Sarah Begg's Blog

 

Hello! Hi! Gosh has it really been nine months since I stopped in here? It must be, because my son is now nine months old! And wow, how the time has flown.

 

I don’t know about you, but I personally love reading about real places and then going to visit them. There’s something kind of amazing about living vicariously through your favourite character’s adventures, and then going and seeing those places for yourself. (One of my personal faves was reading about London and New York in Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic novels, and then going shopping in London and New York myself and channelling Becky Bloomwood!)

As an author, it’s always exciting to set parts of your story in real locations, and hope that your love for that place shines through in the writing and that you can give your readers an authentic experience of the place … and hopefully a burning desire to visit themselves!

 

Well, we are only a few weeks away from the publication of Great Sexpectations, the third novel in the Laura the Explorer series. How relieved I am to have finally reached this point! It’s no secret that this novel took me WAY longer to write than I ever thought it would, and there are a few reasons for that. Some are personal, which I won’t go into, but in terms of the book itself there were some huge plot challenges that I faced when trying to wrangle this book together. I always end up with a lot of deleted scenes and deleted storylines from the final version of the book, but this was the first time that I think I’ve deleted a HUGE number of characters as well as some fairly hefty plotlines. So today, I’m going to deep-dive into one of the big challenges I faced when trying to write this book and how I came about solving my problems to finally get the book working!

 

I can honestly say that I am so relieved to be where I finally am. Because Great Sexpectations is actually finished!! It has felt like the biggest uphill battle getting this book over the line, and I’m still pinching myself that I’m really there. It’s done. The book is complete and the best part is that I’m so happy with it.

 

Today is a special day. October 6th, who knew?, would be the day my author year officially starts again. And by that I mean, today is the day I finally feel like I’m getting back into the swing of author life.

If you read my blog post back in April (the one where I confidently announced that Great Sexpectations would be published on September 10th – hah!) then you’ve probably realised that September 10th came and went and there’s been nothing but silence from me about the book.

So what happened in the last 6 months?

 

Well, winter has well and truly arrived here in Sydney, and I’m trying to take every opportunity possible to escape to my house in Mudgee where we can enjoy the country air as well as an actual fireplace. It’s been almost a full year since we bought the house, and sometimes I have to stop and remind myself just how much renovating we’ve managed to achieve in that time. Of all the projects on the house, redoing the living/dining area was probably the biggest – and also the most hilarious. I realise I haven’t shared many photos of what we’ve been up to, so, instead of book updates, today I though I’d share some progress shots from our house!

Hey lovely readers!

Just a quick shoutout to let you know that both Laura the Explorer and Eat Pray Shag are on a Kindle Countdown Deal (both US and UK Amazon stores) from now until May 13 - and they're both only 99c each!

Book 3 in the series, Great Sexpectations, is dropping in a few months, so now is a great time to get into this series.

Hope you enjoy!
Sarah xx

It’s nearly here! On September 10th, Great Sexpectations, the third book in the Laura the Explorer series, is going to be published!

Okay, so five months might not seem very ‘near’ to many readers but trust me when I say that as the author, that date seems quite terrifyingly close! Especially because the book is not even finished yet!

But there is one thing that is finished, and that’s the final cover design, which I total LOVE:

 

 

In case you missed this from my recent emails / social media, the manuscript I've been working on all year, Blackmailing Ava Darling, got into Queensland Writers Center's Publishable competition! The program, which took place from July – October, is now complete, so I thought I’d put down my thoughts on the experience as someone who made it into the top 10 and got to do the whole program.

 

Spring has arrived and once again I’m faced with the uncomfortable truth that we are well and truly into the second half of this year and a lot of my 2021 writing goals are most likely not going to happen. But that’s okay. I’m currently reading a fantastic book called Trivial Grievances by Bridie Jabour, and I do like her observation that life for us (‘us’ being people in our 30s) seems to boil down to an incessant need to be achieving things. Always, we must be achieving. Whether it’s achieving a promotion or a pay rise, cooking something on-trend and delicious, reading X many new books this month, spring cleaning the house or organising the spice rack, or, yes, writing the next book. But it’s okay not to achieve anything. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine to just laze around on the floor playing with your dog all day, or just veg out in front of the tv binge-watching shows. The only thing we really should be achieving is enjoying whatever it is we are currently doing.

That being said, though I may be falling short on my over-ambitious new-years resolutions, my readers might be happy to know that I haven’t spent the whole year lolling around on the floor playing with my dog or binge watching tv (at least, not all of it). So, here’s a quick roundup of what is happening with each of my novels-in-progress: