Ellie Marney's Blog, page 15

#LoveOzYAbookclub – Author interview: Sarah Epstein (SMALL SPACES)

Sarah Epstein is multi-talented: not only is she a skilled writer of YA thrillers like SMALL SPACES, she’s also a graphic designer, a parent and a small business manager. I love that her illustrations at Sarah Epstein Creative are so colourful and cheery, and her YA writing is so dark and scary! Sarah grew up in Sydney and moved to Melbourne in 1999, where she now lives with her partner and two children.

SONY DSC

Sarah’s been kind enough to answer our Five Messy Questions for bookclub – I hope you enjoy her answers…

Why this book? Why this story?

I’ve always been drawn to dark and compelling content in books, TV and movies. I wanted to have a crack at writing something I hoped would keep readers turning pages into the wee hours of the morning – there’s nothing better than being so gripped by a story you can’t put it down. Imaginary friends is a subject I’ve always been curious about, and it prompted me to wonder what would happen if a gruesome imaginary friend from childhood came back nine or ten years later. It created so many questions, and the characters and plot grew from there.

Your book has been the basis for the development of a themed party.  What’s the party like and what’s on the menu:

Ooh, this is right up my alley because I’ve been known to throw many themed birthday parties in my time. Ideally the venue would have to be a creepy old house with lots of derelict carnival-themed decorations. I would serve pink fairy floss, mint choc-chip ice cream, seafood fritters, kumara patties, hamburgers, sushi and red wine. A pretty random menu, but if you’ve read Small Spaces you’ll understand!

Your favourite fictional tropes are:

Enemies to lovers. Can’t get enough of a couple bickering and/or in competition with each other and then they end up falling for one another. And obviously I have to say the Big Twist in mysteries and thrillers, especially if I have a genuine “Holy crap!!” moment when reading.

Your book has a title, and it’s an awesome title. But what might it have been called, if it wasn’t called what it is now?

Small Spaces came to me from very early on when I was working on the first draft of my opening chapters. But I just went searching in the deep dark dungeon of ‘Old Files’ and found out I called it Carnival in my brainstorming docs. It was just a placeholder until I came up with a better title, and luckily it didn’t take me long once I started exploring Tash’s fears.

Horror Challenge – which fave horror movie would you cheerily inflict on your friends?

My poor friends when we were teenagers – I used to invite them for slumber parties and then spring horror movies on them like Halloween and A Nightmare on Elm Street. I think half of them left the next morning traumatised (oops). I absolutely love horror flicks, and one of my all-time faves is Aliens. If I wanted to inflict something more recent, I’d probably choose A Quiet Place or Train to Busan.

Many thanks to Sarah Epstein for joining in our bookclub Messy Questions, and have a good week!

xxEllie

CIRCUS HEARTS 1: All The Little Bones – cover and blurb reveal

Friends! The day has finally arrived when I get to share this cover with the larger world, and I’m so stoked, and also very relieved, mainly because keeping it sekret has been hurting my brain.

So here it is!

A teenage trapeze artist and an apprentice strongman on the run from a terrible crime…

New dark YA romance, with a criminal twist, from the author of Every Breath and White Night.

Seventeen-year-old Sorsha Neary’s life is changed in one night when she defends herself behind the vans of her family circus troupe. Now Sorsha and apprentice strongman Colm Mackay are travelling south, to evade the fallout and escape the long arm of the law. All they have in their favour is talent, an old promise, and slim acquaintance with the crew members and performers of their new home, Klatsch’s Karnival. But the question for Sorsha and Colm isn’t if the police will catch up with them, but when…

CIRCUS HEARTS – Step. Right. Up.

Ta da! I hope you love it as much as I do! Please send much cosmic love to the cover designer for the series, Debra Billson, who is amazing.

For those of you wondering about the series format – the books are all interlinked, but each can be read as a standalone. They’re romance with a heavy dose of criminal mystery – not as gory as the Every series, but still a few darker themes. Also – much kissing (ahhh) and swoon (ahhh!).

Circus Hearts 1 will release in ebook on 1 September. Pre-orders will be available in August. You can add Circus Hearts 1 on GoodReads right here.

The first chapter of Circus Hearts 1 is going out to newsletter subscribers next month, so sign up for the newsletter if you’d like an early scratch-and-sniff!

For the rest of the series: Book 2 comes out 1 October and Book 3 is 1 November. All paperbacks will release on 1 December.

And that’s it! Please feel free to hit me up on social to share some cover love, and if you’d like to grab the cover pic and share it around, I’d love you forever. I’m so very rapt to be sharing this with you! And I hope you like the book as much as the cover

The Story of Circus Hearts

In 2015 (I think), I wrote a story called Dexter and Sinister – about a young trapeze artist whose circus family covers up a crime she committed – and I submitted it to the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto Awards. The story was unsuccessful, and that’s how it goes with competitions, sometimes it’s luck of the draw. But Dexter and Sinister planted a seed in my brain: after writing three books in which a girl (and her eccentric partner) investigates crime, what would it be like to write a book about a girl who was a criminal perpetrator?

This is where the idea for Circus Hearts 1: All the Little Bones came along.

The characters of Sorsha and Colm were already partially formed by the time I started writing the book. And Sorsha’s book was a release valve – I was already deep in the edits for White Night, which was a fairly intense period of time. I wanted to write something that was pure escapism. Nalini Singh was a speaker at GenreCon, where she talked about ‘squirrels’ – play projects that provide you with a way to blow off creative steam when your main project becomes hard work. All The Little Bones was like that.

But it had another purpose, too: I wanted to see how fast I could write, how quickly I could bring an idea to life.

I already had a hooky concept, with characters who kept coming back – I wanted to follow my instinct into something twisty and emotional and romantic.

The Every series was very romantic, and I wanted to explore writing romance further. Not to mention the tropes. Circus is liminal; it evokes something mysterious and eerie. The world of the circus is fascinating, plus the trope of a microcosm community of performers – elite athletes – and carnival workers was intriguing. The whole idea just made something inside me spark.

Within writing the first two or three chapters of Circus Hearts 1, I knew I could turn the story into a series. As soon as Sorsha and Colm began meeting the other performers and residents of Klatsch’s Karnival, I realised that some of those characters has stories that would be wonderful to write. So I started taking notes for Books 2 & 3. A few events in the books are interlinked, so they’re designed to be read as a series of rolling stories, but you’ll still be able to understand what’s going on if you read one book on its own.

I already mentioned that there are crime elements in the books – probably the first book contains the most violent crime. I feel like YA books and readers are capable of handling this stuff. But I wanted the books to be intense, not heavy – these books are primarily romantic, so there’s a lot of kissing too. If you’re going to write about crime and death, it’s good to write love and romance in there as well, to balance things out. Although who am I kidding? I like writing the kissing – those bits are my faves

#LoveOzYAbookclub July 2018 title announcement – SMALL SPACES

Hey bookclubbers! We have a new title for July – and I think you’re going to like it…

SMALL SPACES is the debut novel of YA writer Sarah Epstein, who is not only a writer but a talented graphic designer.

Here’s the info for the book:

“We don’t pick and choose what to be afraid of. Our fears pick us.

Tash Carmody has been traumatised since childhood, when she witnessed her gruesome imaginary friend Sparrow lure young Mallory Fisher away from a carnival. At the time nobody believed Tash, and she has since come to accept that Sparrow wasn’t real. Now fifteen and mute, Mallory’s never spoken about the week she went missing.

As disturbing memories resurface, Tash starts to see Sparrow again. And she realises Mallory is the key to unlocking the truth about a dark secret connecting them. Does Sparrow exist after all? Or is Tash more dangerous to others than she thinks?”

You can order our newest title at Boomerang Books, and receive free shipping by using the ‘loveoz’ promo code.

If ebooks are more your style, you can also find the e-copy here.

I’m hoping to get an interview with Sarah for our group to enjoy later in the month, but until then I hope you enjoy SMALL SPACES and happy reading!

xxEllie

What Have You Come Here To Say? – writing towards vulnerability

I’m writing this because I’m about to take a deep dive into personal feelings in order to work on a new YA contemp project I’m pitching to a traditional publisher. I have a rough plotline and some strong characters, and the story is somehow demanding to be written, which is great, that’s kind of what you always want to happen. I’ve written the story non-sequentially up to this point, and I need to start filling in the gaps between sections and I’ve got lots of good ideas, so yay.

But (and you knew the but was coming somewhere, didn’t you) I’m very aware that this story touches on some personal emotional issues, and I won’t be able to avoid them if I want to write this book well. In fact, if I want to write it well, I will have to dive right into that vein and follow where it leads, and I can’t say I’m looking forward to it.

Tell you the truth, the whole thing scares me shitless.

Writing towards vulnerable places, you spend a lot of time feeling really exposed as you work, and at the end of the day you’re pretty tired. It’s draining. And yet there’s no denying the power of words you write while you’re tapped into those feelings. But why is writing towards vulnerability so fucking hard? And how do you do it, day after day, for the duration of the time you spend writing the book? How do you keep focused, and open, when you’re writing this kind of stuff? How do you cope, on a personal level, while you’re doing it?

These are all questions I’ve been trying to answer before I settle down to work. My most recent book, White Night, had a number of scenes that were personal, that felt resonant at the time of writing. I’ve been trying to get my head around the idea of writing a whole book that resonates in that way, and I’ve got to tell you, it seems daunting. This new project will be intense. Everything you put down on the page has its own urgency, but some things really take it out of you, and I’m anticipating this project will be like that.

I guess the first question to start with is, why is writing towards vulnerability so hard. And I guess the answer is fairly obvious and straightforward: to write towards vulnerability, you have to push towards fear. Fear of revealing your personal feelings, fear of being unliked, fear of exposure – those are all justifiable concerns. You might also be reluctant to revisit feelings that are disturbing or unpalatable, or relive unpleasant events that those feelings are attached to – you might be scared too, of what that kind of self-examination will reveal. There’s also the legitimate fear of repercussions from family or friends, if they’ve had any involvement in the memories and emotions you’re exposing. Finally, you might be concerned that the feelings you’re accessing will bleed so much into your writing that the prose will come out purple, or too raw, which is a genuine concern as well.

The real question I guess, in the face of these fears, is why the hell would you do it? Why would you even attempt it?

The short answer is: because it makes your writing fucking awesome.

I saw Patrick Ness and Jesse Andrews speak – by the power of Writers Victoria! – with CS Pacat at Kyneton Town Hall recently. I was interested to hear Patrick Ness say, ‘You should always write towards what terrifies you,’ and considering that the man has won a record number of children’s literary awards, I’m inclined to take his advice. I think for books for teenagers, particularly, there’s no point not being real, not being genuine. Ness imbues his work with intense feeling, and you know in your gut that this kind of writing comes from deep within the soul. Teenagers respond to that – heck, everyone responds to that. It’s what makes a good story great, makes a simple idea profound, makes a character into a real person. In lots of books you see glimpses of it, but in some writers’ stories, it’s there in every line.

Ness gave some tips on writing towards vulnerability in that way, the most important one being that you need to remember that you don’t have to show the first draft to anyone. ‘No one has to see it but you,’ he said, and when he said that I immediately thought, ‘Phew’. It gives you an understanding of what it means to write in this way when you realise your concerns about your first draft aren’t that it’s not good, but that it’s too personally revealing. But Ness is right: you don’t have to show anyone that draft. You can take your own sweet time with it, trimming and tidying and disguising a few things in a well-crafted ways before you share it. Knowing this – that your first draft is yours alone – is freeing in lots of ways, because it relieves some of that fear about exposing yourself on the page, plus any lingering anxiety about producing raw, unsophisticated prose.

The other suggestion that Ness had was about self-care, that you should regularly do some things that are not writing-related over the period of the project. This isn’t a procrastination technique, but rather something that allows you some time to debrief and nurture yourself. He specifically mentioned exercise – that helps, apparently. I have to agree, because exercise is good for every writer, whether they’re writing tough stuff or not. Chuck Wendig makes an excellent point when he says, ‘Your brain is a computer wrapped in meat, and if the meat fails, the computer can go slow too,’ which seems a bit harsh, but you get it.

I asked another author about self-care while writing tough, and he said that when he’s writing intense stuff he has a friend who knows, and who checks in on him from time to time. I like that idea, of a system of checks and balances, and I think it’s very wise – having a network of support around you is important for this kind of writing. Make sure you’re getting some human interaction. See your friends – hell, see your therapist.

Of course, if you have a family, that can bring you back to earth pretty effectively, too. Although dealing with family during periods when you’re working deeply and feeling tired can be jarring, which is why I think Jesse Andrews’ advice, ‘Make sure you get enough sleep,’ is really useful. Get some sleep, hey. I know you get caught up in it, the writing of it, but you can’t do this stuff without rest. Get your eight hours, or your six hours, or whatever, and make sure you’re eating properly, and that will help put some gas in your tank for the tough days.

I think the main thing about writing towards vulnerability is that you shouldn’t feel nervous about abandoning yourself to emotion when you’re writing. If it helps, make a private place for yourself to write, where you can shut the door and let go. Then if you get caught up in the whirlwind of it and you end up crying onto the page or something, at least you won’t feel self-conscious about doing it in front of someone.

Above all, don’t feel afraid to be afraid of the process. Occasionally you find that just admitting to yourself that these things scare you is enough to rob them of power. And yes, okay, sometimes that won’t be enough, sometimes it will be hard, and then you just have to dredge up courage from somewhere and Do The Thing anyway.

I’m sure some of you reading this now are thinking, ‘Well, shit, that sounds really difficult, why would you even do that?’ which brings us back to the issue of why writing towards vulnerability is necessary for some projects. I already gave you the short answer, but Stephen King gives a version of that when he says, ‘Write anything you like, so long as it’s the truth,’ which – haha, Mr King, you trickster – is a way of saying that truth on the page, honesty on the page, is the best strategy for writing. Because ultimately, it produces better quality work. Because if you can only get that truth down, you will find that the reader opens their heart to it as much as the writing has made you open yours.

Because, as Anne LaMott points out, ‘Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. [They] will recognise [their] truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of’.

It all goes back to that question – the biggest question, really – of why you’re writing what you’re writing. It’s the question I’m always asking my students: What have you come here to say? It’s the question I ask myself, with every project I start.

So I guess that’s going to be my strategy with this book – to accept fear, to keep my first draft private, to care for myself during the writing, to dredge up courage and Do The Thing, to write the truth. I hope it will help me throw the lights on for my readers. I hope it will help you throw the lights on for yours.

 

*quotes from Patrick Ness and Jesse Andrews were verbal answers to direct questions; quotes by Stephen King and Anne LaMott are taken from On Writing and Bird by Bird, respectively

*image attribution: By Mary Chris Lowe – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...

#LoveOzYAbookclub author interview – PAULA WESTON

Welcome again to another session of Five Messy Questions!

This week we’ve grilled Paula Weston, the author of this month’s title, THE UNDERCURRENT, about everything from how not to wet your pants to why she’d use a katana during a zombie apocalypse. Paula, thank you for playing, and Enjoy!

Why this book? Why this story?

After writing a story over four books with The Rephaim series, I wanted to craft a stand-alone with The Undercurrent to make sure I still could, and because the story I had in mind could be told in a single volume.

As for the story itself, I’d been thinking a lot about where Australia was heading economically, and what the future might look like if our economy declined, particularly in terms of how that might impact government policy decisions. More importantly, I wanted to know what that might mean for the rest of us who had to live with those decisions. Being me, I needed to do all that within a story with plenty of action, pace and intrigue, and – of course – a bit of sexual tension.

Rec us a book on writing craft, would ya?

Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. It’s more about being a writer than it is about craft, per se – trusting your process, dealing with fear, finding insight – but it’s an endless source of inspiration. It’s one that people recommend often and for a good reason.

While researching your book, you found out some crazy stuff, and it was…

Oh, so much stuff! I wanted Angie (Jules’ investigative journalist mum in The Undercurrent) to have some meaty issues to be obsessed with, so I researched how nuclear power stations work and what ‘radioactive half-life’ actually means. I learned there are different grades of radioactive waste, from that created by medical technology (x-rays etc.) to spent fuel rods in nuclear power plants, and that we have no solution for how we store this waste. I discovered that it takes 300,000 years for nuclear waste to naturally return to the radiation levels of the source uranium, and that the processes we currently use still take 9,000 years. That means we need somewhere to store all that waste, and as far as I can work out, we don’t – as a planet – have a solution for this. Basically, we’re hoping that someone in the future will come up with a better idea. That was a bit of shock, to be honest.

I also researched prosthetic limbs, how mitochondria works in human cells, where you inject peptides, what it’s like to ride in a Hercules aircraft, how a desalination plant works and what sort of weapons South Australian beat cops and federal agents carry. You know, just the usual stuff.

Your book has a title, and it’s an awesome title. But what might it have been called, if it wasn’t called what it is now?

How not to wet your pants.

(This will make sense when you read the book, I promise!)

The zombie apocalypse strikes, but it’s okay, cos you have your choice of weapons, and you choose…

A katana. Yes, you have to get up close but it doesn’t need bullets so you won’t have to worry about ammo. The apocalypse may last a while, so that’s one less item of supply you have to forage for. (Plus, the Rephaim all use katanas, so this is a rare opportunity to talk swords.) This option, of course, only works if said zombies are slow movers. None of those World War Z sprinters, thank you.

#LoveOzYAbookclub – June 2018 title announcement

THE UNDERCURRENT is a new standalone spec-fic thriller by Paula Weston, the author of the Rephaim series, and it was recently longlisted for the Sisters in Crime 2018 Davitt Awards in the YA Crime category.

Eighteen-year-old Julianne De Marchi is different. As in: she has an electrical undercurrent beneath her skin that stings and surges like a live wire. She can use it—to spark a fire, maybe even end a life—but she doesn’t understand what it is. And she can barely control it, especially when she’s anxious.

Ryan Walsh was on track for a stellar football career when his knee blew out. Now he’s a soldier—part of an experimental privatised military unit that has identified Jules De Marchi as a threat. Is it because of the weird undercurrent she’s tried so hard to hide? Or because of her mother Angie’s history as an activist against bio-engineering and big business?

It’s no coincidence that Ryan and Jules are in the same place at the same time—he’s under orders to follow her, after all. But then an explosive attack on a city building by an unknown enemy throws them together in the most violent and unexpected way…

You can order a print copy of THE UNDERCURRENT at Boomerang Books, with free shipping available by using the ‘loveoz’ code at checkout.

Alternatively, the e-copy is available here.

Hope you enjoy this month’s title! Feel free to join us at any point as we read together this month – there will be an author Q&A coming soon, and then a title discussion thread on the Facebook group page near the end of the month.

Happy reading!

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub May 2018 discussion post – THE SIDEKICKS (Will Kostakis)

“Mrs Evans’s features soften. She says he died.

I fall out of myself. I picture us contained within a 16:9 frame sitting opposite her desk: me in the winter uniform, full blazer with pants; Ryan in the summer option, shorts and knee-high socks; Harley in his own custom casual interpretation, a shirt that is slightly untucked but not completely, a top button that is undone but obscured by a tie, and white socks visible only when he sits and his trouser legs ride up. The three of us stare at her, stunned.

“Wait, what?’ Harley asks.”

Will Kostakis’s writing has an echo – a powerful punch that hits you after you’ve read the words, so you’re floored by a wash of understood or new meaning hours (even days) later. I’ve had this experience reading all his mature work (The First Third, and particularly his short story for the Begin End Begin Anthology, I Can See the Ending) and I noticed it strongly with The Sidekicks, the story of three boys all loosely connected once the glue of their relationship – another boy, Isaac – dies.

The voices are faultless: closeted swimmer Ryan; working-class rebel and class joker Harley; uptight, aspiring film-maker Miles. Each one has a unique point of view, and each had a different relationship with Isaac – the story is about how they find individual direction after Isaac’s death, but also how the event leads them back to a stronger bond with each other.

I loved this book, and I love Will’s writing. He somehow creates beautiful turns of phrase out of plain language, and he writes from a place of vulnerability and insight that I find deeply affecting. He’s also funny – we know Will can be funny, but the way he shows each boy’s personal sense of humour is a delight. Above all, the boys feel real: they’re all flawed, and flawlessly constructed, each grieving in their own way, each desperate for connection but needing a push to break through. As the Readings review states, “I found that as each section came along I loved that boy the most, and I couldn’t help but see the other two through his eyes.”

I hope you enjoyed The Sidekicks as much as I did. Please add to our discussion of the book in the Facebook thread, or leave a 1-5 star rating if you’re time poor.

I’ll be announcing the next title for bookclub tomorrow, and I’m going to try something a bit new, starting in June: I’d like to reduce the logjam of bookclub posts as I return to more consistent blogging, so I’ll be doing a short reveal on the FB group page and on the #LoveOzYAbookclub page on this site, then at the end of the month the discussion post will also be short and sweet. I’ll still post additional bookclub content (author Q&A’s etc) here on the site’s bookclub page, but I’m going to try to direct bookclub content mainly back to the FB group page. I hope that’s okay!

Anyway, please do leave your review of The Sidekicks, and any comments you’d like to make about the book, and see you again soon for the next title announcement!

xxEllie

#SelfPubIsHere – a hybrid perspective

Okay, so I sat down and wrote a thing – a whole thing! – about self-publishing and lit festivals, and made cogent arguments for indie inclusion, and created incisive sentences about self-publishing’s relative legitimacy, and…

And you know what I realised? It doesn’t matter.

If you don’t think self-publishing is a valid thing, if you consider $700millionUSD in book sales in 2017 alone to be just a blip on the radar…then I can’t help you. I really can’t. I mean, I think it’s time we started talking about self-publishing without wincing, because that sort of behaviour just makes us look immature. And sure, there’s still a shit-load of hobbyists in self-pub, but things are changing fast – and I mean, lightning fast.

It’s fairly clear by now, as Barnes & Noble circles the drain, that the publishing industry as a whole is in a state of flux. I don’t imagine for one minute that legacy publishing is going to die out, but it’s reacting painfully slowly to something that’s been on the horizon for some time – the hungry behemoth that is Amazon – and now the ripples are spreading. Every time I visit an author forum, I hear talk about publishing houses shutting their doors, or lowball advances, or belt-tightening at trad pub houses. Authors are now openly discussing things like rights reversion. If you’re not already part of the conversation, maybe you should be lifting your head and looking around.

Maybe you think everything is peachy. Then again, maybe you’re only looking at Nielsen BookScan figures – you know they’re wildly inaccurate, right?* Maybe you haven’t noticed that more trad pub authors are branching into hybridisation, which just means you’re not paying attention. It’s a bit concerning, though, don’t you think, that the trad pub industry doesn’t seem to have accurate data about what’s selling? Personally, I find it concerning as hell.

It’s time we got beyond the ‘Is Self-Publishing Real Publishing?’ questions – they just go around in circles anyway. We can argue over the issue of whether gatekeeping in trad pub provides quality control (I have two words for this argument: Sean. Penn.). Or whether self-publishing is too much work – because working your butt off to write a book that tanks when your publisher (who has off-loaded most of the promo to you, dear author, because – excuse me for quoting Chuck Wendig – fuck you, that’s why) doesn’t have a sufficient grasp of the market (see inaccurate sales data, above) to get your little book any traction is so easy. Ahem. Or I can point out that literary awards are now starting to accept self-published books, or that poetry would hardly exist in this country without self- and micro-publishing. Or I could explain that I can now hire the same independent freelance editors, typesetters and cover designers that trad pub houses employ to bring my own book out…

Look, I can argue the toss with you about self-publishing until I’m blue in the face, and it won’t make any difference. People who don’t like self-publishing will just turn up their noses regardless. Meanwhile we’ll all still be wondering if we’re going to wake up tomorrow to discover that our trad publishers have cut their entire mid-list, or have been too busy watching Barnes & Noble sink into the sea to worry about the content creators.

I honestly have no clue what the publishing landscape will look like when the dust settles, but hey, we can wait to find out – or we can do something about it.

Thousands of authors – particularly in the romance industry – are already benefiting from self-publishing. Romance authors were the earliest adopters; in fact, they’re the ones we should be keeping an eye on now. They’re not arguing about self-pub anymore; they’re just quietly going about the business of writing books and selling them, and the median income for romance authors has tripled as a result. You want to know what writing-career longevity looks like? US romance authors are lightyears ahead of Australian authors in terms of mature consideration of the issues around professional self-publishing, and how it can be used to forge long-term careers.

And the question of whether self-publishing has enough street-cred to be included at the lit festival table? It doesn’t even come up. Romance broke away and made its own table years ago, with RWA. Fair enough, too – a whole genre was left out in the cold because of a) sexism, and b) a stubborn refusal by the lit industry to give credit where credit was due, and c) a certain distaste in the industry that congeals in the fault line between art and commerce, and d) a lack of appreciation for the preferences, interests and buying power of the average discerning romance reader. And do you see what’s happened to trade romance publishers now? That’s right: romance self-publishing has impacted the market to the point where trad houses like Harlequin have given up on five of their romance lines in the last year.

If you want to talk about #ThisIsHowWeIndie, that’s Exhibit A.

So can we please stop arguing about self-publishing and move on to getting good at it? The only way we can do that – the only way we can keep up with what’s happening in major markets like the US, in fact – is if we finally put all the rubbish aside and get together to talk turkey.

Here are some things I’d personally like to see at a self-publishing festival:

a workshop on rights reversion
a round table discussion with hardcopy distributors – first of all identifying local distributors, examining what they do, and what services they provide, also examining the limits of their services and what gaps in the ecosystem need to be filled (because there are gaps, believe me)
panels and stalls for cover designers – let’s see the pretty pretty, and talk about rates and what working with a cover designer entails
panels and workshops with editors – give local freelance editors a forum to talk about their rates and services, discuss how to work with an editor, what professional editing really involves, and correct invoicing
discussions about typeset/formatting/file conversion – again, who’s providing these services and what’s considered appropriate rates
a ‘from go to whoah’ workshop – walking newbie authors through the steps to get from a Word doc (or a Scrivener doc, whatever) on your computer to a book in your hand
stalls and panels for readers, with lots of cool books available
panels and stalls with micro presses, explaining what they can provide as an alternative to doing it all yourself
also, stalls and panels with self-pub service providers and self-pub consultancy services – what they do, how much they cost, how they can help
panels and workshops with freelance promoters/marketers – who they are, what they can do, and how much they charge, along with concrete data about how outsourced PR helps with sales (US authors already talk about outsourced PR in a casual way, as if it’s commonplace, which suggests we’re way behind)
a workshop on advertising – Facebook, Amazon, BookBub, the works
discussions with bookstore reps – we need more talk about how to streamline the process of getting hardcopy into stores, what discounts to offer, how to invoice and work this out professionally, instead of the scattershot approach that is currently doing no one any favours
library supplier reps – ditto
printers/distributors – there’s only one in this country (that I know of), and it’d be good to know exactly what services they provide, what they charge (prices have gone up recently), how to make the best use of their services, and how they envision their services evolving into the future as demand increases
stalls and panels with author support networks – ASA, Writers Vic, etc, some professional networking events (preferably over cocktails), and maybe some talk about self-care, considering the amount of work involved in self-publishing
at least one workshop on hybrid authorship – including discussion about managing contracts (especially non-compete clauses), coordinating with your publisher, maintaining professional balance, title scheduling etc
a panel with agents – let’s talk about what an agent can do for a hybrid or self-published author, and how an agent might work with an author to control, enforce and sell their rights, help them get into foreign markets and  cross-media, and figure out a long-term career plan
a panel or workshop on audiobook production
…and maybe something on foreign translation
a workshop on business planning, banking and budgeting, including tax
a profile management workshop – platforms, social media skills, the works

This is all stuff I’d like to see at a self-pub festival, and if regular lit festivals can’t be bothered, we might as well be proactive.

But mainly I’d like to see authors and service providers engaged face-to-face in a professional forum that allows them to talk through the realities of self-publishing and how it might work for them, with an opportunity to smooth out problems, and some genuine discussion about where the road is leading.

Let’s get off the fence and do something.

*From Philip Jones’s article ‘A passable year’ in The Bookseller: “…the data we now use is incomplete: there is no market overview of the e-book or audiobook download sectors; no window into self-publishing; and no up-to-date numbers on those publishers (Quarto and Bonnier Publishing, for example) whose major business is done through outlets not tracked by Nielsen BookScan. Some publishers are completely invisible to us”

#LoveOzYAbookclub – May 2018 title selection: THE SIDEKICKS

Heya, folks! It was very cheering to see everyone so excited about last month’s title, and I hope you’re equally keen to get your teeth into this month’s book: THE SIDEKICKS by Will Kostakis.

Will Kostakis’s first novel, Loathing Lola, was published when he was just nineteen. His second novel The First Third, won the 2014 Gold Inky and was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year and the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. A Sydney native, Will happens to be one of those unique writers who are just as eloquent, funny and smart in person as they are on the page – Will is a regular speaker in schools and at festivals and events, and has been a vocal supporter of #LoveOzYA. At last year’s Reading Matters conference, he spoke movingly about his experiences as a closeted teen and a queer writer.

THE SIDEKICKS follows the perspectives of three very different teenagers – Ryan, Harley and Miles – after the death of Isaac, the fourth member of their friendship group. Isaac was the glue that kept the group together, and now grief is the thing that’s keeping them all tied. Reviews of the book describe how the boys’ ‘stories, pains and joys are all achingly relatable’ and the book is divided into three parts, with each part told through the eyes of a different character.

I do hope you enjoy THE SIDEKICKS during May – remember that you can order the book through Boomerang Books, with free shipping by using the ‘loveoz’ code. I’ll be in touch again soon with news about any upcoming Facebook chats or author Q&A’s. Until then, have a good month!

xxEllie