authors

Marketing for Writers

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I’ve just posted a new link on my blog to The Creative Penn http://www.thecreativepenn.com/, a blog by Joanna Penn, an Australian writer, whose blog was voted one of the top ten for writers in 2011. Her online, free course titled Author2.0 details the myriad ways an author can promote herself and her writing, and make some money along the way.

She has also posted a video introduction to the course, available here: http://bit.ly/DjL1M. Joanne is an engaging and enthusiastic speaker, who manages to make the online and offline marketing world clearer.

The development of a blog, a website, a facebook page, a twitter account, a linkedin presence etc and so on is daunting, but Joanne makes it all seem possible.

I’ve just sent off Book 3 of my Dangerous Journeys series, entitled No Motive for Murder and set in modern-day Bermuda, but as in all Anne McPhail’s adventures with perilous links to the past, to the publisher. I’ll keep progress detailed here.

In the meantime, below are the links to Anne’s first two journeys.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/7antbxm Write Words Inc.com
http://preview.tinyurl.com/7wdtnwu My Amazon.com page

Writers’ Retreat: Spring Thaw

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I just spent a lovely, productive weekend at Spring Thaw, a retreat organized and facilitated by Ruth E. Walker and Gwyn Scheltema of Writescape.

The Venue: Elmhirst Resort on Rice Lake near Keene, Ontario. http://elmhirst.ca, a comfortable old resort complete with separate cottages, a salt-water pool, a work-out room and a masseuse with “magic fingers”( so I am reliably informed}

We had two dinners and a fabulous brunch, the latter worth the drive. Elmhirst has a deserved reputation for its expansive dessert table.

Ruth and Gwynn generously catered the rest of our meals in their cottage where the conversation ranged from the progress of the writing, to the business of publishing to the merits of George Clooney as an actor.

They gave us unfettered time to write and think and walk, talk if we chose, to other writers, or silence to listen to the lake and the birds.

Each of them blue-pencilled ten pages of work for each of us and one-on-one, invaluable sessions that combined encouragement and critique.

The other writers: a range from the never-published to the soon-to-be published to those making a living by their pen. The most extraordinary voices emerged from unexpected people.

This was my second retreat with Ruth and Gwynn. It won’t be my last.

Sunday Roundup2

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Writing

My latest book went to the publisher some time ago. Two errors, both mine, merged to give both the editor and me headaches. First, I had sent the wrong version, unedited and unrevised. During May and June I had worked on the manuscript and then carefully saved it — to a usb drive. I didn’t remember that and sent the most recent one on the computer. The next mistake was in using Word. I didn’t know that there was a small button in the reviewing toolbar that I had to click in order to accept all my edits and create a final version. The editor received a file full of corrections, strike-throughs, and sidebar comments.  Once the Microsoft tech told me what to do — success. The publisher, Arline Chase of Write Words Inc. and  Cambridge Books, has been great about it and I have sent along the revised  version to the editor.

Tech Support

I needed support from both Apple and Microsoft to solve the problem, and both technicians were great. The wait time was brief and the information clear. It was Saturday evening, so not too much traffic at support, I imagine.

Another outfit that has an efficient website and great service is Rail Europe. I used them to book our tickets from Madrid to Seville in the fall. From booking to the UPS driver at my door took three days, including a border crossing!

Sakineh

Sakineh still waits in that prison in Iran, while they review her sentence for a murder she says she didn’t commit and of which she was acquitted. Through an intermediary she says that the international pressure is embarrassing Iran. I hope that this country, once such a pearl, can be saved, with Sakineh, from the madmen at the top. Please continue to embarrass them and sign the petition. Website follows.

http://freesakineh.org

The census, still.

This week, Sylvia Ostry, former chief of Stats Can and an internationally known economist is quoted in Michael Valpy’s article at the Globe and Mail, as saying it is “shocking” and “ridiculous” that Ottawa should have abandoned the long form census. She was receiving an award for public policy at the Couchiching Conference.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lauded-economist-slams-census-decision/article1665623/

Why the government is staying with this sorry decision is difficult to understand, unless it is Harper’s ego in play again. Hubris best describes it I think.

Theatre

I went to a summer theatre this week, to see a play, out of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, by way of Hitchcock’s film, filtered through an English music hall. The actors were excellent, but I didn’t enjoy seeing Buchan’s work turned into burlesque.

I hadn’t read the book for many years, so I reread it this week. It’s a cracking good yarn, with lots of adventure in the Scottish highlands of a century ago. John Buchan was also Lord Tweedsmuir and served as Canada’s fifteenth Governor-General from 1935-1940.

One thing I noticed, as I have in Christie, Naigo Marsh, Dorothy Sayers and other writers from England of that period is the pervasive and off-hand anti-semitism. Buchan, though, confines it to a character who is soon murdered, and whose attitude towards Jews is called “strange”.

The Internet Review of Books

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Bob Sanchez reviewed my novel, Murderous Roots, today for the Internet Review of Books.
The Internet Review of Books is a great source for information about both fiction and non-fiction. Check it out before making your next run to the bookstore, or the download site. Murderous Roots is my first novel, and I’m grateful for the review.
My short story, Freddie’s Athabaska, was published today in The Other Herald, an arts broadsheet from Northern New York state.
I’ve finished editing the galley proofs for the print-on-demand version of Murderous Roots, coming soon to Write Words Inc.
Amazon has been granted the right to a “bricks and mortar” facility in Ontario. This is a warehouse they will use for their Canadian customers. As I live in a small town, I’ve used Amazon frequently(except during the period when our son owned a bookstore). I can appreciate the problems of the small bookseller who faces the competition from giants like Amazon and Chapters. When you buy the book from these guys, remember that they have used their vast buying power to bully the publisher into a 40% discount, while your neighbourhood bookseller is paying the full wholesale price.
The publisher and the author pay for your convenience.
All that being said, the publishing trade is in a state of flux, with the fastest growing segment that of electronic books. Does this mean the days of books in paper are coming to an end? I hope not, at least for the small format paperback that is the easiest to read in bed! I read for many reasons: to be entertained; to be informed; to learn my writing craft; to pursue an interest in the arts. Most of these are better served by a book on paper, I think now. I’m going to have a look at a friend’s ipad today, and perhaps my view will change.

New rules ‘a big, big hit’ to Canadian magazines – The Globe and Mail

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New rules ‘a big, big hit’ to Canadian magazines – The Globe and Mail.

The Globe and Mail reported this morning on the new rules for small magazines in this country. Small means fewer than 5000 circulation. That criterion leaves only Macleans, Chatelaine, and perhaps one or two others. Oh,and those, mostly from the west, such as The Western Producer, which specifically target the farming population. No other niche in our culture is important to the Tories. In fact, judging by their approach to anything cultural or historical, if the book or magazine or film or painting or photograph or music doesn’t involve business, it isn’t of any importance what so ever.
This present legislation recognizes the needs of only the farmers, and western farmers at that. I imagine the polls show that they are Tory supporters.
What’s next? Are only those museums devoted to the history of the Hereford, or wheat, or oil going to get support?
And one last thing. The final decision on who gets funding rests with the Minister and his decisions are irrevocable. No wonder Harper thinks we don’t need Parliament. He’s turning our government from a democracy into a quasi monarchy, with himself as king, giving his ministers total power and leaving us with no recourse. He’s started with the arts. Where will it end?

Se’nnight

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Se’nnight, a word from Middle English that means a week, seven nights. It was derived from Old English, seafon nihta, and has relatives in many languages including Italian(settimana), French(semaine) and Catalan(setimana).
I first met it in a Rex Stout short story, used, not by the erudite Nero Wolfe, Stout’s polymath main character, but by a low level hood. “Where did you pick that up?” he is asked.
“Oh some wag started it around last summer.”
The Oxford English revised says it is archaic, Middle English(1150-1500), but there are references to its use later than that period.
Dr. Donald Straughan, in directing the transcribers of the Bath Chronicle(1760-1800) for the Georgian Newspaper Project, instructs them that the word is se’nnight, sometimes fe’nnight, and means a week, not a fortnight.
Se’nnight is included in the Emily Dickinson Lexicon for her 19th Century poems, and Virginia Woolf used it in 1928’s Orlando. The Rex Stout short story I mentioned is called Easter Parade and was published in 1957.
Perhaps the old words aren’t dead, just waiting to be rediscovered.
I’ll write again, Sunday se’nnight.