Tasmania: A Guide

Tasmania- A Guide (1989 / 1997) Post 348

 Tasmania - A Guide first came about in the late 1980s when a local author contacted me and said she'd been contracted to write a book but was now ill and couldn't do it. She asked if I'd like to do it instead. I agreed, and the publisher transferred the job to me. Since it's well known in our family that I can't direct my way out of a paper bag and get lost on a regular basis, the job needed some thought. My parents and husband all drove me about the state, so I could operate a voice-recorder and take photographs. These had to be slides, or black and white prints, and I had a lot of trouble finding a lab that would make the prints look right. I showed one set of muddy-looking images with the tops cut off to my sister, and she obligingly printed up a couple of samples for me to show the lab. 

"Like THIS," I said, showing the sharp images with the tops NOT cut off.

"Oh..."

"Same negatives," I said.

"Oh, but these were done by hand. That costs extra."

So, it would cost extra to get the job done properly. 

That was the first time I realised the usual photo lab did the printing mechanically. My sister obligingly did the lot for me. I hired a friend to draw me some maps. I asked around for (true) stories from the different districts. I did a lot of research. (This was pre-internet,you understand...)

I found out a lot from visiting cemeteries. My daughter, then four years old, got used to "going to see the gravies". I certainly learned a lot about my home state, and later got a couple of novels (Anna's Own and Heather & Heath) from it.

Several years later, the publishers asked for an update. This time, my husband and I tackled the job, re-driving the routes because a lot had changed. We discovered a lot of the historic buildings had changed hands of changed use, so this time, we concentrated on the history of the building rather than its modern application.

At one point, there was a German edition called Tasmanien Australiens Grünes Paradies. Since we don't speak German, we took it off to someone who did, and he told us the new title was: "Tasmania: Australia's Green Paradise". As for the cover pic, to this day I have no idea what that represents.

ABOUT THE BLOG

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist.