On Writing: Gifts from the universe
March 27th, 2012 § 2 Comments
Had an amazing day today. Had the privilege of being on ABCs radio national Books and Arts Program to interview Cate Kennedy, one of my all time favourite writers. Best part is I got to share a pot of tea with her and Paddy O’Reilly afterward and an amazing conversation ensued.
While discussing some of the projects I want to develop I received a gift from the universe through Cate’s genius. I’ve wanted to write a non fiction/memoir type book to share all my weird family stories and things I’ve experienced in my strange childhood, but didn’t know how to approach it without it being a self indulgent thing all about poor me and my crappy childhood.
Cate helped me come up with a title and a structure and I’ve just spent an hour developing some of it. I haven’t been excited about writing for the past few months as I’ve dithered between what I want to do and now I’m on a writing high. Not saying any more than that. You’ll just have to watch this space to see what else comes of it.
There is a podcast of:
My interview with Cate Kennedy
Cate Kennedy and Paddy O’Reilly discussing short stories
And Cate talking about her writing process
I also went to see John Marsden last week at the Caroline Springs Library and he was inspirational. I walked away with three writing tips:
1. Everyone has lots of stories and this is what makes great fiction.
2. He said that he is not very observant and does not write much in the way of physical descriptions, but his strength is in capturing a character’s voice and bringing them to life in this way.
3. And this is the tip that will revolutionise my life-he uses the auto correct function in Word software to convert word abbreviations into full words. What an amazing tip! This will save so much unnecessary typing of character names or speech tags.
All in all it’s been an incredibly inspiring week. I feel like I’ve received two gifts from the universe that will help me with my writing and change my life. I’m feeling all floaty and happy as a world of possibilities stretches out before me.
On writing: State of mind
March 21st, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Had a productive week so far-mostly concentrating on uni assignments. Today I managed to write for an hour and a half. It was a bit of a struggle, but now hopefully I’ve started it will get easier. I’ve been debating about what to work on. I have a novel that I’ve wanted to write for years. I’ve done some rough draft writing and developed the plot-all up about 20,000 words.
Now it’s time to begin the draft, but I just don’t have it in me. I’m feeling a bit unsettled at the moment. Have a lot of things up in the air-lots of possibilities that may or may not happen. Have started uni and lots of information that I have to cram into my brain, plus my last novel took a lot out of me. My whole sense of self worth was wrapped up in completing it and it was a battle every step of the way and this novel I want to work on is not easy. I need to undertake a lot of research and it will be a complex structure.
So I’ve decided on a novella. Last year I re-discovered a draft of something I started years ago and then forgot about. I’ve been re-reading the 20,000 words and I think that there’s an interesting story there. I’ve re-worked chapter 1 as a short story that I’ve submitted to a competition and hoping to cannibalise more of it into short stories. I’m aiming for a 20,000 word novella. If I make the deadline I’ll enter it into this competition, if not I’ll enjoy the journey and look at publishing it as part of an anthology with my short stories.
It’s funny how each year holds surprises. I think I’m going to work on a certain thing, yet when the time comes my mood changes, my needs are elsewhere and the wheel turns to another project. I hope your writing journey is going well and giving you some surprises along the way.
Book review: The Frankston Serial Killer by Vikki Petraitis
March 19th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
The Frankston Serial Killer by Vikki Petraitis
Publisher: Clandestine Press
Vikki is a member of the writing group I joined last year and The Frankston Serial Killer has been on my to read list ever since, but a raving review in a newspaper moved it up the list.
I usually find procedural novels and fiction featuring serial killers dead boring. To make a serial killer work in fiction one must depict their depraved world and they end up coming across as caricatures, yet in real life I find serial killers fascinating. What makes a person crave the taste of blood? Are they born or are they made by society? And why is it that most of the time they are the people who fade into the background, yet there is a darkness inside them that very few see?
The Frankston Serial Killer traces the journey of Paul Denyer’s six week killing spree of three young women in Frankston in 1993. Vikki is a skilled true crime writer with a proven track record in the genre and from page one you know you’re in capable hands.
She jumps into the heads of the police, grieving parents, and charts the way the community changed with the realisation of a monster in its midst, fuelled by sensationalist headlines and a media hungry for a new spin. Vikki has a deft touch in capturing the emotions of the people she writes about, while providing you with enough information so you feel like you are intimately acquainted with them.
The things that hold the most fascination for me are those strange moments in life-how is that through a seemingly random set of circumstances one person escapes a dire fate, while another falls victim? How do some people sense evil or have a premonition of danger and are able to evade, while another person is a victim of being in the wrong place and wrong time?
In a fiction novel the murderer is captured, the family of the victim gets closure and even though still suffering, are able to stoically move forward. Vikki shows that in real life the story does not end when a murderer is captured and imprisoned. Instead the victims are forever frozen in time, while family and friends are forever changed by their loss. I very much enjoyed reading this book and highly recommend it to crime readers of any genre.
****
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
Musings
March 15th, 2012 § 2 Comments
Have started my uni course (Grad Dip in Secondary Education) and I’m really loving it. It’s making me think about my own experiences as a student and the profound influence teachers have had in my life.
I’m doing my first group assignment to develop a lesson plan and I can see how this teaching gig can be really creative, although I’m sure all the teachers out there are chuckling at my naivety as they think on all the non teaching stuff they get bogged in.
Today we had a lecture on young people and the way they think and develop. Made me laugh because I could still relate to some of the descriptions about impulsive decision making and weekly celebrity crushes. I guess that’s why I’m a young adult author.
Supposed to begin a placement at a high school on Tuesdays, but that hasn’t come through. That’s when I’ll really find out about the reality of teaching. I’m so hoping it’s somewhere local so that it makes my life easier. I’ve had a question mark about how I’ll find teaching things not writing related.
Tomorrow I’m attending the Artists in Schools Induction day for my third Writer in Residence at Gisborne Secondary College. Looking forward to it as it’s a great planning day to prepare for the residency and there’s yummy free lunch.
Until next week peeps.
Book review: The Devil’s Staircase by Helen FitzGerald
March 12th, 2012 § 2 Comments
Bronny is a naïve 18 year old Aussie who runs away from life and ends up in London, trying to hide from her problems in extreme partying. She’s made new friends who live on the fringes of society and are squatting in an empty house where she hears noises coming from the walls that no one else hears. Is it a drug induced hallucination or something more sinister?
I came to this book having already read FitzGerald’s previous work and she did not disappoint. She has a knack for being simultaneously creepy and laugh out loud funny.
I could really relate to Bronny and her naivety as she tries to figure out what she wants in life and engaged with all the characters. There was tension and suspense galore right until the last page with FitzGerald employing the device of shifting points of view with Bronny in first person, and other characters in third. I haven’t seen this technique used often before, but it really worked.
I was riveted by The Devil’s Staircase and ended up reading it in one sitting, not a mean feat with a toddler. This is one book that will remain with me for a long time, and I can see myself reading it again.
****
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
Poem: Girl on the Train
March 9th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Girl on the train in the cut off jeans
I watch you in the window reflection
as you lift your foot on the seat and
display your golden thigh
I want to dive into your unblemished skin
skim my hands over the smooth satin surface
squeeze your flesh and feel the firmness
of your sinew and bone
admire the poreless surface of your face
stare into your eyes until we become one
put your skin on like a suit and wear it for eternity
feeding off the admiring gazes that follow
I blink and we exit the tunnel
your reflection disappears replaced by a
face blurred from fat coating the bones
looking like a cheap facsimile copy
of the girl on the train in the cut off jeans
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.
