R. Munro's Blog, page 4

Book Review

Maramatanga, maramatanga: Poems from the past by Joss Morey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Author Joss Morey has within these pages tapped into the lifeblood of a noble people. This poetry sings to the heart, celebrating and mourning the dynamic voices of those long vanished but still alive in memories and the landscape of the remarkable Maori.
From the chilling “Leukaemia” to the joyous “The Message”, the horrifying “What Brings This Evil to This Land” to the simple yet profound “Oneness”, Morey provides a lush glimpse into the heart. Each poem should be savoured like a fine wine. For anyone never having encountered the Maori or New Zealand in general, this collection should be at the forefront of research before visiting.
Beautiful, profound, moving. Thank you Joss Morey.

View all my reviews

Broken

I once wrote a story based on observations I made of some friends of mine. The story evolved, and eventually I had something that not even my friends could identify themselves as, which to my mind was best. The story grew and evolved again, and after a while and quite a bit of gestation, I had in my hands a fully formed novel, suited for young readers.

It’s a tale of a kid who’s a very keen sportsman, but is outgrown by his fellow team mates. He looks to what’s around to help his shortcomings. What he discovers helps him enormously, but he inadvertently finds himself the target of bullies.

I was a target of bullies since I was very small, so bullying has become an important part of my being. Being softly spoken, gentle and kind, humble and non-assertive makes me appear weak and vulnerable in the eyes of some, so I become a target very quickly. Writing this story became for me a very cathartic experience, and I’m glad I wrote it. It became far more than just that though, and everyone who went through it, from beta reader to test subject really appreciated it. I reckoned I had something special on my hands.

Kid-lit is a tough nut to crack publishing-wise. Every other parent who’s read something to their youngster at night seems to think they can do better, so numerous publishers are inundated with all manner of works, to the point where their submissions departments will not accept children’s books at all.

Regardless, I sent the manuscript away. First to an agent, who in typical fashion rejected it without explanation or clarification why. Then I sent directly to a publisher who had an opening for this sort of thing. One morning six weeks later, an email arrived from that publisher with an approval to print. There was even a contract attached to the email. I was expecting a rejection slip or nothing at all, and instead an actual bona-fide contract turns up, accompanied by extremely favourable comments about how well it was written and how commercial it was.

The author’s dream. I was thunderstruck.

Throughout the day, I had my regular weekly medical appointments, which are never fun. I had left the contract to read that night, swimming through the day on a genuine high. None of the dire grind of serious specialists around me seemed to matter as much.

Finally I arrived home and settled down to trawl through the contract to make sure everything was in order. Uncharacteristically, I even printed it out. This was serious. I read the document, and then after my addled brain started to ring alarm bells, I read through it again.

There it was in black and white. I’m an unknown. They don’t want to publish my book without my help. They were insisting on a co-operative effort, and that included funding. They had their hand out – an astonishing sum. Far beyond anything I could have even remotely hoped to put my hand on. My high crashed. The contract was useless. This wasn’t “publishing” my book, this was printing it for me. For the same price I could have paid self-publishing site Createspace to print thousands of copies and then made TV ads to air promoting the title and paid for freight to bookshops all over the world.

I went to bed that night broken. Six weeks. Six precious weeks. Did I mention medical specialists? Yup. I’m not going into details, but I don’t have all the time in the world. Far from it. Six weeks is for me an awfully important amount of time. Submitting to someone else now, and not just six more weeks (one publisher was asking for six months!) but add weeks for the holiday season and all sorts of other things, and I wouldn’t hear from anyone until after my medical problems become centre-stage in my life, probably for months, possibly for the rest of my life, in the new year.

To my mind, the opportunity has passed. The story will go untold, quietly put away, my softly-spoken voice made even softer. My, how the publishing world has changed. I had hoped my work would reach those who would benefit from its lessons, mindfully written so as to resist being preachy or didactic, instead being entertaining, insightful, heart-warming and memorable. A publisher was vital, as kid-lit requires specific distribution and marketing expertise unavailable to self-publishing. Instead, my writing falls silent and still, vague glimpses emerging only as blog posts, observations made on social media and the occasional email. My self-published novel Terror in the Ranks isn’t selling despite efforts, my resources too limited to take measures needed to penetrate where needed to secure sales.

Continued approaches to agents go unanswered, even those advertising for new authors. Direct applications to publishers may still go out, but by the time some publishers might find it in themselves to respond, so much more precious time will have passed, and passed right into time I can’t deal with worrying about publishing books. Some publishers choose not to respond at all, as if such discourtesy is an appropriate gesture in any professional relationship.

The lesson learned is it doesn’t matter how good a writer you are, and it doesn’t matter how good your book is, even when it has already been green-lit for publication. If you’re not a hustler – and a wealthy one at that – more than you are a writer, your own book will go nowhere.

I love my creations. They are my children. I will love them always, even when it seems being good enough is still never good enough.

I’m broken.

Great Wealth

“…and the Great Fog … lifted!”

Morgan Freeman’s voice narrating “Cosmic Voyage”? Actually, perhaps that too, but for me it’s the result of my head responding to the cessation of taking medication for depression.

So I’m back to being depressed? Actually yes and no. During my medicated period, I researched alternative methods of dealing with depression, and one technique I came across time and again was “write”. During deep bouts, nothing could be further from what I wanted to do, and yet even scratching out a creative sentence could have enormous positive effects.

The thing preventing me from writing however was the medication. My imagination was nowhere to be found. I could write factual sentences. I could describe real things around me and in me, but when it came to soaring off on fanciful tangents, hammering out metaphors and similes on my anvil of creativity or even dreaming up a name for a character, the workshop was closed.

A week after weaning off the meds, and I punched out a short story. It was fiction. It was fanciful and fun. It was creative in a way denied me by months of hazy blithering stupefaction designed to make me feel “better”.

Pfff – I felt better writing.

Lesson learned. I’m beta reading for another writer at the moment, a memoir about surviving a brain stem stroke. The author is a remarkable individual, determined to make something of life regardless of the extraordinary and appalling challenges they face. Does it make me feel better given I have reasonable command of my own faculties? The author had their foggy moments, but they came good, a clearly functioning brain locked in a prison of recalcitrant flesh. That’s dreadful and something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I don’t feel better from realising I have it better than someone else – that’s not how I operate. What I have gained from their story is the reassurance it’s not worth giving up, a message that was and is a constant companion of depression.

If there’s something worth fighting for, then fight for it. Everyone out there in the world has their own fight, even those seeming to have it all. Life is about fighting. Some have a fight far greater than others, but everyone’s fight is no less valid than anyone else’s. The wisdom? Don’t judge others until you come to understand their fight, and in the process learn something of your own.

That’s the true value of stories, and the great wealth that is writing.

Block

Dedicated to all those writers out there who have faced writer’s block.

May I—

No.

Can I ju—

No.

Please, I just ne—

No.

Hey, come on, I—

No.

Why not?

No.

Come on, wh—

No.

Please tell me why—

No.

What? Why—

No.

But—

No.

Wh—

No.

…

No.

.

No.

.

No.

.

?

To Hell with you.

Yes.

It’s a Jungle Out There!

Well, this is exciting.

I haven’t been down this track before, so I’m learning as I’m going, but so far so good.

A relative has very generously provided funds for me to buy paid promotions on Twitter, and now ads are going out for my novel Terror in the Ranks.

There are any number of advisory blogs to be found on the internet when it comes to writing. Blogs on what it takes to be a writer, blogs on how to write, blogs on what to write, blogs on how to be a better writer, blogs on how to publish, you name it. Taking it all in is like walking to the shore with a whisky tumbler and trying to drink the ocean. Of course, the difference between knowledge and wisdom is knowledge is what you get from reading, wisdom is understanding what to read.

A lot of advice reckons social media is a waste of time for promoting a book. Instead, promoting the brand – the author – is far more important and valuable, so social media should be about connecting to subjects the book is about. To my mind, that might be effective to a point, but unless the author has a team of people, it’s an easy way to be spread too thin, especially if the author writes across genres and target audiences.

So … I’m experimenting. We shall see what this campaign does. My Twitter followers are a diverse bunch, with some following my writing, others following my art. I retweet the campaign tweets for them, but I have less than three thousand, as opposed to the half-million the campaign is targeting. Wow!

Fingers crossed someone will like what they see and have a read. I already have a sequel in the works…

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

I have to deal with mental health issues. Amongst a panoply of challenging aberrations is depression and anxiety. It’s really no fun and frankly I don’t recommend it to anyone.

I am receiving professional treatment, which is a Good Thing. Part of that treatment involves pharmaceuticals, which I dutifully take every day. My current run requires two tablets which are supposed to relieve me of depression and alleviate my anxiety. Instead, my depression and anxiety are as rampant as ever, and my writing ability has vanished. More specifically my ability to write fiction has vanished, my medication genuinely obstructing any capability to imagine.

I don’t dream. I sleep (fitfully, partly because of another condition that periodically wakes me), the occasional nightmare the only visions of the night, but imaginings and wonder, my escapes from the humdrum despair of the here and now, elude me.

Yesterday I was able to get my health care professional to change my meds, but this isn’t something that just happens straight away. I have to go with a week on half my current dose, and then another week on quarter, and then I’m able to transition. Whatever comes next I welcome – provided my imagination returns. I have three unfinished novels to get on with, four if I include a sequel to one book currently under publisher consideration, and I’d really like to get on with them. I can’t write, I can’t draw or paint or create imaginatively, and it is as frustrating as it comes.

I beta read. I edit. I consider other people’s projects dispassionately, disconnected, like an unfeeling machine, treating the syntax of words intellectually rather than emotionally. Maybe it has made me a better editor, maybe not. I construct what I do write methodically, re-typing everything because another symptom of my meds is a ghastly lack of coordination, even worse than my usual Asperger’s-driven clumsiness, rendering my first pass close to unintelligible.

After my consultation however I feel a glimmer of hope, a promise of improvement, a return to passion and fire, soaring visions and stories aplenty to pour onto page after successive page. Just that prospect is enough to dampen the temperament of my depression for a time.

Hope itself can indeed be a powerful medicine.

Being a Writer in the Early 21st Century

When I was growing up, books were precious. There wasn’t any internet, and the planet was shrinking only slowly. There were vinyl records, cassette tapes, radio and television. We went out the movies, until the late 1970s when video cassettes became available and cinemas starting reeling under the impact of stay-at-home families. Letters were posted and took days to arrive on the other side of the city, weeks before arriving on the other side of the world. The first words of French I ever learned were “par avion”, because that was printed on the little blue sticker you had to attach to the envelope that was going to be sent via “air mail”.

Television news proudly announced things like “via satellite”; overseas telephone calls had to go through an operator and cost a fortune; faxes were new and expensive and slow; libraries had little pieces of cardboard with book information laboriously typed or handwritten kept in drawers you needed to go through to find where your title was on the shelf; bookstores were everywhere and books – especially good books – were affordable, but only just.

Even when I was small, I knew I had to write books. Not big, colourful books with few large-type words and bright illustrations, I had to write books with lots of quality words like the grown-ups read (and I quietly read too). I loved books. The library was a happy place for me. What I didn’t know and couldn’t find out was the process to take something I’d hand-written on sheets of paper and transform it into the beautifully formed lettering all cleverly typeset on those cleanly trimmed pages of a bound volume. It was a mystery that stayed with me until aged about 14, when I saw a documentary that described the process.

I was in awe of authors. They took pages they’d clattered out on their typewriter to big publishing houses and eventually their toil appeared on shelves in bookshops, accompanied by large displays, book signings, printed ads in newspapers and much notoriety. I wasn’t interested in being centre of attention, I just wanted to see words I’d created in bound volumes and enjoyed by people.

I wrote. I wrote a great deal. I wrote all the time, and bided my time while I wrote, knowing that one day my words could end up in bookstores, beautifully typeset in lovely bound volumes that would be a joy to touch, to hold and to read. Despite my efforts, there were impediments. My laboriously hand-written books were thrown away by parents looking to clear space on shelves for more important things. I lost a pile of them to a flooded house one year. I gave one book away to a friend. I re-wrote what I remembered of my lost works, knowing others would never return.

Writing was what I did, but I also had a working life, which was nothing to do with writing. That working life took over, and while some writing continued, not a great deal was accomplished. After that, working life was interrupted by ill health. I stood blinking in the dust wondering what I could do now my abilities were severely limited. I wondered if maybe returning to writing was an answer.

So, I wrote again. Small bits at first, little shorts, notes, memories of old stories long gone. Then out came a novel. Then another. In the space of ten months, I had four novels, with a fifth, six and seventh started. I looked around, and realised the world was a very different place to how it was when I started writing. Bookstores were scarce, printed books more a luxury than a necessity. Cassettes and vinyl were gone, their successors also fading. Skype made international calls as cheap as bandwidth, and it didn’t really matter where in the world people were, they were all connected via the internet. Air mail had subsided because everyone was sending email that took moments, not weeks. Books had evolved, too. Now there were e-books as well as printed books, and they were cheap! Some were even free! I questioned how any author could make a living from writing if books were so cheap. Sure, the cost of manufacture had plummeted, but the margins were so small!

My problem is since asking that question, I haven’t actually found an answer. There are innumerable blogs and articles filled with wisdom and advice, but the majority of these are directed at people who are made to be book sellers, book promoters, author-branding experts and hustlers of every shade. I don’t want to be any of these things, I want to be a writer. I want to write. I don’t want to be a hustler, a shill, a salesman or anything that’s not a writer, because I am hopeless at those things and in spending time and effort doing all of that, I’m not writing. Even publishers these days ask “and what are you going to bring to the effort of selling your book?” to which I feel I want to respond “Isn’t that your job? Just let me write!”

I have to admit I’m feeling a little dispirited about the modern landscape of writing. I keep getting told “content is king”, but as a content creator, I don’t feel that for a minute. All I feel is content I create, whether it’s writing or my art, is barely considered and largely ignored because it’s not being offered for free after being trumpeted from the mountaintop.

I suppose this is the price paid for the “democratisation” of content. Any fool can publish a book these days, and judging by some of what I’ve seen out there, many often do. No longer is there that rubbish-filter of a publishing company editor. Content is no longer king. How it’s sold is king now, which only goes to reward the salesman, not the content creator.

I’ll go on writing. I like my content, and feel it has a place and role out there in the world. I’d rather not give it away, as I think it has value and merit, despite there being a growing number of people who feel that anything other than free is too expensive. There will always be those who want something for nothing. Back in the days of audio cassettes and “via satellite” announcements, many of those people were typically labelled “thieves”. These days, they’re regarded as “entitled”.

Some day I might find an answer. I certainly hope so. I’d dearly love my writing to pay my way in the world, but isn’t that the dream of writers everywhere?

Everyone bleeds. 100+ Sci-Fi/Fantasy Authors reach out to fans on suicide, depression, mental illness for #HoldOnToTheLight (New 95 links!)

Please read and share.

#HoldOnToTheLight

We’re the authors whose books are on your shelf or in your pocket. You’ve seen us in the bookstores, on convention panels, on the bestseller lists. We help to build the genre you love to read, one book at a time. And right now, more than 100 of us are talking candidly about how mental illness, depression, anxiety, PTSD, suicide and other issues have affected us, our characters and our writing.

Why? Because by coming forward with our own stories, we want to encourage our readers and others in fandom and let them know that they are not alone.

We want to help lift the stigma that still shadows mental illness, but lessens a bit when someone in the public eye—actors, celebrities and even authors—own our struggles.

We want to start a long-overdue conversation, and see what happens.

We believe fandom should be supportive, welcoming and inclusive, in the long…

View original post 2,339 more words

“Terror in the Ranks” interview

So Terror in the Ranks is quite confrontational in some places. The language, the story, the characters. Where did all that come from? What was your inspiration?

There had been a spate of attacks in France by Islamic-State jihadists, psychopaths, fruit-loops, you name it, and having had such a magical time in France myself a few years ago, I became quite angered and distressed that such a wonderful country could be so damaged. The carnage was so pointless, the victims totally innocent, and the consequences so predictable. This was added to my existing anger at the deliberate and appalling devastation of ancient treasures throughout the Middle East in the name of resetting history for Islamic State’s new era, just like Pol Pot had done in Cambodia and numerous other hard-line despots, delusional imbeciles and self-appointed messiahs over the centuries. Rather than rattling off yet another political polemic to add to the noise however, I figured transposing some of that nastiness closer to home, and stirring it up a bit with some of the home-grown nastiness that raises its ugly head from time to time.

Terror in the Ranks is set in Australia. Why should somebody in – say – the United States be interested?

Being an Australian story isn’t actually that important. I wrote something I reckon most readers will enjoy regardless of where they’re from. Yes, there’s a certain patter in there that’s going to be unfamiliar to some, but there’s no danger of “Crocodile Dundee” Australianisms to defeat readers. Ultimately, the story, the circumstances, and underlying messages have every chance of resonating in the USA, Canada, the UK as much as anywhere else.

What about the language?

I make no apologies for [the protagonist] Aaron being a potty-mouth. He’s bitter and angry, but mix that with devoted and passionate and you have a powder-keg combination that can propel a story better than a Mister-Clean good-guy hero. Ian Fleming knew that well when he created James Bond, but rather than Aaron being a cold-blooded misogynist, I figured his flaws were better being about manners and distaste for authority figures. He actually has a deep and abiding respect and appreciation for women, so is a bit of an opposite to Bond in that respect. I’ve also kept the overall language in a form that’s not difficult for non-Australians to comprehend, and I found it rather fun mixing present-tense first-person for Aaron’s chapters and past-tense third-person narrative for all the other chapters.

There are some pretty big reveals in Terror in the Ranks. What’s your favourite?

Without spoiling anything, my favourite is Australia’s “dirty little secret”, the object of attention by the bad guys. It’s an absurd nonsense of course, but if a reader can suspend that disbelief, the stakes go through the roof.

Are there any strong female characters in the book?

I’d like to think most of the women in the book are strong in their own ways. The book is very masculine – no argument there – but being such doesn’t require subjugating, objectifying or ignoring females. I’m also a bit averse to depicting women strutting around like men in order to paint them as strong. Female strength differs to men’s, and I’m confident I’ve depicted some of that.

Are there any characters based on people you’ve known in real life?

Actually, my antagonist is a distillation of a handful of people I’ve encountered, and then turned up a notch. I’ve known some pretty bad people in my time, so I’ve had a few different sources of inspiration there, and since a thumping good baddie is the measure of any great yarn, I figured putting as much as I could into him was going to help most. Fielding was based on a woman I met many years ago, as was Carlyle. Aaron is any number of characters I’ve come across over the years reading an assortment of books, mixed with the sort of individual I would expect to capably deal with a crisis such as the one depicted in the book.

Do you think there’s room for a sequel or series of books?

It’s not something I deliberately set out to establish, but I wouldn’t say no to the idea. I guess it depends on the market reaction to Terror in the Ranks first.

What else are you working on?

I have some junior fiction (mercifully minus Aaron and his inappropriate language) in the works, with two being looked at by separate publishers at the moment and a third in the running for a publishing prize (if I win, they publish the book) with a third publisher. I’m working on a fifth novel at the moment, which is an historical fiction, also for younger readers. When I’m not writing I’m creating art. I’m always busy.

Recent review:

Terror In The Ranks is a rollicking good read from the first page to the last. You won’t know what hit you – in a good way.

A fast paced thriller depicting the worst that could happen when the ‘monster within’, those already entrenched bigoted, xenophobic forces seize advantage in the growing climate of fear and paranoia that is constantly being fuelled by a very real threat of terrorist atrocities on Australian soil.

Nationalistic forces seize advantage and begin to take power with a well-coordinated first strike designed to effectively decimate Sydney’s police and military forces and destroy government communication networks. They simultaneously target and slaughter Muslim families in a series of brutal murders that strike fear into the entire Muslim community.

But the plan begins to unravel when hard-bitten cop Superintendent Aaron is recruited at the highest level of police hierarchy still functioning. He gathers his resources to halt the carnage and restore order. Along the way he is reunited with Commander Jennifer Fielding and amidst all the violence and bloodshed an old attraction is rekindled. They join forces and soon find they must battle on two fronts with the discovery the treachery has infiltrated the very heart of government.

The reader is left wondering, could this scenario possibly be based in truth masquerading as fiction? With several ‘would be’ ISIS jihadists behind bars in Australia awaiting trial on terrorism related charges the reader begins to wonder, could this home grown threat to Australian democracy actually happen? Or is it fiction after all?

If you love a scary thriller, read Terror in the Ranks. You may not be able to sleep right away but you will love it. I know I did.

—Joss Morey (author, Boomer Junction)

Terror in the Ranks is available to preview and purchase as a hard-copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Createspace, or as an e-book from Smashwords, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other retailers.

For All You Writers Out There

Check it out:

Literary Services

(link also available on my “About” page which you can find at the top-right corner under the “Menu” button).