About Me

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Perth, Western Australia, Australia
I am based in Perth, Western Australia. You might enjoy my books - The Dagger of Dresnia, the first book of the Talismans Trilogy, is available at all good online book shops as is Book two, The Cloak of Challiver. Book three, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation. I trained in piano and singing at the NSW Conservatorium of Music. I also trained in dance (Scully-Borovansky, WAAPA) and drama (NIDA). Since 1987 I have been writing reviews of performances in all genres for a variety of publications, including Music Maker, ArtsWest, Dance Australia, The Australian and others. Now semi-retired, I still write occasionally for the ArtsHub website.

My books

The first two books of my trilogy, The Talismans, (The Dagger of Dresnia, and book two, The Cloak of Challiver) are available in e-book format from Smashwords, Amazon and other online sellers. Book three of the trilogy, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation.I also have a short story, 'La Belle Dame', in print - see Mythic Resonance below - as well as well as a few poems in various places. The best way to contact me is via Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/satimaflavell

Buy The Talismans

The first two books of The Talismans trilogy were published by Satalyte Publications, which, sadly, has gone out of business. However, The Dagger of Dresnia and The Cloak of Challiver are available as ebooks on the usual book-selling websites, and book three, The Seer of Syland, is in preparation. The easiest way to contact me is via Facebook.

The Dagger of Dresnia

The Dagger of Dresnia

The Cloak of Challiver, Book two of The Talismans

The Cloak of Challiver, Book two of The Talismans
Available as an e-book on Amazon and other online booksellers.

Mythic Resonance

Mythic Resonance

Mythic Resonance is an excellent anthology that includes my short story 'La Belle Dame', together with great stories from Alan Baxter, Donna Maree Hanson, Sue Burstynski, Nike Sulway and nine more fantastic authors! Just $US3.99 from Amazon. Got a Kindle? Check out Mythic Resonance.

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Places I've lived: Manchester, UK

Places I've lived: Manchester, UK

Places I've lived: Gippsland, Australia

Places I've lived: Gippsland, Australia

Places I've lived: Geelong, Australia

Places I've lived: Geelong,  Australia

Places I've lived: Tamworth, NSW

Places I've lived: Tamworth, NSW

Places I've Lived - Sydney

Places I've Lived - Sydney
Sydney Conservatorium - my old school

Places I've lived: Auckland, NZ

Places I've lived: Auckland, NZ

Places I've Lived: Mount Gambier

Places I've Lived: Mount Gambier
Blue Lake

Places I've lived: Adelaide, SA

Places I've lived: Adelaide, SA

Places I've Lived: Perth by Day

Places I've Lived: Perth by Day
From Kings Park

Places I've lived: High View, WV

Places I've lived: High View, WV

Places I've lived: Lynton, Devon, UK

Places I've lived: Lynton, Devon, UK

Places I've lived: Braemar, Scotland

Places I've lived: Braemar, Scotland

Places I've lived: Barre, MA, USA

Places I've lived: Barre, MA, USA

Places I've Lived: Perth by Night

Places I've Lived: Perth by Night
From Kings Park

Inner Peace Blog

Inner Peace Blog
Awarded by Joanna Fay. Click on the image to visit her lovely website!

Versatile Blogger Award

Versatile Blogger Award
Awarded by Kim Falconer. Click on the pic to check out her Quantum Astrology blog!

Fabulous Blog Award

Fabulous Blog Award
Awarded by Kathryn Warner. Click on the pic to check out her Edward II blog!

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Wednesday 22 January 2014

Getting closer



Part four of my path to publication
Late in 2005, I sent the MS of The Dagger of Dresnia out to four agents. They all politely told me that it didn’t suit their requirements at this time – the standard way of saying NO without causing offence when you’re an agent. Undaunted, I tried more agents and such publishing houses as were open to unagented writers. This went on for several years, and gradually I became disheartened. 
Nevertheless, every time the standard rejection letter turned up in my email, I simply read the MS again and rewrote vast tracts. I knew there was something I just wasn’t ‘getting’ and it took me a long time to realise what it was.
All this time – which actually covered several years – I was still a member of several writing groups. I got some very useful critiques from my group buddies, and gradually it dawned on me what was missing. I’ve written about this extensively elsewhere, but to put it in a nutshell, it’s the old chestnut ‘show, don’t tell’.
You read about this in virtually every ‘how-to-write’ book there is. What takes a while for new authors to cotton onto is the fact that ‘show, don’t tell’ is composed three elements: narrative, setting and point-of-view.
We tend to think of these as being separate components of the writers’ craft, but in fact they are all simply manifestations of ’show, don’t tell’. It took me literally years and years to realise this. Some people seem to twig it early on, but as I’ve said before, I am a slow learner. But with many rewrites I gradually got better at ‘show, don’t tell’. There were two catalysts for my dawning realisation of this ‘holy trinity’ of writing.
The first was the growing popularity of the ‘close third’ (sometimes called ‘deep third’ point of view. I started to come across this as far back as 2004, with the publication of Margo Lanagan’s collection Black Juice, which contained the amazing ‘Singing My Sister Down’. I read this story over and over again, wondering how to work that particular brand of magic. Lanagan did it again in 2008 with Tender Morsels and yet again in 2009 with Sea Hearts.
In the same time period, Joe Abercrombie was publishing his First Law trilogy. It had not occurred to me that this style of writing could be applied to full-length novels, but Abercrombie did it, and took the SF world by storm. I am nowhere near being in the same league as Lanagan and Abercrombie, but through emulating them I am at least approaching the edges of their marvellous ‘close third’. If you haven’t yet read their wonderful works, please give yourself a treat and hunt them down.
Incidentally, those of you who are into literary fiction will quickly realise that ‘close third’ has grown out of the Free Indirect Discourse style of James Joyce and his predecessors. However, it is eminently more readable than Joyce at his most abstruse.
Egoboo buddies
The second catalyst was that in 2009, five members of the KSP SF group who had completed novels – Carol Ryles, Helen Venn, Sarah Parker, Joanna Fay and I – formed the Egoboo group. (There we are in the picture at left!) In 2010, we went away on our very own little writers camp. We still share a blog at http://egoboo-wa.blogspot.com.au/ and critique each other’s work from time to time. Of that group, Joanna Fay has now had three novels published by Musa Publishing (USA), Sarah Parker has had short stories published, Carol Ryles has finished a PhD (and written a really excellent novel as part of it!) and Helen Venn has won several awards. So you can see that writing groups really do work.
That writers retreat with my four friends gave me further insights into ‘show don’t tell’ and its connections to the close third POV. Close third aims to ensure that narrative, setting and point-of-view are all written from inside the head of the POV character. There is never an intrusive voice from the author; there is no ‘fly-on-the-wall’ description. In order to learn how to write in the desired style, I rewrote the entire novel in the first person, then, using the same techniques, wrote it again in close third. It worked!
And then something wonderful happened. I started to get rejections that were not just the standard ‘Thank you, but (name of book) doesn’t fit our list at this time. Good luck.’ Rather, agents and editors started to give me pointers on how to improve the work and a couple made it clear that they really liked it but it genuinely didn’t ‘fit their lists’ for one reason or another. The fact is, to get a book published in the traditional way, that book has to be exactly what the acquisitions editor happens to be looking for on that particular day. If s/he has just bought a similar book, s/he’s not going to want another of the same kind that year. If s/he’s looking for urban fantasy and you write hard SF, it could be the best SF book in the world and the acquisitions editor will, sadly, have to pass it up. Traditional publishing is a very hit-and-miss affair.
But now I’ve been lucky. Satalyte Publishing, buyer of The Dagger of Dresnia, is a new small press, the brainchild of husband-and-wife team Stephen and Marieke Ormsby. They have signed a marvellous stable of writers and have already released an anthology, Great Southern Land. I hope for great things from Satalyte, and I’m sure they expect great things from me, too!
Watch me fly.

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