Trudi Canavan's Blog, page 21

Authors on Panels: My Two Cents

One of the things I like about Twitter is how, by following people with professions or interests similar to my own, I'll see links to websites that are more likely to interest me. The down side to this what I call the Latest Uproar on Twitter, where someone says or does something and suddenly all the compulsive bloggers have to weigh in on it. (And more often than not it's blown all out of proportion.) It's too easy to get caught up in it, offend somebody by being too opinionated, and waste valuable writing time.

I'm hoping I'm not succumbing to anything like that here, but I suspect I am just a little.

You see, I've seen a couple of blog posts lately about how authors shouldn't talk about their own work on panels at conventions, festivals, etc.. I have to say, while I agree that some authors overdo talking about their books, I disagree with those posts.

These bloggers are assuming that what they want out of panel is what everyone else wants. Without having interrogated every audience member as they go into or out of a panel, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the reasons people go are varied. Some may be there only to hear discussion of the topic, and don't care who discusses it. Some may want to know why they should care about the panelist's opinion, and knowing about an author's work may reveal their expertise in that area. They also may want to know where to get that author's books, which is particularly helpful if those books aren't widely available.

Of course, an overly pitchy pitch may put people off too. However…

How pitchy the pitch is may depend the cultural differences of the place where the panel is held. Australians are chronically embarrassed about self-promotion, and we tend to cringe when people in other countries are more forward about it. But who are we to say what is appropriate or acceptable to an audience in another country? It may seem pushy to us, but *not* doing the pitch may be considered rude to locals – as if you think everyone ought to know who you are and what you write already, and just google it, duh!

Surely a portion of the audience came to the panel to hear an author or authors speak – to hear their perspective on the subject and, if a writing-related panel, how they write what they write. To have them waffle on about other people's books, no matter how interesting they are, is going to be pretty disappointing to those audience members (as well as possibly coming across as an insufferable name-dropper). It's also a little unfair to new authors who, banned from speaking about their own work, don't get to both enthuse about it and add their new voice to the discussion on whatever subject the panel is about.

It makes me wonder… at, say, a accounting convention are accountants forbidden to talk about accounting?

I guess what worries me about these anti-writers-talking-about-their-work-in-public blog posts is that is seems to be one side of a polarised issue. Clearly all promo all the time is bad, too. I'm sticking to somewhere in the middle: trying to find out what the expectations are where I'm speaking, going with the flow, hopefully avoiding offence, and trying to be interesting about both my books and everything else.

Spanish editions

The mailman delivered these recently:

Spanish editions! I love that people all over the world can enjoy my stories.

The Great Reread of 2011 – Reading My Own Books

The main reason I decided to reread all my books set in the Kyralia world was to refresh my memory and lesson the chance of writing inconsistencies into The Traitor Queen. By that I mean details of the world, characters and magical system, as well as plot, that don't agree across the books. Of course, if I find any big inconsistencies in the already published books there isn't much I can do about it, but I might be able to explain them away in The Traitor Queen. Sometimes doing that actually leads to some good ideas, just as the answer to really thorny plot problems are often already there in the story.

Fortunately, and to my great relief, I found no major inconsistencies. There are a few minor inconsistencies, however. Most of them nobody else has ever noticed. (No, I'm not going to point them out!) They annoy me, of course. I suspect every author wants their books to be perfect, but we have to settle with 'as good as we can get it in the time we have'.

Some errors can be fixed when reprints are done of print books. I've yet to see how easily they can be fixed in ebooks. I'll be letting both of my publishers know what I've found and hopefully it'll be easy for them to make changes.

One piece of good writing advice is 'write the book you'd like to read'. Ironically, if I do go back to read them I don't fully enjoy reading them, and there are two reasons for that:

Firstly, stopping to mark errors and make notes constantly breaks the flow of reading. I can't let myself get carried away with the story, or I might stop noticing problems.

Secondly, I get a terrible itch to tweak things. Partly this is just wanting the freedom to play with words – to shape them into even better sentences and paragraphs. Partly it's because I've written many, many words in the ten years since writing the Black Magician Trilogy, and it'd be a bit sad if I hadn't got better at it.

Now that I'm reading through what I've written so far of The Traitor Queen, I'm enjoying the freedom to play, the chance to avoid inconsistencies, and coming up with ways to explain those small ones from previous books. Also, to wind in some of the little details I enjoyed picking up on – like that the servants bring food to the magicians in lacquered boxes.

And surely there's some way I can follow up on, in some small way, one fact I'd completely forgotten about: in The Novice Regin's father was no less than advisor to the Elyne king! It'll have no impact on the main plot, but it's such an interesting fact that I have mention it somewhere…

The Great Reread of 2011 – ebook formats

scribbled-on versions

A few days ago I finished rereading the Black Magician Trilogy and the first two books of the Traitor Spy Trilogy. For newcomers to this blog, the story so far is this: I decided to reread all of the books in the Kyralia world a) to get all the details fresh in my mind before finish writing the third book of the Traitor Spy Trilogy, b) to check for any continuity errors, and c) so I could see what the ebook versions were like.

This post covers what I learned about the ebooks and the apps I read them on. I don't have an ebook reader because I like reading books on my iPhone. I already had the iBooks app, but I also wanted to test other ebook formats so I downloaded the Kobo and Kindle apps.

Buying the books through running the apps on the phone was very easy. All were free. However, while I can transfer the books I bought via iBooks to my desktop computer via iTunes, I haven't worked out yet how to do that with the Kobo and Kindle ones – or if it's possible at all. I'd like to, as a backup. Perhaps I should have bought the books using the desktop computer, then transferred them to the iPhone.

(Though it may be a moot point if this article is correct. But I also recall reading something about how Apple weren't going to allow or approve the Kindle app, or some such thing, yet there it is. Such are the ways of the internet.)

I started with the Black Magician Trilogy in the Kobo app. Investigating the settings, I discovered I could set it to scroll rather than turn pages. I found I preferred this, not the least because the Kobo app's page turning was really slow. It also gets around the problem of the small screen showing so little text that you're constantly distracted by turning pages. (Though I found that the page turning quickly became automatic on the other apps so I didn't notice myself doing it any more.) Unfortunately, the other apps didn't have the scroll option.

Kobo

All of the apps allowed me to change the text size. I found that if paragraphs were formatted to flush left with a space between (like in this blog post) I needed the text to be larger. If they were formatted with indented paragraphs (like in a novel) I could drop the text down a size and still read comfortably. I tried reading in both formats and found I preferred good old fashioned indented paragraphs. Only the Kobo app has the flush left paragraphs option.

Of the three apps, I found that changing settings and navigation was least intuitive on the Kindle, especially if you wanted to go to a different chapter. The iBooks app is the nicest looking, especially how when the settings/menu buttons come up they don't obscure the text.

iBooks

Only the Kindle had an annotation feature, but it was useless. It must be designed for use on the Kindle reader, as I found that once I'd made a note, I couldn't select the teeny tiny little box icon that allowed you to read your note again.

The ability to annotate would have been very useful. I made notes in physical copies of the books, and in Notepad. But I imagine most fiction readers wouldn't need the feature – or want it, as having to stop to make notes broke the flow of the story.

Kindle

One annoyance while reading with the Kobo and iBook apps was that occasionally my swipe or tap of the screen would select a block of text. But I couldn't make it happen if I wanted to, or do anything with the selection, like copy or highlight. Eventually I realised this was a bug with the phone. In the Kindle app it didn't happen (because the same actions activated the annotation feature), for the iBooks app it was a minor annoyance, but in the Kobo app it would freeze up the screen for several seconds.

As for the ebooks themselves, the Black Magician Trilogy had the most and worst formatting errors. By far the most disruptive error was the absence of scene breaks, which made the transition from one character point of view to another confusing and disorienting. The publisher of those editions has let me know I can report errors to them. First I need to do a little investigation to see if the problem exists in other formats, too.

Otherwise, it looks as if most problems occurred where a page break or the hyphenation of a word wasn't translated correctly during ebook conversion. It also seems as though corrections made to reprints of the print books didn't make it into the ebooks. Fortunately there's only a smattering of these.

So… which ebook app would I recommend? Thankfully, all of them. They are all good for the basic purpose of reading. They're all free, too. There are little differences, but I suspect which one you chose will depend more on the range of ebooks available in your territory, and price.

Me? I think I prefer the look and feel of the iBooks app, and the ability to back up to the desktop computer, but the range of books is tiny here in Australia. Next I'd choose Kobo, as I like the scrolling option. Kindle came in last because I found the interface unintuitive and the one feature that might have had me forgive that, the annotation feature, is next to useless.

(Also, I've decided that I will only buy an ebook if I'm going to read it straightaway. I'm cynical about the likeliness of me 'losing' digital books. Also, as with all online shopping, it is much too easy to buy more than you can use. Price doesn't bother me. I'd rather buy one $20 ebook that I will actually read than twenty $1 books I never getting around to reading.)

(Oh, and I decided to leave rereading The Magician's Apprentice to later this year. It's a bigger book, less likely to affect the sequel and I really need and want to get stuck into finishing writing The Traitor Queen.)

The Traitor Queen Blurb

Before I headed off on tour, my publisher asked for a blurb for The Traitor Queen. I didn't have time to add it to my website then. This morning I remembered I'd written it, so I tweaked it a little and popped it onto the page for the book (under the Books menu above). The usual warning applies: if you haven't read the previous books, blurbs do tend to be a bit spoilery.

I also updated the publication date from 'due 2011′ to 'due approximately mid 2012′. Sorry, that's as accurate as I can be. And I still might be wrong.

And I just thought I'd mention… since watching this video over on YouTube I haven't been able to stop hearing Killer Queen playing in my head, with 'Traitor Queen' substituted. "Dynamite with a laser beam/Guaranteed to blow your mind…"

In the Mailbox

These books arrived yesterday:

Well, yes, if you're in Germany you'll know The Rogue has been out for a while now. It takes a while for books to get to me, and on top of that my agent held onto any mail for me until I got back home.

I'm in the middle of my Great Reread of 2011. I finished The High Lord last night, so I'm not quite halfway through. It's taking a little longer than I expected, partly because I've had to stop and mark formatting errors as well as take notes on details that I need to check are consistent in the sequel (or else have given me ideas for The Traitor Queen). I can report that I've had no trouble reading on the Kobo app for the iPhone. It'll be interesting to compare it with the iBook and Kindle apps.

Buying My Own Ebooks

Well, I've been home for over a week now and mostly over the jet lag. (I still wake up at ridiculous hours of the morning, but the ridiculousness of those hours is lessening.) On Monday I got rid of the layer of dust that had settled over everything in the room I write in, while having a good long think about how I should tackle finishing The Traitor Queen.

You see, it's not just a matter of sitting down and continuing writing. After two months away I've probably forgotten small details of what I've done before. I need to read through what I've done to refresh my memory.

But that got me thinking. I haven't read the Black Magician Trilogy through for five years. And before then I hadn't read it five years before that. I could probably do with reading The Ambassador's Mission and The Rogue, too, to make sure the current trilogy is consistent. And heck, if I'm going to do that I should read The Magician's Apprentice as well. And it won't be hard to fit in the novella, The Mad Apprentice, on top.

Suddenly I had six and a half books and one novella to read.

Deadlines, deadlines! an inner voice whispered. Did I have time for this? The time I have left to finish The Traitor Queen is neither too short or too long if I get started now. Can I leave a reread until I've finished writing The Traitor Queen just in case? Well… I really should take my own advice, given many times during The Tour: that it's better to write a good book rather than a fast one. It's also quicker in the long run to avoid making errors than have to go back and fix them.

So that's what I'll be doing for the next week or two: reading everything I've ever published about the world of Kyralia. But as I dusted off the old, post-it filled paperback copies of the Black Magician Trilogy it occurred to me that I could try reading the ebook versions of my books this time.

Now, I could just get my pdf files or I could convert them to ePub. But the book-ready format of the pdfs tends to make the text too small to read on an iPhone, and I've not had much success with getting a readable file out of the ePub converting program that is most highly recommended (not naming names). Why go to all the trouble when I could just get one that's already been formatted? And this could be a good test of my own ebooks – both of the purchasing of them and seeing how they came out as ebooks.

Then I remembered my ebook availability list for Australian buyers. Would I even be able to get the books? I decided to update it:

Amazon – BMT, second book of AofF, TMA, first & second book of TST

Amazon UK – all books available (a bit odd as the UK editions of the BMT and AotF shouldn't be showing up for Australian customers)

iBookstore – Second book of AotF, TMA, first & second book of TST

Kobo – BMT, first two books of AoTF available, TMA, first & second book of TST

Angus&Robertson – BMT and first two books of AotF available, TMA, first & second book of TST

Borders – BMT and first two books of AotF, TMA, first & second book of TST

Dymocks – No books available

ebooks.com – No books available (what you can see are US editions, which is a bit weird as they're an Australian bookseller so ought to be selling the local edition)

Not a lot has changed. The Rogue has been added to most stores, which is no surprise. Angus&Robertson and Borders how have The Magician's Apprentice and The Ambassador's Mission added to their catalogue. The editions published by Orbit are available everywhere, but the missing titles published by HarperCollins are still absent – which is particularly noticeable in the iBookstore.

Which was annoying, briefly, because the only device I have to read these on is my iPhone and I usually read books in iBook. But I knew that there was a Kindle app for the iPhone. A quick investigation revealed that there is also a Kobo one, too. Angus&Robertson and Borders use the Kobo format anyway, so that left me with two format choices if I wanted to buy the Black Magician Trilogy and three if I wanted ebooks of the prequel and sequel.

Next I looked at price, though this mattered least to me. (You may be wondering why I'm buying my own books. Due to the technological complications of ebook territories and formats, it's easier for a publisher to tell their authors to buy their own ebooks and then reimburse them. It's something that they'll find a way around eventually, I'm sure, but right now I'd rather they spent their time and money working on ways to make my books available to everyone else than to me.)

Amazon were – no surprise – the cheapest with prices averaging around A$9.50. Kobo had most of my back list on sale at A$12.29 (down from $16.99) with The Rogue at A$19.99. iBooks had the Orbit backlist for A$12.99 and The Rogue at A$19.99. (The only HarperCollins edition up there is Last of the Wilds, which is down to $10.99.)

Personally, I think having a choice of booksellers to buy books from is a good thing. I also think multiple ebook formats is annoying and silly, but I'd rather that than one bookseller monopolising prices. Also, for this to be a good test, I should buy from a variety of sellers and use a range of ebook apps so I could compare the results. But to keep it from getting too complicated I chose the three main stores: Kobo for the Black Magician Trilogy, iBookstore for The Magician's Apprentice and The Ambassador's Mission, and Amazon for The Rogue.

Buying them using the iPhone was easy enough with all three apps. After I signed up to Kobo they sent me a 20% discount for my first purchase, which was nice. Then I started reading. As I've found with other ebooks or manuscripts I've uploaded as pdfs, I like reading on the iPhone. However, I've already found a few errors, omissions, formatting problems in The Magicians' Guild, and some things I dislike about the apps. But I'll wait until I've read all six books and tried all three apps before I comment. Then I'll summarise my impressions in a new blog post.

A Peek into My Sketchbook

If you've read my bio, you know that I'm an artist as well as a writer, and used to work as a freelance illustrator. I've always found that my writing improves whenever I have art and other creative pursuits in my life.

It isn't easy finding time for art, but a couple of years ago I started trying to do a sketch a week, inspired by artist blogs and the Urban Sketchers. The sketches didn't have to be good, just a way to keep in practise. Taking away the pressure to do a good picture meant I could experiment and play, trying new techniques and mediums.

I took a sketchbook along with me on The Tour. The hardest part about keeping a sketching habit while travelling is that you don't often sit still long enough to draw anything, and when you do sit down you aren't in view of anything to draw except, perhaps, the inside of an eatery. So to begin with all I drew were the fancy cocktails I ordered just to have something interesting to draw.

But good opportunities came along – or I made them happen by choosing the table at an eatery that had a good view. In the first case, I spotted this pier and heartily agreed to fisn'n'chips on the beach so I could sketch it:

And my instincts were right about the balcony in the cafe where I drew this:

And in the old town of Warsaw, I made sure I was facing this statue at dinner, and it turned out she was very famous and significant:

During the few days we had to ourselves, I could go out looking for things to sketch. We loved these old caravans turned into food stalls along the Thames:

But the view from a hotel restaurant was too good to pass up on, too:

Another great place for sketching, is museums. Here I stopped to do a quick one at the British Museum. Paints weren't allowed, so I took notes on the colours and filled them in later.

Magic Mirror 1 at Imaginales was a challenge because of the complex detail, so I did an 'impressionistic' sketch.

These glass bottles in the shapes of birds at the Romano-German Museum in Cologne were utterly charming:

I didn't have a time or energy to sketch during the German part of the tour, but later did a simple one from memory, of the sort of views we often saw from the train:

At the Berlin Zoo I had a go at sketching the polar bears. One of the good things about sketching over photography is you can leave out annoying people who get in the way, and 'zoom in' when your lens isn't powerful enough. Sketching these bears has me itching to go to Melbourne Zoo for some sketching sessions when I get home:

And maybe a museum or two. Though our museums pale in comparison to European ones, with nothing as famous as the Bust of Queen Nefertiti below, I'm sure I'll find something interesting to draw.

My Tour in Germany

We caught the train from Paris to Germany, which was nice and relaxing. Well… until the end of the journey when we discovered Paul's camera and some lenses had been stolen from his bag in the overhead storage shelf. The frustrating thing, other than losing the camera of course, is that I remember seeing a man fussing around with 'his' bag up there, zipping and unzipping, and never thought to check whose bag he was messing with.

Thank goodness I had nudged Paul into downloading his pics the night before so I could do my blog post about Paris! At least we haven't lost the photos he took.

After spending an hour or so reporting it to the police and getting a report so that it can at least be claimed on insurance, we finally got out of the station and stopped in our tracks as we saw this:

One heckofa big cathedral, all black and spiky! The Cologne Cathedral is the biggest in Europe, according to my Lonely Planet ebook.

We spent the next four days being tourists, visiting galleries. The Romano-Germanic Museum had the most amazingly well-preserved and broad range of Roman artifacts.

The Wallraf-Richartz Museum also impressed with it's range of art from medieval times to the nineteenth century, and information in each section was accessible and explained where Cologne fit into the different art eras and movements.

Then on Monday, after getting our laundry done, we met with Berit, my publicity gal in Germany, Regula, who would be moderating the first three evening events and Hans, actor and professional reader. Then, in the early evening, we set off to Bonn. There, in an amazing theatre converted into a Thalia bookstore, we held our first reading and signing event.

I found I could easily keep track, reading my English version of The Rogue while Hans read his parts. There were good questions from both Regula and the audience, and lots of books to sign for lots of lovely fans.

The next day we hopped onto a plane and flew to Hamburg, where the first task of the day was an interview. I wasn't feeling well – a bit of sinusitis – and we only fit in a short walk and a nap before we headed off to Heyman bookstore. A smaller, but chattier audience this time.

We caught a train to Hanover the next day. I was feeling better, but it was raining, so Paul and I went for a walk along the subterranean shopping mall, where I found a knitting yarn store. Back at the hotel I had a few interviews, then we had a lovely dinner at an Italian restaurant with Heinz W. Hebestreit before heading off to Decius bookstore in Laaten. More lovely fans…

The next morning was an early one. We caught the train to Berlin, then settled into the winter garden where I met Urban Hofstetter, Editor in Chief of Penhaligon, my German publisher, and the moderator for the final two events, Margarete.

I spent much of the afternoon there, meeting with two interviewers. Then we gathered together and set off for Babylon, an old art deco theatre where my reading would be held – in a room upstairs, thankfully not on the stage!

(I haven't got a pic from the event, but I'm hoping to get a photo of Babylon soon.)

First I met winners of a competition, signed lots of books and had my photo taken with them. Then we slipped downstairs and waited for everyone to arrive for the event. Margarete had the audience laughing a lot – often in German making me wish I could understand what she was saying.

The final day of the German tour – and of my European Tour – we travelled by train to Leipzig. I'm so impressed by the trains here. Australia could sure do with some high-speed services between capital cities.

I noticed, as we arrived, that there were more than the usual number of goths around (not that I know what the usual number of goths are in Leipzig!). Outside the station there were hundreds of people dressed in fabulous gothic outfits, and Berit remembered that there was a huge event on that weekend: Wave Gotik Treffen.

After a wander about town to orient ourselves, buy lunch and visit chocolate shops, we returned to the hotel, where I had an unintentionally long nap – I was more tired than I realized. Then after a very light snack we headed to Lehmann's bookstore for the fifth and final event.

Lots of people and many books to sign. As a spontaneous farewell, I gave my English copy of The Rogue, with notes and doodles, to the reader who had come the furthest to be at the event.

By the end of the night I was feeling both happy that all the events had gone so well and I'd met so many lovely people, and sad that it was all over.

And so my European Tour came to an end. Thanks to everyone who came to see and hear me, who brought books to be signed (especially those who lugged all nine books along), and who stopped – even for a moment – to chat. Thanks to the other authors I met, all who were such good company, and some who gave me new ideas for competitions and publicity. Thanks to the wonderful publishing and publicity people that, with their organisational skills (and money), made the tour happen, run smoothly and were an absolute pleasure to work with.

I have many happy new memories – and lots of extra enthusiasm for finishing The Traitor Queen, and beginning the Millenium's Rule trilogy, because there's nothing like encountering rooms of people eager to read your stories to keep you inspired!

But Wait… There's More!

The Tour didn't take me from France straight away. We still had one more event to attend…

A mini bus and train ride took us back to Paris, where we settled into a nice little hotel to rest and freshen up ready for one last event in France: a party at the office of Bragelonne, my French publisher, for myself and Peter Brett. I was amazed to find they have an event space, complete with bar. A generous buffet was laid out.

After signing a few books and having a tour of the office, guest started arriving. I mingled with the crowd, meeting some awesome people. When it came time to eat, I sat at the table with the grinning fans and towers of my books:

The Table of Book Towers

After a quick dinner I launched into signing, and had a lot of fun talking and joking with readers.

Yael, Benjamin and Gaelle

I was supposed to work my way down the tables, but abandoned that eventually because a lovely queue of eager readers kept forming.

At the end we took photos. First the fans:

At the end of the night we posed for photos.

Then the Bragelonne staff:

And then after a last drink and chat, we headed back to the hotel. The next day Paul and I explored some local shops and the Fragonard Museum of Perfume.

After that we headed for the final country of The Tour: Gemany. A few days to rest in Cologne, and then a busy schedule of events over five days.