Compelling reading in Fields of Gold

Readers are finding the co-written journal Fields of Gold (Celebrating Life in the Face of Cancer: a tale of two sisters) potent, heart-aching, inspiring. You can hear surviving author Pam Morrison speaking powerfully in a radio interview here: you have to choose 'Write On with Vanda Symon' from the category list then Pam's name will be near the top of the list that comes up (and mine is under hers, speaking the previous week about Rosa Mira Books).

 Reviewing the book, author Mike Crowl of Dunedin wrote: This book, which started out as a journal in which the two sisters wrote collectively, was never intended to be published. Fortunately it has been. All books that help people to understand that their journey through something painful, such as the cancer that affected one of the sisters, is both unique and universal, are of value. 
Annie is a lively and outgoing personality, seen through her own words and those of Pam. The latter is quieter, perhaps more reflective, and even more vulnerable. It is the delineation of her increasing sense of powerlessness and separation that makes the book’s latter half so compelling.

In a completely different vein, last year I almost published a cookbook-with-stories-and-photos called Fait Maison: Recipes from a Kiwi in France. I didn't go through with the process, but had found the recipes attractive, wholesome and easy to make — described as 'simple, delicious, quotidien or day-to-day recipes for homemade food, with a French and Mediterranean influence,' and commend author Rachel Panckhurst for seeing this through and publishing the ebook here.  

Glad readers

Although I'm planning to give you a teaser today for the inaugural almost-ready 10K ebook, The Happiest Music on Earth, in the meantime I came across a couple of articles worth sharing.

Writer J.P. Ganley read Road Markings: An Anthropologist in the Antipodes earlier this year:  "I stumbled upon Jackson’s book at Rosa Mira Books – a classy, rather gorgeous looking NZ e-publishing site, by the way – and read the synopsis, blog posts and review. Within seconds I was hitting BUY NOW, and downloaded a copy onto my KOBO e-reader ... I can’t express enough how much I’m enjoying this …" You can read the whole on her blog, A Certain Book.

In the same hour, I was alerted to this appreciative piece about Road Markings by Terence Rissetto in  The Landfall Review Online, NZ books in review.

 
 Meanwhile (one of my favourite blogwords, I've noticed),  we seem to have a development in the story of 'the other rat'.

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.

Road Markings makes its mark

New Zealand Books is a quarterly magazine devoted entirely to the review of NZ work by fellow writers. For those reviewed it's not usually a comfortable read but considered critique is the magazine's raison d'être. The Winter 2012 edition opens with its editorial: "Two issues beyond the 20th anniversary edition of New Zealand Books and two before our 100th issue, we've reached another milestone. The determined enthusiasts who founded the journal might well have predicted the first two … But we suspect they would have had no inkling of the third: this issue carries our first review of an ebook.   … the word 'book' in New Zealand Books has changed its meaning forever."

That ground-breaking ebook is Michael Jackson's Road Markings, published here at Rosa Mira Books. (Thanks to NZ Books editors, Jane Westaway and Harry Ricketts, for making the leap.) The opening review, it's a generous page and a half of the A3 format by reviewer Alison Gray.  Rather more an outline of content, however, than an appraisal, it's not an easy review to pick excerpts from, but here are a couple:

"Michael Jackson … uses a 2008 road trip … to explore the theme of 'firstness' both in his own life and in the lives of people affected by social and historical events such as adoption, emigration, colonisation, war and illness or death. … It's a grand undertaking …

"The strongest pieces in this book describe how individual people have handled the blows life has dealt them, but the concept of 'firstness' remains elusive. Some people … reshuffle elements of the past to create a workable sense of self; some, like the wonderful Aunt Simone amd Mlle Picard in Menton, struggle not to be overcome by what has happened; some … simply decide to leave the past behind and make a new start, while others, like Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, seem able to recover from loss without 'acrimony, blame or the need for redemption'."

Road Markings is "full of good thinking and ideas about how people construct their lives. I eventually read it twice and was well rewarded both times."

Also in this edition, Chris Else comments on his experience with the Kindle reader.

A review and an opportunity

"Road Markings is no ramble and Jackson has much bigger fish to fry than nostalgic recall. In fact, he has a fish about the size of Maui’s ..."

So runs the review two weeks ago in the NZ Listener. You can read the rest here.

 

 Also. My friend in Argentina, Elena Bossi, has edited a collection of interviews with people of Puna, the high grasslands where Bolivia, Chile and Argentina meet in the Andes. She has worked into the volume poetry and prose originating in the region, along with photos — all of which reveal something of the soul of the people. You can read more about PUNA on my other blog, and you can take your own free copy of the book, which is written in Spanish, here: PUNA in PDF

Elena is a terrific writer who has received accolades for her fiction, criticism and plays so, while I am (as yet!) unable to read this book and to recommend it in its particulars, I know you will be in very good hands. You can read her story 'The Ache' in Slightly Peculiar Love Stories.

Isgar and Dasychord

I strode up to the shop today, thinking that the NZ Listener had posted a review of Road Markings . . . Well, it's a big step, that they're planning to review a digital-first book at all. Good on them. However, I had my wires crossed and no review appeared this week. I'll be on tenterhooks on Mondays until it does. Meanwhile, readers have loved the ebook (one wrote yesterday, 'I felt quite bereft when I finished it') and you can read (and hear) more about it, and Michael, in the blog posts preceding this.

And what's become of the Rat? Fatherhood has been a potent distraction, especially since Lily has taken one of the ratadillo twins back to the pampas to show him off to the wider fairy armadillo family, leaving Ratty with the other.

Remember, I asked for names? Congratulations and thanks go to Jayne and Pam who each offered two possibilities, from which Lily has plucked the component parts to make . . .  well, you've read the names in the title. Isgar is in Argentina. Dasychord is alarmingly quick on the uptake and at six weeks of age is thrashing her father at chess. With that strategic little mind sharpening by the day, I hope she might be persuaded to join the Sales Department.

Birdsong, banned books, chocolate and feet.

I'm back, energised by Australian sun, birdsong and good company, and perched much more happily on the edge of my chair than I have been in the last few days, with a pinched nerve I'd like to put down to sedentary hours on trains and planes, rather than to encroaching decrepitude. The wisteria is budding forth, and the cherry, and it's hard to keep up with the spring vege greens.

I note that potential buyers of Rosa Mira's ebooks are acting conservatively as the Euro hovers on the brink of the Zone — but I would (naturally) urge them to act now in their own best emotional and intellectual interests. The Glass Harmonica and Slightly Peculiar Love Stories promise to transport their readers into zones eternally vivid and fertile.

In a few days — I'll remind you again then, and point you to her new blog — Dorothee Kocks's The Glass Harmonica: A sensualist's tale will be available in paperback. Details will appear on the website. It makes a handsome volume.

Talking of Banned Books Week, did you see Dorothee's riveting article? On books such as Henry sells clandestinely in her novel, he "hawking risqué literature from the back of his carriage, including what would become the most banned book in U.S. history, Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure".

And I suppose you heard the two radio interviews aired while I was away, in which I spoke about Rosa Mira Books. The first with Ruth Todd (no relation) of Plains FM Women on Air, the second with Lyn Freeman on Radio NZ's Arts on Sunday.

I have a copy of the paperback version of The Glass Harmonica which I'd like to send to someone who could give their review of it wide exposure, besides what's offered here. That and a Whitaker's slab of their choice (alas, the latter an NZ-only offer).

Feet waiting for the Lapstone train.