Fantasy Writer

Philippa Ballantine is a writer of fantasy novels from New Zealand and you can find her work on her Website. This is quite a long interview as we were having such a good chat and she had so much to say about lots of details do to with being an author.

I am listening to her novel Chasing the Bard now and enjoying the story Seeing as I was born in Stratford upon avon I feel I have a tenuous – very tenuous link to Shakespeare himself. So I like the way that Shakespeare is woven into the story as a fictional character. Philippa reads the story well and it is entertaining. You can get it by going to Podiobooks

She is going down the traditional route of getting published alongside the new and exciting podcasting of novels and electronic Books to use on the likes of the Kindle and the iPad.

Although from NZ Philipa is in the U.S. for most of this year to promote her work at conventions and signings. In the interview she also tells us about a course she is giving in fantasy writing. On Saturday 19th February, Philippa Ballantine will be at Borderlands Books reading from the as yet not released Spectyr, and signing books. Afterwards will probably find a local pub and kick back. Philippa says  ”I hope some of you can make it out. Borderlands is a great store, and my favourite place to shop in San Francisco.”

About Philippa Ballantine

Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Philippa has always had her head in a book. For this she blames her father who thought Lord of the Rings was suitable bedtime reading for an eight year old. At the age of thirteen she began writing fantasy stories for herself.

She first earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Political Science and then a Bachelor of Applied Science in Library and Information Science. So soon enough she found herself working in the magical world of libraries where she stayed for over a decade.

Her first professional sale was in 1997, and since then she has gone on to produce mostly novel length fiction. In 2006 she became New Zealand’s first podcast novelist, and she has voiced and producedWeaver’s Web, Chasing the Bard, Weather Child and Digital Magic as podiobooks. Her podcasts have been short listed for the Parsec Awards, and won a Sir Julius Vogel award.

Philippa is the author of the Books of the Order series with Ace- the first of which Geist was released in October 2010. Spectyr (June 2011), Wrayth (2012) and Harbinger are to follow. She is also the co-author of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series with Tee Morris. Phoenix Rising will debut in May 2011.

When not writing or podcasting, Philippa loves reading, gardening, and whenever possible traveling.

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Stacey is the famous author of the book ‘Drive Your Woman Wild in Bed’ tells me how she skived off from school so she could write her first novel. I was flabbergasted to hear that she was only 19 when you wrote her self help sex book and described some of the difficulties in getting the book published. It is totally amazing that she was able to do that and not get ripped off by the published and agents, it seems it wasn’t easy though.

Stacey is of the old school in as much as she writes long hand with pen and paper. I find that totally weird seeing as it is so easy to use a computer and the writing has to go on a computer at some point anyway. It must be really difficult to do any editing when it is all on paper. But the important thing is that you get the ideas and the story out of the head and made real. I suppose my problem is that I am such a tech head geek. When asked about where she saw her writing going in the next five years Stacey was enthusiastic about the possibility if having control of the publishing, perhaps through self-publishing. Especially seeing as the publishing houses now expect authors to get out and promote their own work to a large extent also.

Stacey Keith has been on more than twenty talk shows, including “Montel Williams,” “Geraldo Rivera,” “Real Personal with Bob Berkowitz,” “Sally Jesse Raphael,” and “Joan Rivers.” In addition to hundreds of radio interviews, Stacey has lectured throughout the United States and the University of Toronto. I really enjoyed talking to her about her writing and I would love to see her move to a second stage of her writing career now that her children are getting grown up. In her blog she has plenty to say and also performs a agony aunt role with answering peoples’ questions about various topics.

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During the interview I mention that I have recently self published and information eBook, and I did it though Lulu.com. I was stunned how easy it was to set it up. I exported the eBook out of Scrivener into the correct ePub format. I got an ISBN from Lulu.com and it will be going live on the iBookStore and I think the Amazon Kindle store too. Delighted that it was possible and the next thing for me to do is to promote the book, I think that is certainly the bigger job.

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John Oehler Thriller writer

My wife was sitting on the bus coming back home from Girona and in the next seat was a guy talking to a friend about his writing and his stories. I was fortunate that she spoke to the guy and asked him if he would be interested in appearing on a podcast for writers. Well the long and short of it is that John Oehler and I worked out a time to record a conversation about writing.

Social networking and the writer

We discussed the use of social networking for writers and how to build an audience or a fan base by talking to people on line. Drip feeding bit of story to the public and getting them hooked on your stories. Seeing as the Independent film making community are doing great with the use of Facebook and Twitter.

Used Ladies underwear

John and I talked about all sorts of thing to do with writing and among them was the story that was on NCIS recently on TV which had used ladies underwear as the subject matter. I was a bit miffed because I had written a story / sketch based on the very same subject. I’d heard about vending machines with used underwear in from a guy that had visited Japan. I was amused by what he had told us about and I started into a story involving knickers. We were talking about cultural differences, east and west. Anyway my story is more comedy sketch than murder mystery. This came up in conversation and also tied in with what John had to say about perfumes.

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Seventh Son Author. JC. Hutchins…

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David Hewson Author of Semana Santa and the Nic Costa series of books.

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Clive has an interesting approach to writing, particularly with his choice of tools to do the job. He told me he use Excel to start with to outline the characters, moving on to using scrivener and then on to Final Draft, which is the industry standard for presenting the movie when makng the film. Final Draft gives the timings for the movie apparently.

The Filmutopia company website, where people can see clips from Clives’ movies and there is also a Filmutopia blog, The blog is published with a new post every Sunday morning – European time, which I then discuss with readers on twitter.

Here’s a little bit of blurb about about Filmutopia :

Clive Davies-Frayne is a screenwriter and producer, whose company Filmutopia Ltd develops and produces feature films for cinema. So far, Clive has written and directed half a dozen short films, including one which won a UK Royal Television Society award.. and also two feature films. The first “Punx,” never completed due to funding issues… the second “No Place” was made in HD with a $750,000 budget was completed in 2005, but has spent the last four years mired in distribution issues…

Filmutopia was founded after “No Place” was completed, when Clive decided to walk away from his previous production company and a nine year business partnership, in order to change dramatically the way his movies were made, in particular the business strategies adopted. Clive admits “Everything I ever learned about how to make movies, I learned by first getting it completely wrong”

Filmutopia’s latest movie project, “Smoke” is a comedy and is currently in the development phase… the projected budget, €6M.

“After making movies the indie way for years and seeing little in return for my efforts, I decided to look at different way to make, finance, market and distribute movies. My passions are movies and the movie business… I don’t see the two as contradictions. All I want to do is entertain people and make a profit in the process.”

Please Leave a comment on this post about the Podcast

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What was so great about talking with Karen was that she is into so many things, like myself she can’t stop herself being interested in a variety of interests. She has published a book called  Painting for Photographers which is available now as an eBook and will be going into print very shortly. It is not her first book either, as karen has written a number of manuals for the Application Painter or PainterX. Karen also is an artist and amazingly like the same styles of art as myself too. Both of us  really like the German expresionists, the surrealist and we both have an appreciation for the talent of Picasso.

You really must have a look at her paintings at her web site. She is conveying a dream world as art and with them being in black and white it reminds me of the work by Giger the artist that created the creature in the movie Alien. Karen is having an exhibition this month of her art work and if you live near enough you are invited to go and have a look.

Karen also writes screen plays for movies and has a script for a romantic comedy, where does she find the time to do all these things?

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Opening Night: September 25, 2009
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Show Sponsor is GoDaddy – I use GoDaddy for all my domains and hosting. I use the deluxe hosting for $7.99 a month and have a number of my domains on the same hosting. It is a huge bargain where other hosting companies will let you only have one domain or perhaps two on a hosting and probably charge more for it too. Godaddy is for me the best place to get domains and I am happy to recommend it to you. If you put in the code POD146 when you get to the check out you will get 10% discount off your order. I tested that out and it works.

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I found these podcasts on iTunes and they are really useful to listen to. I  am always listening to podcasts while walking the dog and listening to some with interviews of writers is brilliant.

In this series Alan Ayckbourn talks about the economy of play writing. Jane Rogers talks about her work as a novelist. Poet and presenter Ian MacMillan has a light hearted look at the use of repetition in his poems.

There are eighteen episodes to listen to and they cover a variety of topics.

All in all a set of podcasts well worth listening to. You can get them here.