Fields of Gold, published

Did you know? Fields of Gold: Celebrating Life in the Face of Cancer — a tale of two sisters, was published in the weekend. It's out there. Available here. It's Pam Morrison and Annie McGregor telling their story in journal entries, and forging a path, actually, for others (for all of us) who are likely to lose someone we love and who will need to find a way to utter those things too subtle, painful and precious to be spoken. The reach of this book is profound.

P.S. Pass it on.

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 dangerous liaison

Last time Ratty (Rosa Mira's Public Relations Department) deigned to put himself in the public eye it was to give you a glimpse of Lynn Davidson's forthcoming 10k publication, a novella, The Desert Road. See here.

After skiving off for most of the summer, he's back and limbering up to launch three 10k ebooks in the last week of January. The second is the essay, Angel of Reshaping: Fifteen Years of Alienation. Author H.T.R. Williams (Hayden) came to New Zealand fifteen years ago from Wales. Not long afterwards, he developed a psychosis that would lead him to some dark (and dare I say it, some darkly funny) places from which he nevertheless returned with treasure that has added to his art compassion, insight and a kind of ruthless humour:

Too worthy to wear any lesser colour than orange [I plan] a wardrobe entirely of orange clothes, the wardrobe itself painted orange.  … ‘You seem to have undergone a radical change in appearance,’ says the doctor. He thoughtfully chews the end of his pen, stares out over the tops of his bifocals at Matthias Grunewald’s 'The Crucifixion': an image of the fifteenth-century oil painting has been printed onto the front of my bright orange sweatshirt. ‘It’s a little concerning, I must say,’ he says, picking up the phone and asking the nurse to come through.

H.T.R lives in Dunedin and you can read more about his work on his website. And we'll be writing more in the next few days, introducing, Carolyn McCurdie's three short stories and interviewing the three 10k authors.

Titles forthcoming (rat not so)

Ratty continues to be elusive, however he has been seen treading his way over the great stone slabs of riverbed in the Waitakere ranges. With his green periscope he has noted the industrious preparation of three new ebooks in the 10k series and knows that before the southern summer is over he’ll have to dry himself off, put on his scarf, and promote them. In the meanwhile, I’ll tell you that the first to be formatted will be The Desert Road, a short novella by Lynn Davidson who lives on the Kapiti Coast.

Her story is set in Turangi in the heart of NZ’s only desert, where ‘three volcanic mountains claim ground and sky’ and the three daughters of a charismatic Italian tunneller are confronted with behaviours and consequences as uncompromising as the landscape.

Lynn has published four collections of poetry, most recently in 2012 Common Land, poetry and essays published by Victoria University Press. Her poems and stories have been widely published and her novel Ghost Net came out in 2003 with Otago University Press.

Lynn has taught creative writing for many years and is currently mid-way through a PhD in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Massey University.

More about Lynn and the other tho 10k-ers over the summer  . . .

Rat quandary

Angst — if not existential, then circumstantial — afflicts even a rat. When not foraging or bustling about on mundane tasks in the rats' nest (and there's never a shortage), he worries and wonders how best to spend his minutes, hours, days and money; where his energy is most aptly applied; how to respond to the suffering of fellow rats and the degradation of rat habitats everywhere; whether he's better off conjuring fresh rat histories or preparing others' for presentation— or trying harder to do both; then of course, he wonders if these are still pertinent questions when he's asked them so many times before and somehow trundled on, making this choice and/or that, doing (and failing to do) this or/and that; finding that life goes on unfolding whichever way he handles it. He reckons life is a quiet cacophony  of paradoxes that occasionally strike a gloriously harmonious chord.

Thus far, today, the page is blank and Ratty's not even sure what colour he is.

He recommends (remembering his job description) that others in this fix pop over to Rosa Mira Books and choose one to read.

The Linen Way — published!

The author:

Read about Melissa here.

 The memoir:

Cover image and design by Claire Beynon.

 The content:

Passionate about poetry and seeking guidance to write her own, Melissa Green embarked on a Masters program at Boston University in 1981 and immediately caught the attention of her teacher, Derek Walcott, and his friend the Russian Joseph Brodsky. Giants of American poetry and Nobel prize winners, they recognized in her a literary peer with an innate and dazzling talent.

In a parallel reality, Melissa was living a knife-edge existence, her life an unpredictable and embattled odyssey between poetry and despair, a pendulum-swing between fervent, luminous writing and sudden, ferocious bouts of suicidal illness. In a black shipwreck of a house, she hid away for years, caring for her demanding and difficult grandmother.

That she survives is our blessing; that she has retrieved poetry from the abyss is a timeless boon. As poet Zireaux writes: … having travelled to the outer reaches of human experience …  with a fine-tuned lyre and Odyssean strength of purpose, Melissa Green reports her discoveries back home, in the language they demand.

In The Linen Way, Melissa walks the reader along the thin, perilous path between poetry’s affirmation of life and the unwelcome ghosts of hope apparently lost; a linen way, perhaps, but wrought also of fire and sulfur and the ironmonger’s hammer.

The rat:

It seems to have swelled Ratty’s head to be modelling the prototype Linen Way t-shirt, never mind the skew-whiff appliqué, or the fact that Lily-the-Pink has mislaid her sewing glasses (several pairs, up and down the country, along with earrings and necklaces) and doesn't necessarily notice loose threads or wonky seams. The newest ratadillo, Kawhia, is full of admiration and has made it her life's ambition to meet Melissa.

The Linen Way is available for 11 USD, in pdf, epub and Kindle-friendly formats, here.

Smugrat

Smug. Because of his new t-shirt. To be revealed with The Linen Way (at last! yes, I know) on Tuesday 23rd July.

RMB in transit (again)

This is the state of play. However, Ratty is jumping out at every rest stop to chew cheese and keep a few balls in the air: files of The Linen Way are still flitting internationally as the audios are embedded, the poems made to assume and retain their original postures, fonts restored and t's crossed.

More from the roadside in a day or so.

Winged Sandals: published!

The writer:

Martin Edmond

The ebook:

The content:

Having tried it before, he swore he wouldn’t again: Martin Edmond was a reluctant taxi driver on the streets of Sydney — three times taking up a trade like Charon’s, ferrying souls to keep himself in writing time. In this essay he explores the history and challenges of the profession, carrying the good, the bad and the delinquent through the underbelly of Sydney. He describes his ambivalence, coping with tedium, with idiotic or unsavoury behaviour and with his own early disinclination to work as a servant; how he made an accommodation with himself, finding a parallel in writing — and ultimately transforming his practice, allowing him to serve his clients with a kind of grace:
“Thus it makes perfect sense to treat them as honoured guests; and to do all that is in your power to bring them safely, happily, perhaps even changed, to their destination.”

Edmond is the sort of writer that makes you feel smarter, more creative and more civilised simply for having read him. Landfall Review Online

Winged Sandals is available for US3 dollars here. Anyone buying a copy of Winged Sandals in the next two weeks will be offered another 10k ebook free, by follow-up email.

The rat:

Entrancing audio

Ratty has heaps to do, but a wonderful thing happened, to stop him in his tracks. He's even let his tea grow cold. Dorothee has produced an audio book of her novel The Glass Harmonica: a sensualist's tale in her own marvellous, firm but musical voice.  Listening, I'm back in the common kitchen at our artists' residency in Can Serrat, Catalonia, where I heard her read from the work-in-progress eight years ago. It's a terrific production that does justice to her fine novel.

It's available on Audible, Amazon and iTunes. Go to Dorothee's website to choose your format. On Amazon you can listen to a sample and, if you join Audible, gain a free copy of the audiobook.

You can listen here to Dorothee talking on New Zealand's National Radio about The Glass Harmonica. 

(Martin Edmond's Winged Sandals? It'll be available tomorrow.)

Splendid cover image revealed

Steady progress: The Linen Way, Melissa Green's memoir of poetry and despair, Nobel prize-winning poets and her own emergence as a writer of note, is having last amendments made and audio files added so that readers will be able to hear Melissa read her poems.

And its time we let you see the splendid cover image — a teaser here, but click on the circle to see it entire, if small as yet: the painting (detail from 'Shadow and Shimmer', oil on paper, 2013) and graphic design by Claire Beynon, friend of Melissa who also recently recorded and brought back from Boston the audios mentioned above.

To overcome a certain squeamishness that sets in at this stage of production, when ten times I think the job's done and ten times we find tiny glitches yet to be fixed, I'm determined to call it a dance, where we're all doing our improvised steps and everyone remains cheerful: Melissa ('Oh, joy!!'); Doug Lilly preparing website pages; Caroline Pope styling pages and fixing every little thing Melissa or I ask for . . .
As for other news, I reiterate: Winged Sandals is also in the production chute (Martin Edmond's pensive tales from the streets of Sydney— a cabbie's perspective); we'll have a Q & A with Martin soon; and editing to our Kiwi-French cookbook Fait Maison proceeds at walking pace. In its pages I keep finding perfectly delicious recipes for the seven eggs a day two of us are currently struggling to deal with here in the not-so-wilds of Hawkes Bay.

 I have no idea what Ratty's up to here — not much, by the look of it— but if a caption occurs to anyone, I'll stick it under him.

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.

The next 10k and feijoa ice-creams

I was afraid Ratty had scarpered. His relevance has been under question. Anyway, it seems he and Lily-the-Pink have been cooking up a second litter of ratadilloes. These two are only three days old but already they've discovered the joys of feijoa ice-cream, which is a good job since the fragrant fruit are littering the park and garden edges of suburban Auckland where they're spending these first, formative hours of their lives. Sorry about the sunglasses; they don't do much for our PR rat, but his eyes were looking peculiarly raisinesque so covering them seemed kinder.

 

Of far greater pertinence just now is the fact that The Siren is entering its final stages of preparation for publishing. Author Aaron Blaker spoke with Emily Duncan on Arts Hub, Otago Access Radio in Dunedin last week. He spoke about his wander through Spain in the footsteps of Laurie Lee, his writing, his experience of Rosa Mira Books and more. He also read a fine and moving short story, 'Spiral Staircase, Tiger Tea'.  You can listen in here. (Go to 4th April 2013, minutes 23 to 56.)

Tim Jones of Books in Trees has written an enticing piece about The Glass Harmonica in his first 'Book Watch' column for the New Zealand Herald.

How rats apply for funding

Alas, in the usual way:

Finding the many forms and instructions required.

Sticking bums to seats for as long as ratfully possible at a stretch for as many days or hours as there are between now and the postal deadline.

Apologising for short notice while asking others for support material. 

Making rough drafts.

Yawning, sighing, complaining to nest-mates.

Apologising for very short notice asking for further material . . .

Making several more drafts.

Finding the middle ground between grovelling unworthily and demanding rescue from self-martyrdom: asking boldly for money for very good work on very good projects.

 Checking source documents. Discovering wrong turns.

Getting ratty.

Backtracking. Revising.

Prevaricating. Procrastinating. Drawing rats.

Getting back to it.

Cooking up another 10k

Ratty looked anxiously in the mirror this morning. He'd seen me perusing the website of Vladimir Sivtsevich Volodja, an international Russian illustrator whose email had just popped into my box. Yes, I wrote back, I love your sophisticated, witty and often tender illustrations, but for now will have to make do with the old Pen-cils and paintbrush. Naturally, Ratty wonders if he mightn't be rendered a little more suave (not to say consistent) at the hands of a professional.

I trotted out the cliché about comparisons and took the blue cheese out of the fridge along with a couple of ripe figs. The distraction seems to be holding.

Talking of comparisons, none will be made in the case of our next 10k author, Aaron Blaker. Nor can I find much about him online (although I see he's had stories in Best NZ Fiction #6 and Takahe, one placed second in their annual competition). Okay, not exactly undiscovered but it's still exciting to be introducing a potent newish voice here at Rosa Mira.  I first read Aaron's short novella, The Siren, aloud in the car between Geraldine and Oamaru. When I finished, the driver and I, momentarily silenced by its power,  put out our bottom lips in the gesture that says, gosh, that's a rare one, that needs to be published. Looking at his other stories, too, I can say that his writing is marinated in the currents of desire, provocation, yearning, and mistrust that swirl beneath the light-spangled surfaces of life in these islands, and steeped in the close reading of his literary elders — but distinctly his own.

Set in Tolaga Bay on NZ's East Cape, The Siren is both deeply humane and darkly uneasy; dark in the way of so much NZ fiction, but suffused with blessed light. We're editing it as I write. More anon.

Rat Ascendant II

Ratty has ascended New Zealand, distorting it a little under the weight of summer raspberrries with cream and the quiches served at the top of every pitch.

He finds himself in a cosy nest near Whangarei, but is alarmed to be sharing digs with a Tonkinese, as sinuous, sensuous and gregarious a cat as a rat could hope to avoid, one who remembers in every fibre the former goddess status of her species.

While he's hiding from the cat, I'm happily revising and receiving and sending out contracts. The next to be acted upon will be an aching, frank and tender memoir, The Linen Way, by US poet Melissa Green.

Meanwhile, warm comment is being made by readers about The Happiest Music on Earth. It's only 3 USD, a good start for readers trying out their new reading devices.

The year looks exciting, but that's all I have time to say just now. The rat has bundled up his swimming togs (remember the mankini?) and is hopping about impatiently in the doorway. Have to go.

77 ways to pack up a house

 Ratty's activities uncannily mirror our own although he looks better organised than we are, with superior technique. Also, his packages seem more interesting than ours. He'll probably store his stuff into the space next to ours: 13 cubic metres for ours; 1.3 for the rat's.

The rat and I are keeping a few small Rosa Mira balls rolling in the mornings and after lunch emptying drawers into boxes/bags/rubbish piles. Focus and decisiveness are fine and elusive things.

This week:

I found an ebook called 77 Ways to Find New Readers for your Self-Published Book. It's hard to imagine an uglier, more utilitarian title but I bought it. And no, RM ebooks are not 'self-published' but apparently the author Laura Pepper Wu is the indie authors' (and small publisher's) marketing goddess. She looks about 21 so I dare say she has her finger on pulses I've failed to detect. Ratty will work his way through her marketing tips, one a day for 77 days, starting tomorrow. Or Monday at the latest.

I discovered this week that Christine Buess who painted the cover image for The Glass Harmonica makes and sells gorgeous patchwork and knitted quilts and throws at her online shop, Swister's.

I can't point you to the Kilmog Press site: they must be too busy with their publishing comeback, producing Starch, Volume One, a NZ literary journal, 84 pages in hard covers. It's certain to be a beautiful collection. Located in Dunedin, New Zealand, Kilmog Press creates small edition, beautifully handmade books. Covers are created from individually hand dyed papers and illustrated with woodblock prints all handcrafted in-house. Kilmog writers are selected for innovative and original poetry and prose, often outside the commercial mainstream.

The Happiest Music on Earth is undergoing its nth formatting tweak and will  make its appearance very soon.

Keen rat in ratkini

Happy new year to you all. May we all find our way through 2013 doing what we love: hopping over the hurdles, dismantling the roadblocks, enjoying the scents, vistas and friendships along the way.

Inspired by summer sights on the beaches of Buenos Aires, Lily has whipped up a pair of swimming togs and insisted that if he wants his lunch Ratty must first try them on. With water rat in his ancestry, Ratty tries to recall an instance when a swim might have been enhanced by the addition of .07 m of green spandex with a twisty-tie doing duty for shoulders.

Like Ratty, we are trying to rationalise what we own as we pack up the house and take as little as possible with us on the next (unknown) leg of our journey.

Meanwhile, fresh thought is going into RMB. Ideas are percolating. Last week I talked with Lorraine Steele of Lighthouse PR ("A guiding light in book publicity" — check out the very cool website) about the challenges of selling ebooks. I appreciated her enthusiasm, open mind, and generosity. We'll be keeping in touch, but meanwhile she's given me plenty of resource ideas to follow up.

I talked with Dorothee, too, about the audio book almost ready for release, which is The Glass Harmonica read aloud in her melodic voice. I'll let you know as soon as that's available.

Meanwhile, The Happiest Music on Earth is with the formatter and I've come upon its successor in the 10k series — an exciting new voice in fiction.

Right now, I'm keen to look at 10,000 word essays for consideration. Pass it on.

The ratadilloes are having a ball with the mankini offcuts.

Selling ebooks he is not, but isn't it good to see someone looking so calm and purposeful at this time of year, when the rest of us are feverishly winding up our projects preparatory to winding ourselves down? I'm delighted to learn that Ratty can French-knit. I'm sure that the e-reading populace will also find it a fascinating and powerful stimulus for rushing over to Rosa Mira Books to stock up on midsummer (or midwinter) reading.

Honestly, employ a rat at your peril.

Some people, however, are worth ten rats. Claire Beynon has blogged over at Icelines, with a blushingly generous piece about what she perceives to be happening here at Rosa Mira. She's included one or two, as yet unseen, portraits of The Rat — for what they're worth. Do take a cruise around her stunning site, and pop your head into her studio.

On 12.12.12 at 1.11 the Dunedin HQ was sold and will be vacated on 31.1.13. Actually, HQ remains intact — who needs more than a laptop and a table? — but the RMB operation will be on the road for the next year or two. Who knows, we might wind up in a rats' nest near you.

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'.