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LOUISE CUSACK

~ Crazy, sexy, love…

LOUISE CUSACK

Tag Archives: writing

March Prizes and Promotions

02 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by louisecusack in About Writing, Contest, Reading, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Amazon Giftcard, author newsletter, book review, erotic romance, joey, monthly draw, prize, writing

Congratulations to Newsletter subscriber, Beth W who’s won a $10 Amazon Gift Card in my monthly draw. If you haven’t subscribed to my Louise Cusack News author newsletter yet (some of the people receiving this are subscribed to my website blog), you’re not in the draw for next month! But don’t worry, you can easily fix that by popping over HERE to subscribe.

arra  websiteheaderboxset

Exciting things are happening in the Erotic Romance world. Last month I shared that 3 of my Husband Series novels (above) were finalists in the Australian Romance Readers Association Awards for Best Erotic Romance of 2016. Well, the award has been presented and I was pipped at the post by Vi Keeland, who won with her book Bossman, which BTW is a fabulous read. So no hard feelings here. I’m just thrilled to have three books in the top ten, and am looking forward to publishing book #5 of the Husband Series in the next few months – look out for Cal and Rosie’s sexily-ever-after!

Husband Series Promo Set

If you haven’t started my Husband Series yet, you can always grab book #1 for free. The list of retailers is below:

  • Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AJ8YMYM
  • Apple iBook: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1115739092
  • Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/husband-sit
  • Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/husband-sit-louise-cusack/1123819136

And if you like my books well enough to recommend them to friends, I’ll be very grateful.

I hope you all have a fabulous March wherever you are in the world. Here in Australia we’re coming out of one of the hottest summers I can remember, so I’m looking forward to Autumn, cooler days and all the deliciousness of hearty soups and snuggling in front of my laptop with a coffee!

joeyI’m sure our local wildlife will appreciate cooler weather (and rain) as well. We’ve had quite a few kangaroos coming into the yard looking for water, and earlier this week a joey just out of the pouch got separated from his mother when the mailman frightened them. He ended up in my gated backyard (still haven’t worked out how – that’s a very high fence!) and I had to enlist neighborhood friends to coax him back out and reunite him with his mother. He was one jittery little guy! I caught him briefly on video, so if you’re interested to see him in all his delicious cuteness, click HERE.

Well, that’s it for now, folks! Happy reading until we’re chatting again, and don’t forget, if you love a book, please take the time to review it!

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Scout out the next Amazon best-seller

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by louisecusack in About Writing, Reading, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

amazon customer, books, DaVinci fantasy, fantasy romance, kindle scout, literature, lost world, love triangle, Medici fantasy, romance, writing, young adult

scoutpreview

Amazon has a new website: Kindle Scout where Amazon customers can ‘scout’ through unpublished books and nominate those they like for publication. This is reader-powered publishing where you get to choose what gets published and what doesn’t…

…which brings me to SILK.

Authors will tell you they love all their “babies” equally, but most will have one project that’s the book of their heart, and this series is mine. The Florentia series began it’s life over ten years ago when I first came up with the idea for a portal that joined our world with a lost world that DaVinci had discovered. Then I imagined what would happen if DaVinci’s patrons, the Medici, stole the device from him, conquered the lost world and had been ruling it for 500 years. What sort of society would they have by now? And what would happen if someone from our world stumbled into it?

During the last decade I’ve written many iterations of this story, moving it from straight Sci fi into Fantasy and now firmly into the Fantasy Romance genre. I undertook a research trip to Rome and Florence where I met Medici scholars and even stayed in a building where lesser members of the Medici had lived during DaVinci’s lifetime. In my two decades of writing, this story is the one I’ve loved the most and had the hardest time selling (maybe there’s a correlation there!)

In any case, when Kindle Scout came along, I realized this was an opportunity to share details of the Florentia series with the public to see if it has the sort of wide appeal I’m hoping it will. That’s where you come in!

As someone who subscribes to my blog, I’d love to share this with you. If you are an Amazon customer and have time during December, please pop over to Kindle Scout here: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/GDATHRYHT8YR where you can see the cover, read the first 5000 words of the story and nominate SILK.  You can also check out other books you might like to nominate, and become part of the process of readers deciding what they want to see published. And if you want to share this blog post or the link to SILK on Kindle Scout with your social networks, you will earn my eternal gratitude!

As a reward from Amazon, if your nominated books are published, you’ll receive a free copy for taking the time to support them.

Thanks so much for reading this, and for being part of my journey. Writing is a solitary job, which I love, but it can feel lonely at times. So your interest in my career helps me with moral support to keep going through the tough times and the momentum to surge ahead when opportunities arise.  You’re much appreciated!

Goodbye Winter in Australia

20 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by louisecusack in Recipes, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

custard, mashed potato, recipe, recipes, winter food, writing

GoodbyeWinterWe’re not quite to the end of August, but my first freesia flowered today, the weather is warmer and kangaroos are racing around with a new spring in their hop, so I’m ready to let go of the cold weather (not that it really gets all that cold here by the beautiful Coral Sea just outside Bundaberg) and herald in the warmer temperatures with a few of my favorite winter recipes:

Breakfast of champions: Hot custard (as thick as you can make it) topped with toasted muesli

Lunch: Potatoes mashed with French Onion dip

Dinner: Anything hot and tasty (this meal was mushroom pasta and toasted olive bread), so long as you can watch the moon rising over the water while you eat it!

These are not diet recipes! But winter is a challenge for me, and for most writers I suspect, because we have to sit still for so long. A cold day just gets colder as it progresses! So we need something warm and comforting to get us through.

Summer is for diets and fresh fruit and frolicking. Winter is all about hot meals, snuggling up and LOTS of coffee!

I hope winter is fabulous for you wherever you live. I try to enjoy all the seasons, but I suspect I was a bear in a past life because during winter I just want to hibernate, until the mashed potato comes out, and then I come alive!

I’d love to hear if you’ve got favorite winter food that helps you get through the cooler months wherever you live.

Rainy weather is writing weather

01 Friday May 2015

Posted by louisecusack in About Writing, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

creativity, rain, rainy weather, writer's block, writing

This was my morning (thanks to Lisa at Blainey for my beautiful coffee cup).

pablo(5)If you’re not a writer yourself, you might not realize that writing and water are intrinsically linked. It’s one of the reasons I moved to the beach, so I’d have those crashing waves. The sound of running water (having a shower, hosing the lawn) can loosen up the most stubborn writers block. So rainy days are a gift to writers, no matter where they live.

But don’t imagine you have to be a professional to benefit. Anyone can have their creativity triggered, so if you’re stuck indoors on a rainy day, don’t mope. Pull out that journal you’ve been meaning to start, or create a blog. Rain is creativity pouring down, so don’t waste it! Tap into that abundant stream and let your own ideas flow.

Note: a dressing gown and slippers will earn you bonus points, as does a pet curled up at your feet.

Happy writing!

Fantasy inspired by an imperfect childhood

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by louisecusack in About Writing, Inspiration

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

alice in wonderland, alone, books, childhood, creative writing, fantasy, inspiration, loner, Shadow through time, writing, writing process

I was asked at a weekend workshop I was teaching, “What one thing has inspired your creative writing the most?” and it really made me think. There have been many formative books and movies: Alice in Wonderland, Edgar Rice Burroughs Princess of Mars, Frank Herbert’s Dune, but when I get right down to it, the thing that really inspired me to create fantasy worlds was wanting to escape my own. Not because my childhood was terrible, but simply because I was alone a lot, and had so much time to think about how life could be more exciting.

A rare pic of me playing with someone else - telling my cousin stories

A rare pic of me playing with someone else – telling my cousin stories

I did read books, but instead of constantly losing myself in someone else’s created world, I fantasized about my own, inventing bizarre landscapes, allies and enemies, and most importantly, a reason to be in that world – a well motivated goal. My first fantasy (which became my Shadow Through Time trilogy) was about a girl called Catherine leaving our world behind in a quest to find her missing twin brother. That goal drove her actions for most of the story which was about love – the love of a brother, of a family, and ultimately of a kingdom.

I’m not sure if I craved love as a child, but I certainly fantasized about it, created stories about it, and later turned those fantasies into best-selling novels. Being alone so much when I was in a family of four children didn’t feel strange at the time, but I think I was considered a loner or at least a child who was happiest playing alone.

To a lot of adults, that would appear to be an imperfect childhood, and I can imagine helicopter parents wanting to ‘socialize’ a loner child, to fill their day with activities that involve other people. But now that I’m so much further along in life, I can see how unhelpful that would have been for me. The childhood I experienced, perfectly shaped my creativity. I couldn’t have asked for better.

DestinyOfTheLight_coverJust wanted to share that insight, for what it’s worth! If you’re curious about that first fantasy series I wrote, the opening book Destiny of the Light is currently FREE as an ebook, courtesy of my publishers Pan Macmillan. Enjoy! And let me know in the comments below whether you’ve had insights into your childhood, especially if you’ve experienced something “‘seemingly bad” that’s turned out to be perfect for you as an adult.

Thanks for reading!

Coping with rejection

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by louisecusack in About Writing, Inspiration, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

head and heart, manuscript, manuscript submission, Marie Forleo, rejection, turning rejection around, writing

Business woman crying head in handsWriters submit manuscripts and get knock backs. It’s a fact of life that even multi-published authors have to deal with. Unless you’re Stephen King or JK Rowling (which I’m not) there’s a chance that your latest offering won’t be adored by the first publisher who looks at it. Intellectually I know that. But the heart and the head don’t always agree. When I started off in this business twenty years ago, rejection felt like this to me:

What? My precious baby isn’t what you’re looking for? How could you say that? I slaved over that manuscript. I poured my life-blood into it. I just offered you my heart on a platter and you stabbed it. Several times. Soon to be followed by: Does this mean I’m a crap writer? Maybe I should just stop kidding myself. Publishers know what they’re talking about. I’m just a woman sitting in her pajamas drinking too much coffee, fantasizing about worlds that don’t exist. I should get a day job. Something I’d be good at. Because I’m clearly no good at this…

Thankfully time has moved on, and many, many rejections have helped me re-frame my reaction to a “Thanks, but no thanks,” email. I’ve learned that publishers see lots of manuscripts that are of “publication standard” and from among them they have to choose something that not only suits the line of books they’re publishing, but also knocks their socks off. For most publishers, the choice to take on a book is quite subjective. I can’t have any control over that. I can only offer my best work and have faith that it will (eventually) fall into the right hands. Which of course it does.

Now I’m more likely to think this when I get a rejection email:

I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to consider my story seriously. I understand that not all publishers or even all fantasy readers will love my work. I’ve seen the different reactions to a novel at Book Clubs. So what I’m looking for is the one publisher who adores my story so much that they’ll advocate for it with their marketing department and fire them up with enthusiasm enough to spill over into their interactions with bookstores and online resources. I’m sorry you’re not that person, and that you’ll miss out on the unique opportunities my story offers. But I wish you well as I continue my search, having patience that the Universe moves in perfect timing. All is well in my world…

Yes, it’s a bit Pollyanna, but it works for me, and not only with writing, but personal relationships and other business dealings I might have. I’m not an “I’ll show those bastards!” type of girl. But if you are, you are going to love this latest offering from Marie Forleo who I thoroughly recommend as an inspiration and a resource for women in business. Her reaction to a patronizing comment is priceless:

I wonder, how do you cope with rejection in your life? Does it fire you up? Have you got any tips on how to turn it into motivation to keep going?

Romance Rocks Presents… Louise Cusack

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by louisecusack in About Writing, Writers on the loose

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

conference, getting published, romance, romance writers of Australia, workshop, writers, writing

Romance Rocks Presents….

Inspiration from magical places

10 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by louisecusack in About Writing, Inspiration, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

beauty and the beast, creativity, fairy tale, fairytale, fantasy, fantasy romance, inspiration, inspire, music as inspiration, romance, the voice, the voice australia, writing

It’s no secret that fairytales inspire me. They have for all of my reading life, but it never ceases to amaze me how an old fairytale that I’ve adored as a child can come back to me in a different format and engulf me in magic all over again.

Beauty and the Beast is probably my favorite fairytale, because of its darkness, its inherent romance, and the transformational quality of the character development. I was fortunate to have the latest Disney version come out when my children were young, and I can remember watching it again and again, not just because the animated character were cute and endearing, or because I couldn’t help putting myself in Belle’s shoes and wanting to tame the beast, but because the song, Beauty and the Beast made me cry, every time I heard it. Embedded within it is everything I love about that story – the prince trapped inside the body of a beast, confronted with the delicate beauty of Belle, imagining she’d never even want to look at him, let alone fall in love with him. It inspired me to imagine my own stories with tortured heroes and clever, resourceful heroines who must work with magic – dark and light – to find their happily ever after.

That one song inspired more fantasy plotlines and characterization out of me than probably any other I’ve heard.

So you can imagine how overwhelmed I felt when I was watching The Voice Australia and completely out of left field, two of my favorite competitors lined up in a battle to sing Beauty and the Beast together. It was an inspired move by their coach Ricky Martin (who I adore) and the result is stunning:

I’ve had the song in my mind ever since, playing on a loop, happily inspiring more story ideas, and who would have imagined I’d find inspiration to write fantasy novels while watching a singing competition!

If you’ve ever had inspiration delivered unexpectedly please do share in the comments below. I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

 

The world, not as we know it

19 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by louisecusack in About Writing, Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

books, fantasy, landmass size, mercator, peters map, research, revelation, west wing, world map incorrect, writing

As a fantasy author, I’m occasionally required to put on a cartographer’s hat and sketch out a map of the world I’m creating. This helps me with continuity of distances between kingdoms, how long treks/flights should last, relative temperatures during various seasons etc. The current fantasy world I’m working on is a duplicate earth, a parallel world, and to give you an idea of how I was planning it, here is an early map I created:

FlorentiaI’m writing new scenes at the moment where my protagonist Dan, who comes from our world, has just entered a palace that has a mosaic on the floor detailing the continents on this new world he’s entered. It looks a bit like this:

European segment of the "Jewel of the Universe" mosaic by Chris Chamberlain

European segment of the “Jewel of the Universe” mosaic by Chris Chamberlain

Our boy Dan immediately recognizes Europe and realizes he’s on a parallel world, but it’s his next insight that changes everything. He has knowledge of geography, climate, mining history and food production from our world that might also pertain to this one. That moment of recognition changes the balance of power between himself and the prince who wants him dead, and alters the trajectory of the story.

With that pivotal moment plotted in, I really didn’t need to do much more on the subject, but I couldn’t help myself wondering how the people of that parallel world would feel when they realized that what they’d believed about the size and shape of their world was incorrect. They didn’t have satellite mapping or sophisticated cartography, so they couldn’t be expected to have pinpoint accuracy. But we did. And that confidence in our own technology led me to do a bit of research into our latest maps to appease my curiosity and see the shape of our world as accurately as we were now able to show it.

That, friends, is when I opened a can of worms. In case you’ve missed it on Facebook and Twitter (I had) there’s a huge controversy ongoing about the maps we use in atlases and how inaccurate they are from a land-mass perspective. Apparently most textbooks still use the Mercator projection map which was created in 1569 to help sailors navigate from landmass to landmass along a straight line. The continents were deliberately skewed in size to translate a 3D globe onto a 2D map and keep the maritime routes straight. Landmasses at the top and bottom of the map were expanded to allow it to sit flat, and the landmasses in the ‘middle’ of the earth were shrunk proportionally to keep everything neat! What this has eventuated in (and incredibly is still being taught in geography) is a world view that shows some landmasses as being up to fourteen times larger than they actually are!

Let’s compare. The first map I’m going to show is a typical current version of the 1569 Mercator with skewed landmass size. The bottom map is the 1973 Peters map that corrects the landmass sizes and actual position on the earth:

Textbook World MapPeters World MapCan you believe that? Let me sit these babies side by side so you can really get the full impact of how totally incorrect our world view has been for almost 500 years:

Textbook World MapPeters World Map

The white patch on the Mercator projection map (left) is Greenland, and it looks almost as big as Africa. When in fact, Greenland is 14 times smaller than Africa! South America is actually double the size of Europe, not smaller. And while Alaska appears to be three times the size of Mexico in the Mercator map, in reality Mexico is the larger landmass.

Apparently this was ‘outed’ in an episode of West Wing in Feb 2001, and if you’d like to see the section of that episode pertaining to the maps, it’s here:

Honestly, this was the last thing I’d expected to uncover, and it’s now making me wonder if the guys on my fantasy world actually have a more accurate map of their world than we do. That would be a surprise to my poor protagonist. Clearly I have some more thinking to do on the topic!

I’m passionate about perspective and looking at the world in a new way, but this has really thrown me. What do you guys think about this? Does it change anything for you?

Game for a change

07 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by louisecusack in About Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

colllaboration, computer game, computer gaming, defiant, hoodlum, innovation, multi media, QUT, writing, [imi]

WiiControlAs a fiction novelist, I work alone. I draft, I edit, I polish. If I get stuck I might spend the day working through a plot issue with a colleague, but the majority of my writing time is solitary, and I like that.

Yet… I’ve always been drawn to the idea of working in computer gaming, which I know is a highly collaborative industry. So when QUT (Queensland University of Technology) advertised for artists to be part of the [imi] (Interactive Media Innovation) project, where the outcome could be a residency with a computer game company, I thought, Here’s my shot.

I completed the creative task that came with the application, and was excited to win through to the workshop round where “…artists and interactive entertainment company representatives … meet and engage in professional development and creative play.” Workshops were conducted in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and at the Brisbane one I was joined by 8 other artists – another author, visual artists, circus and performance artists, producer/directors and interdisciplinary artists – and 10 ‘industry partners’ from a handful of Brisbane based computer gaming and interactive media companies. We spent the day working together on a variety of different creative problems in constantly changing groups so the industry partners could scope out how we artists worked, with an eye to engaging us in a residency. It sounds like a job interview, but it was one of the most fun, rewarding and exciting working days I’ve ever spent. So many clever creative people working together. Apparently the Sydney and Melbourne workshops had a similar experience.

Six of us across Australia were selected by interactive media companies for a month-long residency, and when I was selected by two internationally recognized companies, Defiant Development and Hoodlum Entertainment, I was pretty darned thrilled. The residencies came with a healthy stipend funded through the Australia Council for the Arts, and while I can’t talk about the actual games I worked on, because I signed a confidentiality agreement, I would like to share my experience of translating across from fiction to gaming.

At the first residency, the game was in the initial concept stage and the parameters around what it could be were quite loose, so I was able to have an exciting amount of input into world-building, characterization and plot. I don’t play computer games myself but the companies liked that. I came with no preconceived notions. The downside was that I didn’t know the structure of a game the way I know the structure of a fiction plot. So when the honeymoon period of coming up with amazing ideas (which I’m really good at) was over and it was time to put those ideas into a format, I struggled.

I also had to unlearn Show, Don’t Tell and get it into my head that computer games were Do, Don’t Show. But the guys were awesomely patient with me so it was a super-positive experience. I could see where my fantasy world-building background benefited them, and my manuscript assessment practice allowed me to easily pull component pieces of the story apart and look critically at conflict, motivation, and goals. I particularly liked the collaboration aspect – bouncing ideas back and forth – and the other bonus was that I didn’t have ownership of the story, so there was no pressure to get it ‘right’. It was their story to tell. I was just working on a part of it, and that was very liberating.

The second residency was completely different. I was working on an already established game structure, but taking it into a different genre. The structure was immediately evident and I thoroughly enjoyed populating it with characters, plots, dialogue and action. My collaborators were experienced scriptwriters, so the quality of dialogue was particularly important, and the conflicts were on steroids! I also had to ditch  my training in withholding information to create tension, and tell back story up front. It was such a different way of storytelling, my head hurt at times, but the challenge was so rewarding – a real feeling of I can do hard things!

Background to all is this is that I live outside Bundaberg, 4 hours drive from Brisbane where the companies were based, so 90 percent of my interaction with them was via phone, skype or email. QUT liked the idea of researching how I worked remotely, but personally I’d have preferred more face-to-face time. The bouncing of ideas doesn’t work half as well over the phone. Still, I wouldn’t have wanted to be completely in-house. My normal 8hr working day ranges across 14 hours with watering gardens, hanging out washing, eating and gazing at the view as important down-times when my subconscious gnaws things over. So if I was to work for a game company again I’d know so much more about the work required, and how I could maximize my own productivity.

It also bears mentioning that I was part of the QUT [imi] project research into how artists and interactive media companies collaborate. I’m not a student, I’m an industry professional, so I found some of the uni admin processes frustrating. Facilitator Justin Brow really smoothed the way between myself, the game companies and the QUT researchers, so the end result was two months of exhilarating work and the realization that I’d stopped both residencies just at the point where I was experienced enough to really get my teeth into them!

With a bit of luck, I’ll get that chance again.

(Article first published in WQ, November issue)

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