Category Archives: Life

Encouraging Others

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I love writing. But it can be lonely. You’re sitting at your laptop, staring at the screen, wondering where the words will come from.

It’s part of the reason why I’ve joined so many writing groups, to meet like minded people. Because we are all alone on our computers, trying to write the next best selling novel.

And I’ve met some really lovely people through this experience.

This week I’ve been in communication with a lovely lady in California who is still working her way through her first novel. It’s had several iterations, but she’s happier now with where it’s going. She just needs to finish it.

We have a deal going. If she doesn’t finish writing it by the end of February, she is going to send me a $1. And while it would be nice to have a US$1 bill, I’m going to do everything I can to encourage her to finish her novel, because I want to see her happiness at succeeding, rather than have that $1 note.

I’m that kind of person, I like to encourage others, not just with writing. Just before Christmas, we were at Rai Valley having a coffee when I saw a lady walk past with these most amazing boots. I complimented her on them. She was gruff and not very happy looking, but I smiled and told her I loved her boots. When she came out of the shop, she told me to have a lovely Christmas and smiled at me. It was a beautiful smile.

Sometimes someone needs to hear that they look good, or they did something pretty awesome, because our inner selves are telling us otherwise.

So next time you see something you like, or something that was a kind act, tell that person. They might just need to hear it.

Trying Something New

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I hinted that I would be trying something new earlier this year (was that only three weeks ago?). I wanted to see if I could do it before I told you about it.

And I can actually do it, so what have I been doing? I’ve been writing two stories at the same time.

And it isn’t that hard either. With one exception.

I knew that I had three months to write some stories, before I had full time work for a couple of months, so I wanted to see if I could write three stories at the same time. I had a Racing Harts story to write, an Urban Fantasy story, and a fairytale.

The only reason I wanted to try this, was because I can only write for about an hour a day before my brain goes to mush. It was a gamble; would I be able to write three stories?

The answer is no. And here is why. The fairytale and the Racing Harts story were both contemporary romances, so I couldn’t switch between the two stories comfortably. But I am able to switch between a contemporary romance and an Urban Fantasy with no issues, so I have been writing two stories a day since 5th January.

It’s been an interesting experience, but it also gives me twice as much to think about and plot out before my next writing session.

And then I got news, I have a part time job, working 20 hours a week, mostly in the afternoon, which meant that my original idea of focusing on my writing this year is still happening.

I’m looking forward to my new job, I’m moving back into office work, which is somewhat scary, but also exciting. It means that I’m inside all day, even in winter, so no more finding sunny spots to start the day.

I hope to continue writing two stories at a time, with plans to write the fairytale next, then the Men in Kilts series, so there could be a few new books out next year.

My publishing plan this year is to publish Finding Sam Healey (tentatively April 2025), Carol’s Christmas (July/August 2025) and Faith’s story in Racing Harts (October/November 2025).

I’m looking forward to sharing my successes with you all.

Understanding Catherine Mede

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It was a big year for me last year, I learnt a lot of things about me. Stress and I don’t work well together, I let anger build until it gets too much then blast everything around me, and I’m a relator.

Let me explain. A big thing in the writing industry at the moment are Clifton Strengths. Becca Syme (all hail Becca Syme) teaches that you need to write to your strengths, and how to work out your strengths. She’s a business and writing coach, and I got to meet her at the Romance Writers New Zealand Conference in Christchurch in August last year. She is amazing, so insightful and full of inspiration and lots of other things. So, I did my strengths. My top five are: Relator, Intellection, Learner, Positivity and Consistency. A lot of you out there will be nodding your heads, either knowing that is exactly me, or knowing exactly what that means.

Pretty much, I like to develop relationships with people, but I have a boundary system. Only one or two get to the inner sanctum. Everyone else fits into the remaining rings, either as friends or acquaintences. When I’m writing, I like to get indepth with the relationships that people build. Intellection is about enjoying mental activity, intellectual discussions. I like time alone and I am my own best companion. Learner, means I like to learn. Not necessarily about the learning, but the process of learning. I like to continuously improve myself.

Consistency means that I need to treat people the same. I crave routine, structure, rules and procedures. I don’t like unfairness or inequality. And lastly, positivity. I have contagious enthusiasm, generous with praise and encouragement. I like to celebrate achievements.

Many people are probably wondering why this blew my mind. Perhaps because I took a test, and these were the results. There are 34 different strengths, and these are my top five, and they pretty much sum me up. And looking back, I can see how they have affected me this year and the decisions that I made.

Going forward, they will help me with my writing. I already use Relator in building the relationships with my characters, and they with each other. The learner in me, has me studying NZ Small Business studies so I can run my business successfully. The positivity and consistency mean that I need to write every day and be happy with what I’ve done and celebrate the achievement of having written. And intellection? Well, that explains the need for cryptic crosswords in my life.

Moving Forward

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A lot of reflection is done at this time of the year. Looking back to see what went well, what didn’t, how things can be improved, and a writer’s life isn’t any different.

What went well this year – the launch of Second-Hand Daughter. It actually went better than I expected, and I can’t explain why. I wonder if it was the topic, discovering your husband had a secret second life you had no idea about. Anyway, the book sold okay (not thousands, that will be in years to come) but it sold well.

What didn’t go well was the launch of Compromising Positions – this is a fun little romance, but for some reason, I didn’t sell many copies at all. Another writer friend of mine launched her contemporary romance at the same time (November) and she didn’t make many sales either. We both have to wonder if it was too close to Christmas, and people were looking at big ticket writers for their books. It’s hard to say.

As a writer, we often bombarded with so many mixed messages. Write to market / don’t write to market. Write from your heart / don’t write from the heart. Write what you know / write something new / don’t reinvent the wheel. This year, I followed my own thoughts and feelings, and now, more and more people are saying, follow your own goals. I published two books this year, the most I’ve published before. And I loved every minute of the writing and editing process, until I have worked on the piece entirely through and think it’s shite. Then I put it out into the world, and let it float away into the abyss of Amazon / Kobo / Draft2Digital to be swallowed up in the millions of other books out there.

I’m really pleased with both of the books I produced. I’m looking forward to putting more out there next year, which will include Finding Sam Healey, which I am currently editing, and then Carol’s Christmas. Whether I start publishing the Racing Harts series I’m not sure, but I intend to write three books next year.

I wrote three novels this year. The Dragon story, which is part of a five book series, and needs a lot of work, because it became a never-ending story. That doesn’t work in the publishing world, but that’s okay. It needs work.

I also wrote 2 other novels, in the Racing Harts series, Fatih and Hope’s stories. And I hope to have Grace’s started in January. I have ideas for about five other stories, which are all up in the air at the moment, so I’m not sure what will come next, but I’m hoping to write my Ice Planet sequel, featuring the son of Kelvaras and Vyvica.

I’m contemplating splitting off my fantasy / science fiction books under a separate pen name, but again, not something I am fully decided on just yet. If it happens, I’ll let you know, because you’ll want to follow one or the other, I don’t expect everyone to follow me on both. There will be the odd one or two of you, like me, who will read just about anything. I read a large variety of books, and can’t say I’m solely a romance reader. If I have a thriller, I will enjoy the storyline even without romantic elements. But that’s a whole other blog post!

I will list out my goals for 2025 on 6th January, I intend on having a decent break this year. No laptop, no notebooks, just 10 – 14 days of nothing but reading. We’ll see how that goes then aye?

Anyway, I hope you all have a lovely Christmas. Stay safe out there and look after one another. Look forward to catching up with you all in the New Year.

Looking Back to Look Forward

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Last year I set some fairly high goals for myself. And now I’ll go over what they were and how I did.

  • Write Dragon Story – This I managed to do early on in the year. I plan on making this a series, however this was a neverending story, so I need to reassess this story and find a cut off point and decide what I want to keep and what can go into the next book.
  • Write Faith’s Story – This I achieved as well, in early October.
  • Write another story – in November I wrote and completed Hope’s story in the Racing Harts series, so really pleased with this.
  • Edit Second-Hand Daughter – not only did I edit this, but I published it as well in May 2024
  • Edit Compromising Positions – edits were completed and was published November 2024
  • First draft edit of Finding Sam Healey – These I started, but I haven’t completed them yet. I have a date with the editor for March 2025, so it will be published next year.
  • First draft edits of Carol’s Christmas – this hasn’t happened, but I’m not too upset about that.

    Overall, that isn’t a bad year considering I was working fulltime for most of it. The results are pretty epic. At this stage, I have yet to find another job, so I now have to have a real think about what I want to achieve heading forward. I would love to be able to quit work and write fulltime, however I have some limitations as far as that is concerned (will talk about in a future blog post), and to start making money from my writing, I might have to write to market, which isn’t where my heart is. I want to write what I want to write, and that means that I need to find readers who want to read my work, and that proved elusive this year. I guess I could focus on writing in the first quarter of next year and really push my publishing timetable, but I also don’t want to burn out.

    It’s a fine line between doing something you love for money and doing something you love for the enjoyment of writing. I guess it is something I really need to work out over the next couple of weeks as we start the full on countdown to Christmas.

    Visual Writer

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    When writing, we often talk about pantsing or plotting, and now it’s starting to be recognised as a continuum, rather than one or the other. Which is kind of nice, because I don’t really fit in either camp. I do plot, yes, but I also only briefly outline my story, and allow the story to take me where it wants to go.

    Which brought me to another interesting fact. Some people are visual thinkers and others are verbal. What I mean by that, is some people think with words, others think with pictures. It is just one of those things that makes us all different.

    When I’m writing, the story will play out like a movie in my head. For an example, in my recent story, with Hope Hart and Thor, Thor was having an argument with another person (spoiler alert averted), and I could see them bickering back and forth, and my fingers honestly couldn’t keep up with the words that they were saying to each other. I felt like I was Hope, standing on the sidelines watching this bickering unfold before me.

    I also dream in colour. I remember because the colours are so vivid, and I have woken up a couple of times with a deep red dress or gold ring on my mind. I also dream every night, although my psychologist told me that trying to remember and interpret my dreams was a form of overthinking – which is a negative thing. While I don’t try to interpret them anymore, sometimes a dream will disturb me enough to impact me through the day.

    So, technically, I’m a plotting pantser, who see’s movies in her head when writing, and dreams in technicolour glory! Lol.

    Enough Mucking Around, Time to Get Serious.

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    It’s nearly two weeks since I quit my job, so now I have to sort it out.

    I’ve been writing, gardening, studying, spring cleaning my house, now I need to get back out there and find a job. The thing is, I don’t know what I want to do, and whether I want to be fulltime or part time.

    Fulltime work would give me the money to be able to continue my writing and cards until the money from those keep coming in, but I’m also trying to get my proofreading business off the ground, and my cards, and my writing, so would part time suit that better?

    I’d love to be able to not work at all, and just focus on my cards and writing, unfortunately I have had less than stellar sales in my books, and I haven’t sold any cards yet, so it really isn’t such a good idea to just try and exist on thin air.

    I have a partner and a son. We share the costs of living between the three of us. And if I’m not paying, then unfortunately, there would be a few bills that didn’t get paid.

    Now, if I could get something that paid mega bucks for few hours, that would be fantastic, but the chances of that are relatively slim. I’m no executive or manager, so I’m not even going to apply for those sorts of jobs. Fortunately I live in an area full of orchards, and now is a good time to find a job. There’s apple thinning, then pruning, then picking, then packing. That will last through until May. If I put aside enough money, I might not have to work over winter, which would be more than ideal, however I don’t see that working out.

    Oh well, one day at a time, one step at a time. I’ll get there. I’ll work out what I need to do for the next part of my life journey.

    Multiple Beginnings

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    So, I did a thing this week. It was rather an epic thing. If not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.

    I love my job, I really do, but there is one aspect of it I don’t like, and we’ve had to be doing it since the end of last year. And that is mowing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind mowing, but when you’re mowing a rest home. No, let me rephrase that, Push mowing a rest home lawn.

    For weeks, I’ve been stressed about mowing and weed-eating the lawns. I struggle with weed-eating, because it hurts. I have tennis elbow which started about the same time we started mowing the lawns. Anyway, I know what stress looks like in my body, and my eyebrow was starting to twitch. I also noticed that my multivitamins weren’t working quite like they used to, so I brought more vitamin b to help me with my stress.

    But it all came to a head on Tuesday, when we were supposed to mow. I hadn’t had a lot of sleep the night before, and to be honest, I was looking for a fight. So, I started one, with my boss.

    And then I quit. I told her where she could stick the job, and I told my boss in Auckland as well.

    To start with, I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, and after talking with my immediate boss (who is an absolute sweetie to be honest,) she made me promise that I would think it over before I made a final decision. After an epic walk home, I had a sleep. I literally slept on it.

    That night, I wrote a formal letter of resignation to my bosses. If there was a chance of not mowing, I probably would have stuck around, however, that wouldn’t have happened anytime soon.

    While I’m sad to be leaving my job, I’m looking at this as an opportunity to move forward, find something new to do, and look at doing part time work so I have more time for my writing and other business ideas that I have.

    And while I’m nervous, because I don’t have anything lined up, I’m also confident that something will come up that will make me as enthusiastic as I was about gardening.

    And talking about new beginnings, I also started writing Hope’s story, the next character in my Racing Harts story, and I’m already 18k in. I’m taking part in NaNoWriMo, and so far, I’ve clocked in over the daily limit to get the story done by 30th November. I’m quite excited about this story, and even though it is the second story in the trilogy, I have a feeling that it will eventually become the third story, so I am kind of aiming it that way as well.

    I hope you all have a good week out there. Think of me, and if you know of any part time work, let me know.

    Changes Afoot

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    Some people don’t like change. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. It all depends on whether I’ve initiated it or not. Overall, I’d like to say I’m adaptable and it isn’t often I dig my toes in and resist change.

    Change is something that happens regardless of whether you want it to or not. Change can be positive if embraced and negative if you don’t want to accept it. Change is inevitable, you can’t stop progress.

    I’m a ‘routine’ kind of girl. I get up in the morning at the same time, prepare the coffee, get dressed, make breakfast, use the bathroom, bush my teeth, wash the dishes, (hang out clothes from the washing machine if I put it on), and then I have writing time.

    My work day is different every day, and I have some things on in the evenings, but I try and do editing and some admin in the evenings. Weekend, I get up later, and I tend to tidy around the house, or outside for most of the weekend, but then Sunday afternoon, I’m writing up my blogpost, preparing my facebook feed and getting ready for work on Monday.

    Routine helps me to get things done. I discovered this after a long bout of not writing because of procrastination and realising that while I thought I didn’t have time, I had plenty, I was just wasting a lot of it.

    And I’m starting to feel like I’m wasting time again and something needs to change. I want to be more productive, do more writing, more editing, get more books out there, but I’m also aware of burnout and not wanting to wreck myself, because I still work a fulltime job.

    I have a five year plan. I’m now down to 4 and a quarter years, but I think my five year plan is achievable. I might not be making millions in year five, but I intend to have a good crack at the six figure income by then. My five year plan is so that I can finish working at the end of that time, and rely solely on my writing income.

    In saying that, I’m looking at updating my website and completely branding myself – I would say rebranding, but my website has been an ecclectic mess of my branding anyway, but bringing it all together cohesively would be great. So say tuned people.

    A Car Wreck of a week

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    Normally I tell you what I did this week past, but instead I want to start by saying I AM OK!

    This week has been good, writing-wise, and I came up with another story idea! That’s two stories and one to plot…

    Thursday wasn’t such a great day. My co-worker and I were in a car accident, and we both suffered some impressive bruising and a crushing ride sideways in our work van, which is now a write off.

    My boss thankfully gave me and my co-worker Friday off, and we are extremely grateful for that. Because I had to travel to Wineborough to catch up with my Dad who has his birthday this week. His first birthday since the passing of my stepmum.

    It was a lovely day with Dad, we (my son and I), weeded some of his garden and made things a little easier for him, then took him out for lunch.

    And then, to make my poor bruised body feel even more miserable, I have a cold! So a great way to start a week. NOT!

    But hopefully this week, I will finish Faith’s story, and then I’m not sure which story to write next.

    Hope you had a better week that I did.

    Take care out there.

    Catherine