How it all began...

So... I don't know if I've mentioned my Mum before...

Anyway. I need to tell you a bit about my Mum or, as a friend has coined the term my "Mumager", because she is the one who has taken this novella and planned a book launch, gotten twice as many sales as me and now she's gotten a lady from the Brimbank Leader interested in interviewing me for the next issue of the Local.

So that's weird, but it got me thinking that A: I've never really told you guys about the novella (where it came from, what was the inspiration and all of that) or B: what it's like now that it's kinda popular.

Bare with me because I'm part "woo-whoo" and part "yeah, okay". So I may sound ridiculous!

Inception

Murder at O'Hilligan Manor started with a prompt from a teacher. To emulate another's style of work. I'd decided to try something completely not me and give poetry a go. I also decided to make my life extra difficult and see if I could also emulate Agatha Christie. And Murder at O'Hilligan Manor is the product!

I'd fallen in love with Dorothy Porter because a teacher had recommended that I read The monkey's mask. I loved the novel. It was so different from anything I had ever read and I thought it amazing. If you love poetry or are looking for something different here's the link to her page at the Australian Poetry Library. It has links to all of her poems and novels.

Agatha Christie was a love that my grandmother started. She loved the old Whodunits and she introduced me to Agatha Christie through Murder on the Orient Express, still my favourite Christie to this day. Christie's works always had me questioning who the killer was right until the end, where one of her sleuths would give this complicated and intriguing dialogue as to who the murderer was and how the murder was committed. And I still love curling up with Poirot and feeding my need for a little mystery.

Execution

So the assignment was 3,000 words to be work shopped over three separate weeks. So each week I wrote 1,000 words of poetry and got critiqued by the lovely and amazing people in my Myths, Symbols and Poetry class. The words came easily enough but it was all written with no storyboard, no idea as to who the killer was. I had no idea who the killer was until my detective said it. The characters came alive on their own and I loved every second of it. I should try it again.

So really, the manuscript I had at the beginning of my little adventure was written in six weeks and was somewhere around the 3,000 words mark. No where near that of either of the writers I was trying to emulate, but I love what I accomplished and I got some great feedback on it! Yay!

Then I decided to use the poetry as filler for another assignment to create an e-book. (That's a lot harder than I imagined). I grabbed some photos off the web, wrote a copyright page, an acknowledgements page, a blurb, a bio; all of it. Done. I packaged it up into this nice little e-book and then went cool.

Two years later I decided to really publish it so I could hold it in my hands. That process was "ah..."

Making a book

So I had the frame work of the novel; the guts and gore. But I had no clue how to publish it. A friend of mine had self-published a novel and a novella so I looked to see where he had self-published, an online company called blurb (click on the pic and you'll be transported to their Aussie website). 

So I checked it out and it was reasonably priced and I knew that the quality was good so I started to think that this was really gonna happen. I just had to get the prose up to scratch! Therein came the call-out to all of my old NMIT peeps to see who would be willing to do some probono editing for me. Three of my dear friends, Aaron, Tom and Helen answered the call. 

Helen said she had no experience with poetry but would love to proofread it in the end so Aaron and Tom were roped into giving it a real good edit, which they did! Some characters changed slightly so they were easier to tell apart and clunky sentences became smooth and clear, the general story stayed exactly the same and voila I was ready to put it together.

I rewrote the acknowledgements so that it was clearer and thanked everyone necessary (I also took out a lot of filler that wasn't needed). I rewrote the copyright piece so that it was actually legalized. I kept the bio the same and off I was in the land of InDesign. A lovely program once you get your head around it. I'll write another post on that for anyone who, like me, wants to do this.

Helen's sister Louise was kind enough to say yes when I asked her to take some photos for the novella. I'd seen some of work and thought she was fantastic. As well as the cover photo she also took some extra ones which I use to create section breaks for the novella. These are two of the section break photos. I think they're phenomenal!

So all of that was done so yeah, now it was just putting it all together and sending it to blurb where they printed and bounded it for me! That's also another long post so I'll let you digest this one first!

It's kinda popular

So now that I've made money off of it and had to do another print run it's starting to feel like I'm an actual writer now (who has copyeditors/proofreaders/photographers so this page looks nice). It's daunting when my mother says well I did this and I spend a second in shock before I'm like "yeah, I wanted to do this for a living". But she's incredible when it comes to being a manager (she's done it for years in mental health so I'm a piece of cake)! Gotta Love her!