Chris Pearce's Blog, page 37

May 20, 2014

Comments by reviewers and literary agents

Further to my previous post, it was good to get a couple more five star reviews for A Weaver’s Web from Nathan Mercer at Movies and Manuscripts and from Margaret Millmore at Crystal Crichlow’s blog.

Nathan wrote a long review and was clearly impressed:

“The author’s command of his characters is amazing.”

“I can’t recommend this book enough …”

“The settings and descriptions are awesome!

“… writing style … is so smooth and perfectly paced …”

“… agents might look back and think ‘why did I pass up that book’ and kick themselves!”

http://moviesandmanuscripts.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/a-weavers-web-epic-novel-that-will-get.html

Margaret was also impressed:

“The characters are so well written …”

“This isn’t my normal read and I was delightfully surprised at how well the author grabbed my attention to the very end.”

http://crystalcrichlow.weebly.com/1/post/2014/04/review-a-weavers-web.html

That’s now 9 five star reviews and 3 four star reviews at Amazon for an average of 4.75. See the About page for a few comments from reviewers, e.g. comparisons with Dickens, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald and Dos Passos, and a “read of the year!” comment.

I had a favourable professional appraiser’s review on a draft of the novel. I made changes and ran off a couple of boxes of the book and got back 18 responses from general readers, all of whom really liked or loved the book including five who couldn’t put it down. Their comments are in the book’s preface. I may have got something like a 4.75 star average from these people too.

My submissions to literary agents included comments by the appraiser, general readers, writers at a US writing site, and other agents. None of it made any difference. In fact, I don’t think any agents even commented on the comments. Many read or asked to see chapters. Most gave a standard no thanks type of response. There were a few positive comments and a few negative ones. I don’t think any two agents had the same negative comment, and on a few occasions what one saw as a weakness, another saw as a strength.

Many commented on the subjective nature of fiction and to keep trying. Virtually all of them were nice about it all, though I doubt I would have got better than a 3.75 star average from them. I made no changes to the novel based on literary agent comments before publishing it as an ebook.

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Published on May 20, 2014 08:48

April 18, 2014

Interviews

I’ve recently done a couple of author interviews and I’m happy to do more. These two can be found at the following sites:

Indie House Books:

http://indiehousebooks.com/interview-chris-pearce/

Crystal Crichlow’s site:

http://crystalcrichlow.weebly.com/2/post/2014/04/author-interview-chris-pearce-weaves-his-magic-in-a-weavers-web.html

Crystal tells me she is “hearing good things about A Weaver’s Web from one of my reviewers. So far, they’re loving it! They should have a review for you soon.”

I think there might also be a review coming soon from Nathan Mercer at http://moviesandmanuscripts.blogspot.com.au/p/blog-page_9.html. He sounds impressed with the book.

When I was sending the novel to umpteen literary agents and getting knocked back each and every time, I always knew the product was there. I’m glad I’ve taken the indie path.

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Published on April 18, 2014 10:36

April 10, 2014

Looking for reviewers

If anyone is interested in reviewing my historical novel, A Weaver’s Web, and posting the review on their blog and perhaps Amazon and Goodreads, I can send them a mobi, epub or pdf version.

I have contacted a number of reviewers that are on web pages listing people who review books and I will contact some more of these people. But I thought I would add this note here in case there are people who see this post and would like to review the book.

A Weaver’s Web is about handloom weaver Henry Wakefield, his wife Sarah and their five children who live in abject poverty in northern England in the early 19th century at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Henry hates the new factories and won’t let his family work in them. He clashes with Sarah, a factory agent, a local priest and reformers, and son Albert runs away. They move to Manchester but are even worse off, living in a cellar in a terrace and have another little mouth to feed.

Henry’s passion for money overrides his hatred of factories and he starts one of his own, but it is beset with problems. The Wakefields eventually become quite wealthy, but Henry holds the purse strings and this has a devastating effect on the family. Albert is caught stealing and is transported to New South Wales. Her baby’s death, Albert’s unknown fate and society parties become too much for Sarah, who hears voices and is taken to the lunatic asylum. Son Benjamin falls in love with an orphan girl and they have a baby. Henry is furious.

Family members, including Sarah who has got out of the asylum and Albert who has returned to England unbeknown to Henry, have had enough and seek revenge.

Star average for reviews on A Weaver’s Web at Amazon is 4.7.

I can be contacted here by leaving a comment or at c_pearce [at] bigpond.net.au

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Published on April 10, 2014 05:41

April 4, 2014

Famous authors rejected by publishers and agents

Further to Brian Marggraf’s post about Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions” being rejected by 99 of 100 literary agents (the other recognised the book) when submitted by Samuel Moffie as “The Perfect Martini” (http://indieheroblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/16/agents-qualified-literary-gatekeepers/), a similar case happened here in Australia a number of years ago.

The Weekend Australian sent a sample chapter (chapter three) of the book, “The Eye of the Storm”, by Australia author Patrick White to nine leading publishers and three literary agents back in 2006. The book was actually published in 1973, his ninth published novel and the one that clinched him his Nobel Prize in Literature in the same year. He was named Australian of the Year in 1974.

The newspaper called its submission “Eye of the Cyclone” by “Wraith Picket” and changed the character names. Seven publishers and the three agents replied but all rejected the work. One publisher didn’t reply and another wanted three months to review the work. Results were published on 15 July 2006 in an article called “Publishers reject Nobel prize writing” by Jennifer Sexton.

One publisher said, “What I read left me puzzled”, and that the “plot got lost through an aspiration to be a literary novel”.

Another gave tips on getting the work evaluated, suggesting the author “join a writers’ centre” with “access to proofreaders, mentor programs, and inside information about the publishing industry”.

The manuscript wasn’t “suitable for the emerging list” of another publisher.

One literary agent thought the manuscript “was in need of work” and suggested the author read “The Art of Fiction” by David Lodge.

In rejecting it, another agent said that “an agent must be totally committed to a work to sell it enthusiastically to a publisher”.

The experiment may have been inspired by an exercise in January 2006 when two Booker prize winning novels, “In a Free State” by V. S. Naipaul and “Holiday” by Stanley Middleton, were sent to 20 publishers and agents by the Sunday Times of London. It was rejections all round except for one agent who showed a bit of interest in Middleton’s novel.

I think it goes to show that fiction is very subjective and that finding an agent or traditional publisher is a lottery. If the writing of authors of major prizes gets rejected, what hope is there for the unknown author?

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Published on April 04, 2014 05:25

March 31, 2014

Life of an indie author

Great change is occurring in the book publishing industry. Technology has allowed writers to publish their work cheaply and easily as an ebook and they no longer have to rely on traditional publishers or printed books.

I’m glad we are now called indie authors or indie publishers (indie being short for independent) rather than self-publishers (although this is still used) or that dreadful term, vanity publishing. It made out that anyone who self-published had an inflated view of their work and that if it was good enough, it would find a commercial publisher.

I don’t think this is true at all. My experience with literary agents is that they have to be “passionate” (to use one of their favourite words) about a work to take it on. A manuscript can be excellent but finding an agent that is passionate enough is the hard part. One agent nearly took me and my novel “A Weaver’s Web” on: “You are clearly a talented writer but, after much consideration …” Another compared my book to John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”, but still couldn’t take me on.

In today’s market, agents seem to be taking on fewer and fewer new authors, especially of fiction. A contact who does reviews suggests that with traditional publishing, it was a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting “noticed and read” and says it’s now 2 in 10,000 with ebooks! Maybe this is a slight exaggeration, but it’s probably not drastically wrong.

There are so many ebooks out there. My publisher said there are 80,000 new ebooks a month for the public market. That’s a lot of competition, even if the quality does vary. The proliferation of freebies probably doesn’t make life easier either. I’ve read comments by authors at Amazon’s KDP that they get thousands of downloads during the free period. Then when the price comes back on, they get about one sale.

I don’t think there are any easy answers or magic solutions. Basically, I think you and your book/s have to become better known and that means joining book reading clubs such as Goodreads and Shelfari, as well as sites that promote authors and books such as Awesome Gang and Author Marketing Club, and asking reviewers for reviews. The likes of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on probably help too, although not everyone here will be thinking in terms of what ebooks they want to read. It’s a long term process.

Non-fiction is probably slightly easier as an indie author than fiction. People probably search mainly on well known authors for fiction and by subject for non-fiction. I have two non-fiction ebooks coming up, “Through the Eyes of Thomas Pamphlett: Convict and Castaway”, and one on the history of daylight saving time around the world.

Meanwhile, I’m emailing a number of book reviewers asking for a review of my novel, “A Weaver’s Web”. There are hundreds of them. Some specialise in certain areas while others take on many or most genres including non-fiction. They are in high demand and often have a long waiting list and say they can only review a proportion of what they are sent. But it’s all good publicity as they add a review with cover image to their blogs as well as pasting a copy of the review to Amazon, Goodreads and often other sites.

I’m lucky writing is a hobby for me and would pursue it regardless of any monetary reward, although making a bit of pocket money is always nice. The old adage applies: don’t give up your day job.

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Published on March 31, 2014 19:26

March 14, 2014

A Weaver's Web – excerpts

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Published on March 14, 2014 05:51

March 6, 2014

Origins of daylight saving time

I am part way through writing a book on daylight saving time. Meanwhile, here’s an article on the origins of daylight saving time.

The concept of daylight saving time was born in London one summer’s morning around 1770 when Benjamin Franklin was out walking at seven o’clock. He noticed no shops open despite the sun being up three hours. He felt it odd that people burnt candles well into the evening and then slept in the morning when the sun was high in the sky, but complained of the high cost of candles.

Later Franklin was American ambassador to France. In Paris in the spring of 1784, he attended a demonstration one evening of a new oil lamp invented by his friends and debated with them at length whether it was more efficient than candles. He got home after three o’clock in the morning and went to bed. Franklin awoke at six to broad daylight as his servant had forgotten to close the shutters the previous evening. He realised that Paris could make great savings in candles if people got out of bed sooner and made better use of daylight, especially in the warmer months when it got light so early.

As a result, he wrote an article, “An economical project for diminishing the cost of light”, for the newspaper Journal de Paris. In it, he calculated the savings in candles and money Parisians would make if they went to bed earlier and got up earlier. But it was largely a whimsical article. Franklin himself, at that stage of his life, was well known for playing chess with friends, spies, and fellow statesmen almost nightly to nearly dawn.

Franklin never suggested that clocks be put forward and never used the term “daylight saving time”. Local time was the only time used in those days. When the sun was at its highest, that was 12 noon. Each city and town was on a different time. There was no standard time, let alone daylight saving time.

Pressure to standardise time came mainly from the railways. By the mid nineteenth century, railways were spreading across many countries and needed to keep to timetables if people were to catch their train and if terrible accidents were to be avoided. In the end, the railway companies simply implemented “railway time”, whether the authorities and the general population wanted it or not. This started in England in the 1840s and 1850s. American rail companies implemented railway time across the United States in 1883. Within days, most people, schools, courts, and local governments were using it. Over the next few decades, most countries took up standard time. Daylight saving time on a large scale now became a possibility.

New Zealander George Hudson presented two papers, in 1895 and 1898, proposing that clocks be put forward two hours in the summer months. He mentioned cricket, gardening, cycling and other outdoor activities as the main benefits. There was a fair amount of interest, especially in Christchurch. It is quite likely that other people proposed the idea of daylight saving time in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The champion of daylight saving time was English builder William Willett. He was always conscious of making the most of natural light in his buildings. One early summer’s morning in 1905, he was riding his horse in Petts Wood near his home at Chislehurst, Kent, south-east of London, as he often did. As a builder, he would take notice of the various houses he passed. He saw most of the blinds still shut and an idea for saving daylight occurred to him.

In his spare time over the next two years, he developed a plan to shift some of the early morning daylight to later in the day, thinking of what benefits this would bring and of any objections he was likely to encounter. He wrote and published a booklet called The Waste of Daylight in July 1907. In it, he expressed concern about the hours of morning daylight not utilised in spring and summer and the lack of daylight at the end of the working day for outdoor leisure activities. He suggested that if some of the sunlight could be transferred from the morning to the evening, the advantages of extra exercise and recreation and of the money saved on artificial lighting would accrue to all. He estimated net annual savings to Great Britain and Ireland of 2.5 million pounds, a mighty sum in those days.

Willett campaigned vigorously, believing his idea was sure to be a success, constantly updating his booklet with details of new supporters and more advantages of the scheme. Printing, distribution, travelling and lobbying cost him thousands of pounds. His idea met with plenty of support, including in the British parliament, but also with a lot of opposition, especially from farmers, while the press ridiculed it. Successive bills were introduced into parliament over several years but each was ultimately rejected. Willett pursued, and in 1914 published the nineteenth edition of his booklet. World War I brought additional pressure to introduce daylight saving time but, sadly, Willett died of influenza in 1915, before his dream was realised.

While the British kept heatedly debating daylight saving time in parliament, Germany quietly introduced it on 30 April 1916 to conserve energy for the war effort. Several other European countries also introduced it on that day due to their trade connections with Germany, including Austria-Hungary, Netherlands, and Belgium. Others to take it up were Denmark, Luxembourg, and Sweden on 14 May, Norway on 22 May, Italy and Switzerland on 3 June, France on 14 June, Portugal on 17 June and, at last, the United Kingdom on 21 May.

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Published on March 06, 2014 05:56

March 4, 2014

The Peterloo Massacre

The cover of my historical novel A Weaver’s Web depicts a scene from the Peterloo Massacre. You can see Henry Hunt, who led the meeting, in white trousers near the centre of the picture. The painting was first published by Richard Carlile, who supported freedom of the press and universal suffrage, in October 1819.

The Peterloo Massacre took place when magistrates ordered the cavalry to break up a peaceful meeting of at least 60,000 people in Manchester, UK, demanding parliamentary reform. About 18 people died and an estimated 500 or more were injured. The meeting was held at St Peters Field in Manchester on 16 August 1819, a Monday.

In Manchester, there had been quite a bit of unrest in the 1810s with workers complaining about machinery taking their jobs, and people protesting about poor economic conditions and the city’s lack of parliamentary representation. Lancashire had two members of parliament, but only males and only those who owned land could vote and only then in Lancaster, fifty miles north of the county’s main population centres. Some other areas of the country had hardly any people but had two representatives. Manchester was the second largest city in England, after London. Weavers’ pay had fallen to five shillings in 1819 from 15 shillings in the early 1800s, and food prices were rising. Thousands were starving.

There had been demonstrations in Manchester and surrounding towns, which escalated in 1819 and culminated in a huge gathering at St Peter’s Field, now St Peters Square. Vast numbers of Mancunians turned out as well as large groups who marched to Manchester from surrounding towns up to 17 miles away on a fine and warm day. New female reform societies were also involved. It was a family occasion and many were dressed in their Sunday best.

Four magistrates were to monitor proceedings. They can be seen barking orders out of a window of the building at the left of the painting. They arranged for about 2000 military and constables to be present.

People arrived throughout the morning and by soon after 1pm, Hunt was on the speakers’ stand, two wagons tied together for the occasion. He spoke to the crowd but soon the magistrates panicked, perhaps due to the size of the crowd and the noise and a fear there would be a riot and maybe a revolution against the establishment as France had seen 20 years earlier. Also, the magistrates took fright at the presence of journalists from newspapers around the country, who hadn’t been at previous reform meetings.

An arrest warrant was issued for Hunt and other leaders of the meeting. But the crowd was so dense that the chief constable felt that military action would be required to make the arrests. Soldiers, many on horseback, made their way through the crowd. Horses reared with fright as people tried to get out of the way. Soon soldiers were chopping and hacking at the crowd with their sabres.

Some of the crowd responded with sticks and stones and the situation descended into turmoil. By now, most people were trying to leave the field but troops blocked the main exit. Other soldiers kept attacking. The field was cleared in ten minutes but angry crowds hit the streets and the military shot at them. Most of the deaths and injuries at Peterloo were from being trampled or sabred.

News of the massacre spread quickly and people were appalled. But the government cracked down. Reform leaders and journalists were arrested and jailed, including Hunt for two and a half years and Carlile for three, and the Manchester Observer closed. So-called radical meetings and publications were banned and by the following year, 1820, every leading reformer was in jail and the lot of the ordinary people was even worse than before Peterloo.

It took another half a generation for Manchester to get its own parliamentary representation when two member positions for the new borough were created under the Great Reform Act of 1832.

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Published on March 04, 2014 08:31

March 1, 2014

Through the Eyes of Thomas Pamphlett: Convict and Castaway

Quite a while ago, I researched and wrote a non-fiction book on Australian convict Thomas Pamphlett, Through the Eyes of Thomas Pamphlett: Convict and Castaway. It was published in print and I think there are still a few copies at Amazon and other places. I intend to publish an ebook version later in 2014 or early 2015.

It’s an amazing story of a convict who went before the courts four times and received various punishments, including lashes and time in a gaol gang in irons. Later, as a cedar fetcher, he was lost at sea and almost died before being marooned on an island off the coast in an unexplored part of the Australian continent.

Thomas Pamphlett was a brickmaker in Manchester, UK. At age 22 in 1810, he was sentenced to 14 years’ transportation to New South Wales for stealing a horse and five pieces of woollen cloth. After arriving in Sydney on the Guildford in 1812, he worked in the brickmakers’ gang.

Along with two others, he was charged with stealing the windows from stately Birch Grove House in 1814, the only building on Balmain Peninsula, now part of Sydney. He was given 100 lashes and six months in a gaol gang.

Pamphlett escaped twice before being sent to Newcastle, a penal settlement of secondary punishment north of Sydney, in 1815. After absconding again, he received 50 lashes. Returning to Sydney with a wife and three children in 1819, he was soon caught stealing again, but was let off due to unsound mind.

In 1823, he set out in an open boat with three others, John Finnegan, Richard Parsons and John Thompson, to fetch cedar from Wollongong, 50 miles south of Sydney. They were blown out to sea and suffered incredible hardships, with Thompson dying from lack of fresh water and the elements.

After more than three weeks at sea, they were finally shipwrecked on Moreton Island, off present day Brisbane. The castaways spent seven and a half months trekking north in their attempts to get back to Sydney. They were naked and lived with several Aboriginal groups, learning much about their lifestyle and customs.

In their travels, they stumbled across the Brisbane River, the first white men to see it. Pamphlett was the only good swimmer of the trio, so they had to walk along its bank, and those of its tributaries, until they could find a way across it and resume their journey north.

Finally, one evening, Pamphlett noticed a cutter in the bay off Bribie Island to Brisbane’s north. On board was explorer John Oxley who was searching for a place for a new convict settlement. Pamphlett learned that Sydney was over 500 miles to the south rather than to the north. The castaways realised they had spent all that time going the wrong way!

Oxley took Pamphlett and Finnegan back to Sydney; Parsons had gone on ahead and was still somewhere to the north. The explorer gave a favourable report on the area and a new penal settlement was established there in 1824, the Moreton Bay convict colony or Brisbane Town. By that time, Parsons had returned to the area and was rescued.

Pamphlett committed another crime, stealing two bags of flour, and was returned to the new settlement to serve a seven year sentence. This colony, which later became the city of Brisbane and capital of the state of Queensland, would never have been founded had the castaways not shown Oxley the Brisbane River, which previous explorers had missed because several small islands that looked like part of the mainland blocked its view from the bay.

At the expiration of his sentence, Pamphlett was returned to Sydney and lived out his days quietly at Penrith, west of Sydney. He died in 1838 aged 50.

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Published on March 01, 2014 06:47

February 27, 2014

Excerpts from A Weaver’s Web

At Amazon and Goodreads, you can read the first 10% of a book for free and I think the other book sites have something similar.

Helium

Before my historical novel A Weaver’s Web became an ebook, I posted a large number of excerpts to writing site Helium. If you go to https://app.heliumnetwork.com/heliumnetwork/viewPublicUserBio.sc?userNumber=386640 and scroll down, you will see the excerpts.

Or you can click on them from here to go straight to an excerpt (sorry about the flat cover image – some Helium bug):

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-burglary-207653/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-christian-217541/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-childbirth-238676/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-conflict-217502/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-confrontation-207881/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-cruelty-214873/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-death-239027/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-facing-death-217424/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-family-239274/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-family-conflict-103039/

http://www.beyondprose.com/index.php/a-weavers-web-novel-excerpt-friendship-103007/