Friday, March 27, 2020

Book Publishing Secrets with Kiran Bhat

Kiran Bhat was born in Jonesboro, Georgia to parents from villages in Dakshina Kannada, India. An avid world traveler, polyglot, and digital nomad, he has currently traveled to more than 130 countries, lived in 18 different places, and speaks 12 languages. He currently lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Website  → http://iguanabooks.ca/

Book Blurb

The Internet has connected – and continues to connect – billions of people around the world, sometimes in surprising ways. In his sprawling new novel, we of the forsaken world, author Kiran Bhat has turned the fact of that once-unimaginable connectivity into a metaphor for life itself.

In, we of the forsaken world, Bhat follows the fortunes of 16 people who live in four distinct places on the planet. The gripping stories include those of a man’s journey to the birthplace of his mother, a tourist town destroyed by an industrial spill; a chief’s second son born in a nameless remote tribe, creating a scramble for succession as their jungles are destroyed by loggers; a homeless, one-armed woman living in a sprawling metropolis who sets out to take revenge on the men who trafficked her; and a milkmaid in a small village of shanty shacks connected only by a mud and concrete road who watches the girls she calls friends destroy her reputation.

Like modern communication networks, the stories in , we of the forsaken world connect along subtle lines, dispersing at the moments where another story is about to take place. Each story is a parable unto itself, but the tales also expand to engulf the lives of everyone who lives on planet Earth, at every second, everywhere.

As Bhat notes, his characters “largely live their own lives, deal with their own problems, and exist independently of the fact that they inhabit the same space. This becomes a parable of globalization, but in a literary text.”

Bhat continues:  “I wanted to imagine a globalism, but one that was bottom-to-top, and using globalism to imagine new terrains, for the sake of fiction, for the sake of humanity’s intellectual growth.”

“These are stories that could be directly ripped from our headlines. I think each of these stories is very much its own vignette, and each of these vignettes gives a lot of insight into human nature, as a whole.”

we of the forsaken world takes pride of place next to such notable literary works as David Mitchell’s CLOUD ATLAS, a finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize for 2004, and Mohsin Hamid’s EXIT WEST, which was listed by the New York Times as one of its Best Books of 2017

Bhat’s epic also stands comfortably with the works of contemporary visionaries such as Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick.

PURCHASING LINKS

https://amzn.to/2DQIclm

https://bit.ly/2Lqe9Fi

Thank you for your time in answering our questions about getting published.  Let’s begin by having you explain to us why you decided to become an author and pen this book?

we, of the forsaken world... came to me in 2011, when I was on a bus between Dubrovnik and Zagreb. A tall, brunette woman with a lingering stare sat down next to me on one of the stops. We began to talk about a host of things I can’t remember now, but the one thing that she told me which did remain in my head was the following: Croatia is one of the poorest countries in the world. Something about that sentence inspired my imagination. After we reached the bus station, I had to sit on one of the metal benches for a few hours, and write. I was starting to imagine different countries, completely imagined in my head. One was a half-rich half poor megalopolis, the sort found in most third-world countries. Then, there was a town that wasn’t so different looking from my grandmother’s place, the southern Indian city of Mysore. There was a tribe in the middle of nowhere, not to mention a town of great touristic importance, destroyed by an industrial spill. I also imagined hundreds of voices. Though, over the course of time, those two hundred-so voices became around sixteen; the most distinct and boisterous of the lot.


As for why I became an author itself... well, that is more complicated. I suppose it started at the age of 17, 2007, when my parents tried to cure me for being gay, and I had to turn to poetry to emotionally survive. I showed this poetry to my classmates and teachers, and they said it was quite good. I grew the courage to write stories, and then as I started traveling, I realized I wanted to write for a global era. So, I continued to travel, continued to write, and continue to creatively evolve.


Is this your first book?

It is my first work in English, but I’ve published books in my mother tongue Kannada, Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin.

With this particular book, how did you publish – traditional, small press, Indie, etc. – and why did you choose this method?

I chose to publish with an indie press, because they were the only ones as of now who really loved the book, and so I went with them.

Can you tell us a little about your publishing journey?  The pros and cons?

I had finished the book in 2016. One of my friends, who was an editor at a small press in New York, gave me a list of agents to contact. Most of them responsed stealthily and quickly, but after some months, they did not find my book – experimental, ambitious, overtly literary – to be a quick fit for the market. They had to turn it down. After about a year of waiting for these agents to respond, I started submitting to small presses. It was in 2019 that I got a response from an editor at Iguana Books. They were interested in publishing the book. I told them that I was still waiting for some other publishers to respond, so I asked them to wait for some weeks so that I could get some responses. Within two weeks, this same editor emailed me, asking me to follow up. He really liked this book, and wanted to publish it. 

Before my work with Iguana Books, I hadn’t had a publisher respond to me so positively. Admittedly, Iguana Books is a hybrid press. This means that they vet every book project that they take on, but they ask the author to take on the financial burdens of publication. This still did not mean that they had to care so much about my writing. They did a lot of work, from the editorial stages, to the design of the cover, and the maps that I asked to have tailored onto the book itself, to make sure that the book was aesthetically enriched. They spent a lot of time with me talking on the phone, making sure all of my needs were met, from last-minute changes to a sentence or two, to having my books flown to Hong Kong or Delhi for the sake of book festivals. I do not think having been published by a hybrid press has downgraded the quality of my work in any way; if anything, I am glad to have had people who believe as fondly in my vision as I do. It makes me look forward to later publications, as well as the future of my career.



I think it would be hard for me to speak of the pros and cons of hybrid publishing; I will have to see, I suppose, once the book officially comes out.



What lessons do you feel you learned about your particular publishing journey and about the publishing industry as a whole?

There is still a lot of stigma in the world towards hybrid publishing, as there is to any alternative means of writing. I don’t understand it, because we all approach writing because we believe we have a story to tell, and so we should judge people inherently through their talents in writing, not by the means to which they published.

Would you recommend this method of publishing to other authors?

I don’t know. I think you pick whatever path ends up working for you as a writer. If a big publisher takes it, then go for that. If they don’t, keep going down the ladder, until self-publishing is the last resort, and then take that route.

What’s the best advice you can give to aspiring authors?

We as writers are drawn to write what we believe in because that is what our minds have chosen for us. Do justice to that path, and you will get everything you deserve.


Thursday, March 12, 2020

Book Publishing Secrets with J. Arlene Culiner

Writer, photographer, social critical artist, musician, and occasional actress, J. Arlene Culiner, was born in New York and raised in Toronto. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, has lived in a Hungarian mud house, a Bavarian castle, a Turkish cave-dwelling, on a Dutch canal, and in a haunted house on the English moors. She now resides in a 400-year-old former inn in a French village of no interest and, much to local dismay, protects all creatures, especially spiders and snakes. She particularly enjoys incorporating into short stories, mysteries, narrative non-fiction, and romances, her experiences in out-of-the-way communities, and her conversations with strange characters.

WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:




Love and Danger at the ancient Hittite site of Karakuyu

Priceless artifacts are disappearing from the ancient Hittite site of Karakuyu in Turkey, and the site director has vanished. Called in to solve the mystery, archaeologist Renaud Townsend is hindered by both his inability to speak the language and the knowledge that the local police are corrupt. His attraction to translator Anne Pierson is immediate, although he is troubled by her refusal to talk about the past and her fear of public scandal. But when murder enters the picture, both Anne and Renaud realize that the risk of falling in love is not the only danger.

Praise:

Author J. Arlene Culiner does not disappoint in this fast-paced novel, The Turkish Affair. Glittering descriptions, magical settings, and enviable characters bring the solemn grounds of Turkey to life as we are planted firmly in an archeological dig in Karakuyu, Turkey. Culiner’s mastery of the English language and sentence combinations form an enchanting read. The Turkish Affair is a must-read for all lovers of romance and adventure.
–Lisa McCombs for Readers’ Favorite

ORDER YOUR COPY

Amazon → https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0823B18Z3

 Barnes & Noble → https://tinyurl.com/yx2lyg6v

Thank you for your time in answering our questions about getting published.  Let’s begin by having you explain to us why you decided to become an author and pen this book?
I once worked in Turkey as a translator and guide, and I lived in a small, restrictive community like the one I describe in my book. The police were aggressive and corrupt, there was political unrest, and life could be frankly dangerous. I also spent time on archaeological sites in Israel, England and France and Greece, so I also know a certain amount about artifact theft. Therefore, it was only natural to combine the things I knew and my experiences in a book. I love writing, and I particularly enjoy writing romances with all the complications and doubts of two people discovering each other. But I also love mysteries, and in The Turkish Affair, the reader can link up the clues and find the guilty party.
Is this your first book?
No, this is my eight published book, plus one photography book. I suppose I should add I have two finished non-fiction manuscripts that are looking for a publisher.
With this particular book, how did you publish – traditional, small press, Indie, etc. – and why did you choose this method?
I always publish through a publisher. I suppose I need to know that a traditional publisher finds my work good enough to be accepted. And, I usually work with small presses.
Can you tell us a little about your publishing journey?  The pros and cons?
I have generally had good relationships with publishers. However, one editor I worked with on a non-fiction book wanted me to make so many changes — she rewrote almost every sentence — which I found unacceptable. If she didn’t like the way I used language, she shouldn’t have accepted to be my editor. I called her up and asked if we could meet for breakfast the next morning. That’s when I told her I wouldn’t be making the changes, and would prefer ending my contract. She immediately backed down. The book was published the way I wanted it, and it won a literary prize. However, I did run into two other writers who had the same problem — one of them with the same editor. They accepted all the changes instead of fighting, and since the published book was totally different from the one they had written, they hated it.
I had a similar experience a few years ago. One publisher contracted me to write a book, but when he saw how critical it was, he refused to publish it as is… it was supposed to be all sweetness and light. We decided to end our deal but we’ve remained friends.
A year later, another publisher wanted me to add chapters about modern music stars. Since I was writing a biography about a 19th century rebel poet and the political situation in Eastern Europe before WWI, I refused.
What lessons do you feel you learned about your particular publishing journey and about the publishing industry as a whole?
I’ve very much enjoyed working with several publishers, and I love working with my editor for, The Turkish Affair, Eilidh MacKenzie. I’ve already worked with her on three books, and I never disagree with her.
I also like working with small presses because I can have a personal relationship with the people working there. One thing I dislike about the large publishing houses is how they choose a few writers — usually famous ones or one who are writing about “trendy” subjects — then spend an enormous amount of money promoting them. They let all their other writers sink or swim, and that usually means that the forgotten authors’ books are on the shelves for three months, then they’re ground into pulp.
Would you recommend this method of publishing to other authors?
Small press publishing? Definitely. But you’ll have to do an enormous amount of promotion if you want to make money. However, if you don’t care about the financial side of things and just want to write, then fine, go for it.
What’s the best advice you can give to aspiring authors?
The one thing all writers are faced with at one time or another, is rejection. I have no words to lighten the dismal feeling a rejection slip brings, but we just have to get on with it, send that manuscript out again. After a while, rejection doesn’t even hurt: it’s just another challenge.