Another Review.

Quid and Harmony:

I picked up this book with no great expectation, prepared to put it down again fairly quickly if it didn't hold my attention. What I wasn't prepared for was the strength of this story to pick me up and whisk me off on an adventure with a band of characters who quickly became friends, or foe, in the eternal battle between good and evil, light and darkness, joy and despair.

Music, song and dance have the power, in this story, to shape the reality of Earth and Sky, a realm of fire and ice and lost magic. Of dragons.

Quid and Harmony are two Australian children with a special bond and unique talents who are called to Earth and Sky as Muse and Dancer, to free the land from the Darkness that threatens to engulf it.

When you can't put a book down, then delay reading the last few pages in dread of losing such good company, you know the wordsmith has done a fine job.

Allan Smith certainly has. For a self-published first-time author, Quid and Harmony is a remarkable story. Mr Smith doesn't waste words as he builds you a sturdy vehicle in which to race off into this adventure.

The dialogue is full and expressive and shapes the characters into people you won't easily forget.

The cover, maps and layout of Quid and Harmony have been skilfully designed by Allan's son Tom.

All profit from this book will go to good causes, notably the Fistula hospital in Addis Ababa, run by an Australian doctor, Catherine Hamlin. For only $20, Quid and Harmony is an affordable and delightful gift for those close to you, and a life changing gift to someone half a world away.

Quid and Harmony is available from Lost for Words Bookshop, Gallery Walk, or from Allan's website www.smithysbook.com.

Once read, you'll be pleased to know that Quid and Harmony is the first part of the Earth and Sky trilogy. I look forward to more magic from Mr Smith.

D. Schluter, Tamborine Times.

A Book Review

Fantasy breaks fresh ground: Quid and Harmony by Allan Smith

Allan Smith has taken the much visited fantasy genre and conjured a genuinely original story with wonder, horror and romance played out on the textured tapestry of a world precariously at risk. To make goodness convincing, and particularly to make it interesting, is much harder work than to show evil. Both good and evil catch breath here. The flip-flop interface of worlds is bewitching and the pace relentless. Music, uniquely powerful music played and danced, seamlessly laces the plot. The pages had little time to settle as I read this book.

Readers will discover this author is a smith of evocative words. He took his apprenticeship with the humbling act of seeking wide opinion, professional and otherwise, through many revisions over eight years. The love of fine craftsmanship and the long gestation of this book is evidence of his unwillingness to compromise.

Quid and Harmony is full of more inventive twists than the road among the Tasmanian hills where Allan built his first house. In a way, the ‘notes’ for this book accumulated long before he began pecking at his laptop. His rambling house on a hillside is among the first of those ‘notes’. From the secret passageways built behind walls (legendary among the children of his friends) to architectural detail, one finds his written world equally convincing and fascinating. There is the affectionate making and playing of many musical instruments. Over the years Allan has finished guitars, lutes, and other more fanciful pieces. His friends remember his recumbent bicycle experiments. The print version at least, ended in success… an other-worldly transport device called a laze-along that glides to the aid of fugitives deep in tunnels of the city.

The characters live. We exult with the exuberant Quid. We’re inside the numbness, panic and protest, as Harmony comes to knowledge of her identity. We accompany Harmony, kidnapped and carried beyond hope.

My favorite character is Iris, the plucky little scrubber who pursues her getting of wisdom, pivotal, it turns out, to the very rescue of her world, gleaned from books borrowed in secret. The exalted Librarians, for all their learning, do not recognize what transpires in the nook beneath their feet.

Allan baits his lines of plot with revelations and surprises. Many of them. There is theology here evoking C. S. Lewis. Gleaming insights are embedded in incident and in dialog. How deftly Quid turns on its head the presumption that there could be nothing worse than death and suffering.

I readily visualize a movie, ducking in my mind’s eye from the animated advance of the lola’s steaming reptilian bulk on the wide screen. The sinister city of ice. The music. The singing. I can feel the power of the dance.

Quid and Harmony is the first of a trilogy and I am already grateful that my appetite for more will not go unsatisfied. I suggest you elevate your feet tonight, pour a glass of port, catch a whiff of fresh ink, the flash of the elegant cover and crack open page one. Forget about the morning’s to-do list. You’ll be up too late tonight.

Steve Isham is a Tasmanian artist and publisher.

The First Installment

I presented the first installment of $3500 to the Rotary Club yesterday. This is me, looking very serious indeed, with Albert Pryor, the local president.

The brilliant thing about donating the money through Rotary is this: once the fund reaches $10000, Rotary International will match it dollar for dollar. Not only that, they will guarantee that every cent gets to the designated cause. Not one penny will be lost to dodgy officials or diluted by expensive overheads or such-like. Like I say, it's brilliant.

Albert and I are holding ten books between us. The profits from the sale of those ten books is sufficient to cure one woman of her injuries. That little pile of paper can utterly transform a woman's life for the better. The power we hold in our hands is quite incredible.

Book Launch

Well, Esther and I flew down to Tassie last week for the official launch of QandH. And yes. Seeing granddaughter #2 for the first time was an added attraction.

The Youngs kindly housed and fed us for the duration, and lent us a car. I did a radio interview and visited a couple of schools on the Wednesday and Thursday. The launch itself was Friday evening.

Of course, there were technical difficulties. The plug didn't fit into the socket (do they ever?) and this caused a deal of last minute panic. But at last, everyone was happily gathered and all went well. Lots of people attended (the church was full), Steve presented a very flattering book review, I did my slide-show spiel, and everyone bought lots of books. In all, we raised about $3500. Brilliant.

Saturday was spent with the Ishams at Salamanca Market. I sold 11 more books and enjoyed a very pleasant morning. Esther went shopping with our niece Phil and friend Zil. Then we were back on the plane for a late night flight back to Brisbane.

In all, a very pleasant and worthwhile few days.

Two tons of books

Well, the truck arrived a day or two ago, weighed down by three pallets of books. 130 boxes of books, each containing 32. We unloaded them in a very manly fashion and they're now stowed safe and sound in the shed.

Now comes the daunting task of selling them, and it's really quite exciting. Always good to have an adventure. I'm sniffing round the internet seeking for any opportunities. I've written a spiel for the local paper. Sent off thingys to some schools. Spoken to the presidents of some local service clubs. And this weekend, if all goes well, Esther and I will toddle off to a community market in Brisbane, which will be lots of fun. (Not so sure about getting up at 4:30am, but hey. You're only young once.

The Plotters

My printers have just sent me a pile of 24 'plotters', little booklets that show me how the actual book will look like. This is the very last chance to make any changes.

All very exciting... and just a little worrying.

Anyway, I decided I'd better read them through just in case, and I still managed to find some typos. Arrraugh!

So I did a sum just to console myself.

QandH is 105000 words long, or about 586000 characters. Suppose there are 5 typos lurking in it still. That would mean the text is 99.999% correct! But it's still not good enough, to my mind. I want perfection. Trouble is, each error becomes exponentially harder to spot.

Esther's certain I'm developing late onset OCD.

Making a podcast

I've had great fun the last few weeks trying to make a half-decent podcast of Quid and Harmony. Finding a place in the house that was quiet enough was the first challenge. Even building a cubby out of mattresses was less than effective, though it did bring back all sorts of childhood memories.

Anyway, a great bit of software called Audacity has a noise-reduction feature, and that solved most of the problem. It removes most background at the cost of a bit of distortion. Well worth doing.

Sound files are pretty big. QandH is about 12 hours of reading, and the raw wav files came to nearly 11 Gig. My poor hard-drive nearly died from shock.

Anyway, the edited mp3 equivalent came to about 600MB and is quite good quality, even if I say so myself.

A bit more tinkering, and she'll be ready to roll. I'll put a sample on my website. Soon, if the wind blows true, you'll be able to download the whole thing from podiobooks.com. Or you'll be able to buy the CD from me.

If you have any comments about Quid and Harmony, or about my project in general, this is the place for you.
But be gentle.
Remember the delicacy of the male ego.