The year in review

Pic: johnmannophoto.com

The year speeds up towards the end, like many things nearing their finish. The older one gets, the faster time goes... and it doesn't only seem that way. Time really progresses at a faster rate, it's out of our control, and I'll not go into the science to prove it. You know what I'm talking about. A saucepan lid, a spun coin, or spinning top will gather speed as it girates towards the end of its agitation.

And agitation seems to be the key word around Christmas and Year's End: we swear we won't do it again next year, and yet we fall into the same pattern. It's fun while it lasts, but goodness knows it doesn't.

So 2013 ... phew - a tough one, eh? Yes - full of a number of perplexing details and travails that are gratefully behind us now. What a hard one it was. Demanding and testing. But a lot of boxes were ticked, a number of triumphs and hurdles were gained and leaped, on the home front and professionally. Another novel out, and another one started. Covers, prices, and advertising campaigns tried, tweaked, tested and more or less set in place. Decisions made for next year. Resolutions replaced with tempered plans.

Comparisons with preceding years are inevitable when December is over its halfway mark. Calculations are not exact, but it seems book sales are more than double those of 2012, which is gratifying and encouraging. Such encouragement, of course, is accompanied by the demand to do even better in 2014, which exacts more hard work and machinations.

Careful calculations and estimates, forecasts and predictions, however, indicate that next year will be arduous like no other since, so reason and prudence hold one at gunpoint. What's the best way to proceed with the prospect of a very demanding year ahead? The answer is: slowly, and with all the sense and restraint one can muster.

Finishing the new novel is postponed until 2015. Planned novellas are on hold. Publicity and promotions will proceed at a fraction of the furious rate of 2013. Time spent online will be rationed, cleverly and with sensibility. Everything will hopefully slow to a manageable pace.

Have you made the same kind of decision? What does 2014 hold for you - agitation, or the tranquillity that comes from knowing you are in control?

Visualizing my characters

It's inevitable - authors are forced at some point to describe their characters to readers who ask.

'So what does Jana in According to Luke look like?'
'A handsome priest - handsome like who?'
'Oh - a ruthless businesswoman - striking? Beautiful? Well-groomed?'

Christopher Lloyd

All those questions and many more were asked at one book signing. I did the best I could - and tried to hark back to when I started writing According to Luke. How did I see these characters? I found it impossible to think of Bryn Awbrey, the shambling Welsh professor, without visualizing who might play him in a movie. I could not get past Christopher Lloyd. This movie star is Bryn Awbrey all over - he would play the professor perfectly.

I can see him in his chaotic study, where every redundant scrap of paper from the university library seemed to find its final resting place. Boxes of academic journals, files and folders, cabinets bursting with sheaves and sheaves of paper, and bookcases bulging with thousands of books. He sits there, thinking, and his grey head nods and shifts - he is asked questions and he reaches for books. He knows where everything is, you see, and would be dismayed if anyone were to 'tidy up'.

I can see Christopher Lloyd as Bryn Awbrey catching a train from Venice to Ravenna, in the company of anxious Jana Hayes. He puts his large hand on hers, and says something so perceptive and so perspicacious about her private life that she is startled: startled to find she has always wanted this. She has missed not having a father, an uncle, or an understanding Grandad who could look into her eyes, understand, and console.

Bryn is eccentric and easily roused, especially if it's a puzzle or a mystery you have come to him with: his grey hair moves with his agitation, and he shakes his large hands and widens his soft brown eyes. Then his whole face breaks into a huge grin. What does he do next? He pours you a cup of tea from an enormous yellow teapot, into an unmatched yellow cup, and cuts you a large wedge of panettone, the Italian cake foreigners only eat at Christmas. How could you not feel comforted by his hospitality, untidy though it is?

I do know that many authors feel the same affection I have for Bryn Awbrey for some of their characters. An author spends almost a year with a bunch of characters, nursing them from creation to whatever end is in store for them at the end of the novel. During that time, characters can take life, have reality breathed into them, materialize and morph into a tangible personality. Describing that to a reader is not always possible.

I think I manage though, when I answer the question about what Bryn Awbrey looks like, when I say 'Christopher Lloyd!'

Tell me about your favourite book characters, and how you visualize them. Do you assign a movie star to represent them in your head as you read?

If you are an author, tell me how you go about describing characters to readers who ask.

If you have read According to Luke, tell me whether you see Bryn Awbrey in quite the same way.

Book covers - the great debate

A Cate Myers design

Many authors love their book covers so much they have posters of them made, framed, and hung in their study or office. I must admit to liking some of the covers of my books that much.

When BeWrite Books sent me this cover for approval, way back in 2005, for my first novel Death in Malta, I fell in love with it at once. My fans loved it too, and this first novel has been a nice steady success ever since. Sometimes, a cover and the content of a novel just click together, and readers sense this.

A Tony Szmuk design

I feel that typography is one of the most important elements on a cover: after all, one could dispense with everything else. The words - title and author's name - are not something a book can travel without. I like solid no-nonsense typefaces whose style seems to match with the book's content.

When BeWrite Books sent me the cover for According to Luke earlier this year I was not immediately convinced. It took me a while to see the genius of Tony Szmuk's design. Ever since the book was released, I have received any number of compliments about the novel's appearance. People praise its appropriate 'puzzle' suggestion, and the background that indicates the watery location of Venice.

It's far from easy to design a book cover. Designers are visual people - and they rarely have time to read a whole novel in order to conjure the image that might interpret and promote it best. By the same token, authors are 'word' people who rarely understand visual prompts as well as those trained to understand what makes people love a cover. Or better still, makes them buy a book because they like the cover.

A Rosanne Dingli design

When it came to designing covers for my story collections, issued independently from a bunch of out of print collections, whose rights had reverted to me, it was a steep learning curve. All the years of art school seemed not to mean much at first, but my training there - and a background working in magazines and publishing - soon put me right. My latest effort, Encore, is here on the right. It's wrapped around my latest collection, released in time for Christmas gift-giving, so I hope it is suitably festive. Apart from being merely seasonal, however, it is meant to carry a bunch of stories all written around a music theme.

To come up with what you see, it took me a fortnight of playing around with concepts, images, words and colours. I am not the fastest person on earth to make a decision, let alone the two dozen or so selections one must make to create a cover. The process was slow and deliberate this time. The opinions of a number of groups and individuals were taken into account. Now the little book is out, and I hope will gladden me with the approval of a whole lot of happy gift-buyers this Christmas.

Your opinion is required: What do you think of the covers of all my books? These are only three ... there are several more, which can be seen on my website.

A candid opinion is a rare thing - I would like as many as you can muster. Leave one or two in a comment box for me.

How to Announce a Winner

Image via Wikipedia

Big announcement

It is very tempting to write a title that goes something along the lines of "And the winner is...!" or to attach a sound file with a big trumpet fanfare. But this, after all, was a small giveaway. All the participants want to know is whether they were the one whose name was drawn out of the hat.
It had to be a big hat! 
Up for grabs was a copy of Death in Malta in paperback, remember? The emails came thick and fast at first, and then dwindled to a stop, with one straggler coming in just before I closed the draw at midnight on October 31.

I have used a special raffle software called The Hat. It's a nifty little program that's great for teachers and large families! 

The prize

So let's cut to the chase and put the winner up in big letters.

  

Margaret Sutherland

         Congratulations, Margaret - the book is on its way to you by snail mail.
Those of you who have missed out will be glad to hear there will be another similar draw closer to Christmas.
See you all again then.