Tag: covid-19

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And So The Book Is Here, Let The ‘Fun’ Begin!

carolyncordon
This is possibly my most important book yet …

I have written about important subjects in the past, Chronic Illness, Sex Abuse, for instance, and they are certainly both important subjects, but more on a personal level. This new book I have edited, ‘Plague Invasion – Creative Writing Responses to Covid-19’ is an important book on a global level, and may well become even more important historically, who knows.

I just know that when the phrase ‘plague invasion’ invaded my mind back in April 2020, I had to do something imporant with the phrase. That important thing, was to put the phrase ‘out there’ (online on this blog, and other places online), and see what happened. What happened is this book. An anthology of poetry and prose, filled with words about this awful coronavirus.

The responses go from the silliness of nursery rhymes, to the seriousness of brutal attacks and a wide variety of ideas in between. Covid has hit us all, but we are hitting back, remembering, reporting on, what has been going on.

So I am thrilled that I have produced this book, and humbled by the way others have stepped up to help me make this important document come to life, in the form af a book, a book well worth owning! If you sent me something to go in this book, and gave me permission to include it in the anthology, would love it if you sent me a message with your postal address, so I can get your free copy of the book.

Further copies will be available to contributors at the special price of $15 Australian dollars. If you would like futher copies, tell me, and I can include those copies too.

And if your words are not in the book, but you’d like a copy, the pre launch, and Festival price is $20 Australian dollars. The price after the Festival will be $25. The ‘Festival’ is the Gawler & Adelaide Plains Festival of Words, which will run from 22-25 July 2021. The launch of this book will be at 3pm on Sunday 25 July at the Prince Albert Hotel in Gawler South Australia.

So if you’d like a copy of this book, please let me know, I have nearly 100 copies of the book, just picked up from the printer today, and they’re all looking for a new home!

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Launch Of Covid-19 Related Anthology

carolyncordon

Things are moving ahead! Today I saw the completed version of the front and back cover of the Anthology I’ve been working on, and it looks fantastic! This Anthology is “Plague Invasion – Creative Writing Responses to Covid-19”. I put the word out in various places, including this blog, and in the responses came, from may different places in the world, but mostly from my own country, Australia.

I have this book with the printer I’ve used previously for printing my own books, a printer close to where I live and travel to often. They do good work. I have a friend, a fellow member of my writing group, who also uses this printer at times, when appropriate.

I’d asked for both poetry and prose creative writing and received a large variety of different works, some serious, some funny, and others in between. The quality was great of almost all of what was received, and it was difficult to turn down most of what was received …

I’d quite early decided I was going to raise the money to print this book, and give free copies to each of the contributors. So I’ve been saving my money to be able to fund this work, which is completely a work that suits my wanting to help others, in any way I can. Doing good is a thing that warms my heart, and suits my heart and mind well …

So my next job, is to wait … But it will only be a short wait, and then, once I get the email from the printer, I will pick up these books, and gloat about how clever I’ve been, and how wonderfully good it all looks! Then after that, I will give a copy of the book to the Mayor of Gawler, who wrote the foreward of this book for me!

And then. once that has been done, there will be another wait, which will end once we get to the day this book will be launched, on the final day of the Gawler & Adelaide Plains Festival of Words (Recovery). It will be a fine day indeed, with a variety of people in attendance, including a goodly number of contributors to “Plague Invasions”. These people will be given their own copy of the book, whilst there, and what fun that will be, for them to meet with other contributors!

So 25 July is going to be a fine time to think about how we’ve been going with this pandemic, and be glad we can meet with other people again! That’s as long as Covid lets us …

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The Book I’ve Edited Looks Fantastic!

carolyncordon

Yes, I caught up with the printer, and the man who created the front cover, and it looks fantastic! This book will be ready well in advance of the programmed launch date, and that feels like a good thing, no, a great thing!

When I decided I wanted to make this book, Plague Invasion Creative Writing Responses to Covid-19, I wasn’t sure of my abilities to do such a thing, calling for reponses from people all around the world. But those responses came, and they came, and putting them together in satisfactory way pleased me greatly!

And I was thrilled that the printer, who I’ve used before, liked what he saw in this book! So it’s on the way to being made beautiful, with all of the right things in the right places! It is so thrilling to have managed such an important book, and even though I will be out of pocket intially, I expect, with actual book sales, I will cover all of my costs, and start to make money.

Of course, if I factor in all of my own time, and the time of the various writers involved, that would paint a different picture of it all, but writers write for the love of it, and then, as I have, they may move into the ‘editing’ role, again for the love of it. I gave a lot of my life to this book, and I’m happy to see it looks like a worthy book indeed.

The front cover captures the craziness of this Covid time we’ve all been going through, and I have been thrilled to have given this role to a young man who has been studying Graphic Design at university, and from the way he was talking to the printer today, he knows what he’s talking about, and I was impressed when I was listening to them talking about ‘bleeds’ and ‘bleeding’.

My mystery writer mind listened in, and I wondered about the possibility of such a conversation being heard and misunderstood in one of my novels in the future! But I have lots of other bits of writing to work on, and that idea may have to wait until another time.

I was doing my ‘Writer in Residence’ thing again today, and enjoyed in very much again. Even though I didn’t get much money in my tin there, I did work at raising awareness, to some degree, talking to one of the regulars there about Multiple Sclerosis. Later on, I went to Gawler, where the printing business is, and doing some more fundraising, and awareness raising there, or I tried, anyway.

There will be another opportunity for that again later in the week, and on Monday next week too. After that, I will be taking my money raised to the MS Society SA & NT, to see how close I was able to get to my target of $1000. I fear I won’t hit that total, but I’m glad I’ve been working at it anyway, confident that I did the best I could with it.

So today was a great day for me, and I hope for another great day again tomorrow, when I do a Zoom meeting about ‘branding’, and perhaps some more of my novel written!

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Anthology Getting Even Closer To Being Print-Ready!

carolyncordon

OK, so if you know me and my writing, you may well know what the Anthology mentioned in the heading of this post is. For those who don’t know, this particular is possibly the biggest and most important writing thing I’ve done yet.

The Anthology is “Plague Invasion” subtitled “Creative Writing Responses to Covid-19”. I put out a call for submissions to this project last year, and the submissions rolled in, and kept on rolling in right up to the end date for it. I was overrun by an amazing variety of fantastic works all about Covid-19, the thing that has turned so many things upside down, and sideways.

So I had poetry, and prose, fiction and non fiction, and had to organise it all in a way that makes sense, and is easy enough to navigate for the interested reader. I could have gone with ‘theme’, but that would have been beyond me in terms of the work that might require, and I feel that may be limiting to some extent anyway.

Instead, I took the easiest way, and split the anthology in two sections, Poetry first, then Prose. And the pieces are in alphabetical order, based on the surname of the relevant writer. Simple, easy to work with and now almost all done!

I’ve spoken with the printer I wanted to use, and they have agreed to do the work, and have seen a first draft of the anthology, as has the person I approached for a foreword for the book, who has done that, and sent it to me, so is in the anthology, and the same for the person I approached for the back blurb.

So, I have the back cover done, a front cover on the way and almost done, and almost all of the inside matter of the book in place and ready. The next thing I needed to get done was getting the official agreement to publish, from each contributor, which is almost all done.

Most of the pieces in the book are from Australian poets and writers, but it was a thrill to get great works from writers overseas as well. Having such responses adds to the anthology, in terms of greater ‘oomph’ and cachet. it adds to the cost of sending the free copy out to each contributor too, of course, but I’m fine with that, and feel further book sales will cover that.

Contributors will be able to purchase further copies at a reduce rate, and the book will be available for purchase by the public, and libraries. So obviously i am going to have to be the book marketer, as well as the editor, and contributor also. And for such an important work, I am more than happy to put money into the project.

So, there is a date set in place for the launch of the book, and as soon as I have this anthology with the printer, (which will happen by mid next week, I hope), I will announce the details of when and where “Plague Invasion” will be launched. I’m so close to announcing this, it is exciting, and feels incredible that little old me, could achieve such a big and important thing!

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My Latest Writing Platform

carolyncordon

I’ve begun writing for an online writing platform, Medium. A friend of mine, Hi Marie! shared the news about it, and said she’d joined up with it, and it seemed to be quite a seamless one to join, and to use, so I thought about it for a bit, and then jumped on board.

I published something, earned a little bit of money, published something else, earned more money, and thought, hmm this does seam to be a good site! I like blogging, and will keep on with my blogging, but for other things, perhaps Medium cold be an excellent site to use as well.

I’m never going to earn money through my WordPress blogs, not directly anyway, but that isn’t why I hang around here for making money, I hand around on my blogs to rant and ramble on a bit …

Anyway, I published another piece on Medium next, and haven’t earned a single cent … I’m not sure whether I did something wrong, or it just wasn’t interesting enough. It was a longer piece, 7 minutes reading time, while the first two had been only 3 minute reads … So perhaps short and sweet is the way to go with Medium, I’m not sure, I’ll keep on exploring the site.

There is some interesting and varied reading there for sure, with writers from all over the world, writing about anything and everything. It is dead easy to publish articles to the site, and photographs too, so that makes it even more attractive to me, when I’ve been with other sites in the past where their rules and regulations were difficult to understand, and work with.

I decided to have a look back at my ‘stash’ of bits and pieces on my laptop, and found a piece about Covid, and the toilet paper shortage that happened last year, and is still happening for some people. I had some photographs of toilet paper rolls, so I used one of those as the image to head my article, and posted it. I’ll keep an eye on it, and see whether this has a broader appeal, so I can get more people following me, and build up a readership, perhaps.

The idea of writing something that ‘goes viral’ holds a lot of appeal to me, but I’m not sure if I have it in me to manage that, who knows? I have a feeling my most recent piece will attract more attention than any of the previous three pieces. Perhaps I’ll manage to build up my earnings to, oh, I don’t know, 20 cents?

I definitely can’t see myself becoming a millionaire with this site, but I’m enjoying myself with it, and surely that is important. Writing, and sharing my words beings me joy in life …

And for a bit of a giggle here is one of my ‘toilet paper’ images , not the one I used in the article.