Okay, then. Here we go...

A post every day for a month. How hard can that be, right?

At the risk of kicking things off with blatant self promotion, there's a little event coming up in Perth in a few weeks which it might be worth flagging:



Tuesday the 27th July, at the Fremantle Children's Literature Centre, in (of course) Fremantle. (The FCLC is the same place where both Nightpeople and Skyfall were officially shoved onto an unsuspecting public, (and also, oddly enough, where Imogen and I got married) so I'm thrilled, as you can imagine, to have the chance to finish the trilogy off in the manner to which it's become accustomed.) If you're in Perth (or, you know, want to fly to Perth from wherever you are,) please let me know if you'd like to come along. The more the merrier.

The book will be launched by the Federal Member for Fremantle, Melissa Parke I met Melissa a couple of years ago at a function, soon after her election to parliament, and since then she's proven to be a great supporter of the FCLC, and of literacy generally. She's also an avid spec-fic reader, so I'm really pleased to have her as the launcher.

And, as long as I'm on matters Darkland-y, while doing a trawl for some reviews of my books for the new-look anthonyeaton.com website (which is almost done, and looking really nice) I found this:

Which is, I think, pretty cool in its own way. Just the fact that someone took the time to really think about the book and then talk about it so intelligently is pretty nice, from my point of view. Even if she didn't like the characters or story (and, I'll be honest, she's not the first to make that observation...) I tried to send her a response but to do so I need to sign up for a youtube account and don't really want to. Either way, if you ever read this, Anna, then thanks.

It's probably also worth mentioning that, following on from her comments, setting 'Nightpeople' in an Australian context was a very deliberate response to the fact that a lot (though not all) of spec fic by Australian Writers tends to be set in worlds that are either completely 'other' or based on a European and often medieval framework. There are very good commercial and artistic reasons for this, but with the Darklands books I really wanted to challenge this trope a little, so it's really nice to know that this aspect of the books worked out for some readers. (I'm also not the first to do this, by a long shot. Sean Williams, among others, has written some *awesome* antipodean spec fic. (Actually, his 'Books of the Change' were among the big inspirations for the Darklands Trilogy - they're awesome!)

Anyway, day one of my month of blogging and I've already resorted to banging on about myself. I'll try for something a little more interesting tomorrow. Promise.

Margo Lanagan, plus some more Random Bits of News

Hello Bloggies -

Yet another week with only one post here. And on a friday, none the less. Talk about leaving things until the last minute.

But, in my defence, it's been a busy week. Also a really fun one. If exhausting. On Wednesday, I was lucky enough to spend the day with the wonderful author (and all round nice person) Margo Lanagan, who generously agreed to come down here to Canberra for a day to do a couple of lectures for my classes here at UC.

Margo, for the uninitiated, is the author of numerous novels and short story anthologies, most of which have won bucketloads of awards including (but not only) Hugos, Nebulas, Ditmars, Aurealis, Prinz Honours, CBCA awards, and many many others. Last year, her novel Tender Morsels was the winner of the World Fantasy Award for best novel. (Also probably my favourite book of 2009, and which, as you can see, now has a spanky new cover by all round clever bugger Shaun Tan).

But most of you know that stuff already, so I won't bang on about it now.

Margo delivered two fantastic lectures for us. The first was a general talk about her creative process and the realities of life as a published, award winning author. One of the things I really love about Margo's approach to these things, and which I always find incredibly refreshing, is how completely grounded and down-to-earth she is in her treatment of these issues. As she took us through the writing process for Tender Morsels it became very clear to all present that here was a writer who took writing seriously - very seriously - but who at the same time was able to maintain a positive and sensible perspective on the balance between the writing life and 'real' life.

Her second lecture, which was to the literature studies class in which we're currently looking at Tender Morsels addressed all sorts of issues related to the novel, including its classification as 'YA', the tabloid media beat up in the UK which followed the book's release there, the use of violence and the inclusion of 'taboos' in writing, and about a dozen other equally interesting topics. It's always fun getting an insight into another author's ideas and creative process, not least because it enables me to flagrantly steal ideas and techniques for my own writing. (Which is fine to do, because Margo said so...)

All in all, Margo Lanagan Day was a really enjoyable one for all concerned at this end.

(For those interested, Margo is a prolfic twitterer, and can be found @margolanagan)

In other news, earlier in the week I got a package from Queensland, and inside it were two shiny new copies of the first print run of Daywards. After ten years, I'd expected to be all excited upon recieving these particualar books in the mail, but for the most part I have to say the predominant feeling was a profound sense of relief that it was all - finally - over.

The book looks very nice. Bright and, uhm... rather gold and shiny. (Dat Book gots bling, fo shizzle!) It also looks very, very nice parked beside Nightpeople and Skyfall. It'll hit the shelves on the 29th of March, but before then anyone lucky enough to be at the Somerset Celebration of Literature, between the 17th and 20th of March, can get an early copy from the bookshop there. On the first day of the festival the book will also be officially 'launched' by the very generous James Roy.

Anyway, that's it from me for the moment. Long weekend this week for all us ACT residents, and me and my little brood are off down the coast to Tathra.

Cheers
Tony

News, and a little bit of pimping

My friend Karen Brooks has a new website and blog. You should check it out here. It's really nice. I'm possibly kind of jealous (though not really; my website was designed and built by my clever wife, which I find very cool, too. The last website I put together for myself looked like the internet equivalent of duplo.)

On other matters, if all goes well, then Daywards should be off to the printers this week. The cover is done, the blurb written, the internals looking *pretty*, we've dotted all the i's, crossed the 't's' and removed all the preposterous words from the text. Like, well, 'preposterous' for example. It'll probably even be out on time, and in time for any lucky people attending the Somerset Celebration of Literature to be the first people in the country to be able to buy a copy.

My next book, Orion is a little stalled at the moment, owing to the vagaries of start-of-semester madness. Hopefully once things get going at uni in a couple of weeks, and my daily routine becomes a routine again, rather than a series of crisis-management triage moments, then I'll be able to get back in to it.

Anyway, it's hot as hell here, and we're off to Toby's grandmother's place for a swim.

Have a nice weekend, everyone.

Nothing New Under the Sun.

Just in the last week or so, several people have asked me (jokingly) when I'll be launching my lawsuit against James Cameron. Apparently there's some similarities between Avatar (Which I've yet to see) and the Darklands Books - most particularly Skyfall.

Now, having only just watched the preview of Avatar, I can see that there might be some very broad similarities, but only in the same way that you can see broad similarities between, say, Les Miserables and Crime and Punishment. Sure they're both broadly about redemption, and there's some fairly common tropes about the nature of humanity in the face of moral dilemma, but the approaches to the story are fairly different.

It's got me thinking, though - one of the big risks you take whenever you put something creative 'out there' is the risk that someone's done it first. It's something that will, I suspect, happen to most writers at one point or another.

 I remember vividly one particular night in 2003 when Imogen and I were living in Brisbane and I was in the final editorial stages of Fireshadow. About three months before the book was due for release, I read David Metzenthen's Boys of Blood and Bone, which had just hit the bookshelves.

Imagine: There it was - a YA story set in the World War One (mine was in WW2), with two protagonists both in their upper teens (same as mine). One has gone off to fight the war (same as mine), while the other is a contemporary youth struggling with that period immediately after school (same as mine.) The chapter structure was the same - each chapter alternating between past and present with the present narrative told first. The similarities - especially across the first half of David's book - went on and on. The breaking point for me was when I got to the point where his protagonist goes off overseas unknowingly leaving his lover pregnant (Same as mine). That was when I yelled an obscenity and hurled the book across the room. 

I couldn't believe it. At that point I'd been working on Fireshadow for about five years. At that point I'd never met Dave Metzenthen. We'd never spoken, lived on opposite sides of the country and yet had managed to come up with two remarkably similar books, on similar topics and with similar narrative approaches, just six months apart from one another.

Wierd.

But it's the nature of ideas, I guess. 

According to Stephen King (I'm paraphrasing here) a lot of the time writers have no idea where their ideas come from, or what particular forces are shaping the way they see the world, but it's fairly probable that if an idea has occurred to you, then somewhere, someone is working on something very similar. And when it happens, it's awful. That night reading Boys of Blood and Bone (which is a book I love, by the way) was one of the most horrible moments of my life.

I think the secret, though, is to make sure you put a lot of yourself and your own world into everything you create. That's where the differences lie. Someone might have the same idea as you, but as long as you make your story your story, chances are that the points of difference will shine through and lend your work the unique elements that all creative works need.

That said, if James Cameron wants to cut me in for a percentage of the royalties, I'm willing to talk... 

Out With the Old, in With the New...

Sitting here at 7.16 am on a Saturday morning, I've been awake since 3.00am for some reason. The baby is walking around my feet making all manner of odd noises with a toy trumpet, (none of them even vaguely trumpet-like) and I've been reading through some of the many new years blog posts and reflections by my various friends. This has, naturally enough, put me into something of a reflective mood...

2009 was, perhaps, the strangest year of my life. Mainly in that I'm not sure what happened to it. It seems to have just slipped past in a blur.

As anyone who's been reading this knows, '09 was our first year of parenthood and that, probably more than any other single thing, has completely and utterly dominated our lives for the last 12 months. This time last year Min and I were still reeling from the shock of being responsible for this little human we'd somehow managed to create. Now we're reeling from the shock of discovering that Toby is, in fact a real person - a tiny walking, babbling, willful (!), funny, and always surprising little human being. I always swore, back in my pre-parenthood days, that I wasn't going to be one of those parents who only ever seemed to talk about his kid. Looking back across my entries here at Musings... this year, it's immediately obvious that I haven't exactly managed to achieve this ambition - my writing blog has more tags relating to Toby than to writing, but I suspect this is probably unavoidable.

2009 was the first time in seven years that I've had a 'real' job. I got to actually use my shiny new PhD and return to teaching again, albeit in a very different capacity from my former life. This meant I was also able to give up much of the touring and speaking gigs which had formed the backbone of my income since the end of 2002. When I first left high-school teaching for full time writing, I used to love touring; the travel, the meeting people, the seeing new places - it was all new and exciting and adventurous. I loved the adrenaline of doing public performances (which is, let's face it, what 90% of speaking gigs actually are) I loved the buzz of capturing the attention of 200 disinterestd year nine boys and most of all I loved the idea that I was making my way as a writer. But it's a hard lifestyle to sustain, and cutting it back has been one of the highlights of the last 12 months. And I'm so glad I did it - otherwise I'd have missed out on so many of the big changes in Toby.

2009 was my first year as an academic. I've read more and thought more this year than I have in pretty much forever. When I finished my PhD, I actually didn't really think I'd get to use it in any professional capacity - I originally started it for much the same reason that people climb Everest. But at my graduation my uncle, who is a career academic, told me to remember that finishing a PhD isn't the end of your thinking life, but just the beginning. It was brilliant advice.

Writing wise 2009 was, on balance, a good year. Into White Silence did well in the various awards, I was invited to attend both Reading Matters and the Melbourne Writer's Festival, and I had a lovely time at both events. I finally finished writing The Darklands Trilogy, and got to work on it with a new editor - the lovely Kristina, who stepped in to Leonie Tyle's shoes at UQP. This was the first time in my writing career I'd worked with someone other than Leonie, and was both a challenge, but also a really refreshing experience in many ways. With that mind-filling project now signed off, I can get on with some of the other projects I've been looking forward to throwing myself at. It's a bit odd, though - even though objectively 2009 was probably the most successful year I've had as a writer, it's also highlighted a lot of the shortcomings in my writing career - the almost complete lack of overseas interest in my books, for example - and has made me seriously re-think a few of the decisions I've made about my writing career.

2009 was the year I watched a close friend fight and win a battle with cancer. This frightened me more than I like to admit. Partly because of the powerlessness involved for all concerned, and partly because being confronted with your own mortality is always difficult. Hearing that my friend's surgery had gone well, and finally hearing her voice again once she had recovered were two of the best moments of the year.

All things considered, a good year. A crazy, difficult, busy, challenging year, but a good one.

Here's hoping 2010 delivers similar highlights.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Today is the day...

When, if all goes well, I'll finish the final rewrite, of the final draft, of the final book of the Darklands Trilogy.

Of course, if all doesn't go well, then I'll probably just have to re-post this tomorrow...

My Cover Story

In keeping with my weekly posting routine, this is my first post in a little under a week. But you know that already, don't you? Truth is, at the moment (and just for something completely different) I'm horribly behind in just about every aspect of my life. This wasn't helped by last week which included:

a) The aforementioned job interview (no word on that, yet. Fingers still crossed, and cramping slightly...)

b) Me delivering my first ever academic 'Work-in-progress' paper to the rest of the faculty (or at least those who turned up). This was almost as nerve wracking as the interview, though I managed to avoid any Monty Python moments. I talked about the stuff I've been doing with current directions in YA fiction. I've blogged a lot of this already, so won't repeat myself here.

c) An all day symposium on friday on the topic of creative practice led research. I'm thinking of putting together a paper on this, too, so I won't bore you with the details quite yet. It was an awesome day, though.

In the middle of all that, I received something I probably should have posted here. It's sort of proof that I actually *have* done the final Darklands book. (Which, by the way, I finished editing and sent back to UQP about a week ago - only eight days late, which is something of a record for this particular work...)

It's this:Yep. That's right. An actual cover! And a damn awesome one, too (even if I do say so myself) Greg Bridges, the artist involved, has done his usual stellar job of this. I was absolutely blown away by his work on the first two books in the trilogy, but this one just takes the cake. I cannot wait to see it wrapped around a book. And John and Stella Danalis have done (as always) a brilliant job of the design. It looks fantastic alongside the other two covers, too.

So on that cheerful note, I'm going home.

Standing at the base of the mountain...

So, last week, just before I got hit by the dreaded Pig Disease, the readers and editorial reports for my next book dropped into my inbox, along with a frighteningly imminent deadline (Douglas Adams on Deadlines: "I love deadlines. I really like the 'whooshing' noise they make as they go past".)

This is always something of a good/bad moment, for me.

On the one hand, it's a sure sign that the end is in sight. Just two or three, or twenty or thirty rewrites, and then the book is done.

On the other hand, it's almost always the precursor to a bucketload of extra work.

These ones were particularly scary, though, because for the first time ever they were based on the first draft of my book. Up until now I've never showed my first draft to anyone. Not my family, not my editor, and certainly not an outside reader.

My reason for this? First drafts are, inevitably, crap. Mine especially. Word repetition, passive expression, repetition of phrases and ideas, redundant description, over-long sequences, set-piece cliches - you name it, my first drafts have it. They're awful.

But this time, we're on a deadline. So I had to bite the bullet, finish the draft, and send it off.

Even scarier - this one was for the final book in my Darklands trilogy, and so there was additional pressure. I know for a fact that some people (four, at last count) actually read and enjoyed the first two books in the series, and so this one has to live up. (Actually, that's a weird thing in itself - having to produce the final book of a series that's already out there. I know a lot of other writers do it all the time, but it was a first for me, and it scared the hell out of me. I'm not sure I'd ever do it again, to be honest. I can't believe J.K.Rowling managed to produce seven of the damn things with the whole world watching her. I take my hat off in admiration to her for that. But anyway...)

So I wrote it, sent it off to the nice people at UQP and, about a fortnight ago, I got my editorial reports which I opened with trembling (metaphorical, because the actual reports were emailed) hands, fully expecting something along the following lines:

Reader's Report on Dayward by Anthony Eaton.

Well, first off, what a letdown. I can't believe I wasted seven years waiting for this piece of....

...Luckily for me, the actual reports didn't live down to expectations. In fact, they were overwhelmingly positive, which is nice, given that I'm one of those writers who hates everything I've ever written until at least a hundred people or so manage to convince me otherwise. And even then I don't really believe them. 

Of course, I've still got a complete bucketload of work to do. (I wasn't kidding about the quality of my first drafts - I have all the above mentioned problems to address, plus several others I hadn't thought of. All by August 17th.) But at least I'm feeling positive about the book, now, which makes a huge difference.

So thanks to Kristina (editor extraordinaire) and my mystery reader, whoever you are. I've read the reports, thought about them, taken in the comments, printed out a MSS to work on, bought myself a new red editing pen, and marked off my afternoons for the next two weeks.

All I have to do now is actually start working on it.

Tomorrow.

Definitely.

(perhaps)