Archive for the 'People' Category

Tony Burns is a lawyer by day, whom I know through my day job in the City. In the evenings, he has translated a children’s book from French into English, which is a daunting challenge for anyone at the best of times. I wanted to know what prompted him to take on this task and what the process of translation is like - so naturally, I invited him to write about his experience on this blog.

Tony writes:

A family connection

Les 3N et le Bouton d’argent (The 3N and the Silver Button) was written by my great aunt, Roberte Armand, as part of a series of children’s adventure stories which she wrote and which were published by Hachette in France between 1970 and 1978. Roberte Armand was my grandmother’s sister, the youngest of three daughters, all of whom were given boys names by my great grandfather who wanted a boy but never had one! She is now 91 and is still in fine fettle, living in the French Alps. An extremely active person all her life, with an amazing imagination, Roberte Armand grew up in Grenoble, France. An acclaimed science teacher (her father was himself a well known professor at Grenoble University) , she had four children, three sons followed by a daughter, upon whom the characters in her books are based. The beautiful countryside in which she grew up forms the setting for the stories, which are aimed at 9-12 year olds.

The Three N stands for Nathalie, Nick and Noel. Nathalie, at 9 the youngest of the trio, but nonetheless very perceptive represents her real life daughter. Nick, her brother is the aggressive one who teases his sister endlessly, and Noel, the cousin (Hachette insisted he be the cousin and not brother), who is the reasonable one, and kind to Nathalie, represents an amalgamation of her two eldest sons. Knowing the family, although those children are my mother’s generation, I can honestly see how the characters in the book represent real life people. I think that is really important because it makes the characters seem more real.

The 3N series

In total, 14 books in this series were published in the 1970s by Hachette, France, in the “Bilbliotheque Rose”. They have never been translated into English. When the 15th manuscript was submitted, a new person at Hachette decided he did not like the books any more, commenting that there were not enough “savoureux gouters” - “delicious teas”, as could be found in Enid Blyton books! No more were published, although there are 16 unpublished manuscripts, not to mention the most recent addition to the series, written last winter, some 30 years after last downing pens. The latest story is called Les 3N et L’Extra - Terrestre, and focusses topically on the problems of global warming.

A book at bedtime

I started on this project after reading a couple of the books to my eldest son. He was 8 at the time and although I was having to translate as I went along, he was fascinated by the stories. After reading the second one to him, I thought the story was so good that I decided more children should know about them and began the long and daunting process of translating. As a busy lawyer with 2 young boys , time is at a premium, but after 9 months the draft was finished! I was lucky enough to live in France for a few years as a child, and with a French grandmother and having spent alot of time among French people, I have a good grasp of the language. My A level and degree level French skills came into their own. Translating is an art because there is not always a perfect translation possible, particularly where you have a play on words or a pun which simply does not work in English. The French have an obsession with food, which comes through, but then Enid Blyton was also very keen on her lashings of ginger beer etc!

The translation process

I was fortunate to have the author on the other end of the phone if clarification was required but luckily this was not needed too often. There was one passage which involved the children visiting a mink farm which I advised might not be politically correct nowadays. Two weeks later I received through the post a revised extract from my great aunt where she had re - typed one entire page of the book (probably with her original 1970s typewriter!), changing the reference from mink to exotic fish, with associated changes in the dialogue! She did admit to being stumped by this request but came up with the idea after several trips to her local library in France!

As the work continued I got more and more into the characters, and began to understand how they themselves thought, picturing the real life characters when they were themselves children. It was a very rewarding experience.

I am also delighted that the whole process has rejuvenated my great aunt. To go away and write another book at 91 is proof of that! She has been so excited about the renewed interest in her stories and it would mean so much to her if they were to be published again. Her children are also thrilled that her mother has reacted in this way.

My boys are now 9 and 7 and into Enid Blyton in a big way, as I was, Secret Seven, Famous 5 etc. Those stories are still selling very well even though they were written in the 1950s. Well here is something to match them, but with subtle differences (only one of the stories has a secret passage!). I think children just love a good story, from whatever era, and this is what these books provide. Being a mathemetician/ scientist, the author leaves no unanswered questions and all the plots end neatly with all loose ends tied up, just how children like it.

The feedback I have had from children who have read my translation has been 100% positive. These are mainly children in my son’s class at school and that of my goddaughter. Adults too have enjoyed it. “When’s the next one coming out?” they say.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tony is looking for an agent/ publisher in the UK to take on The 3N and The Silver Button so that more children can have the pleasure of reading the adventures of Nathalie, Nick and Noel. So if anyone can help with suggestions or recommendations as to what he can do next to bring Tante Bob’s book to a wider English-speaking audience, please do get in touch by leaving a comment and emailing me via the Contact Form and I’ll pass on your email to Tony.

You can read the first chapter in English by downloading the pdf from the box below, or via this link to The 3N and The Silver Button

Photo: of Tony and Tante Bob (with permission)

Susan Macaulay is a dynamic Canadian living in Dubai, whom I met while in Barcelona for the IABC EuroComm Conference earlier this year. Susan is a public speaking coach and also the founder of the social network for amazing women, aptly called Amazing Women Rock. I invited Susan to share her cross-cultural experiences for Fusion View.

Susan writes:

I got to the United Arab Emirates by accident. Like the castaways in the 1960s American sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” my then-husband Bob and I set out on what was meant to be a little adventure in 1993, only to end up marooned on a desert island for the next 12 years. It was all terribly unplanned, but then I guess most adventures are.

Our collective travel experiences had been rather limited until then. I had wandered around New Zealand and Australia for a year and half in my early twenties. He had been to Hawaii and Mexico I think, and we had holidayed together in Europe for six weeks in 1990. But that was the extent of it.

Our move to the Middle East (from Canada), was driven mostly by boredom (his, with a routine job in Calgary), and thirst (mine, for adventures in exotic foreign lands). When a friend who worked for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company called to say there was an opening for a technical instructor, Bob jumped at the opportunity and I prayed he would ace the interview.

He went on a 10-day reccie to Abu Dhabi just before Christmas 1992, and was offered the job. We gave the move some thought over the yuletide holidays, got married on January 9, 1993 (after seven years of co-habitation), and he hopped on a plane a few days later – leaving me to hold the fort for six months in case things didn’t work out.

Fifteen years later, Bob and I are divorced, he’s based in eastern Canada (working 28-day shifts at a refinery in the Algerian desert), and I’m in Dubai making the most of one of the few places in the world where the economy is booming, and people are arriving in droves to stake their claim in a 21st-century Middle-Eastern version of the Klondike gold rush , which, by some accounts was started by a woman in 1896.

Unlike their 19th century counterparts, however, many of these latter-day prospectors are panning for property, instead of the nuggets of old. Scores of speculators who have bought into the Dubai real estate dream are banking on ‘happily ever after’ not turning into disaster, as it seems to have done the world over in the last year or so.

Whether the whole thing will implode (or explode), leaving investors holding the proverbial bag remains to be seen. Time, as they say, will tell.

Back in 1993, expatriates couldn’t own property in the UAE, Abu Dhabi and Dubai weren’t global household names, the Dubai World Trade Center (at 34 floors), was the tallest building in the country, and I couldn’t find work in my profession, because public relations was still unknown in the Emirates.

So I wrote. A lot. Mostly to friends and family “back home.” Mainly about my experiences as a successful career woman suddenly having to cope with being an expat wife.

A few weeks ago, I began republishing those Letters from Abu Dhabi (LADs as I called them then), on www.amazingwomenrock.com , a website I conceptualized, created, and finally launched in July, after three frustrating years of development.

It’s interesting, and a little ironic, to be posting those long-ago LADs on this internet creation of mine, which is as much my passion and joy today, as the LADs were a decade and a half ago. I could hardly have conceived of a website then. In fact, it would be years before we could even access the internet in the UAE.

(To steal the words from a 1970s cigarette ad targeted at women, I’ve “come a long way, baby.” So has the UAE. We’ve transformed ourselves in tandem, and at light speed, my adopted country and I.)

Even more interesting is that, alongside my LADs of the mid-1990s, I’m publishing a series of recollections by Gertrude Dyck, a Canadian nurse and missionary, who went to the UAE in 1962 (almost a decade before it was even a country), and who lived there for more than 40 years.

We are collaborating: two expat women of different ages, from different eras. The result is two sets of impressions about the same initially-foreign-to-both-of-us country, seen through totally different lenses, 30 years apart, and yet presented side-by-side (years after they were originally written), on the internet.

As I tap out this blog entry (sitting in an airport in Germany), for UK-based Yang-May (whom I met at a conference in Spain in February), Gertrude is reviewing the next installment of her story from a retirement home in western Canada. I wonder where you will be if and when you read the fruits of our joint labour?

All of this suggests something about culture change, I think, about how small our big world has become. Here we all are – you, me, Yang-May, Gertrude and who knows who else – continents apart, or perhaps unknowingly sitting next to each other in a café somewhere, paradoxically separated, and yet interconnected (by choice), through time, space, and experiences – some shared, some uniquely ours.

But I digress. Let me see. Where was I? Oh yeah, Abu Dhabi, 1993…

Veteran explorer John Blashford-Snell has been an inspiring and controversial figure leading some of the most extraordinary expeditions in modern times. Fusion View’s occasional guestblogger Alan Lane talked to Britain’s own Indiana Jones about his life and the continuing passions: scientific research, the future of the planet and solving inner city problems.

John Blashford-Snell will be giving an illustrated talk about ‘Stanley and Livingstone’ at the Royal Geographical Society, London on 1st October 2008 at 7pm. Further information from Anne Gilby: Tel: +44 01747 853353

The Royal Geographical Society on London’s Kensington Gore is a place where you don’t easily forget the past. In the Map Room, a portrait of explorer Henry Morton Stanley stares solemnly down on the crowded room. In a glass case just outside, is a copper bolt used by mutineers from the British Navy ship HMS Bounty in 1789 to split wood. Next to it are Stanley’s boots, repaired with canvas from his tent during the 1887-89 Emin Pasha Relief expedition.

By the door, relatively unnoticed in a sober business suit stands who I had come to track down: Colonel John Blashford-Snell; Royal Military College Sandhurst, Royal Engineers, Order of the British Empire (OBE), Doctor of Science, Doctor of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Within the hour, in the great lecture hall he is recounting tales from 40 years of expeditionary life to help raise funds for the International Trust for Nature Conservation.

Blashford-Snell is difficult to tie down. We were to meet next at a London gathering of the Scientific Exploration Society (SES), which he helped to found in 1969.

Now, some years on after our first meeting, I am at the Society’s headquarters deep in the English countryside, ready to pick up our conversation. It is an historical moment for him. A month ago, he stepped down as Chairman of the SES after almost 40 years to follow the many other passions on his agenda.

The telephone rings incessantly, bearing messages of progress from the latest expedition or inner city project as I begin to unravel an extraordinary life.

HIS REPUTATION AMONG modern-day explorers has inspired admiration, controversy and a feeling that he is perhaps Britain’s answer to Indiana Jones. He led the first descent of the Blue Nile and forced the first vehicular passage through the jungles of the entire Darien Gap between North and South America. He navigated 2,700 miles of the Zaire River. In the wake of these expeditions, he set up Operation Drake and Operation Raleigh to give young people exposure to expeditions and responsibility.

More recently, he has tackled aid and conservation projects in the Mongolian Gobi Desert and discovered giant elephants, lost cities and unknown tribes. Headlines have been made by other equally exotic projects: lengthy voyages on reed boats along South American rivers, delivering a grand piano from the UK to the music-loving Wai Wai people of Guyana, and discovering a two-nosed dog in Bolivia.

Now 71, Blashford-Snell is very much a product of the British Army: just over six feet of durability, quiet authority, and a clipped, no-nonsense delivery.

As we rewind his life and career, the pale blue eyes at times resemble gun sights which look through you, preoccupied with the next logistical challenge in some far-flung corner of the world.

The family history is, like his life, unusual. The Snells were common in the south-west of England. The Blashford came from a small hamlet in Hampshire to where the family had moved. Around the late 1700s they went to Jersey in the Channel Islands, which he regards as his roots. Grandfather Blashford-Snell was a sea captain who commanded a packet steamer between Jersey and the south coast. John Blashford-Snell’s aunt thought many of the ancestors were pirates; and she was probably right. He recalls with fondness, great uncle Albert, a beard to his navel, sitting in his great deck chair looking out to sea with a telescope to a bloodshot eye. Everyone thought he was looking at the ships but he wasn’t, he was watching the women on the beach.

A childhood he describes as “heaven”, was split between Jersey and Herefordshire, where his Army Chaplain father had a parish. The only child of adoring parents - “my father prayed for several hours when he saw me arrive” - he began life as a shy, sickly child with a slight disadvantage. This was a withered arm from a difficult birth. Mother was a determined woman who claimed an impressive assortment of forebears, including King Louis XV of France and Oliver Cromwell, leader of Parliamentary forces in the English Civil Wars of 1642-51. Using her considerable skills with animals, she put the arm into a splint to stretch it and encouraged exercise.

Blashford-Snell’s early health problems persisted. Shortly after he was born in October 1936, a nurse at the hospital dropped him on his head and split his head open like an egg. “I’ve got the scars to this day,” he tells me, bending to (more…)

I met Kieron Smith at The Bookseller’s Digitise or Die conference a couple of weeks back when we were both on the Digital Spaces panel and intrigued by his online social networking bookstore BookRabbit, I asked him to tell me more about it.

# What is BookRabbit?

BookRabbit is an online bookshop that dynamically connects readers, authors and publishers through the books they own.

Using BookRabbit, readers can share their passion for books, make recommendations to other readers as well as creating their own personal bookcase (using pictures of their real owrld book collections) and catalogues online – anything from medieval falconry, through bestsellers, to educational publications for schools. BookRabbit has a simple aim – to claim back book selling and book buying, enabling readers to discover the right books for them.

# How did you come to be involved / start BookRabbit?

I’ve worked in bookselling for many years for companies including WHSmith, Ottakar’s and Waterstone’s - I have felt for a while that online people don’t get the interesting and engaging side of discovering a new book to read. Instead they get one where books are commoditised and just about price. Although there are millions of titles available through the big bookselling sites, more and more it feels like we actually have less to chose from.

I was approached by an entrepreneur in late 2007 who asked me what I would do about this given a blank sheet of paper, I told him and he said he’d back me to do the lot - something of an offer I couldn’t refuse!

# For booklovers who are already signed up to buy books from Amazon, why should they move over to BookRabbit?

On the e-commerce side we’ve hopefully made it as painless as possible! We don’t require registration unless you want to take part in discussions or set up a profile, so no new passwords to remember! We’re cheaper than Amazon on the top 100,000 titles and take PayPal (as well as the standard cards) and have free delivery on everything.

BUT

I’d like to think you should give BookRabbit a go because browsing other people’s bookshelves and getting title matches with your own collection means you’ll discover something new!

# Is BookRabbit for UK residents only?

No anyone can use the site, we only have UK shipping at present but hope to add International as soon as we can.

# For those who have already got their libraries displayed on LibraryThing, why should they also sign up to BookRabbit? (This is my dilemma too!)

I wanted to avoid the whole painful data input thing - so you can start making useful and interesting connections from just a few books tagged on a shelf - give it a go and see who you match with!

# What are the benefits for authors for signing up?

There is an element of vouyeristic pleasure for authors in that they get to see what other books are sitting next to their own on people’s bookshelves - and if they wish start to interact on discussions. They’re also able to directly amend their title details on screen, including synopsis, jacket, catagory and even add YouTube videos all of which go live immediately.

# What are the kinds of discussions on BookRabbit?

We have discussions on three ‘areas’ they are either books, bookcases or categories and there is a summary of most recent ones on the homepage. It’s early days and we didn’t want to assume we would know what the community would discuss, but it seemed sensible to anchor them against a particular part of the site, rather than have one sprawling forum - we could be wrong though!

# I like the function for uploading a photo of your own bookshelf. What’s on yours?

I’ve got many, many bookselves, one of which can be seen http://www.bookrabbit.com/bookshelf/detail/bookshelfid/113 I’ve quite an eclectice taste in titles. We’ve a special offer on at the moment that if you upload a bookcase photo and tag at least five books then we’ll handpick you a free book and send it to you. You can see how we’ve been getting on with our selections at http://www.bookrabbit.com/help/showfaq/topicid/77/page/1 full details of the offer at www.BookRabbit.com/free

Knucker Press published James W. Wood’s new collection of poems, “Inextinguishable” on 22 May. A collaboration with young illustrators from a diverse range of backgrounds, the collection is accompanied by an exhibition which ran in Edinburgh’s Owl and Lion Gallery from 23 May to 11 June. James writes for us about the experience of working with visual artists and what has happened since the publication of his first collection, “The Theory of Everything”, eighteen months ago.

James writes:

My first short collection, The Theory of Everything, ran to thirty-two pages and was selected by the editor of the HappenStance Press from a sixty-four-page manuscript. Encouraged by the reviews of The Theory of Everything, I continued to write through a difficult period in my life that included the death of my father, to whose memory my new book is dedicated.

Between my new work and the poems I had written earlier, I had accrued enough substance to consider a second short collection in just over a year. I have always wanted to work with visual artists, and so I was delighted to be offered the chance of publication with Knucker Press – especially since their Editor, Jane McKie, is a prize-winning poet as well as a publisher.

Knucker Press was founded in 2007 and aims to pair the work of visual artists and writers with a view to creating fresh relationships between words and images. I watched fascinated as the collection took shape with almost no involvement from my side. Barring one or two minor changes, Jane McKie felt that my poems were, as she put it, “fully formed”, and so proceeded to work directly with the students and lecturers at the Edinburgh College of Art to generate responses to the poems.

Weeks passed and I waited patiently. Then one night after dinner at Jane’s house I was presented with the proofs of the book in a near-finished format. Barring a few further changes, this was the book as it would be published. I can remember thrilling to the perspectives the artists had brought to my work as I turned the pages for the first time. In some of the work, artists had perfectly encapsulated in visual form what I had imagined when writing the poem; elsewhere, the artists had opened up completely new meanings, or illuminated corners of the poem I had considered peripheral to the meaning of the piece.

Overall, the interplay between the verbal and the visual in Inextinguishable has enabled me to return to the poems with a fresh eye – even after having spent weeks (in some cases) writing them. For me, the best examples of this are “After She Leaves”, “Afloat”, and, “The Craws”, where the poem and artwork meld into each other on the page, and the traditional relationship between illustration and text is broken down so that the poem becomes part of the canvas.

This experience represents the fulfilment of a long-held ambition for me, and I am pleased that Knucker Press are able to offer three copies of my new book to the readers of Fusion View.

Click here to find out how to win a copy of Inextinguishable

Mark Wu and I have been reading each others blogs for awhile now but we’ve never met. He blogs at OneInchPunch.net and is also very actively involved in the Chinese community here in the UK. When Mark invited me to be featured on his website VisibleChinese.com, I was very honoured. I’m delighted to to return the favour and introduce you to Mark here on Fusion View.

Mark writes:

Unofficially named “Mark Wu” (my Chinese name being my legal identifier), I’ve led a quite straight-forward life. My parents came to the UK when they were teenagers and met and married young. My brother, sister and I were subsequently born into the British Chinese culture which labels a generation of young Chinese people whose parents immigrated to the UK, and where the majority of families were involved in one way or another, in catering. With a talent for drawing, at an early age, I was “destined” for the arts and eventually found myself drawn to digital design.

In the last decade, I’ve spent most of my life focusing on working through my co-founded design company Kibook Interactive Design, which at its peak in the dot-com boom, grew to eight people plus freelancers. Aside from working quite alot, doing the company thing also meant meeting and working directly with a variety of clients and living a life that combined freedom (sort of) and choice with responsibility.

Some of our clients were British Chinese organisations such as Yellow Earth Theatre and The Pearl Foundation and that was great for me personally, to be able to tap into my own culture professionally. Working with them in the last five years or so, meant being involved with what I perceive to be an important time in the UK’s Chinese culture, with its growth and development being quite passive initially but which is now continually increasing in pace, encouraged by the Olympics in China this year.

Promoting Chinese culture in the UK is something I am passionate about and as a result, I am a Trustee of The Pearl Foundation, Interactive Associate of Yellow Earth Theatre and a core member of The British Chinese Project which is an organisation that works to help integrate more British Chinese people into politics.

Visible Chinese

Bringing together my passion for promoting British Chinese culture and design for the web, I also created another website which came about through a simple idea. The website is at VisibleChinese.com and it aims to become an Authoritative Independent Listing of Achievers within the UK’s Chinese Culture. Pretty much like a Who’s Who.

Visible Chinese is a site that is focused on profiling just individuals, as opposed to organisations, putting faces to names, as I insist on a photograph to accompany each profile. Profiles can be flexible in what they say, as long as they are biographical in some way. People can also outline what they do professionally and include links to their websites, so Visible Chinese serves as a great advertisement for their services and a useful tool for networking. I like to think of it as the sum of its parts being greater than the whole. Someone I met recently mentioned how it would be useful to see what people looked like in order to help recognise them at a future networking event.

The site doesn’t take long to maintain, and also doesn’t have the same pressure as a blog requiring constant (perhaps daily) updates, so all in all, the whole concept is a win-win situation for both the people featured, and for myself in gaining the satisfaction of creating something useful.

Not so silent minority

The Chinese community in London seems to be advancing and growing in voice and confidence, from the media labeled “silent minority” it began as. Traditionally, the visible aspects of Chinese culture seemed to consist of takeaways, large suburban supermarkets and the annual Chinese New Year event around the UK’s Chinatowns.

However, in recent years, there are signs that the next generation of young professionals are beginning to influence the community. Young professionals who have grown up in both Chinese and English cultures, and who are not just comfortable, but fluent in both.

As the British Chinese population increases, the diversity of talent also increases and is steadily gaining exposure. Take The Pearl Awards for instance. An annual event which will be in its fifth year in 2008. Each year saw the awards grow in profile and diversity with the fourth awards in 2007 set in the Royal Festival Hall, including HRH The Prince of Wales as one of its distinguished guests.

The British Chinese Project is also a significant initiative, founded by the prominent Chinese Solicitor, Christine Lee and which is supported by the UK Chinese Embassy, representatives from the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and a variety of different organisations and Chinese community groups. It aims to encourage more British Chinese to take an interest in politics, particularly the younger generations, but in itself, also counts a number of young professionals as members, the like of who are increasingly looking to play active roles in the community.

Go Croydon!

In the North-South London debate, I was a classic, born North Londoner who believes everything there is better, alas more expensive, than South London. A few years ago, I moved down to Croydon to my partner’s place and have been there ever since.

Croydon has a kind of stigma attached to it, but one which I think is over the years, being slowly eroded. It might be because of this, but everything in South London does seem to be cheaper than the North. Redevelopment in some areas is happening, and so I think the South is in someways, quite an exciting place to live. What I can’t fault is the convenience of being so close to shopping areas like North End, and the fast rail links into Central London - a bonus since I’ve been able to avoid getting on the claustrophobic tube to work.

Bruce Lee still inspires

I started my first blog One Inch Punch in December 2006 - during a quiet Christmas break, when I felt I really had no excuse not to. I had been working in the web industry for more than eight years and aside from a small portfolio site, had nothing of my own to show for it.

Building a blog was something that I wanted to do for awhile and it was also a good idea for several reasons. These included knowing the ins and outs of the process - which I could easily advise my clients on. “Walking the walk” as they say.

For almost a decade, I had been nurturing an idea for creating a large and complex East-Asian community website. Several visual designs came about, and the idea was refined, changed, amended and refined once more. I had never got beyond that, partly because of the time required and also due to lack of technical know-how required to get the idea made. However, in the last few years, blogging technology has improved massively - enough for me to fine tune my comprehensive ideas down to a simple (and practical!) East-Asian entertainment link site. Hence, OneInchPunch.net was born.

Comprehensive as the ideas were, keeping things simple inspired the name OneInchPunch. I basically wanted to aim for one post update a day, which would consist of a visual and a link. Something short but effective, which literally speaking, is basically what a One Inch Punch is. For those who don’t know, the “One Inch Punch” is a martial arts technique, made world famous by Bruce Lee, which unleashes explosive internal (as opposed to muscular) power² from a very short distance. So the name was not just dynamic-sounding, but also indirectly name checks probably the world’s most famous East-Asian.

Note: This article has also appeared on Dulwich OnView where I am the co-editor.

I am chuffed that highly-respected UK editor turned writing coach, Kathy Gale, has written a guest piece for Fusion View - a personal account of her experience of working with writers while an editor at the top London publishing companies and as an independent writing mentor.

Kathy Gale has been Senior Editor of Pan Books, Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton; Editorial Director at Pan Macmillan; Marketing Director of Simon & Schuster; and Joint Managing Director of The Women’s Press. She currently heads her own writing consultancy, KG Publishing Services.

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Kathy writes:

Flair

As an editor and publisher for over twenty years, I’ve worked with many writers and I’ve always shared the common publishing view that you’ve either got writing talent or you haven’t. If the flair’s there, it’s worth honing, nurturing and developing. If it isn’t, don’t encourage the writer.

I held this view steadfastly during my time as Senior Editor at Pan Books, Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton, and when I became Editorial Director of Pan Macmillan and Joint Managing Director of The Women’s Press. But in 2005, I decided to go it alone and set up my own business as a publishing consultant and writing coach.

Breaking down the barriers

I began working with writers who were just starting out - reading their work, meeting them, talking to them on the telephone, helping them to understand the bewildering world of publishing and what publishers and agents actually want. When I started, I thought I would mostly be telling writers, gently and clearly, that they hadn’t got what it takes. And then I noticed a remarkable thing. As I worked with authors, and as I talked to them about the difficulties they were experiencing, the challenges they faced, the reasons their work wasn’t having enough of an emotional impact on the reader, often something was unlocked. Often, draft two or draft three was suddenly remarkably different. At that point, I began to change my mind about the whole talent question. Perhaps, in reality, we all have talent, but there are barriers – lack of knowledge of the publishing world, fear of exposure or failure, the ability to create the time and space to write – that hold us back.

It’s a tough world out there

This isn’t to say that I’m not realistic. I still give writers clear and honest feedback about their potential to be published and that’s often not the feedback the writer wants to hear. And I alert writers to the realities of the publishing world – it is extremely and increasingly tough to get a publishing deal. But I have been surprised by the amount of talent that is out there, just needing some encouragement and support to flourish.

Our beloved babies

For some of my writers, publication is the aim and nothing else will do. Others want to write the best book they can possibly write for the satisfaction that gives them. That changes the advice I give and the way I work. Some writers will come to me for initial feedback on their work and then go away for months as they rewrite. Others come regularly for detailed editing and support throughout the writing process. All of them come to accept that writing a good book takes months, often years, of sustained, hard, committed work. But most find it a highly satisfying and rewarding process. Alice Walker once said that having a child was like letting your heart walk around outside your body – a graphic picture of the vulnerability motherhood creates. And I think writing is a little like that – something internal and personal is being put out in the world for other people to look at and comment on. This can be a delicate, painful process. But most mothers would say that they wouldn’t be without their children. And I bet most writers wouldn’t be without their books.

~~~~~~~~~

To contact Kathy Gale about her work as a writing coach:
Kathy.gale@kgpublishingservices.co.uk
www.kgpublishingservices.co.uk

Photo: thanks to bookseller.com

by Guest blogger Alan Lane

Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest with the late Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, died in New Zealand on 11 January 2008, aged 88.

As a tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary’s extraordinary life, writer Alan Lane steps back in time to recount a conversation with Hillary in Canada on the 30th anniversary of the Everest climb. He talks about the ascent and his life at that time.

Big Ed

It is no coincident that Edmund Percival Hillary has become known as ‘Big Ed.’ As he rises from his chair to greet you, there develops a feeling of size (he is 6ft 3 in tall, broad- shouldered and close to 200lb). There is also a breadth of vision gained from a lifetime embracing challenges which for others remain permanently in their fantasies.

The appearance is craggy, but unlike the ascent on Everest, approaching the former bee-keeper from Taukau, New Zealand, is considerably easy. The grin on the weathered face is genial, and deep-set eyes trained from years of scanning distant horizons peer searchingly from beneath cliff-like brows. The handshake is firm without trying to impress.

Hillary has never given any time to pretence or the fineries of society. Loping through the Toronto headquarters of Simpsons-Sears, who he advises on sporting equipment, he is unmistakable among the well-groomed secretaries and executives. A rumpled suit and bulging, battered briefcase which has seen many a base camp, underline his down-to-earth informality and aversion to the cocktail circuit. “I have never been a great social butterfly and can well do without it,” he tells me.

For many people all over the world, Big Ed dropped out of sight after Everest. As one Australian student told him at a Sydney high school: I’m glad you’re looking so well. I have read abut you in the history books and I thought you were dead.”

Since then he has led the first vehicle expedition overland to the South Pole and headed an international group searching for the Yeti (the Abominable Snowman). He also led an expedition travelling in jet boats up the Ganges River in India to trace its source in the Himalayas.

Physically-fit

Now in his early 60s, this maestro of the snowline has always striven to stay physically-fit. He never trains formally for expeditions but walks an hour a day. To maintain his best climbing weight he will walk for five days in the Himalayan foothills in Nepal to his work building schools and hospitals with the Sherpa people. He would rather walk than take an aircraft. Once he walked 240 km (150 miles) in 12 days, climbing to 1500m (5,000ft) when monsoons grounded flights.

This firm grasp on his physical condition has at times been elusive. One day in New Zealand as his 50th year approached, he took a look at himself and became disenchanted with what he saw.

“I had a mild hangover from a surfeit of good food and wine, my discarded clothes reeked with other people’s tobacco smoke. Almost unconsciously I was slipping into the easy habits of most of the well-meaning, self indulgent and well-heeled members of society. If I became too physically soft I would be worth nothing to myself or to anybody else.”

On a notepad beside the bed he wrote a short list of resolutions – things he had wanted to do for years which would help to keep him reasonably fit and adventurous.

The first task was to escape the telephone and the concrete jungle – his term for a city. This was achieved by building a cottage on the cliffs above the Tasman Sea, outside Auckland, in New Zealand’s North Island – facing the setting sun and without a telephone. The list of objectives has continued to grow.

Such a life has not been without its personal traumas for Edmund Hillary. The death of his wife, Louise, and daughter in a Katmandu air crash several years ago has left “a great gap” in his life. Louise was a constant companion on his aid projects in the Himalayas – the place where he has directed most of his energies in recent years, away from the high profile glories of mountaineering.

The lectures he gives have increasingly reflected deeper involvement in world problems – racialism, the population explosion, conservation of the environment and the increasing gap in wealth between the rich and poor nations.

Nepalese mountain people

During his years among the Nepalese mountain people he became committed to improving their physically demanding, harsh lifestyle. He set up his Himalayan Foundation in New Zealand and established a Canadian equivalent to raise funds for this work.

Since the early 1960s, he and a team of helpers and the Sherpa people have provided hospitals, schools, airfields and piped water for the mountain people of Nepal. It’s a major contribution to a country of 13 million people, where only nine out of every 100 can read or write, and the nearest medical care for many is several days’ walk away.

Working, planning and climbing in Nepal can take up to six months of his year. During this time he strives to prepare the mountain people for inevitable changes in their lifestyle.

“Tourism has become an important business and quite a lot of money is involved,” he says. “There is nothing much I can do about these changes but I can try to ensure, with the agreement of the local people, that they do not get left behind.

“What has happened so many times is that the local people become needed just as a source of labour. By providing education, health care and communication facilities I have been able to ensure that the Sherpas have the knowledge of how to do things for themselves – such as running the hotels and trekking businesses which have been established. I prefer to see the Sherpas steering their own ship rather than just being trampled on.”

The changes for which Hillary is preparing the Sherpas are already influencing their way of life.

“Divorce is much more common now in the community. The Sherpas are under great pressure of a type they had not previously experienced. Their previous tough, hard lifestyle had a regular pattern of habits but now they have a great deal more money and their lifestyle is changing. I want to see them confident in their new environment and I have been able to play a small part in achieving this.”

Hillary’s no-nonsense style and earthy approach to life is legendary. A suggestion that a larger share of New Zealand’s national purse should be devoted to assisting the poorer countries drew the following reply from the Minister of Finance (described by Hillary as “well nourished”): “I think Sir Edmund Hillary knows as much about the New Zealand economy as I know about mountain climbing.”

Even at what was the pinnacle of mountaineering achievement, his style remained unchanged. After the descent from Everest’s summit he told fellow expedition members: “Well, we knocked the bastard off.”

Everest ascent

Thirty years later, Hillary cast his mind back to 11.30am on May 29, 1953, when he stepped on to the summit of Everest, with the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. It was a time of climbing with simple army equipment, leather boots which froze and thick hemp rope of the type used by ships – far removed from the specialized gear of today.

“My first reaction was one of surprise. I had been brought up thinking this mountain could never be conquered. Now, here was Ed Hillary on top of Everest. Who’d believe it. Everest was just another mountain. There are dozens of projects which have all been just as important.”

Would he do it again?

“I am physically incapable of doing it again. If I did try, I would tackle the most difficult route.”

He is amazed how the mystique of Everest has been retained. “We really felt it would all fade away when we conquered it. But there are still people lining up waiting to climb.”

On climbing and challenge today, he has this to say: “It is nonsense that people climb mountains just because they’re there. You wouldn’t put up with all that discomfort and grind your heart out just for the sake of it. It’s the challenge of fear and danger. You struggle with them. You extend your limits.

“There are challenges all around us if we take the trouble to identify them. Modern mountaineers are doing much more difficult things today than we were. The purpose of climbing then was to find the easiest way up. The route we took on Everest was only moderately difficult. Now the challenge is the difficult route.”

Rather a tent than hotel

As the interview draws to a close, Edmund Hillary prepares to leave for the United States, where he will test camping equipment for Sears Roebuck.

“I’m looking forward to that,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “I’d rather sleep in a tent any day than stay in a hotel.”

We shake hands and it’s time to say farewell to this giant of a man.

As he sets off down the street, I recall his style of parting from fellow climbers at a crossroads deep in the Himalayas. They would be simple affairs. With a cheery “see you in a few months,” Big Ed would set off on foot heading for perhaps India, Tibet or Pakistan, quietly disappearing into the mist. In comparison, some of the traumas in our own lives could seem a little overdone.

While in the United States, Hillary will continue to raise funds for his work in the Himalayas. There, among the great mountains, he is known by the Sherpas as ‘Burra Sahib’ (Big Sir).

These hill people are never far from his mind. They gave him his most prized accolade for climbing Everest: a decoration from the Katmandu Taxi Drivers’Association.

His concern for the Sherpas’ future is well founded.

Tenzing, now 69, and known as the Tiger of the Snows in his home town of Darjeeling, said earlier this year: “There is a lot of change since Nepal opened for trekking. Everything is too commercial. Even the monks are having tea shops now, not praying any more.”

Alan Lane Toronto 1983

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A tribute

11 January 2008. The news of Sir Edmund Hillary’s death made me dig deep into my files for a copy of this interview. Past conversations are not normally worth resurrecting; but the life of a bee-keeper from New Zealand was different. Here was someone who saw the big picture. Here was someone who managed fame and humanitarian work with equal humility; someone who grabbed life and ran with it.

Meeting the great man, the first on the roof of the world, left a lasting impression.

© Copyright Alan Lane Poole, UK January 2008

Alan Lane is founder and chief executive of VASGAMA providing reputation management consulting to international corporations and government.

Photo: thanks to achievement.org

Cheryl Snell left a comment on one of my posts, mentioning her cross-cultural Canadian and Hindu experiences. I was intrigued so I followed the link to her blog and website and found that she had written a novel about a Westerner’s experience of marrying into a Hindu family. Naturally, I had to find out more! So I invited Cheryl to write a guest piece of Fusion View.

By way of background, Cheryl Snell is a Washington DC writer, and the author of four books, including the poetry collections Flower Half Blown (Finishing Line Press, 02), Epithalamion (Little Poem Press, 04) and Samsara (Pudding House Publications, 07). She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times, and is the book reviews editor for Alsop Review. She can be reached at cherylsnell3 [at] gmail.com.

Cheryl keeps two blogs, one devoted to poetry and her sister’s art at http://www.snellsisters.blogspot.com; the other an author’s blog built around her debut novel at http://www.shivasarms.blogspot.com . The novel, Shiva’s Arms (The Writer’s Lair Books) explores the relationship between an American woman and her Hindu Brahmin in-laws.

She writes:

When I first met my new family, this passage from Wonderland’s Alice popped into my head– “What if I should fall right through the center of the earth…oh, and come out the other side, where people walk upside down?” I knew the basics—don’t touch the men, no shoes in the house, have a fry pan uncontaminated by meat handy. But there were an overwhelming number of ambiguities to sift through, from the comic head-shaking that looked like No but meant Yes, to the serious conflict between freedom and family.

I had been pulled into samsara, the important householder stage. The word conjured up images of drowning in the domestic sea, and I had read many novels by Indians—Narayan, Desai, Mukerjee—who touched on its complications. I began to imagine my own project, a new novel built on the swirl of relationships around me. Always drawn to the stories with characters belonging to two cultures, I wanted to know which part of a divided self goes and which part stays.

To pit a fictional family with the weight of ancient traditions behind them against the quintessential unsuitable bride would help me to delve into an immigrant’s liminal state, from both points of view. Thresholds are so alive, with the way dualities merge, overlap and intrude on one another, I knew the intersection of cultures would afford me ample imagery. As a poet, I appreciated that.

Writing poetry transcends the personal, for me, whereas fiction relies on empathy. For both forms, I start with an image, a phrase, or an idea. Both forms distill language and meaning–in a poem every word counts, sound and syllable. In fiction, the sentences must advance plot or reveal character. With a novel, revisions are more rigorous, more of a juggle. With so much to take into consideration—characters, scenes, and points of view—it seems counter-intuitive that a novel is more forgiving. But I find that its sprawl makes it more tolerant . “In the novel or short story you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival,” May Sarton once wrote.

That’s not to say that it’s an orderly progression. When characters run amok, and suddenly have their own plans, it’s hard to force them back into the author’s. Mary Lee Settle advised that empathy without identity is one way to keep control of a character, but it’s difficult to maintain that distance. Transformation, the way the characters change, what conclusion the narrator comes to, are born out of writing one’s way into the piece again and again, trying on different plots, tone, voice. I feel my way.

Sometimes, when all is said and done, a character has more to say. My new novel follows Nela from Shiva’s Arms, back to India. The woman who has spent her life resisting samsara finds meaning by rescuing a little girl from child marriage, at great personal cost to herself. I imagine I can hear them talking together in my poem “Veranda.”

Above sounds of a sunset world
whoops of children rise. We lean
against verdigris, watch the streetlight evolve
like some star buzzing blue to white,
then a steady nostalgic amber.

lamplighters lit my village gaslights with a hook;
old men rocking on verandas nodded off

The widow in white climbs our hill, secrets
folded in her apron. She naps here
like your auntie, one eye open to the world,
sandals dangling off her toes.

The man next door pedals his bicycle so slow,
we worry for his balance. He waves to us
like laundry on a line, half-hearted surrender.

the veranda became a sleeping-porch on hot nights;
a place for cricket games during monsoon

Houses tuck themselves in. Lamps flicker on,
rising story by story. Silence blooms, holding
its breath. I sweep the pots of flag-striped flowers
from our porch, crockery from the table.

You need more room in this place.
I will make room for you.

Photo: of Cheryl and her husband Krisha - thanks to Cheryl Snell

.

A while back, translator Nicky Harman wrote a guest blog piece for Fusion View about the book she was translating from Chinese to English, Striking Root. She was looking for a publisher at that time and we put a plea out via Fusion View to anyone who might be able to help her.

A little later, I received an email from an editor asking to contact to Nicky and naturally, I forwarded the email on. Nicky also reported that she had made contact with a literary agent who had checked out her credentials online and the Fusion View article had been helpful in adding to Nicky’s credentials in that context.

Recently, I received this email from Nicky:

Dear Yang-May

I thought you’d like to know that I have finally found a publisher for Striking Root! University of Hawaii Press have accepted it, and so it will come out in the US before here. I am delighted ….. now I get on with what I’m best at - translating.

Thanks very much for your encouragement, and I do hope all is well with you

best wishes

Nicky

Wow! I am thrilled for Nicky and equally thrilled that Fusion View played a small part in her path to publishing success!

Congratulations, Nicky!