Best books on Shepherd

 

I was recently invited by Shepherd, a wonderful book discovery site, to recommend 5 of my favourite books around a topic, theme or mood, that might in some way be reflected in my crime mystery novel Night-night, Sleep Tight. The title I came up with for my topic was 'The best crime mysteries with an extra twist of character' because that's one of the things I look for in a good novel. And what a fascinating challenge it was. You can read my selection here.

Shepherd is a great way of discovering book recommendations based on books that you might have already read. I love browsing the various lists and letting the themes lead me from one set of recommendations to another. For a broader sweep, I love browsing the bookshelves, especially the Crime bookshelf.

In the words of Shepherd:
"7,000+ authors have shared five of their favorite books around a topic, theme, or mood. And we make it easy to find the books they recommend through a book you already love, an author you adore, or a Wikipedia topic that interests you." 

Visit Shepherd at https://shepherd.com/

 

 

New edition - The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore

Whoopee! A brand new, fully revised edition (with chapter head-piece illustrations) of The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore has been published by Windeye Publishing and is now available around the world. This shiny, re-edited edition is released for sale today. You can also buy it from the Windeye website with free postage.

The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore (2018 edition)

Chapter One - text and head-piece illustration

Travel to the dark side with Night-night, Sleep Tight

Now offering free delivery to more of the planet! France, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark, UK, New Zealand, Canada, USA, as well as Australia. See Windeye Publishing for details.

Night-night, Sleep Tight giveaway!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Night-Night, Sleep Tight

by Paul Burman

Giveaway ends July 27, 2017.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Thanks and Word of Mouth

Thanks so much to everyone who helped launch Night-night-Sleep Tight and everyone who's bought the book. Crime mystery/suspense novels seem to go down well. Also thanks to those lovely people who've let me know how much they enjoyed getting to know Meg Dapsy and reading her story. Feedback like this makes writing worthwhile.

Word of mouth is certainly what sells books - newspaper reviews have little impact - so if you feel like posting a review on Goodreads and/or Amazon, etc that'd be a tremendous help in reaching a wider audience and selling a few more copies (available with free delivery in Australia from https://www.windeyepublishing.com or from online sellers/bookstores around the world).
Cheers.

'Night-night, Sleep Tight' launching this evening at Blarney Books

Psychological thriller Night-night, Sleep Tight will be launched tonight (6:00pm onward) at Blarney Books as part of the Port Fairy Winter Weekends Festival and Blarney's wonderful 2017 Biblio-Art Opening & Awards night. Looking forward to seeing everyone who can make it, but know that time and distance will make it impossible for some. If you can't get there and would like a copy, https://www.windeyepublishing.com will give free delivery in Australia and online shops around the world are also selling if you're outside of Oz.

I always get a kick out of seeing my books for sale on foreign websites, and particularly on Japanese ones, so here's a slice of Amazon.jp's page page.

'Laundrette' performed this weekend in Port Fairy

Members of the Port Fairy Theatre Group rehearsing my short comedy, Laundrette, which is one of seven plays being performed this weekend, as part of the Port Fairy Winter Weekends festival.

Night-night, Sleep Tight - in the wild!

Yes, it's out there! It's been released! Into the wild! Today is publication day and Night-night, Sleep Tight is now available from booksellers around the world, and with free delivery in Australia direct from Windeye Publishing (see their website for details). O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Back cover and spine reveal for 'Night-night, Sleep Tight'

Night-night, Sleep Tight - a psychological thriller

Back cover and spine reveal for 'Night-night, Sleep Tight'. Released by Windeye Publishing this coming Thursday - 1st June, 2017.

doubleBig news

New book, new publisher!

Night-night, Sleep Tight is a psychological thriller set against the backdrop of a vast, forested wilderness, and will be released for publication on 1st June, 2017 by Windeye Publishing.

Meg Dapsy’s family home has been destroyed in an arson attack. Her mother is dead and her father is missing, but Stella, the younger sister she’s always taken care of, has one secret too many… and it involves an old boyfriend.

With suspicion falling on a group of militant Animal Rights activists, Meg has no doubt where the blame really lies.  

It's been a while between novels, but having decided to say goodbye to my British publisher, I've followed much good advice and spent several months setting up my own independent publishing company: Windeye Publishing.

Wanting to get things absolutely right - in terms of interior book design, cover design, etc - and not wanting to risk another author's book on the first run, I decided to launch with Night-night, Sleep Tight. And I'm delighted with the result: it's everything I wished for.

It's already available for pre-order as an ebook in the global marketplace (Amazon, Kobo, Apple, etc) and should be available for pre-order as a paperback before long.

If you live in Australia, you can buy it direct from Windeye with free delivery, or, if you live in this part of Victoria, I'd love to see you at the launch, which will take place at Blarney Books & Art in Port Fairy on 10th June, 2017, from 6:00pm, as part of the 2017 Biblio-Art Opening and Awards night.

Across that same long, winter weekend in Port Fairy, my short play, Laundrette, will also be performed (premiered even) by the Port Fairy Theatre Group, along with 6 other plays. So it's tripleBig news really, I guess.

Night-night, Sleep Tight

The Woman on the Stairs by Bernhard Schlink

The Woman on the Stairs by Bernhard Schlink
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm a sucker for a flawed narrator, especially when the reader catches glimpses of those flaws ahead of the narrator's discovery of them in him or herself, but only as long as there's ample opportunity for redemption and the opportunities are eventually grasped. In part, these aspects drew me to the naive and unimaginative lawyer in Bernhard Schlink's wonderful The Woman on the Stairs: his inability to understand Irene Gundlach, the mysterious woman who modelled for the eponymous painting, coupled with his determination to be her shining knight - to 'save her' and have her love him... while failing to see that it was he who needed saving. Although his behaviour was a tad irritating at times (offset by the arrogance of both the artist and her ex-husband), the delightfully mellow narrative voice of this novel draws the reader along towards a beautiful, redemptive climax (albeit a far from expected one.) A rich novel.

View all my reviews

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler

The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Erika Swyler's The Book of Speculation is a delightful read. I entered its world after being disappointed by several other attempted reads (mainly novels by Booker Prize winners and short-listers) and found it to be a breath of fresh air. I particularly enjoy books that introduce hints of magic or that flirt with the surreal, without being too far-fetched and while remaining grounded in the 'ordinary every-day', and The Book of Speculation certainly satisfied this for me. Loved the two narratives - past and present - and the way they intertwined, and was quickly drawn to the characters (and their relationships) so that I wanted to see how each of their stories connected and played out. Nice one.

View all my reviews

Penguin ... butcher

This shop sign conjures a range of graphic images. I recently came across it in the beautiful, north-west Tasmanian town of Penguin.

Audio excerpts of Snowing and Greening and Grease Monkey online at The Narratives Library

A few years ago, I'd drive 70 km to work each day along a road that didn't see much traffic - just the occasional truck. Of an evening, I'd be extra careful driving home though, because of the wildlife. An encounter with kangaroos could do serious damage all round as I once discovered on a different road when I managed a 180 degree spin and to wipe out two tyres just avoiding three roos that were a tad short of road sense. One dark night, I came across half a dozen sheep wandering down the road  followed, a few minutes later, by a large koala sitting in the middle of the road ... as a truck bore down from behind. There was no shortage of trees waiting at the side of the road either, ready to scoop you up if you swerved too sharply. However, the biggest danger by far, after 12 years of doing this drive, was falling asleep, particularly when the sun was low, and so I'd try out different strategies to keep me alert and add interest to the journey. Unlike the fella I once saw driving towards me with a newspaper spread across the steering wheel, I came to particularly appreciate the value of radio, a good supply of CDs and audio books. They kept me sane.

And so it was with more than a smattering of delight that I came across The Narratives Library recently, and the opportunity to contribute a few audio recordings of my own.

Set up by Karena Wynn-Moylan in conjunction with Bay FM 99.9 and Arts Canvass, which Karena presents each Thursday, The Narratives Library "provides a permanent, online  resource for community  radio stations, educational institutions, book clubs, writers and readers – anyone who is interested in books, stories and writing." Arranged into a variety of themes or categories, the library houses a growing collection of recordings of authors reading excerpts from their books.

The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore and The Grease Monkey's Tale are both represented under Love, Romance, Sex & Relationships. A further Snowing and Greening excerpt can be found under the Strange and Fantastical category, and a second Grease Monkey reading is located in Crime Fiction and Fact.

I hope you enjoy listening to these as much as I enjoyed making them.

SUBTITLES FOR NOVELS or A Shift in the Style of Writing Across One Hundred and Fifty Years

Subtitles for novels have gone out of fashion, it seems. I can't recall a recent publication that's used one. And that's probably not such a bad thing. They seem to belong predominantly to that Victorian era where long, convoluted sentences were strung into long, convoluted paragraphs; each one intricately knotted together with so much punctuation that they somehow ended up resembling the crocheted sideboard runners and antimacassars of the day.

Elizabeth Gaskell's MARY BARTON (1848) is subtitled A Tale of Manchester Life, while Flaubert's MADAME BOVARY (1857) is subtitled A Story of Provincial Life.

Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843) ran under the full title:

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

In Prose

Being

A Ghost Story of Christmas

And HARD TIMES (1854) as HARD TIMES For These Times.

Thomas Hardy was no slouch when it came to a solid subtitle either, with:

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE

or

THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE

A Rural Painting of the Dutch School (1872)

The Life and Death of the

MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE

A Story of a Man of Character (1886)

TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES

A Pure Woman

Faithfully Presented By

Thomas Hardy (1891)

 

While it's a maxim that didn't carry much weight in the nineteenth century, I suspect, authors today are urged to 'Show, don't tell,' and this may account not only for shorter, punchier sentences and less knotty punctuation - to say nothing of the shift in narrative voice - but also for the decline in subtitles. Of course, subtitles still occasionally surfaced during the twentieth century and Hermann Hesse wasn't averse to using them, most notably with:

THE GLASS BEAD GAME

A tentative sketch of the life of

Magister Ludi Joseph Knecht

together with

Knecht's posthumous writings

edited by

HERMANN HESSE (1943)

Although it could be argued that Hesse used this as an artistic device on this occasion in order to extend the fiction.

Which, no doubt, is what Kurt Vonnegut achieved in 1969, when he appeared to nail the subtitle once and for all.
 

SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE

Or The Children's Crusade

 A Duty-dance with Death

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

A fourth-generation German-American

now living in easy circumstances

on Cape Cod

[and smoking too much],

who, as an American infantry scout

hors de combat,

as a prisoner of war,

witnessed the fire-bombing

of Dresden, Germany,

'The Florence of the Elbe,'

a long time ago,

and survived to tell the tale.

This is a novel

somewhat in the telegraphic schizophrenic

manner of tales

of the planet Tralfamadore,

where the flying saucers

come from.

Peace.

What's In A Novel's Title? Some Famous Alternatives

It seems that a good book title is almost as important as a good book cover.

When my first publisher and editor at PaperBooks, Keirsten Clark, changed the title of The Snowing and Greening of Tom Passmore to The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore, it didn't take long to weigh up the benefits of having a more rhythmic metre to the title against the less formal use of his name. After all, my aim was to make the prose in this novel as lyrical as possible and, besides, the reader would soon find out, through reading his story, how his friends called him Tom and only officials and his estranged family called him Thomas. And so I happily went with it. 

Sometimes I've wondered whether The Grease Monkey's Tale wasn't catchy enough as a title and whether it might have reached a wider audience if it had been called something else - it certainly hasn't done as well as Snowing and Greening - but then I've never come up with an alternative title I like as much.

With these thoughts in mind, I was interested to read this item at Jonkers Rare Books on Working Titles of Famous Novels. I can't imagine feeling the same way about The Great Gatsby if it had retained its original title: Trimalchio in West Egg. As for 1984...

 

A Second Run for Virtual Reality

Pleased to announce that, following the three sell-out performances of one act plays last February, Port Fairy Theatre Group have chosen to present my comedy, Virtual Reality, once again, but this time as part of the Winter Weekend festivities. It'll be a two-play evening on this occasion, with Garbage, the accompanying play, and will be performed at the Lecture Hall theatre on the evening of Saturday 23rd July and afternoon of Sunday 24th July.

The seven weekends of winter festivities began last night with exhibitions, films, concerts, light projections around the town and a few glasses of mulled wine. Further details of all activities across each of the weekends can be found at http://www.portfairywinterweekends.com.au/ .

Tickets for the plays are available via the website, the Visitor Information Centre and possibly on the door (although they sold out ahead of the evening last time). 

Depending on where you live:     Break a leg!     Merde!     or     Chookas!

Writers Victoria Salon in Warrnambool - Invitation

Writers Victoria extends an invitation to local writers, which I happily pass on:

"Join us in Warrnambool as we invoke the grand tradition of literary salons without the pretence. Share your work or success stories in our two-minute rapid fire Speed Celebration, delight in conversation with fellow writers and enjoy a brief talk from visiting author Leanne Hall.

The Salon is FREE but bookings are essential."

First Five - A Season of Short Plays

The last time I wrote a play for performance was when I was a student at Kingston Poly in London, reading Literature, History, Philosophy, Politics... that sort of thing.  I didn't actually write the entire play, but was part of a group of budding authors who all contributed, under the mentorship of playwright and writer-in-residence, Olwen Wymark.  She listened to our ideas, interpreted them, gave them shape and ultimately did the bulk of the writing.  We ended up with a play called The Encounter, about an Encounter Group meeting which is busted by the police, and I don't remember much more about it than that, except I was somehow conned into performing the role of a detective during its performance.

Last year, however, a few other writers and myself were invited to each write a short, one act play for the Port Fairy Theatre Group.  I hadn't a clue what I'd end up with when I agreed, but certainly didn't think it'd turn out as a comedy, nor that my interpretation of 'short' was a little longer than other people's interpretations.  Be that as it may, Virtual Reality and four other plays are being performed in the Port Fairy Lecture Hall, Sackville Street, on Friday 26th February (7:30 pm), Saturday 27th February (7:30 pm) and Sunday 28th February (2:00 pm).  Tickets available from the Visitor Information Centre or online from Trybooking.com/KGSD.  Further details above.

Two Narratives About To Collide!

Intertextuality in a cartoon.