How rats balance

Ratty's moved south by a couple of hundred miles, to the country, where mellow fruitfulness is the order of the day. Apples and feijoas carpet the earth beneath the trees; rampant tomatoes and strangely shaped gourds gad about the vege garden and huge oranges thud as they land. We've seen chestnuts, avocadoes and persimmons lurking in the orchard.

With all the moving about, many projects to be embraced, correspondences to be kept up, fruits and vegetables to be saved from the sudden decay of late autumn (not to mention ebooks to be promulgated, which Ratty seems to forget is his raison d'être) the rodent has been seeking poise and calm. I'll give him 15 minutes with his Om Shantis, then I'm calling him off the fence and giving him a job (said the Little Red Hen).

Meanwhile (a favourite blog adverb, I notice) The Siren is out there doing its sultry thing and reports back have been more then favourable. We love hearing from readers.

Amigas received an agreeable notice from Tim Jones writing in the New Zealand Herald.

And lovely designer Caroline Jackson became Caroline Pope a couple of weeks ago (congratulations, Caroline) which means she's almost back from her honeymoon and ready to make the final pre-formatting adjustments to The Linen Way. Which — exciting news — is to be excerpted this month in the prestigious New York poetry review, Parnassus. That's the hard copy version; they've promised to hold off on the digital one until we're ready to publish the full work.

To close: in case any of you didn't see this glorious selection making the rounds of FB recently, here's inspiration for the use of expired pumpkin vines and rustling delphinium stalks: Old People Wearing Vegetation.

A poet praises a novel

I found Ratty. He was hiding out amongst rough sketches for a card for a talented young clarinetist with a birthday this week. Whether a rat can achieve the correct embouchure and dexterity to play the clarinet is another matter.

Music is (often) sweet to the ear and so is a happy reader's report to the ears of authors and publishers. This week Dunedin poet Kay McKenzie Cooke told me and Elena how much she enjoyed Amigas. Kay blogs at Born to a Red-Headed Woman, where she shares stories from the south, along with her very fine poems and photographs. Here's 'Surprising the Quarry', which she wrote on the wall in Claire's hallway.  Kay kindly said I could bandy her words about.

Finished Amigas — loved it. Authentic evocation of the late sixties and pleasing tension to keep me scrolling. Expertly written, believable characters I really cared about. A smooth collaboration and a compelling story-line.

We're happy with that.

An email to gladden the writers' hearts

I'm away from home on the slow parental computer, so there are no frills and no pictures today, but I wanted to share this email from poet, novelist and short story writer, Carolyn McCurdie about Elena Bossi's and my collaborative novel, Amigas. (In the interests of keeping the plot from full view, I've abridged the email slightly.)

Just to congratulate you and Elena on this delightful story. I loved the characters, strong, very different voices, the joys and hiccups of their developing relationship. I loved the contrasts between the increasingly harsh realities of Claudia's world, and the almost cottonwool comfort of Jude's, and yet the ordinariness of both, family, the growing of girls to womanhood. I cared about these two. And for that reason I appreciated the integrity of the ending. I wanted a happy ending. I wanted Claudia to be well and happy. Then I just wanted information about her … in its fictional way it honoured the truth of what the people of Argentina endured  during those years …  Humanity shines through this story. The structure, the skipping from country to country, culture to culture, language to language, brought home in the most powerful and subtle way, that a basic humanity is what we all share, linked by that and by shared pain and love.    

Thanks for saying so, Carolyn.

Amigas on the wing

Amigas is launched.

Early this morning there was a little candle-lighting, a little clinking of virtual glasses, a flurry of laughing emoticons between Argentina and New Zealand, and a message from Doug to say that the new website pages are live.

With this celebration of our friendship comes an avalanche of gratitude:

Mine to Elena for being the true and generous friend that she is. Amigas was her idea. She has always said yes to every challenge, has always believed the best of me and my capacities, and made sure — somehow — that everything we did was fun. Beautiful woman, outstanding writer, exceptional friend — gracias.

Thank you to Creative New Zealand who sent me first to Iowa and then to Argentina, and to all involved in the Iowa International Writers' Programme itself. To Christina and Beatriz who translated our texts from one language to the other. To Emma who made a detailed and indispensable assessment. To Pablo for our striking cover, and Caroline for her stirling design work. To Jason for patient file-making, and Doug for meticulous website management. To Coral and her class for marketing plans. To Jane for help with enacting them.

Friends and family have enthused from the very start about Amigas. Several have read it and given invaluable feedback, here and in Argentina: Claire, Christine, Elizabeth, Barbie, Raymond who also proofread, Marcelo, Irène, María Andrea, Raúl, Beatriz, Jorge, Tati, Gigliola y Alejandra. I'm afraid of leaving names off if I list friends who have been always alongside — wings or feathers aiding our flight — so I'm going to make this thanks both general and particular: you know who you are and we embrace you. Without friends, this work would be empty of meaning.

Fly, Amigas.

Some prize!

Elena emailed this morning to share her terrific news: she's been awarded the the Eduardo Mallea Municipal Award of Buenos Aires for her novella, Otro lugar (Another place), published by Ediciones de Copista. Ratty has decided to give her his almost entirely uneaten (and generally peculiar-looking) apple as a token of his estimation. This is a prestigious award, a fantastic reward for her beautiful novella. Congratulations, Elena!

You'll have to agree, it's nicely timed, too, as we ready ourselves to release our novel, Amigas, our happy experiment, as Elena so aptly puts it. She wrote (I paraphrase), an experimental work may turn out a little uneven, but it is necessary and good. "We did something important, you know? We made our little piece of sand. I am very happy with our work." And so am I.

Without knowing it at the time, we made a novel that is entirely fitted to the new technology of the ebook (with internal links that can carry the bilingual reader from English to Spanish and back again). ("Sin saberlo nosotras, estábamos escribiendo un libro que sólo podía publicarse como ebook si queríamos que se apreciara el modo experimental en el que lo escribimos.") By the time we'd finished writing it, Rosa Mira Books was up and running; we decided to publish here.

Checking the the ePub file the other day (yes, the eternally-penultimate version is being sent to and fro again today for checking and fixing), I realised we were in danger of contravening copyright by quoting freely from the Beatles song our teenaged characters sing together in the airport in Rome in 1969. So I cut the words right back (you're allowed to quote song titles); the reader will have to add words and music

Meanwhile, here's Joe Cocker singing 'With a Little Help From My Friends' live in Berlin. (Thanks, Elena. I found it on your FB page.)

Even cowgirls get the muse

The digital files for Amigas are in the usual state of to and fro between me and Jason of meBooks: I ask, Can that font be reduced? Can this colour be restored? Oh, and there's a comma I overlooked . . .  He practically always says yes. Cheerfully, as far as I can tell.

Doug who makes and maintains websites for artists has been given a list of alterations to be made before next week's (pleasegod) launch.

At my request, Elena has sent photos and text. I still haven't found out what variety of camelid she's riding below.

Here she touchingly describes our meeting in Iowa five years ago (try it in your dashboard translator if you don't read in Spanish):

"Conocí a Penélope en Iowa durante mi residencia en el Programa Internacional de Escritores.

Recuerdo que llegué tarde al hotel y me dijeron que debía estar a una hora determinada en el atrio para conocer a los demás participantes. Cuando las puertas del ascensor se abrieron vi dos ojos enormes y una sonrisa en el centro del salón y caminé hacia esa mujer alta sin dudarlo. Era ella. Apenas lográbamos entendernos; pero ya éramos amigas. Sería un error decir que estrechamos los lazos durante tres meses: creo más bien que los tres meses sirvieron para entender qué nos reunió desde el primer momento."

On Rosa Mira's Facebook page I posted the cover image of the collection Elena contributed to, that was published last year, No me lo cuentes a nadie (Don't tell anyone) a book of letters between women writers who are also friends. It received this warm review in GRUNDmagazine, page 41. Again, it helps if you can read castellano.

And just to prove that Elena and I were amigas decades before we met:

"a good south wind sprung up behind"

This week albatrosses galore have flown between Buenos Aires and Dunedin. You'll see some of them in due course but the beautiful birds are the work of talented cartoonist and animator Pablo Accame who is putting together the cover image for Amigas. Pablo happens to be Elena's son. Elena Bossi is my co-writer.

As I hinted last week, it's not an entirely comfortable decision, to publish one's own work. It's definitely been seen as the second cousin three times removed to meticulous trade publishing, and all too often the home-grown product is immediately recognisable. However, with the current turmoil of publishing, the scene is changing. Knowledge is available to anyone with an internet connection; there's no reason why the diligent author shouldn't put her work through the same stringent processes that a publisher would, and establish his own sales and marketing base. And I think that's the key: stringent processes. If an author is prepared to seek and pay for assessment/s and editing (their writing apprenticeship is another topic), then find designers who know what they're doing, and oversee the final product, then they can produce a book – hard copy or digital – worthy of their writing efforts.

So, am I apologising or what? I'm very proud of Elena's work and I'm prepared to say that mine is happy in the company of hers. We certainly had a great time working together, and continue to do so. Anyway, we have a publisher: Rosa Mira Books.

The decision to publish with Rosa Mira means that we can produce an edition in which English and Spanish versions sit side by side. Not page for page (most devices are more comfortably read with a single page open, and anyway, our translations are not word for word) but with links at the end  – and possibly the start – of each chapter so that the reader can switch between the two versions if they wish to.

Okay, that's enough for now. It's Saturday morning: the garden beckons, so I'll leave Ratty contending with the bird. More soon. Suggestions, questions and comments are welcomed.

Getting the next show on the road

A rat has little conscience. This one's not even going to apologise for his weeks' long silence.

He's just getting on with it, he says.


Elena Bossi and I met in Iowa, at the 2007 International Writers' Programme. We became friends and when it was time to part Elena suggested we work together on a project – a novel – in order to keep our friendship fresh in spite of language difficulties (mine: Elena's English is vastly superior to my Spanish).  We worked apart for a year or two, writing alternate chapters in our own language, having them translated, then putting the whole together to make a novel in each language. In 2009 Creative New Zealand awarded me a grant to visit Elena in Argentina, where we polished up our versions; checked facts, laughed a lot, sang Beatles songs, completed a solid draft of Amigas, then flew off to Tierra del Fuego.

The decision to publish one's own work is not straightforward. I'll say more about that soon. I'll talk with Elena on this blog about our process and who else has been involved. I'll tell you what's brewing in the way of book design and marketing. I'll keep Ratty busy.