Curd the Lion in porcelain or is it China?

First results from China simplified Chinese edition show 7,654 copies sold!
(Bringing my worldwide total to around 18,000 sold)
A big “thank you” to all those in China kind enough to buy my book! Tell your friends, please?

Waffle and waving in Waterstones

Discovered today meandering through the Images for Curd the Lion on Google:
from the website http://www.26.org.uk (way back in 2008)


THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF CURD THE LION (AND US!) IN THE LAND AT THE BACK OF BEYOND

Alan Gilliland
Raven’s Quill, £14.99 or £10.72 on Amazon


Strolling through Waterstone’s on a recent Saturday afternoon, we were virtually accosted by a man waving this book at us. Listening to him, it turned out he was in fact the author of this children’s book. I asked a few questions that revealed he was once graphics editor of The Telegraph. He waffled on a bit about four soft toy animals in search of a stolen brooch and then showed us some quite superb black and white illustrations. We were quite taken by the old fashioned storytelling and the nod towards Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. He signed a copy and I merrily trotted towards the checkout with book under my arm. My daughter Martha (9) has not stopped reading or talking about this book ever since.   John Fountain

What a nice young lady she is, and her father too.

A story of self-publishing – the hard way!

About The Author

A Potted History:
Born in Malaya in 1949 and brought up on a garrisoned rubber plantation during the ‘Emergency’, Alan Gilliland’s first, mountaintop, boarding school was reached by means of a 1930’s American armour-plated car, WWII Dakota aeroplane and Saracen armoured personnel carrier. A year later, aged six, he was transferred to a new school, memories of whose white hot sandy beaches were to remain ingrained upon his psyche long after leaving for this drizzly island we call home.
With his departure, Malaysia became independent and its anti-colonialist insurgency lost its rationale. Alan quickly learned the uses of the cricket bat, macintosh and other essentials of integration into English society. Performing passably well throughout his boarding-school years, he fell at the final hurdle, being expelled for revising for his art A-level exam.
Undeterred by this setback, he did not go to art college, preferring devious paths to the realisation of his creative ambitions via film-making, architecture, photo-journalism, newspaper cartooning and news information graphics – with 18 years and 19 awards as graphics editor of The Daily Telegraph – before finally arriving at the decision to write and illustrate fictions less ordinary than his own life.
Casting himself adrift with his long-suffering wife upon a tiny barque of of talent with its pencil-mast, he draws from the very winds the inspiration to fill the sheets and carry them across the ocean of scepticism that lies between hope and fulfillment.  On the shoreline, his six children and three grandchildren, wave their little hankies, litorally wondering if ever he will make it.

Now what happened next?
First he exhibited on a tiny stand at the back of the London Book Fair, to both promote his graphics to publishers and to promote his own work. He found some admirers, including the founder of Alibris, a website for books in the US, and a young lady, daughter of a US publisher.
She was so enamoured of his first book ‘The Amazing Adventures of Curd the Lion (and us!) in the Land at the Back of Beyond’ that she recommended he take the Ms to Cornerstone’s Literary Consultancy to get an in-depth report on it and ever-so-kindly offered to pay for that report.
The report, critical but also very enthusiastic about it, was carried out by a fine author of children’s fantasy. It advised changes which he mostly carried out (saddest of which was the ‘murder’ of one of the characters – in real life, not in the story).

Buoyed by her enthusiasm, and because his financial situation was becoming critical (the consequence of a near-fatal spinal infection that destroyed a disc at the base of his spine and his ‘seed-fund’ by the time he recovered) he decided to throw aside caution and take the plunge, completing the text and illustrations, designing the book with its 80+ pencil illustrations as a hardback and finding a Chinese printer  for the first print run of 1,000 copies, to be sold at £14.99.

Next he persuaded nearly 60 independent booksellers to order a copy in advance of publication, and following that, Gardners wholesalers to order 400 copies.

He went, as a visitor, to the Frankfurt Book Fair and traipsed the stands, trying to sell his graphics to UK publishers (with some success) and his book to foreign publishers (without).
On the Saturday after his return, he did an inaugural book-signing at the Guildford High Street branch of Waterstones and sold, he was told later, more books than many of the authors invited to the Guildford Book Fest that week.
This mild success gained him access to that chain at which he has been assiduously signing ever since.

His micro-publishing company, Raven’s Quill Ltd., joined the IPG and PA and then exhibited under their aegis at the Frankfurt and Bologna (children’s) Book Fairs, receiving UKTI grants. Through these he acquired a South Korean agent, Amo, who immediately sold Curd to a publisher there, a Spanish/Portuguese agency, Ilustrata, and a Far East agency, Big Apple, who have just sold translation rights to a mainland Chinese publisher. At Bologna his exhibit was seen by an Israeli publisher who subsequently bought rights to Curd, and by Kassie Evashevki of United Talent Agency in Hollywood, who subsequently acquired the rights to Eat, Pray Love, the Twilight Saga last film and Stieg Larsson with the result that Curd was relegated to the twilight zone.

Meanwhile, back home in its first year, Lovereading4kids (the children’s bookselling website) discovered Curd and made it first a ‘Book and Debut of the Month’ then ‘of the Year.’ This drew the attention of a Fox Films executive who asked for it – but this was stymied by Disney announcing Toy Story Three the week it arrived there.

I had forgotten to mention Curd’s first positive reviewer was the political philosopher, John Gray (Emeritus Professor of European Thought in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics) who wrote an incredibly kind appreciation (link at bottom of article).

He made mistakes. The first print run of Curd the Lion had the two characters, Sweeney the Heenie (a hyena) and O’Flattery the Snake talking phonetic Oirish, which he had probably been advised against and which annoyed the pants off certain adults, though it seemed to affect children, with their more malleable English, not at all. Secondly, he enthusiastically put that first version of Curd up on an Amazon Vine program (whose reviewers receive free copies of any book they choose to review) and discovered exactly those people intolerant of phonetic Oirish. (For my own thaumaturgically therapeutic response to such rude reviews, see link at very bottom of this piece)

So he changed that and has received no negative reviews since then (touch wood) but has slowly acquired appreciative comments from book bloggers, academics and media people (see bottom link) along with a host of fantastically enthusiastic reviews from kids themselves, including some which can be read on this Lovereading4kids page, http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/book/3991/
and this lovely response to my half-term signings:

"Dear Alan,

I was thrilled with meeting you today in Bishops Stortford. 

My teacher, Miss Jones, really enjoys reading 'Curd the Lion and Us' to my class. All my friends love to listen.  

I wish I could be you. I can't wait to tell them I've met you.  

When Mummy finishes reading the book to us I'll e-mail again and let you know what we all thought.

Thank-you,

William Shields (6 years old)"

(and mum's follow-up after I sent a pdf of a drawing)

"Dear Alan,

Thank-you for the picture that you drew for William. 

He was absolutely thrilled and we'll get it printed professionally and put it on his wall.

Thanks again for making a little boy very happy and for helping him develop a love for stories and reading.

Lesley Shields"

Curd has been through five print runs (up to 3,000 at a time) and has now sold 9,000 plus copies at £14.99, with 42.5% - 57.5% (through Gardners – self-supplied at signings) return to the publisher.

In publishing his second book, ‘The Flight of Birds’ – a Gothic ghost tale – for which he confidently ordered 3,000 copies as a paperback with French flaps to be sold at £9.99, he made a second slip. The copy editor he thought had done the final edit before going to print left before doing so and that print run had its fair share of typos. He failed to double-check and the book went to print. He only discovered this mistake when a very literate teenager pointed it out, adding the rider that though she abhorred any typos in books, she adored the story.

This has now sold out of its first run and the author has introduced a ‘White Edition’ – which version has a different beginning and (happier) ending and was written at the same time as the original dark version – after receiving many reports from ladies who loved the story but were serious upset by the tragic ending. This version – and the Black – is being printed in digital short runs that are relatively unprofitable in response to an edict by James Daunt, head of Waterstones, that threatens the very continuance of his book-signings and the introduction of his books to new readers. See his BookBrunch article on that draconian edict here: http://alangilliland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/my-book-brunch-piece-on-drastic.html

Until it becomes clear whether or not Alan may continue his business conducted through Waterstones so successfully to date, a decision to print the more profitable litho runs of thousands cannot be made.

This is a shame, since the author (of both) has personally put £140,000-worth of books (10,200+) through the tills of Waterstones and yet still finds himself under threat under this new regime.

For reviews of both books and a more factual analysis of Alan’s progress, see this earlier blog post:
http://alangilliland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/updated-promotional-material-for-my.html

My own therapy, fresh from the South of Ireland: http://alangilliland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/limericked-look-at-rude-reviewers-and.html

Oh, and a piece pertinent to the pervasive uninhibited vitriolic outpourings of some internet reviewers: http://alangilliland.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/on-unrestrained-nature-of-vitriol-on.html

A time for melancholy?

: (

This day I started, bright and cheery,
Yet all at once began to query
Why? For what should I be cheery?
I sought and sought, till eyes were bleary
And of this trial began to weary,
Till sudden dawned a light so eerie:
Like this rhyme’s end, aren’t most lives dreary?


A Black Stone day, then, despite the sudden sunshine. Returning to yesterday’s theme, a visual homage in my book, Curd the Lion, at the end of the tale...

Old Corbie, the Great Raven, becomes a Phoenix, reflecting...

Edmund Dulac’s lovely watercolours from The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, which in turn lead to...

Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer above the Mists, reminding me of his...

Two Men looking at the Moon, that is somehow reminiscent of...

my own photograph, The Wanderer, taken at the enchanted Chanctonbury Ring on the South Downs in Sussex.
If you want to see more of my landscape photos, click this link:
https://picasaweb.google.com/116922605845018607478/AREAWILDNATUREPICTURES#slideshow/5740083912536983906

(I have a first edition copy of the beautiful Dulac book, with the original exhibition poster still inserted.)

ON THIS DAY... LEWIS CARROLLED LIDDELL ALICE...

“I mark this day with a White Stone...”

I’m sure Charles Dodgson would have loved Go, had he discovered it, with its deep logic and with all those shiny black and silky white stones resonating on the hollowed-out board...

It was on this day he rowed young Alice Liddell and her sisters up the river, down a rabbit-hole, and sowed the seeds of a delightful myth.

Visit http://briansibleysblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/underground-publication.html for more.

In remembrance, may I reveal one small secret from my own little tale of nonsense with a long title: ‘The Amazing Adventures of Curd the Lion (and us!) in the Land at the Back of Beyond?’

This tale is a nonsensical quest story set at the Turning of the Year. Many of its characters relate to this: notably (and obviously, in this context) The Dodongs.
He has two heads because two heads are plainly better than one, especially in a book of nonsense and because he is Ineffable Emperor of the Land of Nod, which sits in the middle of the Great Sea of Slumber, which is all around us, if only we could see it, which is why he has hands instead of wings – he can swim through the air.
He has scales instead of feathers, for his feathers are so magical he has to hide them inside himself to protect them (two are hidden in Queen Mumbie-Bumbee’s magic pillow).

Pilgrim Crow flummoxed by the Dodongs at Writing Desk Rock

Why Dodongs, you may ask?
This two-headed Janus bird sits at the Turning of the Year looking forwards into the New Year and backwards into the old (Postvorta and Antevorta) ?
Because his name is simply an anagram of Dodgson, the surname of Lewis Carroll, whose chosen emblem was the Dodo (some say on account of his stutter, which seems like two voices fighting for speech)
and because Janus was the family crest of the Dodgsons.

Hence the Dodong’s anagrammatic parting shot in the book:
“If you would be,
As E. Clerihew, droll,
Heed...”

If you happen upon my book, see how many other characters, in name or function, you can relate to the Turning of the Year,
or to myth, folklore and legend,
or to local history (the book has a real setting, Brimham Rocks, a National Trust site near Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire – and a real map: you can follow the whole adventure and even meet two of my characters there, in a manner of speaking...)

The book.
ISBN 9780955548611. Price £14.99 Available from several good bookshops, Lovereading4kids
website (www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/book/3991 – great site – it has all my reviews on it), Waterstones (stores and website), Amazon if you must, or signed and posted direct from me at Causeway Cottage, 63, High St., Billingshurst, West Sussex, RH14 9QP.

‘Nonsense’ is form of language I think perhaps most nearly and delightfully described by my mother’s sister when a young girl, writing to her older sister at a time when a letter was a letter, a joy and not a sentence:
“...and French! Well, it’s quite a nice little language all by itself. He! He! He! You should have seen it (my essay).”

Dora’s letter to her sister, with a watercolour on every page, and even the envelope reverse!

And its last sentence takes us neatly back to where Alice and her sisters climbed into a boat with the Reverend Charles Dodgson and Mr. Duckworth, on this day in 1862, and they all rowed happily into posterity.

WATERSTONES SUMMER SIGNING TOUR!!

A huge “THANK YOU” to all those Waterstones stores who have agreed to host me over the Summer Holidays!

From Somerset to Suffolk, from South Dorset to Northamptonshire, over 30 stores have welcomed me.

<– (For a list of stores and dates, see my Signings Itinerary, left)

I look forward to trying to emulate my last year’s success: over 1,100 books sold.

Curd the Lion for iPad

It should have been out by now, but I was totally let down by a Norwegian App developer, who had promised to create it but just abandoned it.

So now I am creating my own iPad book using iBooks Author.

It will have:
• an introductory slide show (to be replaced by an audio-slideshow),

• the story itself with 80 illustrations

• each chapter will have a map symbol at the start. Clicked, it will show the real map location and the Animals route (as roughly explained in the intro). Where you are on the map at that point of the story highlighted. This is the start of a photo slide-show of that part of the route. ie. 18 photographic route guides. (for instance, at the end of your own adventure, you may even meet two of my nonsense characters!)

• an addendum featuring all the creatures. Click on these and you will see the origins of their names (not often what you might think they are*) or other points of interest, mythological, historical, etc., and explanations of some of the hidden things in the book.

I hope this will interest now and future readers.
The audio-visual intro will be simultaneously put on YouTube to try to drum up more interest.

For details of the book, read other parts of this blog, or go to  the great book website:
www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/book/3991

*For instance, you might think the name, Professor Balloonafuss (the moon), comes from his hot-air balloon form. But no, along with many others, it comes from the world of mythology, calenders and alphabets. In this case, the ancient Celtic Ogham alphabet, whose first letters are:
Beth, Luis, Nion, Fearn and Saille. This tree-alphabet betters are also the first five months of the lunar calendar as explained in ‘The White Goddess’ by Robert Graves.

And that’s just one character.

The Red Baron –v– The Tiger Moth

The Red Baron (aka Ben Gilliland) provided the model for…

My Caterpillar (from Curd the Lion), in training to be a Tiger Moth