How To Buy My Books: Men Briefly Explained, Anarya’s Secret And More

 

Books

You can find details of all these books at my Amazon.com author page.

If you want a print copy and can’t find one, please email me.

Recent Anthologies

The Tim Jones Review Of Books

 
When people ask me what I do, writing-wise, I don’t usually answer “book reviewer”. All the same, I do write the occasional book review, and this year I even ascended to the giddy heights of a feature article about one of my favourite authors.

Here are some of the book reviews I’ve had published in the last few years, plus that feature article.

In Belletrista

Belletrista is an online magazine dedicated to reviewing and writing about books by women, especially books in translation. You can find out more on its About Us page.

Though all the books are by women, a number of the reviewers are men, and I contribute occasional reviews. There are some great reviews and articles on the site, and I encourage you to check it out.

Feature article:

Be Careful Out There, Be Careful in Here: The Dangerous Worlds of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Reviews:

New: Deathless, by Catherynne M Valente

The Topless Tower, by Silvina Ocampo, translated by James Womack

There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, translated by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers


The Word Book
, by Mieko Kanai, translated by Paul McCarthy

Selected Prose and Prose-Poems, by Gabriela Mistral, translated by Stephen Tapscott

Kalpa Imperial, by Angelica Gorodischer, translated by Ursula Le Guin

The Secret History of Moscow, by Ekaterina Sedia

In Landfall Review Online

The Landfall Review Online gives the literary journal Landfall the chance to review the books it doesn’t have space to review in its print issues. I have written one review for them:

The Unsuspecting Huia: a review of Mr Allbones’ Ferrets, by Fiona Farrell

That’s All, Folks (till 2012)

And with this list (which I’ll make into a page on this site, and update it as new reviews comes out), I exit regular blogging mode and enter January weekly blogging mode.

Look out for my “What I Read In 2011” post, in which I complain about how little reading I’ve got done and then admit I’ve actually read more books this year than last year, and for my “What I Listened To In 2011” post, in which I reveal that a new band beginning with W has joined Warpaint in the pantheon.

Merry Xmas if you celebrate Christmas, Happy Holidays if you don’t (or even if you do), and a Happy New Year, everyone!

Tuesday Poem: Appearances

 
It is autumn in the land of appearances.
Film sets are being taken down.
To the south, the audience
diminishes to haze.

Out beyond the Heads, the crash of guns.
Shore batteries, defend us!
Ships of every nation
have come to take our lamb.

A broadside works wonders.
We rush out in our dinghies.
If you are dismasted, take my life-raft.
Take my rubber ring, my hand.

Credit note: “Appearances” was first published in Bravado 7, July 2006.

Tim says: This poem has nothing to do with Christmas, except that I wrote it during my Christmas holidays a few years back, walking south along the ridge from Seatoun and looking at ships steaming into Wellington Harbour past the old gun emplacements.

You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem Blog – this week’s hub poem in the centre of the page, and all the other Tuesday Poems on the right.

At Home He’s A Blog Tourist

 
Latest Blog Tour Interview

Wellington poet and author Janis Freegard asks me about how Men Briefly Explained fits with my previous books, and what I’m working on at the moment: Interview with Tim Jones.

Previous Interviews

12 December 2011: Wellington poet and publisher Helen Rickerby asks me about the development of Men Briefly Explained as a collection, and I revealed that it started life as a never-published chapbook called “Guy Thing”: Tuesday Poet: An interview with Tim Jones about Men Briefly Explained.

12 December 2011: Christchurch fantasy author, poet and book blogger Helen Lowe talks with me about whether men buy poetry, the identity of those mysterious men who write poetry, and what relationship there is between poetry and speculative fiction. Look through the comments for a giveaway I’m offering! A Magical Mystery Tour Through “Men Briefly Explained” — & A Few Side Topics — With Author Tim Jones

7 December 2011: Auckland poet, graphic poet, short story writer and novelist Rachel Fenton asks me to dance: Tim to dance: Rachel Fenton interviews Tim Jones.

6 December 2011: Wellington poet Harvey Molloy talks with me about men, mid-life crises, art and politics: An Interview with Tim Jones.

1 December 2011: Dunedin poet Kay McKenzie Cooke talks with me about Southland, prose poems, and the fabled Gore High School jersey: New Zealand Writer Tim Jones Explains.

27 November 2011: Canberra poet PS Cottier talk with me about hard work, whether the male sex has a future, and Swannis: Of Poems and Men: Interview with Tim Jones.

An Interview With Penelope Cottier

Penelope Susan Cottier, who usually writes as P.S. Cottier, is a poet and short story writer living in Canberra. Penelope was born in Oxford, England and moved to Australia as a baby. She has published three books; two of poetry and one collection of short stories.

Penelope’s poem The Exquisite Confusion of the Prose Poem was my Tuesday Poem this week.

Penelope, I have just finished reading your second poetry collection, The Cancellation of Clouds, and I’ve enjoyed it very much. It seems to me that you combine a number of aspects in your poetry: political commentary, nature poetry (especially about birds), elements of fantasy and surrealism, and grounded observations of your life and the lives of those around you. Does that sound like a recognisable description of your poetry, or have I got it all wrong?

It does sound recognisable to me Tim, in the way you can read a map and recall a seldom visited landscape from it. All the elements you mention are there, certainly, but for me one of the major things I think of is the play of words in each poem, whether the topic is a serious one or a lighter piece (a distinction that I try to erase, anyway). I often think of my work in sporting terms, I’m afraid, and probably the most apt comparison would be chess boxing; I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, I’ve only seen it on youtube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5TQSKmS3o but it involves men with very flat noses playing chess in a ring and then whacking into each other. I try and combine the intellectual and the slap of surprise all the time, so it’s a kind of simultaneous chess boxing.

I’m glad to hear you liked Cancellation; I was so worried, and having enjoyed Men Briefly Explained made me even more anxious. The tone of mine is so much rougher than yours; more unsettled, I think, although you also value humour.

I enjoyed the various political jabs in your poems – both in this collection and those I’ve read online. Would I be right in thinking you are not a huge fan of Australian Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his policies?

Byron’s ability to suddenly insert an blinding political jab into the flow of his perfect couplets (say about Lord Elgin stealing the Greek marbles) is something I admire greatly, even envy. Today we tend to draw a rigid distinction between political and non-political writing. I sometimes think that there should be a new sport developed, where the crudest ‘real world’ poems face off against the very worst ‘moment of personal revelation’ poems. The former could be represented (in the green corner) by a truly inept rave about climate change, full of well-meaning (and valid) politics, the very obtuseness of which gives poetry and politics a very bad name. This is a creature which can sometimes still be seen in alternative publications or heard at poetry slams. In the white corner we could have the ‘my mother just died and I feel sad’ poem, which inevitably uses words such as ‘numinous’ and ‘lucidity’ and won’t lower itself to any knowledge of the world outside the poet’s ring of refinement. (Penelope stops rant, runs to check Tim’s latest book, while not of the sort described, doesn’t contain the words ‘numinous’ or ‘lucidity’. Quick flick reveals neither, but she is still worried.) Both of these extremes make me puke, although my personal leaning is more towards the former, and there is just not enough good political poetry being written. (I don’t know about New Zealand poetry in this context, I’m talking about Australia.)

Speaking of puking, Tony Abbott, with his open discussion of the importance of his women’s virginity, his pandering to the lowest common denominator on climate change, and his virulent defence of the mining industry’s fight against increased taxation is definitely not my cup of tea. Our Prime Minister Julia Gillard is by no means perfect, but next to Abbott she seems like a shining light. I recently wrote a poem called Abbott’s booby, which is far from subtle in describing my reaction to him, but which is, I hope, saved from the ranting corner by humour. And fantastically detailed ornithology.

One thing that strikes me about your poetry is that even quite long poems often take the form of a single stanza, and that you use long line lengths in many of your poems. Technically, why does that approach appeal to you?

I hadn’t really noticed this, and thank you for pointing it out. To put it in a negative way, I think that I am an extremely impatient writer, and want to get everything down quickly, with as little hesitation as possible, and that as I value the prickly, unsettling tone, I am not interested in smoothing things out later. I’d rather go for the KO than the points victory, but perhaps I need to look at my footwork. (I know I’ve flogged the boxing thing to death, I’ll stop now.)

I sometimes feel that poems are being dictated to me, and it’s a question of getting them down, catching them before the unseen speaker runs away.

There are some poems in Cancellation that use shorter lines, such as ‘The atheistic angel’ or ‘Tiresias at the beach’ but they are the exception. And the prose poems sometimes just cascade on and on.

I haven’t read your first collection, The Glass Violin. Are the poems in The Cancellation of Clouds recognisably part of the same lineage, or does The Cancellation of Clouds represent a sharp break from your previous collection?

My first book contained near every poem of publishable standard that I had written, and there is more variation in quality there. Many of the topics you mentioned above are represented in the first collection too, but I feel I am writing better now, with more confidence and more ability to sift out the less successful works.

The Glass Violin was quite well reviewed, and one reviewer spoke of how ‘busy’ my world was. There is still a lot going on in Cancellation, but I think the poems speak to each other a little more coherently. I am trying out more forms too, notably prose-poems, which weren’t in the first collection.

I was intrigued by something I read on your blog, referring to your first collection:

Yet I actually write quite quickly. I’ve just been a shocker about trying to have my work published. About a year ago I decided to put an emphasis on seeking publication, and I have been quite fortunate in finding places that liked my work.

I have three questions about this:

(i) What prevented or discouraged you from seeking publication for your poems for so long?

I lost quite a few years of my life to depression, which is now routinely described as the black dog, a personification that I find quite amusing, as it conjures up a fat black Labrador acting as a benevolent guide dog, a creature as far from the quiet, years-long desperation of losing one’s way as it is possible to imagine. Anyone who speaks glibly of depression should be taken out and shot, in my liberal opinion. Poets do seem to have high rates of depression, but this is not what makes them poets.

I struggled to write during this time (although I did complete work) and was much too ill to cope with what I call the administrative side of poetry, or indeed any contact with the outside world. I felt ashamed at suffering from depression, which makes about as much sense as being ashamed of having cancer. I think at some level I blamed myself for being weak, and also that I had ‘no reason’ to be depressed, being in the sunny, white, middle class Australia I inhabit.

Interestingly, this is the first time I have discussed my illness in a public forum; as if the distance to New Zealand makes it easier to be honest. Although, of course, with them internets, there is no distance at all.

(ii) What caused you to change your mind and start submitting poems?

I’m tempted to simply write ‘medication’ and that is part of the truth. I finally got to the stage where I knew I was not going to die as a result of depression. I worked my way out of depression through employment at a national cultural institution, working in copyright law, an experience which was positive but which taught me that I am fundamentally not a lawyer. Then I wrote my PhD on Dickens, at the Australian National University, three months into which I had a baby. Miraculously, these two things that could have proven difficult, also helped pull me away from depression.

After the PhD I decided that I didn’t want to try and be an academic either, and that I would try and work at my own writing, rather than produce scholarly articles.

Without my husband, there is no doubt that I would not be around by now. Because of him, I am also free to write as much as I want. So from a most traditional family structure I am now able to compose cutting poems about the world’s injustices including the oppression of women, and from having survived depression, to write funny poems about Death. Death appears in most of my works, it seems to me, in one form or another.

Incidentally, I never used poetry to get out of depression; and my poems are not at all confessional. On the contrary, the slight distance I like to achieve through humour or word-play is something I value all the more for having been depressed. I invented the pen name P.S. Cottier, as I almost forgot to stick around. It’s a reference to a post-script, and is also gender neutral, as I often write in a man’s voice.

(iii) Do you think that in some ways it has been an advantage to have a lot of strong poems already written before you began to submit any of your poetry?

This is definitely true, although I’d rather not have had the extreme experiences that led to my nice little stockpile of poetic weaponry.

The Cancellation of Clouds is your third book; the one we haven’t talked about yet is your short story collection A Quiet Day and other stories. I’m keen to hear more about that collection, and I’d also like to know: do you alternate writing fiction and poetry, or do you work on both during the course of a writing day or writing week?

I was very pleased to have A Quiet Day and other stories highly commended in the recent Society Of Women Writers NSW book awards in Sydney, in the adult fiction category. It is a tiny volume of stories, ranging from the slightly surreal to the examination of loss and renewal in a suburban context. The judge of the awards referred to my stories as having a ‘poetic element’, and certainly, plot is not my particular friend. Or character development. Just description and word-play, in a slightly different form.

I can envisage writing a volume in which prose-poems are mixed with stories that are just a verb or two from being prose poems. Whether people can envisage reading such a thing is another question. If only I could work in a science fiction element it might become the world’s least publishable book.

No structure is imposed by me on my writing week except that I sit down each day at a particular time and write. I am quite looking forward to the minimal structure of being a Tuesday Poet, and posting something on my blog every Tuesday. I spend a lot more time on poetry than prose.

Each of your books has been published by Ginninderra Press. Have you enjoyed having a continuing relationship with one publisher?

Yes, I have enjoyed this. Ginninderra Press was originally based in Canberra, but moved to South Australia just before I sent them my manuscript for the first poetry collection. The two events were allegedly not related. GP publishes a lot of first writers, and it is not in the business primarily to make a profit. (As opposed to those other huge money-grubbing poetry publishers, with their Stephen King type print runs and huge advances!) They recently celebrated their 15th birthday.

All tiny presses have limited funds for promotion, so there is a great irony in the fact that the less commercial one’s work is, the more one must work to promote it. This brilliant insight may have occurred to you too, Tim.

Many of my readers may not be familiar with as much Australian poetry as they should be – and I’m one such reader. Are there Australian poets, or for that matter any poets, you especially enjoy or have been influenced by?

Firstly, I will take your stated unfamiliarity and up it with my near total ignorance of New Zealand poetry. Hopefully involvement in Tuesday poets will go some way to changing this. And I will be going to a reading by New Zealand poet Vincent O’Sullivan in Canberra next year.

I must admit that my literary heroes, until recently, have been from England and, to a lesser extent, the United States. Emily Dickinson, the aforementioned Byron (now there’s an interesting coupling), TS Eliot, Shakespeare; all very traditional. But I truly believe that you must read all this to be any good at all.

If you want to read Australian poetry on line, I recommend the Australian Poetry Library. http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/. You can search by poet or topic. Of course only one-third of the poets represented are women, but there are many fine poets here. I am totally in love with the works of joanne burns, a Sydney poet who writes prose poems, of great wit and intelligence, some of which are readable in the Poetry Library. Seeing her read last year was a genuine highlight for me.

There are also many fine poets in Canberra, such as Alan Gould, Geoff Page, Hal Judge, Kathy Kituai, Melinda Smith and many many others, and I try to go to as many launches and readings as I can without compromising my work. It is so good to be able to be a little social, after having been forced into myself by depression. I am also enjoying my doing own readings several times a year, and judging competitions.

Finally, and if you’re willing to tell us, what writing projects are you working on at the moment?

I have just started working on a possible series of linked poems dealing with extinction starring the cane toad as narrator. The corroborree frog may also be in there. We’ll see.

I am shocking in that if something catches my eye, whether it be a prompt for a competition, or an interesting argument on a web-site, I’ll drop everything and wade in.

Most of my good work comes from chasing weirdness in this way, rather than having a particular end in sight. One of my first contacts with you, for example (after you had brutally rejected one of my poems for an e-zine in an editorial capacity!) was because you had an excellent poem about snails on your blog, by Janis Freegard, and I was about to publish a story about snails on mine. (I carefully avoided any puns about getting Shelley during my first email.) That was weird and fruitful. I’m also shocking in that I will post a poem on my blog that has not been published elsewhere; I just can’t stand waiting at times, and going through the established channels of submitting to a journal.

And let’s face it, if I wanted a proper, ordered career, I’d be a lawyer, billing every six minutes of my time to a client. I don’t want that, and revel in my ability to write what I want. It’s a privilege to be where I am now. My business card says ‘poet’.

How to buy The Cancellation of Clouds

The Cancellation of Clouds is published by Ginninderra Press, as were P.S. Cottier’s two previous books, The Glass Violin (poetry) and A Quiet Day and other stories (short fiction). Each can be ordered through the poetry and fiction sections of the Ginninderra Press website.

Chaps And Chapbooks

 
In the latest blog tour interview, Wellington poet and publisher Helen Rickerby asks me about the development of Men Briefly Explained as a collection, and I revealed that it started life as a never-published chapbook called “Guy Thing”. It’s all revealed in Tuesday Poet: An interview with Tim Jones about Men Briefly Explained.

Previous Interviews

12 December 2011: Christchurch fantasy author, poet and book blogger Helen Lowe talks with me about whether men buy poetry, the identity of those mysterious men who write poetry, and what relationship there is between poetry and speculative fiction. Look through the comments for a giveaway I’m offering! A Magical Mystery Tour Through “Men Briefly Explained” — & A Few Side Topics — With Author Tim Jones

7 December 2011: Auckland poet, graphic poet, short story writer and novelist Rachel Fenton asks me to dance: Tim to dance: Rachel Fenton interviews Tim Jones.

6 December 2011: Wellington poet Harvey Molloy talks with me about men, mid-life crises, art and politics: An Interview with Tim Jones.

1 December 2011: Dunedin poet Kay McKenzie Cooke talks with me about Southland, prose poems, and the fabled Gore High School jersey: New Zealand Writer Tim Jones Explains.

27 November 2011: Canberra poet PS Cottier talk with me about hard work, whether the male sex has a future, and Swannis: Of Poems and Men: Interview with Tim Jones.

Tuesday Poem: The Exquisite Confusion Of The Prose Poem, by P.S. Cottier

 
Exquisite, as if there’s pleasure in my mongrel life. Dog of the boulevards, sniffing this way and that, torn between the mundane and the mellifluous. Hand on my leash pulls this way, towards rhyme and rhythm, then that way, towards common sense, if not the solid brass lamp-post of the best-seller. Trickle of golden adjective runs from me, moderated by the cut of verb. It must end, this torture, this constant orphaning. Father was a Poem of the Proper Sort/His Lines They Echoed as They Ought. Even when I will myself into a sad bad clang of couplets, they won’t break the flow of this word after word, the hideous horizontality of being that beset me from the start. I am doomed to lie down, to cover myself with the rags of reason, frayed into flags of a red agonising interest, signalling the daytime nightmare of the metaphor. Cruel matador of the plunging quill, never-ending coup de grâce. Mother’s mission, to share recipes and love stories with the masses, has eluded me. In cook-books she was legion; in romance novels legendary. She tied an apron of prosey appropriateness each time she entered the literary kitchen. Hand over honest hand, she ribboned herself in the present tense (or past simple). And her progeny is this half-slipped knot, the dropped stitch, the soufflé which never rises into ether and the crêpe can never be mere honest pancake, stacked into hearty flat use. Creeping creature of the half-light, twin of an invisible doppelgänger, neither one nor not either, I pull my carcass through the cruel streets of non-belonging. At least, at least, release is soon, that delicious sip of easy non-being. Be seeing. Been seen.

Credit note: “The Exquisite Confusion Of The Prose Poem” is from P.S. Cottier’s second poetry collection The Cancellation of Clouds, published by Ginninderra Press, and is reproduced by permission of the author. The Cancellation of Clouds can be ordered from Ginninderra Press.

Tim says: I have recently finished reading The Cancellation of Clouds in preparation for my interview with P.S. (Penelope) Cottier, which I will be posting here later this week. I very much enjoy the spikiness, humour and energy of her poetry, which is well represented in this tale of the tormented prose poem, forever pulled this way and that.

P.S. Cottier has just joined the Tuesday Poets, and you can read her first Tuesday Poem post here: http://pscottier.com/2011/12/12/progress-by-p-s-cottier/. I look forward to reading more of her poems – and watch out for our interview later this week.

You can check out all the Tuesday Poems on the Tuesday Poem blog – the hub poem in the middle of the page, and all the other poems in the sidebar on the right.

The Magical Mystery Tour (is coming to take you away)

 
The Magical Mystery Tour is coming to take you away – away, that is, to Helen Lowe’s blog, where she talks with me about whether men buy poetry, the identity of those mysterious men who write poetry, and what relationship there is between poetry and speculative fiction. It all finishes up with Buffy, of course:

A Magical Mystery Tour Through “Men Briefly Explained” — & A Few Side Topics — With Author Tim Jones, an interview with Helen Lowe.

Previous Interviews

7 December 2011: Auckland poet, graphic poet, short story writer and novelist Rachel Fenton asks me to dance: Tim to dance: Rachel Fenton interviews Tim Jones.

6 December 2011: Wellington poet Harvey Molloy talks with me about men, mid-life crises, art and politics: An Interview with Tim Jones.

1 December 2011: Dunedin poet Kay McKenzie Cooke talks with me about Southland, prose poems, and the fabled Gore High School jersey: New Zealand Writer Tim Jones Explains.

27 November 2011: Canberra poet PS Cottier talk with me about hard work, whether the male sex has a future, and Swannis: Of Poems and Men: Interview with Tim Jones.

An Interview With Johanna Knox

Johanna Knox is the author of an intriguing new children’s book series for 8-12 year olds – The Fly Papers. The first book, recently released, is The Flytrap Snaps.

Described in reviews as everything from ‘fresh’ and ‘funny’, to ‘quirky’ ‘madcap’, and ‘bizarre’, this fast-paced mystery adventure is set in a booming movie industry town called Filmington. It features resourceful children, a ruthless venture capitalist, and a plethora of walking, talking carnivorous plants, who’ve been genetically engineered to star in horror movies.

Johanna has spent much of her career writing for museums, as well as for magazines, youth websites, and educational publications. However, her passion has always been fiction. This is her first published novel, and she has teamed up with her partner Walter Moala, a graphic designer, to bring it out under their own imprint – Hinterlands.

How did the idea to write The Fly Papers come about?

About eight years ago, our young son got obsessed with carnivorous plants, so we bought him a small collection of different species for Christmas. Then I think I became one of those dreadful parents who takes over their child’s interest! His obsession wore off (hopefully I didn’t smother it), but mine stayed.

I was fascinated with each plant’s personality. They felt more like pets than pot plants, and I used to wonder what they’d be like if they became animate.

I started a story about them but wasn’t sure where it was going, and put it aside. I came back to it, ages later, after the global financial crisis had hit. By then I’d thought a lot about debt, and consumerism, and financial exploitation. I melded those themes with the carnivorous plant story, and suddenly I was excited about it again.

It’s perfectly possible to read The Flytrap Snaps for fun without dwelling on financial issues, but those ideas are there, if readers care to delve into them. I’d like to think the book could make a good discussion starter if parents wanted to talk about money with their children.

How long did it take for the idea to become a published reality?

The year before last, a whole lot of things came together and Walter and I found ourselves in a position to do what we’d always talked about, which was publish our own books. We figured, ‘it’s now or never’, and it made sense to start with this carnivorous plant fiction series.

I’ve got a copy of The Flytrap Snaps, in front of me, and it looks great! How much effort did it take to get that superb production quality?

Thank you for saying so!

Well, Walter really drove the production process. We felt that if we were investing so much into the books, the production values should reflect that, and as self publishers, we could control the outcome.

Walter worked closely with MWGraphics on production. For example they collated all the illustrations and sample text onto A2 pages and tested the ink coverage on the paper stock on the printing press. It doesn’t get more accurate than that. We knew exactly what we were going to get before we went to print.

Walter has a great (and longstanding) relationship with MWGraphics, and they really went the extra mile to help us get a result that they were proud of too.

A major part of the appeal of the book is the illustrations by Sabrina Malcolm. How did Sabrina come on board as the illustrator?

From the start, we wanted the books illustrated. We were inspired by movies like Little Shop of Horrors, and old B-grade movie posters. We began to imagine what the plants could look like but, as Walter says, we needed the safe hands of a great illustrator who knew the subject, but would also add their own ideas.

We’d worked with Sabrina before, back when Walter was at Huia Publishers, and I was also doing a bit of children’s book editing for them.

Walter and I both worked on the Huia picture book Koro’s Medicine by Melanie Drewery. We were looking for an illustrator for it, and a friend recommended this woman Sabrina who had a background in botanical illustration – ideal for a book about native medicinal plants. So she came on board.

We loved working with her, and the book ended up as a finalist in the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards, so she did a great job.

Some years later we reconnected with Sabrina when our respective sons became good friends. When we needed an illustrator for a novel about carnivorous plants, it was a no-brainer to approach her, and that’s when we discovered that unbeknown to us she’d been harbouring a deep fascination with carnivorous plants for years!

Will Sabrina be illustrating the whole series?

I hope so! They’re a big part of The Fly Papers’ identity.

The Flytrap Snaps is published by Hinterlands. What made you decide to take this route to publication?

Walter and I had been running our business, Hinterlands, for years, contracting out writing and design services, and usually working for separate clients. The book series was a way to combine our experience and skills on a single project that we could take full responsibility for.

Do you envisage that Hinterlands will publish work by other authors?

We’ve always had that in mind as a goal, and we’ll look into it further down the track.

I was impressed by the list of bookshops that carry The Flytrap Snaps (on the right of the linked page). As a new publisher, how have you gone about getting this wide distribution? Was it difficult to achieve?

Before publication, we did a road trip through sections of the North Island, gauging and drumming up interest at independent bookshops. After it was published, we did our best to get in touch with as many of those shops – and other independents – as possible, to see if they’d stock it. And it’s ongoing. We’re constantly working on getting it into more places. But that does take time.

It’s been all about lots of emailing, plus in-person promotion to bookstores near us. We’ve also had kind friends and associates in other parts of the country help promote it in their locales. Plus whenever we go on a trip, we make sure we take a few books to show the local shop.

Forming good relationships with independent booksellers is really a holy grail for us. They have such a passion for books and for the whole process of matching books with people. They’re the ones who are likely to hand-sell your book if they like it … and that’s what you need when you’re starting out and don’t have a name.

The more booksellers we can find who decide they actually like our book and want to put it in the hands of customers they think would like it too, the better.

They don’t have to be independent booksellers of course – there are stores in chains where the individuals running it have the same ethic. Someone told me you’ll often find that kind of attitude in chain stores in small towns, where they may be the only bookshop around, so they become an extra special part of their community.

All that said, we’re discovering how brilliant and supportive libraries and librarians can be to deal with, too!

The advent of ebooks has had a big impact on adult fiction. Has it had the same effect on children’s and YA fiction? Is The Flytrap Snaps available as an ebook, or if not, do you plan to turn it into an ebook?

I think ebooks are taking longer to take off in the world of children’s and YA literature, but it’s definitely happening.

We do plan to turn it (and the other books in The Fly Papers series) into ebooks in the not-so-distant future.

Walter and I love printed books though! We’re not luddites by any stretch, but we’ve both always loved the look and feel and smell of printed books, and somehow they feel more real, more substantial and more permanent.

When I have a new book out, and given my other commitments, I find it difficult to maintain the balance between writing and promotion – put another way, it’s hard to get writing done when there’s a book to promote. If you have a secret to maintaining that balance, I’d love to find out what it is!

Me? I’ve been searching for balance – any kind of balance – since I can remember. Maybe the balance is just in the constant seesawing.

It’s funny how this is such a major topic of conversation when writers get together! We always seem to be comparing notes about how we have or haven’t found balance of one sort or another, whether it’s writing vs promotion, writing for love vs writing for money, or writing anything vs family commitments!

To get back to your original question, promotion eats up a lot of time, and so does distribution. Even just the packaging, invoicing and mailing. All the jobs that individually only take a few minutes, really add up.

A wise friend recently told me how she likes to make sure she never lets a whole day get totally consumed by long lists of small jobs (like promotion and admin tasks). Instead she makes sure that every single day, she spends at least a bit of time making headway on a large scale job (like a novel manuscript).

I’ve tried to force myself to do that lately, and it’s really helpful. Otherwise, it’s too easy to put off the large-scale tasks, thinking I’ll wait till I have a day clear of small tasks. But that day never comes!

A slightly different question: do you enjoy the whole publishing and promotional side of the business, or is it a necessary evil that one has to undergo?

Hmm … it’s definitely an interesting learning curve, and it’s satisfying overseeing the entire process. On the other hand, sometimes it would be nice to have that extra support of an external publisher.

As well as continuing work on The Fly Papers, I’ve recently been commissioned by another publisher to write a book.

I’m finding this a very different experience. Just having the external validation of someone saying, ‘We believe that you can do this book,’ is so reassuring. Whereas when you self publish you need an amount of inner self-belief that it’s frankly impossible to maintain all the time.

When I can’t maintain it I have to go onto auto-pilot, and think, okay, whether I believe in this project or not right now, I just have to keep trudging along this path I’ve mapped out … keep putting one foot in front of the other.

When it comes to the actual promotion, it can be deeply uncomfortable trumpeting your own book, especially when it’s effectively self published. It’s like I have to split myself into two selves – the writer-me and the promoter-me. It’s not always a happy split, either.

The writer-me (which I’d suggest is much closer to the real me!) just wants to immerse myself in the story, and have a handful of people like the story for its own sake, and ignore all practicalities … But the promoter-me has to block out any investment in people liking the book for any reason other than that it’s a business venture, and we need to make some money off it! (And that means I have to get LOTS of people to like it.)

Right now, you’re really interviewing both those people, and this is an odd feeling. The writer-me is a wear-my-heart-on-my-sleeve kind of person who wants to answer everything you’re asking me fully and frankly, and not a little self-deprecatingly. But as I reply I’ve got the promoter-me in my head, interjecting sometimes with ‘you can’t say this…’ and ‘make sure you slip in something about that …’

On a lighter note, one fun thing about promoting this book is that I get to talk a lot about carnivorous plants, especially to kids. I love it that anywhere I set up a display or talk, there are always one or two children who seem so enthralled that they can’t leave.

They will come, look at the plants, and then wander off (or be dragged off) … Then a few minutes or half an hour later they’re back … And then later they’re back again, and each time they think up new questions to ask. These plants really seem to get under the skin of some children.

Can you reveal a bit about the second book in the series?

Well it’s coming out next year, and it has a lot of stunt wrestlers in it, as well as carnivorous plants.

One final question: what’s the best thing about being a writer?

Not having to sit around wishing I was a writer, I suppose, which I would … if I wasn’t.

On the other hand, occasionally, when things aren’t going so well, I dream about chucking it all in and becoming a florist or a herbalist or a perfumer. I reckon lots of people must have fantasy alter-ego jobs that they float away to when things get too much in their real job.

Anything else you’d like to say?

Well, the promoter-me says I have to tell you that The Flytrap Snaps makes a really good gift for bright, inquisitive children when packaged up with a real Venus flytrap from your local garden centre. Especially as in the back of the book you’ll find detailed instructions for looking after your own Venus flytrap!

Invitation To The Dance

 
The hits just keep on coming! (And yes, I did write “Yummy Yummy Yummy I’ve Got Love In My Tummy”, and yes, I did write “Ferry Across Wellington Harbour To Eastbourne, Stopping At Matiu/Somes On Request”, which Gerry and the Pacemakers insisted on changing to “Ferry Across The Mersey” because it was more ‘relatable’.)

But this is a different type of hit – a dancefloor hit. A dance card, in fact, marked for me by Auckland poet, graphic poet, short story writer and novelist Rachel Fenton. It’s the latest stop on my blog tour. It is…

Tim to dance: Rachel Fenton interviews Tim Jones.

Previous Interviews

6 December 2011: Wellington poet Harvey Molloy talks with me about men, mid-life crises, art and politics: An Interview with Tim Jones.

1 December 2011: Dunedin poet Kay McKenzie Cooke talks with me about Southland, prose poems, and the fabled Gore High School jersey: New Zealand Writer Tim Jones Explains.

27 November 2011: Canberra poet PS Cottier talk with me about hard work, whether the male sex has a future, and Swannis: Of Poems and Men: Interview with Tim Jones.