Guest Post: Who Am I by Erika Rummel

Who am I? It’s difficult to answer that question when you play multiple roles every day – housewife, mother, career woman, lover. Are you that caring kiss-you-better person, or that authority figure, or that gourmet chef, or that sex kitten?

Who am I? is the question Lisa asks in HEAD GAMES, but instead of looking inside herself for an answer, she makes the mistake of looking into the mirror of other people’s eyes. Don wants her to be his baby doll, Jim wants her to be his lover, and the spiritualist Santos wants her to be a medium to attract his missing sister.

HEAD GAMES is not only a journey into the strange and mysterious north country of Argentina. It is also a journey into Lisa’s head, the landscape of her crazy imagination and the only place where the existential question Who am I? can be resolved.

Is HEAD GAMES autobiographical? Yes, I’ve lived and traveled in Argentina. The description of the wild country on the border of Bolivia is authentic, as is the threatening political climate in the early ‘80s when Argentines lived under the iron fist of the military junta.

In some ways, Lisa is me. In others, she isn’t. Unlike her, I am suspicious of spiritualists and séances. And I wouldn’t fall for a creepy old man like Don, who wants to play sugar daddy. Lisa gets kidnapped in Argentina and lives the life of a captive in a Quechua family compound. Nothing like that happened to me. But like Lisa, I am trying to figure out Who am I? What do I want to out of life?

HEAD GAMES has a happy ending, and that’s what I love about novel writing: You can make it up. Lisa’s life is a fast-paced, thrilling story with a beginning, middle, and end. My life is full of inexplicable twists and turns going who knows where. Lisa ends up knowing who she is. I’m still searching!

PS: If you are into the question Who am I, you’ll also enjoy my novel PLAYING NAOMI, in which Liz, an out-of-work actress, impersonates Naomi Baum, a reclusive millionaire. She plays her role so well that she attracts all the passions meant for the real Naomi. Ted romances her. Miro plots her murder. Things are getting out of hand. Maybe it’s time for Liz to slip back into her old life and her old self? Or is it too late, and has she turned into Naomi?

Find more about Erika Rummel and her fiction at: http://www.erikarummel.com 

Poetry Monday: Kate Middleton following the Colorado River

Though you may have dropped by expecting the Dutchess of Cambridge, the Kate Middleton I want to profie today is the author of the exquisite book Ephemeral Waters which was launched last week by Chris Andrews. Ephemeral Waters is one long poem, broken up into 9 parts including an Instruction (Prologue) and a Relection, After.

The work winds its way with the 1,450 mile river, moving from Colorado through Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico like a poetic tour guide, picking up pieces of information, detritus, visiting side roads, recreation areas and museums, and holding conversations with strangers. It's a fantastic journey that reveals more than simply one place or one space, but also carries us into the heart of humanity, of our frailties, and of the fragility of the natural world on which we rely.  Here's a tiny snippet from the "Instruction (Prologue)":

Drive    You will learn
something    You will learn
nothing but absence, but rock's
wonderful indifference

Middleton's poetry has won a number of prestigious awards (including the WA Premier's Award for Poetry). She was the inaugural Sydney City Poet until 2012.  You can grab a copy of the book here: http://www.giramondopublishing.com/poetry/ephemeral-waters/

Guest post: On Digital Books and Reader Expectations by Leigh Russell

The first Geraldine Steel murder mystery, Cut Short, came out in print in the UK in 2009. In one of the first US reviews, which appeared in the Compulsive Reader, it was described as a 'fine police procedural, with a convincing if disconcerting feel of contemporary Britain.' I remember the thrill of reading a review on an American website, never dreaming that one day my books would find a US publisher.

A fellow author suggested my publisher bring it out as a digital book. It seems strange to recall that just four years ago I wasn't really sure what that meant. Nevertheless I sent a polite request to my publisher to bring my debut out as an ebook. No one thought it was important, but six months later the digital version duly came out. 'Of course your books don't sell on kindle,' someone in the know told me. As for me, I still had only a vague notion what a kindle was. Exactly the same happened with Road Closed in 2010.

But reading habits were changing. When Dead End came out in 2011, the digital and print books were published on the same day. By the time Death Bed appeared in print in 2012, the digital book had already  been available for six months. This pattern has been repeated in 2013, with digital versions of Stop Dead and Cold Sacrifice available for download six months in advance of  print books. 

Nowadays, no one says my titles 'don't sell on kindle'. Not only have the print books reached bestseller lists in the UK bookstore chains and on amazon, but the ebooks have reached Number 1 on kindle.

Every British author aspires to be published in the US, so I was very excited when, following the series' success in the UK, all of the Geraldine Steel books were acquired by a US publisher. They are also publishing my new spin off series for Geraldine's sergeant, Ian Peterson.

Harper Collins US are publishing my books at a rate of one a month, starting with Cut Short in November 2013. It is exciting, but times have changed since Cut Short was first published. Harper Collins are publishing my titles as ebooks first. I doubt if I anyone will suggest I send my US publisher a polite request to bring my books out in print. How times have changed!

Find out more about Leigh and her work at: http://leighrussell.co.uk/

Compulsive Reader Newsletter

Hello all you fine readers. I've been a little snowed under at the moment, but just a quickie to let you know that if you don't subscribe to The Compulsive Reader's Newsletter, you've just missed our November newsletter featuring three (yes 3) separate book giveaways, ten fresh reviews, a roundup of literary news including the latest on the Man Booker, the Forward Prize for poetry, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Scotiabank Giller, and lots more.  If you would like to remedy this situation just let your fingers walk you over to: http://www.compulsivereader.com/ and sign up for free on the front page. If you are already a subscriber, watch your mailbox for the latest issue which has just been dispatched.

Grammowrimo

Are you thinking of writing a novel? Everyone's getting in on the act it seems, especially in November for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Grammar checking software company Grammarly has decided to devote the month to coordinating a community novel. They're accepting submissions through October 25, 2013 from writers at all levels. Signing up with your email address will add you to the queue of authors planning to help write the novel, and Grammarly will notify you when it is your turn to contribute up to 800 words to your assigned chapter. At the end of NaNoWriMo, Grammarly is aiming to publish a book that boasts the largest number of authors of any novel ever written.

If you want to join in the fun, just drop by http://www.grammarly.com/grammowrimo/ and enter your email address. You can even help choose the plot, and enter contests to design the cover and name the book.  If you've been wanting to join in NaNoWriMo but don't have the wherewithall (or ability to drop out of your life for a complete month), then this is the perfect option to get your creative juices flowing. I'll be looking forward to checking out the result.

Poetry Monday: Rochelle Owens

Rochelle Owen is a poet, playwright, translator and video artist who has published, among many other things, eighteen books of poetry, the latest of which is Out of Ur just released by Shearsman Books. 

Out of Ur is an extraordinary collection of new work and older work taken from the period between 1961 and 2012. The poems meld classicism with a post-modern sharpness. The work is simultaneously lyrical and starkly confronting.  The poems, which I'm still in the process of reading, take the reader in multiple directions, sometimes at the same time - moving outward to places like the streets of Marrakech, and inward into the brain or the makings of the creative process. Observation and realism mingle with meta-poeticism. It's dense and satisfying work that I'm looking forward to spending more time with.

The PennSound page on Rochelle Owens is a treasure trove of MP3s, videos and text collected from a variety of readings, which will no doubt be augmented by the upcoming reading by Rochelle and her equally illustrious husband George Economou at the Kelly Writers House in Pennsylvania on Thurs the 17th of Oct at 6pm (Arts Cafe if you're in the area).  The following little excerpt is from the poem "The Glacier" which is published in its entirety in Out of Ur:

‘Green the gardens of Tuscany’
the word ‘avore’ tattood on her forehead snow forming ice
the glacier expanding outward outward moving slowly slowly
lumps of ice tilting twisting rows of words order of words

‘Green the gardens of Tuscany’
parts of words
the word ‘abandon’ stuck in her throat lovely the letters like roots
spirals of roots multicellular
slender pliant twigs
lovely the letters like arteries

Happy Banned Books Week

It's Banned Books Week this week.  The annual celebration runs from Sept 22-28 and was launched in 1982 to try and counter the growing trend for challenging/banning books. According to the American Booksellers Association, who runs the event, more than 11,300 have been challenged since 1982, including, last year, Khalid Hosseini's The Kite Runner, and Toni Morrison's Beloved. 

Many of the books on the banned list are amongst my all-time favourite books.  I try each year to celebrate the event by revisiting a classic banned book.  This year, the book I revisited was Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange.  When I was around 17 (over a hundred years ago, as my kids would say), I attempted, along with some of my friends, to memorise the first chapter.  We did pretty well with it and I'm afraid that, all these years later, I'm still able to recite the first two paragraphs ("What's it going to be then, eh?"). The appeal of A Clockwork Orange for me was partly due to the disturbing, risque nature of the work. I was, after all, a rebellious teen. The questions that the book raises about morality and free will are as disturbing and relevant today as they were when it was written in 1962. Pondering those questions and discussing them with my pals was part of the pleasure and the educational value that we got from the book.  I was also attracted to Burgess' innovative use of language. Every word is understandable, yet much of it is linguistically inventive, and in spite of the disturbing nature of the words, kind of thrilling to read. You can check out a glossary here: http://www.artofeurope.com/kubrick/nadsat.htm

Finally, I think that A Clockwork Orange is probably one of the few really exceptional books that translated into an exceptional film. It's hard to think of Little Alex in any other way than as he was portrayed by Malcolm McDowell.

You can find out more about Banned Books Week here: http://bannedbooksweek.org/ and join in with your own tweets, readings, and reflections (feel free to put some of those in the comments below as well).  You can even 'hang-out' with banned writers like Erica Jong and Lauren Oliver.