Better late than never

This post, which first appeared on Jason Goroncy's blog, should have been copied here at the time...for some reason it got lost in transit, and has only surfaced four years later. Better late than never... 

Some moons ago, I posted an interview with the Dunedin author, composer, and musician, Mike Crowl, in relation to his book, Diary of a Prostate Wimp. Mike is a good friend who has, besides his literary foray on his surgical experiences, published two fantasy books this year for children. One of these was based on a really delightful musical he wrote and produced in 2012, called Grimhilda! (I posted about it here). This month, Mike released a ‘sort of sequel’ to Grimhilda! called The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret.

The Mumbersons is a ‘sort of sequel’ because here new characters take the lead, and only a very few of the people from the first book appear. It’s an approach not unlike that which C. S. Lewis adopts in his Narnia series. The Horse and the Boy, for example, has distinct connections to the earlier book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but the characters driving the tale are quite new.

Mike’s fantasy world, like Lewis’s, isn’t explicitly ‘Christian’, although much of the strange new world of the Bible underpins the stories. In Grimhilda!, for example, the parents of a young boy called Toby are kidnapped by a witch, who later explains that she’s entitled to do this because they haven’t loved their son; they’ve been too busy with their own lives. After some initial reluctance, Toby sets out with some companions to rescue his parents. In the background to the story we learn of another young boy who tried to do the same thing many years before, and failed, dying in the process. This past sacrifice makes possible Toby’s new life of loving service.

And then there’s the blood. Indeed, a main thrust of the new story is about the secret of Billy’s blood, and whether it can be used for good or evil.

Both stories are adventures, with the heroes having to overcome a number of difficulties, sometimes by their own strengths, sometimes aided by the unlikeliest of gifts. In each story, the boy is accompanied by a female companion: in Grimhilda! she’s a bossy doll who’s come to life; in The Mumbersons, she’s a risk-taking girl with a rather strange family background.

Like the other two books, The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret has been published as an e-book [and also a paperback] on Amazon, and is also available at the Dunedin Public Library. Again, Mike has worked closely with Cherianne Parks, his co-author, whose ideas ‘permeate the story’, as he notes in the Acknowledgements. You can read more about Mike here.

It isn’t necessary to have read Grimhilda! to understand the new book. Although, of course, knowing the background of the earlier story will add to the enjoyment of the sequel.

Slow writers

A longer review of The Disenchanted Wizard - from Lorraine Orman - is now on KidsBooksNZ. She finishes the review by noting: Non-stop action and a strong focus on the child protagonists are combined to create a satisfying fantasy for readers (probably girls) of about 9 to 12. I was pleased to tell her that I know of two very enthusiastic boys who've also read the book, so we can take 'probably girls' with a grain of salt. It didn't seem to bother either of the boys that the main protagonist is a girl; anyway there are plenty of males in the book as well!

I've begun writing a fourth book, but it's in the extremely early stages so far, finding its way with some difficulty. And if the last book is anything to go by, what I've written so far is just as likely to be ditched by the time the book reaches its final form. 

I was pleased to read a long blog post by Anne Allen today called Slow Writers: Are they Doomed to Failure in the Digital Age? Having taken some two years to complete The Disenchanted Wizard, which by any standards is a relatively short book, I think I would call myself a slow writer. And yet two other books that appeared in 2014: Diary of a Prostate Wimp and The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret were each written in a few months. So maybe it depends on the book as to whether slowness is an element or not. 

Still, a book of 30,000 words should, you'd think, take a good deal less time than some of the books running to 600 pages or more that I've been asked to review in the last two or three years. But when a book requires constant rewriting and revision and rethinking, then any book of any length will take time. And a dose of procrastination doesn't go amiss either, when it comes to dragging out the time involved. 

I'm currently reading through an old journal I kept. At the moment I'm in the section written during 1990, when I was really finding my feet as a writer. Again and again I write of the struggles of trying to write with so many other calls on my time (I was working full-time and had five children), but also dealing with procrastination and with the difficulties of revising. So nothing much has changed it seems!



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Typos and puns and fans

Over the last week or so I've been reading a kids' fantasy, The Midnight Glass, by D T Vaughn. It has a great climax, and a couple of neat surprises towards the end. Other people might have seen what was coming, but I didn't, so they were very pleasing when they arrived.

Unfortunately there are some typos and missing words in the book. It seems as if other people who've read it weren't perturbed by this, but having a kind of proofreader's eye, those sorts of things stick out like a sore thumb. They don't take away from the story, but just catch you up as you're reading along.

The irony is that my wife said to me last night while reading my book, The Disenchanted Wizard: 'there's a word missing here.' It was an of, but she picked it up, in spite of the fact that I've been through the book with a (plainly not effective enough) fine tooth comb, and so has my co-author. And to cap it all, my son informed me today that when his son enthusiastically read the book in the last couple of weeks he commented afterwards, 'There was an and missing at one point.' Oh, dear...

Anyway, on a more positive note, a friend of mine was here tonight and said she'd bought all three of the books in the series, after at first having had some trouble finding the most recent one on iTunes. Whatever the problem was, she'd obviously overcome it, and her son - a voracious reader - had already finished Grimhilda! and loved it, especially the humour; was into The Mumbersons, and keenly anticipating reading The Disenchanted Wizard. He even pointed out to his mother how 'clever' the title of this last one was...did she get it, did she see how it was a play on words, etc?  I think he's my greatest fan....!

He's talking about using the three titles for a book report for school, which has to be about a New Zealand author. Wow, I'm really into the big time now...!

But something else he said really made me laugh. Those who know the book, Grimhilda!, will know what a sticky end that lady comes to. This young fellow's comment to his mother was 'She should have been taken into custardy.' If you don't get that, my advice is to go and buy a copy and read it. You'll see how delightfully in tune with the book his comment was.

Smashwords Summer/Winter sale

July is Smashwords Summer/Winter sale month, and all three of my books are discounted for the month. Here's your chance to catch up on the two children's fantasy stories:

Grimhilda! a fantasy for children and their parents

The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret

and my non-fiction book: 

Diary of a Prostate Wimp

Just go to my profile page and you'll see the three titles listed towards the bottom of the page. Click on any of them and over to the right there's a discount box. And away you go!

Happy reading....

Mumbersons reviewed

The following review comes from the Readers' Favourite site, and is by Michelle Stanley:

The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret (Grimhilderness Book 2) is a children’s fantasy by Mike Crowl and Cherianne Parks. A haircut turned into an ear cut when Billy Mumberson went to the barber. Things got more peculiar when a bedraggled looking elderly couple barges into his home, claiming to be his grandparents, and takes over running it. A text from his father asks Billy to meet him at the factory, but when Billy and his friend Olivia arrive there, they walk into a trap. The barber who had nipped his ear forces him into a room to extract more blood. Quick thinking Olivia rescues Billy, who wonders why his blood is in demand. They soon learn that the Mumberson family are in more danger, especially when Grandpa decides to sell his diamonds and the villains find out.

The Mumbersons and The Blood Secret is the sequel to Grimhilda! by Mike Crowl and Cherianne Parks. It is a charming story with magic, action, and a nice mystery that will keep children engrossed. I think the first chapter is very interesting since it gives readers a perceptive look into Billy’s character, his family, and Olivia’s too. The authors are creative in their writing and they seem to enjoy keeping readers in suspense since almost everyone that Billy meets and events that occur always appear suspicious. I like the main characters, Billy and Olivia, but found the others amusing, given their descriptions, attitudes and conversation. I highly recommend this fantasy book.

The Disenchanted Wizard heads for the finish line

Blog posts about the book I'm writing have been few and far between recently, mainly because I've been writing. (#amwriting, as the Twitter hashtag goes...)

The latest posts on the topic seem to be here, and here. However, such has been the nature of this particular beast, that what I say in one blog post seems to get sideswiped by what I say in a later one, because this book has changed so many times.

It started life as a NaNoWriMo exercise, you might say, though I'd had the idea for the book in my head for some time before that. The NaNoWriMo version is so different to the draft I've been working on today, that you might almost say there's no comparison. The hero took second place to a heroine and the couple who were going to be the reason for the book's existence have vanished entirely. Though I regard it as the third in the Grimhilderness! series, there's no mention of Grimhilda or anything else to do with the place: there was, but even that got excised. 

A good character got shunted out and a bad character who'd had a very small role took his place. Dogs became wolves, to avoid confusion when reading the book aloud (something I hope will be done!). Those who were wizards in the first version stopped being wizards and became ordinary human beings...and then one of them became a wizard again! One character who played an ambiguous role in the original version, changed sides several times before he settled down to being a 'good' character. Soccer was intended to play a big part in the story, was reduced to almost nothing, and now plays a big part in it again. And certain people flying was an exciting idea I had originally which got abandoned, and now plays a big role in the current version. 

My 'beta reader' as you might call her - her name appears on the first two books in the series - has finally deemed that we're getting to the point where the structure of the book is working. Now it's down to the nitty-gritty of detail, which is what I've been working on today. 

I've predicted that I was nearly finished this book at least twice before, and ended up with egg on my face. This time I think you can save the eggs for eating. I hope!

If you haven't read the first two books in the Grimhilderness series, these are the details: 

Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children and their parents. Kindle or Smashwords
The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret. Kindle or Smashwords

Both books are available on iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and a bunch of other sites. Just search for the titles on these. 

Where writers go wrong

Last year I read most of a book by Sol Stein, called Solutions for Novelists. I read it rather randomly, skipping back and forth between the chapters, but one chapter in particular struck me enough to make quite a few notes, and so I'm including and edited version of these here, since they're helpful for many writers, I think. They relate mostly to a chapter entitled, Where writers go wrong. I've laid them out here as bullet points, just to keep them a bit more readable.

• Try summarizing the book in one page [that's easier, I'd say, that Blake Snyder's one-sentence approach - Blake Snyder of Save the Cat fame]
• Break the draft down into scenes [Stein recommends doing this before the draft is written, unlike some of the others I've read recently who opt for just writing and then pulling it together. Both methods work. However he also quotes both Malamud and Fowles on page 142/3 who talk about writing the first draft to find out what the novel is about. See comments from them at the end of this post.]
• Then check if the order of the scenes is right for full emotional experience for the reader.
• Stick with one protagonist - two or more means the writer hasn't worked out whose story it is. [Although, that said, there are some books with more than one protagonist that work perfectly well.]

In the rewrite of your draft keep an eye out for: 

• Sentences that are out of order [this also applies to phrases within sentences]
• Authorial asides [I noted one of these in the chapter I was writing at the time in The Mumbersons. Grimhilda! had a number of them because it's part of the style.]
• Adjectives that aren't necessary. [And of course adverbs, which, by the way, are still essential in their place.]
• Things that only the author can know...these have to go if you're focused on your protagonist's story.
• Unimportant. or too early, appearances by minor characters. [Just finished reading UnderMajorDomo Minor, by Patrick de Witt. He ignores this advice by interrupting the main story to write about minor characters in a way that's irrelevant to the main events.]
• Descriptions of the way a piece of dialogue is said [he whispered] are often better before the dialogue.
• Be clear to the reader as to who the protagonist is.
• Didactic stuff that isn't part of the actual story [don't think The Mumbersons or Grimhilda! are guilty of this.]
• Delete words that soften the pace. And cliches - find fresh ways of saying things.
• Too many antagonists? [Note how I originally had trouble with dwarves as well as witches as antagonists in The Mumbersons, until finally one of the two had to go.]
• 'Beats' - those little bits of 'business' that characters do within a dialogue scene. They need to be relevant, and give the scene actual action not just pretend action. [I remember the awful 'business' in the popular Christian apologetics book The Case for Christ where Lee Strobel broke up long conversations with real people, by always having them crossing their legs, or standing up to make coffee.]
• Don't bring in backstory late in the book [Amazingly that's exactly what a novelist who was also supposed to be an editor did - terrible muddle of a book - the book is The Accident, by Chris Pavone.]
• 'Point of view of the person is most affected by what is happening.' In other words it's not necessarily always the POV of the protagonist, though it helps to keep them in focus. In The Mumbersons, Olivia gets some POV too, because she's an identifying character. POV doesn't mean seeing it from their perspective necessarily, but focusing on what's happening to them without interrupting it with another character's POV.
• Avoid cartoonish cliche characters; the sort that often appear in TV series, especially US ones. {Note how there's often the 'funny' character, the geek, the wacky secretary and so on in crime series: they're always unbelievable to me.]
• An antagonist can be given his or her due by the writer seeing both the protagonist and the antagonist as equal antagonists. Interesting thought.
• Pets can humanize a character. [Snyder is strong on this idea: the title of the book Save the Cat applies to the hero doing something that puts him onside with the audience - rescuing a cat, for instance. Even the most unpleasant ‘heroes’ need this kind of moment to make the audience have some empathy with them, and of course antagonists often have animals accompanying them.]
• Be careful with names that have similarities, or use the same initial letter, or even how you feel about a character...though perhaps this isn't so applicable in a kid's book where fun names are more usable. J K Rowling is as good as Dickens when it comes to naming her characters.
• Phone conversations shouldn't be used often.
• Trim down any fat in a tense scene - in terms of detail that's not relevant enough.
• 'We know' - means the reader already knows this and doesn't have to be told again - or rather doesn't want to be told again. This is different to a stage play where audiences have to listen and can miss things, and may need them repeated.
• Be particular about details - the three-wheeled car [in The Mumbersons] can actually have its brand name, for instance. [Not being good with cars, this was something I had to research for that book!]
• Omens are good...
• Characters do the same things too often: he smiled, she shook her head, etc. [In one book I read in the last couple of years, characters kept showing their 'incisors'. Really? This seems to me a difficult thing for them to do.]
• Don't throwaway an important event, such as the finding of a body.
• Confrontations, not discussions.
• If action seems confusing then work out things in sequence - like those picture boards they use in making action movies.
• Make sure the action word is doable...you can't sprint across the average office.
• In a realistic novel don't do melodrama. Keep it sensible to real life. 
• Make sure the readers know who is who...name the characters as you go. Too many books leave the reader in the dark as to who is talking.     

Bernard Malamud notes: First drafts are for learning what your novel or story is about. Revision is working with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to re-form it. D H Lawrence did seven or eight drafts of The Rainbow. The first draft of a book is the most uncertain - where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better. Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing.

John Fowles (who wrote The Collector in a month) says: During the revision period I try to keep a sort of discipline. I make myself revise whether I feel like it or not; in some ways, the more disinclined and dyspeptic one feels, the better - one is harsher with oneself. All the best cutting is done when one is sick of writing.  

     

     

The third in the Grimhilderness series...

This unpleasant-looking fellow also
plays an important part in the story. 

I've been blogging a bit recently about the new children's book I'm in the process of writing. Only a couple of weeks ago I said it was no longer going to be called The Disenchanted Wizard. At the moment it is called The Disenchanted Wizard. Unless something better turns up. 

On the other hand I wrote a bit later that the book was no longer a prequel to Grimhilda! This at least is still correct, and likely to remain so. The book was to have been set about twenty years before the events in Grimhilda! Now they take place about the same time as the events in The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, but in a different city altogether. 

And another decision has been made. I'd be thinking of the books as a series for a while, but with only two on hand it seemed a bit pretentious to call it a series. However, with the third in the pipeline, I'm now able to go forward on the series idea, and they will be given the overall name of Grimhilderness. 

As anyone who's read the books knows, this is the place where Grimhilda's diamond mine is located, and it was where the Mumbersons arrived home from. You discover things the more you write about a place: it seems that Grimhilderness is reasonably easy to get out of; it's not so easy to get into. You'll understand more of this when you read book three. Of which two chapters have now been written...something I've very excited about!

**********

My first e-book for children: Grimhilda! a fantasy for children and their parents, is available on Kindle or Smashwords

The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret - the 'sort of sequel' to Grimhilda! - is available as an e-book on Kindle, and at Smashwords. 11-year-old Billy lives an ordinary life. But one day people start wanting to get hold of his blood...what's the secret his blood holds?

My non-fiction e-book, Diary of a Prostate Wimp, is available on Kindle or Smashwords.

Rosanne Higgins interviews me....

Back in December last year, I interviewed Rosanne Higgins about her books. Recently she returned the complement. You can see the original interview on her blog, but with her permission I'm reproducing it here.

Rosanne: Hi Mike, thanks for joining me. You are a musician, a composer, and, occasionally, an actor.  What made you want to write children’s books?

Me: I’ve been a writer for at least as long as I’ve been a musician, so writing is nothing new. It’s just taken me a long time to get to the point of publishing books.

In the past all the books I’ve written (but not necessarily finished) have been for adults, with one exception. However, there have been some children’s short stories in the past, at least a couple of which have been published. The first children’s book I completed (Grimhilda!) was based on a musical a friend and I had written a couple of years earlier. I thought it had some ‘life’ beyond the theatrical version, and that’s proved to be the case.

How do you balance your writing with your other creative pursuits?

It can be a bit of a juggling act, but usually it’s a matter of which creative venture needs priority. A deadline helps, but at the moment I have deadlines in two different areas, one musical and one writing. It’s not unusual for two things to be running along together: they just have to give each other elbow room.

You have referred to The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret as a sequel of sorts to your first children’s book, Grimhilda!.  Please explain what you meant by that.

In terms of the ‘sequel of sorts’ I mean that only two of the characters from the earlier book appear (though Grimhilda is mentioned several times). In other words, it’s a story about a new lot of characters who have some connections to what happened in the previous book.

You mentioned that Grimhilda! was adapted from a musical that you wrote. What motivated you to write The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret?

I’d had a sequel in mind for Grimhilda! when we produced the musical, partly because some of the cast talked about what happened next and were enthusiastic about me writing another musical. However, the idea I had in mind didn’t seem to work as a musical, or as something that could be done on stage. And I enjoyed the freedom a book version gave me to let things happen that would have been far too complicated to put in a script.

Do you foresee a third book in the Grimhilda series? 

I’ve since written a draft of a third story which will probably be described as a prequel: it’ll take place some twenty years before the events in Grimhilda! and will again only have a couple of characters in common with the first book. But it will (probably) also explain how something that was rather curious in Grimhilda! actually came about.

You have 10 grandchildren and one foster grandchild.  Have they read your books?  If so, what did they think of them?

Strangely I don’t think any of my grandchildren have read the books! They are all readers (at least those who are of an age are) but it’s mostly been their parents who've read them. I think it’s probably not entirely unusual that family members are so close to you they can’t see you as someone separate: a person who writes books. However a number of the grandchildren did come to the musical, and enjoyed it, so I’ll have to do a bit of promotion amongst them in terms of the books… Thanks for the reminder!

What are the challenges unique to writing children’s books in your opinion?

I think everything has to keep moving; you can’t have too much reflection on what’s happening, or too much description of things that aren’t immediately related to the action. On the other hand, someone did comment that The Blood Secret didn’t seem to have any breathing places as the book headed towards its climax. It’s a tricky balance.

I’ve just been reading more of Diana Wynne Jones’ books. She wrote a large number of fantasy stories, with lots of magic and big events. She was a highly successful author of books for children, and yet the books vary enormously in pacing. The one I read most recently had a rather long patch towards the end when things went rather slowly and then suddenly, all of a rush, everything was sorted out and the book was over. Even one of J K Rowling’s books ˗ I think it was the last ˗ had a long stretch in it where very little seemed to be happening. They tightened this up considerably in the movie. I’m not sure that children worry too much about these things; maybe it’s adult readers who do. (I think adults should read children’s books regularly; I certainly do.)

I have noticed that your blog covers a wide variety of topics, some are about writing, some are religious in nature and some are observations.  What motivates you to write your blog?

As I said earlier, I’ve written since I was young, and it seems part and parcel of my nature to record what I think about things. Before blogging came along I used to do it in exercise books or in diaries or journals on the computer. Blogging just became a way of making these things more public! I wrote a weeklycolumn for a local newspaper back in the 90s, for five years, and in it I was free to write on anything I fancied. I guess the blogging is an extension of that. For me, blogs that keep on hammering away at the same subject week in and week out get a bit uninteresting after a while, just the same as newspaper columns that are focused only on one thing. I like variety!

Do you find social media to be more useful in marketing or in helping you to learn more about the self publishing universe?

I don’t know that I’ve made a distinction like that between them. I tend to read anything and everything that’s going when I’m first learning about something. Social media’s certainly been helpful in discerning what’s useful in terms of marketing ˗ though you have to sift between what are often opposing viewpoints. Equally there’s a heap of information about self-publishing out there: some of it is excellent, some rubbish, some marginally informative and so on. It’s the nature of the Internet. But it often points you to books that are of value: I’ve discovered several books about self-publishing/marketing, and these have probably been more helpful because they’re more focused. Deb Vanasse’s book What Every Author Should Know is one I’ve read recently that I found very good all round.

If you could ask any question on social media about self publishing and get an honest answer, what would it be?

“How can I guarantee that my books will sell very well?” I’m sure I’d get plenty of honest answers, but I don’t think I’ll get one that will guarantee sales!

I would ask “How many books have you sold?” There are so many of us out there and I think it would help to have a better understanding of the goals (in terms of sales) that other authors set for themselves and the timeline they set for achieving them.

With e-books by relatively unknown authors, the secret seems to be perseverance: keep on reminding people about the books through social media. But don’t do it in a way that makes it sound like you’re insisting on a sale, or like you’re advertising. Make it part of the overall conversation. Encourage people to help your books to sell by word of mouth. An endorsement from someone who’s enjoyed your books to one or more of their friends is still one of the best ways of getting the books known, even better than good reviews.

I was pleased this morning to find a tweet from a friend saying: My daughter is again reading Grimhilda, by @mcrowl. She thinks it’s ‘awesome’.  That sort of publicity is invaluable, because it’s sincere.

Well, judging by your reviews on Amazon, others find Grimhilda! awesome as well! I really enjoyed The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret and I look forward to reading Grimhilda! (I agree with you that adults should read children’s books, and I do!). Mike, thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I wish you success in all of your endeavours!

Interviewed by Ognian Georgiev

Christmas has come and gone and my mind has become a blank on some things in all the rush.

For instance I can't quite remember now how I happened to come into contact with the Bulgarian sports journalist, Ognian Georgiev. It may have been on Google+, but I honestly don't remember! Anyway, Ognian is doing a series of interviews on his blog. These are conducting digitally, with the questions being sent to various authors around the world. The authors reply at their leisure, and the result, with a bit of additional comment, is uploaded to Ognian's blog. Apart from being a journalist (he covered the 2012 London Olympics, amongst other things) Ognian has himself written a book, The White Prisoner – Galabin Boevski’s secret story. This is the story of the way in which Boevski's Olympic fame vanished overnight when he was caught at the Sao Paulo airport with cocaine in his luggage, and imprisoned for nine years. 

Ognian has posted interviews with a wide variety of authors already on his site, and is continually adding more. The authors write in a variety of genres, and most of them are people I've never heard of, so it's an interesting way to discover a heap of new authors.

My interview, which mostly relates to The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, is number 130 and can be found here. 

Review of The Blood Secret

Nice review of my second children's book, The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, has just appeared on Amazon, from Rosanne Higgins. I'm sure she won't mind my copying it here...

I found The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, by Mike Crowl, to be a most delightful story. Billy Mumberson, and his friend, Olivia, risk life and limb to uncover a long kept secret at the factory where his father is employed. The children have in common parents who are preoccupied and spare them little attention or affection. Billy’s life is particularly confusing since the departure of his mother, nearly a year before. His father is grumpy, becoming even more so after the sudden appearance of his own parents, who arrive after a 20 year unexplained absence. Billy’s grandparents move right in, providing both children with the care and comfort they have been missing in their lives.

As the tale unfolds, we learn how Billy’s blood is critical to the story’s villains in their quest to reclaim something lost to them a long time ago. Through a series of adventures sure to keep young readers turning the page, Billy and Olivia expose the clandestine activities of the factory’s mysterious owners and save a few lives in the mix.

Although this is the second book in the series, I enjoyed it without having read the first book (however, I am planning on reading the first book, Grimhilda, anyway!). The story moves along and is an easy read for children just starting to tackle chapter books. It would also be a fun story to read aloud to youngsters not yet ready for big kid books.

Rosanne Higgins is the author of a couple of novels based on the real history of events in 19th century Buffalo, in the US. Orphans and Inmates, and A Whisper of Bones. I'm reading the first of these two at the moment, and finding it very good. 

Not a winner this time round....

Didn't win the Gallipoli Songs competition organised by ABC Classic FM radio and our own Radio NZ Concert. But a young fellow called Andrew Baldwin was one of the six winners. (Now if 119 of the other 124 entrants hadn't entered, I might have had a fighting chance.

Andrew Baldwin is fairly well-established as a young composer; I've twice heard his music on the radio in the last couple of weeks. When I knew him first he was only a skinny little lad with a very good boy soprano voice. He performed in the local singing competitions and frequently won, or got placed. And then his voice broke - it was breaking during the last lot of competitions I remember seeing him in, to his embarrassment and everyone else's sympathy. But at that point Andrew was already composing, and I can remember him playing something he'd written way back then. I've also got a piano piece that I enjoy playing that he wrote some years ago, although his style has changed since then.

The breaking of the voice usually means boys have to take a couple of years off singing in competitions, or anywhere else. Some boys, like my younger son, manage to shift that gear in the voice without much problem, but my son had never really been a boy soprano in the accepted sense. The young fellow who played Toby in the musical, Grimhilda!, that I wrote two or three years ago, Max Beal, is currently in the same boat. He was in the most recent lot of competitions, this year, but will have to take a bit of time off to grow into his new voice.

So, I didn't win the Gallipoli Songs Competition. Well, I knew I'd be in heavy duty company, and I'll get over it. Eventually.

I spoke to one of my daughters on the phone the other night. We were talking about what I'd been doing and she was asking how my latest book is going (The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret). I said sales were pretty sluggish. Her comment was that I'll probably be one of those writers who becomes famous after I'm dead. I agreed. She went on to say that then my children will get all the handsome profits.

It would be nice to think so!

Interview with Jim Heskett

I've been doing some promotional work on Google+, getting to know some other writers and interacting with them. It's been fruitful for me, and hopefully for them. I asked a few of them if they would like to read my latest book, The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, and give me some feedback. 

Some have responded, and the first one to read it, Jim Heskett, who's published a book of poetry recently, Love Poems, Hate Poems, was the first to come back to me. I gave him a list of questions that I thought he might like to answer, and here are the unadulterated responses. 

Me: Did the book entertain you, keep you wanting to know what happened next?

Jim: It did. The first chapter had a nice mystery hook with the blood-taking barber. The suspense had a nice ramp-up over the first half of the book.

Me: Did the characters come across as real people for you?

Jim: Hard to gauge, since I’m not too familiar with children’s literature. It felt like a fairy tale, a bit like Neil Gaiman.

Me: Were any of the lines or situations amusing to you?

Jim: The banter between Olivia and Billy was pretty clever.

Me: Did you find the situations plausible, given that there’s an element of fantasy in it?

Jim: I did, but it seemed odd to me that Jerry wouldn’t recognize his own parents after only twenty years. Also, that Billy thought of his dad as “jerry” and not “dad.”

Me: Did you feel that the language was at a suitable level for younger readers (given that it’s intended for kids from 6 - 12, roughly)

Jim: I think so, it seemed comparable to the first couple Harry Potter books.

Me: Did you enjoy it as an adult reader? Would you read it to your kids? (Well, when he’s ready...)

Jim: I did enjoy it! Good suspense, fun situations, and a satisfying ending.

Me: Did you find there were any cultural differences that you queried while reading it?

Jim: A little, but I lived in Australia, so I was able to puzzle out most of the slight language differences. Referring to the skateboarders as Ninjas was a new one to me.

Me: This is intended to be a stand-alone story, but it has links back to the first book in the series. Did it make you want to find out what the first book was about?

Jim: Since I knew nothing about the first book, I didn’t know what any of those links back to the first book were. Maybe adding some mystery by making vague references to things that happened before might help.

Me: Was there anything that really irritated you...?

Jim: I found some POV problems that stuck out to me… the POV seemed mostly in Billy’s head, but occasionally it would jump into another person’s head for a few sentences here and there. That’s a small quibble but those things always pull me out of the story.

You can also buy The Blood Secret on Smashwords, Kobo and iTunes. 

The Blood Secret uploaded

I've been very neglectful in not telling people who read this blog that my latest e-book, The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, is now available from Kindle, and Smashwords. I'd love to say it was also available in print, but that's not the case at the moment, although it's a possibility. One of the many options I've explored that haven't quite got off the ground yet.

Anyway, last Saturday the book was uploaded online, and is sitting waiting for people to buy it....

The Blood Secret is the sequel to Grimhilda! the story that began life back in the late 70s, and finally turned into the musical which we presented in Dunedin in 2012. And then it became the book. At the time some of the cast asked when the sequel was going to happen. They were thinking of another musical but such a venture is fairly overwhelming, even with a good team behind you, and so the sequel, now that it's finally arrived, is also in story form rather than musical.

It would be interesting to adapt The Blood Secret for the stage, however: though it has a number of challenges that might be tricky to overcome: a car that changes its colour, skateboarders whizzing around at impossible speed, a huge door that doesn't want to be a door, and something special that wants to remain invisible.

Only a few minor technical problems...!

I'd have loved to have given the four actors Grimhilda! the chance to fly, as they were supposed to do in the script, but in the end the audience had to imagine this. Another production, however, might achieve it. It would certainly add a Wow factor to the stage version. There's one moment of 'flying' in The Blood Secret too, but that would be a challenge even greater than the one in the musical...

Read it and see what I'm talking about!

#gigatowndun

I've been involved in the #gigatown competition since March 2014. Some people have been involved since November last year, I think. That's a horrendously long time to compete at something.

Most of my involvement has been on the tweeting side, sending dozens, sometimes hundreds of tweets on many days with the hashtag #gigatowndun. In the process I've gradually lost track of the people I've been following on Twitter who aren't involved in the competition. Which is a pity.

Some of them gave up because they got swamped themselves with #gigatowndun tweets. And fair enough. Even people on Facebook, where all of my original tweets get sent, eventually reacted in the same way.

In the early stages it was a fun way to get to know other local people and write some crazy tweets as well as some sensible ones. Certain weird themes came through about baths, and two people being the same person and such. Innocuous, but quite entertaining, especially if a conversation got going between participants.

In the latter stage when things really got serious, we weren't able to be quite so facetious: the rules changed and we had to spend time tweeting or FaceBooking about things that #gigatowndun would do for the city if we won. That became limiting, especially when a whole pile of new people got involved and basically began tweeting about the same things that had been tweeted about time and time again. Not quite so inspiring.

I've had a few days on Twitter since the later part of the competition, but have found myself struggling to be very creative anymore, and I think there may be a few longstanding Tweeters who've come to the same place. Exhausted with dealing with the same topic over and over.

Yes, I know we should remain enthusiastic, because we're nearly there, and there's every possibility that we may win. I know we should keep the idea of a marathon before us and be thankful that in the last stage a whole pile more supporters have got on board. That is terrific, and kudos to those who've worked hard to get them there.

But I had some other things I wanted to do, and #gigatowndun-ing all day chews up the hours that could be spent productively on other stuff, such as finishing a book - The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, which was published on Kindle yesterday. And then there's the marketing of the other two books I've published this year, and the work on a fourth....

I'm sure, if Dunedin wins the giga comp, it'll make a huge difference over a period of time. But much and all as I'd like to spend the last couple of days plugging away at it, I think I've just plain run out of steam.

A nifty line

Every so often, when you're writing, a line appears that comes so wonderfully formed, you think someone cleverer than you wrote it. In the first chapter of my next book, due to be published in November, there's this line:

He put a stopper in the top, and popped it in his upper pocket. 

It's a bit like a line from a poem, except that this is an ordinary prose story. I love the way the letter p appears all over the sentence, along with the letter t, and the rhythm of the words in the sentence.

Did I say what the name of the book is? Nope? It's The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret - a sequel of sorts. It's a sequel in the sense that it happens about a week after the first book in this series, Grimhilda!, but there are only two characters from the first book who make an appearance in the second. A couple of others are mentioned, but that's it. Almost an entirely new cast...!

The Mumbersons ˗ and the Blood Secret

I'm pleased to say that my co-writer on Grimhilda! has come in to help with the last stages of the book about the Mumbersons - the 'sequel' (of sorts) to the earlier book. Currently the title is The Mumbersons ˗ and the Blood Secret. 

She read it through a couple of weeks ago, or so, and said, Wonderful. Love it. That's very encouraging. And then of course the work started, rejigging lines, cutting phrases, sentences, paragraphs, adding in things that were missing, and tightening up the plot so that awkward persons (like herself) don't come along and say, But why.....?

Someone will always come along and ask, But why?even when you think you've covered all the bases, but you have to live with that. One of our aims is to see that these kind of people are in the minority!

The story's two main characters - Billy and Olivia - have been friends for a short while before the story starts, and together find themselves having to deal more than one curious thing involving Billy's blood, and why someone should want to have some of it. The connection with Grimhilda! becomes evident at the end of the first chapter, and increases as time goes on. More than this I'm not prepared to reveal just yet! 

I'm aiming to have it ready before Christmas 2014, and hopefully it will encourage people to go back and read Grimhilda! if they haven't already done so. 

Promoting the ebooks

While working on the sequel to Grimhilda! I haven't had much time to give to promoting that good lady herself, nor my non-fiction book, Diary of a Prostate Wimp. Both were published as ebooks earlier this year, one in January, the other in April, and while they had some interest from customers at the beginning, before I began writing the sequel (currently going under the name of The Mumbersons), they've languished over the last three months for want of sufficient attention. It's difficult to write and promote at the same time. The energy required for one tends to consume the energy required for the other.

Now that The Mumbersons is well on its way, and is awaiting a reading by a friend, I'm doing some work on getting the other two books back on their feet. I'd kept copies of a number of articles (on Evernote, of course) about promoting the books, and yesterday, while trolling through these looking for promotional ideas, came across a note about a site called Good Kindles, which, for a one-off (and reasonable fee) will promote your ebooks. I've listed Grimhilda! with them for starters, and we'll see how she goes. 

On top of that it was nice to find an unsolicited review of Grimhilda! had turned up on Amazon. Short and sweet, but nicely to the point: I was intrigued and delighted by this story. Great fun to read. It was contributed by a person who does a fair number of short reviews: Ruby,owl.  Thanks, Ruby!

Grimhilda! - a fantasy for children and their parents is available on Smashwords and a variety of other ebook sites, including Apple and Kobo.
The same applies to Diary of a Prostate Wimp.