The World is an amazing place .... go and be in it









Monday 28 September 2015

Buddhas, Bombs and the Babu - Book Trailer



Once upon a time, in a time long, long ago,  a little girl had a dream, a dream to sit in a room all by herself.  This room would be filled with books, lots and lots of books spilling from the bookcases, stacked on desk, covering the floor and anywhere else there was space. It would have a desk covered with stuff - pens, writing pads, scrunched up balls of paper and cups of cold coffee,  and it would have a big overstuffed chair with a side table covered in  remanent stains of coffee rings.  This girl dreamed of sitting in this room and stare at the wall while her fingers tapped furiously away at a machine, pounding out words, turning words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs and whipping it all into a story.  Her whole life, all she wanted to do was sit in the room and write.  

Well not quite all. 

She also wanted to dance across the contours of borders, wander an open road, to fly across a sky of uncountable stars and then write all about it.  That was the dream.  To be a writer, to be an Author. 

And in a few weeks time the 'Author' dream is about to become a reality.  So as I await the realisation of this dream I find there is much more to being a fully fledged author than just tapping out a few words, seeing it bound and maybe ringing up the local radio station for a speal on the book. 

I have to build a BUZZ.             
                             Cause a vibration.
                                                            Start a wildfire.    

I knew I had to do some marketing work - organise some bookmarks and postcards to send out to book shops,  poster here and there, contact a few book groups and libraries to chat too, but as I googled the sites on "marketing your book"   I learn there is so much more.  Amoung the fountain of ideas was The Book Trailer.  

Now up until a month ago,  I'd never even heard of a book trailer.   Sure I'd heard of trailers for movies and I'd come across countless videos of author chats and 'how too' videos but not book trailers.  So a little google wander sent me of a whole new journey, and it turns out, book trailers have been around for years - huge in America - and are now becoming the norm in Australia,  most of the big publishers make and send them out to the bookshops as part of the marketing package.   I had a chat with a bookshop owner friend of mine and she explained they are a brilliant Author Package Tool as they bring an auditory emotional feel to the book,  if the trailer is engaging, just like a movie trailer,  it'll entice the shop owner to put the book on the shelves.  Turns out my book will be competing with 7000 titles that hit the market every month - anything to give an enticement,  that got me interested in definitely making one. 

So where to start - I didn't have a clue.  I am not a movie maker,  hopeless at even taking a video on the camera - a bit of a shaker, with an addiction to the zoomer -  so I wasn't sure how I was going to come up with something that might be worth even glancing at.   I also had to find some software. I might work on a computer all day, but I don't know the first thing about computers or software.   Thankfully I have a writer friend who  knows a little something about PowerPoint... that was a start, then when she had a look at what 'freebies' her computer had come with - there was MovieMaker.  With her generous offer of a day of her time, armed with a couple of photos I landed on her door step first thing in the morning and we began the day musing over the photos picking the 'best' ones - that was hard because I love all my Nepal photos equally... except for the ones of me... then we installed them, lost them, found them, lost them again, argued, took time out for coffee, then discovered they (the photos) had set up their own little file which we had to wrangle them from .  Finally the photos fell into a movie strip, and text and fades were added, only to lose the whole bloody thing again.  It was wine o'clock time by that stage.
 
Over the following week I scoured the websites for music I could use. Every tune I thought  might work was voted down by the new production team I'd suddenly found gathered behind me.   But seriously, it was all my fault in the first place for this happening, as I had come home with the put together piece and insisted that M, Bud and the Gorgeous Gal look at it and give me their thoughts.  A once over wasn't not enough,  I insisted they look at it,  over and over, and then some more.  So when it came to choosing the music, they felt they now had an invested right.  I eventually came across a fabulous website called 300Monks (royalty free music) and  after much shuffling through endless wonderful tunes, finally found the perfect beat we all agreed upon. "Chakra Superstar" from the A Magnificent beautiful day by The Winston Giles Orchestra (a Melbourne band),  is just so quirky and upbeat, and for me evoked the mystery and joy we had found in Nepal and its people on our first visit there.
 
As I uploaded the trailer to Youtube and Vimeo,  I suddenly discovered I was now a 'channel owner' good grief!  I have my own 'entertainment station'  WOW, next step, Ted Turner land... (you can tell I'm a bit of a social media luddite!)    I notice now my book trailer is looking a little lonely on Channel Kerry Tolson.  Might have to BUZZ it up!   Once again I hit the google train and find the catch phase "VLOGing" .  A new 'frontier' for me to discover.
 
This brings to mind a line from one of my favourite Book Trailers, How I Almost Lost My Mind Trying to Understand My Brain by Dennis Cass. 
                  Quote: "That's the dream, twenty years when I wanted to become a writer, a big part of the dream was being able to put little videos on the internet. That's why we do this.  Maybe I'll just stop writing and I'll just do downloads, apps and widgets..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxschLOAr-s

Monday 21 September 2015

Have a peek around the 'backyard'

from Savvysugar.com
There's a little (mis)quote attributed to the Dalai Lama that I just love and try to live by "Once a year As often as possible, go someplace you’ve never been before." and every year I plan a new destination, but while I dream and plan the next big trip,  I try to keep the wanderlust at bay by living a similar quote by Katja Hentschel (Travelettes www.travelettes.net) with her "Once a month, go somewhere you've never been before."....and try and find places close to my backdoor to go visit.  

Last Sunday morning, after our weekend 'chores' of early morning stroll around the village, check on the platypus in the creek and pick up our regular Sunday coffee from our local barista, we sat on our backdeck, and wondered where to go that was close and 'new'.  A flick through the local North Coast markets website threw up the name 'Pottsville'.  We had driven through Pottsville and it's twin village, Hastings Point countless times, but had never stopped - ever - not once in twenty-five years of living on the north coast.   So off we trundle with the treadlies, to the tiny little seaside village of Pottsville.
I had always thought of Pottsville as a very much blink and you'll miss it sleepy little hamlet with a peep-of-a-beach hidden from the road behind a large sand-dune.  Many a time we've just driven straight through it; winding our way off the main highway and following the coastal road from Brunswick to Tweed, thinking is was just a group of houses facing the ocean.  
But how wrong we were...

Friday 11 September 2015

If ironing undies was an olympic sport....

As you know, this little blog is about my travels, both overseas and just outside my backdoor - if I could and if M would, we'd be stepping out the back door, locking it tight and popping the key under the potplant for a very looooonnnnnnnng time.  I love reading the blogs and pages of people doing exactly just that - drifting around the world living amazing awe inspiring journeys after selling up, de-mortgaging or were never mortgaged and will probably end up boomeranging in and out of the family home once their travels finish.  I have a lot of respect for them and appreciation of what they are doing - their spirit and tenacity is what keeps me going with the hope that one day, that could be me too. (Though I have promised my parents,  we would never move back into their house.  Bud on the other hand might not be so lucky to get such a promise.) I've even found inspiration from a woman who's travel blog is all about her yearly one month trips, where she buys a round the world ticket for thirty days and crams in as many countries as she can, then for the other eleven months of the year slaves away at her desk job  to save for the next RTW Ticket.  What really stirs my travel dreams is the experiences she 'infuses' into those 30days.... Ahhhhh dreams, they can become real!
 
While I continue to dream of an endless road around the globe and grab any chance I can in chalking up a some travel miles, even if it’s only for a few weeks, I'm also wandering along on another journey - that of a wistful writer who falls between moments of furious writing and industrious procrastinating.  I'm sure writers are the best multi-tasking procrastinators in the world -   there's even an actual name for it.... I looked it up... it's called MULTICRASTINATION :  the art of being proficient doing lots of unnecessary pointless things whilst at the same time never finding the time to do that one import thing. 
And I'm a wiz at it.

I have been known to iron undies and tea towels, wash the insides of CD case covers and rearrange my granddaughter's Lego blocks into colour co-ordinated units - if these were sporting events,  I'd have a wall full of medals'.

Though I do caution against using an ironing agent on the undies, for although the occasional waft of mountain breeze is all very nice, the crispness takes walking at a cracking pace, to a whole new perspective.