Tracy Farrier 'The Evil Stepmother'

Today I have started a couple of new chapter and have found that the character who plays Toby's mum isn't the wicked stepmother I'd planned her to be. Toby has enough enemies in the manuscriot and this character wouldn't let me paint her as evil. I have pasted my character sheet on Tracy below.

Tracy has never got over giving Toby up and has carried the guilt inside her for years. She spent her mid teens and twenties modelling for David Jones Melbourne to help her through University.

Her friend Michelle had married tall and handsome truck mechanic Darren Farrier and they’d drifted apart for a few years after Darren bought the family tucking business from Michelle’s mother’s estate. After Toby was born Michelle contracted the same disease her mother had, Breast Cancer. After a brave fight she too succumbed and Darren was left to look after the baby. He contacted Tracey about taking care of the book work and managed as he could with a baby seat in the truck and the two of them travelled Australia carting stock.

Arthur had his hands full with Lois and her decline during this time but they took Toby when they could. This gave Darren a much needed break and soon he and Tracy became more than friends. Five years after Toby was born Tracy became his step mum. The relationship was strong and they adored each other, only after Toby began school did the trouble start.

NAME:                                               : Tracy Farrier

Position in story:                                 : Secondary

Age:	37
Nationality:	Australian
Socioeconomic level as a child:	Secure
Socioeconomic level as an adult:	Well Off
Hometown:	Kyneton
Current residence:	Kyneton
Occupation:	Mother – Business Partner – Accountant was a catwalk model when younger
Income:	High Earners
Talents/skills:	Multi Tasker very capable mother keeps the business on solid financial footing.
Salary:	Draws a salary of 65,000 per annum Darren has a similar drawing
Relationships:	Married to Toby’s father Darren
Birth order:	Third of four girls
Siblings (describe relationship):
Spouse/partner (describe relationship):	Darren total commitment to each other, she is his second wife after Toby’s mum died. Both women were friends
Children (describe relationship):	Toby estranged. Adele and Jasmine
Parents (describe relationship):
Grandparents (describe relationship):
Grandchildren (describe relationship):
Significant others (describe relationship):
Relationship skills:	Peace maker, doesn’t mind a fight but will find a common purpose to end conflict. Good negotiator
Physical Characteristics
Height:	160cm
Weight:	56 kg
Race:	Caucasian / English descent
Eye Color:	Green
Hair Color:	Blonde from the bottle tends to change it twice a year
Glasses or contact lenses?	Glasses to read
Skin color:	Fair skinned but will tan easily. Uses fake tan for special occasions
Shape of face:	Angular with high cheekbones, her nose is straight with a bit off a turn up.
Distinguishing features:	There is a dimple /crease in her chin.
How does he/she dress?	Her dress is elegant and expensive. ‘She could wear a bag and make it look good’ was Darren’s claim
Mannerisms:	She tilts her head and screws her nose up when considering her next move
Habits: (smoking, drinking/drugs/addictions etc.)	Nil likes good wine but never in excess
Any physical illnesses?	None
Health:	Very good goes to the gym five days a week
Hobbies:	She likes to ride and does eventing and show jumping
Favourite sayings:
Speech patterns:	Her speech is trained and no strine in her voice although she will “go all outback” if the need arises
Disabilities:	None
Style (Elegant, shabby etc.):	Elegant
Greatest flaw:	She lacks self confidence and although successful her fear of failure drives her toward her goals. Tracy never lived up to the expectations her parents put on her. They thought modelling was for Bimbos and accounts couldn’t make it into medicine.
Best quality:	She is empathetic and kind. Which is how she came to marry Darren, she helped him through the dark times after his first wife died of breast cancer. She spends a lot of time working for the Jane McGrath Foundation
Personality Attributes and Attitudes
Educational Background:	Melbourne Uni
Intelligence Level:	Very high
Any Mental Illnesses?	None
Learning Experiences:	Plenty, losing her friend and Toby’s mum hurt and giving Toby up has left a stain on her self esteem.
Character's short-term goals in life:	Be a good wife and mother
Character's long-term goals in life:	Keep the business successful make their marriage happy till death do they part.
How does Character see himself/herself?	As keeping up a charade of confidence and strength
How does Character believe he/she is perceived by others?	As one tough cookie
How self-confident is the character?	She fakes it till she makes it.
Does the character seem ruled by emotion or logic or some combination thereof?	She would love to let emotion in but only Darren knows how fragile she can be.
What would most embarrass this character	Failure in her part as wife and mother, losing Toby is her greatest regret and considers it their biggest failure. He didn’t deserve what they did to him
Spiritual Characteristics
Does the character believe in God?	Would love to but is too pragmatic. She admires her sisters and mother’s complete devotion to the Catholic faith but too many things tell her it’s all bunk.
What are the character's spiritual beliefs?	She doesn’t know
Is religion or spirituality a part of this character's life?	No
If so, what role does it play?

 

 

Missing Ben

It's been just thirty one years today
at two o'clock you closed your eyes
an angel's arms then lifted you
for in this matter, I had no say

A lot has happened since time
Some good, some bad, some hard
but no a day goes past my son
I forget you in my rhyme

I think of all the stuff you'd do
with family near and far
would you have a wife and kids
or be a keeper in a zoo

I get a little choked up too when
I see your friends now all grown
With children running round
and so I've put paper neath my pen

I've seen a million changes
and done some stupid things
I've written lots of words to you
and told of you to strangers

It's been just thirty one years today
at two o'clock you closed your eyes
an angel's arms then lifted you
for in this matter, I had no say

Kundela on Kindle is $0.99 from after Midnight Valentines Day until Friday 21/2/2014

About six weeks ago I tried to organise a Kindle promotion price for my novel KUNDELA as an e-book through Amazon's Kindle Books. Being new to publishing with their format I made a couple of mistakes and when I posted on Facebook and other platforms that the book was available for ninety nine cents, it didn't work that way.

To make up for misleading everyone I have manually adjusted the price to $US 0.99 as of midnight Australian Eastern Time 14/2/2014 and will leave this pricing in place for seven days.

Please advise your friends and fellow readers so they can take advantage of the pricing. Hard copies are priced at $32.95 including postage and are available by e-mailing; kundela@bigpond.com

I am sorry for any inconvenience caused and hope this initiative helps.

Terry

When Satan Took the Wheel.

This is the first rough draft of a set of verses that popped into my head while I was waiting for my wife at the supermarket. I wrote the lines in a journal before I lost them altogether. I'm told that other writers musicians and poets keep something handy to record their ideas and  until now I always maintained I'd remember it, not so. By writing these things down you are able to conjure up the inspiration of that moment, and begin where you left off.

I would like to challenge anyone whose interested to play around with it and make it better.
If you are inclined paste your version in the comments section below. As for the copyright aspect of it, I will surrender that for as far as I'm concerned this is out in the ether now and anyone can have access to it.

Papa was a trucker
and he drove a Bulldog Mack
Mumma rode the sleeper
They would overnight to Sydney
and tomorrow they'd be back

They carted fruit and veg and fridges
The load would never change
And late at night it happened
On the great Dividing Range

Five hundred horses snorting
The load was high and wide
they felt the door swing open
Satan joined them for the ride

Lightning flashed around them
And made the mountains white
Wipers swept swept away the rain
But Satan steered the rig that night

Mumma screamed out tractor
A huge shape without a light
Papa swung the wheel to miss it
But Satan's grip was tight.

Too late they clipped the tractor
and sent it or'e the side
The mack followed like a magnet
When Satan took his ride

On on her deathbed wheezing
Mumma prayed to stop the squeal
Of demons dancing gaily
When Satan took the wheel.

Stinking Dogs and School Socials

As I write different things, memories flood back and I keep notes of them in a file that I call "Letters to my Children". Someday it may form the basis for a memoirs. I found these notes from a Master Class I did with Kirsty Murray. They are a first draft only.

 

The door flew open we could read the fury on our mother’s face.

‘Get that stinking dog out of here.’

‘David let him in...’

She cut me off before I could finish. ‘He’s your dog and he’s rolled in something.’

‘Out.’ I yelled and pointed to the door she was still holding open oblivious to the swarm of blowflies that circled past her. That anger would wait.

Fido ,who had never done anything in a hurry looked back at me. He shared the same look as my mother. At the door he peered out and looked up at Mum as if to say, ‘Are you serious?’ Fido took his time, but before she could move her foot behind him and give his backside a nudge he shook. A long violent shake. Wet cow dung atomised, and bits and pieces of green and black goo speared from his black and white hide. A mist of stink landing on Mum, the door, the stove and the fridge. Everything within a metre copped it.

He might have gone to golf with mum that day, something he wasn’t welcome to do, but he always made sure he was home to greet David and I when we’d finished school. Fido was my dog and now more than ever I knew it. Mum would make sure of that.

She stormed out cursing all kinds of obscenities toward David me and the dog. She muttered about dress fittings and school socials and how she’d promised Mrs Gibb I’d go with Gwenda. That was fine, she and her brother Allen were mates. She insisted I would have to ask her to dance. Me dance, I have no rhythm or sense of timing and at thirteen I thought boys still got germs from girls. Well they did, didn’t they? Having to dance with any of the girls filled me with terror, there was no way I could do that, dancing was something different again.

But after the Fido incident, I was not in a position to refuse and at the end of it all of us had a good night.

I don't have Writer's Block, I'm Procrastinating

Since attending a writing workshop in August I have had trouble finding time to keep writing. Les Gillespie's Gold lies abandoned in a cobweb covered file on my desktop, and my Toby Farrier manuscript is craving for attention. I have written a few small short stories and spent a lot of time on research, but if I'm being honest with myself, all of that is procrastination.

I know that I pointed to the workshop as the trigger, but this is unfair. It was great to spend four days with intelligent and funny people all with the same ambition. Sure I was intimidated by their writing prowess and found myself in awe of their academic ability, but the real reason for my lack of word count was distraction. I was drawn away by other things. Oh and I had a simple excuse, I had writers block. What tripe, story ideas dance across my mind continually, I even jot down notes or dialogue that I can use. No, I was letting stuff get in the way.

Social media for me is the greatest trap of all when I am writing, it is too easy to click onto Facebook of follow a tweet. I can find plenty of time to promote and create awareness for my novel. I have developed complex plans for a dozen new projects, but again if I'm honest, this is just putting things off. Building and maintaining my author platform (which is what I am doing now) is the greatest consumer of my time and saps at my creativity. Oh and I can blame my self publishing and printing a substantial quantity of  my novel KUNDELA. This knowledge requires that I acknowledge the investment we have in unsold books, and therefore out of respect for the family finances I have a responsibility to introduce them to as many bookstores as possible. This too takes time.

I am from a sales and marketing background so I find calling on retailers familiar to me. However this field is new and all of the cold call fears and trepidation surface as I prepare to make a new contact.  More lost time as I build the courage to make a cold call. One thing I do know, is that I am able to present my product well enough for a bookstore manager to make a purchase, or at least take a few books on consignment. Thankfully all of these calls have resulted in more acceptances than knock-backs.

Another time investment for a writer are in-store promotions and author talks. These are fun events and everyone I know loves signing copies of their book. Talking to like minded people and listening to a reader enthuse about your work is great. We all want to get that affirmation and as often as we can and in my case, time to write gives way to this vanity. Again it is too easy to put off working on my manuscripts by saying that the existing book is more important.

Recognising these things that I use to justify not writing is easy to put aside, after all these are important things that must be done. Bull-dust to that, I am only making them important and as big as I make them, they really don't matter much. I just need to get some discipline and structure into my writing week.

To define my Writer's Block is easy.

Procrastination fuelled by fear.

The more I learn about writing the more I struggle to get it right before the words hit the screen, and then I ask myself, how would my author heroes frame the same passage? I waste hours on this. At the root of this procrastination is that I continually question my skill.

• Is the story strong enough?
• Are the characters believable?
• Have I planned enough?
• Did I spend too much time on planning?

I even know how and why I am procrastinating. Social media called, and I weakened to it's lure.

However there are some benefits. Analysing my problem has highlighted the traps, and if I can take one thing from this process, it is that everything I have learnt has challenged me to write in a purposeful fashion. Therefore the solution to my writer's block will be to make sure I build some structure in my writing day. I can do this by developing and working on the following points until they become a habit:

• Spend no more than 10-20 minutes a day reviewing the story plan and character profiles.
• Write for at least 3 hours before lunch every day without distraction, or a break.
• Only check my e-mails after 3.00 pm.
• Dedicate one full day a week to sales and promotion.
• Limit Facebook and other social media until both manuscripts are completed.
• Set the manuscripts aside for at least 6 months before beginning to edit.

I have taken the summer to re-read everything I've written and I must say I've become a bit impressed with myself. I know that sounds cocky, but after reading my first drafts I know the thing I have most to work on is self belief. I need to understand the strength of my writing and know anything out of place will be fixed during the edits. This affirmation is best summarised by the following points:

• Let the characters develop unrestricted and have them take me on their journey.
• Believe in the storyline, mostly the plot is strong and the subplots colourful.
• Get the words down, any problems can be edited it later.

So why should I doubt myself? I don't need to.

Sorry got to go now, I can hear a character calling.

It's funny what research turns up

We all agree that our planet seems to be suffering from dramatic climate events, none more real than the expanding deserts of Africa and into Asia.
Doing research for my novel Les Gillespie's Gold, I spoke to one of my daughters about one of the plot points and she sent the following link to me. It will mean revising that particular plot but what it has done is explain how we can save the great grass lands that we have lost over the years of ecology science.
In the eighties farmers in my home district of Orroroo began using minimum tillage farming as a means to increasing crop yield. This TED talk by Allan Savoy shows the science now being employed around the world to stop desertification. A lot of the techniques used duplicate what those marginal farmers from Perth to Adelaide were trying.
Take a look at the link, maybe it will cause us to rethink our views, change the way we manage stock numbers and even save a few endangered flora and fauna species in the process.

Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change.html?utm_source=email&source=email&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ios-share

KUNDELA is now avaiable as an e-book

I thought I’d let you know that my novel KUNDELA has now been released on Amazon’s e-book list and the good news is that for the next few days it is available for just $0.99.

You will need to act quickly though as on the 7^th of January 2014 it reverts to the recommended retail price of $9.99. If you’d like to spoil yourself  with an entertaining holiday read, download it to your tablet, e-reader or desktop now.
I continue to be amazed by people who take time out of their day to let me know what they think of the story and this encouragement motivates me to finish the next book in the series.

Here is just one of the reviews I received last week.

 

Dear Terry,

I just finished your book Kundela, I actually started it last night and kept reading all day until it was finished - I just loved it.  Although having just returned from staying in Orroroo for the Carrieton rodeo and after travelling on the back roads via Hammond to Quorn, the images of that country were very fresh in my mind making the story very believable.

I can't believe a big publisher has not seen the potential in your work.

Cheers

Cathryn Harris