Showing posts with label Edinburgh eBook Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edinburgh eBook Festival. Show all posts

August is a Busy (Festival) Month


Your Own Skipper

This is a time of year when most of my friends are off on holiday - or just back from it. It's shaping up to be one of my busiest months of the year!

First things first - this week, I'm 'mid-list' Writer in Residence, over at the Edinburgh eBook Festival. There's a regular schedule of posts, but if you can't be there all day (and who can? - it's a little like ANY book festival with a huge range of possibilities) - you can click on the Catch Up tab to the right of the home page and see what you've missed - and go to the post and read it at your leisure if you want!
Here's the link to my first mid-list writer post - but you can catch up with them at any time or read them all of a piece at the end of the week or later on.
Meanwhile, if you find anything you like, all the participants would be very grateful if you could spread the word even in a small way  - especially since there is so much which might be of interest to readers and/or of use to writers, whether indie or hybrid or traditionally published, new or experienced. There's comedy, ghosts, crime, life writing - you name it. And it's ALL free.

Just to make life more interesting (if a bit hectic) for myself, I'm back from the Inverness Book Festival where I was doing a seminar on Digital Publishing with the amazing Lin Anderson and the equally amazing Sara Sheridan. We do an occasional triple act for the Society of Authors in Scotland advising people about the possibilities for eBook publishing and marketing and  we always seem to get a great response and good feedback from the audience. Truth to tell, Sara is so good on the marketing aspects that I always learn something from her whenever we do one of these sessions. And this time, Lin was wonderfully eloquent on the democratizing effects of eBooks and online publishing, comparing these changes to the early days of libraries, when there was a certain amount of angst about ordinary people having access to books - how on earth would they cope without the intellectuals to tell them how to think?

Next week, I'm doing another session on digital publishing - a panel at the Edinburgh Book Festival this time, with Maggie Craig, and Mark Buckland with Lin chairing it. It's all go in the Czerkawska household and as if that wasn't enough, I'm working on revisions of my Canary Isles trilogy, aiming to publish the first book, Orange Blossom Love, by the end of this month. We'll see.

Oh, and there is a piece of bigger news to come - but I'll be posting about that soon!
And before I forget - I have another little trio of short stories out on Kindle right now. Your Own Skipper. These are a bit dark though. You have been warned!

EDINBURGH EBOOK FESTIVAL 2013


Here's a press release from writer and publisher Cally Phillips, who works incredibly hard to make this whole festival happen. I can't do better than let her tell you all about the festival herself - but please do visit and spread the word. I'm participating myself  - in fact I'm mid-list writer in residence at the ebook festival - and I'm also happy to be part of a discussion panel  on Being a Writer in the Digital Age at the Edinburgh Book Festival this year - that's what being a 'hybrid writer' means, I suppose. (Like the roses - hardier and more inclined to repeat flowering!) 

Everybody's doing it.
Now in its second year, the Edinburgh eBook festival is back from the Glorious 12th of August right through to Sunday night August 25th. This is a unique type of festival. Billed as ‘the festival that comes to you’ it’s available online any time of the day and night, with limitless audience capacity and everyone gets the best seat in the house. Dress code optional. And it’s FREE for all.

During the day a regular set of ‘events’ are posted up on the festival site. You access it via your ereader, smartphone, tablet, ipad or computer so that you can literally be in two places at one time. Wherever you are, as long as you have internet or wifi access, you can take part.

Our programme features individual slots at roughly hourly intervals throughout the day from the Short Story slot at 11am, right through to the ‘Conversations’ slot at 11pm. In between we will feature residencies, workshops, ebook launches, and sundry other ‘events.’ We even have the world’s first weathersheep ‘Derek’ who will be providing a ‘sheeping forecast’ each day at noon. Derek is this year’s internet phenomemon and his ‘Fifteen Grades of Hay’ trilogy is the talk of the cyber valleys.

Residencies include Catherine Czerkawska’s Mid-list, Cally Phillips’ Drama Retrospective and Chris Longmuir’s mammoth exploration of the Crime genre. For Sci-Fi buffs there’s David Wailing, as well as Travel with Jo Carroll, Horror with Mari Biella and Ghosts stories dissected with Dennis Hamley. Sue Price will inspire you regarding Functional Literacy and Ingrid Ricks will do similarly about advocacy. There’s a chance for you to participate too. Kathleen Jones will be running a Life Writing workshop and Bill Kirton a Comedy workshop.

There’s plenty more. Mr McStoryteller Brendan Gisby will host the Short Story slot and Roz Morris offers a new spin on Desert Island Discs with her ‘Undercover Soundtrack’ event while Jian Qiu Huang confirms the internationality of the festival with his ‘Conversations with the Universe.’

There are slots on ‘Market Choices’ where writers and publishers reveal ways they have approached publicity and sales and there’s launches of ebooks as well as talk about the relationship between narrator, author and reader. Our festival theme is Beyond the Margins and we hope to explore this concept in a way which will be thought provoking ,fun and open doors and minds as to the possibilities of digital publishing.

The festival opens with a look at Stuart Ayris’ unique, inspired and inspiring ‘Frugality’ Trilogy and closes with Peter Tarnofsky’s latest short story collection ‘Everything Turns Out Just Fine.’

And if that’s not enough, there will also be a FREE Goody Bag available throughout the festival.

Last year we welcomed over 9,000 visitors through our virtual doors. With over 150 separate ‘events’ and featuring oodles of writers – some you know and some you’ll want to get to know – we hope that there will be something for just about everyone. We hope to show you that the digital revolution is alive and well and that Beyond the Margins there’s a whole new world just waiting for you to read and read about.

Daily previews begin on 1st August with some background information about the main participants and events, giving you the chance to ease your way into the technology. But really, if you already know how to use an ereader, tablet, smartphone or pc it’s simple. Just go to www.edebookfest.co.uk and the events will come to you. You can catch up on events you’ve missed with a click or two to the appropriate category. Remember, it’s all free and everyone is welcome.

The festival has a facebook page where you can post your comments and you can follow on Twitter @edebookfest or have your say at #edebookfest.

There’s really no excuse not to visit this exciting new festival now, is there?

The Next Big Thing - The Golden Apple

I agreed to write a 'next big thing' blog when asked by an old friend Michael Bartlett of Crimson Cats  without thinking that almost everyone I know would already have done it. That's the nature of these chain blogs. It's a bit like pyramid selling. Those who are in at the start are OK.  But  one of my friends has a new Next Big Thing due out any time now, so I'll have at least one nomination. Meanwhile, here's a bit about my own Next Big Thing, with more to come soon.

Alan, my husband, on Tenerife, way back when....
What is the title of your next book?
It's the Golden Apple and it's an extensive rewrite of an old backlist title which sank without trace. But I loved the characters and the setting and the story. My original intentions for it got lost somewhere for reasons too complicated (and painful) to go into here. The new book will have the same skeleton but the flesh on those bones will be different.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

It's started out as a book about cross cultural marriage, something that has always interested me, perhaps because my dad was Polish and my mother was Leeds Irish. They loved each other to bits, their whole lives long, but it sometimes struck me that adjustments must have had to be made on both sides. As a child, I was never aware of it. I think my dad was just glad to be alive after the war. But all the same, it's something I have found myself thinking about and tackling in plays and fiction quite often. This was probably my first foray but I've done it since then. My novel Ice Dancing explores vaguely similar territory, and the sequel to that novel, which I'm already planning, certainly will.

What genre does your book fall under?
I'm always a bit phased by this question since just about everything I write crosses genres. I suppose I'll have to categorize it as a romance, but I'd quite like to invent a new genre: Grown Up Love Stories. That's what I often write.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition
I always had Antonio Banderas in mind for the hero, but time has passed and Luis is only in his early thirties! It would have to be somebody else tall, dark, sexy and Spanish. Any suggestions?

What is a one sentence synopsis of your book?
She marries him in haste; will she or won't she repent at leisure?

Will your book be self published or represented by an agency?
Oh self published. Like all my books, these days.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
For me, this is always a 'how long is a piece of string?' question. I never really know. When I'm on a roll I can get a first draft finished within a matter of months, and frequently do, but it will be a very very rough draft. Then I set it to one side and come back to it later, and repeat this process many times. I usually have a few projects on the go at once.

What other books would you compare yours to?
I actually can't answer this one. I don't know. I used to be compared to Daphne du Maurier, which is very flattering for me. I'd be happy to write so well.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
That's easy. Years ago, I spent a winter aboard a big catamaran in the Canary Isles with my husband, who at that time was a charter skipper. It was a company boat and we looked after charterers, but in practice they only arrived quite sporadically. Alan had his hands full most of the time looking after this beautiful big boat (it had two master cabins, three loos and showers, a captain's cabin and a saloon you could comfortably hold a party in) but I spent an enviable amount of time sitting on deck in the sunshine, writing. I wrote the first draft of the Golden Apple at that time. Then it went through the publishing process and got turned into something it wasn't. By the time I came back to Scotland, I was expecting a baby. The following winter, with Alan still working aboard a yacht in the Canaries, we borrowed a friend's apartment and I spent another few months in Los Cristianos, this time with a brand new baby. It was wonderful.
Now I'm restoring The Golden Apple to the novel I intended it to be, returning to the thoughtful book I first wrote. I was particularly inspired by the wonderful island of La Gomera which was my favourite place. I haven't been back since and they suffered with terrible fires last year, but I gather that they are flourishing again. A truly magical place. The novel is a love song to the Canaries really.

What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
It's a sexy, sunny novel. It should be published later in the spring. Watch this space.

I'm passing this on to Cally Phillips 
Cally has had a 20 year career writing for stage, screen and latterly fiction. She has worked as script reader for Channel 4, as secretary of Scottish Branch of the Writers Guild and held Drama residencies with DGAA and WLYT. As Artistic Director of Bamboo Grove Theatre Company (2002-2006) and facilitator for ABC Drama Group (2003-2010) she developed an advocacy style of theatre. In 2010 Cally set up HoAmPresst Publishing and in 2012 Guerrilla Midgie Press (an advocacy publisher) Cally has published novels, plays and short stories (in Scots). She is the director of the online Edinburgh eBook Festival which is held in August.