Wednesday Review: Gerry McCullough on “Life Is But A Dream” by Cheryl Shireman

Gerry McCullough

Once again it’s my pleasure to welcome back our reviewer in residence Gerry McCullough, with this long overdue post on Cheryl Shireman’s novel.

By coindence I was e-discussing this book yesterday with Cheryl and I was echoing almost exactly Gerry’s thoughts, as below, about how this novel is absolutely nothing like you expect it to be. And I’m sure that has accounted for its amazing sales.

Anyone masochistic enough to be hoping for my usual lengthy preamble will be disappointed today. Yes, I can hear the rest of you cheering.  Thanks for nothing.

Anyway, both Gerry and Cheryl are regulars here and have been through my cruel introductions many times. They escape today because my net server is playing up as usual, and I’m miles behind with everything, also as usual. If I delay any longer the evening net signal will be too weak and I’ll miss the Wednesday deadline.

So without further ado, here’s Gerry on Cheryl.

 

Life Is But A Dream: On The Lake

Reviewed by Gerry McCullough

 

The word which stays with me when I think about this book is ‘powerful.’

Right from the first page, when Cheryl Shireman takes us into Grace’s thoughts, dreams, and dream-memories, she grips. Using a poetic, literary style, she plunges us right into Grace’s psyche, just in the same way that Grace plunges into the swimming pool. And throughout the book she takes time to bring us into the head and soul of each of her major characters as we meet them – Nick, Tony, Bert, Paul.

It’s Cheryl Shireman’s amazing way with words more than anything else that makes her people so alive.  The reader knows so many deep things about each of them in such a short time after she meets them.

The child Grace’s thoughts as she moves slowly nearer and nearer to the pool, unobserved by her mother: ‘She does not see. She does not. See me. See. Me.’

Nick’s pain as her mother fails to return. ‘When he found her she would ask him, “Quanto tempo ti amo?” And he would pull out the picture and say, “Ti amero sempre.”’ Words repeated with immense emotional effect towards the end of the book.

Grace’s experiences with God, and her feelings.

Paul and his child, and his final experience… ‘a little girl was waiting. A beautiful little brown-eyed girl named Julie whose arms stretched toward her Daddy. And Paul had smiled.’

It is these moments and many more like them which make this book so special.

For the first few chapters, I thought I was reading a gentle, moving, literary romance with great characters, a story which focused mainly on the people, their backgrounds, and their interaction.  Halfway through, I woke up and realized that this book is also a thriller full of action, excitement and a terrific climax which seizes us and hurls us along breathlessly.

And yet the focus on the characters is basic to the book, too. It’s because Cheryl Shireman has taken the time to build her characters and to allow us to feel for them that the impact of the action is so strong. As Grace rows across the lake our hearts are in our mouths with her. And the dreadful discovery in the cabin closet hits us as surely as it does her, as a further horror almost beyond believing and yet something which has really happened.

The ending is beautifully handled. We really want Grace to be happy. There have been so many possibilities for her, all of them abortive. The final resolution is everything we want for her; and yet it does not seem contrived, or only there to tie up the story nicely. Instead, it seems inevitable, something which couldn’t have worked out in any other way.

The murder plot is deft and agile. There are a satisfactory number of suspects, and enough twists and turns to keep us guessing, but the final solution arises straightforwardly from what we already know about the characters. And when Grace, at the last, turns away from approaching rescue and goes back into the cabin, the little scene, and the repetition of the words ‘Ti amero sempre’ is immensely moving. It is so right that Grace should go back in.

The spiritual element of this book is one other thing, a one of great importance, which makes it different and powerful. Introduced through Irene and Harold, God takes His place as a major character in the story from then on. Grace says at one point that she finds the whole idea too confusing. But as things begin to happen, she turns more and more to prayer as a natural response to the need for help, both for herself and for others. The beautiful picture of the sunset and her delight in it is a key point in Grace’s development.

‘The sun slowly slides from the sky, from another day in my life. It meets the water with a languid and silent splash, pulling a riotous mane of color behind. A wild shock of orange and pink is tangled amid tousled blue and purple tresses. Such beauty is overwhelming. Suddenly, it does not matter that I am divorced. It does not matter that Laney is not with me. At that second, that glorious second, all is right with the world.’

And later she and Tony sit quieting watching the wild geese and feeling at peace.

Like me, you will probably find that this book is not what you expected. But you will find it striking, moving, exciting, powerful and very, very readable. Don’t miss out!

Life Is But A Dream: Beyond The Lake can be bought from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
Highly recommended by Gerry. Highly recommended by me.
***

Finally, a reminder that today’s reviewer Gerry blogs regularly over at Gerry’s Books.

And if you like her reviewing style you’ll love her books. Gerry’s debut novel Belfast Girls is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

Her latest novel Danger Danger is of course also available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

Gerry also has a book of short stories out but my net won’t let me grab the cover or link. C’est la vie.

2012
02/22
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Midweek Review
Ones To Watch 2012
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8 comments

Indie Fables: The Myth of the 70% Royalty

Truly disruptive developments in technology impact not just on related industries, but have repercussions far beyond, changing society. It’s why they are called revolutions, not just improvements on the previous infrastructure.

The printing press was one such.

Railways. Manned flight. The internet, of course.

Epublishing? No question is has transformed the publishing industry itself, and transformed the lives of many who aspire to making a living from it. But to be a true revolution it has to impact on wider society.

It’s too soon to be certain how history will regard what we now term the epublishing revolution, but I think it safe to say it will be classed as revolutionary.

Epublishing is revolutionary because it is capable of transcending media boundaries yet still be available to anyone with the requisite and readily available technology. Not just a transfer of an existing industry to a new means of delivery (movies are shifted from celluloid to magnetic tape to aluminium disk to digital without being revolutionary changes) but a transformation in what is available to read, where it is available, how it is read, and most importantly in the relationship between the creator-supplier and consumer.

Like any revolution, epublishing has its proponents and opponents, and like in any propaganda war truth always the first casualty. As in any revolution, epublishing has its icons and its demons, and reasoned debate is rarely an option.

Urban myths abound. You know the type: trad publishers eat babies for breakfast, alligators live in the sewers beneath New York and you can earn seventy per cent royalyties from Amazon around the globe.

BTW, for those wondering, Hugh Laurie is not actually a trad publisher. And I can personally vouch for there being no alligators in the sewers of West Africa. Crocodiles on the other hand…

So this is the first of an occasional series intended to strip away some of the more colourful blandishments of both sides, and take a look behind the us and them mentality that is so pervasive and corrosive, and view the reality behind the war of the words.

And we’re starting with the biggest myth of all – the myth of the 70% royalty.

*

The fabled 70% royalty is of course the weapon of choice of any self-respecting indie wanting to poor scorn on the traditional publishers. And no question the royalties paid out by the trads are piss-poor. Don’t for one second read this as an apology for the failings of the trad pubbers to pay a fair whack to their authors.

But equally, don’t fall for the opposite extreme that the trads are therefore robbing us blind because Amazon and other e-retailers pay up to 70% royalties. The trad publishers may well be robbing us blind. But that’s a different argument for a different time.

What’s important to grasp here is that Amazon are not paying 70% royalties. In fact, except in the case of the select few who have signed up with the Amazon imprints, Amazon aren’t paying royalties at all.

Okay, they call the payments royalties, but actually they are charging a 30% fee for distributing our books, selling our books and processing the fees. They then hand us the remainder. By what stretch of the imagination is that a royalty? A rose by any other name? Not so. If we sold an ebook on eBay and eBay paid us the money after its fees were deducted would we call that a royalty? Of course not.

Amazon, Apple, B&N, Kobo and co. are not our publishers, they are our distributors and sales agents. That’s why it’s called self-publishing, folks!

The point being, it’s crazy to directly compare what Amazon (or Apple, or Kobo, etc) hand out (after deducting their sales commission/distribution-fee/payment processing fee) with a royalty from a trad publisher.

Low as trad-pub royalties may be (7%-15% is typical), it’s ludicrous to suggest that a trad publisher paying 15% to the author is somehow pocketing the other 85% as profit. Apart from anything else they have to pay sales commissions/distribution fees/payment processing fees just like we do. They have production costs, just like we do.

Does that justify the trad publishers’ higher list prices and lower pay-out of real royalties to authors? Of course not. But the arguments against trad pub practices stand better scrutiny if we deal with facts, not Konrathian hyperbole. The grave-diggers and pall-bearers of the trad publishers have their own agenda, and can be entertaining to read. But facts are easily lost in the one-sided debates.

I’ll return to this in future posts. Here to address the realities of “royalty payments” from bodies which aren’t acting as publishers and are actually charging distribution fees, not handing out royalties.

In a bizarre twist by the company that prides itself on offering consumers the cheapest prices and claiming the agency model keeps prices artificially high, Amazon penalize any author wanting to give the reader real value, and more than double the distribution fee if we choose to list at less than $2.99.

Which of course means that for many ebooks the so-called Amazon “royalty” is only 35%.

And that applies to rather more than you might think.

*

There’s a common misconception touted by the celebrity self-publishers that writers can earn 70% globally by being indie. If only…

For ebook purchases outside of the Kindle countries Amazon only pay 35% regardless of list price. Far from giving you the fabled 70% royalty they actually charge you a 65% sales commission/distribution fee/payment processing fee. And of course they then also add the infamous $2 surcharge to the buyer’s bill.

New Delhi, not New York

So your 99c ebook sold in downtown Buenos Aries or New Delhi will cost the buyer $2.99. But you’ll still only get 35c. In case you’re wondering that’s an actual “royalty” of less than 12%.

That’s always assuming they let Johnny Foreigner buy your book at all. A reminder here that, as a resident of a West African country, I cannot buy my, your or anyone else’s ebook from Amazon, not even with the $2 surcharge, because Amazon block ebook sales to almost the entire continent.

Not quite as bad as Barnes & Nobles Americans-only policy, agreed, but hardly a global sales reach. Apple by contrast have iBook stores in twenty or so countries and don’t surcharge. Kobo have even bigger global reach, and curiously they don’t surcharge either.

*

The big appeal of Amazon and B&N for authors is of course the ability to self-publish relatively easily. Although for B&N that applies only to Americans. Everyone else has to go through an aggregator like Smashwords.

Apple and Kobo both, in theory, accept indie authors, but the hoops to jump through are such that few try and even fewer succeed, so again aggregators like Smashwords come into play. But in order to get into B&N, Apple and Kobo through Smashwords you have to subject yourself to the ignobility of the “meatgrinder” to get premium status, and as anyone who submits multiple titles will know, that can be an absolute nightmare.

We can submit two identically formatted files one will be approved and the other come back time after time after time from the auto-vetter for some revision that actually doesn’t need revising. Typical is to get an email from Smashwords saying your ebook has passed all the tests and been approved, followed by an email literally five minutes later saying that exact same book has failed and must be re-submitted!

For those who persevere Smashwords gets you, in addition to those mentioned already, into Sony and Diesel, and Aldiko and Stanza. Useful, true, but how well do Smashwords perform compared to direct uploads?

For those of us outside the US, B&N’s long-standing policy of blanking anyone outside the US borders meant Smashwords were pretty much our only hope of getting listed there. And while the evidence is anecdotal, it does appear being in B&N via Smashwords does you few favours. We sold next to nothing in B&N via Smashwords, despite huge sales on Amazon. Almost all of the B&N success stories we are aware of are from direct-upload authors.

The same goes for Kobo. Again, anecdotal evidence suggests Kobo and Smashwords do not work well together.

Our own experience is telling. Last year saw our e-titles in the e-stores of the two biggest bricks and mortar book-sellers in the UK – Waterstone’s and W.H.Smiths. We let Smashwords get us into W.H. Smiths as their e-store is operated by Kobo. We went via a more direct (and more expensive) route with Waterstone’s (Smashwords do not supply any UK stores except W.H.Smiths through Kobo).

Last year we had two top ten hits in Waterstone’s, held number two spot in store for some while, and was the most searched for name in store. In W.H.Smiths? Nothing. You could count the sales on one hand.

What little we did sell via Smashwords last year was through Apple, and the sums are just too embarrassing to mention. Yet somehow we sold well over 100,000 (of just one title) on non-Smashwords platforms last year. And not just on Amazon and Waterstone’s. As we demonstrated here, we have been getting ourselves out into ebook stores far and wide.

No, these sales aren’t massive. Yes, Amazon will probably dominate the scene for a few years yet, and will maintain it’s position as the biggest ebook retailer in the US. But ebook sales worldwide can only get bigger. If you’re not out there you won’t share in it.

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Some people are dismissive of Kindle UK because sales there don’t match up with Kindle US. Well, no question the US is a bigger market. And Kindle UK is much newer than Kindle US. E-readers are still a novelty in Britain.

But the UK’s time will come. Those who have a foot in the door now – not just on Kindle UK, but on all platforms – will be well placed to ride that swell when it does come. We know. We’ve got the t-shirt. Just think Waterstone’s.

We’ve also got a direct route into the other major e-stores including B&N, Kobo and Apple, without playing games with Smashwords’ meatgrinder and their ludicrous auto-vetter. And more importantly we have a direct route into far more stores than Smashwords offers.

As said here a week or so back, we can now get you into these stores too.

On Thursday here on MWi we’ll be explaining just what that involves, and which ebook stores you could potentially be selling in. Unless you’re locked into KDP Select then this is a great opportunity to reach new markets at no upfront costs. If you are with Select then come and join us when your ninety day experiment is up.

We’ll provide the ISBNs and quality-formatted ePub files where necessary, and any titles listed through us will be featured in the We Love Waterstone’s promotional campaign in the UK, and similar campaigns internationally.

No, it probably won’t make you rich and you may not sell at all. In which case you lose nothing. On the other hand you may just be the indie that beats us to the number one spot in the UK’s Waterstone’s or Tesco ebooks (the e-store of the UK’s biggest retailer by far), or that makes it big in South Africa’s Kalahari store, New Zealand’s Fishpond store or…

No, we can’t guarantee sales in these stores. But there are two things we can guarantee.

One is that if you’re not in those stores you haven’t a hope in hell of ever selling there and establishing your brand there.

Two is that ebooks are a world-wide phenomenon and growing fast. China already is the second biggest e-reader market in the world. It will probably eclipse the USA later this year.

E-readers, tablets and smart-phones are everywhere, in every country. India is just about to launch its latest mega-cheap tablet, the iBerry Auxus.

Don’t for one second think these “third world” countries don’t have e-readers and tablets. The average citizen might not be able to afford an iPad or a KindleFire (not that the Kindle devices are available internationally anyway) but there are plenty of cheap, locally produced tablets, e-readers and smartphones available.

People are e-reading worldwide, not just in the USA and UK.

Will they be reading your ebooks?

2012
02/13
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Mark Williams on Books
MWiDP
The e-publishing debate.
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23 comments

Call Me Demens, But… – Charley R. reviews Susan Kaye Quinn’s “Open Minds”

If you’re wondering what that snazzy little Saffina Desforges Recommended logo is all about then I’m afriad you’ll have to be patient  a little longer. All will be revealed shortly, but not today.

Suffice to say that, despite the teething problems (as with any new start-up enterprise), and local conditions and ailments delaying progress, the MWiDP wagon is still rolling, and the YA / teen fiction imprint is gathering pace.

Our very own St. Mallory’s Forever!, the first of a new YA boarding school series, is close to launch, and it will be joined by a very, very different YA book Anca’s Story. Both will be in an ebook store near you this spring, along with our top secret (so top secret we can’t even mention title or topic at this stage!) MG / 8-12 series which could be live as early as next month.

For those who missed yesterday’s post, our own Sugar & Spice was officially declared the UK’s best selling indie ebook of 2011, and came in at number eleven out of ALL ebooks sold last year, despite being up against some of the biggest names in the industry. We made the top rankings not in some fly-by-night promo blitz, only to disappear a week later, but held poll position for months at a time and was the most searched for brand for several months.

I mention this now because, wiith our new distribution outlets now live (see post here for background) we’ll be looking to emulate that success in 2012, not just for our own titles but for those who have joined with us under the MWiDP banner. The Saffina Desforges Recommended initative is just one part of that master-plan, using our brand recognition to help promote your books. More in coming weeks.

Here just to remind regulars, and inform recent newcomers, that we last year lent our commendation to many promising YA authors who went on to great success (Michelle Brooks, Marion G. Harmon and Megg Jensen to name but a few) and plan to expand that support this year.

And first in line for 2012 is Susan Kaye Quinn (that’s her on the right), whose book Open Minds was itelf a mind-opening experience. I absolutely loved it, and predict a huge success in the future for this title as word spreads.

And Susan herself will be here after the weekend talking about YA in general.

But for now, back to her book. I have to admit I was sorely tempted to review this myself, but my co-writer Charley R. beat me to it. Here’s Charley:

Call Me Demens, But…

Charley R. reviews Susan Kaye Quinn’s Open Minds

Before I begin, I have a confession to make. Despite the fact I am not yet old enough to drive, order a drink in a bar, or marry without my parents’ consent, Young Adult fiction usually isn’t my scene. Call me a literature snob, but most of the time I feel they just reiterate the same old story, with a few mythical creatures thrown in just to spice things up.

So, for me, Open Minds was a lovely breath of fresh air. The premise of the story is very simple – it’s our world, in the future, and everyone can read minds. Well, almost everyone. Our heroine and first-person narrator Kira is a zero – she can’t read minds, or project her own thoughts, which makes life surrounded by constantly gabbling mentalists something of a daily trial for her. That is, until she accidentally clobbers her best friend’s brain and discovers she’s not a zero … though she might just wish she was.

I found the world to be a very engaging place – it was intriguingly realistic, while at the same time managing to make me go “ooh, shiny!” at several very strange moments (especially when it came to the mindwave controlled cars. So long, SatNav!). The slang is also completely believable and, for me, was one of the highlights of the book. It’s hard enough working out why certain words are slang today, let alone devising convincing ones of your own! “Demens” is my favourite 

However, despite this, I think the story was pretty effective. It was quick, snappy and moved along at a good pace to keep the action coming and – praise be! – avoided any long stretches of angsting that seem so common to today’s teenage heroines. The characters were clear cut and sympathetic – well, except the baddies, but even they manage to look rather cool. Regrettably, due to an unfortunate combination of brisk pacing and a small cast of characters, every event did turn out to be rather Kira-centred, and I found the singling her out as an extra-special individual among an already gifted group was a little irksome at times. Thankfully, the author knows too well to let me get a solid point on that, because she then went and showed us a perfectly viable and believable conclusion for Kira’s individual prowess. Curse you, logic!

On a similar note, I did very much like the deft handling of the grey area concerning the shadowy Clan. Rather than confirm them as either good or bad people through events of the book, the author has performed that oh-so-delicious yet utterly frustrating feat of presenting them both ways. It’s up to us to decide what we really think of them (personally, I’m just as confused as Kira. Though I would rather like to give Agent Kestrel to Andre and Molloy, just for kicks and giggles…)

In short, therefore, I’d say Open Minds is a pretty piece of YA indeed. True, it’s not flawless – Kira sometimes falls into the trap of out-of-character altruism, and I found the swiftness with which she attached herself to Laney (and, to a certain extent, Laney herself), a bit peculiar – but, I think the fact I’m now planning to pass it around my friends is testament to its charm. That, and I have to fight down an urge to describe everything as “mesh” now.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and test my own jacking skills … here kitty kitty …

Thanks, Charley.

I just adore the future teen world Susan has created with Open Minds. And in particular I loved that it was almost at the very end of the book that the author finally gave us a date for when this is set, and throughout the book the new world was spoonfed to us without ever info-dumping or contriving dialogue to explain why things are like they are.

One of the true joys of indie-reading is coming across new writers who have all the skills and flair of an accomplished long-published author. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does you know pretty much from the first page that you have stumbled across something special. That you are reading the work of a future superstar.

Susan Kaye Quinn is one such, and I have no hesitation in introducing her as the first Saffina Desforges Recommended author of 2012.

Open Minds is available on  amazon.co.uk, and of course on: Amazon.com:

B&N:       Smashwords:     iTunes:      Diesel:   and Kobo.

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Finally, just to say Charley R., our intrepid reviewer, is herself in the spotlight in the newly released short-story anthology Saffina Desforges Presents… Volume 2 of the Kindle Coffee-Break Collection. I’ll be covering that here in detail on MWi after the weekend (yeah, a busy week ahead on MWi – you have been warned!).

2012
02/11
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Mark Williams on Books
Mark Williams on Writing
Midweek Review
Ones To Watch 2012
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5 comments

Mark Williams Has Risen From The Grave

 

Okay, play time’s over. I’m back!

Contrary to popular opinion I haven’t been lounging on the beach all day while nothing was happening here at MWi. For those of you unfortunate enough to have had emails from me recently it may not have been obvious, but I have been struggling with Africa’s most common malady. To anyone who’s emailed and not had a reply, sorry! I’ll be making vast efforts to catch up over the weekend.

For now just to add that my recuperation was greatly aided today by news that Sugar & Spice came in not only as the top selling UK indie title last year, but also ranked eleventh highest-seller out of ALL ebooks sold in the UK in 2011.

What more could one ask?

 

 

 

2012
02/10
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Be Inspired! The stories behind the stories.
Sugar & Spice - our struggle.
You couldn't make it up...
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16 comments

Trad Publishing: Sinking Ship? Or Phoenix that will Rise from the Ashes?

Way back in 2011 (anyone remember that long ago?) one of the more imaginative assertions of the grandees of indie spokes-folk was the suggestion that print was on its deathbed thanks to digital, that the Big Six publishers were going to the wall, and self-publishers would inherit the Earth.
Well, no question self-publishers have gone from strength to strength, and we all know how well the tiny minority at the top are doing.
But most of these are formerly trad-pubbed authors with an established brand built up over many years, and a backlist of titles they’ve re-acquired rights to.
All credit to them for seizing the opportunity and taking control of their careers. But let’s not for one second pretend this is something your average new author, starting out from scratch as a self-publisher, can hope to emulate.
Sure, there are exceptions, but they are few and far between. And the same goes for the formerly trad-pubbed authors now going it alone to huge acclaim. It is precisely because they are exceptions that they are news worthy.
What I find increasingly bizarre is the advice they give out to new authors. Don’t even think about promotion until you have four or five titles out. Forget free and cheap strategies – “you indies have no business sense”. And best yet, aim to put out a new title every two weeks!
What planet are these people on?

***

I ran a post on MWi back in May of last year suggesting the doom-mongerers might be a bit premature with their predictions.

Back in 2009 there were two schools of thought. Either this “new” epublishing fad would die a death and paper would remain king (the experience of the newspaper industry being a classic example) or the Big 6 were finished.
As one leading pundit said in April 2009, the Big 6 were not even “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic – they’re staying put and ordering more piña coladas and charging them to rooms that are already underwater.”
Two years on the Big 6 are most definitely still with us, and while there’s no question they are changing, there’s little sign that they are going under. Which will be a great disappointment to Konrath, but should be a big relief to the rest of us.
Paper sales are plummeting, giant bookselling chains like Borders are in liquidation, and Konrath and co. have already written the obituaries for the Big 6 and are there, spades in hand, digging their graves.
But I disagree. I simply cannot see the end for the Big 6 or for publishing.
Just the opposite in fact.

As I’ve said on MWi many times, big ships are hard to turn. But below deck there’s a frenzy of activity long before anything is seen on the surface. And once they do turn they soon pick up speed.
Almost another year on, and the ship has turned.

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According to Calvin Reid at Publisher’s Weekly the Digital Book World conference has just wound up with some contrite statements by the trad publishers:

A panel featuring executives form S&S, Random House, Little Brown, HarperCollins and Perseus, spent the morning issuing mea culpas (and highlighting current and planned correctives) over past “paternalistic” practices in dealing with their authors. Indeed there was a fair amount of discussion about whether authors should be called “partners,” “customers,” or “clients,” in an era when veteran authors and even emerging writers have viable alternatives to the traditional publishing contract.

Some quotes to savour with your morning coffee.:

“Publishers must treat authors as equal partners,” said Little, Brown’s Michael Pietsch, “We are offering a service to authors,” as the panelists also emphasized that it’s not always clear to authors, just what publishers do for them. “If authors are confused about what we do, we need to make it clear,” said Random House’s Madeleine MacIntosh. Joe Mangan of Perseus agreed, “communication is the key.”

Okay, us indies can indulge a smile at this belated turn-around by the trad-publishers, in the certain knowledge the success of indie-publishing has forced this change of attitude.

But let’s also be clear what it means:

The Big Six aren’t going to the wall anytime soon. While they spent the first half of 2011 publicly denouncing ebooks, and the second easing up on the rhetoric, they were all the time busily investing in the new world of ebooks.

And as the quotes above show, they can and do learn, and can and do change. Too little, too late? I don’t think so.

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In future posts I’ll be returning to just what this means for indie publishing, and why indie writers should welcome rather than rue the return of the Big Six.

But for today, a word from our sponsor.

In past posts elsewhere I discussed how ebooks would be transformed by sponsorship these coming years, and that advertising within ebooks could and would happen, and that it needn’t be a bad thing. The suggestion had a mixed response at the time, from horrified to gleeful, but most seemed curious as to how it might work.

In fact some writers are already making it pay for them. For example, Olivia Lennox writes across many subjects, and tendered a post on library-lending and piracy which she thought might interest MWi readers.

Like most bloggers, I’m always on the look-out for guests and new material, so when Olivia emailed offering me a guest post I was of course all ears. But unlike 99% of bloggers, Olivia is a professional freelance journalist. Having been down that road myself in a past life I know that freelance does not mean giving away articles for free. Far from it! Which got me asking why any professional writer would want to write an article for an unpaid blog like MWi. It turns out Olivia makes part of her living by writing sponsored articles.

And it transpires this is a fine example of what we might expect in the future with ebook sponsorship, so I’m presenting Olivia’s article in its entirety. Further discussion follows after you’ve read Olivia’s post.

Will Piracy Kill Public eBook Libraries?

With the announcement that Penguin has pulled all its new books from e-lending in libraries due to ambiguously labelled “security issues” with digital copies, it’s clear to see piracy has reared its ugly head and leads to the question of whether eBook lending is ever going to take off if publishers are so concerned with “security issues”.

According to the Library Journal publication, there has been a 185% increase of eBooks being offered in public libraries across the country and this is a clear step towards a new type of library lending. With Amazon signing up their Kindle to 11,000 public libraries, it’s clear that the eBook really is an alternative to the traditional paperback, even for library users. Digital editions in libraries are a fantastic development and have the added bonus of no worries about late fees as once the time period of loan is up, the book is simply removed from your device. There’s absolutely no reason why you can’t curl up on your recliner sofa with your eReader just as easily as you could with a trusty old paperback.

However, with the Penguin group suspending all new eBooks from being made available to libraries in digital form and a complete ban on lending out eBooks to Amazon Kindle users; it is clear there’s a big underlying issue. The Penguin group cited “security concerns” as their reason for this action and this can only mean piracy. There has been no time frame given for the action so it could be a permanent decision although Penguin haven’t pulled their back catalog from the shelves, just new releases and of course, that complete unavailability for Amazon Kindle users.

Penguin aren’t the first publishing company to exercise caution when lending our their eBooks, in fact both Macmillan and Simon & Schuster have kept their entire catalog unavailable and HarperCollins have some very strict guidelines in place, with very stringent limitations on the number of times eBooks can be lent. With these publishers all considered high flyers in the industry, it’s a worry for eBook readers that they may not have access to some of the best books around.

What’s the problem with Amazon?

It seems Penguin have a problem with Amazon in particular, as they don’t like that library eBook lending is directly linked to Amazon. Across US libraries, the service used to lend Kindle eBooks is offered through OverDrive. Overdrive is an Ohio-based book lending company who provide services to over 10,000 schools and libraries in the USA and another 15,000 worldwide. In October, OverDrive began a deal with Amazon for lending eBooks to Kindle uses, promoting Kindle compatibility. As well as working with Kindle, OverDrive provide eBook lending in many other formats including those compatible with Apple and Android devices. Using OverDrive, users are about to loan DRM-protected eBooks which then expire when the lending period is up.

The problem with OverDrive and Kindle, is that the titles borrowed from their library appear in their Amazon.com Kindle account area and it’s from here the content can be delivered to your Kindle or Kindle app. This has irritated many publishers and a whole host of readers too as Amazon are seemingly acting as a storefront for all eBooks, whether you’ve used their site to purchase them or not.

The issue of eBook piracy

Publishers have voiced concerns regarding piracy and the digitalisation of books since their first creation and in fact, it’s very easy to see through multiple sites across the web that there are people out there offering thousands and thousands of eBooks for free via Torrent and other download sites. These sites sometimes even include books which have just been released, which is obviously to the detriment of the publishers. That being said, this has been an issue for music producers and record labels for decades now and so this isn’t really anything new, it’s just that the publishing industry is just being stung by it.

The issue of piracy and eBook lending is a bit more complex. There are many reasons that publishers may think lending increases the volume of piracy out there. Firstly, the number of different sources through which the digital content passes is a concern. Rather than being transferred from company to reader, a library eBook will pass through the library itself, an intermediary company such as OverDrive and then onto the reader, increasing the number of points at which it could be intercepted and copied. The second major area that concerns is to do with DRM protection. Unfortunately, there are tools readily available to remove this protection from eBooks and then they can be easily shared. With eBook lending, there is no purchase required so it only takes one talented hacker with a library card to slowly work their way through hundreds of books, making them readily available to download and keep for free.

eBook lending is a brilliant opportunity to spread the digitalisation of literature and books in general and is something that should be cherished not damned. Hopefully, publishers like Penguin will soon find a way to protect their content in such a way that means they are happy to make it readily available to all the digital bookworms out there.

Thanks, Olivia.

Piracy is of course the age-old excuse for inaction, and a nice little earner for those offering so-called anti-piracy services. But the fact is there are two types of pirates: The international pirates against whom we love to rant, though they cost us nothing, and the domestic pirates we prefer not to acknowledge, who actually cost us far, far more.

A reminder for now that most ebook piracy occurs in the USA, and that some of America’s biggest corporations profit from it daily and therefore have abolutely no reason to try prevent it. More on this in the near future here on MWi.

But back to sponsorship. The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted the link to a sofa company hidden away in the text. Now I have no idea what the arrangement is between them and Olivia (I would stress MWi has no connection with the company and uses this purely for ilustrative purposes) but what is clear is that this is a very unobtrusive way of advertising.

It’s a short step from a link like this in an article to a similar link in an ebook. For those not interested, just ignore it and read on. But if the link is to a product or brand the MC of the novel is constantly using, or to a location or event, then easy to see the potential here to attract an advertiser’s interest. And their money.

All the moreso if you think about how easy it would be to run paid adverts in the back of your ebook. I stress in the back, so they dont interfere with the reading experience.

Yes, I can hear the purists muttering about how this would never have happened in print. About how this is the thin end of the wedge.

Of course these same people wil happily read comics, magazines and newspapers, listen to radio and watch TV chock full of advertising. Many a print book in the past has carried paid ads.  And almost every print book carries ads from its own publisher. So get real. It’s gonna happen whether you like it or not.

I’ll return to the ways in which writers might benefit fr0m these developments in future posts. But for now, ponder Olivia’s article and answer this question honestly: Did the sponsored link in the post in any way detract from the quality of the artcle or the point it was making?

 

 

2012
01/28
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Mark Williams on Books
Mark Williams on Writing
The e-publishing debate.
TAGS





24 comments

Play It Forward – Where Next For MWiDP?

Pay It Forward.

How often do we hear that in the world of indie publishing? It has become the mantra of the indie movement, to the point where recently some bloggers were actually arguing over who thought of it first! The mind boggles.

Menander

In fact the concept has been about since forever. It was in use by the Greek dramatist Menander in 317BC, and the first recorded example in the US was Benjamin Franklin, who lent money to someone and asked them not to repay Franklin but to instead lend that money to another person in need. Similar sentiments were later echoed by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The actual term was in use from the early part of the twentieth century, and became popularised by Robert A. Heinlein’s sci-fi classic Between Planets.

But of course the phrase took on a life of its own after Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel Pay It Forward was published in 1999. The film quickly followed. A movement was born. A decade on and the Pay It Forward movement is still going strong, guided by the Pay It Forward Foundation Catherine founded.

What does this have to do with MWiDP? Bear with me. There are two big announcements from MWiDP today.

~

First, some background for the many newer visitors here.

When we slipped our debut novel Sugar & Spice into the murky waters of the Amazon ocean fifteen months ago it was, more than anything else, an act of defiance against the gatekeepers. Not so much desperation as sheer frustration.

There was no carefully thought out marketing plan. No launch party. No blogs. No tweets. It was whole new world, and one we knew next to nothing about.

Ebooks were still in their infancy, Kindle UK was about to experience its very first Christmas, and we just sat back and hoped someone might buy our unknown and unloved book.

Of course, no-one did.

This time last year we had sold nothing. And we were still querying. It seemed our best bet at the time. And maybe, at the time, it was.

And then around February / March we got the serious interest of an agent. A real-life literary agent wanted our book! By then it was just starting to sell a few copies on Amazon, but the agent wasn’t interested in that. She liked the book, but ebooks were just a fad. So the agent took our book under exclusive review, and we sat and hoped.

Three months passed. When she finally got back to us with her decision she wanted us to take down the ebook so she could approach publishers.

That was a close call. If she’d got back to us sooner we might well have fallen for it.

Trouble was, in that three months she had sat on our novel we had somehow sold thirty thousand books. Ebooks a fad? Clearly this was an agent who had no future. And, we realised, querying had no future either.

A month on and we had sold fifty thousand and were the second biggest-selling ebook in the country. The agents started to query us!

Again it was a close call. Big promises, tempting “unofficial” offers, but accompanied by draconian contract conditions. We stayed indie.

Regrets?

You’ve got to be kidding! That same book went on to sell another fifty thousand before it began to wind down on Amazon (not helped by the infamous three week disappearance!). And by then we were riding high in Waterstone’s, the UK’s equivalent of B&N.

Meanwhile we had brought out another book, got on with some other writing projects, and began to look at the bigger picture.

MWiDP was born.

Little could we have imagined that, just months later, we’d have one of the biggest names in modern English literature sign with us.

~

The big news this week, of course, is the announcement, first made on Anne R. Allen’s blog on Sunday, that Anne and NYT best-selling author of Pay It Forward author Catherine Ryan Hyde turned their back on the trad publishers in favour of joining forces with MWiDP.

In Anne’s own words:

The book I’ve been writing with Catherine Ryan Hyde, HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE—and keep your E-sanity! will be published by Mark Williams international in June of 2012. The book will be available as an ebook that will include free six-month updates. AND it will also be available in paper in both a US and UK edition.

We’ve had some interest from more traditional publishers, but decided to go with the innovative people at MWiDP because we need a nimble publisher who can keep up with industry changes and offer timely updates. Also, Catherine has a large international fan base, which made “Mr. International’s” offer especially attractive.

The fab cover is the working design, courtesy of our designer in residence Athanasios.

How To Write in the E-Age and Keep Your E-Sanity will be the first of many books under our non-fiction / education imprint Writers Without Frontiers, aimed at fellow authors, at whatever stage of their career they are at.

As well as more books for this imprint we’ll also be teaming up with other industry professionals to bring online writing courses and other resources to help the growing number of people worldwide who want to realize their dreams of being a writer.

And just to add there will be a prize draw in June to mark the launch of How to be a Writer in the E-Age. And not just any old prize.

We’re talking a first edition of the zillion-selling Pay It Forward, signed by Catherine Ryan Hide herself!

~

Yep, I had to read it twice too. Catherine Ryan Hyde is now an MWiDP author!

~

Writers Without Frontiers is just one of several imprints that will see MWiDP expand rapidly in 2012.

Our YA imprint will launch this spring, commencing with the long-awaited St. Mallory’s series, and though it’s not official yet we may well have another fantastic YA title going live with it. More on that in the near future.

We have some great titles pending for our Exotica imprint, all about travel and stories set in distant lands.

And for those so inclined we have also launched our mature-audience imprint, Aphrodysia, with the first book due out for St. Valentine’s Day.

Those not so inclined will be pleased to know covers and content will not be appearing alongside the other books, unlike on Amazon where some seriously disturbing covers are prone to pop up alongside MG titles.

Several other imprint ideas are being developed, which we’ll bring news of all as and when.

~

Enhanced ebooks are of course high on our agenda to progress, and we’ll be making some announcements on this in the next few months. We have some trial projects under way, but won’t give details until we have a clearer picture.

We also have plans for audio books, and are currently examining ways in which this can work in the new indie publishing world. More on this in coming weeks.

In the very near future we’ll be moving into print-on-demand publishing for some of our titles. While there can be no doubt the days of bricks and mortar stores are numbered, there will be a small but significant market for print for the foreseeable future, and as POD technology improves and prices drop, POD will become the only real alternative to ebooks.

Meanwhile our tech team Elizabeth (she may only be one person, but she does the work of many!) has been hard at it behind the scenes with the new websites and the ebook store. All now very close to completion.

Take a sneak peak at www.mwidp.com.

~

The ebook store, indiebooksunited, is hardly going to challenge Amazon’s supremacy, of course, so important to remind ourselves why we felt it necessary at all.

I asked an author recently if they would be interested in the ebook store and they answered, “Why? I’m selling through Amazon.” I put it to him he might sell even more if he was in other stores. He answered, “But I don’t need to be. I’ve ticked world rights. I’m available everywhere.” I tried not to laugh.

For anyone who missed it, do check out the MWi post Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Aakash  which explains how Amazon either blocks downloads or surcharges buyers across much of the world.

Above is a screen shot of what I see when I try to buy one of your books. Check out the green box at top right. (You may need to click on the image to enlarge.)

Check out the MWi post referred to above for real numbers about just how many potential buyers cannot buy your ebook from Amazon.

There’s also this strange idea that someone who has bought a Kobo ereader, or a Sony or an iRiver, or myriad other alternatives to the Kindle, is somehow going to make Amazon their first stop for ebooks. Yeah, right. Just like us Kindle users always go shopping in B&N and Diesel…

~

The recent introduction of KDP Select has raised the issue of exclusivity once again. Leaving aside the good or bad aspects of KDP Select itself, let us briefly ponder exclusivity.

If we had chosen only to list with Amazon last year would we have sold as many books? Unequivocally no.

Of course we are on Apple, Kobo and B&N too. Kobo is a rising star, as I’ve said many times here on MWi. Just this week Kobo announced plans for expansion to ten new countries, including Japan and Brazil, just as the Amazon’s Japan plans have stalled.

Kobo has also partnered with WH Smiths, one of the leading UK retail stores. Kobo is the place to be in 2012-15.

If you’re not on Kobo, or are on Kobo through Smashwords and seeing no results, then be sure to check out the announcement at the end of this post.

But Amazon, B&N, Apple and Kobo are not the be all and end all of ebook vendors, and only form part of our income.

In the latter part of 2011, long after the Amazon star had waned, we had two top ten hits simultaneously in Waterstone’s, the UK’s equivalent of B&N. We held the number two spot, kept off #1 only by the Steve Jobs biography, and for a long while the Saffina Desforges brand was the most searched for name in the store.

But we weren’t just selling there. Britain’s biggest retailer by far is the supermarket giant Tesco. It has its own e-book store.

Guess what? We’re in it.

Foyles? Yep, you’ll find us there.

Books, etc? Yeah, we’re there too.

Pickabook? Of course.

ACCO in Belgium? We used our “leetle grey cells”!

Selexyz in the Netherlands? We love the Dutch!

Fishpond down in New Zealand? Say hi down under!

Kalahari in South Africa? Of course!

I could go on. Our books will soon be appearing in Textr in Germany, Asia Books in Thailand, Eason’s in Ireland, Buscalibros in Chile, etc, etc. I’m not called Mr International for nothing!

There’s a whole world out there that could be reading your ebooks, if only they had the chance. True, the sales aren’t earth-shattering. But a sale is a sale, and that reader may tell a friend who tells a friend…

And sometimes it can be good to be a big fish in a small pond, as we found with Waterstone’s. Next time it could be you. But not if you’re not listed there.

Of course the problem is these stores aren’t indie friendly. Just the opposite. They make it almost impossible to get in. ISBNs are required pretty much everywhere except Amazon and B&N. That includes Apple and Kobo, which is why most people go through Smashwords.

But Smashwords won’t get you into Waterstone’s or Foyles, Fishpond or Kalahari. And apart from ISBNs there are a ton of other conditions to meet and hoops to jump through too, before these companies will even think of listing your title. For example Waterstone’s insist you are a VAT-registered company to set up an account.  For the US readers that means having an annual turnover of about $100k. Then you face the nightmare of keeping track, receiving payments, etc. It’s not easy.

Which brings us to the second big announcement of the day:

MWiDP can now offer your titles direct listings to these stores, and also Apple and Kobo.

We’ll be contacting you all shortly with further details. For anyone not currently with us who wants to know more, just drop me an email.

We hope to start uploading to Waterstone’s by the end of this month, and just in case you’re wondering how anyone will find you there, we’re delighted to tell you we have advanced promotion in hand. We own the domain name www.welovewaterstones.com and will be launching a big awareness campaign within the UK this spring aimed at bringing attention to your titles.

Oh, and did I mention we accidentally bought the domain names welovekoboebooks, welovetescoebooks, welovefishpondebooks and welovekalahariebooks too? :-)

So, even though it may have seemed nothing much was happening, we have been busy behind the scenes. I’ll be elaborating on the various projects in more detail over the coming weeks here on MWi.

I’ll also be introducing the Book Theatre project to find narrators for audio books for your novels, and the Translator’s Co-op project to bring together a pool of novel translators worldwide to help get your books selling not just in the international stores, but in the local languages.

The trad publishers will tell you writers still need them because they can get you places you can’t get on your own. They have a point. Once you step outside the Amazon bubble being indie isn’t easy.

But with MWiDP you’re not on your own.  Many of our authors are already busy exchanging ideas and services. It’s all part of the cloud.

With MWiDP you get all the benefits of being indie but a lot less DIY.

Mark & Saffi

2012
01/20
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
MWiDP
TAGS








53 comments

Review Wednesday: Why Sherlock Is Good TV – by Miriam Joy

This isn’t the review I’d planned for today, but with so much else going on (see announcement this Friday) I’m even more behind than usual, not helped by multiple daily power cuts here. But with temperatures in the 30s C / 90s F in mid-winter I’m prepared to put up with the inconvenience rather than head back to “civilization” in Europe.

After toilet facilities, the question I’m most asked about my life here in West Africa, is how do I manage without TV?

It seems life is unthinkable for many without the daily gratification of passive entertainment that TV provides. It’s so easy to get home from the day-job, slump in front of the screen with remote in hand, and just flick through until something engages, under the pretext of relaxing, and next thing you know an hour has passed.

An hour that could have been spent writing, gardening, cooking, or myriad other things that might have added value to your life, instead of watching that re-run of Friends, or the same news footage loop over and over, listening to a presenter waffle on until some actual news comes in.

Miss televison? You’ve got to be kidding. It’s one of life’s great time-sucks.

That’s not to say all TV is bad. Or even most of it.  And occasionally it can be exceptional. Take the BBC TV series Sherlock, for example.

I happened to be in the UK when the first series was broadcast. I’m a huge Sherlock fan. Who isn’t? But when it came to Sherlock on TV I thought nothing would ever surpass the Granada TV series with Jeremy Brett playing Holmes.

I was wrong. The new BBC series, which transplanted the Conan Doyle stories to the modern day, was outstanding.

Annoying, too. In my youth I’d often written short Sherlock stories relocated in time to the modern world. I loved the idea. Everyone else hated it.  I went on to write for TV (a long time ago now – don’t ask!) and once suggested to a producer the idea of a Sherlock series set in the modern day. He fell about laughing. In fairness, I think he misunderstood and thought I meant some sort of time-travel sci-fi, where the old Sherlock found himself in the modern world.

Of course back then television production was a different world. A series like the modern BBC Sherlock simply couldn’t have been written back then, because the technology didn’t exist to support it.

~

For those born into a digital world it must be hard to imagine life before the internet, plasma TV and computer-generated graphics, but there was a time when TVs looked something like this. The remote controls are those round things on the right-hand side. You had to get out of your chair, walk over and physically change channels (both of them!) and adjust volume.

So don’t mock your elders. Feel sorry for them!

~

Off course, other than being Sherlock in modern times, the new series bears no relationship to the project I envisaged all those years ago. It’s also far, far, far better than anything I had in mind.

So good, in fact, it even impressed my teen co-writer Miriam, who blogged about it over at A Farewell To Sanity. I was impressed by her review.

Miriam is your typical monosyllabic teenager. Sleeps all day, grunts in answer to any question, skives school whenever she can, never does her homework, and has no future.

Oh no, sorry. That was me.

Actually Miriam is one of those annoying superteens who manages to cram twenty-five hours into a twenty-four hour day, reads books by the truckload, writes novels in her sleep and is a musical genius to boot. No wonder I tricked her into signing up as co-writer on our new St. Mallory’s YA series.

But what caught my eye this week was Miriam’s review of Sherlock, which had me almost booking a flight “back home” so I could watch it on the BBC iPlayer. This was, deservedly, Miriam’s highest hitting post on her own site, so I thought I’d grab a piece of the action and steal the whole post and run it on MWi.

Here’s Miriam:

Why Sherlock Is Good TV

by Miriam Joy

If you live in the UK, or have BBC elsewhere, you’ll most likely have seen / heard of Sherlock. Based on the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, it takes the famous detective and puts him into a 21st century environment, and into the body of Benedict Cumberbatch. John Watson is fantastically played by Martin Freeman – I was very pleased to hear, not long ago, that both of them are going to be in the Hobbit. That, my friends, will be a movie to see.

It often seems nowadays that television is going downhill. I’m a massive fan of Doctor Who and anyone who knows me or has been following my blog for more than a fortnight will attest to this. But I will not hesitate to say that the most recent series disappointed me, because it tried to be too clever. The story arcs were contrived and long-winded, and though individual episodes may have been good (The Girl Who Waited, the Doctor’s Wife, etc.), I felt the series as a whole was lacking what I’d seen in, say, series two or four.

And most people blame Steven Moffat, the head writer, and mourn the days of Russell T Davies. But Moffat is also in charge of Sherlock and that’s fast becoming one of my favourite programmes – even when it had most people in tears yesterday.

So why was that episode so good?

*Second warning – this post contains spoilers for Sherlock – “The Reichenbach Fall”, which aired on 15th January 2012*

It had, in the words of my friend, ALL OF THE EMOTION.

Last week’s episode had me laughing out loud and then too tense to breathe; this week’s had me laughing out loud and then far too close to tears for my liking. It was big and dramatic, but that wasn’t what was important. What was important was Sherlock taking John’s hand and telling him to run, because we know he didn’t want to run alone. What was important was that his friends meant more to Sherlock than his own life, because he couldn’t be sure that whatever he had planned was going to work. What was important was his figure on the roof top and his words – “This phone call is my note. That’s what people do, isn’t it? Leave a note?”

It hit home with things we’ve all felt.

Most people have lost someone in the past, so most people know what it is like to beg them just not to be dead, for it all to be some sort of sick joke and for them to come back. And most of us would be too blinded by tears to stay by the grave for long enough to see them come back. Most of us, like Watson, walk away crying. I think also that most of us know what it’s like to be kept in the dark, because Sherlock said that he had to do this alone and he walked away from his best friend. Doesn’t it hurt when someone does that? Won’t let you help, and thinks they can cope alone?

The characters provoke our sympathy.

We’ve all felt for John through the series as his association with Sherlock not only makes it impossible for him to get a date, but also renders him ‘guilty by association’ whenever he’s in trouble. We feel for Molly, because Sherlock constantly insults her and puts her down, without even realising he’s doing it. When he at last registered that she was a good friend to him and that she understood him – and oh, who wasn’t affected when she said, “You look sad when you think he’s not watching”? – we knew what she would be feeling: glad, perhaps, that he trusted her, but also miserable because he was. Mycroft is just a human like all of us. He’s clever, yes. But he made a mistake and he’s trying to get somebody else to make up for it so that he feels less guilty.

Look at his face when he sees the newspaper at the end. Look at it, and then say you don’t feel something for him.

We keep thinking it’s going to be all right.

After they announced on 7th January that there would be a third series – and Steven Moffat confirmed that it had been commissioned at the same time as the second, which hopefully means the wait will be slightly shorter than the one between series one and two – we knew that it had to work out. We watched Holmes and Moriarty on the roof top and we felt like something had to sort itself out. When Sherlock was right on the edge, we tried to predict what he would say when he started laughing, and thought of all the ways it could work out. All the ways he wouldn’t fall.

He fell.

And across the UK, Sherlockians on Twitter were yelling at Moffat and Gatiss, who just sat there smugly and saying they felt quite accomplished by what they had achieved. Across Tumblr, the fandom was frantically putting its collective heads together to work out what must have happened, resulting in a fully developed and realistic enough theory just half an hour after the episode finished.

“Stop being dead.” That’s what John said. “Just please, don’t be dead.”

Haven’t we all felt that in the past?

I think most people did yesterday, when Mrs Hudson and John Watson stood by the grave and stared at the name on it. I think even Sherlock’s unexpected appearance didn’t help all that much, because they had already felt ALL OF THE EMOTION and cried ALL OF THE TEARS.

Yes, he was alive, but that didn’t change one thing -

“Goodbye, John.”

Be sure to check out the post on Miriam’s own site for some extra graphics I can’t reproduce here.

I don’t plan to make a habit of posting reviews of television shows, but this was a telelit event. One of the great works of western literature transformed into great television. And now iced with a great review.

So many reviewers, whatever the medium in question, just sum up the storyline of whatever it is they are reviewing, perhaps throwing in their personal opinions, but rarely touching on how the subject in review impinges upon their lives. That’s what makes the MWi reviews from Gerry McCullough and Charley R. outstanding. They set the bar for book review standards.

Miriam has just set the bar for reviewing television.

2012
01/18
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Midweek Review
TAGS






32 comments

Ones To Watch 2012: Sarah Woodbury – the next Ellis Peters?

Okay, so I’m in historical mood just now. Another year has whizzed by, and we’re all another step closer to departing this mortal coil.  Which got me thinking about legacy.

When the day comes, who will remember us, apart from our loved ones? Most people toil through life, day by day, month by month, year by year, without ever leaving their mark beyond the immediate circle of family and friends.

It’s rather sad when you think about it.

Every job is important, whether we sweep roads, swipe barcodes at a supermarket till, drive a train, design tall buildings or perform life-saving surgery. Most work goes unappreciated by those who benefit. Who knows or cares about the person who sweeps their roads, takes their money at the till, or drives their train to work? Unless it’s an exceptional building, who knows the architect? Unless it was the brain of you or a loved one, who would know the surgeon?

If we have a pleasant train journey on Monday when Tina the Train Driver is at the wheel we don’t make a point of finding out which train she will be driving next, and booking a ride. When Brian the Brain Surgeon saevs our life we’re eternally grateful, but we don’t then try find out who he will be operating on next. Just the opposite. We hope we’ll never see him again. We don’t form appreciation societies or invite them on blogs for interviews.

But when we read  and enjoy a book something altogether different happens. We form a bond with that author. It may not be a personal one, but it’s a bond nonetheless. Harry Potter fans talk of JK Rowling as if she’s a personal friend. Stephen King fans will buy his next book simply because it says Stephen King on it.

And it’s not just living authors. Show me the Jane Austen enthusiast who does not know every detail of her life, or the Dickens fan who cannot tell you all about Victorian childhood tribulations, or the Shakespeare fan who has never heard of Anne Hathaway’s bed…

Through their books these writers have created their legacy.  Each one of us does the same when we put our works before the public. But in the new world of epublishing there is infinite shelfspace and no books will go out of print. Our legacy is assured, however great or small our success while we are alive to enjoy it.

***

This is turn got me thinking about history.

History writers expand the legacy of the past by making it accessible to the modern reader. In doing so they assume responsibility for imparting factual context amid fictional story. No easy thing to do.

Prue Batten has recently, and most kindly, handed me her manuscript of Gisborne to cast an editing eye over. With luck Gisborne will be out there on the e-shelves as part of Prue’s legacy next month.

But in reading Prue’s manuscript I am reminded that my own WIP on King John, seen through the eyes of his young wife Isabella of Angouleme, is languishing on my hard-drive still, with no chance of completion this year. What idiot decided to create days with only twenty-four hours in them?

Then yesterday I heard from our translator, who is sorting our Sugar & Spice into German (more on this next week on MWi), that Umberto Eco’s works were free as ebooks on Kobo over Christmas. Of course I rushed to Amazon, only to find no sign even of of Umberto Eco’s classic The Name Of the Rose in the Kindle store.

But by now I was in historic-obsessive mode. I checked out Robert Graves, of I, Claudius fame, only to find they were available, but ridiculously priced.

And so to Cadfael.

Hands up, who remembers Cadfael? I’d had Cadfael on my mind anyway, because Sarah Woodbury’s The Good Knight has been making steady progress in the e-charts. Sarah writes (among ther things) medieval mysteries set in Wales, and Ellis Peters’ wonderful series of Cadfael Chronicles, while actually set in Shrewsbury, England, was about a Welsh  monk turned sleuth. The books spawned the equally delightful Cadfael TV series.

Ellis Peters

For those outside the UK, Wales and England border one another. Shewsbury is an English town bordering Wales. Ellis Peters combined her love of Wales with her affection for her home town by bringing the Conwy-born fictional character Cadfael to the market town that was historic Shrewsbury.

Sarah Woodbury doesn’t live in Wales either. In fact she’s American, and in Oregon. Unlike the Cadfael series, Sarah’s books are actually set in Wales. And unlike Cadfael, Sarah Woodbury’s MC is female.

For much of history England and Wales have been uneasy neighbours, often at war. At the time Sarah’s book The Good Knight is set, Wales is not even united in itself, let alone with England as part of the modern United Kingdom. Life then was short and brutal, and of course the concept of gender equality quite unknown.

So for Sarah, sat at home in Oregon, USA, to write a medieval mystery set in Wales, with a women sleuth running rings around the menfolk, was either madness or a stroke of genius.

My money is on genius. This is Cadfael for the twenty-first century, set in the twelfth.

My prediction, here in writing on MWi, is Sarah Woodbury is going to be the next Ellis Peters. With a range of novels from YA to historic magical fantasy to historic detective, and using her impressive research to bring to life past times and locations, I’m very confident Sarah is going to be one of the indie stars of 2012.

Sarah Woodbury

Here’s Sarah:

A Woman Detective in Medieval Wales?

It is a stereotype that women in the Middle Ages had two career options: mother or holy woman, with prostitute or chattel filling in the gaps between those two. Whether we like it or not, for the most part this stereotype is accurate and the status and role of women in that era revolved around these categories.

This is one reason that when an author sets fiction in this time, it is difficult to write a self-actualized female character who has any kind of autonomy or authority over her own life. Thus, it is common practice to make fictional characters either healers of some sort (thus opening up a whole array of narrative possibilities for travel and interaction with interesting people) or to focus on high status women. Such women may or may not actually have had more autonomy, but their lives didn’t consist of drudgery and child care from morning until night.

This is not to say that men in the Middle Ages weren’t equally restricted in their ‘careers’. A serf is a serf after all, of whatever gender. Men as a whole, however, did have control of women, of finances, of government, and of the Church, and thus organized and ruled the world. Literally.

There are obvious exceptions—Eleanor of Aquitaine, anyone?—but women such as she were one out of thousands upon thousands who were born, worked, and died within five miles of their home.

At the same time, within Celtic culture, women had the possibility of greater personal autonomy. In Ireland, where the Roman Church had less influence, women had a viable place both within the Druid religion and within the Celtic/Irish Church. Wales, too, was less subject to the restrictions of the Church. There, women had a higher status than in Christendom as a whole, including the right to divorce her husband and societal acceptance of illegitimate children.

The Laws of Women (part of the Laws of Hywel Dda) included rules that governed marriage and the division of property if a married couple should separate. Women usually married through contract, but elopement was allowed, with the provision that if the relationship lasted seven years, a woman had the same entitlements as if she’d been given to her husband by her kin.

The Good Knight is the story a young woman, Gwen, who investigates the murder of a King of Wales. She’s a bard’s daughter, which gives her mobility, ambiguity in terms of social status, and an autonomy that any good detective needs. Gwen’s sleuthing takes her from Wales to Dublin and back again, and earns her the trust and confidence of high and low alike.

The Good Knight (A Medieval Mystery)

Intrigue, suspicion, and rivalry among the royal princes casts a shadow on the court of Owain, king of north Wales…
The year is 1143 and King Owain seeks to unite his daughter in marriage with an allied king. But when the groom is murdered on the way to his wedding, the bride’s brother tasks his two best detectives—Gareth, a knight, and Gwen, the daughter of the court bard—with bringing the killer to justice.
And once blame for the murder falls on Gareth himself, Gwen must continue her search for the truth alone, finding unlikely allies in foreign lands, and ultimately uncovering a conspiracy that will shake the political foundations of Wales.*

Links:

My web page: http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/
My Twitter code is: http://twitter.com/#!/SarahWoodbury
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahwoodburybooks

The Good Knight is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk

There wasn’t supposed to be a post this Sunday, but loss of power meant I couldn’t run this yesterday, nor follow up as I usually do. But Sarah will be back here next week with some posts about medieval life, and to show why historic fiction is so popular.

Sarah also writes YA, and her book Daughter Of Time is available free on some platforms.

So, no question, Sarah Woodbury’s legacy is assured.

What will be your legacy?

2012
01/15
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Mark Williams on Books
MWiDP
Ones To Watch 2012
TAGS





18 comments

Wednesday Review: Gerry McCullough Discusses Dead Is The New Black by Christine DeMaio-Rice

If you’re thinking you’ve already seen that cover on MWi recently you’re right. Christine was here before Christmas with a much-praised post on why men hate fashion.

Gerry McCullough

Christine will be back with us soon with a follow-up, but meantime, it being Wednesday and all, Christine’s book drew the short straw for dissection by everyone’s favorite reviewer, Gerry McCullough.

Withou further ado, here’s Gerry on Christine.

Dead Is the New Black

Reviewed by Gerry McCullough

I’ve been a fan of the classic detective story all my life. Of recent years, these have become harder and harder to find. Labelled ‘Crime Stories,’ they have become more and more police procedural/ serial killer in nature. To me a classic of the genre should have wit, imagination, and a puzzle element with fair play clues presented to the reader in a cleverly misleading way. The plot should be fast moving, full of twists and turns, and with a central character or characters who are easy to like.  The characters should not be mainly policemen, unless we are allowed into their private lives, although the occasional cop whom we can get to know is fine. It’s also a plus if the setting is interesting and is presented accurately in a way which tells the reader a lot about it, without dumping too much information.

Dead is the New Black fulfils all my requirements.

Set in the New York fashion world, it immediately attracted my attention. Rex Stout set several of his books here; and Marjorie Allingham’s marvellous The Fashion in Shrouds is similarly set in the London fashion scene. Christine DeMaio-Rice knows a lot about her background, and this makes the book especially fascinating and enjoyable to read. The sophisticated atmosphere takes us by the throat from the first page.

Then there are the characters. Laura and her work mates, particularly Jeremy St James, are vividly drawn. Laura, we learn straightaway, is hopelessly attracted to Jeremy. (She wonders herself if she would have dared to allow their relationship to develop if she hadn’t believed he was gay – because then there would have been a risk that it might become serious.)  So we feel sympathy for her from the start, and at the same time realise that we are in the hands of a writer who can give us characters with depth.  Laura’s sister Ruby is a bright contrast. Stu becomes more likeable the more we see of him.  And Cangemi, the cop, is a much cleverer detective than we are led to expect at the beginning.

Christine DeMaio-Rice

The handling of the plot is all we could ask for. The clues are thrust at us in a way we should be able to pick up – but almost certainly won’t.  The murderer appears in the first few chapters.  When Laura arrives at her desk to find coffee waiting for her, she tells us, she knows that Jeremy must be already there, because he is in the habit of buying coffee for them both on his way to work. The coffee, unusually, is spilt – which is not like Jeremy, she thinks. But when she goes to his office, she sees that he is in a state of extreme distress – he has found a dead body there.  Laura spends the next hours ringing the police, talking to the cop who arrives to take over, Cangemi, and assuring other members of the company who turn up for work that Jeremy is not guilty and that work will continue as normal.  And I wonder how many of DeMaio-Rice’s readers will be able to pick out the important clues, and identify the murderer, from what they have by now been told?  The motive, also, has already been trailed before us, even earlier in the action.

The title of this book tells us at once that here is a witty, clever writer, and the cover backs this up. The book is full of amusing one liners and funny situations.  As an example of the one liners, when Laura tells Stu, ‘I’m not pissed off with you,’ Stu says, looking at Laura slyly, ‘You’re honesty-challenged right now.’  Laura thinks, on hearing that Jeremy is in prison in Rikers, ‘If Central Park was the city’s backyard, Rikers was the haunted house down the block that your mother told you to stay away from.’  And Ruby and Laura decide to call their fashion business ‘Sartorial Sandwich.’ How about that?

And as an example of funny situations, the description of the sisters’ housing problems, with Ruby always coming out on top compared to Laura, is consistently amusing.

Laura’s tangled love life finally works out, just as her career does; and the murder mystery element is solved in a satisfying way which is clearly believable. This is one of a series, I’m told.  If the other books are as excellent as this one, I’ll look forward to reading them.

Chrstine has a book trailer for Dead Is The New Black on youtube. On a good day my ISP will let me add a video, but today is not a good day, so check it out here.

Christine has a great blog called Fashion Is Murder. Her book is available from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk, not to mention Barnes & Noble.

Our thanks as always to Gerry for a great review. Dead Is The New Black is high on my TBR list. Sadly there just aren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with all the great indie books flooding the e-stores.

Ever since epublishing took off there’s been a lot of talk about how self-publishers are flooding the market with mindless rubbish. And badly typed mindless rubbish at that. And I’m sure it exists. Some people are quite concerned by this. Check out our co-writer Miriam Joy’s sister Bella for a non-writers’ viewpoint.

But my Kindle is coming up to its first birthday. I’ve lost count of how many books I’ve read on there, but strangely I have yet to find a single example of the “tsunami of crap” that supposedly makes it impossible for good books to stand out.

One reason for that is that I choose ebooks in the same way as I used to choose print books – by looking before I buy, and by reading reviews like this one of Gerry’s, to help find new material.

Reviewers play a crucial role in our lives as writers, and as readers.  We should all be thankful to people like Gerry who set aside time not just to read, but also to write in-depth reviews when they’ve finished.

As authors we know how valuable that service is. We all love it when someone publishes a review of our books. Yet so many of us, while craving reviews from others, rarely take time out to do it ourselves for the authors we read. And yes, I’m as guilty of that as anybody.

But writing a review – not just  a paragraph of praise on Amazon but a full review for Goodreads, or the author’s website, or here on MWi – is one easy way to thank the author for the pleasure they gave you, and to pay it forward for the future.

Speaking of pay it forward, watch out for some related news here on MWi this coming weekend!

Meanwhile, a reminder that today’s reviewer Gerry blogs regularly over at Gerry’s Books. Rather appropriately given discussion here on MWi yesterday, Gerry’s last review on on her own blog was of The Lord Of The Rings. Well worth checking out.

And if you like her reviewing style you’ll love her books. Gerry’s debut novel Belfast Girls is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

Her latest novel Danger Danger is of course also available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

***

Finally here today just to add that that wonderful cover for Dead Is The New Black was designed by Christine herself.

In fact Christine has an alternative cover live on am.com at the moment, which refuses to copy here. It’s jus one of those days…

One of the dilemmas of indie writing is were you pitch camp in the genre fields. It’s murder-mystery crime fiction but its also comedy-thriller and chicklit. It must be great to be able to design multiple covers to test the market.

But Christine’s talents range far wider. I leave you with three covers Christine recently produced for fellow MWiDP author Sarah Woodbury. Sarah will be here on MWi next week to tell us more about her life as a history obsessive, now combining authentic research and fantasy writing skills to good effect. Meanwhile, just sit back and admire Christine’s designer skills.

2012
01/11
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Midweek Review
Ones To Watch 2012
TAGS







13 comments

What Would Shakespeare Have Blogged About?

I had my first blogging-free Sunday for six months yesterday. And while I didn’t keep to my plan to stay offline the whole day it did give me a chance to catch up on other blogs of the past week.
If you’re like me you’ll see a blog that you think will interest others, bookmark it, then be distracted by other things and never get back to it. So I’m trying a curatorial approach to start the year, where I pick out some of the sites that caught my eye this past week and leave you to decide if their openers are intriguing enough to grab your attention.

***

Living in a predominantly Muslim country on the edge of the Sahara is no place for someone who likes a drink. Outside the tourist zone alcohol is pretty much unavailable, simply because there is no demand for it.
     Fortunately my idea of a good time is a cold Sprite or a frothy latte. That said, as a rare treat I like nothing more than a velvety grand reserve rioja or a single small ice-cold beer. My total consumption in 2011 was less than five glasses, all on separate occasions!
But Claude Nougat’s post Italy, the Land of Wine is Turning to Beer! caught my attention this week.

Beer drinking started growing in Italy fifteen years ago and now it is fast becoming a fad. In that time, over three hundred microbreweries were started. According to a recent study, their number stood at 397 in 2011 and rising. None of them suffered from the 2008 recession.

While fast rising, this is still a small sector: it amounts to a modest 1.5% of total production and sells only in specialized beer pubs and a few restaurants — and not in any supermarkets like industrial beers.
For example, in Rome, in the old part of town, you can go to a beer pub – the Open Baladin – that serves 40 different craft beers on tap, all of them Italian. They have an on-going “Winter Beer Fest” and I thought I’d try them out for lunch. I started walking from the Isola Tiberina. Here is a view of the island:

Join Claude for more scenery and food at:
http://claudenougat.blogspot.com/2012/01/italy-land-of-wine-is-turning-to-beer.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FxnZjb+%28Claude+Nougat+-+The+Blog%29

***

Perhaps because it was the Christmas season food and drink featured heavily in my blog reading this week.

Lee Lopez dished up a recipe for Jake’s Scalloped Potatoes. Most of the time I make do with local foods (watch out for some real African recipes on my new blog site, launching very soon!) but occasionally I have to venture into the tourist zone, and there one can pick up a range of imported western foods, for a ridiculous price.

Jake’s Scalloped Potatoes

This is a recipe that doesn’t have any exact measurements. Maybe it’s a bit crazy to put it out, but it was too good to ignore. We had it for our Christmas with a prime rib and it was wonderful. It’s my son’s recipe and he just sort-of told me how to make it. This is the sort-of how to make it from me. It would also go good with left over ham. Do this one before the New Year’s resolution to diet hits, because there is nothing skinny about this.

As many russet potatoes as you need to make a nice size casserole or a small one.
1 lrg carton of heavy whipping cream
1 container of the good Parmesan cheese, shredded. The deli type.
Cheddar Cheese, which ever you like, mild or sharp
1 dollop of sour cream
Fresh Thyme
1 tsp Nutmeg
Salt and pepper to taste. (Watch the salt, Parmesan can be salty.)

Check out the full details on Lee’s site.

http://leelopezauthor.blogspot.com/2011/12/jakes-scalloped-potatoes.html

***

Of course, being a writer / reader my attention was mainly on the writing world, and this post from Good eReader caught my attention. James Patterson sold two million ebooks in 2011 (5 million in total). He also sold 14 million paper books last year, just to keep things in perspective. But this shows clearly the expansion of the ebook market and that the trad publishers are taking it seriously.

Now Patterson’s writing, or rather the writing of the authors who churn out work under his brand, comes in for a lot of criticism for its formulaic style, its utter disregard for writers’ rules, and its story content.

Personally I find the attacks on Patterson distasteful. He doesn’t pretend to be Shakespeare. His writing may not be to everyone’s taste. But he’s obviously doing something very, very right.

He gives his readers what they want to read. Is that such a bad thing?

James Patterson is a literary juggernaut, pumping out a copious amount of books every month. He often works in collusion with various other co-writers to help with the workload such as Maxine Paetro and Michael Ledwidge. His publishing Little, Brown & Co. is a division of The Hachette Book Group and the company announced today that his ebook sales of topped 5 million purchased copies. What is surprising is explosive growth of e-readers during 2011 with 2 million of his digital sales occurring just last year.

This might seem like a high number of book sales and it is true he continues to lead the charts every month as a prominent bestseller. Truthfully over 14 million books in 38 different languages were sold last year in paperback form. Electronic Books may continue to gain momentum, but cheap throwaway books continue to make up the bulk of his sales. You only have to go as far as the beach, airport or holiday destination to see his books strewn about.

Read the rest here.
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/james-patterson-sees-explosive-growth-in-ebook-sales-tops-5-million-sold/

***

Okay, so James Patterson won’t be picking up the Nobel Prize for Literature any time soon. But this past week it emerged JRR Tolkein had been nominated, albeit fifty years ago, and rejected.

J. R. R. Tolkien may have won over millions of devoted fans across the globe with The Lord of the Rings, but to a small committee in Sweden known as the Nobel prize jury, his epic tale of Middle Earth just wasn’t up to scratch.

Newly declassified documents showing the inner workings of the world’s most prestigious literary prize have revealed that, 50 years ago, Tolkien was rejected because The Lord Of The Rings had ‘not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality’.

Nominated by his friend C S Lewis – author of The Chronicles Of Narnia – in 1961, Tolkien was swiftly dismissed by the committee along with other lauded figures such as Graham Greene and EM Forster as they awarded that year’s prize to Yugoslavian writer Ivo Andrić instead.

Full story here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/01/06/tolkien-lord-of-the-ring-noble-prize-rejection_n_1188684.html?ref=mostpopular

Personally I’ve never read Tolkein, so make no judgment on the Nobel Committee’s observation that The Lord Of The Rings had “not in any way measured up to storytelling of the highest quality”.
But a reminder, whether its Tolkein or Patterson, that all reading is subjective.

***

I end with a couple of personal favourites:
Way back early last year the highly-regarded reviewer Red Adept gave our then unknown novel Sugar & Spice a respectable review and score, but marked us down for using British English spellings and because some British slang terms were lost on the American audience.
So it was a huge surprise when Red Adept announced the 2011 indie awards and Sugar & Spice picked up a top place in the mystery awards section.
Full story here:
http://redadeptreviews.com/2011-red-adept-reviews-indie-awards-mystery/

***

Here at MWi I pride myself on picking winners. Many writers I featured here in their early days went on to great success. But here’s one I spotted before their book was even published.

Let’s go back to January 1st, 2011. I had finished and re-finished Wearing the Cape, and while I turned to three other projects (to see which one would pop in my head), I sent query letters to close to 100 agents and publishing houses. The response was underwhelming if not unexpected. The odds of a literary agency taking a serious look at the first novel of an author writing in a very non-traditional genre were…not good. I should have been prepared to patiently query and wait for at least a year or three.
      But I wasn’t. Therein lies the story of Youwriteon.com and a review of the first 7,000 words by an English writer living in Africa. I love the internet. Long story short, Mark Williams (among other things, the co-author of Sugar and Spice, one of the UK’s top-selling ebooks in 2011) read my sample draft on a site dedicated to providing shared criticism for aspiring authors, and convinced me that, not only was Wearing the Cape publishable, it was self-publishable. Reading the full manuscript didn’t change his opinion, and the thoughts of someone whose own self-published book was climbing the Amazon rankings, well they have some weight. So I thought about it for all of January while learning everything I could about the new ebook self-publishing market.

See the rest here:
http://marionharmon.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/what-a-difference-a-year-makes/

I told Marion a year ago that his then unpublished and unwanted novel Wearing the Cape was far more than just a great book. It was a huge success story waiting to happen. Not just sequels, but spin-offs with the characters, and a transmedia dream franchise waiting to be discovered.
A year on the first book has topped the charts, the sequels have topped the charts, and the spin-off series are well advanced.

The transmedia franchise is just a matter of time.

***

But I end as I started, with food.
Cooking on charcoal burners and over open fires can be a long and arduous process. Finding the right ingredients at the right time can be even more of a challenge.
     It’s midwinter here in West Africa and one of the coldest on record. Temperatures drop to around 70F of a night and while that might be a dream for you in northern climes just now it’s scarf and gloves weather for the locals. So I’d been experimenting with some warming soup recipes.
And along came soup addict Conseulo Saah Baehr with this great recipe which has ingredients I can actually get hold of here.

Lately, I’m addicted to soup and eat it for breakfast and other times. I used to think I needed a lot of stuff to make soup. I used to think I needed a chicken or lamb bones or a leftover ham bone to make soup. With me, necessity was the mother of invention. I invented my quick soup because most of the time, I didn’t have the ingredients and I needed a soup fix immediately. Here’s my first instant soup recipe that takes about 4 minutes to prepare.

a can of whole tomatoes -
8 oz filtered water (omit if you like thicker soup)
1/2 cup of evaporated milk (evaporated milk has all the oomph of cream without the calories.)
two cloves garlic, splash of olive oil.
Puree the tomatoes and garlic in a blender. (I use the Oskar).
Put the puree in a pot. Add the water, milk and olive oil. Heat until it barely boils and you have good cream of tomato soup without any of the stuff they put in canned soup.

But Consuelo’s post is much more wide-ranging than soup recipes. Check it out at:
http://setthiswriterfree.blogspot.com/2012/01/power-of-soup-and-power-of-sound.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+setthiswriterfree+%28The+repurposed+writer%29

***

And so into 2012. A disruptive few weeks, but back to reality from today. It’s quite impossible to do justice to all the great sites I visited this past week, but hope at least one or two above will have found you heading over for more.

As writers we tend to write blogs about writing and read blogs about writing, but as some of the bloggers above show, there’s more to the writing life than just books. Marion G. Harmon was on his book this time, but often goes off-topic, notably on economics. It does us all good to have some variety in our blogs.

I wonder what Shakespeare would have blogged about?

2012
01/09
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Blog Round-Up
26 comments
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