On and on

Lists and lists. I have pages of them. Each day I fill the diary allotment with another, then shape up a new list next day with the leftovers. Crossing items off has never felt so satisfying. But it's dawning on me that I'm never going to be done with these lists. Rosa Mira is a long-term commitment and I'm well past the point of no-return. The world of digital publishing and social media is continually expanding. The number of seminars I can attend, websites explore, links follow, online tools utilise, and media networks pursue roughly equals the number of currants on our bushes this year. It's a bountiful season.

I think the secret route through this maze of possibilities is to do what looks like most fun. Fun is energising. Anxiety (fear of too-muchness) is enervating. Is that too simple a formula? I don't think so. I need to survive this. Better still, thrive.

I love the ebook RMB is soon to publish. I enjoy editing and exchange with writers. I like writing this blog. I'm warming to Twitter, and I look forward to my evening FB exchanges. I love meeting enthusiasts who cheer me on and share their own challenges and pleasures.

Knowing what fires me helps me discriminate. My lists look more enticing already.

And I'm not alone.

Did I say? January. Thanks, everyone, for your patience.

A pause for breath

Setting up Rosa Mira Books has been such an adventure. The work and learning  of the last year have stretched and heartened me, flattened and firmed me up inwardly, given me nightmares and days of quiet exaltation. I've met and consulted and worked with exceptional, generous, encouraging people all the way. No one has told me I'm a fool for doing this. I keep finding in the web community fantastically open-handed people sharing what they've learned and giving practical advice.

I'd hoped to launch at the start of December.

Coral wrote the other week that she tells her publishing students that every publisher's middle name might be 'slippage'. That was strangely heartening if (as I contend) slippage is part and parcel of publishing and not necessarily of the publisher's personality.

For various reasons, most to do with human capacity vs hours available in the week, not to mention the Christmas/year's end/holiday change of gears, I'm delaying the launch of Rosa Mira and The Glass Harmonica until late January. By then our Slightly Peculiar Love Stories should be well into production, all nearly all wrinkles ironed out, and those involved rested, eager, savvy and ready to roll.

Unsprung

Reaching the end of the manuscript — a proofread that was inevitably a copy-edit as well  — I felt like a piece of elastic released from its duty to hold the britches up. I sprang about, disconcerted and happy. Dorothee in Utah will make a last read-through then Christine across town will check the styling and create ePub and PDF files. Across the Tasman a Kindle-friendly version of the novel will be conjured up.

Meanwhile Eion in Dublin and Lorraine in Colorado are reading copies of The Glass Harmonica on Android and PC, in order to toss us a few choice comments to further entice our readers, and in Auckland and Salt Lake City, marketing strategies are being firmed up.  Today I was enticed to join Twitter. Twittering — the antithesis of my habitual self. But I will learn. Tomorrow I'll send a message.

All these things happen at the press of a button (or several). Hourly miracles.

I know I've tried to fix dates before but watch this one: December 2nd. Should be a good day.

Deep Water

We watched the doco of that name the other night — the Donald Crowhurst story: how he left port according to deadline but before he felt ready. How he sailed south with quaking heart. If he entered the southern ocean he would probably die. If he turned tail for home he faced financial ruin. Sad, sad, sad. But fascinating, too, to ponder what risks one is prepared to go on a limb for; what constitutes a risk, what a failure; and where is the point of no-return?


Helpful, too, for gaining perspective, No lives or livelihoods are at stake if Rosa Mira Books goes online before all doubts are quelled. However, we want the rigging sound, our crew confident, and all sailors to have a happy trip when they come aboard. We're running around checking the sheets, anchors and winches (okay, am about out of nautical terms here; you get the gist) and are casting a weather eye at this week's forecast . . .  We want everything just so — although the draft pages are looking sleek and lovely already. Hugh reckons it's his best design yet. I think he might be right.

 This week suddenly it seemed crucial to have an e-reader in order to test our manuscript. I needed a versatile device, so I went down to the Mac shop, stroked the iPad a few times and said, 'Okay.' On it I can download a zillion apps: Stanza, iBooks, GoodReading, Kobo, Kindle, B&N . . . (Best of all, the meowing cat piano app).

Meanwhile the little soft-covered, bendy e-reader is on the imagination's back burner. It'll turn up in due course. :)

Take a look

It's possible that the final paragraph of The Glass Harmonica: A Sensualist's Tale has at last been tweaked to perfection, just in time for the stylist and the proofreader who advance like lawn-mower and garden roller upon the author and editor.

And look!

The cover image was hand-painted by Christine Buess of Longacre Press fame, designed, more or less, from a description of Henry's waistcoat with its pièce de résistance, the tomato, or pomme d'amour.

Dani Wright has cooked up a marketing plan that includes Rosa Mira going seriously online. Soon. The inevitable is imminent and I'm almost ready for it. We have some plans on the front cooker in the U.S. too. Kind of exciting.

Meanwhile, thanks to Helen Heath's weekend reading round-up I've found a couple of expansive articles on Why Readers Hate DRM (digital rights management) and The Future of Publishing Takes Shape on Faber's blog, The Thought Fox. Points pondered in the latter include the editorial process which I am pleased to state will be Rosa Mira's strong suit in an industry that has been forced to reduce its editing TLC in recent years.

It's possible the website will go live this week. You'll hear it first here.

Here we are in September

Sorry to keep you waiting, dear readers, but I'm back.  More fun if I turned up on screen wind-tousled, pink-cheeked and breathless, looking as if I'd been up to mischief, but really I'm flat-bummed and poker-faced from long editing hours. Nevertheless I am happy! Dorothee's novel The Glass Harmonica: A Sensualist's Tale is fabulous: heartfelt, moving, wise, and crackling with energy. My appreciation deepens with scrutiny. Phew. That's always a relief — to find a story dense with life, down through its layers. The 'cover' Christine painted is glorious (scare quotes because I reckon we need a new name for the icon that announces the ebook — any ideas?) and my mother is proof reading it. I love to think of her reviving her lifelong but under-used critical capacity; I guess I received the editing gene from her. And maybe the more sweeping, intuitive engagement with story from my dad.

I've asked Hugh if the site could please go live in October — my birthday present, perhaps. And the novel will be launched a month later. Soon I'll be able to apply myself to the Slightly Peculiar Love Stories and their patient authors. I'm thinking about a typographic 'cover' for that anthology. (Is that the term for a plain cover with slightly peculiar lettering on it?) Know anyone talented with text?

Meanwhile, droves of people are buying, or thinking of buying, or fervently resisting buying, devices on which to read ebooks. I still haven't decided which model I'll choose.

Heartening

I was heartened by this article in Digital Book World, of particular interest to authors and digital publishers, discussing the new and flexible contract, and the 'revolutionary' idea that, in exchange for the author signing over a 'broad basket of rights', each contract would be renegotiated after three to five years. More power to authors. More fair sharing between author and publisher. I'm offering a two-year contract. Makes perfect sense when the market, platforms, and what's implied in those rights are so rapidly changing. We can see up to the next corner but not around it.

While I don't wish to promote one reading device over another (not until I found that perfect, palpable, bendy number), I can't help marvelling at this neat little beast, the Kindle 3, not yet in NZ, but it can be ordered via Amazon. That'd slip into a handbag no trouble. Okay, so I've just promoted a reading device. Which only makes sense, given what I'm doing here. Who wants to read an ebook on their PC?

 I'm not sure I'd want to see a plastic tablet in any of these reverent hands (not unless it wore a soft, indigo cover) but for a beautiful meditation on reading, please look at the images on Steve McCurry's blog.