WHEN THE SMILE FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHER IS FAKE ... THAT'S CAMERA OBSCURA

Rosanne Dingli’s Camera Obscura – released today, March 23, in paperback and all ebook editions by BeWrite Books – is a thriller reader’s dream, and one photographer’s nightmare.

The very title sets the scene, hinting that behind what the innocent lens sees lies dark mystery, evil and death.

Pages turn at shutter speed as characters snap into life in their desperate bids for discovery and truth and their yearning for understanding and love.

                      
 So, without further ado, here’s what Camera Obscura is about:

***

Photojournalist Bart Zacharin’s camera doesn’t lie … but his mysterious new lover Minnie Cuff lies for a living.

Love-struck Bart can’t get that into focus until he follows her from Australia on her flimsily excused trip to Europe and becomes embroiled in an obscure web of international organized crime, deception and murder.

Minnie’s a fake. Her humdrum job as a computer programmer, her deceptively carefree style and her passionate affair with Bart merely provide a plausible front for her sinister role as key player in a ring of ruthless museum raiders and smugglers of priceless artifacts.

Bart tries to take charge in a lover’s fierce hope to reform her on a dash around some of Europe’s most colorful port cities that becomes a frantic race for life itself, with deadly danger throwing its shadow at every twist and turn.

Fast moving yet poignant, Camera Obscura is one hapless man’s struggle with obsessive love that competes with a million-dollar crime empire: a search for meaning and belonging, thwarted by everyday happenstance and misfortune.

As in her previous novels ‘Death in Malta’ and ‘According to Luke’, the characters in ‘Camera Obscura’ become as real as Dingli’s meticulously researched locations. True paintings, stamps, and rare antiquarian books delicately spice pages that seem to turn in the wind as her breakneck-speed story keeps the reader in chair-edge suspense, right up to a startlingly unforeseen and unforgettable climax. NM

A plot as convoluted as the winding streets of Malta; a breath of the Mediterranean from various venues; two people – one abandoned, one exploited – searching for a primal need: the love of a father. And each, in his own way, finding it.

Particularly telling are the author’s descriptions: “Their red tail lights tunneled away through the narrow street,” and “He needed silence: he needed noise;” and, “… he spoke into the square ahead of him, the words entering the narrow street before him, ahead of the clatter of his feet.” Lovely, graceful sketches, each with a definite edge, intrigue the reader at every turn.

Reading such lines is very much like wading into a pond and stepping into an unexpected hollow, over one’s head, into depths never imagined. Dingli’s use of language does not impede the flow of her story; rather, it lends richness to the narrative, calling upon sensory and philosophical reader-identification that propels the story forward on several multilayered levels.

A sophisticated, smart, and deeply engaging novel that should attract readers everywhere.
                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                             Simon Lang
                  (Simon Lang is the nom de plume of acclaimed US author and script writer Darlene Artell Hartman)

                                                                               ***

Camera Obscura is available in print and ebook editions now from all major online bookstores. A free thirty-page mini-book brochure including cover, book notes, reviews, author biography and picture, and a generous extract can be read, downloaded or printed out HERE.

Rosanne Dingli, who has a personal blog, is the award-winning author of six collections of short stories. Her previous novels – each published by BEWRITE BOOKS – are Death in Malta and According to Luke. They are available in print and ebook editions everywhere and details and free mini-book brochures are at the BeWrite Books BOOKSTORE.

Author Rosanne Dingli

Born in Malta and extensively traveled, full-time author Rosanne is dedicated to the thorough historical and location research that pepper her spell-binding work to add that vital dash of irrefutable authenticity. She now lives in Western Australia.

For those interested in the details: Author: Rosanne Dingli. Editor: Hugh McCracken: Cover art, text design and technical preparation: Tony Szmuk. Extra input: The BeWrite Books team. Print Distribution: Ingram: Ebook Distribution: BeWrite Books Digital Distribution Division.

Happy reading and a relaxing weekend, folks. Neil, Tony, Hugh and Sam at BeWrite Books,

Don’t Discount the Little Guys: On the Benefits of Small Publishers

Ask any new author whether they’d rather be published by a big publishing house or a small but attentive local publisher and you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t choose big. I’d like to suggest that this is a misconception. Even if it were a possibility, and with all due respect to the five biggest publishers (Penguin, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Random House, Time Warner), getting published by a big press may not be the best option for a new author. Here are some of the key reasons why.

• Getting a first novel or poetry book published by a mainstream publisher is a difficult task by any standard, but the big houses are often constrained by tight quotas, by large overheads and mandated profit margins, by purely commercial (rather than literary) considerations (and the demands of shareholders), and by the need for big name acquisition and the subsequent costs. Most won’t take unagented submissions and even if they do, may not look at them. So the entry portal for a large house is very small.
• Naturally the bigger the house the bigger their resource pool, budget and so on but these funds are often not available to new authors, whose slice of the funding pie may be correspondingly small to fund the famous ‘names’ that the house has. Even if their book is accepted by a big house, first time authors may find themselves receiving surprisingly small advances, and more importantly, very limited editing, publicity, and promotion. With the big houses, you are one author amongst thousands, and your personal success is generally not that important in the overall scheme of their lives. In small houses, your success is critical, and you’re only one of a very small number of authors, so you count.
• One of the biggest problems with big houses is the limited timeframe for promotion. A book is usually only “hot” within the first two months from publication. This means you need reviews from galleys, and if you don’t sell well in the early stages you may be dropped, pulped, or ignored. Large houses will often only do large print runs, which means that a book has to sell significant numbers of books to make back the investment (more than 5,000 copies is an average lower limit for large houses). Smaller publishers generally don’t have those sorts of constraints. A book can be considered viable with much smaller sales than those expected by a large publisher and will often be promoted and kept ‘on the books’ in print (especially if it’s POD and no stock is required) over many years.
• Smaller houses often provide much greater rights to your book, and higher margins, even if the initial advance is low to nonexistent. This may well mean that you end up earning much more from your book sales.
• Smaller house are often faster to market with books (partly due to fewer constraints and a flatter structure), more flexible, and more willing to personally edit your book to perfection.
• Small publishers often have much closer contact with their authors. They collaborate on covers, work together on galleys, and can even involve authors in the production process. There is a wonderful intimacy which you will never find in the large houses.

There was once a time when the small houses produced poorer quality printed books, but this is no longer the case. The cost of printing is cheaper than it ever was, and most small press books are printed on the same quality paper and with the same quality printers as the big house books (some have higher printing quality than the big houses because they are able to focus their resources). The Internet too has given smaller houses a leg up, and they are making the most of global promotion opportunities in a much faster way than the big houses – utilising Amazon and reaching targeted markets with the kind of dexterity that can only come when you aren’t hampered by the constraints of a pro-forma performance appraisal.

There’s also a broader aesthetic implication to consider when sending your work out for publication. Small presses tend to support diversity and innovation. As they aren’t reporting to a board of directors or stockholders, there is much more freedom for them to make selections based on quality rather than sales potential. So supporting small presses means that you’re supporting diversity in publishing and ensuring that the wide variety of stunning voices that are out there continue to be available. Poetry in particular has always existed outside of financial considerations, and the number of poetic titles being published by large publishers is miniscule. Good poetry books are being published almost solely by small presses, which continue to support new poets out of very small funding pots, and primarily for the love of it. Most small presses work primarily for the love of it anyway, regardless of what they publish, and choose books based on that one criteria that every writer wants his or her reader to have – a deep and abiding love of the book. In other words, if a small press is publishing you, it isn’t because you’re Ethan Hawke or Jewel, but because they absolutely love your work. What more could a writer ask for? How about a long book life, small (possibly very small) but steady profits, superb, thoughtful, personal and collaborative editing, and aggressive, innovative marketing? If that’s what you’re looking for, small presses are the way to go. Of course not all small presses are divine. There are plenty of sharks out there. But a majority of small presses are operating on a tiny budget and a massive heart. It’s enough to keep you writing.

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. Her short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and journals, and have won local and international awards for poetry (including this year's Roland Robinson literary award), and fiction. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything and three other poetry chapbooks Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse and She Wore Emerald Then. She runs a monthly radio program podcast www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader

Lad Moore's Success is Attributed to Vivid Imagery and Realism of Characters

Writer Lad Moore is preparing for the release of his third short story collection, Riders of the Seven Hills. Once again, he has chronicled a montage of characters and events that as he says, represent his world of “red clay and blue denim.”

Like his first two offerings, Tailwind and Odie Dodie, his new work will be published by BeWrite Books in the UK. In addition to his three books, Mr Moore has been published more than five hundred times in print and internet venues, including The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Virginia Adversaria, Amarillo Bay, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. His is a six-time contributor to Adams Media’s Cup of Comfort and Rocking Chair Reader anthologies and has won such awards as The Silver Quill, The Wordhammer, and a best-fiction nomination to the Texas Institute of Letters.

Lad Moore has an earthy style often compared to that of Mark Twain, Patrick McManus, and William Faulkner. As to these comparisons, Lad admits to having read woefully little work by the three famous writers, and is surprised and honored to be thought of in that company.

Questions of style and discipline often dominate the curiosity of his fans at interviews and book signings.

“The question I get most is ‘how do you approach writing’?” That question suggests style and content, but usually the root of the question centers around discipline. How can one sit for those many hours and fill all those pages? The answer embraces something even the writer has difficulty explaining. How does one describe a compulsion? It would be easier to list reasons for not writing.

“Writing for me is reaching past flesh into one’s guts. I think Red Smith expressed my feelings best: “There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”

Lad explains that there is, at the core, a creative mind and a need to share experiences and imagination with others. There is a pride in reading a sentence that bristles the hair on the neck. There is that inevitable soft sigh when the last page is finished and the cover closed. It is the release of truth, release of passion, and yes, the freeing of secrets.

“I just feel it. I don’t have a ‘time’ to write. I don’t have an agenda to fill, a number of pages or chapters to complete, a deadline to meet. I let it flow until it stops. Sometimes it stops because of distractions. Sometimes it's that mysterious dam called writer’s block. But it will flow again, because of that compulsion writers have at their helm.”

As to subject and material, Lad explains: “I don’t force genre. I don’t force theme. My writing includes poems, mystery, passion, anger, and even fantasy. It’s what came out that day. Maybe that is why I am a short story writer. It allows me to hopscotch around my noggin. For in each crevice of my brain lies something to share. I don’t write to satisfy anyone else. I accept criticism and praise as both being useful. My credo was captured well in these lines: ‘Better to write for self and have no audience, than write for audience and have no self.’ - Cyril Connolly

Lad Moore resides on a small farm near the historic steamboat town of Jefferson, Texas.

Magdalena Ball: A Voice in the Wilderness - Part Two

Part Two

The road from New York to the outback and writing success was a winding one.

She said: “When I was an English major at CCNY, a counsellor suggested I apply for a Rhodes Scholarship. I didn’t get it, but in the process, I became enamoured of the idea of going to Oxford, especially since I’d just finished studying Jude the Obscure and those spires were as appealing and seemingly distant to me as they were to Jude, so I applied anyway and got in. I went, but the college I got into (St Cross) didn’t have any permanent accommodation for me so I had to find a place to live.

“I did find something at Crowley; a cute house which was being sublet by an even cuter guy with round glasses like John Lennon, and who, despite his gentle demeanour, was wearing black leather trousers and had some amazing looking motorbikes parked outside the door. It didn’t take us too long to fall in love. When I moved in, Martin had just quit his DPhil in Philosophy to do a PGCE teaching certificate and then did some teaching of French and History. His BA was in French and Philosophy.

“I was totally awed by Oxford and had the silly idea that I could write something new about James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and WB Yeats. The bulging bookshelves already full of theses on these authors, as well as my own lack of linguistic capability made it quickly clear to me that I was off-track. But I knew I wanted strongly to write about the limits of language and how these three authors were able to move beyond those limits. Although I passed my qualifying exams and a VIVA – the little thesis I wrote for that was pretty much all I was able to do on the topic using academic prose. I tried a few different supervisors but it was clear that I had nothing more to add to an already bulging canon so I left.

“I was also working at a language school, waitressing (research for Sleep perhaps, though I didn’t know it at the time) at a restaurant called The Crypt, and eventually got a secretarial position at a biotechnology company. And there was my advancing relationship with Martin, who was an active member of Oxford University Motorcycle Club. We had a reasonably strong social life, so leaving the university wasn’t that difficult. It just began to assume less and less of a role in my day to day life until I decided there was no point continuing to pay fees.

“Though I hate not finishing something I’ve started – my thesis topic is, in a way, covered by the themes in Sleep, so I feel like I’ve now finished it. I even sent a note to my old supervisor telling him. Being a Yank I’ve never had much notion of protocol.

“So we were bumbling around in Oxford. Martin was teaching and I was doing secretarial work, both no longer tied to the university, and we decided to get married. After the wedding and a wonderful honeymoon in Brittany, we knew we wanted to buy a house, but house prices in the UK were high.

“As Martin’s folks had migrated to Australia some eight years prior, and Martin had just returned from a long visit when I met him, and loved the place, we decided to apply for migration. I had never been to Australia, but what the heck – I was young and adventurous. It sounded remote and exciting.

“It took over a year though for the application to be processed, points tallied, qualifications assessed, so we decided to try our luck in the US for a bit first, ending up in North Carolina, which completely cured me of any desire to return to the US permanently. It’s hard to go back. When the Australian migration came through, we went, staying initially with Martin’s parents who are still within walking distance from where we currently live.

“And now this is home and our three children were born here. They’re all gifted; charming, gorgeous, challenging, and outrageously and sometimes terrifyingly intelligent (I’m not exactly objective). My daughter, for example, yesterday asked me to explain to her how liquid nitrogen could be ‘boiling cold’ – and she was only satisfied when I looked it up on the Internet and gave her the appropriately specific scientific answer. My eldest son has been reading her passages from Sophie’s World and he asked her if she understood it. She said, ‘I understand all the words you’re saying and can picture the scene and the girl, but I don’t quite get all the rubbish about existence.’

“My children are certainly my biggest inspiration as a writer. Dom is a pianist and he was practising Dvorak’s Largo while I was writing Sleep – which is exactly why I used the music in the book.

“One of the things I love about Martin is how engaged in the family he is because my parents were divorced so early in my life; before I was one year old. The whole missing father thing in the novel is a key element in my life, although my own dad has always been around – seeing me on weekends, taking me to the zoo, planetarium, etc – all that paternal stuff Marianne’s grandfather took her to.

“Martin has, on occasion, criticised me for being a wee bit secretive about my writing – doing it on the sly and not talking about it much. I guess I’m conscious of it being something of an indulgence (maybe having a novel out will change that – giving me a mandate), and also conscious of the juggling act in my life. I try to focus on whatever I’m doing at the time and not let anything suffer too much from the diversity of my roles. And I’m still turning a buck at a steady day job. I kind of like to hedge my bets on the Hopeville thing – doing it while earning at something that has no element of hope in it.

“I do have to combine writing heart wrenching life or death scenes with ironing. I do sometimes burn dinner because I’ve had to write something down. My typical afternoon could easily involve the following simultaneous activities: breaking up fights between my children, making dinner, writing a scene from novel number two, working on a poem for a competition, fixing up a spreadsheet error for my day job, assessing someone’s manuscript, and talking on the phone to the rural lands department about the fox that keeps eating the chickens.

“I court busyness and I do suffer from guilt when anything goes wrong or if I feel I’ve been neglecting the children by working too much. There are a lot of balls in the air. I chose to be a juggler so I’m not complaining. But sometimes someone throws one extra in there and they all fall.

“I could build my Ithaca anywhere now – having my family with me makes anywhere a home. Australia feels safe – clean air, space, peace – I can let my children go out and play and not fear for them (except for the snakes and spiders – another story!).”

• Part One
• Part Three coming soon

Interview by Alexander James

Interview first appeared in Twisted Tongue Magazine

Read an excerpt from Sleep Before Evening

Listen to Magdalena Ball read an excerpt of Sleep Before Evening

View the Sleep Before Evening book trailer

Click here for Magdalena Ball's biography

Magdalena Ball: A Voice in the Wilderness - Part One

Part One

Author and poet Magdalena Ball left behind the concrete canyons of New York and the sleepy spires of Oxford to find her voice in the rural mountains of Australia.

And with wombats and kangaroos for neighbours, she’s producing the best work of her life.

In the past five years alone she’s seen wide publication of short fiction and poetry, non-fiction book, The Art of Assessment, her Quark Soup poetry anthology and, this month, her debut novel, Sleep Before Evening.

With work underway on two other books 42-year old Magdalena even finds time to run her bustling review site, CompulsiveReader.com – and look after her children, Dominic (10), Oliver (7) and Genevieve (4).

She said: “It’s hard to believe that we’re only an hour’s drive from Sydney. It’s very rural here and, as I type, the lyrebirds are singing, kookaburras laughing, bellbirds tinkling. Chickens are tearing up the lawn looking for grubs, and I really do need to follow up on those fox baits

“It couldn’t be more different from the New York I grew up in. There’s anonymity in the country that is actually similar to that in a big city. You’re surrounded by sound and bustling activity, but completely unnoticed. I like that. It makes me feel both ‘in the midst of’ and yet absolutely alone.

“In some ways Sleep Before Evening is an extended love letter to a city I can never go back to except as a tourist. What I looked for when I came here, with my British husband, Martin, and we grew into a family, was Ithaca (in the Homeric sense of the word). And I’m not entirely sure why I had to be so far away from my roots to find it. To a certain extent a door just opened and, young an unencumbered, I walked through it.

“The home I have here is exactly what I always wanted as a child: stable, rooted, safe: two parents, strong ideals, three regular meals on the table – stability.”

Magdalena Ball’s critically acclaimed new novel – released by BeWrite Books – tells the story of a middle class teenager cast adrift by the sudden death of her brilliant grandfather-mentor and her struggle against a self-centred artist mother, a succession of drive-by stepfathers and her desperate escape into a nightmare of drugs and sexual degradation.

Set in and about New York, the gritty, relentless tale unfolds with the same cool detachment that motivates the central character to peel back the layers of her life and expose the painful scalding within. There are lonely vigils in city parks and subway journeys to oblivion. In the city she meets Miles, a hip musician busking the streets and playing seedy venues with a rock band.

Her new, exciting, dissolute world challenges Marianne’s preconceptions about art and life. Here, in contrast to her prescribed upbringing, she finds anarchic squalor, home grown music and poetry, substance abuse, sex and crushing disappointment and fear; but above all, exhilarating personal freedom.

Addictions – of all kinds – and the redemptive power of art and music, love, loss and beauty are all explored in a young girl’s difficult journey from sleep to awakening. The book draws on Magdalena’s own rich life experience as a daughter and a mother to bring Marianne startlingly to life.

“But Sleep isn’t autobiographical at all – I’m happy to say! It’s pure fiction,” Magdalena said. “It’s set in a real time and place where I lived when I was Marianne’s age, and there are flashes of characterisation, dialogue and situations that came from memory rather than pure imagination. There are many reasons for that – the key one being my lack of inventiveness. I need something clear and visual to work with as a writer, and it helped to ground the characterisation in a specific place and time where it seemed to fit.

“The other reasons are that, like Marianne, my mother and stepfather were going through an ugly break-up during that period of my life and there was tamped tension and unresolved pain that I was able to use for verisimilitude by setting the book in that particular time and place.

“And, of course, like most writers, I do tend to be a magpie and have taken all sorts of observations, memories and experiences to put into the fictional situation. For example, I did like to go into NYC from Long Island when I was a teen, and like Marianne, could never find someone brave enough to come along, so tended to go alone.

“I also attended a few of those poetry sessions Marianne goes to, including a gorgeous all-nighter on New Year’s Eve with Ginsburg, Jim Carroll, Lou Reed, Anne Waldman, Richard Hell, etc, at the St Marks Church.

“I even remember listening to a harmonica player under the arch at Washington Square Park and talking to him afterwards, but I never ended up in Marianne’s situation, falling in love with him. There was a little bit of my brother’s mother, an artist and writer, in Marianne’s mother, Lily, and a little bit of my stepfather in Marianne’s stepfather, Russell. And there are plenty of places in the book I remember being in myself and things I remember seeing, but the overall story is completely made up.

“Having said that, I was worried that my mother would see herself in Lily but instead she identified with Marianne, and reminding me that she lived through something very similar indeed, as she did have a brief dalliance with heroin addiction. So perhaps instinctively, because I never really knew my mother’s full story – it all happened when I was a baby and I was mostly out of the situation, safe with my grandmother – I knew and understood something of my mother’s pain and put it in there. She tells me it’s uncanny, but it was entirely unintentional.

“I think there are aspects of me in every character, from Grandfather Eric to stepfather Russell, to mother Lily and to Miles, to the boy in the park. They all have something of me in them and something of other people I knew in them, but ultimately the resemblance to both people and places was only a starting point. Once the story became strong, it took on its own life, and the characters developed their own imperative which was completely unique to this particular story and these particular characters.”

Part Two coming soon

Interview by Alexander James

Interview first appeared in Twisted Tongue Magazine

Read an excerpt from Sleep Before Evening

Listen to Magdalena Ball read an excerpt of Sleep Before Evening

View the Sleep Before Evening book trailer

Click here for Magdalena Ball's biography

Developing an Internet Presence: The Hometown Advantage

The Hometown Advantage

Let the home town advantage work for you and use all the freebies available to you. I work at a local university and am also an alumna of the Journalism Department. The department interviewed me for their newsletter that went out to PR alumni, our faculty/staff newspaper and our Alumni Center did a "spot light" in their publications which also went out to all university alumni when the book came out. My book will also be displayed at our Alumni Center library along with other published alums. Other than the price of a donated book, this is FREE publicity that has reached thousands inside and outside of our community.

Does your community have a historical conservation organization? If you write historical fiction, is there a way to connect your writing to local history and/or work with the organization to draw local interest to your book?

If you are fortunate enough to have a public broadcasting television station (PBS) in your community, donate 2-3 copies of your book for their telesales auction. There's no better way to get a FREE 2-3 minute on-air promo that has the potential of reaching thousands of households.

Get to know the managers of the local bookstores and set up a few book signings throughout the year. Be sure to send out flyers, post cards, and/or e-mails to family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, etc., at least a week before your signing. Start thinking outside the box and don't limit book signings to bookstores. Most communities have annual events that draw local attention. If you manage to sell 5-10 books, it would easily pay for the cost of the booth (if applicable) and it will put your face and name in front of a diverse group of potential readers.

Does your book have a seasonal theme? For example a Halloween murder mystery - focus a special local promotion leading up to Halloween.

Create an alliance with your local library. No, books that are checked out of the public library won't earn the author royalties, but think EXPOSURE. Most people who read and enjoy an author's writing will more than likely want their own copy. Again, word of mouth will sell books. Most libraries and book clubs are eager to find new programs to offer their patrons and from their standpoint there's no better draw than a local author. You'll need to take your books, but this is a focused group of readers who will hang on every word you say. Also, contact your state library to see if they sponsor any contests for resident authors. If your local library promotes books on their blog ask them to write a review or spotlight your book. Again, working with a library may not generate immediate sales, but if you are a new author, getting name recognition and a following is far more important right now. Once the reader is hooked, they'll want to buy all your books.

Don't give books away unless you stand to gain promotional exposure from it. Tell your family and friends who expect a freebie that you must cover your costs. Whenever a book is given away it is a lost sale and will most likely end up being circulated to others without any purchase or, it will collect dust on their bookshelf. Remember that something for nothing is worth nothing, but when an investment of time (to search for the book) and money is made, the person will most likely read it.

There is no way to keep people from sharing and/or exchanging books. Still, from a promotions standpoint it goes back to exposure and getting your name out and that's good. But an author has to at least get one sale out of the deal.

Here’s an example of what one young lady did with my debut book, SILENCED CRY. My first book signing was at our campus Barnes & Noble. While I was setting up, one of the student workers told me that as she placed my books on the shelf, she became intrigued and decided to buy two copies (the dear); one to keep and one to create a chain read out of it for her friends who were studying around the world. I tried to contact her several times to see where the book had traveled to, but was unable to reach her. I finally gave up thinking I'd never hear form her again. Eight months later I received the following e-mail:

“This is Aimee, the girl from the Ball State Bookstore. I am currently residing in Japan, and just received news that your book has traveled to Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Taiwan, Vienna, France, and actually returned to Japan twice! I thought this might make you happy.”

Happy? No, I was ecstatic! How cool is that? The e-mail was dated February 23, 2008. Who knows how many more places my homicide detective Sam Harper has traveled to since then? So I sold two books and it was read by at least nine other people. My only hope is that all those who borrowed my book and liked, it will want to have their own copy eventually.

Keep writing and remember -

"Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible." -

Claude T. Bissell, Canadian author and educator

1. Developing an Internet Presence: An Author's Website
2. Developing an Internet Presence: The Public Author
3. Developing an Internet Presence: Book Trailers
4. Developing an Internet Presence: Spread the Word
5. Developing an Internet Presence: Virtual Book Tours
6. Developing an Internet Presence: The Hometown Advantage
   

Marta Stephens, a native of Argentina but a life-long resident of the American Midwest, began her career as a fiction writer in 2003. This evolved into a life-changing passion that has led to the birth of her Sam Harper Crime Mysteries and her debut novel, Silenced Cry. She runs the popular Murder by 4 blog along with her fellow crime authors at Murder by 4. She also has several short stories and flash fictions to her credit.

Marta's debut novel, Silenced Cry, was published by BeWrite Books in 2007.

Her second novel, The Devil Can Wait, was published by BeWrite Books November 2008.

Promoting Poetry: Is it a Mug’s Game? by Magdalena Ball

Let me start by saying, right up front, that publishing poetry is generally not a road to riches. Most of us write poetry for reasons other than its hot selling power. Of all genres, poetry is probably the hardest to sell. I’m not entirely sure why this is the case, but I’ll hazard an educated guess that it’s because there’s a kind of misconception that poetry isn’t an engaging read (not suitable for the beach or an airplane), isn’t an easy read (the “highbrow fallacy”), and that it isn’t going to improve you in any way (unlike self-help books, which will cure your diseases, make you slimmer, and attract lots of good stuff to you). Don’t say I didn’t warn you. So why bother? Why not just write a diet book? Here are two reasons why poetry matters.

1. “it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.”

That is, as Auden said so beautifully in “In Memory of WB Yeats”, poetry connects us in ways that go deeper than any other words can. It endures, and continues to move us, in the writing and in the reading, regardless of literary trends, political activity, and its overall saleability.

2. Because “men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.”

That is, as William Carlos Williams said so beautifully in “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”, there’s an inherent power in poetry to move beyond the boundaries that divide us; to jump over the cliffs between us; and move beyond those lines of race, class, age, and above all, our innate fears, and reach a place of common humanity. Life is busy, and it’s so easy to forget to look into one another’s eyes; to talk in convenient syllables and soundbites rather than sincerely; to miss what matters under the big pile of what’s urgent. In other words, and let me say this very clearly, good poetry is important. It’s important to our inner life, and where it succeeds, it succeeds hugely, becoming lodged in our consciousnesses. Like the two poems above, which I’ve carried around in my head since I came across them as a young teen, good poetry sticks with the reader. It continues to be recited and cited and in its own beautifully viral way, changes who we are and how we see our lives and our world.

So poetry matters, and we need to keep reading and writing it, even if it isn’t an easy sell, because it will be with us long after the South Beach Diet has been forgotten. But how, as a poet, do you become “lodged?” How do you promote your poetry so others read it?

Firstly, remember that good poetry is as pleasurable to read as it is to write. If you write it, you have a responsibility to read the best work of others. You’ll be a better poet as a result and who knows, you might start a trend. If you don’t know where to start, try Dorothy Porter, Billy Collins, Charles Simic, Les Murray, or Luke Davies. Those are a few of my favourites, and writers whose work is consistently beautiful, passionate, modern, relevant and accessible. Or try the classics, Williams, Frost, Yeats, Auden, Plath, Brooks. Try purchasing an anthology. Black Inc do an annual anthology of Australian poetry (Best Australian Poems 2008 was edited by Peter Rose), Scribner does one for American poetry, (Best American Poetry 2008 was edited by Charles Wright) and there are similar books for Canada and England. Or try a literary journal – there are plenty to choose from. Great poetry will inspire great poetry, even if you write nothing but prose. The perfectly chosen word is always worth reading, and emulating.

Secondly, don’t limit yourself to the printed page. Poetry isn’t sacred. It began as our earliest oral tradition and continues to be most effective delivered orally. Sing, dance, recite, move about, use props. Think Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith. You don’t even have to have a good voice– just confidence (easily feigned), and some performance acumen. Look your audience in the eye, remember they’re on your side, and connect. But just because you’re adding props, music, and chutzpah doesn’t mean you can use cliché, ineffective imagery, or be ridiculous. I once saw a poet perform his work while eating a banana. It wasn’t pretty. There’s a fine line between great work and a fun performance. Find it and walk it. Don’t forget to bring books to sell with you either, because you’ll sell more work at a live performance than anywhere else. Then you can capitalize on the buzz with websites, blogs (like this one), reviews of other poet’s work, and samples.

Finally, network. Poets should support one another. Writing poetry doesn’t need to be secretive, lonely, or tortured. We should buy, review, and talk up each others’ work (where deserved); and if you find something good, by all means, shout about it. Collaborate, coordinate, cross-promote, and above all, celebrate. Because great poetry, and by that I mean words that sear and sting and open every pore, are cause for celebration. You can take that to the bank.


Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. Her short stories, editorials, poetry, reviews and articles have appeared in a wide number of printed anthologies and journals, and have won local and international awards for poetry (including this year's Roland Robinson literary award), and fiction. She is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything and three other poetry chapbooks Quark Soup, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Cherished Pulse and She Wore Emerald Then. She runs a monthly radio program podcast www.blogtalkradio.com/compulsivereader

Developing an Internet Presence: Virtual Book Tours

Virtual Book Tours

First let me emphasize that the following is based purely on my experience. It is not intended as the perfect model, but simply a list of things that worked for me during my August 2007, virtual book tour. Keep in mind that there are several sites available that offer to help authors coordinate and schedule virtual tours for a fee. However, with a few basic communication skills, a little time, and some careful planning, it is not only doable, it is an inexpensive and fun way to meet potential readers and promote your book. My tour kick-off was July 30, 2007, with a live interview on Internet Voices Radio. The following day, the hits on my website jumped by 44%. To listen to the interview visit, http://www.martastephens-author.com/interview.html.

The key word is NETWORK and RELATIONSHIPS, but don't wait until your book is published to begin building a communication network. I joined my first author forum several years before Silenced Cry was released in April 2007, by BeWrite Books (UK). I've built my network of friends and contacts through membership in about 20 sites. These sites represent more than 16,000 members and potential readers. The number of readers increases when I add in the number of people who visit my website, my pages in NING groups, Facebook, Myspace, Gather, Squidoo, Authors' Den, Amazon, and other such sites. Also not included in that figure are the friends and family who are on my mailing list. What's more important is that you will also meet potential virtual book tour sponsors on these sites as well.

Join diverse groups that provide different focuses such as some general author forums where anything having to do with writing can and is discussed. Other groups may have a membership with focused interest on your preferred genre, while yet others focus on discussions about marketing, agents, and publishing.

Several people have asked me how I find time to stay current with the various posts and keep up with my writing. As mentioned in my previous article, getting involved within those networks doesn't mean you have to devote hours a day to each one, but do make yourself known to others. Get involved in the conversations that are of interest to you and ones that you can contribute to. Think of how many people you know and come in contact with every day. Each member in these sites probably knows as many or possibly more people than you do. Get to know them. Pay attention to what is being discussed and follow the links they mentioned. You never know where they may lead you. If a certain link is not to your liking, go on to the next one.

Get Ready:
So, the day of your book launch has come and gone and now you feel it's time to beef up your promotions. Great! Roll up your sleeves and prepare to work for several weeks on nothing but your virtual book tour.

Step 1:
Don't be shy to ask for sponsorship. You'll find that most authors or site owners will be more than happy to showcase you. It's a win/win situation. The site owner wins because you're doing all the work; writing the articles and promoting their site. You win because you will be able to promote yourself and your book to a target audience that you might not have had access to prior to the tour.

Write a basic announcement and customized it to fit each site based on their criteria for self-promotion. Beware; there are author sites that frown on self-promotion. Make the announcement short, sweet, and to the point. Mention that you are making plans for a virtual book tour (give the dates) and indicate that you would like to know if anyone would be willing to sponsor you on their website or blog.

Step 2:
Within hours of my announcement, I began to receive e-mails from some of my contacts with an "I'd love to sponsor you-please send..."

Remember, everything about the tour is entirely your responsibility.

1. Study the sites of those who have invited you to be a guest writer. Read what others have posted to those sites. What can you write about yourself, your book, your characters, etc. that will fit the site's format?
2. Don't make the mistake of accepting the offer to post if the site doesn't fit your schedule. I turned one offer down because they wanted a book review. I was reading a book at the time, but I wasn't going to have time to finish it and write a review in time for my tour.
3. Get a calendar and write down the names of your contacts and the blog's name and URL. Don't over commit. If you can't write more than four or five articles, don't promise to do seven or eight. It's better to add events to your tour than to commit and not follow through.
4. I found it helpful to create an e-mail folder titled Virtual Book Tour. I moved all my e-mails (received and sent) into that folder so I could find important e-mails easily. I also printed the final e-mails confirming the date/time of the event and placed them in a manila folder in event date order.
5. Create a folder in your favorites and save the links to each website and/or blog that is sponsoring you so you can find the links quickly.
6. Try to do a variety of events. Ask if you can write an article for some of the blogs, ask others if they would like to interview you. If they've read your book, perhaps they will be willing to write a review. Check to see if a group has a chat room and would be willing to schedule an hour chat with you and their members. Check into other media opportunities such as radio and television. Be prepared to send a picture of your book cover or banner to some of the sites. Remember to include a few local blogs in your mailing if they are available, such as local library or book club blogs.
7. Start writing. Type, type, type-breathe-type, type, type-breathe again! Vary the topics of your articles. Your sponsor will more than likely makes suggestions. They may want to know what inspired you to write. Others may want you to discuss specifics about your book. Take their lead, but if they leave the topic up to you, one idea source is to review some of your previous interview questions. Maybe there's one that is particularly thought provoking that you would like to expand on. Check your work. Don't expect your sponsor to proofread or edit your work and don't expect them to post an article that is riddled with typos.
8. When you e-mail your article to the website owner, be sure to remind him or her of your purpose, the name of your article, the agreed date to post the article, and which blog to post it in if they have multiple blogs.
9. If time permits, check what other authors are doing to attract readers to their tour. Some offer to draw names of those commenting on the tour posts for a free autographed copy of their book. Freebies always attract readers. Think about a variety of give away give away options and decide which will be best for you.
10. Create an events page on your website and post the tour schedule and links. Join a site such as http://www.booktour.com/ (mention my name if you join, please!). Book Tour is a super easy site to work with and it has a nice, clean look. It allows you to link to your website and book trailer (if you have one). There may be others, but this one has some other nice features such as allowing visitors to send reminders of the tour dates to their e-mails or websites.
11. A few days to a week before the tour, prepare another standard announcement to post on the various websites you belong to. This time, list the details of your tour and/or the links to the sites that lists your schedule.
12. Two-three days before each event, contact your sponsors and remind him or her to post your blog. This is also a good time to send out private e-mails to everyone listed in your address book to remind them of the tour. Be sure to ask them to post comments on your blogs and to forward your e-mail to a friend or two.
13. Once your article or interview has been published, check your posts for comments and be sure to type a response to each.
14. After each article has been published on the host site for the day, post it on your own website and/or blog. This way, your article will appear on the search engines via the host site as well as yours and your work will be available in one convenient place for visitors to read.

Step 3:
You will instinctively want to measure your success in sales, but sales aren't the only measuring stick of success. My tour attracted the attention of critical reviewers, additional interview opportunities, a screenplay writer, and invitations to write for other sites which translates into credibility and more exposure. For a new author, the experience and contacts can proved to be invaluable.

Step 4:
Nothing will get you an invitation to post on a site again like a heart-felt thank you. Your sponsor will appreciate it as much as a reciprocal offer from you to return the favor.

All of the articles and interviews from Marta's August 2007 Virtual Book Tour are available on her personal blog

In February 2008, Marta and three other mystery authors launched an authors’ group blog, MURDER BY 4 . If you are considering a virtual book tour, stop by and request a feature.

Good luck and have fun setting up your virtual book tour.

Was the Virtual Book Tour Worth It? An article by Marta Stephens on her 2008 book tour for The Devil Can Wait

1. Developing an Internet Presence: An Author's Website
2. Developing an Internet Presence: The Public Author
3. Developing an Internet Presence: Book Trailers
4. Developing an Internet Presence: Spread the Word
5. Developing an Internet Presence: Virtual Book Tours
6. Developing an Internet Presence: The Hometown Advantage

Marta Stephens, a native of Argentina but a life-long resident of the American Midwest, began her career as a fiction writer in 2003. This evolved into a life-changing passion that has led to the birth of her Sam Harper Crime Mysteries and her debut novel, Silenced Cry. She runs the popular Murder by 4 blog along with her fellow crime authors at Murder by 4. She also has several short stories and flash fictions to her credit.



Marta's debut novel, Silenced Cry, was published by BeWrite Books in 2007.







Her second novel, The Devil Can Wait, was published by BeWrite Books November 3rd 2008.

ABRACADABRA … IT’S ALLAKAZZAM! - Part Two

From Real Life Horror at an African Murder Scene to Sheer Magic

Read Part One here

Eventually, the voices of his ancestors called out to him from Israel – were he eventually landed up via a circuitous root that saw him working as a juggler, a tightrope walker, a fire eater, a magician ... and even a snake charmer.

When he got to the Levant, much to Abelman’s chagrin after successfully avoiding the South African national military service conscription, he soon found himself drafted into Israeli Defense Force. After many years of active service, slipping in and out of Lebanon, both in the regular army and in the reserves, he was honorably discharged with the towering rank of private. His military memoir has been published as the short story, No Medals & No Mentions.

He said: “We were all Zionists in our family and supported Israel. There was no shortage of books on Judaism and related subjects in the house, both religious and secular.

“One of the first games I can remember playing was ‘Germans and Jews’. In a draped, darkened dining room, the table was covered with blankets skirting down to the floor. The ‘Jews’ would hide under the table with a little reading lamp. When they heard a sound outside, they had to turn the lamp off and sit silently until a ‘German’ yanked up the blankets with a yell – ‘Juden raus!’ –giving a scare to the cowering ‘Jews’. I must have been three.

“Jews in the Diaspora live dual lives. Outside the house we were proud South Africans and Jews, inside the house we were proud Zionist Jews and South Africans. My father’s name was Abraham, and rather than contend with the split personality of Diaspora life, I decided to move to the land of Abraham, where you can be yourself both inside and out.

“My brother had made the move some years earlier so the way was paved for me. With a single suitcase, I tary disciplinleft South Africa – ‘coincidentally’, a week before induction into the South African Defence Force – not to return until fifteen years later, by which time the military police had stopped inquiring as to my whereabouts.

“Milie in Israel didn’t come as too much of a shock – I knew it existed. There are rules and regulations, but as long as you take your training seriously (and you’re stupid if you don’t because you can find yourself at war quicker than you expected over here) and do your job as directed, the Israeli Defence Force is a happy-go-lucky place to be; compared to other armies that is.”

At a loose end after his army service, Daniel soon found employment as a professional performing artist. As thrice winner, in successive years, of the Israeli National Magic Competition, it paved the way to success. His hat trick set him off, traveling the country, performing up north in the Golan Heights and as far as the southern resort town of Eilat.

“The performing arts can be a hot, sticky and, at times, filthy business,” he said. “A tight rope walker may make a living with three ten minute acts a day – but it’s not something I would recommend anyone trying. Artists spend more time waiting around for the show to begin then they actually do performing. It’s a boring, nerve racking and dangerous way to make a living.”

Daniel married a rabbi’s daughter, Joani, and after the birth of their third child, it dawned on him that seasonal work as a performer wasn’t the best way to provide for a growing family and that long periods away from home wasn’t the best way to enjoy it. So he hung up his wand when the Intifada that followed the Israeli Scud War (into which he was drafted for three months) discouraged tourists, and the performing arts job became even more precarious.

He became a licensed electrician, a competent plumber and, for a while, built wooden frame houses

But his beautiful wife’s outstanding success as a prenatal educator and childbirth assistant, a field in which she attained near guru status, decided Daniel to become the primary care-giver parent in the family, leaving Joani to spend more time on her career.

By the time Daniel became a house husband, there were four children. And between hectic breakfasts in the morning and brushing teeth before beddie-bies, was when he began to write in earnest. Mornings, with the young Abelmans at school, were his most productive hours. It was during these mini brakes from the bedlam of so many kids in a home of just sixty square yards, that ALLAKAZZAM! took shape.

“Contrary to popular belief,” said Daniel, “kids have to be fed on a regular basis and tucked into bed on a regular basis. Hungry and tired kids are ratty kids. The quickest cooked meal to prepare is corn-on-the-cob with a sliced tomato for salad. Being a ‘fun-father’ we would sometimes do the outrageous; breakfast for supper! ‘Cereal for supper tonight!’

“But kids aren’t stupid. They won’t put up with such dismal parenting for long. I really had to work hard at the job. It’s like tight rope walking, fire eating and juggling all in one ... and all sheer magic.

“Then, of course, there’s the eternal battle as to whose turn it is on the computer. Mostly I have to write things on scraps of paper and then transcribe them into the computer when the kids decide it’s my turn. Out of school time, if I managed two good paragraphs a day on ALLAKAZZAM!, I was happy with the output ... and don’t forget there’s a wife who appears at the most ungodly of hours and who demands to be fed and given some love and attention, too.”

When people ask Daniel how he ever got ALLAKAZZAM! finished, though, he doesn’t tell them about the late nights, the early mornings, the entire finished sentences and paragraphs carefully filed away in his head, the lifetime of research through experience, adventure, diversity and astute and compassionate people-watching, or the decades of practicing and mastering the writer’s skills to supplement an inborn talent -- and the years spent carefully polishing ALLAKAZZAM! to a perfect shine.

After all, it’s a poor magician who reveals all the secrets of his tricks.

Interview by Alexander James

Interview first appeared in Twisted Tongue Magazine

Read an excerpt from ALLAKAZZAM!

Click here for Daniel Abelman's biography

ABRACADABRA ... IT’S ALLAKAZZAM! - Part One

From Real Life Horror at an African Murder Scene to Sheer Magic

Daniel Abelman was sixteen when he stumbled upon the battered corpse of a murdered black man at the side of a remote dirt road in South Africa.

He called the police who swung the body onto the back of a dusty pickup truck.

“Don’t you want my statement … you know … for your investigation?” Daniel asked.

The boss cop’s reply numbed him: “Investigation? Are you bloody mad, kid? It’s just another kaffir.”

That’s when young Daniel decided to leave what had been the Beloved Country – and the adventure began.

Daniel had been born in the busy South African shipping city of Port Elizabeth on the coast of the Indian Ocean in 1958. It was also the body-surfing capital of the world, and as a tot, he learned to swim long before he could walk.

Later, unknowingly, he started to play the illusion game that became his life and fueled his bitingly satirical novel of skullduggery, ALLAKAZZAM!

“It was a pleasant four-mile downhill freewheel on my pushbike to the beach,” he said. “But after a day’s surfing and swimming, the prospect of pedaling back, uphill and in the summer heat, wasn’t so appealing. So I’d let the air out of one of my tyres to fake a puncture and sit, looking thoroughly miserable, at the side of the road until some kind-hearted driver was fool enough to load my bike into the back of his car and take me home in style. Never failed.

“When I arrived home – invariably late for supper – I’d blame the ‘puncture’ and the family would feel sorry for me and heap my plate. I guess that’s when I first learned about the power of illusion: my first step toward becoming a professional magician, and a writer. Mastery of illusion is vital in both art forms.

“Conjuring is the plausible demonstration of the implausible. The audience is spoon-fed with only what they have to know; nothing more and nothing less if the demonstration is to be plausible. There are techniques in building a workable magic routine, and I use the same tricks of the trade when composing a story. The reader gets all the information they need; nothing more and nothing less. The outcome is a believable story, no matter however outrageous and impossible the concept might seem. The catch is that conjurors are made and not born – with writers, it’s pretty well the opposite.”

Daniel’s Jewish Lithuanian grandparents and uncle fled to Johannesburg from their home country in fear of their lives. With the outbreak of the Boer War the Jewish community was transferred in masse to Port Elizabeth, yet again in fear for their safety. Enthusiastic and prolific breeders, the Abelman clan waxed with the years and did well for themselves as dairy farmers and wholesale merchants.

“How they got their hands on the farms,” Daniel admits, “is shrouded in mystery. All I am prepared to say is that we come from a long line of renowned Lithuanian horse thieves and, by all accounts, grandpa and company made it onto the boat to Africa by the skin of their teeth -- with a posse of irate, horseless Cossacks hot on their tails.

“Grandpa and Great Uncle Isaac would schlep their products from door to door in hessian bags, taking orders from farmers on the way so as so stock up with supplies for the return journey. They’d spend the night on the back of their donkey cart, snuggled up in sack cloth sleeping bags.

“Later they opened a general store in Selbourne. On Thursdays, my mother – a ten-year-old then – would run down to Rabbi Bloch, the ritual slaughterer, with a shilling and a hen. On Fridays she ran down to the Port Elizabeth train station with kosher cooked chicken and baked hallot loaves for the Sabbath, which she gave to the guard on the train. The guard, in turn, handed it over to Uncle Isaac on the Selbourne platform.

“Runaway horse thieves and rogues they may have been, but you’ve got to admit, they were good, kosher runaway horse thieves and rogues.”

Writing was in the family from as long as Daniel could remember. His father was the community’s scribe, penning letters in Yiddish to the old country and reading replies from home.

The multilingual household, shelves stocked with books, was a literary incubator. Family time was spent with Daniel’s father reading to the company. Balzac and Herman Charles Bosman, the Yiddish literary greats, and running commentaries from Pa had the household moved to tears or howling with laughter.

“Our edition of Balzac’s droll stories was illustrated and, as the level in Pa’s brandy bottle lowered, so did the Old Man’s guard, letting us peep at the naughty succubi and incubi pictures. Then Pa would decide it was time for bed and Ma would decide he was to drunk for that. The advent of TV and Ma’s distaste for Pa’s over-imbibing during story-telling sessions is probably what put an end to our family nights ... and what brought on the birth of the twins.”

Now with five siblings, making up a total of seven souls in the family unit, and with three library cards per family member, the weekly trip to the public library was accomplished with the help of a giant wicker basket and a strong back.

“We lived on 2nd Avenue and the library was way up on 5th. There is a lot a youngster can do traversing those few blocks, even when weighed down with a basked stuffed with books and a pair of flip-flops (the librarian wouldn’t let us in without some form of footwear). You could stop and mix with the mice (white) in the pet shop, or jive with the petrol station attendants (black). Great care was to be taken to resist the temptation of a rest on the bench in the 4th Avenue Park and make a start on the reading. It would invariably result in trouble when, once again, arriving home late for supper.”

There was always something to read in the house. Daniel’s only complaint was that fate had left him as the middle child in a big family.

“With a rich blend of shtetl and farmers’ blood flowing through our veins, nothing went to waste in our household. Hand-me-down was the name of the game. Via numerous cousins and finally off the back of my elder brother, my wardrobe was a motley collection of short pants and tee-shirts. When I joined the school soccer team, I remember being given a pair of old rugby boots that laced up past the ankle. The bulbous metal-reinforced toe cap was out of date even back then. But they came in handy for giving the ball, mostly in the wrong direction, a hefty kick whilst positioned at left-back.

“The up side of being the middle pip was that my best friends were also my siblings, and that meant I was always surrounded by friends, some older, some younger. The close bonds of childhood remain to this day. My sisters married wisely and live in Johannesburg. The brothers, who married for love and nothing much else, now live in Israel. We’ve all done pretty well for ourselves.”

The school where Daniel studied far from home had the reputation of being one of the best high schools in the southern hemisphere. Only one student had ever failed matriculation examinations. Young Daniel Abelman was the stain on an otherwise unblemished record.

“They don’t invite me to school reunions. It’s no skin off my nose -- I hated school, I hated the teachers (that was probably mutual), I hated the curriculum ... and I probably would hate going to a reunion, too. The day I left school, I never looked back. I lost contact with teachers and schoolmates, most of whom I had sat with on the same school bench for twelve years. I did hear a rumour circulating that I was clinically insane.

“I explained to my parents my motives for failing matriculation, that it was no accident. After a while, it was water under the bridge and they got over it. I think they might even have quietly approved.

“The school was by no means rank with perves and paedophiles like the school described in ALLAKAZZAM! But it did have two of them who stood out like sore thumbs, seen but inexplicably ignored. The headmaster was aware of what was happening and, for his own personal reasons and agenda, did nothing about it.

“This malpractice and social injustice had to be brought to an end, and it seemed it was up to me. I deliberately failed my incredibly easy matriculation exams and so tarnished the school’s clean record that the head was fired by the board of directors.

“I remember coming out of those exams. The headmaster was waiting, anxious to find out how things had gone. It was a real pleasure to lie and say that the exam was as easy as pie and that I had done marvellously, knowing that he would carry the can. Without the head’s support the paedophiles were soon got rid of.

“About a year ago, I managed to establish contact with the old headmaster via email. We traded a message or two that were surprisingly genial. I sent him the first chapter of ALLAKAZZAM! His feedback was wonderful and I asked if he’d like to read more. When he said he would, I sent him the fictionalised schooldays chapter from deeper into the book. I never heard from him again. A bit of a belated twist of the knife, what?”

Daniel later walked through his national matriculation certificate at another school of, he says, low esteem.

Then came the day at childhood’s end when he abruptly learned what the hateful South African Apartheid system was all about – when it hit him in the face in the shape of a murdered black man and a racist Afrikaans-speaking white cop.

He took to the road and travelled around Africa doing odd jobs and often living off the land. Eventually winning a grub stake in a card game, he left for Europe where the cruel climate took him unawares.

Read Part Two here

Interview by Alexander James

Interview first appeared in Twisted Tongue Magazine

Read an excerpt from ALLAKAZZAM!

Click here for Daniel Abelman's biography