Me, me, me, Newcastle THIS IS NOT ART Festival Schedule, me, me, me...

Hey, blogfans!
It’s been absolutely crazy in my-book’s-just-come-out land. While it’s wonderful to travel the country signing and scribbling and pressing the flesh, there hasn’t been a lot of time to consider the other important things in life – like the rituals of the seasons (I think I just missed the Southern Hemisphere Candlemas) or what to do with a polished lump of forest jasper.

Secretly, forest jasper sustains and supports through times of stress.
And I have been so busy I have considered EATING THIS STONE.

Burnt Snow has been getting fantastic reviews, which is awesome. There’s now a handy Facebook fanpage for the book, where all the press and reviews and an upcoming *fun competition* get recorded and discussed. There’s also a Facebook group called Brody Meine is So Much Hotter than Edward Cullen which you can join if you wanna debate whether the guy in the video promo looks like Brody or Christian Slater does. This group was not actually started by me so you can imagine my surprise/delight/kinda-weirdness when I found out it was there. Remind me to talk about my Dark Half syndrome at some point.

The two big pieces of news at this end is that I’m having my FIRST GUEST BLOGGER appear on these pages shortly; my old friend and comics author Christian Read (who has written for Buffy, Star Wars Adventures and Batman, amongst other works of complete genius) will be donating a piece on Voodoo Queens of New Orleans. HOW FUN IS THAT?

ALSO: I will be attending the National Young Writers’ Festival AND Crack Theatre Festival which are part of the amazing TINA (This is Not Art) Festival in beautiful Newcastle (the Australian one)… as from Thursday, SEPTEMBER 30 until Sunday, OCTOBER 3. So if you wanna see me bang on about: me, my book, TV, literary fiction, me, performance poetry, theatre literary management, me and theatre for social change (sometimes simultaneously – I am so way versatile) NOW YOU CAN! And it's free! My full schedule is below.

Would love, love, love to see y’all there – and if we haven’t met personally before, do make sure to say hello.

Thursday, September 30th

15:00 – 16:15 / Special Event
Festival Club
Launch Pad: Burnt Snow 
Did I really think that this would ever happen to me? ELEVEN years after my first NWFY appearance as an angry young radical playwright, I have returned to launch a fun, chunky book about witches and spookiness.
I’m doing a Newcastle/NYWF launch of Burnt Snow for the sentimental reason that it was going to my first NYWF that convinced me I had the entitlement to call myself a writer.  Please come join me as I celebrate coming full circle and the 10-year journey that’s brought me back to TINA. I’ll read a bit of my witchy book, answer a few questions – and there’s a rumour of a celebrity launcher guest who may or may not drop in. (Ooh, he'd better).

Friday, October 1st 

12:00 – 13:00 / Panel
Crackhouse: Lodge of Research
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Literary Management...  
This panel is part of the Crack Theatre Festival and it’s where I put my theatre-mafia hat on and bring out the violin case. Literary Management is what I do at my other job at the Finborough Theatre in London – that’s someone who selects scripts for development and programming and works with writers making their work better. Kinda useful to know about if you want to write for the theatre. My fellow panelists are Chris Mead (who runs Playwriting Australia) and Pater Matheson, who is not only my guru like Master Po to David Carridine in Kung Fu but also the former literary manager of the Melbourne Theatre Company.

16.00 – 17.00 / Panel
Crackhouse: Lodge of Research 
Theatre for social change 
On this, another theatre panel, I’ll be trying to answer the question: Can you use theatre to make the world a better place? … without cynicism. Hmm. Should be an interesting panel because the discussion of how much of this whacky artform can possibly change the world is certainly older than the Brecht/Lukacs stoushes of the 1950s (“Aristophanes is a big, fat fascist!” anyone?). Good panelists! Brenna Hobson from Company B Belvoir, Jane Gronow from Lowdown magazine and Alex Kelly from Ngapartji Ngapartji.

17:30 – 18:45 / Panel
City Hall: Mulubinba Room 
Debate: Free-To-Air Television is for Old People and Idiots 
This should be fun – though god knows why I was selected for this panel* – my experience of TV is appearing in crowd scenes at demos and writing some sick-child scenes for a BBC hospital drama. I only watch television to see live sport – but if you want to see a paranormal YA novelist/radical playwright talk about the upcoming NRL grand final with passion an integrity (CARN THE MIGHTY ROOSTERS), come along. The other people on either side of the debate are pretty cool – Zora Sanders who writes about TV, Alexandra Neill who is 9 or something and writes for Good News Week and William Kostakis who wrote the novel Loathing Lola. *I may be deliberately underplaying this because it is one of those comedy “Great Debate” things and I now have a comic persona to maintain. Sigh.

Saturday, October 2 

14:30 – 15:45 / Panel
Staple Manor
Vampires, Detectives and Rocket Ships: Oh My? 
This panel I’m REALLY looking forward to as it’s about that old chestnut of genre fiction vs literary fiction – and why one side often has a very negative attitude towards the other, and vice versa. It’s been a particularly interesting journey for me writing genre fiction because a lot of people who knew me as a playwright were (hopefully mock-) horrified when I announced my recent Burnt Snow career diversification. Again, the people on the panel are cool: Sommer Tothill, a writer who also reviews for the Brisbane Times; Kate Eltham, the CEO of the Queensland Writers’ Centre; microfictionista Daniel Walker; Krissy Kneen (who writes erotic memoirs, oh my!) and Thomas Benjamin Guerney, performance poet.

17:30 – 18:30 / Special Event
Crackhouse: Grand Lodge 
Performance vs Poetry 
Okay, so all I’m going to say about this debate thing is that my exboyfriend was a performance poet and I’ll be publicly releasing a lot of anxiety built up from three years of going to events that involved shoeless wankers screaming out nonsense like “I wanna be your dolphin!” during my debate speech allocation. I don’t even care who is on the rest of the panel because this one is all about ME... (although, some rather major poetry and performing people like writer/performer Tom Doig, poet/theatremaker Hadley, performance poet Steve Smart, poet/storyteller Candy Royalle, “drag king/queen wandering poltergeist” Di Drew and theatremaker Laura Scrivano are also rumoured to be involved). If you’ve ever heard the words “I want to explore the tundra of your womb” said to an audience without irony - and no, I am not joking - come stand with me.

Hope to see y’all soon. OH, and do feel free to follow me on Twitter if you’re curious to hear the kind of things I occasionally scream at the television.

Xxx

I had a book launch and nice people came! Wheee!

Oh, man: I've never been so tired in my life. Check it out, though - this is the scene as it went down at Shearer's Books in Leichhardt Sydney when we launched Burnt Snow.

Book launch: I'm at the far left, the Nice Bearded Man is playing Where's Wally. Photo courtesy of Alison Lyons. Rock.

It was exhausting. Amazing. Exhilarating. For those of you who haven't thrown a big party with a lot of people at it in a bookstore, I recommend it wholeheartedly. Shearer's is truly an awesome cafe and the catering was excellent, so I'm told - I was way too freaked out to actually eat anything.
For protection, I wore my big, fat turquoise amulet. According to the gemstone dictionary, "a string of turquoise gemstone crystal beads worn around the neck (also) absorbs all negativity from the body and mind and helps you develop your own natural powers". I think that's how I survived a room that contained four exboyfriends, most of my extended family and everyone from my best mate from high school's mum, my lawyer, publishers and the Mayor of Leichhardt, Jamie Parker, who launched the book. The emcee was James Beach, who did a marvellous job of extending a long welcome to the guests while I desperately tried to find the section of the book I'd planned to read.
More lovely shots from Alison Lyons:

That's me in the blue frock, greeting the fantastic Ms Hellen, friends from high school, stars of Sydney's musical theatre community, flatmates from uni, my former university students and EVERYONE I KNOW.

A huge thanks from me to Mum and Dad, who wrangled the launch organisation while I was between continents, the Nice Bearded Man (so nice, so bearded), James Beach and Jamie Parker who did the official business, Barbara and Jessica at Shearer's and all their staff, my publicist Louise and all at Pan Macmillan and, you know, my amazingly hot friends who made me look sexy and popular just by being there. Look how happy I am:

Thanks for these, Alison.

If you missed it, don't worry - two more books in the series means TWO MORE LAUNCHES. Am gonna maintain the mailing list in the right-hand sidebar if you wanna get an invitation.
Right, now I'm gonna sleep. xxx

Okay, so now I've worked out the embed thing...

Hi. Check it out. I've actually mastered the technology to put the promo for my book on my actual blog. No-one faint.

There was much discussion when this was being made regarding the casting of Brody in the promo (for pondiferications on this subject, see my last post). You'll note that on the right hand side of this ol' blog is a poll by which you can vote on whether the promo Brody looks like the Brody of your imagination. I've noticed that he's become something of an, ahem, popular character: note that SOMEONE WHO WASN'T ME started an FB group on this subject.

It's getting weird now. It's getting really weird...

PS ... Am LOVING it.

xx

Published: The point at which it gets a bit exciting...

Well, howdy! And a big round of applause for our model, Ms Impossibly Nice, seen here with a copy of Burnt Snow in her sweet little hands.

Ms Impossibly Nice holding Burnt Snow

Yes, my book is now not only available online (if you missed the list of online sellers, please feel free to revisit my last blog post, which has a dandy list) but it's also on bookshelves throughout Australia.
I'm learning a lot about this having-a-book-out malarkey - primarily because I've been on my very first book tour, attending the Melbourne Writers' Festival and the Brisbane Writers' Festival as part of the PanMacmillan Australia entourage. This means I've stumbled into a world of festival appearances, talks, signings, panels, author dinners, literary conversations and lots of bonding with the shockingly friendly and supportive world of Children's/YA novelists. Before I do a whole post on this subject, let me just say that if you strike books by Kate Forsyth, John Danalis, Fiona Wood, Steph Bowe, Kirsty Murray, Melina Marchetta, Leanne Hall or Belinda Jeffrey BUY them. Not only are these people great writers, but they're NICE and have GREAT TASTE IN FOOD. Belinda and John in particular - for who could ever forget the bonding had over the unbelievable feast provided by this restaurant? Absolutely noone who ever had the good sense to consult the waiter at European about their tasting menu, oh my.
So I'm learning a lot about what it takes to sell a book to the world. The first rule seems to be CONSTANT TALKING which, though I have a natural talent for talking incessantly about anything to hand is actually really tiring when you do it for three hours at a time without a break. The other great occupational hazard here is Signature Wrist, which is the painful tradeoff for the miracle of avid and enthusiastic readers wanting you to sign their copy of your (my!) book. If anyone out there has suggestions for how I can stop feeling like my writing career is about to be destroyed by tendonitis much in the same way Luke Skywalker's swordfighting career suffered a setback at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, please let me know.
The other thing I'm learning is how enormously hard a publicity team at a publisher's works to sell a book. Whoever said "You don't judge a book by its cover" clearly was not employed professionally in the publishing industry. Burnt Snow's publicity campaign includes an ad in this month's fabulous Frankie magazine, as well as - OMG - a book trailer on the YouTubes, which, of course, you can look at RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.
Have you read Burnt Snow yet? The video promo process was interesting because, as we were using actual human models for the animations, there was a rather heavy discussion around the issue of representing the "hero", Brody Meine. It was an interesting discussion to be a part of, just because it became apparent how everyone who reads a book imagines the characters in their own way - for me, as the author, it was interesting to hear people go "that's not Brody" or "that's so totally Brody" about a character who was, once upon a time, a figment of my imagination. Does the way you see a character get influenced by video promos or film casting? Do you cast actors in your head to play the parts? Are you ever cranky with who gets cast in film adaptations of books because they don't match the character in your head?
Obviously, I am way interested in this phenomenon right now and would love to hear your thoughts. Also looking forward to seeing you at Shearer's Books in Sydney on Wednesday and OMG book launch! Eeeee!

xxx Van