Book launch: Solace and grief

Yesterday, Foz Meadows, one of my SuperNOVA writers group, launched her first book Solace and grief. I'm a great believer that we all feed each other as writers, that we all grow from reading each other's work and from critiquing -- not just from the comments that other people make on our stories, but as much from the comments we make on theirs. However, we didn't have any input into this book -- it was written and perhaps even accepted before Foz joined SuperNOVA. (If not accepted, then this followed shortly after, but the book was certainly already with the publisher.) But none of that stopped us coming out in force to help Foz celebrate.

Finishing a draft is a huge thing, so is whipping the book into publishable shape (or finishing the redrafting process) and getting it out there, and having it accepted and published is the hugest of all. Each stage should be celebrated because each is a success. And we should take joy in the success of our peers. One writer whom I was in a workshop with once, both as unpublished novelists, signed a seven-figure deal awhile ago. I'm ecstatic for her. Such success helps all local writers -- it opens doors for all of us.

Every so often I hear of writers, often published and successful writers, who hear of somebody else's success and get their noses put out of joint because they see that as a success they've missed out on. There are many different readers and many different books to meet those differing tastes -- to hear of someone else's success and see it as a loss for you is not only likely misguided but a path to self-destruction. Such small-mindedness harms you.

It astounds me that people are so competitive in this sort of pursuit. You have control over what you do in terms of perseverance, you have control over how much reworking you do, how exacting you are, you have control over whether you research a publisher to make sure you're giving your book the best chance, but you have no control over whether that publisher will take on your work or not -- whether the editor who reads it falls in love with it enough to go out and bat for it. That's what you need -- and it's not easy to find, so rejoice when you find it, and rejoice too when your friends do.

Foz's launch was unusual in that it was the first book launch I've been to where the books weren't actually out yet. Don't get me wrong: they were there. I've been to launches where there were no books because they hadn't come back from the printers, and to launches where there was no author because of illness. But this was the first preemptive book launch I've been to. Anyway, Foz, I hope it's strike is long, hard and successful! I look forward to the launch of the sequel! (And in a side-note, I haven't been able to lay my hands on it for reading yet -- my daughter took one look at it and said, "You must've been reading my mind. I want that book. And she's had her nose in it ever since.)

Launch of new short story collection

Sherryl and I have just been to the launch of Scribe's New Australian stories (ed. Aviva Tuffield), mainly because one of our past students, Demet Divaroven has a story in it. And isn't that a fantastic thing for a teacher: going to see your student successes!

Aviva spoke about the health of the short story, which is always a concern for short story writers. I have to admit that before I started writing seriously, I hardly ever read short stories. I've learnt, over time, to appreciate them -- and perhaps part of the problem for me, originally, was that most times when I'd encountered them it was in buying science fiction books that I thought were novels. I'd be all set, engrossed in a story, and then it would end. (Truth be told, many of these were probably novellas rather than short stories.) I'd always be so disappointed when they finished, and felt ripped off. I'd become emotionally engaged with these characters and was ready for the long haul, only there was none, and I do love the long haul! I thought I hated short stories. Really, I don't think I did -- what I hated was not having my expectations met. This is a concern for all writers, or should be. But that's for another post.

These days when I read short stories, my expectations are for a different type of experience. I love the short story form. Many believe they're easier to write than novels, but I don't think so. Shorter, yes. Don't take as long. But not easier. 

They're often talked about as the training ground for a novel, and they really can be this. This is not to say that all novelists write short stories. They don't. Nor do they need to. Nor is it any kind of slight against the short story or implying that the short story is, in any way, inferior. It's not. It's just that the short story form, because it is shorter, can teach you a lot about structuring fiction. In the time that you write one 80,000 word novel, you can write many short stories, learning how to get in and get out of the story, how to show rising tension, a whole host of factors. This gives you time to improve, experience. To get that same amount of experience in structure, you'd need to write several novels. Many novels. That's going to take longer. So the short story is like a short cut to gaining useful writing experience.

One thing Aviva spoke about, which I'd never really thought about, was how the publishing of short stories has changed. In the past, new writers often began with a short story collection and then graduated to novels, whereas these days most short story writers need a successful novel or, better, a few successful novels published before they can get a short story collection published. I knew both of these things, but somehow I'd never quite juxtaposed the ideas and thought about that change. (And of course there are exceptions to this, particularly with small press publishers, but there are also publishing houses that never seem to touch the short story.)

These days, we're more likely to read our short stories in literary (or genre) magazines. The mass market magazines do publish a few, but some will only take these through agents. But if we all do want to see more short stories published then we have to let the publishers know this in the one way they really care about: book sales.

Busy week

This week is a full on social week, and all to do with writing:

(i) Wednesday morning: launch of the Ada Cambridge exhibition at the VU library on the St Albans campus
(ii) Thursday night: dinner out with my Clarion South buddies -- or family as we are now -- where we will reminisce about that crazy six weeks where the temperature varied between 31 and 33 degrees every day and we had no air-con in our dorms, and we workshopped over half a million words, and most of us churned out a story a week and a collaborative story. I know I did. And kept a journal (50,000 words worth)
(iii) Friday: lunch out with Effy whom I taught Text and Culture, part of the Diploma of Liberal Arts, with. (All right, this is a teaching one more than a writing one.) Effy drove the subject, luckily, and I scrambled to keep ahead of the class, because I did not have a background in Arts. When they start teaching Haematology for Writers, I'll be right there!
(iv) Friday night: dinner out at a special performance as part of the Williamstown Lit Festival with Western Women Writers, Ellen from SuperNOVA, and Susanna from work.
(v) Saturday morning: attending the first session of the CBCA conference to see Shaun Tan's speech, and then to see Sherryl's new book Tracey Binns is trouble launched. With a character name like that, how could that not be close to my own heart.
(vi) Saturday: go to the Williamstown Literary Festival sessions and attend the prize-giving ceremony of the Ada Cambridge competition. Can't wait to see who wins! I've just found out that at least two of our students have been shortlisted, which is rather nice. Of course, when you're doing the shortlisting, you're looking at blind entries and have no idea who has entered, so it's always interesting later on to find out who the winners are, and whether any of them are even names that you've heard before.

And around all this I've been getting Poetrix ready to go to print, which means finishing typesetting and cobbling together bios (and then paring them back because they were too long), writing an editorial, having it ready for proofing by (last) Wednesday, proofing in writing group, now making the final corrections and then doing one more proofing pass. Should all be ready by tomorrow! Then I better get into my assignments.

Book launch: The whisper of leaves

Today, I've had the rare and rather satisfying experience of attending a book launch by one of my past students. Karen Simpson Nikakis was one of my Novel 2 students and launched her new fantasy series The whisper of leaves, Book 1 of The Kira Chronicles.


It's always exciting to see a "new" author arrive on the scene, but this isn't Karen's only first. She also spearheads Allen & Unwin's new imprint Arena, and is the first novelist to be accepted through publisher Louise Thurtell's innovative Friday Pitch sessions. (Authors can email a first chapter and synopsis on Fridays for consideration. More information can be found here.)

I had an interesting chat to Louise (who'd come down from Sydney for the launch, and to attend the Melbourne Writers' Festival) about Karen, fantasy writing, teaching writing, and publishing in general. She thought it was great that at least one writing teacher out there loved fantasy, and I spoke about friends who've studied writing and are forced to write only literary fiction. I really can't see the point in this -- for two reasons: (i) literary fiction doesn't sell, and (ii) writers should be writing what they're passionate about. Karen is passionate about fantasy -- she has followed her dream and now it's paying off, and that should be heartening for all writers!

Professor John McLaren (former VU academic and editor of Overland) launched the novel, and made an interesting speech about the importance and value of fantasy in our lives, which was good for me to hear because sometimes in the SF community that I inhabit there is the pervading opinion about how academics perceive speculative fiction, and it's nice to be reminded that not everyone is as polarised in their views. I mean, it always amuses me how magic realism is viewed as respectable, and yet its close kin fantasy is deemed rubbish.

He also spoke about the richness of the world that Karen invokes, richness both in detail and in language, and how love permeates it all -- and it again made me think of the divisions between science fiction writing and fantasy writing: the head versus the heart.

Karen's speech was warm and gracious -- and without being at all longwinded, she managed to thank everyone there (I think!), and gave our course a plug, which was nice. It's great to see a writer whose family is behind them -- hers seemed suitably excited. Here's a photo of Karen and her kids with her new book (I just wish my camera program filtered out the red-eye, the way it says it does!).


I hope Karen's new book (and indeed the trilogy) and Louise's new imprint both do spectacularly well!

Friday night

So, last Friday night (you'll know if you're a reader of Sherryl's blog) we celebrated the launch of her newest book Sixth grade style queen (not!) with a writer's party. Western Women Writers were there in force, of course, with some of Sherryl's other writer friends. I love catching up with people and talking writing. Most of us don't bring our spouses because our spouses, well, mine at least, aren't that interested in talking about writing. At home, we might talk about different aspects of writing, but it's usually a matter of my commenting about something, and everyone else listening and maybe putting forth an opinion or two. Not real discussion. Get a whole lot of writers together though, and it's a gabfest.

We talked about many different aspects of writing and publishing, particularly publicising your book and the trouble writers have to go to to get their book on the radar. I understand the logistics of a publishing company not being able to get behind every book they publish, but it seems ludicrous that they spend so much money on so few books, usually on books that need little publicity tp begin with. I find it scary when the big names in writing are people like Steve Waugh, though he's no doubt a very fine writer. It seems to me that if you want to have the publishing behemoth behind you, it pays to be famous in your own right first. Anyway, we had a long discussion about how writers have to take some of the responsibility for PR of their books themselves. Of course for some this will prove more difficult than for others. Some people are drawn to writing because of the whole writer in the garret thing, the solitariness. The whole idea of having to go out and promote yourself can seem akin to hell. But that's the reality of the writing life for most writers. It has to be done. Far better to do this than see your book remaindered (though this can happen anyway, but this is all about maximising your book's chances).

We also talked about Paul Collins's new foray into publishing. He passed around his first two titles, including one by Sean McMullen, and I must say they looked great. It's always exciting to see someone new (well, Paul's not new to writing or editing, of course!) taking that next step and opening up new avenues for the rest of us.

This party was of course on top of Sherryl's launch at Altona Primary School a couple of weeks back. The grade fives and sixes were a great group and plyed her with lots of questions. I know, because I was there. Again with Western Women Writers. Later we went for coffee with her editors and later again for lunch to celebrate. Mmm, seems like a lot of eating for one book, but it was worth it. Style queen's's well and truly launched now, with champagne at the party, so it should be smooth sailing from here.

Writing groups

On Friday evening, I went to a book launch. One of the members of my writing group, Western Women Writers, self-published her second book of poetry. Poetry publishing in Australia is a tough market to crack because it's so small. Margaret didn't seek commercial publication, I think, aware that her book would appeal to a niche market.

There's something inherently satisfying about seeing a project go from inception to published book, to hear the drafts, and to make suggestions, however small, along the way. It's a learning experience. Margaret credited Sherryl, in her talk, for causing a major change in direction in the manuscript along the way. That's one thing I love about writing groups -- hearing someone suggest something and seeing the possibilities.

I also love the support that we give each other. There's a lot to be said for a group where everyone works cooperatively rather in competition, which can happen too. Cooperation leads to everyone celebrating each other's success. In Western Women, the tradition is that when you have a story or poem or whatever accepted, you have to bring cake. Most bring it on acceptance. I tend to wait for publication -- so had to take one recently for a short story that was published in Fantastic Wonder Stories. I'm always circumspect about celebrating too early, because my first story accepted never saw the light of publication. The story, about 1500 words long, was accepted, and I was offered $450, much more than I've had for any similar-length short story I've sold since. Then, a month later, the magazine folded and that was that. I wasn't able to place it anywhere else. Sometimes, I think I should rework it and send it out again, but it's so old now that I look at it and cringe.

We also support each other through taking a plate to something like a launch, and it is lovely holding the finished product in your hand, and catching up with friends who I don't see nearly as much as I should -- some members of another writer's group I used to attend, and past students. The most rewarding part of all though is seeing the look of delight and pride on the writer's face. It's always worth going along just for that!