And Some More Great Reviews For Wolfborn!

It's nice to be getting lovely reviews for your book two years after publication. It has only recently come out in the US, but once a book is out, a publisher simply doesn't have time to continue the promotion though they will co-operate if you can arrange your own promo. So I have been approaching blogs about reviewing it and have had some that didn't bother to reply, even though my inquiry was personalised and chosen for appropriateness- heavens, I reply, even if to say no, unless it's clearly been sent to a hundred blogs at once or is laughably inappropriate, showing the author hasn't read my policy - and some said yes. I've had five reviews out of it, but only two in the US, where my publishers could have sent a copy, so I reached into my stash and paid my own postage. However, promo is always good! And most recently, I am very pleased to have got in touch with Sherre of Beckoned By Books, Cassie of Knows Prose and Hollie of Music, Books And Tea.

As they have all posted their reviews on Amazon, on the same page, I'm giving you the link to that, here although their web sites are all well worth a visit if you love books and reading, especially YA.

The reviews are on the Kindle page, though you can also buy it in iBooks and, of course, order it in print.

US Release of Wolfborn - Reviewing and Promo

A few months ago, I became very excited because I learned that my novel Wolfborn was FINALLY becoming available in the US. It wasn't quite what I would have liked - they were going to distribute it themselves instead of creating a new overseas edition - but still, it was available outside Australia and I felt as if the book was being released all over again. I had one gig on the blog Dear Teen Me, arranged by the publicist over there, which I wrote and waited for more to happen, meanwhile arranging the interview and giveaway on I Am A Reader Not A Writer. So I asked the US publicist what else was happening.

Her reply came this morning : nothing else is happening, unless I arrange it. She will of course support anything I do, but she's finished with it. She only has a few review copies left anyway.
(Where have the others gone? I haven't seen a single review from over there). It's the way of things, I guess. I've been dealing with publishers for many years. I can remember when I had to send THEM copies of reviews I found, because they didn't let me know. One publisher asked me for a publicity photo and then lost it, these being the days before email. Ah, well! Nothing to be done there.

I would like to see more sales in the US, and if I had known it would all be over so quickly with so little promo effort from that side of the ocean I would have done more, earlier.

So,  I would like to invite requests for review copies. If you have a blog and haven't read my novel and would like to, email me at the contact address on this blog. If you're in the US I will send your address to the publicist there. If you live elsewhere I will send you a copy from my stash - I bought far too many at author price anyway.

I do suggest you check out the sample chapter on this web site to decide if the book would interest you. It's not compulsory, but it's sensible. Postage is going to cost me and I would like to think that anyone who asks for it is asking for something that they actually want to read. Just so you know, it is NOT a paranormal romance, it does not feature a Mary Sue who discovers she is a princess and has to marry a gorgeous vampire, mer prince, faerie king, whatever. In fact, it's seen from the boy's viewpoint and the romance element is subtle and takes the whole novel to build up, so much so that some  reviewers have accused it of being "tacked on". It's a mediaeval fantasy with werewolves.

If that doesn't interest you, don't request it. If  you think you'd like to read and review this, let me know. I'll look forward to hearing from you. :-)

The Next Big Thing Post

I have been tapped to do The Next Big Thing by George Ivanoff, quite late in the piece, which means that nearly everyone I have tapped myself has already done it or is busy. It's meant to be a chain, so if any writer reading this would like to do it, get in touch. You do have to have a web site, because effectively it's like doing an interview on your own site. However, if you'd rather do it on my site I would be happy to host you.

Below are the questions George sent me.

1) What is the [working] title of your next book?

The working title is The Sword And The Wolf, but I'm not good at titles. That said, when I did a writers' workshop with it, the publisher from Tor thought the title was fine!

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?

It's a prequel to Wolfborn. I felt that the story of Etienne and his friends, Armand, Sylvie, Jeanne and the werewolf knight, Geraint, was told, but there were some lesser characters in the novel whose stories I believed needed expanding. I fell in love with King Luiz, who mostly appears as a sort of deus ex machina near the end of Wolfborn, but turned out to be a likeable person and I wondered about his teenage years. And there was a lesser baddie who also took my interest, so he is worked in too. The universe is the same, but it's set during an interregnum when the king had been killed in battle and his heir had gone missing. Yes, there's an Arthurian flavour to it.

3) What genre does your book fall under?

YA fantasy. It has werewolves in it, but it's a mediaeval fantasy, not the standard urban fantasy.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I'm still thinking about it. Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark in Game Of Thrones, would be about the right age now for the role of my heroine, Lysette, and has the right style. Her mentor Amrys, the former court wizard who got locked in a tree by his last apprentice and missed the young prince's growing up, needs to be someone fortyish, as he was frozen in time. He's not an ancient man with a long beard, he's more like Mary Stewart's Merlin. Maybe Hugo Weaving.:-)

5) What's the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Teen werewolf girl lets a wizard out of a tree and finds herself caught up in the search for a lost prince - a very cute lost prince! :-)

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I don't do self-published. Agents? Over the years I have had to represent myself, because any agent I approached either had full books or didn't bother to reply, even to an inquiry letter( I never sent them a manuscript unsolicited). Publishers know me now, so usually at least read the MS, even if they say no. That said, any agent reading this is welcome to contact me! ;-). Otherwise I will first offer it to publishers I have dealt with before. Then, if no luck, I will try others.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

My first draft is not finished. And it's taken ages! Still, I'm around 60,000 words in.

8) What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I don't think it's exactly like anything I've read. The closest, though, would be a cross between Tamora Pierce's Wolf-Speaker and Mary Stewart's The Hollow Hills.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My previous novel was full of aristocrats, even if they did have to live wild. I thought I'd see what life might be like for a peasant werewolf who managed to avoid being lynched.

10) What else might pique the reader's interest?

Oh, lots of adventure, a little romance, prehistoric animals, humour. There's not enough humour in YA fantasy novels in my opinion. If you're curious, check this out: She Bursztynski Reads Her Fiction - it's me reading from the manuscript. And if you're curious about my published novel, there's a sample chapter on this site, just look at the side, or wander over to YouTube, where I'm reading from the book here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5izWm0i33s

And I have also done a Current Big Thing post about Wolfborn here.

Thanks, George, for inviting me!

A Find, A Veritable Find!

I LOVE the Internet and ebooks! I have found, at last...

But first, for my friend Stephanie Campisi, a Haiku with unicorns in it, based on Wolfborn:

Golden sky above,
My friend's horse a unicorn,
Armand, you are shamed!

Okay, I can see a real Haiku poet sneering, but it has the five/seven/five thing and it does feature nature as required, so hope you like it, Steph! You really did like that scene, didn't you? (g)

If you haven't read the book yet, it's in Chapter 9, set in the Faerie Otherworld, and has the kind of silliness both Steph and I enjoy. I do silly. I can't help it. 

Now, speaking of Faerie, I have at last acquired an e-copy of Robert Kirk's The Secret Commonwealth Of Elves, Fauns And Fairies, written back in the 17th century and a classic, a must for writers of the kind of folklore fiction I write. This edition has an introduction by Adrew Lang, who did all those coloured "Fairy Books" (I have the Blue one on my virtual shelves, courtesy of Project Gutenberg). It's said that Robert Kirk never died but was carried off by the Fairies. Well, I'm still reading the intro because Andrew Lang was a big name in folklore himself, and am having a ball. And you know how it is when you read something and, to paraphrase Helene Hanff,author of 84 Charing Cross Road, you find something interesting and say, "Hold on a minute!" and go check it out? Of course, she was writing a long time ago, when you had to go look it up in the library, but I bet she would have loved the Internet, which was just starting when she died. 

So, there were references to a book by Sir Walter Scott, on witchcraft and demonology, and like Ms Hanff, I said,"Hold it right there!" and went to find it with my good friend Mr Gutenberg and there it was. The intro to that one told me things I hadn't known, such as that he spent the last years of his life paying off a massive debt that wasn't his fault. Poor Walter!

But his book is there now, on my virtual shelves.

And I have the famous Secret Commonwealth! It was one of the books Melissa Marr used in her research for the Wicked Lovely series. Se really did some good research for those, some of them books I already had, such as The Fairy Faith In Celtic Countries, but this was one that had eluded me till now. And for $2.99 I now have access to it. There is an online edition, but I'd rather do it as an ebook, much easier to handle, and you can flip the pages.

Research is so much easier since the Internet!

PS What do you mean you haven't read 84 Charing Cross Road? It's a must-read for anyone who is passionate about books and reading.

Off to the conference!

Today and tomorrow I'm going ti be at Reading Matters. It's a conference that happens every two years, organised by the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library in Melbourne, held at RMIT's Storey Hall. I have been to all of them. It's a great opportunity to find out what's new, see writers I otherwise might never see or hear speak, mingle with fellow teacher-librarians - and, okay, promote my latest book!

I shall wear my Wolfborn T-shirt today and take along bookmarks for both Wolfborn and Crime Time. I'll wear the crime Time T-shirt tomorrow. And I'll be taking along some "Notable" stickers in case the bookseller actually does have copies of my book. One of the organisers told me last night that they had asked the booksellers to bring copies of books by about six writers coming to the con but not on the panels, so that's nice. I did email the lady from Reading's some time ago and hopefully, between us the CYL and I have persuaded them.

Time for breakfast and printing out the program! More tomorrow night, when I hope I have time to write a con report and maybe put up some pics.

The MSFC mini-con

Yesterday I went along to the Melbourne Science Fiction Club mini-con as the invited GoH. Very nice, my first time as a guest speaker at a con!

It was a freezing day when people would rather stay at home and the audience was not very big although it was bigger by the time I began than when I arrived. I forgot to take my camera, but thank heavens, that indefatigable photographer Helena Binns was along, snapping pics, and here is one of them.

I arrived at just after 11.00 a.m. with my ten copies of Wolfborn and, seeing how few folk were there, wondered if I'd have more copies than audience! However, I found a table and set up, popping Crime Time bookmarks into them, with a special con price; I'd bought the books from Random House at author's price and could sell them cheaper than RRP and still get the equivalent of my royalties out of them.

(I've had my first lot of royalties for Wolfborn, by the way, much to my delight! It's been YEARS since my advance was earned back that quickly - since the GST, in fact. At this stage, however, the only book that hasn't yet earned back its advance is Crime Time, and that's because of the messiness of putting children's non-fiction anywhere kids will actually find it. Bookshops never seem to know what to do with them. One book store manager told me that when he put the books facing outwards, he sold them right away. It's done well in school libraries, though, and I'm going to wear my Crime Time t-shirt to Reading Matters conference and see how many can sell that way. Not that the booksellers will bring any with them. But it might remind people).

To my delight, I actually sold three copies before I even started my talk. People stopped to chat, whether I knew them or not. The first talk was by a teenage boy called Duncan, who was keen to discuss computer games, which have really become elaborate since the first few games like Space Invaders and Pacman. I can remember when Prince of Persia was a basic animated figure jumping across chasms.

I hadn't thought I should have the cheek to ask for equipment to show my very silly crude book trailer, but as they had the equipment set up I asked if they could keep it that way and they saved the thing on to the desktop so I could put away my USB stick.

I explained that I'd prepared it for my students, who will be making their own book trailers later this term. It won't be going up on YouTube, even if it was good, because I've used copyright material, but it makes a good example that they can have a laugh at and do much better. I was pleased when the audience had a laugh over my "big soppy dog" slide - you know, "Faerie! The Lord of Animals! Ruthless Villains! And a big soppy dog."

That made a good start to the talk. I talked about the background to the novel and the research and the editing done on it. One lady asked if there was anything I'd rather had not been edited out, i.e. "will there be a director's cut?" and I admitted the book looks much better for the editing, because you can't always see things when you've been so close to it, and the editors were pretty good; when I said, "I don't think this should change and here's why" they said, "Fair enough." I told them about the Year 8 students who had read bits of the novel because I wanted them to be involved, and how supportive my students were of all my writing.

I spoke of the long time it took to get the thing published and the problems with publishers who moved from one company to another and then rejected your book again! In the end, it was lucky for me that one particular publisher did move, because she was finally able to accept my book that she'd had to reject last time even though she'd liked it.

After the talk, I sold some more books. Altogether, seven copies out of my ten left the hall with new owners, which was nice. Believe me, there are ALWAYS people who just want to browse and keep you talking and have no intention of buying. Always. So you're lucky to sell everything and there were not a lot of people there.

I gave the last few Crime Time bookmarks to Sue Ann Barber, a fellow teacher-librarian who was on another stall, and left around 3.00 pm. I was lucky enough to get a lift all the way home from Bruce Barnes, a gentleman I've known for years.

I appreciate having been invited and maybe it's the first of many such invitations by conventions. I can only hope.

Me and my new T-shirt!

Isn't it great what you can do nowadays? I decided it might be nice to promote my new book, so I went to the local camera shop and using a simple JPEG file, I got a T-shirt in an hour, promoting my book for about the same price as promoting someone else's product (and I never have understood why people pay to wear a shirt advertising a brand of shoes or jeans! You'd think the company would hand out the shirts for free). I also got a shirt with my last book, Crime Time, on it, but haven't yet worn it. As soon as I can, I'll get someone to take a photo of me in that one.

Meanwhile, I got my nephew Mark to take some photos of me in my lovely new shirt and am considering getting some mugs made up for friends who have already bought the book, so what do you give them?

I know this has been possible for years, but hey, this is my first time!

Here I am in it!

Wolfborn - lots of happy-making stuff

It finally came out officially on December 1st, although the shops had it before then. I wandered into Dymock's in the city, where I had been told they would be getting it in, and offered to sign any copies they had. "Yes, please!" said Zoe, the lady at the special orders counter, and her manager brought twelve copies out. I then offered bookmarks to go with them, because the bookmarks counter has been cleared for Christmas wrapping. This offer was happily accepted and then I had another thought: since the counter usually used to put advertising bookmarks was being used for wrapping - why not give away a few signed bookmarks with the first few wrapped gifts? Zoe liked that idea too, so I signed a dozen bookmarks for those. Nice!

Tomorrow I will be going to another Dymock's, at Southland in Melbourne, to do a book-signing, and see how that goes.

Meanwhile, the reviews and interview offers continue - very nice! George Ivanoff reviewed it in Literary Clutter, the blog connected with Boomerang Books,AND did an interview, there was, of course, the very first one in AsIf, written by Tehani Wessely, teacher-librarian extraordinaire, editor, reviewer and former ASIMite. There is a fabulous one in ReadPlus and Tehani has done a very nice extra review for Fiction Focus.

But two especially exciting promos - a wonderful rave review on Marianne de Pierres' blog,Burn Bright, by reviewer Belinda Hamilton, not to mention the lovely interview.The other bit of excitement came the other day when one of my students looked up from her Dolly Magazine and said, "Miss, your book is in this!" You really know you've scored when you get a mention in Dolly - think of the thousands of girls who read it, not to mention quite a few boys. For any of them who might be reading this, Wolfborn has lots of adventure and a touch of romance. Well, it has to - it's based on a story that was one of a bunch of tales with romantic elements, not just the standard "mediaeval romance" which might not be what we think of by the term, although it often is.

The nicest thing of the lot is the reason why I couldn't get extra copies from the publisher to hand out at my school book launch on Monday and will have to buy a few at full price: the book was out of stock. I'm told it has already gone into reprint. After a week! Okay, it just means shops have bought up big for Christmas. There could be returns afterwards. I hope not. Fingers crossed!

At last!

Here it is - my book. I got my first advance copy on Thursday. I ordered some extra copies because my author copies won't be arriving for a couple of weeks. Yesterday I handed out a few copies to those students who had helped me early in the year. to their history teachers and to a friend on staff, then took some home for my mother and sister.

But there was no excitement quite like that I felt coming home on Thursday, finding the envelope and ripping it open. The students at my school have been sharing the excitement of the process. They got the first look at potential covers. I have to say, this is not the one most of them chose, but they have been pleased to share the process with me, asking now and then how it was going, when it would be out, could they read it when it did.

I'm hoping to do a school-based launch, if I can do it before all the end-of-year stuff catches up. Exams, assemblies, end-of-year activities... We'll see. If I can't do it now, I will have a belated one first thing next year, but I'm hoping not to lose the impetus.

It doesn't matter how many books you've done (this is my tenth if you don't count the manuscript I did for that small publisher who then informed all her writers that she couldn't publish because the Canadians didn't have the money to give her, but that's another story). It's always, always exciting to see the finished product for the first time. You never get used to it. Well, I don't.

Oh, joy!

Page Proof Time!

I've just received the page proofs for Wolfborn! This is pretty much what my book will look like when it comes out. Well, the layout will, anyway. I don't have it bound with a cover, as reviewers sometimes get. It's finally feeling as if it's really, really happening! And after getting my copy of The Worlds Next Door, an anthology of children's spec fic stories published by Fablecroft Press, and finding I'd left one error, I'm going to be a LOT more careful. The editor, Sarah Hazelton, has warned me this is it - my last chance to fix anything before it goes to the printers. She says it's gone to a proofreader, which is good, but I'm taking no chances. And I have found some sentences that don't make sense - well, perhaps I missed them with all the "track changes" lines going here, there and everywhere.

It's all very exciting. The book will be 289 pages long, more than I had expected, if not exactly thick as a brick. That's just a nice length.

And Alice at Dymock's is organising a book signing for me on December 12th. My first as an individual! If I can't sell lots of copies to passers-by at Christmas, when can I?

Stand by for more!

Copyedit Done!

My novel, first called Bisclavret, now to come out in December as Wolfborn, is getting to the final stages. Cover design done, complete with something called a 'shoutline" and cover blurb, copyedit complete as of today. I was surprised to see some things "corrected" when they weren't wrong, but this was to fit in with the company style manual. I also found some bits that I had got wrong ages ago and somehow missed, in all the writing and re-writing I've done.

Strange, really. This is my tenth book - eleventh if you count the one I wrote last year for a very small publisher who will never get any work from me again ... but that's another matter. Anyway - I have been through the editing/copyediting/proofing stages many times and somehow this feels different, probably because all but two of those books were non-fiction. And the two fiction pieces were children's chapter books, only the length of a short story. You learn so much.

In the past, because it was non-fiction and each chapter told a different story, I could write my book and send it in chapter by chapter, working with an editor as i went along. This one started with a complete manuscript and comments were made on the book as a whole.

That makes for a very different experience.

Still - it's very exciting now that it's really, really happening. I think I might have a very emotional moment when I see my first advance copy. :-)

A Book With My Name On The Cover

It's always exciting when you first see the possible covers for your book. Well, to be honest, I was horrified with some of the initial plans for my last one, Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, but the final product was terrific. Perhaps too terrific; it looks like an adult book till you open it up, so bookshops kept putting it into the adult true crime section, where it was a lot less likely to sell. And if they had thought it was for kids, they would have been horrified. Innocent little dears shouldn't be offered this sort of thing! But the students at my school grabbed it the minute they saw that gruesome picture on the front. And school librarians knew what their library users wanted; I think I will do quite well in Education Lending Right for this one. The cover of my Allen and Unwin books ranged from a library image of a roaring monster for the first one, through a woman with a test tube (cliche!) for the women scientists book to a delightful bewildered-looking cat and a spy with a maginifying glass for the spies book, Your Cat Could Be A Spy.

Now I've been sent three possible covers for my new werewolf novel, formerly Bisclavret, now Wolfborn. One, which I rather liked, was a blue cover clearly influenced by the cover for Melina Marchetta's Finnikin Of The Rock, had a silhouette of a wolf howling in front of a full moon with leaves and forest around. The second, which I believe the publishers favour, was red with a photographic wolf which, unfortunately, seems to be fading into the white background. I liked this least. A third had a photographed silhouette of a wolf against a bleak landscape and splashes of blood. Despite my own feelings on the matter, I've been showing these around and I've put them up in my library with the new books, asking students to vote on them. So far, the overwhelming vote has gone to the third one. The kids love it. They assure me that's the one they, personally would pick up, of the three. My bookseller said that was the one librarians would be most likely to take, but he is carrying copies of the covers on his rounds and asking for opinions. My friend Bart, a teacher-librarian at a large private school, has offered to show them there.

Whichever cover with my name on it ends up in the bookshops, I am very excited.

As always.