Writing away the time...

Hi all,

So, time is a very funny thing. What exactly is it? We can't touch it, experience it or change it in any way, but it affects us very deeply and tears us apart.

Connected to the idea of time, is the idea of fate and destiny. I myself have become transfixed by this idea to the extent that in 2005, I began writing a novel series based around the idea of destiny. I finished the first book on the first Saturday of my Junior Cert exams, in June 2006. Now, I've begun rewriting it.

It's title, or what I'm still calling it, is What Lurks Through the Mirror. People who follow me on Twitter may have noticed a few references to Hounds, nasties in the night and other such oddities. I can now confirm I have not stepped further into madness, I'm just working on a novel.

The idea behind the novel was that there was a War, the Great War, that split the World into several smaller Worlds - ours, a similar world, two worlds of magical entities, a world of the Fate (the beings that control Destiny), a world known as Death but what is really Purgatory for the dead, and the Chaos world, where all the evil went. The Fate made it so that the worlds were safe from each other, so long as the magical boundaries were sustained. Then they went missing.

They left only a lineage, an order; the Chosen would save the Worlds from a terrible doom, and potentially destroy the Chaos magic for good. But there are prices to pay, and skills to learn.

It begins six years before the main text, with the death of Gary Tane. His daughter and he had a similar gift of seeing hidden messages in the stars. Neither were aware the other could do it, and Sarah certainly didn't know she was capable of it until shortly before the story begins. That's when the Hound attacks.

Moving to Ireland, Eric Murphy finds himself caught in the middle of a fight - a pair of dancers are the target to a Disciple of Chaos. The Casters Guild attempt to save them, and Eric, when the world of Madness reveals itself, and the Chaos Crack opens.

Shamam twins struggle to find meaning in their seperate lives; an Ancient searches for freedom; the Hounds are loose, the boundaries broken - Darkness has fallen.

The Fate Saga is here Ladies and Gentlemen. It will change everything. A simple visit to the circus is now the biggest mistake anyone can make, when the Jester comes to play...

So yes, that was essentially a pitch for the books. But I think it summarises fairly well just how dark this story is. Three years ago it was nothing but a childhood fairy tale. Everything had to be safe then. Everything was convenient. Now it's not. Now the characters are struggling. Even with their abilities, they aren't guaranteed to win. The change has happened, and it's staying that way.

My grand scheming...

Hello world! I've been scheming behind the scenes for the latest development in the Literary Den. I've sent four emails to four seperate parties independant of the Den, and received only one reply so far, which led to a phone call. However, it's the first and most vital step and I'm glad to report that it was a resounding success, even if no one knows about it.

The emails all concern the Den and it's members, although I won't specify which ones. That would be giving away the secret, and I'd prefer to torture the various members that keep an eye on me so that when the news gets out they'll be happy I didn't spoil the surprise. If the three remaining recipients of my emails all reply positively, then I'm one more phone call away from getting another thing organised. I won't say who I have to call until it all begins. It's big though, trust me on that one.

In the time I've been gone from this blog, I've been overly active on Twitter. Follow me, you know you want to.

I've also stumbled across a number of very interesting details, all of which affect the Den's campaign. Now, forgive the copy and paste job here, but this is what I've said on the forum:

The Espresso Book Machine

Hey Gang!

There's been a revolution in book printing I wanted to share with you. Thanks to a certain Mr Niall Kelly at work, I found out about a machine that can print and bind books in five minutes. It's amazing!

Now, I don't know what titles are available, as I've been too busy to check... but the Guardian and a blog (I think it is) each had something to report on this fabulous creation. I suggest reading them!

Loyalty Schemes

Hi!

Hughes & Hughes, my humble place of work have launched two loyalty schemes since around April 24th. One is a Kids' Club. Every five euro spent on kids books gets one sticker. Six stickers gets five euro off the next transaction of kids books. Easy as pie.

The adult one is very similar. Launched last weekend, either the 9th or the 10th. Every ten euro, you get a stamp. A card of eight stamps gets the purchaser ten euro off anything, including book tokens. Easy peezy, lemon squeezy!

Both of these loyalty schemes (although I just mean systems, not implying there's anything sinister about them) give readers more incentive to buy more. They encourage book sales to go up, and, as such, encourage more people to read. This is good news for us! It basically gives us one place to send people who think books are too expensive, although it's unfortunately limited to Ireland at the moment.

Classic Reprints and the associated offer

Right, so Oxford have taken advantage of the fact that booksellers are looking to sell lots of books, and they've only gone and reprinted everything! All the world classics are now in new bound forms, some with the old text (James Joyce's Ulysses in the 1922 text!) but most with the new.

It's a great refreshment on the old books, and they're cheaper than before too. Then there's an added bonus. For a limited time, Hughes & Hughes (sorry, I can't report for other shops, as I don't work in them and therefore don't see them every week) are offering a 3 for 2 deal on the Classics, with mix and match on everything else too to make sure it's not just the Classics. Great stuff for us if we decide to suggest a load of Classic titles. The reprint and sales offers are also more encouraging to readers.

Irish Book Awards and Others

Every year, the Irish Book Awards are held to celebrate bookselling and other such things. The short listed titles were put on the 3 for 2 offer in (yes, you guessed it, if you've been following my other threads) Hughes and Hughes. They're still there, although the awards have been announced.

The Irish Book Awards are really prestigious. Win one and your set for sales. The winning titles are favourites, and even though it's a public vote, the winning books always sell more after they've won!

Back when Sebastian Barry won the Costa Book Award for The Secret Scripture, everyone was buying it! It's a surprise we still had copies left for the customers we'd never seen before! It was the same when Anne Enright won the Irish Book Award for The Gathering. Her sales went mad!

As a group promoting reading, we need to focus in on these awards, and the others like them. I'll see if I can get more info on the really big ones, and I suggest you do the same in the UK. Pinpointing the titles and encouraging people to take advantage of the offers on them is a great way to get more people actually reading them.

(the winners of the Irish Book Awards can be found here)

"Important News From The Bookseller @ April 17th 2009

Okay, I've had this info for too long without sharing. Some headlines I thought were interesting to us:

Sainsbury's steps up space for books.

Big changes here! I'll bullet-point them for convenience.

• A top 15 chart in children's books in 214 branches.
• 2 books for £5 in 183 stores (paperback books)
• Books sold in 408 of their stores, with an increase of staff on the book team from 2 to 8I was impressed!

Sales of hardbacks down 14.3% in the first quarter of 2009

Printers considering more Print on Demand to remove the Warehouse costs

Anderson Press releasing e-books

The publisher are introducing 23 young adult titles in e-book format. 8 books are already on the list of e-books as of this month.The article also mentions how the main publishers all have around 100 e-books available, with Puffin leading with 150 titles. In 2009, Puffin will release 10-20 e-books a month.

Waterstones offers 10,000 e-books through it's website. It's also helpful to note, though The Bookseller doesn't say this, that Hughes & Hughes are now attempting to match this with the introduction of the Sony Reader to stores, offering 100 free classic titles to begin with, and when the website is done, a free e-book from the wide selection they hope to offer. From my knowledge of the situation, Eason are the only ones not doing this now... (correct me if I'm wrong, but remember that I can't get out much due to exams)

Amnesty Anthology released

The Amnesty Anthology has been released. It focuses on stories of freedom from well known authors. Likely to cause a stir if it's promoted properly. This could mean more people will be reading, specifically if the money goes to charity.

JK Rowling Book Day Books released again

In July, Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Wear to Find Them are being released for £5 each, a mark up of 100% on their initial releases for Comic Relief. Not sure where the money goes this time."

With all that to digest, I bid you farewell, until next time! Thanks for reading

Book Reviews: Dark Calling & Gone

Good evening! I purchased a couple of books while at work on Saturday, and earlier today I finished reading the second of the two. In tune with my older blogs, I'll review them!!

Review: Dark Calling

About the book...
Kernel Fleck sees lights - it's one very important factor to keep in mind. He sees lights, he had control these special lights, and now, they're talking to him. He fights demons, he's part of a weapon, and the universe is at stake in the next battle. Darren Shan (the oh-so-famous author) picks it up around there.

Was it as good as the prequels?
Most definetely. I'd go as far as to say that it's perhaps the most important book so far, as it gives the reader a lot of answers as to what's going on. The series, up to then, looked a little... well, I won't say messy, but it was at the stage where it could be hard to follow. Dark Calling filled in the gaps and gave us more than we thought we'd get.

The only bad thing...
Well, there are two, but one isn't Shan's fault. It's a typing error in the back of the book. It says the final book is coming out in 2010, not 2009, and there's a line that wasn't brought down past the actual text of the book. No, the problem is that the series is coming to an end!! Hell's Heroes is the final book in the ten book series, and should wrap everything up. It's the big problem when authors tackle a series of books - they sometimes don't know how to end them. Shan had an...okay ending to The Saga, so he knows what he's doing. I expect he's going to follow the same sort of feeling the rest of the Demonata had - it's going to be a mighty big ending!!

I heartily recommend Dark Calling!!

Review: Gone
About the book...
There are no adults. Just suddenly, they are vanish. It's November; Sam Temple is 14 years old, turning fifteen in 299 hours, 54 minutes. Precise? You betcha! Anyone fifteen or over disappears, forever. They don't come back, and there have been no exceptions. What's more, is that people start developing abilities. The world is changing around them. The small Calfornian town is trapped in a ten mile radius, coming from the nuclear power plant. They call it the FAYZ, or Fallout Alley Youth Zone. But when some people have power (the power) and others don't, there can only be trouble.

Expectations...?
I did, and I didn't. I work in a bookshop, so I heard about this one a few months before it's release. They described it as being Heroes for the book world. So I knew then and there that there was going to be super-powers. I was waiting for them. All the while, I was loving the book. It's fast, without being at a lightning speed. It's exciting. There's a real motive behind the protagonist Sam's actions - he has only days to live before he "poofs." His story is developed, his emotions become raw, his mind is put down on the page (although it should be mentioned after that that it's not a first person narrative; several others are followed for shorter periods of time). So I expected something with powers, and I got just that. I expected something about the people, not just about the powers. I got that too. But I heard the writer, Michael Grant, worked on Animorphs, so I expected two things from that: a short book, and a bad story. For one thing, the book is in no way short. Over 500 pages in length, it takes up a lot of space. And the story? Well, I loved it.

Wrapping up...
The book was brilliant, there's no denying it. Now I wonder if Grant can do it again. Hunger, the sequel, is out in April 2010. I can't see it being so compelling, except that I know the characters now. But this is one book we all need to keep an eye on! It's a fantastic read!!

The freakiest thing about it...
Not the powers, no. It's the many similarities Sam Temple has with my own friend. Same first name, similar appearance (as described), similar tastes in music, and a shockingly close family story. Freak, freaky stuff. I struggled to keep the two apart in my mind.

That's a wrap for this one. Come back next time, when I may have actually done something on the Campaign instead of reading books for 3 days!!

Just some ideas...

So here we are, blog time!

It's the Easter break from school, a painful time when parents force their sons and daughters to study, just as the Irish weather decides to stop crying. Naturally, I'm going to beat the study blues with some good old fashioned, Literary Den!!

Elizabeth Dyer, AKA Ellie, came up with some rather smashing ideas that I wanted to put past the general readership of this blog... many of you who look at this won't even realise what I'm talking about until it's seven months later and something has happened in the world to give you a reason to look me up.

So here we go! Firstly, there's a "Read Me, Keep Me" day! Now, this all sounds very vague, so here's the details: second hand books with a postet stuck on them (with the aforementioned title) are left all around the city (it will be in Dublin and various other places in the UK and Ireland). People find the books, as you might guess if they're left in public, and they get to keep them, and read them. That way, more people are reading. We're still discussing the details, but it looks to be quite fun. Some artists did this in Dublin City a while back, much to the delight of the people who found the paintings! We'll need second hand books to do this with, so you may end up getting a knock on the door by a member of the "Read Me, Keep Me" team, asking for donations (if you're willing to part with them!!)

Secondly, our mentor programme. Now, I intend on annoying my friend Sam with this as much as humanly possible, but the rest of the public knows nothing about it yet. So, we're going to make a snazzy, and dare I say, sexy website to attract young writers into the group. This will be part of the Den, but an exclusive forum and independant website for the mentor programme. It's bloody excellent!

The group are now also getting ready for The Literary Den Book of New Fiction 2009, which will see the arrival of a large number of Irish writers! Myself and Anthea West were the only Irish writers last year; this time, we're going to have Brendan McLoughlin and Lisa Sills alongside us, and hopefully young Senan Warnock if he can throw something together. We also have a resident of Dublin and native to Bermuda, Jonathon Bell. Woo! In true Irish fashion, we're infesting the book, rather than invading. It's great craic!

So, that's about it for now. I'm still being too lazy to work on the new Campaign document. There's less pressure now, though. Battlefront opted to go for Wrong to Be Different? over our campaign, so we won't be on television. *sigh*

Anyway, if you want to "follow me" on Twitter, you can find me here!

Battlefront is a no go... for now

Well, the Literary Den did not make it onto the Channel 4 TV show, Battlefront. We came second in the public vote and in the judges' room, which I suppose is pretty damn good! The Campaign will continue as before, just without the handy Flip Camera and the associated videos (unless someone wants to make a donation....)

I've not got much else to say... I opted to enjoy my first Monday off since... well the last bank holiday, so I don't have that new file done yet. Maybe tomorrow. Definetely by the weekend.

So, until something new and exciting happens, I'll be off.

But feel free to follow me on Twitter!

I use it for my own life as well as the Den. People need to know the man behind the mask.... in this case, the author behind the Campaign!!

20 million people in the UK don't read!

So, it's official - there are 20 million people in the UK who just don't read. They can afford to, they just have no interest to. An article by The Bookseller reveals all.

As a way to combat this, the Literary Den Campaign will take a number of actions. The first will be to create a Guide to Bookshops. Now, this isn't meant as an insult to anyone, merely as a response to the article. Apparently, the codes and references in bookshops are putting people off. So, the Guide will explain special offers, ISBN and genres to help customers find their way.When it's done, I ask that people spread it far and wide - the more people that know their way through a bookshop, the better.

Now, obviously every bookshop is laid out differently. But that doesn't mean that they use different terms. Everyone in the book world uses the acronym ISBN; everyone has "3 for 2" offers, and "25% off" and other such things. Pretty much all the High Street bookshops have the same genre sections. Any differences are easy enough that customers can find their way - we have to remember that everyone has a bit of common sense, and if they still get lost, there are always staff there to point them in right direction.

I see this every week. It's the advantage of being a writer and book campaigner who works in a bookshop! I'm there on every side of the transaction at some stage and therefore I know what I'm talking about. This document will help!

Thanks for tuning in..... well, no one really does as far as I know. But if you're that one person who does, thank you!

Campaign Update

Well, voting has stopped on the Campaign! In fact, we've even gone one step further to getting the Campaign into the show - I got a call from London on Wednesday. I liked that I got to confuse people with that piece of info for a little bit!


The call was terrifying to say the least. I was so afraid I'd mess it up there and then. Ultimately though, I may not get through. It could potentially cost too much to send a camera crew over to Dublin, when the other campaigns are all in the UK. Bummer....


Still, fingers crossed!


In other news, the How to Write Document has been updated. Basically, the date was in the wrong format, there was a typo in one of the questions (so it came up several times!) and one of the author's names wasn't underlined or centred. You can download the updated file here.


I'll find out on Monday if I've been accepted by Battlefront. Wish me luck!


I finished typing my story for The Literary Den Book of New Fiction 2009. Yay! And I have the same editor as last year - Claire Hack. So, we have ten submissions so far, and we're still waiting on a few. I'm so excited about this one. I think the book will be better, and there are already more writers from Ireland in it than last year! Yahoo! That'll make promoting it so much more fun too!! When it's released, I demand that you buy it. Afterall, the money goes to charity!