James Gering's Staying Whole While Falling Apart - Q&A

  

We interviewed Staying Whole While Falling Apart's author James Gering to find out how he stays whole while falling apart and more!
 

Q: Your main protagonist is a character called Aaron Auslander but it's hard to look past the parallels... are any of these poems based on your own experience? 

A: Many poems, yes - we are each great repository of experiences to draw on. The skill lies in converting experiences to art. Sincerity in poems is about emotional truth not literal truth. The writer reflects on his material, finds the fresh angle, and strives for an artistic conversion. Letting ample time pass between a life event and its poetic rendering is important so that artistic judgement is not compromised. 

Q: How do you manage to stay whole? 

A: By living outside the city, far from the maddening clichés. I live in the Blue Mountains. My backyard is a world heritage wilderness, and after a day's writing I like to get physical. I run a mountain trail, swim laps, rock climb or ride my mountain bike - something different every day. I wouldn't like to bore myself or the exercise would fizzle.

I like to find the balance between my imaginative world and the real world. As a writer, there is a real danger of disappearing down an imaginary rabbit hole. Us humans are social creatures with an urge to love and be loved. We also need material for our writing. Hooray for the human canvas and the settings the real world provides. 

At the moment I am writing full-time. This can be dangerous in terms of rabbit holes, but I think I have enough hard-won ploys to manage. One ploy is consciously moving between states of intensity and insouciance. Twenty-five years ago I was the intense moth getting singed.

Q: Do you have any advice for readers on how to stay whole while falling apart? 

A: Strike a balance between your emotional, intellectual and physical needs. Embrace the natural world, doubly so if you live in a big city. Flora and fauna are a wonderful salve. Additionally, animals are more genuine than us humans will ever be. Remember your childhood and to sometimes see the world through childish eyes for a fresh take. Beware community - it can be two-edged. Only conform to a group sympathetic to your character. Listen to The Sunscreen Song, its sage advice, like doing one thing a day that scares you. 

Q: What would you say was the hardest topic to explore and why? 

A: It's tricky to get depresion right on the page - clichés abound and the writing can easily slip into mawkishness or melodrama. You also have to find points of connection to the reader, regardless of whether they have ever been depressed. 

Q: What life changing experiences have helped you as an author and how? 

A: Learning from my mistakes has been useful. Adversity also - the  humility it brings. I came to Australia from South Africa when I was 16 after a family trauma, and I struggled to find my place as a sensitive person with an inquiring mind. Enter poet, John Berryman, stage left. He gave simple advice for metamorphosing into a poet. He said that when you are young, you need to survive a life-threatening trauma, only by a whisker, and then you are in business. I agree. but perhaps there are other ways too. Parenthood was also life-altering for me, so wonderfully enriching. Suddently you are serving others in a loving manner every day, and it opens a treasure box of raw material for stories. 

Q: Touching on your Judaism, what do you think are the defining features of Jewish life today and how has it influenced Aaron Auslander's character? 

A: There are many ways to be Jewish - from ultra religious to atheistic, from cultural heritage to Israel, a country that punches well over its weight in many fields of human endeavour, whether technological advances or the embracing of diversity. Few countries in the Middle East have the vision and inclusivity to host the Eurovision song contest. 

I like to think that Judaism helped Auslander to develop an inquiring mind, and helped develop his self-deprecatory humour, not to mention his Houdini-like talent for rising above adversity. 

Click here to get your copy of Staying Whole While Falling Apart 

Click here to watch James Gering's virtual launch of Staying Whole While Falling Apart

Outer Space, Inner Minds Digital Anthology

Calling all "self isolating" artists (& others)

We think it's time to blast off from this virus-fuelled 'hot spot' to the fresh air of inspiration to be found in the cosmos.

So we're calling for entries to our first-ever digital anthology, which will have the theme/title Outer Space, Inner Minds. Any work that touches on our relation to the cosmos and its impact on our thinking or creativity is eligible.

Our idea for this took flight from the success of Dark Sky Dreaming: an Inland Skywriters Anthology, which brought together creatives and scientists from regional New South Wales and elsewhere in Australia. Check it out to see the types of work that were accepted.

The anthology will be published online in 2021 and be comprised of the best poetry and prose that are submitted, but also audio and short films. Artists from anywhere on or slightly above Earth are eligible, but any text must be in English (ETs, please note).

Previously published work is eligible, but you must have clearance from any licensee to the work for it to be published in our anthology royalty-free.

As well as text-based works such as poetry and prose (up to 1500 words per entry), we're open to:

• audio files

• moving poems / prose

• short films

Format:

• text: Word (.docx) or Pages

• images: .jpgs @ 300dpi resolution, preferred

• audio as .mp3s (5 minutes playing time maximum)

• video as .m4v, .mov or .wav (5 minutes playing time maximum)

Entry fee is AUD20 for each group of up to three poems, each story or non-fiction work, or each audio or film entry.

Entries, with the required fee, must be submitted via our online form. Extended deadline due to COVID-19 and other considerations: 31 July 2020.

Full-time students, people on a pension or people under-employed due to COVID-19 are eligible for a fee waiver for one entry. Please apply to info@ipoz.biz with your details.

As a special bonus, all entrants will receive a free eBook of David P Reiter's Time Lords Remixed.

We look forward to seeing, reading and publishing the best work out there. 

May the Cosmos be with you!

Hemingway in Spain is featured in a new critical book

The most gratifying outcome for an author is, of course, to have his book bought in huge numbers. But the next best thing is to be the subject of an extended critical study. That's what's happened in the case of my book, Hemingway in Spain: Words and Images (1st edition, 1997; 2nd edition 2007), and the feature film Hemingway in Spain, which was released in 2006.

In his 2015 book Appropriating Hemingway: Using Him as a Fictional Character, American academic Ron McFarland studies both works at length in his final chapter, "Hem Among the Poets". Dr McFarland has graciously given his permission for us to quote from his analysis of the works.

David P. Reiter’s book, Hemingway in Spain: Words and Images (1997, 2nd edition, 2007) offers a kaleidoscopic portrayal of Ernest Hemingway in that post modern vein touring contemporary Spain accompanied by his girlfriend Maria, presumably borrowed from his 1949 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. As Publisher of Interactive Publications in Brisbane, Australia, Reiter, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver, has seen to the publication of several of his own books, and on the IP Web site he describes the “several ‘Hemingways’” that make up the sequence as “voices from the past and present, real and imagined” in a mode he calls “fusion poetry.” In a DVD based on the book and released in late 2006, available through amazon.com, Reiter fuses his reading of most of the poems (only sixteen of the 61 are not included) and an elaborate pastiche of images and videos pertinent to the texts. We can sample the variety of these Hemingway voices by reflecting on a few of the poems, starting with the first one, “At Plaza de España, Madrid,” where we hear a voice sounding very much like Hemingway addressing Cervantes:

You were their best, Miguel,but you only got it right once.Is that why they bronzedthe myths before the man?

The presumably rhetorical question might apply equally to Hemingway. Hemingway––or more accurately David Reiter, speaking through that mask or persona––then rips on Franco, whom he reduces to no more than “wet sand: between toes of the peónes. In the DVD, Reiter provides images ranging from statues of Cervantes and Franco on horseback to a quick clip of a donkey. Throughout he occasionally inserts lines of text from the poems, in this case the description of Franco as “no more than wet sand between their toes.” 

As the poem ends, Reiter looks back to a piece of dialogue near the conclusion of The Sun Also Rises, when Brett says, “It’s sort of what we have instead of God” (249). The neuter pronouns’s antecedent may or may not be regarded as ambiguous. It would seem from the context that she means simply “deciding not to be a bitch” is what we have instead of God. But Jake proposes that they have a martini, so one might surmise that alcohol is “what we have,” and in a broader context, perhaps “it” refers to love, or perhaps to feeling “rather damned good.” In appropriately post modern fashion, Reiter’s Hemingway offers “irony’s what we have instead of God” (4). Addressing Cervantes again, he writes, “You took up a pen to escape a war; / I took up battle to escape an uncertain / pen.” In the closing line, he declares flatly, “Things haven’t changed a hell of a lot.” The opening poem is set opposite a familiar photograph of Hemingway from the early 1930’s. Another twenty or so photos of scenes from Spain are distributed throughout the book, and most of those also appear in the film. 

The second poem in the book, “A Clean Well-lighted Place,” opens with a three-line passage from A Moveable Feast and follows with a quatrain very much in synch with the style and tone:

It’s easier when you come back in winter, in the half-life. The sun’s more sympathetic to grey and you can sip a cheap rosé without regretting those stories you left too quickly [5].

Hemingway then notices a wooden bust of himself, and he comments on how a waiter told tales of how Papa composed A Moveable Feast there in Madrid and he made out so well with the tips that he was able to open his own place, which he called “Not the Hemingway Restaurant / and all the postmodern pretenders go there” (6). Ernest claims not to be able to understand a word the postmodernists say. In the third poem, “At the Hotel Florida,” the first-person speaker signs the register as “E. Hemingway, / Ketchum, Idaho,” and in the lobby he encounters Maria, who will accompany him throughout the rest of his visit to Spain (7). In that poem we watch him struggle with his writing. Maria joins him in the next poem, “No Writers in the Prado.” There and elsewhere in the book the dictator Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975, is conjured up and repudiated as a man incapable of appreciating art or literature. 

Some sense of how the poems affect the reader can be gained by citing a few opening stanzas in which the historical past (sometimes the Spanish Civil War, sometimes events from much more distant history––Reiter provides explanatory endnotes) mingles with the present:

It took days for our troops to reach Toledo through all the sniper fire and land mines but just a few hours for Maria’s old Renault 

[“The Walls of Toledo,” 15].

I couldn’t help but think of Robert Cohen
as we walked by that pathetic synagogue
scrunched between souvenir shops

[“In the Barrio de la Juderia,” 25].

Charles was tapping his sceptre in the dustas we passed the ticket counter. “I suppose,”he said, “that Boabdil asked you to intervene with me on his behalf. The man has no shame.He gives the crown––or whatever he wore––a bad name.” [Boabdil, or Muhammad XII, was the lastMuslim ruler of Granada, the last Muslim-ruled city in Spain] 

[“Charles V Sets the Record Straight,” 65].

It would have been pure hell for Scott––a Hollywood without martinis and olives––but old Clint never looked so fit.

“You won’t believe your eyes, Hemingway,”he said, “but they’ve done it up in spades.Look at this––it’s a base away from home!” 

[“Clint Eastwood at Tabernas,” 73].

Some of the poems are more subtle, and in some Hemingway appears nonexistent, or perhaps more completely blended into a first-person speaker who seems more akin to David Reiter lowering the mask. In the credits at the end of the film, Reiter states simply, “David Reiter was Ernest Hemingway.” 

True to the postmodern premise of the poems, anything can happen. For example, in “Bluffing at Gibralfaro” (Lighthouse Hill in Málaga, per Reiter’s endnote––a castle-like fortification on a hill that rises about 427 feet over the Mediterranean) a gypsy attempts to force Hemingway to pay a parking fee, an obvious scam. “Here was another gypsy / who didn’t recognize Hemingway!” he grouses (48). When the gypsy returns with a shillelagh, Hemingway, slipping into the role of his own character, Robert Jordan from For Whom the Bell Tolls, regards him as “one of the faceless ones I shot down / before I passed out above the bridge.” Then just as a fight seems inevitable, Teddy Roosevelt shows up with “a mean bull-whip” and the gypsy turns tail. “Get tough, / Hemingway,” TR advises, that’s the ticket to ride” (50). In that gesture, Reiter connects what was most likely an unpleasant contretemps he experienced as a tourist in Málaga with Hemingway, with the fictional character of Robert Jordan, with Theodore Roosevelt (as Rough Rider), and with the Beatles via the allusion to their 1965 hit “Ticket to Ride.” Viewing the bullring from the ramparts of the Gibralfaro, TR scoffs at bullfighting, but Hemingway suggests, “Maybe that’s what they have instead of God” (51). 

Near the end of the book Maria parts company with Ernest, ending their relationship “quick / as a bullet” and reminding him, “If you have to turn the page / the ending was wrong!” (105). In the final two poems Hemingway first visits the Escorial, where Philip II (1527-1598) welcomes him and Ernest likens writers to kings: “The veins we mine are the only ore / worth a sentence. Yet who else loses sleep / over the marrow behind the architecture?” (107). He then visits the Valley of the Fallen, a monument to the dead from the Spanish Civil War. Here he feels the presence of Franco, who had the site constructed by prisoners of war, but Franco is not there:

I walked further and further into the mountain but I couldn’t find him among the statues. Maybe he’d decided not to interrogate the myth [110].

Of course, both the film and these poems, most of them driven through with lines and characters drawn from Hemingway’s prose, invite just such an interrogation.

Both titles are available in physical and eBook formats from the IP Store.

Meet Robert Cox: A Compulsion to Kill

A Compulsion to Kill is like no other! Investigating the lives of the murderous and heinous, Robert Cox brings Australia’s earliest serial killers to life in a gripping page-turner.

Cox sat down with Editorial Assistant Sarah Trapski to have a quick chat about his new book.

Sarah Trapski: With your previous work, Baptised in Blood, and now A Compulsion to Kill, it’s obvious you’re not one to shy away from historical research. What, in your opinion, is the big draw? 

Robert Cox: History has always fascinated me. In Tasmania it’s all around you; you’re standing in it or leaning on it or living in it; it’s very unlikely to have disappeared under concrete and steel. But I’m a reader rather than a historian, so my interest isn’t in the dry old stuff of formal histories, like policies and administrations and economic fluctuations, but in the people, the personalities, especially the lesser lights, the ordinary people whose flame briefly flared in some way: convicts, bushrangers, Aboriginal people. And serial killers, of course!

ST: A Compulsion to Kill is about Australia’s earliest serial killers. Researching the history and lives of Charles Routley, Alexander Pearce, and John Haley, just to name a few, would have been a monumental task! How did you go about it?

RC: I’d written about the virtually unknown Charles Routley, Tasmania’s worst serial killer, in a previous book, which got me to wondering whether there’d been other serial killers in the state who’d also been forgotten. Alexander Pearce has been much written about and his story’s also been filmed a couple of times, so he was fairly easy. For the others, I had to rely on books, contemporary newspapers, historical documents, and, in a few cases, websites. It’s quite fascinating when you start with just a name and perhaps just a detail or two but nothing else to go on, then eventually manage to build a picture of a life or an event, bit by bit, through assiduous research.

ST: Any tips for budding historians out there?

RC: I have to say I don’t consider myself a historian; I have no qualifications or training in that discipline. I’m just a writer who happens to like historical subjects. Like Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale, I’m a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, which isn’t a bad thing, given what I do. Like a patchwork quilter, I gather a scrap of fabric here, a scrap of cloth there, and stitch them together into what I hope is an interesting whole. All of which is a rather verbose way of saying: leave no stone unturned. Cast the widest possible net. Accumulate scraps large and small. Send Google on wild and imaginative searches. But where possible, rely only on original sources.

ST: Out of the list of serial killers you documented in A Compulsion to Kill, who did you find the most fascinating?

RC: Probably Rocky Whelan, not least because he operated in areas near Hobart that I know well. Also Thomas Jeffrey. Jeffrey was a warped individual, a sadist, a sexual predator, a killer and cannibal. But Whelan was simply a fairly minor career criminal who underwent a horrific 20-year brutalising in the Norfolk Island penal colony, which hardened him and probably turned him into a killer. When he was transferred to Tasmania, he absconded and in just 24 days killed five men in cold blood.

ST: A Compulsion to Kill is your sixth book. Is writing compulsive for you? Or do you enjoy the research more than the writing?

RC: I do enjoy the research, especially when it rewards me with something new or unexpected. But writing … I don’t know whether compulsive is the right word for me. I just do it — I write every day — and it’s fulfilling and hugely enjoyable, even when it’s not going well. Then it becomes a challenge to get it right, and I enjoy that too. I rewrite constantly —compulsively, even!

ST: What are your thoughts on Jack the Ripper? How does he compare to Tasmania’s killers?

RC: Jack the Ripper was insane; I don’t think anybody would dispute that, especially anyone who’s seen post-mortem photographs of his victims. But I wouldn’t readily say that about Tasmania’s colonial serial killers. They nearly all seem to have had clear motives for what they did: Brown and Lemon killed for revenge, Pearce and Broughton and McAvoy to avoid starvation, John Haley through losing his uncontrollable temper. Routley, Jeffrey, and Whelan, although they killed to prevent being identified by men they’d robbed, all seem to have increasingly enjoyed exercising their power over their victims — the power of life or death. The more they killed, the easier it seems to have become. Jack the Ripper, probably fuelled by an insane rage whose cause we’ll never know, seems to have found murder easy right from the outset.

ST: Do you think reading this book will affect the way Tasmanians view their State?

RC: I hope so. Tasmanians, especially those who come from pioneer stock, are very protective of their history, but all too often they see it through the rose-coloured glasses of hearsay and ignorance and don’t want to face uncomfortable facts. Some terrible things happened here in the early days, but there’s a part of the population that simply doesn’t want to know about them. My last book, the first history of the town of Sorell, which took me six years to research and write, was traduced by so-called historians with local roots who claimed I had it all wrong, but none of them has yet produced an iota of evidence to support the claim because none of them has ever bothered to do any real research. I can’t see A Compulsion to Kill being on their reading list. Too much truth!

ST: What’s your next project?

RC: One’s already with the publisher: Behind the Masks, a collection of friends’ reminiscences about the late and much-esteemed Tasmanian poet Gwen Harwood, which I co-edited and contributed to. My other projects are a New and Selected Stories, which is nearly complete, and Broken Spear, a biography of the Aboriginal leader Kikatapula, or Black Tom Birch. After being raised partly in a wealthy Caucasian family, he went bush, started and led Aboriginal resistance in Tasmania’s Black War of 1823-32, then changed sides to work against his own people, yet the great majority of Tasmanians have never heard of him. His story has never previously been told, and he’s wholly absent from a truly astonishing number of history books, even those about the Black War.

For more information, please visit: http://ipoz.biz/Titles/CTK.htm

The Planets are Aligning in Banff!

More international recognition for David P Reiter's latest work!

David's recent win at the 2012 Western Australian Premier's Book Awards 2012 for the My Planets Reunion Memoir set the stage. And 2014 is looking to be bigger and better!

The International Autobiography and Biography Association (IABA) Conference has just invited David to present Planets to a global audience in Banff, Alberta, ironically, at the very place where he composed the work in 2012, in collaboration with the digital media staff at the Banff Centre for the Arts. The conference will showcase life writers such as Patrick Lane and Fred Wah, who David knew from his years in Canada. A key supporting organisation of the conference is the University of Alberta, where David did his Master's degree.

The Banff Centre will be promoting his work as "Made in Banff" and there are plans for the University to highlight in their alumni magazine.

IP also sends an extended congratulations to David, and Sona Babajanyan, for their work in Bringing Down the Wall. The heart-warming picture book about a young boy taking responsibility to resolve a family feud has been selected by the Canada's Children's Book Centre as a Best Book for Teens and Children! Bringing Down the Wall has also been included on The Chief Minister's Reading List in the ACT.

While in Western Canada, David hopes to tour schools and libraries to give readings his wonderful children's books Bringing Down the Wall and, hot off the press Tiger Takes the Big Apple (Project Earth-mend Series: Book 4).

We're accepting expressions of interest from schools and libraries for stops on the upcoming tour (mid May through early June). We're also offering the hardback edition of Bringing Down the Wall to them for a mere CA$20 (the same price listed by the CCBC for the paperback edition) – and free postage. Interested? Please contact us on sales@ipoz.biz – we'd love to hear from you!

First international reading of 'My Planets'

I was delighted to have my first USA reading from My Planets at Op.Cit Bookshop in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

We had been staying with my long time friend David de Vaux and Molly at their cosy home on the other side of the Rockies, about an hour and half drive from Santa Fe, and David was kind enough to introduce my reading to the Op.Cit audience. It's a good vibe when browsers in the bookshop who weren't planning to attend the reading are drawn in to take a seat – and that's what happened with several people.

Here's the reading, which lasts about 30 minutes, filmed by my daughter Siobhan. Hope you enjoy it!

Key links: the book; the interactive website.

IP to attend the upcoming Australia-China Publishing Forum 2014!

IP is one of only 5 publishers invited to attend the Australia-China Publishing Forum in mid-March 2014!  – who said the start of the year would be boring?

We are excitedly preparing pitches for Chinese publishing houses regarding prospective sales and rights deals and looking forward to brushing shoulders with our colleagues at with Penguin Random and New Frontier Publishing, who will be attending with us.

With a heavy focus on digital publishing, our team is keen to promote such titles as I Love You, Book, Even Grimmer Tales, No Matter Who We're With, and The Smallest Carbon Footprint (in ebook format, as well as physical formats). Though still awaiting advice on which publishers and agents we'll be matched with for the Chinese market, thanks to our wonderful and hard working authors, we'll have a well stocked list to show off!

As David prepares to travel to Beijing in mid March, he is thrilled to be arriving a few days early to meet in Hefei with China's largest publishing house, Time Publishing. Eager to learn more about the Chinese market, David is looking forward to a tour of Times headquarters and meeting with publishers of their various imprints. A meeting with the Australian Ambassador is also being planned.

While we send him off on these sorties, keep the excellent work coming in!

And keep up to date with the Forum events by following us here or on Facebook and Twitter.

... Are you as excited as we are?

Media attention for two wave-making books: magical realism novel and child abuse legal battle memoir

Blood by Peter Kay

Blood was recently featured in The Mercury Saturday Magazine. Blood, written by Tasmanian local Peter Kay, is a magical realism novel involving time travel, romance, adventure, and the WWII bombing of Darwin.

Blood has also been featured in The Sunday Tasmanian, The Saturday Tasmanian, CQU News and the University of Canberra Monitor.

Sexual Abuse Survivor's Handbook by John Saunders

Sexual Abuse Survivor's Handbook by John Saunders has also been making waves. Read the feature article in the Northern Star here.

Sexual Abuse Survivor's Handbook has previously been mentioned in NSW Parliament, featured in interviews on ABC Radio, and has been the star of several public forums for child abuse survivors.

For details about a forum near you, contact us at info@ipoz.biz

Latest reviews of I Love You Book and Sawdust

This week we feature the latest reviews of our titles I Love You Book by Libby Hathorn and Heath McKenzie and Sawdust by Deborah Kay with Barry Levy.

I Love You Book is a charming picture book about the reasons why children (and adults!) love reading stories in books. It was inspired by a play that Hathorn's adult students in PNG put on to celebrate their excitement over learning to read for the first time. A great Christmas present for young children!

Sawdust is a moving memoir of child abuse that ends not with a broken victim but with a brave woman who has transcended her past and now urges us to protect future generations. It was launched by Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale for National Child Protection Week (October). A gift to make you think.

I Love You Book:

"The inspiration for this book could have been the sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning which begins “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…” because it is an ode to the pleasures and delights of the book – its sights, sounds, smells and the remarkable places it encourages our imagination to visit and the amazing creatures we meet when we get there.

From the “rustle-bustle” of the pages to the “dots and commas, question marks Performing every page” to the “happily-ever-afters, packed-to-the-rafters”, this is an enthusiastic, energetic romp that reaffirms the joy that reading provides and why books are here to stay because they are the perfect format. On each page, illustrator Heath McKenzie has created fantastic artworks (hand-drawn using a digital tablet) which match the energy of the text and help us recall some of the most magic moments in our reading lives. And even if we haven’t yet met the centipede being rude or visited those lands at the top of the tree, it inspires us to find those books so we can.

We ask our students to express why they love books, not just as an exploration of the senses but also as a way of having them recommend books to others. Which books make you “dreamy and sometimes quiet and slow”, and which books make you want to “go, get up and go!”? Similarly, how do those “short-long words” make the story move, and what role do those dots and commas have?

If you’re planning to start 2014 off with a focus on reading and books and the pleasures the children are going to be in for as the year with you progresses, this is a must-have."
- Barbara Braxton, The Bottom Shelf, OZTLNet (Australian Teacher Librarian Network)

Sawdust:

"This book is an excellent read - such a tough and terrible subject told with such optimism and hope. It helped me to understand how a young child normalises this situation. Deborah Kay is an amazing woman and so brave to tell her story. Her own children should be very proud of her. Well done!"
- Judy White, reader

IP eNews 60 (our last newsletter) is online!

Our last ever issue of IP eNews is now online, so please check it out if you haven't already: IP eNews 60

We've enjoyed the 15 years that eNews has been online and were pleased that the National Library has been archiving it as 'a significant cultural feature' almost from the start. The newsletter evolved over the years, reflecting the growth of IP, adding columns on imprints like IP Kidz as they came on stream, as well as fascinating interviews with our authors.

The only problem was that it was a quarterly. In the early days that was fine, but recently we've had so much news to share that we've increasingly relied on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for posting breaking news and events. eNews became more of a summary of information that had already been released on our social media sites, so readers would likely skim over much of the content.

The big advantage of newsletters, though, is covering issues in greater depth than the "grabs" one expects from Twitter and even Facebook. So we're hoping this new blog will be a more efficient and timely replacement for eNews, however sad we are to see it go!

And we also hope that you will "write back" to us in response to our postings, even prompting us for postings that you would like to see here. Here's your chance to shape the direction of our blog at the outset, so do let us know!

Welcome to Interactive Publications Australia's Blog!

From 2014, we'll post items here that hopefully will interest you about IP, Australia's most innovative independent publisher.

Our blog will replace IP eNews, which we wound up after its 60th issue, 15 years after it went to air. eNews was a quarterly and had an engaging mix of news, interviews, how-tos and editorials. But we think it's time for a more immediate means of communicating with you. So this blog will coordinate with our Facebook and Twitter sites, providing more depth. And of course it will be easier for you to chat with us here, and at length. We're looking forward to 2014, and beyond!