Prologue/Epilogue: Yes? No? Maybe?

I recently did an author talk and during the course of discussing the concept of an emotionally satisfying ending being a key ingredient of a romance novel, one of the audience said. “I have read GATHER THE BONES and I loved it, but of course they could never have a life together… he is too damaged.”

That comment set me back on my heels because if that was what she thought, then I have failed in my task as a writer of romance. I had hoped (intended?) that readers would see GATHER THE BONES as a redemptive story where the damage the hero suffers through World War One is healed. Without a spoiler, I won’t reveal here how I ended the story except to say in it’s original draft the story had an epilogue with the hero and heroine away from the terrible events of the book, in their new life in Australia. My original editor and I discussed the need for this epilogue and, given the book also has a prologue, decided that the ending provided the hope of a life together.

"In a Galaxy far, far away..." So begins the most famous Prologue in cinematic history. 

It was Jenny Crusie, a writer for whom I have the utmost admiration, who stood up at a Romance Writers of Australia Conference and told us in no uncertain terms that a writer should NEVER use prologues and epilogue. They are a sign of weak writing and show disdain for the reader.

I have published six full length novels and I am ashamed to admit that two of them have prologues (BY THE SWORD and GATHERTHE BONES) and, in my opinion, both prologues provide absolutely vital pieces of information regarding the motivation of the characters that I feel the reader needs to know before they move to the events of the book. Could the books stand without them? I’m not sufficiently far removed from the story to comment!

The current work in progress also has a prologue - for the same reason. This is the third book in a series and I feel, for the readers sake, it needs an explanation of the intervening years between Book 2 and this book. I guess at the end of the day it is up to the reader. Like all things… some readers love them, others hate them. Whether the Prologue stays in the final version is yet to be seen...

I also think in the vast majority of cases the prologues I have read are unnecessary and are just used as a vehicle to provide back story. If that is the case then that is the wrong use of a prologue and it is, as JC, would say “lazy writing”. I particularly hate prologues that end with something like “And little was she to know…” or “and then the countess died, the child grew up and etc etc…”.

Epilogues - these can very often feel tacked on to the story. In romance stories do we need to see the wedding or the hero and heroine surrounded by their brood of children. I have one book with an Epilogue - Secrets in Time. Would Gather the Bones be improved with the addition of the unpublished epilogue?

I think for writers considering the use of prologues or epilogues, the question you need to ask yourself is: “What does this add to the story that cannot be exposed in some other form during the story?” (Which probably leads to another discussion on Flashbacks…). If the answer is “very little” then ditch the prologue and start the story where it is meant to start. Ditto for epilogues - unless the epilogue is going to add something significant to the story and is not just an indulgence on the part of a writer who can’t let go of the characters, then it should be enough to leave the readers with the promise of the Happy Ever After.

As to the unpublished epilogue to GATHER THE BONES... subscribe to my newsletter and on the issue of my next newsletter you can have exclusive access to read it... and maybe comment as to whether the published version should or should not have included it!

Epilogue: 

In the meantime GATHER THE BONES (prologue and all) is on sale of just .99c until 20 October. 

Brenda Novak Auction - Win a basket of Ebooks by Australian authors

Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes

  The Auction for the BEST basket 

of E-BOOKS EVER is HERE!

That's right, here's your chance to bid on a whole heap of books donated by more than a few wonderful Aussie Writers - mostly members of the HISTORICAL HEARTS.

Thanks to the hard work by the lovely Christina Phillips a large bunch of us Australian writers, mostly writers of historical romance, donated some of our favourite books to this worthwhile cause. If you are interested in connecting with Australian writers and reading a collection of books in a different sort of voice, then this is the item to bid on!

 

This is the 9th Annual On-Line Auction for Diabetes Research New York Best Seller Author - Brenda Novak has held.  Follow the links to find out more details and how to sign up for your bid here: Brenda Novak - Auction for Diabetes.

To take a look at the Basket of E-Books on behalf of the Historical Hearts Group click the link  HERE

This magnificent collection of Romance Titles takes in Historical, Sci-Fi, Paranormal, Outback, Erotic and Spicy and Contemporary Reads. Something for everyone  OR Everything for one lucky Bidder!! (Including a copy of my own best selling, multi award nominated GATHER THE BONES).

I'd like to acknowledge the support of ALL the Authors who made the donation basket, from the Historical Hearts RWA group of Writers, such a marvellous item to bid for.

Tamara Gill, Erin Grace, Maggi Andersen, Carol Hoggart, Euphrasia Holmes, Alison Stuart, Jo Duncan, Suzi Love, S E Gilchrist, Catherine Evans,   Kylie Scott, Marianne Theresa, Beverley Oakley, Annie Seaton, Keziah Hill,  Mel Teshco, Rhian Cahill, Nicole Hurley-Moore, Rhyll Biest, Shona Husk, Tracey O'Hara

There is also a virtual Gift Basket of Critiques for Writers from HERE

This basket Includes:
**From developmental & copy editor Annie Seaton:1 10-page edit
**From author Erin GraceOne 3-Chapter Critique
**From author Euphraisa Holmes
1 10-page edit.
Thanks Ladies :))

BUT WAIT - There's more ...  Check out these Hot & Spicy Reads from the Hot Downunder Authors. 14 Titles to help put a Sizzle into your Winter reading..  

You can Connect with Historical Hearts Authors on Facebook or visit the Historical Hearts Blog page

WIN A COPY OF GATHER THE BONES!

How I Became an Australian...or how I nearly became a Kiwi...

Ripper, bonzer, beauty...it's my turn to be part of the great AUSTRALIA DAY BLOGHOP. I'm as chuffed as a kookaburra with a beak full of sausage, straight off the barbie. Thank you to the wonderful Annie Seaton for her hard work in herding a bunch of wayward Aussies into some semblance of order!

"I am... you are... we are Australian..."

That song , “I am Australian” has a particular poignancy for me and never fails to bring tears to my eyes.

In October 2002 we were living in Singapore. My husband was already commuting to his job in Melbourne but I had remained in Singapore to allow my eldest son to finish his schooling at the Australian International School. The Year 12s were a week off finishing their exams when the Bali bombings occurred. Of the 202 people killed at Kuta Beach, 88 were Australians. Nothing, short of war, could have had such a devastating affect on Australia. A week later and it could have been half of the young people from the AIS who had been planning “schoolies” in Bali. As it was the Singapore Rugby 7s had been playing in a tournament on Kuta and several members were killed, many injured. We all knew someone who was directly affected.

The Australian High Commissioner opened up the High Commission to the Australian expatriate community for a memorial service. The place was packed, a community united by shock and grief. The High Commissioner spoke of the importance of “tribe” and how the tribe comes together in times of trouble and sadness. The Australian school choir sang “I am Australian”. Men and women, larrikin Aussies all, wept. It was in that moment I really understood what it was to be Australian.

You see I was not born Australian, although through a quirk in my family tree, I should have been. My great great grandparents were Australian born and bred, tracing their lineage back to 1798 - to a country that had been settled by Europeans for less than 10 years. I can point to my convict roots and make claim to being Australian “royalty” but whatever their own reasons my great+ grandparents decided to “return” to England in the 1860s and that particular branch of the family settled into comfortable middle class life in London.

I was therefore born a “British” citizen at the end of the British Empire, in the dying days of colonial life, in Nairobi, Kenya. My mother had been born in Kenya where her father had gone as a colonial civil servant in the 1920s and my father, following a long and divergent route, had decided to end his British army career in a country he fell in love with and, I suspect, mourned to his dying day. Independence came in 1963 and my parents decided that modern Kenya held no future for their children but where to go? They could not bear the thought of returning “home” to a country neither of them had lived in for twenty years and to which they felt no allegiance. So they decided to have a look at New Zealand.

A good military man, my father was all booked for his reconnaissance trip to the land of the long white cloud. He even had an introduction to then Governor of NZ. It looked like I would live out my life pronouncing my name “Ulison”. Unfortunately I gave him mumps and the trip had to be cancelled. Months passed and he decided perhaps Australia might be worth a look so off he went, returning with a stuffed koala bear and favourable reports. There was a large expatriate community of ex Kenyan colonials in Perth and that would be where we would move. The one city he had nothing good to report on was a miserable, cold city on the bottom of the country, where all the pubs closed at 6.00pm. If we lived nowhere else we would not, he declared, ever live in Melbourne.

My travel diary for the move... showing indications of the writer I would become... Kilmanjaro -  "Its splendour showing radiant against the blue sky..."

Mauritius on route to Perth

We had to meet with a visiting member of the Australian parliament to prove, we suspected, that my mother (and indeed my brother and I!) was white. The late 1960s marked the dying days of the "White Australia Policy" and my mother's own birth in Kenya may have aroused suspicions! 

In July 1968, as approved migrants travelling under the General Assistance Package Scheme (not quite ten pound poms but pretty close!), the move was made and our little family transposed from Nairobi to Perth. I had studied Australia at school in Nairobi and I knew all about the Ord River scheme (yes, really!) but it was something of a disappointment to find that kangaroos did not live in the back yard of our rented house in Subiaco. In fact my parents might as well have moved me to the moon.  I am not sure I even spoke the same language as the girls at St. Marys Church of England Grammar School. 

A forlorn Perth school girl 1968

In my first few months in Perth I survived the Meckering earthquake and  the running of some sort of horse race in far off much derided Melbourne which necessitated the Grade 5 girls clustered around a radio at the end of the school grounds during lunch hour (for the record, the 1968 Melbourne Cup won by Rain Lover). I can't say those early days in my new country were very happy. I was definitely the odd one out.

Dad couldn’t find work in Perth. My parents carefully eked out savings were beginning to run out and despite strident advice from my mother’s father (always a plain speaker), they decided it had all been a terrible mistake and we would move to South Africa. We were booked on the next boat to South Africa when a job opportunity came up in ... Melbourne. The passage to South Africa was cancelled and we moved to the cold miserable city where the pubs closed at 6.00pm.

I loved Melbourne from the moment we stepped into a taxi at the airport. I blossomed at my new school. I made lifelong friends. There were a few adjustments to be mad... a nasty moment in my first week at my new school when it was discovered I didn’t know the National Anthem (God Save the Queen) and disparaging notes were sent home to my mother. (BTW I can still sing the Kenyan national anthem!)

An Australian with the paper to prove it!

My life in Kenya slipped into the furthest recesses of my mind and on 21 November 1977 at the age of 18 I became an Australian - I even have the piece of paper to prove it. Actually we all became Australians, even my father who grumbled at the inequity of being made to swear allegiance to the same monarch he had served as a British Army Officer for 15 years. However not for us, the public ceremonies where you are presented with a gum tree or a wattle with much singing of the National anthem (the newly minted Advance Australia Fair to which NO ONE knew the words). Dad arranged for private, oddly impersonal, meetings with a public servant in a gloomy office somewhere in the city. Mr. Albert Terence Stuckey “Migration Officer” signed me off as having sworn the the proper oath of allegiance and I was officially Australian, completing a circle begun by my convict ancestress in 1798.

One last tie bound me to my British citizenship. I still had a British passport. In 1984 I married an Australian and the unmitigated bureaucratic nightmare of travelling internationally with a spouse on a different passport forced my hand and I surrendered my passport. I was now 100% Australian and the mother of two little Australians.

It is only when I speak, that the well enunciated vowels of a colonial past slip out and betray my non-Australian background. I can’t change the way I speak. That will be with me forever, but for those who think I do have an English accent - stick me in England and you will see that what I have is a peculiar accent that is neither English nor Australian but the product of both.

My 3 year sojourn as an Expat in Singapore sealed the deal (despite the accent becoming more pronounced!). I loved being an Australian abroad. I may have been a member of the British Club but it was in the company of Aussies - at the opening of the Sydney Olympics, at Melbourne Cup functions, watching the AFL Grand Final with the airconditioning way down and wrapped in scarves, putting on an Australia Day morning tea for the ExxonMobil spouses… and standing with my tribe at the ANZAC Day dawn service or weeping while the children sang “I am Australian” at the Bali Memorial Service -  that I really understood what it was to be Australian. Dinky di, true blue Australian...

MY GIVEAWAY:  As you probably know I mostly write historicals set in the seventeenth century, long before Australia was "discovered" but I yearned to write a book with an Australian character, that reflected the experience of being an Australian. In GATHER THE BONES I have an Australian heroine, Helen Morrow, and I am giving away a copy of this multi-award nominated, Amazon best seller to a lucky commenter who can tell me their favourite fictional Australian (is it Crocodile Dundee? Edna Everidge? errr... how many fictional Australians do we have???).

AND DON'T FORGET MY LATEST BOOK:  CLAIMING THE REBEL'S HEART is now out now on AMAZON and where all good ebooks are sold. 

AND LASTLY, BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, PLEASE ENTER THE BLOG HOP'S OWN RAFFLECOPTER CONTEST. A $100 Amazon voucher and other prizes are on offer. Entry below!!!

Happy Australia Day on the 26th January
Alison

In Flanders Field and a Director's Cut

Of all the poems that came from the blood and mud of the World War One, one of the most evocative is the poem Flanders Fields written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a doctor who served in the front lines of battle during the Flanders campaigns.

In 2005 my husband and I stumbled on the bunker where he worked, only a few miles outside Ypres (for more about how that influenced my writing see below). There we read the story of how this poem came to be written. 

The bunker where McCrae worked

McCrae came from Ontario in Canada, where he had practised medicine in Montreal. He had served with the Canadian artillery in the Boer War and when the call to arms came again in 1914, he was appointed as a field surgeon to the Canadian artillery. The death of his friend and former student, Lt. Alexis Helmer, during the 2nd Battle of Ypres, affected him greatly. He performed the burial service himself, at which time he noted how poppies quickly grew around the graves of those who died at Ypres. The next day, he composed the poem while sitting in the back of an ambulance.

McCrae did not live to see peace. He died of meningitis in January 1918 at the age of 45, his legacy this poem:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

In my own little town in far away Melbourne, 2000 young men from a total population of only 18,000 marched off to war.

As our church has done every year since the 1920s, on the Sunday closest to Remembrance Day an evensong is held where the memorial light that burns in our chapel is relit. Last night the junior school choir of one of our local schools sang Flanders Fields. The simple, lovely tune carried so clearly by the young innocent voices, evoked the spirit of the poem so strongly that I found myself wiping away the tears, remembering once again my own lost forebear and the many, many families torn apart by that terrible war.

The following video is not the school choir that performed at our church last night but still a lovely rendition of the Jacobson anthem.  Listen carefully and remember...

When you write a book...like a director, you may write a great deal that ends up on the cutting room floor. In writing my story of the First World War,  GATHER THE BONES, I wrote all of Paul's back story - his experience in the trenches during the 3rd Battle of Ypres.


The following excerpt is one of those  "Director's cuts" and is based on that visit to the clearing station where McRae wrote his poem. It is told from the point of view of Paul's friend, Angela, an ambulance driver on the front lines.

It had been a long day and a longer night. Angela pushed a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes and steered the ambulance around the new shell hole across the Ypres road. She had not allowed herself the luxury of conscious thought for twenty four hours, now she allowed the familiar anger to start coursing through her. She had lost count of the broken bodies she had carried from the front lines back to the field hospital. For what? For what? she thought on a note of rising hysteria.

            The men had told her that whatever ground they had taken had been lost as high command dithered and failed to push forward to consolidate the gain. More men had been lost in retreat then in advance.

            She longed for a cigarette and a hot drink and as she brought the ambulance to a screeching halt at the dressing station, she saw the opportunity for both. Rubbing her hands down her filthy trousers, she strode over to the group of medics gathered around the field oven.

            One of them thrust a hot panniken into her hand with something that passed for breakfast. She knew them all and they knew how long and hard she had worked that night.

            “One more trip,” she said, “and that’s it for me. Someone else can bring the jalopy out.”

            One of the men smiled, his teeth uneven in his unshaven face. “Reckon you’ve earned it,” he said.

            She finished the rough breakfast, gulping gratefully on the hot, sweet coffee. “Where’s my patients?”

            “We’ve a couple for you there and if you can wait a bit, we’ve got one just come in. He’s with the doc now.”

            Angela nodded and strolled over to inspect the patients, a young boy, barely able to shave with a chest wound and a veteran corporal with a shattered leg. Both were conscious and stable for the moment. She greeted them cheerfully and was rewarded with smiles. It always amazed her the difference the presence of a woman could make.

            The young Canadian doctor who staffed this aid post worked from a bunker, dug into an earthen bank. There were times when German shells reached this far behind the lines but he continued to work on.

            The door to the bunker was open, allowing the daylight in and Angela could see by the boots that he had an officer on the table.

            “Going to be long?” she enquired.

            The doctor looked up. “Well if you want to come and lend a hand, I’ll be quicker,” he said.

            She washed her hands, found some gloves and a mask and slipped into the bunker.

            “Oh, God!” she said.

            “You’ve seen worse,” the doctor commented.

            “I know him,” she said.

            “Oh. Good friend?”

            She nodded. “Very good friend,” she replied. “Is he bad?”

            “Who knows?” the doctor said with a philosophy born of two long hard years in the front line. “Pass me those forceps.”

            Angela wet a cloth and began to wipe the mud and the blood from Paul’s face. His eyes flickered open at the touch and held hers.

            She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile but lucidity faded as quickly as it had come and he lapsed into unconsciousness again.

            The doctor gave an impatient grunt. “I’ve done enough to hold him together for the moment, but we’d better get him back to the field hospital.” He signaled the medics who came forward to collect the stretcher and load him into the back of the ambulance with the other two men.

            “How bad is he really?” Angela asked through tight lips.

The doctor shrugged. “Shock, loss of blood... He was out in no man's land the better part of twenty four hours.” The doctor looked at her closely. “Angela, you should know better than to allow them to get to you.”

“It’s never been anyone I knew before,” she replied.

Halloween with Ms Stuart and giveaway

CONGRATULATIONS TO HELEN HOLLICK who is the winner of a copy of SECRETS IN TIME. Thank you to all blog hoppers who came trick or treating at my door!


TRADITIONAL SCOTTISH PRAYER (for All Hallows E’en)

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

In Australia, Halloween does not have the deep seated tradition that it has in the USA or in the UK.   It is really only over the last ten years that I have noticed Halloween displays creeping into supermarkets and the occasional smart alec kids who don’t really get it, knocking on the door.  As 99% of householders would not be entering into the spirit at all, the pickings are slim!

The origins of Halloween are lost in the commercial world of pumpkins and spectres but it was originally the festival of “All Hallows Even” - the night before All Hallows Day.   Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls' Day.

  

The carving of jack-o'-lanterns springs from the souling custom of carving turnips into lanterns as a way of remembering the souls held in purgatory.  The turnip has traditionally been used in Ireland and Scotland at Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which are both readily available and much larger – making them easier to carve than turnips!

Through the magic of the “Interwebs” we are now global citizens and when my friend, English writer Francine Howarth, proposed a Halloween blog hop, I put up my hand to join her.

Francine’s idea is to encourage readers and writers to try reading something outside their comfort zone. 

So as my “treat” I am offering a Kindle copy of ‘SECRETS IN TIME' - dashing cavaliers, time travel and, most importantly, a witch…Is there anything more appropriate for Halloween?

 

Can love overcome time itself?

When Nathaniel Preston stumbles into Dr Jessica Shepherd’s garden, she is reluctant to believe he has crossed more than three hundred years to seek her help. He must help her understand why he has travelled from the midst of civil war to the quiet English countryside of the twentieth century.

But is falling in love with him destined to end in heartbreak? Jessica knows he must return to his own time and face certain death in battle.

Why has Nathaniel been sent to find Jessica? Can their love survive a bloody battle…and overcome time?

SECRETS IN TIME is currently hovering around the best selling lists on Kindle.

Meet my witch, Dame Alice…

Dame Alice stood back to allow me to enter first. Bunches of drying herbs hung from hooks and little round clay pots crammed the shelves between stoppered flagons. My nose twitched. The room smelled of sage and rosemary with the tinge of something sweet, such as honey. We had touched on the history of medicine in my studies and here was an opportunity to study it at first hand. My professional curiosity overcame any reservations I may have had about Dame Alice.

“This is extraordinary,” I said.

She shut the door behind her and indicated a heavy, leather bound volume on the table. “That is my book of receipts. The sum total of my knowledge.” She looked up at me with her grandson’s clear eyes. “It would be wonderful to be born in your time, to have your knowledge.”

“What do you know of my time?” I challenged.

“What I have seen, Doctor Shepherd. Extraordinary machines that do the work of men and horses. Magic lights and water that comes from the walls, but I have also seen unhappiness and poverty. Those things are universal to any age.”

“How do you see?” I looked around the room, wondering if she kept a crystal ball or some sort of bowl with magical divining liquid in it.

TO EARN YOUR TREAT…  Tell me what halloween costume you are wearing/ would like to wear for Trick or Treat this year (even if you are Australian and don't believe in the Halloween stuff...dream a little!)

And don’t forget to hop over to Francine’s blog, ROMANCING THE BLOG, to find other opportunities for a trick or treat.

Ms. S. in Halloween costume...the city had to be scoured to find something suitable!

Visit the other Blog participants...you will be in for a treat!

Hallowe'en Blog Hop

1.	Francine	9.	Denise Covey	17.	Susan Hanniford Crowley
2.	Marie Laval	10.	Grace Elliot	18.	Stephen Tremp
3.	NancyJ	11.	Gilli Allan	19.	Hywela Lyn
4.	N. R. Williams	12.	Alison Stuart	20.	Iyana Jenna
5.	Alison Morton	13.	Mary Pax	21.	Vala Kaye
6.	Karen Aminadra	14.	Natalie-Nicole Bates	22.	Yolanda Renee
7.	Lori Crane	15.	Douglas Boren
8.	Derek Birks	16.	Anna Belfrage

GATHER THE BONES is on sale...

UPDATE:  as at 1800AEDST 21 Oct 13, GATHER THE BONES hits the top 100 across all Kindle books.

It's been nominated for 5 awards and received some glowing reader reviews and now it can be yours for just .99c UNTIL 22 October.

DESCRIBED AS A STORY FOR FANS OF "DOWNTON ABBEY" and "A HAUNTING LOVE STORY"... now is your chance to snap it up.

On sale at Amazon Kindle or Smashwords.

War leaves no heart untouched

In the shadow of the Great War, grieving widow, Helen Morrow and her husband’s cousin, the wounded and reclusive Paul, are haunted not only by the horrors of the trenches but ghosts from another time and another conflict.

 As the desperate voice of the young woman reaches out to them from the pages of a coded diary, Paul and Helen are bound together in their search for answers, not only to the old mystery but also the circumstances surrounding the death of Helen’s husband at Passchandaele in  1917.

As the two stories become entwined, Paul and Helen will not find peace until the mysteries are solved.

A Writer's Life - The Contest Circuit

In this morning's Inbox, was the wonderful news that GATHER THE BONES had finalled in the 2014 EPIC Awards for Best Historical Romance, a category I won with BY THE SWORD back in 2008.  This is its 5th award nomination this year.

Contests are a part of a writer's journey and a long time I wrote a book.It sat on my desk, a pile of paper (pre digital age!) and I just stared at it. I had no idea what do next... Where should I send it? 

A friend in the publishing industry read it and said “You do realise this is a historical romance? Why don’t you enter it into the Romance Writers of Australia Emma Darcy contest?”

The 1996 Emma Darcy Award

Here’s a confession - I had never even dreamed there was a Romance Writersorganisation and (not being a traditional romance reader) neither had I heard of (the lovely!) Emma Darcy. In the days before internet,  somehow I tracked down the organisation and entered the Emma Darcy Contest and to my utter surprise I received a phone call from ED herself congratulating me on coming 2nd in the contest. The rest, as they say is history…

Even as an unpublished author I picked and chose which contests I entered. I was never a “contest junkie”. The contests I went in for were those that would give me the best feedback on my entry. Now, not all feedback is good and trust me, some comments I received cut to the bone but to be honest it is those comments that I went back to in the rewrite. As a contest judge myself these days, I try to impart that my comments are my subjective opinion and try to offer constructive suggestions on improvement. It is not always possible to say wonderful things about an entry you are reading, sometimes you have to hold the mirror up. It’s how it is done that is important.

The other great thing about entering unpublished contests is your works gets in front of editors and agents. I had a few requests for full manuscripts but alas, the magic "call" never happened but at least I was being read and getting feedback from professionals in publishing.

The world of “feedback” contests closes once you become published but the occasional contest, such as the Romance Through the Ages Contest is open for published authors. I won it in 2012 with an unpublished regency romance. Once again the feedback was invaluable…particularly from the judge who DIDN’T like it!

GATHER THE BONES was published in September 2012. It is the cross genre story to end all cross genre stories…history, mystery, romance and ghosts… but I thought in my heart of hearts I had written a good story and so I invested in the contest circuit. Two of the contests in which it has finalled were reader driven contests (The Australian Romance Readers Awards and the RONE Awards). I didn’t lodge the entries…they came from the readers…and believe me those nominations mean the world to me. The other 3 were contests I entered. It does cost money to enter contests, particularly if one also has to provide printed copies of books to distant places.

So what is the benefit to entering these contests…particularly if you don’t win?

●        It would be nice to think that it lifts your book above the pack but to be honest I have noticed no appreciable increase in sales riding on award nominations.

●        BUT it does go on your writing CV, it builds your profile and makes you a more attractive proposition for editors and agents. This, for me, is the major reason I would enter published author contests.

So there we are… GATHER THE BONES has just garnered its 5th Award nominations and I am as proud as punch of its success… Stay tuned for a special offer on purchasing this book that begins 20 October :-)

Alison with her 2008 Eppie Award for BY THE SWORD

In the meantime I would love to know why you think contests (for pubbed or unpubbed) are worth entering…OR NOT….