On Holidays & Hiatus

So I have made some very big decisions this week some to do with mental well being and some to do with reevaluating goals and aspirations.

I was asked two weeks ago by one of my full time teaching colleagues some questions about becoming a novelist - they were trying to give a year 11 student some guidance.

So I was letting him know the average earnings of Australian authors and the fact that its probably best if the student has a career or some training to fall back on.

But we got talking about what I was doing and how I work part time so I can write. This got me thinking that, while I have had some success with poetry publications over the last few years, I have taken to making myself busy with projects that are on the periphery of my writing, that don't stretch me and that allow my to "hide" from the task of improving my writing.

So for 2016 I won't be reviewing.  That is to say that I won't be taking review copy to read.  I will of course still support and share other's work via social media and you may see the occasional novel that I have read to take a break from the only project that I intend to do in 2016.

I will be engaging in a Year of Poetry.  I am still formulating the structure but the idea is for me to Read, Write & Rework, Study and Engage reflectively with poetry with a view to improving my craft and output dramatically.

In essence, take it seriously.

If you are interested in following along there's a link to the poetry blog above or you can go here.

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Change in reviewing procedures

So it appears that my faithful backup ereader, the old Sony PRS 505 is finally dying (8 yrs versus 11 months for my Kobo Vox).  At this point in time I can’t afford the outlay on a new reader( or a new phone) so I will be finishing off previously accepted ebook reviews by laptop. 

For the foreseeable future I will only be taking review copy in print form for novels and collections. For poetry reviews and small collections I may consider digital formats (pdf / epub).

I will also stop taking unsolicited reviews through the blog.  I have had a number of people sending me requests who obviously don’t read the blog or what I review.  I just can’t keep up with the volume.

I still intend to try and support the Australian scene as much as I can and will source review works through my contacts with traditional publishers, the Australian speculative fiction scene and Australian small press publishers.

 

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So endeth the year

So glad to see the end of 2014.

It wasn’t all bad, indeed creatively it was a really good year.  Getting nominated and winning two Ditmars was perhaps the highlight. Growing as a poet and getting some paid publishing credits to my name was very rewarding.

I became an uncle again. I attended conventions, met some long time friends for the first time in the flesh. I did lose about 20 kilos which I need to keep reminding myself about, because its slipped my mind as an achievement this year.

The end of the year came with disappointments and illness.  I didn’t get a job that would have set me up for the next few years and I underwent treatment for some health issues that seemed to come from nowhere, but which after reflection I can see have been a long time coming.

I participated in the Australian Women Writers Challenge for the third year running and will need to compile that and a gender audit of my reading and reviewing for the year.   I read more poetry and discovered more poets.

I am still reading for the Aurealis Awards and that has been rewarding and educational.  I recommend saying yes if you get the chance.

So until I have the wherewithal to write again, please have a happy and safe new year.

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A prayer for the small things– Poetry and an Update

Busy four weeks as you may be able to tell from the slow post count.  I have been working full time, helping manage the downward decline of our 18 year old cat, trying to read Aurealis Award Submissions and reading the odd review title as well.  This weekend should see some reviews of books I finished weeks ago.  Until such time I shall inflict some poetry on you.  I subbed this to an Inkermann and Blunt anthology and sadly it didn’t make it.  So here it is:

 

A prayer for the small things

Oh, say a prayer for the small things
for in all things, small things matter.

Oh, say a prayer for love’s gentle touch
for too much is made of passion.

Oh, say a prayer for a stranger’s smile
for while here, such joys are fleeting.

Oh, say a prayer for an unkindness spared
for where unkindness lives, it festers.

Oh say a prayer for a listening ear
for to hear a sorrow, helps heal it.

Oh, say a prayer for a considered word
for once heard, words have no master.

Oh, say a prayer for the small things
for in all things, their sum’s the larger.

 

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Taking stock – Examining reviews by publisher

Regular readers will be familiar with my gender audits and so this time I thought I would examine reviews by publisher to get a handle on how my reviews are weighted.

Now the following list only goes back over the last 2.5 years.  It lists publishers and self publishers and should give you a broad picture of the work I have reviewed.  In makes no differentiation between review copies and books that I selected/bought myself, indeed it’s missing a number of books bought from TPP and Ticonderoga that languish on my TBR pile.

Publisher	2014	2013	2012	Total
Hachette/Orbit/Etc	5	9	16	30
Wizard’s Tower	1	1	0	2
Solaris	4	1	3	8
Interactive Press	1	0	0	1
Picaro	2	1	0	3
ARF	1	0	0	1
A&U	2	3	4	9
SALT	2	0	0	2
Shambala	1	0	0	1
Peggy Bright	1	1	2	4
Shane Kozycan	1	0	0	1
UQP	1	0	0	1
FableCroft	0	2	0	2
Twelfth Planet	0	2	6	8
Ticonderoga	0	2	0	2
Satalyte	0	1	0	1
Momentum	0	2	4	6
Endeavour	0	1	0	1
Cloudburst	0	1	0	1
Flipreads	0	2	0	2
FutureFire	0	1	0	1
Harper Collins	0	3	0	3
Bloomsbury	0	2	1	3
CSFG	0	1	0	1
Emergent	0	2	0	2
Patty Jansen	0	2	0	2
XOUM	0	0	2	2
Rabia Gale	0	0	2	2
Tor Rox.	0	0	1	1
Patrick Duffy	0	0	1	1
Gilgamesh	0	0	1	1
Angry Robot	0	0	1	1
RBB	0	0	1	1
Glenda Larke	0	0	1	1
Math P.P.	0	0	1	1
CDL	0	0	1	1
Clan Destine	0	0	1	1

Comments

I can’t say there’s much that is surprising here, I thought that the reviewing would be heavily weighted toward Hachette etc. because the send me quite a lot books and aren’t shy about doing so. 

I thought I had reviewed more Twelfth Planet Press but then I sometimes forget that I have purchased most of their catalogue and not necessarily read it all. I note too that the Twelfth Planet Press and to a lesser extent Ticonderoga’s reviews are influenced by the fact that I have been participating in the Australian Women Writers project for some time and those two presses are focussed supporters of Australian women writers.  Twelfth Planet Press’ Twelve Planets Collection is a nice way to make your challenge target.

The Solaris figures are a little surprising but then I'’m a huge Rowena Cory Daniells fan and they have recently picked up Jonathan Strahan as well so maybe I shouldn’t be.

Top 5 reviewed publishers over the last 2.5 years

1. Hachette etc    30
2. Allen & Unwin  9
3. Solaris/TPP     8
4. Momentum      6
5. Peggy Bright   4

If I break the table into Traditional/Medium and Small Presses(incl Self pubbed)

Large	45
Medium	17
Small	49

Note I have ranked Solaris and Momentum as medium presses.

I think there’s an even spread between small and large presses and to be honest Hachette gives me access to a number of subsidiary publishers so I am not concerned about the weight they seem to have here.  Indeed they also publish a few Aussie authors in our scene.

Likewise I am not too concerned with the weighting among some of the more prolific small presses.  I have a Peggy Bright title in my reading queue at the moment and I have only one more Twelfth Planet book I am reading.  But I will use this as an excuse to read Angela Slatter’s and Lisa L Hannett’s collections from Ticonderoga. 

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2014 – The Cunning Plan

So yesterday I let the year slide by through a veil of Whisky Sour and 2014 arrived slightly seedy.  Still at least my neighbours didn’t catch me crawling from my car in my pyjamas. So what is the big plan for 2014(understanding of course that no plan survives contact with reality or children)?

Work

• I plan to return to working 2-3 days a week as a relief teacher. I am not happy about this.  I should write a best selling book or something.

Writing

• I’d like to up my writing content and get some more poetry published in paying/prominent markets
• I’d like to continue the novel I have been procrastinating around

Reading

• I would like to read more books this year.  Maybe I should get on to this instead of surfing twitter and facebook.

Blogging

I maintained some respectable stats despite my blogging falling by the wayside toward the end of the year.  So I intend to:

• Blog more reviews
• Blog reviews of short fiction
• Blog DVD reviews

Podcasting

• I’d like to continue to raise the profile of Galactic Chat. We had a very good last 6 months but am toying with the idea of a two week schedule.

So that’s the cunning plan.

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Holidays on the Horizon

And what’s this? another post in less than seven days.  It has been quiet around here hasn’t it *crickets chirp* but dear readers I have been working and reading very hard.  Holidays are just a week away when I shall have all my time devoted to blogging and reading and podcasting.

If you are following on twitter you will be well aware that we, as in Me and the team, are relaunching Galactic Chat after a hiatus, on July 5th.  So I have been editing my arse off in post production and have interviews done two months in advance. I am so happy to be joined by some quality interviewers, some of whom are doing it for the first time but sound like naturals.

Check out the Galactic Chat page over here and subscribe or you can find us in the ITunes podcast directory.

Other than that it’s more reading and reviewing for me.  I am part way through the anthology Next which is proving to be a very charming collection and this weekend I shall be delving once again into Filipino Spec Fic for my ISF column.

There’s also a sekrit project I am working on that I am foresworn on pain of death not to reveal that could mean something special happening next year. 

Until I claw my way out of the editing mines.

Adios

Yes I’m Still Alive

It’s refreshing to know that when you don’t appear online for 2-3 days that people start questioning what’s happened.  So nothing new to report other than I have a new computer, I knew computer which runs Windows 8 (Why Microsoft? Why?) and that needs all the flash little bits of software loaded on to be able to do the most basic of things (like write this post).

So this is a bit of a test post to …erm test that everything is going according to plan.

 

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Creating eBooks of your blog posts

This is a follow up of sorts from yesterday’s post, it’s part reference for myself and for any other interested readers.  You’ll notice the eBook image to the right—>, where you should be able to download either a .mobi or .epub file of my 25 most recent posts to read in comfort on your preferred device.

That’s all well and good, but its a bit of a shotgun approach.  I asked the developer of eBook Glue if it was possible to provide a way of selecting specific types of posts and it is.

As it currently stands Ebook Glue takes your RSS feed and simply compiles an ebook(.mobi or .epub) file from the 25 most recent posts.  My RSS feed is below:

http://bookonaut.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I simply take this url and plug it into the field at Ebook Glue (note you don’t have to sign up but I have as it saves my feeds).

 

Creating eBooks from specific labels

Now let’s say I want to give you (and me) the option of downloading just my book reviews.  I would need to modify the feed to search for the Book Review label

http://bookonaut.blogspot.com.au/feeds/posts/default/-/Book%20Reviews

Note: the %20 seems to indicate a space in the label, for single word labels it’s not necessary.

It will still only generate a file of up to 25 posts but it’s an improvement.

 

Capturing Multiple Search Labels

Lets say that I want to refine it even further though and search for multiple labels.  Say I want to be able to download all the Book Reviews that I have written for Margo Lanagan.

http://bookonaut.blogspot.com.au/feeds/posts/default/-/Book%20Reviews/margo%20lanagan

You’ll see above that all you need to do is separate the search terms with a  /

 

Usefulness?

The developer has only been offering the service for 2 weeks, and plans to build upon it as it evolves and I presume he gets feedback from users.  I’d like to be able to create eBooks of all my reviews (somewhere in the vicinity of 70 post per year) and perhaps make ebooks of particular post series i.e. might have been handy for some of my work to be in ebook form for last year’s Ditmars.

So what do other bloggers think?

 

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Adventures of a Bookonaut in Epub or Mobi

Because I know that you just can’t get enough of this blog I have hunted down a service that will enable you to download the last 25 posts of this blog into an epub and mobi file(actually I didn’t hunt it down per se, it was showcased on Teleread). 

I know, am I not wonderful?

Seriously though, am I not wonderful.

Ok getting on with it.  It’s a service called Ebook Glue and it does a pretty good job of formatting posts into eReader formats ( to be honest I haven’t checked out the mobi file)but the epub was better compiled than one tested through DotEpub.

The site is in its infancy but I hope that as it devlops that i might be able to get filtered links so that I can compile an ebook of just my reviews for a certain year.

To download a copy of the 25 most recent blog posts go here.

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House Keeping – Review Index

Those with a keen eye ill note that I have added a review index page for 2012.  It’s fairly simple at this stage, being basically a filtered list of my archive showing only book reviews. 

I have plans to edit it later in the week to make title and author clearer.  Feel free to be opinionated in the comments about how you would like it to be organised i.e. chronological, alphabetical?

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Housekeeping –The Daily Papers

Astute readers, might notice that I have changed around some pages on the blog.  The Daily Papers page features the two Paper.li papers that I edit/collate. 

Paper.Li have added a couple of new features, one being the ability to install some script on a page (as I have done).  The other to provide discussion threads on individual papers.

So feel free to check them out.  They are a way of checking out what’s being said on twitter in regards to the subject areas that they cover, without you having to be signed up to twitter.

Check them out at the page link above or here and click through to get the complete experience.

By all means if you are a blogger/author who tweets and would like to be included in the source lists for either paper let me know in the comments.

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