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Suite Scarlett
Martin family birthday breakfasts followed a strict tradition. First, there were Belgian waffles, made by Belinda, the beloved Hopewell Hotel cook. These were served up with an array of toppings: chocolate syrup, fresh lemon whipped cream, stewed strawberries, and powdered vanilla sugar. The air should have been thick with wafflely perfume. Instead, there was an acrid, confusing smell, undercut by a light touch of smoke.
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Writer in Residence
Thursday morning, waiting for the rain
I have walked down the hill from home, have chatted to the animators who are working on “The Missing Key” in the downstairs office, have got my coffee from the cafe across the street and learned a bit of local gossip, and am now at my desk.
This is pretty much a normal start to my day. Now I shall look at e-mails. The morning e-mail will have its usual load of spam, even after it has been winnowed by the various anti-spam measures, but it may have more interesting stuff as well, particularly given the time zone difference which means that if there is anything happening, then it is in the morning I will hear from my New York or London agents or my publishers there. Though I have been writing for about 27 years and being published for the last 19 years, I still get excited by e-mails and letters and packages from agents or publishers.
[Goes away and reads e-mail]
Not a lot of interesting e-mail this morning. It is pretty quiet, apart from some traffic on one of the mailing lists I’m on, where everyone has discovered “The Terrible Crossover Fanfiction Ideas Generator”. I would actually like to see some of these crossovers, written by the people who have been posting about them, but I suspect it is the kind of thing which is best left as a funny idea. Which applies to quite a lot of fiction, fan-based or otherwise, and helps prove the point that the idea is not as important as the execution.
Though my e-mail is fairly quiet, February and March are big months for me. LORD SUNDAY, the seventh and last book in THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM is out in Australia now and will be out in the UK and US next month. It seems to already be going very well, and the reader feedback I’m seeing on my Facebook profile and elsewhere is all positive (so far).
I’ve already done some media interviews and the like, and on Saturday I begin the bookshop appearances. I normally find this quite difficult at first, coming out of my hermetic writing shell to transform into a public speaker. It is a funny thing that you need to be relatively solitary and inwardly-focused to be a writer, and then change it all then when a book comes out. Perhaps I should learn to tap-dance. Or perhaps not . . .
3 Responses to “Thursday morning, waiting for the rain”
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Garth, I am a little concerned at a sentence on your bookshop appearances website. Are you retiring from writing after LORD SUNDAY?
“Garth Nix will be touring Australia in February 2010 to promote the release of his FINAL book, Lord Sunday.”
I sometimes feel torn between my desire for my favourite authors to remain in their hermit-bubbles and write the me the books I so very much want to read - and my desire to hear them talk about their writing and the magic that they weave.
Looking forward to reading the new book AND seeing you at the Perth Writer’s Festival ^__^ (Thanks for spoiling me for my birthday this year with a book and a talk!)
well it’s been flying off the shelves in my shop - so exciting. congratulations. good luck with all the public speaking. could i suggest a song, or rap?