RACHAEL STAPLETON

I am participating in an online writers event called The Next Big Thing which provides an overview of all kinds of upcoming and recent novels.   It's kind of fun like a Blog Hop. Each person tagged answers a series of interview questions and posts them on his/her blog or website while linking to other writers. My thanks to Ann  Dulhanty , who tagged me from  her blog . Ann and I are in the same writers group The B7. Ann has a great sense of humour which I get into enjoy weekly when she reads excerpts from her work. The story Ann is currently working on is Urban Fantasy called the Odds of the God about Brigit, a blackjack-dealing, Vegas druid on a mission to save the world. Below, I’ve answered questions about my novel and at the end I direct you to the blog of another author who will tell you about her upcoming story next week. 1) What is the working title of your next book? The Temple of Indra Jewels  2) Where did the idea come from for the ...

About a month and a half ago, I met a lovely woman at a writer’s conference who invited me to visit her writers group in Brooklin. I’ve been going once a week and can’t believe the profound impact they now have on everything I write, I value them immensely, and I am learning to be a better writer every day because of them. I believe every group is a little different but with us, everyone takes a turn reading their chapter aloud and then we discuss it as a group. We offer constructive feedback, the good, the bad and occasionally the ugly. It’s a great format for polishing, editing, as well as testing out story ideas and hooks. The best part is that everyone checks their ego at the door because in the circle we are all just writers looking to strengthen our work and celebrate our love of the written word. But before you run out to search for a writers’ group of your own, there are a couple of things you ought to consider: Can you handle being critiqued? This was the first thing Marissa...

I attended a writers conference a month ago where one of the lunchtime speakers discussed the fact that in March, two potentially landmark events occurred right before our eyes. A best-selling author refused an advance of $500,000 in order to self-publish his next two novels, while a self-published author who has made more than $2 million so far decided to accept her first traditional publishing contract. As an aspiring author, I had debated for a very long time what to do with the novel I had sitting in storage. Do I try the traditional route, do I self publish and in addition to that do I online publish as so many people seem to be doing these days? While I found it tempting to view these situations as basically cancelling one another out, the speaker really helped put it in perspective for me. What I found inspiring is that they both show how many book authors are now fully in charge of their fates. Not to mention that perhaps doing it both ways isn’t a bad idea. I think the...

‘The Temple of Indra Jewels’ is a story that has been floating about in my head for five years. It is a working title as I haven’t quite found the real title yet. I wrote the first draft of the story when I was pregnant with my son in 2006. The 3D Animation Company that I had worked for had been bought out and so I was left with a lot of time on my hands aside from taking a night course on Canadian history at the University of Toronto. This allowed me to basically write the bones of the novel. Then in 2008 I made it more complex as I found the time after planning a wedding, buying a new home and caring for an infant. The adventures of the last four years of my life definitely played into my characters and plot. I took the break up and the painful emotions from my past engagement and translated it into the unhealthy relationships between my main character and her relationship in the beginning of the story. I played with the story line to incorporate the new and exciting feelings, tr...