Candice Fox's Blog, page 4

Insensitive Questions for Authors

I saw an awesome hashtag recently that was along the lines of ‘Do Not Ask the Author’ or ‘Insensitive Questions to the New Author’, and I had many to add. Of course, this is all in good fun – I’m not writing this in the white-hot rage of someone recently insulted. There are insensitive questions that apply to many situations, and the old list for the pregnant woman pops up a lot. Here are some of my favourites from across my writing career, and I’ll add in any good ones my author buddies come up with if they respond to my Facebook post about it. This might be a good resource for would-be interviewers, or loved ones of writers.

Why aren’t you appearing at (Certain Writers Festival)?

Because writers festivals are as difficult to get into as the popular girls’ slumber parties in early high school. I’m not a popular girl. I’m a writer – that should be evidence enough.

Is your book coming out in hardback?

No. I’m not Harper Lee.

So are you going to do a book tour?

See response to question one. I actually had the extraordinary experience of having sixty or more people turn up for a book talk I did in Tamworth for my first novel, but in most cases, if you’re not a best-seller, no one will know who the hell you are during the release of your first, second and third books. They might turn up because they have nothing else to do, or they’re old and they want a night out with easy parking that’ll end in time for an inappropriately early dinner. But that’s about it.

Where can I get your book?

In a goddamn bookstore, you twat.

Oh, so it’s a real book?

Now you’re being insensitive to eBook writers.

Will you write my memoir?

No. I’m a crime fiction author. You’d know that, if you weren’t too busy thinking about how amazing you are to ask what kind of author I actually am. Also, your life is not the next Eat, Pray, Love. There was one Eat, Pray, Love and that’s quite enough of that to last a lifetime.

Why aren’t your books on posters on the backs of buses?

Because publishers pay for those adverts, and they’ll only do that for their big-fish authors. Posters on buses need to be brief and recognisable – they’re not designed to draw in first-time readers of an author but to show all-time readers of an author that their new book is out. Jodi Picoult and Lee Child are on the backs of buses, because people don’t see their names and say ‘Who?’

So you’re gonna be the next J. K. Rowling, right?

No. J. K. Rowling’s story is a one-in-a-billion Cinderella-style fantasy that happens to absolutely no one. But good on you for knowing another author’s name.

Can you come over my house and fix my washing machine? You’re not working today, right?

No, Mum. I’m not a washing machine technician. And writing is work.

While you’re here, will you replace the light bulb above the stairs? It’s too high for me.

You really are getting old, aren’t you.

I’ve written a manuscript. Will you read it for me and tell me if it’s any good?

No. There are many reasons why I will not. Because I’m a word-lover, I won’t be able to read your manuscript without marking it up. And because your manuscript is unpublished, it’ll likely need a lot of marking up. This basically constitutes an editing job, which takes forever, and should never be free.

Also, in all likelihood, I have no idea whether your book will be viable for publication or not. I can tell you it’s well written, an awesome concept, or that it’s very rich in good characters and plot (or all of those things!). But books with all of these features go absolutely nowhere in their attempts at getting published ALL THE TIME. The publishing industry is very, very complex, and I would hate for you to hang your chances on me liking your work, because in reality, me liking your work means zip.

You’re still working here? I would have thought you’d have quit to be a writer by now?

Almost no writers live off writing. It’s not very lucrative, for the most part. Writers teach, mostly, or if they don’t have part-time employment, it’s because a very loving and giving partner is sponsoring them while they write.

Why don’t you write (other genre perceived as being ‘where the money is’, usually chick lit or erotica)?

Why don’t you go and do (other job perceived as being ‘where the money is’, usually training as a doctor or lawyer, or playing the stock market).

When’s your next book out?

In fucking December! Jesus Christ I must have said this eight million times. Look at my blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts, where it’s mentioned. Look at my publishing page. Look at any article that has mentioned me over the last year. If someone asks me when my next book is out again I’m going to kill everyone in this room. SIT DOWN. NO ONE LEAVES. PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM.

Error: Feelings not found.

I think I have compassion fatigue. Let me tell you what it feels like.

It’s a slow and gentle draining of the emotional resources people keep for use in dealing with others. It’s something which I thought must have been connected to my approaching the age of thirty and finally losing my rose-tinted view of the world. My unshakeable faith in the goodness of people.

It’s a lack of pity toward a general collection of people who act in distinctly childish ways because they obviously have self-esteem problems. For example, I have encountered a couple of people in the last few months who go on the ‘sell’ with me about themselves, cramming and cramming their value down my throat. I’m impressive. Aren’t you impressed with me? Look at how amazing I am. I need your admiration. I need it, I need it, I need it. Instead of feeling sorry for them needing it so badly, (hell, I’ve needed it at times!) I just get cranky at them for being so desperate for attention.

It’s a kind of cynicism that stops me from smiling and feeling sorry when I’m approached by people on the street looking for charitable donations. I think; you just want to take advantage of me. When I look at Facebook, I think: Shut up, feminists. Go away, political activists. Look elsewhere, fundraisers. If you’re angry, empassioned, desperate or in need of assistance, put your hand down. Now.

I have zero tolerance for the homeless, the sick, the mentally ill right now. I have no sympathy for those who are addicted, traumatised, outcast or downtrodden. I just wish they’d get out of my way.

Where has this come from, this draining away of my tenderness? I know, logically, that people have legitimate problems. That terrible things have happened to them, and they’re never going to get over it. That their bad behaviour is a symptom of something they can’t fix.

I’ve read some pretty interesting stuff about compassion fatigue online, and have been shocked to find it so accurately attuned to what I’m experiencing, particularly in the areas of what they call ‘the homelessness problem’. The articles describe sufferers of compassion fatigue working in the health profession developing the syndrome from being overloaded with the need to empathise with patients. Compassion fatigue can lead to ‘a decrease in productivity, the inability to focus, and the development of new feelings of incompetency and self-doubt’. Maybe that’s where my ‘fuck you all’ attitude is coming from lately. My ‘shut up and leave me alone’ sort of tone toward people I don’t know (and don’t want to know, thanks much!). Some studies are suggesting that there’s a world-wide trend toward compassion fatigue, caused by some of the devastating crap we’re seeing in the Post-Sep 11 media. My back hurts. Really? Well eighteen children were just killed in a fire in Kansas, ok? So shut the fuck up.

I wonder if compassion fatigue has anything to do with my interest in crime. Do I subconsciously think ‘Oh, you had a rough childhood? Well I was just reading (or writing) about (insert murdered child’s name here). Want to know how hers worked out?’ ‘Oh you don’t like your mother? Good thing you don’t have (insert murderous mother’s name here) for one.’ Am I stuck in the extremes of human experience, in which no one has anything to whinge about until there’s blood on the floor?

Is it that I hate hearing about problems I cannot personally fix? I am, and always have been, a perfectionist. There have been times in my life when I’ve received more tangible pleasure and security from re-organising a cupboard than I have from a human hug. When someone presents me with a problem (I’m homeless, I hate myself, I hate my job, I’m crazy, no one will ever love me) that I simply have no effect over, does some neon light in my brain that reads FAILURE sizzle and spark to life?

When you put all of this together, it probably sounds cold. But at least it’s honest, right?

I think I just need to get into a bathtub filled with puppies. Dozens and dozens of newborn puppies. The ones with the soft, downy fur.

An open letter to Stephen King from author Candice Fox

I read this speech for an event connected with the New South Wales Writers’ Centre at Berkelouw Books in Paddington on Thursday night. The assignment was to talk about the ‘problematic’ nature of your literary hero. It got a few laughs, so I thought I’d share it for all who couldn’t attend. Happy reading (and writing!) everybody.

Dear Stephen,

Candice Fox here. Again. I wrote to you when I was sixteen to tell you how much I love your books, and to ask you if you’d read my manuscript. You never replied. Seriously? Do you have any idea who I am? It’s ok, I get it, you were 54 at the time. You were probably lacing your cupboards with mothballs, writing complaint letters to your local paper and rubbing balm on your corns. You’re old.

I wanted to get the first part of this letter, the part where I defy logic and burn you for not replying to my fan letter, out of the way up front. Because deep down in my heart I know it’s ridiculous to expect you to reply to every fan letter you receive, even though I myself receive at least one a week and reply to all of them, even the last one, which just said ‘I love you Bae’ over and over. And the one a couple of weeks ago that told me I had an inheritance waiting for me in Nigeria, I replied to that too. You probably get tens of thousands of fan letters. I shouldn’t be bitter. I only do it because I’m good at it.

My real plan in talking about your problematic nature, the Problems with You (Capital P, Capital Y), is to criticise in the way that I always criticise, with a tasty shit sandwich. I introduced my students to the concept of the shit sandwich a few weeks ago when I told them I’d be writing comments on their assignments that way. The bread in a shit sandwich consists of friendly and encouraging sentiments. The shit, is shit. Comments on their assignments went something like ‘This is a very well formatted document. Your writing is terrible, and you will never succeed. Give up now. I like your hair.’

Stephen, you are responsible for some of the most emotional reading moments of my young life. The Green Mile set me aflame with regret and injustice. In Shawshank, the bad guys got away, which is a wonderful and hopeful thing that I think a lot of writers stray away from, afraid they’ll somehow be challenging the Disney happy ending readers are supposed to love and expect. Misery made me sweat with tension, and there was not a moment during its reading when I knew if that captured writer was going to escape or if Annie was going to eat him like a piece of birthday cake.

But here comes the shit.

I think that, despite being a funny, practical and engaging book, On Writing contains plenty of ideas that are bad for young aspiring authors.

Firstly, you describe your unnaturally prolific output as a young writer. Aside from writing for various school-based publications, and starting a home-grown magazine with your brother, you also seem to have written and submitted enough stories to choke a small horse. You write:

By the time I was 14 the nail on my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. By the time I was sixteen I’d begun to get rejection slips with hand-written notes a little more encouraging than the advice to stop using staples and start using paper clips.

This troubles me for two reasons. In order to be considered a socially normal 14-year-old at present you need to not only succeed at school, but maintain a range of social media accounts with witty and topical content, be across the latest celebrity meth downspirals and keep up with Games of Thrones before some jerk ruins the whole thing for you online, not only what’s actually happening on the show but whether it’s ‘too rapey’ or ‘just rapey enough’. How many sheets of paper does it take create a downward weight strong enough to pull the standard steel nail out of a wall? I’m thinking more than five. You’re asking of the young writer too much.

You also mention that you were getting hand written notes from publishers by the time you were sixteen. The first time I submitted anything to a publisher, I was eighteen. I got a personally typed letter from a publisher asking me if I wanted to polish up and resubmit my trashy vampire novel (Twilight had just broken). I didn’t get another non-automated email from a publisher until I was twenty six. I have over two hundred rejection emails, which weigh exactly nothing, that read just like this:

Dear Candice,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript, (insert title here) to us here at, (insert publisher here). Unfortunately, after careful consideration, we have decided not to pursue the work. We wish you all the best with your writing.

See? Shit sandwich.

You recommend in your memoir that the young writer pursue their dream with a daily writing goal. You manage 2,000 to 2,500 a day, but for the amateur you suggest starting small. You write:

As with physical exercise, it would be best to set this low at first, to avoid disappointment. I suggest a thousand words a day, and because I’m feeling magnanimous, I’ll also suggest that you can take one day a week off, at least to begin with.

Now in my brief and ludicrous foray into high school teaching, not once did I suggest the students get their books out of their bags without being assaulted by a thirty-strong collective sigh of both disdain and disgust at the suggestion. I once suggested to the class that they should number their page from one to ten, at which a young man at the back of the room cried ‘Oh my God!’ with all the astounded indignation of someone slapped with a fish.

Your success story is unreasonably Cinderella-esque. You describe making a dollar an hour shaking used syringes and body parts from blood stained sheets in a medical laundry and not being able to buy your infant daughter agony-saving ear medicine, when surprise surprise, the reprint rights to your first novel ever sell for four hundred thousand dollars. I’m on my forth novel and I’m still not important enough not to come to writer’s talks like the one I’m sitting at right now, and while I can afford ear medicine for my infant daughter, I don’t have one.

Don’t tell young writers that being a junky will liberate their creative spirit. You recall snorting so much cocaine in the eighties that your nose bled for days, and you were so high you don’t remember a minute of writing Cujo, which won the 1982 British Fantasy Award, was adapted into a successful film, and which has sold over 2.5 million copies world wide. I put it to you, Mr King, that you were creative and prolific despite your addiction. I know this, because I live in Kings Cross, in Sydney’s red-light district, and the most creative thing a junkie has ever said to me is ‘You think you’re better than me? You should go burn yourself alive!’ I couldn’t even return to this creative soul that I thought her use of the word ‘alive’ was unnecessary, as how could I perform the act if I were not alive, because by the time I had raised an indignant finger she’d already been arrested. Drugs are bad.

If I can have one final beef with you before I go, Stephen, it’s with this quote of yours I found among two hundred and thirty three of your sassy and sweary one-liners on Goodreads. You say:

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you… He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic.

No, Stephen, no. You can’t blame a magical cigar-smoking bowling champion for some of the shit you’ve written, because no one wrote it but you. And don’t tell young writers that anyone’s responsible for their own writing but them – because when they finally do get published they need to be able to say it was their blood and sweat that got the manuscript written, submitted and accepted and not some dickhead in their basement. Your assertions about magic are wrong. The magic of writing is in being the kid in English class who gets their stuff read out all the time. The magic is in preferring books to members of your own family. The magic is in learning how to write, whether it’s by doing degrees or having your grandmother snap your head off every time you end a sentence with a preposition.

I still like your writing, Mr King, and I also like your hair. Look forward to hearing from you.

Candice Fox

Candice is a Parrot

I’ve recently become the parrot in a battery farm. And it’s great!

A few weeks ago I hired a ‘hot desk’ in a corporate office in Sydney. For a monthly fee, I get access to a desk in a large pool of desks in what would otherwise be wasted office space for a big corporation. I have no idea what the corporation does, but they own seven offices with ‘hot desk’ spaces in my city alone. For a mere dollar a day I get to drink their coffee, stare out their windows at the tiny ant people marching around the streets below me, use their fridges and vending machines. The monster company is at a loss having me here, and they probably know it. I use more than a dollar a day’s worth of their toilet paper.

What are the benefits of hot desking if you’re a crime fiction author trying to churn out compelling murderousness by the page? There are plenty. There are some downsides, too, but I’ll weigh them for you in the most colourful way I can. Welcome to my office. Please, take a seat.

Pros

Working in a corporate office has infected me with the quivering productivity of corporate workers. Although I don’t have a meat-headed boss wandering scarily between the cubicles, glancing threateningly at my screen now and then and slapping reports he wants done ‘by Monday!’ on my desk seconds before I trundle off for the weekend – I do still feel the need to work. Gone are my lazy mornings on the couch swiping Imgur endlessly. I arrive at the office with all the other drones at 9am, and I take my first break at 1030. I eat among them in the local food courts, checking emails on my phone. I listen to their stories about Johnson in accounting and how he’s getting transferred out, the lucky bastard. I subscribe to their constant assessments of what day it is and what that means.

‘Monday,’ someone groans. I nod, lips tight at the corners with resignation.

I partake in Tim Tam Tuesday, and on Fridays I’m ten percent louder. I laugh harder and I sometimes whistle. I wave the receptionists off like they’re my work buddies from years back.

Writing is lonely, and I used to treat this by getting out of the house and hanging around libraries and cafes – but the office is doing things for me these havens for the disturbed and the retired could never do. I don’t have to pack up everything I own every time I want to use the rest room, as I do in a library, so that some weirdo doesn’t steal my laptop while I’m away. I’m trusted to eat and drink at my desk without somehow transforming into a toddler and hurling my spaghetti all over the place in a fit if infantile rage. No one is sitting near me giggling loudly at FailArmy compilations, and no one wants to tell me their latest conspiracy theory about September 11. I love libraries, don’t get me wrong, but a few months of these charming interactions is enough to turn anyone into a spree killer. While I miss the staff at my favourite cafes, I’m not stealing anyone’s table by being here, and I don’t have to order something every half an hour to avoid feeling like a creep.

Cons

The cons are few, but they are there, and I’m not sure this would be a fair representation of my time here if I didn’t present them. Cramming myself into the hive is probably exposing me to some seasonal nasties, demonstrated so perfectly by the worker bee lady I rode the elevator with yesterday who coughed wetly non-stop all the way to level 12. Because the building is so large and central, it’s harder to get into than fort knox. A gauntlet of security checks and sign in points interrupts any would be thief, disgruntled ex-employee or terrorist, which is nice, but it takes me five minutes to get back to my desk if I venture out into the city.

As a writer, I used to like taking inspiration from the people around me, and my library weirdos and café retirees sure were a lot more colourful than this pant-suited lot. It’s also not as quiet here as I expected – a television at the front of the room plays CNN Live all day long in muted tones, and every now and then someone hires a desk casually for the sole purpose of making loud phone calls. But I’ve gotten around this by tuning into Noisli and listening to the wind and rain.

While tuning out for a few minutes of Struggle Street on Youtube might be totally expected in a public library, here it gets a couple of weird looks, as workers glance away from their Spreadsheets at my screen. Now and then someone clues in that I’m writing fiction from the dialogue, but no one has commented. I’m the only person in the office today wearing a red Robot Panda t-shirt, and I’m the only person who pauses at ten to call their Mum. But I’ve becomes accustomed to being the ‘only one’ doing something over the years. It’s not as socially terrifying as it sounds.

All in all, I’d strongly recommend the hot desk system to the kind of writer who can work all day. The office hours and word count tables and drone of the air conditioning hasn’t dampened my creative spirit, so if you’re thinking about it, it might be a good move to boost your productivity. You can still sing, as a parrot, even if you’re the only one in attendance not expected to shoot out an egg every hour. And, you never know. Your colours might brighten things up around the farm.

Happy Friday, everyone.

Tappety Tap

Hey, everyone!

Here’s a list of everything that’s going on, so we can get that out of the way.

1. Hades and Eden are now published (or on their way to publication) in Australia, the US, Israel, Germany, Japan, and in the Spanish language! Soon my plans to take over the entire world will come to fruition. The first thing I’m doing is pushing for a three day weekend.

2. Tim asked me to marry him. I’m not sure if I told you or not. I said yes!

3. I’m on a huge fitness bender, that is half about my love of fitness and half about my serious girl crush on Michelle Bridges. Yes, I’m wearing a puffy black Michelle Bridges vest right now. No, I don’t care what that means about me.

4. I’ve discovered Sword and Scale podcasts. If you haven’t, you need to. Now.

5. I’ve discovered Scrivener, for writers. If you haven’t, you need to, also. Right after you’re done with point 4.

I’ve just got a royalty summary through for the quarter, and I’m just so grateful when I look at those book sales numbers for every single person out there that they represent. I know they represent far more than they appear to, because fans write to me now and then telling of how they gifted my book to a loved one, or shared their book around their family. I feel blessed, as I always have, to have any readers at all. The dream was never as big and wonderful as this reality.

I’m powering away at Troppo, due for release in August 2016. Fall, book three of the Bennett / Archer series, is out in Australia in December. We’re in the midst of drafts with that one.

Tap, tap, tap, I’m tapping away at life, at love, at the books. It’s all good here in Candiceland. Hope you’re all happy, well, and reading up a storm.

Free Fall

I’ve had some pretty scary times over the last decade or so.

I was once, for fifteen terrifying minutes, in command of a navy frigate on the Atlantic ocean. Me, alone, giving steering directions to the sailor on the helm. There were in excess of 250 people onboard.

I once found myself booted out of my home in the pale twilight of an otherwise ordinary Sunday afternoon, lamb roast in the oven, washing on the line. I had nothing but my clothes, my cat, $400 and a divorce on the horizon to claim as my own.

I teach young people for money. If that alone isn’t nervous-breakdown worthy, I don’t know what is.

But I’m putting it out there; the moment someone you care about and respect sits down to read your fiction manuscript for the first time inspires a fear unlike all others.

It’s one of the deepest kinds of fear. It’s a personal, bodily terror. Because having the responsibility for the lives of 250 people on a ship on the ocean – I’m not sure that really says much about my soul. Being dumped by a loser I was wasting my time with anyway – nope. Doesn’t say anything about my soul. But writing is the song of the soul. And when I give it over for scrutiny, as I have many times now, I fear for the lifeblood of that inner-born sound.

Enough criticisms could strangle the soul-music of a writer. I’m sure of it.

And don’t get me wrong – I’ve had my share. I read a review by some idiot recently that said that if I cut the back story of HADES and focused only on the front, I’d save paper, thereby helping the over-burdened natural environment. Thanks, jerkface.

The criticisms of someone you care about as deeply as I care about my fiancé, my publisher and my agent are different. The assessments of my publisher and agent wait behind email walls, but Tim read my latest manuscript, FALL, in front of me. I curled on the couch and watched him in the armchair over several days, frowning in that stern almost angry way he does at the pages, lips pressed together. Every time he put the book down, I ached. When he asked questions, they stung.

Imagine that this slow-burning terror comes out of a writer who already has a couple of scores on the board. My first two novels have been very successful. It makes me wonder about what criticism from loved ones and mentors does to the voice of young writers whose scoreboard is empty.

I’m pleased to report that the assessments of both publisher and the magnificent Tim are very good. I delighted this morning in watching him devour the last pages, exclaiming with surprise or horror, now and then, as his eyes danced over the lines.

My soul bellows today.

Fully-fledged, real, actual

Probably, due to my winning the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction, there might be a bit more traffic here over the next few days, so I suppose I’d better make a post! Indeed, if you haven’t heard, I’ve been added to a list of Australia’s most wonderful and exciting crime writers, paraded before my peers, and given a little statue to honour my achievement. I couldn’t be more proud of myself. Myself, and the people who had a hand in plucking me up from obscurity and making this of me – this, a fully fledged, real, actual, even slightly popular maybe, writer.

Don’t think for a moment I’ve forgotten that actually, yes, everyone and anyone who sits down to put their mind to the keys and play out their innermost stories is a fully fledged, real, actual, writer. You don’t have to be anything other than a putter-down-of-words to be a writer. I don’t believe in holding back labels, because it encourages nastiness – you mark my words. The moment anyone starts saying ‘These people are real and worthy and these people aren’t’ we’re right back in the dark ages. And when you start saying ‘these people are real’ and ‘these are real but less real’ and ‘these are on their way to being real’ you just create a class structure. Let’s not do that. At least not here.

But I suppose there are degrees of feeling these descriptors, whether they’re self-applied or not. There are times, I’ve discovered, when even the most high-flying of writers feels like a failure – feels fraudulent somehow. But there are moments, like that one in which I stood on the stage at the Brisbane Writer’s Festival and gave thanks for my Neddie, that you’re confirmed to yourself. I feel, in the wake of this honour, like I’m on the path I was meant to be on. I feel confident. I guess that’s what an award like this was designed for. To give the first-time writer a bit of a zing and to tell the long-time writer to keep going. The lovely Michael Robotham called it a ‘right of passage’ in his words before he announced my name. Unlike most rights of passage, I’ve found this one distinctly pleasant.

What news is there aside from this little gold nugget of an event in my life? Well, I’m hard at work on book three of the Bennett / Archer series, book one of which is due for release in the US in February 2015. I signed the contract for Fall (book three) just the other day at my agent’s house over coffee, while her delightful horse-shaped-dog begged me for pats. I’m eagerly awaiting the release of book two of the series, Eden, in December here in Oz. I do hope readers will enjoy Eden, because I’ve been having violent terrified conniptions of second-book-horror over it, as apparently all writers do, when they’re not on post-Neddie highs. But I’m being all zen and trying not to think about those horrors. I did it once, I can do it again… RIGHT?! I’m trying to do it for a third time here in the library right now, to the ironically loud clatter of other silent-room-workers’ keys. Sneakily, I’ve got 7k down on something exciting for you for 2016. Something outside Frank, Eden, Hades and their dark and twisted world. Still dark, twisted, and… worldy… so don’t you fret. I’m very keen to get onto it. I think it might blow your socks off. Just got to get this pesky PhD out of the way first. Oh God the friggen PhD.

Anyway. That’s it for now. I’m alive, I’m working, I feel great and I won the Ned Kelly. More news as it happens. Thanks for being here, Blogfollowers. Xx

Foxbooks is GO!

Alright, fans. It’s not very pretty. It has no logo. I’m still learning to use it – but it IS alive. My new business venture, Foxbooks is off the ground and hovering nervously. All your manuscript assessment needs in one place right here:

Foxbooks

What are you waiting for? Go and have a look!

Fated

People are often curious to know how HADES happened. It was not, in any way, a straightforward journey from page to print, and therefore like all perilous journeys, its path was full of lessons and surprises. The first and most critical lesson I learned from trying to get HADES into print was not to go around trumpeting my success until contracts were exchanged and money in my hand. And even then, I wouldn’t advise it. Wait until the book is in your hands. That’s the only certainty you have in this game.

 

The first time I read those magnificent words, ‘Yes, I would like to publish you,’ they were in an email not from my current publisher, Random House Australia, but from HADES’s original publisher in the UK. I will not name this publisher, because I’m not sure it’s really fair. I was so angry and blinded at the time, that I didn’t ask for all the details in what occurred in my first publishing deal. There might very well have been legitimate reasons for what happened happening. I hold no resentment, and I wish this tiny publisher all the best in the future. The indie publishing game is often a dire and thankless one, and what happened I’m sure is a familiar story to people who deal with these ambitious little companies.

 

Basically, I was on my fifth novel with no success in the publishing game. This was around 2011. A one-man publisher in the UK offered to publish me in print and in digital form in both Australia and the UK. I told everyone I knew. I told people I didn’t know. I was in tears with excitement all the time. I was planning my book launch from the first day. I printed out my acceptance email and framed it. I was drunk with visions of opening a package and finally holding my first words in print.

 

The year and a half long wait to see myself published flew by. We were editing the manuscript together over email. I became quite close to my publisher and regularly chatted with him on Facebook chat about family dramas, both his and mine, books and authors we loved. I fended off contant interrogation from confused friends over when my book would be published as it was again and again pushed back. These things take time, I would say. He’s one man doing an entire company’s job. I knew my publisher had a busy work and family life outside of his publishing hobby.

I was willing to wait as long as it took.

 

After waiting six months for our cover designer to emerge from the mist into which she apparently descended, (with me resisting the urge to simply have my graphic designer step-mother do the job over a weekend), my publisher emailed to tell me he didn’t have the money to put me in print anymore. He’d overspent on a local literary festival. He could still publish me in eBook form.

 

It’s hard to describe how this felt. I was ‘crushed’, yes, but it was a private hurt, a thing so devastating I didn’t dare seek comfort from anyone on it. It happened at exactly the wrong time. I’d just separated from my husband in the most awful and heartbreaking way a relationship can come to an end; suddenly, inexplicably, shockingly. At the time, I was sleeping on my parents’ living room floor. My cat was traumatised. I was so mad. White-hot mad. The only reason I hadn’t published myself in eBook form a year and a half earlier was because I wanted to see the book on paper. I wanted, at least once, to hold my book in my hands. I withdrew from the relationship with my publisher. I hadn’t been contracted, and my publisher accepted my, rather coldly worded, withdrawal.

 

It sounds silly now, but I was actually deeply humiliated by the failure of this little book deal. I guess deep down inside, after the first couple of push-backs of the publication date, I was in doubt that the book would be published. The publisher had only put one book out in print before. But friends were introducing me to other people as an ‘up and coming author’ with an ‘international book deal’ and I was too embarrassed to correct them. When the book was laid out fully, I was encouraged, but then we stalled. When I finally got the cancellation email, I sort of knew before I opened it what it was going to say.

 

HADES found print, finally, with Australia’s largest publishing house, Random House. I did open the box, smell the fresh ink and paper, cut my book out of the plastic and hold it lovingly to my chest. I have an unapologetic affection for books in print. I got to see my first tattered and well-loved copy of HADES the other day in the hands of a man walking down the street, so used to seeing it brand new and sparkling on book shelves in stores.

 

I am profoundly lucky that my original publisher did not publish HADES.

 

He stalled me, effectively stopping me from publishing it myself with my doomed publishing deal, and kept the book off the market until the exact moment I arrived in Sydney, where I would find my new boss, who would recommend me to the woman who would become my agent, who would then find me my publisher. I don’t know if you believe in fate, but this example, this crushing, failed opportunity was so perfectly that old door closing so that a window can open, that I had to share it with you. Rejection is never, never a waste. Don’t despair, and don’t count your chickens. Just keep knocking, keep on knocking, until it’s your time to be let inside.

Don’t get mad

Something I see a lot in aspiring authors is an incredible, deeply rendered frustration. I guess I notice it because I’m only one book into my (published) writerly career, and I remember what it felt like.

There’s plenty to be frustrated about as an unpublished author. That dream of getting the phone call, signing the contract, walking into the hallowed halls of your traditional publisher’s brightly lit offices and being greeted like a star is very familiar – because when it happens it happens just like that. It’s magical. It’s miraculous. It was certainly the highest point of my life thus far. When it happens to traditionally published authors for the first time, they tell everyone about it. I sure did. I’m still doing it.

So for aspiring authors they can imagine that for themselves pretty easily. They also know how to get there. They’ve read all the books. They’ve attended all the seminars. They’ve spoken to all their idols and heard the same set of steps. Write something brilliant. Edit the shit out of it. Submit it everywhere you can. Don’t take no for an answer. Keep on truckin’, baby. Just keep on truckin’.

The problem is, that you can do that a hundred times and still not make it. And there’s no logical reason you can grasp onto. None.

A few times before, people I’ve known and loved have tried to teach me to drive a manual car. The instruction I was being given was painfully simple. Take your foot off one pedal as slowly as you can, and simultaneously, gently, press down on another pedal. Easy, in principle. One up, at the same time as one down, slowly. I tried it. The engine clunked and failed. I started up and tried it again. Clunk. Fail. Again. Again. Again. Again.

Why isn’t this working? What the hell am I doing wrong? It’s so simple. Jesus. Everybody can do this but me. Children can do this. How is it that I can do (list life achievements) but I can’t do this. I am such a loser for not being able to do this. I am the ultimate non-manual-driving loser.

At about my hundred and fiftieth rejection letter, which was around the time I was finishing up my fourth unpublished novel, I’d managed to cultivate a pretty dark and devastating aspiring author frustration. A lot of crying and swearing was involved. I hated publishers. I loathed published authors. The good ones, and murderously, the bad ones. How do these people make it? How? Who are they related to? Who are they sleeping with? What did they study that I didn’t study? There must have been something going on here that I didn’t understand, some secret that everybody knew except me.

The truth is, there is no secret. There is no conspiracy against you. You’re not personally being targeted and shut out of the party. Publishers aren’t gathering around your manuscript laughing at your work. They’re not throwing darts at a picture of your face. They’re lovely people. They work unspeakably hard. It’s the same with agents. They’re not money-hungry fiends. They care about good work and the big dreams of the writers at heart out there as much as you do. The problem is time. And money. And manpower. You know this. You’ve heard it plenty of times before. Most of the big publishing houses in this country handle upwards of three thousand submissions per year. They have room for ten to twenty new authors in their stable. This falls every years with the rise of digital self-publishing. That’s the situation. That’s how it is.

It’s good to be a bit frustrated, so I’m not telling you to calm down completely. It’s only through the unshakable, stubborn, fuck-you determinedness that you’ve developed that you will succeed in squeezing into that tiny gap, that crack in the wall that allows new authors in. It may (probably will) take you years to get there. It will probably take you multiple books. What I want to discourage, however, is that self-hating, publisher-hating, author-hating frustration that can arise out of the good frustration.

There is some joy in being locked outside the party. You’re not alone. In fact, there are so many of you out there that you’re kind of like your own party. You’re all experiencing the same thing. You’re all fighting the same fight. You are a part of a journey that tens of thousands of successful traditionally published authors have made. There’s no reason to hate or doubt anyone, particularly yourself, for not making it when book one fails. The same for book ten. It’s not you. It’s not them. This is just the nature of the journey.

And let’s face it. You’ve never been the type for easy journeys. You wouldn’t want this so bad if you were.

Don’t give too much to your frustration, because it will crush your work first, and your spirit next. Channel it, use it, thrive off it.

Don’t get mad. Get writing.