First book, snap
My friend of longest standing (let’s not mention the word oldest - entirely inappropriate now we’re into the fourth decade and best avoided), Angela Savage, and I have both had our first books published within several months of each other.
I took this photograph at her launch in June at Readings, Carlton. A very happy occasion it was. She is with Bryan Pryke, our English teacher from secondary school (Siena College), who we’ve both kept in touch with on and off over the last twenty years.
I first read the manuscript for her novel Behind the Night Bazaar in 2002, and thoroughly enjoyed re-reading it again recently. It rips along. I particularly enjoyed the piss-take of academia in the interchanges between the characters Moira and Nalissa. Go on, read it!
How about a link to where people could find out more or even buy it?
That’s what the link on “Angela Savage” is for. It goes to her website, from where you can find out more about the book, including all the good reviews, and she has a link to where you can buy it. Doesn’t the link stand out enough, or you think I should be more explicit?
Yes, you are right. I guess I am just lazy and want a link directly to the book.
I like this comment styling. Re. link to book, I don’t think much of Text’s website, and I cheerfully say that without regret. The site uses frames, so to give you a direct link I had to open the frame in another window to get the URL, which means the content is divorced from the Text site! I must help Angela and tell her how to make this link. Anyway, you have the book already!
If Russ didn’t understand what the link was, then you need to fix the link, not teach Russ how your mind works. I suggest dot points between the first and second paragraph:
+ Whatever her book is called by Angela Savage, date, Text Publishing.
+ _Blue Maritius_ by Helen Morgan, date, publisher.
If Text Publishing have a crappy Web site, then it is their fault if people can’t navigate away from the purchase page. Besides, the link from Angela Savage presuambly goes to a nice framed page.
Other thoughts - you probably hate your “contact me” form for the same reason that I hate “contact me” forms: they suck. Here are the things that I can’t do from this page: ring you (esp on the mobile if I am a book reviewer looking to fill three minutes on the ABC Radio); write you a real, honest to god letter on rich, creamy think paper; e-mail you with a cc to my friend the influential Mauritius historian; believe that you will ever read it because you and I both know that most organisations have comments pages that go NOWHERE (so why should I believe that yours is any different); trust that my computer isn’t going to crash when I hit the [submit comment] button and take my whole beautifully crafted comment with it (sure that happens when I write e-mails, but I can save a draft e-mail and come back to it later). So just give me an e-mail address already, and a phone number, and maybe even your office address, so that I can bring you flowers and chocolates (OK, I probably won’t, but someone might…).
Your photo thumbnails are weirdly proprotioned and so small that they look cluttered. Can you select a small area of the photograph and make it into an interesting thumbnail, please?
OK, so now I will preview my comment to make sure that my links worked… Or maybe not. Here goes.
More to follow - I’m at Melb Uni this arvo - I’ll try to pop in.