While I wait for Tax Office administrative detail to resolve and the editors tear my book apart looking for final problems, I’m delving into the wonderful world of ISBNs. For those who don’t know, each book and each variation of that book have a separate ISBN. While this used to mean two codes, one for hardcover and one for soft, this means at least three for digipub: MOBI, EPUB and PDF. I find this fascinating, from an informational perspective, as I can see why soft and hardcover are different because of the significant structural changes that would lead to repagination, but the idea that two free-flowing text formats aren’t informationally equivalent is not something I’d thought about. Fortunately, the Australian arm of Bowker sells blocks of ISBNs and I’m going to buy enough for two books.
I am, apparently, madly optimistic. Or in deep denial.
Thank goodness I don’t need barcodes for physical works as well!
It’s worth noting that Canadians get ISBNs for free as part of cultural enrichment, while most of us have to pay for them! Canadians, you have no excuses for not writing lots and lots of books.
I’ve had some more questions about what you’ll be able to read “Kereves” on and the answer is, effectively, anything electronic. I’m partnering with a couple of distribution platforms and, between them, they give me all of the reader formats and a small bit of extra control for one of the dominant formats in my own market.
Ultimately, Apple, Android, Kindle, Kobo, B&N… whatever… you should be able to buy it for your device.
My apologies to those of you who are still reading on the reticulated bronze harmonascope. We are apparently all out of the Cavorite required to power your device.
I know… and you’d just rewound the core, hadn’t you?
Things are moving along! I’ve had to spend some time setting up the business side of this enterprise. The Australian Tax Office and I now know each other a little better.
My constant readers are going through the manuscript again and I have a meeting with a professional editor this week to discuss making a final pass over it to make sure that all of the processes I’ve put in place have resulted in something that’s fit for sale. There’s a lot of good work out there that is marred by accidental or unnecessary issues with editing. I want to keep those problems to a minimum and I want to learn how to improve my own processes. One of my key interests has always been “how can I become a better writer?” Good editing is an essential part of that and it has been one of my weaker areas in the past.
In between applying for various important numbers and talking to people, I’m making (mostly small) changes to the work itself. I hope I’m only a week away from announcing the launch date.
Oh, and the launch date for a collection of my short stories to whet your appetite for the main book. Did I not mention that before?
Set in the early 1930s, this action adventure follows Charles Kerry and his friend Bosco, survivors of the Great War, as they struggle against terrible, dark forces who would destroy the world. They have Williams and Fauve, London’s most interesting booksellers, and Dr Cavendish of the British Museum to help but their opponents are deadly. Can the British-Kadariak society be defeated or will their insane plans tear apart London and bring forth The Unspeakable One from his sanctum on Lost Carcosa?
“The Curse of Kereves Dere” is Nick Falkner’s first novel and is fast-paced and engaging, with a plot that spans myth and legend from the Celts to Lovecraft. Early readers have called it a page turner, with characters that are interesting, distinct and in good assortment.
If you like adventure, realistic heroes, a touch of horror and snappy dialogue, you’ll enjoy “The Curse of Kereves Dere.”
(If you happen to really like one-armed Frenchmen who never say die then have I got a book for you.)
Available soon on iBooks and the Kindle bookstore. Detailed timeline to be released soon.
I’m in the final editing stage for my first (released) novel “The Curse of Kereves Dere.” I’m still linking everything together but this WordPress account and the accompanying @velourfuture Twitter account should keep you informed in the run up to the launch.
I’m very pleased to have been able to be part of the Little Rundle Street Art Project for 2016.
My work “Legends for Explorers in Uncharted Territories” is a mixed-media digital/linocut/monoprint/photography composite. All the quadrants are 15cmx15cm.
Statement: Love is a collaborative creative activity; we build a map beyond ourselves, with each participant’s perceptions rewriting the terrain and legends.
Details of the work:
The original linocut, terrain with a blank legend, was inspired by a visit to the Medici household in Florence. The great map room is full of documents that show perceptions of the world, represented as maps, including some highly racist references to the more southern aspects of Africa. As Korzybski noted “the map is not the territory” and this separation between the representative and actual, geographical and the geopolitical, was brought home to me, standing in this grand room where the very powerful once sought to contain a view of the globe.
I used a blended roll to achieve the rainbow colouration, as a recognition of the many forms of love, but also to subvert the traditional colouring of maps. Any two-dimensional map can be displayed with only four colours, without any two adjacent sections having the same colour, but I chose to use more to remind myself that love is not about the minimum required, it is about beauty and that is often gloriously multi-coloured.
The text was cut as a separate plate and, over time as I printed with it, developed a character of its own that I did not erase, forming a monoprint that I then printed in isolation. The four panels are formed from the original printed work, with an early text overlay, and then digital composition of the elements. The black and white terrain is a high-contrast digital photograph of the cleaned plate, reversed.
The words “Our Love” by themselves are, in the digital version, on a transparent background. This was a deliberate decision, to add to the first work where love is a lens through which a terrain is viewed, to show how self-contained the shared perception of love can be, where it can be applied over wherever you find yourselves.
Any recollection of love, whether happy or sad, is deeply personal and yet it must be affected by the actions and thoughts of others. A single map does not show us the true territory through which this love travelled, but it can give us an idea of the shape, the highs and the lows, and whether this journey is over or ongoing.
I hope that you enjoy the work. Thank you for coming to view it.
El Topo was screened last week as part of Cinemathèque at the Mercury Cinema. This 1970 Mexican film, directed by the Chilean-French Alejandro Jodorowsky, was described in my brochure as “the ultimate Acid Western, the first midnight movie, a phenomenon of allusion and allegory, and one of the most important films of the Sixties counterculture.” Well. Considering that description, there was more plot, more violence and more torture than I expected, but a full fill of grand Western vistas and heavy symbolism.
Consider the first two scenes. In the first, a gunslinger takes his small son into the desert to bury his toys and declare himself a man. It’s visually striking, reaches for resonance and yet remains slightly absurd. In the second scene, the two ride through the aftermath of a massacre. Women and children lie dead but still bleeding, the men swing from nooses in the town church, and their animals have their guts spilled out. The sun beats down. It’s meant to be savage and it’s meant to motivate the gunslinger to moral action, but the lingering shots felt like torture voyeurism. Even hardened film-goers, such as my companion to the film, a fan of zombie films and Reservoir Dogs, found it hard to stomach. What has been seen cannot be unseen, after all.
The film follows the gunslinger (played by Jodorowsky) through various trials that may or may not lead towards sainthood. He must defeat the men who massacred the townsfolk. He must ride through the desert and face down four other master gunfighters. Then he is metaphorically reborn to help inbred villagers escape their underground prison. He is El Topo, “the mole”.
The landscapes are beautiful. The shot compositions are memorable (for good and ill). The dialogue is mystical and often beside the point. The disfigured and dwarf cast members are more human and less monstrous than the world they want to escape into. There is wanton eating of fruit. But the violence and torture left me thinking that this was a film I was glad to have seen, not a film I was glad to watch.
I was surprised to realise that El Topo is not actually that much of a departure from some other Westerns. The human blight amid starkly gorgeous scenery was not new. This world abandoned by God, without law, where only the gun matters – is this not a staple of the spaghetti western? Think of Tuco and Blondie in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, who abandon each other in the desert, to crawl half-dead across lovingly-shot empty dunes. What hell is this? Push it just a little further and a bit sideways and you might get El Topo.
The programme for Adelaide’s queer arts festival, Feast, has been released, and it’s worth taking a look to see what’s on this year. The festival is held in Light Square from 10 to 25 November.
Most of the names I recognise are local performers. Of those, I can unhesitatingly recommend Libby O’Donovan. She has a huge voice, solid song-writing skills and a sassy-yet-vulnerable persona. What more could one want from a cabaret singer? She’s performing her show, Some of My Best Friends Are Single, for one night only. (Note that I’m posting this only after I’ve secured my own ticket.)
Jamie Jewell is back with a new show, Last Days on Earth. Jewell did a superb comic turn in La Chêvre Noir last year – even his knees were hilarious – but disappointed recently in the showtune melodrama, The Lonely Man, despite singing his heart out. Last Days on Earth is described as a “cosmic caper”, so let’s hope this is Jewell in better form.
Young performer Annie Seigmann is back. Last year she managed an irreverent, feel-good performance of her own songs even on a slow Tuesday night. She’ll have her work cut out again this time, as she’s been given the 11 am slot for Picnic in the Park. Another repeat show is New Coat of Paint: The Songs of Tom Waits, which I recall as being perfectly entertaining at the time but not actually memorable.
Feast Comedy Gayla should be worth a look. It will feature short taster performances from five comedians, including the acerbic, fishnet-wearing Hans. I usually find these compendium shows to be good value, as if any one performer is disappointing, there’s always another one on in a minute. Even better for the budget-conscious are the visual arts exhibitions, which are free. Last year they were held in shipping containers in Light Square, with a few works from each artist.
Otherwise, well, there’s lots. Cabaret, music, films, comedy, drag, and community events. Bowling, bingo, and the release of a pig by an animal liberation group (what?). The burlesque boom is well represented, so let’s hope some of that is less dull that what I sat through during the Fringe. Boyleqsue and Ambrosia do boylesque, Shaken and Stirred do “grrrlesque”, Trixie and Monkey do striptease acrobatics and Bad Barber Shop Burlesque involves man-eating plants.
Yes, that’s rainbow triffid burlesque. This intrepid reviewer may have to report back later.
This is an entertaining production of the old favourite by Agatha Christie. There’s a snowed-in guest house full of eccentrics and an inevitable murder. The first half plays up the comedy, the second half concentrates more on the drama. A few details of the script beggar belief, but otherwise this is a solid version of a minor Christie mystery.
One friend who accompanied me also saw the London production last year: she thought that the Adelaide show was the funnier and more memorable of the two.
Note that this is being performed at the Dunstan Playhouse, one of my favourite Adelaide theatres. You should get a good view from pretty much any seat.
Fearless Nadia is a musical performance and film about an unusual star of Indian cinema. Mary Evans, a white woman born in Western Australia, became a popular Hindi-language actor known for her alarming stunts, progressive views and vigorous fight scenes.
This OzAsia show presented a brief biographical film, followed by numerous highlights from her film Diamond Queen (1940), in which she plays a young, educated Indian woman who must team with a local bandit to defeat a cruel and rapacious overlord. There’s slapstick, romance and some excellent action set-pieces with a large cast and a moustache-twirling villain. There’s even a heroic horse.
The film snippets were accompanied by a small orchestra playing Western and Indian instruments. The musicians playing Western instruments wore their traditional garb of waistcoats and jazz hats. The Indian musicians performed sitting down, on raised platforms. All gave virtuoso performances, but it was the tabla players who garnered the most enthusiastic applause.
The combination of Diamond Queen and the Orkestra of the Underground was hard to resist. We in the audience cheered when Fearless Nadia punched out her first villains – her cinematic entrance is as an on-screen fist. We quailed when Mary Evans, who did all her own stunts, fell backwards into a waterfall. It was, perhaps, a little over-the-top when an electric violinist hung upside-down over the screen, suspended some metres above the stage while a scene reached a climax, but generally speaking, the music enhanced the film rather than distracted from it. After a long, luxurious, post-film outro, reminiscent of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, we gave the orchestra a standing ovation.
The show has closed in Adelaide but will be touring in India.
Nick Falkner, Personal Projects 