blog2

Divine News I have a new article on the Divine website , a review of Me and Her , a memoir by Karen Tyrrell. It is about her life with Bipolar Disorder. The review is very different from the personal review I had previously posted on my blog . This is the first paid book review I have done so I was determined to keep references to myself and my opinion out of the review. I think I succeeded.    I originally submitted an image of the cover of the memoir to Divine in the body of the email with the article.   Unfortunately the image did not show up in the email when the Divine editor viewed it. So the story did not go up with the book cover as its image. I am trying to rectify this.  The editor at Divine told me I needed permission from the publisher to use an image of the cover of the book. If that damned image in the original email had revealed itself to her I would have known about this proviso before the story went up on the site. Anyway, I i...

Those Communist French. I read recently that the French government fixes the price of books so that French bookshops, including those online, cannot discount books by more than 5% of the RRP.  On further investigation I found this article in the New York Times.    French legislators even dictated to Amazon that its publishers can charge whatever they like on Amazon. It seems this law has helped bookshops prosper in France. It also seems to have affected the uptake of ebooks in France with them being only a lowly 1.8% of the market. The fixing of prices by the French has benefited French Bookshops and probably French authors with higher royalties.  I have been trying to find out the actual price of the average just released paperback in France. The price would probably still be cheaper in France than here in Australia due to their much larger market where the cost of producing a book can be spread over more sales. My Expenses Were how Much?  I h...

  T he Passage by Justin Cronin has been a bloody good read so far. It’s apocalyptic horror/science fiction that takes vampires back to being monsters and not the insipid morally confused fashion plates they have become. The vampires in The Passage are genetically engineered mutants that have reverted to a primeval state whose only goal is survival. They are the result of an experiment by the US military to create super soldiers, but instead of defending the US they destroy it.  These vampires are not demons either, so anyone brandishing a crucifix or holy water will quickly have their arm ripped off. A shot to the brain or heart will kill them, but it has to be the first shot as there is no time for a second.  I am really enjoying this reinvention of the vampire. It was about time that the sophisticated womanising vampire was torn to pieces and splattered with gore.   Flashbacks Within Flashbacks. Justin Cronin’s writing style surprises too. I ...

Price of Top-selling ebooks Continues to Rise. It has been seven weeks since I last checked the prices of Amazon’s 100 best-selling ebooks. Some trends seem to be continuing while others are faltering. Overall, the price of a best-selling ebook seems to be going up. The trends that continue include a drop in the number of ebooks on the list selling at 99 cents. This time there were seven ebooks at 99 cents, compared to three last time which was massive drop from 34 in February. The number at the ebook guru price of $2.99 continues to drop. This time there were 15, last time 22, which was down from 32 in February. $3.99 has been confirmed as a hot price with seventeen ebooks at that price, compared to 13 last time and four in February. $4.99 might be a new hot price too, with eleven at that price this time.   Thirty-two ebooks were priced over $7 compared to 47 last time. But overall the price of the 100 best-selling ebooks is increasing. I think part of this in...

Writing News. I have been catching up on my newspaper reading and I have read some interesting articles relevant to writing and books. Shades of Twilight. A few blog posts ago, I postulated that based on the success of Fifty Shades of Grey , publishers would now be bracing themselves for an influx of erotic manuscripts. I thought that this rush of erotica might make up for publishers having to wade through thousands of Twilight like manuscripts about vampires who couldn’t   bring themselves to have sex with their human girlfriends. Little did I know, Fifty Shades of Grey grew out of Twilight fan fiction. I only found out about this link between the two series of books when reading an article in the AGE by Helen Razer.   It seems the author of Fifty Shades of Grey really wanted the vampire to impose his manhood on Belle. As a result of expected Fifty Shades of Grey fan fiction wanted the female character to be more assertive, I predict the next big flo...

  Australian History in Schools There has been a bit of debate in the media lately about the teaching of Australian history in schools. I wish Australian History had been taught when I was in school in the 70’s. All I remember being forced to study was ancient Greek history in high-school. It not only bored me - I spent most of my time inking in text book illustration - but seemed totally irrelevant. But Australian history is another matter. My interest in Australia’s history grew out of a trip around Australia when I was fifteen. On the trip I found out that Alice Springs was named after a telegraph station built beside a spring. I learnt the history of the Flying Doctors. I saw the harsh conditions that convicts were jailed in at Port Arthur. I learnt that dinosaurs had once inhabited Australia when I saw dinosaur footprints at Broome. An Aboriginal ranger told us about their customs at Ayers Rock (as it was called then). I learnt that whales used to be caught off...

A Pursuit of Miracles is a fabulously entertaining and thought provoking collection of science fiction short stories. It maintains the exceptionally high standards of George Turner’s many novels. Turner is arguably Australia’s best ever science fiction writer and this collection shows why.  There are only eight stories in the collections 207 pages, so they are mostly long stories. All but one of Turner’s nine published short stories are in the collection. Turner preferred to write novels. Indeed, at least two of the stories in this collection were later turned into novels. Turner was obviously a proud Australian as most of the stories are set in a future Australia. He seemed to be fascinated with telepathy which is the main theme, or in the background, of a number of the stories. Turner also seemed very much concerned with humanity’s destruction of the environment. The collection was published in 1990 and the stories have not dated.      The collect...