Barbara Algie on NZ Sporting genius!

‘Strike up the Band’/’Roll out the Barrel’/’Congratulations’/and ‘Wasn’t that a party?’ All amazing songs but I’ll tell you more about them later.

Right now it’s all about National Pride in this under-populated chunk of land whose exact whereabouts has some people in the world scratching their heads. This week we are celebrating a host of amazing moments in the worldwide sporting arena

1) National Sport – ‘Rugby Racing & Beer’. Our All Blacks, whose veins are a combination of fibre optic cable and No.8 fencing wire, brushed off mangled muscles to defeat a burly South African team by a country mile, causing nationwide Sunday hangovers.

2) Ranfurly Shield – Provincial challengers have been playing ping-pong with the ‘Log o’ Wood’ as

it’s widely known. Otago (rank outsiders) held it briefly before it was wrested from their grasp by the Magpies from Hawkes Bay who didn’t even have time to give it a polish before it found itself in the firm grip of Counties Manukau. The Shield is beginning to feel dizzy, so – watch this space.

3) Sweet was the victory of Netball’s Silver Ferns over their Australian opponents in the first of a bruising series of Five Tests where the slogan of our so-called friends across the ditch is ‘take no prisoners'. For once our kiwi girls managed to forget they were the nice-guys and inflicted the necessary amount of push, biff and shove, for a narrow cliff-hanger win. ‘Go the Ferns!’ for the series.

4) World-beater Lydia Ko – what can we say? This young lass has put new emphasis on the phrase ‘a real cool cat’ by astonishing the golf world with her ability not only to make the cut in every tournament in which she has so far competed, but whose short game is the envy of players, male or

female. Her aim? To be the best in the world. Good luck Lydia - ‘Go Ko – Turn Pro!’

5) NZ Rowers – Bedecked with so many medals they set the airport security devices ringing like the Bells of St Mary’s. Rowing – showing the world how it’s done.

6) Now to the ‘biggie’ – America’s Cup where Team New Zealand need to win just one more race to bring the Auld Mug back to where its empty (burglar-proof) cabinet awaits in the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. I’m not sure the description of this event as a ‘Regatta’ is correct. Rather than a genteel afternoon picnic with cucumber sandwiches it’s more a bitter battle currently being waged on San Francisco Bay. The rivalry between Jimmy Spitall (the Pitbull) and the Deano/Dalton duo (the Icemen) is intense, but thankfully somebody has resurrected a pair of red socks. A gimmick yes, and some smell of mothballs, but one which seems to be working for our unflappable crew.

So please don’t worry about stomach ulcers or angina pains – put on those red socks and pray – HARD – and after we win tomorrow’s race (fingers crossed of course) you can start singing all those songs at the top of this blog and don’t worry about impending hangovers – they may go on for a month or two but ‘they’ll be worth it’!

 

Barbara Algie

Sept 19 2013

                                                           Photo: Bev Robitai

 

Vicky Adin on Facebook for authors

For those indie authors who wonder how to reach those elusive readers, I came across this post - http://socialmediajustforwriters.com/4-sure-fire-ways-to-generate-engagement-on-facebook/ – the best I’ve seen – explaining the difference between a Facebook profile (personal) and a Facebook page (professional).

A Facebook profile is for people. A Facebook page is for products (books!), services, nonprofits, and businesses.

Having a Facebook page will enable you to promote it, announce your readings, and inform your readers of upcoming workshops you’re giving. Technically, writers can’t promote their wares on their Facebook profiles

Even so, I struggled with some of the concepts.

After several experiments, the author – Frances Caballo – came to the conclusion that:

•     On your Facebook profile, personal information trumps beautiful images. Profiles are for friends and they want to hear about your life, your travails and your accomplishments. They also want to help so don’t forget to solicit their feedback.

•     Information about your specialty or niche will perform better on your Facebook page, not your profile. I’m a writer who specializes in social media. I love to post about books, libraries, social media marketing, and authors. However, those types of posts work better on my Facebook page where my fans expect me to write about social media and as writers themselves, appreciate quotes by writers. So keep professional interests on your Facebook page and keep personal information you’d like to share on your Facebook profile.

•     The image posted was beautiful, but it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t a picture that I’d taken on vacation or after a day at the beach. If that had been the case, more of my friends would have left comments. Images in and of themselves, despite the beauty they capture, won’t generated the engagement you’d like to have on your profile.

•     Facebook users love to laugh. Whenever I post an image that’s hilarious, whether it’s on my profile or my page, the engagement goes up. This is true for both your page and your profile; something truly hilarious that isn’t offensive may trump everything else, except for your profile when you ask people for their help.

I agree that photos and images are postings that attract comments and likes. A good photo or humorous image and hitting ‘like’ is quick and simple. But in this article, the author also pushes the personal - Facebook profiles are all about sharing one’s drama, struggles, parties, promotions, and other personal items. And this is where I have a problem.

I am happy for people to know about me as an author, but do they really need or, more importantly, want to know if I have a cold, had chicken for dinner or my granddaughter was cheeky? My friends will, I agree; my family probably already know as I talk to them, but do my readers, followers and people who ‘like’ me want to know? I’d be interested to know your opinion.

As a reader I want to know what about my favourite authors: something of their interests and what excites them, but not personal and intimate posts. I want to know a lot about what they are writing, what the theme for the next book might be, and what inspires them. I am also more interested in the struggles they are having with writing rather than anything in their personal lives. Is that just me, being a fellow writer, or am I being too ‘out-of-touch’ in today’s world?

So this is where Facebook doesn’t work for me. You must have a personal profile to have a Facebook presence – okay, so far so good – and if you ‘like’ a business page (which I have done) you would expect to receive updates according to your setting.  Unfortunately, that also means an author not only has to spend time commenting on their personal page but also on their professional page, which takes them away from what they do – write books.

Yet anything posted on that business page does not necessarily appear in your personal news feed. Sometimes it might and sometimes not. I have a friend, both personal and on Facebook who updates here personal profile with interesting news. She is also an author. I have ‘liked’ her professional page, but rarely do I get any updates from that page.  I wondered if it was my ineptitude and somehow I didn’t have the correct settings. It appears not.

Another article by Stephanie Chandler - http://authoritypublishing.com/social-media/social-media-for-authors-how-to-use-promoted-posts-on-facebook/ - tells us Facebook deliberately controls the number of people who see the posts on your business page. The only way to overcome this problem is to spend money and pay for Promoted Posts.

What do you think?

Do you want read personal updates about people who you ‘like’ on a business page? Shouldn’t that sort of personal information be just for friends and family – people you know? Are your readers also your friends? What is the difference between a friend and a Facebook friend? I don’t like to share my personal with the wider world out there in cyber space who I don’t know, but thousands, even millions of people do. So much for the GCSB debate! (But that’s another story).

What would be the factor that would attract you away from the personal profile of an author to the professional page of the same person?  If I put my writing information – and I don’t mean hard sell: that doesn’t work in anybody’s world – but a link to my blog, for example. Would you follow that link more if it was on a professional page rather than my personal profile? According to this article, yes:

Facebook friends want to hear about the highlights of our lives, and not have to click a link that take them to a blog post. Do you agree?

Seems to me that social media, which is constantly highlighted as THE way to connect with your readers, is not all it’s cracked up to be, but then I’m old-fashioned like that. I want people to read my stories, not the story of my life today in one-sentence updates. So, I still have the problem – how do indie authors find their readers?

Vicky Adin

 

 

The New Face of Bookshops

When travelling last month I took the chance to check out the state of bookselling in Canada and the UK, and it was mostly a disappointing exercise. Bookstores, unable to make enough profit by selling books, have become houseware and accessory stores, filling their retail space with knicknacks and completely unrelated products.

 

 This is a branch of Chapters - the equivalent of Borders - hardly looks like a bookstore, does it?

 

I guess they need to do whatever it takes to survive. There were certainly no independent bookstores in sight in any of the towns and cities I visited, only big chain stores, or secondhand bookstores.

But on the positive side, I was impressed by the care taken by the Toronto Central branch of Indigo, where I found all kinds of interesting displays designed to unite books with readers who would enjoy them. That's where bricks and mortar stores need to concentrate their efforts to stay relevant. Having titles recommended, either by a human or a well-thought-out display, tips the balance between buying a book in the shop or getting it later online.

 Here are books for Book Clubs, and mystery lovers.

 The books most often stolen! Fascinating set of titles!

And special interest books grouped together so customers can browse them easily, probably finding more than one they'd like to buy.

There's no silver bullet to 'fix' the problems with book selling, and I think bookshops will continue to struggle in the face of cheaper and more convenient book-buying options. It will come down to customer support. If they can offer an experience the customer is willing to pay a little more for, then they'll survive.

Meanwhile, writers continue to find new and exciting ways to get their books in front of readers with or without bookstores.

Speaking of which - open invitation to a double book launch on Tuesday 10th, 6pm at Takapuna Library. Shauna Bickley and I are talking about our new publications Lies of the Dead and Sunstrike. All welcome!

cheers
Bev

US Tax Terrors!

If you have ebooks published on Kindle, you may have received the following email and been struck by foreboding chills concerning form-filling and migraines.

"In order for Amazon to comply with U.S. tax reporting regulations, it is required that all KDP publishers provide valid taxpayer identification. Our records are showing we haven’t received valid tax information for your account yet. To ensure you may continue selling on Amazon, please complete your tax information by 10/25/2013. 

A new online method is available to submit your tax information by taking a short tax interview. Please follow the instructions below to submit your tax information:

  1.  Sign into your KDP Account at http://kdp.amazon.com

  2.  Click on the “Complete Tax Information” button at the top of your Bookshelf.

  3.  Be sure to enter accurate information and avoid typos in Name(s) or Tax ID numbers.

 The tax interview will guide you through a step-by-step process to determine which tax form is right for you and gather all required details to update your account. Once the tax interview is complete, you can follow the status of your submission on your KDP Account page under “Tax Information”.

 

To do the interview you'll need a US Tax number. There is some disagreement over exactly which US Tax number you will require and how best to get them. I've been researching the problem and have found a helpful post from a British writer, who says that phoning the US to obtain an EIN number is the most effective solution. Here's the link to her blog post which has numerous comments from people who have followed the process and added their experiences.  http://catherineryanhoward.com/2012/02/24/non-us-self-publisher-tax-issues-dont-need-to-be-taxing/ 

 

It seems that if you are direct about saying you are simply selling ebooks through Amazon from outside the US, you should be given a number within 7-10 minutes. No need to fill out massive forms and post your precious passport to the US to verify your status!

 

I'll give this a go when I can find the courage, and let you know how I get on! It's got to be better than going to the accredited NZUS Tax company in Auckland for help and forking out $400 for a consultation!

 

Once you have your EIN you can fill in form W8BEN for Kindle, Smashwords and Createspace so that your earnings are only taxed at 10% instead of 30%. (I think.) And Kindle won't close your account!

 

Ah, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, eh? Wish me luck.

 

Bev

 

 

The horror genre is one of the most popular literary forms.

Maureen Green

When writing 'Thriller Chillers' and immersing myself in the character role, emotional empathy becomes so strong that I find it somewhat draining and frequently disturbing when the character takes over. I'm often left wondering where that chilling idea or action came from, for, nothing, nothing captures the pain that lies at the heart of human beings more than something overwhelmingly frightful, loathsome, shocking and abhorrent.

In a truly horrific experience we have no clear idea of how to react. We may freeze; or our head may snap up like an alarmed bird's and our eyes swell before all the panic, the pain and the quashed screams of one's life erupt into the air. The horror genre is constructed around such emotional and physical responses. It seeks to produce in its audience anxious fright and hair-raising chills.

            Across history and culture, horror stories have served to document and illuminate the human condition. Horror lies at the very core of literature, from scary narratives in folklore and fairy tales to a long-standing tradition of fear-narration. Horror lies in the tension between the figurative and the real, the conscious and the unconscious. It is an emotional response extremely personal. An act that horrifies some will barely make an impression on others. 'Man's inhumanity to man', anger-motivated violence, murder, abuse, and the worst of all acts, the deprivation and cruelty heaped upon our children disgusts, yet provides compelling reading.

In our life time we can experience, either as an onlooker or an active participant, acts so bizarre, that extreme sensory responses activate.

It was during the 1951 Waterfront Dispute - the longest, costliest and most widespread dispute in New Zealand history - that I tasted, for the first time, the extreme emotional forces associated with horror. Few confrontations have divided New Zealand and created a depth of feeling that produced bitter divisions between neighbours, friends and families. The number of New Zealanders unaffected could be counted on one hand during this time of great nationalism, civil disobedience, prejudice, stubbornness, passion and anger. For five months, men, women and children throughout the country carried the burden of these events.

            It is in, Footprints in the Sands of Time, a collection of short stories recognized by the Turnbull Library as of historical significance, that I write about this experience. A story I called -

Blackballed

Something thwacked on the back of my neck. A small paper missile; the ones made by spitting on paper and rolling it into a tight ball, ricocheted onto my desk. I swung around and Jackson leered. His lips stretched taut showing the gaps in his front teeth. “Your old man’s gonna get it today. The miners and the wharfies have something special for the pigs today. They've got guns.”

“Leave me alone,” I whispered.

Miss Bagnall lifted her head from her marking. “Adelaide Taylor, no talking. You know the rule during silent reading.”

“But, Miss...”

The class, nearly all children of the strikers, snickered as Miss Bagnall placed two fingers to her lips. “Shhhhh.”

And the class aped her reprimand.

I should have known better than to try to explain. There were hundreds of the strikers’ kids in our school. Roberta Thomas and I were the only policeman’s kids who attended Omanaki School.

The old school bell burred out, luncheon break. Four classes in the unit, eager to be free of the restraints of the classroom surged along the corridor jostled and elbowed at the narrow doorway before spilling out into the playground and freedom. 

As usual, the strikers’ kids gathered at the far end of the playground. Today their mood seemed different.  Ugly! I could smell it. I even thought I could taste it...'

It was during this time of unrest that I discovered Edgar Allan Poe's, 'The Tell-Tale Heart', a tale where an old man's cloudy eye incites the narrator to an act of madness.

The hook, 'True——nervous—very, very, nervous I have been and am.' captured my attention; the story as it unfolded was creepy, chilling, thrilling.

While I read, 'Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker and louder and louder every instant,' my own heart banged against my ribcage and my pulse played a symphony in my ears. I heard that heart beat in moments of silence, week after week.

I then tackled Poe's poetry and was mesmerised by the lyricism and the economy of words used to create a chill.

Leave my loneliness unbroken!

-quit the bust above my door

take thy beak from out my heart,

and take thy form from off my door!

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore"

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him steaming throws his shadow to the floor;

And my soul from out the shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted-nevermore

Consequently, roughly fifty years on, having immersed myself in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Shelley and other canonised authors of horror stories, when I came to writing for adults I chose to write 'Thriller Chillers' . Works in the horror genre remain some of the best-selling and most cherished books of all time with chilling experiences that assist in providing the reader with coping strategies. 

I have so many horrific acts which have never been aired in the public domain to weave into works. Books already published have a bizarre event that motivated the writing. Consequences, Tangled Web, Snatched are adult works and, Code of Silence is a work for young adults. 

SHOWING, NOT TELLING.
We are bombarded constantly with the advice to Show, Not Tell. Everyone I know diligently works through their writing eradicating any telling, because we all know the great bar to becoming published is the sin of telling. 
As a beginner writer, it is very difficult to hold on to my own convictions in the face of emphatic critiquing to the contrary. If I re-express a section in a way which will presumably satisfy the purist ‘Show-ers’, I don’t always feel as if I've achieved much, or more importantly, that how I want the book to read has been improved. It seems to me that jumping on the ‘telling’ is too easy a target; and does not necessarily reflect a considered assessment of the whole manuscript by the ‘critiquer.’ (And I acknowledge this might simply be my defensive mechanism feeling my ‘literary darling’ is being criticized.)
The subject vexes me and so I looked it up on Wikipedia; and found this article:
 Show don't tell is a technique often employed by writers to enable the reader to experience the story through action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description. The goal is not to drown the reader in heavy-handed adjectives, but rather to allow readers to experience the author's ideas by interpreting significant, well-chosen details in the text. The technique applies equally to fiction and non-fiction.  The concept is not just literary: It also applies to speech, movie making and playwriting.
Nobel Prize winning novelist Ernest Hemingway was a notable proponent of the show, don't tell style. His famed Iceberg Theory, also known as the "theory of omission", originates from his bullfighting treatise, Death in the Afternoon:
If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.
"Show, don't tell" should not be applied to all incidents in a story. According to James Scott Bell, "Sometimes a writer tells as a shortcut, to move quickly to the meaty part of the story or scene. Showing is essentially about making scenes vivid. If you try to do it constantly, the parts that are supposed to stand out won't, and your readers will get exhausted." Showing requires more words; telling may cover a greater span of time more concisely. A novel that contains only showing would be incredibly long; therefore, a narrative can contain some legitimate telling.
Scenes that are important to the story should be dramatized with showing, but sometimes what happens between scenes can be told so the story can make progress. According to Orson Scott Card and others, "showing" is so terribly time consuming that it is to be used only for dramatic scenes. The objective is to find the right balance of telling versus showing, summarization versus action. Factors like rhythm, pace, and tone come into play.
 Creative literature (as opposed to technical writing or objective journalism) in general hinges on the artful use of a wide range of devices (such as inference, metaphor, understatement, the unreliable narrator, and ambiguity) that reward the careful reader's appreciation of subtext and extrapolation of what the author chooses to leave unsaid, untold, and/or un-shown. The "dignity" Hemingway speaks of proposes a form of respect for the reader, who should be trusted to develop a feeling for the meaning behind the action without having the point painfully laid out for him.
According to novelist Francine Prose, who refers to the "show, don't tell" concept as "bad advice often given young writers":
Needless to say, many great novelists combine "dramatic" showing with long sections of the flat-out authorial narration that is, I guess, what is meant by telling. And the warning against telling leads to a confusion that causes novice writers to think that everything should be acted out ... when in fact the responsibility of showing should be assumed by the energetic and specific use of language."
I feel a bit better; there are others out there who agree: not all things should automatically be shown.
Erin.

WRITERS BEWARE

    A recent press release covering the decline and fall of Jill Marshall, until recently CEO of PearJam Books, sends creepy things running up and down my spine. 
    Who can you trust these days? Even the mighty Fonterra has fallen face down in the cow-yard slush. Their resounding crash will have taken the publicity heat out of Jill Marshall and her broken dreams. But what of her innocent clients, all too often not only out of pocket, but out of patience, out of product (books) and out of mana, due to the sloppiness of the more recent editing and printing.
    So what went wrong? Is this a case of Murphy’s Law or just a minnow pretending to be a shark in the publishing/ editorial world?  New Zealand’s tiny population and consequently the ‘self absorption’ of publishing houses to an ever-diminishing degree has created a vacuum for writers. Consequently their course-plotting for any port that offers apparent shelter and the eventual publication of a treasured manuscript, seems the only way to go.
    What is to be done? Should a writer be looking overseas at larger more sturdy publishing houses, perhaps Australia? 
    Is this a warning that online publication is the safer way ahead?
    Modern technology is a mine-field to the older writer and the more than scary prospect that completed ms will have to be handed to the techno-savvy for good or ill. 
    Anyone who has an answer for current NZ writers who might right now, be putting out feelers to one of the few remaining publishing houses in this country, is invited to respond to this blog. Those of you who have experienced a disheartening and down-right dishonest state of affairs such as Jill Marshall and her PearJam Books failure, are welcome to record your plight and if possible what was done to rectify the matter.

Pam Laird