Behind Sally's Books Mark 2

 This month, our round robin topic is creating character, which is one of my favourite subjects. Please check out my fellow bloggers below for their take on the subject! There are lots of different ways to create characters. Mine hasn't changed a lot since I started writing in the 1970s, except that now, as I drift away from those days, I have stopped automatically basing sisters and parents on my own. I also learned, quite soon, that using my own basic personality for a protagonist wouldn't work. Protagonists have to be proactive, and I like a quiet life! As well as being a writer, I am also an editor and manuscript assessor for Wordkettle, Therefore, I see a lot of characters in their prepublication state. The same stock characters get used and reused and that makes me conscious of two things. One is that I am so tired of seeing the same child... often with the same name... from multiple writers and the other that characters can't venture too far from "givens...

 Oh dear, the glamour of it! And yes, I am talking about the life of (most) authors. The word "glamour" picks up the image of a perfectly coiffed and polished, stylishly dressed and impeccably madeup celebrity, dripping with diamonds... or maybe wandering rustically about his or her reclaimed property where horses graze and rain comes on command... Okay, that's silly, but to most people "glamour" means wealth, comfort, fame and adulation. Picture the Hollywood stars of the Golden Age, when mink coats were the wrap of choice instead of something to hide away in the depths of the wardrobe because it was Great-Aunt Marina's and you can't quite bring yourself to burn it. Glamour has another meaning though, and that's the one that illuminates the lives of most authors. Glamour is illusion. It is hope. It is faith. It is that golden certainty that is just out of reach for everyone but fanatics, the fantastically wealthy, and --maybe--some politicians. Glam...

  Our fearless leader of Blog Hop, Skye, challenged us to talk about how Chapter One hooks our readers- specifically, what we do to get that hook working. Sounds simple but in my experience it varies from audience to audience and from book to book. Certainly the hook in Chapter One of an entry in a long series will be different from Chapter One in a standalone. You see, in long series, we expect readers to know the main characters, settings and the way the plots work. The simplest way to approach this challenge, I think, is to look at the opening scenes of a handful of books to see how they work. Book 1: Heather and Heath:            It had been late summer when the May Queen left the dock and now, a bare seventeen weeks later, it was summer again. A summer in December, while the loch-side at home would soon be mantled with snow. The herds would be keeping their sheep close, and the heather would be dim in the glens and up the brae.     ...

Airways... a science fiction sport story cross  Welcome to the blog hop for March. The challenge this month was to talk about crossing the genres. Maybe you remember Ghostbusters? Never, ever cross the streams. Until they did, and it worked beautifully in a chaotic sort of way.  Well, back in the day, genres were pretty clearly defined. We had family stories, pony stories, detective stories, historical novels, school stories, animal stories, romance, westerns, fantasy, science fiction, adventure, horror, ballet stories and a few others. Some of these were mainly, or always, for children. In the sixties, problem novels popped up. All those genres! Seriously! And some were perceived as being more worthy than others. And after a while, there was another shift. In this one, the literary novel was split off from the genre novels, and was held to be more worthy. I noticed all this but it never affected what I read with one rare exception: I knew Mum disapproved of books by Enid Blyt...

  Thanks to Skye for another intriguing blog hop challenge! This time, it’s about whether or not we work with a critique group or partner.   Over my sixty-plus years as a writer, I’ve had varied experience with critique partners.   My first experience came in Grade 4 at school when my teacher, Mrs Ting, went above and beyond in her response to my stories. She not only marked spelling and grammar but put little comments in the margin and actively encouraged me to write at home as well as at school. I used to bring in my “home” stories and she’d mark them for me. My handwriting was terrible, so that was pure dedication.   My high school English Expression teachers, Mrs Collis and Mrs Rockliff, were equally engaged so I was very lucky.   At home, I had my elder sister, who is also a writer. She knows my writing inside out, and always puts her fingers on my chief weakness which is a general avoidance of drama. Decades on, she remains my best critic.  ...

  Dear Mrs Odgers I am delighted to be writing to you on behalf of the Governor-General to inform you that you are being considered for the Medal of the Order of Australia (General Division) within the Australian Honours System... So came the email back in September 2025. "Scam," said my brain. Click the link... Not likely! However, it seemed a pretty creative and well-worded piece, so I crept around the back door and entered the Governor General's site via a google-search. I clicked for contact and was duly called by someone who informed me it was a legitimate invitation. To be considered for one of these honours one has to be nominated, then accept the invitation, then wait for a few months for confirmation. I was next contacted on Jan 6th to say I had been given the award. So, there you are. I can now sign myself as Sally Odgers OAM. The award was given for services to literature, following decades of writing with editing and manuscript assessment on the...