the Walrus said, to talk of many things, of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, and greenstone and violins. With apologies to Lewis Carroll.
I'm feeling a bit excited today because I think the draft is nearly ready to publish. Just getting a final copy edit done by Jane from Reedsy.com and then it's good to send to Kris and Lis from DIY Publishing Ltd, who have put off complete retirement from this part of the business to help me out. They did 'Finding Miriama' so I really wanted them to do this for me too. I just sneaked in. They will still do Web Hosting and Development under their dearjohn.nz banner.
On the topic of publishing, I've had the cover in my head forever, and I even ran a poll to get your ideas, and today I found out that Amazon probably won't accept my violin man because it is based on an AI image. A bit disappointing, but the DIY ladies have come up with a solution using actual photos, as with 'Finding Miriama'. The background might be from stock images of a cemetery, which are acceptable, and hopefully a painting done by Colin Greenwood. We shall see. One thing I had to delete from the manuscript was the 'Born to be Wild' lyrics. Of course Steppenwolf are going to object when they read the novel.
Now back to earlier news:
I neglected to mention in my October Blog that a bookshop in Invercargill called 'Pae Pukapuka' (paepukapukanz.com)has featured 'Finding Miriama' on its website and is open to sales on consignment. It also gets a small donation every time someone buys the audiobook on Libro.fm This audiobook site is very similar to Audible, but the plus side is that they support small local bookstores.
While I'm talking about audiobooks, I did look up 'Finding Miriama' on Kobo, but the price seemed exorbitant. If anyone has Kobo, please let me know what my book price is. Maybe it works differently to Audible.
I can also add Pakuranga College library to my list of customers, which makes me super proud. It gives the story some credibililty, as it did when the Reference section of Hamilton Library bought one last year.
The panel I was on with Charlotte Lobb and Carol Garden during the Tauranga Escape Festival was fun, despite my nerves. I was hoping no-one in the audience would ask me a hard question, which they didn't (because they were my friends). And the amazing thing for me was that despite not having any luck with bookshops in the past, that night they purchased four copies, and I found out when I called in yesterday that two of those have sold. Woot!
This month has been one for panels. The other one I was asked at the last minute to join was part of The RV Book Fair 2024 organised by Lucia Matuonto from 'The Relatable Voice'. The other participants besides Lucia and myself were Pat Backley and Mandy Eve-Barnett. Amazingly we all managed to turn up for the Zoom, even though we were sitting in Spain, England and New Zealand. We are all writers of historical fiction amongst other things and we just had a very casual 45 minute conversation which seemed to fly by. You can listen to it on The RV Book Fair through www.relatable-media.com between the 16-23 November.
On the travelling front, I did mange a few days down in Wellington, to catch up with family and attend the annual Verve Writers Festival. I went along to hear Paddy Gower, who surprised me with his humility. I might even get his ebook one day.
Lastly in this report, I shall mention books I have read/listened to. They are: Kate Morton's 'Secret Keeper', Rebel Wilson's autobiography, Liane Moriarty's 'Here One Moment' and Katherine Leamy's 'Dare to Travel Solo'. A bit of a mixture there.
Also in a moment of madness, whilst waiting for my draft to come back from my editor, I began Chapter One of Book 3. I've called it 'Book Three' and have no idea when I'll continue, but there you go. It's so I can still call myself an author on my immigration card, rather than 'retiree'.
That's it for now. I'll leave you with a photo of one of my friends from downtown Tauranga. (The one in the front).
Arohanui
Donna
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