'My Secret Life' book launch November 1st

Maverick author Leanne Waters talks about her new book 'My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia' in her latest video blog here.

My body had never felt so small or so fragile. In one sense, it was a moment of ecstasy and I was comforted with soft, almost compassionate, encouragement. Delicate, she said. The word imprinted on me like the cold before it. I was weak and going numb, but I was delicate. This is what I had wanted. I wanted to lose weight and retain some ounce of delicacy to resemble that of the spider-figured women I had seen in all those flashing images. Suddenly, the lack of strength displayed by my body was counterbalanced with a surging lease of mental satisfaction and might. As I lay in bed, buried under all my layers of clothes and bed sheets, the warmth still could not reach me. It was too late for that now and I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep, basking in my success and enduring the cold until I could finally slip into a forgetful slumber.

‘My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia’ by Leanne Waters will be available on Kindle next week.

Leanne's book will be launched on Tuesday November 1st in the Dublin Bookshop on Grafton street. All are welcome!

You can follow Leanne on twitter, facebook and tumblr.

RSVP to the launch of My Secret Life: A Memoir of Bulimia by clicking here!

The book launch of 'My Secret Life: A memoir of Bulimia' by Leanne Waters will take place on November 1st at 6.30pm in the Dublin Bookshop on Grafton Street. All are welcome, we'd love to see you there!




Follow Leanne on twitter and facebook.

'Eating Smoke' reviewed by the South China Morning Post

Check out this great review of Chris Thrall's debut book 'Eating Smoke: One Man's descent into drug psychosis in Hong Kong's Triad Heart Land. A true Story'. Click on the image to enlarge.

Click here to read more about Chris Thrall on his website.

Eating Smoke by Chris Thrall is now available to buy from the Maverick House website, click here to get your copy.

National Novel Writing Month is when People Turn their Dreams Into Reality

Every person I meet these days wants to write a book; at least that’s how it seems anyway. This was something that I talked about for decades as well before doing something about it. The sad fact is though that most of these aspiring writers will never actually knuckle down and write that book they are always talking about. This is a shame because we should all try to achieve our dreams; it keeps us young. The great thing about becoming a writer is that there are no real entry requirements; you don’t need to apply anywhere and nobody is going to judge your credentials. In order to become a writer the only thing you really need to do is start writing – sounds easy doesn’t it.

One thing that always held me back from writing a book was that I’d run out of steam after a few pages. I would then make the mistake of reading back on what I’d written; I’d be disappointed and give up on the whole project. I didn’t realise then that the secret of writing a book was to just write the first draft without any attempt to judge; this is because nobody writes a good first draft. Once this is finished though, there is then something that can be fixed through editing. When you have completed your first draft you then have achieved your goal of writing a book; all you then need to do is polish it.

What is National Novel Writing Month?

Getting the motivation to write that first draft from start to finish can be difficult. This is where something like National Novel Writing Month (called NaNoWriMo for short) can help. This event takes place each year in November and during this time people from all around the world commit themselves to writing a novel in one month – 1,000 + per day. This might sound like an outrageously ambitious task but thousands of people have already won NaNoWriMo; you become a winner by finishing your first draft.

The nicest thing about National Novel Writing Month is that there is a lot of help and encouragement available. The organisers of the event provide plenty of inspirational material including blogs, tutorials, and podcasts. There is also a huge community of people that you can join; a great source of inspiration, support, and advice. Writing a novel in one month is tough but with all this support it is achievable – all you need is a couple of hours a day.

Are You Ready for the National Novel Writing Month 2010 Challenge?
If you have always dreamed of writing a book then now is your chance. Don’t be like all those other people who only ever talk about doing this – anyone can do that. Even if you don’t write a masterpiece there will be a great sense of achievement. It will also give you the inspiration to go on and do more; once you know that you have the ability to write one book there will be no stopping you.

If you are interested in finding out more about NaNoWriMO the just follow the link.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Paul Garrigan

Editors — A Breed Apart…

We may walk upright, require three square meals a day and bear a striking physical resemblance to our fellow mankind, but don’t be fooled by these superficial attributes, editors are, in my opinion, a breed apart.

I’m not suggesting that we are superheroes, or freaks of nature, or anything like that, but we do possess certain traits that tend to attract funny glances from our peers and have the potential to empty a room in record-breaking time. It is a basic prerequisite of a job as an editor that you are at least a little neurotic; the misplacement of a comma or the omission of a full stop can assume an Armageddon-like magnitude capable of reducing even the strongest of editors to a blubbering mess. But it is these finer details that have the power to transform a good piece of writing into a masterpiece.

These neuroses can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand the gnawing terror of putting a comma wrong, if you’ll pardon the pun, is what makes us good at our jobs. But on the other hand, there is only so much time you can spend deliberating over the capitalisation of a certain word, or trying to decipher an anagram-like sentence, before you begin to feel like shaking your fist at the tedium of it all. But that’s only on the rare bad days. Mostly editors take great pleasure in correcting punctuation and tweaking the flow of language—with each uncovered error feeling like a small personal triumph. Sadly this sense of triumph is lost on many of our peers. I have been known to point out errors in restaurant menus when dining with friends, proudly indicating where a double space has accidentally been inserted between words, or an apostrophe has been misplaced—which completely changes the meaning of the word, or so I try and explain to my completely disinterested dinner guests. A long silence usually ensues, with conversation struggling to recover from the blow I have apparently just dealt it. Perhaps such details may seem trivial to many but that is exactly why editors are so important. If we didn’t lie awake pondering the great mysteries and complexities of language, then who would?

The saying, ‘Behind every great man, there is a great woman’, applies in equal measure to authors and their editors. Next to a pen and paper (or a laptop rather), an editor is oftentimes an author’s most valuable tool. Editors are the mechanics of language—undervalued linguaphiles whose mission in life is to add oil to creaky joints and bring a body of text to life.

- Bridgette, Editor

The Word Made Flesh

There is a book on my shelves that I have never read but will never throw out. It is a schoolbook edition of Silas Marner from the early part of the 20th century. I’d already read the story in my own textbook by the time I acquired it, and had no especial fondness for the characters. Nevertheless, I had to have this book. The cloth of its hardback cover is worn to a delightful softness, and the weight of the book is perfectly proportioned to its size. I still sometimes take the book from the shelves just to let it rest in my hand. Then I might open the book and finger the slightly yellowed pages, imagining that all its readers have handled it this tenderly (though knowing what I do of school children, I doubt this to be the case). Silas Marner was the first book I loved purely for its physicality.

With this in mind I read of the projected success of ebook readers like Kindle and iLiad, and I can only give a noncommittal shrug. As a fairly frequent traveller (who can never remember to redeem her miles), I can imagine the advantages of packing a whole library in the space of just one book. What I can’t imagine is reading The Hobbit via anything other than my 1960s edition with Tolkien smoking a pipe on the back and a thumb-sized tear on the front cover, exactly where my thumb goes when I open the book.

Isn’t a book an incarnated idea—‘the word made flesh to dwell among us’? And shouldn’t that flesh be clothed appropriately? No tawdry covers for my favourite books, please. Make them like my copy of The Grass is Singing, its white cover interrupted with a few spikey blades of grass, looking ever so grassy, I could swear they really were singing. Let the pages be grainy and inviting and not too white, and most of all let the text be worthy of its trappings.

For all my friends this Christmas, and for you, I wish good stories, wrapped in suitable covers, that feel just right in your hands.
- Jessica, Editor

On writing - advice from an Editor

Before anybody decides that they want to write a book, they must first ask themselves a very important, though perhaps obvious question: why do I want to write it?

The answers may not come to you as easily as you thought they might, so it is worth taking some time to think about it.

At heart, one needs to consider what will be involved in the writing process, and if seeking publication, in the marketing process; that is, what will having my work or story out there in the public domain mean to me and to others?

There are several reasons why you may want to write a book, or have your story told.
You may have what Juvenal called scribendi cacoethes; the itch to write. People enjoy writing stories, and the ones that seem strongest are more often than not personal stories reflecting an author’s experiences. A good non-fiction book has at its heart the unmistakable voice of the author.

When you decide that you want to write or tell your own story, you must then realise that this will mean revealing details about yourself. This may sound obvious, but it is important to understand. A personal account that does not tell the whole story, or leaves out important aspects of, say, a childhood, does not ring true.

This can be used to the author’s advantage, showing how early experiences helped to form the person whose voice the reader is now hearing, whose attitudes and reflections on life are now being shared.

As George Orwell noted in Why I Write: ‘I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development ... before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape.’

Depending on the type of work you wish to produce, you also have to consider the style you are going to incorporate, and which suits your work best. Importantly, you have to like what you are writing and how you are writing it, and you have to work at it.

This is very important to remember. Nothing good comes easily. Writing and storytelling are crafts that need to be honed, worked on, practiced—just like any other. It is a mistake to think that writing a book, or sharing your life with an audience, is easy, and this false idea is why many people end up wanting to be authors, but not necessarily writers.

Samuel Johnson remarked that ‘What is written without effort is read without pleasure,’ but perhaps Alexander Pope said it best:
‘True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.’

Another possible reason why one may want to write is a desire to inform and educate. Information is what makes the world go round, what makes us understand and cope with what we experience. Without it we would be inanimate objects incapable of emotion or reaction.

As Johnson said: ‘The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.’

This is not a fanciful idea from a bygone age. To bring things more up to date, John Wilson remarked that ‘Western civilisation needs good flows of information like it needs good flows of air to breathe.’

But what do we inform the reader of? That is where the writer comes in. Is there a unique point of view, a unique experience that would help to serve the general public by its being shared? If so, how best can you express it?
News lies in revealing truths previously unknown, in important facts and figures, in educating and informing us on how we live and how we should live. Good non-fiction is news that stays news.

For me, the best way to tell a story is to describe what is seen or witnessed or experienced, using the words that come to you at the time, bringing in emotion and thought to shape the story as part of a shared experience. News and non-fiction writing are subjective. What good are they if we don't know how a person who is immediately experiencing and reporting it is made to feel by events?

As John C. Merrill points out: ‘Man is subjective. He cannot escape from himself—nor should he attempt it. When he tries to be objective—a 'reflector' of his environment—he takes on a false nature; he becomes inauthentic.’
In other words, you must write from the heart.

With this, however, is the need to remain focused and fair. It is a plain fact that non-fiction should be accurate, fair and without bias. These criteria can easily be met by common sense.

Writers must not be afraid to discuss issues, topics and events that may be controversial. Non-fiction thrives on raising talking points. While staying subjective, it is also necessary to be able to talk about issues that do not necessarily reflect the writer’s own beliefs.

‘We should recognise that a willingness to do certain distasteful but necessary things does not carry with it any obligation to swallow the beliefs that usually go with them,’ as Orwell said in Writer and Leviathan.

Whatever your reasons for writing or telling your story, or that of important events in our history and society, the author must be prepared to work and to delve into areas they may find difficult to explore. The old adage that every person has a book in them is true, but one must be prepared to work to uncover it, and must be prepared for what it means to have an audience scrutinise it.

If you are prepared, then pick up that pen, or dust down that keyboard, and get started. The end result may or may not be published or publishable, but in writing it you will have completed an act of creation, and that is why writing is an art form. That is what it is all about. Adam, Editor, Ireland