Google Shmoogle

The lit blogs and forums are buzzing as deadlines loom (and pass) for Google's plan to digitise every book published in the US, Canada, UK and Australia.
(The original plan covered the whole world!)

Agents are giving conflicting advice to their authors.
The Society of Authors says 'opt in'. My agent says 'opt out'.

'In' gives you greater control, theoretically - and you can always ask for your books to be removed later. You will also be eligible for any money that may or may not come your way.

'Out' means your books will be removed from Google's site but doesn't guarantee they won't scan them in future.

Few authors have the staying power and attention span to wade through the reams of complex information and work out how it applies to them.
Those who do, come to different conclusions.

They've divided us, and now they'll rule us.

Most authors, I suspect, have their heads under the duvet and are hoping it will all just go away.

And there's the rub.
If you do nothing, by default you've opted in.
(It was this factor that has caused the greatest controversy and is still being contested in the courts.)

But if you continue to do nothing, you don't lay claim to your books.
Which means you have given your 'permission' for your books to be digitised and sold but won't get any money.

In other words, doing nothing is the worst possible course of (in)action.

Yet I suspect that 'nothing' is exactly what most authors are going to do.

Now excuse me for being cynical, but if I'm right about the low take-up, that must add up to a humongous pot of unclaimed money.
Google say this will be held in a fund for future claims, but meanwhile it's presumably not going to just sit there doing nothing ...

So what exactly is Google's objective?
Why the controversial 'opt in by default' angle?
And the off-putting labyrinth of information?

***
What am I going to do?
I'd just made the decision to opt out ...
... and found the deadline was yesterday!
So I'm presumably in - and should now get in there and claim my books ...

Meanwhile, I may be new on Facebook, but I've just started a We Hate the Google Book Settlement group.
Because that's one thing I think we can all agree on.

Debi's deafisms

Part 1 in an occasional series giving an insight into my muffled world.

Little Guy: Everyone I know says Avatar is amazing!
Me: What's so special about apple tart?

It's in the Bag!

I've been teetering on the edge of finishing Book 6 for some time.
I love that final stretch where the words spill out, tripping over each other in their haste to reach the finish line.

Last night, while the boys watched the footie, I unplugged Desdemona and wrote the epilogue, lying on the settee.

Then - I danced round the room ...
poured a large slug of Malibu into my camomile tea ...
ate some chocolate ...
a packet of crisps ...
two satsumas ...

Yeah, I really know how to party.

I'm looking forward to the 2nd draft refinements, which will be my first opportunity to see how it all hangs together, pruning the bits where the pace drops off and fleshing out the scenes I've skated over.

Then on to the the 3rd and final draft where I make sure I've always chosen the best word/phrase/image, before I enter the nail-biting phase where I send it off and wait for my agent's feedback.

Meanwhile, I have another 2 MSes to edit, so I'm izzy wizzy. Add that to continuing email problems and it means I might not get here much for a while.

But I'm close ... very close ...
What a ride!

Eek mail woes

Damn and damn again.
It seems that once more I have annoyed the lords of the cyberverse, and they've decided to punish me by blocking my emails.

If you have recently emailed me at my debialper dot co address, I won't have received it.

Please try this one instead, replacing the words 'at' and 'dot' with the appropriate symbols:

debialper at talktalk dot net

Right, I'm off to sacrifice a goat or something to try to appease them.
Do you reckon a wood louse would do the trick?
Bit short on goats in our neck of the woods ...

Now hear this!

I saw the audiologist yesterday and he souped up my left hearing aid.
(Can't use the right one yet as that ear's still v inflamed.)

Anyway, I now have the Lamborghini of listening devices ...
The Harry Potter of hearing instruments ...
The Diamond Standard of deaf aids ...

He's not only bounced up the volume, he's also cut out most of the extraneous noise so that I no longer have the distraction when someone opens a crisp packet in Sterling or turns the page of a book in Aberdeen.

Yippee! Hello, world!

So while I'm feeling cheerful, here's my list of things that are good about being deaf.
(Cos there have to be some, right?)

1) A large percentage of what many people say is not worth hearing

2) You spend a lot of time inside your own head, which is great for writing fiction.

3) Ditto cos there are fewer distractions.

4) Family arguments in which you're not directly involved float over your head.

5) The internet is a great leveler.

6) A deaf aid can always be removed or turned down if you want some peace and quiet.

7) You can bond with your aids - grateful for the difference they make to your life - instead of resenting them. Have I introduced you to Desdemona and Hortense?

At Deaf's Door

My dad finds my deafness hysterically funny.
(NB: He's the only person allowed to laugh!)
I think he gets a kick out of someone much younger being in a worse state than he is.

Yesterday's conversations went a bit like this:

Dad: Mumble, mumble.
Me: What?
Dad: (cheeky grin) Oh, nothing. Just talking to myself.

Dad: Mumble, mumble.
Me: What?
Dad: Mumble, mumble.
Me: Nope, still can't hear you.
Dad: Mumble, mumble.
Me: Eh? Hang on. Let me lean close to you. Now, what did you say?
Dad: Incomprehensible mumble.
Me: Come again, one more time.
Dad: Louder mumble.
Me: Hang on - that's not English. What is that?
Dad: (cheeky grin) It's Russian!
Me: I didn't even know you could speak bloody Russian!

Snow joke

So there was I this morning, preparing to cross London,

... bundled up like a Polar explorer
... anticipating digging myself out from snow drifts
... leaping from ice floe to ice floe
... wrestling with bears,
penguins,
seals
and those funny floppity things with tusks ...

'I'm going out. I may be some time.
If anything happens, remember how much I love you all ...'

Eh? Hang on ... Where's the snow gone?

Anyone else notice the past few days seem to have assumed a certain dreamlike quality ...?

Life and deaf

I'm standing in a queue at the bank.
Only one till is open and I'm 14th in line.
More people are piling up behind me.

The woman in front has a small child with a scooter.
She has grazed knuckles on her right hand and looks well 'ard.
The boy scoots over my foot.
I say nothing.

I think there must be an argument or something at the back.
Probably about the queue.
Everyone's turning round and staring.

The woman behind me is speaking to me.
I can see her lips moving.
I smile and say, 'Sorry, I'm deaf. I can't hear you.'
But I must say it too softly and she can't hear me either because she carries on talking.
I broaden the smile and hope it's not an inappropriate response.

I'm at the till at last.
The cashier is telling me something.
I fix on the all-purpose smile.
'Sorry,' I say. 'I'm deaf. I can't hear you.'
She starts mouthing at me and waving a form.
I have no idea what she's saying, but conscious of the queue behind me, I nod and hope she's not imparting crucial info.

Back on the street.
I avoid eye contact, pulling my hood over my eyes, hoping no one will recognise me.

I pass an old friend without seeing her.
She calls me and I don't respond.
Luckily, she taps me on the shoulder and I explain I wasn't deliberately ignoring her.
'Sorry,' I say. 'I'm deaf. I can't hear you.'
I wonder how many other people might be thinking uncharitable thoughts about how rude I am.

I stop every time I cross the road, looking in every direction several times before stepping out and continuing to glance every which way until I'm safely across.
I'm aware that to the casual observer I must look like an over cautious neurotic.
But I know it's all too easy to step in front of a car you didn't hear approach.

Back home.
After just one day back, the boys are off school because of the snow.
They know better than to try to communicate with me unless it's for something urgent.
I give thanks for the internet.

Apologies for the whiny post. Smiley happy Debi will be back in the next post.

Tail Tale Tit

Breaking news!

Hoovering the Roof, the East Dulwich Writers' Group anthology, has gone stellar!

Well, OK, maybe not quite stellar, but we are going to have to reprint mere weeks after our launch and even allowing for the recent gift-giving season, that's got to be pretty good going, eh?

And My Man in Spain, Steve Redwood, has said some very kind words that he's agreed to let us use as a cover quote.

So far, so good.
But things are rarely that straightforward in the world of wordsmiths.

I sent Steve's quote to the anthology contributors, and they were suitably flattered.
Just one small problem.
In his review, Steve had used the words twist in the tail.
'Surely that should be tale,' said one contributor.
'No, I reckon it's definitely tail,' said a second.
'Bloody writers,' grumbled a third. (That was me). 'Look, I've Googled both versions and there's contradictory advice. I reckon it could be either. But these are Steve's words, so I reckon the decision should be his.'

So I emailed Senor Redwood.
A nice polite email asking if he wanted to go with a twist in the literal tale or the metaphorical tail.

What a fool I am! You'd really think I'd know better.
Next time I opened up my Inbox I was greeted by a veritable flurry of emails from My Man in Spain.
Each was brief and to the point - and increasingly infuriating.
(I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing I nearly wet myself reading them.)

The time has to come to be decisive.

I'm staking my claim for tail and offer the following as justification:
If you say the tale of the tail, you mean a story about a tail.
If you say the tail of the tale, you mean the ending of the story, which may have been about anything, including but not exclusively nether quarter apendages.
A twist in the tail, implies an unexpected ending and that's what I reckon Senor Redwood meant, even if he refuses to settle the argument and is having far too much fun watching us squirm.

Voting is now open.
Which is to be?
Support your local tail.

I am a weak and weedy woman

I nearly held out for the full decade.
Until late last night ...

Guess what I was doing in the dying embers of the year.
Yes, holding my hands over both ears and saying, 'Ow', but I don't mean that.

Yes, friends, it's confession time.
In a moment of supreme weakness I went to the place where I had always sworn I would never go.
Yes, dear friends, I allowed my kids to set me up on Facebook.

And today, oh joy of joys (smell the irony), my Inbox is filled with messages.
Just what I needed ...

I'm not even sure what I'm going to be using it for, apart from yet another online distraction to stop me doing more important stuff.

But I'll tell you what I won't be using it for.

I won't be using it for creating some sort of idiotic virtual farm for people who have dust from the keyboard under their fingernails instead of earth.

I won't be using it to join random cyber groups designed to beat meaningless records for numbers of people signed up to random cyber groups.

I won't be using it to poke people, whatever the hell that is. Nor do I wish to be virtually poked by others, thank you very much.

I won't be using it to send messages into the world that are so shallow they wouldn't even moisturise the soles of your feet.

Any messages I do send will not now, nor ever, contain the letters LOL.

Nor will I be learning complex codes in order to insert banal emoticons into said messages, whatever they consist of.

So, having stated all that, if you'd like to meet up with me at the forbidden planet, you can connect with me here.
Just don't poke me.

Oh ... and Happy New Year.

Sweet 'n' sour

The bad news ...
I spent yesterday in bed with a perforated ear drum, feeling shite.

The good news ...
We don't celebrate Xmas, so the day is not as significant as it would be for others.

The bad news ...
It's the ear that until yesterday was known as 'the good one'.

The good news ...
I can see the sea from the bedroom window.

(We're cat sitting in Brighton. Which I guess is also good news ...)

Hope the news where you are is unmitigated good stuff.

People and planet

It would be so easy to feel downhearted by the feeble ending to the Copenhagen summit. But we can't afford to give up. There's too much at stake.

From the Avaaz site:

The Copenhagen climate summit ended up in failure: an unambitious, non-binding accord that leaders themselves admit won't come close to tackling climate change. Their failure is a disappointment -- and their failure is a challenge. We must work harder, demand more and never resile (sic) from our fight for our children and our planet.

That fight continues now. In just 6 weeks time leaders of each country will lock in their nation's emissions reduction targets under this week's agreement.

In Copenhagen, leaders didn't make history—but the world's people did. A year of unprecedented action on climate change reached unimagined heights in the last two weeks: thousands upon thousands of vigils, rallies, and protests; floods of phone calls and messages sent; millions of petition signatures—all calling for the fair, ambitious, and binding climate treaty we still need and still will win.

We're in this for as long as it takes. For now, let's look at what we've done, and thank one another for joining this journey. Take a moment to ... draw hope from the countless people of all nations who are joining together for a better world.

If you leave a comment here, you can watch your words slip downwards as they are joined every few seconds by other people around the world who share the same hopes and fears.

My Book of the Decade

I have always been a voracious reader.
These days, I'm very fussy.
I don't want to waste my valuable reading time on books that don't come up to my exacting standards - and some of the bestsellers fall a long way short IMO.

But there are some wonderful books out there.
I've reviewed many of them on this blog before.

So you'd be forgiven for imagining it would be difficult to come up with one worthy of the title of

... triumphal horns and drumroll ...

Book of the Decade.

And the winner is ...

The Killing Jar by Nicola Monaghan.

Dear blogmates, I have to tell you it wasn't a hard decision at all because this book stands out for me as not just a book of the decade but one of the best books I've read - ever.
Every aspect filled me with respect and admiration for the author.

At first glance, it seems a simple book with a first person linear narrative.
No clever frills.
No obvious literary devices.
Just the most compelling voice, spot-on pacing, vivid characterisation and gritty grimy realism.

Nicola shies away from nothing, refusing to romanticise the poverty and violence that define life on the grim Nottingham housing estate where the action takes place.
She shines her unflinching spotlight onto the lives of marginalised people too often dismissed - or simply feared - by 'respectable' folk.

Kerrie-Ann, the narrator of The Killing Jar, lives a drug-fueled life of crime and violence as both victim and perpetrator. The book begins when she is five, the daughter of a junkie single parent who soon disappears, and continues through her struggles through adolescence, including a desperate and lethal kind of love, to a bittersweet, life-affirming ending.

At times the book feels so painful, it is almost hard to carry on reading, yet, at the same time, I was unable to put it down. Kerrie-Ann haunted me and I know she will remain with me always.

But don't get the idea that this is a hard book to read. In these pages you will find humour and energy and a zest for life that you rarely see in the written word.

Nicola has done well with The Killing Jar and its successor, Starfishing (a different demographic but, in its own way, an equal triumph). Sales have been steady and respectable. She has won awards.
Yet her name is not on everybody's lips and she's not at the top of the bestseller charts, where she deserves to be.

I wonder why this is.

I suspect it may be because many people don't want to know about the people she has depicted. It's too hard, too confusing. Easier to maintain preconceptions, batten down the hatches and take refuge behind high fences, peeping out from behind net curtains.

Take up the challenge.
Read the book and then let me know if it failed to enthrall you.

Seasonal gifts for you

Happy festivals of light to you all.

Here are some virtual goodies for you to while away the hours between eating doughnuts (so many doughnuts ...) if you celebrate Chanukah, or mince pies if you're just about anyone else.

Treat number one:
Check out the new site from Lucy Pepper ( she of Bookarazzi fame) where a group of unkempt women have got together to celebrate their unkemptitude.

Treat number two:
Thanks to Qwerty Queen (she of mentee fame) I can give you this link to all the competitions you may want to enter. Go on. You know you want to.

Treat number three:
Probably only a treat if you're a parent of one of the children featured, but this is how we celebrate our festival of light.

Later this week, Bookarazzi members will be giving their recommendations for gift books. My next post on this blog will be my own personal 'Read of the Decade'.

Enjoy!

PS: Don't forget the biggest gift of all - a future for our planet!
Please sign the petition here to put pressure on world leaders meeting right now in Copenhagen to discuss climate change.
11,088,380 have people already signed up at the point of posting.

Debi does quantum

So Little Guy was explaining to me about the co-existence of multiple universes, which I vaguely recognised (mainly thanks to Philip Pullman) as being a principle of quantum physics. And they say education is dumbing down ...

Anyway, that got me thinking. What if, when we create a fictional reality, that too has an independent life of its own? Would that explain the spooky feeling we sometimes get as writers that our stories exist outside of our will, even though we created them?

When I finished writing my first book, Nirvana Bites, for example, I never intended the characters to reappear in subsequent books. But somehow, they muscled their way in. I justified their inclusion on the grounds that I had given these characters life and now they would be continuing those lives whether I wrote about them or not - so I might as well.

Sounds crazy, but that's exactly how it felt. Plots too can sometimes feel eerily prescient, even as you create them.

And here's another parallel. You come up with a character. You see what they look like and how they react to the situations you put them in. But - for me anyway - you may well not know why they are the way they are. You have to wait for them to trust you enough to tell you.

That's exactly the same in real life when you meet someone new. Say it's a colleague. You see them daily. You know who they live with, if they have children, where they go on holiday, what their favourite food is ... But you might not know why they become defensive on a particular subject, or perhaps you notice they seem to over react to something trivial ...

It's only after you've known them for some time that you find out what it was in their past or background that caused that particular reaction. Maybe they tell you themselves or you might hear it from someone else. Either way, the pieces suddenly fall into place and you think,
'Aha! That explains it ...'

Well, it's true for fiction too. I know that's hard to wrap your head round (like quantum theory isn't?) but I swear it's true.

In my WIP, my main protagonist is not a likable character (though I hope that readers will still care about what happens to her). She's manipulative, a snob, irrational and often a real bitch. In the back of my mind, I always wondered what had made her like that but waited patiently for the story to evolve.

I watched her get pregnant against her long-suffering husband's will. I noted the wedge she'd driven between him and his brother; her profligate spending in denial of their financial straits; her plunge into depression matching their plummet down the social ladder; her total meltdown when things go tragically wrong.

And now, over 50,000 words in, she has finally revealed her secrets to me. The secrets she had hidden from her shrink and even from herself.

And ... it all fits! No re-writes needed, at the most a minor tweak here and there. It makes complete sense and it's utterly pivotal to the plot I've been writing.

So - in scientific terms - how can that be explained if not by some quirk of quantum theory, meaning the fictional worlds we create are as real as this one?

And there we have it: Alper's theory of fictional reality. You saw it first here.

PS: You just gotta love a scientific theory that includes something called a charmed quark - not a new vegan foodstuff, but according to here, 'a type of quark with a mass of c. 1.0 to 1.6 GeV/c, a positive charge that is the charge of an electron, +1 charm, and zero strangeness.' Got that?

Not weird, but wonderful

If last weekend was weird, this one also revolved around writing in one form or another but was full on wonderful!

I spent Saturday selling Hoovering the Roof on a stall on Northcross Road with other EDWGers, then came home and changed and was off out again, this time to a launch party.

The great thing about this event was that it was to celebrate the publication of a book that's created a real buzz by a blogging author who I had come across only briefly via Bookarazzi.

Cally Taylor has struck gold with her novel, Heaven Can Wait, which has already gone to a 3rd reprint just weeks after being launched and has sold translation rights in 8 countries (so far). (Can't wait to read it.)

To make the party even more exciting, Cally is part of a vast extended community of blogging writers, none of whom I'd met before - even in the blogosphere - and all (yes, all!) of whom were friendly, welcoming, sharing and supportive.

As if that wasn't enough for my cup to runneth over, I got to bring the only one I had met before (my fabulous mentee, Her Royal Qwertyness) back home with me and keep her overnight.

Anyway, if any of the new people I met happen in here - greetings and welcome. I forgot to write down all your blog names, so please drop me a comment so we can continue the discussions we started.

My weird weekend

Collectormania - I'll let the photos tell the story. (More here to give a full flavour.)

Many thanks to Ayo, Lizzie and Sara at Mystery Women for setting this event up, looking after us all and for your tireless efforts to promote our genre.

It was great to meet and spend time with such a warm and friendly group of authors ...
*waves at Cassandra Clark, Suzette Hill, Lesley Horton, Joan Lock, Linda Regan (accompanied by her husband, Brian Murphy), Leigh Russell, Zoe Sharp and Kate Stacey*

Between us all, I reckon we're going to spawn a whole new sub-genre based on this last weekend ...

Mystery Women are running a short story competition for unpublished writers. 1000 words exactly, entitled Mystery Woman or Mystery Women. £10 per entry. Winning entry will be published in Mystery Women magazine and the author will receive £100 and a conference ticket for CrimeFest 2011. Entries must be submitted under a pseudonym. Closing date 31/01/10. Send submission and entry fee to Ms L Hayes, 2 Darwin Close, Broughton Astley, Leics., LE9 6XD.

We came, we saw, we hoovered ...

... and we ate, drank, read, bought, laughed, shared, signed ...

From which you will gather it was a great evening at the fabulous Bookseller Crow on the Hill last night.

Nineteen copies of Hoovering the Roof sold and one local bookshop has run out before we've even got it into all the others!

Next event will be 7.00-8.30 pm Monday 30th November at Dulwich Library.

More info and photos on the EDWG site.

Hoovering the Roof - In Praise of Writers' Groups

Once upon a time, way back at the fag end of the last millennium, a lone writer decided he’d like to meet up with other local authors to share their words. He put cards in shop windows (this was long before the days of internet forums) and half a dozen people responded. The East Dulwich Writers’ Group was formed.

To begin with, the group met in the back room of a local café. After the first few meetings, they decided it would be more comfortable to meet in each other’s homes, where they would have access to kettles, toilets, back gardens and – yes – roofs.

Twelve years later, over a hundred people have joined the mailing list for the group. In spite of the huge numbers, EDWG has remained intimate and informal, retaining an ethos of mutual support and constructive criticism. The ages of our members range from teens to octogenarians and we reflect the diversity of culture and class in this corner of south east London. We have people at every stage of their writing career, from absolute beginners to published authors and competition winners. All those who have attended regular meetings have appreciated the feedback and advice, as well as the motivation provided. For some of us, EDWG has literally changed our lives.

To celebrate over a decade of local creativity, EDWG presents their first anthology, Hoovering the Roof.

Now you're faced with a choice. Do you want to come to our launch event at the Bookseller Crow on the Hill on Thursday?

Or what about the event next Monday at Dulwich Library ...

Or perhaps you'd like to pop by the stall we'll be running in Northcross Road on Saturdays from 5th December ...

For details of all events, go here and click ... er ... 'events' on the sidebar.

Or maybe you can't come to any of these real life events but want a copy of the book anyway, in which case you need to go here and click 'Hoovering the Roof'.

Alternatively, leave a comment on this post with the words 'lucky dip' included in the text to have a chance of winning a copy of the book signed by the contributors.

If you want to know what I personally owe to EDWG and the way it has changed my life, check this out.
I still rely on the group. No matter how many edits I have done for other people, it's almost impossible to be objective about your own writing and the feedback is invaluable.

By the way, did I tell you how excited I am by this ...?

Lost for words

Oh, pooh! I've just lost 5,000 words.

There I was, steaming ahead with my WIP and assuming I was nearing the end, when I saw something that didn't feel right and realised I've duplicated several chapters. I think it's fine cos I also realise I need to insert stuff earlier but it's still mega irritating.

At times like this, the lure of pharmaceuticals is hard to resist ...

NOTE: This image and the one on the previous post was sent to me many moons ago by the magical Minx. Though she's barely blogging these days, so probably won't notice.