Penguins in Japan

After the book trailer workshop I did in late 2009, I had the best intentions of putting together trailers for my 2010 titles. However, life and busy-ness overtook me and that didn't eventuate. I was very excited to see recently that my penguins nonetheless have an international video presence. Skip ahead to 14:50 in the video below (original version here) and you'll see what I mean.



This guy Kazuoki Ueda seems to be some sort of penguin researcher who is fond of picking up representations of penguins in literature and popular culture. On a visit to Melbourne last year, he came across The Truth About Penguins in a bookstore and decided to pick up a copy for his discussion group back in Japan.

Here's a loose translation of the video dialogue:

Ueda:
This is a picture book about penguins that came out this year in Melbourne, Australia - The Truth About Penguins.

There's a rumour that penguins are coming to the zoo and various animals spin tales as to what kind of creatures penguins are.

And there's a banner like this put up "Welcome Penguins" and lots of different animals spread rumours and say things like apparently penguins fly through the sky and penguins travel all over the place with their luggage and penguins hang out at the beach. They say all kinds of things.

Then the zookeeper comes along and says no no, you've misunderstood. I'll tell you the truth about penguins. He tells them all about penguins and it's like, oh, okay, so that's how it is ... but then when the penguins do come, what are they really like ... ?
[shows last page]
It's so fun!

Hiraka: Wow, that was like kamishibai just now.

Ueda: Yes, this is really popular in Australia, in Melbourne. There were rows of them out front in the bookstores [or possibly 'a bookstore'. Japanese is happily ambiguous on this point, thereby enabling my dreams of bookstore domination].

Then he gives it to her as a present and moves on to talk about phone cards featuring penguins.

************

I had the biggest smile on my face when I saw this.

And now I want to go to Melbourne, land of milk and honey where my books may possibly be taking the city by storm.

Or maybe I should just get on and make that book trailer?

At the very least, I will write to Mr Ueda and say thank you for taking my penguins back to Japan.

Cover Me

I have a new cover.

I've liked all my covers well enough - some more, some less, as is the way of things.

But this cover? I love it. And in a curious kind of reversal, in some ways the cover is responsible for the book.

I wrote this book in 2009 and it was a bit of a mess. I would probably have given up on it but for the fact that I had a grant from the kind people at the Department of Culture and the Arts, and felt beholden to actually produce something.

I wrote it and rewrote it and moved scenes around and moved them back again and deleted them altogether and stepped away from the manuscript and started over - again and again. I tore out metaphorical chunks of hair and really thought the whole thing was dead in the water.

I left it sitting for a while. I'd lost all sense of whether it was any good or not. I felt odd about sending it to my editor. I feared it was still a mess.

Eventually, I shrugged my metaphorical shoulders and decided I may as well just send it and see what she thought.

In July last year I got an email saying they liked it, and wanted to publish it. In February this year. Which is very fast.

Because it was so fast, I thought, well, for once in my life I've written a book that doesn't need a lot of editing. I was relieved but also vaguely uneasy, because I'd thought the book had problems, and if it in fact didn't, then I had no barometer at all for such things.

Both luckily and unluckily, I was wrong. The short lead time was no indicator of the quality of my manuscript. It was an indicator of there being a slot in the publishing schedule that my book would fit nicely into, if only I could get it ready in time.

'Ready' in this case, meaning substantially rewritten, rather quickly.

I almost lost courage. I was sick of the book. I had lost sight of what I was doing. I had no real feel for the characters. I had no faith in my ability to recognise what was wrong with it or how to fix it.

Then two things happened.

The first was that I had a fantastic conversation with my editor, who nudged me gently towards a vision of what the book could be, if I could only find a way to get it there.

The second was this cover, which, because of the tight schedule, was sent to me in draft form quite early in the rewriting process. When I saw it, I may have gasped. It was a cover for the kind of book I love. It was a cover for the book I wanted this book to be.

I converted it into wallpaper for my desktop so it was there every morning, every evening, every everytime I turned my computer on, and I set off, at once inspired - to write the book that would live up to the cover - and anxious - that I couldn't, that the cover would end up being gorgeous packaging for a lacklustre story.

When the going got tough, I set the writing aside and just stared at the image, reminding myself of what I was writing out of and towards. I watched that figure plunging down and down towards the drowned town. I reconnected with my character. I found the heart of my story. And now, finally, it's a book.

I'm hoping I pulled it off, but I guess time, and readers, will tell.