To listen or not to listen?

Recently, during a promotional visit to a bookstore in Melbourne, I received a wonderful surprise. A lady

with whom I had connected only via email in the past made a special effort to drop by and meet me in person. This lady works for an organisation that helps those with visual impairment or ‘print disability'--her role includes acquiring books for possible recording for the audio lending library this organisation runs. A few years ago, an elderly friend badly wanted to read my first two novels but the print was too small for her. She told this organisation about my books and asked if they could record them. After some time, they contacted me and the upshot was that, over the next little while, my first three novels were produced as audio books. I was sent a copy of each in their special DAISY mp3 format—and I thought that was the end of it all.

However, when this lady met me recently, she told me they had now completed my fourth and fifth novels and were about to start on my memoir Soul Friend. As well, she also wanted to purchase my latest novel The Inheritance, with a view to recording it. A few days later, she emailed to say she was forwarding the recordings of my fourth and fifth novels so I would have all my books they had produced so far.

But here is my dilemma. While I love having these copies, I have not as yet been able to bring myself to listen to any of them! I know they are  professionally produced—the person who narrated them is a well known and very gifted actor from stage and screen here in Australia and has a beautiful speaking voice. But I am certain that, because these were my first novels, I would want to change so much of what I would hear, which would definitely dampen my enjoyment of the whole experience. I imagine it is a little like artists might feel when viewing their early efforts at painting. Surely their fingers must itch to alter or touch up this or that!

Perhaps the best way to approach it all is for me to listen to those recordings with an accepting heart and mind, acknowledge the stylistic changes I would now make, and simply be thankful for how far I have come since those earlier writing efforts. We all learn as we go and we all have to begin somewhere. And, stylistic issues aside, the stories they contain still touch readers, I have discovered, who are often not as critical as those of us who write! Then again ... is it better not to listen and instead to keep moving forward, writing the best I can at this point?

What would you decide in this instance? Would you listen or not?

All questions aside, I am honoured and grateful that those recordings have been made—especially my third novel Laura, which is the story of a girl who becomes blind as a child. I love the idea that those for whom most books are inaccessible can choose to hear my books, if they so desire. God has ways of blessing us far beyond what we could ever imagine, don’t you agree?

Jo-Anne Berthelsen lives in Sydney but grew up in Brisbane. She holds degrees in Arts and Theology and has worked as a high school teacher, editor and secretary, as well as in local church ministry. Jo-Anne is passionate about touching hearts and lives through both the written and spoken word. She is the author of six published novels and one non-fiction work, Soul Friend: the story of a shared spiritual journey. Jo-Anne is married to a retired minister and has three grown-up children and three grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.jo-anneberthelsen.com or www.soulfriend.com.au.

The continuing saga of choosing those names


Choosing just the right name, whether it be for a real child or a ‘book child’, can certainly be a torturous journey. A couple of weeks ago, Marion Ueckermann posted her blog ‘What’s in a Name?’ here where she shared the journey of choosing her new grandson Liam’s name and also that of her novelette, Helsinki Sunrise. I was so interested to read her blog, as our daughter was then days away from having her second child and still struggling with choosing a name. Now it is all over and she and her husband are the proud parents of a new baby girl, but watching their journey reminded me of my own struggles in choosing the titles of some of my books.

Maxine and her proud Nanna!

Because our son-in-law Kofi is from Ghana, there are added complications when choosing a baby’s name. Often, Ghanaians are named after the day of the week on which they were born—and these differ according to whether the baby is a boy or a girl. ‘Kofi’ means ‘Friday’, the day our grandson was also born. However, to avoid confusion, Kofi and Tina opted to call their son Zain Kofi. Already they have various friends called Kofi as well, except one is called ‘Kofi Plumber’ and another ‘Kofi Junior’ and so on! So when it came to their daughter, they chose not to use the Twi word for Tuesday. Instead, along with the names Maxine Marie, they decided to include Kofi’s mother’s surname—which is different from Kofi’s because, in Ghana, you can choose a different surname for your children!

Phew—so you thought choosing book titles was complicated?! Compared with that, naming my books was nothing really. My first novel had to be Heléna, the name of the Czech migrant we had known years earlier who inspired the book. I then decided I would use another girl’s name ending in ‘a’ for my next novel and chose Laura, soon to be followed by yet another, Jenna. But then it was decided my first novel needed to be divided into two, which put paid to my little plan! Eventually, I called this second half of my first novel All the Days of My Life, from Psalm 23:6, since I felt this verse encapsulated the attitude of my lovely heroine Heléna.

Having messed up my run of names ending in ‘a’, I decided to abandon that idea entirely. I called my fifth novel Heléna’s Legacy and my sixth The Inheritance—despite the fact that there are umpteen books out there already entitled The Inheritance! I still felt it summed up key issues in the book—the ungodly inheritance of anger and bitterness passed down to the main male character from his family, along with his material inheritance, with all this contrasting to our heavenly inheritance. With my memoir Soul Friend, I was well aware another book with that title already existed but went ahead anyway. The ancient Celtic term ‘soul friend’ describes my lovely spiritual mentor Joy to a tee and seems to have captured the hearts and minds of many of my readers, for which I am very grateful.

How have you fared in your own book titling journey? Maybe your publisher has the final say—and I did listen to my publisher with my last two at least—but I’m glad I had the final choice. They are my babies, after all! 

Jo-Anne Berthelsen lives in Sydney but grew up in Brisbane. She holds degrees in Arts and Theology and has worked as a high school teacher, editor and secretary, as well as in local church ministry. Jo-Anne is passionate about touching hearts and lives through both the written and spoken word. She is the author of six published novels and one non-fiction work, Soul Friend: the story of a shared spiritual journey. Jo-Anne is married to a retired minister and has three grown-up children and three grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.jo-anneberthelsen.com or www.soulfriend.com.au.

Those launching emotions

 

This past week, my sixth novel The Inheritance was officially released (see my book trailer here)—and yet again, the emotions involved have taken me a little by surprise. It was only last October that my first non-fiction book Soul Friend was released, so one would think I would remember how it all felt. Granted, launching another novel is different. The Inheritance is, after all, fiction, while releasing my memoir Soul Friend like personally serving myself up on a platter! But again, I have felt those nervous flutters inside as I have posted off those advance copies already purchased. Will this novel of mine be well received? Will those readers who have stuck by me through all seven of my books enjoy this one as much?

The Inheritance is, in essence, a story of family secrets, forgiveness and faith. It explores one man’s struggle to come to grips with the past, be reconciled with himself, his family and ultimately God, and face the future with courage and integrity. At the same time, it also explores a woman’s struggle to stay true to her faith in God and pursue God’s purposes for her life. In writing this novel, I attempted to focus equally on each main protagonist much more than I did in my earlier novels. And this brought with it new challenges such as being careful to stay in in one character’s point of view for a whole scene or chapter and balancing how often I changed from one to the other. I was very aware of the importance of point of view prior to this, but the approach I chose with this novel has meant I had to be particularly careful in this regard. The Inheritance is my first work of fiction with my new publisher, Even Before Publishing, and I am grateful for the assistance I was given to see the mistakes I was making with point of view and to learn so much more in the process.

But will my faithful readers—and hopefully some new ones—like the somewhat different style I have employed in The Inheritance? Will they relate to my initially very angry and aggressive hero Michael Trevelyan and my equally determined heroine Alexandra Hope? Will they track with these two people I have grown to love as they experience so many ups and downs in their personal lives and in their ongoing relationship? What if they feel one character is not quite believable—or, worse still, both? What if they decide Alexandra is just too ‘good’ a heroine, an opinion some expressed about my main female protagonists in my earlier novels?

Yet, while I still have doubts and questions like these, the counterbalance to it all is that I do believe it is my best novel so far! Please understand I don’t say that in any boastful way, however, but rather with thankfulness to God for enabling me to keep on writing and learning and also with gratitude to my publisher who challenged me to grow.

What about you other authors out there? How have you felt when your own new novel has been released? Is it a huge mixture of emotions such as it has been for me? For those not yet published, how do you plan to tackle this whole book launch experience?

Jo-Anne Berthelsen lives in Sydney but grew up in Brisbane. She holds degrees in Arts and Theology and has worked as a high school teacher, editor and secretary, as well as in local church ministry. Jo-Anne is passionate about touching hearts and lives through both the written and spoken word. She is the author of six published novels and one non-fiction work, Soul Friend: the story of a shared spiritual journey. Jo-Anne is married to a retired minister and has three grown-up children and three grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.jo-anneberthelsen.com or www.soulfriend.com.au.

Searching for that perfect cover

Have you ever been turned off buying a book because the cover image didn’t appeal to you? I have. Or perhaps it was a tagline there or sub-title or even some phrase in the back cover blurb that caused you to decide against exploring the book any further. Maybe you have gone your own journey of agreeing to or choosing or even suggesting cover art options for your own novel. And perhaps, like me, you have found that can be a rather torturous experience.

Book covers need to be attractive, so that people are drawn to them in some way. It might be that a beautiful or intriguing image captures their attention or that the colour chosen is one that appeals to them. Our covers also need to be appropriate for the particular novel, giving some sense or glimpse of what lies inside. And, of course, the title and other wording on the cover has to interest potential customers enough to cause them to decide to make that purchase.

In my opinion, covers also have to look as professional as possible. Here in Australia at least, Christian novelists cannot afford to have their books appear second rate in any way. There is already enough scepticism out there in the secular world about Christians, without our producing work that reinforces their opinion that we don’t know what we’re doing! Anyway, who wants to produce something less than honouring to God? Surely God deserves our best efforts? Besides, with such a wide variety of imported novels in our Christian bookstores here, we have to ensure our own home-grown efforts will be noticed and look as good as those overseas ones!

But it can be quite a journey, I’ve discovered, to decide what aspect of my novel needs to be picked up on that cover and then to find that photo that conveys the essence of the story or depicts the characters or setting as I imagined them. With the two different publishers I have had in my writing career, I have very much valued being able to suggest cover concepts and even particular images. Yet I have also been glad that, in the end, my publishers were the ones who had to search long and hard at times for that perfect image and make the final decision about how much they were prepared to pay for that ideal cover!

In September, my sixth novel, The Inheritance, is due for release by Even Before Publishing. Months ago, my publisher and I created a cover for it that depicted the story well, yet was not totally successful. It looked a little dull and dated, and we felt it might not appeal enough to its intended market. Yet it was needed for inclusion in a catalogue, so we went ahead. But just recently, we had a second attempt—and ended up with an entirely different result! The first time around, we had focused on the specific setting of the novel, but this time we went for a more modern image with only a general sense of place about it (see photo). I am very happy with it—yet I’m aware it’s all such a matter of personal taste. Some will love it and some will no doubt hate it, but we have done our best, given the time and resources available.

And that’s all God expects, don’t you think?

Jo-Anne Berthelsen lives in Sydney but grew up in Brisbane. She holds degrees in Arts and Theology and has worked as a high school teacher, editor and secretary, as well as in local church ministry. Jo-Anne is passionate about touching hearts and lives through both the written and spoken word. She is the author of five published novels and one non-fiction work, Soul Friend: the story of a shared spiritual journey. Her sixth novel, The Inheritance, will be released in September. Jo-Anne is married to a retired minister and has three grown-up children and three grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.jo-anneberthelsen.com or www.soulfriend.com.au.

Letting those early novels go

In September, my sixth novel, The Inheritance, will be released. I’m excited about that as I think it is my best yet—plus I love the two main characters in it! But this novel brings with it two dilemmas for me that I am currently trying to think and pray through.

The first one is this. I wrote this particular novel before my first non-fiction book Soul Friend which was released last September and was given the choice as to which would be published first. So now it’s time to release the novel. But which direction should I head next? Should I alternate my books and aim to complete another non-fiction book this year? Or should I stick to novel writing?

But my second dilemma is the more pressing one at the moment. I feel so blessed, having six books published when I never thought I would have any. My first novel Heléna was released early in 2007 and since then, I have had one book released each year. It’s not that I am particularly prolific, however. It’s just that while I waited to find a publisher for my first novel, I decided to begin the next. So until now, I have always been in the happy place of having another novel completed by the time the previous one was released. But now the question is—do I let those first two novels go and not try to promote them anymore? Although the first one has just become hard to find in most bookstores, there are still a handful of copies of the second around. And small numbers of orders still seem to come in for them via the bookstores, plus I have people contacting me as well for copies from time to time. Also, wherever I speak, it seems people are still interested in those first two novels. I sell almost as many of those as my later ones—which leaves me a little reluctant to run out of copies myself. Yet, if I did, would I sell more of my later novels? It’s a puzzle!

And of course, there is a limit to the number of books I can carry around with me wherever I speak. Often, I am unsure which book people will go for, so I need to take a good number of each. I could no doubt get back the rights of those first two novels and attempt to make them available as e-books only, but to me, that seems to answer only half the question. Also, I know if I did this, I would need to re-edit both novels severely! After all, they were my first two attempts at writing—and back then, I knew nothing about the current anathema against using omniscient point of view or the evils of ‘head hopping’! And my very long sentences are liberally sprinkled with lots of lovely ‘ly’ adverbs! Yet do I want to invest time in re-writing these books? I’m not sure.

So ... you see my dilemma. Any suggestions? I know some of you have had many more novels released over the years than I have, so would you have any wisdom to offer from your own experience?

Meanwhile, I will keep thinking and praying about it—and writing that next best-seller!

Jo-Anne Berthelsen lives in Sydney, Australia. She holds degrees in Arts and Theology and has worked as a high school teacher and editor, as well as in local church ministry. Jo-Anne is passionate about touching hearts and lives through both the written and spoken word. She is the author of five published novels and one non-fiction work, Soul Friend: the story of a shared spiritual journey. Her sixth novel, The Inheritance, will be released in September. Jo-Anne is married to a retired minister and has three grown-up children and three grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.jo-anneberthelsen.com or www.soulfriend.com.au.

Enjoying the editing process

Just last week, I completed checking the edits of my latest novel, which the publisher had sent to me well over two months ago. Prior to this, I had not had time—or the space in my brain—to do a careful enough job of it all. However, in these quieter January days, I finally tackled those edits so patiently waiting for me.

I felt my editor had done her part with thought and care. She had picked up things I had totally missed and I was grateful for that. Around six months ago, I was asked to re-write some sections of this same book because I had swapped point of view too often. That was a good lesson for me to learn. I duly did this re-writing and returned the manuscript. Yet now, I discovered I had still missed a couple of spots where the main protagonist could not possibly have known some things I had her saying or thinking. Also, I had fallen into an all too familiar trap for me, which was that I kept repeating myself in the earlier chapters, just to make sure my readers understood exactly what was happening! Little by little, I am learning to trust my readers more, but it is something of a long process for someone who has been a school teacher in the past and also speaks often! I want to be sure people are ‘with’ me when I speak. Yet, in a novel, this merely becomes unnecessary repetition.

Am I striking any chords with other authors out there? Do you ever find your editor has marked things in your manuscript you wonder why you didn’t see yourself? Or am I the only one who is a slow learner at times?

Yet inevitably, I also found points on which we differed, particularly in the punctuation area. I tend to use quite a few dashes in my sentences, especially in direct speech. For some reason, I like them better than commas—and definitely more than semi-colons! Somehow, they seem to make the dialogue flow better and feel more relaxed, whereas the commas make for a much jerkier, choppier ride. Or is that merely my imagination? Also, while I understand the grammatical rules for using commas, it seems fewer and fewer of those little, curly things are being used these days. So, not wanting to appear old-fashioned in my writing style, I now tend not to use so many myself. Do any of you face this dilemma as well?

Along with all this, however, I experienced some wonderful moments of joy and fulfilment during my editing. It is a while since I wrote this novel—I finished the first version over two years ago. Yes, I had another bite at it around six months ago, but so much has happened in my life since then. How enjoyable it was, I discovered, to be caught up with my characters again and be drawn into their stories! How satisfying it was to be able to say to myself as I read. ‘Yes, I do love these characters! Yes, I agree with what they’re saying. And yes, I still think this book will be a jolly good read!’

Do you ever find yourself doing such weird things? Or am I the only one?

May you, too, not only survive all your editing journeys ahead in 2013 but enjoy them as well!

Jo-Anne Berthelsen lives in Sydney but grew up in Brisbane. She holds degrees in Arts and Theology and has worked as a high school teacher, editor and secretary, as well as in local church ministry. Jo-Anne is passionate about touching hearts and lives through both the written and spoken word. She is the author of five published novels – Heléna, All the Days of My Life, Laura, Jenna and Heléna’s Legacy—and one non-fiction work, Soul Friend: the story of a shared spiritual journey. Her sixth novel, The Inheritance, will be released in 2013. Jo-Anne is married to a retired minister and has three grown-up children and three grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.jo-anneberthelsen.com or www.soulfriend.com.au.

Living with 3D vision

I know I’m behind the times. I have yet to see a 3D movie at the cinema, so can only imagine what it must be like. But wait—did I just write ‘only imagine’? What a grave injustice to my imagination! You see, recently I realised all over again that I tend to see so many things in 3D in my mind on a regular basis. I recall some event or hear something wonderful and see it in full colour in my imagination. I put myself right in the scenario and experience it from all angles. And I often wish I could write it all down and convey it to others even half as vividly as I have witnessed it in my mind.

Do you experience this too? Or is it just crazy me? As I was talking with a friend the other day and describing something that had happened to me, I noticed how I could not seem to resist setting the scene in a colourful way, commenting on exactly where I had been standing, expressing my feelings about it all with great emotion and generally taking much longer to tell the whole story than others would! But then I stopped short and apologised.

‘Sorry!’ I told my friend. ‘I know my husband would tell me to hurry up and get to the point, but I’m a storyteller. I can’t seem to help myself!’

Several years ago, during a wonderful week-long writing course I attended, our group was led in a guided imagery exercise. We were asked to imagine a large room, to picture the dimensions of it and where the doors and windows might be. Next, we were asked what else might be in that room—perhaps a fireplace or a particular item of furniture. Then we were led to wonder who might be in that room. Was there more than one person? If so, what was their relationship like? On it went in this way—until I was almost bursting to want to write it all down! From the moment our course facilitator had started, I was off, lost in my imaginary room. For some odd reason, I had pictured a large dining room in an old, English manor, complete with fireplace, huge dining table and heavy chandelier. And in my room were two people—a mother and an adult son, come together for the first time in many years. There was no love lost between these two, I knew. The mother was stubborn and autocratic—and also ill. And the son, a doctor, was equally stubborn, but also very angry and bitter. I was fascinated with the whole scenario—and I wanted to find out more.
By the time that course was over, this scene had become a long Chapter One of what I hoped would be a future novel. I put it away until around eighteen months ago—and now that chapter has become the first chapter of my sixth novel, The Inheritance, due for release next year.  

I never cease to be amazed at the power of imagination and at our ability to see those 3D images in all their glory inside our heads. But then, why should I be? After all, we are created in God’s image. And we only have to look around us to see God’s awesome creativity and imagination at work in nature. How blessed we are to have such an amazing, God-given resource at our disposal!

Jo-Anne Berthelsen grew up in Brisbane, Australia, and holds an Arts degree from Queensland University. She has also studied Education and Theology and has worked as a high school teacher and editor, as well as in local church ministry. Jo-Anne loves communicating through both the written and spoken word and currently has five published novels – ‘Heléna’, ‘All the Days of My Life’, ‘Laura’, ‘Jenna’ and ‘Heléna’s Legacy’.  She is married to a retired minister and has three grown-up children and three grandchildren. For more information, please visit www.jo-anneberthelsen.com.