Gillian Polack's Blog, page 106
August 1, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-08-02T11:22:00
Today is the paperwork day I put off earlier. I've crossed precisely 1.6 things of the list at this stage and am not permitted to eat lunch (Ah, woe is me!) until three more are gone. Preferably 3.4, to be honest, but the .4 depends on the result of a phonecall.
I'll report in again when life gets more exciting in a less mundane way. Or when I have a vagrant thought that deserves a report, or when I overdose on caffeine. Whichever happens first.
I'll report in again when life gets more exciting in a less mundane way. Or when I have a vagrant thought that deserves a report, or when I overdose on caffeine. Whichever happens first.
July 31, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-08-01T15:26:00
Every single book that I've read this week has had an annoying first thirty pages. Some of the ones I read last week, too. Right now, I'm gearing myself up for more, because it looks as if it's the editing gap of 2013. Great writing - but overworked introductions; or an initial thirty pages with too much explanation; or a book that starts off in quite a different genre to the way it continues; or no characters worth their salt until the narrative begins properly. There's no single error or single publisher, but it makes quite a pattern for my reading.
Some of this is inherited from writers like Michael Crichton. Timeline has at least two of those faults. And, to be honest, they're not always faults. They're faults in these books, though, and that's a problem for me.
Anyhow, my solution is obviously to read an extra book today and hope that the final book of the day will behave nicely. This will not only appease the annoyed corner of my soul, but it will also make a nice dent in my Aurealis reading.
I have many other things to do today, but the Aurealis reading won't go away until January and it all must be done, and my soul needs appeasement. And besides, a day of books is a rather nice change from three days of low-key migraine. Have eyes, must read.
In between the reading, I've sorted out more books that can go. I realised that two shelves of non-Medieval non-fiction might have more leeway than the more serious parts of my library. I was right! I've run out of boxes, but by getting these books out of the way now, the boxing will be faster and I will move to a reasonable state of being more quickly, too.
In case you're wondering where all my paperwork has gone, it's gone into tomorrow. Piles of it, all carefully sorted. Tomorrow is miles less fun than today, which is why I deserve that extra book this evening.
PS Migraine almost gone, but I still have to re-read everything three times because I make stupid errors. This is why today is a reading and booksorting day and tomorrow is a big solid paperwork day.
Some of this is inherited from writers like Michael Crichton. Timeline has at least two of those faults. And, to be honest, they're not always faults. They're faults in these books, though, and that's a problem for me.
Anyhow, my solution is obviously to read an extra book today and hope that the final book of the day will behave nicely. This will not only appease the annoyed corner of my soul, but it will also make a nice dent in my Aurealis reading.
I have many other things to do today, but the Aurealis reading won't go away until January and it all must be done, and my soul needs appeasement. And besides, a day of books is a rather nice change from three days of low-key migraine. Have eyes, must read.
In between the reading, I've sorted out more books that can go. I realised that two shelves of non-Medieval non-fiction might have more leeway than the more serious parts of my library. I was right! I've run out of boxes, but by getting these books out of the way now, the boxing will be faster and I will move to a reasonable state of being more quickly, too.
In case you're wondering where all my paperwork has gone, it's gone into tomorrow. Piles of it, all carefully sorted. Tomorrow is miles less fun than today, which is why I deserve that extra book this evening.
PS Migraine almost gone, but I still have to re-read everything three times because I make stupid errors. This is why today is a reading and booksorting day and tomorrow is a big solid paperwork day.
gillpolack @ 2013-08-01T12:17:00
1429 books are now in boxes and I have run out of boxes. I've also discovered I can't get the boxes into the storeroom without help, which is no surprise. I borrowed a trolleything from Naomi and it would be wonderful, if only I could use it. I have almost got enough strength back, but I don't have the capacity to use the strength when I have to twist or turn. I think the moral is never to get a serious illness, for even when one is nearly recovered, some quite ordinary actions are troublesome. I shall work on my capacity to work with heavy objects (gently) and, in the meantime, if any Canberra friends are good with boxes of books and little trolleythings, I can pay in chocolate and coffee.
Speaking of coffee, I made and forgot it. :small break while coffee was obtained: Coffee is essential for regaining words.
The funny thing is that I write better fiction when I'm working through the mildest of migraines, for the extra time it takes to find even the simplest words helps clarify ideas. My prose is almost lucid at these stages. My mind's lucidity is so very different to the way we shape English that the migraine can serve as a bridge.
Once, many years ago, someone asked a group of us to write stream of consciousness as a way of improving our prose. This has been demanded of me many times, but only that once have I actually given in and written the words the way my unmigrained brain considers them. I wish I'd kept that exercise. I was explaining to Sean Wright the other day that I think in layers, and this exercise would have been a perfect demonstration of how those layers operate.
In those fifteen minutes I had maybe a half dozen big thoughts that I developed and a whole bunch of small ones that were related to one or more of the big ones and all these were peppered with magpie comments on everything around me and with apologies. Until then, I was positive I went off at tangents all the time, but I didn't in that stream of consciousness: I was juggling many balls, but I didn't drop any of them. By the end of the fifteen minutes I'd tied up all the strands and finished it off and it was neat and tidy.
We read out our writing aloud and mine sounded strange. Articulate, but strange. Complete, but odd.
As I get older, my brain normalises. I can't do as many things with it at once. That's the bad side. The good side is that I don't have to interpret myself for everyone else all the time (which is exhausting). The odd thing is that some of my family still tells me to be quiet when I venture more than one idea at a time or venture too much enthusiasm, for this was their way of dealing with my strange brain and wild need to share*. I may be changing, but not all the people around me realise this.
*This explains my need to teach. It also explains how I can work with a dozen special needs students at once. It doesn't explain how they can work with me. Although I admit I'm not convinced that special needs always means what people thinks it means. In my case it means a bunch of people who are devoted to learning and understand the complexities of life. Which really means that they've already done the work to create a solid learning environment and I could have double the number in the class and it would still be amazing. Which means that this group is no evidence at all of my capacity to teach the unusual, a dozen at a time.
Speaking of coffee, I made and forgot it. :small break while coffee was obtained: Coffee is essential for regaining words.
The funny thing is that I write better fiction when I'm working through the mildest of migraines, for the extra time it takes to find even the simplest words helps clarify ideas. My prose is almost lucid at these stages. My mind's lucidity is so very different to the way we shape English that the migraine can serve as a bridge.
Once, many years ago, someone asked a group of us to write stream of consciousness as a way of improving our prose. This has been demanded of me many times, but only that once have I actually given in and written the words the way my unmigrained brain considers them. I wish I'd kept that exercise. I was explaining to Sean Wright the other day that I think in layers, and this exercise would have been a perfect demonstration of how those layers operate.
In those fifteen minutes I had maybe a half dozen big thoughts that I developed and a whole bunch of small ones that were related to one or more of the big ones and all these were peppered with magpie comments on everything around me and with apologies. Until then, I was positive I went off at tangents all the time, but I didn't in that stream of consciousness: I was juggling many balls, but I didn't drop any of them. By the end of the fifteen minutes I'd tied up all the strands and finished it off and it was neat and tidy.
We read out our writing aloud and mine sounded strange. Articulate, but strange. Complete, but odd.
As I get older, my brain normalises. I can't do as many things with it at once. That's the bad side. The good side is that I don't have to interpret myself for everyone else all the time (which is exhausting). The odd thing is that some of my family still tells me to be quiet when I venture more than one idea at a time or venture too much enthusiasm, for this was their way of dealing with my strange brain and wild need to share*. I may be changing, but not all the people around me realise this.
*This explains my need to teach. It also explains how I can work with a dozen special needs students at once. It doesn't explain how they can work with me. Although I admit I'm not convinced that special needs always means what people thinks it means. In my case it means a bunch of people who are devoted to learning and understand the complexities of life. Which really means that they've already done the work to create a solid learning environment and I could have double the number in the class and it would still be amazing. Which means that this group is no evidence at all of my capacity to teach the unusual, a dozen at a time.
gillpolack @ 2013-07-31T18:49:00
Today has been undertaken through a soft migraine.
I lost words for most of my class this morning, so I had my students find them for me. They created word collages then they wrote poems about the word collages and we were out of time just when we'd finished. We were mostly quite snarky, in a good-tempered way, so it wasn't just me.
I managed my messages and half my essential phonecalls and since then I've done...not a lot. I'll make up for it this evening, but will still have a few unfinished bits and bobs to tackle tomorrow. We're getting a slight change of season (not quite Spring, but definitely no longer the dregs of winter) and this has caused the interesting side effects.
I shall read the book I promised today, for it needs doing and is fun and why put off the fun work just because one is a little grumpy? I'm beginning to suspect that enjoying reading is a happy little cycle and that the reason I read so much is because I love it, and that I get grumpy when I can't read and I can't write (not just because eyes dance across the landscape or my brain refuses to find words of its own). I've been reading my own past notes all week and novels are a lot more satisfying, so that's my tonight's fare. About an hour's worth of it, at least, for it's a quick book.
If there's a Readers' Anon group to cure addiction, I don't want to join it. What I really want is to be able to re-read all my books, rather than packing them away. They are such wonderful books! As I put them in boxes I smile and grimace and I chat to them, for they're talking to me.
I'm saying farewell to more than four full boxes of books now. I hate this, but it must be done. I nod sadly and put the latest on my new pile of books to go (for the first three and a half boxes have gone to better places) and some of them get a last quick almost-read.
If you took a microscope to my soul, I think you would find it lined with paper on which is written the fascinating stories others tell.
I lost words for most of my class this morning, so I had my students find them for me. They created word collages then they wrote poems about the word collages and we were out of time just when we'd finished. We were mostly quite snarky, in a good-tempered way, so it wasn't just me.
I managed my messages and half my essential phonecalls and since then I've done...not a lot. I'll make up for it this evening, but will still have a few unfinished bits and bobs to tackle tomorrow. We're getting a slight change of season (not quite Spring, but definitely no longer the dregs of winter) and this has caused the interesting side effects.
I shall read the book I promised today, for it needs doing and is fun and why put off the fun work just because one is a little grumpy? I'm beginning to suspect that enjoying reading is a happy little cycle and that the reason I read so much is because I love it, and that I get grumpy when I can't read and I can't write (not just because eyes dance across the landscape or my brain refuses to find words of its own). I've been reading my own past notes all week and novels are a lot more satisfying, so that's my tonight's fare. About an hour's worth of it, at least, for it's a quick book.
If there's a Readers' Anon group to cure addiction, I don't want to join it. What I really want is to be able to re-read all my books, rather than packing them away. They are such wonderful books! As I put them in boxes I smile and grimace and I chat to them, for they're talking to me.
I'm saying farewell to more than four full boxes of books now. I hate this, but it must be done. I nod sadly and put the latest on my new pile of books to go (for the first three and a half boxes have gone to better places) and some of them get a last quick almost-read.
If you took a microscope to my soul, I think you would find it lined with paper on which is written the fascinating stories others tell.
July 29, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-07-30T12:27:00
If I keep on getting rid of books at the current rate, I will lose 10% of my library. Alas, however, I think I've got rid of all the easy targets. Although today I did find two by Agatha Christie. I don't need them at all. That's four books gone today... and three boxes packed. Not ten percent by any stretch of the imagination.
I've packed 35 boxes (a lot of which are still to go into my storeroom) and spaces are beginning to show on the shelves. This means that, in about ten boxes time, my flat will have floor space and nothing falling on heads and all unpacked books will be locatable. In twenty boxes time, I will have enough shelf space to deal with incoming. In thirty boxes time I will be laughing. My aim for the next few weeks, then, is to obtain thirty more boxes.
My most recent boxes were from Val and were nappy and related ones. They're the right size and surprisingly robust. I was pleasantly surprised. This means I'm now open to nappy boxes and boxes from bulk purchases of baby wipes as well as boxes that once held 12 bottles of wine. The boxes from Peter's of Kensington are a bit big, though I could use them for other things (I just need to determine what I mean by 'other things' and if it would help my space problem if I boxed them, or if I really should get rid of possessions).
On an unrelated note, my yesterday was turned upside down by the next inspection of the flat. The cracks have now been inspected three times, and a tender document is being prepared. The outside of the building will be fixed and stabilised and made firm to last into the far, far future. Then they'll be back to fix the internal problems.
The engineer keeps telling me to stop what I'm doing and go for big income stuff (partly because I have a good brain and partly because he can't understand why I don't care about massive sums of money, which is partly related to my yesterday's rant). Yesterday he pointed out that if I were massively rich I could choose to live miserly, if I wanted. I don't want. What I want is to do things I love, which obviously includes teaching and research and writing and talking about interesting topics and changing the world and... so many things are my priorities, but becoming rich has never been one of them.
My latest way of annoying people who tell me that all Jews are rich (but many, being miserly, hide it) is to describe the state of Jewish poverty in the thirteenth century and then describe what happened in 1290. This upsets people a great deal, and I should stop. My family's never been money-minded though. We're book people. As I'm discovering right now.
What I really want to do is put all my work on hold and re-read every single book before I box it, because I won't have much access to any of the boxed books for a while. Also, I'm being a bit wicked in my boxing. Harlan Ellison is sandwiched between two volumes of George Eliot, for instance.
Now that more books are in boxes, I must return to the Middle Ages.
I've packed 35 boxes (a lot of which are still to go into my storeroom) and spaces are beginning to show on the shelves. This means that, in about ten boxes time, my flat will have floor space and nothing falling on heads and all unpacked books will be locatable. In twenty boxes time, I will have enough shelf space to deal with incoming. In thirty boxes time I will be laughing. My aim for the next few weeks, then, is to obtain thirty more boxes.
My most recent boxes were from Val and were nappy and related ones. They're the right size and surprisingly robust. I was pleasantly surprised. This means I'm now open to nappy boxes and boxes from bulk purchases of baby wipes as well as boxes that once held 12 bottles of wine. The boxes from Peter's of Kensington are a bit big, though I could use them for other things (I just need to determine what I mean by 'other things' and if it would help my space problem if I boxed them, or if I really should get rid of possessions).
On an unrelated note, my yesterday was turned upside down by the next inspection of the flat. The cracks have now been inspected three times, and a tender document is being prepared. The outside of the building will be fixed and stabilised and made firm to last into the far, far future. Then they'll be back to fix the internal problems.
The engineer keeps telling me to stop what I'm doing and go for big income stuff (partly because I have a good brain and partly because he can't understand why I don't care about massive sums of money, which is partly related to my yesterday's rant). Yesterday he pointed out that if I were massively rich I could choose to live miserly, if I wanted. I don't want. What I want is to do things I love, which obviously includes teaching and research and writing and talking about interesting topics and changing the world and... so many things are my priorities, but becoming rich has never been one of them.
My latest way of annoying people who tell me that all Jews are rich (but many, being miserly, hide it) is to describe the state of Jewish poverty in the thirteenth century and then describe what happened in 1290. This upsets people a great deal, and I should stop. My family's never been money-minded though. We're book people. As I'm discovering right now.
What I really want to do is put all my work on hold and re-read every single book before I box it, because I won't have much access to any of the boxed books for a while. Also, I'm being a bit wicked in my boxing. Harlan Ellison is sandwiched between two volumes of George Eliot, for instance.
Now that more books are in boxes, I must return to the Middle Ages.
July 28, 2013
On being other (again)
I've stopped my morning's work in order to think. Several times this month, people have described me with phrases like "Jewish descent" or "Jewish ancestry" "you" (the 'you' being a plural and referring to my extraordinary close affinity with people most of whom I'll never, ever meet and whose common ancestor, if there is one, might have separated from mine 2000 years ago, but definitely no closer than 300 years ago*). One of these people was a student. I'm trying to articulate how very uncomfortable it makes me. It's flavoured my July with a tinge of bitterness, the way my April and May were coloured by the eyesight problems.
My ancestors were Jewish as far back as I can find out, I don't dispute that. My culture, however, is Australian. Genetically, my inheritance is... and here's the rub - there may well be some traits in my genes that are influenced by my family belonging to a particular group that has hung out together for centuries.
Is that the whole picture, though? Are we certain that I'm genetically Jewish in all directions, going all that far back? And why aren't people who have just one known ancestor who was a practising Jew called "of Jewish ancestry"? I have heard people who have converted to Judaism called "Of Jewish descent." The phrases are not meant literally for the most part, and there lies the problem. Or a part of the problem.
For me, I'm Jewish. I don't mind being called Jewish, for my religion is Judaism. But to define someone by othering them (which is what these phrases do: "You are not people like us") is to keep alive some very nasty memories. It's also an affirmation of the current wave of antisemitism, however innocently the description is meant. I'll get to this latter, shortly.
Ask someone Jewish how they describe themselves, please. Stick to that, if you can. It makes a difference.
I describe myself as Australian. My descent (when I am asked to describe it ) is 'mixed European.' For me, Judaism is my religion. I have far more in common with other Australians of various European backgrounds than I have with Jews with quite different ancestry and nationality to my own. I can break this down for anyone puzzled by it or who needs clarification. I can break it down linguistically, in terms of food traditions, in terms of nationality, in lots of ways.
I may technically belong to a group of people who share a religion that goes back a way, but then, so do my Catholic friends, who are never told that they are of Catholic descent. I have Buddhist friends who are not of Buddhist ancestry. And yet these people were taught their religion in the same way I was, by their parents.
The boundary between religious culture and other culture is a blurry one. It's a particularly blurry one for the vast complexity of Jewish cultures. This makes the phrases arguably accurate in describing some people (eg me), but that still doesn't make them good phrases to use without checking with the person you're describing.
What's not blurry is the amount of antisemitism around. It doesn't need encouraging by the acceptance of an othering culture for Jews. I am Australian. I have European ancestry. My Judaism is part of my life, and was of my ancestors, but every time someone defines it in a way that others me, that makes it more than it should be, then those reading or listening who already other Jews are encouraged to believe that they're right.
If you discover that an old friend is Jewish and has never told you, using phrases like this may be one of the reasons. "You people" is a worrying phrase when, just one generation ago, over six million people described like that were brutally murdered. Every time I meet new people I get someone coming up to me and admitting they're Jewish or that their parents or grandparents had been but they didn't admit it outside the family or had entirely lost the religion because family members had been murdered for it. Othering is not without side-effects for those who are othered.
I admit publicly to being Jewish largely because it's inevitable, given my family, but also for these people, who can't. And because I hate having bullies win. I've paid for this public admission, however, with interesting life experiences and with PTSD. Little phrases can have big consequences.
If someone Jewish tells you they like the universal 'you' or 'you people' for Jews, and if they like being known by that aspect of their ancestors' backgrounds, then by all means use these phrases about them. Me, though, I hate those phrases intensely, for I grew up surrounded by Holocaust survivors and I have felt the effects of that othering and I do not want it in my little world.
*When I do my "Are we rellos?" check, the first thing I find out is where people are from. That saves a lot of time in determining who I really, really am not related to. It turns out that I'm not related to an awful lot of people. It also turns out that I have actual relatives who are not Jewish. Yep. I know. Very strange.
My ancestors were Jewish as far back as I can find out, I don't dispute that. My culture, however, is Australian. Genetically, my inheritance is... and here's the rub - there may well be some traits in my genes that are influenced by my family belonging to a particular group that has hung out together for centuries.
Is that the whole picture, though? Are we certain that I'm genetically Jewish in all directions, going all that far back? And why aren't people who have just one known ancestor who was a practising Jew called "of Jewish ancestry"? I have heard people who have converted to Judaism called "Of Jewish descent." The phrases are not meant literally for the most part, and there lies the problem. Or a part of the problem.
For me, I'm Jewish. I don't mind being called Jewish, for my religion is Judaism. But to define someone by othering them (which is what these phrases do: "You are not people like us") is to keep alive some very nasty memories. It's also an affirmation of the current wave of antisemitism, however innocently the description is meant. I'll get to this latter, shortly.
Ask someone Jewish how they describe themselves, please. Stick to that, if you can. It makes a difference.
I describe myself as Australian. My descent (when I am asked to describe it ) is 'mixed European.' For me, Judaism is my religion. I have far more in common with other Australians of various European backgrounds than I have with Jews with quite different ancestry and nationality to my own. I can break this down for anyone puzzled by it or who needs clarification. I can break it down linguistically, in terms of food traditions, in terms of nationality, in lots of ways.
I may technically belong to a group of people who share a religion that goes back a way, but then, so do my Catholic friends, who are never told that they are of Catholic descent. I have Buddhist friends who are not of Buddhist ancestry. And yet these people were taught their religion in the same way I was, by their parents.
The boundary between religious culture and other culture is a blurry one. It's a particularly blurry one for the vast complexity of Jewish cultures. This makes the phrases arguably accurate in describing some people (eg me), but that still doesn't make them good phrases to use without checking with the person you're describing.
What's not blurry is the amount of antisemitism around. It doesn't need encouraging by the acceptance of an othering culture for Jews. I am Australian. I have European ancestry. My Judaism is part of my life, and was of my ancestors, but every time someone defines it in a way that others me, that makes it more than it should be, then those reading or listening who already other Jews are encouraged to believe that they're right.
If you discover that an old friend is Jewish and has never told you, using phrases like this may be one of the reasons. "You people" is a worrying phrase when, just one generation ago, over six million people described like that were brutally murdered. Every time I meet new people I get someone coming up to me and admitting they're Jewish or that their parents or grandparents had been but they didn't admit it outside the family or had entirely lost the religion because family members had been murdered for it. Othering is not without side-effects for those who are othered.
I admit publicly to being Jewish largely because it's inevitable, given my family, but also for these people, who can't. And because I hate having bullies win. I've paid for this public admission, however, with interesting life experiences and with PTSD. Little phrases can have big consequences.
If someone Jewish tells you they like the universal 'you' or 'you people' for Jews, and if they like being known by that aspect of their ancestors' backgrounds, then by all means use these phrases about them. Me, though, I hate those phrases intensely, for I grew up surrounded by Holocaust survivors and I have felt the effects of that othering and I do not want it in my little world.
*When I do my "Are we rellos?" check, the first thing I find out is where people are from. That saves a lot of time in determining who I really, really am not related to. It turns out that I'm not related to an awful lot of people. It also turns out that I have actual relatives who are not Jewish. Yep. I know. Very strange.
July 26, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-07-26T22:11:00
I've had a most delightful evening. Many of my friends from the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild and I met at the Wig and Pen and drank and chatted and a few of us went on to eat Shanghai-style dumplings and I've only just got home. Fine friends and fine ale - what more can one ask for? I am now properly celebrated and can't escape my qualifications.
I'm also happy and relaxed and wondering if I can fit in a couple of hours of work before bed. This latter would be because I'm incorrigible as well as being happy and relaxed.
I'm also happy and relaxed and wondering if I can fit in a couple of hours of work before bed. This latter would be because I'm incorrigible as well as being happy and relaxed.
July 25, 2013
gillpolack @ 2013-07-26T12:02:00
I have spoken to AAMI and they have spoken to me.
They can't shake themselves of the slight suspicion that it might be a bit my fault (which it isn't, for, as I keep explaining, I told everyone about the bracelet - I didn't just send it off!) but are prepared to admit that the whole thing was a chapter of accidents. I've asked that the young man at the other end of my temper be given my apology and also that they have a note that in cases like these (where the scripts don't allow of solution that will work for the client and everything goes round in circles until it sounds as if the client is being forced into something (which wasn't actually their aim) then they should let things be kicked upstairs. I suspect they already had this, and the guy I spoke to just was unhappy about doing it, for the person who spoke to me today said that they really, really try to resolve things on each call ie he was under pressure to resolve it and had somehow missed seeing that he couldn't offer the resolution for he didn't have the information. He should have rung off to get the information, or sent me upstairs. AAMI has admitted that he was less than perfect in his handling of it and I have apologised for losing my temper. We're all on speaking terms.
Anyhow, AAMI has talked to the jeweller and they're agreed on a process. This is what I was asking to hear about last time. I'm happy with the process. They're happy that I'm happy. They've asked if I mind that they push to get it done quickly. I'm *very* happy with this. I told AAMI about my conversation with the jeweller and that I was fine with what they had suggested.
And so it looks as if everything will one day be finished. If I'm lucky, it'll be before we hit the 18 month anniversary of the burglary. I'm hoping my great-niece gets her bracelet and necklace before she can walk.
So for me, it's wait and see, but at least we're all talking about the same thing now.
They can't shake themselves of the slight suspicion that it might be a bit my fault (which it isn't, for, as I keep explaining, I told everyone about the bracelet - I didn't just send it off!) but are prepared to admit that the whole thing was a chapter of accidents. I've asked that the young man at the other end of my temper be given my apology and also that they have a note that in cases like these (where the scripts don't allow of solution that will work for the client and everything goes round in circles until it sounds as if the client is being forced into something (which wasn't actually their aim) then they should let things be kicked upstairs. I suspect they already had this, and the guy I spoke to just was unhappy about doing it, for the person who spoke to me today said that they really, really try to resolve things on each call ie he was under pressure to resolve it and had somehow missed seeing that he couldn't offer the resolution for he didn't have the information. He should have rung off to get the information, or sent me upstairs. AAMI has admitted that he was less than perfect in his handling of it and I have apologised for losing my temper. We're all on speaking terms.
Anyhow, AAMI has talked to the jeweller and they're agreed on a process. This is what I was asking to hear about last time. I'm happy with the process. They're happy that I'm happy. They've asked if I mind that they push to get it done quickly. I'm *very* happy with this. I told AAMI about my conversation with the jeweller and that I was fine with what they had suggested.
And so it looks as if everything will one day be finished. If I'm lucky, it'll be before we hit the 18 month anniversary of the burglary. I'm hoping my great-niece gets her bracelet and necklace before she can walk.
So for me, it's wait and see, but at least we're all talking about the same thing now.
Guest post - Phill Berrie
Hello everyone,
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Phillip Berrie and I am a writer and editor living in Canberra, Australia.
Gillian and I have known each other for quite a while.
Gillian has invited me onto her blog to talk about my short novel, 'The Changeling Detective' which is now available through the US small press Hotspur Publishing. I think, and hope, she feels a little responsible for this, because the Changeling Detective first saw print as a short story in a themed CSFG anthology called 'Masques', that she co-edited.
As there are likely to be a lot of authors reading Gillian's blog, I am not going to bore you with a spiel about the book. If you are interested, you can find out all about it on the Hotspur Publishing website here
No, instead, I am going to bore you all with details of the book's genesis.
-- Sounds of crickets --
For those nice souls still reading, the original idea for the protagonist of this book (i.e. the changeling detective, a reference I will continue to use because his real name is just as changeable as himself) came from a character I designed and played in a superhero role-playing campaign. That character's name was the Magician and he had a couple of super powers that he used for fighting crime and, in his secret identity, as a stage magician.
The ability that intrigued me the most was his ability to change his appearance and disguise himself as other people. For those familiar with Marvel comics or the X-Men movies, he was a sort of male equivalent of the Mystique character, with added extras.
The character's face-changing ability should have been one of his most useful, but it was under utilised as it wasn't conducive to group play. However—in perhaps what was a foreshadowing of the future—when that character finally left the campaign, he did it by simply changing his features, assuming a new identity and disappearing into the mass of humanity, never to be heard from again in that world.
The fictionalised (and de-powered) version of the character was first seen in a short story called 'The Triple A Detective Agency, RIP' which I put before a critiquing circle called 'Critmonsters' that I was a moderator of back in 2008. Critmonsters was a Yahoo-based critiquing group of writers who hung out on the original HarperCollins Australia 'Purple Zone' at the time. Critmonsters is now defunct, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the members of that group aren't regular readers of Gillian's blog. So—Hi guys!
As mentioned previously, the story was written to submit to the CSFG's 'Masques' anthology. When I heard what the theme was to be for this anthology I saw it as a natural fit for this face-changing character that was still kicking around in my head.
For this story, I made the character into a detective. There was a Janus (i.e. the Roman two-faced god of beginnings and transitions) aspect to this story, and I wanted it to be open-ended, but leave the reader thinking that the protagonist would henceforth be on the case, as it were. Making him a detective also allowed me to play with the detective noire trope, after all, if you could change your face, wouldn't you be tempted to look like Humphrey Bogart?
The story successfully made it through the blind reading selection process after which Gillian helped me whip the story, now with its name changed to 'The Changeling Detective', into better shape for an anthology format (Please note that the short story in the anthology is a spoiler for the novel, so be warned).
Why the title change?
The first title was a gimmick. The Triple A Detective Agency was a one-man operation that appears at the top of the list of private investigation companies in the phone book. The company has three detectives listed on its books, each with a family name beginning with the letter 'A'. I'll let you think about what happens if even one of these detectives gets killed.
The new name still has several connotations, depending on your context, but it rolled easier off the tongue and the idea of a 'changeling' had much greater relevance to the back-story of the character. So much so, that this name has survived to remain the title of the novel, even though there is already a book by Elaine Cunningham in the marketplace by that name.
The 'Masques' anthology was published in 2009, and to add to my excitement, the story was one of the ones from the anthology that gained honourable mention on Ellen Datlow's blog for best horror for 2009.
While the short story was making its way to publication, I was busy working on the longer version of the story. This involved my creating a detailed outline of the story with the goal of writing the text as my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in November (Duh!) 2008.
As an aside for the writers out there, I have taken part in NaNoWriMo three times, using three different story-crafting techniques: rigid outlining, pantsing, and writing scenes for multiple characters that fit within a general SF story outline. Of these three techniques, the first has produced the strongest story, but I still have some hopes for the last experiment.
With the publication of the anthology buoying my spirits, I started shopping my completed MS around some of the Australian spec-fic publishers that I thought would appreciate this sort of material. My plan was (and still is) for this book to be the first in a series of pulp-like short novels concerning the protagonist. However, before going ahead with this plan I needed to be convinced that it was going to be worth the effort going beyond the first book. Unsurprisingly, considering the rough nature of the text, although a few publishers had a look at the full manuscript, nobody ended up being interested enough to offer me a contract.
Meanwhile, other things were happening in my life. As mentioned earlier, I am a specialist editor (i.e. proofreading and continuity checking) and I list among my credits Glenda Larke. Glenda, bless her socks, was responsible for my attending Worldcon in Melbourne in 2010, where I met and got to know over several breakfasts, an American writer named Saul Garnell. This was a meeting that was to prove very beneficial for the future of the book. However, between then and now, the changeling detective took a turn at being a freelance.
Spurred on by the panels on self-publishing that I'd attended at Worldcon, I put my efforts into producing my own self-published version of the book through Smashwords, which went live for the first time in December of 2010. I have a great admiration for the concept of Smashwords, and while the original edition of 'The Changeling Detective' did not do very well, I now recognise that its less than stellar success was more through my lack of promotion and marketing than the quality of the book because, rough though it was, it was still better than a lot of the other offerings out there.
Humble? Me? Nope. But that doesn't matter. This observation is based on personal experience as I read a lot of independently published work from that site.
One thing that did come out of having the book up on Smashwords was that I had put together a nice submission package to present to potential publishers and so, when I heard through an author colleague of mine about a new ePublisher starting up in my home state of Queensland, who I thought might bring some proper marketing to the title, I sent off my submission.
And I was accepted. Yay!
But this was a case of a very small fish in a very small pond and nothing much happened after the first initial run of sales and I removed my book from their list at the first opportunity. (I carefully negotiated sunset clauses into the contract.) One of the reasons I withdrew my book was because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that the book still needed some polish. I had been hoping for some editorial input from this publisher, and there had been none forthcoming.
So, the changeling detective was threatening to disappear back into the unwashed masses of failed manuscripts again. Fortunately, seeds sewn at Worldcon were starting to sprout.
Canberra's Conflux is my local spec-fic convention, and apart from worldcons in Australia, is the only convention I regularly attend. You can imagine my surprise when my American friend Saul Garnell walked in the door of Conflux 7 in October 2011. This time, however, he was attending as a published author himself, having had his science fiction story 'Freedom Club' published through a US small press called Hotspur Publishing.
During the course of Conflux he offered to have a read of something of mine, saying that he might send it to David Bischoff, a New York Times best-selling author famous for his work in the Star Trek franchise, who was now the head of Hotspur.
I dutifully sent him a copy of a fantasy novel 'Transgressions' that I'd recently put through the CSFG's novel critiquing group and was completely surprised when I was contacted by David Bischoff himself. David said he was interested in my work, but that he thought that the novel needed major work and asked if I had anything else that I was working on that was perhaps less ambitious than a fantasy series that could conceivably run to five books. In response I sent him a copy of 'The Changeling Detective', which he found much more to his liking and thought would be more marketable after some work had been done on it.
Understandably I was rapt, this was exactly what I thought the story needed, and over the course of a very busy year for both of us we traded chapters. I finished the final run through earlier this year when the CSFG had a writing weekend in Yass that finally gave me the chance to work through the last couple of chapters following David's advice.
Hotspur Publishing is still small press, but it is a small press in a lot bigger market. A market where traditional physical small presses have larger print runs than some of Australia's larger publishers. The book 'The Changeling Detective' was published as an eBook in June of this year and is now available through Amazon and Smashwords and all its affiliated distribution sites.
If sales of the eBook go well, the book might even find itself being manifested in a physical form, perhaps through Print On Demand. But that's not really a big deal for me, because I am a great believer in eBooks. I also still see this sort of story as a kind of e-pulp to be consumed by people on their e-readers to help enliven their daily commute, and having my book one-click away from a potential reader is a definite plus to me.
What next?
Well. Now comes the hard part—promotion.
These days, with so much competition, I see it as a requirement that an author play a major part in their own promotion. Fortunately, the internet has also made that much easier. I am active on Facebook, Google+ and Goodreads (Sorry, no twitter) and can be found on those sites under my name 'Phillip Berrie'.
Guest posting on popular blogs like Gillian's is another great way of raising one's profile. There are also plans afoot for me to be interviewed on the 'Adventures in Sci-fi Publishing' podcast, which will be a sort of dream come true for me, as I have been a long time listener to that podcast.
However, promotion aside, for me the most important thing is to write more books and let my body of work speak for me. To this end, I am now working on the second in the Changeling Detective series. Hopefully, this book will see the light of day a lot sooner than the first.
So, I think that's about it for me.
Thanks to all of you who made to the end. If anyone has any questions about me, the book, or Christmas bubbles, they can either leave a comment on the blog or contact me directly at 'phillberrie at phillberrie dot com dot au'.
Happy reading.
Phill
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Phillip Berrie and I am a writer and editor living in Canberra, Australia.
Gillian and I have known each other for quite a while.
Gillian has invited me onto her blog to talk about my short novel, 'The Changeling Detective' which is now available through the US small press Hotspur Publishing. I think, and hope, she feels a little responsible for this, because the Changeling Detective first saw print as a short story in a themed CSFG anthology called 'Masques', that she co-edited.
As there are likely to be a lot of authors reading Gillian's blog, I am not going to bore you with a spiel about the book. If you are interested, you can find out all about it on the Hotspur Publishing website here
No, instead, I am going to bore you all with details of the book's genesis.
-- Sounds of crickets --
For those nice souls still reading, the original idea for the protagonist of this book (i.e. the changeling detective, a reference I will continue to use because his real name is just as changeable as himself) came from a character I designed and played in a superhero role-playing campaign. That character's name was the Magician and he had a couple of super powers that he used for fighting crime and, in his secret identity, as a stage magician.
The ability that intrigued me the most was his ability to change his appearance and disguise himself as other people. For those familiar with Marvel comics or the X-Men movies, he was a sort of male equivalent of the Mystique character, with added extras.
The character's face-changing ability should have been one of his most useful, but it was under utilised as it wasn't conducive to group play. However—in perhaps what was a foreshadowing of the future—when that character finally left the campaign, he did it by simply changing his features, assuming a new identity and disappearing into the mass of humanity, never to be heard from again in that world.
The fictionalised (and de-powered) version of the character was first seen in a short story called 'The Triple A Detective Agency, RIP' which I put before a critiquing circle called 'Critmonsters' that I was a moderator of back in 2008. Critmonsters was a Yahoo-based critiquing group of writers who hung out on the original HarperCollins Australia 'Purple Zone' at the time. Critmonsters is now defunct, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the members of that group aren't regular readers of Gillian's blog. So—Hi guys!
As mentioned previously, the story was written to submit to the CSFG's 'Masques' anthology. When I heard what the theme was to be for this anthology I saw it as a natural fit for this face-changing character that was still kicking around in my head.
For this story, I made the character into a detective. There was a Janus (i.e. the Roman two-faced god of beginnings and transitions) aspect to this story, and I wanted it to be open-ended, but leave the reader thinking that the protagonist would henceforth be on the case, as it were. Making him a detective also allowed me to play with the detective noire trope, after all, if you could change your face, wouldn't you be tempted to look like Humphrey Bogart?
The story successfully made it through the blind reading selection process after which Gillian helped me whip the story, now with its name changed to 'The Changeling Detective', into better shape for an anthology format (Please note that the short story in the anthology is a spoiler for the novel, so be warned).
Why the title change?
The first title was a gimmick. The Triple A Detective Agency was a one-man operation that appears at the top of the list of private investigation companies in the phone book. The company has three detectives listed on its books, each with a family name beginning with the letter 'A'. I'll let you think about what happens if even one of these detectives gets killed.
The new name still has several connotations, depending on your context, but it rolled easier off the tongue and the idea of a 'changeling' had much greater relevance to the back-story of the character. So much so, that this name has survived to remain the title of the novel, even though there is already a book by Elaine Cunningham in the marketplace by that name.
The 'Masques' anthology was published in 2009, and to add to my excitement, the story was one of the ones from the anthology that gained honourable mention on Ellen Datlow's blog for best horror for 2009.
While the short story was making its way to publication, I was busy working on the longer version of the story. This involved my creating a detailed outline of the story with the goal of writing the text as my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in November (Duh!) 2008.
As an aside for the writers out there, I have taken part in NaNoWriMo three times, using three different story-crafting techniques: rigid outlining, pantsing, and writing scenes for multiple characters that fit within a general SF story outline. Of these three techniques, the first has produced the strongest story, but I still have some hopes for the last experiment.
With the publication of the anthology buoying my spirits, I started shopping my completed MS around some of the Australian spec-fic publishers that I thought would appreciate this sort of material. My plan was (and still is) for this book to be the first in a series of pulp-like short novels concerning the protagonist. However, before going ahead with this plan I needed to be convinced that it was going to be worth the effort going beyond the first book. Unsurprisingly, considering the rough nature of the text, although a few publishers had a look at the full manuscript, nobody ended up being interested enough to offer me a contract.
Meanwhile, other things were happening in my life. As mentioned earlier, I am a specialist editor (i.e. proofreading and continuity checking) and I list among my credits Glenda Larke. Glenda, bless her socks, was responsible for my attending Worldcon in Melbourne in 2010, where I met and got to know over several breakfasts, an American writer named Saul Garnell. This was a meeting that was to prove very beneficial for the future of the book. However, between then and now, the changeling detective took a turn at being a freelance.
Spurred on by the panels on self-publishing that I'd attended at Worldcon, I put my efforts into producing my own self-published version of the book through Smashwords, which went live for the first time in December of 2010. I have a great admiration for the concept of Smashwords, and while the original edition of 'The Changeling Detective' did not do very well, I now recognise that its less than stellar success was more through my lack of promotion and marketing than the quality of the book because, rough though it was, it was still better than a lot of the other offerings out there.
Humble? Me? Nope. But that doesn't matter. This observation is based on personal experience as I read a lot of independently published work from that site.
One thing that did come out of having the book up on Smashwords was that I had put together a nice submission package to present to potential publishers and so, when I heard through an author colleague of mine about a new ePublisher starting up in my home state of Queensland, who I thought might bring some proper marketing to the title, I sent off my submission.
And I was accepted. Yay!
But this was a case of a very small fish in a very small pond and nothing much happened after the first initial run of sales and I removed my book from their list at the first opportunity. (I carefully negotiated sunset clauses into the contract.) One of the reasons I withdrew my book was because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that the book still needed some polish. I had been hoping for some editorial input from this publisher, and there had been none forthcoming.
So, the changeling detective was threatening to disappear back into the unwashed masses of failed manuscripts again. Fortunately, seeds sewn at Worldcon were starting to sprout.
Canberra's Conflux is my local spec-fic convention, and apart from worldcons in Australia, is the only convention I regularly attend. You can imagine my surprise when my American friend Saul Garnell walked in the door of Conflux 7 in October 2011. This time, however, he was attending as a published author himself, having had his science fiction story 'Freedom Club' published through a US small press called Hotspur Publishing.
During the course of Conflux he offered to have a read of something of mine, saying that he might send it to David Bischoff, a New York Times best-selling author famous for his work in the Star Trek franchise, who was now the head of Hotspur.
I dutifully sent him a copy of a fantasy novel 'Transgressions' that I'd recently put through the CSFG's novel critiquing group and was completely surprised when I was contacted by David Bischoff himself. David said he was interested in my work, but that he thought that the novel needed major work and asked if I had anything else that I was working on that was perhaps less ambitious than a fantasy series that could conceivably run to five books. In response I sent him a copy of 'The Changeling Detective', which he found much more to his liking and thought would be more marketable after some work had been done on it.
Understandably I was rapt, this was exactly what I thought the story needed, and over the course of a very busy year for both of us we traded chapters. I finished the final run through earlier this year when the CSFG had a writing weekend in Yass that finally gave me the chance to work through the last couple of chapters following David's advice.
Hotspur Publishing is still small press, but it is a small press in a lot bigger market. A market where traditional physical small presses have larger print runs than some of Australia's larger publishers. The book 'The Changeling Detective' was published as an eBook in June of this year and is now available through Amazon and Smashwords and all its affiliated distribution sites.
If sales of the eBook go well, the book might even find itself being manifested in a physical form, perhaps through Print On Demand. But that's not really a big deal for me, because I am a great believer in eBooks. I also still see this sort of story as a kind of e-pulp to be consumed by people on their e-readers to help enliven their daily commute, and having my book one-click away from a potential reader is a definite plus to me.
What next?
Well. Now comes the hard part—promotion.
These days, with so much competition, I see it as a requirement that an author play a major part in their own promotion. Fortunately, the internet has also made that much easier. I am active on Facebook, Google+ and Goodreads (Sorry, no twitter) and can be found on those sites under my name 'Phillip Berrie'.
Guest posting on popular blogs like Gillian's is another great way of raising one's profile. There are also plans afoot for me to be interviewed on the 'Adventures in Sci-fi Publishing' podcast, which will be a sort of dream come true for me, as I have been a long time listener to that podcast.
However, promotion aside, for me the most important thing is to write more books and let my body of work speak for me. To this end, I am now working on the second in the Changeling Detective series. Hopefully, this book will see the light of day a lot sooner than the first.
So, I think that's about it for me.
Thanks to all of you who made to the end. If anyone has any questions about me, the book, or Christmas bubbles, they can either leave a comment on the blog or contact me directly at 'phillberrie at phillberrie dot com dot au'.
Happy reading.
Phill
Guest post - Philll Berrie
Hello everyone,
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Phillip Berrie and I am a writer and editor living in Canberra, Australia.
Gillian and I have known each other for quite a while.
Gillian has invited me onto her blog to talk about my short novel, 'The Changeling Detective' which is now available through the US small press Hotspur Publishing. I think, and hope, she feels a little responsible for this, because the Changeling Detective first saw print as a short story in a themed CSFG anthology called 'Masques', that she co-edited.
As there are likely to be a lot of authors reading Gillian's blog, I am not going to bore you with a spiel about the book. If you are interested, you can find out all about it on the Hotspur Publishing website here
No, instead, I am going to bore you all with details of the book's genesis.
-- Sounds of crickets --
For those nice souls still reading, the original idea for the protagonist of this book (i.e. the changeling detective, a reference I will continue to use because his real name is just as changeable as himself) came from a character I designed and played in a superhero role-playing campaign. That character's name was the Magician and he had a couple of super powers that he used for fighting crime and, in his secret identity, as a stage magician.
The ability that intrigued me the most was his ability to change his appearance and disguise himself as other people. For those familiar with Marvel comics or the X-Men movies, he was a sort of male equivalent of the Mystique character, with added extras.
The character's face-changing ability should have been one of his most useful, but it was under utilised as it wasn't conducive to group play. However—in perhaps what was a foreshadowing of the future—when that character finally left the campaign, he did it by simply changing his features, assuming a new identity and disappearing into the mass of humanity, never to be heard from again in that world.
The fictionalised (and de-powered) version of the character was first seen in a short story called 'The Triple A Detective Agency, RIP' which I put before a critiquing circle called 'Critmonsters' that I was a moderator of back in 2008. Critmonsters was a Yahoo-based critiquing group of writers who hung out on the original HarperCollins Australia 'Purple Zone' at the time. Critmonsters is now defunct, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the members of that group aren't regular readers of Gillian's blog. So—Hi guys!
As mentioned previously, the story was written to submit to the CSFG's 'Masques' anthology. When I heard what the theme was to be for this anthology I saw it as a natural fit for this face-changing character that was still kicking around in my head.
For this story, I made the character into a detective. There was a Janus (i.e. the Roman two-faced god of beginnings and transitions) aspect to this story, and I wanted it to be open-ended, but leave the reader thinking that the protagonist would henceforth be on the case, as it were. Making him a detective also allowed me to play with the detective noire trope, after all, if you could change your face, wouldn't you be tempted to look like Humphrey Bogart?
The story successfully made it through the blind reading selection process after which Gillian helped me whip the story, now with its name changed to 'The Changeling Detective', into better shape for an anthology format (Please note that the short story in the anthology is a spoiler for the novel, so be warned).
Why the title change?
The first title was a gimmick. The Triple A Detective Agency was a one-man operation that appears at the top of the list of private investigation companies in the phone book. The company has three detectives listed on its books, each with a family name beginning with the letter 'A'. I'll let you think about what happens if even one of these detectives gets killed.
The new name still has several connotations, depending on your context, but it rolled easier off the tongue and the idea of a 'changeling' had much greater relevance to the back-story of the character. So much so, that this name has survived to remain the title of the novel, even though there is already a book by Elaine Cunningham in the marketplace by that name.
The 'Masques' anthology was published in 2009, and to add to my excitement, the story was one of the ones from the anthology that gained honourable mention on Ellen Datlow's blog for best horror for 2009.
While the short story was making its way to publication, I was busy working on the longer version of the story. This involved my creating a detailed outline of the story with the goal of writing the text as my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in November (Duh!) 2008.
As an aside for the writers out there, I have taken part in NaNoWriMo three times, using three different story-crafting techniques: rigid outlining, pantsing, and writing scenes for multiple characters that fit within a general SF story outline. Of these three techniques, the first has produced the strongest story, but I still have some hopes for the last experiment.
With the publication of the anthology buoying my spirits, I started shopping my completed MS around some of the Australian spec-fic publishers that I thought would appreciate this sort of material. My plan was (and still is) for this book to be the first in a series of pulp-like short novels concerning the protagonist. However, before going ahead with this plan I needed to be convinced that it was going to be worth the effort going beyond the first book. Unsurprisingly, considering the rough nature of the text, although a few publishers had a look at the full manuscript, nobody ended up being interested enough to offer me a contract.
Meanwhile, other things were happening in my life. As mentioned earlier, I am a specialist editor (i.e. proofreading and continuity checking) and I list among my credits Glenda Larke. Glenda, bless her socks, was responsible for my attending Worldcon in Melbourne in 2010, where I met and got to know over several breakfasts, an American writer named Saul Garnell. This was a meeting that was to prove very beneficial for the future of the book. However, between then and now, the changeling detective took a turn at being a freelance.
Spurred on by the panels on self-publishing that I'd attended at Worldcon, I put my efforts into producing my own self-published version of the book through Smashwords, which went live for the first time in December of 2010. I have a great admiration for the concept of Smashwords, and while the original edition of 'The Changeling Detective' did not do very well, I now recognise that its less than stellar success was more through my lack of promotion and marketing than the quality of the book because, rough though it was, it was still better than a lot of the other offerings out there.
Humble? Me? Nope. But that doesn't matter. This observation is based on personal experience as I read a lot of independently published work from that site.
One thing that did come out of having the book up on Smashwords was that I had put together a nice submission package to present to potential publishers and so, when I heard through an author colleague of mine about a new ePublisher starting up in my home state of Queensland, who I thought might bring some proper marketing to the title, I sent off my submission.
And I was accepted. Yay!
But this was a case of a very small fish in a very small pond and nothing much happened after the first initial run of sales and I removed my book from their list at the first opportunity. (I carefully negotiated sunset clauses into the contract.) One of the reasons I withdrew my book was because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that the book still needed some polish. I had been hoping for some editorial input from this publisher, and there had been none forthcoming.
So, the changeling detective was threatening to disappear back into the unwashed masses of failed manuscripts again. Fortunately, seeds sewn at Worldcon were starting to sprout.
Canberra's Conflux is my local spec-fic convention, and apart from worldcons in Australia, is the only convention I regularly attend. You can imagine my surprise when my American friend Saul Garnell walked in the door of Conflux 7 in October 2011. This time, however, he was attending as a published author himself, having had his science fiction story 'Freedom Club' published through a US small press called Hotspur Publishing.
During the course of Conflux he offered to have a read of something of mine, saying that he might send it to David Bischoff, a New York Times best-selling author famous for his work in the Star Trek franchise, who was now the head of Hotspur.
I dutifully sent him a copy of a fantasy novel 'Transgressions' that I'd recently put through the CSFG's novel critiquing group and was completely surprised when I was contacted by David Bischoff himself. David said he was interested in my work, but that he thought that the novel needed major work and asked if I had anything else that I was working on that was perhaps less ambitious than a fantasy series that could conceivably run to five books. In response I sent him a copy of 'The Changeling Detective', which he found much more to his liking and thought would be more marketable after some work had been done on it.
Understandably I was rapt, this was exactly what I thought the story needed, and over the course of a very busy year for both of us we traded chapters. I finished the final run through earlier this year when the CSFG had a writing weekend in Yass that finally gave me the chance to work through the last couple of chapters following David's advice.
Hotspur Publishing is still small press, but it is a small press in a lot bigger market. A market where traditional physical small presses have larger print runs than some of Australia's larger publishers. The book 'The Changeling Detective' was published as an eBook in June of this year and is now available through Amazon and Smashwords and all its affiliated distribution sites.
If sales of the eBook go well, the book might even find itself being manifested in a physical form, perhaps through Print On Demand. But that's not really a big deal for me, because I am a great believer in eBooks. I also still see this sort of story as a kind of e-pulp to be consumed by people on their e-readers to help enliven their daily commute, and having my book one-click away from a potential reader is a definite plus to me.
What next?
Well. Now comes the hard part—promotion.
These days, with so much competition, I see it as a requirement that an author play a major part in their own promotion. Fortunately, the internet has also made that much easier. I am active on Facebook, Google+ and Goodreads (Sorry, no twitter) and can be found on those sites under my name 'Phillip Berrie'.
Guest posting on popular blogs like Gillian's is another great way of raising one's profile. There are also plans afoot for me to be interviewed on the 'Adventures in Sci-fi Publishing' podcast, which will be a sort of dream come true for me, as I have been a long time listener to that podcast.
However, promotion aside, for me the most important thing is to write more books and let my body of work speak for me. To this end, I am now working on the second in the Changeling Detective series. Hopefully, this book will see the light of day a lot sooner than the first.
So, I think that's about it for me.
Thanks to all of you who made to the end. If anyone has any questions about me, the book, or Christmas bubbles, they can either leave a comment on the blog or contact me directly at 'phillberrie at phillberrie dot com dot au'.
Happy reading.
Phill
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Phillip Berrie and I am a writer and editor living in Canberra, Australia.
Gillian and I have known each other for quite a while.
Gillian has invited me onto her blog to talk about my short novel, 'The Changeling Detective' which is now available through the US small press Hotspur Publishing. I think, and hope, she feels a little responsible for this, because the Changeling Detective first saw print as a short story in a themed CSFG anthology called 'Masques', that she co-edited.
As there are likely to be a lot of authors reading Gillian's blog, I am not going to bore you with a spiel about the book. If you are interested, you can find out all about it on the Hotspur Publishing website here
No, instead, I am going to bore you all with details of the book's genesis.
-- Sounds of crickets --
For those nice souls still reading, the original idea for the protagonist of this book (i.e. the changeling detective, a reference I will continue to use because his real name is just as changeable as himself) came from a character I designed and played in a superhero role-playing campaign. That character's name was the Magician and he had a couple of super powers that he used for fighting crime and, in his secret identity, as a stage magician.
The ability that intrigued me the most was his ability to change his appearance and disguise himself as other people. For those familiar with Marvel comics or the X-Men movies, he was a sort of male equivalent of the Mystique character, with added extras.
The character's face-changing ability should have been one of his most useful, but it was under utilised as it wasn't conducive to group play. However—in perhaps what was a foreshadowing of the future—when that character finally left the campaign, he did it by simply changing his features, assuming a new identity and disappearing into the mass of humanity, never to be heard from again in that world.
The fictionalised (and de-powered) version of the character was first seen in a short story called 'The Triple A Detective Agency, RIP' which I put before a critiquing circle called 'Critmonsters' that I was a moderator of back in 2008. Critmonsters was a Yahoo-based critiquing group of writers who hung out on the original HarperCollins Australia 'Purple Zone' at the time. Critmonsters is now defunct, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the members of that group aren't regular readers of Gillian's blog. So—Hi guys!
As mentioned previously, the story was written to submit to the CSFG's 'Masques' anthology. When I heard what the theme was to be for this anthology I saw it as a natural fit for this face-changing character that was still kicking around in my head.
For this story, I made the character into a detective. There was a Janus (i.e. the Roman two-faced god of beginnings and transitions) aspect to this story, and I wanted it to be open-ended, but leave the reader thinking that the protagonist would henceforth be on the case, as it were. Making him a detective also allowed me to play with the detective noire trope, after all, if you could change your face, wouldn't you be tempted to look like Humphrey Bogart?
The story successfully made it through the blind reading selection process after which Gillian helped me whip the story, now with its name changed to 'The Changeling Detective', into better shape for an anthology format (Please note that the short story in the anthology is a spoiler for the novel, so be warned).
Why the title change?
The first title was a gimmick. The Triple A Detective Agency was a one-man operation that appears at the top of the list of private investigation companies in the phone book. The company has three detectives listed on its books, each with a family name beginning with the letter 'A'. I'll let you think about what happens if even one of these detectives gets killed.
The new name still has several connotations, depending on your context, but it rolled easier off the tongue and the idea of a 'changeling' had much greater relevance to the back-story of the character. So much so, that this name has survived to remain the title of the novel, even though there is already a book by Elaine Cunningham in the marketplace by that name.
The 'Masques' anthology was published in 2009, and to add to my excitement, the story was one of the ones from the anthology that gained honourable mention on Ellen Datlow's blog for best horror for 2009.
While the short story was making its way to publication, I was busy working on the longer version of the story. This involved my creating a detailed outline of the story with the goal of writing the text as my first attempt at NaNoWriMo in November (Duh!) 2008.
As an aside for the writers out there, I have taken part in NaNoWriMo three times, using three different story-crafting techniques: rigid outlining, pantsing, and writing scenes for multiple characters that fit within a general SF story outline. Of these three techniques, the first has produced the strongest story, but I still have some hopes for the last experiment.
With the publication of the anthology buoying my spirits, I started shopping my completed MS around some of the Australian spec-fic publishers that I thought would appreciate this sort of material. My plan was (and still is) for this book to be the first in a series of pulp-like short novels concerning the protagonist. However, before going ahead with this plan I needed to be convinced that it was going to be worth the effort going beyond the first book. Unsurprisingly, considering the rough nature of the text, although a few publishers had a look at the full manuscript, nobody ended up being interested enough to offer me a contract.
Meanwhile, other things were happening in my life. As mentioned earlier, I am a specialist editor (i.e. proofreading and continuity checking) and I list among my credits Glenda Larke. Glenda, bless her socks, was responsible for my attending Worldcon in Melbourne in 2010, where I met and got to know over several breakfasts, an American writer named Saul Garnell. This was a meeting that was to prove very beneficial for the future of the book. However, between then and now, the changeling detective took a turn at being a freelance.
Spurred on by the panels on self-publishing that I'd attended at Worldcon, I put my efforts into producing my own self-published version of the book through Smashwords, which went live for the first time in December of 2010. I have a great admiration for the concept of Smashwords, and while the original edition of 'The Changeling Detective' did not do very well, I now recognise that its less than stellar success was more through my lack of promotion and marketing than the quality of the book because, rough though it was, it was still better than a lot of the other offerings out there.
Humble? Me? Nope. But that doesn't matter. This observation is based on personal experience as I read a lot of independently published work from that site.
One thing that did come out of having the book up on Smashwords was that I had put together a nice submission package to present to potential publishers and so, when I heard through an author colleague of mine about a new ePublisher starting up in my home state of Queensland, who I thought might bring some proper marketing to the title, I sent off my submission.
And I was accepted. Yay!
But this was a case of a very small fish in a very small pond and nothing much happened after the first initial run of sales and I removed my book from their list at the first opportunity. (I carefully negotiated sunset clauses into the contract.) One of the reasons I withdrew my book was because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that the book still needed some polish. I had been hoping for some editorial input from this publisher, and there had been none forthcoming.
So, the changeling detective was threatening to disappear back into the unwashed masses of failed manuscripts again. Fortunately, seeds sewn at Worldcon were starting to sprout.
Canberra's Conflux is my local spec-fic convention, and apart from worldcons in Australia, is the only convention I regularly attend. You can imagine my surprise when my American friend Saul Garnell walked in the door of Conflux 7 in October 2011. This time, however, he was attending as a published author himself, having had his science fiction story 'Freedom Club' published through a US small press called Hotspur Publishing.
During the course of Conflux he offered to have a read of something of mine, saying that he might send it to David Bischoff, a New York Times best-selling author famous for his work in the Star Trek franchise, who was now the head of Hotspur.
I dutifully sent him a copy of a fantasy novel 'Transgressions' that I'd recently put through the CSFG's novel critiquing group and was completely surprised when I was contacted by David Bischoff himself. David said he was interested in my work, but that he thought that the novel needed major work and asked if I had anything else that I was working on that was perhaps less ambitious than a fantasy series that could conceivably run to five books. In response I sent him a copy of 'The Changeling Detective', which he found much more to his liking and thought would be more marketable after some work had been done on it.
Understandably I was rapt, this was exactly what I thought the story needed, and over the course of a very busy year for both of us we traded chapters. I finished the final run through earlier this year when the CSFG had a writing weekend in Yass that finally gave me the chance to work through the last couple of chapters following David's advice.
Hotspur Publishing is still small press, but it is a small press in a lot bigger market. A market where traditional physical small presses have larger print runs than some of Australia's larger publishers. The book 'The Changeling Detective' was published as an eBook in June of this year and is now available through Amazon and Smashwords and all its affiliated distribution sites.
If sales of the eBook go well, the book might even find itself being manifested in a physical form, perhaps through Print On Demand. But that's not really a big deal for me, because I am a great believer in eBooks. I also still see this sort of story as a kind of e-pulp to be consumed by people on their e-readers to help enliven their daily commute, and having my book one-click away from a potential reader is a definite plus to me.
What next?
Well. Now comes the hard part—promotion.
These days, with so much competition, I see it as a requirement that an author play a major part in their own promotion. Fortunately, the internet has also made that much easier. I am active on Facebook, Google+ and Goodreads (Sorry, no twitter) and can be found on those sites under my name 'Phillip Berrie'.
Guest posting on popular blogs like Gillian's is another great way of raising one's profile. There are also plans afoot for me to be interviewed on the 'Adventures in Sci-fi Publishing' podcast, which will be a sort of dream come true for me, as I have been a long time listener to that podcast.
However, promotion aside, for me the most important thing is to write more books and let my body of work speak for me. To this end, I am now working on the second in the Changeling Detective series. Hopefully, this book will see the light of day a lot sooner than the first.
So, I think that's about it for me.
Thanks to all of you who made to the end. If anyone has any questions about me, the book, or Christmas bubbles, they can either leave a comment on the blog or contact me directly at 'phillberrie at phillberrie dot com dot au'.
Happy reading.
Phill
