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200 reviews

21/9/2018

The 200th FlaxFlower book review
has been posted
on the FlaxFlower page

I started FlaxFlower in 2014 as a free service to fellow Kiwi authors, who often find it difficult to have their books reviewed. At the time I committed to do it for the year. Then thought, maybe a further year, and now…

The process – When I get a request for a review, I find a suitable reviewer from my stable of lovely people who volunteer their time and expertise. My rule is that reviewer and author do not know each other – essential for an unbiased opinion.

When the review comes in I let the author or publicist see it first and decide whether or not they want it published – a yes or no decision, no negotiation or rewriting. FlaxFlower might be unique in this. My reason for giving the choice is I want to help promote good books, not to pull down any writer. Some authors choose to take the no-publish option, so the number of reviews processed is higher than 200.

Yes, all the administration takes a lot of my time.
Yes, I sometimes think I could spend it more profitably in another way - in the garden, patting cats, or even on my own writing!

My grateful thanks to the reviewers who also give their time. If you'd like to join them, please let me know via the contact page.

Please see the 200th
and other past reviews
on the FlaxFlower page

😊 Bronwyn Elsmore

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Your opinions noted

19/9/2018

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Thank you to everyone who voted on the covers below.

As well as the notice on this blog, I shared the idea on the Flaxroots Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/flaxrootsNZ), with an online writers’ group to which I belong, and via Twitter. Lots of you lovely people gave your views, via the voting buttons, comments, or private messages. Thank you all.
The result? Cover 1: 27 Cover 2: 37
The 26 people who took the trouble to comment on their reasons raised some good points, so we’re now working on further refinements.
Watch this space for the eventual cover reveal.

😊 Bronwyn Elsmore

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Your opinion, please

3/9/2018

10 Comments

After the inspiration, the planning and plotting, the months or years of writing, rewriting, polishing, repolishing, repolishing the repolished, you’d think an author could say “finished”.
     But no. Then comes all the other things that go into final production of a book – engaging an editor, proof-reader, designer, before printing and/or digital publication.
     Selecting a new cover design is always a difficult part of the process, so for my forthcoming book I thought I’d get wider expert opinion – from you, the all-important readers.
     The designer and I have reduced dozens of possibilities down to two. Which do you prefer? Please vote via the buttons, or leave a comment.
   Thank you.

10 Comments

One among millions

18/8/2018

1 Comment

I find that now I'm one among millions, rather than one in a million.
When I started my professional writing career – it’s a long time ago – there were few of us who could call themselves fulltime writers. I started in radio as a copywriter, and since then have been a freelance writer, contract writer, editor, education writer, playwright, then an academic writer during the years I was an academic.

Apart from my salaried years in academia, it was a low and intermittently paid career. The stereotype of writers and artists starving in garrets contains some truth.
The picture is different now, though for most the low financial return remains the same.
Storytelling is now in vogue in a big way – everyone, it seems, has a story they want to tell. At the same time, technology has opened the publishing business to anyone who wants to see their by-line on a cover, be it paper or digital.
Figures on how many books are currently being published per year seem to agree it’s around the 2.2 million mark. Yes, that’s millions! More than 6,000 every day.
Despite the fact that the majority of these books will sell very few copies, sometimes only a couple of dozen, and comparatively few will pass the 200 mark, the number of hopeful new authors is also increasing by the day.
A recent poll in UK revealed that the most popular choice of most desired job was that of an author, with 60% of respondents choosing it from a given list.
It seems all these wannabe writers aren’t readers. If they were, they’d know that almost every author who’s made any sort of name for him or herself has said what an exceptionally hard job they find it. For all but a handful there’s no glamour attached to it, and most probably almost no pay. Apparently that’s not a deterrent.
I guess it’s human nature that most people believe they’ll be the one among millions who is the exception to the rule.

😊 Bronwyn Elsmore

1 Comment

NZ National Poetry Day

14/8/2018

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Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day #NZPoetryDay announces its largest ever celebration of poetry today, with more than 130 events programmed to take place around New Zealand.
Held annually on the fourth Friday in August, National Poetry Day sees award-winning poets join poetry enthusiasts from all over the country in a marathon programme of poetry readings, performances, workshops and competitions.
On August 24, poetry will be making news – and noise – in dozens of cities, towns and rural areas across New Zealand. Expect to encounter poetry in expected and unusual places – on public transport, street posters and footpaths; in cafés, bars, bookshops, and libraries; and at schools, university campuses, retirement villages, marae, theatres and community centres.

The day will include appearances by 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards poetry category finalists Briar Wood and Sue Wootton in Auckland and a workshop with winner Elizabeth Smither in Christchurch. All four 2018 Ockham poets, including Tony Beyer, feature in Phantom Billstickers’ countrywide super-size Poetry on Posters campaign and will also be filmed for a social media campaign celebrating poetry.
   New Zealand Books Awards past poetry winners Jenny Bornholdt, Kevin Ireland, Anne Kennedy, Bill Manhire, Greg O’Brien and Brian Turner will also take part in events around New Zealand. Alongside established poets, emerging voices and student poets will take part in open mic sessions and spoken-word performances. There will be a host of poetry contests for writers of all ages and many of the programmed events will be open to the public and free admission.
   Among the scores of events taking place from the far north to the deep south are: Rodney District’s live human art/poetry installations and poems written on the sand, to be captured by drone and made into a movie; the ‘love letters to Auckland’ event – a multimedia performance by poets, rappers, storytellers and dancers; Taranaki’s ‘Pop Up Poetry’ exhibition of poems on sticky notes; Wellington’s ‘Where the Wild Words Are’, in the company of local poets who promise to bewitch, berate, busk and bewilder; Nelson’s ‘Poetry Fridge Door and Poetry Generator’; Christchurch’s ‘Speed Date an Editor’; Dunedin’s gala poetry evening; and Central Otago’s evening of poetry on the theme of rivers with Brian Turner, Michael Harlow, Jenny Bornholdt, Gregory O’Brien and Liz Breslin. There will even be an international poetry event at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
   For full details about all the events taking place on Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day, including places, venues, times, tickets and more, go to: http://www.nzbookawards.nz/nationalpoetry-day/calendar-of-events/.
   Established in 1997, National Poetry Day is a popular fixture on the nation’s cultural calendar and one that celebrates discovery, diversity and community. For the third year in a row, Phantom Billstickers support National Poetry Day through their naming rights sponsorship. In the lead up to August 24, they will bring poetry to New Zealand communities with a mighty street poster campaign.
#NZPoetryDay | facebook.com/NZPoetryDay | twitter.com/NZPoetryDay

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I feel quite distraught

13/7/2018

0 Comments

Thoughts inspired by my reading

Oh dear, oh dear, I feel quite distraught. Someone just ejaculated in front of me. Really. Right there on the printed page.
     It’s not as though it hasn’t happened before, but I still find it poor practice. Yes, I realize that authors of some classic works of the past did it. Victor Hugo for one. And Charles Dickens was an inveterate user, with his characters given to ejaculating on right, left, and centre of his pages. Messrs Smallweed, Mantalini, Brass, Pickwick, and Richard Swiveller did it, as did other ‘gentlemen’ including Sir Leister Deadlock and Lord Frederick Verisopht. Even the kind-hearted Miss Betsey Trotwood was wont to let forth an ejaculation from time to time.
     So really, perhaps I shouldn’t be so squeamish, but when a book’s characters squeal, shriek, remonstrate, intone, or spit, I can’t help wishing they’d take hold of themselves and simply ‘say’ something.
     I’m a little mollified to find I’m not the only one to object to all these variables which are, to my mind, on a par with the adverb.
     I’ve never read any of Elmore Leonard’s books – westerns, and crime fiction not being my usual reading fare – but he must have had something going for him, and I am more inclined to do so since I read that the third of his 10 Tricks for Good Writing was “Never use a verb other than ‘said’ to carry dialogue.”
     It’s a shame he died a few years ago. I feel I’d like to write and ask him what he thought about the habit of Mr Pickwick et al.

😊 Bronwyn Elsmore

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I'm not alone - staunch readers wanting books

3/7/2018

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Oh, have I been waiting for this! Or something like it. Anything that addresses a complaint I’ve had for a long time. And, unfortunately, one that seems to be a growing concern.
I’m a book buyer, and for some time now I’ve been more and more picky about what I spend my ebook-purchasing dollars on, and what I read. Murders – not for me. Serial murders – definitely not. Especially when it’s a case of women as victims.

Now I find I’m not alone. At times I thought I must be, but today I came across notice of the inaugural Staunch Book Prize, that is open to thriller genre books in which no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered.
The website elaborates –
“We launched the Staunch Book Prize because we felt that there’s just such an overload of violence towards women in fiction. When women in the real world are fighting sexual abuse and violence, or being murdered because they’re women, the casual and endless depiction of women as victims sits uneasily alongside their fight.”
Bravo to the Staunch organizers. I’m looking forward to seeing the shortlisted titles, then the winner in November. You can be sure some of my book-buying budget will be directed their way.
More details of the book prize here - http://staunchbookprize.com/about

0 Comments

People meander too

25/5/2018

1 Comment

After I wrote and posted the piece How fast should one saunter? (this blog 16 March 2018) someone wrote to me and said she noticed that characters in books also meander a lot.
I hadn’t noticed that so much, but I’ll watch for it in future to see if, when it occurs, it’s appropriate to the context.
I hope so, because I have no problem with people meandering if that’s their intention and there’s no pressing reason for them to get somewhere more directly.
Centuries ago it was appreciated that some tended to wander in this way, as did the Maeander River that took a winding scenic route through fields and olive groves in its journey from the Anatolian plateau to the Aegean Sea. Supposedly, both the river and those following its example arrive at their destination relatively stress-free.

The Welsh poet William Henry Davies was probably a fan of meandering –
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
(W H Davies, Leisure)

I’ve been aware of the benefits of meandering since schooldays when a teacher, with a grin, explained the word’s meaning in relation to the pleasure of walking with his girlfriend – “we go the long way, me-and-’er.”

😊 Bronwyn Elsmore

1 Comment

April 19th, 2018

19/4/2018

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Turn/click, turn/click...

2/4/2018

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Thoughts inspired by my reading

I’m speaking here as a reader, rather than an author, and reminding myself to remember these words when I have my author’s hat on!
I’ve just read a book that annoyed me. Another book, I should say, because I’ve read others that have irked me similarly. If you’re an author, you may want to know why.
    Here’s how it goes –
   I’m holding the book – either in print or digital form, it doesn’t matter. I take a look at the cover and absorb what’s on that. I turn or click, and expect to see a title page. It’s there, good.

     Turn/click – another title page. Why?
     Turn/click – publishing details. Good. I find those useful.
     Turn/click – Now I want the story to start, but no.
     Instead, there’s a plethora of other stuff first.
Dedication, a page or more of thanks to anyone who has even sneezed in close proximity to the manuscript. Yes, I understand the author feels indebted to them all, but if it’s more than a line or two, please put it at the end where the rest of us can ignore it if we want to.

Then comes –
     Preface – rarely necessary, and if the content is a long explanation of why the author felt moved to write the book, usually to be ignored.
     Prologue. In most cases this should simply be chapter one.
     It’s 32 turns/clicks before I get into the stuff I want to read. In the past I’ve written serious non-fiction books and included some pre-pages I thought were necessary, but this one’s a novel, for heaven’s sake!
   The one I'm looking at now is also an ebook but that’s not the problem, I love ebooks. I feel just the same when I find this in a tree book – actually even more so.

Yes, I know that in the case of an ebook, in my case my kindle,
I have the chance to start at the beginning without bothering with the
pre-pages, and that on its own should tell you something. But I’m in
the business. I want to see the cover. I want to note the publishing
details too. Strange of me, perhaps, but I do.
Then I want to start the reading.
Don’t make me turn/click over page after page. I may just decide to click the home button and select another title.

😊 Bronwyn Elsmore

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200 reviews

Your opinions noted

Your opinion, please

VOTE FOR THE COVER YOU PREFER

One among millions

NZ National Poetry Day

I feel quite distraught

I'm not alone - staunch readers wanting books

People meander too

April 19th, 2018

Turn/click, turn/click...

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