Greta van der Rol

This is what a fellow writer said about my newly finished book, 'The Admiral's Choice'.  Just finished another ms by an unpublished author. I couldn't put the thing down except for sleep, meals and family conversations.

I was inspired recently to finish the book after having left it for many months. Yes, I wrote some brand new stuff - that exciting, pivotal part where all the threads come togather and form an explosion. But also resurrected work I'd written a long time ago and discarded. Sometimes writers are too close to their own work.

What's it about? I'm sure I heard you ask.

Well, the Galaxy has settled down. This is the sequel to 'The Iron Admiral', in which Allysha Marten, systems engineer, meets Grand Admiral Chaka Saahren. Allysha has inadvertently aided in the resurrection of a killer which could threaten the Ptorix, the dominant intelligent species in the Galaxy. That threat is averted but Allysha has not reconciled herself to the fact that the man she fell in love with under another name turned out to be the bane of the Ptorix - the man who killed her father.

Peace - or perhaps a cold war - reigns supreme. But Allysha still doesn't want a bar of Grand Admiral Saahren. He's at his wit's end to come up with some way of winning back her love. A few other people are interested in Allysha as well, for different reasons. The Galactic People's Republic, those who eschew the Confederacy's use of cranial implants, have developed a weapon. But they need Allysha's skills to get it ready for deployment. Allysha's estranged husband, Sean, is recruited to deliver Allysha into GPR hands. If he doesn't, he's dead.

The race is on. When Allysha finds out what her skills will be turned to, she faces mind-numbing choices. And Grand Admiral Saahren must make the hardest choice of all.

Coming soon to a web site near you.

…did all this happen? The Houtman Abrolhos archipelago is a straggling chain of islands for the most part barely above the water line, 30 miles or so off the Western Australian coast. Even now, it’s little known. Cray fishermen base themselves there in the summer catching season, including on Batavia’s Graveyard, now known as Beacon Island. There’s even an airstrip on the High Island (East Wallabi).

The satellite images on Google Earth show it all; the relative sizes of the islands, the shallows, the channel. Search for the Houtman Abrolhos and the Wallabi group.

Henrietta Drake-Brockman, in her book "Voyage to Disaster" describes the Abrolhos Islands. "The whole atmosphere of the Wallabis is one of elusive form, the spray cast up on the great reefs acts like gauze in a theatre, everything is remote and mysterious, sometimes enlarged, sometimes diminished, never altogether clearly defined. Having seen the islands, it is not difficult to imagine an unforeseen wreck on Noon Reef or Morning Reef, at night, in moonlight." (p272)

Back off a little. Where is Australia? There. A desolate, windswept coast, lined with cliffs that plunge into the sea anything from thirty to two hundred and fifty metres (about one hundred to eight hundred feet). The desert reaches the sea along most of that stretch. Endless ridges of ancient dune, covered with tough, sparse vegetation. Even the Aboriginal people didn’t go there much. If you're following on Google Maps, don't get the wrong idea from any bits of blue on the mainland. It's salt water.

Back off a little further. That’s Batavia up there (now known as Djakarta), through the Sunda Strait which separates Sumatra and Java. The longboat left the Australian mainland from North West cape (that last cape jutting north before the coastline turns irrevocably east. And then Pelsaert in the Sardam had to find these tiny specs in the ocean, all unknowing that murder and mayhem had been let loose and that two camps of Batavia’s survivors eyed each other across a few miles of ocean.

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any thing. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death.

           The Tempest William Shakespeare





Somebody who left a comment on Die a Dry Death on Authonomy (you can read seven chapters there) said after reading three chapters, he could see why I used those words as the title.

And sure enough the danger seemed to be the forces of nature, the implacable fury of the sea. The first chapter is a prologue and then the next two chapters are all about the shipwreck and the attempt to get the people to dry land. Think about that.  The Batavia carried 341 people when she left Holland. When she hit the reef, the ship would have been carrying less people – deaths due to scurvy, desertions at Table Bay. But still, the number was probably around 330. The ship had two small boats; workboats used to ferry passengers and supplies. The longboat could carry forty people; the yawl, ten. That’s it. No lifeboats, no vests, no blow-up dinghies. But the boat wasn’t sinking; it was stuck on a reef. So between them, these two boats and some very brave crew did an amazing job getting people to two tiny islands.  By the time Pelsaert and Jacobsz set off for Batavia in the longboat, about two hundred people were crowded onto Batavia’s Graveyard, forty people had drowned trying to get to shore unaided (many people couldn’t swim) and forty-eight made the journey in the longboat. The rest were still on the wreck.

Some of these numbers are conjecture but even so, the point, I think, is made. Cornelisz and his cronies killed around ninety-six men, women and children. Sure, some were drowned. But at the hands of men, not nature. So the title of the book is ironic, if you will. Many of those who would ‘fain die a dry death’ – did.

Like many of us aspiring writers, I’ve been beta-reader for a number of other people’s books and I’m about to embark on another. Which led me to reflect on why I do it, what I look for and what’s in it for me?

Why is easy. I know how hard it is to get an objective third party to read my own work. I don’t want ‘this is wonderful’, I want constructive criticism to help me improve my writing. I’ve been privileged to have the benefit of that from a number of aspiring writer friends and I think it’s incumbent on me to return the favour. I have to say, too, I get a little thrill when my input helps. And if one of those books goes on to greater glory (like the Authonomy editor’s desk or *gasp* publication), I bask in its reflection, like a stage hand peeking from the wings while the principal actor takes applause.

What I look for is more difficult. Really, I don’t look for anything. I just read and record things that don’t work for me. I have my little list of ‘gotchas’, things that will always strike me. Two in particular stand out; incorrect use of ‘ing’ words and ‘there was/were’. Very often people will write things like ‘walking across the room he opened the door’. Er, no. You can’t do both those things at once. Whereas ‘walking across the room he smoked a cigarette’ is plausible. ‘There was/were’ is perfectly acceptable – but it’s often overused and just as often can be either omitted or the sentence can be rephrased to work harder using stronger verbs. Other things I’ll note are word repetition, word echoes, slips in point of view. But the real value in reading a whole book is you can see if the characters are well drawn and behave consistently; see if transitions are smooth, the story arcs flow and are complete; notice any parts where the plot doesn’t ‘work’. Etc. And those things you don’t look for, you just notice them.

What’s in it for me? After I’ve reviewed somebody else’s work I look at my own with a fresh eye. The ‘ing’ thing and ‘there was/were’ are so noticeable to me because I was guilty of them myself.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s great value in chapter by chapter crits to iron out the nitty-gritties. But the first three chapters does not a good book make. My great fear has always been to write a kick-arse first three chapters, leaping and bubbling down the hill – to end up in a meandering marshland of broken tributaries and a bog of cliché. And only a disinterested third party can tell me if I’ve got it right.