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Really valuable list of diverse picture books (as in, picture books featuring diverse characters). Thanks to Picture Books Blogger!

The fact that my book now sits on a library shelf seems very surreal. I must visit and take a photo before someone borrows it – NO, wait, I really want someone to borrow it!

There is this thing where authors get paid micro-microcents for each time their book is borrowed, but really, you wouldn’t want to hold your breath to use it for a cup of coffee. What’s much much much more exciting is that the story could possibly, maybe, perhaps, get into the hands of a reader. An actual live person turning pages.

The thought that somebody unknown might go in and have a look at my imaginary world is just amazing. It’s strange how even the chance that it might happen affirms the world of The Pale as somehow more real.

And very motivating. Right, out of the blog and back to writing Pale #2!

Sometimes I look up from the imaginary world I’m writing and take note of what’s around me. Sometimes I ask, What am I doing? Is this worthwhile? Can stories have value? Is this how I want to spend 2018?

A dear friend recently sent me this link from Literary Hub on the moral agency of the fiction writer. I include it here because it makes total sense. The quote is from Susan Sontag’s At the Same Time: The Novelist and Moral Reasoning, and addresses the morality of the writer:

“Obviously, I think of the writer of novels and stories and plays as a moral agent. . . This doesn’t entail moralizing in any direct or crude sense. Serious fiction writers think about moral problems practically. They tell stories. They narrate. They evoke our common humanity in narratives with which we can identify, even though the lives may be remote from our own. They stimulate our imagination. The stories they tell enlarge and complicate—and, therefore, improve—our sympathies. They educate our capacity for moral judgement.”

See the page with many more snippets of Sontag’s wisdom at

http://lithub.com/susan-sontag-on-being-a-writer-you-have-to-be-obsessed/

I have been re-reading this passage as I write. It seems to me to be very apt for the stories that come out of Odyssey Books, where nothing exploitative or repulsive gets a look in. Odyssey – where books are an adventure – and very often, a moral one at that!

 

Thanks to the British Library free Flickr stream for the image taken from:  “Italien … mit 12 Städteplanen und 40 Ansichten in Stahlstich”, by Georg von MARTENS, p. 1775, Stuttgart, 1846.

I have just read Fascinating article about genre boundaries in this month’s Writers Victoria magazine, The Victorian Writer (as in, writers who live in Victoria, not those who write like Dickens necessarily!).
In ‘Crossing the Streams’, author Claire Corbett writes that ‘the genres all need each other and dividing them up is pointless … Sci-fi in particular plays well with the others’.

Corbett argues that all genres use the techniques of romance, crime, horror, etc, to keep their narratives going, and that ‘sci-fi is on the verge of swallowing pretty much all literature whole because, as Kim Stanley Robinson points out, the reality we are living in now is pretty science fictional’.

I looked up Corbett’s author page and it’s very impressive. Check it out at
https://www.clairecorbett.com/

This evening is the launch of my sci-fi, dystopian novel, The Pale. I’m very excited and just a little bit nervous.

All I have to decide is what to wear, what to say, and what to read. Problems every author should have 😉

This afternoon, I took my courage in both hands and visited my local library branch with the usual pile of books to return … and a copy of My Very Own Book.

I respectfully asked whether the library was happy to speak directly with authors, or whether whoever was in charge of book-ordering would prefer to be approached by the publisher.

Well, they asked me to sit at their desk while they called the library events manager over, who phoned the acquisitions librarian (at another branch) and was very excited to hold, feel, and flip through the book; read the author bio; and take my business card. They were also clearly happy to hear that I would be launching The Pale at Readings Carlton – because (OMG) they use Readings’ monthly book-review magazine as a guide to purchases!!!

Result: they will order in a copy – one to start with, they said 🙂 – and put me on their list to invite as a featured author in the 2018 calendar of events. Result is right!

My tips from this terrifying event:

1. If you don’t ask, you can never get YES for an answer – this goes for Readings as well as the library
2. It is definitely worthwhile to have a good-looking, ‘pretty’ business card (I have MOO’s ‘Chelsea Groves’ as seen above)
3. Elijah Toten’s cover art on The Pale is a real winner (I already knew that!)
4. Just go for it. They can only say no. Plus I don’t think any librarian would be rude to an author, so libraries should be a safe space for us.

It’s release day here at the desk, with a great deal of leaping about to celebrate the Actual Bookness of The Pale. Click here to see the announcement by my favourite publisher.

It is also slightly surreal to know that such a thing exists.  Oh my goodness!

 

 

One of the things that makes me sad amidst all the excitement of my novel being published is that my mum doesn’t know it’s happening. I will show her the book once I have it in my hot little hand, but given that she now has no idea what day it is or what time it is, events and dates have become completely meaningless. If by next week she is still as (comparatively) alert as she is today, then she will look at it kind of blankly and nod. If I then put it into her hand, she will very probably say ‘Thank you.’

I am grateful, though, that she still recognises me. That’s a blessing in all the sadness.

I have been told – and yes, seen for myself – that The Pale is now available for pre-orders. Yes, Novella Distribution already has a way to buy the book 🙂

So I realise that I have passed a milestone that I hadn’t even thought about. My book is available to buy even though the launch is more than a month in the future. Excellent. It’s more learning on the way to being a fiction author.

And very nice to know!