed on the run. This caused me to double up on names and traits and descriptions.

With Toby Farrier I wrote a short story I called The Character Bus and used it as a plan to work out who the people were and how they interacted. It was a great tool but I still had to do charts for each one of the characters to create an easy reference to follow.

Les Gillespie's Gold follows on from Kundela, so some of the characters are known. Now others need introducing to keep the tension in the story and for over a week that is all I have done. Names may change to more suit the story later but by doing it this way a decision is made when the character is created. this has a two fold benefit to prevent duplication of Christian names and it also addresses the problem of ensuring the name is correct for their generation and position in time.

Thanks go to Merlene Fawdrey for providing the draft character charts through her Novel Writing Workshop sessions.

Here is one of my favourite characters who appeared in KUNDELA but takes a bigger role in Les Gillespie.

NAME:                    : Fiona O'Rourke

Position in story       Secondary -  Tilly’s Friend

Age:	37
Nationality:	Australian
Socioeconomic level as a child:	Good
Socioeconomic level as an adult:	Good
Hometown:	Sellicks Beach
Current residence:	Orroroo Police House
Occupation:	Home Duties
Income:	Family Benefits + husbands wage
Talents/skills:	Was a school teacher before marriage
Salary:	Gets some part time teaching work at Orroroo & Jamestown will go back to work
Relationships:
Birth order:	Second of two children
Siblings (describe relationship):	Stuart----43
Spouse/partner (describe relationship):	John  Police Constable in Orroroo for over 3 years)
Children (describe relationship):	Four: Ashleigh, Zac, Harry, Maxine, (Max)
Parents (describe relationship):	Sam and Joan Styles
Grandparents (describe relationship):	N/A
Grandchildren (describe relationship):	N/A
Significant others (describe relationship):	John (Husband)
Relationship skills:	Good
Physical Characteristics
Height:	160
Weight:	62 kg
Race:	Aussie
Eye Colour:	Green
Hair Colour:	Changes, most of the time she is blonde
Glasses or contact lenses?	Neither
Skin colour:	Fair
Shape of face:	Narrow
Distinguishing features:	Broad nose
How does he/she dress?	Simple smart
Mannerisms:	N/A
Habits: (smoking, drinking/drugs/addictions etc.)	Non smoker social drinker (has an image to protect)
Any physical illnesses?	None
Health:	Good
Hobbies:	Netball and gym
Favourite sayings:	I was like that once
Speech patterns:	N/A
Disabilities:	None
Style (Elegant, shabby etc.):	Yummy Mummy
Greatest flaw:	Says yes to everyone
Best quality:	congeniality
Personality Attributes and Attitudes
Educational Background:	Teachers College in Adelaide
Intelligence Level:	High
Any Mental Illnesses?	None
Learning Experiences:	Life in country towns has rounded her life skills
Character's short-term goals in life:	Get back to work to contribute to the family’s security
Character's long-term goals in life:	Be happy with lots of grandchildren
How does Character see himself/herself?	Confident strong supportive
How does Character believe he/she is perceived by others?	As above
How self-confident is the character?	She is happy with who she is
Does the character seem ruled by emotion or logic or some combination thereof?	Emotion features heavily in her judgement but measures it with logic
What would most embarrass this character	Family scandal
Spiritual Characteristics
Does the character believe in God?	Unsure
What are the character's spiritual beliefs?	She takes her children to Sunday School
Is religion or spirituality a part of this character's life?	Not really but she likes rules and the Christian religion provides that
If so, what role does it play?

As you can see Merlene's chart has helped reference this person's features characteristics and beliefs. giving me a ready reference to what I might need to know as the book develops.

Thanks Merlene.

More on publishing and distribution

I thought today that I would research the world of book distribution and came across a very topical article by Simon Haynes. Now an author with a lot of notable publishing credits he offers some advice to those who are taking the self publish route.

You can find his article by clicking on the link: http://www.spacejock.com.au/DistributeSelfPublishedBook.html

Cheers,

Terry

KUNDELA Replica

In my quest to find out as much as I can about the pointing bone in my story Kundela I decided to try and replicate something that may have been made. Research shows that after the bone has been charged with mystic power and the target pointed at, for the kundela to work it had to be destroyed. These weapons were the burnt in a ritual fire and that is possibly why few exist today.

To discover what kind of materials were used I spent days checking and reading everything I could about the different ways a kadaicha man may have made and used the bone. As most kundelas are made from emu or kangaroo bones I figured if I kept a lookout on an interstate trip I might find one or the other that had been killed in a road accident and I would have the main element of my replica.

Fortunately while resting the dog on the side of the Adelaide road, he started sniffing around under a wattle tree and found the skeleton of a dead kangaroo . Now all I needed were a few feathers, something to replicate human hair and spinifex gum. I couldn't find spinifex but a gum tree provided a rich red resin that could be heated and moulded to make a pad on the handle end of the bone. Some twine was found and plaited to make the strap.

Using a fine cutoff wheel in an angle grinder I began shaping the bones. I took two tibia bones from the skeleton, these showed greenstick fractures, the animal had been hit by a vehicle of some sort and crawled into the scrub to die. Using the cutoff disc I tapered both bones and cleaned them with a burnishing pad.

The photo below shows my finished replica.

Research in to the construction of a Kundela

Today I thought I should spend a bit of time finding out how a Kundela is made and came across this wonderful diagram of the skeleton of a kangaroo. Just check out the size of the bones in their feet. No wonder they can hop.

Link: <a href="http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/animal-kingdom/marsupial-mammals/kangaroo/skeleton-kangaroo.php"><img src="http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/images/animal-kingdom/marsupial-mammals/kangaroo/skeleton-kangaroo.jpg" alt="skeleton of a kangaroo - Visual Dictionary Online" title="skeleton of a kangaroo - Visual Dictionary Online" /></a>

Interesting Article on E-publishing by Alan Kholer

Thanks to Fleur McDonald for posting this link on Facebook. Alan Kholer delves into the e-publishing market and opened the post to receive some interesting and informative comments.

Here is the link to get you there:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-30/kohler-video-has-not-killed-the-bookworm/4490404?WT.svl=theDrum

The Wordsmiths of Melton are back for 2013

Had a great day today catching up with a few of the gang from last years writing group. It was interesting to hear about everyone's holidays their writing and plans for this year.

Thanks to Les, Julee, Caitlin, Sonia and Tracey for you company at lunch today. I will miss you guys.

As a few of us won't be with the group this year, there are a couple of places available for anyone interested in writing. From a personal point of view, I found the fellowship of other writers a great benefit to me, and they encourage you when the words won't flow. The group has planned a few workshops to support their critiquing meetings for the coming year and you can get more details from the Melton Library of if you wish to contact me I will get Julee to get in touch with you.

Have a successful year Wordsmiths

To Self Publish or Not? That is the Question.

Having finished my novel KUNDELA I have sent out samples to different publishers. Having religiously followed their submission guidelines in the hope that someone would chance upon my masterpiece, I have checked the e-mail inbox daily with dissapointment. Weeks of waiting and with response times now passing I have to face the possibility of not being picked up on this first round of enquiry letters.

I have been through most of the self publish websites and now have would be publishers from all over the world willing to publish and market my book for a fee, in some cases a rather large fee. I don't have that kind of money to spend, and I'm not sure that Francis from Frisco can be bothered with the marketing plan my novel needs. I think it's an opportunity for them to make money from the author rather than the other way around.

Taking the view that I'm a trades person with a commodity to sell takes the marketing of  KUNDELA into an area I know well. I've spent all of my previous career in sales and marketing so I have the skills. What I don't have is the contacts, therefore I will need an agent or at the very least the contacts an agent has. The first question raised now, is how do I do I gain that knowledge. Therefore I started to research the people who have been in a similar situation to me and gone on to become successful and published authors.

From my research I find that it is necessary to embrace rejection as something that teaches you a lesson, and to learn from it. Another point I found helpful was to create a business plan for your proposal. To sell anything you need to know everything about it, what it is, what products it competes with, the strengths and weaknesses of both yours and your competitor's product.

Now I am on a quest to structure a business plan for KUNDELA, complete with a marketing plan, sales strategy and finance plan. Now I find that I'm on familiar ground with a product to sell.

Proving that writing is a business.


One of the sites I found helpful was a Youtube Interview  by Stacey Cochran with John Fuhrman as his quest. It is over 50 minutes long but contains some wonderful information.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKLr9eWucrw