Despatches: Coming together of authors

Writing and authors reading authors: Well the YA novel is not going to be finished now. My reader, whom I trust, said she couldn’t get very far with my first draft, between the alternative words/phrases separated by a slash and the notes to myself in red. Ah well. I don’t know why I think I can take a shortcut.  A first draft is a first draft, even if you wrote draft 4 on it because you increased the # each time you saved it as a new document. It is still a first draft. So I’m working on it slowly, or frantically, or passionately. Trying to deal with the chapters that needed to be collapsed into one, which was so embarrassing; finding out more about my characters and their motivations; finding out more about the story itself. What was I thinking? There is a lot of work left to be done on it. (I guess it was just the excitement of completing the first draft). It’s work I will enjoy, except that now I have some freelance work to do (to keep the proverbial wolf from the door) so those enjoyable almost wondrous moments of throwing myself into my story all day, every day are over. Ah well.

Authors’ get-together: I had the first of my author get-togethers on Saturday before last. I imagined it to be something like a salon in artistic circles. Aah!  All of us had put e-books onto Amazon or are in the process of doing so. Only one was a children’s’ book, The Mermaid Escape by Suzanne Francis Brown, (post of May 18). She explained the premise for the artwork on the cover of her book, which was very enlightening.  Modern! She had used an overseas illustrator and said she found his rates reasonable.

Now you will recall that my adult book of adult short stores, The Land in the Purple Evening, was supposedly done so as to see if there was any point in putting Caribbean material on Amazon. Will anyone see it? Will anyone buy them? Well none of us have enough to report on yet. Nonetheless, it was delightful camaraderie; suffering together or having great expectations together. I deliberately joined some of my social media links so as to be able to promote my books when the time arose. I’m barely doing that, my friends. Instead, I’m chatting away on the sites. I’ve been sucked into this social media machine. Why did I think I could escape? It’s fun; it’s just that it eats up writing time.

And a launch by Blue Moon Publishing: except that it’s under the imprint Blouse and Skirt Books, a delightfully whimsical name. It will be the adult book side of Tanya Batson-Savage’s Publishing House. The book is All Over Again by A-dZiko Simba. Although it is an adult book, the protagonist is a boy and the story is told in the second person. A-dZiko is a brilliant performer. She not only performed a dance to the drumming of M’Bala, but she performed her story. The story is made for performance reading and she magically pulled us into its spell. Wonderful!  Congratulations not only  to the author, but also to Tanya, whose publishing house is going from strength to strength. ( See posts June 21 and June 28). That is so encouraging and heartwarming, and everything. Young people who care as much as we did and do. You see, all is not lost.  Perhaps it never is, guys. Perhaps it never is. What a something!