Ngaruawahia Girl

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Macgillivray ( Mac ) Du Rose - These friends of mine

Macgillivray ( Mac ) Du Rose – These friends of mine

Mac Du Rose

Mac Du Rose enters the world in the most traumatic way possible. Like his sister before him, he’s early, his mother is alone and he’s born at the top of the Du Roses’ mountain in the north island of New Zealand. Phoenix opens her eyes to the stars overhead, but her newborn brother draws his first breath to the sight of a gun aimed at his tiny face.

Mac’s early life is dogged by the…

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Kit Maguire -These Friends of Mine

Kit Maguire -These Friends of Mine

‘Kit is an enigma’

In the second Curly Fan Club novel, one of the other characters says to Kit, “You’re an enigma.”

And she is.

A riddle, a conundrum, a puzzle, a mystery all on her own.

So, who is Katharine Maguire when the lights are off and there’s no one else there to see?

‘She’s a rebel’

Kit doesn’t want to do the same things as everyone else. She’s a rebel. She’s convinced she won’t be…

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These Friends of Mine Introduction

These Friends of Mine Introduction

“Is it me?”

People often ask about the inspiration for my characters and what drives their development. They’re often asking because they’ve recognised some facet of their own nature in a fictional person. I knew a lady once who had convinced herself and all her friends that I’d based one of the Hana characters on her. I hadn’t, but she loved the idea and ran with it.

Unless otherwise stated,…

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Lifting your game

My motto for 2018 was ‘lift your game’. Ouch!

On the face of it, that was ridiculous. 2018 saw my average time spent working as 60 hours per week. If it dipped for some reason, like a trip in an ambulance and a hospital stay, I beat myself up and tried to make it up the next week. How much higher could I lift my game? I already clock watched and docked time if I felt I’d wasted it, creating a…

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Keeping the Compliments

Compliments are vastly underrated in the writing world.

We’re besieged by others telling us all the things we don’t do well; the opportunities missed, the odd typos, misuse of the Oxford comma and that time you used a split infinitive by accident. The compliments don’t flood in and it’s too easy to measure the success of others based on the delicacies they feed us and the six figure incomes they…

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Writer's Log, Day-12

Writer’s Log, Day-12

New Year is a great time to take stock.

On Writer’s Log, Day-12 I’m running over my business plan for 2019. You’d think I would have done this last year but…I didn’t. My parents visited from the UK, my son got married, Christmas descended followed by New Year and then I was into working as a #fulltimeauthor

via GIPHY

“I should’ve known better. It’s obvious now…”

I should’ve known better. It’s…

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Writer's Log, Day-11

Writer’s Log, Day-11

In case you didn’t see it the first time around…

On Day-11 I nearly died.

It was just an ordinary evening for us. Husband and I decided to journey into Hamilton to our favourite Pak n Save store on the south side of the city to get our groceries. It’s a bit of a trek, but worth it for the cost saving…usually.

We didn’t get there. After the incident happened, we went to the pub instead. Not for…

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Having coffee with your narrator

Having coffee with your narrator

Dictionary definition of a narrator: noun

– A person who narrates something, especially a character who recounts the events of a novel or narrative poem. – A person who delivers a commentary accompanying a film, broadcast, piece of music, etc.

Do you like your narrator?

This is a question many authors don’t ask themselves enough. Because the voice of the narrator is your direct link to readers.…

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Writer's Log, Day-10

Writer’s Log, Day-10

There was always a plan. In the old Star Trek of my childhood, Captain Kirk always had a plan. If he couldn’t think of anything helpful to say to the strange alien race – with their heads of molded polystyrene – he left it to Spock to think of something. Spock always thought of something. There was always a plan on Day-10. “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable,…

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Writer's Log, Day-9

Writer’s Log, Day-9

B12 day. I worked away from the house today. It’s B12 day and I’m not quite sure what happens to me after the injection, but I just want to sleep. So instead of caving, I wrote at a local cafe with a mug of herbal tea. No complaints. They didn’t throw me out and happily let me occupy a corner table, making me welcome and just letting me be. A great start to Day-9 at The Odd Spoon. The problem was…

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Writer's Log, Day-8

Writer’s Log, Day-8

A Day-8 slap My son gave me one heck of a serve on Day-8. I felt the burn travel the nine hours of distance between us. I hope you understand that nine hours is a conservative estimate for myself as the driver. Anyone else can drive from Hamilton to Wellington in less time, but apparently I drive like a nana. So, there I was wandering around The Warehouse at tea time because Husband needed…

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Writer's Log, Day-7

Writer’s Log, Day-7

My Day-7 smoothie is a little bitter. It’s because my banana was too green to eat. When you need to peel the skin off with a knife, it’s perhaps a little too green even for me. Day-7 involves squeaky teeth. I sat opposite my parents during our regular Friday FaceTime and they wanted to know if I’d written. Hmmmnn…how to answer such a leading question without incriminating myself… I have. And I…

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Writer's Log, Day-6

Writer’s Log, Day-6

DAY-6 AND THE MUTANT RAGWORT It’s going okay, this unemployment lark. By Day-6, I admit I’ve found myself super productive, especially in the realm of editing. As you know, I’m taking a tour through my older novels and eliminating some of my former bad habits. I’ve also written 500 words per day minimum, with reasonable consistency. As a special Day-6 treat, I decided to take myself outside onto…

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Writer’s Log, Day-5

I just got thrown out of my first cafe on Day-5 Yeah. This is new. And on Day-5 too! So soon. Mark Dawson goes to cafes to write. I’ve seen the footage. He sits at a table in a busy hub in Salisbury in his little waistcoat and dicky bow tie and types stuff. It should have worked for me. Not so. This is my Day-5 disaster… Yeah, they threw me out. Not bodily, but verbally and very much emotionally.…

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Writer's Log, Day-4

Writer’s Log, Day-4

Day-4 WAS AMAZING All day. It’s been the best so far. Yep, Day-4 was a doozy good one. I’m a morning person, so while I no longer have to get up at 4.40am to ride the treadmill, I did push my day back a little from 6am to 5.30am. That still gave me a good hour of exercise and then I got dressed and ready to work. But wait. In a new bid to sniff the roses, I had breakfast with Husband on the deck…

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Writer's Log, Day-3

Writer’s Log, Day-3

DAY-3 JOYS AND CHALLENGES Oh, the joys of working from home and not being tied to a timetable. Huzzah! For the first time, I made it to a live webinar on marketing. I hardly heard a word of it and will need to watch the replay. Spent far too much time fist pumping the air instead of making notes. How the small things in life delight the simple. I gleefully typed Ngaruawahia into the list of…

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Writer's Log, Day 2

Writer’s Log, Day 2

A tragic death on day 2 I didn’t expect to find myself standing at my old desk in my old office for day 2 of my new writer’s life. Yet, that’s exactly where I’ve been. We archivists are a strange and specialist breed and I’d served as one for quite a few years. When the worst news possible hit at the weekend, informing me that a colleague and friend had died suddenly, I offered to go back for a…

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