Enchanted Orb with Claire Boston

Claire Boston, writer of paranormal, fantasy and young adult, is sharing her inspiration behind her latest release, What Goes On Tour.

When I tell people who inspired the idea for What Goes on Tour I usually get a certain look – you know the one where people screw up their face as if to say, ‘Really?’

He’s not one who would usually come to mind if you consider traditional romance heroes. Who is he? Marilyn Manson.

Okay so maybe I should explain. I was watching one of those music video shows on TV and Marilyn Manson came on. He’s so distinctive with his dark hair, dark black lipstick, dark eyeliner and pale skin. It’s quite a fascinating combination and really sets a certain image in your mind. My immediate thought was what if he was the complete opposite of that image? Now, I know nothing about what Marilyn Manson is like as a person, nor did I try to find out anything about him. This first what if thought spiraled away from that image and got me thinking other what ifs. What if the persona was just a front, just a way of facing the world? What if in actual fact the person (I was now thinking in terms of my new character) was your typical boy next door, the type of person who would go out of his way to help a grandmother across the road? Or digging a little deeper, what if he actually hated being in the public eye but loved singing? At the end of this what if session, I had my hero, Adrian Hart.

So that was the inspiration for my latest novel, What Goes on Tour, but I’ve had inspiration for other novels from all sorts of places.

I get a lot of ideas from my dreams. I’m one of those people who dreams vividly and can remember them when I wake up. I keep a notebook and pen on my bedside table so that no matter what time I wake up I can reach over and jot down notes. Sometimes it will be pages where I try to get down the story I’ve dreamed and other times it’s just a character or a setting. My husband has become used to me turning on the light in the middle of the night to capture my ideas. J

Documentaries are also a good source for ideas. I got the whole plot for one of my fantasy novels from watching a documentary about the Great Wall of China. It was just a small snippet from the one hour show, but it generated a whole novel.

To capture all these ideas I have an ideas notebook. I used to write them in a paper notebook but I was a little paranoid about losing it so I now use Microsoft OneNote. It’s a program which usually comes with Microsoft Office and I love it. You can create sections (or tabs) and then have pages in each section. I have tabs for my romance ideas as well as my fantasy, paranormal and young adult ones. I also have tabs for settings and characters. Then each idea has its own page. Sometimes it’s as little as a job title or a two line description and other times its pages of plot.

My current work-in-progress came from a setting. It’s a coastal holiday town, set over the four day Easter weekend. As a child I used to go down there with a group of family friends and the story grew from that.

I believe inspiration is everywhere and I have a mouse pad next to my computer with the words, “I’m a writer. Anything you say or do may be used in a story.” For me, that’s the truth.

Buy Links: Amazon US, Amazon Au, ITunes, Google Play.

A Little About Claire Boston

Claire Boston was a voracious reader as a child, devouring anything by Enid Blyton as well as series such as Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, The Baby-sitters Club and Sweet Valley High. Then one school holidays when she’d run out of books to read her mother handed her ‘Hot Ice’ by Nora Roberts and Claire instantly fell in love with romance novels.

The love of reading soon turned to a love of writing and she struggled to keep within the 1500 word limit set by her teachers for her creative writing assignments. When she finally decided to become serious about her stories she joined Romance Writers of Australia, found her wonderful critique group and hasn’t looked back.

When Claire’s not reading or writing she can be found in the garden attempting to grow vegetables, or racing around a vintage motocross track. If she can convince anyone to play with her, she also enjoys cards and board games.

Claire lives in Western Australia, just south of Perth with her husband, who loves even her most annoying quirks, and her two grubby, but adorable Australian bulldogs.

Where to find Claire:

Website | Facebook |Twitter

 

 

 

Magic Thursday: My Path to Publication

with Claire Boston

When you talk to authors about their path to publication, there’s one thing they all have in common – they’re all different! I’ve been writing for almost eight years now and have written and rewritten seven novels (only five of which are fit for human consumption). On a whole it’s been a fun journey but there have been times  when I’ve thought, why am I doing this, will I ever get published? At those times my critique group and other author friends have been invaluable support.

So how did I eventually get from the slush pile to the acceptance pile? I skipped the slush pile step.
For those of you who don’t know about how publishing works, the basics are this: There are few publishers who will accept unsolicited manuscripts. If they do, you send a query letter with details about your novel and it sits in their slush pile until an assistant has time to go through it and decide if it’s any good. If you haven’t captured their interest with your blurb or synopsis you’ll get a form rejection.
There are ways around this though and competitions are a good way. The final judge for most writing competitions is an agent or an editor. This means if you make the final you get straight in front of someone who can say yes or no to your manuscript (and they have to read it to judge it!) What Goes on Tour reached the finals in three competitions. I knew I was close, but it wasn’t quite right for the editors or agents at the time.

Then the Romance Writers of Australia annual conference came up. They were doing a panel called Survivor: Submission Island and were requesting submissions for it. Basically they had two agents and four editors on a panel and the first three pages of a manuscript were read to them (Eleni: entries were anonymous). When the panel would have stopped reading, they held up a stop sign. If they liked the manuscript they could request it.

I thought it was a fantastic opportunity, if not highly scary. My manuscript was going to be read out to a room full of people and then critiqued by six influential people in the industry. What if they hated it?

In the end I decided it was too good an opportunity to miss and there was a chance that my manuscript wouldn’t get read at all, so I sent it in.

When the time came for the panel, I was on the edge of my seat each time a new manuscript was read. I could only breathe when I realised it wasn’t mine – until it really was mine. When Jennie said the next manuscript was titled What Goes on Tour I think my heart must have stopped. I had a moment when I wanted to close my eyes and pretend I wasn’t there. I tried to tune Jennie’s voice out (your novel sounds so different being read aloud than it does when you read it in your head) and instead watched the panellists. They weren’t rolling their eyes or doodling on a notepad so that was a good sign.
In the end I got four requests and Joel Naoum at Momentum was one of them. I don’t think I stopped smiling all day.

After the conference I dutifully sent it off and two months later Joel sent me an email saying he wanted to publish it. I think I screamed the neighbourhood down – it was a good thing he hadn’t called me, otherwise I may have deafened him.

So if you’re trying to get published I can highly recommend entering competitions as a way to go, but with two qualifiers.

1. Make sure the final judges are people who will actually be interested in your novel – don’t send an erotic romance to a competition where the judge is looking for inspirational romance.
2. You need to be ready to receive criticism about your manuscript. If one negative word is enough to stop you writing, then you’re not ready for competitions.


When you do receive the criticism don’t take it to heart. It’s just one person’s opinion. My general method for reading the feedback is to read it, rant to myself that they obviously don’t know what they are talking about and put it aside for a week. Then I’ll go back to the comments and go through them and ask myself as objectively as I can, is the person right? Sometimes they are, and I’ll tweak the story to make it stronger but sometimes they’re not. Take what you can from the feedback and discard the rest. Competitions are meant to help not hinder.


So after a very short four months, I’m thrilled to announce that my first novel, What Goes on Tour was released by Momentum Moonlight on the 11th February 2014.

What goes on tour, stays on tour or does it?

Few people know that socially awkward Adrian Hart is actually rock god Kent Downer, and that’s the way Adrian likes it. His privacy is essential, especially now that he has guardianship of his orphaned, ten-year-old niece, Kate. But when the nanny quits in the middle of his tour Adrian finds himself in a bind.

Until Libby Myles walks into his life.

Libby has only ever wanted to become a full-time author and prove to her parents that she can make it on her own. On the surface, the temporary job as the nanny for Kent Downer’s niece looks perfect the pay is fabulous, the hours are short and Kate is a big fan it’s the rock star that’s the issue.

Arrogant and way too attractive for anyone’s good, Kent Downer has enough swagger to power a small city. But when he’s out of costume he’s different shy and uncertain. For Libby it’s a far harder combination to resist. She needs to find a balance between work, writing and ignoring her attraction to the rock star, because if she falls for him, it could mean the end of her dream.

But when a horrible scandal is unleashed putting young Kate in danger there’s more heat between Libby and Adrian than just sexual attraction. Libby must figure out if Adrian ever cared for her, or if it was all just part of the show

What Goes on Tour 

is available at: 

Amazon | iTunes | Google Play

You can contact Claire via:

 Website | Twitter | Facebook