It's been raining men - but where's the benefit?

When everyone raves about ultra-fast fibre broadband, it's a no-brainer to sign up for it right? 
Now that we've done so, I'm not so sure.
The fibre cable arrived at our gate, along with all the other gates in our street, about two months ago, followed by a flyer from Snap! Did we want to sign up for some incredibly cheap rate, including landlines, that was significantly less per month than our existing supplier? Of course. So, after decades with Telecom, we switched everything - phones and internet provider - to Snap! 
Men came to make diagrams where the cable would go up our long drive. Men came to have another look at where it would go into the house. More men came back a month or so later to burrow up the garden border at the side of the drive, like big hairy rabbits burrowing holes every few meters and magically drilling horizontally in between to stretch the cable. Another bunch of men came to drill through the wall and connect up the phones and the Fritz-box that holds the key to the ultra-fast broadband. But they couldn't find where the copper cable comes in so they couldn't disconnect it. Several phone calls later, another bunch of men came to disconnect it. Meanwhile, my laptop wouldn't get emails and neither would my non-Telecom phone. More phone calls to reconnect. Apparently there was a new code that had to be entered into the laptop and phone, but nobody had bothered to tell us. 
It became something of a trial, really, waiting for endless people at call centres to fix each problem and get everything going again. But three weeks later, we're all connected and looking forward to enjoying the benefits of ultra-fast fibre broadband. I say "looking forward" because neither the cable provider nor the ISP has bothered to explain to us what the benefits actually are and how to access them. Such as movies. My laptop, being an older one, doesn't like playing movies unless they're on DVD - which don't need fibre broadband to be delivered to my lap. 
Next step: upgrading the laptop software to play movies and finding out what else the fibre wizardry can do.
It would be a pain to think that all those men laboured in vain.

An Indie learns to publish on Kobo and Smashwords

Having made the most of the "Kindle Select" promotional offers with my latest book (In Her Mothers' Shoes) - the ones you can only have if your book is exclusive to Kindle - I decided the time was right to move onto other pastures, hopefully just as green. Kindle was my first learning experience in Indie Publishing, as they call it. I sweated for hours over my keyboard formatting the book for html; I nearly went mad getting the cover the right size; and I almost lost it trying to get the worldwide distribution settings right. But after a while, I got the hang of it so well I published two of my earlier novels on Kindle as well - and each time, it got a little easier.

You would think, then, that publishing my adoption-triangle novel In Her Mothers' Shoes on Kobo and Smashwords would be a doddle.

Not quite.

While Kindle requires you to save the book as "Web Page, Filtered" (html), Kobo needs it in epub, odt, mobi (whatever that is) and, thankfully, word documents. Smashwords, on the other hand, only takes older word documents but the formatting is much the same.

The only major difference between Kindle and Smashwords is that you can't have your paragraphs indented AND a 12pt (or any-sized) gap after the paragraph. It has to be one or the other. But it was only a moment's work to reformat the whole book without the extra space. How times have changed!
There is also a specific requirement for how you word your copyright on Smashwords, which I hadn't struck before (Published by Felicity Price & Associates at Smashwords, © Copyright 2013 Felicity Price).
For Smashwords and Kobo, you need to have a new ISBN Number (which you get when you apply first time round - one for print, one for Kindle and one for epub).
With those four things sorted, I clicked the "Publish" button and my book was up there in the Smashwords and Kobo stores.
Just how this will translate to sales, I have yet to learn. I suspect there is a secret formula somewhere but, unlike Kindle, there doesn't appear to be a special "Select" marketing programme that helps boost your sales up the rankings.
That's my next task. I'll keep you posted!

Top Ten Tips for Painless Publishing on Kindle

Even the most reluctant technophone can become highly savvy when the motivation is to get your book out there. And by out there, I mean read by people who don't even know you.
In the last couple of months, I've put two of my earlier novels - No Angel and Call of the Falcon - up on Kindle. They say that the more books you have in your author profile available for purchase, the more you are likely to sell since people who enjoy one book can then go back and buy another. So I've done all the right things like put a request for a review at the end of the book (with an appropriate link) and put a list of my other books for sale at the front (with their own links too).  It takes time, of course, but the more you do the easier it becomes. I recall when I put In Her Mothers' Shoes on Kindle last year it took forever to get the formatting right and the cover the right size and the rights all allocated correctly. Now I've done it three times, I'm becoming a bit of an expert. In fact, I even ran a couple of classes on the subject of digital self-publishing for the local branch of the NZ Society for Authors earlier in the year. Who would have thought it?! 
So, if you're thinking of doing this yourself sometime, here are my summarised top ten tips for a comparatively painless way of publishing on Kindle: 
1. Get your book professionally edited - and that doesn't mean friends and family
2. Get your cover professionally designed by a graphic designer who knows about what works on a book cover
3. Write a promotional "blurb" for your book of up to 300 words that will make its target audience want to buy it (and you do need to work out what sort of people your readers will be). This is a vital sales tool, as are the 8 "key words/phrases" you choose to help your book be found. (Don't use words in the title).
4. Get ISBN numbers from (in New Zealand) www.natlib.govt.nz. You will need one for Kindle, one for e-readers and one for print. They are free.
5. Log onto Kindle Direct Publishing, create a password, click to create a new book.
6. Make formatting your friend. Follow what KDP tells you to do, set fonts (only 3 are available) at 11pt, delete any page numbers, and save the document as HTML (Save as: Type: Web Page Filtered)
7. Upload your book following the prompts. Then follow the instructions to see how it will look on Kindle. If it doesn't look right, fix the errors and upload it again.
8. Upload your cover according to the size limits, and add your "blurb" and your 8 key phrases.
9. Decide on your royalty option, pricing, tick it is not in the public domain (unless it's an old copyright-expired publication), worldwide distribution, Digital Rights Management and available for lending. Royalties (for those of us not US residents) will come in the form of a cheque mailed when the amount due reaches over 100 pounds or 100 US dollars.
10. Click Save and Publish and in a day or two you will see your book, its cover, and its blurb up in the Kindle Store.
Good luck! I'm looking forward to seeing what difference it makes having several books for sale now. I'll keep you posted - along with any further tips for getting sales.

Top writers are ignoring top writers' advice

In the last couple of weeks, I've read two of the most highly recommended female writers of our generation - Anne Tyler (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant) and Rose Tremain (The Swimming Pool Season). There is no doubt in my mind that they are both exceptional writers; their prose is inspirational. But taken as a whole, their books - specifically their characters and their stories - leave me pretty cold. 
In neither book was there a single engaging character. In both books, the characters were either brittle and damaged, just plain difficult, or passive pushovers who never learned to stand up for themselves. In both books, there was at least one major character who was a nutjob. 
Both books also go into a tremendous amount of extraneous detail, building up as complicated a picture as possible. And the detail often lacks interest.  There are a lot of dream sequences (yawn) and several totally irrelevant scenes, with new, unusual characters added, that made me wonder if they came from a writing exercise or short story Tyler decided to throw in for good measure.
Dare I say it, AS Byatt does this too - adds page after page of diversion and detail - sometimes in the extreme.
Yet what about all that advice to writers - by some of the world's top writers - to make sure all your subplots and action contribute in some way to the overriding theme or story? Not to mention the advice about dream sequences - leave them out because they bore the pants off people.
Funnily enough, reviews in the Telegraph and Guardian often point out the extraneous detail and unlikeable characters in these books, but they still rave about how these writers are so good.
I don't get it!

Time to Write

What an unaccustomed luxury to have time to write. My first book, Dancing in the Wilderness, was published in 2001 and I wrote a lot of it after midnight, after the kids were in bed, after the after-hours work was polished off. From then on, writing was secondary to the day job, squeezed in between running a very busy business and looking after two equally busy teenagers. In fact it was the demands of those very teenagers, combined with the growing demands of having elderly, increasingly frail parents, plus the job, the community work and a badly behaved spaniel, that inspired me to write my fourth, fifth and sixth books, including the best-selling Sandwich Short of a Picnic. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AM7FHCC

I was a fully fledged member of the Sandwich Generation - sandwiched between elderly parents, teenagers and a career, all making demands on my time and leaving no time for me, let alone for writing. 
But as all authors know, you just make the time. You're driven to. There's something about that laptop, those characters, the sudden plot twist that overtook you the last time you typed out a chapter. You just can't keep away. 
In July this year, as a long-planned bucket-list move, my husband and I spent three months in Menton, in the south of France, where I had plenty of time to write - as well as eat a lot of cheese, drink a lot of wine and swim in the sea every day. My eighth novel sped onto the page. And now that we're back home and waiting for the right job to come by, there's even more time to write. I can't believe how much fun it is, sitting down at the laptop every day. Now I can be just like Stephen King, who sets himself a 2000 word limit every day. And without another job to go to, it's not that hard to achieve.
Like all good things it can't last forever. Like most writers, I have to have a day job. Besides, how will I get that real-life experience I can write about at some later date? 

From a Distance issues look a lot clearer

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/opinion/perspective/9089709/Performing-arts-precinct-will-suffer

The Town hall debate needs clarity of thinking instead of the current emotional knee-jerk reaction to supposed voter preferences or “architectural integrity”. What’s the point of architectural integrity if people have very little use for the buildings saved?

Save the Town Hall auditorium by all means for its iconic status, its world-class acoustics, its heritage, its wonderful Rieger organ, its place in our hearts. But now is the time, after 40 years use has revealed their inadequacies, to forget about the impractical James Hay Theatre, the unpopular Boaters Restaurant, and the unnecessary Limes Room and associated function rooms, which will be replaced in due course by function rooms at the new Convention Centre and local hotels.

The Council’s proposed vote in favour of keeping the lot will deprive Christchurch of the Arts Precinct it not only deserves but badly needs. It was all there in the CERA Blueprint – a new, purpose-built concert auditorium, a new Court Theatre, a new Music Centre, and a home for the CSO and for the city’s other resilient arts organisations that have managed to thrive despite events of the last three years.

How has this come about?

The Council “consulted” on saving the Town Hall during consultation on its Annual Plan (LTCCP). The heritage lobby was vocal in saving the Town Hall in its entirety, without really understanding what they were demanding, other than preserving an iconic building. The arts community - those most affected – were not vocal and have not been able to have their say on using a large chunk of the planned Arts Precinct money to save the James Hay Theatre, which they rarely, if ever, use. And it’s difficult to dissent anyway when the Council is one of your funders.

The Council tells us it has looked at all the options and saving the whole Town Hall complex has been agreed as the best option. But has it really looked dispassionately at the other options? It seems that the best option of all – retaining the Town Hall auditorium with an iconic new foyer designed by original architects Warren and Mahoney (or by Sir Miles Warren if he would agree to it) – has not been afforded the public discussion it deserves.

This option was considered by councillors late last year and was recommended by the staff, but later in the committee meeting an impassioned plea by Sir Miles Warren to save the whole thing to preserve its architectural integrity won over the councillors’ hearts. I’m not sure if the auditorium and grand foyer option was ever considered by the full council.

It’s hard to know why the council is so in thrall to Sir Miles Warren’s pleas. His iron will is going to leave the city’s arts community with half the precinct they need. The full council has the opportunity this week to decide if they’re giving the arts a fair go.

They’ve only got this one chance to get it right and, even though many of them won’t be councillors next year to see their legacy fulfilled, such a significant decision should not be rushed through without due consideration of all the alternatives – especially alternatives that would provide significantly more benefit to the arts.

The $80 million win-win option

Often when there’s a major conflict within an organisation or a community over an issue, the most sensible solution is to look for a compromise, preferably one where everybody wins to some extent.

Last year, council staff proposed such a solution – an overwhelmingly sensible proposal that, for a preliminary estimate of $70 to $80 million, would save and fully restore the Town Hall auditorium, provide it with a fitting foyer, and thereby allocate the remaining $80 million (out of a total budgeted now for the Arts Precinct of $158 million) for music and theatre venues for the city’s major arts organisations.

The Council commissioned Warren and Mahoney to design and report on the aesthetics and practicalities of retaining the auditorium only, with a new entrance and gathering space that would have sufficient grandeur and design impact to provide “a sense of place”. Included in the proposal was advice from structural and acoustic engineers. The design, published in a committee report on the council’s website, kept part of the foyer in its existing location and created a new entrance to the east (Colombo Street) that gave it, according to the report by Warren and Mahoney managing director, Peter Marshall, “a sense of arrival in conjunction with existing” [structures].

“We are also of the opinion that the Auditorium could function alone, with modifications that we have suggested previously, and still have a strong architectural and urban presence,” Peter Marshall wrote. “This opinion is shared by Sir Miles Warren.”

Sir Miles obviously changed his mind because he turned up at the meeting and pleaded with councillors to retain the whole complex.

What is wrong with the James Hay Theatre?

With 1006 seats, the James Hay is similar in size to the 1250-seat Isaac Theatre Royal, which is currently being restored. However it has none of the grandeur, it has a number of flaws (such as acoustics, raking of the seats, backstage layout, fly-towers, staging) and is generally disliked by theatre and music companies. The Royal New Zealand Ballet, the opera and Showbiz have all rejected it in favour or the Isaac Theatre Royal.

A city this size does not need two auditoriums of almost the same capacity. Keeping it means that the sort of music and drama venue we do need (around 500 to 600 seats) is unlikely to be built.

What will the Arts Precinct look like?

So far, as far as I’m aware, the only agreement on tenants of the new Arts Precinct (possibly because it’s so restricted by the small $32.5 million budget) is that it will include a new Court Theatre and a Music Centre. Proposals for it to be the home of the CSO and other arts organisations have yet to come to fruition.

The Arts Precinct is supposed to extend, under the council’s plan, from the Town Hall to the Isaac Theatre Royal and suggestions are that the buildings will be located close to each other, on or near Armagh Street, at the rear of the Isaac Theatre Royal building.

The Court Theatre building will be used – like the current one – almost every day of the year. It has been estimated to cost around $32 million, plus the cost of the land. This, like all proposed projects and costs in the precinct, is by no means definite but it is indicative of the size of a complex The Court currently has and will need in future: a 400-seat theatre plus a smaller studio theatre, a joint foyer and booking office, at least one rehearsal room, as well as the other theatre essentials like space for set design, wardrobe and offices.

The Music Centre building is proposed to include studios, music rooms and storage, and a 350-seat concert chamber.

There has also been talk of an outdoor performance space in the Arts Precinct.

The city’s music, theatre and other performance people have often said that there is a desperate need for a smaller music/drama/dance venue. About half the size of the Isaac Theatre Royal and James Hay Theatre, the theatre would be a purpose-built, 500 to 600-seat auditorium suitable for both “plug-and-play” bands and amateur theatre groups in search of a venue - rock bands to Repertory.

The Arts Precinct is also supposed to house facilities for the CSO that could include offices and storage, but probably not a rehearsal room because of the very large size requirements. Before the earthquakes, the CSO had acquired a rehearsal room and office space in the Salvation Army Citadel near the Town Hall, but this is no more.

It is also hoped by some that the Arts Precinct will become a hub for the city’s thriving arts, such as Showbiz, local ballet, The Body Festival, the International Buskers Festival, The Press Christchurch Writers Festival, the Arts Festival and SCAPE. Galleries and fine arts could stretch around the corner as far as Christchurch Art Gallery.

Arts organisations are always short of money, so the sort of subsidised rent that a council-owned Arts Precinct hub could provide for them should help drive the sort of creative ambience that would thrive with activity and ideas.

And where the arts go, cafés, bars and restaurants follow.

From a Distance

Two weeks and twelve thousand miles away from home and what was so important before is much less important now. No more scraping frost off the car, no more traffic queues to work in the morning, no more work!

But some things do not fade away with distance. Such as the ongoing media nastiness about Bob Parker’s situation. Intense pressure these past few days and weeks (maybe even years!) has got too much for him and he’s exhausted. Who can blame him, new revelations every day about some fresh communication breakdown inside the council? Combined with continued media attacks, relentless, enough to wear anyone down. He’s borne it all with the sort of statesmanlike leadership we saw after the earthquakes – calm authority, telling us what he has been told is the truth. From what I’ve seen of Bob, he’s straight up. He wouldn’t lie.

But The Press continues to be unrelenting. The day after his announcement not to stand for election, there were two pages of “Mainlander” criticism of Bob and the council they chose not to pull. And now, whenever they refer to his decision, they imply he stood down because early indications The Press poll results showed his popularity had declined. And there’s a whole lot more nastiness that doesn’t bear repeating.

A lot of people asked me ‘Why don’t you stand for the council? We need people like you.’

You’ve got to be kidding. Who would want to be a councillor – let alone a mayor – when everybody, from the local rag to the local whingers, see you as fair game for snide remarks and downright slander. I’ve always stuck up for The Press, it was my training ground after all, but it seems to have become a source of major negativity in our town. How long before the honeymoon’s over and Lianne gets the same treatment? Six months? Less?

I had a very small experience of this negativity when I carried out the council audit. I was fair game for the naysayers, The Press and its many columnists included. But what I went through then was nothing compared to what the Mayor has had to put up with lately.

True, he’s not perfect. True, his decision to trust his management team may have come back to bite him. But for heaven’s sake, let the whingeing stop!

There is a small glimmer of hope: you kick a man when he’s down and people go to his rescue, stand up for him even. And the online nastiness eventually self corrects. I hope that’s soon.