Parenting lessons
February 29th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
The sure way to get your kid to eat her snot is to say ‘Don’t eat your snot.’
If you invent a word, your kid will adopt it. Our word is ‘adorabubble’ which I hear every day now.
When telling a story about Jubba the Hut don’t describe him as fat and ugly, cause sure as hell she’ll point to a lookalike in real life and say ‘That man is fat and ugly’ at the top of her voice.
While it’s fun telling her a scary story about Sharktopus, a half shark half octopus that roams the ocean eating people, it ain’t so much fun when she wakes up crying during the night from a nightmare about same Sharktopus.
Parenting-every day is an adventure into the unknown.
Book Review: The Crescent and the Pen by Hanifa Deen
February 28th, 2012 § 2 Comments
The Crescent and the Pen: The Strange Journey of Taslima Nasreen by Hanifa Deen
Praeger Publishers, 2006
I was seeking the latest book by my Sultana’s Dream editor Hanifa Deen’s when I found The Crescent and the Pen. This is a biography of Taslima Nasreen, a former medical doctor and protest writer who shot to fame in 1993 when her book was banned and a warrant issued for her arrest in her homeland of Bangladesh.
Taslima Nasreen is a woman not of her place and time. Bold and fearless she found her voice writing about the injustice women in Bangladesh faced. The way they are silenced by tradition and religious expectations. Falling foul of community standards and culture, she stumbles into a legal nightmare when participating in an interview that quotes her saying the Quran should be revised. Despite her clarification that she was misquoted and was actually referring to Hadiths, sayings and acts by prophet Mohammed used to understand the Quran, the damage is done. Religious Mullahs with their own agendas use her misstep to bring a case of blasphemy against her.
After tense negotiations and facing the possibility of extensive time in jail Taslima becomes a writer in asylum in Sweden and her new life as the poster child against Muslim fundamentalism for the West begins. Hailed as the next Salman Rushdie by the ‘Dragon Slayers,’ the human rights fighters that rescued her, they find that Taslima the woman falls short of Taslima the myth.
Deen writes the book like a detective novel subtly piecing together the pieces of the puzzle about who Taslima actually is-a writer, human rights activist, unconventional woman, professional victim, or opportunist. As she charts Taslima’s rise to prominence and uncovers the power plays behind her leaving Bangladesh, she also pinpoints the gullibility of the media in being too quick to chase the next story to undertake fact checking, and the eagerness of the West to embrace an opportunity that confirms their own prejudices.
I got caught up in this book and couldn’t put it down. As a writer it was also fascinating to think about some of the observations and questions Deen posed as she tried to peel back Taslima. Can a writer actually survive being in exile when their voice and soul is shaped by place? As a writer should we be governed by the ethos of freedom of speech, or censor ourselves?
The Crescent and the Pen is a complex tale and one that says much about our expectations of writers as well as women.
****
This review is written as part of the Australian Women Writers Review Challenge established to help counteract the gender bias in reviewing and social media newsfeeds that has continued throughout 2011 by actively promoting the reading and reviewing of a wide range of contemporary Australian women’s writing.
E-book Distribution Seminar by Copyright Agency
February 24th, 2012 § 2 Comments
Yesterday I attended a seminar about E-book distribution hosted by the Copyright Agency and there were some amazing insights to be gained. The panelists were:
- Mark Tanner from Google Australia
- Virginia Murdoch from Booki.sh
- Malcolm Neil from Kobo
- Paula Browning from Copyright Licensing Ltd/Digital Publishing New Zealand
- Moderated by Michael Lijic from Copyright Agency
Tip from Michael:
If you want to know anything about digital publishing in Australia a good starting point is a guide created by Copyright Agency you can find here.
Malcolm from Kobo
- Did a great presentation showing sales by book prices. The most people will pay for a digital book is $11.99, whereas $4.99 works best. Amazon has conditioned people to accept $9.99 as acceptable price.
- Kobo runs a marketing campaign whereby a previous book from an author is sold at reduced price for a month before new book to generate new readers for new release. This strategy is effective to build momentum for new release, rather than energising the back list.
- He made the point that backlists should still be modern, readers aren’t interested in something not contemporary and also backlist is more effective for midlist authors rather than bestsellers because fans will usually already have copies of their favourite bestselling author.
Mark from Google
- The google platform indexes books for searching.
- They are involved in various platforms.
- $14.99 is the Australian digital price
- Rare to see a book over $20 that does well.
- Price promotion on backlist does well.
Virginia from Booki.sh
- Booki.sh is a web based ebook platform.
- Sells books to Kindle-a platform not used by many others.
- Can read first chapter, then buy. Book lives on Booki.sh website and is cached if you’re off-line.
- You access the book by using a hyperlink and password, as such the link travels across twitter, facebook, email, SMS, website embeds.
- Providing a new service to publishers where they can distribute up to 500 complimentary copies to reviewers etc
- Topical books sell well that are shortish and priced under $13.00. $10.99 is the biggest sales.
- People are looking for fair pricing.
- Also interested in new ways of promoting and selling books. For example Review of Australian Fiction that does volumes of short stories bundling two authors together.
Paula Browning from Copyright Licensing Ltd
- A new initative to convert books by New Zealand authors and content to digital and offer for sale
- Publishers and authors to engage and use platform to market
- One of the biggest pitfalls has been obtaining rights with lack of clarity in some instances.
Points made during discussion:
- Digital Rights Management is an impediment to the consumer. Kobo lets the publisher decide whether they wish to use it or not. Hope is that DRM will stop being used now as most recognise it’s a bad idea, rather than in 5 years time.
- There are no openly available stats of ebook sales in Australia. The percentage is different for various publishers. Most that can be surmised from anecdotal discussion is it is 10%, however everyone agrees that whatever the figure it is it’s growing and they expect it to double by this time next year.
- To promote your book the best way is email direct marketing backed up by social media presence.
- Converting books to digital formats at the moment is very painfull and is done by experts.
- Advice about giving things away for free-use it to build yourself as a brand, not to try to get people to buy your book.
- The best way to protect your copyright is to make it easily available for a fair price on any device. Most people want to pay for things on-line.
- All spoke about how they use humans to track useage and see whether books are being distributed outside of terms of agreement.
Things that I thought about:
- Need to engage more with digital distribution. It’s outrageous that I didn’t know about some of these platforms and hadn’t made the links available on my website for people to buy my book.
- I need to buy more digital books. I just had a quick look at each of these platforms and digital prices are really cost effective. While I don’t have an e-reading device, I can read things on my laptop in the meantime.
- I need to think about using digital distribution in some way to provide extra value to my readers and promote my work. I have an idea that I’m going to work on for my second book.
- How effective am I in using social media to engage with people? The whole point is to get people to come to your website to buy your book-am I doing that? How do I do it better? I think building my blog up by writing more content is the obvious way, but is something I struggle to dedicate time to.
- Need to tie in social media and digital distribution opportunities by advertising widely the mediums my book can be purchased on. It feels slightly uncomfortable being too forward about promoting sales of my book, however the whole reason I engage in a lot of my on-line activities is for this reason. So I need to find a way to engage in a meaningful way with people on-line who are potential readers, while also advertising my book.
Overall this session was really interesting and relevant. I feel like I’ve been a dinosour stuck in the prehistoric era by not engaging with digital distribution. This is a wake up call.
Review: Melody Burning by Whitley Strieber
February 19th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
What’s it’s about:
Beresford doesn’t remember much about his past or how he came to live in the chutes and crawl spaces of the posh high-rise that shares his name. But when rock star and teen sensation Melody McGrath moves to an apartment on the fiftieth floor, he knows he has to be near her. Although she doesn’t realize it, Melody is threatened by more dangerous forces than her manipulative stage mom and the pressures of life in the spotlight. The owner of the glamorous building has been hiding a fatal secret within its walls, and Beresford puts all his plans at risk. Will Beresford and Melody be able to escape with their lives (and love) intact?
What I have to say:
Melody Burning by Whitley Strieber
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Picked this book up because it was the only non paranormal book in the store and I loved the cover. The premise was intriguing. Would have liked more character development and build up of tension. Feel like it was a bit forced and incomplete.
Time Management
February 15th, 2012 § 2 Comments
Over time I have found that my ambition far exceeds my ability for output. Consequently I constantly feel like a failure as I chase my impossible to meet goals. While I know that every day I am working on something relevant to my writing career-whether it is completing a grant application, writing a short story or my novel, developing fiction and non fiction for competitions-I sometimes get to the week and feel like I haven’t done anything worthwhile because I haven’t achieved my impossible list.
Lately life has become more manageable as I’ve figured out two tricks that have made my life easier:
1. Colour coded calendar-I’m using my electronic calendar, with colour coded labels, to track what I’m working on. Each day I identify what I spent the day on. This includes tags for Domestic (where I list my household chores) a Writing tag, as well as one for paid work and study.
2. To do list-An excel spreadsheet in which I keep track of my tasks, with a completed section so I can review what I’ve done.
Now I feel much more in control. Sometimes there were days where I’d be frustrated at not doing things, but forget that I had to spend half the day cleaning the house or doing my grocery shopping and errands, so I’ve had to identify these in my schedule. Now whenever I feel demoralised I look at my calendar and examine my little boxes of colour charting my week and I feel much better.
Other times I have to be realistic. I just realised the other day I have two weeks until I begin uni and next week I’ll spend a day doing orientation, so my to do list has had to be adjusted. I crossed off a competition I wanted to enter and now my focus is completing three short stories in various states of progress. And once uni begins I’ll have to just focus on progressing with my novel.
Book review: Tea with Arwa by Arwa El Masri (biography)
February 9th, 2012 § 5 Comments
Tea with Arwa: One woman’s story of faith, family and finding a home in Australia by Arwa El Masri
Hachette Australia, 2011
RRP: $35.00
Arwa El Masri’s biography Tea with Arwa is an evocative story of a migrant finding a home, a Muslim woman exploring her faith, a love story, a cookbook and an educational resource to breaking down misunderstandings between Islam and the West.
Arwa was born in Saudi Arabia to Palestinian-born migrant parents who couldn’t claim citizenship in the country of her birth, an effort by the Saudi government to maintain Palestinian cultural identity. When her parents decided their children needed a country of their own they looked to Australia.
The first section of the book about her family’s migration to Australia is poignant. Her father had to seek work overseas leaving his wife who had limited English to effectively raise their five children as a single parent. As a result Arwa’s childhood was very unsettled and she faced great responsibilities and challenges.
As Arwa shares her life, she also shares her faith and clarifies misunderstandings of Islam. For example she discusses Saudi Arabia’s policy of forbidding women from driving thus making them dependent on chauffers, and makes the point that Islam gives women rights, but it is governments and politicians who enact laws contradicting these.
She charts her romance with Hazem El Masri, a rugby league player and it reads like a beautiful regency romance filled with prejudice and misunderstandings, until finally love wins out. As an adult she decides to wear a veil and she shares the difficulty she faces, with assumptions being made that this is forced on her by her husband rather than a choice that reflects her spirituality.
Arwa sees food and eating together as a way of ‘connecting over our differences’ and ‘a personal act of diplomacy.’ While her biography follows the chronology of her life, it also charts food that has made an impression during that time and after each chapter are recipes for the meals featured. It’s a wonderful melding of a biography and cookbook in one.
Tea with Arwa is a beautifully written biography of one woman, yet ultimately also tells the story of Australia itself. I very much enjoyed reading it and feel enriched and more informed by the experience.
****
This review is written as part of the Australian Women Writers Review Challenge established to help counteract the gender bias in reviewing and social media newsfeeds that has continued throughout 2011 by actively promoting the reading and reviewing of a wide range of contemporary Australian women’s writing.
On Writing: Chasing the Trend
February 6th, 2012 § 1 Comment
I find visiting bookstores these days a depressing experience. When I look at the young adult shelves all I see is paranormal books. It’s either vampires, angels or fairies; not to mention the odd troll. While I love paranormal novels, I also think there needs to be a place for books about realistic themes. While the fantasy books give us escapism, realistic fiction speak a universal truth and opens a portal to another world that helps teens make sense of their own world.
As an author I begin feeling inadequate. Ideas begin swirling about the paranormal novel I could churn out to cash in on the trend, but then I get my reality check. Chasing a trend is not how you get anywhere in the publishing industry. By the time I write a book and get it published, the trend I’m chasing could be well and truly over.
Plus I don’t believe that this cynical approach to writing works. I don’t believe that these authors who are writing paranormal books are doing so because they’re trying to cash in. I believe that they are writing the book they have to write and it is the weight of their passion and belief that connects with the reader.
So my muse adjusted I return home to focus on my work in progress. It is the book I’ve wanted to write my whole life and I believe that the passion I inject in my words will connect with readers, and if at some point I have a paranormal book in me, when the muse takes flight, I will follow.
