The Mutterings and Musings of an Author's Husband

Still author's husband-ing away

 

Gina (www.ginacolliasuzuki.com) is still intensely focused on two fiction projects in their advanced stages, an history degree course and working on her next academic work on Japanese art as well. Oh, she’s also managing to find time to maintain her ‘Angry Birds’ high score ranking of being in the top 1000 in the world (ranked 765, the last time I looked). Obviously, Gina is very, very busy, as always.

What about me though? After helping with the marketing activities of her second novel in 2010, what has this Author’s husband being doing in the meantime to support my beloved writerly one?

Well, apart from making sure she has sustenance while buried in the large mountain of books and research papers where I presume it’s her typing madly away, I’ve been excitedly preparing for the marketing for her next novels.

One of them is set in late eighteenth century Japan, and once published, we’re planning on attending events in clothes from the period. I’ve been looking at kimono for Gina and me, as well as looking at props that are appropriate to her main characters. Apart from being eye-catching, getting dressed up will be good for photo, news article and internet marketing opportunities. Let’s face it, it’s just going to be enormous fun!

We tried various approaches to Gina’s book signings in 2009 and 2010. We were very lucky because most of the things we tried worked very well, some needed adapting a little and a small number of approaches were OK but didn’t really add to the campaigns in the way we hoped they might. Overall, the campaigns were very successful with sales figures beating many in-store records for non-celebrity book signing numbers, re-orders on book stocks and post-event internet sales improved if on-line rankings are anything to go by. Great rewards for having a lot of fun and meeting a lot of very interesting people - both ‘Interesting!’ and, erm, shall we say, ‘interestingly psychotic’ (See A Signing, a Psychiatrist, and a Spicy Sausage).

Anyway, from all those activities, we identified some other things that we’ll definitely want for the next campaigns which I’ve been preparing for, as well as planning for some other experimental things that we want to try as well. As an example, I’ve already got 5 expandable banner stands in different sizes to allow for smaller or larger events. Some marketing and banner designs have been sketched out, although these can only be conceptual at this point. Still, it's been good to sketch out ideas and playing with various ways to market Gina using multiple types of media.
  
I’ve been thinking about the local, national and global marketing plans too. We’ll take a lot from what we learned before, but I think it makes sense to revisit those plans from scratch at a later date, although they’ll still be completed well in advance of the launch of each novel once published.

I'm also very excited about our coming twenty-fifth anniversary in November; there's so much to do in so little time, but life is very good indeed.

Wishing all of you who read this the very best.

Ryoma

You can't tell me anything!

 

There's a peculiar thing that I didn't mention in the blog I wrote a while ago about how I met Gina. At the time, before I even knew her name, an absolute 'knowing' came over me that I have never been able to explain. It overwhelmed me but was in turn overwhelmed by the fact that I was falling in love with Gina at first sight.

That 'knowing' was that the incredible person I had just met would write books that would make a difference in the world. I had no idea what that difference would be, when it would be or what she would write about. I just knew it would happen and it was just a fact, regardless of anything else that would happen in life. Recently, Gina told me she has never felt any pressure from me all these years, only belief in an inevitability. I am grateful for that, as it's always been a fear of mine that I would negatively influence the natural course of what is meant to be.

To put this into a little more perspective, when I met Gina she was a very shy, academically brilliant seventeen year old student and I was an unemployed, uncouth, down-and-out eighteen year old. Now, we've known each other for well over twenty four years. 

The study of Utamaro had already been a passion of hers for a few years by the time I met her and I remember fondly that our earliest 'dates' involved me carrying the heavy old books to and from the secure stacks at Birmingham Reference Library to Gina as she would study the hallowed tomes of the 'Old Gentlemen of Ukiyo-e', the title she reverently gave to the numerous scholars, connoisseurs and collectors who had been writing about Utamaro and Ukiyo-e over the past century. I got to know them through Gina as she enthusiastically talked about their discoveries, their theories and their thoughts that they had shared on paper. I can still name several of them from memory now - Vignier and Enada, Gale, Vever, De Goncourt, Bing, Humphries, Yoshida, Michener and of course, the finest gentlemen of them all, Mr Jack Hillier, who would invite Gina for tea just months later and went on to be a pivotal part of Gina's life as both a friend and mentor until his passing in 1995.

One story that might amuse you about those days at the library was that I was inspired by Gina's sheer passion for knowledge and decided to have a go at 'getting cleverer'. I set out to write an essay on Shakespeare's King Lear, bearing in mind I hadn't been taught Shakespeare at school and had what I would consider to be a very limited vocabulary, and therefore a limited understanding as well, at the time. After several hours, Gina overheard me asking the head librarian if they had a copy in 'normal English', for which I was given a look by the man that was a mix of horror and disgust as I was dismissed as a possible trouble maker. I'm surprised he didn't ask security to have me escorted into the picture book section of the library. 

A few hours later still, after hearing much muttering and grumbling from me, Gina asked me how I was doing and if she could see what I'd written so far. I flipped the writing pad around to show her the one line I'd written, which was, "This bloke's not all there in the head." Erm, yes, I know, I think that says it all really. The experience didn't stop me reading and appreciating Shakespeare as the years went on, but you can see where I started out. Funny, really.

With Gina's two groundbreaking works on Utamaro being published in 2008 and 2009, I was not only proud of her, I was also suddenly struck by the thought that one day, many, many years from now, a young student of Ukiyo-e will be at a reference library, buried in books by all the Old Gentlemen of Ukiyo-e, and, amongst those fine tomes will be Gina's fabulous reference books right next to Mr Hillier's works as well. What a fine and wonderful thought that is.

I am sure Mr Hillier would be so proud of her if he were here today, watching her continue the legacy of the Old Gentlemen. I think he would also agree that we need a new title that includes ladies now as well. Gina has suggested that it might be the Old Codgers of Ukiyo-e instead. Hehehe. Whatever the new title, there's no rush for that now as I'm sure that one of the students sat in a library many years from now will come up with a lovely title herself or himself too.

Ding-a-ling!

Ding-a-ling! Ding-a-ling!

Over the last few days, the sound of a brass school bell emanating from our bedroom has repeatedly put a smile on my face. And "No!", hahaaa, it's not some kinky role-playing going on here, it's Gina's way of alerting me that she needs help or assistance while she is bed-bound and voiceless due to the flu.

So, why do I smile when she is suffering so much that she can barely sleep from coughing so much and has completely lost her voice? Well, "No" again, its not because I am glad for the "peace and quiet"! LOL!

The school bell was bought on a whim, many years ago, when we lived in Bath. We popped into one of the many wonderful gift shops there, saw this lovely brass bell and bought it. We just liked it. Little did we know that years later it would be used frequently while Gina lay in bed for over 12 months between 2007 and 2008, barely coherent following a sudden and mysterious illness that had her rushed into hospital where they literally had minutes to save her life and then spent 3 days and nights in the emergency assessment unit while I sat there watching her decide wether or not to stay here or move on to whatever comes next after life. Even now, if there is a hospital scene in a film where someone is hooked up to machines and looks like they are about to die, I get a lump in my throat and tears well up in my eyes as I vividly remember what Gina went through at the time.

When she came out of hospital, there was a lot of adjusting to do in our lives. Gina, a strong, active and passionate person, basically became a prisoner of her own body with absolutely no end in sight, no answers from the specialists and little improvement seen, even after 12 months. During that period there were a few times when the school bell came in very handy. At the time it was a mechanism, something to alert me to a need or a problem. It was practical and it worked. Not something to celebrate or smile about at all.

Now, when I hear the bell I smile because our life since then has been about second chances and not taking anything for granted.

In a funny way, the bell is sort of an ironic joke. It's used as an alert for problems but it also makes me feel grateful that she's here to ring the bell in the first place and it represents unbelievable amounts of joy. It still represents the happiness when we bought it, how we have loved it and kept it on our bookshelves for years, the fact that it was part of a time of great uncertainty and worry when she was barely able to think and speak for over a year, the reminder that it was put back on the book shelves when those times suddenly came to an end on the day that Gina woke up and was suddenly able to think clearly again, was completely focused as before and determined to finish her work on Utamaro. Over the last two years, to see her flourish and succeed at a phenomenal rate has been so amazing that I don't have the words to describe how I feel when I watch the words flow out of her in an endless stream of creativity. Astounding.

Gina's second novel, The Delightful Undoing of Patricia Enid Guppy, is out in June and she was working on two, yes two(!), other novels just before she fell ill 3 weeks ago. All this, and her second Utamaro book has just been published just a couple of months ago as well, my mind boggles at the very thought of it!

So, back to the bell. Ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling. We ring the bell for fun sometimes too, not just when Gina is ill, so I hope that I get to hear it ring for many, many, many more years to come yet. That's certainly something to smile about, isn't it?