Tag: paperback

Review of Walk Away Silver Heart by Frank Prem

On By Mick CanningIn books, Frank Prem, poetry, Review, Walk Away Silver Heart, writing3 Comments

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This is a collection of love poetry, with each poem inspired by a line or phrase from the poem Madonna of the Evening Flowers, by Amy Lowell.

If I hadn’t already read some of these poems on Frank’s blog I don’t think I would have approached this collection, since love poetry is not something that usually appeals to me. Poetry is a medium of emotions, but love poetry can sink all too easily into banality or cloying sentimentality, something which is best written privately for an audience of one. Frank avoids this trap, though, by writing about the lives of the lover and the beloved – the gardening, the brewing of the coffee, the shared music – rather than the more intimate details of the relationship. Sometimes these are little more than snapshots of shared moments, at others there is more of a narrative.

Yet this makes it no less a love poetry. Each poem speaks of feelings, sometimes telling overtly of love, but sometimes this emotion is reached by a more circuitous route. In each of them, though, there is gentleness and patience. This is a mature poetry, a poetry that recognises love is something that needs to endure.

Frank describes himself as a storytelling poet, and his three previous published books all work on that level as narrative. This collection manages to do the same, only without the timeline.

One poem shall suffice as an example: Tell me everything (about you), inspired by the line You tell me these things.

tell me everything (about you)

You tell me these things.

talk to me

tell me things

you think

I need

to know

pour the yellow liquor

hot

into my shot glass

speak of love

talk in tongues

of fire

tell me of your anger

of the passion

that is the same thing

shout aloud

all the things

that you believe

hold meaning

I will turn them

on my guitar

into a song

ta-da ta-da-da

throw your glass

into the fire

then

start dancing

tell me

all these things

I

would know

everything

and all there is

about you

Although, as I mentioned earlier, I rarely read love poetry, I have to say I really enjoyed this collection and will certainly award it 5 stars out of 5.

The ebook is released on February 14th, and paperback on March 14th. It is available on Amazon, and can be pre-ordered before those dates.

The Night Bus Has Arrived!

On By Mick CanningIn Fiction, poetry, publishing, short stories, The Night Bus, writing23 Comments

We’ve been away for a couple of days, and in that time the proof copy of The Night Bus arrived.

I’ve read it through to check for any errors, and am relieved to report I found none, so the paperback copy is good to go!

Both it and the e-book version are available on Amazon, and can be found on my author page here.

Just time to order a few dozen (or more) for Christmas!

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Early Release of the Paperback Edition of The Night Bus

On By Mick CanningIn e-book, Fiction, paperback, poetry, Print on demand, short stories, The Night Bus, writing39 Comments

Oh, I knew I’d get something wrong.

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I wanted both the e-book and the Print On Demand paperback to be released on the 30th November. All went smoothly as far as the e-book was concerned, but Amazon have just emailed me to say the paperback is live now.

I blame the change from their old system to the new one. Before, the author had to approve a proof copy before the paperback would go live. Despite my ordering a proof copy that will not arrive for a few days yet, it’s already gone live.

Oh, well.

‘Roll up, roll up! The Paperback edition of The Night Bus is available now on Amazon! Roll up, roll up!’

The Night Bus

On By Mick CanningIn Fiction, poetry, publishing, short stories, The Night Bus, writing39 Comments

After a day of faffing and kerfuffle (and a little bad language, but not too much) yesterday, I have posted my new book up on Amazon.

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The Kindle e-book will be released on 30th November and is available to pre-order now. It will take a few days yet for the paperback edition to be ready, as I need to check through a printed proof first. I’ll post when that is done.

The book is in two parts. A collection of seven short – and not so short – stories, which make up the bulk of the book, followed by a selection of recent poems.

I have always enjoyed travel and, one way or another, nearly every piece in here is to do with travel. The only exceptions are a couple of the poems that seemed to fit in among the others for aesthetic reasons.

Some of the stories are quite dark, but the majority of the poems have a lighter touch. In these, especially, I hope that my love of the natural world comes through.

Two of the longer stories are set in India; in one, a young man goes in search of a mysterious destiny, while in the other a travelling Englishman becomes embroiled in a chilling disappearance. One story speaks of the support and comradeship of a close-knit island community while another tells of jealous intelligences far older than mankind.

Of the poems, there is one long piece, which gives the title to this collection and tells of a long journey across India and into the mountains and, among others, one short series of poems about the ancient paths and tracks of Britain.

An early piece of writing advice I was given, and for which I am eternally grateful, was ‘Write the stories and poems you want to read’. This I have done, and I hope you will want to read them too.

Nice To Meet You!

On By Mick CanningIn A Good Place, Art, Author, blogging, books, Fiction, Making Friends with the Crocodile, The Assassin's Garden, travel, writing26 Comments

It’s been a difficult time. There’s been stuff. And we all know what stuff does, don’t we? Well? Don’t we? Yes, you at the back, boy! Tompkins Minor! Well, what does it do?

‘Gets in the way, Sir.’

Louder, boy!

‘GETS IN THE WAY, SIR!’

That’s right, Tompkins. It gets in the way.

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Stuff getting in the way.

100b

Stuff not getting in the way.

And with all this stuff flying around, stuff I’m finding it rather difficult to deal with, sometimes it’s as much as I can do just to leave a ‘like’ on a post. Even posting a comment seems too much like hard work, although I want to. So I press ‘like’ to simply show my appreciation of the post.

But I’m working on it. I haven’t gone away, I’m just a little snowed under with…stuff.

And because it’s a new year (oh yes, Happy New Year to you all. Have you broken all your resolutions, yet? I have.), I’m thinking it might be a good time to re-introduce myself to the blogging world. So, this is me:

I have published one novel, Making Friends With the Crocodile, which is set in rural Northern India and is about the way society treats women there (and, by extension, in most places still). This has had good reviews, and I’m especially pleased with the ones from Indian women, who obviously know a thing or two about the subject! It is available as e-book as well as Print On Demand paperback.

The first draft of my second novel, provisionally titled A Good Place, is completed and I shall begin to edit it at the end of February. This story is set in a fictitious hill station in Northern India populated by a mixture of the English who remained in India after Partition, a few English travellers, and, naturally, the indigenous Indians there. In the meantime I am also working on another novel, the first in a series of 3 or 4, provisionally titled The Assassins Garden and set in both Persia and India in the 1600’s. This one I like to think of as being a mixture of ‘The Arabian Nights’ and Neil Gaiman. It starts innocuously enough, but rapidly becomes darker. The later books will also have elements of Gothic fiction and Victorian Detective stories in them. Possibly rather ambitious, I admit, but I have already written quite a large proportion of several of them.

I also write short stories and occasional poetry. At least, I call it occasional, but I do seem to be writing more of it than I used to.

And then I paint. I try to sell some of these through my shop on Etsy, although in the past I used to exhibit regularly at exhibitions and in various galleries (and sold quite well!). Perhaps I should investigate that route again.

There are links to Etsy and to my books on the sidebar, if you wish to go and have a gander.

And, when I can, I travel. Preferably with my wife. India and Nepal are favourite destinations, but so too are places closer to home in the UK, especially long-distance walks.

But, that’s enough about me for the moment. Possibly a little more next time.

Stories From Anywhere

On By Mick CanningIn books, creative writing, Fiction, Print on demand, reading, short stories, Stories From Anywhere, Tunbridge Wells Writers, writing51 Comments

I am proud to announce…Tah…Rah!! A book of short stories from Tunbridge Wells Writers.

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My regular reader may be interested to learn that the collection includes a fairly long short story of mine, World’s End, and I’m reasonably proud to point out that the cover is also designed by me.

A dozen stories in total, this is available at the moment as a paperback on Amazon (the link is here), and it will be published as an e-book on Kindle fairly soon. Once it is, I’ll put up a new post.

From the blurb on Amazon…Twelve writers, twelve stories. From intrigue in Colombia to bizarre adventures in Italy, from an unusual protest to a prison break in Chile. Get ready for an exciting journey with this collection from Tunbridge Wells Writers… 

A Bit of a Hiatus…

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, writing18 Comments

Well, blimey. Another of those passages of time when I’ve been just so stupidly busy, that I’ve hardly had time to take breath, never mind look at blogs or think about doing any writing myself. And…it’s going to be quite busy for another couple of weeks.

Yet, here I am grabbing an hour to write something and, hopefully, catch up with one or two other blogs. And I have no idea what to write about! I usually have a few ideas mulling over before I sit down at the keyboard, and one or two half-finished posts on the computer that I can draw on. Today, though, zilch. I have one finished post that is on a somewhat contentious subject, which I’m going to leave a few weeks so I have time to properly respond to any comments it generates (who knows, though, perhaps there won’t be any?), and a couple of partly begun travel posts. I need more time than I can spare at the moment to sort out photos for those.

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Random and totally irrelevant photo of the week.

Yet…a blog is a personal thing. We’re not journalists, with deadlines to meet and news stories to tackle before they go cold. We’re not being paid to produce highly detailed technical notes on a particular subject. So my personal blog, today, is simply about my progress, or lack of, with my writing.

So, yes, nothing for the last couple of days. But I promised that I would produce an Author’s page on Facebook by the middle of the month – I will!  – and that I had a bawdy, riotous, Elizabethan short story to post in a couple of instalments at the same time. That one is a bit more interesting! Having promised I would do that (primarily to give me the impetus to write it), I got stuck in and by the end of last week I already had over 8,000 words done.

Far too long for a couple of posts, which I feel should be limited to around a thousand words. Certainly, I almost never read posts that are much longer than that. I don’t have the time, unfortunately. So I have a bit of an editing job to do on that.

When that is out of the way, I am going to collate some of my longer short stories together to publish as an e-book and, perhaps, a POD paperback. I won’t have the novel ready this year, so the short stories will be this year’s publishing project. I hope I have enough decent ones to be able to produce a themed collection.

And then? Back to the novel!

Tally ho!

The Indian edition of my book is published!

On By Mick CanningIn books, e-book, India, Making Friends with the Crocodile, Print on demand, publishing, writing43 Comments

Well, it’s taken me long enough, as I’m sure everyone will agree, but I have finally managed to publish Making Friends with the Crocodile as a Print on demand paperback in India! Hurrah!

It is published by Pothi, and is available on their site, here, and on Amazon.in and Flipkart.

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It is still available as a Kindle e-book from Amazon, and is also available as an e-book from Kobo, worldwide, for those who do not favour Kindle.

I have been told plenty of times that I need to be more proactive promoting the book, but I’m not terribly good at that. However, this is me having another pathetic stab at it:

Buy it now! It’s great! Please…pretty please…

Oh well, I’m working on it.

Should you be kind enough to buy it, or, indeed, if you have already done so, please consider leaving a review. Reviews encourage others to buy the book, and, on Amazon, once a book has garnered a certain number, then Amazon list it a little more prominently – which is a tremendous help to the author!

And I have been lucky enough to garner some very complimentary and generous reviews, so far. A few excerpts:

‘This beautifully written story, set in a village in Bihar, draws you in from its first page.’

‘Making Friends with the Crocodile is a very fine book. And it takes us into the harsh reality of the life of women in rural India, much more effectively than any official report.’

‘The characters are depicted with obvious respect for a culture that is both beautiful and at times shocking. By the novels finale, though tragic, we are left with a very thought provoking and memorable story.’

‘This is a novel with depth and real emotional involvement. Told simply and with an honesty that defies disbelief at events and attitudes, it packs some serious punches. It’s a story that will live with me for a long time, and one that has materially altered my opinions about certain cultural norms. Researched in real depth and related in language that fits the narrator so well, it’s a very good read.’

‘Mick has delved into the mind of a middle- aged woman living in rural Bihar and has beautifully sketched the love – hate relationship she shares with her daughter in law. The book gives a lot of perspective on the mind-set and predispositions that prevail in the rural north Indian society (which apply, at large to many other parts as well).’

The blurb: ‘Siddiqa was only just into her teens when she was forced to leave her home to live with her new husband and his family in another village. The years have passed, and now Siddiqa has three children of her own. Her grown up son has brought his new wife, Naira, to live with them, so Siddiqa is no longer the lowliest in the household, for she has a daughter-in-law.

Life in rural India is particularly harsh for women. This novel explores themes of female oppression and tradition and asks whether the next generation will find life any easier.‘

I suppose that at least when I publish my next book, I should have a much better idea of how to go about it.

Print on Demand in India

On By Mick CanningIn books, Fiction, India, Making Friends with the Crocodile, Print on demand, publishing32 Comments

I have a question for my Indian friends.

Have you published any books as print-on-demand in India? And if so, which company did you use, and were you happy with the experience?

When I published ‘Making Friends with the Crocodile’, I was hoping that because of the subject matter and the setting of the book, it would be of interest to Indian readers. Unfortunately, though, I created the paperback version through CreateSpace and whilst I am very happy with the book produced, it is one of the quirks of Amazon that they do not sell these through Amazon India.

Making Friends with the Crocodile cover

And so I need another source.

I have learned that there are a few fairly new print-on demand companies in India, and looking at a few sites and reading some comments here and there, I quite like the look of Pothi.com.

Has anybody used them?

I would really appreciate any feedback or advice that anyone has to offer me on this.