The Weekend in Review

Everyone in publishing in Australia knows how hard it is to garner any sort of review or publicity for children's fiction - especially if doesn't involve wizards or emo vampires. So you can only imagine how surprised and thrilled I was to get a phone call on Saturday morning to say there was a great review in the Daily Telegraph. It made my weekend.

When the call came on Sunday from another friend I simply thought that they too had seen the Saturday Telegraph, but no - there was another review in the Sun Herald. You could not ask for a better Sydney spread than to be in these two papers over one week.

A huge thank you must go to Emmeline, the publicist at Harper Collins who has somehow pulled off this impressive coup.

All I need now is to be banned from a primary school library and I'm set!

In good company

A friend tipped me off that The Trouble with Sauce was featured in a window display in Better Read than Dead, the excellent independent bookshop in Newtown. I trundled down on the weekend and was delighted to see the book was front and centre of a display protesting Parallel Importing, quoting the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd’s ocker line, Fair Shake of the Sauce Bottle asking him to give Australian authors a fair go. For once it seems timing is on my side to release a ‘sauce-themed’ book! It’s relief to see your book on the shelves in a bookshop - it’s a delight to see it in a window - especially when your publisher didn’t pay for it and every other book in the window is certified best-seller. I’ve never been in such great company. So when I said in an early post everyone should run to the shops for the book, I now amend that to run to Better Read than Dead in Newtown!

Run to the shops!

Technically it's not officially launched until mid Aug, but The Trouble with Sauce has hit the shelves. All up it's taken a year from me pitching the idea to ABC to the book actually being on the shelves. Looking back it seems like a long, long journey, but right now it seems like nothing - from conception to being on the shelves in less time than it takes to gestate an elephant.

I haven't actually seen it on a bookshelf yet but Dymocks online already have it on their website as do Readings bookshops in Melbourne. Dymocks is an advance for me as they didn't stock Lab Rats in Space. Not sure about Angus and Robertson, the other major Australian bookseller.

Physically the book looks great. The little egg head character that got axed from one of the versions of the cover made it to the back cover which I'm delighted about. The inside front pages are also lined like a school book and fun.

All up I'm very happy with it indeed.

I have about 8 school visits lined up over the next few weeks so I'll have to see how it goes down reading wise. When I've told schools about 'my next book' and mentioned the principals gives the students pills, the kids have gasped in shock - exactly as I'd want.

Hot Little Hands

Here it is... well almost. This is the uncorrected proof that gets used for promotional purposes. I've had them for my books before but not without a colour cover. They were made for Lab Rats but I don't think the sales reps ever saw them. It's good to see it in it a physical form for the first time. It's now a thing, an object in the real world. However that means it's also an object that has to be sold, assessed, reviewed... discounted.

Right now is the moment of hope. The moment when I foolishly allow myself to think that this might be a success. I always hear something positive about the book at this stage - 'it's had great feedback', 'the sales conference was very excited', 'certain influential booksellers are very keen'. I get a bit carried away and light a candle of flickering hope in the maelstrom that is Australian publishing.

Leading Edge Title
This time round it's the news that The Trouble with Sauce is to be a Leading Edge book. Leading Edge is a buying group of independent book sellers. Each month they select a number of books which are offered at a slight discount and pushed within their stores. It tends to be known best sellers or books which are more suited to the 'independents' than to the big chains. I think I fall in the latter category. It's certainly a plus being on the list and apparently they don't often do ABC Books. This may be part of the new age of Harper Collins.

First rule of being a minor author: be nice to the reps
I found out about Leading Edge from one of the Harper Collins reps. In my relentless pursuit of self-promotion I engineered a lunch with him via one of the Allen and Unwin reps. It was like a informal handover, from the person who used to sell my books in, to the one who was just about to start. In Australia where there are lots of independent book stores and all books aren't sold on group deals, the reps still play an important role. Book stores listen to them so if they say stock Bruno's book, they probably will. Now, at least I know one of the reps selling my books, or more the point, he knows me. The manager of Kinokunyia was also there - again a big plus. He asked if I wanted to come and do a library talk with him in September. I said YES of course.

Second rule: Pity the Publicist
The big mistake Harper Collins have made in giving me a copy of the uncorrected proof is that it lists the contact details for the publicist on the back. Poor Monica - she's about to get flooded with good ideas and fabulous suggestions on a book for which she probably has about 2.5 hours of work allocated.

And the winner is...

Thank you to everyone who voted on the cover, left comments and gave me opinions on facebook. It was fantastic and very useful. I also canvassed the opinions of over 400 school children at Waitara Public School along with several young friends. Their favourite was No1, with No 3 not very far behind. Number 2 was a distant 3rd. Of course this clashes with the preference on here and at the publishers for Number 2.

I did like Number 2 but pointed out to the publishers that there were similarities to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The typeface is virtually the same, the 3-part title-in-the-middle structure and the outline figure are quite familiar. I'm hoping my book will also be featuring "Winner Whitbread Book of the Year" on the cover.
The 'covers committee' at Harper Collins (yes they have a committee!) has now suggested going for Cover 3 with the tomato sauce to be more of a splodge and less of a Dexter-esque blood pour. The pills will be made to look more like capsules than the latest ecstasy tablet. I'm happy with this.

Judging a book by its cover
I've always maintained that this is perfectly possible and if you can't, something has gone wrong. I tested the case with one group of kids at Waitara. I showed them the covers without saying anything about the book and asked them what it was about. They said it was aimed at boys. Most said aged between 8 and 12, some said a bit younger, others older. They all agreed it was a comedy but was a little bit scary too. The book was about there being poison in food or about a boy who hated Tomato Sauce. One young boy developed quite an interesting plot about a boy who thought all the food he was given has something wrong with it and was scared of eating.

I could see how they could tell this from the covers. However they went on to say the book was set mainly in one place in Australia and it didn't move around very much. They were spot on, but I still can't see how they worked that out from the covers. Quite brilliant.

Manuscript Complete
I have completely finished writing the book with the final manuscript now submitted. I had a strange block on the final sentence. It just needed tidying up to make it clearer but I couldn't do it! It took me over 24 hours to fix. Talk about coming a cropper at the final hurdle. The last word is 'do'.

It’s not brain surgery, but it’s close

One of the lovely things about writing books, and especially children’s books, is the enormous good will you receive from virtually everyone. I can think of few other professions where you can ask for help and it is so eagerly given. Imagine an accountant coming to you, asking for some help in putting together their figures - short shrift I would imagine. Not as a writer. For a scene in The Trouble with Sauce I needed some technical information on brain surgery: parts of the brain and implements used, so I turned to Adam, a psychiatrist friend. His eagerness to help was a treat: he did some research and even consulted his colleagues at the hospital where he works. They were all fascinated and equally enthusiastic. On being given the outline of the plot, the child psychiatric specialist gave it a thumbs up in appealing to boys.

The net result was sitting with Adam in the cafe beside the El Alamein fountain in Kings Cross being presented with a delicious array of new words. We giggled over the names of the implements: Raney Clip, Cottoniod Sponges and the splendid Caspar Vertebral Body Distractor. What fun I could have with a ‘body distractor’! It sounds like a surgical belly dancer who seductively arouses and distracts the body while the brain is hacked into. There is also a host of different ‘ronguers’: pituitary, Ruskin (a rhyming rongeur perhaps?) and trimline. However, the perfect implement for Trouble was the wonderfully descriptive Brain Retractor. It was even more thrilling when I looked up pictures of it. (See below). 

I was like a child in a toy shop who thinks he knows all the toys there were, suddenly then discovers a whole new section to play with.