Isobel Blackthorn's Blog, page 38
December 11, 2015
Playing the Trump card
Who saw this coming? This pitting of Islam against the West and it’s quasi-Christian infused secularism. Who knew that after WWII the next major global conflict a la WWIII would be seated in the Middle East?
What a fabulous find Donald Trump is for the American warmongers in this regard! They must be ecstatic. Fancy being able to roll him out to polarise debate and whip up hysteria and it’s counterpart, terror.
Trump is a symptom of a terrible malaise sweeping the world. Hatred.
And while all this murderous bullshit is going on, we’re wasting time. We should be in environmental damage control.
Islam is a beautiful faith, as practiced by billions. It teaches what all major world faiths teach – Love. Poor love. It’s having to fight for its own survival on the world stage.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Donald Trump, Islam, New World Order, World War Three
December 6, 2015
Literary book reviewer
I’m far from alone in stating how hard it is to promote literary fiction online. Literary fiction has taken an enormous hit in recent years, in my view largely the result of the corporatisation of the industry. The economic rationalist model in which profit, not art, reigns, has led to widespread risk aversion and a lack of interest in niche markets.
So we see an emphasis on bestsellers, on cookery books, and on discounted bookselling by supermarket chains and department stores.
All fiction writers are affected but there is no doubt that genre writers, to their credit, have it far easier. Quick to adapt and seize new market opportunities online, romance, crime, fantasy, horror, all have developed their support structures, their dedicated reviewers, their vast internet savvy fanbase.
Readers of literary fiction are more likely found seated somewhere comfortable and quiet with a hardcover on their laps. No tablet or Ipad or Smart phone in sight.
Literary fiction lovers like to buy their books from bookstores. They read book reviews in print media. On Sundays. It’s all so old school.
Literary fiction remains prestigious review and award driven. It’s all high end stuff, and often nepotistic, favouring the in-crowd.
For those of us outside of the clique, or who miss out on both the prestigious reviews and awards, sales of our books are likely to be pathetically small.
I’m not one to be defeated. I’ve embraced the opportunities of the online world. I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn and of course Goodreads.
I blog.
I’m even doing a book giveaway. My first.
I’ve also been known to write the occasional book review.
And I can’t end this post on a dismal note. So I’ve decided to do my little bit in support of literary fiction writers. By offering to write reviews.
In the knowledge and in the hope that if we pull together, we might benefit each other and the whole literary fiction scene.
So I’ve just created a book review page on my site. http://isobelblackthorn.com/book-reviews/
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum, book giveaway, Book review, Goodreads, literary fiction, Odyssey Books, The Drago Tree
November 2, 2015
After the fanfare
So, I’ve published a book. That’s fantastic news! All those years of slavish labour coming to a glorious culmination – the release. The Drago Tree is my second novel published by Odyssey Books in this auspicious year of 2015. My year! I’ve made it. Crossed that line that feels like the Grand Canyon. There’s the endorsement. There’s the kudos. There’s the fanfare of the press releases, the radio shows, the launches. Fans grab their signed copies. Friends congratulate me on my success. It’s such a high. Then…
You wait…and nothing happens.
No Google alerts. Nothing on Goodreads. Or Amazon. You run an eye down the urls in your daily book x self x review search and all you see is, ‘be the first to submit a review.’
Doubt kicks in – They don’t like it. They’re not even reading it. They’re using it as a door stop. They’ve left it, face down at page two, on the bus. They think it’s too long, too short, too, too, uninteresting.
You wait…
Someone writes a great review. You’re swinging from the chandelier. You post, blog, tweet, pin it. You get as much mileage out of it as you dare.
You wait…
You think of recycling that one review but pride won’t let you.
You wait…
Is the story really that bad? All those review requests you sent out last week and only one reply? Perhaps you haven’t got the review request tone right. Face it, you’re no good at this game. Then there’s the timing. Requesting book reviews at the end of the year is bad timing. All the prestigious blog reviewers have shut up shop for the year. But what’s to be done? The publishing calendar doesn’t end in August.
You wait…
…feeling jinxed. Review copies go astray in the post, no doubt making the journey from Canberra to Melbourne via Marble Bar. Anticipation has morphed into despondency. You wake each day feeling heavy. You no longer feel a frisson of optimism when you search for a book review.
You wait…
You stop yourself from searching for that one person who told you in a comment on Facebook how much they loved your book, and begging them to join Goodreads.
You wait…
Your local press and community decide not to join in your fanfare and launch promotion. ‘You’ve had a lot of coverage already this year with your first book, Isobel. Now it’s someone else’s turn.’ Turn? Ouch. You know it’s irrational but the rock-solid support you thought you had feels like gossamer. You begin to wonder if anyone will turn up to your launch. You begin to wonder who your friends are, or even if you have any.
You wait…
You bury yourself in your latest work. Tell yourself you’ve raised your expectations way to high and the world doesn’t revolve around you and your book.
Face it, you’re too impatient. It’s only been a few weeks.
You remind yourself of persistence, perseverance, resilience – that’s what it takes to be a writer. You tell yourself not to be so, needy.
You wait…
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Amazon, bookreview, contemporary fiction, fiction, Goodreads, Isobel Blackthorn, Lanzarote, literary fiction, Odyssey Books, publishing, women's fiction
October 25, 2015
On Gilgamesh by Joan London
I’m about halfway through Joan London’s Gilgamesh and toying with writing something on Goodreads. Just now I scrolled through the reviews to read what others were saying but stopped when I realised there were over 1,800 of them. I really only have one word to add – bleak.
And I realise much of the bleakness comes not from the story itself but from an absence of emotional reaction on the part of the main characters, along with a paucity of introspection. As is typical of much Australian writing the feeling in the story is embedded in the action as the main character, Edith, goes through the motions of her difficult life. She isn’t the responsive type and I’m left feeling empty.
The story is straightforward. In 1937, on a tiny farm in the town of Nunderup, in far southwestern Australia, seventeen-year-old Edith lives with her sister Frances and their mother, Ada. One afternoon two men, Edith’s cousin Leopold and his Armenian friend Aram, arrive, taking the long way home from an archaeological dig in Iraq. Among the tales they tell is the story of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk in ancient Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh’s great journey of mourning after the death of his friend Enkidu, and his search for the secret of eternal life, is to resonate throughout Edith’s life, opening up the possibility of a life beyond the farm.
Alongside the myth of Gilgamesh, there is a motif of perversion running through the narrative, stated almost in passing in the most matter-of-fact manner. It’s a motif that evokes revulsion and a sense of doom.
Overall the narrative is restrained. I think the idea behind this style of storytelling is that the reader is free to have their own emotional reactions, unimpeded by those of the characters. The downside is that the characters are more like automatons. The rich roundness of their beings duly muted in the rendering, they are at risk of appearing one-dimensional.
In it’s favour I have to say that the narrative is superbly crafted and poised, the prose elegant. Gilgamesh is definitely a book I would recommend.
Well, that was more than one word!
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: bookreview, fiction, Gilgamesh, Goodreads, Isobel Blackthorn, Joan London, literary fiction, women's fiction
October 22, 2015
Follow the blog tour…
Follow The Drago Tree blog tour and read the story behind the story.
Starting with
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: blog tour, CA Milson, Goodreads, Isobel Blackthorn, JunePerkins, literary fiction, PatriciaLeslie, Rachel Drummond, storytelling, Tasman Anderson, The Drago Tree, Tracy M Joyce
October 20, 2015
Narrative as Navigation Through the Self: Isobel Blackthorn’s Asylum
They say the mind does not create, and that it only cuts and pastes the stimulus it receives from the outside world.
Author Isobel Blackthorn has a talent for this, in fact, I often get the feeling with her that she is cataloguing my idiosyncrasies. I suspect I am not the only one to suspect this, and that she has an arsenal of our traits and habits to be appropriated for the right character at the right time. It’s the literary skill that brought us Plath’s The Bell Jar, and it goes by the name of semi-autobiography.
When I asked Isobel about her creative process, her words confirmed what John Cleese (whose name my computer insists I correct to Cheese) once said about creativity, that the subconscious will reward you with an idea if you spend long enough contemplating a topic. Here it is in Isobel’s words; “I let the story brew inside me for a while, sometimes years, and when some other far larger part of me has it all figured out, I have a powerful irrepressible urge to write. And I go into lockdown and give that other self total freedom.”
The true art to Plath and Blackthorn’s (Plath-thorn’s, if you like) literary style, however, is dissecting the self. Most authors do it; a mood or thought is isolated. It becomes the embryo from which a new self germinates, and it becomes a complex character. (Ever wonder why writers think of their characters like children? Well, there you have it.) Entire books can be populated by these alternate selves of the author, and a narrative becomes the ship through which the self is navigated.
Who’s at the helm, you ask? Isobel speaks not only of smaller selves, but of a larger one who personifies her creativity; “I prefer to think of my source of inspiration as some other greater me deep inside,” she says, “and every time I write a first draft, I’m paying homage to her, to the muse.”
Isobel’s most recent book, Asylum, is the story of such an alternate self. Yvette Grimm speaks with an incredibly honest voice from the perspective of an illegal immigrant waiting to be told to leave Australia, but having no-where else to go. She has been given a personal prophecy that she will meet the father of her children in Australia, and her hopes of permanent residency depend on meeting him very, very soon.
What resonates the most with me, however, is the creative block that all of this brings about in Yvette. Blackthorn made me want something, as a reader, that a book has never made me want before; I wanted Yvette Grimm to paint. Blackthorn played on a knowledge we all have that when you find inspiration, it’s probably because you’ve found something else too.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: asylum, Book review, contemporary fiction, Goodreads, Isobel Blackthorn, literary fiction, Migration, Odyssey Books, women's fiction
October 16, 2015
The Drago Tree blog tour coming soon
Next weekend I’m on tour again, talking about The Drago Tree, this time in cyberspace on my first ever blog tour. Just six destinations and I don’t leave the house! Here are the tour dates.
And here are the blog links
Patricia Leslie
June Perkins
Tracy M Joyce
Rachel Drummond
C.A. Milson
Tasman Anderson
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Goodreads, Isobel Blackthorn, Lanzarote, literary fiction, Odyssey Books, The Drago Tree, women's fiction
Coming Soon on Pearlz Dreaming – The Drago Tree Blog Tour
A new experience for me. Looking forward to it. I have great respect for bloggers. It’s quite an art.
Originally posted on Pearlz Dreaming:
Blog tour from Friday 23rd October:
You can find these bloggers talking with Isobel about her book at these links on the above dates:
Filed under: Uncategorized
October 1, 2015
The Drago Tree in the Lanzarote Gazette!
I’ve never featured in a glossy magazine before and I have to say it’s an amazing feeling!
Lanzarote Gazette, the island’s English language monthly magazine, has given over a page to a feature piece on The Drago Tree.
http://thegazettelive.com/flip/oct2015/index.html#p=22
You can find out all about The Drago Tree here And purchase a copy at
And through all good booksellers. For an author signed copy please use the contact form above.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Isobel Blackthorn, Lanzarote, literary fiction, Odyssey Books, The Canary Islands, The Drago Tree, women's fiction
September 29, 2015
The relentless march of Empire
So the sugar cane roots that decimated the land of Central and South America, were taken there by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage from a source on the Canary Islands. Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano.
That source was in large part Tenerife, where native forests had been clear felled to make way for sugar plantations.
It seems timely to remember what Empire did to hundreds of millions of people, in Africa, and in the Americas, and the world over. How it was the short-sightedness and avarice of the Spanish and Portuguese, and the calculated and shrewd opportunism of the Dutch and the British, that created a situation of unimaginable cruelty in the name of gain.
Lanzarote, the setting for The Drago Tree, was squarely in the path of this massive expansion of Empire. The island effectively linked the African slave trade to the South American silver and gold and cash crop exports.
Something about the exodus today of millions of people from war ravaged lands makes me thing of our recent human history (of, say, the last 600 years). Of the arrogant way the major powers choose to treat other nations and their peoples as if the mantle of Empire were still wrapped around their necks.
The Drago Tree is out now at Odyssey Books and through all good booksellers
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: empire, fiction, Isobel Blackthorn, Lanzarote, literary fiction, Odyssey Books, refugees, The Drago Tree
