So, remember I went to Belfast last Friday to meet the editors at a publishing house? Well, yesterday I got the call, and it was a “Yes”! The aim will be for a collection of my stories to be published in October, so the next few months are going to be very exciting 🙂 .
Today I applied to joined The Society Of Authors . The brilliant thing about this organisation is that it supports authors in a variety of ways (including offering help with reviewing contracts).
I feel at the start of something very auspicious. A whole new road lies ahead, and I’m itching to get my adventure boots on and to start walking.
Well, here we are already 17 days into January! Whilst my 365 Days Of Adventure project is now complete, that doesn’t mean that the adventures have stopped : far from it 🙂 . My year-long project has started an avalanche of new projects, and some of the adventures I started back in 2014 are growing into veritable “expeditions”!
New Projects And New-Old Projects Thanks to my webinar and TV show adventures, I’ve now developed the technological confidence (yes – actual confidence!) to launch my very first on-line programme. It’s a natural next step for me and for any of you who want to get the hang of doing new stuff (and doing the stuff that you really want to do) without holding yourself back. You can get the full low-down on the Learning To Leap programme here.
Thanks to my SurveyMonkey adventure (Oh, how I wish I’d undertaken this adventure a long time ago!), I’m also launching a live retreat version of my Learning To Leap programme . The retreat is called The Leap and you can jump into all the detail here.
My survey results showed that the programme that most people were interested in was my Telling Stories For A Change training. So, I listened and ,after a few years of rest and recuperation, that course is back on the menu!
The Big Expedition If you’ve been following my adventures for a while, you may know that I wrote a short faerie story last summer. I sent that story off to a handful of literary agents and one publisher. The publisher was interested and asked for another story, which I submitted in December. They like that too, and yesterday I embarked on the next stage of my writing adventure : a visit to the publishing house!
I really enjoyed meeting the two editors and it was FABULOUS to be able to tell them how I came to write the stories (yes- I even owned up to my fairy-hunting adventure). The meeting was more about getting to know me and about ascertaining whether I had it in me to go the full book-signing, speaking, reading, interviewing hog… and whether I could enthuse about my own work . We also talked about the genre of my book .. which is a little sticky …. because its natural genre (cross-over) is notoriously hard to sell to bookshops because they don’t know where to put the books.
I get to hear whether the publisher wants to go ahead with publishing a collection of short stories early next week 🙂 . Here’s the “live” report >>
If you’re new to my blog, and you want to catch up with my 365 Days Of Adventure project, just click on the Blog Categories button in the right hand column (or under this post if you are reading this on your phone). When you click on the button it will give you a topic menu, so you can pick and choose as the fancy takes you 🙂 .
Well, it’s here : it’s the final day of my 365 Days Of Adventure project, and I can hardly believe it!
There were so many adventure choices today, but I didn’t hesitate in making a decision to go to visit the faeries at the faerie thorn tree on the farm.
My faerie-hunting adventure in the summer opened up a series of adventures that I would never have imagined myself doing on January 1st this year. Thanks to that adventure, I’ve written two faerie stories … and those stories have brought me closer to the possibility of a publishing deal! (I should hear in mid-January whether the publisher intends to acquire the rights 🙂 )
Since writing my second story, I’ve not slept very well at all. My dreams are full of new storylines – and I’m certain that the faeries have more than a little something to do with that 😛 .
For today’s adventure, I went to the tree and left the faeries the gift of a small bottle of Bushmills whisky.
I’m going to let my experiences settle for a while before drawing out the key learnings and insights, but one thing is for sure : it’s been a life-changing experience.
Thanks so much for your company this last 365 days. I’ve really appreciated all of you who have been following my blog or watching my videos on YouTube : I’m sure our paths will cross again.
(Oh – it was REALLY windy today, so that sound quality isn’t that great. I’m sure you’ll get the gist though!)
In the meantime, I am going outside and may be some time.
Today’s adventure feels exciting! The full manuscript of The Faerie Thorn is now with the publisher, and I’m awaiting a decision. The fact that the publisher liked my work is brilliant : up until this point, the only people who had read my story, or listened to it, were friends and family (my cheer-leaders 🙂 ).
The landscape suddenly changed when I read that the publisher liked the story. I somehow felt more like a “proper” writer.
The thing is, proper writers have proper critics and proper reviews. And so for today’s adventure, I am asking a young reader whom I have never met , who doesn’t know me at all, to review my story.
The reader is a 13 year-old girl. She’s an avid reader and up for the job of casting a critical eye over my work. Â I requested a “no-holds-barred” review.
Here’s the thing : I’ve only got 85 days  of adventuring left. Time’s flying and there’s still stuff I want to get done, stuff I want to complete. I’ve realised that I like completing things, and I’m beginning to realise exactly how much I’ve actually completed this year!
Whilst I’ve really enjoyed the smaller one-off adventures, the adventures that have taught me the most have been those that have become larger projects : my composing adventure (The Call, a choral piece for 3 voices), my writing adventure (The Faerie Thorn) and my poetic adventure (my haiku collection).
So now I’m shifting my focus a little, Why? Because I want to finish these projects. Because I want to share the outcomes of my adventurous undertakings. Because I want to break new personal ground. This means that over the next couple of weeks, whilst I will respond to the daily adventure impulse if the call is strong enough, I’m going to pay attention to the deeper impulse, the core impulse, the primitive, insistent impulse that has been emerging throughout my 365 Days Of Adventure project.
Actually, as I write these words, I’m not sure if I know exactly what I mean by “core impulse”, Â but I can feel a deeper, wordless call. I recognise it. It’s been calling more insistently for the last couple of weeks, and it’s getting stronger by the day. I am listening. I am calling back. I am beginning to hear the resonant echo.
For today’s adventure, I took another step towards completing my writing adventure : I spoke with my friend Damian Hamill (the guy in the picture) who is originally from Northern Ireland (the setting for The Faerie Thorn) and who does voice-over work. I’ve sent him the manuscript and he’s going to turn my manuscript into an audiobook. Damian also talked me through all the options I have in terms of making my audiobook available for purchase and I’ve researched those options (and made a decision!).
I like the idea of collaborating, and I’m looking forward to hearing Damian’s interpretation of the characters in my story.
Okay, I’m owning up : the radio silence is becoming a little uncomfortable. Yes, it’s completely true : I’ve been fabulously productive over the last 2 days, but I am starting to feel a little cut off from the world.
Today, I managed to craft a curriculum vitae to submit with my manuscript to the next agent on my list. The process made me smile (I haven’t written one of these since 1997) and I’ve produced a single-page document that is a complete reflection of who I am : I squeezed my whole life onto an A4 sheet of paper! Â I wanted to share the experience… not necessarily with the whole world but definitely with some of my friends with whom I’d normally have daily contact via a Facebook group.
I emailed them, but it’s not the same. There is something alive and connecting about social media; not all of it but certainly some of  it.
So, it seems that behind my “distraction” lies a sense of disconnection. I might need a bit of time to process this : I work largely on my own with a transitory client-base. So I ask myself, is social media a distraction for me or does it, in fact, perform an important function for me? Does it provide me with colleagues and a lively working environment?
Well, it’s Day 1 of  The Big Distraction Project and things are going rather well! (It actually feels like I’ve been driving with the handbrake on until today 😛 ). In fact, things have gone so well that I’m ahead of schedule and have even managed to submit the manuscript for my short story to a literary agent (which feels very exciting).
Well, I am considering going to the local trolls and asking to be turned into a bone-ghost … anything to escape the synopsis! I’ve dedicated a further 5 hours to refining my synopsis and it still doesn’t feel right to me!
I am just going outside and may be some time 🙂 .
Well, what can I tell you? Writing a one-page synopsis of a story I know inside-out is not something that I’ve found easy at all. Turns out though that the “Synopsis Struggle” is very common amongst the writing population – and just knowing that makes me feel better (and like a proper writer …. a REALLY proper writer because it was a REALLY big struggle.)
It took me four hours and (as you will see in today’s video) I am now “all worded out”. There’s not a single letter, let alone word, left on my tongue. I need a lie down 😛 . (And. Yeah. It’s just the first draft. *SIGH* )
I have completed the fourth (and final) round of editing of my short story, The Faerie Thorn. Now I’m ready to move on to the next part of my writing adventure : preparing my bio and a synopsis to send off  to agents and publishers!
Humans Resourced 