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…“The Death of the Shadow God’s Magic Blood-Dragon”
Why?
Because I want to be part of the trend!
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…Sydney’s specialist bookstore. Well, online with them anyway.
You can find me answering some fun questions here.
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What do you think??
I shall be honest here: I really haven’t made up my mind because there are pros and cons, and both are persuasive.
- I think most people agree there are quite a few male readers out there who won’t read female authors.
- Conversely, there are probably almost no female readers who turn down a book just because it’s written by a man.
- So, should a woman writer use a male or androgynous pseudonym in order to increase her sales?
- Or should she stick to her feminist guns, use a female name, and say: “I’ll show ’em!” so that these prejudiced male readers finally realise being a woman has little to do with writing a readable book? (But…then they’ll never read it…)
That’s the first way of “hiding” one’s gender…and basically it has to do with money and reaching a wider audience. It also has to do with getting published at all. If your sales are too slim, the publisher won’t pick up your next book. Publishing is a business, folk. Shouldn’t we do whatever we can to sell? (Too late for me…I am committed to my female name, partly because at the time it never crossed my mind that there were 20th century men who wouldn’t read women writers!!)
The second concealment of women writers is – some say – by others…
- There has been a great deal of blogging over the years about the lack of novels written by women up for major literary prizes, or short stories written by women accepted for anthologies. Numerous reasons have been given for this and possibly the real reason is a combination of factor all playing a parts: fame, subject matter, prejudice, more male judges, more male writers, … Perhaps more male judges/editors in the past have regarded “female” family or domestic issues as less worthy when compared to larger “male” issues. This of course presupposes that women don’t write so much about large issues and men writers avoid domestic issues.
- So, should there be prizes just for “women’s” fiction, i.e. by women writers? Such as the Orange Prize?
No! That implies women aren’t as good as males, worthy of competing for the “real” literary prizes, like the Man Booker! Yes! There should be separate prizes for women’s fiction in order to get the recognition women deserve for both their issues and their writing! Otherwise we won’t be aware of their top-notch work…
So what do you think?
Comment here and/or answer on the two poll questions in the sidebar…
Another family of Yellow-vented Bulbuls being raised in our garden. Not sure how many young, as I don’t want to disturb the surrounding leaves. The first photo shows the back of the head and beak of a fledgling in the nest in the gingers.
The second photo shows the parent, giving me the eye as I photograph it from the side verandah. These birds are very urban, and often choose nesting sites as close as possible to human contact, perhaps because this offers safety from other predators. I’ve often had them nest in pot plants.
The third photo shows how protected the nest is.
Here is our side verandah from inside, looking at the gingers where the nest is. As you can imagine, I am often hanging clothes within feet of the nest.
And here, taken from the outside, to the left of the grille behind the palm, is the ginger plant that contains the nest.
…to a wonderful piece of luggage.
If you have been a follower of this blog for sometime, you will know I am always travelling. To see the kids, to conventions, for my work, because we lived in Borneo for a time, and so on.
And I had a suitcase. It was made by Citymark. I had it for about ten years, possibly more. It was bashed and battered by every airline from here to Glasgow, Kandy, Sandakan, San Fransciso or Yogyakarta. It was used four or five times a year. And it never flinched. Its handles remained intact, its wheels spun, it stayed shut when it was supposed to, as it travelled around the world with either my husband or myself. It was plastered with travel tags – many of which fell off but others you can see in the photo.
During those ten years my husband went through an average of one suitcase a year. Usually the wheels snapped off, or the handles. He bought a hideously expensive “Made in America” brandname suitcase, thinking the cost would be worth it. The first time he used it one of the wheels disappeared and the pull-handle could no longer be pulled out. The second time he used it another wheel fell off. The third time he went to use it he didn’t even get it out of the house – it wouldn’t unlock, even with the correct digits entered. As he had accidentally put his ticket inside, we had to smash open the combination with a hammer, then repack into another suitcase — all while the taxi was waiting. So much for the expensive suitcase.
And all the while, my suitcase trundled along happily whenever it was used. Until one day, it finally, finally, expired. Someone managed to put a huge crack in it (even then it refused to fall apart) and the lid was bent out of shape so it was hard to close, and the locks wouldn’t align. Still those wheels and those handles were in perfect shape…
Goodbye Citymark. I wish I could find another like you, with sturdy metal shafts to the wheels…
I bought another suitcase today. I couldn’t find the Citymark brand.
Hush Puppies: you are under notice: I chose you because you were the only one I could find that didn’t have wheels just asking to be snapped off. But if your zips give up on me in under ten years, I shall be very, very unhappy, right?
And a piece of advice to travellers. Never buy a suitcase made in mainland China. You will be lucky if it gets to the front door intact…on your way out of the house.
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I’ve always hated the expression “chick lit”, even though I’ll admit I have used it myself in the past to describe books written in a lighthearted way about modern woman and non-serious issues. Light reading is a better description, and in the past those are the words we used to describe these books; and other books like them that weren’t about women. Not particularly deep novels, but fun. Light reading, and who doesn’t need that sometimes! (Tell me you only read novels of significance and depth, and I’ll tell you to lighten up once in a while.)
The expression “chick lit”, though, has singled out one type of light read and given it a derogatory twist. It’s by chicks for chicks. Not by or for women. Chicks. Fluffy little things without stature that look at you with a vacant stare. And the expression is used now by some readers with a sneer, with the implication that these books are worthless reads, beneath the notice of all men, and also beneath the notice of women of substance.
Here is a marvellous Huffington Post article from Diane Meier, American author of a book about an intelligent middle-aged woman, “The Season of Second Chances”.
As she herself puts it: “Most critics felt the need to talk about how “surprisingly” intelligent the book was. Their tell-tale phrase: how many “notches above Chick Lit” they deemed the book. Or they registered amazement that a book so domestic in tone might have been intended for — can you imagine — educated, intelligent readers.”
Later on in the article (and do read the whole thing) she writes:
“But my concern is larger, for the issue is insidious: the way Chick Lit has been used to denigrate a wide swath of novels about contemporary life that happen to be written by women.
“If you think it’s not affecting our work, not affecting what the publishers are handed, not affecting the legacy we leave for future generations, you’re wrong. In The New York Times, the judges of the UK Orange Prize (for women novelists) bemoaned the grim and brutal content offered this year in the submitted manuscripts. Their conclusion: No serious woman writer wanted to be painted with the Women’s Lit label, and issues contemporary and domestic, if not presented with violence, are apparently (to academics, to critics and to the general culture — male and female, alike) seen to have less value.”
She goes on to question the idea of having a prize just for woman novelists, and I’m not sure that I agree with her on that issue, but mostly she is spot on.
I especially agree with her at this moment…Why this week? Well, because it hit home. (Yeah, I admit it. I wait till things get personal, before I get vocal. Mea culpa.)
Stormlord Rising is a fantasy novel, but it does deal with issues of war and its effects, especially on the woman and children who are caught up in the battle. Ok, so it’s a story, not a treatise, but it touches on things like: how much should a woman do to keep her unborn baby safe? Should a woman use her sexual allure and her body to stay alive? How much should you compromise your principles for those you love?
Universal themes, one would assume. One Amazon reviewer didn’t much like the latter two-thirds of the book – his privilege, of course, and I don’t mind that – but he says it’s chick lit and therefore automatically disappointing, not worth the read. Pregnancy in war time, love and life and death of loved ones, are chick issues apparently, not universal after all. Chick lit. Light-hearted comedy.
Let’s stop using the expression “chick lit” even if we enjoy the books now so designated. Let’s be careful how we use the expression “women’s issues” when such issues are usually universal to humanity. If a reader doesn’t like a book about what women feel or what happens to them, or the way in which women live and love, let him say so outright, and not hide behind a derogatory dismissal: “It’s chick lit”.
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Read the whole thing here at the Rob Will Review blog.“…Then the storm hits.
“It hits in a blaze of war and blood, steel and sand. Big events happen, and, more interestingly and more importantly, big changes take place in the minds and souls of the main characters. One finds he has started becoming a leader, and events only hasten that particular forging. Several characters find themselves compromising their morals and beliefs, for a number of reasons–one woman to save her unborn child, another to help the man she loves…”
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“…I don’t want to say too much for fear of spoiling the book’s events, but I do want to make mention of how impressed I am at the evolution of events and relationships within the books. It’s not always a simple question of defeating the Big Bad who was there from the beginning. There are victories and losses and new enemies grow out of past events. The picture changes.
“It’s exciting. It’s excellent.
“It’s Stormlord Rising.”
Oh, sands. My intermittent medical condition – a swelled head – has returned. Maybe I should pop over to Good Reads for a cure, and re-read the reviewer who said (of The Last Stormlord): “600+ pages of boring world-building without a plot with a resolution.”
I love reviews. You never know what you’ll get!
You know, the day job thingy. Not that fun writing stuff that’s so easy I can whip up in a book in my spare time in a few weeks…
I actually thought the second phase of the birding tourism project was never going to take off, but it has, so I have just spent two days back in the rat-race (read: Kuala Lumpur traffic jams) attending meetings and thinking of everything except writing the next book.
Having a centre core around my heart that is all written words and plot-lines, naturally I want to get started on the next one. I’ve written a couple of hundred words of what will possibly be a duology called “The Hidden Kingdom“. But alas, it will have to
If I get a reading slot at Worldcon, I probably could be bribed into doing a reading of what I have written so far of this new book. It is set in the Havenstar world of a disintegrating land, peopled by citizens desperately trying to find a way to hold their world together. This time it’s a different country with a different solution for keeping the Unmaker at bay, and a different set of characters.
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So, no sooner do I hand in Stormlord’s Exile on Sunday – updated with editorial input changes – than one of my beta readers (Phill Berrie, bless him) points out a large plot hole towards the end that no one else spotted. Including myself. Sigh. Thank the magic for someone like Phill. Fortunately, although the plot hole is major in terms of the impossibility of what happens next, the fix will only necessitate a relatively small change: two waterpaintings have to be done where there was only one…
My delivery of the book was majorly late. It is book number 10, and it’s the first time I have overrun the schedule to the extent that the publication dates have to be changed, for which I apologise to all you readers out there. (And of course, to my wonderful publishers, neither of whom decided to hang, draw and quarter me, but reacted with remarkable restraint and unqualified support; and then — probably with much teeth gnashing — rescheduled and rearranged their publishing list.)
So what went wrong?
Who knows? Sometimes creativity to a schedule doesn’t work, it’s as simple as that. It’s not the time put in, it’s the quality of what is achieved.
Once the book was finished in its initial show-someone-this-draft form, I knew something was not right, but couldn’t put my finger on what exactly. The two initial readers – Karen Miller and my editor friend and neighbour Alena — took a look and applied tough love. Basically: Glenda, the beginning is ALL WRONG.
They were so right. I had to do more than the usual spruce up: I had to rewrite the entire beginning, 30,000 words, and start in a different place with different characters. And then dovetail that to the rest of the book, which is harder than it sounds. Sort of writing something backwards. The way I had written in initially simply didn’t push the story forward, but kept looking backwards.
Anyway, it is re-written now, and my editors are happy. Publication dates will be next year sometime. When they are definite, I will tell you.
Oh, and I have seen the cover art for the Voyager Oz edition. And no, I am not showing you, yet. 🙂
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So, for those of you haven’t read it yet, what’s Stormlord Rising
Read the rest of this post at the Orbit site, here.
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