The results are in!

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The Macquarie’s pick for Word of the Year 2013 is:

Infovore noun a person who craves information, especially one who takes advantage of their ready access to it on digital devices.

The people’s choice goes to onesie, which I’m not even going to give a definition for here – y’all know what a onesie is by now, right?

For the full listings, you can see the Macquarie page here, and glory in such gorgeous words as churnalism, facepalm and cli-fi (not to be confused with clit-fic, which doesn’t appear to have made its way into the Macquarie yet, but is definitely on Urban Dictionary).

The only thing to do now is to stretch these glorious words even further. Is an infovorous onesied churnalist a thing? It is now!

Macquarie Dictionary – adjective /doʊp/ (say dohp) 9. (Colloquial) excellent: a dope book; so dope!

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Words are the tits, really. Australian English especially so, as the folks at Macquarie Dictionary will tell you. And now their editor Susan Butler’s got a blog, and it is awesome. Ever wanted to know the difference between a taboo and a derogatory word? Suze has you covered, with colourful examples. Wanna know the history of Aus usage of youse? Ms Butler has the answers.

Not only that, but you also get to vote for the Word of the Year 2013, which I am disproportionately excited about. The ‘Colloquial’ category is amazeballs (–adjective 2.  very astonishing: an amazeballs day out).

Doesn’t get better than that.

Fear (no more) the heat o’ the sun

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Urgh. Day Five of the great 2014 heatwave rolls on. The horror, the horror.

Time to pull out the big guns.

Four part series. Available immediately online. Got your attention yet?

First read this summary of book one. Then go here. Purchase.

Now start reading. By the time you look up, I promise, all this horrible weather will be over.

Don’t worry, you can thank me later.

 

Dead by Friday extract

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Dead by FridayDerek Pedley’s a man with a taste for the darker side of life. His award-winning true crime books are gripping, mesmerising – and occasionally terrifying, when he reminds us what even the most ordinary of folk are capable of.

Dead by Friday recounts a tale of murder and adultery that gripped Adelaide over ten years ago. Shortlisted for the Ned Kelly True Crime Award (the nation’s highest true crime honour), Dead by Friday tells the full story of what happened in the Carolyn Matthews murder case of 2001. With a cast of unbelievable characters – including the hitman who ate his contract in a sandwich! – Pedley skillfully and entertainingly manoeuvres his readers through the details of the case.

It’s an amazing book, but if you’d rather try before you buy: a long extract can be found here.

Tricks to survive a heatwave …

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The holidays are most definitely over. And we’re into Day Two of the great 2014 heatwave (fingers crossed this is the only one!). We all need a good book to get us through.

Thank goodness for Iola Mathews, then! Chequered Lives is the hottest off-est the press at the minute, and it’s already flying out the door. Telling the story of John Barton Hack and Stephen Hack, and the early days of South Australia, it’s fascinating, incredibly well researched and incredibly well written, too!

Or, if you need a book with a cool name, there’s always Sea Change, our incredibly popular (and beautiful) history of the City of Holdfast Bay. Recently reprinted to keep up with demand, this book is perfect for a slow read on a hot afternoon.

You can almost feel the sea breeze on your face …

And if that doesn’t appeal, we’ve only got one more suggestion.

Can’t go wrong!

Book Fair Success!

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What a weekend it was!

Don Pyatt Hall looked incredible, thanks to Liz, who spent hours sewing bunting (so cool, right?) and finding the perfect decorations.

Then, the books themselves, all marked down and arranged neatly due to the enormous efforts of Trevor, our sales rep extraordinaire, and Jonny, warehouse manager and backbone of all WP’s operations.

But the best part of the whole weekend was the authors! We kicked the weekend off with Rodney Fox’s launch, and that guy can tell a yarn. The hall was in stitches for his speech, then they queued up for ages to get their books signed by the man himself.

Other highlights included Lisa Fabry’s talk on the guilt-free benefits of vegan desserts, which had us all drooling, and Derek Pedley’s explanation of the process behind Dead by Friday — an amazing book and an amazing author. Valerie Volk’s fascinating writing processes were explained, and Jude Aquilina treated us to a couple of readings. Bruce Munday explained all things stone walls and Margaret Merrilees gave an excellent overview of her work, The First Week, while Sharon Kernot explained the processes behind the creation of the world in Underground Road.

And, of course, we left Don Pyatt Hall on Sunday night with a lot less books than we’d arrived with on Friday, already talking about how we’ll do it all next year.

Thanks all for coming, enjoying, giving talks or just sipping wine. It’s lovely to have such a great bunch of people reading and interested in Wakefield titles, and it warms the cockles of our Wakefieldian hearts to know that more than a few of you will be reading our books over the break!

Publisher Profile – Michael Bollen

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The very last of our profiles for the upcoming Wakefield Press Book Fair is not an author, but our very own publisher, Michael Bollen.

Michael Bollen

Michael is publisher and director at Wakefield Press, where he has worked for 20-odd years. This version of the company was started in 1989 (the fifth incarnation of Wakefield Press, if you can believe it) which means Wakefield has a 25th birthday coming up in 2014. Michael works across all areas of Wakefield, from editing to finance to marketing, and knows the business inside and out.

As Wakefield releases around 40 new titles each year across fiction, true stories, history, food and art, Michael has a large backlist to keep track of – as well as a formidable range of general knowledge!

There is no one in South Australia who knows more about the publishing business than Michael does, and he is an invaluable member of the SA creative community. He’s also a great source of information about the publishing industry, which is why he has been roped in to give a couple of talks during the Wakefield Press Book Fair. You can catch Michael at the fair at 11.00 am on Saturday 14 December or at 1.00 pm on Sunday 15 December.

Come armed with your questions! This is your opportunity to get the inside scoop on what’s happening in the industry, and to find out about the process of publishing your book.