Eileen O'Hely

Children’s Author

50 Ways to Launch a Graphic Novel

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Children seated around table at 50 Ways to Die in Space library workshop
Kaptivating KinKin Kiddies

It’s been an amazing 3 weeks since the official publication day of 50 Ways to Die in Space. Illustrator Nico and I have been opening spaceports at various bookshops around Brisbane to launch our first graphic novel together. I’ve also been visiting some not-so-local libraries to do workshops with kids outside of the confines of Brisbane. We’ve also had a couple of pals (human and otherwise) help us out at the book launches.

The first foray into the world of live promotion of 50 Ways to Die in Space was at Kin Kin, a tiny town on the Sunshine Coast hinterland. I took a few books plus my supply of air rocket-making materials (photocopies of a template I drew up the day before), rocket launcher and launch safety officer. Kin Kin is a super cute town with some unexpected, giant artwork. To my delight, 1/3 of the primary school had turned up for the event! We talked about space, read some of the book, then got into rocket making and launching which kept the attendees engaged for much longer than the nominal 45 minutes.

After a quick lunch with a friend it was on to a booked out session at Noosaville Library. I raided their shelves for astronomy books (I’m used to having pictures about space ready at my fingertips and I really missed being able to show the kids constellations at Kin Kin), but this time the conversation was different and pictures from 50 Ways to Die in Space were sufficient. Again, the rocket making and launching was a highlight and went on for long enough for me to chat to the adults who’d accompanied their kids who had also learned a lot.

Back to Brisbane, and a few days later Nico and Renata, host of The Endless Shelf podcast, joined me at Quick Brown Fox Bookshop for the north Brisbane launch. It was an incredibly wet day, but that did not deter the crowd who packed in and got to witness Nico and my puppeteering skills.

The next day my colleague Tom joined Nico, myself and another packed out crowd at Avid Reader for the west Brisbane launch, and invited an astronaut up on stage to act out some of the ways you will die if exposed to ionising radiation. We caused a bit of a pedestrian traffic hazard out the front with our signing table, but luckily no one got too grumpy.

Later that week I took the rocket launcher across to Russell Island then back to Capalaba Library for more workshops. I was very touched that a family had caught the ferry to Russell Island from a nearby island to come along. A downside to the day was witnessing a dognapping. A man came running off the ferry with a dog, and it wasn’t until minutes later the distraught owner came off the ferry after him. I hope they were able to reunite the dog and owner, and my thoughts for the day often returned to worrying about the welfare of the dog.

Yesterday Nico and I joined forces again for our east Brisbane launch and entertained the crowd at Harry Hartog Carindale with our puppets. My favourite quote of the day was from bookseller Amy who said; “I knew it would be funny, but I didn’t expect it to be that funny.” There weren’t many books left after the launch, but Amy promised to shelve them with the cover facing out, which is very high praise indeed!

Nico and I (and the puppets) will be back at Books@Stones on Thursday May 15 at 6:30pm, and we’d love to see you there.

50 Ways to Die in Space

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Only 4 weeks to go until 50 Ways to Die in Space is officially released!

Writing 50 Ways to Die in Space was a very different process for me, as the book wasn’t my idea at all! I was at a party at my publisher’s house when she asked me what I’d done earlier that day. I had been at my day job, and as Halloween was approaching, we did a Halloween spooky special planetarium show. Lots of kids dressed up for it and it was lots of fun. Then my husband said; “What you should have done was all the ways you can die in space.” My publisher whipped her head around to me so quickly she must have given herself whiplash and said; “Can you write that book?”

I didn’t take their suggestion too seriously at the time, but over the next week or two the idea really grew on me. I could write that book. So easily. I knew all the science behind it*. As the idea had started from a conversation, I pictured the book being a conversation between two nameless characters, one enthralled by the beauty of space, one warning of its dangers. I wrote the dialogue and really liked the flow of it. There was no he said/she said, it was just the characters talking. I thought it really worked. So I put it in the proverbial bottom drawer to let my mind forget about it and look at it with fresh eyes in a few weeks’ time.

Once I’d dusted the manuscript of and re-read it, I still really liked it and was excited to send it to my publisher. But there was only one problem: the only way to present a conversation without quotation marks and he saids/she saids was as a graphic novel. And graphic novels are expensive. There were over 400 pictures to draw, and the printing process uses a lot of ink.

Anyhoo, I sent the manuscript in, reminding the publisher about the conversation we’d had, and waited. Not for long! 12 days later I received a yes. This is ridiculously fast in publishing time frames.

So writing the book was fast, receiving the contract was fast, but from that point it took over two years to bring us to today when the book is available for pre-order. The long bit was the illustrating. First of all we had to find an illustrator. That took almost 6 months, and we were very happy when Nico O’Sullivan agreed to bring the story to life. As I said, there are over 400 frames in the book (some of them double page spreads), which is more than a frame a day for a whole year with no days off (not even Christmas!). To top that off, Nico was doing Year 12, which is quite a high study load. He turned in an outstanding job. After that there’s the whole … actually I don’t really know what comes next, I just do the words, but there was some massaging needed to get the book up to the print stage, and then printed and shipped.

There are lots of launches and library visits lined up in April:

April 8 Noosaville and Kin Kin library workshops

April 12 Quick Brown Fox Bookshop launch 2:30pm

April 13 Avid Reader/Where the Wild Things Are launch 3pm

April 16 Russell Island and Capalaba Library workshops

April 26 Harry Hartog launch

*To be honest, I did have to do a smidge of research, especially on physiology

Aisling and Amelia Book Launch

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Just like budding ballerina Aisling, on Saturday April 27 I combed my hair into a neat bun, packed up some craft and headed to Quick Brown Fox Bookshop in Grange to launch my latest picture book, Aisling and Amelia. Aisling and Amelia is the story of two dancers. Aisling is able-bodied and Amelia has a limb difference. (I chose the name “Amelia” because there is a condition called “Amelia” when a baby is born without fully formed limbs.)

When I arrived at Quick Brown Fox I was delighted to see how Anna and Theresa had decorated the shop for the launch. There was a wall of Aisling and Amelia books, a cute sign and the displays had been pushed aside to fit lots of chairs and a pink rug to match the colour scheme of the book. Renata who would be MCing the event was resplendent in a tutu and rocketship earrings to mark the occasion of the launch.

Then the people started arriving. First illustrator Chloe Finnis who I had only met for the first time the week before, and many of her family who had made the long drive up from the Gold Coast, Nico O’Sullivan who is illustrating a graphic novel for me (I cannot reveal the name of the book just yet!), fellow Hawkeye authors and publisher Carolyn Martinez, my tap dancing buddies, other family and friends, and most curious of all, PEOPLE I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW! It was getting quite squishy with standing room only, but luckily Renata and I had chairs to sit on – although Renata did abandon her chair at one point to do a spectacular one-off dance performance.

I would like to extend a very big thank you to Theresa and Anna at Quick Brown Fox Bookshop in Grange for hosting the event, and to Renata from The Endless Shelf kidlit podcast for being such a wonderful MC.

Japanese Research Trip

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Sculpted trees in Yudanaka

Okay. It was more of a holiday than a research trip, but as a writer everything I experience informs my work.

This concept is voiced by a character in a draft I’m working on. My character (a nerdy and embarrassing dad) has a creative career which allows him to accompany his globe-trotting academic wife on her overseas trips: as long as he has access to an internet connection to upload work to his editor by the due date, he can work from anywhere in the world. (Sound familiar?)

One of the family’s adventures takes place in Japan. Now, a month ago I had never been to Japan, but I have a BA double majoring in Japanese and Italian, so a reasonable understanding of the country and culture. Plus Google Street View allowed me to go there virtually and concoct most of my story.

However, when I got to Japan I realised I have to rewrite some of my current manuscript because:

1. Credit cards are not widely accepted (so my junior protagonist can’t rely on a debit mastercard for buying sushi)

2. There are heaps of English announcements on trains (so it’s possible to navigate the public transport system without a thorough understanding of spoken and written Japanese )

3. Unlike the Italian Frecciarossa, the Shinkansen (bullet train) doesn’t have a little light-up panel inside the carriage displaying its speed.

Despite trips to Tokyo Disneyland, the Warner Bros Harry Potter Studio Tour and the incredibly amazing Snow Monkey Park where you get to amble amongst wild snow monkeys, the highlight for me was visiting the scene where the climax of my book takes place: the Kishimojin Temple, where families worship the goddess of safe childbirth and child rearing. It’s certainly not one of the main temples on the tourist route, but I was very excited to see it for real, and even more excited to see a woman in a gorgeous kimono arrive with her husband and newborn for a ceremony!

The moral of this story is that while all my experiences inform my work, in this case my work informed my experience.

Aussie STEM Women coming soon…

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Back in 2019 I had what I thought was a winning idea for a book. I would single-handedly solve the gender imbalance in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths workforces by writing a book for Australian girls about Australian girls who grew up to achieve amazing success in STEM fields.

I interviewed 37 women working in various STEM areas, and they all thought it was a great idea too. They very generously gave of their time and personal information in the hope that young high school/upper primary school girls would be inspired to pursue a career in STEM if that is where their aptitudes and interests lie.

Some publishers thought it was a good idea too, but it was too academic for the trade children’s publishers and not the right demographic for the marketers at the academic publishers.

Not being one to give up – especially when so many brilliant women had been so generous in sharing their stories – I then thought about running the articles as a serial in a magazine for girls. The problem with girls’ (and, IMHO, women’s!) magazines is that most focus on fashion or celebrities, and my articles just would not fit, so I didn’t even bother pitching to them.

But then I discovered Poppy for Real (link to Poppy for real magazine). Poppy for Real is issued monthly, has no advertising and contains serialised stories, animal facts, art and craft projects and at least two articles on female role models. I thought my articles would slot in nicely. And happily the editor did too.

Dawnie Rasmussen, said editor, has been very helpful, introducing me to the concept of readability indices. If you don’t know what these are, they are ways to calculate the reading age of your audience based on factors like syllable count and sentence length. The sample article I sent through was pitched perfectly for Year 8’s (my original target audience), but a little too high for actual 8-year-olds. Luckily (or dare I say skilfully?) my redraft was just right for Poppy for Real’s readership, so I will go full steam ahead with the other 36.

(The readability index calculation for this post suggests it’s pitched at a Year 10 level.)

The Coolest Day Job

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Nick Manning in action during his successful Guinness World Record attempt

If you live in a house with at least one bookshelf, some of the books on that shelf are most likely written by famous authors. Although you may not know what those authors look like, you recognise their names. Some authors are a step higher on the fame ladder, with recognisable faces. And some are so successful that their wealth rivals that of the Royal Family!

As an author several rungs down the ladder, I have only been recognised by name once, when a checkout worker noticed the name on my credit card matched the name of the author of her brother’s favourite book. Even though they are called royalties, the payments I have received for my book sales fall way below what the lowliest member of the aristocracy would pay for a pair of shoes. So like many authors and creative professionals in other fields, I also have a day job. I’ve mentioned this before, so today let’s chat about the weirdest author day job I’ve stumbled across yet: Guinness World Record Holder.

Technically, being a Guinness World Record Holder isn’t a job, as it’s not necessarily a paid gig. It could be described as a hobby, a passion, or a seriously misguided use of time. However, I am proud to say that a writer friend of mine, Nick Manning, trained very hard for over six months and is now the proud holder of not one but two world records!

I met Nick way back last decade when we and fellow writer friend and all-round good guy Lee McGowan were selected to write some locative fiction stories for Story City. Locative fiction is a story you read on a mobile device in the place where it happens. I had an excellent day walking around with Nick, Lee and Emily Craven – the brains behind the operation – checking out the three locations our stories would be set in. At that time I had no idea Nick would become a multiple world record holder.

So what are the world records that Nick broke?

Fastest time to put on 10 pairs of undies

Putting on the most pairs of undies in 30 seconds

It’s something we all do every day, just not as fast or as often as Nick.

Needless to say, the time Nick saves getting dressed in the morning is put towards his latest writing project.