Natalie Allan

It all started with that Friday Feeling…

After my husband’s incredibly long weekend last week, we were looking forward to having a simple and relaxing two days spent together with a visitation from the parental units. No such luck.

I ordered the limited edition version of Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice on the day it went up for pre-order, with all the excitement of a pig-headed child. I wanted the limited edition screen print that came with the double CD. However, on Friday I had an email from Warner records saying the bank refused to give authorisation on my debit card. The money was there, I’d shopped online with it before, there was no reason why that transaction shouldn’t have gone through.

Annoyed, I was forced to order the special edition without the screen print from Amazon instead. That night, we were tentatively awaiting the arrival of our groceries from Asda, due between 7 and 9 P.M. At 9:15, when the shopping didn’t arrive, I checked the website to see what the hell had happened to my food and loo roll, only to find the order had been cancelled.

Annoyed again, I called Asda to see where my goods were, only to be told the bank had refused authorisation on the debit card again. Even more annoyed, I called the bank at 9:30 P.M. to see why they wouldn’t allow me to spend my money. Emphasis on the *my money*, not the bank’s. I was told they had seen a suspicious transaction on the card resulting in the card having a temporary block on it. When I asked what this transaction might be, they told me it was an overseas transaction for the said CD that didn’t go through, and they couldn’t understand why the debit for Amazon had been allowed. After much begging and promising I was the owner of the card, they lifted the block and I rescheduled the groceries for the next available slot, which was today, Sunday.

So, in essence, the bank saw a transaction between myself and a large company such as Warner suspicious. WTF? Can’t I buy from America if I want?

Saturday Stupor…

Saturday, things continued in much the same pattern. the parental units called to say they were down with flu and couldn’t make their regular Saturday visit, so we went into the city for a spot of retail therapy. Not to spend much because we don’t have much. My husband needed a new pair of shoes, and I wanted to buy a book of collected works of Charles Baudelaire as well as the dog’s three monthly fleas treatment.

We started at Pets At Home for the flea drops for the simple fact they have a free car park for up to 2 hours. The flea treatment by Frontline is veterinary grade and kills fleas like a nuclear bomb and prevents them from ever coming back (so long as you use the damned stuff regular as clockwork). The dog doesn’t have fleas, but prevention is always good.

In the pet store, I asked for the veterinary grade stuff and was asked a million questions as to why I wanted to buy it. Er, it’s flea treatment, it kills fleas, right? The woman then said she couldn’t sell it me because there was no one qualified to hand out veterinary grade medicines. After much cajoling, I felt like leaping across the counter and yelling “Just gimme the goddamn drugs already” into her overly round face. She told me I’d have to wait several days before this oh-so-qualified checkout operative would be in store. I decided to leave it and buy it online from the Medic Animal online veterinary store. this was the first shopping faux pass.

We then trawled the shops for my husband’s shoes. When it comes to shopping, we have a conflict of interest. He likes cheap and cheerful, I like high-quality will-last-forever-and-fuck-the-price kind of shoes. We finally were able to find a pair in Marks and Spencer that both covertly aided his dodgy ankle and would last a long time in the field of onsite technical support. And we got both at the bargain price of £30 while still being able to proudly carry a bag from a reputable shop. Payless shoes? Go fuck yourself!

After this, we went into Waterstones to grab the tome of Baudelaire. Non such happened. What kind of bookstore must it be if it doesn’t carry at least 1 copy of Baudelaire’s collected works? Faux pass number 2. I did, however, come out with a compendium of H.P. Lovecraft’s work. Bingo!

After this, we drove back to our small town for lunch only to find the local Subway has closed down. Faux pass number 3. We ended up going home and ordering in a pizza after spending much time queuing in the warehouse for a new dog bed and a can of air freshener.

The dog loves the new bed and hasn’t left it since we gave it her yesterday afternoon:

When we got home, I ended up ordering the Baudelaire book from Amazon as well as the flea treatment from Medic Animal.Why didn’t I just shop online to begin with?

That night was also a bad night. We noticed our elderly rat, Suse, the only remaining rat from the original Linux Rat pack, was not well. She was very elder and doddery at the best of times, but last night her time came and she passed onto wherever it is all good pets go when they depart. I’d bred Suse myself, so she lived and died in my home. She was 3 years old and the best rat a person could ever wish to own:

She will be sadly missed.

Sunday Screams…

Today has carried on in the same vein.When the groceries finally arrive, most of the items had been substituted for the “closest possible match” because the originally ordered items were “temporarily out of stock”. Why the hell didn’t Asda say they were out of stock when I ordered them.

So now, after much agonising with the delivery driver, I’m stuck with 4 boxes of Starbucks Tassimo coffee maker filters when I ordered 4 bags of ground coffee, spicy burgers for the husband when I ordered regular quarter-pounders, and 2kg of teeny tiny potatoes when I ordered the good fist sized ones.

Needless to say, we ended up driving to Morrisons in our little town to buy the items we actually wanted, resulting in us spending even more money.

I’m well and truly ready for this weekend, this month, to be over and to start afresh on February 1st.

Beta Reading

After my epic fail on the productivity side of things last week, this week has started with a fruitfully.

On Sunday, I offered to do an emergency beta read for  friend of mine of twitter when she came to the end of her wits with her manuscript for her book. I began beta reading for her yesterday and managed to pass through the first 40 pages in two sittings. I estimate it will take me another week to complete this beta for her, seeing as her manuscript is very clean so far.

Helsinki Vampires Synopsis

On par with my super-productivity, I managed to write the outline for 11 chapters of Helsinki Vampires, the second book in my series, yesterday. I anticipate there are about eight more chapters to outline, perhaps ten, so I should be done with the outlining on that book this week.

The Dissapearing Husband

Okay, so he didn’t really disappear. There was no magic involved and I new exactly where he was.

On Friday he was asked to go to Cannock to help with a server install, and worked a couple of hours over. When the job wasn’t completed (because servers like to fuck up just to get the better of their admins), he was asked to go in and complete the job on Saturday. So he went in, worked 9am until about 6pm, but was unable to finish the job so had to go back in on Sunday.

Oh yeah, this server really hated its masters.

On Sunday, he arrived back in at 9am, worked off his socks with his colleague, and all seemed to be well. He called me at 10pm that night to tell me they were having major technical difficulties and would be probably be working on it through the night. By now, he’d been working for 13 hours.

I next heard from him at 8am on Monday morning. They were still there, working hard and the server was still refusing yield to their geekerly powers. Current hours worked: 23.

He finally arrived home a little after 5pm yesterday, after working all day Sunday, through the night, and all day Monday. Needless to say he was pooped. He’d worked 32 hours straight.

He crashed for five hours, I woke him up to feed him, then he went straight to bed to sleep the night away. And he was still up in time for work this morning. Now that’s dedication.

Now how can I apply that sort of dedication to my writing…?

This week has been mostly boring…

This week, one way or another, has led me to messing around and generally procrastinating, which has taken all my focus off the synopsis for book two.

Time wasting ventures…

Earlier this week I checked the stats on the website to find the bandwidth had gone through the roof. Someone had been hotlinking images and I wasn’t impressed. It took me a whole day to trace the hotlinkers and put a text file in the directory to disable hotlinking via those people. That was a gargantuan waste of time.

Husband passes his finals…

My husband took his last final on Wednesday for part one of his CCNA course and passed with flying colours. He’ll be starting part two on the 10th February, and after that there’ll be two more parts to take him to the end of 2011. He works hard. On Wednesdays, he works 08:30 til 5:00 at his IT geek job, then does college from 5:30 til 9:00. It’s a really long day for him.

Visitations…

My sister and Harvey came around on Thurday and we had a trip to the warehouse to buy curtains and drinks cannisters. I swear to God that child has grown a good six inches since Christmas. He never stops talking, either. He’s learnt a tonne of new words.

Back-ups and crack-ups and why win-blows…

It was my intention to back up my PC on Friday for a re-install. Windows 7 had somehow deactivated itself, parts of the operating system had stopped working, and it was slow and laggy. It took the entire day to back up my 500 GB disk to the slave drive. I tried re-installing yesterday (Saturday) but the thing wouldn’t allow me to un-mirror the drives and convert them back to basic disks and I didn’t want to fuck up any of my data. So I spent all day yesterday trying to bodge the operating system to a working state and re-activate Windows. It seemed to work. I now have a 99% working installation of Windows so it wasn’t an entire waste of time. Windows sucks and blows at the same time.

Exploding speakers…

If I expected to ever blow up a sound system, I thought it would be the amp for my guitar. I play it far too loud. So loud the thing crackles. However, it was not my illustrious death metal rendition of “Ode to Joy” blowing up the amp. In fact, it wasn’t the amp that blew up at all.

I switched the extension socket on for my PC last night and something went BANG! This was promptly followed by the smell of burning and a little bit of smoke. I panicked. I assumed I’d totalled my PC. The PC came on fine, but I didn’t get any sound out of it. When testing the sound card for the problem, I unplugged the speakers sound system, and plugged a set of head phones straight into the back of the PC. Upon getting sound through the headphones, I checked the plug for the speakers and smelt like bonfire night.

Alas, my sound system is no more.

Workaholic…

My husband doesn’t normally work weekends, except this weekend my poor techy-geek was needed for a server install in Cannock. He worked 9:00 til 6:00 yesterday, and went in again at 9:00 this morning and is still there. It’s almost 08:00 PM, and who knows how long that puppy’s gonna take? He has to be there until it’s done. Hence, apart from a short visitation from the parental units yesterday, I’ve spent my weekend all alone and haven’t been able to kill time writing because of the above problems.

Quitting smoking…

Didn’t work. I started again on Thursday, gave up on Friday, and started again today. What can I say other than I needed something to kill the boredom. Want me to appologise or spend further words justifying? Tough crap, I am what I am and what I am needs no excuses.

What I am is bored.

I can’t wait to get back to some productivity…

Helsinki Vampires

The synopsis for Helsinki Vampires, the second book in my series, is 10 chapters into the synopsis stage and it’s coming easily. This time I’m leaving no room for error that could lead me to doing an entire re-write like it did with Village of Vampires. So each chapter is being carefully outlined and each subplot is being taken into consideration. It looks like I have another exciting cast of new characters as well as the old one from book 1 which are sure to be reader’s favorites.

Village of Vampires

Village of Vampires is still being beta read and I’m taking a well deserved break from it. After all, I did write it twice (the re-write was a complete re-write where nothing was copied or pasted from the old manuscript, the only thing that remained was the skeleton idea and the characters).

Main Website

Some more work on the main website will go ahead this week, including the gallery intergration. All exciting stuff.

Query Letters and Book Proposals

I’ve drafted a query letter for Village of Vampires already which I hope hooks a good and trusty agent. The letter has been emailed off to the Query Shark for critique. Hopefully this will get the bones of the letter into a good shape to send it off (if the Shark chooses to critique mine, that is).

I’m also researching the world of book proposals ready for when I begin querying those trusty agents. You can never be prepared enough in this game.

On the Cards

I’m hoping to complete the synopsis for Helsinki Vampires before I get the critiqued manuscript for Village of Vampires back from my beta reader. If I have time before I get book 1 back, I’m hoping to work on the bones of the synopsis for book 3, thus saving me time and energy in future.

I Quit Smoking

This post does exactly what it says on the tin, so to speak. At midnight last night, we both quit smoking in a bid to save more money for home improvements. Well, that and the added health bonuses, of course.

How has the first day been? Good, actually. I was a bit snappy earlier on, but since I’ve increased the strength of the coffee at about eleven am, all seems to be going well. My husband’s been going through food and snacks like they’re going out of fashion. The thing I’ve missed is standing in that one corner of the kitchen every half hour. By God, how much more time I’ve had today, it’s incredible.

Helsinki Vampires

The syopsis for HelsinkiVampires is well under way and I’ve managed to outline eight chapters so far. All seems good. Village of Vampires is still with my beta reader for the time being. I can’t wait to see her thoughts on it.

Originally Posted August 2009.

For this week’s blog interview, I’m very excited to introduce the steampunk author of the upcoming Soulless, Gail Carriger, who very graciously took time out from her trip to Peru to answer these questions for us. It’s an honour to have her here with us today! Her new book Soulless is available to purchase 1st October 2009 and can be pre-ordered. Soulless is Gail’s first novel.

Soulless Synopsis

Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she is being rudely attacked by a vampire to whom she has not been properly introduced! Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire, and the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate. With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London’s high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

Interview with Gail Carriger

Soulless is out on 1st October and there’s a lot of excitement pending your book’s release, can you tell us a little about your character Alexia and where the idea of her and the universe came from?

Alexia is a hardened spinster with two embarrassing problems: her long dead father was Italian and she has no soul. However, I’m getting ahead of myself for the universe came first and Alexia followed.

I’ve long been troubled by certain quirks of history that seem never adequately explained. The most confusing of these is how one tiny island with abysmal taste in food, excellent taste in beverages, and a penchant for poofy dresses suddenly managed to take over most of the known world. It seemed to me that the only explanation for the success of the British Empire was that they had supernatural help where other European countries didn’t. This, in turn, led me to postulate that King Henry’s breach with the Church was over open acceptance of vampires and werewolves into society (the divorce thing was just a front).

In a flash, everything made sense: cravats cover bite marks, the British regimental system is clearly based on werewolf pack dynamics, and pale complexions are in vogue because everyone wants to look like the trend-setting vampires. Then I realized, if there were supernatural creatures puttering about, Victorian scientists would study them, and invent machines to do so. I didn’t want magic in my world, but 19th century science is almost as effective. Suddenly, I’ve got steampunk gadgets trying to weigh people’s souls, and scientists theorizing that it is through a rare inclination towards excess soul that some survive supernatural metamorphosis. And that, rather long-windedly, is how Alexia was born. For, if some people have an over-abundance of soul, there must also exist an antidote – a person with no soul at all.

Your book is set in Victorian London and it’s obviously an alternate London. Have you kept the setting historical and added in the supernatural creatures? Or do we see curious inventions and fantastic vehicles?

I try to stay as accurate to 1873 England as possible. Changes leak in as either alternate explanations for reality, or alternate inventions to deal with the non-reality of the supernatural. For example: there are sill hansoms roaming London but dirigibles have risen to prominence as an alternate mode of transport because vampires and werewolves cannot use them. Guns have evolved utilizing silver and wood bullets. And, of course, the vampires take a keen interest in new technology and have the funds to invest (East India Company anyone?). You could say that the steampunk elements in Soulless are the result of a the supernatural intrusion into the Victorian world.

In your universe, it’s deemed impolite for a vampire to attack you and drink your blood without a proper introduction.  Where did the idea for this come from and what happens when they attack you rudely?

Normally, they simply don’t. (I shouldn’t talk about such things in polite society but there are perfectly adequate blood-whores available down Dockside if said vampire is in need.) Vampires are very civilized, you see? In fact, much of the societal etiquette of the London ton is a consequence of Vampire influence. When the vampire attacks Alexia, she is shocked because it means there is something seriously wrong with him – he must be unwell or perhaps mad. Of course, then she accidentally kills him. Big. Fat. Oops.

Does Alexia fall in love whilst trying to solve the mysterious disappearance of the local vampires?

I think it might be better put that Alexia “falls in annoyance.” Alpha werewolves can be very bossy, particularly when they’re Victorian bureaucrats, and Alexia does not like being told what to do.

And Queen Victoria – does she make an appearance in the book or is just referenced by your other characters? How does she feel about vampires and werewolves in London?

Queen Victoria has a Shadow Council of supernatural creatures that meets twice a week. She relies on a vampire advisor for assistance with espionage operations and political intrigue, and a werewolf advisor for guidance in the arena of military tactics. In turn, the supernatural set is well aware that England is one of the few places in the world where they can exist openly. Therefore, they are heavily invested in keeping the British Empire strong, healthy, and ever expanding. As to the first part of the question, Queen Victoria has a brief (excuse my Latin) deus ex regina appearance.

On to you. You are obviously a big fan of Steampunk. How did you get into this world of brass goggles and afternoon tea, and what was it that drew you in?

My Mum is a tea-swilling ex-pat. I was raised on British children’s books (Tom’s Midnight Garden, The Borrowers, The Water Babies, Wind in the Willows) and I spent many a youthful summer in Devon and two years of graduate school in the Midlands. It was this, plus the fashion aesthetic, that first drew me to steampunk. I’ve always adored the Victorian era – I used to make crinolines out of my hula-hoops as a kid. I also love the maker side of steampunk – technology you can see working, rather than little silver iPods with all their functionality secreted away.

Did it take long to research and write Soulless?

Six months, which I understand is comparatively fast. I’m pretty comfortable writing in a Victorian setting and I love research, so that doesn’t slow me down. Each book, and I just finished the third, takes about six months to write: three to draft and three to edit. I’m a big rewriter – I enjoy going back over my own prose with a red pen and eviscerating it. I also have five betas. So to make my deadline, I have to write fast enough to get the book to at least three of them, and then do a rewrite, before I turn it in to my editor.

I saw a little bit about your cat, Chubby Fucker, on your website: She pees in the human lavatory and keeps you company while you write. Were you the one to teach her this neat trick?

Ah the Chubby Fucker. She’s a sweetheart – even if we really are only keeping her around to make into stew after the zombie apocalypse. I did not, in fact, potty-train the cat. She came to us fully disciplined (or she wouldn’t have come at all – I do not allow litter boxes in my house, thank you very much). Funnily enough, her trainer is the infamous Eytan Kollin of the Brother’s K – co-author of The Unincorporated Man (http://www.theunincorporatedman.com/). So I suppose you could say I have an unincorporated cat.

Apart from writing, what can we find you doing to relax?

Shoe shopping, drinking tea, more shoe shopping, thinking about shoe shopping, drinking more tea – it’s a simple life.

And finally, can you tell us something about you we can’t see on your website?

I ride an SV650 motorcycle named Carmen and drive a Toyota Spyder named Chanterelle (after the mushroom). In fact, all my inanimate objects have names (I think it’s rude to yell at them without calling them by name). The laptop I’m typing on is Pippin (he is an Apple after all). Oh and I’m famous amongst my friends for a certain breakfast item called the “eggy cup.”

About Gail Carriger

Ms. Carriger began writing in order to cope with being raised in obscurity by an expatriate Brit and an incurable curmudgeon. She escaped small town life and inadvertently acquired several degrees in Higher Learning. Ms. Carriger then traveled the historic cities of Europe, subsisting entirely on biscuits secreted in her handbag. She now resides in the Colonies, surrounded by fantastic shoes, where she insists on tea imported directly from London. She is fond of teeny tiny hats and tropical fruit. The Parasol Protectorate books are: Soulless (Oct. 2009), Changeless (March 2010), and Blameless (September 2010).

Connect with Gail

Here’s a few ideas on how you can connect with Gail and let her know you appreciate her books!

Her website can be found here.

You can also find her on Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal and Blogspot.

Why not become a fan of the Parasol Protectorate Series on Facebook?

Play the Alexia paper-doll dress-up game.

How to Buy

You can buy Soulless from amazon.com and indybound.org. Don’t forget to look out for it in your local borderlands (USA).

Soulless Cover

Village of Vampires

The 3rd draft of Village of Vampires is complete!!!! It now sits in the trusty hands of my beta reader learning all life’s good lessons.

Not only is this a milestone for this novel, it’s another chapter in my hopeful writing career closed and finished off. After this, and when I recieve my beta reader’s advice back, I’ll beging the next chapter and the next draft: line edits and tweaks!

I feel a little out of kilter because I’ve promised myself a writing break for a few days now while I sit and stew about what I’ve learned so far from this book, from the previous chapters of my writing life. To think I began preps for this book in October and began writing it on November 1st is mindblowing. So many changes in so little time. Onwards and upwards!

Back by Popular Demand

The blog interviews are going to reappear here over the next few days, back by popular demand. After I broke the site late last year, a lot of posts were lost. However, I managed to salvage the interviews I did with Nicole Peeler, Gail Carriger and Toni Mcgee Causey.

I’ll also be hosting new interview and guest posts soon, and the book reviews are also returning here! Watch this space…

Village of Vampires Edits

Village of Vampires is still in the 3rd draft and growing nicely towards the end now. I’m on the rewrites of Chapter 20, meaning after this one there’s only two chapters and the epilogue to go. I’m still on target for my Friday deadline of this round of revisions.

Future Projects and Ideas

As soon as Village of Vampires is complete hopefully by the end of March and I’ve began querying agents, I’m going to begin work on the sequel to this book and the next part in the series, Helsinki Vampires. After that book is complete, I’m penciling into my shedule to begin work on a novella from a different character’s point of view which links directly into this series. After that, I’d like to begin work on a separate story that’s been following me around before getting back to the main series and working on book 3. 2010 is an exciting year!

Life in General

Life in general this year is going to be a constant cycle of saving money then blowing it as we work room by room to give our home a much needed facelift. We have mismatching furniture that’s all rammed together in a make-do fashion, and I think it’s time for a colour scheme change as well. This time we’re not going to buy stuff just to “make do” until we can afford the very best or what we want. Indeed, we’re going to save the money to work on a room at a time to buy all the stuff we want in the exact finish we want, and hopefully the end result will be pleasing.

Apart from that, there’s not much else on the cards. I’m planning some more tattoos and David is looking forward to building his career. I like to keep “life in general” open to interpretation. I think spontenuity is the key. I love it when we wake up one morning and on the spur of the moment decided to jump in the car, drive cross-country and see a place we’ve never been to. It’s fun and exciting.

So, last night I was happily writing away on the 3rd draft of Chapter 18 of Village of Vampires. I got to the end of the chapter and queried my plot chart for what to write for Chapter 19.

Except there was a problem. There was a dirty great big hole in the plot, which meant Chapter 18 didn’t continue on to 19.

I queried the 2nd draft to see where my chunk of plot had gone. Lo and behold! I’d completely missed it off the plot chart! Duh! I had to pencil it into the chart and began work on it until almost 2am to ensure my nice neat personal deadline wasn’t blown out of the water. Not that it will be. I’m a well oiled writing maching, here me ROAR!

Tonight, I’ll be finishing this elusive monster and continue working on through more re-writes.

Don’t you just love surprises?

The 3rd draft/re-write of Village of Vampires looks set to come in under my person deadline of January 15th. This is awesome because I have the first 14 chapters sat with a beta reader and it’ll give her chance to get it done before I print this draft for a full read through.

I’m about to put Chapter 18 through the mill of re-writes, and hopefully by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest this draft will be complete.

After I’ve gone through this draft with the Red Pen of Doom, I’ll be doing a final/4th draft based solely upon line edits and final tweaks.

The end is nigh, and I am excited!