Publishing in the Time of Covid-19
To misquote that title by Gabriel García Márquez: publishing in the time of Covid-19.
I write to get away from the everyday, necessary but tedious things we all have to do. And I read for the same reason. I’ve never wanted to read about what I’m surrounded by, or what’s on the news, and that’s been true more than ever during the past year.
So, I write fantasy. But this isn’t an invented planet or land. There are no dragons or clan wars. My trilogy is set in the far west of Cornwall. Fantasy in Penzance? Oh yes. You’ll find cars and smartphones, texts and emails; and, of course, libraries. But there is also magic. And time travel.
My second book came out in April ’19 and for that one I did the same as the first time round: visited venues which might sell it and arranged to give talks. I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed doing these, and I’ve been delighted to discover that grown-ups enjoy being read to. However, my third book came out just before Christmas 2020 and of course talks are out; libraries are closed except for click and collect, and groups aren’t meeting except online. And many of the venues that sold the first two are closed too, from the shop at the sculpture gardens to the café in the little local airport. But I keep hearing that people are reading more than usual, so I must make sure they know about this get-away-from-Covid set of books. Set in 2014 and 2016, with no face masks.
So I’ve done socially distanced deliveries in West Cornwall: place wrapped book on doorstep at pre-arranged time and pick up envelope with money from under the flower pot. Ring doorbell and stand six feet away but ensure the book is picked up by the enthusiastic reader. Others have been posted in succession from the local post office and deliveries checked daily by me, using the Royal Mail Track and Trace system – which works, dare I say it, better than another system of a similar name. Though even Royal Mail are suffering in present circumstances.
As with the previous two, there are a host of practicalities around a newly published book. I should have lots of time for these and other things as everything else is on hold: no writers’ groups, no having coffee with friends or visiting family. Yet somehow it doesn’t work like that, and I don’t seem to have any more spare time than I did before.
However, I should also be writing. A trilogy has three books? Still, the first one was never written with a sequel in mind. After I finished it (some years before I got as far as publishing) I was feeling bereft – till one day I had an idea about what might happen next. It was very similar with the third, although that time it was an idea about how to combine the main characters from the first two books with two new characters that I was keen to introduce. And to use a story about an island cut off from the world by magic, which I’d first written about half a lifetime ago. So that’s what I did, and it became The Island outside the World.
I’m going to share something which I haven’t posted in public before. In the opening pages of Book 1, my heroine Gerry has gone into a jeweller’s shop in Penzance. She’s about to leave when a small, silver-haired woman comes into the shop, holding a watch and asking if they can check if the watch needs a new battery. Well, that’s me. I go into that shop every two years or so to see if I need a new battery for my watch. When I tell people this, they always say it’s like Hitchcock’s cameo appearances in his films. I don’t do it again in the whole Jewels of the Rainbow trilogy. But I’ve just started a possible new book. It begins at our local airport. I love the place. Tiny planes taking 16 passengers, yes, one-six, on 15-minute flights to Scilly. Only two check-in desks and jolly good coffee. And they’ve sold my books since the first one came out in 2018 – or did, until the café closed in January 2021. So, three books after I wandered into a jewellers’ in Penzance in Chalice of the Rainbow, a small silver-haired woman is looking at the books for sale beside the counter in the airport café. This time it’s me checking to see if they’ve sold any more of my books since I was last there. My narrator doesn’t know that; all she sees is that the person she’s looking for isn’t in the café. The readers don’t know it either. The story begins four years after the end of the first book, so no one will make the connection. Except people I’ve told about it. Book 3 was set a couple of years after the first two, and I introduced two new main characters in it. I like them so much that I wanted to see them again. I’ll just have to see how this one works out. But you can’t have the fourth book of a trilogy. Can you?
The woman on the cover of Book 3 is wearing the ring from the cover of Book 2, which is why she’s got a rainbow coming from her hand.
About the author:
Victoria Osborne-Broad was born and grew up in London, with Scottish parents, and has an accent which switches to Scots or East London as it chooses. She has been reading for as long as she can remember, and worked in libraries for thirty years. Victoria began visiting Cornwall in 1991 and has now lived there for nearly twenty years. The Jewels of the Rainbow trilogy draws heavily on the Cornwall she knows and loves.
The books in the trilogy – Chalice of the Rainbow, Guardian of the Stones and The Island outside the World – are available as paperback and e-book from www.victoriaosborne-broad.co.uk and on Kindle from Amazon. You can also follow Victoria Osborne-Broad – Author | Facebook aka https://facebook.com/osborneb
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