Everything writing related from feathers to soaring
Dick Lane and his team of Lipizzaners at Brighton Driving Trials. Copyright: Roland Clarke
Need to know more about me and my past? Although I don’t reveal all, this interview by Gina Knight on her Riding & Writing blog poses some interesting questions. I talk about my equestrian past and some of my writing plans for the future. Read more here…
Five days into February and just three weeks until our moving day, so should I be panicking?
Surrounded by boxes, we at least know that we/my wife has packed most of our accumulated stuff. But yesterday I had to pack my dictionary and Word Flip-thesaurus and more will follow in the next few days, like notebooks, pens and essential files.
At least the crucial files, like the work in progress, are on my desktop and backed-up onto Skydrive or Dropbox. However, in the last week that too will get packed and the desks may be going to charity. The prospect of a new office in our new home is exciting, but there will be a few days when I will be restricted to using my Notebook PC.
Not a terrible hardship when I think of all those writers creating with just a pencil and a notepad, or even a quill and parchment. But in this era of mass communication, the wrench from all that my PC offers will feel hard, for a short while.
What do I do without my accounts package? What about Scrivener? How will I cope?
I’ll get over it.
All I need to remember is to ensure that one notebook and one pen stays out.
On February 28th we will be in our new home, but I suspect it might take a few days to catch up. It’s hard enough wading through emails each day trying to find blogs that I need to read and inwardly digest, but it can be done.
I intend to plan my IWSG blog post for Wednesday March 5th in advance, just as I am already scribbling down ideas for the A to Z Challenge in April. Theme here is going to be all things Gossamer Steel. Might have to use those advance word counts to ensure that my 100k in 100 days effort is acceptable.
This is my second posting of 2014 for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. This is when we release our fears to the world – or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the logo and sign up. We post the first Wednesday of every month. Visit at least a dozen new blogs and leave a comment. Your words might be the encouragement someone needs.
The awesome co-hosts today are Sheena-kay Graham, Julie Musil, Jamie Ayres, and Mike Swift. Many thanks to you all for your time and effort towards making all IWSG members feel welcome.
As the lady says: “Gong Xi Fa Cai one more time!” (And one step nearer Ireland)
This is it, New Year’s Day on the Chinese calendar. Two more pretty images for you:
(Yeah, the last one is an ad … but I liked the image enough to conveniently overlook that. Maybe Horseware Ireland will show its appreciation by magically turning up and monetizing my blog. The shameless link is for their benefit, really.)
Happiness and prosperity to all today and for the rest of the year. Myself, I could use a little prosperity …
Today I am pleased to be interviewing fellow Spectacle author Alethea Eason. She is the author of the fantasy novel HERON’S PATH, (Spectacle PMG), a novel set in an alternative history setting of Northern California circa 1908. The story focuses on the clash of cultures between the mostly white settler and the Nanchuti, the native people, in the wilderness area along the Talum River. Two sisters, Katy and Celeste, are caught amidst this conflict, while they discover that they are an integral part of the legends that are unfolding in the midst of the seeming disintegration of Nanchuti culture.
Heron’s Path has been classified as a young-adult novel, yet you’re finding that it’s not so young adults who are its primary readers. Why do you think this is the case?
Novels who have young protagonist are often classified as young-adult. I believe there is an audience of young people out there who would love Heron’s Path. It is written in a style that I loved to read as a young person. I believe one of the strengths of Heron’s Path is that it is a character driven novel. I worked hard to create vivid characters and in using imagistic language to carry the story through. My readers, mostly women but also several men who have written to let me know how much they appreciate the story, have loved the plot, especially as the setting is very grounded in the natural world, yet unexpected forces are at play throughout the book. But it’s not a seat-of-your-pants kind of book. It’s quiet, which I think makes the climax hit that much harder.
Why did you create your own native culture?
As I’m not Native American, I knew that I could not do justice to any culture that I was not part of. I got the idea for the book after a camping trip along the Klamath River while reading a wonderful memoir called In the Land of the Grasshopper Song which was about two East Coast society matrons who come to work with the Kurok Indians at the turn of the 20th century. I based some of my ideas on what I read about the Kurok/Yurok culture, along with information I received from a friend, Annie Smith, who is Pomo. I created my “alternative” wilderness, the Talum, instead of the Klamath, for example to accommodate my own people, the Nanchuti. The character of Sarah Price was a conflation based on Mary Ellicott Arnold and Mabel Reed, the writers of In the Land of the Grasshopper Song.
Klamath River by Linda Tanner
You created legends and also a language for them. How did you do this?
These were the easiest parts of the book to write. I suppose I latched on to the power I felt in the Klamath River area, the beauty of the both the river and the land, and the stories just spilled out. I wouldn’t say I have a complete language, but I tried to follow some rules as I wrote the dialogue that was in Nanchuti. It was fun.
Tell us a little more about the story.
The narrator is Katy Farrow, the practical 12 year-old daughter who struggles to find attention from her parents. Her sister Celeste is more compliant (when with them) and prone to strange “fits” and disappearances. Their surrogate grandmother, Olena, was the common-in-law wife of their grandfather. As she practices the “old ways,” their father does not approve of the girls relationship with her, but it is this relationship that the riddle of Celeste’s strangeness is eventually solved. There is light romance, coming-of-age themes, a self-defense killing, and a dangerous trip where the girls encounter rapids in a small dugout as they go deeper into the wilderness to save Celeste.
You had a new novel come out on January 16th. Tell us about it.
Starved is a sequel to Hungry, which was a Washington Post KidPost Book of the Week in 2007. It is a much different book than Heron’s Path. It is irreverent, funny, and could be classified as “horror” lite…a book a fifth grader could read without their parents getting upset, but one the parents would enjoy along with them. The premise is that Deborah has been raised as a typical California girl, but she and her family are really aliens in disguise preparing Earth for the invasion of her planet. She’s is in conflict with loving Earth and its people and wanting to be loyal to her species. I guess the theme of the conflict of cultures is in both Hungry and Starved and in Heron’s Path.
Many thanks Alethea, I find it inspiring that you are writing in what some would call two genres and yet, as you point out, have managed to subtly link them in terms of theme. Further details can be found here. All three books are worth a visit Amazon to get a taste of your engrossing style of write.
Amazon link for Heron’s Path: http://www.amazon.com/Herons-Path-Alethea-Eason-ebook/dp/B007P5ZD0A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390673069&sr=8-1&keywords=heron%27s+path
Amazon link for Starved: http://www.amazon.com/STARVED-The-Hungry-Series-Book-ebook/dp/B00HXHHP60/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390673153&sr=8-1&keywords=starved+alethea
An inspirational read as we approach the Year of the Horse.
“When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.”
– Shakespeare, Henry V
January 31st is Chinese New Year, ushering in the Year of the Horse, and it is followed one month later by Losar, the Tibetan New Year. As I’ve done the last few years, over at BellaOnline I’ve offered an overview of some of the traditional interpretations of the Year of the Horse, drawn from Chinese astrology. Here at Mommy Mystic I’m doing my own take, based on the symbolism of the horse in various cultures and time periods. This is part intuitive read, and part symbolic play.
I hope you enjoy it and feel inspired by the energies available this year, because if there is one prominent theme in…
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This is my contribution to the first ever Online Marketing Symposium!
One month into my debut novel release and the word success is not on my lips, yet. But I remain optimistic because there are still promotions in the pipeline. ‘Spiral of Hooves’ was released on December 9th with an online party on Facebook, which was well attended. However, there was a slight delay, of a few hours, with the book appearing on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Since then it has been promoted to my followers and friends in a low key way on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and here. But I have not spammed cyber-space. Apologies if I have been in your faces for the last few weeks. I still need to learn the secret of keeping my followers happy. Treats?
The most useful marketing tools, so far, have been the two five star reviews that have appeared on Amazon. One has even been re-used, by the reviewer, to garner additional coverage on Facebook and an online equestrian site. There are some other reviews in the wings as the novel went out to some of my journalist friends, contacts from when I covered equestrian sports. As the novel is a thriller set against the sport of eventing, the forthcoming coverage in the sports main UK magazine, Eventing, could be key to the spring campaign. Use your contacts but don’t lose their friendship.
Cover credit: Danielle Sands
I have also sent the novel to some rider friends, including an Olympic rider, in order to get some useful quotes, and to spread the good news about the book being out. As one journalist friend said, ‘getting the word out in the lorry park will boost sales”. With that end I intend to produce some A5 flyers quoting the reviews and the name riders, and linking to my website and where to purchase a copy. Unable to hand these out at shows myself, being wheelchair-bound, I have some good friends that will get them in the right places. Despite being stumped from pressing the flesh in person, flyers might help spread the word at the grassroots. I have no previous experience of using flyers to promote books, so I will be interested to see the results for ‘Spiral of Hooves’. Later today I will check out the other blogs and see how others have fared with similar marketing techniques.
However, when I was in the film industry we used flyers quite often, although these were usually A4 glossy hand-outs that we used at film and TV conventions, including Cannes. We attracted interest, but not as much as we needed to fund a movie. Some were used for selling short films but it is hard to say how successful the leaflets were. All the sales were via a Distributor so our production company was last in line, having paid everybody else. Flyers do work for some producers and, from my observations, it was the hook plus pitch, the cover and elements like cast that were key selling points. But the flyers mustn’t have too much information. And that has to apply with book flyers as well. What are your thoughts on flyers? No better than random advertising? Destined for the recycle bin? Another useful tool in spreading the word?
For links to other participating Blogs and information on the first ever Online Marketing Symposium! please visit here.
Writing Wings 