Tui's RIPPLE Blog
Hi Everyone. This is my first ever blog. I've made a zillion web sites but no blogs. I guess this is where you can talk to me about Ripple (or anything else you want to talk to me about) Feel free to charge in with any questions. I say to kids in schools, you can ask any question you like but I don't necessarily promise to answer them. That's because their first question is often , "How old are you?"
Well dang it the answer's 59. Might as well get that out of the way.
Well dang it the answer's 59. Might as well get that out of the way.
Had a brilliant ride up the mountain tonight with the WAMOs mountainbike club. Beautiful evening. Thrilling hooning back down again and great company in the pub afterwards. It's good to be alive and fit enough to do a ride like that.
Just got back this morning from Wellington. We had a march through Wellington to try to encourage the politicians to protect the Maui's dolphins by extending the ban on fishing nets that kill so many of them.We carried banners and signs and Pete Bethune got us all cranked up with noisy chants etc. I'd repainted the huge red banner we used for the "Save Japan dolphins" day demonstration, to make the wording say "Save Maui's dolphins." We were photographed and filmed and were on the news I believe. I spent the night before the march on the bus to Wellington and the night after the march on the bus home. So pretty tired after all that, but it was worth it when you think there are only 55 Maui's dolphins left alive.
After writing a book like Ripple, it's extremely sad to think that it looks likely the first species of marine dolphin to become extinct at the hand of man will die out right here in New Zealand and in my own lifetime.
On Saturday, I go to Auckland for the Auckland incarnation of the same protest.
Today we had the funeral march in Auckland for the Maui's dolphins who've died. There was a much bigger crowd than we had even in Wellington. Very different march though. The Wellington one was noisy and rowdy. This one was sad and sombre being a funeral. Lots of cameramen there so we'll be watching the news tonight to see if there's anything about it.Some great Ripple news; the book was accepted by the "Awesome Indies" blog and is currently being displayed on the home page of their site here:
http://awesomeindies.wordpress.com/
She is also displayed on their "Contemporary Fiction" page. I take it as a big honour to be selected by Awesome Indies, since they only accept books of high standard.
Went out from Tauranga on the Gemini Galaxy cruise hoping to spot dolphins but none appeared. It was a beautiful day out there with gentle sou-westerlies and long low lazy ocean swells. So sad to see the big black hideous wreck of the Rena like a blot on the seascape and to know the harm it caused to the surrounding environment.We NEARLY saw a whale but it turned out to be a log with a dorsal "fin."
I felt honoured to hear that Ripple has been awarded the "IndieBrag" medal and listed on the IndieBrag website here:http://www.bragmedallion.com/
Quite a thrill.
Big thanks to the two Goodreads reviewers who reviewed Ripple this week - Kathleen and Darkpool.
Just found out that Ripple has been selected as one of the forty books being taken to Frankfurt by the NZSA to showcase NZ literature. They are doing this because this is the year that NZ is the Country of Honour at Frankfurt. I got in the shower when I found out so no-one could see me cry. I was just so surprised that my little Indie book would receive such an honour. I submitted thinking I had no show. Frankfurt is the biggest book fair in the world.
It's a stunning sight when they're all lit up at night en masse and "playing" with their flames so the huge balloon shaped light masses of colour are dancing in time to the music. We loved it. I flew away in a balloon once, very much on the spur of the moment at the start of the school day. I left my class for the principal to teach. He didn't mind.
Congratulation on getting a showing at 2012 Frankfurt book fair. I will be attending it for the fourth time. Would u like a report of how u tiny tale screamed out to be a universal hit. Haven't read "ripple" but will at Frankfurt. The kiwis have always presented their writers way better than Australia. Best of luck. Joel
Joel, You have me really intrigued now. What tiny tale do you mean? Is that Clancy? Hope we can meet up there. Look me up at the NZ pavilion.
Just got back from Auckland where I'm busy having a timber book-selling booth made. The plan is to take it around the markets and sell print copies of Ripple to the public, to try to get the money together to get me to Frankfurt in October.
Made resolution to keep this blog up-to-date!So much to tell! I'm madly learning German. It's a slow process to learn a new language. My air tickets for Frankfurt arrived today. Quite emotional for a stay-at-home like me.
Also working on Rigel's Prayer quite regularly now though it has been very patchy recently. Writing a sad part yesterday and went through a few tissues.
Had two amazing bike rides yesterday and today. It's getting dark so early now we always seem to end up riding in the pitch darkness. Last night I found myself miles away from anywhere alone, on a high hilltop where I stopped to wait for some others to turn up and I turned out my lights and it was black as pitch with no moon or stars (clouds hid them.) It was such a lonely spot with no houses, no people, nothing but trees, steep hills, and mountains all around. Away in the distance I got the odd glimmer of red light form the windmills they have on the windfarm on the west coast. Fantastic. Wouldn't have been stuck at home on the couch for anything.Today we rode in the bush near here and it was so beautiful in a different way. Not as high and wild and windswept but rushing streams, lush forest, winding paths weaving their way through a setting so storybook, you can really feel the patupaiarehe (fairies of the mist) playing around you all the way.
Another fantastic bike ride but this time we managed to get out there in the middle of a lovely cold sunny winter's day so no need to have our lights on for once. This was very different form the last two rides as we were on our road bikes and went in the direction of civilisation and cafes. Coffee and delicious lunch half way through a long ride - what more could you ask?
What an exciting but terrifying few days we've just had. During the weekend my daughter Heather was flown by helicopter from her rather remote home near Stanthorpe in Queensland to the Mater Mother's hospital in Brisbane. She was in early labour. At the hospital they managed to stabilise things and give her medication to help strengthen the baby's lungs in case she was born early. An early birth was staved off, but only for a day or two. Mica Tasman Dawes arrived on Sunday night just before midnight, ten weeks and one day ahead of schedule, making me a grandmother for the first time. We are told Mica is in the best hospital in the Southern Hemisphere for being born prematurely. The staff are hugely expert there and can deal with a ten week premature baby with ease. Heather is well and providing milk for Mica who is in an incubator most of the time, though Heather is allowed to touch her and cuddle her.On a completely different tack, just in the last few hours, Jeff's son Paul, who is a fireman, pulled some teenagers out of a submerged car. They were hospitalised with hypothermia as they'd been in the water an hour with only a small pocket of air to breathe. He managed to secure the car and pull them out of it. They could not have lasted much longer if he hadn't got there. Paul's wife Deryn then stayed with the boys' younger siblings to allow the parents to get to the hospital to see their teens.
The interview regarding Ripple's B.R.A.G Medallion success is now live. It looks wonderful and makes me feel proud. Not sure about the hat but at least it's colourful.The interview is here:http://layeredpages.blogspot.co.nz/20...
Ripple and I are now in the countdown to the big trip to Frankfurt for the Book Fair. I am very nervous about surviving in such a big city, the biggest I have been in, in my life. I am a country girl at heart and ever more will be, but this is an opportunity not to be missed and I will see a whole new side of life and the literary world and have the opportunity to make contacts I could never otherwise make. Wish me luck as my preparations continue.The NZSA catalogue is printed and the Ripple page looks great. I will take plenty of copies and a zillion Ripple cards to hand out. It is so scary but so exciting. Just wish I could ride there on my mountainbike or sail there in a boat instead of having to sit all those hours (days?) in an aeroplane.
Thanks Kathleen. Wednesday at the library will be excellent practice for the "frantic Frankfurt five-minute pitch." LOLIt will be a bit scarier though since we'll be addressing a big audience in a big auditorium, instead of just one publisher at a time.
The Frankfurt Night in the library went well and I even sold some books there.One hilarious aspect emerged. Several of the authors asked me if we could arrange someone sitting near the front of the audience to make a signal at 4½ minutes to let the speaker know their 5 minutes was almost up.
My Jeff got the job. He was the perfect choice, being a numbers man anyway, with no interest in literary talk. This way he got to be the one telling all those authors it was time they shut up!
He took it a bit seriously though and thought it was his responsibility to MAKE them shut up.
There he was frantically waving his NZSA Frankfurt catalogue, while the authors droned on ignoring him. You had to laugh. He also had to put up with me whacking him with MY Frankfurt catalogue, to try and stop him from being so rude.
He said the whole evening was far more stress than he'd banked on, and meant he couldn't even ALLOW himself to take interest in anything anyone said in case forgot to keep checking his stopwatch.
Miriam, the lady whose alpaca website I do, came around today to drop off two garments, a shawl and a poncho. Her gifts to me for doing her website. She wanted me to see them before I left for Oz.(leaving for Oz first thing in the morning.)They're made from naturally black alpaca fibre from two black alpacas she has bred herself. It's felted so delicately it's like cobweb. Onto this midnight background, she's hand felted and embroidered and embellished in deep blues and greens with pearl koru spirals and little glittery stars creating the effect of a shimmering ocean at night with green and blue dolphins leaping. Very reminiscent of the cover of my book. They come even more to life under electric light which sets all the shimmery bits dazzling like a starry sky.
They are spectacular and I will be wearing them in Frankfurt at the book fair. The poncho will look terrific during the day and the shawl is more formal and it will be great at the closing cocktail party. I'll be wearing the poncho when I do my five-minute pitch. In one blink, these fantasy garments tell everyone who I am and what's inside my head. They're like an exterior display of the interior world of mine that gave rise to Ripple.
They're unique works of art and priceless. I can be certain that no-one else at the fair could possibly be wearing anything like them. I've always wanted to own something created by Miriam but today when she turned up with these I was gobsmacked.
Here's the website I do for her:
http://www.karisma-alpacas.co.nz/
Got back last weekend, from spending time with my new grand-daughter in Australia. She is perfect and it was so sad to leave her there so far away from Grandma.
Three more sleeps and I'm off to Frankfurt for the book fair. Got my bag all packed and everything ready. Got my five minute pitch fully memorised and my 10 second pitch all ready to rumble. That's the one they call the "elevator pitch," because you have time to trot it out if you happen to find yourself chatting to the CEO of Harper Collins New York, in the elevator at the fair.
Can't believe I haven't reported here about Frankfurt yet. How slack of me. I've given speeches about it, written magazine articles about it and told everyone else about it but not my Goodreads blog. So here goes:To be at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the year NZ was Country of Honour there was an amazing and enlightening experience and made me proud to be from New Zealand. The events and setting of the NZ Pavilion were an inspiration to us and to the world. My personal highlight there was meeting and speaking to NZ Author Witi Ihimaera face to face.
As far as “working the halls” I have to say you need to be thick-skinned, very well-prepared and have an awful lot of luck to do well at this. Being country of honour was an extra dollop of luck thrown in from the start.
Don’t think of Frankfurt as being a place where you go to find a publisher. It’s more about publishers selling rights for existing editions to one another – not looking for new material to publish. But if you are also a publisher as I was, (being self-published,) then you have as much right to be there as they do, seeking international outlets for your book. It’s a way of viewing yourself we were taught by Richard Webster of the NZSA before we went. It was a very helpful mindset to hold onto. That was one of many ways we were well supported by the NZSA. Without them the fair experience might have been quite overwhelming. With them behind us and around us, we were free to make the most of it all and always have friendly faces to turn to when we needed them.
I spoke to conventional publishers there who said they had the same experience I had, no contracts, but lots of conversations that could lead to something down the track.
I had many moments of luck, perhaps the most exciting being given the opportunity to pitch my book onstage on the Sparks Stage there. It was a mystery why this chance came to me but I certainly made the most of it.
I may find that long-term nothing concrete comes of my trip, but I still would not have missed it. Nor would I be surprised to find something does come of one of my many conversations there, as people I gave my book to, get the chance to read it and consider.
I have written a short piece about my experience of the fair for the NZ Author magazine.
It is also reported in greater detail (with a picture)on the Indiebrag website here:
http://www.bragmedallion.com/blog/rip...
This morning Ripple received her 26th five-star review on Amazon.comIt's the one by a reviewer called . . . *Cierä* ©
It made me feel like crying to get such a heartfelt response from someone on the other side of the world. If she is reading this I hope she knows how much I appreciate her words.
I am delighted to discover and announce that Ripple has just gone into top spot on two Goodreads lists. The "Animal Stories" Listopia and the "Metaphysical Fiction" listopia.To reach top spot on the animal list she had to romp past books of the calibre of Call of the Wild, Watership Down and Life of Pi. All those are books I voted for myself and they are beloved favourites to me and the rest of the world.
What company is Ripple keeping up there at the top of such a list!
But she is such an athlete, no wonder she can leap so high.
Thank-you! yes, it is quite exciting and a little bizarre. I'll wait until my agent has perused the contract, which he's doing today. Then I'll make an announcement about it here.
Tui wrote: "Thank-you! yes, it is quite exciting and a little bizarre. I'll wait until my agent has perused the contract, which he's doing today. Then I'll make an announcement about it here."Whoops - I went ahead and deleted my comment, for now.
So sorry, didn't mean to jump the gun.
(Fingers crossed, though!)
It's not a problem at all - its no secret. I was talking about it on the Australian thread as you've already noticed. So I was quite happy with your comment going in. I'm only waiting to make sure I get a more complete picture of what it means so I can be a little more prepared before making an announcement here. You've just helped to build a little buzz around it first so I'm happy with that. :)
What a week! Ripple gets her second gold medal, I got offered my first paid speaking engagement for Ripple at the best hourly rate I've ever been paid in my life, and now a Ripple interview has gone live on the Visionary Fiction Alliance, with some of the most FUN questions I've ever had to answer. (Like questions concerning music!) Also some of the most IMPORTANT questions I've ever had to answer, (like questions concerning dolphins.)And I happen to know, the Ripple events of this week are not over yet.
Here's the Visionary Fiction the interview:
http://visionaryfictionalliance.wordp...
A "Sneak-peek" of Ripple went live here on Indies Unlimited a few hours ago:http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2013/0...-
peek-ripple/#more-34211
Ripple is free for the next few days, so if you're interested, now's your chance. I'd like as many people as possible to read the book.I would really love it if someone could post a message about this on the UK Amazon's freebies for the day.
Here are the useful links again for you to check it out:
Visionary Fiction Alliance Interview:
http://visionaryfictionalliance.wordp...
Ripple on Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ripple-Dolphi...
Ripple on the .com Amazon (has a lot more reviews)
http://www.amazon.com/Ripple-Dolphin-...
I posted it in the UK, Tui.Good luck with the promotion!
Thank-you - I just saw your post. It caused an immediate improvement in downloads.
Thinking of going to England for Whalefest in about a year. Thinking of going for crowdfunding through Boosted. Have contacted the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society about this also. It could really help Ripple and Ripple could really help whales and dolphins.
Hello to my followers. I have something to ask of you. If you enjoyed reading Ripple, she would benefit greatly from your vote on the list linked below. It is the "Best Books About Animals" list. Because of Ripple's very high review ratings every vote helps her to gain several places. Ripple is currently sitting at 70th place which is excellent for such a very long list as it means she is on the first page already, but more votes could see her much closer to the top, since her review average is higher than most others on the list. If you don't find her at 70th place it may be that some of you have voted and she has moved up.
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/89...
John, I'm working on another novel and have recently published a little story to Readwave that went quite viral collecting 1000 reads in the first 36 hours it was up there.It was read all over the world. I was gobsmacked to tell the truth. It's winning the challenge by so much its almost unassailable even though there are still a few days to go on the challenge. It was the top trending story on Readwave until someone "got to them" and they took it off the trending page. That's the only explanation I can think of since the stories remaining there are "trending" far less than mine is.
It was a story written from the point of view of the mother of the snow white baby dolphin that was kidnapped recently in Taiji and which made world headlines. So its a controversial topic and I notice I had some readers from Japan. Makes you wonder if the yen is srtonger than the pen. (But its not because they can't silence me that way.) If you want to read that little story it is free to read here:
http://www.readwave.com/first-brush-w...
John, your "read" will be recorded anyway and it will add to the mounting hundreds and it all helps the dolphins.
Hi Tui, what ethnicity are you? I know it's a silly and personal question but I need to know for my homework assignment about you, I'm writing about women of color who are interested in environmentalism.
I am a New Zealand European so probably won't fit into your assignments needs, but I'm very flattered to be considered anyway. I'm often presumed to be Maori because of my darkish colouring and my Maori name but not so.
You're welcome to state that wile I'm not Maori, I feel emotionally linked to them through our shared love of cetaceans and my Maori name. I also have many Maori relatives. Might not be enough to impress your teachers though.:)
RIPPLE ARRIVES IN EUROPE!Big announcement. Ripple has just been traditionally published as a hardcover edition in two European nations, The Czech republic and Slovakia.It was translated into the Czech language by the new publisher. The translator's name is Peter Antonin. Help me celebrate the beginning of her journey on the other side of the world, so far from her birthplace here in New Zealand. Fly high my little dolphin.
Right now in Taiji, Japan they are hunting and killing dolphins daily. Every day for the last three days they have butchered pods of Rissos dolphins. All over the world young activists are traumatised and supporting one a another on many facebook threads, where they receive updates of the atrocity from groups like Sea Shepherd who are on the scene to ensure the horror is documented.
To help them through this dark time of year, I decided to make my Ripple free for three days to give them all a chance to get a copy without having to pay. If you share a love and concern for the dolphins dying right now, feel free to get a copy now while its free and spread the world to your like minded friends.
The book is here on the USA Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NHAW4PE
For other Amazon stores the world there are links on my web page here:
http://www.tuiscope.co.nz/pagefiles/r...
Thank-you John. You caused a big jump in downloads.
My author copies of "Vlnka" finally arrived from the Czech Republic today after being 3½ months in transit.The book looks great in translation, even though I can't understand a word!
Here I am with some of them:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.ne...
Nice pic Tui. Glad it looks nice, you can enjoy its look, even though the printed words are foreign.
Finally succumbed to social pressure and got around to publishing Ripple on Smashwords so folks who prefer to read e-pubs can read it on their iPhones and iPads. It is on pre-release for another week or so but with a 40% free sample to decide if you like it first.She's here in iBooks:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/ripp...
And here on Smashwords in multi-format:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Balloons over Waikato this week with the "Night Glow" on Saturday night. Hoping to get along to see that. Driving to my dentist appointment yesterday morning there were dozens of balloons in the sky above the city. What a sight!