Firstly, let me apologize in advance for the brevity of my posts these past couple of weeks. My life has been a constant state of activity which has prevented me from sitting still for more than a couple of minutes at a time. In the rare few moments that I have had to just "chill" the last thing I have wanted to do is sit down in front of my computer.
I have gotten some serious DVD watching in though - which has been cool.
So these past couple of weeks have seen a couple of really good radio interviews emerge between myself and a program on Melbourne community radio and on New York Internet Radio (check the archive on the side bar to find links to the audio). I felt hesitant about the results of those initially but on listening back I found they were pretty damned good - not too much umm'ing and ahh'ing on my part, enough information put forward by myself to showcase the book and a kind of nice conversational about writing and words in general. They are definitely keepers.
I've also had a piece published at The Creative Penn which is a fairly renowned portal for writers, authors and publishers and I consider the significance of this - fairly...significant! I was tasked by Joanna Penn (owner of the site and publishing guru) to produce a piece about "How to be a Man in the romance market" and it wasn't easy. It didn't know whether to imbue the piece with a sense of fun or whether to play it completely straight but I think what emerged was a piece that is humorously straight (???) - Oh God - I have no idea if that makes any sense at all...does it??? Anyway - it turned out to be pretty enjoyable and I am proud of the result. It's looks damned good on the page too. In a few days an interview I did with Kristi Faith of Random Acts Of Writing will go live. I'm looking forward to seeing that because it was a fun interview to do.
My B.I.L. who works in printing surprised the heck out of me this past week when he dropped round about a thousand (!!!) very high quality bookmarks promoting my novel which I can hand out to people and leave a few lying around in some cafes. It's an awesome idea and so far I've convinced a few places around the traps to let me drop some off.
I think the thing I am most chuffed about is the article that appeared in my home town newspaper "The Traf News" last week. I'm getting a steady stream of updates from my parents that it has set the district abuzz and everyone wants to get a hold of this book of mine. Apparently, even those who aren't at all computer savvy are attempting to become overnight experts on the internet in order to jump into the realm of digital books - which is really sweet. I have this image of an old dairy farmer I know sitting at his beat up old Win95 machine that he's not used since ... 1995!! and he's yelling to his wife in the kitchen "Margaret!! How do I "start this thing!!?? I want to get myself this eBook thing of Steve and Sue's boy!!"
Turning people on to the idea of a digital book - especially here in Australia - is a hard nut to crack. Despite the explosion of Apple iPhones and Digital Readers (that are beginning to take off down here) many a consumer still prefers the "feel" of the paper and card in their hands. They consider the eBook to be somewhat lacking in tactility - even though it's the story that is the tactile heart rather than the medium that it is presented in.
So I gotta (excuse the lingo) drag my arse of to work again tonight for another round of night duty at the hospital. Monday's are always a downer as I guess they are for most people but, getting yourself into night duty mode is always a challenge because you know that - after having been awake for a day as I have been, the knowledge that it's gonna be at least another 13 hours before you're gonna get to sleep again is a tad deflating. And I don't know what I'm going to be in for once I get to the hospital so that's always an additional little head screw.
And so it goes forth...I promised some people another "Character Inspiration" piece so I better hop to and get that done over the next couple of days.
Talk soon.
DFA.
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