Jackie French December 2002 message

                 Merry Christmas! And a green and fruitful Christmas too.
                 We've just had half an inch - about 14 mm - of rain, the first we've had since the start of March. It has been desperately dry and still isä but at least we know it still CAN rain! And today at least the winds are down and not screaming through the valley, and even though the bushfires are still buurning at least today with no gales they can be fought.
Wombat news
                 Mothball is still large, fat and stroppy and her baby is doing well too, despite the drought!
                 We had one bad moment when we found a fox had killed a wombat across the creek. Was it Mothball, or her baby? But it wasn't.
                 There are a lot of other wombats about the house too, as we keep a water bowl filled for them and there isn't any other water around. So Mothball is marking out her territory VERY firmly with large droppings every couple of metres around the house, with tiny fingernail size droppings from her baby. She particularly likes to leave droppings on the steps, so we have to watch out where we put our feet if we dash out in the mornings.
Book News
                 'Diary of a Wombat' is going bananas and has been reprinted I don't know how many times in the past month and copies are being airfreighted from Hong Kong and they still can't keep up with the demand! But if you want a copy and the shop doesn't have it, order it and they'll keep you one from the next lot in!
                 'Phredde and the Leopard-skin Librarian' is still fluttering away too! By the way, the leopardskin librarian competition is now CLOSED!!!!!!!   But many, many thanks to all the librarians in leopardskin!
                 The next book out will be 'Valley of Gold' in about March next year, and 'Big Burps, Bare Bums and Other Bad Mannered Blunders - an hilarious look at good manners, bad manners and really TERRIBLE manners!'
Awards
                 'In the Blood' (the first in the trilogy) has just been awarded ACT Book of the Year (Wacko!). The third volume will come out next year, packaged up with the first two. They're adult books but any teenagers who loved the first two can grab the third!
Travel
                 Nope, nil, no way - no more travel till next year! Well, except for over to Canberra, or up to town to get the mail and a few watermelons (ours aren't ripe yet).
Chocolate Christmas Wreath
                 For those who think that Christmas decorations should be edible, and preferably chocolate!
You need:
thin after dinner mints OR
chocolate leaves (See Christmas gifts below)
glace fruit
peppermint leaves (optional)
walnuts (optional)
Method - Arrange after dinner mints in a circle on baking paper on a baking tray, small or large, each one slightly overlapping the other. Bung in a hot over for about 30 seconds till JUST melted.
                 Now very quickly press in mint leaves or small pieces glace fruit. I like to have a round of orange at the bottom with a few glace cherries on each side, a few nuts along the top and nothing more, but eb as extravagent as you like. You may ever prefer to be minimalist and just place a few nuts and slices of cherries pressed into the wreath.
                 Leave to set in a cool place, but not in the fridge, as the chocolate may get a white waxy look. Hang up on your tree as long as the tree isn't by a sunny window- not a good idea anyway, as the tree may wilt.
Note: if the fruit won't stick either press harder or melt some more chocolate to use as glue.
Six Things to Do with Reindeer Droppings
A few little momentos on the lawn?
. use reindeer droppings to fertilise your roses
. mix them with water, to lure the polar bears out of the freezer (polar bears are very fond of reindeer)
. paste them in the photo album, for a genuine scratch and sniff
Christmas memory
. bundle them into a pillow for the dog, so they can dream of big
game hunting next year
. make GENUINE Christmas earrings - the dingle dangle sort
. place them on a flowered plate and tell Aunt Ethel they're date
and walnut... no, sorry kids, forget I ever mentioned that one...
Some Christmas Recipes
                 Too often Christmas presents are - I hate to say it - a waste of money. Stuff no one really wants, but you have to give Aunt Gladys SOMETHING.
                 Okay, none of these cost much, but there's sure to be something there Aunt Glad might like. To be honest, I'd like any one of them...
Red Christmas Cordial
Red Cordial
If you want a really bright red cordial, get yourself about 250 - 350 grms of blueberries - frozen if absolutely necessary or cranberries or raspberries or home grown mulberries or even lillipillies if you were sensible enough to plant a lillipilly tree about five years ago. Lillipillies make the best jam or cordial I've ever tried.
                 Taste the fruit first - if it tastes like old cardboard you need more fruit to get a decent flavour.
You also need:
4 cups sugar
1 cup lime or lemon juice
2 cups water
2 teaspoons tartaric acid
                 Boil the sugar and water for 10 minutes. Add the fruit and juice and simmer five minutes. Take off the heat, squish well with a spoon, strain, add the tartaric acid, bottle and store in the fridge for up to two weeks. Actually I keep home-made cordial for a lot longer than two weeks this way but if your family, friends and neighbours all drop dead from drinking it you can't blame me. Do remember that if it starts to bubble, change colour or grow interesting fungi, it's really only useful as a kid's zoology project.
Makes about 2 bottles of cordial.
Christmas Biscuits
(Crisp and very good)
125 margarine or butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsps rum, rum essence or vanilla
1 large egg
1 and three quarters of a cup SR flour
half a cup chopped macadamias or pecans
half a cup chopped, crystallised cherries
half a cup choc chips
I also add half a cup chopped crystallised pineapple, but that's because I'm stuck on preserved pineapple at the moment - it's good but you can leave it out!
Cream butter and sugar, mix in the egg and essence and fold in other ingredients. Bake at 200 C for about 10 minutes or till pale gold.
Lemon, Lime or Grapefruit Moisturising Hand Soap
2 tbsps rolled oats
2 tbsps avocado or virgin olive oil
2 tbsps sorbolene
2 tbsps bicarbonate of soda
6 tbsps water
                 Rub oats to a powder between your fingers - takes about 30 seconds. Mix the rest up. Keep in a plastic bottle in a cool place.
Cheat's Most Excellent Chocolate and Macadamia or Pistachio Fudge
                 This can be given to anyone - male, female, teenaged or with a walking frame. If they are determined to eat healthily they can always give it to someone else.
125 grms dark cooking chocolate
60 grms butter
quarter cup evaporated milk
375 grms icing sugar
150 grms chopped roasted macadamias or pistachios
                 Line an average sized cake tin with baking paper. If it's a bit small the fudge will be thicker, so cut it into smaller pieces; if it's large then the fudge will be thinner, so make the chunks generous.
                 Melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave or in a bowl over boiling water. (Well, okay, I do it in a saucepan but I stir constantly and keep it on as low a heat as I can and I have very good t hick based saucepans.)
                 Take off the heat, add evaporated milk and mix well. Add icing sugar and again, beat well. Add nuts, mix well and taste a few times. Pour into the tin, leave till cool and cut into slices.
Fruit Hamper
                 Sometimes I think we are the only family to regard Christmas fruit as the best part of the seasonal tucker. Fat Ron's Seedling cherries, squishy mangoes, peaches, apricots, plums...
                 A case of cherries, peaches et al unadorned by anything except their box is a most excellent present for anyone (especially me). Or you can buy a selection of them all, place in one of those cheap baskets that flowers, nuts etc come in nowadays or just wrap them in cellophane.
Chocolate Gum Leaves.
                 This present is perfect for anyone who likes chocolate. It's also perfect for anyone who doesn't like chocolate or is on a diet, because then they'll offer them to everyone else around the Christmas tree, including you of course, before the calories add to their pudgy bits.
You need:
gum leaves, long and perfect and remember to remove the Christmas beetles, because chocolate coated Christmas beetles don't taste very good and, anyway, a coating of chocolate upsets a beetle's centre of gravity, and Christmas beetles have a hard enough time staying upright through the Christmas season anyway.
You also need
cooking chocolate
Any useful flavourings that happen to around in unlocked cupboards like a few drops of Cointreau or finely chopped macadamias or other nuts or a few drops of peppermint essence.                  Melt the chocolate over a double boiler or in the microwave, take off heat, stir in a few drops of flavouring or nuts and press the gum leaf into chocolate to coat it thickly on one side. Leave to set, peel off the leaf... and you have a chocolate gum leaf.
NB Do not eat the gum leaf unless you are a koala.
Gardener's Gloop or Mechanic's Mud - in other words this is a hand cleaner that works wonderfully well and smells pretty good too.
You need:
1 cup marmalade, strained ie throw out all the bits of peel because they clog up the plumbing
3 dessertspoons good detergent
                 Mix and bottle. Bung a hanky and ribbon around the top of the bottle so it looks fancy and bung on a nice rustic looking label ie add a few bees or butterflies or king parrots. King parrots conveniently come in the regulation Christmas colours of red and green, but remember if they argue and try to fly away when you stick them on the label, don't argue - parrots can give you a nasty peck.
Effervescent Bath Salts
6 tbsps full cream powdered milk
half a cup Epsom salts
6 tbsps citric acid
6 tbsps bicarb of soda
1 piece of grated vanilla bean, or dried lime or lemon zest or 2 tbsps orris root
Mix and package nicely!
Bath Bazookas
1 cup citric acid
1 cup bicarb of soda
1 tbsp essential oil
avocado oil - enough to bind it together.
You'll need to press very firmly to get them to stick together and it uses a surprisingly large amount of oil.
Mix. Press. Package!

How to get your first novel published
1. Rewrite it and be really honest about it - yes, of course you can damn well make it better. And I don't just mean changing the odd word. The first four chapters almost certainly need rewriting to really drag the reader into the narrative so they can't bear to leave it. Remember, you are writing this to entrance the reader, not showcase your own passions and literary ability.
                 Not prepared to do this? Then go no further. Literary honesty is the most important attribute of a writer - the ability to accept your work can always be improved and invariably needs to be.
2. Have it both on disc (so it can be emailed as an attachment) and legibly printed and double spaced with wide margins and numbered pages. Do not forget to number the pages - this is critical as manuscripts can be dropped, blown about by a sudden gust of wind etc etc and the numbered pages are the only way the editor has to know what should go where. Don't bother with fancy fonts etc - they just annoy the editor who'll do it better than you can.
3. Don't bother looking for an agent unless you are already famous or the Duchess of Windsor. Most agents only take work from those who have already been published. But if you know one socially - or you ARE the Duchess of Windsor or have any other reason why a publisher or agent will pick you up even though you haven't had anything published, go to it.
4. Go to a bookshop. Have a look at six books of the same genre as yours. Write down the publisher's address.
5. Write a covering letter. Include:
. your name and address
. a brief synopsis of the book - about 4 - 6 sentences. Make it as fascinating as possible. If it doesn't sound fascinating, either rewrite the synopsis or the book, or both. Also remember that a synopsis is a summary of the plot - do not give wads of descriptive waffle about underlying themes or your deep and poetic intentions etc. Stick with the matter in hand.
. also include in point form:
. Target audience
ie this book will entrance anyone who has loved either 'Winnie the Pooh' or 'Wuthering Heights'.
. Selling points:
ie evocation of a little known period in history
   well paced action- both physical and moral etc
6. Send it off. According to etiquette only send it to one publisher. Acccording to me, bung it off to as many as you can afford. On the other hand, if you only send it to one and they send back a kind letter telling you WHY they are rejecting it, you'll get some great pointers for improvement. And you only get one bite of the cherry - so unless a publisher likes your book so much that they say, 'Do X and Y and send it in again' there is not much point sending them a book they have already rejected, unless it has been so drastically revised they won't recognise it.
7. Wait for at least six months before sending another letter asking what's happened to it - publishers rarely move quickly.
8. If - when - it is rejected, console yourself with the thought that there are more successful brain surgeons than there are successful writers - and it takes a heck of a long time to be a brain surgeon. It is very, very unlikely that your first book will be good enough to publish. Good books need practice. (On the other hand your first book may be 95% brilliant - but that 5% lack of polish, the not-quite-togetherness of the narrative structure, will make it unpublishable.)
9. Rewrite the book, or write another.
Do NOT think ah, but they rejected (insert other brilliant book here) and some one else published it and it was an instant success!
                 Those tales are mostly myth. Yes, prize-winning books have been rejected - but they were almost invariably rewritten and rewritten before being sent off again.
                 If your book is fabulous, a major publisher will snap it up, even if you are unknown - but only two or three unknowns are picked up by major publishers in Australia each year.
                 Smaller publishing houses - who can't pay large advances or get you overseas sales - are more likely to pick up unknown authors. Some of these go on to have brilliant careers; others fade away after their first, unsuccessful book. In other words - the smaller the publishing house, the better chance you have of publication. But if it's a brilliant book, go for the bigger publishers.
10. Do not send me the manuscript. (Sorry!)
a. Even if I adore it, it will still have to go through the publishing process.
b. People get nasty when I don't adore their books and I either tell them it doesn't have much chance or suggest ways to rewrite it. Only one person has ever thanked me for this or followed my advice, though others have threatened me with court action if I 'steal their ideas' or publish their story under my name. As it takes a lot of time and energy to read a manuscript and even more to work out ways to improve it, I've given up this extremely thankless task.
                 (Actually I suspect the one person who thanked me and really worked to improve her book - even though it still hasn't been published -will turn out to be a stunningly successful writer in a few years. Maybe it's just that the worse a writer is, the more they are convinced nothing can possibly improve their brilliant work.)
c. I get over 3,000 letters to answer a year, about 200 requests for free talks, workshops or openings a year, at least one unsolicited manuscript a week and I only have two eyes, one brain and two hands (all of which are aging rapidly) and a garden in which I wish to mooch, wombats to watch, birds to observe and a partner to whom I wish to chat and a son with whomä well, you get my drift.
PS There are manuscript assessment services, who you can pay to give you advice on your book. But as you are asking them for at least three days work, you'll be paying a few hundred dollars for their trouble. But then, maybe, having paid for the advice, you will be more inclined to act on it!.