Zoe Jakes performing to Beats Antique. Tribal Fusion belly dance.
This post came about from considering the comments of two friends/colleagues: namely Vivienne Dacosta (Serendipity Viv of Serendipity Reviews) and Joanne Harris. Continue reading
Little girl reading a book in a burned-out forest by simpleinsomnia on Flickr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
To be utterly straightforward, I want more readers. Continue reading
The Queen smiles as she greets Archbishop of York, John Sentamu as she arrives for Maundy Thursday Service at York Minster Chris Jackson/Getty Images via Daily Telegraph.
This Lent I tried to give up two of my psychological props with rather mixed success. This Maundy Thursday, I’m reflecting on how it’s gone so far. Continue reading
Five hows from the 8th Annual Conference of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Winchester, November 2015 Continue reading
I will be at #SCBWIcon15 this weekend in Winchester. I’m too excited/distracted/busy to post today. Watch this space on Monday, though.
Small plug – there’s a Special Offer for #SCBWIcon15 people on Peacehaven B&B – but if you wanted to go and didn’t make it, you can have the offer too – because I love my readers!
Labels are tricky things. Getting your name to fit on neatly and above all legibly. Positioning them so people do not have to squint at your bust. Peeling them off without a felted patch of jumper coming away too. Most of all, defining who and what you are… Continue reading
Apologies if you were waiting to learn which character I chose for the SCBWI Agents’ Party. I went for Tolly.
Inside Tolly’s bedroom at Greeen Knowe
For those of who you have not had the pleasure, I refer to Toseland Oldknow in L.M.Boston’s truly enchanting ‘The Children of Green Knowe‘. He is a lonely boy – who makes friends with the ghosts of children long gone in his great grandmother’s ancient house.
I wanted so much to be like Tolly – and in some ways, I still do. Slipping in and out of time, finding companionship in strange places – that’s my world at its best.
Happily, you can visit Lucy Boston’s fascinating house and garden – and the 60th Anniversary of the first of the Green Knowe books will be on the 9th November this year. There will be a celebration at Hemingford Grey. Do go if you can.
I’d never make a Hollywood leading lady – but I can do character.
This evening I am braving possible thunderstorms and the rumblings of my own trepidation to attend the annual SCBWI BI Agents Party at Foyles Grand Design of a new bookshop. Choosing what to wear was tricky enough – but archfiend Nick Cook has issued us with a second badge.
We have to select one character from children’s lit we’d like to be. Crumbs. Where to start? All of them is not an acceptable answer. One close to me seems good.
Hermione? Well, I am a bit of know-it-all but she is too recent. If I included all the children’s characters I have grown to love as an adult, it would be impossible. Also I suspect Hermione will be very popular – as will delightful bookworm Matilda.
Eowyn? I think that’s cheating. OK I read LOTR when I was still a child but she’s not really a children‘s character. So how about Alan Garner’s Susan? Could be – I was utterly convinced that a bracelet of my grandmother’s with blue tear-drop stones was a magical talisman – and I’d get two books to inhabit (three if you count ‘Boneland’).
What about the other Susan – Narnian queen and healer ? Well, putting aside The Problem of Susan for another day, she does get four books to go at – but she is a bit of a bystander. I feel like that with Jane Drew in ‘The Dark is Rising’ books – I don’t really remember her that well.
That goes for many others – and I won’t pick ones I only really know from films or TV. Princess Eilonwy from The Chronicles of Prydain is too pretty, and so too is Princess Irene. Never could be doing with that. I will admit to fancying a few ‘baddies’ , though. Empress Jadis of Charn – who wouldn’t want to be remembered this way?
But she was a dem fine woman, sir, a dem fine woman.
That’s grown up me speaking, I suspect. Still, I’m far more fond of Captain Hook than Tinker Bell or Wendy – though I do have soft spot for Tiger Lily. She used bow-and-arrows in my mind – and how marvellous was that?
Of course, I can gender-swap. That gives me Kay Harker and Eustace Scrubb. Yes I know – Eustace is a complete prig – but he gets to be a dragon and learns his lesson. I’ve always loved that. I can identify with the miseries and misfits – Eeyore, Puddleglum, Bard the Bowman [though he gets a bit grand].
Well, time has run out. I have made my choice. If you’re at the Agents Party, you’ll know. If not, I will reveal all tomorrow.
From the words of C.S.Lewis
‘Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”‘
This afternoon I had a visit I had been both looking forward to – and dreading. For some while I knew a fellow writer was going to call. Someone who set out about the same time as I did, who is talented and committed, and who wanted to talk about writing.
By Guaderel Guitarist Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial No Derivative Works 3.0-License.
The gap of time allowed my maungy, sad little twin demons of envy and fear to whisper at me. They blew sleet-cold worries down my neck.
I bet he’ll have been published already.
You’ll have to admit you’ve got nowhere yet.
How will you feel when he gets out a book with his name on?
What exactly have you got to show for over four years’ effort?
It didn’t help that it’s close to my least favourite time of year – Mothering Sunday – when I always feel insecure and vulnerable. Nor that I am waiting to hear if any agents are interested in my Selkie novel. It took some arm twisting from my Chi-SCBWI friends to put it out there again.
My unarmoured head feels so exposed above the ramparts.
He came. And over time and coffee, his honesty dissolved my mask, just as surely as his daughter’s marshmallows disappeared from her little cup in the cafe. I could see the same kind-ness of hard-won understanding in his face. The empathy of time served and mutual frustration.
No need for me to hide. We’re more siblings than rivals.
That broke me open, let the old warmth out and sent the two stony nasties back into their cave. And what rolled the boulder across their threshold was his absolute need to write. The imperative, regardless of sense and logic and all the will-it-make-a-living questions to get the stories down. How the breath of his ideas filled his canvas, blew him onwards.
I hope my friend reads this.
It’s not ‘you will get there‘ I want to engrave on maps of the future, surrounded by mermen and whales. There is no need when you have already left land and certainty.
But we already have successes to share – and there will be more.
We are both writers.
It’s the time of year to review what happened over the previous twelve months. Part of me wants to just put the past behind me and look forward without reflection – but the history-lover in me recoils. How can you know how far you’ve travelled if you don’t know where you’ve been?
So here it is – a collection of events and thoughts about this writing year.
So there you go – I hope I didn’t bore you too much. It was a useful exercise for me at least. I now know three things;
Finally, to quote Peter Sinfield:
I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
I hope to see you in 2014.