PAUL COLLINS
- GUEST AUTHOR & PUBLISHER -
G'day folks,
Today, I'm pleased to present one of Australia's most noted authors, publishers, and characters.
Paul has been short-listed for many awards and has won the Inaugural Peter McNamara, A Bertram Chandler, Aurealis and William Atheling awards. However, he has just published his latest novel, and it’s presented here today.
JAMES GONG: THE BIG HIT
Publisher: Hybrid Publishers
Distributor: New Holland
RRP $16.95
ISBN: 978-1-925736-44-1
Synopsis:
James Gong is
training for his black belt in taekwondo. One night a camera crew from Hollywood
Productions turns up at training for an episode of My Life, only to see James at his most ornery aggressiveness. They
love James' jumping spinning sidekick, and decide to star him in a small budget
flick. Trouble is, Hollywood Productions is a scam company that basically
produces B grade ‘loser’ movies to offset huge tax bills.
Meanwhile, James,
who likes his sister Caitlin’s best friend, Amber, thinks his sudden film
career will curry favour. Not so. If anything, Amber shuns him more so. Hollywood
Productions may want to lose money, but underestimates their star.
About the author:
Paul
Collins has written many books for younger readers. He is best known for
his fantasy and science fiction titles: The
Jelindel Chronicles and The Quentaris
Chronicles ─ co-edited with Michael Pryor. His trade series The Earthborn was published in America by
Tor. Paul has been short-listed for many awards and has won the Inaugural Peter
McNamara, A Bertram Chandler, Aurealis and William Atheling awards.
The Book!
I originally wrote
James Gong – The Big Hit as a book
for Lothian back in the days when they were publishing a stack of my books.
These included six Quentaris Chronicles titles, The Great Ferret Race and The
Dog King. I was also co-editing the series with Michael Pryor – we produced
about thirty titles all up.
Alas, Lothian was
bought out by Transworld and within weeks, Hachette took out Transworld.
Although he Quentaris Chronicles held
on for six more titles with Hachette, Lothian’s other books were dropped. As an
aside, one of them went on to sell to Penguin, so there was an upside!
But not so The Big Hit as it was known as back
then. It did the rounds but nobody seemed interested. At that time there was
what’s known in the industry as the mid-list implosion. Many publishers were
getting rid of those authors who weren’t performing so well sales-wise. It’s
getting worse now, as I see some former A-list authors getting published by
smaller presses.
But back to James Gong! I originally got that
idea from The Age newspaper. There
was a big article on the bottom of the harbour schemes whereby businesses would
deliberately strip themselves of assets just prior to tax returns thus avoiding
tax to the ATO. There’s an article on it here:
So I figured, okay, what say we have a martial artist kid
who gets spotted by a talent scout who’s associated with a shonky producer that
needs to lose some money on producing a really bad movie to avoid paying tax.
I’ve since learnt that a similar idea was used in The Producers (‘Springtime for Hitler’),
but I really did get this idea from The
Age. A bit of trivia: I wrote Cyberskin
in 1994 and Hybrid published it, and that’s who James Gong – The Big Hit is published by. Anyway, the elevator
pitch for Cyberskin might be: Movie
star is filmed basically making snuff movies whereby people have to fight to
stay alive. The movies are screened worldwide as gladiatorial sport. Sound
familiar? The Hunger Games might have
the same pitch. But I wrote Cyberskin
two decades before Suzanne Collins wrote her series. It happens.
But I’ve digressed again. One of my tips is to never throw
out a manuscript. The Beckoning was
written even before Cyberskin, and I
finally resurrected it and finally sold it to Damnation Books. I took the same
line of approach with James Gong.
I can honestly say the lead-time between writing the first
draft to when it was actually published was around thirty-five years. I dabbled
with it from time to time, added things, deleted scenes, etc. It’s been very
much a hobby book, during which time I had other books commissioned by
Scholastic and others. One thing most people don’t realise is that often,
authors write for specific markets. And The
Big Hit didn’t really fit into what people were looking for at the time.
Hence it usually took a backseat to books that I had commissioned and knew
would sell.
When I finally had the draft I was happy with, I secured an
agent who thought it was great. Alas, she had no luck in placing it. She tried
about fifteen publishers and gave up.
This worried me somewhat. As the publisher at Ford Street
Publishing, I reckon I know a good book when I read one. I hope that doesn’t
sound too bigheaded, but I knew there were way worse books being published.
Regardless, cutting a long story short, I remember Hybrid telling me that
they’d always publish me if I sent them another manuscript. So I tested them
and sent James Gong – The Big Hit.
The publisher got back to me some weeks later and said he’d
be true to his word and publish the book. He added that quite apart from
keeping his word, he actually thought it was a great read.
You can imagine his delight when four book clubs pre-ordered
2000+ copies. When this happens you know the book has legs. Book clubs get
offered most of the books being published in the country by the major
publishers. So for a small press to get a book taken up by four of them, you
have to say the publishers who rejected the book got it wrong. 2000 pre-sales
is a good figure to any publisher, big or small.
Re the book itself, it contains parts of my life. I have two
black belts in martial arts and was trained in kick-boxing by Dana Goodson,
then Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion of Australia. So all of that experience
hopefully shines through in the book.
It’s early days, but so far a couple of reviewers have given
it ‘Highly recommended’ reviews. Here’s one from a teacher-librarian in Queensland:
My partner, fellow children’s writer, Meredith Costain, has
produced a trailer for it. Watch it here:
'James Gong: The Big Hit' is available from all good bookshops and via my own website.
Clancy's comment: Well done, Paul. I hope you sell squillions of this book. Keep up the good work, and stay safe.
I'm ...
