Americans, they are all just so...AMERICAN.

The Great American Adventure.

We are fresh back from a trip to the states, a trip that we had talked about for a very long time (10 years is a long time to be planning an event, by any measure) and now, all too soon, it is over.

We got remarried in Vegas, saw some nice stuff, spoke to people about my book, and was heartened as to how well it was received.

I won’t bang on with the whole itinerary, but just know that in the 3.5 weeks we were there we saw a sizable chunk of the country.

Not all of it.

Not most of it.

Just a sizable chunk.

Thought I’d clarify that in case any of my US fans felt the need to weigh in with assertions that one CAN’T see all of America in 3.5 weeks.

I agree, hence keeping my estimate at “A sizable chunk”.

Enough of the geographical semantics. I’ll get to the point.

Which is:

Java Cabana - Memphis open mic night.

During the epic journey that was the great American adventure, (more on that in another post) while in Memphis we found ourselves staying in the fabulous Cooper-Young district...

... and fell completely in love with the area. An eclectic mix of bars, bookshops, art spaces, a cat rescue center and the fabulous Java Cabana coffee house.

Private?

A welcome reminder of why I write...

If you've been visiting the blog, and perhaps the facebook page, you might notice since the release of "Erasure" in early June that many of the posts that I've added tend to speak more from the "What's wrong with publishing" than anything else.

I really haven't set out to do that, it just seems to be the natural way of things. 

Generally when I sit down to work I don't follow a plan, so to speak. I just write, and pick up the pieces after. But write I do, and the next book in the series is well under way.

When it comes to blogging I take a different approach. If I have nothing to say, I don't blog.

It goes against the grain, I know. 

"You HAVE to blog, if you don't your book will die." Is the slightly exaggerated version of what all the author forums seem to preach. I didn't sign up for that sermon, and yet I still hear it ALL the time.

Today I have something to blog about. 

A solid reminder of what it really means when I say that I'm a writer.

I woke up Saturday morning, thankfully hangover free, and logged on to check out what was happening on that bright sunny day.

I was greeted by this message via facebook - and it made me smile (Thanks Gemma C.):

I have just read an awesome book, I can't remember ever being so taken by a book. I had chills, tears, laughs... the works. needless to say I double locked all my doors tonight and kept the lights on. Check it out guys - the book is called ERASURE www.athwebber.com BIG TIME WOW! and all you computer junkies totally gonna dig this one!

I've just started smiling again as I pasted the message.

I didn't set out to be some kind of writer-rockstar (although I'm not against the idea should the mantle be trust upon me). I write because it is what I do. I find it entertaining. I find the process incredibly detailed and frustrating at times, but while it (the process) might backhand me every now and then, the sense of achievement is a nice thing to feel.

This message reminded me that people do actually read my work.
It reminded me that the work is worthwhile.
It reminded me that someone I didn't know while I was writing the thing would ultimately turn the final page and feel like they had read, really read, what they probably say is a great book.

This whole writing thing can be an unbelievably lonely existence, but little beacons like this message stretch out of the gloom and reach me on my little hill. It is a connection I didn't know I needed until now. If I stand on tip-toe I can almost see the little hill top from where the beacon came, and can see many other little hills around it, all with their own singular inhabitant. 

I hope others see the beacon too. So that one day this valley will be ablaze.

An open letter to Amazon: Things have to change.

To: Amazon.com
CC: kdp.amazon.com

Re: Things have got to change.


To whom it may concern:

I am writing to offer my thoughts on the current state of play in the direct publishing market.

Never before in the history of publishing have so many had the opportunity to publish their own book. Certainly, vanity presses have been around for a significant amount of time, but I am talking about real, "Here's your book's ISBN and a store-front, so your book is now a saleable commodity" publishing.

It is an exciting place to be.

Gone are the days where an independent author would have to pony up for a minimum of a thousand books, which when delivered would take up residence in a handily cleared garage... or spare room, or form the foundations for a good sized coffee table.

Gone are the days when an aspiring author had to enter the lottery that surrounds literary agents-publishers-book-store-owners, and their ability to see a quality product, or product of potential. Or, quite frankly, (and just to add another layer of prize winning bonanza) each segment's inability to keep their desk in order so that every manuscript got read.

The last couple of years have heralded a new wave of publishing, allowing folk to simply write their opus and hit publish.

In short: The best thing about today's new publishing situation is that everyone can write and publish a book.

The worst thing? That in today's new publishing situation, everyone can write an publish a book.

The Balkan Express - Slavenka Drakulic

The Balkan Express:
Fragments from the
other side of war.

I am ashamed to say that I only remember the war depicted in this book as little more than an intellectual enterprise. It was given to me by a friend of my wife's as we had just come back from a holiday in the region, and she thought I might be interested.

In 1991, when the short essays in this book commence, I was 19 years old, and living in Melbourne, Australia.

I remember the news coverage, as limited as it was, showed in point form the actions of one group of people visited upon another group of people, all of whom were on the other side of the world.

News was like that in Australia in the early nineties. It's probably not much better now.

As one of the other reviewers on Amazon.com states:

This book was published in 1993. This makes it hard to read, since several times Drakulic talks about the war being "almost over". When one knows that the worst in the former Yugoslavia was yet to come this makes this depressing book even more depressing.

It's true. This is a hard book to read, not because of Drakulic's lack of writing talent, she writes supremely well, but because it describes the real hardships of everyday folk trying to go about their lives, while the dogs of war slaver in the streets below.

This is a great if somewhat humbling read from someone who was there, but with no political agenda. Just a person whose world crashed around her, leaving her not overly interested in the political why, but definitely the personal processes that happen when war is all around you.

Read this book, it will make you ask again and again: 

If we are supposed to learn from history, why do people repeat these atrocities?

I remember 1999 and what happened in Kosovo far clearer than I do the destruction of Yugoslavia in 1991.

Melbourne took plane loads of Kosovo refugees and I remember watching them disembark via a TV report.

It struck me then that refugee is a divisive term: Years of seeing African refugees starving in shanty towns had given me a pretty solid idea of what a refugee should look like.

The Kosovo arrivals looked like me, they wore the same clothes, same shoes, all looked healthy.

I remember saying to my girlfriend (now my wife): They could be passengers getting off a plane after any domestic Australian flight. These people aren't refugees, they could be us.

A counterpoint to the passage above re: Drakulic's belief that the war was almost over, 5 years and hundreds of thousands of lost lives before.

The Light Between Oceans - M.L. Stedman

The Light Between Oceans
M.L. Stedman

I really wanted to like this book, and on balance it is a good one. But there are some real clanging issues that hold it back.

It is set in the 1920's at what was then an Australian outpost. For the most part it is written in a modern voice - which I don't mind, what I do mind is that the author would go from writing a beautiful, descriptive passage (truly mesmerising painting of landscape and characters) then in dialogue the modern voice would continue until for reasons I can't fathom she seemed to periodically release her inner Steve Irwin. Terms like "doing your 'nana" or "give it a burl" are certainly colloquialisms of the time, but seemed shoe-horned into the text as a reach for Authenticity.

It's probably something that wouldn't be noticed by non-Australians, but adding such terms in the context that they were delivered is akin to writing an American Southern States epic in a modern voice, and then dumping a couple of "y'alls" in as some lame reach for authenticity.Or a Canadian book with some poorly placed "Aboots"

The other clanger, and this one unforgivable, is her switch between past and present tense. While I am aware that this is a technique to create immediacy and drama. It wasn't well applied.

I'd be there on the island, nothing existed but for the words and the image-scapes, and then the tense would change and I would feel like I'd have to interpret it to past and.... BAM I'm back in my reality holding a book. The Island gone and I am having to think about the context/tense/reasons why she chose to switch.

The colloquialism issue could have been resolved by picking a couple of obvious characters - like the boat guys - and made them as Steve Irwin as she liked... it would have given space and presence to the novel without looking like trying too hard.

The tense issue? Unforgivable.

The premise is a good one, the concepts of moral accountability; the isolation that might make people make decisions that they would not have had they been firmly attached to a community, rather than isolated on a rock and away from prying eyes, makes for some pretty hard questions. 

One of which is how not being accountable to the view of a community could sway a situation.

The technical issues though hold this book back for me, although I can see that the book has already gained a lot of traction so I am likely to be firmly in the minority on this. Nonetheless: even though the premise was immense I can only give it a 3 out of 5... at best.