My writing week (4) 20

Hi all,

Amazon set to become world's biggest publisher.

I thought that headline might get a few people reading. Readers of this blog would know that I have said that Amazon, Google and Apple will probably be the biggest publishers of books in the near future. Amazon already sells thousands of self-published titles, and recently launched four publishing businesses.

Amazon Encore will buy underperforming, but well reviewed, books that have already been published and republish them. It will specialise in first time writers.

Montlake Romance will publish digital, physical and audio romance books. In an interview, Jeff Belle, vice president of Amazon Publishing said they will eventually publish books in other genres, including science fiction.

Amazon Crossing will publish English translations of foreign books.

Domino will publish non-fiction books.

So watch out. Amazon might achieve what Rupert Murdoch has tried to achieve, total domination of the publishing industry.

Dentists are cold people

I write this belated post between dental appointments and sneezes. Last Friday, the 13th, I visited an oral surgeon in Melbourne about having some wisdom teeth removed. I then returned to visit the dental hospital in Melbourne, on Monday, to see if they would remove the teeth for free. The dental hospital appointment was only a preliminary meeting, I need to go down next Monday for a more thorough examination.

Meanwhile, my local dentist has done a couple of fillings and the preparatory work for a crown. The work for the crown turned out to be a bit of an ordeal, it took 1 and 3/4 hours. For about an hour of that the dentist had drills and other instruments in my mouth.

Here's a riddle for you, if you are seeing three different dentists/dental organisations, how many will attempt to change the time of your appointment? The answer is: all of them.

It would seem that somewhere along the way, I have caught a cold, which suddenly came on very strongly yesterday. Hope it has weakened by Monday.

So I have done very little writing. I almost got my article on cataract surgery finished last week and that's about it.

Why waiting for appointments and travelling on trains and busses, I did manage to get some reading done. I finished reading Margaret Atwood's brilliant The Year of the Flood, which is a prequel to her Booker short-listed Oryx and Crake. I reviewed it in a post yesterday.

Graham.

Review of The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A brilliant book which is perfect for the times we live in. It's message is that humanity through action or inaction will destroy itself. The book mainly concentrates on genetic engineering but has society slowly decaying from lack of resources in the background.

I read this novel because it is a prequel to the equally brilliant Oryx and Crake - which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Year of the Flood shows how civilisation collapsed and humanity died out before the story of one of the few survivors begins in Oryx and Crake.

The world is dominated by giant corporations. These corporations are heavily into genetic engineering. There are many genetically engineered animals created in place of the many extinct animals like pandas and platypus. Humans are genetically engineered mainly for aesthetic reasons.

The novel begins after the waterless flood occurs and then takes us back a decade or so earlier to show how the flood happened. The story concentrates on a girl and woman whose end up at an environmental cult called the Gardeners. The Gardeners are vegans who recycle everything. They survive on food grown on a huge rooftop garden and anything they can scavenge.

Ren's mother deserted her father and took her to live with a Gardener. Her story is told from her early teens. Toby's story begins just as she reaches adulthood. She works in a burger joint that sells secret burgers. They are called secret burgers because you never know what their ingredients might include. Toby is rescued from a rapist manager by the Gardeners.

Adam one leads the Gardeners. His sermons connecting the bible and the environment litter the novel. He knows the end is coming. He is trying to teach his fellow gardeners how to survive it.

I found the innocent but quickly learning voice of Ren very believable. Atwood writes he portion of the story in first person. She changes to third person for Toby's tired but stoic voice.

I was continually stopping to marvel at the insights to the world and people in the novel. How humanity has little hope of surviving because of the hoplessness that pervades us doing anything about the huge environmental and social problems that we face. We lack hope of changing so we do nothing to change.

I also found myself laughing a lot. Srcastic and ironic humour flows through the book.

Everyone should read this novel. It shows were our lack of hope could lead.

View all my reviews

My writing week 4 (19)

Divine Article on Universal Remotes

I have a new article up on Divine about universal remote controls. The article was inspired by the inability of my mother to control a set-top box. The buttons on its remote control were too small for her arthritic fingers to control. She has the same problem with the remote for a Sony DVD recorder. I am hoping that someone who reads the article will suggest a universal remote control that is suitable for her.

Divine Cataract Surgery

If you have cataracts that are interfering with your life, but are too worried about getting them removed, you should have a read of my next article for Divine about cataract surgery. It details my first had experience. Cataracts run in my family. Both grandmothers had problems with them. My mother has had them removed, as have uncles and aunties on both sides of the family.

Source Code

The movie Source Code is nowhere near as good as Inception, but it is better than most of the crap alien invasion and comic book garbage being served up as science fiction lately. Source Code is directed by Ducan Jones, who also directed the Hugo award winning Moon. It’s more of a thriller than action movie. Like Moon, it relies more on story than special effects.

Source Code is set on a train in the near future in Chicago. I will give you no plot details as, like Moon, they will be spoilers.

My Writing

Family visited. Garage boy next door seems to have become garage boys with the accompanying increase in noise. It seems they want a war. I returned fire at their parents this morning. When not thinking up scenarios for future battles, Divine magazine took up my writing time: writing an article and arguing over edits for the other.

Television Misinformation

I could do with a week long drinking session. Numbing the brain would help me forget the misinformation surrounding me. I even got sucked in by the fake pictures of a shot-in-the-head Osama Bin Laden on the telly.

I remember a few years ago hearing about research into television news which showed that it frequently left people less informed than before they viewed it. Last week’s collections of sound and vision bites on the news from ABC, Nine and Seven definitely confirmed this.

Graham.

My writing week 4 (18)

My Epic Novella, Part 739.

I slaughtered a few of my novella's darlings last week, replacing them with just as many fabulous? ordinary? deplorable? words, so the word count stagnated. But at least I did some work on it.

I want to start researching/interviewing and then writing my next article for Divine magazine this week, but I am determined not to use that as an excuse to neglect the novella.

Divine Article on Cataracts

My next article for Divine magazine is about cataracts. If you have cataracts or have had surgery to remove them, I have a few simple questions for you:

1. Where are/were the cataract/s on your eyes and what effects did/do the cataract/s have?

I had one dead centre of my left eye and had to try and read around it.

2. If you had surgery to remove them, describe your post op vision.

I had surgery on both eyes. I could see a mountain range in the distance for the first time. Black was once again black and not grey. I could see my freckles again.

3. If you didn't have surgery, why?

You can leave your response as a comment or send an email to graham@grahamclements.com

Doctor Who

The thrill of Doctor Who seems to have disappeared with Russell T Davies or perhaps it is just Matt Smith. Being a writer, I prefer to think it has more to do with scripts that are now too fast paced, with no time for tension. I only tuned in out of a sense of duty to watch the first episode of the new season on Saturday. I ended up watching the first fifteen minutes and then recording the rest.

In contrast, I keenly await the return of Fringe on Go next Wednesday. A series full of tense and edgy scripts.

My writing week 4 (17)

Hi all,

After weeks of doing little writing, except Divine magazine articles, I actually did some editing of my novella last week. Yaaa me. And things are looking good for this week as I have caught up with other activities like gardening and newspaper reading. I still need to strip the rest of the paint off a picket fence and paint it, followed by painting new guttering.

Novella

It is amazing how the plot needed to change in my novella after I substituted an ipad for a newspaper. My main character had been reading a newspaper, but as the story is set about a decade into the future, I decided to give him something more advanced, an ipad. He then needed something to carry it in, so I gave him a backpack.

In the novella he has to make a hasty exit. He had previously just dropped the newspaper and ran, but now he had to try and bundle his ipad into his backpack while lurching for the exit. Those in pursuit catch up with him. Previously they grabbed at his clothing, now they had a backpack to latch on to. The backpack is lost, but when found it provides evidence to back up his alibi. The police had been a lot less believing when he just lost a newspaper.

The novella is now 24,000 words.

Ebooks Seem to be Getting Cheaper

I just checked Amazon Kindle’s top 100 bestseller list for the first time in a couple of months. Fifty-two of the ebooks were $2.99 or less, with 28 at 99c and 12 at $2.99. Twelve were $9.99. There were none priced at $12.99. Last time I checked, twenty were $12.99, six were $7.99, nine were $2.99 and twenty were 99c. No other prices had significant numbers.

Ebooks Most Popular Book Format in US

I have read reports from Amazon that they sell 115 ebooks for every 100 paperbacks, but that was just Amazon. Now, according to Jason Steger’s Bookmarks column in last Saturday’s Age, the Association of American Publishers is reporting that the ebook is the most popular format out of adult hardbacks, paperbacks, mass-market, children and young adult hardbacks and paperbacks.

They AAP says print sales fell 25 per cent in the first two months of this year, while ebook sales jumped 169 per cent. And the full impact of the collapse of Borders in the US is still yet to be felt according to Publisher’s Weekly.

The data continues to suggest that print books will be much rarer in the future, replaced by dirt cheap and free ebooks.

Graham Clements.

My writing week 4 (16)

Hi all,

Global Warming

I’ve been catching up on my newspaper reading and the global warming debate is not going well. Clive Hamilton in last Wednesday’s Age sums it up well:

“What do Australians want? The answer is clear. We want symbols of action but not action itself. We want to hear words that make us fell good about ourselves but none that ask us to make any sacrifice. We care about climate change, but we hate the idea of having to do anything about it.”

Even with my household’s limited resources and income we have tried to decrease our contribution to global warming, while people on much larger incomes do nothing, except whinge. We have installed solar hot water and a rain water tank. We upgraded the gas heater to one with a thermostat. Every light fitting has one of those energy saving light bulbs in it. We grow a lot of our vegetables and fruit. We don’t have a car, instead we walk everywhere.

The only good thing about global warming is it makes it very easy to write about future dystopias as the lack of water, food and land, will inevitably lead to civilisation’s collapse in the next century. Just as well I don’t have any kids to worry about. I wonder what those with children think the future holds for their offspring. Are they ignorant (the science is clear) or just selfish.

Arrhhh Dentist

I spent more time arranging dentist appointments and visiting doctors and medicare to get onto the EPC programme last week. By the end of the week it was all organised. $4250 of my dental costs will receive a rebate of around $2750. For a moment I felt a bit of relief, but then got the quote from the dentist - $6090. There were three crowns instead of one, fortunately one of the crowns is not urgent. So the EPC will cover all the work by my dentist except for that third crown. I still will need to pay an oral surgeon around $2400 for the removal of two wisdom teeth and other tooth.

I have set myself up for a really enjoyable week starting the 10^th of May when the dental works all begins with three fillings. On the 13^th of May (and it is a Friday), I trip down to Melbourne to see an oral surgeon for a consultation. The next Monday I go down to Melbourne to the dental hospital. I am hoping they have an oral surgeon at the training hospital who will extract the wisdom teeth for free or not much more. The next day, it is back to the dentist for the start of the first crown.

Oh the horror, the horror.

In the future dentists will be able to plant stem cells into jaws and grow replacement teeth, which will be protected from plaque by nanomachines. I can’t wait.

Writing

Besides organising all things dental again last week, I spent a bit of time as DIY Graham. The plumbers arrived and laid the new pipes I then filled in the trench, which wasn’t as easy as that sounds because I had to make sure the heavy clay soil got under the pipe and down its sides. I also planted a tree.

The next door neighbour’s son – who lives in the garage – decided that the best time to chop wood for his fire was in the middle of the night. I dragged myself out of bed to inform him that it was not. I suggested he make himself a nice pile of chopped wood during the day. He also woke me up on two other nights with his music. I suggested to him that I might contact the council.

I am wondering whether he is legally able to live in the garage. I remember when I lived in Sydney in a share house that one of my co-occupants was kicked out of his mum’s garage by the council. He was a moron as well.

The combination of tiredness, anguish and other things to do, meant that once again I did very little writing last week.

I have decided to change the title of my blog to: Why I didn’t Write Last Week. The change will be made as soon as I get time…

Graham Clements.

My writing week 4 (15)

Hi all,

I had a bugger of a week last week. It all seemed to be about damage control. I went to the dentist and found out I needed a bit of work. She directed me to an x-ray clinic for a mouth shot. I found out I need to go and see an oral surgeon to get a wisdom tooth and its neighbour pulled. Their roots are too close to a nerve for the dentist to pull.

Just the removal of those two teeth will cost me somewhere between $1500 and $2000. I also need a root canal ($1500) and a cap on a front tooth ($1450) and some other things done. All up the initial bill was around $6,000. As I am trying to survive on a part-time writing job and newstart, I don’t have that sort of money lying around.

But by the end of the week, it looked like I can get onto a special medicare programme for those with chronic illnesses (like my ulcerative colitis). It pays up to $4650 over two years. My GP says I am eligible and is currently, I hope, doing the paperwork.

I’ve made appointments for consultations with two oral surgeons – even the consultation will cost, after a medicare rebate, $70 and one of those consultations will involve a trip to Melbourne.

The need for the dental work is partly my fault and that of the previous dentist. Seems he was cheap because of the quality of his work. Lots of his ex-patients are now getting their fillings replaced. I was stunned when a 12-14 year old entered the waiting room and said he had to have three fillings replaced. I only went to see that dentist because he took over the surgery from the previous one.

I said my fault too. I did not get my teeth cleaned last time I saw that dentist a year and a bit ago. It was in the middle of getting my cataracts removed and placing my dad into a nursing home. I was somewhat distracted. And of course I could have done a better job cleaning my teeth.

While arranging and doing many things dental, we found out the drain pipe down one side of the house were clogged with tree roots. So water from the roof was just flowing under the house. Not wanting the house’s stumps to rot, we had arranged to get the drain pipe replaced. To save money I have the dug the pipe up. It was full of cavities. I just finished digging it out this morning.

Universal Remote Controls Article

I just submitted another article to Divine. This one is on universal remote controls. You know I could not find anyone who had tested remote controls for use by people with disabilities. Remotes are hard enough for people to use who are able-bodied, but imagine you have motor control issues, like arthritis, or poor vision.

Self Publishing Ebooks

In promoting my latest article on Divine about self-publishing ebooks, I got into a debate on one of the writing sites I frequent, where an article on Salon by Laura Miller was mentioned. That article epitomises the reasons for and against self-publishing ebooks. And it has a lot to do with marketing.

The article mentioned Angela Hocking, who is now an ebook self-publishing millionaire, has just signed a traditional publishing contract. She is happy that she won’t now have to spend all her time marketing. While Barry Eisler knocked back a half-million dollar contract from his publishers for two new books because he wants to self-publish them. Part of his reason is he didn’t like the marketing his publisher had done on his previous books.

Other Writing

At the end of last week I actually did some editing of the much neglected novella. But then while taking a walk I thought of a great idea for a story. It might distract me further from the novella.