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A couple of years ago on a writer’s website I met an assortment of people from a wide variety of backgrounds - journalism, law, PR, mothering, teaching, writing, editing - and locations such as Penzance, London, Dubai, Sydney, Washington, Mobile Al., Melbourne, St Louis and Oxford. We are all fiction writers and have become friends and supporters of each other’s writing endeavours, as well as exchanging martini recipes, debating the future of publishing (doesn’t everybody?) and blathering on about nothing in particular just because we can. One of these friends, Michelle Witte, a YA writer living in Utah declared to us one day not so long ago that she was going to open a bookshop. Despite the online writing world declaring paper books dead and the e-reader dancing and shimmying on the freshly dug grave, Michelle has opened her bookshop - Fire Petal Books - and talks to me about this new venture.

Opening a bookshop in this age of publishing uncertainty and the arrival of ebooks is an interesting move. What made you decide to open a bookshop in 2010?

There’s never a perfect opportunity to take a risk, but a good business plan combined with a visible need can make for a very successful endeavor.

As for e-books, it’s not going to immediately affect children’s and young adult books. Kids need pages to touch and turn and yes, even rip. They need something tactile as they learn to control their growing minds and bodies. As they get older, there’s still a need to hold a book, even for the kids already addicted to cell phones and iPods. E-books have just not had any influence in the kids market. That may change, but Fire Petal will be ready to adjust as readers change and grow.

The last thing people should do is fear the impending future. It’s already here and things are changing. Ignore the desire to bemoan the loss of “good old days” and see how you can thrive even more in a changing world. If you don’t, someone else will.

How did you go about getting money to do this?

I’m still trying to figure that part out. Oh, wait. You probably mean the auction. Well, I know an children’s book editor at HarperCollins in New York who suggested I hold an online auction, similar to what other people in the kid lit community had done recently to raise money for charities and other causes. She then offered to donate a manuscript critique.

I, of course, jumped at the offer, and so started my search for items to auction off. I ended up with an incredible list of donations from authors, editors, and agents, which ended up bringing in a total of $5,000. That money became the seed fund, which purchased painting and remodeling supplies, and put a downpayment on the store space. Without that, I doubt the store wouldn’t have gone anywhere.

Since I’m single without a house, still paying off my car, and no co-signer, no banks would even look at me. Well, I’m sure they did for a moment before rushing to the back to laugh their . . . erm, well you know . . . off.

What sort of bookshop is Fire Petal Books?
Fire Petal Books focuses on books for kids and teens, and all of the ages in between.

Is it a specialist bookshop for business or personal reasons?

I’ve always loved kids books, but well-meaning adults thought it best to forbid me to read them after I’d turned 12. I see that happen a lot, though maybe not as explicitly. Parents frequently come in saying their child is an advanced reader. What they really mean is that they want their child to be a genius, and that means they shouldn’t read kids books the moment they’re able to pronounce the words used in Moby Dick. Never mind that at that age a kid isn’t going to enjoy reading Moby Dick as much as he may ten years down the road when a college professor forces him to read it.

It wasn’t until I returned to college after a brief hiatus living in Montreal that I decided to re-read some of my favorite books as a child: the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. At the time, I was so incredibly busy with school and work that there was hardly a moment to relax. Since I didn’t have a tv at the time, I decided to read books that are relatively short and not mind-numbingly difficult to understand. I was already overworked; there was no way I would add to that.

So started my love affair with children’s and young adult literature. It’s progressed so far since I was a child, though there’s still a stigma that if an adult is writing for children, they’re doing it until they can “graduate” to real writing. While it’s rude for me to scream, “You’re wrong!” in their faces, I still doing it in the silence of my mind while I lovingly stock the store’s shelves with incredible works that many “adult” writers could never produce.

Oh, and business-wise, an independent bookstore is more likely to survive if it focuses on a niche—so long as that niche has a large enough audience and serves their customers’ interests. In Utah, families with 6, 7, and even 12 kids aren’t uncommon. Actually, they’re more common than families with only one or two children. So there’s definitely a market here for kids books.

Do you see value adding (workshops, readings etc) as important to bookshops?

That’s the only way they’ll really survive. In the world of WalMart-size discounts and shopping in your pajamas—or naked—online, independent bookstore have little to offer in the way of competitive pricing.

That said, the value an indie adds to the community is worth more than the $2.73 they’ll save by shopping big-box. Think about it. The last time you walked into a store like that—or even one of the chain bookstores—and asked for a book that wasn’t on the bestseller lists, had the salesperson even heard of the title you wanted? My most recent experience involved a search for Mockingjay at a price club the morning of the book release. (Don’t ask why, and I won’t tell.) Can you guess how many of the 6 or 7 employees I asked even knew what Mockingjay was? I’m pretty sure you already know.

So they offer knowledgeable staff who are actually excited to help you pick out the perfect book. They have a larger selection of books that aren’t ginormous blockbusters. And they’re interested in matching you with a book you’ll enjoy, love, adore.

Oh, and did I mention that they also bring in authors to talk with you and your kids? Or throwing ridiculously fun parties for midnight releases? Or how about educational opportunities? Though larger stores give their customers what they want in the form of convenience and low prices, I don’t know that I value a cheap book more than any of the things listed above. I really don’t know how to apply a discount to that without it completely losing value.

Location is everything in the retail world. What about your location?

Fire Petal Books is at the corner of a busy intersection, just down the street from all of those dreaded boxes. The closeness to a larger retail center offers visibility and increased shopping awareness, but the store is also far enough away that it isn’t dominated by big commerce. We’re near schools and homes, which is where we’ll find our most devoted customers.

Thanks Michelle,  I’m sure the shop will be a success and I salute your energy, committment and courage with a salted caramel

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I follow various writers’ blogs and I’m always interested to see what they are reading because they usually range over unexpected territory. In June I posted about the books I was reading or had read recently. Time to do it again.

I tried reading Elizabeth Kostova’s book The Historian but after 250 pages I had to put it down. I didn’t care enough about the characters to keep reading and I found it to be repetitious and guilty of what I was told is a major crime in novel writing – cramming in all your lovely research because you find it too interesting to leave out. leave it out, it’s a narrative traffic jam. If I was fascinated by the history and legends of Romanian vampires perhaps I would have persisted - but I’m not, so I didn’t.

I moved onto Sarah Waters’ book The Night Watch which had me right from the start. I prefer a straight narrative with no flashbacks, but I found the characters so compelling the back- to- front storytelling enhanced rather than detracted. I wanted to know more about them and finished the book with a sigh, disappointed that there was no more. I’ve bought two more of her books but have had to squirrel them away for the time being.

After the disappointment of The Historian I wanted the soothing pleasure of an old favourite so I returned to Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong and took my time with it - I’d read it before. A second, slower reading always pays off and I found myself moving deeper into the story of Steven, Isabel and the soldiers in the hell of trench warfare. A humane and riveting story.

Because I’d recently read Faulks’ The Girl at the Lion D’Or I thought I may as well go for the trifecta and picked up Charlotte Grey. I was curious about how Faulks slips secondary characters from previous books into the foreground of subsequent stories. For example, Charlotte’s father was Steven’s (Birdsong) commanding officer in World War One. Hartmann, who seduces Anne in The Girl at the Lion D’Or, finds himself on the way to a concentration camp in Charlotte Grey, along with the German Jewish doctor who rescued Steven in Birdsong.

I was also reminded of the botched film of Charlotte Grey - a disappointing translation from book to film. But aren’t they all.

I moved on to contemporary Urban Fantasy with Trent Jamieson’s Death Most Definitely. I have never been interested in fantasy, science fiction or paranormal stories. But Trent is an Australian writer, the book is set in Brisbane and he’s a stablemate of mine at Hachette Australia, so I decided I would give it a go. I loved the location and the surreal goings on in the middle of a sub tropical Australian city. The inventive and imaginative aspect of the book had me turning pages, and while I’m not a convert to the genre I have to read the next two in the series to find out what happens. If you like urban fantasy it’s a great read.

I moved onto Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise because I found a very cheap copy and had been meaning to read it for awhile and still had the taste of Vichy France in my mouth.
Paul Gray in The New York Times writes -
“”Storm in June,” the first novella of “Suite Française,” opens as German artillery thunders on the outskirts of Paris and those residents who have trouble sleeping in the unusually warm weather hear the sound of an air-raid siren: “To them it began as a long breath, like air being forced into a deep sigh. It wasn’t long before its wailing filled the sky.” … With the utmost narrative economy, sharp, scattered images coalesce into an atmosphere of dread. Parisians wake up to the realization that nothing, particularly the gallant French Army they have read and heard so much about, stands between them and the Germans, and they decide, as one, to get out fast. To depict the widespread chaos that ensues — railroads hobbled by overcrowding or bombed tracks, shortages of gasoline and food — Némirovsky concentrates on a few individuals caught up in the collective panic.”

Next I picked up a book by George Makari called Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis – a very readable account of the development of new ways of thinking about inner life, an evocation of old Middle Europe and the feuding Freudians, Jungians and Kleinians who squabbled over the intricacies of their theories while seemingly oblivious to the disastrous state Germany was sliding toward. Now I’m switching between Freud and Robert Harris’s The Ghost - about a ghost writer, a politician with a nefarious past - because I need something light to switch off with after reading about the spiteful bickering and territorial spats of theorists at play.

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Over the last few days I attended a writer’s conference interstate. The taxi driver who drove me to the airport yesterday afternoon asked me what I’d been up to. I told him and he shyly confessed to me that he was writing a book. He was tertiary educated, presented as very intelligent, outlined the story he was writing but revealed that he could not overcome his own fears regarding his ability as a writer and was stuck gathering research material for the book rather than writing, editing and submitting. I’d hazard a guess and say that his manuscript probably had much to recommend it. The story certainly appealed to me – a family saga starting in Poland and moving to Australia. But he couldn’t get over his fears and thus was unable to complete the book and move on to the submission stage.

I understood immediately what he was feeling. I know several sensitive and wildly talented writers and artists who do not have the inner resources (or external support) to overcome these crippling anxieties. Their work remains undone or obscured by those who can cope with the emotional demands of creative work. A great pity.

I understood what he was telling me because I’ve felt those fears as well. I’m toughening up every day, but when you are starting out as a writer the self censoring, the constant self doubt and worry that you are just wasting your time and will be humiliated if you show someone your work can be crippling. But you cannot move forward unless you let go of the fear. You cannot develop unless you open yourself up for constructive criticism, as my friend Pete Morin says in his blog. You cannot drag the same manuscript around for ten years, tinkering here and there but refusing to submit. Burn it or shred it or dig a hole in the garden and leave it there wrapped in plastic for a few years, but let it go and write something else.

Or stop writing and do other things. Draw a line under that part of your life and move on, because hanging around when the magic has gone is a living death.

The decision to move onto something else is not an easy one, but nor does it signify failure. You have to ask yourself do I want to do this – with all the attendant agony, or do I not. Because if you do, you must find ways of dealing with the angst so it doesn’t hold you back. If you don’t want or need that pain in your life, let it go. Walk away and find a more soothing and rewarding occupation.

I walked away from the stress of the art world – and if you fear public humiliation and exposure as a talentless wannabee do not venture into that world - into a private world of growing vegetables and cooking. I got very good at the cooking; I made all sorts of Italian preserves, pasta, gelato, and foods from all around the Mediterranean – French, Lebanese, Spanish. I read their cultural histories and the history of food and ingredients, I grew heritage seedlings, scoured seed catalogues, haunted growers markets and French cheese shops, and it was a very soothing and creative period in my life. Constantly praised for my cooking skills, no one ever said ‘re do that bit’ or ‘cut that chapter’ or rejected what I offered. When I felt it wasn’t enough anymore, I decided to try writing. Now I just throw meals together because I’m consumed with what I do now. It’s probably the antitheses of the speedy modern life but that fallow period of almost ten years was vital to my journey back to public creative work.

I need the intensity and challenge of a creative mountain to climb. If I don’t have it I build that mountain in my head, and as anybody knows, it’s painful having a mountain inside a human skull. If I could walk away from it all and be happy I would, but I know it’s not possible for me. It is for some others and sometimes walking away is the healthiest thing to do.

So my taxi driving friend, what do you think?

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I’m a stony eyed killer.

I’m your go-to gal when you want to kill off your darlings. I kill my own without any feeling of remorse. I highlight them, they startle in the sudden shock of light, knowing what’s coming is no pleasant cut and paste to a new context. I press delete. I feel nothing except a frisson of satisfaction in the job. I take a swig of coffee and keep moving.

I wasn’t always like this. My darlings were precious and I indulged them whenever I could, but it proved to be an unhealthy attachment, a toxic dependency that could only bring me down.

I had thirty thousand of them, the start of the sequel to The Book of Love, which I wrote in 2008 as I was still under the spell of my characters and could not let them go. I had to be with them, so I started a sequel, little knowing that one day a big publishing house would say, ‘do you have a sequel?’ Of course, I chirruped, not realising the full and fatal implication of that simple affirmative.

I had started a sequel so finishing it should be easy. What foolishness, what utter inexperienced naivety, what lazy self deception. I struggled to shoehorn those thirty thousand beautiful words into a sequel. I … had … to … use … them …*panting noises*

I learned, through flagellating myself with these words day in and day out that it had been a bad creative decision. Two years before I had been in a different place as a writer and words written then, no matter how beautiful or funny, simply were not working. As I and my manuscript slowly steamed toward the iceberg, my publisher had the presence of mind to alert me. A pit was dug, the words assembled, the delete button was pressed. After that moment, killing a paragraph here a sentence there arouses nothing in me other than pride that I can be so ruthless.

As the editing of the sequel comes to a close and the sun sets on the smoking delete button, I look around for my next project and dig up a manuscript written in 2006. I start work, I get frustrated, I can’t get it to work, my mojo has not awakened, what is going on?

Done it again, haven’t you? How much pain do I have to go through before I learn to let go?

So I extracted the characters and will build them a new world. And I killed the rest.

I killed them and it was good.

Tags: imagination, madness, writing

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I wandered along the other day thinking about whether or not I held a principle that I would die for - as you do. Something beyond self interest. I probably will never be put to the test so it’s easy for me to say, yes, there is one.

Universal education.

Education for all is a cornerstone of the Enlightenment, right? Education to banish ignorance and superstition so we can approach living in as reasonable a manner as we can, valuing reason and knowledge above our animal lusts for power, possession and shagging all who wander inadvertently into our orbit. We all agree on that?

You are nodding your head, sipping your coffee, saying yes … go on … your point, madam?

My point is this. It is only a principle, not a reality, despite all the posturing and blather of our politicians and educationalists. We have education. Just enough so we can find the remote control and switch onto Master Chef, find the car keys and make our way to Consumer Durable to buy a molten chocolate fountain, and then relax in front of some funny Youtube videos, then go to bed with our f**k buddy. And don’t ask me to read, crikey, I might over stimulate myself and goodness knows what will happen then?

I rant because I was myself perhaps overstimulated last night while attending a social event distinguished by a goodly smattering of very intelligent people, employed in the tertiary education sector in Chemistry, Languages, Nuclear Physics, IT, Engineering and, bless ‘em, Creative Writing.

I know from my own observations that tertiary education is sliding into laughable territory - user pays, buying places, overseas students, lowering the bar so that it’s practically underground – have all contributed. But when I hear anecdotes from those in the frontline – and yes they are anecdotes, but put a glass of wine in the hand of any academic in Australia and you’ll hear the same things – they produce a frisson of fear in my vitals. I’ll be dead before we see the real impact of the Great Dumbing Down, but my kids will feel it and it’s not going to be an easy ride for them. I suppose a single purpose electric donut maker will be some consolation though.

I wouldn’t die to save the Australian education system as it is, and as it will be in ten years time. But I would willingly stuff the petrol soaked rags into bottles and bay for the blood of all vocational educationalists as I storm the barricades erected around the lickspittle lackeys who design education to fit the interests of the capitalist running dogs of the corporate world rather than human beings if I thought the educational values of the enlightenment could be restored to education.

Modern History does not start in 1945. Or maybe it does for those curriculum design bots.

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