Z.R. Southcombe's Blog, page 6

Ramble On Book Launch

Thank you again to everyone who played a part in the launch! It was by all accounts a wonderful afternoon (you can read Mayur’s account here) and there were many wholesome conversations about walking, mental health, and the importance of connecting with the outdoors.

The librarians were amazing. They made trees, stole borrowed pot plants, set up and packed down, made tea and coffee, and generally put a whole lot of energy and effort into the day. I look forward to working with them again!

Contributors to the book Mayur Wadhwani, Grace Penlain, and Anya Forest all spoke, reading some of their contribution, and we were treated to an awesome stop-motion video (below) by Theo Foyster.

 

Shout out to the goody bag sponsors: Auckland Transport, New Zealand Walking Magazine, Blants, and PhysioLogic; and to the spot prize sponsors: Louise de Varga, Keitha Smith, J. C. Hart, Erena Waho Thompson; and to the event sponsors: U Go Aloe, The Magic Brush, and Auckland Council. Thanks for making the day fantastic!

Keep doing what’s honest to you

Lately I’ve gotten into the habit of watching the news in the morning, and the other day there was an interview with Bic Runga (you can watch the interview here). She had been nominated for the Silver Scroll, alongside four other women songwriters, and Bic was asked about her twenty year career. How did she stay relevant? How did she keep coming up with new ideas?

I loved how down to earth she was, but what I found inspiring and motivational is how she described her approach to song writing. She says, “I guess you have to keep doing what’s honest to you; that’s all you can do.”

When I first started writing (so for The Caretaker of Imagination and Lucy’s Story) I had three rules that I had to meet before I was ready to publish. One of them was that the story had to be true to me. I think I lost that a little with Beyond the End of the World, which is perhaps why I’m not as proud of that story as I am of my others, but I’m regaining that now.

Now, I’m focusing very much on what’s true to me; what’s honest to me. In Bic’s words, that’s all I can do, but I think that’s also what I should do. Because what’s the point otherwise?f

It has been refreshing this year to start cutting out voices that are telling me what to do, telling me how to be a success, and telling me that there’s a right and a wrong way to do this whole indie thing. And the more I follow my own nose, the more I am rewarded.

Which is all to say that there’s more than one way to make a buck as an indie, and more than one way to carve a niche. Perhaps my niche is something that doesn’t really exist anywhere else – I mean who else publishes colouring books, anthologies, collaborative non-fiction, AND children’s books?? – but I can chisel away at it until it becomes something special.

Why a picture book on leatherback sea turtles? +augmented reality announcement

When I look at my backlist (yes, it’s exciting to be able to refer to my ‘backlist’) I see a diversity of work. There’s children’s fantasy fiction, collaborative children’s non-fiction, anthologies, zines, photography, illustration, and painting.

Since it’s pretty clear I’ve given up on the idea of being consistent, why not chuck a picture book into the mix?

There are several reasons why I write, illustrate, edit, and publish. I love the challenge, and I love trying new things out and seeing where they lead me. It’s rewarding to publish other people’s work, especially people who may not otherwise be published. Most of all I enjoy the process of making, of problem solving: I work towards that moment where the idea in my head aligns with the product in front of me (I have no qualms about calling my finished pieces ‘products’).

I try to choose the medium that the story, or topic, tells me it wants to be. Reading Into the White, by Joanna Grochowicz, inspired me to write narrative non-fiction. I did some research, and had a few potentials to write about. But as I was researching, something else caught my interest – native New Zealand plants. We know so much about our birds, but what about our threatened plants? Or other native animals?

The more I researched, the more I found. I was also keen to do more collage, so I listened to an artist talk by Jeannie Baker as I worked – who better to turn to for inspiration on nature-inspired books? She got me thinking about what I’d really like to share with people. What do I love that I want to celebrate?

I had a turtle for a while, a red eared slider, who we’d rescued from the beach. She had probably been dumped (or escaped) from a previous owner. When I moved out of my parents’ home, I gave her to a friend who bred them. I’d love to have a turtle as a pet again. I simply like them.

Turtles have been used as a subject in children’s books before. My favourties are The Smallest Turtle by Lynley Dodd, I’ll Follow the Moon by Stephanie Lisa Tara, and One Tiny Turtle by Nicola Davies, though there are others. Primarily, they’re about the dangerous race of the turtle hatchlings from the nest to the water.

There are already many creative non-fiction picture books, so I wanted to ensure I was adding something to the landscape. Thus, I ruled out a book about hatchlings getting to the sea. Many creative non-fiction books start at birth and follow the life cycle of the animal they’ve chosen to focus on. So I wasn’t going to do that either.

I visited the DoC website and looked at turtles they featured. It told me the most common sea turtle in New Zealand waters is the Leatherback. I hadn’t heard of it, so I searched it up and found out more. They are fascinating! I had found my topic

It’s okay to not be happy with your work

When I was finishing off the formatting for Ramble On over the last few weeks, it was taking longer than anticipated to get it done. On top of genuine tech issues, I was procrastinating like crazy and I could feel a knot in my chest just at the thought of getting it done. Something was holding me back. I tried talking to my partner about it (he’s pretty good with the pep talks) and he said as long as I was 95% happy with it, then it’s okay for it not to be perfect.

I couldn’t even say that I was 90% happy with it. The final outcome was not how I had envisioned it at the start so I was grappling with this on top of general wonderings of ‘is it good enough?’ He told me not to worry about it so much – the important thing was that I was actually doing it.

At Tauranga Zinefest I was chatting with the artist next to me, who had recently illustrated a children’s picture book. As our conversation continued, I asked her if she was mostly happy with her work. She didn’t say anything but her face said no. ‘90% happy?’ I asked.

Nope! In my opinion, her illustrations were fantastic. They gave a great vibrancy to the story, reflected the tone of the words, and had a distinctive style. Her opinion of her own work told me that maybe it’s okay for me to not be super happy with my work, either.

Maybe the important thing here is taking that original vision and striving towards it, rather than having something that is perfect. Maybe it’s about actually doing something about the vision, rather than just thinking or talking about it.

I may never be 99% happy with my work – but I’ll do my best to get as close as possible, and be proud of my efforts.

And now, I best get back to writing.

Linkies:

The Ramble On launch party details are on Facebook
If you’d like to support me from $1/month, head to Patreon
To see my previous works, go to my Felt shop

Turtles, dollhouses, and plants – what’s next?

With Ramble On in its final stages (celebrate the release at Auckland Central Library, Sun Oct 15) I’ve been busy planning my next projects. Here they are!

The Caretaker Series is, I’ve decided, just for me. These are books where I get to be as deep, dark, weird and fantastical as I like. It’s about getting ideas out of my head and into a story that other people can interact with. I’m up to Book Five of the series at the moment, about halfway through the draft, and have a couple of beta readers lined up to give me feedback.

The Train to Nowhere is an idea I’ve had for a while, and I’ve recently worked out how to best do the illustrations – with a miniature dollhouse! I wrote a blog post about it here if you want more details, but this is going to be a longer term project. It’ll probably be ready for photographing in early 2018.

And now for the new one… I’ve been playing with the idea of making a picture book about turtles for a while now, and returned to this idea a couple of weeks ago. I did a search for turtles in New Zealand, and the DoC website told me that the most common wild marine turtle is the leatherback. I’d never heard of them before, but they’re fascinating! They don’t have a hard shell (hence their name), and there’s still a lot we don’t know about these jellyfish-gobbling, dinosaur-age giants.

The storyboard is 95% complete, and I’ve been inspired by Jeannie Baker’s work to do this one in collage. Looks like I’ll have a few picture books in my future.

The final project is another long-term one. I feel like I didn’t give myself enough time to research for Ramble On, so I’d like to remedy that with my next adult non-fiction, which will be on New Zealand plants.

Yes, plants. Because they’re also fascinating. There’s this tree on this island that’s the last of its kind ever, and a native carnivorous plant that only flowers for like a week a year, and a kiwi botanist whose research of seaweed was important during WWII… like I said. Fascinating! So I’m giving my time to research this fully and will probably look at putting it together in late 2018, or possibly even 2019.

Well, you can’t stay I’m not staying creative. Looking forward to the journey these projects bring, but for I’m off for a walk and then the day job… have a happy day! xx

On bookselling: you get back what you give

I’ve been selling at events for a while now. The first was The Caretaker of Imagination book launch, then craft markets, and finally bigger events like New Zealand’s annual zinefests and the NZ Book Festival. Not being a salesperson at heart, I’ve learnt a lot.

Last year, the NZ Book Festival almost didn’t happen. It was only in it’s third year, though, so we pulled a team together and gave it a good shot.

On the day I made conversation with customers, shared my story about how I got into writing, and repeated my ‘elevator pitch’ for books people were interested in dozens of times throughout the day (with plenty of help from my niece – thanks, Angie!). My setup wasn’t great and I was feeling a bit flustered but I made my stall fee back, as well as a small profit on top of that. Besides sales, I launched the second annual NZ Young Writers Anthology, met some wonderful people, and got to catch up with a bunch of my author friends.

It surprised me then how many people complained about their lack of sales afterwards. An author friend, Kirsten McKenzie, wrote this brilliant post about the do’s and don’t’s of selling. Read it. While I certainly didn’t have the upbringing that Kirsten did, I’ve learnt what she’s learnt: engage with your customers, don’t sit down, smile, have a tablecloth, a table full of books, and don’t play on your cellphone the whole time.

At most events I’ve been to, I’ve done well. However, at Tauranga Zinefest last weekend I broke most of my rules. The problem was that all week, and the previous evening, I’d been working on two new stories. I was still in creative mode, and I just wasn’t in the mood to sell or engage with people. And guess what? It showed. The organisers of the zinefest did an amazing job, but because I didn’t bring my A-game to the event, I didn’t do nearly as well as I usually would.

It reminded me how important it is to bring myself fully to every event I attend. No matter what mood I’m in, I need to be there for the customer and engage with them, and make sure that my stock levels and signage are what they need to be. I’m going to take this lesson forward for the rest of my events – onwards and upwards x

New project: A miniature dollhouse style picture books

The Train to Nowhere is a story idea that has been waiting for attention for about the last five years. I had a dream about a train that goes round and round in circles, with people living on it. This girl gets on accidentally, and ends up in Nowhere. I actually used this train idea at the start of Lucy’s Story: The End of the World, but there’s a ‘fuller’ story that I’ve been wanting to write in a picture book format.

The idea is still fairly true to my original story. Once the girl gets off, she ends up at Nowhere –  a place where lost and forgotten things end up (think Harry Potter‘s “Room of Requirement” in its “Room of Hidden Things” incarnation). She makes friends with the little characters in the house and meets the Maker, who brings them to life. She then has to decide whether she’d rather stay in this fantastical world or return to her ordinary life.

Room of Hidden Things – source: http://harrypotter.wikia.com

There’ve been a couple of things holding me back, one of them being that I didn’t really know how I wanted it to look. I knew what feeling I wanted to create, but which medium would be able to do that?

It was at my writing class the other week that I realised what would work. We were discussing ways that we could illustrate our work if we weren’t super confident about drawing, and looking at collage options. One of my students had some retro wallpaper (her story was set in the 70s) and so I showed her Lauren Child’s Princess and the Pea. I also admire the illustrations of Mouse Mansion (I’d really love to do something like this for a whole series one day! If you’re interested in Mouse Mansion, see their website about how they built it).

Princess & the Pea – source: secretadventuresofwritergirl.blogspot.com

Mouse Mansion – source: themousemansion.com

I realised that miniature dollhouse or diorama would be perfect for The Train to Nowhere, so I went on YouTube and watched everything I could find. I also found out that the North Shore Miniature Society was having a show and sale, so I went to that too. I bought a few small pieces, and when I came home I began building an open dollhouse structure from illustration board.

The first thing I did was decide what each of the rooms were going to be (I later added a cupboard beneath the stairs with a nod to Harry Potter), and then drew up a rough plan. The plan changed quite a bit as I started building, but I’m happy with where it ended up. The next day I bought some filler to patch up gaps, even out walls and strengthen the structure. I re-drew my plan so it looked like the finished piece, and created a colour scheme. I’m now ready to paint and fill the rooms!

I also have another picture book I want to work on, and this weekend I’m heading to Tauranga Zinefest but also using it as a writing retreat to work on my next chapter book. Heaps of stuff in the works, guys, so I hope you are looking forward to them as much as I am! – but first, I must finish Ramble On and get that to my printer. Please pray to the Technology Gods for me.

On over sharing

Sometimes I’m aware that I say a lot more than many people would about the stuff that I’m struggling with, as well as what I’m celebrating. I do this quite consciously and for good reasons.

On an old blog, I wrote a post about only seeing people’s ‘highlight reel’ – whether online or off. It was after a conversation with a couple of writer friends. One commented on how productive and confident I was, and how well I was doing, when they were riddled with self doubt. It was the concept that we only see the highlights of a person’s life – we don’t get to see behind the scenes.

Um, excuse me? I was full of self doubt, and there were a plenty of days where I achieved nowhere near what I wanted to achieve. If it wasn’t for my partner, and my then-new writer friends Amanda Staley and J. C. Hart with their encouragement and words of wisdom, I’d have given up. From then, I decided that I was going to share more behind-the-scenes stuff. I still think this is important – I don’t want to be seen as this person who just does things and achieves them with no problem in the world. That’s not a way to inspire people – it’s just a way to make themselves feel crappy in comparison. Last week after a school visit I got an email from the teacher affirming this:

“It is wonderful for the children to see real people talking about this and it will help them understand that it is not something ‘weird’ about them if they experience any of that – it is ok to ask for help and admit life is not always peachy and easy. Thank you so much for your openness and for providing a good platform to start a discussion.”

So reason no. 1 is just about being a real person, because real people can be real role models.

The other is about mental health. I hid it for most of my life – hid it pretty well, too – and was diagnosed a few years ago. The official diagnosis meant lots of things, one of them being I could talk about it without the perceived need to convince people it was real. Many people are still surprised though. I know I’m seen as a young, pretty, privileged, and capable woman – not the kind of person that people picture when they think of mental health problems. It’s important to me to help break that stereotype and stigma: having depression is not a weakness, and it doesn’t mean I can’t function in life. It just means I need to look after myself while giving to others. I also believe there is a positive side to depression, and anxiety, but we only focus on the negative.

So reason no. 2 is about breaking mental health stigmas, and showing that it is not a sign of weakness.

And what about celebrating achievements? Well, I am actually proud of what I do! I’m also excited when I manage to achieve something I never thought I could do, or touch someone in a way that inspires them to go on and try something new, or feel better about themselves, or just feel a little bit better about themselves. I want the world to be a happy place, and I want to hold my place in that happy world. I’m going to keep celebrating my wins because they excite me and I worked for them! I also want to see more people celebrating their successes. While there’s definitely an up-side to Tall Poppy Syndrome (I do believe we’re all of equal value), one of the drawbacks is that we tend to downplay our achievements. I want to celebrate my win of publishing a book, even though billions of people have done it before me; I want to celebrate my two sales on Etsy even though that’s a bad week for other people. It doesn’t matter how small my win is in comparison to others – it matters that it’s a win for me. And I want to help you celebrate your wins. We’ll be in a much happier world when we can recognise and celebrate our achievements without shame.

So reason no. 3 is about recognising and being proud of my work – and encouraging that in other people.

I feel sometimes like my honest, open sharing is seen in a negative light (attention-seeking or complaining about a privileged life), but I also feel that it helps more people than it annoys, and that is far more important to me. It also just feels like it’s a more real version of me on the internet, and I’m all for being real

P.S. Featured image is me as a kid, because that’s about as real as it gets. Also cuteness.

New books on the way (finally!)

Okay I know I’ve been super slack with getting these new editions done, which is for several reasons. One is that these editions won’t be illustrated (there are still the gorgeous, limited run Illustrator’s Editions available though – see them here), the other is that there’s a price hike which I feel bad about, and the other is just time.

Illustrator’s Edition: Limited Run Hardback

Time has felt scarce lately, though to be honest a lot of it has been spent worrying, procrastinating, and consumed in self-doubt. With a little help from friends, a lot of positive self-talk, and some time reflecting inwards I am now on the upward with this. There will be some changes in my lifestyle so I make sure I am enjoying what I do, though part of it was just adjusting to new challenges.

The other two reasons are just about money. I first published in 2015, and at the point I had only been writing and publishing for two years. That’s not a lot of time to learn how to write, edit, publish, and market! So I’ve been learning on the job, which means I’ve made a bunch of mistakes. One of them was underpricing – I had thought most of my sales would be eBooks so I could price my print books lower but it’s the exact opposite. I also hadn’t thought too much about the bookseller/wholesale discount, and I would like this to be an option while still making a profit.

So. I’m putting my business hat on and making these difficult decisions. The upside is that those of you who have the illustrated editions are extra lucky

Call for sponsors – Ramble On: A celebration of walking in NZ & around the world

I’m in the final stages of drafting Ramble On, and then I have a long list of illustrations to do – but those are heaps of fun so I’m not too worried.

Ramble On illustration work in progress

For those of you who don’t know, Ramble On is a book celebrating walking. For me, walking (especially walking in nature) became the key part of my self-treatment of depression and anxiety. I’m incredibly grateful for the tracks and parks that are available to us in New Zealand, free of charge, and well-maintained.

My aim is to get on board with Mental Health Awareness Week, and launch this book in October (hopefully Saturday 14th) – I think Spring is the perfect time for a book on walking.

While I can’t confirm much at this point, I’m in discussion with some awesome people & organisations to make this a fun event. My aim is to have some guest speakers, interactive stations, and make this a celebration of our health and walking – not just a book launch.

So this is where you come in. I’m looking for sponsors, in the walking / health / nature industries for:

goody bag items, including branded merchandise
interactive stations like photo booths, digital technology, demos & games
spot prizes like shoes, socks, health items, books, art, toys, first aid kits & gift vouchers
guest speakers
drinks and nibbles
and a few select stallholders – highly relevant products, around $15 or less

Or if you’ve got something else you think would fit these themes, I’d love to hear from you! I’m on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram, or you can email me zee@zrsouthcombe.com and we can discuss what we can offer each other. I’ll keep you updated via my blog and social media, and once the date is confirmed you can get updates from there, too.

Thanks in advance xx