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.  

Publishing in the south

Like Ratty below, we've been heading south over the last week, pulling onto the roadside as needed to attend to Rosa Mira business. Yesterday we reached Dunedin. It's good to have the new 10k books out in the world and if you've missed them by any chance, they're summed up here: yes, here.

The first reader review is in for Albatross. Dusty Sandison from New Brunswick writes: "Three thoughtful stories that share the pained thread of grief, regret, remorse — and hope. The writer delves into relationships with friends, strangers, family and self that are touching, even heartbreaking, and make you look inward and examine your own journey in life."

Ratty drives south. I used to have a VW this colour — hand painted with roof paint. I miss it. Let me know if you have a Beetle for sale.

This month, I have my head down preparing Rosa Mira's next exceptional publication, Fields of Gold, subtitled: Celebrating Life in the Face of Cancer, A story of two sisters. It's the journal, written over the course of a year, of two remarkable women, one of whom is dying. Pam Morrison wrote for both herself and sister Annie McGregor, recording their shock, love, bafflement, humour, deep respect, grief  — the rich life that flowed between them. I'll be saying more about it in the coming weeks, and introducing you to Pam who lives here in Dunedin.

"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.

How bizarre, how bizarre

I'm back on my laptop (I'm going to think up a suitable name for him/her, too — one that signals a sensitive but resilient nature, and a certain tolerance for water — any ideas?). Despite a quote (from Auckland because Dunedin is overloaded with ailing Macs) for fixing $4000 worth of 'liquid' damage to my $1600 model, my lap companion evidently decided it would rather come home and behave nicely than be scrapped.

I have to say that its malaise closely resembled my own at the time — the whirring fan that, like my head, was all noise and no traction; the X on the battery symbol; the 'something wrong' with the hard drive. I have to say that it gave me time to recuperate and consider my working habits (work when I'm working, play when I'm playing and quit the fretting); the need for creative time; the need to do a comprehensive back-up now; and time to consider Rosa Mira Books' chief objective: to become deft (and a little quicker) in the production of exceptional ebooks — which means looking for ways to travel more like an arrow than an articulated truck. Figuring out what's essential and what's not.  I have to say I'm grateful. And will be taking neither the laptop's vigour nor my own for granted.

Thanks and hugs go out to all — writers, followers, friends and family, who have been so supportive in spite of it all, and without whom this project would be a) impossible and b) pointless.

This week I came upon some helpful tips for digital dummies like me:

1. If you use iBooks, or other reading app, on your iPad/Pod/Phone, do notice if there are updates (red dots) available for it on the app icon of your iPad/Pod/Phone, and download them. Makes all the difference to the layout, as it turns out in the case of Slighty Peculiar Love Stories. 

2. SLPS writer, Salman, sent me this nifty feature:  as he says, 'If you use Firefox, you can add this and read epub directly.' It's not refined in its features, but is a very quick way to open an epub document.

3. Less a helpful tip than a celebration of beautiful web design, and a chance to have your own: check out Sue Wootton's web page (and drool, poets). She writes, 'I recommend Doug Lilly. He's started to specialise in arts/writing/creative people's sites, at very reasonable rates.'

Okay, there's no reason now not to release Slightly Peculiar Love Stories in the middle of next week. I have a day in mind and will confirm it with details here, there, and everywhere as soon as I get the okay from my techie.

Shall we have a nice cup of tea in the meantime?

Maxine Alterio — days lived well

'A day without writing, reading or storytelling feels to me as though it has not been well lived.'

Another writer of Slightly Peculiar Love Stories, Maxine lives here in Dunedin. She's warm, intelligent, funny, and incredibly hard-working. Diligent also comes to mind. When we belonged to the same writing group some years ago, she read us a single story month after month as she honed and re-honed it to the point where it won a major UK short story prize. Her stories have been well anthologised and her first collection Live News and Other Stories appeared in 2005. Her best-selling novel Ribbons of Grace was published in 2007.

Maxine is currently enrolled in a PhD in Creative Writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University of Wellington, where she is working on a thesis based on the memoirs of First World War nurses, and her second novel, Lives We Leave Behind. I'm looking forward to that.

Maxine once had an English butler for ten days. The ingredients of her slightly peculiar story include a physio pool, a steep path, a banana and a file…

Sue Wootton, peculiar poet, too

Editorial intrusion: from now until Slightly Peculiar Love Stories is launched — let's say mid June, fingers and toes crossed – we'll give a free copy as soon as it's ready to anyone buying a copy of The Glass Harmonica here.  

Sue's story in the collection is peculiarly sensuous and achingly wistful. Do explore her website.

Sue:
Here's a peculiar love poem. A couple of winters ago I spent a lot of time with Raymond Carver. Well, a lot of time reading Raymond Carver, but it's the same thing. For a while my daily life in Dunedin, New Zealand was filtered through a Carver-esque lens. 'Breakfast with Raymond Carver' was the result. The epigraph is from Carver's poem 'Looking for Work', which begins  I have always wanted brook trout/for breakfast. In his poem, he speaks of the quest to find 'a new path/to the waterfall'. Every writer knows the difficult task of getting to 'the waterfall', and the joy of finding it. The path can be quite peculiar. Like love.

Breakfast with Raymond Carver

 …brook trout for breakfast…
           from ‘Looking for Work’ by Raymond Carver

He says This way! He says
but I have to warn you
there may not be brook trout; there may instead be
birds like small brown empty wallets in the trees.

But what trees! Sharp and hairy as a man’s shins
when he lies in bed all day simply because it rains,
his heart going flip, flip, like playing with the top of a carton,
sucking itself down to the filter in only three drags.

Look, I say, camellias: crimson, with stamens like the hairdos
of recently re-blonded wives. But these are the wrong flowers.
Not enough snow, or kitchens, or bare yards, or pickups full of men
and beer and fishing lines. Not enough fish. Not enough cold river.

After the waterfall I make coffee, and there is a table.
No violets, but these bruisable camellias.
He is looking out the window. He is watching cars crawl
and some weather building. A boy’s arm and a girl’s waist.

We talk of selling sofas. And love, of course.


Breakfast with Raymond Carver is from Magnetic South (Steele Roberts 2008). It won the 2006 Aoraki Literary Festival poetry award.

A week's worth

We have a cover for Slightly Peculiar Love Stories. I'm torn between plastering it everywhere and uncovering it little by little. Wait and see what I decide. It's striking and I like the fact that it doesn't have to follow the rules of regular book-making. Doesn't need a spine or a back page. Doesn't even have to be rectangular, except that it'll fit more neatly on a screen if it is (and it is).

Proof copies of The Glass Harmonica, the print-on-demand version, arrived in Salt Lake City and Dunedin this week, and we were pretty chuffed to hold it in our hands, stroke that winsome front cover, and see Dorothee's fine prose on cream paper of good quality. A couple of tweaks at the Lightning Source end, and a couple of technical details to attend to at this, and we'll be away. I'll keep you posted here.

While we're talking short stories, please consider pre-ordering a copy of Tales for Canterbury (collected and edited by Canterbury writers Cassie Hart and Anna Caro) for which all profits will go to the Red Cross Earthquake Appeal. I see that at least four of the writers have work appearing in our collection, too. What a feast of stories.

You're going to meet our slightly peculiar writers, one by one, here on this page, starting on Monday or even sooner. Some will blog, and others I'll introduce before pointing you to a fine example of their work. I hope they'll venture to speak about love, about writing, about their own peculiar interests – oh, anything at all; we just want them here, hanging about on Rosa Mira Books and talking to you.