Names and Faces

(Me with two of my authors in Florida, Kat and Ryan. I'm the short one.)

I've been putting names to faces for over a month now. It may not be the first time, but it is absolutely amazing. There are no words to adequately describe what it is like to work with someone online for years and years, to be so attuned to each other in a team without meeting...and THEN, to meet.

It is one thing to fill our chatter with work talk and know each other on that basis. Even reading each other's books is a doorway into the soul, but it is still at a certain distance between author and reader, or author and publisher. It is another thing entirely to walk beside someone, to observe their quirks, snuggle their pets, learn how they drive, eat, socialise. In many ways it is the fulfilment of what went before; it rounds out that partial picture we have seen through our screens, darkly.

Getting closer to the issues we knew about but had not seen in the flesh. Tickling their kids, chatting with spouses, discovering what their taste in music is like to live inside, how fast they type, how their homes are laid out and decorated, how they relate to those around them. Note to self: Do NOT mimic mannerisms, even out of curiosity. It can be quite disconcerting! I guess I'm fascinated by how a real person differs from their online persona, just from the limitations of the Internet experience.

I'm not dissing the Internet at all. Most of the time, it's all I have. But I am definitely loving the strangeness of moving from that to reality, of letting the environment sink in and getting used to being in the actual presence of people I have known from afar. I'm not surprised that conferences are so overwhelming for many, as this transition effect is multiplied.

Of course the goodbyes are all the harder when we don't know how or when or even where we will meet next. Yes... thank goodness for the Internet!

For more thoughts in this direction, please see the companion blog post, Circle of Life, at Speculative Faith.

My Virtual Office

I started a new job last week, in an office in the city, all proper-like. Six years I've been freelancing, with little personal contact to the people I work with. And three years I've been publishing, with constant online-only contact to my team. So I'm having a truly wonderful time interacting with people day to day.

In the bus on the way home, before leaving the city centre, I can see a number of office premises for lease. Full or half floors, they say. Open plan with some partitioning. Newly built, newly decorated, newly renovated - there are quite a few options available to a company wanting to set down roots in downtown Auckland.

As the bus rolls on, to the motorway and over the high harbour bridge, I stare at the sea and dream. If I could lease one of those office suites for my own purpose...what would I do with it? Well. First off I'd haul in all my co-workers at Splashdown, and perhaps the teams of some other small presses as well. Might as well use the synergy, eh?

They come from all over the world. If we're to gather in one place, New Zealand is as groovy a spot as any, right? Everyone would pin up their family photos over their desks along with their choice of Trekkie/Whovian/Narnian/Lord of the Rings posters, and there'd be huge prints of all our book covers on the walls. Hours would be completely flexible, since everyone's a volunteer, but we'd all be there pretty much all the time because we love it and I reckon we'd rent apartments above for all the family to be near. While we're at it we'd rent the ground floor retail space to sell our books.

There'd be a massive amount of mind-meld style brainstorming as authors write, designers design, editors edit, salespeople sell, readers read, artists draw and paint, and everyone keeps the world updated on our progress via social media. Can you imagine the fun to be had in a shared office like this?

Then it occurred to me: we've already got the next best thing. We may not be in physical proximity. We may sleep and wake at different times. We may never have actually met. But we're colleagues of the highest order.

We chat whenever we can get online. We bounce ideas around. We show off our families and fan memorabilia. We sell books in a virtual space. We run to each other with questions and requests for input or help. We write, edit, design in parallel, driving for a common goal. We commiserate and celebrate, joke and jabber.

There's just one thing I'm waiting on...a virtual reality setup to bring the actual experience closer to the felt connections.

--

Grace Bridges is a freshly hatched office translator, writer and publisher at Splashdown Books. Her calling is the weird and wacky arena of science fiction, fantasy and horror, driving for constant innovation and quality in the small press scene. See www.splashdownbooks.com for more.

She also runs the Avenir Eclectia fiction project at www.avenireclectia.com, currently works with Team PYP as a short story mentor, helps oversee the Lost Genre Guild, and very much enjoys living in New Zealand where the date is mostly tomorrow for her American colleagues.

Your Time, My Time

I woke up around 4pm this morning.

Yes, you read that right, and no, it's not a typo. It just so happens that the time I swung out of bed was late afternoon on America's east coast. My widget told me the time there before my sleep-muddled mind figured out that it was about 9am here in New Zealand.

This is an increasingly common occurrence as I work with a literary team that's spread across the globe, and Eastern US time is a point of reference at the start of my day. Much of my idea-mongering is initiated, mulled over and completed in online chat circles where my co-workers are well-versed about what time I am to be found there. We talk design, marketing, editing, task assignment, contracts, and of course writing, along with day-to-day stuff and everyone's news, reviews and plans.

It's the reality of international publishing, and it can be fun trying to liaise with this person and that one at a time when we're all awake. Some things take a little longer to sort out because of it, but we have to learn patience and work on as many things at once as we can so that the whole operation still moves along at a nice pace.

And there are some odd but useful side-effects. Like doing business with a Stateside nightshifter in my early evening. Or being told by a morning-fresh compadre to hurry up and go to bed because it's after midnight. Since I'm a night-owl I sometimes work on projects through the "wee small hours" and I can enjoy the instant support of people who haven't had to stay up all night to help me.

On the other hand, most of my friends are gone by 4pm my time (Midnight Eastern) and my evenings here are fairly quiet of online activity except for the night shift and the European contingent - plus a few very early risers. This has led to my online social life occurring during the day and my work mostly after dark. Strange but true.

Depending on how late I stay up on a given day, we can all cross paths again by the time it's midnight downunder. I may keep working (with admonitions to get enough sleep coming from the distant morning) and sooner or later shut down to sleep their day away - just as well, or they'd likely get nothing done!

I'm so grateful for the technology that allows us to work so closely in this way, even though we've (mostly) never met face to face. Having to figure out the time zone calculation is a very small price to pay for this great gift: that we even found each other in the first place.

RESEARCH, RESEARCH--By Christine Lindsay

Being a history buff, I loved researching SHADOWED IN SILK. But after writing 2 historical novels, and currently on my 3rd, I sometimes despair. The world is full of couch history experts like me, not to mention the real experts.

Like every writer, I’m prepared for when my book comes out, and hoping a reader won't stop mid-sentence to say, “Hey, wait a minute, that detail's wrong.”

My daughter, the real history major, gave me this advice. When writing a university paper, a student must use at least 2 primary sources-–meaning first person experiences, in other words, autobiographies and such. If primary sources aren’t available, get as many different versions of that particular person or angle in your story as you can.

She also said to be wary of on-line resources. Websites are great to stimulate ideas, and to find where you can get those first-person accounts. Just be careful to back any on-line research with other sources.

But for the best research, I find the good old library is best.

The hero of my story is a major in the British Cavalry during England’s rule over India. To understand the myriad of details that went into the life of that kind of officer, I read the autobiographies and biographies of military personnel from that era.

From those firsthand experiences I discovered specifics like the galvanized bathtub my Major Geoff Richards would bathe in---what his uniform was like, his tent when he was away on maneuvers, and one of my favorite details, what it ‘feels’ like to sit on a cavalry charger as it jumps over irrigation canals in Northern India.

My heroine, Abby, was researched by reading autobiographies of famous British women in India, as well the experiences of lowly female missionaries. Details such as how they sailed to the subcontinent, the calf-length skirts they wore in the year 1919, the vinolia soap they used, how they ran a home. I even read British Raj cookbooks written by English women.

How else would I have learned a favorite of British children growing up in India was a chappati spread with marmalade?

And I poured over the autobiography of that famous author MM Kaye as she grew up in India, and who later went on to write the epic Far Pavilions. However, the 3 years it took to write my own India novel, I stayed away from reading MM Kaye’s fictional works that were set there. I didn’t want to unconsciously pick up on her style or wording in any way.

I lost count of all the books I read. My guess is somewhere around 30. But there were books on Indian women’s lives, Indian weddings, Indian flora, cooking . . . the various religions there, as well as the history of Christianity in India . . . the political climate through reading biographies of Gandhi, Nehru and other politicians.

But after all was researched and my story written I wanted to make sure.

A friend who’d lived in India and Pakistan read the novel with the intent of finding mistakes. And still wanting to be sure, I found Dr. Shirley Hereford, a charming Indian woman with a PhD who teaches literature at an all-girls Indian university in India.

Perhaps I did too much research, as a non-published author at the time with no deadline. After reading my story, Dr. Shirley said that she was astounded I’d never been to her country. I seemed to know the place so well. But then . . . I had been there, through the eyes of others.

Since completing the writing of my book I have travelled to that colorful and mysterious place. When I came home from India last January, I added one or two fresh impressions to the story, but not as much as one would think.

It had been the research that made the place and time of my story come alive for me.

Drop by my website www.Christinelindsay.com if you'd like to find out more about why India means so much to me, and to follow the journey of my debut novel SHADOWED IN SILK, winner of the 2009 ACFW Genesis award for historical under the title of UNVEILED.

Hands Around the Globe

I am writing this on my phone at a Pasifika wharfside festival. A Samoan dance crew is doing their thing on stage, with much beating of wooden drums. A huge cruise ship is moored just metres beyond them; tantalising smells emanate from a row of food stalls behind me. The sky is only partly cloudy, so I'm hopeful the lunar eclipse will be visible in a few more hours when it gets dark.

Ferries sway in the harbour and a soft warm breeze is blowing. It was an easy choice to go sleeveless tonight, though the umbrella's always packed in case the unpredictable local weather turns wet.

That's the backdrop. And I'm hopeful in many other ways today too. Earlier, I began the day by chatting online with a writing colleague. In his part of the world it was early evening. He asked a question that jolted me out of my everyday reverie: when are you going to do such-and-such? Now I can't tell you just what he said because that would ruin the surprise; in any case, it was something I wouldn't have thought of myself. Something I had seen others do and sighed a little enviously at. So the question gave a much-needed prod and I began to think. Yeah, why don't I plan to do that?

One friend went offline and later another came on. It was after midnight where he lives and afternoon in New Zealand. I told him of the idea that had been provoked, and instantly he leapt on it. How exactly? What are the specifics? I came up with a few, and he said do it now. Start that thing rolling. So I did. I'm very excited where it might go, but it's so new there's nothing to tell yet.

Other times it's happened in a similar manner. Wonderful ideas are born in global conversations that I then picked up with whatever time zone happened to be around. Whether by video chat or text or a plain old phone call, we join hands around the globe in a wave of inspiration that grows with each turn of the planet.

And help is never far away. When the Americans go to sleep, the Europeans are just getting up, and when I get up, the Americans are generally raring to go. So at any time at all, I can count on having a colleague at hand to help out with a brainstorm in time of need.

As I finish this up, the lunar eclipse can be seen in the northeast sky. I ping another note off to my friends around the world. Today, I've seen new things. Hope, and dreams, and the shadowed moon.