Rants and Research

The holidays are fast disappearing and my To Do list stays the same. This week has had some highs tho.

My family managed to all go to the movies together. It may not sound like a big deal to you but it is to me. With so many things pulling at each one of us, we can only usually manage to eat together once a week. Family events of more than the fifteen minutes to eat dinner take major planning.  We saw The Sorcerer’s Apprentice...and we all enjoyed it for various reasons...How they managed to cleverly mix physics and magic, the mop scene from the old Disney version, Nicolas Cage, and the Harry Potter trailer....

Straight after the movie I raced into The Children’s Bookshop for Diana Menefy’s little soiree to celebrate her book, The Shadow of the Boyd. This ripping yarn’s journey to publication has been long in the making. Diana has been researching this piece of tragic New Zealand History for about a decade. She has cleverly woven in many facts about shipboard life in the early 1800’s but not at the expense of a great story of tragedy and survival against the odds. When I got home after dinner out with some great writers...I started the book and kept going...finishing it in one bite. Shadow of the Boyd is the last book picked up by a publisher from the pitch session at Spinning Gold to be published and I was delighted to be able to celebrate this with Diana and some of the Spinning Gold team.

I haven’t been doing much researching on the net this week so this morning I took a look at what has caught peoples attention that might be of interest to you.

Lynn Price, Editorial Director Of Behler Publications has ripped into Christopher Pike for not only NOT researching properly but for then trying to defend the resulting mess. She does not spare the editors of his publishing house either who did such a sloppy job that they didn’t catch obvious errors which ruin the whole foundation of the story....You may think she is a bit harsh...but I don’t. Diana Menefy spent ten years getting the history right, the life and times, the names of the characters and the language right for Shadow of The Boyd. It is children’s novel but it has been meticulously done. I know how much time I spend researching...writer friends have called me on it...(stop and just write the damn book...) We have a duty to our readers after all to write a good story. Our readers are not dumb and treating them as such shows an amazing arrogance which will fast lose you credibility and readers.

While I am ranting (but not half as well as Lynn Price) Suzannah of Write It Sideways has a minor rant on her blog about being plagiarized. Suzannah has discovered that whole articles have been copied and pasted, cut up and attributed to other bloggers. She is trying to get a perspective on it that doesn’t involve wasted energy...and negative thoughts. Suzannah has posted a short list of rules for new bloggers to understand about linking to others work, and commenter’s have linked to some great sites for copyright protection.

Off on a different tack Victoria Moxon has another very fine article on How To Make Your Novel Hopelessly Addictive and Nicola Morgan has one on Dialogue Techniques. Both of these bloggers are a valuable resource if you are looking for writing help.

Chip MacGregor has posted an exhaustive list of things a good agent needs to know. As Chip is the owner of a successful literary agency he is well qualified to speak. As always I urge you read the comments of the articles I link to because they often have some great extras to add to the discussion.

Over on Craicerplus my Amplify page I have links to articles on

7 Factors For Success In Finding An Agent

Earth Like Planet Can Sustain Life (geeking no apologies)

9 Ways To Prepare For NaNoWriMo

A Writers Guide To A Successful Interview (how to use an interview to get your message across)

Writing Series-Thoughts and Resources (this is great if you find your story going on longer than one book)

Kindle Self Publishing (writers can now self publish on Kindles....)

On a slightly different facet of the writing life...Alexis Grant has a good article on Writer’s Colonies. These are amazing residential places that writers can go and just write. Someone else takes care of all the other details...food, laundry etc etc. Some colonies will pay you to go there...It is to dream...

Guy Le Charles Gonzales has been doing a bit of that lately and has re mixed his ideas on 21st Century Publishing. Traditional print plus fan sites plus book cafe sites plus on demand printing equals a very interesting publishing model for writers.

For those of you interested in the 1000 fans idea, my friend Justin sent me a link to a photographer who is experimenting with the concept and has chronicled his two year journey...(yes he is making money...and he doesn’t have 1000 fans...)

enjoy,
maureen


Pic is the cover of The Shadow of The Boyd and below a little clip (you can find anything on YouTube)

Catching The Speeding Train in the Writing Journey

This week I have been thinking of added content....following on from ideas sparked by the 1000 true fans post and talking to various friends about the widening fields of being a content provider(author)

On Monday I was at Te Papa for the Institute of Modern letters Monday lunchtime talk series which featured Kate de Goldi talking to Vic. Writer In Residence, Paula Boock. Paula’s journey from editor to YA writer to script writer to TV Film producing to writing her first adult novel which we were privileged to listen to a bit of...(main character is a child tho, so she hasn’t strayed far away from us) and it got me thinking about the writing journey.

A long time ago I scribbled stories for myself then I thought I‘d better learn how to write so I went looking for the magic formula.(guess what... there isn’t one) Along the way I collected rejections...then I got an acceptance...I’ve made it, I thought...No I hadn’t.

Lots more rejections later then writing took a back seat to life...I got involved in the writing community, so I wrote by osmosis...free association with some of the best in the world at writers talks etc. Then back to collecting rejections, trying my hand at new styles of writing but always, always learning.

Our writing journeys take us into many lands where the language is different and the culture is foreign and obstacles look insurmountable...and so it is with the new ideas of writing content and digital media to the children’s author. But in essence it is applying your skills in a different way using a different medium or media. (I joked to Fifi on Monday that Paula could be a poster child for the Spinning Gold Conference as she has applied her skills across two or three medias. Fifi is a poster child...Martin Baynton is the poster child, Janice Marriot who is writing scripts for the Wot Wots is a poster child... (they are all marvelous New Zealand children's authors trying their hand at new media.)

They are leading the way for the rest of us...and I will learn from them by osmosis and posting little snippets of interest to you all, who are struggling, like I am, to make sense of the speeding train called ‘Social and Digital media as it applies to our craft.

So onto the Future....Eeeeek I’m not ready.....

Fourth Story Media a new publishing company in the ‘states’ are ready to launch The Amanda Project. CEO Mike Smith describes the company this way on their website.

Traditonally, stories would be told through one medium. A film would exist as a film. A book would exist as a book. Now, the internet and new forms of technology are enabling storytellers to tell their stories not through one medium, but through every conceivable form of media.
— Michael Smith, CEO & Owner, Mind Candy and Perplex City

To have a look at what they are doing with The Amanda Project go here or just look at the video below.




Chorion based in the United Kingdom is working with a range of writers and literary estates to add media content to enhance the book presence. Here’s what they have done for Agatha Christie but their flagship is Children’s lit....(their slide show is really cool)go take a look at their website.

Merchandising: PC games, jigsaw puzzles, mugs, pencils, cushions, deckchairs and more are available at retail and online.
Stage: We license first class productions worldwide and actively oversee the hugely successful Agatha Christie Theatre Company's ongoing professional tours in the UK.
Online: The official website at http://www.agathachristie.com/ features blogs, games, downloadable content, information on Agatha Christie and every story she wrote, newsletters and a very popular forum for her fans.

The world is getting bigger and bigger for the author(content provider)...but seriously have you thought about turning some of your writing into added content slogans for merchandise????

And finally as a present to Tania Hutley...(stat counter says her site sends the most people over to read my blog...I’m awed...) the following video because she loved the Buffy staked Edward post.

maureen

pic is the Ave Solar train in Spain and the new way to travel without carbon emmissions... it's as fast as a jet...the way of the future????