Andrea K. Höst's Blog, page 34

A Fine Point of Etiquette

As my first reader reviews trickle in, I find myself wrestling with the nebulous etiquette of the internet.  One thing I've seen over and over the past couple of years is an increasing resistence to self-promoting authors.  Authors who send friend requests to everyone who so much as mentions their book.  Authors who comment on reader reviews (or, worse, argue with them).  There is a thin divide between networking and pushing.

I quite understand the desire to show up wherever discussion of my books arise, all hyped with eagerness and offering to answer any questions.  Or to just go "thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou" because someone managed to read one of my books.

So far (fortunately for my fragile little ego) my first few reviews have all been overwhelmingly positive (I particularly enjoyed book-blogger Alana's review at her Sunshine and Bones blog, who handed me one of the best compliments I've ever had.  And, gosh (golly gee-whiz other non-expletive exclamations) it is HARD not to jump in and squee at people.

So this is a generalised, non-pushy, hopefully the right side of internetiquette THANK YOU to those who have read and especially those who have said Nice Things about my books.

I am smiling.

A Quarter Million To Go

The next thing on my to-do list is a final edit of "Touchstone".  It's a story I really love - practically a comfort read for me - but it is massively different to everything else I've written.  Character from this world.  Young adult.  Diary format.
The tone is very free-flowing, full of slang and Australian-isms, and I don't want to clean it up to the point I lose the voice which has emerged, but I do need to tune the lazier sentences, and strengthen the overarching theme.  Clocking in at more than 250,000 words, it's a daunting edit to embark upon.  Thankfully the decision to split it means I can work on it in two neat sections.

The story is such a significant departure from my other work it poses something of a marketing challenge.  Do I warn those who like my fantasy novels to look before they leap?  Will the diary format work against me?  In some respects this is the closest I will ever come to a "high concept" novel - tons of hot young men and women in tight black uniforms, the ghost of a love triangle and plenty of angsting from Cass.  But I can't see psychic space ninjas derailing the vampire/steampunk juggernauts.

Tangled

A lovely movie.  I was so/so on whether to go see it, but am glad I did.  I liked most how artistic Rapunzel was, which made her chameleon companion very appropriate, and there were some spectacular visual moments in the movie which reminded me strongly of "Spirited Away".

The humour worked very well, the male lead was not as obnoxious as he sounded (and thankfully through his actions believably left his thieving ways behind him).  The horse was hilarious.  I can live without singing in movies, but the songs weren't too tiresome.

What really caught my attention was Rapunzel's relationship with the witch.  Rapunzel here is not a prisoner, but a beloved and over-protected daughter.  But 'Mother' is a toxic one, keeping up a grand show of a loving relationship, but constantly criticising, sniping and making cruel remarks - then laughing them off as a joke.  She's what I think of as Sugar Evil.  I can't help but wonder whether the witch felt anything for the 'daughter' she'd raised for so many years, and whether her insistence that the world was a cruel place which will destroy dreams had any explanation - did she have her hopes crushed in the past, and fail to find a new dream to replace them?

Demon of the Pharmacy

Reading bunches of Golden Age mysteries means occasionally encountering words and phrases which have mutated or fallen out of fashion.  One of these is "dope fiend", which is a vastly more interesting term than "drug addict", conjuring all manner of pharmacological daemons - hallucinatory mists, possession in a pill, creatures with syringes for teeth.

Chalk up another idea for an urban fantasy I will never write.

A New Year's Launch

[image error] Just hit Go on the e-version of "Stained Glass Monsters" over at Smashwords.  I've hit Go for the print version as well, but that takes longer to process so it will be a week or two before I'm able to go ahead with my next Goodreads promotion.
I particularly like the detail on the SGM cover, and it is both spectacular in thumbnail and well worth the full view - it would be a  pity to miss out on the lovely glimpses of Eferum-Get in the background, or the way Rennyn's ribbons are twined around her fingers.  This time I even managed to make the title legible in quite small thumbnails.

My launches are all quiet ones, since self-publishing doesn't really lend itself to big launch parties.  You press Go, you wait for approval, and then you wait several weeks more while the book's listing trickles out to other sellers.  You don't really want to make too large a fanfare if readers can't even find the book listed.  Medair and Champion still haven't reached The Book Depository, which is my benchmark of "available" (since that's where I buy most of my books).  And, of course, there's only a limited amount of fanfare you can indulge in as a self-pub without making yourself obnoxious.

Still, the quiet approach gives me time to adjust to the learning curve involved in all this.  And, of course, edit the next release (Touchstone!  So BIG!).

Time Travel

I not infrequently displace my characters in time.  Not, as a rule, sending them back, but bringing someone forward, so that they have to deal with a home that has become not-home, recognisable and yet wrong.

Going to Townsville for Christmas took me into vaguely similar territory - it has become not-home, recognisable but strange.  Whole new suburbs have appeared, the mall is being restructured, and the saplings in the middle of the big roundabouts are now large trees - but recognisably Townsville with the cascara flowering, and tamarinds littering the ground.  Familiar stores have different names, but the bones of home are still there.

The Townsville of my childhood was rarely anything but brown-gold - El Nino held sway and the hills were dry.  It was more than disconcerting to see everything so green, and that's not even counting the floods.

The 1000% humidity was also an excellent reminder of why I don't live there any more.

A Place to Write

I'm not someone who can write through a lot of noise and interruptions (which makes Christmas visits to relatives a rather unproductive patch).  The best place I've found to write is on my morning commute by train.  No internet, little in the way of distractions, and a great deal of predictability.  I can concentrate.

Little progress this past week - I'm meant to be doing a final edit of Stained Glass Monsters, but Word is not launching itself, and there are few occasions when I can find the "write moment".

Around the World

Just finished my first book giveaway promotion at Goodreads, which has been a fascinating experience.  Goodreads is a great site, and I had 845 people who thought it might be nice to get a copy of Champion.  The ten who won were scattered all over the world - from New Zealand to Russia - and it gives me a real kick to think someone on the other side of the planet will see Soren through the fight with the 'wretched shrub'.

Sixth Cover - Voice of the Lost

[image error] "Voice of the Lost" is the last of the covers from my first commissions.  The conclusion to the story started in "The Silence of Medair", we've moved here from fire to water.

The mood Julie has achieved here is just wonderful: a wholly eerie scene, with Medair contemplating her past self, and her past self looking disturbingly like she's capable of reaching up and taking a firm grasp of Medair.

I'm still not totally decided on font and font colour.  This is not a title shouting its name to the world, but it's readable even in thumbnail, and I love the picture so much I don't want to draw the eye from it with too loud a font colour.

"Voice" will be the last of this batch of first releases - I'm aiming for about March with it, and then there will be a gap till probably the last quarter of next year, where I will have one or two more.  I already have covers in mind for them.

Covers are fun.  :)

Ngaio Marsh: "Overture to Death"

Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh

The stand-out characters of this book are all very unlikeable people. Neat, ferrety Mrs Ross. Bullying, brash Idris Campanula. And judgmental Miss Prentice. It is a book of lonely women; embarrassing, manipulative, needy. The scene where Alleyn and Mr Copeland (two very handsome men) are sharing a shudder over the passions of a woman too blind and lacking in self-awareness to see how unwanted she is, rings very true, but is not a kind moment.

In the larger story of Alleyn, this novel falls after Troy has finally agreed to marry him, but before their wedding, and his feelings for (the small, talented, attractive, intelligent) Troy - everything Idris Campanula is not - serves as a stark contrast. Not one person mourns Miss Campanula's death, but on this re-read I was struck that she spent the night before her death crying and heart-broken.

It's a difficult book to love, but as a mystery it is clearly plotted and worth reading.

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[Experimenting with cross-posting reviews between here and Goodreads...]