Tag: gratitude - Mala Naidoo's Book World

May The Trilogy Be With You!

Writing a trilogy is not how I began writing, Souls of Her Daughters. The ending brought on an extension to the lives of Grace and Patience, and as the muse requested two more tales were born ending in the grand finale of, What Change May Come. The second book, Chosen Lives, picks up from Patience’s mission shrouded in mystery, and suspense when the aircraft she travels in disappears, followed by time tense revelations and heart-stopping fulfilling thriller magic!

enthrals with mystery and suspense ~ engaging and addictive ~ exhilarating… oozes with deep passion ~

~ Goodreads

The present trilogy in the making was planned. Book 1 of The Bardo Trilogy, Aurora Days, was released in April 2020 and Book 2 is scheduled for an October/November release. Book 3 will follow in the first quarter of 2021. And poetry beckons, egging me on with each publication. Hence Viola is also a closet poet! Stories crafted will always borrow some aspects from the writer’s world.

entrances and entertains… epic tale of courage, love and peril ~ Goodreads

Lessons learned in writing a trilogy are keeping a tight track on characters, places, time, and events. While for the most part, I am a panster, I do plan on Scrivener and shift and rearrange as each idea emerges. The glory of Scrivener is a necessary asset in a writer’s toolkit!

Sometimes the protagonist’s trajectory takes on a different path than originally envisioned. This is the power of independent creative choices — a freedom to chop or sustain at will.

Creative freedom is the stuff dreams are made of!

The Bardo Trilogy revolves around a family mystery in the life of PI Viola Bardo, schoolteacher extraordinaire with music in her heart and justice in her soul. Family relationships are a keen part of both my trilogies as are hidden secrets that connect to my thriller edge.

Changing locations is a wonderful way to revisit places I’ve been to in grounding the story.

While all this is in the making, a new venture beckons as an epic once-off or standalone novel on a family saga. The title came to mind first and pieces are emerging on that idea. Currently, I run two journals, something I have not done with my backlist publications. It has been largely one book at a time.

I am allowing the creative spirit to bite whichever way it wants so while the second book in The Bardo Trilogy is given priority, I am jotting down ideas as they appear on a new vision. I have taken on board Elizabeth Gilbert’s advice in ‘Big Magic’ — if you don’t pick up the stories coming to you, someone else will.

The muse will nudge the writer with her private messages when a story must be told.

The new venture beckoning will shift and change with time and no deadline is on the horizon for that yet. But it will be created as it comes.

I don’t intend on leaving Viola Bardo in the wings because she has many more revelations for the reader.

Keeping track of all that the divine muse dispenses is the best way forward.

May the Muse be With you!

Happy Writing! Happy Reading!

What’s your favourite trilogy read?

End Bell

As the year draws to a close in the blink of the year bowing out, it is a time to reflect on where we are, where we’ve come from and of course where we’re heading to.

Gratitude

My gratitude for a writing life is the blessing of the creative gift to tell the stories of forgotten or unheard voices and the passion to sustain this. I am indebted to the people I’ve met along the way who support my creativity by reading my books and inspiring and supporting my desire to write more.

ALLi guides my ethical author status by providing up-to-the-minute publishing and marketing advice through podcasts, publications, members’ forums and Orna Ross’ weekly, Maker, Manager, and Marketer accountability for creatives.

The vibrant How to Write for Success FB group supports seasoned and novice writers in a nurturing, inspirational forum and is a space to create and showcase some of my pieces while supporting writers on their creations in a constructive, non-judgmental forum.

Joanna Francis Penn’s Travel and Books Podcast and Mark Dawson’s SPS Podcasts are informative, entertaining and inspirational.

Writers no longer work in isolation. Seclusion is necessary for the creative process and networking creates visibility

Publishing

The third novel in the Souls Of Her Daughters Collection was completed, titled What Change May Come and a collection of short stories, Life’s Seasons was published this year. It has been a year of many things on all of life’s fronts with life experience extending understanding and the capacity to live my passion.

2020 – Onwards and Upwards

Currently, a new novel series/trilogy is in the making with the first draft complete and chilling for a month before several rounds of editing and reworking to be born into the world in the first quarter of next year.

Poetry is a calling that intensifies as evident in the post, Poetry Educates Prose. It was a joy to have my poem, ‘Listen,’ published in the December edition of the literary journal SIPAY. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Yeats and Orna Ross are poets I enjoy reading.

Additionally, supporting rising poets brings joy to my creative space.

What more…

Lots more writing and possibly looking at non-fiction and poetry publications while teaching, learning and growing.

A writing life, like reading, is the breath and pulse of life.

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As the year closes this chapter, I look forward with a glad and grateful heart.

Happy Reading, Happy Writing and Publishing this holiday season.

Season’s Greetings, may 2020 bring you the very best in peace, joy, good health, enhanced creative productivity, and abundant success in all your endeavours.

What are you grateful for as 2019 draws to a close?

Add your comments in the box below.

Writing Life: Looking Back

Time and technology have propelled us through 2018 at the speed of light. While the end is nigh, it’s nostalgic as memorable, or a year quickly fading and forgotten.

A nostalgic or forgotten year? What’s your choice?

It has been an incredible year on the writing and publishing front with changes appearing at every corner. While embracing change is the way forward, it has been challenging keeping pace with the rapidity of change in the publishing landscape.
Keeping informed and grounded is paramount to keep creative energy buoyant and abundant. Associations with professional writing bodies, tuning in to the wise and wonderful is essential.

After three publications this year:

•Souls of Her Daughters – March 2018
•The Rain – A Collection of Short Stories – July 2018
•Chosen Lives – October 2018

the year certainly sped by in a haze of complete joy and heady energy.

The Rain, A Collection of Short Stories, an unplanned visitation that appeared between resting a novel draft before editing, took hold with an unstoppable fire, in the middle of the Australian winter, warming my heart and heating my hands, for a July 2018 publication.

The joy of writing is soulful, delightful and inspiring and brings to mind the memory of the amazing Aretha Franklin’s timeless, universal words breaking the wall to being voiceless, to find the necessary space through writing/music/painting that is unshackled by difference when it ignites, consumes, connects, offers hope, and entertains – surely that is the meaning of life!

It has been a year of connecting with writers near and far, the lovely Queensland author, Rhonda Forrest in the post, Australian Voices, and reading her novel, The Shack By the Bay, that invites the reader into the stunning North Queensland setting. Meeting online, award-winning, inspirational, Trinidadian author, Brenda Mohammed, author of How To Write For Success, a non-fiction book, and the famed fictional Zeeka Chronicles, and many more.

Valuable inspiration is drawn from ALLi’s Director and Founder, Orna Ross, poet and author, on the creative process and the creative business mindset, essential for authors/artists. Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn podcast provides up to date inspiration and information on publishing trends, and Mark Dawson’s SPF podcasts and courses are valuable resources for all writers. Online inspiration is abundantly available from well-informed, forerunners who selflessly share their experience in supporting aspiring and new authors.

Receiving readers’ comments on what they enjoyed or how they connected to your books is the sheer joy of knowing it has moved someone. It’s the validation needed to go on. Equally, it’s accepting that one learns something new every day, to improve, to become the best at what we do.

Looking back is undoubtedly encouraging the way forward to 2019, to reach out, share, connect and create.

Moving ahead, onwards and upwards is what matters the most, by networking in a shared global, writing community.

May the new year usher in abundant creative energy and books galore!

Happy NEW YEAR!

Happy writing, Happy reading.

Share your thoughts in the message box below to start a New Year conversation on your writing and reading aims for 2019.

What have you done with your days?

It’s the summer of December 2017. Eleven months of the year are done and perhaps not quite dusted yet as we tie up loose ends to set us free for the holidays.

Do you take stock of the year in your business of life? Do you tick off all that you have achieved and create another list of goals yet to be achieved?

The final month of a year is time to step back, think over and set the bar further for a host of things that will drive your passion into the next year.

Continue reading “What have you done with your days?”

Are You Grateful?

Every day should be Thanksgiving.

Kindness, Thankfulness, and Generosity in equal parts, blended together, is the alchemy needed for harmony and peaceful coexistence.

The words, ‘thank you,’ ‘I give thanks,’ ‘I’m grateful for,’ send out good vibrations to both the messenger and recipient of these encouraging words.

Let’s take a look at wise words on moments of gratitude.
Continue reading “Are You Grateful?”