It is the moment that I see a book’s cover that I know it is real and all the work has been worth it. I don’t have an advance copy yet, but Cambridge University Press have put it on Amazon and a host of other sites for pre-order.
The full title is Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture. I am really proud to have my book come out with Cambridge University Press. They have been wonderful to work with in every aspect.
I am a recovered arachnophobe. I now adore spiders. Absolutely adore them and am endlessly fascinated by their incredibly varied lives. I told that story in my book, Spiders: learning to love them, published by Allen & Unwin in 2009.
I am still enthralled by spiders, go out and watch them and want to tell the whole world that there is nothing to fear in these incredible critters.
I got to wax lyrical about them on the American podcast, MonsterTalk. They describe it as:
ONE OF THE MOST COMMON FEARS in the world is the fear of spiders. But what does a rationalist do when gripped by an irrational fear? MonsterTalk interviews author Lynne Kelly about her transition from arachnophobia to spider enthusiast. Note: This episode deals with spider sexual reproduction which includes masturbation and cannibalism.
You can listen here. It was great fun!
Spiders is available from Amazon and other book shops.
“I held out the deck of cards, a bicycle deck. I had said nothing. I had done nothing beyond holding out a deck of cards in dealers’ grip. The teenager turned to his friends and said ‘I know this one’. The girls wandered off.
A week later, the teenagers were around a table. I slowly unwrapped the leather pouch and took from it a very old deck of cards. I told how they had belonged to my great‐grandmother and have magic powers that I don’t understand. I held the precious deck out to show them, in dealers’ grip. No‐one already knew it and none of the girls wandered off.
This essay is not just about being a female magician, but about being a feminine one. I’m always dressed in long skirts, lots of jewellery and all the trappings of somebody who loves being female. This essay is about the reasons I feel there are not many feminine magicians.“
That is the opening to an article which was reprinted in The Journal of Performance Magic published by the University of Huddersfield Press. The entire article can be found here:
http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/view/journal_jpm/2014/2/1.html
It was originally commissioned for The Magiculum edited by Todd Landman.
My father had been an amateur magician, so I had always loved it as I did anything even vaguely related to him. But it was through research for my book, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal, that I became intrigued about why and how people were convinced by false perceptions. Meeting magicians in Australia and the UK, especially Ian Rowland and Lewis Jones, sent me off on a new obsession.
My leather pouch has the old deck of cards, the handwritten book left by my great-grandmother and packages of other strange cards. It’s all an illusion. I love it!
Obsessions are great when you are a non-fiction writer. Material is simply everywhere.
Some days are just so significant they become milestones in your life. I have no doubt last Wednesday will be one.
An email arrived headed Arts Victoria funding outcome, and I could see the opening words “I am pleased to advise that you have been successful …” Obviously this is a fantastic email to get because of the money awarded. But it is much more than that. It is my first literary grant. It is recognition of my status as a writer. Can you imagine how good that was for my self-esteem?
Ancient Memory Spaces is for the general reader and will focus on the memory methods used by indigenous cultures to memorise vast amounts of rational information. It then shows how a simpler version of these methods were used by the Ancient Greeks and Romans and then slowly became more specialised in the Middle Ages and Renaissance until they disappeared in Western cultures other than for world memory champions showing off in memory competitions. Ancient Memory Spaces then shows how these ideas explain the purpose of ancient monuments around the world, including the great houses of Chaco Canyon, Easter Island, the mound builders along the Mississippi, the Nasca lines in Peru and many more. And of course, Stonehenge and other Neolithic sites including Avebury, the Ness of Brodgar, Newgrange and the amazing 3000 standing stones of Carnac.
So much fun and I am now funded to write it!
Meanwhile, back at the Cambridge book, Knowledge and power in prehistoric societies, we are just up to the production phase. There’s much more on my blog specifically about my research, Memory Spaces. The designers have chosen one of my photos for the cover. Not surprisingly, it is of Stonehenge – one of the all important Welsh bluestones overshadowed (both physically and metaphorically) by the huge sarsen trilithon. Here’s the image. I can’t wait to see what they do with it.
I do appreciate advice, especially in terms of marketing. Ian Rowland has made a suggestion for the cover which I love. I shall send it to Cambridge immediately. The book would sell so much better than my totally rational version.
Spiders: learning to love them published by Allen & Unwin
My future books will be all about my research on orality, traditional knowledge systems and archaeology. There is so much to research and write that it will take more lifetimes than I have available.
But that doesn’t mean that past books are forgotten. I am finding myself drawn out each night with a torch and camera to check out the spiders. That is a passion which will never die, although Spiders was published a few years ago now.
I once feared these critters. Now the obsession with them is something I still want to write about.
Eriophora pustulosa
Last night, I knew that the old thrill is still very much alive as I watched a small orb weaver emerge from her hiding place on the birch in the back yard and spin her web. I’ve named her Little Birch. She’s a young knobbed orb weaver, Eriophora pustulosa. She was flighty, rushing back to her resting place on the tree trunk when I tried to photograph. Previous E. pustulosa have been far less concerned by my presence. I have noticed before that individuals of the same species can have very different personalities.
So I didn’t get any good photos. Above is one of last year’s favourites.
I am still intrigued by why people believe things for which there is no evidence. The topics covered, and cut out of The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal have a lot more to offer me as a writer. There’s so much in my books and online units on education to write about. And Crocodile? It is the chapter In Life and Legend which led me to oral tradition and the science encoded there, so it is still very much alive.
Although these topics will probably not form the basis of a book again, I want to look at freelance writing so I can still wax lyrical about the things I find fascinating. I’ll let you know how I go.
Find the spider! This is Little Birch in her resting place. She thinks that she’s hidden.
The Writing Process Blog Hop is a movement which asks that writers answer the four Writing Process questions and then nominate a few others to do the same. You then thank the writer who nominated you, pointing to their blog. So, thank you Peter Macinnis for the nomination.
What are you working on?
I am finalising the manuscript for an academic book based on my research into the extraordinary memory methods indigenous cultures use to retain huge amounts of practical and scientific knowledge without writing anything down. I propose that enigmatic archaeological sites such as Stonehenge are primarily as knowledge spaces – somewhere to aid memory and convey information, most of which is practical, the stuff survival depends on. The book will be published next year by Cambridge University Press as Knowledge and power in prehistoric societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture. Academic titles are like that!
I have just completed a proposal for a book for the mainstream reader on similar topics, with more emphasis on memory and a larger range of archaeological sites. The working title is Ancient memory spaces. It is now with my agent, Lyn Tranter.
Lots more about that research on my other blog, Memory Spaces.
How does your work differ from others of its genre?
This is a hard question, because I am not really sure what my genre is. I know it is non-fiction, but it is really across disciplines. The Cambridge book is clearly archaeology. In that genre, no-one else has applied all the research on ‘primary orality’ – the way communications work in cultures which have no contact with writing. No-one else is linking formal memory training and non-literate knowledge systems and the archaeology on non-literate sites. Yet the people who built Stonehenge, Avebury, Chaco Canyon, Poverty Point, Easter Island and so many other amazing sites around the world were non-literate. They must have had complex knowledge systems and they must have used memory systems to manage to keep so much stuff in memory.
The ancient Greeks call this artificial memory – not just being reminded of things but formally working to commit it to memory by studying. Oral tradition isn’t all about religion and history, as so often implied. It is also about a vast amount of information like animal and plant classification and characteristics (thousands of them!), navigation, genealogies, astronomy, geology, rules, surviving resource stress, resource rights … How do they remember so much stuff? And isn’t it logical that people in prehistory used the same methods?
But there is so many other aspects – the role of art, portable memory devices, how amazingly effective these methods are … it just goes on and on. I want to tell the world about it all!
Why do you write what you do?
Because this is what I am so interested in at the moment and my brain doesn’t like working on anything other than what it is interested in. What bliss that I can do just that!
I still love my spiders and topics of previous books. But I must write about what I am reading now and convey all the wonderful things I found out when I was doing a PhD on this topic.
I believe that what I am writing about is important. I can’t write just for fun. And I’m no good at humour. So I write seriously. It’s just the way my words come out.
How does your writing process work?
Oh dear – this could be a very long answer. Ask me if you want to know more! I have all sorts of systems in place developed over the years of writing. I have a studio (I call it my Garret) where there is no noise and no food. I am surrounded by a whole lot of things which are very different to the real world and so it just feels totally different which seems to make my thinking change track. Everything is written or pasted into exercise books, 5 mm grid only, each covered in coloured paper and contact which acts as a code. There are 100 of them neatly on the shelves.
I start each writing session with a journal update which divides the outside world from my writing world and focuses me on the task at hand. I write every day – even if it is only notes and even if it isn’t any good. I just want to write and hope that someone out there wants to read my words.
And when I am gardening or walking or cooking or waiting in queues, I have imaginary conversations with people about whatever I am thinking about. Endlessly. Then these conversations become the next page of words. It’s a lovely lifestyle.
Tagging Todd Landman: academic, writer on really important topics like human rights, and [wait for it] magician!
Tagging Narelle Harris: a writer in many genres including speculative fiction, apps, Melbourne Guides … but she won’t be back in Australia until September, something to look forward to!
Writers aiming to pitch a book to a publisher are advised to prepare a 25 word description to attract attention.*
If asked for more, they should be ready with a 125 word expansion. Then, having raised the interest during a query phone call, be ready to expand further with ideas on the intended audience, marketing and planned format.
I also find this task invaluable to be ready for when people ask what I am writing at the moment. The questions they ask often give me ideas and directions, or highlight an issue I hadn’t even considered. They want a 25 word description, and then maybe 125. They don’t want me to wax lyrical for half an hour, even though that is my natural inclination.
Today I discovered a new reason for developing this skill. I volunteer at the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Museum as part of the curatorial research team. We have been asked by the new Director, Jennifer Kalionis, to work on a variety of approaches to improve the information available to gallery and museum visitors. The image below will lead you to the Gallery’s website.
I have started with a bark painting from Oenpelli in Western Arnhem Land, Northern Territory. It would be easy to write a book on this incredible art which demonstrates a continuous tradition for at least 20,000 years. But visitors to the Gallery do not want a book on each art work. Jennifer has asked for:
1. An expanded label which includes a paragraph, at most two, of background to the bark. Just one paragraph, when I want to write a book.
2. A children’s label presenting the information in a way which will encourage children to take an interest and feel engaged. Maybe two paragraphs. (I know adults read the children’s labels – I always do.)
3. One page of background for visitors who want to know more. Only one page? Oh dear.
4. A more detailed background, provenance, sources and so on for the Gallery’s records. Maybe, she suggested, aware how much I was writing, a few pages?
Our team is also talking about the possibility of electronic information displayed on a visitor’s mobile phone when a QR code is scanned. That is a different format again – it has to look good and be easy to read on a small device. No long sentences!
This is one of the great aspects of writing non-fiction. One set of research can lead to all sorts of outcomes. I can guarantee the Oenpelli art on bark and in rock shelters will feature in a future book. And I think an article for a magazine is forming in my mind.
I love research. I love the way I can then turn that research into so many writing projects.
* An excellent book on writing proposals is “A Decent Proposal” by Rhonda Whitton and Sheila Hollingworth (Keesing Press).
This site has been a static website – until today! I am now making it a blog about writing non-fiction. So, welcome!
After seven years of research into memory spaces, gaining a PhD along the way, I am ready to return to the world of writing for the mainstream public. My research will be published in academic format by Cambridge University Press with the title Knowledge and power in prehistoric societies: orality, memory and the transmission of culture. Academic book titles are like that. We are into the production phase and it should be out within a year.
There is a great deal more about that on the blog dedicated to the topic – just click on the image below:
I have written books for education, one novel and three popular science titles. My first task, having returned to the real world from academia, is to write about the incredible memory systems I have learned about from indigenous cultures. I want to explain how that explains the purpose of monuments such as Stonehenge and all the other henges in the UK and beyond, as well as other mysterious sites around the world which fit the same pattern as a memory space: Easter Island, the Nazca Lines in Peru, Chaco Canyon and the Ancestral Puebloan sites in the US southwest, the mound building sites in the US southeast and so many more. That is all over in the Memory Spaces blog.
I went to the Bendigo Writers’ Festival just over a week ago. It was so good to listen to other writers and feel that familiar vibe. And it’s so good to be blogging about writing and a writer’s life.