Tag Archives: Donald Finneaus Mayo

The perfect Gift for anyone who loves writing

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Take the pain out of giving this Christmas – look no further than Betimes Books’ Gifts

In many ways, it was born out of frustration. Frustration with editors who want the same formulaic junk that sold by the bucketload last year, frustration with editorial decisions being made by accountants, frustration with marketing departments who reserve their entire budget for the same half dozen or so big names, frustration with being constantly depressed by the gloomy state of the publishing industry.

People still like to read good books, don’t they? I know I do. They can’t all want the latest ghosted biography from some C-list celebrity or yet another Andy McNab knock-off.

So I was delighted to join the list of Betimes Books, a new imprint designed to retain the best elements of publishing (good taste, rigorous editing, high production values) whilst taking advantage of the digital revolution that, frankly, caught the traditional publishers napping. I mean, these are the guys who pretty much handed their entire digital content to Amazon on a plate. I don’t see a company like Apple letting that happen.

At first it felt a little bit like being on one of those funky, indy record labels back in the nineties. But then I realised the flip side of having a multi-billion strong global audience one click away meant a whole lot more work to be done. By me. Time had to be carved out for blog posts, twitter, Facebook, new media marketing initiatives; a whole new language and skills set had to be embraced. It didn’t really matter what I thought about these innovations, they were now part of my job description. Bottom line, if I didn’t roll up my sleeves, get over my technophobia and do it, it wasn’t going to get done. The world would continue turning without me and my books.

One of the joys of this past year has been seeing the way the imprint has grown whilst retaining its editorial integrity. The titles are so different, the authors have such diverse experiences and backgrounds, yet there’s a common thread that makes them recognisable as part of a stable. I think it’s the French literary tradition coming out in our founder and editor.

So it seems entirely appropriate that we celebrate our first year with Gifts, our contribution to the new age of literature in the form of a collection of Bittersweet Christmas Stories. There’s one by each author. It’s a really good way to have a look around the list, introduce you to some of the writers, see what you might like to explore more of.

Gifts is available to read as a free PDF or Mobi, as an e-book for £0.79/$0.99, or in paperback for £4.79 directly from Betimes Books

My own novel Francesca is also available there or can be purchased directly here.

Francesca – Genesis of an idea

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It’s easy to forget just how different the world was back in the mid 1970s, when Francesca was set. No mobile phones, no internet, no Starbucks on every street corner. Easier, too, for dictators to keep a lid on their shenanigans. You could take out a town, empty a region of its population without any fear of pesky demonstrators posting evidence of your atrocities on youtube for all the world to see and condemn.

So it’s hardly surprising the Indonesian invasion of East Timor passed me by, even though I was living in the region at the time, an expat teenager whose father worked in the oil business. The local media was strictly censored, whilst foreign correspondents who might have kicked up a fuss were for the most part unable to access the place. Besides, who was interested in what was going on in a backwater most people had never heard of?

It wasn’t until the early 1990s that I encountered East Timor again. I was doing some volunteer work for Amnesty International in London, and kept coming across all these cases from the conflict. The more I looked into them, the more shocked I became, compounded by the more shocking revelation that I had been in Indonesia when this tiny country was gobbled up by its neighbour and large parts of its population annihilated.

Several hundred miles away our lives continued in their cocooned luxury, oblivious to what Suharto’s soldiers were doing. No one mentioned it, no one spoke out, no one did anything that might upset the cosy relationship between the Indonesian government and the western oil companies. Everyone was making money, and besides Indonesia was on our side, a bulwark against communism.

It was the discovery of these parallel worlds that inspired me to write Francesca. In particular, I was interested in people who straddled both, the ones with the fullest picture. Naturally, they would all be invented characters, but that is the freedom and the joy of fiction. As they took on their own lives, they created their own dramas, sorrows, joys, tragedies and triumphs. Out of all this Francesca was born.

Francesca will be published in September 2013 by Betimes Books

www.betimesbooks.com