by Grace Bridges

Writing and publishing from New Zealand can be a difficult balancing act at times. Face it - we're out here far beyond where the sailors of old feared they'd fall off the edge. 

Cables and wires connect us to the rest of the world, but the distance is still felt. Think that'll stop me? Not likely...
Picture

Isolation


Paint a wooden sign and nail it to a stake. Hammer it into the sand dune and I'll take a seat beside it, gazing out where it points at the wet blue horizon. Ten thousand kilometres thataway, give or take, begins the land of my writing colleagues. On these shores I am quite alone in my circles. An independent publisher of speculative fiction with an inspirational bent? There's few enough of us as it is, let alone a second one in the country I call home.

But that doesn't matter, most of the time. I love my home all the more for having been away for almost eight years. Though I've been back a while now, I still revel in the sound of familiar accents and the easy way things are done here. The ocean is a constant inspiration, family is near, and the cost of living allows for less stress than Europe.

So how does one begin to build the momentum to drive such an undertaking? I got my start while in Europe, which although it has more people than New Zealand, is still far from the centres of literary activity in my niche. The people around me didn't even speak my language as I worked on my first novel. Trying to explain science fiction to a German is not an easy prospect!

Then I moved to Ireland for a while. That's where the picture above is from, the edge of Europe on the island of Aran Mor off the west coast of County Clare. In Dublin I felt the words that have seeped into the venerable ground of ancient city streets, where pauper writers once roamed. Maybe they still do in our time, if one wide-eyed antipodean tourist counts among them.

By this time it was very clear in my mind what I wanted to do. Publishing got into my blood and refused to be diluted by any amount of naysaying. I've had to make it my mission to figure out the doing of it from a distance, without being present or even in the right time zone for a phone call. 

I'm still feeling my way, blindly stretching virtual hands through the network that binds us. I still get a lot of "Huh?" reactions when I introduce myself. But nothing is impossible. My wonderful team of Stateside authors are patient with their physically remote publisher, and they have themselves to thank for their success. 

So I'll sit a while on my sand dune and stare at the sea, but not for too long. I'll walk the beach, then write a while, then go home and do some book production or maybe talk to someone on the other side of the world who's doing the same job as me. Not such a bad state of affairs, really...   ~BE 

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_Grace Bridges owns Splashdown Books, an indie press that publishes speculative fiction. She is also a science fiction author and has two published books: Faith Awakened (2007) and Legendary Space Pilgrims (2010). Grace is a New Zealander of Irish descent and a multilingual do-it-yourself force to be reckoned with. A graduate of the University of Auckland and a translator by trade, she spent eight years globetrotting chiefly in Europe while working for the police and also completing her first novels. She has lived in Germany and Ireland, but now resides in her original homeland with a cat and approximately six boarders within sight of several volcanos. Often found staring into trees in search of a tui, she is a mystic wordnerd, urbanite hermit, and a writer of futuristic dreams that mess with your mind. www.splashdownbooks.com