Hackpacker

Reviewing Yann Martel's latest offering got me thinking of a mythical phone conversation Yann should have had with his agent. Yann: So I'm writing a new book about a donkey and a howler monkey... Agent: Keep talking, Yann-baby. This has Booker-bagging written all over it! Yann: ... as a fable of the  Holocaust. [pause] Agent: Yann-sweety, I think we might have a crossed line with Art Spiegelman here... Yann: No, no. It'll be great - because I'll bring together that essay I was writing about the Holocaust and create a way of re-imagining the history the way Camus and Orwell did. Agent: Yann, baby-doll, you know you're not Orwell, don't you? And that essay with fiction flip book idea always seemed kinda crazy... [sounds of faux static] There's something wrong with this line. I'll call you back, lambkin... I stayed away from Martell's Life of Pi as long as I could, because it was always being forced on me - usually by a dreadlocked friend who

There's been a lot of talk about how authors need to jump on the iPhone app bandwagon. Having just written Essential Melbourne I can only agree. Will apps replace guidebooks? Inevitably. There are obvious reasons. Most of the time I've worked for Lonely Planet, travellers have been asking if LP could give them a more portable book. From cutting out pages themselves to a ringbinder edition, the market has been talking about a book they can carry around for yonks. An app does just that and more. Writing travel guide content has always been more than textual. Wrestling with maps on rainy Finnish streets has become plotting a point on a Google map. And those practical details like phone numbers become crucial when you know that in an app a user will use that number to call a restaurant to make a reservations. While the maps were familiar an app uses clever geo-coding. I tagged some places "coffee" and others "kid friendly" so users could filter their map

In her debut novel In-human Anna Dusk mixes poetry, Aussie vernacular and a gutsy werewolf heroine. Don’t ask Anna Dusk if werewolves are the new vampires. Sure she’s releasing a lycanthrope book just as the zeitgeist howls with The Wolfman and the Twilight franchise has been re-booted by shapeshifting spunk Jacob. But Dusk began In-human over 12 years ago so she’s hardly jumping on the fangwagon. In-human follows Sally, a high school girl who tears out of the humdrum of rural Tasmania as she transforms into a werewolf. Her allegiances are tested between family and the pack, between hunger and herself. Far from Twilight ’s de-fanged fairy tales, In-human is powered by Sally’s anger with buckets of sex and blood. As Dusk sees it, “Growing up in a small town and having people constantly commenting on her all the time really pisses Sally off.” Dusk is no fan of Stephanie Meyers vegetarian vampires. “Where’s the fun in that?” she laughs flashing her prominent canine teeth. “Peop

If you want to look into the future of books and publishing, the record industry makes for a pretty good crystal ball. The iPod took music out of the physical into the digital in the same way e-books will take books off the page. The documentary I Need That Record looks at how music stores in the States have been gutted by the changes in music, not only by MP3 downloads but also by 'big box chains'. These stores stock the big records (the doco says 1 in 5 albums sold in the US goes through a Walmart checkout) at lower prices because of their huge volumes. If you followed the recent parallel importation debate then you'll see similarities big bookstores and big box chains. Does it follow that independent bookstore will be pushed out by the evil machinations of the big stores and the unstoppable march of e-books? For me the answer is: not so much. Independent bookstores remain a sensual and social experience that will be tough to replace. Going to a bookstore is as m

Almost a year ago I wrote a piece for Meanjin called "The Written Image" about the Australian graphic novel and the developing long-form comics created in Australia. This was followed by a response blog post criticising my article as "defensive and dismissive of comics". From inside comic culture this reading might have some weight, but the article sought to introduce a new audience to Australian graphic novels. I started writing about comics in 1993 when I chose Australian comics and the censorship campaigns of the 1950s as a history thesis topic. The history department was reluctant to take it on and suggested doing it over at the freewheeling postmodern English department. A confused English professor wrinkled his nose and asked "Do you mean a thesis about Ginger Meggs?" Nope, I was looking to research what happened in the mid-1950s that damaged the development of Australian comics for years to come. Most Australian states introduced censorship l

If you've noticed it's quiet in Hackpackerstan lately, it's because I was lucky enough to receive the Rosebank Fellowship . What kind of artsy nonsense is that, you ask oddly channelling Andrew Bolt. For me it was three weeks staying in a 19th century cottage owned by Mary Delahunty to work on my novel. It's the first fellowship/residency/retreat I've done so I was daunted by three weeks in the bush with only my manuscript to keep me sane. Luckily I could check in with my co-fellow, the mighty poet Andy Jackson . And I also  sought advice from folk who'd done this kind of thing before. The best advice? Bring DVDs, because after a day bent over the keyboard you'll need some easy entertainment. Another good piece of advice was that you'll go on a lot of walks. When I heard this I saw myself on a residency on a travellator ambling around for hours with little pen to paper, but the a stroll can be a useful writing tool. I assumed I'd be rolling out

National Novel Writing Month is the brain child of Chris Baty, a San Franciscan who took November off to write a book and found a few friends to join him. It 's become a global phenomenon with more than 150,000 participants. Chris chatted about the future of writing, the Office of Light and Letters , book piracy and the bright future for the story in the age of laptops and Kindle. Hackpacker: What made you start NaNoWriMo? Was it a tool to beat your own procrastination? Chris Baty: The "why" of it all is such a good question. It wasn't because I had a novel in me that I was dying to write. I'd always loved novels and worshipped novelists but had never really thought I would write a book of my own. Until I started planning the first NaNoWriMo, I believed that novelists were a (superior) alien race that had been beamed down to Earth to delight and intimidate the rest of the planet. Then, in 1999, I quit my full-time job and try to make a living as a freelance wri