I have become increasingly cynical of late. The world made me do it, I have not chosen to be overtaken by the horror, but the horror is there.
It has become necessary to compare two people... Schapelle Corby and Renae Lawrence
Schapelle Corby http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schapelle_Corby and Renae Lawrence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renae_Lawrence are the same age, both were born in 1977 making them only a few years younger than me. Both of them are Australian citizens. Both of these young women were arrested in 2005 in Indonesia for drug trafficking.
Schapelle got caught taking drugs into Indonesia, Renae was caught taking drugs out. Schapelle it was Marijuana, Renae heroin.
Now, I would have assumed that Indonesia would want to crack down more on someone bringing drugs into the country right? Schapelle was screwed right?
When the two arrests happened the publicity was completely different. Schapelle was made out to be a victim, the media believed her story that someone placed the drugs in her bags. The media was full of sob stories and cries to let Schapelle go! Renae was made out to be a fool who smuggled drugs and got caught, she (with the Bali 9 the others who got caught) was seen as a victim of the system, but a guilty drug trafficker.
Both women were convicted and sentenced to 20 years prison.
Now nine years later Schapelle is free, and all reports imply or state that she was freed because of the publicity from Australia, that she was freed because Australians have put increasing pressure on the government of Indonesia. On the other hand Renae will be in prison until 2025. Incidentally, Schapelle has been offered a lot of money for interviews, one can assume she is waiting for someone to offer enough.
So, why the discrepancy between the treatment of the two women? I remember at the time wondering why the Bali 9 were not being treated the same as Corby, why the cries of innocence and "let them go" were not all over the press. Well, I didn't wonder that hard, I kinda knew and even now 9 years later I still know. You see, Schapelle is pretty, blue eyed and cries well on camera. She makes a good "poor baby" media darling. Renae on the other hand, is gay.
There is no other reason for the discrepancy. So remember, if you plan to get caught with drugs in a foreign country and want the media to put pressure on the third world country you smuggled drugs into, make sure you are pretty, blue-eyed and above all STRAIGHT.
Monday, 10 February 2014
The Whats Whys and whynots of going indie
Some years ago, 6 i believe, I completed writing a book that I loved. Looking at it now I still love it. Not many books of poetry have the potential to actually change people's lives but in my deepest soul I believe that I have written such a book.
Not only do I think it brilliant but friends of mine, who I asked to look it over back then loved it as much as I do if not even more. At the time I was performing works from that book regularly at poetry gigs and open mics and to my surprise I didn't even get sick of them. It was not until last year that I attempted to get said book published.
While attempting to get my book published, while submitting it and waiting the interminable wait for replies, I published other works both new works and others from my backlist on Smashwords, having little success but seeing enough to become a believer in the power of independent ebook publishing.
Today, only minutes ago, my beloved book was rejected by my favorite publisher, one that I truly though would love my book. Yes, I know it happens all the time that most people find it hard to get published but I also know that publishers are only human and they make mistakes. What if my book is truly as great as I say but the publishers made a silly mistake?
Then there is the other problem, I live in Australia with a population around 20 million. Even though publishers can get their work distributed anywhere in the world their first thought needs to be "can we sell this on the local market". Well, my book might not do well locally, it would do better internationally. Also, I want a lot of people to have the chance to discover it, and a local publisher reduces my chance of that happening.
My questions to myself are, 1) Will I get more of a market if I go indie with this book?
2) Am I holding on to my life-long desire to see my name on the spine of a book in a bookshop too tightly
Answer to 1) is most likely and 2) is almost certainly
Therefore the answer to "should I make it indie"? Is probably "stop being a doofus and just do it"
It's amazing how writing it all down helps clarify my thoughts
Not only do I think it brilliant but friends of mine, who I asked to look it over back then loved it as much as I do if not even more. At the time I was performing works from that book regularly at poetry gigs and open mics and to my surprise I didn't even get sick of them. It was not until last year that I attempted to get said book published.
While attempting to get my book published, while submitting it and waiting the interminable wait for replies, I published other works both new works and others from my backlist on Smashwords, having little success but seeing enough to become a believer in the power of independent ebook publishing.
Today, only minutes ago, my beloved book was rejected by my favorite publisher, one that I truly though would love my book. Yes, I know it happens all the time that most people find it hard to get published but I also know that publishers are only human and they make mistakes. What if my book is truly as great as I say but the publishers made a silly mistake?
Then there is the other problem, I live in Australia with a population around 20 million. Even though publishers can get their work distributed anywhere in the world their first thought needs to be "can we sell this on the local market". Well, my book might not do well locally, it would do better internationally. Also, I want a lot of people to have the chance to discover it, and a local publisher reduces my chance of that happening.
My questions to myself are, 1) Will I get more of a market if I go indie with this book?
2) Am I holding on to my life-long desire to see my name on the spine of a book in a bookshop too tightly
Answer to 1) is most likely and 2) is almost certainly
Therefore the answer to "should I make it indie"? Is probably "stop being a doofus and just do it"
It's amazing how writing it all down helps clarify my thoughts
Thursday, 2 January 2014
the Desolation of Smaug Review - (WARNING SPOILERS)
I am a fan of director Peter Jackson, I have been since his first feature film "Bad Taste", there has never been a better (or worse) piece of "so bad it's good" horror in history (and to top it off it's so-bad-it's-good intentionally without being over-silly garbage). I am also a big fan of Tolkien, Lord of the Rings was the first book I ever read by choice (not a school book) after I found it in the local tip and just started reading at eight years old. It was the book that made me love books, the book that over 30 years ago started me on the path to becoming an author.
Being a fan of both Peter Jackson and Tolkien I was admittedly apprehensive at the thought of Jackson adapting Lord of the Rings, I loved his work but I couldn't see him successfully converting from what he did through to the most important work of epic fantasy in history. Basically I thought he would cock it up.
I could not have been more wrong, Peter Jackson's adaptation of Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece.
When I heard that Jackson had overcome his aversion and decided to adapt the Hobbit I was understandably excited. Here was one of my favorite directors continuing with a body of work that produced his masterpiece, his great work. Nobody else could make the Hobbit, it had to be him, I knew that others had started the work so I was delighted that Jackson had decided to finish it.
Then an Unexpected Journey came out and I was frankly disappointed. I had gone to the cinema in anticipation and excitement, hope and delight, emotions that the movie frankly failed to live up to. It was dull, it was boring, the drawves had been turned into cartoonish caricatures and there was a peppering of anachronistic language and modernised themes that didn't work. Every time it happened I cringed, it broke the feel, destroyed the atmosphere completely.
Rather than a well thought out, long planned, almost perfect script we were shown an adaptation that I would have been ashamed to put my name to if I had written it. Even the action and spectacle was a failure, far from the realistic (sometimes too realistic) and horrific violence of the Lord of the Rings, the action in an Unexpected Journey was comical and frankly quite silly. Far too silly.
Sadly though, the disappointment I felt when I saw an Unexpected Journey pales into insignificance compared to the heartbreak i experienced watching the Desolation of Smaug.
Far from the improvement I would have hoped for, somehow they managed to make a movie even worse than the first one. It had all the flaws I had seen before, the cartoonish violence, the one-dimensional comedic characterisations, the boring, poorly written padded out script. Don't forget the Hobbit is only one book, and that book is shorter than one volume of the three volume Lord of the Rings, how they thought to get three epics from it is beyond me.
The biggest problem was the padding. Understandably there was an intent with the film-making to fill out some unexplained or poorly explained details from the Lord of the Rings. Turning the Hobbit into a true prequel could even be admirable. I have no issue with those pieces of padding. That was not the only padding.
------ WARNING SPOILERS BELOW -----
What I have issue with was big chunks of padding that even required massive modifications to the story to fit them in that are there for no good purpose. The worst crimes against Tolkien's work were when the plot was changed in a major way to fit in padding that featured a character that didn't even exist in the novel they said they were adapting. I am of course referring to the tokenistic, unnecessary, transparently sales-grabbing character of Tauriel.
Get this straight, I am a woman and a feminist, I would argue always in favor of more female characters in all media. I personally wouldn't add a female character to the Hobbit because that is almost like messing with sacred writ but I don't disagree with it in principle. However, if I was to add a female character to the Hobbit it certainly wouldn't be a clichéd too-pretty pointless female elvish warrior type. If I did she certainly wouldn't have been so obviously cast to turn on 15 year old boys.
To rearrange the plot to add filler that focuses on a character that doesn't even exist in the primary text is unforgivable. Doing it obviously to give boys someone to look at is even worse.
If they truly just wanted to add a female character to reduce the "boys own adventure" aspects of the piece there is a less offensive (though less box-office grabbing) way. Throughout the Lord of the Rings, and even within the script of the Desolation of Smaug, there are references to Dwarvish women being, on the surface, almost identical to Dwarvish men, even to the point of having beards (in the movie Legolas mistakenly identified a sketch of Gloin's wife as his brother).
It follows that an arguably more feminist and less offensive way to insert a female character would have been to rewrite one (or more) of the dwarves in Thorin's company as female. This would not require any additions of characters or massive rewrites of major parts of the story line. Additionally nobody would be able to criticize the production team for inserting vapid, unnecessary and sexist eye-candy. I do not believe it necessary to point out the comedic value of having one of the dwarves as female, you can work that out for yourself.
There are so many ways that the Desolation of Smaug could have been handled better. In summary, I have never been so disappointed with a movie in my life, it could have been, it should have been a masterpiece. To Peter Jackson and the rest of the production team I say this, I am fans but I have to be honest with you, you should have got it right, you can't go back and do it again.
Maybe it would not have been a bad movie if it was something else and not the Hobbit, maybe it would have been better if not being compared to the Lord of the Rings, but it is the Hobbit and it is being compared to the earlier masterpiece. I was so disappointed with the movie that I wanted to cry.
Finally, if I had finished a script with the line "what have we done!" I would, in embarrassment, never write again. You could do better.
Being a fan of both Peter Jackson and Tolkien I was admittedly apprehensive at the thought of Jackson adapting Lord of the Rings, I loved his work but I couldn't see him successfully converting from what he did through to the most important work of epic fantasy in history. Basically I thought he would cock it up.
I could not have been more wrong, Peter Jackson's adaptation of Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece.
When I heard that Jackson had overcome his aversion and decided to adapt the Hobbit I was understandably excited. Here was one of my favorite directors continuing with a body of work that produced his masterpiece, his great work. Nobody else could make the Hobbit, it had to be him, I knew that others had started the work so I was delighted that Jackson had decided to finish it.
Then an Unexpected Journey came out and I was frankly disappointed. I had gone to the cinema in anticipation and excitement, hope and delight, emotions that the movie frankly failed to live up to. It was dull, it was boring, the drawves had been turned into cartoonish caricatures and there was a peppering of anachronistic language and modernised themes that didn't work. Every time it happened I cringed, it broke the feel, destroyed the atmosphere completely.
Rather than a well thought out, long planned, almost perfect script we were shown an adaptation that I would have been ashamed to put my name to if I had written it. Even the action and spectacle was a failure, far from the realistic (sometimes too realistic) and horrific violence of the Lord of the Rings, the action in an Unexpected Journey was comical and frankly quite silly. Far too silly.
Sadly though, the disappointment I felt when I saw an Unexpected Journey pales into insignificance compared to the heartbreak i experienced watching the Desolation of Smaug.
Far from the improvement I would have hoped for, somehow they managed to make a movie even worse than the first one. It had all the flaws I had seen before, the cartoonish violence, the one-dimensional comedic characterisations, the boring, poorly written padded out script. Don't forget the Hobbit is only one book, and that book is shorter than one volume of the three volume Lord of the Rings, how they thought to get three epics from it is beyond me.
The biggest problem was the padding. Understandably there was an intent with the film-making to fill out some unexplained or poorly explained details from the Lord of the Rings. Turning the Hobbit into a true prequel could even be admirable. I have no issue with those pieces of padding. That was not the only padding.
------ WARNING SPOILERS BELOW -----
What I have issue with was big chunks of padding that even required massive modifications to the story to fit them in that are there for no good purpose. The worst crimes against Tolkien's work were when the plot was changed in a major way to fit in padding that featured a character that didn't even exist in the novel they said they were adapting. I am of course referring to the tokenistic, unnecessary, transparently sales-grabbing character of Tauriel.
Get this straight, I am a woman and a feminist, I would argue always in favor of more female characters in all media. I personally wouldn't add a female character to the Hobbit because that is almost like messing with sacred writ but I don't disagree with it in principle. However, if I was to add a female character to the Hobbit it certainly wouldn't be a clichéd too-pretty pointless female elvish warrior type. If I did she certainly wouldn't have been so obviously cast to turn on 15 year old boys.
To rearrange the plot to add filler that focuses on a character that doesn't even exist in the primary text is unforgivable. Doing it obviously to give boys someone to look at is even worse.
If they truly just wanted to add a female character to reduce the "boys own adventure" aspects of the piece there is a less offensive (though less box-office grabbing) way. Throughout the Lord of the Rings, and even within the script of the Desolation of Smaug, there are references to Dwarvish women being, on the surface, almost identical to Dwarvish men, even to the point of having beards (in the movie Legolas mistakenly identified a sketch of Gloin's wife as his brother).
It follows that an arguably more feminist and less offensive way to insert a female character would have been to rewrite one (or more) of the dwarves in Thorin's company as female. This would not require any additions of characters or massive rewrites of major parts of the story line. Additionally nobody would be able to criticize the production team for inserting vapid, unnecessary and sexist eye-candy. I do not believe it necessary to point out the comedic value of having one of the dwarves as female, you can work that out for yourself.
There are so many ways that the Desolation of Smaug could have been handled better. In summary, I have never been so disappointed with a movie in my life, it could have been, it should have been a masterpiece. To Peter Jackson and the rest of the production team I say this, I am fans but I have to be honest with you, you should have got it right, you can't go back and do it again.
Maybe it would not have been a bad movie if it was something else and not the Hobbit, maybe it would have been better if not being compared to the Lord of the Rings, but it is the Hobbit and it is being compared to the earlier masterpiece. I was so disappointed with the movie that I wanted to cry.
Finally, if I had finished a script with the line "what have we done!" I would, in embarrassment, never write again. You could do better.
Monday, 16 December 2013
verse novels/novellae
I love verse novels, they are an obscure genre of literature, and all too often under-appreciated. Some of my favorite books are verse novels, such as the Monkey's Mask by Dorothy Porter (and all the rest of the Porter verse novels - all brilliant) and Love Death and the Changing of the Seasons by Marilyn Hacker. Not only are verse novels among the best pieces of poetry you are ever likely to read, and are thus enjoyable to readers of poetry, but they are also a great introduction to great poetry for non-readers of verse.
I have spent a large part of my life writing poetry (I was a poet first before all other forms of art) and lately I have been working on serious quantities of prose fiction. It follows therefore that I should return to something I have tried before, that is verse novels. To that end I am working on a verse novellae series between other projects.
More to follow.
I have spent a large part of my life writing poetry (I was a poet first before all other forms of art) and lately I have been working on serious quantities of prose fiction. It follows therefore that I should return to something I have tried before, that is verse novels. To that end I am working on a verse novellae series between other projects.
More to follow.
Thursday, 21 November 2013
Just completed tonight and posted on smashwords, my first published book of poetry. I have trawled through notes on envelopes and in old note books. I have dredged lost files from broken computers, I have torn my hair out but here it is: "Falling into Barbed Wire" - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/380184
check it out
check it out
Friday, 15 November 2013
soon to come
Soon to come, hopefully tonight, my first smashwords ebook, more details when I get it out there.
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