Showing posts with label Positively Phill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Positively Phill. Show all posts

Tuesday 7 December 2021

#21 Twenty Twenty Twenty One!


The above photo of grey skies prowling the morning horizon beyond the boardwalk at Happy Valley in my hometown of Caloundra, Australia, does a good job of summing up the past two years. Just when you think tomorrow is about to usher in a brighter day, a storm of some form seems to come along and swallow it up.


Worldwide, 2020-2021 has been a testing time for everyone, and it seems that no-one on earth has been spared from the grip of a seemingly never-ending pandemic. Just when you think we're over the numbers and new cases, another wave of COVID-19 comes along, and like cyclones, they now seem to give each outbreak names. While 2020 saw Australians adopt some strange new habits such as wearing face masks and toilet paper hoarding, as 2021 draws to a close, it worries me that the Australia I grew up in has changed as a result. Everyone I talk to seems to think the same thing. We can't wait for life to return to normal. We just don't know what the new normal is going to look like.


It's been a while since I last tagged a post under the banner of 'Positively Phill'. Three years to be honest, and without sounding pessimistic this will definitely be the last one! Not just because the world has changed, but over the course of the  past 10 years I've been blogging, I guess I have too.


I developed a habit throughout my decade of blogging, of always trying to share some positive inspiration and information, be it on writing, life or travel, beyond the guise of simply self-promoting my own books. For the large part it just went unnoticed, as thoughts on writing and tricks on how to handle yourself as a writer, transitioned from well written text entries on writer's pages, to a bunch of infographics and power words on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. It was something I already shared back in January 2018, 'Is blogging still relevant?' and something that seems to have gone further down the toilet in the years since as positivity was replaced by marketability.


And call me old-fashioned... but rattling off a bunch of power words such as...

STRIVE

    BELIEVE

        BECOME

            EMPOWER

...does sweet stuff-all to improve my life or the lives of those around me. So how do you actually stay positive?


As a new era of acceptance sweeps through society, the broom of cancel-culture seems to be following right behind. When it comes to sharing views on how to survive and stay strong in a pandemic, I'm finding it's becoming increasingly harder to have simple conversations with friends and family, without first needing to gauge their stance on matters such as COVID vacination, gender issues, Faith and real estate! Our so called accepting world seems more devisive than ever.


Sunshine always breaks through. Shelley Beach sunrise, Caloundra, Australia.


It's something I've been thinking about more and more while our country has waded through border closures, hotel quarantines, lockdowns, home schooling and the oxymoronic social distancing rule. I've never had such mixed feelings about the state of our country. From panic buying toilet paper in 2020, to panic buying property in 2021. I've never seen greed played out on such a scale in the Australian psyche.


Having called the Sunshine Coast home for the past 14 years, a mass influx of people moving north to escape Victoria and New South Wales has driven local prices up, and the last of my friends away. You can't blame people for thinking that a move north to Queensland sounds like a good idea, and you can't blame locals for accepting offers $200K over what their asking price was. But when houses are being snapped up only to be demolished, as compared to Sydney prices it is still a cheap block of land close to the beach, you know the playing field has changed. Property values go up, and I know of cases where landlords have increased their rent by $200 per week just because they can. If you can't afford it, there's a waiting list of families in Sydney who can. Beyond the inconvenience of a Pandemic, there's now a Pandemic-led geographical redistribution of finances in play.


I find myself somewhere in the middle of all this. Having run a small cleaning business with my wife for the past 6 years, we've had to negotiate the initial COVID-19 panic and work-from-home practices that saw us lose a large portion of our clients, the stress of keeping the business afloat with the Federal Government Jobkeeper Assistance package, and dealing with having my wife no longer able to work after injuring her back. Finally, just when the economy is supposed to be recovering and I'm running the business on my own, I tear the meniscus in my knee and was told I'd need 8 to 12 weeks off work. Like that was going to happen! And all the while I'm trying to continue with several book projects I have underway. Something has to give.


So let's finish this with the positive. There's only two choices you have whenever something goes wrong. You can either let it defeat you on any level of your choosing. Or, rise above it and find a way around the problem. Sometimes finding a way around a problem is simply accepting what you can no longer do.


The key part of the problem seems to be that the world has changed. I'm also getting older, and have to realise that I can no longer work as hard as I have in the past under the false assumption that I'm getting ahead. With business earnings down, expenses up, and general pain and discomfort with my knee on the increase, 2022 will be a year of change.


Here's hoping for brighter days like this in 2022. With my wife at Caloundra boardwalk.


There's a lot of positives to look forward to next year, starting with my wife and I both turning 50. Trusting that all the State border restriction nonsense will be over with, we've booked a holiday to the red centre as our gift to each other, and will (touch wood) be flying to spend 5 nights at Uluru. Come August, our Daughter will be marrying, making Denise and I true empty-nesters. We'll then kick off 2023 by celebrating our 30th Wedding Anniversary. They're all big milestones that have taken a lot of work to get to! And with all of these milestones marked firmly on the calendar, its also exciting to be working around them as to when we wind up our cleaning business on the Sunshine Coast, put everything into storage, and head off on a working holiday around Australia.


It's something I've always longed to do, but something we've had to put off until our children were both grown, married and in a place of their own. If we don't do it now, there will be Grandkids in the coming years that will prevent us from being away, and who knows if we will both physically be up to the challenge when we retire? Who knows if the average Australian will still be able to afford to retire? It scares me the level of financial stress the next generation has inherited with University HEC Debts and astronomical real estate prices, but at least I know my two are equipped to navigate it.


For a writer who has relied solely on running a cleaning business to earn an income rather than the 16 books I have released to date, the pressure is now on to finish all of my current book projects by mid next year! I want a clean slate in front of me to start a new project on the road, with whatever my camera lens takes a liking to. Heading off after August will give us time to be properly prepared. The alternative... keep doing the same things but having to work harder to make someone else rich, doesn't sit right with me. If that's the game, someone else can play it.


They say change is inevitable, and I agree. But when change comes, you always have the option to change with it, or let it change you. 2022... I'm ready to see what life changes there are!


Positively Phill... Over and out!


Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! Wherever you are, may 2022 be better for everyone.

Wednesday 12 September 2018

#20 Retiring a good series


It's been a long year, and we're not even done yet. It only seems like the other day that my wife Denise and I were on the other side of Australia to see in the New Year, and now its September and the football season is suddenly coming to an end. It's made me stop and think of the term 'season'. Everything has a season, and every season has its turn. When it comes to drawing the metaphor between seasons and a book series, it's taken a rather ordinary year to realise when an extraordinary series has had its time. Let me elaborate.


After smiling for the photo by the driver's control stand aboard the Oliver Hill Railway on Rottnest Island off the coast of Fremantle in Western Australia, I headed off the next day for a week by the ocean near Margaret River to celebrate my wife 'putting up with me' for 25 years of marriage. We took the Australind train from Perth to Bunbury, hired a car, and spent the next week exploring the caves, wineries and even sought out some old railway stations to photograph for a future book. Three nights in Perth and the trip south to Bunbury had also given me enough material to put together another train tripping adventure.

Ready to depart Perth for Bunbury in the heat of an Australian summer!

Fast forward to July, and work on a fifth Train Tripping instalment hadn't progressed beyond the notes scribbled in my notebook. The same notebook that contained all the notes I had jotted down from my adventures by train around South East Queensland for another instalment in the series. Denise and I found ourselves heading south on short notice to visit her mother in country Victoria in the dead of winter. True to form, I somehow managed to find my way onto a train, and let me tell you... Shepparton at 6.28 am in the middle of a frigid winter's morning is a damn long way from the sunshine of Margaret River in the summertime!

Alone on a frigid winter's morning in Victoria, about to board another train.

Despite the first hour of the journey south to Melbourne being in total darkness, with notebook in hand I started scribbling my usual observations in the remaining few blank pages. Travelling in the darkness had its downside however. With nothing to see out of the window between the lights of slumbering country towns, I started looking through my notes from Perth and Bunbury, along with my trips around Brisbane and the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. Notes... fun facts... figures. Yet nothing that captivated me quite like the journey itself. In fact, the diesel locomotive hauled service from Shepparton that I was riding aboard was yet another example of a train that is slated to undergo change, with the ever popular Vlocity diesel multiple unit train sets set to replace it within the next 12 months. Just as happened to The Sunlander train that I rode on when I set out to write my first book in the series Train Tripping Coastal Queensland, changes were taking place around me faster than I could complete the next book in my series.

The 6.28 am from Shepparton, about to depart in 2 degree temperatures!

I put my notebook away. Instead of taking any further notes, I went to the buffet car, bought myself a cappuccino and simply sat back and enjoyed the trip. Who knows when will be the next time that I get to ride a train in Victoria, and it most likely won't be behind the gentle rumble of a locomotive. By the time I'd returned back to Shepparton later that day, I knew there was little chance of me adding any further instalments to my Train Tripping series.

After a year that has gnawed away at my time and creative endeavours, the train journeys that I have made over these past 12 months hardly seem worth the effort of fashioning into another instalment. Not when the trains in question are all in the process of being reviewed or updated with newer rollingstock. Tying any further books to a series that was written between 2014-2015 was only going to call for a re-write and re-release of the original books. The logical answer was to leave a good series be, and put aside all the new material I have collected for a new project with a different formula.


I'll always remember the first of these four books for earning me a nomination in the 2015 Global eBook of The Year Awards. As a 99 cent eBook, it at least proved to be cannon-fodder against the highly successful Lonely Planet travel guide books. But all four were mildly successful when it came to sales, and at times topped their bestseller categories on Smashwords. I made the decision to re-release them all in print over the course of 2017, when really I should have just let them be. At 99 cents they sold. At $7.99 in black and white print, even with the added inclusion of photos, they don't. But hey, even though their moment in the sun has passed, at least I have some cool-looking train books to place on my bookshelf.

It's funny how these realisations just seem to hit you at the right time. Instead of throwing myself into writing the three follow-up instalments as I had planned to, I now feel as though a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I'm suddenly free to hit-up another project. There's a few ideas already ticking over in my head that involve me finishing my railway-themed books on a high, but I can now finally sit down knowing that I'm free to do whatever I choose to with all this other great material that's just sitting there.

As for my Train Tripping Series? It's safe to say that it's been retired. The books will always be there, waiting quietly for readers to discover. But just like the trains featured in them, they too will take on a completely different perspective in the years to come. Maybe someday people may read them in a historical context, or a nostalgic sense, as they too remember when....


Tuesday 22 May 2018

#19 Ending a career positively


Everything has a use-by date. I know I've opened a blog post with this line before, but its only as we grow older that we begin to pay more attention to the things around us that come to an end. It usually starts with a long running TV show that airs its' final episode or a favourite footballer who hangs up the boots, but the older we get the longer the list becomes. We'll get surprised when our favourite restaurant closes down, shocked when our favourite products become unavailable and disillusioned when a favourite place that we visit doesn't live up to the memories they once held. Somewhere along the way we'll lose hair, money or even the drive that has kept us going all those years, and before too long we start referring to the past as the good old days.

That's life. And no matter what kind or work we do, brand of clothes we wear or car we drive, everything has a use-by date.


If you're an artist, athlete or even a less-recognised writer such as myself, what you do now is not going to be what you do forever. Eventually every footballer will take his last kick, every race car driver will turn the engine off for the final time and every actor take his or her last bow. Sometimes, due to injury or contractual disagreements and the like, that moment happens without warning. Lately however I've been noticing a growing trend of athletes announcing their retirement before the start of a season, with the statement of wanting to go out a winner. Their fans rally behind them and the season becomes a glorious swansong, that win or lose, hopefully still ends on a positive note rather than being stretchered from the field for the final time.

So why don't actors, singers or writers follow suit? Probably because in each instance, you are only as good as your next album, movie or book. A flop can usually signal game over, while a smash-hit always brings the temptation for 'just one more.' I've never heard of a writer pre-announcing that their next book will be their last. Art works entirely different to sport. Everyone is looking for the next 'insert name here,' who is like them only different. Different gets attention, and attention sells. The problem with different however, is that different has a short shelf life. Perhaps that is why I find myself drawing less and less inspiration from these people, and instead pay a little more attention to the heroics on a football field.

Name any singer, actor or actress from the recent past who was a little too different, and I can guarantee you that their fifteen minutes of fame has long expired. Fame too has an expiry date.


While an athlete's body remains the best indicator of knowing when to call time on their career, it is more likely that an actor, musician or writer's curtain call follows closely behind a stinker. Yet that doesn't have to be the case. After seeing my own writing come full circle to where I was ten years ago, I came up with these five simple questions to put to myself. I'm sure you could substitute the word 'this' with any career or profession, from goal-kicker to project manager to extract an honest answer from yourself.

  1.  Will not doing this anymore be something I can live without?
  2.  Is continuing with this beginning to cause me anxiety?
  3.  Am I already looking forward to doing something else when this is over?
  4.  Are there more genuine things other than this that deserve my time and money?
  5.  Am I able to look back on this with a sense of pride?


If you answered yes to all of the above five questions, then you guessed it. You should probably be planning to do something else.


Of course there are sometimes other tangibles that may indicate your career is coming to an end. The Train Tripping books that I first started writing back in 2014 now have other factors dictating that their shelf-life is fast approaching an expiration date. With a budget of zero, my self-published railway guide adventures have taken me on board everyday trains around Australia, from the humble XPT to the 7:20 am to Warrnambool. While money and a lack of sponsorship ruled out adding any Trans-continental epic adventures to my series, some of the trains featured in my books are now in the process of being replaced by newer versions commencing in 2020. This in turn makes the trains that I have written about (and quite possibly my books) obsolete in about two years time.

Then there are my Last Train books. Instead of getting excited that my self-produced fusion of railway photography and Australian bush poetry was something fresh and new, I've had the sense to sit back and see my work for what it is. Different. Good different? Yes. But in such a niche genre of writing as to make it impossible to even command those fifteen minutes of fame. With my next book almost complete, my thoughts are already wrestling with whether to continue the series.

Photographing old and abandoned railway stations becomes increasingly harder with each passing year. More and more decaying structures are being demolished due to government health and safety concerns, and preservation groups and government bodies can make it nearly impossible to gain permission to legally use the images in a commercial sense. The research required, coupled with the expense of travelling great distances, (such as flying to the other side of Australia and spending the best part of two weeks bouncing down dusty roads in a rental car to collect the necessary photos), makes the thought of another of these books prohibitive.

Perhaps a more positive approach would be to plan one final hurrah, and make it a good one!


Instead of feeling ripped-off that I didn't have the time or budget to cover more adventures, I'm taking it as a positive that I at least get the opportunity to decide how I want to finish with one last great adventure. Back in October 2016, I wrote my 100th and final railway reminiscing post on this blog, and began with the words everything has a use-by date. It's strange how your own words can come sometimes come back to haunt you.

For myself, writing about my love of trains was only ever intended to be a short diversion from my writing fiction. Beyond writing that last great railway adventure however, the fire is no longer there. I can live without it. The thought of putting myself out there again causes me anxiety. I'm already enjoying interests other than writing, and there are a million other things more deserving of my time and money. Strangely the drive is now about finishing what I've started, and ending a career positively.

I guess that will be the moment I can answer question 5 with a yes, and look back on it all with a sense of pride. No sour grapes, no hard-luck writer's stories, and no regrets. Not being able to forge a full-time writing career hasn't been through lack of trying. Take a look back through this blog and you'll see just how far and wide I travelled promoting my novels, back in the good old days.

We live in a world of talented people. There are more writers, actors, musicians and artists living around us now than when I was I kid. Good grief, it stands to reason that not everyone is going to make it to the top when most can't even get a foot in the door. But even then, everything has a use-by date. Even the best of them.

At the end of the day, I think its better to have tried and not got your fifteen minutes of fame, than to have not recognised when your fifteen minutes were up! 


So with no pressure, no self-imposed deadlines and no great expectations, I suddenly have a much clearer outlook on how I'd like to approach finishing up my railway-themed books and moving onto the next project. Whatever that may be. Now to get back to some writing. I'll let you know when my next Last Train book is coming out.


Monday 29 January 2018

#18 Is blogging still relevant?


Spare a quick moment to think about every word that has ever been written on the internet. The internet has been going for how long now? Just twenty-six years. It's really not that long in the grand history of human civilisation. Yet ever since Tim Berners-Lee created the world's first shared hypertext database on the 6th August 1991, people have been adding and sharing words and links on the World Wide Web ever since. So for a writer who is responsible for two blogs on the internet, where do all the words and pictures go once the hits subside and people stop reading your blog post from 2011?


The answer is; they don't really go anywhere. Articles no longer accessed on a frequent level are simply compressed to take up less room on the giant servers that host them. Blogger users especially, are at the mercy of Google, whose giant search engines compress and then re-compress old files in much the same way as Aunty May shoves all the stuff she doesn't need to the back of her closet. Google keeps itself relevant to internet users by showing the most recent results for news, sports and weather. Google the weather and you'll get today's top temperature and tomorrow's expected forecast, not a random Thursday report from 2008. Its a prime example of why the blog post you wrote about the Sydney Olympics back in 2000 isn't receiving all that many hits this week.

Recently however, Google changed their search algorithms for the second time in 12 months. And like me, you may have experienced a noticeable drop-off in the number of visitors to your blog or website. In many instances, the top search results now being returned feature paid advertisements. There's nothing much the average blogger can do about this. After all, Google does provide us with a free platform to blog about our interests. However, after limiting the number of keywords that Bloggers can use to make their posts searchable, it seems less and less blogs are turning up on the first page of Google's search results, no matter how recently they were written. It's led me to ask the question is blogging still relevant?

I really don't have the answer to that question yet. From my perspective, since June 2017 I've watched the number of visitors to my model train blog at phildenmodelrailway.blogspot.com.au crash from a regular 500 to 600 visitors per day, to just 30 to 50 visitors a day. This blog has fared even worse, falling from 50 to 80 visitors per day to sometimes just 15.

"As a writer, those are alarming figures when you consider that is a huge drop in the number of potential customers that are able to view my books."


To be perfectly honest, we all should have seen this coming. Nothing on the internet is permanent, not even Tim Brenners-Lee's original alt.hypertextnewsgroup that was the world's very first version of the internet. Type it in and you'll only find an Internal Server 500 Error page. If that's what the wide wide world of web thought of such a historical document, then this post will not fare any better in about a month's time.

"Blogging, just like the internet, is fluid media, meaning its like trying to hold water in your hands."


Fast forward to 2018, and we have Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, GooglePlus, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit and a host of other media platforms that have all jumped miles ahead of blogging. Blogging means reading, and reading takes time. More and more, consumers just want to get the general gist of what's going on in the world or with their friends, and to get that you just download an app. What you blog about today is soon forgotten, and what you've blogged about in the past is becoming increasingly harder to find.

"Blogging in the future will attract less views than in the past, simply because as a media sharing platform it continues to be diluted by so many other apps."


Looking forward, perhaps a blog's audience in the future will be better measured by having a more loyal and close-knit following compared to a simple spike in viewer numbers after each new posting. So what does that mean for lone bloggers such as I? Well, it is possible to better prepare your blog to still remain relevant to search engines, but to be honest...

"I baulked at paying for an expert SEO report that guaranteed a top 10 search engine result because... well, at the end of the day it's just a blog."


At the end of the day, no matter how obscure the content of your blog is, there is bound to be someone looking for that particular information. Keeping you blog current by removing any outdated, or no longer relevant information makes it easier for readers to circumnavigate your page. Dead-links and missing pictures or graphics spoil a visitors experience and will do nothing to entice them back. If you have a presence of Facebook or Twitter, share the links or badges on your blog. The worst it will do is attract more viewers to your Facebook page.

Most of all, consider what it is you are trying to achieve with your blog. Is it your blog that is no longer relevant? Or is it your message? I've come across plenty of blog sites for model railway shows, clubs or even other authors where the information on their blog is years out-of-date and the emails only bounce back from the server as undelivered. It would've been better if their blog site was simply deleted instead of wasting my time. In that sense, it seems the only way to keep blogging relevant, is for bloggers to keep their blogs relevant. Otherwise our blogs will all be compressed and compressed again, to the point where one day there'll be no proof that they even existed on the internet.

Wednesday 8 February 2017

#17 Where travel writing fails


Don't let my lack of any recent blog posts fool you, once more my creative side is deep in the final stages of nutting out what will be the next chapter in my rather inglorious writing career so far. The problem is, this project is almost impossible to limit to just one new book for 2017. The scope for where I can take this is almost endless. TV spin-offs, travel (hopefully for once it can bloody-well be paid for!) and even merchandise.


After coming up empty handed when seeking assistance to continue my Train Tripping series of books, I've spent the past 12 months concentrating on the small business I run with my wife Denise, and generally planning to do all the things we've always talked about doing together. In 2016, we visited Shoal Bay, Newcastle, the Hunter Valley and saw in the New Year in Port Douglas in far north Queensland. And 2017 doesn't look like slowing down. Next week we head off to Sydney and the Blue Mountains, then Melbourne for the Anzac Day weekend, before finishing the year in Perth and seeing in the New Year at Margaret River in Western Australia. Sounds like I'm a rich travel writer being pandered to by luxury resorts and airlines right? Wrong. In fact, it couldn't be further from the truth.

The truth is, I run a small Mum and Dad cleaning business on the Sunshine Coast with my wife of 24 years Denise. Despite spending the past 10 years throwing everything I had into trying to 'make it' as a writer, for some reason or other, it didn't work out. Somehow, in the space of the past 18 months, our cleaning business did. So with our children both studying full-time at University while also holding down decent part-time jobs of their own, suddenly Mum and Dad have the time, and the money, to travel.

Now you'd think that, (as a writer), I'd take this next opportunity in life to try my hand at travel writing. But again, you'd be wrong. While I've shared some Travel Tales of my own in the past and written several small pieces on travel sites, magazines and web e-zines, (all without being paid, or expecting to be paid that is). The truth is that this is our time, and I'm not about to give it away for the benefit of any website or magazine that wants to offer me the chance of 'furthering my career', under the guise of simply selling advertising space.

Don't believe me? Take a good look at the advertising that springs up on most travel related websites. It's all click-generated income built around keywords in the freely submitted travel articles. Honestly, with the over-saturation of travel bloggers on social media these days, resorts, airlines and travel agents have never had it so good.

At the end of the day, professional travel writers get told where to go, where to stay and ultimately what to write. But they do expect to get paid or reimbursed for their work, (even if it's not as much as some people might imagine). In business, time is money. With writing, time is still time. If you're good enough, or maybe just plain lucky enough, someone will talk to you about the money later.

So why would someone like myself, who's had to work hard for 11 months and 2 weeks of the year to afford a 2 week getaway with his wife, feel compelled to compete with the hundreds of thousands of aspiring writers talking-up their accommodation, attractions or airline, all for the opportunity to 'further their career?' It just doesn't interest me anymore. I'd much rather leave a tip and tell our waitress that we had a wonderful meal, thank the reception staff for a wonderful stay and pray to God that our flight home isn't cancelled again as it was coming home from Port Douglas, (thanks a lot Tiger Air!) without the compelling duty to find nice things to say about bad service.

As for the social media 'travel experts' who desperately want to show you how you can make a living traveling the world and blogging about it? Keep buying their books. They desperately need your money.

Me? I plan to keep writing. Why? Maybe because its like my sister, and fellow writer, Tanya Bird says; "we do it Phill because its like a disease. It's just in you so we have to get it out." I do know I'm glad I have someone like my wife Denise to talk ideas over with. Each great book idea I've had pop into my head over the past year, we've had to dismiss due to either the time or money it would take away from our business. Believe me when I say there are plenty of great ideas lying dead in the water!

The truth is.... I like to write, and somehow through all that frustrating thought process, we've both landed on an idea for a new book project that is going to work. How do I know? Because the photos I've already taken, the memories I'm already passionate about and the stories are already in me. I just have to get them out.

Steve Jobs once said; "people with passion can change the world." I don't know if my next project will change the world, but I do know it has already changed the way I look at it. So watch this space, because I'm about to venture further off the beaten track than I ever have before!


P.S. no travel writers were harmed during the writing of this post. Nor was Tiger Air, who did give me a full refund and have no doubt since cancelled other flights.
P.S.S. Tiger Air did not pay me to write this article.

Friday 7 October 2016

#16 What's a long time?


As a writer, it's a scary thought when your debut novel racks up its tenth anniversary. A thousand questions surface in your mind at once, and you even revert to the old counting your fingers trick just to be sure you haven't missed a year. Yet it seems that ten years have passed since I signed my first publishing contract back in October 2006. The Long Way Home it seems is now a long way from where I started out, and a lot has changed from those early days of dreaming I was going to be the next Bryce Courtenay, Stephen King or Matthew Reilly. Ten years later as it turns out, I'm not.


A decade after the book was first released in February 2007, I can at least look back and admire the bravado I showed for even contemplating writing a novel, let alone the gusto at which I attacked trying to sell myself as an author for the six years that followed. If believing 1000% in your own work and ability can be attributed to success, then I should have been a millionaire years ago!

For a thirty-something author with a young family and a mortgage, I didn't let a sea-change from the city lights of Brisbane to the laid-back charm of the Sunshine Coast slow me down. Not even when a bigger mortgage coincided with a reduction in salary after my wife and I walked away from two well-paying jobs. I firmly believed that my next novel was going to land that big contract which would enable both of us to quit our jobs, pay off our mortgage and live the life of a full-time novelist. The reality couldn't be further from the truth.

Combined with our annual family vacations, I book-toured the east coast of Australia at my own expense, speaking or setting up with a table to sell copies wherever I could secure some time and space; bookstores, shopping centres, libraries, schools, even arts & crafts markets. In between working full-time and writing part-time, I even made time to meet regularly with a paid mentor who helped sharpen and hone what would become my second novel. Yet the immediate years that followed The Long Way Home were full of ups and downs. After landing a contract for my third novel in 2011 with Last Wish of Summer, the book ultimately failed by industry standards and by 2013 had been pulled from sale despite a sequel being in the final stages of editing. A mad scramble on my part saw me recover the rights to all four of my novels, and re-release them as eBooks that same year.

The whole experience taught me one important lesson. That as an author, all you can really ask for is that a reader be kind enough to invest their time to read and appreciate your work. For some, reading a book takes a long time. For an author, writing the book takes a long time. But trying to get my head around the fact that ten years have passed since writing my first novel is almost unfathomable.

A meet the author morning at Capalaba Library, February 6, 2010

So a decade after the fanfare of organizing that time-honoured first book launch, I find myself far removed from the idea of forging a career as a writer. That trail has been blazed. These days I'm busy running a successful small business with my wife, while my two children are both studying full-time at University, none of which are at all attributable to any of my books. For myself, that represents a long time.

Yet somehow my first book, The Long Way Home in that time has become a reminder that sometimes hard work and even the best of intentions can count for nothing. So there you have it, ten years.... over just like that. For a 122,000 word novel that took two years to write and edit, the following ten years have disappeared in the blink of an eye. If spending a decade of my life trying to 'make it' as a writer was a rush, then looking back on that time is pretty damn cool.

Not everyone gets to the top, not everyone gets a gold medal. Then again, not everyone can say they actually wrote a novel either. So to those who have supported me as a writer in the past, I once more say a heartfelt thank you. For those who are only discovering my work for the first time, I do hope you enjoy the read, and please by all means leave some feedback on the website you downloaded it from.


Wednesday 10 June 2015

#15 Does crowdfunding really work?


Ahead of writing the next book in my Train Tripping series, I turned to the idea of crowdfunding. It seems wherever you look on the internet, crowdfunding is being pushed as the 'in thing' for writers, musicians, artists and movie producers to raise some capital for their project. So could it also work for a railway adventurer who was busy making travel plans to head to Melbourne to write his next book? Why not? After all, even the crowdfunding sites were touting this as a way to get free money. So what was the result? Does crowdfunding really work?


I always planned to write my next book regardless of whether I reached the crowdfunding target I'd set or not. Living in Australia, I looked for an Australian based crowdfunding platform rather than simply choosing the biggest. I also wanted to find a crowdfunding platform that was more publishing-orientated rather than a free-for-all collaborative of anything goes. So I chose Publishizer.com.


Publishizer is a crowdfunding platform aimed solely at authors. It seemed the perfect place to pitch my proposal. With three Train Tripping eBooks already behind me, and my travel plans to Melbourne already booked to write the next one, I set about building a launch page, writing a book proposal and having a mock cover designed and uploaded for the book. With Publishizer sending the best of their successful campaigns directly to literary agents, there was even the odd chance that all of my books might come to the attention of an Australian publishing house. So I went one step further. I also sought out a professional puppeteer through Fiverr.com who produced a 30 second video for my Train Tripping book series, uploaded it to YouTube and embedded it on my campaign page. The idea was brilliant, or so I thought.


I think I spent the best part of two days putting the whole thing together. I set my crowdfunding target low, from memory it was $874 Australian which was what I calculated my air fares, train fares, accommodation and meals to amount to when flying to Melbourne and spending 3 days riding as many trains as I could for my next book. Next up, I blitzed social media through email, my blog, twitter and Facebook pages, followed by the local newspapers here in Australia over the next two weeks, and watched as my 45 day target campaign slowly ticked by.

Nothing.

I kid you not. 45 days later, I had raised exactly $0. Talk about a disappointment! While I'd received an amazing amount of positive feedback about my puppet video from friends and family, my crowdfunding page on Publishizer had been shared a grand total of 17 times, including 3 tweets and 1 like on Facebook. So was my crowdfunding campaign nothing but a waste of time?

Well.... uh, yes, and no. Apart from the few bucks it cost to create a puppet video, the whole campaign only cost me my time. I look at it this way, it was free advertising. During my campaign, my recently released book Train Tripping Around Sydney became a Number 1 Bestseller on Kobo, and the Kiama Independent ran a story on my wife and I visiting Kiama as part of my Train Tripping adventures. I guess when comparing the few crowdfunding projects that did reach their campaign targets during the same time that my rather unsuccessful effort was live, I did make one important observation. Most of the books that were successful in crowdfunding thousands of dollars were either technology, business or alternate self-awareness books, as opposed to fiction and travelogue books like my own.

From my own experience, you really have to decide first if you could be bothered putting all your ideas out there in the hope of raising some financial support ahead of working on your next book. Keep in mind that pledges of money normally come with one thing attached, the offer of something in return. That something in return is normally 'x' amount of copies of your book when it is released, and books cost money. A quick search on Google will reveal a myriad of crowdfunding sites, all of which promise free money for your ideas in a matter of minutes, and all of which survive by keeping a small percentage fee of the amount you raise. So if like me, you just like to do things your own way, then ignore the promise of free money, (which it isn't), and simply put all your time into writing. At the end of the day I'm aiming for a published book, not a successful crowdfunding campaign.


Monday 3 November 2014

#14 Beware of the snakes


I used to be forward in letting people know I was a writer. Somehow the conversation would turn to the question of what is it that I do and I would ever so easily spill the words 'I'm a writer' without giving it a second thought. And if it didn't, I'd more often than not find a way to work the topic into the conversation. I've been around the block long enough now to know that people sometimes mistake your name on the cover of a book for a target on your back. Being a writer is as much a business as it is an interesting topic for conversation. Wading into the business world is akin to stepping into a field of long grass, you can't always see the hidden things that you can stub your toe on and you sometimes have to watch out for the snakes.



There is a period of a few good years after seeing your first book in print where you think everything is going to work out just dandy, the world is your friend and the people you meet are just waiting to hear all about your book. That line of thinking it turns out is wrong. I learnt long ago that although most people love to be able to say that they met a writer, they won't necessarily run out and join your fan club just because you handed them a business card. A quick visit to check out your website and maybe, just maybe an online purchase of your book usually suffices their interest. But mention it in the process of doing a business deal and the result is completely different. Suddenly you have a new best friend. Congratulations are usually followed by a short period of fawning over the fact that they can't believe they have a writer standing in their presence, and the next minute they are promising to buy your book, tell all their friends about you and offer a special deal on whatever it is you're looking for. Now don't get me wrong, I have dealt with many genuinely nice business people in my time. But my point is that in life you have to use due diligence in your business matters, and as a writer we sometimes forget this point among the praise and accolades that are coming from the salesperson.

It was Irvin S. Cobb who once said, "if writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers." The key is to be wise in your business dealings when it comes to who is offering what, and what they are asking for in return. Is it really a good offer that is being presented? Or is it just a dressed up sales pitch they are trying to corner you into?

It is something I discovered recently, the hard way. Organizing a book launch involves selling yourself to potential sponsors. Much like convincing a company that they need to employ you for a position they don't have. Pooling this support and ensuring that each and every business is happy with the promotion you offer them in return becomes a delicate matter. In making these arrangements I needed to pay to have something created for the event. Choosing one local business, I explained what was needed to be done, was ensured they could do it and was promised that I would be looked after with a special price. Sound familiar?

When it became apparent that the end result wouldn't be to the standard I expected, and there wasn't anything special about the price at all, I advised them that I wouldn't proceed and went elsewhere. Now if I had been the average customer off the street there would have been no further ramifications for what amounted to a quote. The problem came down to what I said before, that sometimes people mistake your name on a book for a target on your back. Not only did I get a spiteful email for not proceeding with their services, but the invoice for a design cancellation fee came with a threat of contacting my sponsors and my publisher if I didn't pay. To top it off, I was physically threatened when I arrived at the business to pay the bill and reminded that it was a small town.

What did I do? I remembered that although it was a small town, it was also a wide world. You don't drag your own name down into the dirt. As a writer, your name is your brand and the world is your marketplace. So I paid the fee, and kept a copy of the receipt and email to ensure it didn't go any further.

I always try to take something positive away from any experience. As always, lessons learnt in this manner often stay with you, and leave you better prepared to spot trouble the next time it comes around. I'm fortunate now to have the foresight to keep my writing and the business side of my writing separate. Its important to find out the facts rather than falling for the false accolades and sales pitch.

Sometimes business matters aren't clear when it comes to who is right or wrong. What is important is to handle yourself in the right manner. Before you wade through the long grass, be sure you are wearing the proper shoes and a pair of thick socks. Ask questions first and read your contracts thoroughly. Then if you do have a bad business experience, sure, take your business elsewhere, but keep your business dealings on the highest level. The last thing a writer wants when they step out for the launch of their latest hit novel is for a scandal to erupt over something trivial. Above all else, in everything that comes the way of a writer, whether it be good or bad, nothing stands in the way of him being able to use the experience in a future book. After all, that is what we writers do.

#13 Is social media working?


I remember the world before the internet, Facebook and Twitter. It wasn't necessarily quieter. It wasn't free of over-opinionated people either. It's just that the whole world didn't have to hear what they had to say. It seems we've reached saturation point with instant quotes, pictures and video footage of everything that people say, eat and do. So maybe its time we ask ourselves; is social media working?



I never like to put other people down when making a point. So for the purpose of this story I'll use myself as an example. I've been a twitter user since 2008. When I started out, I was like most other people embracing this new found form of instant global awareness, misled by the false perception that the world was waiting to hear about everything I did or thought. Now, years later, I finally get it. People aren't interested in everything I say or do. My thoughts, quotes, ideas and one-liners, are sometimes better served as advice to the people I actually talk to, than squashed into two lines less than 140 characters long.

In the early days of twitter, we would all suffer through useless tweets such as; "eating pizza, Yum," if it meant the chance of gaining more followers. Now days, the twitter-verse seems full of people who enjoy the public attention of putting-down celebrities, sports stars and politicians. Maybe we should ask ourselves just who we are following? These people generally hide behind non-descriptive names such as @kwijibo167bounce, and remain forever anonymous. (My apologies if this is actually your twitter handle and I hope you are not one of the people I described above). But when a movie star or sportsperson vents their frustrations on the twitter-sphere, their quotes often make the evening news. Or get taken out of context. After all, there is only so much of your thoughts you can squash into 140 characters.

In Australia, when a National Rugby League player takes to Twitter to share God's thoughts on the topic of same-sex marriage, he is promptly turned upon by an angry mob of people who seem to hate the idea of opposite sex marriage and like hiding behind a bunch of non-descriptive names. The incident made newspaper headlines and went on to brand the player as a homophobic Christian, when in fact the full article that his link referred to was an extremely well-written and thought-out piece of work that was taken entirely out of context. The player's best attempts to explain this unfortunately fell of deaf ears. My point is this; the nameless people who use social media for inflammatory comment feel vindicated because they are purely expressing their view. Whereas real people who use their real names to share thoughts on social media are crucified if they offend even the 2 percent minority. Something seems dreadfully out of balance.

Can I ask the obvious here? Is social media working? Or have we created an anti-social media platform? Some of the things that people feel inclined to write about so freely on twitter, already had their own special place reserved in a world before social media and the internet. It was called the back of the toilet door.

Good grief, social media has become a place where people feel they have the right to express their opinion, any opinion for that matter without needing to answer to anyone. Back in 2008 I may have felt inclined to ask the person who had just tweeted that they were eating pizza, what kind of pizza they were eating. But what if it is pepperoni? Will I offend my vegetarian followers? I don't think so. As it stands, my 1,500 twitter followers last year did not run out and buy 1,500 copies of my latest novel. I think we need to keep social media in perspective. It is purely designed as a way of sharing interests and connecting with people who share those same interests. If I like pepperoni pizza, am a Christian and am interested in trains, then I'm sure that saying so doesn't offend vegetarian atheists who hate taking the train to work. It just is what it is, a little bit of information.


My advice is this; while social media can connect you to the world, remember that it is a world full of strangers. If you have something personal to share with your friends and family, then use the phone or send an email. A witty put-down of someone online may win you followers, but it certainly won't win you any friends.

Wednesday 16 April 2014

#12 Giving stories second chances


It seems stories do get better with age, and my 2014 recently re-released novel A Walk Before Sunrise is proof of that. The contemporary love story narrated through the eyes of the book's main character Neil Phillips, had the rare opportunity to be re-released for the North American market. While A Walk Before Sunrise is a stand alone tale of love and misfortune, it is also serves as a companion book to my other novels Last Wish of Summer and The Rag Doll Cafe, meaning that the bigger picture the three novels collectively paint, either begins or ends here. Depending on which book you read first.


I first wrote A Walk Before Sunrise back in 2007, in a year where my personal life was about to reflect the sea-change spirit of the characters in my book. A great deal of that time was spent meeting with fellow Australian Author Louise Cusack who mentored me through the process of writing my second novel shortly after the euphoria of self-publishing my debut novel had passed. While I almost became another success story in Louise's growing list of clients in Australia who have been accepted for publication. It was not to be. Despite having the manuscript in the hands of a leading Australia publisher who strongly considered signing me for almost a year, they regretfully passed. I self-published A Walk Before Sunrise through Trafford in 2009. And so began the long process of travelling between libraries, bookstores, arts & crafts markets, anywhere really that would allow a struggling writer to pedal his books to passers-by.

I went back to writing, deciding that I really needed to raise the bar. Last Wish of Summer was written as a prequel to A Walk Before Sunrise, simply because I adored the character Anton so much. It was later picked up by a publisher in the USA, with the request that I Americanize it and make the setting more generic. That I did, and the sequel The Rag Doll Cafe followed. After parting ways with my publisher and taking back control of my own work, I was faced with the problem of what to do with A Walk Before Sunrise. While each book was written to be enjoyed on their own, collectively these three novels form a bigger picture, courtesy of Anton's uniquely interesting, yet adorable philosophy. But A Walk Before Sunrise was set in Australia, the other two books were not. So I spent 2013 and the early part of 2014 effectively re-writing the book. It was something that I had previously done with Last Wish of Summer, and something that I find more challenging than starting afresh on a new project.


A Walk Before Sunrise is a story I wrote for my wife, and being married for 21 years was something that I did not want to see disappear overnight when I also cut ties with the self-publishing label of the original book, (new eBook cover on the left, original paperback cover on the right). So I put everything into giving the book a second chance. Alchemy Book Covers designed the new cover, and while a completely new ending means much has changed, much still stays the same.

Readers of The Rag Doll Cafe will be delighted to return once more to Lighthouse Bay, and anyone picking up this book for the first time will be relieved to know that you don't need to read my other books first. Now, as a sister book to Last Wish and Rag Doll as I affectionately call them, Sunrise can justly take its place beside them. In keeping with the humorous misadventure theme of the other two books, Anton is once more waiting in the wings to give some quirky advice to a couple desperately wanting to give love another chance. Better days lay waiting just around the corner in this humorous contemporary romance, and I hope that the book that was originally a 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel official second round selection, gets a second chance at the success it rightfully deserves. Writing, much like love, doesn't happen overnight. You have to continually pour all of yourself into it.


Friday 28 February 2014

#11 Judging books by covers


The idea of people judging a book by its cover can be an appalling thought to a writer. After years of writing, editing and enduring the hard slog of seeing your book finally published, success ultimately depends on the two seconds that potential buyers afford your book when viewing the cover. If the cover strikes a chord with them, then perhaps they'll pick it up and read what its about. If not... well, you've been afforded as much time as studies show the average book receives from potential buyers. It's a ready known fact that people really do judge a book by its cover. No matter how defiant they are in trying to convince you otherwise.


Take my 2007 release The Long Way Home for instance. Six years after the self-published release of my debut novel, sales figures had reached the point where it had simply stopped selling. Despite the fact I was still touring up and down the east coast of Australia with it, and my two more recent releases. Sure my latest novel had a catchier cover, but The Long Way Home was still, in my opinion, a very good book. So what could I do about this?

It just so happened at the time, that I was shifting my platform as a writer from being a mainly print published author, to focusing solely on eBooks for my future releases. The Long Way Home had never, up to this point, been available in eBook format. So rather than press ahead with an eBook release using the same cover, I sought out a professional cover designer to give the book a much needed face lift, resulting in a completely different cover designed by Laura Gordon.

The new cover I felt was more polished and to the point in seeking to capture the 2 second attention span afforded to most shoppers perusing page after page of eBook cover thumbnails. If they thought it looked like the kind of book they would normally like to read, they would surely stop, read the blurb and decide that $2.99 was not a lot of money to risk on buying a book by an author they were yet to read. So did they? Yes, and in droves.

 

The eBook (new eBook cover on the left, original paperback cover on the right) notched up five times the downloads in its first month of release alone, than sales that the paperback had accumulated over the course of six years! On eBook store Kobo, The Long Way Home reached as high as number #3 on the Religious Fiction Bestsellers list. Sure a lot of things including timing, price and availability on eBook for the first time may have contributed to its surge in success, but when it was the cover only and not the contents in-between that changed, you've got to ask why. The answer appears to be that first and foremost, the new cover held potential readers' attention for more than two seconds.

With millions of books available worldwide, the trick it seems is to match a cover with your message. Whatever your message is, it is likely to be found anyway by like-minded individuals searching for it. Yet whether someone searches for your book, or randomly comes across it, unless it is something on the scale of the Bible, the cover is ultimately going to shape their opinion of your work before they even pick it up. Want them to pick it up? Then be sure the cover is relevant and interesting. Why? Because people really do judge a book by its cover. No matter how much we try to deny it.


Wednesday 13 February 2013

#10 Sports cheats and plagiarists


I have always loved watching sports. Being a writer, I think the greatest appeal comes from the prospect of watching an unscripted ending. Whether that be a fairy tale result, a come-from-behind victory or an underdog that wins against all odds. When an athlete announces that he or she is drawing the curtain on a stellar career, you can rest assured that a book is not that far behind. But that was once upon a time, and if I mention the name Lance Armstrong, you soon realise this story doesn't end with the words and they all lived happily ever after. Which is a shame, because suddenly I don't know what to make of all the memories that sport has given me in my lifetime.


Good grief, over the past hundred years sport has evolved from a social game constructed around a set of rules, to a muti-billion dollar industry centered around huge player payments and endorsements. Players are drafted and traded on their way to becoming heroes to the next generation of kids eager to follow in their footsteps. Along with the trappings of success comes the temptation to win at all costs. And along the way, cheating has evolved from Rosie Ruiz simply jumping out from the crowd near the finish line to win the 1980 Boston Marathon in record time, to Lance Armstrong dropping the bombshell on the world that he had used performance enhancing drugs on his way to winning the Tour de France a record 7 times.


I live in Australia, in a nation that prides itself on being sports mad. For my entire life I've taken the same view of many fellow Aussies, that incidents of match fixing and athletes taking performance enhancing drugs only happen in other countries. Not anymore, in fact I've grown tired of the drawn-out ASADA investigation into the Essendon Australian Rules Football Club and the Cronulla National Rugby League team. As a result, Australian sport lost its innocence, and footballers from all codes across the country suddenly had a shadow of doubt placed over their names. But my gripe isn't with the who, why and how sport managed to fall to this point. Frankly, I just feel ripped off when I'm sold a fake story.

As a writer, I feel that cheating in sports is akin to plagiarism in writing. So what do you call an auto-biography of a sports star who years later comes clean and tells the world they had lied to the public? Simple, you call it fiction. As a writer of fiction, that thought leaves me worried that my competition in the marketplace has just increased substantially. A writer found guilty of plagiarism soon discovers that it is an impossible road back once that trust is broken. Yet we have a huge market of athletes from all sports penning biographies once their playing careers are over. What do we do with a pile of books if years later these top athletes of our time come out and admit to doping? Not only would we have been sold a false account in their book, but also a false performance on their chosen playing field. It's an issue that worries me.

I took two weeks off work in 2000 and paid a fortune to attend the Sydney Olympics, only to discover years later that one of the stars I saw in action, US athlete Marion Jones who went on to collect five medals, admit to doping. I was never a life-long cycling fan, but I stayed up many times late at night just to see Lance Armstrong, believing I was witnessing something special. It turns out I wasn't. It is one thing for an athlete or team to come out and say they cheated and are sorry, but will I ever get the money back that I paid to see them? Will they ever return the sleep I lost in staying up late at night to cheer them on? Probably not.

Writers over the course of history have lined our bookshelves with many fine tales of lost empires and ancient civilizations. I wonder if this is the beginning of a modern day equivalent. The death of sport. For the love of the game I surely hope not. It's easy to forget all the good work that athletes have done over the years when you no longer know what to believe. At the top level at least, it appears that playing purely for the love of the game is beyond the point of resuscitation.

Perhaps the last authentic game of football that I witnessed in my life was my son's final game of junior football for the Under 14 Caloundra Panthers Australian Football Club. They won their grand final and my son left the game a premiership winning player after missing the finals the previous year with a broken collar bone. Perhaps it's a timely reminder to us all. We've created a world of false idols, only instead of making a golden calf, we've dressed them all in team colours. As I said at the beginning, I love sport. I love watching an unscripted ending unfold live before my eyes, not knowing if my team is going to get up for a win before the final siren. But if it turns out that these so called magic moments in sport aren't really that authentic after all, then I'll be the first to start watching something else, or pick up a book to read. And it won't be an auto-biography of a fallen sports star.


Monday 31 December 2012

#9 End of the world


2012 didn't turn out to be the end of the world after all. I'm very glad of that. When I'd just started work on a new novel, the last thing I wanted to face was a bunch of meteorites, or angry Mayan-sympathizers insisting that Christians had got the whole end of days thing wrong right from the beginning. But when The Wiggles announced that three of the original members were retiring during their last ever performance at Sydney's Christmas Carols in The Domain, perhaps it was a sign that it wasn't the end of the world after all. Just the end of the world as we knew it. Otherwise, why go through all the trouble of finding three new faces to replace Greg, Murray and Wake-up Jeff?



I'm absolutely almost sure that its now safe to admit that the Mayan calendar had simply run out. Just as the computer calendar of the 1990's was supposed to bring about the end of the world when the clock struck midnight and we ticked over to the year 2000, and just as my Hallmark calendar is about to run out now that today is December 31st, 2012. I find the best solution in times like these is to simply buy a new calendar. It seems the Mayan calendar outlived the Mayan empire itself. Which makes me think now that 2013 is upon us, that sales of 2012 doomsday-style books on Mayan prophecies and the end of the world will surely plummet to the same sales levels of 2012 Hallmark calendars. After all, it's last years news.

As a writer, I've learnt to question the work I put out there for the general public to discover. What message or legacy do I want to leave behind for years to come? The problem with writing a time sensitive apocalyptic thriller, is that often the writer is left with egg on their face after the year that the world was supposed to end has come and gone. Or at best, their novel never lives to see the light of day again.

On the other hand, when three of The Wiggles left the stage for the last time after 21 years of entertaining children, they left behind a legacy of songs that will continue to bring delight to energetic young kids the world over long after they're gone. When the three new faces are still singing the same songs in 2021, no-one will question the decision of five young guys studying at university back in 1991 to form a pre-school rock band. In the case of The Wiggles, their influence cannot be measured in the millions of CD sales and millions more sales of DVD's that the band has enjoyed. It is best summed up by my 17 year old daughter and 15 year old son who sat with my wife and I in front of the TV and watched the original Wiggles perform live from Sydney's Christmas Carols for one last time. Watery-eyed, the both said in unison; "I've just seen my whole childhood flash right before my eyes.

In that moment, my wife and I could recall taking them to see a Wiggles concert when they were just 3 and 5 years old, every CD, DVD, stuffed toy character, t-shirt and hat we had ever bought them when they were young, and we still knew the words to the songs they were singing together for one last time. You see the world didn't end on the 21.12.2012. Neither did The Wiggles when they sang on that very same evening at Sydney's Domain. For two sad-faced teenagers, it was just the end of the world as they knew it.