Narrelle M. Harris's Blog, page 46

Doing It Yourself (with other people)

A little while back, I wrote about self-publishers needing to put in the time and effort to match the excellent work that traditional publishers do in getting a novel ready for publication. That work includes editing, proofreading, cover art and design. (Not to mention expertise, PR contacts and simply taking on all that hard slog so that the author doesn't have to do it.)

It's all well and good, you say, to declare that e-book authors need editors and cover designers and whatnot. But where are these persons of skill and virtue?

Good question, I reply to my imagined interrogators, where are they indeed?

So I asked some fabulous and talented people I know for some clues.

Alex Adsett of Alex Adsett Publishing Services says "The absolute best place to start for all this information is the Australian Writers' Marketplace.  It's a book and an online database, and invaluable if you're looking for an editor." Alex herself provides publishing advice, including contract and rights advice, to all writers.

Clandestine Books, headed by crime writer Lindy Cameron, provides editorial and PR services, including manuscript assessment, too.

Individuals offer editing services as well. Gillian Pollack (author of Life Through Cellophane) is a teacher-editor based in Canberra. Her approach is to work with writers to increase their editing skills. "Editing is part of the writer's longer journey when they work with me." You can find her contact details at http://www.gillianpolack.com.

Laura Goodin, who Gillian also recommended, has specialised in business and academic writing and may be a good choice if you're writing a non-fiction book.  Another of Gillian's recommendations is Elizabeth Fitzgerald. Elizabeth's website,  Earl Grey Editing, will be active in a week or so. In the meantime, you can email her on elizabethafitzgerald@gmail.com for information and her rates.

The divine Davina MacLeod is the freelancer who copyedited The Opposite of Life. She charges by the double-spaced 12-point page and can be contacted on davinamacleod@gmail.com for a quote. Davina also does illustration and can be hired for cover designs.

Twelfth Planet Press publisher, Alisa Krasnostein, says "I hear Sarah Endacott is one of the best editors there are." Endacott also provides manuscript assessment.

In terms of cover art and design, Lucy Sussex—researcher, reviewer and writer of crime and science fiction—says: "I find my own artists–go to galleries, collect photos, fight like hell with the publisher to get a decent image on the front of the book. It's worked well so far."

The previously-mentioned Gillian Pollack recommends Andrew McKiernan of Kephra Design, who designs for Aurealis and designed the cover of Life through Cellophane. Gillian also spoke highly of illustrator Kathleen Jennings in Brisbane.

For printing your book, Paul Collins, writer and publisher at Ford Street Publishing, says "One of the cheapest printers I've come across is a print broker called Alfred Hornung of Tingleman Pty Ltd."   Paul also recommended Ekonvurs for the conversion of print to e-books.

So if you want to get a new cover and do a final polish on the out-of-print book you want to e-publish, or if you're thinking about self-publishing an original manuscript, visit the websites or get in touch with these persons of skill (and, one assumes, virtue) for some quotes. Work out a budget to make sure your e-book is whipped into the best possible shape, with all of its apostrophes and commas in the right place. Banish those typos and continuity errors to the nether reaches of hell with some expert help and make your book the best it can be.

Review: The Girl Who Was Was On Fire edited by Leah Wilson

This collection of essays about The Hunger Games was an excellent way to follow my five-day binge spent reading the entire series. Everything in this book either brings elements I was aware of into sharp focus or reveals new themes and interpretations to me. With each essay, though, I responded with variations of "Yes! Exactly! YES!"

Favourite essays include:

Team Katniss, which questions the whole Team Peeta/Team Gale romance subplot and opts for Team Katniss, The Girl Who Was Compassionate, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Your Heart Is A Weapon the Size of Your Fist by Mary Borsellino, examining love as a political act
Carrie Ryan's Panem at Circenses, with its look at reality TV and The Hunger Games
learning about trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in Blythe Woolston's Bent, Shattered and Mended
The Politics of Mockinjay by Sarah Darer Littman, which I found particularly resonant with the lines it draws between current world politics, the packaging of war footage as entertainment and the political tactics of Panem
Community in the Face of Tyranny, in which Bree Despain touches on a theme I felt but did not articulate in my original reading.

But this are just my favourites in a collection filled with intelligent, thoughtful and well written insights into this superb trilogy.

Read another review of this essay collection at Bookmarked.

Buy The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy in paperback or the e-book The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy.

E is for Exciting!

Today I spoke at the Australian Society of Author's E-Exchange seminar, an introduction to digital publishing in books and apps. I had a great time talking to everyone, listening to the other guest speakers and meeting writers, artists, agents and other publishing professionals.

Vincenzo Pignatelli of Blue Quoll showed what his company is doing with apps for children's picture books. Their first book, Mr Wolf and the Ginger Cupcakes, looks gorgeous.  The colours are vibrant and the interactive features are pretty cool. The fact that the book can be translated into seven languages is pretty neat too. Blue Quoll are looking for authors and illustrators to work with, and I'm looking forward to seeing where they take the technology.

Splitting Image Colour Studios has been working with traditional publishers for decades, and now they've been working on e-publishing for picture books for a few years. These are the guys responsible for the charming adaptations of Graeme Base's Animalia and Jungle Drums as well as the Four Ingredients cookbook in app form. Director Warren Smith talked about the other projects, including apps, digital books and print on demand books.

Virginia Murdock spoke about Booki.sh, the web-based online e-book seller, associated with Readings Bookstores. For some reason I'd been having trouble getting my head around how Booki.sh worked, as I'd got used to the model where you buy a book and download it to a reader or device. Booki.sh, being web-based, simply allows you to buy your books in your browser and download your current book into the cache for reading anywhere. It's actually very straightforward. And because it's web-based, you can tweet links to chapter samples, which is a cool function. Just remember to search for book titles through the Readings ebook link.

Another innovative approach is being taken by Jeannette Rowe, writer of extremely popular books for preschoolers. She's working with partners to develop a whole website with online books, book-related games and other ventures. It's terrific to see a writer really taking charge of the ditigal aspects of her career and working with others to find the best way to do that. Rowe herself is passionate and firm about standing up for your (digital) rights.

I was on a great group panel that fielded some great questions from the audience, and then illustrator Ann James of Books Illustrated got us all into separate groups to brainstorm aspects of epublishing and promotion, which generated some great ideas for the convenor, the lovely Marie Alafaci to run by the ASA when she gets back to the office on Monday!

The attendees were all pretty neat too. For all the things that book people have to consider with the new technology—especially considering that we have no idea where it's all going to go—the future of publishing is wide a slightly scary page for us to write a new history onto. Whatever we're doing with digital publishing in ten years' time, this is where we are shaping how that decade ahead may look.

My thanks to the Hazel Edwards and the ASA for asking me to speak, to the other speakers for coming along and all the really cool things they are doing, and to those who came along to dip their toes into the digital waters.

The role of the writer's friend

On Friday night, I attended the launch for Pulp Fiction Press's latest book, Carolyn Morwood's Death and the Spanish Lady. It's a murder mystery set in Melbourne in 1919, in the aftermath of the Great War and during the deadly flu epidemic that killed more people than the actual war managed to do. I'm excited to see it out and it's next on my to-read pile!

I love a book launch. The publisher gets to finally release their latest project into the wild. An honoured guest gets to launch it with good and kindly words about the author, the subject matter and how everyone there should buy a copy because BOOK X IS AWESOME AND YOU WILL TOTALLY LOVE IT.

And the nervous author, often better at hiding behind a keyboard and typing than standing up in front of a bunch of people, gets to say "I'm really proud of my book. I hope you like it." (Perhaps with a subtext of "I'm kind of glad it is all over now. Someone pass me a drink!." and maybe a frisson of 'Oh god, now I have to write another one!!"

In short, a book launch is all promise and hope. It's that marvellous/terrifying moment of letting your words finally fly beyond your own brain and fingertips and hopefully find some hearts and minds in which to nest.

But the release of a novel can be a fractious time for a writer as well. To be more accurate, it's the months after the release that can be fractious, with well-meaning friends deciding that the best time for critical feedback on everything they think you did wrong is after publication.

I'm not talking about reviews, whether in the pages of a newspaper or magazine or in the blog of an enthusiast. All writers know that their book will be reviewed, and they hope some people will like it, though they know some people will hate it. It's part of the deal. Bad reviews only upset me, for example, when I agree with the point they're making. But I can live with the bad reviews. Not everyone's going to like what I do. I don't like everything that other people do. We all bring our own interpretation and ideas to what we read. I'm not even trying to please all of the people all of the time, so it's hardly surprising when I don't.

I'm talking about the friends who say "There's a spelling error on page 58″ or "I thought it had a weak ending" or "I really hated your lead character."

I don't mean to sound like a hypersenstive, delicate little flower but… why are you telling me these things? Why are you, my friend, telling me you don't like my work, to my face, as though that is a helpful thing? I don't expect that all my friends will like everything I do, but seriously, why do some friends feel the need to tell me they think my work sucks?

I've already had a handful of readers (with particular skills and viewpoints and a mandate to look for the flaws) provide critical feedback it before I submitted it to my publisher. My publisher has read it. So has my editor. Numerous times. Both have provided firm, unflinching but constructive feedback on how to polish it, picking up the continuity errors, plot holes and thin character development as we went. A team of other readers, including the proofreaders, have gone over it and hopefully caught all the errors (though, yes, sometimes we miss them).

So, you know, it's been edited before publication. Once the thing is printed and sitting in its crisp, shiny cover, smelling of ink and new paper and potential, it's too late to change anything. And if you don't like the ending or the lead character, that's really okay, but what is the purpose of telling me so? The reviewers will cheerfully tell me they don't like my work, and I'm prepared to live with that, but why are my friends telling me? I, my editor, my publisher and a bunch of other people responsible for releasing the thing actually really liked the book and the ending and the characters, or we wouldn't have released it.  I'm not going to rewrite it now. It's finished. It's published. It's done.

Here's the deal.

Writers:  Never ask your friends what they thought of your book. They may not care for it, and you don't want to make either party uncomfortable by putting a friend on the spot and making them either lie or hurt yourfeelings with their brutal honesty. It's needy and awkward, so do not do that to your friend or to yourself.

(By the same token, if you are sharing your manuscript pre-publication, ask for honest feedback. You don't have to take it all on board, but this is when the honesty is essential.)

Friends of writers:  Feel free to tell your proud author friend that you enjoyed their book if you did. That's nice, but it's not essential. You can always say "I like the cover" if absolutely nothing else appealed. If you think the whole thing's a wash, try "You must be so proud of your achievement." But skip the part where you imply that your writer friend would have better spent that two (or more) years of their life learning shorthand and becoming a secretary, which would at least have been useful.

Offer your your support and a little kindness because, believe me, there have been times when this process has been really rough and the writer concerned has seriously considered that secretarial course.

To show your support, it's ideal if you buy a copy of the book, even if you don't read it (though it's nice if you do). It's great if you like it, but you're not obliged to. Just like you're not obliged to tell the author every defect, great and small, you think the book contains.

So please, if you love me, if you understand what hard and emotionally exhausting work this has been, oh please be kind. Suppress that need to tell me how flawed you think my book is*. And I promise not to tell you that you really can't sing, that you're a bad cook or that your children are ugly**.

Because that would be rude and tactless.

*Though actually, if you find formatting or typing errors in my e-books Witch Honour, Witch Faith, Fly by Night or Sacrifice, I'd like you to tell me about those, because those ones I can fix.

**These examples are not aimed specifically at any of my friends, just in case you think it's you I mean. All of my friends are excellent cooks, sing like nightingales and have exquisitely behaved and beautiful children.

Self-publishing = vainglory?

Dymocks' announcement of the launch of D Publishing Network is lighting up the newsgroups and Twitter at present. It's at pains to state that the venture is not 'vanity publishing', the service will nevertheless allow writers to pay to have their books designed and uploaded, with the distant possibility that some books may be distributed via the Dymocks chain of bookstores.

I am not sure how this model is different from 'vanity publishing', but it will allow Dymocks to participate in the shift to authors self-publishing that is already very common on Smashwords and Amazon.com.

I myself have books on both Smashwords and Amazon.com. Each of the titles was previously published by small presses (Homosapien Books and Five Star Science Fiction) and are now out of print except for the digital imprints I've now released online. These books have been through the curation process of having a publisher select them from submissions and polished in collaboration with a professional editor.

So, like Dymocks, here am I distancing my own online efforts from that dreaded label, 'vanity press'.

Cory Doctorow doesn't seem to have this problem owning what he does. But of course, he was a professionally published author long before he experimented so successfully with the digital self-publishing route.

Why is it that readers automatically assume self-published means bad books? True, we've all read books that were published in this way that were at best full of typos and at worst full of badly plotted, badly written, self-indulgent purple prose. But then, I have read professionally published books that are just as guilty of poor structure and style, many of which I've abandoned by chapter five because I just don't have the time to read books I'm not enjoying.

If someone creates jewellery that they then sell at markets (or on Etsy), we might be intrigued and praise the artist for their work. We might similarly encourage and support musicians who fund their own CD to sell while busking. Such efforts don't have the sales reach of an official music publisher or art gallery to promote them, but we don't disparage the efforts or talent of such entrepreneurial creativity.  The popularity of such work will soon be determined by those who see and buy things on the spot, and help the creators build up an audience of enthusiastic fans.

But try to write a book, publish it and sell it on a roadside stall (or online) and everyone will just assume it's terrible. Admittedly, it's harder to determine in a short period whether the book will be your cup of tea. A painting, a piece of jewellery and even a track from an album can be assessed in a pretty short period of time. Taking out fifteen minutes to read the first chapter or two of a budding new work is more time consuming and maybe less revealing to the casual purchaser.

But this is not far from how we select books (either digital or paper) in the bookshops. There, we may leaf through the first few pages to see how it strikes us. We also go by word of mouth or, in digital books, a free sample to download and try. Staff and friend recommendations and reviews give us an overview of what we might like to read. Surely this same model can apply to self-published books?

I am trying to train myself out of the old gut response that a self-published book is necessarily a bad book. I've been disappointed often enough with traditional titles, and every good book started as an unpublished manuscript at some point. The self-published titles on Smashwords, Amazon and, in future, D Publishing, will eventually be sorted into wheat and chaff by virtue of the same methods used for books with publishing houses: reviews and recommendations.

Nevertheless, authors taking this route can learn a lot by understanding and valuing the process that takes place in traditional publishing, where manuscripts are selected, curated and promoted by experts.

Many self-published books fail on a basic level because of the lack of editorial input and proofreading. I owe so much to my own proofreaders and editors for catching things that I have missed because I have just been looking at the damned thing for far too long. It's not fresh to me any more, and I'm reading what I meant to say; not what I actually said.

Those fresh eyes, who are paid to be constructively critical rather than being friends, who are looking out for my delicate writerly feelings, are essential to helping me become a better writer, and to releasing books that are as good as I can make them at the time. Luckily, the publishing house takes on the economic responsibility of paying these fine people in the hopes that my books will sell well enough for them to recoup their costs.

My publishers have all been small presses, so while finding distribution channels can thankfully be left to them and their expertise, on the whole, promotions and marketing are left a lot to me. It's hard work, and it's time spent spruiking that I would rather spend writing, but I have to get word out somehow. Those recommendations and reviews don't write themselves. (Well, some try via programs, but nobody's falling for that.)

Doctorow recently pointed out in a Locus article that self-publishing and especially marketing books is much harder than it looks.

In the end, I think that self-publishing can work and be worthwhile, but the author needs to exercise professionalism. Self-publish by all means, but be professional and businesslike in your approach to the manuscript. If you don't have a professional publisher to take on the costs of editing, find an independent editor to at least proofread your work. Value their input. Even if you don't agree with it, don't dismiss it out of hand. If they've missed the point of your prose, maybe you haven't written that passage well enough.

Take the time to learn more about the craft of writing. Learn about grammar, spelling and structure. Read widely to see how others do it. Accept constructive criticism gracefully. Be painstaking and check your work. Consider your marketing approach, because publishing is absolutely not a case of 'if you write it, they will come'.

Be like those artisan jewellery-makers, those struggling artists, those hungry musicians. Put everything you can into perfecting your craft. Help to get rid of the stigma of self-publishing by respecting everything that a publisher does for a writer and replicating it as much as you can.

Then, with luck and good timing, the readers will determine what happens in the market.

***

My thanks to Katherine Horsey, a fellow editor, who proofread this entry for me.

I will be presenting 'Introduction to digital matters for writers' at the Australian Society of Authors' E-Exchange Day on 17 September 2011. Check out the ASA page for the details.

Interview: Warren Bonett at Embiggen Books

Bucking the trend of bookshops closing down, Embiggen Books threw open its literate doors to the people of Melbourne in August 2011. Warren and Kirsty Bonett brought their arts-meets-sciences store from Noosaville in Queensland to Little Lonsdale Street, opposite The Wheeler Centre, for family reasons. It's definitely a win for Melbourne!

I spoke to Warren in mid-August about Embiggen's approach to life and its future plans.

Narrelle: What's the philosophy behind Embiggen Books and the kind of books that you stock?

Warren: We focus on science as a pretty big area, but our primary thing is where the arts meets the sciences. Our MO, if you like, is a cross pollination of ideas. We got in a lot of neuroscientists to talk in the shop up north and we will do the same down here. They have a lot of things to say to people of all disciplines. You'll find Proust, for instance, was particularly interested in the mind and there's been a lot of cross-fertilisation between Proust and neuroscientists in the way that they think about thought itself and the brain.

N: What kind of ficton will you stock?

W: There's quite a lot of science fiction in there, but what I've done is actually keep all of the different genres together from literature through to sci fi, horror and crime, because I think that the distinctions between the genres is shocking at best. It's all a bit artificial. Science fiction or crime tends to become called literature after a patina of age has given it a bit of respectability.

Fiction is a good example of people being able to stumble across something that they weren't really expecting to find or look for. Someone might come in for a Dickens and walk out with Doctorow instead. That idea, to me, goes to the heart of the store.

N: The store is making me think of Jules Verne, HG Wells and the whole Victorian era with that idea that the sciences and the arts not only don't have to be separate but perhaps shouldn't be separate.

W: I think they've both got to transform. Once upon a time you had the Renaissance-type individuals who didn't really specialise but just applied thought to a wide range of disciplines. I think we're at a point where that is almost impossible now. But some of my favourite artists and the most stunning artwork you'll see today are coming out of people like mathematicians and engineers.

I think in some respects it behoves the arts to catch up with that, in that we can't just rest upon our laurels and say "I'm a creative type, therefore I don't have to pay attention to this stuff." I think if you're a creative type, it's your responsibility to pay attention to this stuff.

So that's my take on it, and steampunk and the Victorian era is really classic for it. The great icon of steampunk and in the sciences is Charles Babbage, possibly one of the top five most brilliant people the world has ever produced. His discoveries and his work are absolutely mindboggling, and he really did cross over between multiple genres. For instance, one of his favourite things was automata. That art that has really been lost, where you make a robot, effectively, out of clockwork.

I'd love to have some in the store and be able to represent artists that do the work in here. That would be fantastic.

N: Is that something you might consider in the future, having mini art installations?

W: Up north we actually did have a gallery attached to our bookshop. It just so happened that this space wasn't really suitable for it. But we will conduct one and two day exhibitions, where we have a particular artist come in, some plinths and things through the store, by invitation only.

N: Is there anything particular you'd like to say to readers about your store and what they can expect of the experience?

W: It's our mission to keep the culture of bookshops and having somewhere where you will be provoked in thought very much alive. We will have more events than most bookshops tend to, but we'll bring in the people who are running the synchrotron or scientists from the Florey Institute in order to try make those things more accessible to people.

You don't have to go to university or a specialised centre to see that. And that's what we want to permeate throughout the shop. If you've got any ideas about anything that is worthwhile and rational and reasonable out there about the world, we want to help people connect with it.

***

Embiggen Books at 203 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne is open Monday to Saturday, and late on Thursday and Friday nights. Follow them on Twitter @EmbiggenBooks.

Embiggen is also now stocking titles from Twelfth Planet Press, including the first three 12 Planets anthologies, Nightsiders by Sue Isle, Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Raynor Roberts and The Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex. It also stocks Sophie Cunningham's Melbourne. So what are you waiting for? Get yourself in to Embiggen Books!

It's not creepy, it's research.

I like visiting graveyards. Some people think this is morbid of me. They suspect perhaps that I'm scouting for possibe monuments for my own passing, or wishing to dwell on the End of Things, especially since, as an atheist, I really don't believe I have an afterlife to either look forward to or dread.

Others share my enthusiasm, like my friend Katherine who recently accompanied me on two visits to the Box Hill cemetery in search of a couple of gravestones. Two visits were required because we couldn't find DJ Dennis or Cyril Callister the first time round. Luckily, on the second visit we bumped into some members of the Friends of the Cemetery who knew just where we could find them.

But seriously, I don't find graveyards morbid. Sometimes they are very sad, especially the graves of children. Most graves are meaningful only to the families of the deceased. Sometimes, though, a little part of the person's story is left behind for random strangers like me.

And that's one of the pleasures of the graveyard for me. These places mark the end of everyone's story, eventually (or, if you're a believer, the end of volume one and the beginning of the sequel). From time to time, a little of that story is shared.

In Box Hill, Katherine and I found the grave of a woman from Brighton who had been a keen gardener. We knew this because her epitaph referred to her devotion to her garden and the joy she and her neighbours gained from her gifts with plants. Beneath the headstone, her grave contained a little panorama of plants and a bluebird made of porcelain, shielded under clear perspex. I never knew this woman, but for a moment I shared and understood her love of growing things, and sharing that love with her community.

The purpose for the visit was to take pictures for entries in a new iPhone app project I'm working on, so, see, research, like I said. Dennis and Callister were my destinations.

CJ Dennis's grave bears a quote from one of his poems, and it was pleasant to spend a moment reflecting on the legacy of The Sentimental Bloke and his other works which I"m yet to read. At Cyril Callister's grave, I took a moment to be thankful for Vegemite, which he invented, on which so many Australian children have grown up and which gave me a taste of home when I needed it while living on foreign shores.

It has to be said, as an editor in my day job, it's also an occupational hazard that I spotted a typo on stone. I don't believe in an afterlife or ghosts, but I swear I'll come back to haunt anyone who carves a spelling or grammatical error into my final resting place.

Graves can be sad; they can even be morbid. I find them melancholy but restful, a reminder that every life, however, brief, has it's own story, filled with love, drama, tragedy and joy. It's a reminder that every story ends and that I want to fill mine with love, adventure, friends, exploration and the unexpected.

In case you're wondering, if I end up with a headstone (rather than cremated and kept in a pretty jar) I'd like my epitaph to read: Here lies Narrelle Harris. Full stop."

Review: Whispering Death by Garry Disher

Garry Disher has been writing crime, along with kids books, thrillers and a host of non fiction, for a while now, but Whispering Death is my first foray into his world. A little brave of me, one might think, to leap into the sixth novel of the DI Challis series without having read the preceding five, but Disher has managed that difficult task of making the book as welcoming to a newbie as to an old hand. There are no barriers to first time readers coming on board at this stage of Challis's career, and plenty of back story that beckons me to go back to the beginning.

Avoiding all the techno-wizardry of 21st century forensics, sparkling labs and endearing ubergeeks, Whispering Death instead brings you solid, foot-slogging detective work. The characters and the locale are drawn with detail and nuance. Alongside the dependable and likable Challis, Constable Pam Murphy has humour and warmth, as well as a few issues of her own to sort out. I particularly liked the practical, positive and no nonsense way he deals with the consequences of Murphy's bout of anxiety and reaction to the antidepressants she has been taking. Treatment of common mental health problems should always be dealt with in such a matter-of-fact and non-judgemental manner.

The dual plots, one involving a rapist who dresses as a policeman, the other revolving around the activities and strange past of a female cat burglar, provide a balance between crimes of brutality and of intellect. The two never overlap except that the same police are involved in investigating both crimes, but the disparity between the types of crime allows an intriguing look at how the same type of police work, and a little luck, is effective no matter the crime.

Disher, twice winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction and other awards, has given readers a tight, gripping novel set in a distinct Melburnian landscape. Even if you've never read the Peninsula murder mysteries before, this isn't a bad place to start.

Read an extract from Whispering Death, buy the paperback or get the e-book.

GaryView: Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Raynor Roberts

*For newcomers, the GaryView is a review of books/films/TV/entertainment carried out as a conversation between Lissa Wilson (librarian) and Gary Hooper (vampire) , characters from my book 'The Opposite of Life'. Visit my website for more information.

Lissa: I hadn't heard of Lamia's before. How did I miss the fact that Keats wrote poems about vampires?

Gary: Lamia's aren't really vampires. They're not really real, either. I think.

Lissa: Neither are manticores or basilisks, I take it.

Gary: Not that I've ever seen.

Lissa: Well, given that fiction is usually a case of Epic Fail when it comes to accurately describing vampirism as you know it, did you like the book?

Gary: Oh, she got the attitude of vampires spot on. And I really liked the Roman theme park and especially the airship in the last story.

Lissa: I bet you just wished there was a lot more about the engineering.

Gary: I know a lot about how airships worked. I was a bit obsessed with the idea when I was nine and read a bunch of books about the Hindenburg and stuff. My granddad still had newspaper cuttings from the papers from the disaster. I once met a vampire who said she'd been on an airship once. Sounded terrific. Well, except for the high volatility and risks of burning to death.

Lissa: A design flaw that sucks equally for humans and vampires. I really loved the idea of a Roman re-enactment town in the middle of the Australian bush. Someone should actually do that.

Gary: I'd love to see that. The Romans had some incredible engineering. Not just the aqueducts. They had hyraulic mining, water wheels, even ways of getting ducted heating into buildings.

Lissa: I have a sudden image of you in a toga supervising the building of bridges.

Gary: A toga?

Lissa: And sandals.

Gary: And you're not laughing?

Lissa: I thought it would be rude. (giggles)

Gary: Getting away from your images of me in ridiculous costume…

Lissa: At least I didn't picture you as a Centurion… oh dear… (giggles some more)

Gary: Getting away from that… what did you like?

Lissa:  My god, there were a lot of fearsome women in this book! I loved all of them.

Gary: Clea reminded me of my mum.

Lissa: Really? Don't tell me she had a long-term friendship with an immortal…

Gary: Apart from me?

Lissa: Oh, there is that, isn't there. Don't tell me she fought monsters, too?

Gary: No. Well, she did once throw a cup of hot tea into Mundy's face and tell him to bugger off.

Lissa: Your mum was clearly awesome.

Gary: Yeah. She was.

Lissa: Wish I'd known her.

Gary: She'd have liked you, I think.

Lissa: Her name wasn't Julia, by any chance?

Gary: Dot. Dorothy.

Lissa: But a Julia in spirit, eh? The Julias in this book were all brilliant. If I ever have a daughter, I'm going to call her Julia, and she'll be mighty.

Gary: I suspect any kid of yours'll be pretty feisty.

Lissa: Though it seems that Dots are fairly mighty too.

Gary: And they make a mean lemon delicious.

 

Get Love and Romanpunk from Twelfth Planet Press. The book is the first of TPP's Twelve Planets series.

Review: Melbourne by Sophie Cunningham

To begin with, I want to say what a beautiful object the book Melbourne is. When people go on about the texture, weight, feel and smell of real books in the e-book debate, this is the book they mean. Melbourne, written by Sophie Cunningham and published by New South Books, is exquisite. A small, solid hardback, its elegant dustcover sheaths a simple cream cover embossed in gold. It looks like a book made for princes. The inside cover is an old-style map of Melbourne with icons highlighting features of the city. The pages are thick, rough-edged paper which provide a real tactile joy.

An object as lovely as this book ought to have magic in its pages, and it does. Sophie Cunningham's tale is part memoir, part ode to the city. I began by thinking the story was like some densely woven cloth, linking the past and present, connecting people and events across the city and time, but cloth is flat, and this story is deep and rich. So the Melbourne of these pages is more like close-growing plants whose roots go deep and intertwine, and whose branches and leaves mingle equally above.

It's all a pretty poetic approach, but what the hell—the book has a beauty and poetry that go beyond saying "this is a neat and evocative book about Melbourne and its history".  Cunningham's personal history is revealed along with the city's own story, and her emotional response to the places and people therein give the book real life and depth. Some of her experiences tally with or even cross over with mine, adding an extra tang of resonance.

Her story is full of extracts from essays, novels, emails and articles. The seasonal chapters flow from topic to topic, so that you may start with fruit bats in the gardens and end up at a book exhibition by way of Barry Humphries, football, TISM, indigenous history, Australian TV of the 1960s and the Victoria Markets. And every step leads logicially from start to finish. Along the way she talks about things I knew only in passing or not at all, adding to my own stash of knowledge about my adopted hometown.

New South has produced a number of books that give personal accounts of Australian cities, including the award-nominated Sydney by Delia Falconer. Cunningham's Melbourne will surely be on upcoming lists. It sings a song of home to those of us who love this place, and perhaps may even explain that love to people who come from anywhere else.

Get Melbourne by Sophie Cunningham from New South Books  or from Readings, which also has it as an e-book.