E-books on the near horizon: E is also for emotions

I was astonished to see that more than a month had passed since I wrote my last blog and I wondered what on earth could I have been doing. Wasting time?  Surely not! Frittering away my energy and emotions?  I have come to  realize that my energies may not be taken up by work alone – they can also  be taken up by just the thought of work; or by any other emotional circumstance, even if it seems to be a good circumstance. Therefore, I am relieved to report that, upon investigation, I find that my energy/emotions have actually been taken up by worthy endeavours.

So, emotion # 1): My friend Hazel Campbell has managed to reformat Cordelia Finds Fame and Fortune, including the illustrations  for uploading to Amazon. That in itself is enough to take up a lot of  my emotional energy, as I realise that my plan to put most of my books (where the copyright has reverted to me) onto Amazon, might be about to materialize. One hopes that the presence of a number of my books on Amazon might generate more interest. Yeah, right! Anyway, publication date might be next week!

Emotion # 2):  I reviewed and sent off another potential e-book, Ebony and the Auntie of the Starlight to the artist. Publication date? Hopefully some time in July/Aug as it has an Independence theme.

Emotion # 3): I located and reviewed another story, Daughter of the Time to Come (once slated for publication, but the publisher stopped doing children’s books and eventually went out of business) located the artist who did the sample artwork and he is still willing to work on it. That publication date is slated for later in the year, probably about Heroes’ Day. So far, that’s all a lot of emotion, as you can see. A lot for me! I like my emotion in small does.

Emotion # 4): Things I Like was interrupted  - still have one illustration left to paint, then try for sponsorship, because I really think that it will be good for  early childhood. Emotions floating around in the air with nowhere to settle.

Of course, we have to have a new story for Christmas - blog, or e-book. Can’t keep redoing the old one, Once Upon a Starlight. (Is it the same character as the one interacting with Ebony above? Yes, it is.) This, however, happily  is not yet a fully formed emotion.

Emotion # 5): hot on the heals of all these potential e-books, I’m seriously thinking also of transforming The Ring and the Roaring Water ( the second of the Time Travel books) into an e-book. We’ve found  what could be the last pre-press copy, so have to check it.

Then I was asked to do a writing workshop for children at Franklin Town Primary. The children responded very well indeed; lots of interaction.  The best story was written by a boy! Wonderful! Well plotted, exciting! (We ignore the potential of our boys to our peril! But we know that, don’t we).  Anyway, this has fired me up about not only doing readings, (which is what we writers usually do), but also writing workshops in schools.  Emotion # 6.

Emotion # 7): I got a wonderful review from a writer whose work I respect, on my book of adult short stories on Amazon, The Land in the Purple Evening, as follows.

Review from Amazon

A delicious collection of short, short stories that makes reading feel like an unhurried afternoon sitting and talking with a good friend over tea. The gently told stories are all rooted in interpersonal family and community relationships looking at respect, love, duty and emerging awareness of life through the eyes of a child or an ingenue. I am not an education professional but would suggest that the material is suitable for age 13 and up.

Lovely, eh! Love the ‘delicious’. It makes me feel like I could just dance all around the room, in the air.  So delighted by it, I’ve decided to  seriously compile another collection and have started reviewing my other adult stories. That’s sort of lovely as well as daunting. I found one which was published by Bim & Kyk-Over-Al years ago (which I hadn’t even realized, and just the other day, so to speak, out of the blue, someone asked if I was the same Diane Browne who . . .she photocopied it for me) and  I just had it retyped – before it faded completely. So the thought of compiling that collection extends the emotion.

It really would seem that I’ve been very busy indeed, and even if it hasn’t all been actual pen to paper, brain engaging computer work, it has been hectic emotionally, especially when we all know that the e-book plan might not work at all. ( Amazon is not the real solution!)

 Come to think of it, it’s a wonder I have enough emotion or energy left to write this blog.

And then this last weekend was Calabash. But that’s another blog, another emotion.

Despatches: First draft of YA novel completed and an e-book of adult short stories on Amazon

First draft of next YA novel completed. Aha! Of course I planned to write another blog right after the last. However, this time I have an excellent excuse. I was writing! Yes, I was! I was writing the first draft of my next time travel book which I started about a year ago, I believe (hush!). It was bothering me so much that I had not got past the first few chapters. So now I wrote frantically, stopping only to eat, sleep, etc. supermarket, bank and so on. And  then plop into the bed cross-eyed to watch TV for relaxation. I think I got that done in about a month. Lovely! However I still have things to reconcile; still lots of work to be done: time line - Is it dark in this scene, or not? If it’s not dark how are you going to see them by light shining on them in the dark? If it’s already dark then how are they going to see that next aspect from the air …? (important scene).

The conversation with myself continues. Which character turns out to be the villain? Hello! Why? (you’d think I’d know by the end of the first draft, and of course I do). So give us the rationale. Oh! and what is the purpose of that character, now that you’ve given most of her lines to another character, because you were going to cut her from the story, and now you’re not sure you want to anymore?  So when did they discover the blueprint so they could fix the machine? Oh really?  

Not to mention real structural aspects like: Too much dialogue here and there? Is it moving the story along, or is it slowing it down? Too much narrative/explaining/ background here and there? Can we break it up and give this info in some of the dialogue? But didn’t you say the dialogue was slowing the pace? So time out to have someone read it and for me to work on something else, like this blog, while I wait for insights to appear. It’s a scary but interesting/stimulating time in the process.

Enlightenment, validation from trip to Barbados. Watching school videos of the grandchildren (no, this is not a grandchildren story); the older is 7 and ¾; the younger, 6 next month. Of course, since the older one went  to 'big school' first there is more of her in plays, etc. We see her doing all sorts of things, dancing, playing the recorder, etc. She is  suitably delighted and gracious, as only first children can be. (We always belong!). The younger cannot see himself in the videos. He walks away, sad, face screwed up,  arms folded, to show that even though he is hurt, he still has some dignity. “Come!” we say, “See you here!” He returns but is  so upset he cannot see himself in the school play. We have to stop the video and say, “See you there! See you there!” He laughs with heartfelt delight at the discovery that he is also in the pictures. “It’s me! It’s me!” All is well.

The purpose of this anecdote? Well it came to me, this is what happens to a child when they cannot see themselves in books. This is what we do to Caribbean children when they do not see themselves in books. Do we wonder then that solving of our problems is so difficult? How do you solve problems if you don’t exist? A new insight comes to me even as I write this. Is it because the gatekeepers did not see themselves in books that they do not see its importance, that they fear it? Are they really only comfortable with the books of the colonizers, old and new, or the books that the developed countries tell us are acceptable? Scary thought! If so, hush! We cannot tell the gatekeepers. It will make them angry with us, ... and you know what that means. (This last sentence may just be a carry over from the sci-fi YA novel, of which first draft mentioned above. The mind is like that, as you know.)

An educator recently read Island Princess in Brooklyn, and liking it, asked: Is this book in the schools? Why isn’t it in the schools?  

A children’s writer publishes a book of adult short stories: This I did, and it’s called The Land in the Purple Evening, and is an e-book on Amazon. My friend, Hazel Campbell, who is also a published author of  adult short stories, put an e-book on Amazon last year. I was supposed to do so from then, but I didn’t. Hesitation! Procrastination! So it was an achievement to finally have it done. The book is under the name Diane Aiken Browne, to make some distinction between that and the children’s stories. It will probably only cause confusion.  Some of the stories have been published already in anthologies or journals. The purpose was to see if putting a book on Amazon can work  for us in the Caribbean, and it has got two nice reviews. I haven’t done much marketing on social media, mostly because I feel shy. I sent out the announcement, using my address book, and that caused me enough anxiety. Anyway, I will continue to press on with the technology of today’s world. I hope to be able to put out a children’s as an e-book also, to see if it works. Before Christmas! Really? And the artwork isn’t even given out yet, and it’s September. Ah my friends, what can I say? I press on.