Nathalie M.L. Römer General Posts

“I was busy… oh so busy…”

“With what?” you ask incredulously.

“With my book writing,” I counter your question.

You lift your arms in the air in the same way Joy from Inside Out might do.

“When is the book out?” you ask me, grinning broadly.

“Soon… soon,” I reply.

You pout your lips because you want to read the book now.

“I need to wait for it to be checked over…” I say.

“Who’s doing that?” you ask.

“The people at CreateSpace where I am publishing the book.”

“Ohh,” you say, suddenly realising that it’s just a matter of waiting for them to finish their work.

“Will the book be good?” you ask.

“Of course,” I reply, “I wrote it after all…”

“What is it about?” you ask.

“I can’t give you much information yet, but if you come closer, I will whisper it in your ear” I say.

You listen with growing excitement to the story. Your eyes shine with happiness because you realise this was just the book you were after as a good bedtime story.

“You’ll keep that a secret until the book is released, will you?” I ask.

“My lips are sealed,” you say, “But won’t the other readers get jealous not knowing what I know?”

“Noo….They’ll buy the book on the release day, and then YOU get to share the fun of reading with them all,” I reply.

“I think I WILL buy the book, and I will tell all my friends, family and people at work to do the same,” you say.

I blush…

“Well, thank you… I love it when someone is my fan…”

Nathalie M.L. Römer General Posts

Revision Time

For the last four or five days I’ve been working on revision. It’s that thing you do before getting the completed for publication. There are many sites and pages out there, if you search for “book revision” that tell you to do it in this way or in that way…

I came across two interesting terms yesterday before I headed to bed. That’s Plotter and Pantser. A plotter is someone who does an outline of their novel before they write it, and a Pantser is when you write by the seat of your pants.

I am trying to work out whether I am Plotter or a Pantser, and while I am revising, I came to the conclusion I am bit of both.

I know where the overall story that I am currently revising is heading, but I like to add that element of surprise so my characters don’t know what lies around the next corner they turn. I am getting moments of “I wonder what such and such is really thinking right now because I put him or her or them in that situation?” and usually do it right in the middle when they’re busy with something else or when they’re facing the good or bad that’s also present in the story.

So after reading up all the advice on doing revision, I have come to one conclusion about how I tackle it myself. I do the usual checks and balances to make sure that grammar works, that the characters don’t grow an extra arm somewhere in the middle of the story (errr… that’s not happening, just saying that now!), that all subplots work, and that all the ‘easter egg moments’ are fun to read and discover for those who end up reading my books, and that all my spelling is correct.

The “easter egg moment” is a term coined in the game World of Warcraft I play from time to time. In that game an ‘easter egg’ is often a hidden item or message of some sort that can add humour or other fun to the game. For example, one such easter egg is the reference to the tv series Lost that is found in the zone called Sholazar Basin, where a hatch is located in the middle of a lake, with the enigmatic numbers featured in the tv series listed on them – the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 that appeared in Lost are shown as an easter egg…

So the term “easter egg moments” is a term I coined early on, and the first person to hear it is my partner, who would be told something about what I was writing, and then I’d say, “That’s an easter egg moment for connecting this book with the overall story arc…” The easter egg moments are definitely Plotter items in my book, it’s the moments before or after that can have an element of Pantser to them.

Revision makes sure that the Plotter parts and the Pantser parts both work for the overall story I’ve got planned… and there I just laid out an easter egg moment in my blog for you to ponder over…

Nathalie M.L. Römer General Posts

Blogging…

Never done it in my life, but that was the same when I started writing my first ever novel, which seems to be close to completion as I write this. I guess that I need make blogging a part of my weekly schedule and because I am still learning what it is to be an author, I decided to read up… and the general suggestion is to do it two or three times a week. So I decided to make Sundays and Wednesdays my blogging days. Well, it is Sunday right now, and a perfect excuse to do something else while my mind comes up with a perfect ending for my book…

I am very excited because the book is so close to completion. I am hoping already that people will enjoy it a lot, and fingers crossed that it gets a warm welcome.

So instead of writing I am doing the other things needed to launch myself into deep end of publishing… setting up blog… check… finish website… almost check… finalize book… ermm, okay that needs work on later.

Most of the metadata, that’s the bits of data that lets the world know details about your book – such as book size, number of pages, the plot blurb, and other stuff – are for the most part ready at Create Space where I am self-publishing my books initially. I guess I wasn’t brave enough, yet, to try find an agent to get my book at a traditional publishing house, and published the old-fashioned way. But hey, if I keep on writing (and believe me I will), I am sure that will come too soon enough.

I think I jumped the gun a bit with setting up my Twitter @nathaliemlromer (former home), my Bluesky @nathaliemlromer.bsky.social, and on my Facebook http://www.facebook.com/nathaliemlromer but I think it will lend presence in the long term and will let potential readers – FANS perhaps! – find me easier. If you’re on either (or both) social media site, connect with me for updates and news. They’re kind of linked so any posts I make on Facebook also trickle down to Twitter, and vice versa. You’ll find me more active on Facebook though.

I guess my extensive post writing I have done on the World of Warcraft forums for several years is proving to be of help. It’s a game I love playing (I play on the Shadowsong realm mostly), and whenever I post there I am prone to posting long posts… seems it’s happening here too. If I keep this up two times a week for a few years, readers will have so much to read by me that they won’t keep up with it… and that’s in addition to the many books I have planned…

Anyway, signing off here to go do other important stuff… such as working on completing my book for example. See you again for the next blog post on Wednesday…

Blessings,

Nathalie xx

Updated on 17 August 2025 for accuracy.