Today pulled down what I thought was an empty notebook to collate my notes for a new story. In the back of the book I found a map I’d drawn when I was writing The Courage to Love.

I travelled to the Degilbo (Queensland, Australia) area to visit my cousin, whose family had lived there since the 1920s. They had a wealth of information to share with me, and old maps to pour over. We chose a likely spot to have been selected as late as 1919 and drove around the area. The land we chose as David’s and Bernard’s plots is still owned by the descendants of the original selectors of that land.

Degilbo township was declining by 1920 but there were still shops there in the 1930s. The land around is still farming land today, with an active social community.

I also found some notes I made about the area. Much of the information I gleaned didn’t make it to the book, but it gave me great background of the area and allowed me to visualise what David and Bernard would have been confronted with when they arrived. There's an excerpt below.

David and Bernard’s story:
Bernard is the only one who understands David when he returns home from war. He also needs David to help him face each day. David needs to learn that love is worth any risk, even death. If he ever wants to taste happiness, he must find the courage to love.
 
Available from:
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​Blurb:
Sequel to Between Love and Honor
 
In 1915, after his beloved Carl died from a vicious beating, David Harrison enlisted in the Army and went to war. He returns home to find a world seemingly unchanged, while he will never be the same. At Mrs. Gill’s boarding house, he meets Bernard Donnelly, a young man suffering the aftereffects of his own war experiences. David finds himself increasingly attracted to Bernard, but that terrifies him. He blames himself for Carl’s horrific death and fears he isn’t strong enough to lose another love to violence. 

Bernard needs David to help him face each day and find a way they can be together without stigma—and without putting them in legal and physical danger—but David clings to his idea that the only way to keep a lover safe is not to have one. His fears threaten to destroy everything, unless he learns that sometimes the risk is worth it and finds the courage to love.
 
Excerpt:
Chapter One
Brisbane, July 1919
 
THE westerlies began early this year. The icy winter wind cut straight through my clothes. I tugged my collar closer around my face, shoved my gloved hands into the pockets of my overcoat, and stared at the weathered headstone. The words carved into the pale granite were now dark and legible. The southern side of the stone held a slight greenish tinge, the beginnings of moss growth, but someone had been caring for Carl. The grass around the grave was neatly trimmed, and there was a small bowl of fresh camellias beside the headstone.
 
We could not say good-bye.
My heart is broken.
 
“It still is, Carl,” I whispered. “Every day.”
 
Eventually, my shivering became so extreme I had to leave. I looked up at a sky tinged orange and pink and knew if I didn’t run, I’d miss the last tram into the city.
 
MOTHER’S shrill voice started before I finished unbuttoning my coat. “Where have you been, David? Dinner’s been ready for over an hour. You know what time to be home.” The diminutive woman who ruled my every waking moment when I was at home came into the front hall. She had pulled her graying hair back into her usual severe bun, her thin lips were pinched in disapproval, and her gray eyes glared accusingly as I turned from hanging my coat on the coat stand. “Well?”
 
“I was just walking around, Mother.”
 
“Mrs. Edwards and Esther came for afternoon tea. I expected you to be home.”
 
I stifled the sigh that wanted to escape, but judging by the frown on Mother’s face, I probably didn’t hide my relief very well. The excuses I’d once used dried on my tongue. I would no longer pretend to be someone I wasn’t. After Carl, I’d not get drawn or trapped into marrying a woman my mother chose. Or any woman.
 
“Did you go to the Post Office and get your job back?”
 
I couldn’t control the sigh this time. I had gone in there in the morning, and nothing had changed. The checkered tiles still muted footsteps from the doors to the counter. The polished oak counter and stair railings gleamed in the light as they had before. The large room still smelled of old paper, ink, and furniture polish. The only difference was the new faces behind the counter. And me. I was different too, but no one understood that, least of all my mother. I didn’t want to go back to the Post Office, but I wanted to stay in this house even less.
 
“I begin on Monday.”

Her consideration of me changed, and I suppressed a cringe, standing taller, my back rigid, knowing what she’d say next.
 
“Good, then you’ll be able to pay more board.” She returned to the living room and sat among the threadbare spotlessness of worn carpets and upholstery. A small fire burned in the grate, lending a homey feel to the one room my mother spent time in. She positioned her feet precisely together, as a lady should, and picked up her mending. “Your dinner is in the oven.”
 
Dried-out cottage pie and wrinkled, woody carrots, burned on the tips, sat forlornly on an enameled plate in the hot side of the wood-fired oven. I sat at the scarred kitchen table and shoveled the food into my mouth, chewing and swallowing without tasting anything. I didn’t care what my mother served. Everything here tasted better than what I’d eaten the last four years. If I never saw bully beef, tinned peaches, or golden syrup again, it would be too soon.
 
When I finished, I placed my plate in the tub of water sitting in the sink and stared at the dim reflection of myself in the grubby window. I shuffled my feet against the gritty, sticky floor, then went up the stairs to my room, grateful every day that it was positioned directly over the kitchen and its warmth.
 
I pulled my suitcase from the top of the wardrobe, sneezed at the dust that came down with it, and packed as many of my clothes and books as would fit. I put the filled suitcase back on top of the wardrobe, hung my pants, coat, and shirt over a chair, crawled into my narrow bed, and stared at the stained ceiling.
 
I woke in the dark hours before dawn to screams echoing in my room and, from what I knew from her complaints after other nightmares, the thump of my mother’s shoe hitting the other side of the wall above my head. I rose and dressed, then went down the back stairs. Within five minutes, I was free of the house and headed for the river.
 
OUR glade was unchanged except for the cigarette ends that littered the flattened grass in the middle. The white paper-ends, left by careless smokers, glowed dully in the predawn light. I crawled under the drooping leaves of the willow and leaned against the trunk. I closed my eyes as I remembered the times I’d spent there with Carl, holding his warm body against mine, before the ugliness of our world exploded.
 
I woke reaching for my rifle, only to have my fingers bump against roots and dew-damp mulch. Murmured voices faded downriver as their unseen owners meandered along the nearby path. I stared through the fractured canopy above me until my breathing settled and my heart rate calmed. When I was sure I was in the glade and not at war, and that no one waited to shoot me, I crawled out of the dimness, brushed myself off, and walked along the riverbank toward Mrs. Gill’s in New Farm.
 
The house had suffered while I’d been away. The paint looked dull. Sections on the western side had begun to peel and flake away. Dirt clouded the louvered windows that formed the top half of the closed-in wraparound verandas on both the ground floor and the floor above. A small gum tree sprouted in the drooping gutter at the corner of the corrugated iron roof. The front gate needed oiling—the hinges caught and screeched as I pushed it open and closed. The grass beside the path needed cutting, while the flower beds on either side of the short set of stairs to the front door still flourished amid a tangle of weeds, though not much but azaleas were in bloom. The roses, planted in round mounds of mulch leading the way from the gate to the stairs, had been pruned and were beginning to shoot. Over to the side of the front yard, between the house and the fence, a scraggly Geraldton Wax leaned away from the wind, its purple geometrically arranged flowers whipped to a frenzy against the fence dividing this yard from the one next door.
 
I took the front stairs two at a time, as I always had, only remembering when I reached the landing, there was nothing worth running toward anymore. I took a deep breath and knocked on the door. I hoped Mrs. Gill remembered me and that she had a room to spare.
 
“Mr. Harrison, you’re back!” Mrs. Gill pulled me into the entry and enveloped me in a lavender-scented hug. Then she pushed me away and fussed with the position of a bowl of camellias on the side table. They were the same color as the flowers at Carl’s grave. “Come on in and tell me when you got back.”
 
I followed the bustling woman down the long hallway—past the doors to the dining room and parlor, the stairs to the upper level, and the short hallway that led to boarders’ rooms and the downstairs bathroom—to the back of the house and stepped down the single step into the warm kitchen.
 
There were only good memories in this room. Mrs. Gill’s stove was the same model as my mother’s, but where my mother’s was dull black and smoked from its poorly cleaned flue, Mrs. Gill’s shone from Stove Black and produced a sweet, clean warmth that immediately soothed me. Mrs. Gill tapped the back of one of the wooden chairs as she passed. “Sit, sit, Mr. Harrison.”
 
She dragged a heavy kettle from the back right corner of the stove to the left, directly above the fire. I looked around the room as I sat. The scrubbed wooden table top was the same, but the large basket that usually contained fruit was gone. The potato sack hanging on the back of the open pantry door was half-full. On the floor in the pantry was a bucket filled with turnips and cabbages. The icebox in the corner of the room didn’t sweat as it usually did when freshly stocked with ice but appeared to be the same temperature as the rest of the room. The stone floor gleamed, clean and smooth in the early morning light that streamed in through the windows over the stove.
 
Outside, in the backyard, the vegetable patch brought memories of lazy Sunday afternoons in my room, laughing as Carl, naked and flushed from our loving, leaned out the window and tried to scare the crows from the corn. Tall stalks of corn and trellised beans waved in the breeze, but appeared neglected, overgrown with weeds, like a remnant of a better life that would never be seen again. The tall jacaranda tree in the back corner appeared unchanged, and provided shade over nearly half the yard. In front of the vegetable garden, over to the side of the privy, white sheets flapped in the breeze on lines strung across the yard from the small washhouse.
 
“I’ll make us a nice cup of tea, and you can tell me all that you’ve been doing since you came back and what you have planned now.” Mrs. Gill pulled down cups and saucers from the dresser against the wall facing the sink.
 
I sat and breathed deeply for the first time in what felt like months. Everyone else wanted to know about the war. They asked if I’d had fun in France and how many French women I’d met. They told me I must be “so proud to have served King and country” and be pleased to have driven the Huns back. I’m glad Mrs. Gill didn’t.
 
“So how are you settling back in, Mr. Harrison? Several of our young men from here never returned.” She cleared her throat. “But you’d know more about that than I would, I expect.” She placed a cup of steaming tea in front of me and pushed the sugar over. “We lost nearly half our chickens in a storm a few months ago, so it’s going to be difficult to keep eggs on the table until new ones arrive, but I’m sure we’ll manage, dear. We always do.” She sat and, pulling the saucer, drew her teacup toward her.
 
I flinched at the rattled china-scrape across the table.
 
Mrs. Gill added milk to her tea, picked up a teaspoon, and stirred it as she stared at the swirling liquid. “I suppose you’ve found better accommodations since you returned?”
 
“Actually, no, Mrs. Gill. I’ve been staying with my mother, but I was wondering if my old room was available.” My speech was as I had rehearsed, but my throat felt scratchy, like I wanted to cough or vomit. I had no idea what I’d do if Mrs. Gill had rented my room to someone else. The only thing I knew for sure was I couldn’t spend another night under my mother’s roof.
 
“Oh.” Mrs. Gill looked up at me, her faded blue eyes showing an endearing combination of surprise, pleasure, and dismay. “Actually, it’s not available, Mr. Harrison. I put Mr. Donnelly in your old room, on account of it being at the back of the house and quieter.”
 
I nodded and tried to smile, but my stomach churned. I twisted my fingers together in my lap, my nerves stretched so tight I thought I would start screaming and never stop.
 
“I expect you’re looking for a quiet room as well.” She considered me carefully for several seconds. I was relieved that she seemed to instinctively understand. “With so many motor cars around lately, all the front rooms will be too noisy for you. You could have Mr. George’s old room if you wanted.” After making this statement, Mrs. Gill jumped up, grabbed a cloth, and wiped the table down, then refilled my cup, even though I’d barely taken two sips from it.
 
“It’s not taken?” My heart pounded and I closed my eyes against the image of Carl, in pain, his eyes crying out his love for me even as he breathed his last. I didn’t know if I could go back into that room, yet part of me couldn’t stay away.
 
“No.” Mrs. Gill hesitated. “Some gentlemen don’t like the thought that someone died there, but you and Mr. George were such close friends, I thought you wouldn’t mind.”
 
The alternative was my mother’s. I’d rather be somewhere Carl had been. “I start back at the Post Office on Monday. Would I be able to move in today and pay the board after I receive my first wage?”
 
Mrs. Gill beamed at me. “Of course, dear. You didn’t bring anything with you?” She looked around the kitchen as if expecting to see a suitcase materialize even though we both knew I hadn’t arrived with anything. Mrs. Gill reached over and patted my arm. “It’s good to have you back, Mr. Harrison.”
 
I smiled at her. “And it’s good to be back, Mrs. Gill.”
 
For the first time since the ship had landed back in Australia, I meant those words.
 
I RETURNED to my mother’s house in the afternoon. Today was her library afternoon, in which she met several like-minded matrons at the local library and they discussed in hushed whispers the state of the neighborhood. It was cowardly, but I didn’t want to face her. I’d had enough of people screaming at me, and if I had to listen to one more of her tirades, I would say something irrevocable. As much as I no longer wanted to live with her, she was my mother, and I needed to treat her with as much respect as I was able to. Unfortunately, that meant behaving like the basest coward and running away.
 
I left a note on the kitchen table, collected my suitcase, and shoved the front door key under the door as I left.
 
CARL’S room felt like me: it looked the same, but it was empty. The washstand still held the same fluted blue-and-white basin and jug, but his brushes and shaving gear were gone. I laid out my toiletries precisely but on the opposite side of the basin from where he’d always stored his. After hanging my clothes in the single wardrobe, I pushed them to the left, leaving enough room for as many again beside them. Then I positioned the suitcase on its side on top of the wardrobe. I stared at the bed, but didn’t touch it. His bed had always been narrower than mine, so I’d never slept in it. If I closed my eyes, I could see Carl as he was the last time I saw him, belly swollen, bones broken, tears streaming down his face.
 
I didn’t close my eyes.
 
Mrs. Gill let me take one of the brocade wing-back chairs from the downstairs sitting room. I positioned it near the window, facing out so I could sit and look at the garden, with the branches of the jacaranda tree gracefully protecting the corner of the vegetable garden from the midday sun. I kept it at an angle so I could also see the door. On the floor beside the chair, I placed a sturdy branch that had fallen from the gum tree in the neighbor’s yard.
 
At dinner that night, I met the other boarders. I remembered one from my previous time there, but the other two were new. I forgot their names before I’d finished shaking their hands. They took their places at the dining table, leaving one place setting unclaimed. They sat silently and avoided looking at each other, a stark contrast to the noisy conversation that had heralded their arrival. The two other dining tables were bare of place settings. I went to the kitchen.
 
“Mrs. Gill, is there anything I can help you with?” I asked as I walked into the room.
 
A crash greeted me, and I looked over to see a tall, thin young man, with a head of unruly mahogany curls, crouched over a smashed plate. He frantically scooped scattered food onto the largest piece of plate. As I watched, blood bloomed on his hand, and I rushed over to him.
 
“Mr. Harrison, don’t.”
 
“You’ve cut yourself,” I murmured as I reached for the young man’s hand. “Let me see.”
 
I wasn’t sure exactly what happened next. One moment I crouched next to the injured man, the next I lay sprawled on the floor with food splattered over me and the young man curled into a whimpering ball, pressed against the wall beside the stove. His trousers rode up his ankles as he curled in on himself, but I could see the fabric gathering under his belt, a testament to recently lost weight.
 
“Mr. Harrison, come away now.”
 
I looked up to see Mrs. Gill standing on the far side of the table, concern etching wrinkles into her forehead.
 
“Come now, Mr. Harrison, I’ll put your dinner in the dining room with the others.” She loaded a large wooden tray with plates of steaming food and left. I glanced at the man on the floor, and I felt torn between doing as Mrs. Gill instructed and helping the man.
 
The whimpers had stopped, but the man hadn’t moved, his face resolutely hidden from me. I determined to ask Mrs. Gill about him after dinner, then went to eat my meal.
 
By the time I’d finished eating, I’d decided I would ask Mrs. Gill if I could eat in the kitchen from then on. Anything would be better than the uncomfortable silences alternating with generalized complaints against society that had accompanied my meal in the dining room.
 
“THAT’S Mr. Donnelly.” Mrs. Gill efficiently dried plates and put them in a stack with a clack. “I mentioned him this morning.”
 
“Is he…?”
 
“He was in the war, Mr. Harrison.” Mrs. Gill turned to stare at me. “I’m sure you know the kinds of things he might have experienced.”
 
Shell shock. I’d seen it before. Good soldiers, even great soldiers, started to sob and not stop, even when the medics came to carry them out. Others experienced flashbacks so bad they went on rampages and shot everything that moved. Hell, I’d even experienced some of that myself. I still had nightmares.
 
“How long has he been with you?”
 
“Only a couple of months. He just needs things quiet for a while, I think.”
 
Hence giving him the back bedroom. I placed my hand on her shoulder. “You’re a good woman, Mrs. Gill.”

​I call this stage The Last Stage but that’s optimistic. It’s the last stage of the process but that doesn’t mean the MS is now perfect. Stage 4 is proofreading.

During this stage I read through the MS from beginning to end, often aloud. Reading aloud lets me become a reader again and helps me avoid reading what I expect to be there, rather than what’s actually there. This includes things like missing commas—or extra commas. I look for all types of errors when I’m reading this stage. Some basic errors I’ve found myself make over and over again:
​

• Every sentence must begin with a capital letter and end with a fullstop. This seems basic but sometimes I miss the fullstop, then two sentences get joined together and it doesn’t make sense. Relying on Word to insert the capital letter at the beginning doesn’t always work, especially with dialogue. It needs to be checked.
• Homonyms. In my rush to get the words down, I sometimes write the right word but the wrong spelling (which gives me a completely different word). An example: pair, pear. Both words are spelled correctly so Word won’t pick them up, but only one of the words is the correct meaning. Only careful reading will identify them.
• Repetitions. I’ll often say the same thing in two or three different ways. I think it comes from my background as a teacher where I often repeat instructions in different ways to ensure students understand. It doesn’t work in a story. I have to choose the best option and rewrite or edit the words around it for it all to hang together properly.
• Paragraph breaks. Sometimes I get into the habit of breaking a paragraph when it begins to look too big. Often that works, but sometimes it’s better to begin a new paragraph after a single word, for impact, or to let ‘pretty prose’ stand together in a longer paragraph.
• Repeated words. On any particular day, my mind will somehow decide that one word sounds pretty special and I’ll use that word two or three times in one paragraph or page. One word that often happens with is ‘intense’. I have a list of words I’ve recognised I use a lot (there are a lot of lists other authors have kindly posted online), that I do a basic search for. If they show up too often in a space, I rewrite/edit to make it less repetitive.
• Passive voice. There are certain words that show very clearly that passive voice is being used, eg was, could. I do another search for them and check that the writing in that section is best as passive. If not, I change it so it’s more active.

Sometimes, during the proofreading stage, I’ll notice things in structure or characterisation that don’t feel right for the story. I put a note next to them and go back and check them later. If I allow myself to get distracted from the process, I miss important things.

That’s the four stages of editing I do with my work. Once I’ve done that, the work is ready for critique partners and beta readers. Often my critique partners have seen the story as it’s been developed. I only show them the finished product if I’ve made extensive changes to the structure and/or characterisations. That happened with Warrior Pledge where one plot line was removed completely, and the characters that were the major characters in the first version became secondary characters. That meant point of view changed throughout, scenes were deleted and new scenes were written. It became a completely new (and much better) story.

After this week, the completed edited version of The Gingerbread House will be posted to the Free Stories page on my website. The older versions will be removed from that page, but will still be available in the blog archives.

The third stage of editing a story is looking at characterisation. I leave this part until third because I often make a lot of changes to the characters and their reactions to various things. There’s no point in changing how a character reacts to a specific plot point if I’m going to remove that plot point from the story during a structural edit, so characterisation goes after structure.

This is the section where I have to go back to my character profiles and check that the characters’ GMC (Goal, Motivation, Conflict) is clear throughout and the growth towards the goals is clear. I look at how characters are behaving, the way they speak to each other and what they think while they’re doing it. My focus includes:

• Making sure each character has a unique voice,
• Making sure that voice is consistent throughout, or any changes to the voice are logical and consistent with their personality and the circumstances,
• Adding depth to the interactions between characters to make sure their growth is clear. Every major character must change and grow during the story; I have to make sure that shows in their interactions and introspection.
• Making sure the relationship between the characters develops logically and in accordance with each character’s GMC.

The two right hand columns of my scene map provide the template to analyse character development. Mapping that along with the structure ensures the characters grow and change as the story develops.

As I go through the structural edit, I might think of things I need to check with the characterisation. I write them in the scene map rather than trying to fix everything at once and losing track of what I’m trying to achieve with the structure.

I’ll work through the character notes as they stand at the end of the structural edit, and make the changes noted. Then I’ll map the character profiles, particularly the GMC into the scene map and check the manuscript again. With really short stories, I can do all this in one pass. Often though, this part of the editing will require more than one pass through the document. With a lengthy manuscript, I might need to do a separate editing pass for each focus (eg, one pass for voice, one for personality glitches, one for interactions, one [or more] for individual GMC).

Throughout the entire editing process, I’m also watching for proofreading errors, spelling mistakes, grammatical glitches, homonyms, etc. I correct those as I go through the MS with the aim that the final stage of editing—proofreading—will be fairly quick. Even with all the passes through the MS, I still pick up errors in the last stage, so I make sure never to ignore the proofreading stage.

Last week I drafted a scene map of The Gingerbread House. Stage 1 was to write down what was there, both with structure and character development. It didn’t have to be complete.

Stage 2 goes further. The focus for stage 2 is structure. I’ve gone through the story again and mapped the actions against a couple of well-known story structures: The Writer’s Journey and Wells’ Eight-point Story Arc. I use these as a guide for my writing but I don’t worry if my scenes done match up exactly, especially not with a short story. Most of the things need to happen and they generally happen in that order. Some things don’t fit the structures, but are necessary for the story to move on.

During stage 2, I’ve mapped what I planned against what I wrote. I’ve identified things from the original plan that didn’t happen but should have—they’ll need to be written in somehow. In most cases, I think what I wrote is better than the original plan. I’m still thinking I’d like to blow the house up, but I might not do it. Or I might do it with this stage, but change it again later if it doesn’t work.

Now the structure has been analysed, I’ll go through the story and make the changes that need to be made. With some luck, that means the story will flow better, make more sense, have better rise of tension, and be more interesting for the reader.

I’ve posted the edited version in the free stories section. I’ve kept the original on there as well so you can see the differences.
​
Next week is stage 3: analysing character arcs.