And the winner is...

AUSTRALIAN woman Deanne Scanlan is the winner if our exclusive Bent Banana Books T-Shirt.

Deanne won the t-shirt as one of the first 15 Likers of the BBB Facebook Page. HERE 

Only two of these exclusive shirts are in circulation. The other one is in Sweden.

Second prizewinner isTony Koch who receives a copy of my book, 7 Shouts. BUY eBook here 

We are hoping the next t-shirt goes to the Americas and the trio will be across the globe. If you know anyone in the Americas, ask them to like BBB Facebook Page. HERE 

These T-shirts are not for sale. They can only be won by supporters of Bent Banana Books. There are two designs, the fetching minimalist one and one for the extroverts among us.

When we have 25 Likers, BBB will send out three prizes. All 25 Likers will be eligible and those odds are pretty good.

One of the prizes will be a t-shirt and the other 2 will be something different.

Like BBB Facebook Page. HERE 

Cheers
          Bernie

9 ways art tells the story

THREE years ago, the not-so-magnificent seven of us were sitting around, drinking coffee and eating crackers laden with chili-cheese dip.

We were gathered in the comfortable recreation room – actually a detached building – at the home of Arts Alliance president Ken Armstrong.

It was one of monthly committee meetings of the alliance we had formed two years earlier as an umbrella organisation to represent the artists of our local area.

President Ken did not have to travel to meetings at his place and, in exchange for that comfort, he supplied the excellent coffee, tasty dips and the occasional small glasses of red wine.

Representing the arts community,  those of us who enjoyed a quiet drink felt it was fitting to indulge in the traditional arty red rather than a white cousin.

Theatrical representative Ray Swenson suggested the Alliance put together  an anthology of short stories from local writers.

Artists Ken Armstrong and Daniel Wagner said we should illustrate each story. The annual arts alliance anthology was born. Ken and Dan produced the covers for the first anthologies.

Ken took on the role of Illustrations  Editor at our usual rate of pay  -  priceless appreciation for a love job well done.

An  anthology of short stories, each with original illustration, is a rare beast.   I am yet to see one from the Big Six mainstream publishers. Such a creation fulfils for the vow of Bent Banana Books to produce books that are different.

I present a selection of the  art from  our 2010 and 2011 anthologies

Elena Ventura creates a technologically enhanced citizen for Brenda Simcox-Hunt's sardonic tale  2060 Woman. Elena was a finalist in the prestigious Australian award (since 1949) Blake Prize for Religious Art named after the poet/ artist William Blake who some believe was a Druid priest. It is from the anthology Can you believe it...

Multi award winning artist Michelle Caitens renders an impressionistic urban landscape for the story The Other Side of Life, written by the artist's daughter, Jenna Caitens for The Writing on the Wall, the anthology coming soon as an eBook through Bent Banana Books. The story and artwork are now available in 5 Strong Bricks in the Wall.

This Ken Armstrong illustration is for Audrey Sanderson's The Anniversary (available in The Writing on the Wall and 5 Strong Bricks in the Wall.) I like the sense of joy Ken has captured as the young woman tries on a new pair of shoes.

Another one from Elena illustrates Best Mates by Anne Olsson from Can you believe it.

Elena's skill has rendered a vivid portrait from the back. Can't you just see the sunset or the lagoon the contented couple are looking at. 

Michelle's sketch of a young woman has such fine detail in the eyes, the mouth and the clutched note. You just have to love how Michelle has captured the state of the young woman's mind in the hair. It is for Too Late for Heroes, written by 18-year-old Maddi Mitchell and found in Can you believe it.

Another from Ken for Peter Bowler's Tempting the Devil  (available in The Writing on the Wall and 5 Strong Bricks in the Wall.) 

 Yet another from Ken, this one illustrating my story Codpiece and Chips from Can you believe it. My anti-hero Steele Hill has three loves - horse-racing, rock music and girlfriend,Natalie, unfortunately, in that order. A meal of fish and chips is prominent in the yarn.

 You have probably gathered Ken is very much hands-on as an illustrations editor. This is is his artwork for L. G. Dalton's A Once Upon a Time Tale in Can you believe it.

But Can you believe it HERE and 5 Strong Bricks in the Wall HERE

Cheers

Bernie

7 Celebrities cultivated in 7 Shouts

YOU know actor George Clooney personally and regard him as the nastiest person on earth.

You are invited to a dinner party with the traditional girl-boy/girl-boy seating. You are placed next to George Clooney whom you cannot stand the sight of. You cut your eyes out with the fish knife and the soup spoon rather than look at Clooney.

The paramedics arrive and ask why. You reply: ‘if you knew George Clooney, you would do it too.’

This dinner-party anecdote drills to the weird core of the phenomenon we know as the cult of celebrity.

I have at least seven celebrities embedded in my book of anecdotes, musings and stuff-made-up, 7 Shouts. I may have put the celebs in for a nobler reason than wanting to sell more books. I probably did.

The cult of celebrity does not upset me as much as it does other, particularly male, critics. Still, I find it a worthy topic of discussion at dinner parties or elsewhere.

The critics mundane gambit against the thrust of celebrity is to rail against the idolised who are famous for being famous. I do not have to mention names such as Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton but I will. It would be a shame to waste a column on celebrity without frequent name dropping.

I find fame for fame’s sake to be the most elegant expression of the cult of celebrity. To me, the most troubling part of the fame of Ms Kardashian and Ms Hilton – Kimi and Paree, as I like to call them – is they do stuff. To be and not to do; that is the answer for the ultimate celebrity challenge.

What does annoy me most about the cult followers is when they express undying love or eternal hatred of someone they have never met. I doubt Mr Clooney is a nasty person at all and he would certainly be far from the nastiest on the planet but part of me wishes it were true. I could use it as evidence against anyone who says he is so gorgeous. Ooh, and a really nice guy, too.

I am in the room when you are saying this. Am I not gorgeous and a really nice guy? Well, no! I am just your average citizen of the world with good points and bad – just like George Clooney, I suspect.

At the other end of the celebrity spectrum are the cultists who say, ‘I can’t stand him/ her’ when a celebrity face appears in the media or on a television screen. You know the critic is a cultist as they use the exact same words every time, ‘I can’t stand him/ her.’ Again,  I’m here in the room. Why can’t you can’t stand me?

I will explain the context of some of celebrity drop-ins throughout 7 Shouts.

Russell Crowe is there to illustrate the Aussie habit of claiming a famous New Zealander as their own.

Celebrities can lose their Australian nationality if they behave badly. Russell Crowe might lose his place in the sequel to 7 Shouts. He has fewer than 400,000 Twitter followers, compared to Kevin Spacey’s 2.2 million. What’s going on there, Rusty (as I like to call Crowe)? I do not wish to threaten a character in my book, but Rusty, I am expecting a better performance. No, Russell, talk to the hand about that Academy Award; we are on about celebrity in the real Nirvana of fame, Tweetyland, not Hollywood.  For the record, I have 21 followers on Twitter and I would like to thank every one of them for their support and all that sort of guff.

Pop duo the Veronicas I used in 7 Shouts to illustrate how media based in State capitals appropriate celebrities from outside their borders. Twins Lisa and Jess Origliasso grew up in Pine Rivers shire, north of the Queeensland capital but Brisbane media claims them as their own. Lisa has 204, 000 Twitter followers and Jess 195, 000. If we can spark some sibling rivalry, those numbers might increase before the release of the sequel to 7 Shouts.

Performer Delta Goodrem – 173,000 Twitter followers; come on Del (as I like to call her) lift your game  –  is in a fun piece about buying a Christmas present for an impoverished teenage boy by trying to line him up for a date with Delta.

I needed sports celebrities in 7 Shouts and two of them are Australian Olympic swimmer Jessicah – I really do call her Jess – Schipper and Ethiopian middle distance runner Hicham El Guerrouj. It was a privilege to see Schipper rise from a humble hard-working schoolgirl to an Olympic Gold Medal winner. For the El Guerrouj story, I was able to work in Rastafarian hero Haile Selassie and I was pleased about that.

Two children’s authors were literary celebs: Aussie Colin Thiele and Brit J. K. Rowling.

I am pleased Australian political celebrity Kevin Rudd is making the news everyday with his challenge to become Prime Minister again. All I need him to say is ‘I’m not challenging; if I were, it would be in 7 Shouts’. US president Barrack Obama visited Australia so that he would appear in the book.

The cult of celebrity may appear to be based on delusional connections with fantasy figures. But at heart, it bonds real people around the water cooler, on a corner of Twitter, in the collective readership of a book. It also sells almost every commodity on earth, including 7 Shouts.

Buy 7 Shouts HERE.

Pet Peeve # 1

THE most abused word in the literary world is audience.

And this, dear readership, introduces an occasional Save the Book series, Pet Peeves.

You are welcome to comment or send in a guest peeve.

Now back to Pet Peeve # 1

Cheers

Bernie 

• From Oxford University Press

THE most abused word in the literary world is audience.

Writers misuse it, along with editors and publishers.

Readers do not listen to a book; they read it, unless it is from the relatively small emerging class of audio-books.

The word is appropriated from the theatre. To the pedant, the word is wrong there, too. Theatrical consumers are audio-visualisers, though that makes them sound like producers rather than users.

What makes audience an acceptable descriptor in theatre is the passage of time.

I do not want time to make audience an acceptable synonym for the perfectly serviceable readership. I believe that boat is yet to sail. We do need strategies to prevent it leaving port.

Strategy #1

You are pitching your novel to a publisher and she asks, ‘what is your target audience.’

Usually, my favoured response to this question is: `people who can read.’

Now I suggest a more specific reply. You feign obtuseness to ask: ‘You mean when my novel is turned into a play?’

It will probably cost you any chance of a contract but who wants to ‘nurtured’ by a publisher who does not know the meaning of words.

Strategy #2

A friend asks how your self-published history of artichokes is going. Reply: ‘not well, the audience walked out before chapter 4.’

Most people know writers are crazy and your friend will nod as if what you just said made sense. And he will pass on your appraisal to other friends, some of whom will realise you made a sophisticated jest.

As a reward for your bon mots, a few will buy copies of your history of artichokes, which, BTW, I found fascinating.

Strategy #3

 Your editor says you are losing your audience with too much back-story in the early chapters. You reply: ‘I only wrote it for deaf people.’ The editor will process the reply and soon realise you are making fun of her where it really hurts: her trade of words. She will hate you forever after but she will be scrupulous in further editing of your book so you do not catch her out again.

Strategy #4

 You are ecstatic the literary editor of your local newspaper chooses to review your book himself.  It is a glowing review with the central theme of your great connect with your audience.

You write a letter to the literary editor, pointing out his continual misuse of the word, audience.

You never receive another review. You lament the loss of a few thousand readers, but are proud of doing your bit to save the literary canon.

Strategy #5

You re-send this blog through social media. Your friends who read it think: ‘That Bernie Dowling is a nit-picker. Shouldn’t he be finishing his play instead of writing stuff such as that?’

And you are right. I should get back to my play. My readership awaits. I mean my audience calls.

IF you have a pet literary peeve, become a member of this blog or email me at bentbananabooks@gmail.com

What the Dickens: birthday wishes

I FOUND them dull, most of the thousands of words written to mark the 200^th birthday of English author Charles Dickens.

It was almost as if he had been re-categorised in history’s library as a somewhat  tedious celebrity rather than an author who used humour, pathos, social observation  and clever word-play to agitate for social reform, especially the reduction of  poverty.

The Christian Science Monitor ran with an Occupy tag-line on the link to its story: Charles Dickens birthday: a 19th century voice for the 99 percent’  Curiously, CSM did not feature the Occupy analogy prominently in the story layout.

No doubt more than one Open Letter was addressed to Dickens, but this from biographer, Claire Tomalin, asks what he would think of our times.She thinks he would be ‘daunted’ by the increasing prison population in an age of decreasing crime

(Personally I think he would give the Occupy Movement a better run than most of his fellow journalists.) LETTER

The Washington Post ran with a defence of Dickensian verbosity. Whatever! WORDSMITH

The National Post had the obligatory ‘Ten things you might not know about Charles Dickens’, proving numbers are more sacrosanct in popular culture today than 200 years ago. TEN

The Los Angeles Times tried to embarrass us by asking how many Dickens novels we have read. (From my experience, the answer for the average newspaper reader would be more than the average newspaper journalist.) BOOKS

 

Confirming my theory of new media, the most interesting analysis came as a comment to an article in the Times of India.

Here is the comment in its entirety,

Enjoy the Dickensian humanity.

Cheers
Bernie

Sid Harth (navanavonmilita) wrote:
I was a born poor, tenth baby. Poverty is not such a big deal in India. More people are poor in India that any other country of the world.

However, I as a poor boy and Charles Dickens, as a celebrity writer, got along just fine. Frankly, Charles tells, according to his writing and subsequent adaptations of his stories, less than what it does to the human spirit.

It must be a fashion in England. Not in India. Poverty existed then, as well as today, side by side with filthy riches.

For instance, the richest man in India, Mukesh Ambani, built a mansion atop a hill. Spent one billion dollars, furniture, decorating and other do-dads, not included, for four members of his family.

I called it, "the most ugly house on the hill." It is not the modern architecture, I was talking about. It is OK by me. It was his most arrogant placement of that house, practically darkening the houses near his. Moreover, what view he has looking outside of his giant house is no beautiful at all. Slums here. Slums there and slums everywhere.

What Charles Dickens did was to show the miserable conditions of the poor. It shocked the society. If I write a book on poverty, nobody would buy my book.

Sorry Charles.

...and I am Sid harth@topcogitoergosum.com

 

 

Poking fun at focus groups

I tried my hand at parody for our anthology Can you believe it...
What better target  for satiric verse than politicians using focus groups to develop policy.
You can buy Can you believe it... HERE
If you like this parody feel free to pass it on.
Cheers
Bernie

How they Brought the Good News from Focus Groups

Bernard Browning Dowling

(Gallup is one of Australia’s busiest political pollsters.)

I sprang to the mobile, and Tony, and she;
I Galluped, Jools Galluped, we Gallluped all three;
‘Good speed!’ cried the Whip, as the poll date near grew;
‘Speed!’ echoed the Press to us Galluping through;
Behind sits the Speaker, his tights sank to rest,
And into the midnight we Galluped abreast.

Not a word to each other; we ran the poll race
Neck by neck, stride by stride, ever changing our place;
I turned in my muddle and made its grabs tight,
Then shortened each sentence, and set the pitch right,
Rekindled the cheap shot, stained blacker the wit,
Nor Galluped less readily Tony a bit.

By half-way, Jools groaned; and cried Tony, ‘Quick slur!
‘Your Labs Galluped bravely, the fault’s but in her.’
She’ll remember the day for one heard the quick wheeze
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering freeze,
And comeback, and straight’ning steel of her face,
As up from her haunches she re-joined the race.

‘How they’ll greet us!’—and all in a moment my phone
Rolled neck and crook over, lay dead as a stone;
And there was my mobile to bear the whole weight
Of the news which alone could save Oz from her fate,
With my nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim,
And with circles of red for my  eye-sockets’ rim.

And all I remember is, friends flocking round
As I sat with my head ‘twixt my knees on the ground;
And no voice but was praising this failure of mine,
As I poured down my throat our last measure of wine,
Which the tacticians misreading a Galluping jerk

Said no more than my due who sought good news not work.

You can buy Can you believe it... HERE