Critique Partners with Marie Dry

This week we have author Marie Dry talking about Critique Partners. She has a new book out,  Alien Captured (Zyrgin Warriors Book 5).

Ever since she can remember Marie Dry wanted to travel. She had had the privilege of living in Zambia, Morocco, and Spain and sees herself as a bit of a gypsy. Every few years she gets restless and has to be some place new.

She read romances since she was nine and was fairly young when she decided she would write the perfect story that had all the elements she looked for in a romance. In 1997 she decided to go all out with her writing and to get published. Being published by Black Opal Books is a dream come true for her.

There are several wonderful moments in her life that she would never trade for anything. One of them is meeting President Nelson Mandela and the second being published.

Connect with Marie Dry:

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While I tried to decide what to write about I kept thinking of the one person who had been a constant through my struggles to learn my craft and to get published. We struggled together and cheered each other on during the time we wanted to be published so badly but still had to learn our craft. When I got published after seven years of taking courses and pitching and submitting, we celebrated together even though she was in Australia and I was in Spain. Technology made a huge difference to how writers interact. It can be a dangerous time suck, but it also means you can reach out for help at any time.

In 2010 Rachael Thomas suggested I joined Romance Writers of Australia – please note how effortlessly I name dropped - and immediately registered for the Critique Partner Scheme. Those days it was only RWAustralia that had critique partner schemes. Through them I met quite a few good writers, but no one that I really clicked with. Then I hooked up with Cassandra L. Shaw and everything just fell into place. She liked urban fantasy and I liked to read paranormal romance and we had many things we differ on. But we had one very important thing in common. Our work ethic and determination to succeed. Though I have to mention that she did speak a strange version of the English language. She kept talking about chooks and other strange creatures I thought only roamed Australia until I learned that chooks are actually chickens.

The one decision we took that worked out really well was to try and do the same editing courses.  We both wanted to become good at editing so that we could edit our own work and each other’s up to a professional standard.

These days we rarely read each other’s work, but we chat every day and keep each other informed and motivated. Once we were both convinced our first chapters are the most boring in the history of man. We exchanged chapters and gave feedback and could reassure each other that we did not write the most boring chapters ever.

Cassandra is also indirectly responsible for my first book getting published. She suggested I join Savvy Authors and told me about their pitching opportunities. I had just done a course where how to craft a pitch was very well explained and I started pitching at Savvy Authors and got accepted by Black Opal Books.

So please raise a glass, or cup, or mug to critique partners all over the world.

Alien Captured (Zyrgin Warriors Book 5)

In a bleak future, where government systems are breaking down and poverty and violence reign, on an abandoned farm in Montana, Susannah had a simple plan. She’d capture an alien, sell him to the resistance, and use the money to save her son.

Instead, Susannah had an arrogant alien trapped in a pit who acted as if she was the prisoner. He wanted to kill her dog and insisted she should care for the wound he sustained when he fell into the pit she dug to trap him. On top of that, she had no way to know if the resistance got her message. Every day that passed, she doubted her decision to hand Azagor over to the resistance.

But her son, her baby, was being held by people who considered him unclean because he was conceived out of wedlock—and time was running out.

Buy on:

Amazon Kindle

Amazon UK

Amazon Aust