Sunday 30 June 2013

What Is it With Schools and Bookselling?



It’s Independent Bookseller Week and, as little makes me happier than browsing bookshelves filled with interesting titles, I want to shout hooray for such shops and celebrate their diversity and unique appeal. 

 
I also want to admire their toughness in the face of What Happens with Books and Schools because recently the complexity of school bookselling was really brought home to me. 

I'm also sorry as this is a slightly vexed post!

You see, a while back, a literacy co-ordinator at a primary school booked me for a future date as a visiting storyteller and author for the Nursery, Reception & Key Stage One classes. 

  
Now, although I am expected to talk about my books, many primary schools do not expect to arrange author book-sales these days. Many schools opt for the “big discount” Book Fairs instead, wheeling out the metal juggernauts as their visiting author departs. That’s the bookselling opportunity that parents  get the letters about. No point in fretting over it.

I am not keen on the hard sell style of visit but I do usually carry a few copies of my books with me just in case anyone asks. 

At the end of the day, I often donate a copy or so to the school so that the children do get a chance to read my books - and maybe they'll ask at the library or their parents afterwards.

Well, I cannot tell you how totally surprised and delighted I was back when I heard that this primary school DID want plenty my books! 

There had to be enough copies, so the message said, for every child to be bought a book and have it signed by the author. The quantity was enough for a bookshop to be involved. It felt like a dream!

It was just like a dream, because then came the twist. The independent bookshop that was supplying the books was told – presumably by some distant distributor or hub - that none of my books were in print, bar one new and therefore expensive hardback. (If, dear newly published author, you think publishers will tell you about such situations in person, you may be disappointed.)


Aaagh! Being bookless is like being silenced or becoming invisible. It’s why authors re-issue their best back-list titles themselves. I felt as if I’d been punched. But I’m stubborn so I rang my publisher’s distribution contact number. The pleasant woman checked her computer and told me that, yes,  copies of several of my books were actually still available. Big smiley face!

So I contacted the teacher at the school. I contacted the bookshop too.  

(The bookshop though lovely, was none of those illustrated. Their pictures are here to remind me to be cheerful - and how hard the people inside work to make their shops special.!)  

Next I heard that the publisher’s rep was calling at the bookshop the next morning. All would be fine, all round.

In any case, there was still plenty of time to go. When the future Visit Day arrived, my books would be available. Problem solved. Ta da!

However, it wasn’t. It isn't. At all. Even knowing the books would be available, the Head-teacher suddenly decided to cancel the visit

Why? It’s impossible to find out for sure, and not wise to try. Had the head realised that the books - being from an independent bookshop - might not offer the same wild discount as those big shiny trolleys full of “special deal” books?

Or were parents not as keen to buy as was expected? So the school might not make the profit that was expected? So were we – the author, the books and the bookshop – cancelled because we were not “discounted” enough?

Just now, this all feels rather sad. In my opinion, the children will lose out and the school and staff will lose out. The travelling rep and the publisher certainly lost out. 

And as for the stoical independent bookseller? 

Either the news of the cancellation reached them in time, or else they were very polite about dealing with a large number of specially delivered, unwanted books. 

They lost out in the time spent and in book sales, too. Sad. 


Yet my sorry little anecdote is only ONE small incident in the life of such a bookseller. I can’t help feeling how incredibly brave these small bookshops are to deal with this sort of thing day in and day out. Somehow, somewhere the publishing business just does not seem to be organised in a way that fully supports such valuable bookshops.

However, despite all the annoyances, the eager indie booksellers keep smiling and trying to promote books to their customers. So, for this week and more, hooray for the bold optimism of independent booksellers!

As for me? Come that visit day, I’ll be enjoying some satisfying writing time at home.

Are there any authors out there? If so, how do you manage your book sales in the era of austerity? How do you pursuade teachers to let children buy your books? And do you know of any incredible indie book shops that are great at school visits?

Penny Dolan
www.pennydolan.com

The bookshops shown are the Childrens Book shop at Lindley, nr Huddersfield; Storytellers Inc. at Lytham St Anne's;  The Bookseller at Lowdham; Victoria Park Books in London and the Norfolk Childrens Book Centre.


In Praise of Booksellers - Lari Don


It’s Independent Booksellers Week, which is probably not a surprise to many readers of this blog. And I’ve just spent a day being a bookseller! Well, not a day. A bit of a day. I was one of several local authors invited to be a bookseller yesterday at The Edinburgh Bookshop, the city’s very friendly independent bookshop, to celebrate IBW13.

I love my local bookshops (not just The Edinburgh Bookshop, because Edinburgh is lucky to have a handful of lovely Waterstones, a brilliant Blackwells, and several other excellent independents like Looking Glass Books and Wordpower) and I also love my local booksellers.

I appreciate the booksellers even more now I know what they do all day. The first thing I learnt is that booksellers don’t spend all day reading books. If you just lounge about reading, you keep getting interrupted by customers…

In my short but instructive shift as a trainee bookseller, I sat on the floor with a five year old and her mum and looked at picture books. I chatted to a seven year old and her mum about the exciting move into chapter books. And I pulled out half a dozen of my favourite adventure books for a nine year old and his dad, and sent them off to sit on a couch to read the first page of each, so see which one they wanted to keep reading.

And I’m happy to say that each of those kids went away with at least one new book!
Getting excited about a box of books

But I didn’t spent all my time having fun with customers. Along with my fellow new-starts Viv French and Cat Clarke, I also opened a box of just-delivered books, which was really exciting. Then I ticked them off on a bit of paper. (An invoice? A billing sheet? A despatch form? A delivery note? I’m sure there’s a technical term. But it was definitely a bit of paper.)

Then I registered the new books on the shop’s computer, by pointing a red light at the bar code until it went BEEEEP! That was exciting too. Then I called the customers whose orders had come in, which was exciting for me and for them.

I even put some books on shelves. Though that is a bit of a challenge for someone who has to chant the alphabet under her breath for any letter after “E”.

None of it was rocket science (the real booksellers didn’t let me near either the till or the kettle) and I worked in shops when I was a teenager, so despite the more complex technology (BEEEEP!) it was essentially all the usual shop stuff. But it was all the usual shop stuff about books, and books are my passion in a way that leggings and chewing gum never were. So it was genuinely exciting to chat to people about books I loved. It was genuinely exciting to handle new books, and to tell customers that their books had arrived just in time for their summer holidays.

I didn’t even try to sell anyone my own books, because that’s not what the day was about. I just wanted to share the books that inspire me with customers who had come in hoping to find the right book for them.
Booksellers for the day: Viv French, Cat Clarke and Lari Don

And that’s why writers and readers need booksellers. Because a recommendation from real person who knows about and cares about books, and who wants to match the right book to the right reader, is far more powerful than any computer-generated recommendation.

So make a trip to your local bookshop and have a chat with your local bookseller. Though if the bookseller is wearing a Tshirt saying “Careful or you’ll end up in my next novel,” you might be talking to an author, moonlighting for the day…

Love your booksellers, because they love books!


Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than a dozen books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales and novellas for reluctant readers. 
Lari’s website
Lari’s own blog
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Saturday 29 June 2013

For My Eyes Only


“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.”   Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

So I keep a diary. So what? Writers have done since writers first began writing, and there have been posts from Sassies in the past on this very subject. But the last time I visited a school and asked how many children did, only a smattering raised their hands, and this got me thinking.

Why is my diary as important to me today as it was when I was a child? Has its role in my life changed? And why does the diary form in fiction still hold a fascination for us if many of us are no longer keeping our own?

I could not survive without my diary. An inflated claim? I don't think so. I feel bereft if I forget to pack it on holiday: I have to rush out and buy a new notebook immediately – not for the Wildean reason quoted above, I should add. Ever since my teens, the diary has become less a record of things I have done and places I have visited, and more a place in itself; one of refuge, a sanctuary.

At its best it has kept me sane by allowing me to air thoughts and feelings I knew I could share with no one else. And of course it has meant that I can record happy times that are a joy to revisit – and are sometimes an inspiration for fictional writing. At its worst it has been a seething cauldron of secrets and emotions that were certainly much better kept between its covers than held up for public inspection. But even such supposedly negative material benefits from revisiting, if only to remind me that I have been here before, and all things shall pass.

I have no doubt that keeping a diary has also helped me hone the writing that I produce as a published author. Years ago, when my desire to Become A Writer was something that I kept a well-guarded secret, I would scribble away, feeling that this, at least, was writing of a sort. And it was – it was a rehearsal for the day when I would Become A Writer For Real.

We still love to read diaries. There is something irresistible about spying into the confessional. The first fictional diary that I loved, along with many children of the 80s, was The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 ¾. Since then I have devoured many more in this genre, from the hilarious Bridget Jones’s Diary to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s more disturbing The Yellow Wallpaper. More recently I have roared with laughter at Jo Nadin’s Rachel Riley diaries. And I have been entertained and moved by celebrities giving readings from their real-life journals on “My Teenage Diary” on Radio 4.

So is the diary doomed other than in its fictional form? If so, what effect will the loss of the convention of journal-keeping have on future generations? I am not suggesting that anyone will want to read my diaries (indeed, I very much hope that they will not), but those of famous writers, politicians and commentators have given us much in terms of historical insight and human empathy. And then there is possibly the most famous diary of the 20th century: that of a young girl who never lived to tell her story, so her diary had to do it for her. Otto Frank had to steel himself to read his daughter’s private words, as he knew that she had never wanted him to do so, and yet he recognized how important they were for the world to see, and thank God he did.

Will we have to rely on blogs for this in the future? And, assuming anyone will bother to trawl the ether for such material, will blogs really give us the same insight as that of diaries, originally not intended for public perusal?

For a while I wrote a personal blog, lampooning my life and my family. It was not the kindest thing to do, but at the time I found it cathartic and liked the way other people connected with it and commented on it. It was a vastly different exercise from writing a diary though. It was, essentially, an exercise in showing off.

A diary is by its very nature lacking in artifice. In a blog there has to be an element of putting on an act to the world, in the same way we do every time we step out of the front door. My diary is something for my eyes only; something kept hidden between those covers, sometimes even under lock and key.

I hope the convention is not dead. I hope that my children are secretly scribbling away by torchlight, under the duvet. And I hope they never get to read my diary, just as I am sure they would never want me to read theirs!


“For obvious reasons, I never told you about my notebook, with a cover as green as mansions long ago, which I use as a commonplace book, a phrase which here means 'place where I have collected passages from some of the most important books I have read.’”   Lemony SnicketLemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography

Thursday 27 June 2013

Summertime... - Lily Hyde


A post I wrote on ABBA in December, complaining about my difficulties finding a plot for a book I was working on, garnered a host of wise and useful replies, including one about writing seasons (thanks, Liz and Jen!).

It was cold and grey in London when I wrote that post. In a big city, especially one as temperate as London, it’s easy to disregard the seasons. If the squirrels were busily running about in Hyde Park, begging nuts from enamoured tourists, then why should I remember to hibernate for the winter? 

Now it’s hot and blue in the Carpathian mountains. Everything is growing and flowering through the long, long summer days. And I realise that creatively, at least, I was hibernating through that December. Now I’ve woken up. Not just that particular book I was stuck on, but a host of others too, have unfrozen. It literally feels like water running again, like plants sprouting.


It’s a lovely feeling, and I hope that the words I write down manage to capture the promise and ease I sense from the ideas filling my head.

Wishing you all a happy, fulfilling and productive writing summer!          

www.lilyhyde.com

Wednesday 26 June 2013

Putting Up with the Low Down - Andrew Strong

Some years ago, just after my first book was published, I met a friend I'd not seen for some time.  The first thing he said to me, without even a pause, was “I didn’t like your book.”  I hadn’t mentioned my book, and didn’t intend to, but for him it was clearly imperative that he let me know exactly how he felt about it. 

I’ve been working on something new, and have almost completed it.  Last week I went for a meeting with my agent and one of the agency’s interns to discuss progress.  I had a heavy cold, and was weary from a very intense time in my day job as a headteacher.  Earlier in the week I’d had a scuffle with some school inspectors and was hoping for a far more pleasant experience with my agent.  I was pretty low, and having spent years on this new book, wondered just how much I was prepared to hear my work pulled apart before I snapped.

But my agent was lovely, and so was the intern, and there I was, happily having my book’s structure, and then its sentences, scrutinized and questioned.  Their criticisms were so intelligent, and so accurate that I felt I was learning, and I knew what was being said made absolute sense. If only school inspections could be as pleasant and useful as this.

But I wonder what must it be like if you couldn’t take criticism?  As a headteacher the rebukes come from every direction, in every form, and there’s nowhere to hide.  I don’t like it, but I’m used to it. Is it the same for a writer?  Do you grow a thick, leathery skin? Or, if you can’t take criticism, do you just give up? 

Perhaps writing isn’t something to pursue if you’re too sensitive, but then don’t sensitive people make better writers?  And when, and if, the book is published, and your work gets a more public scrutiny, then it’s open season and people may say and write horrible and unkind things. You have to be tough to put up with the criticism, but sensitive enough to write it in the first place. 

Secretly, I think, we are all a lot tougher than we imagine.  It isn’t easy getting published in the first place, so I suppose most of us have experienced plenty of rejections.  But once the book is out there, and not everyone adores your work as much as you’d hoped, what do you do?  How do you cope?  Drink? Feign madness? Blame it on the kids? Or do you take it all to heart and shake your fist at the heavens and seek vengeance upon the universe?


Tuesday 25 June 2013

Why I Don't Believe In A Book At Bedtime - Tamsyn Murray

I'm sure you've seen the headlines - bedtime reading is dead. OK, so maybe not quite dead, but seriously ailing. Only one in three parents read to their children every night, claims a new survey by Harris Interactive in the USA and a UK study commissioned by Pearson last year claims that more than one in six parents never reads to their child before bed. Fewer of us are spending bedtime exploring new worlds and having adventures with our children than ever before and, if that's true, I find it a little depressing. You might be surprised that I'm only slightly downhearted by the findings and here's why: I don't believe in a book at bedtime.

I have two children; one is eighteen years old and the other is a toddler, nineteen months old. Both love books and stories; my daughter first learned to read from Dear Zoo by Rod Campbell. By the time my son arrived, I was a writer myself and had access to a lot of lovely pictures books, so it was only natural that he would become interested in books from an early age. But I very rarely read him a bedtime story.

Before you all stop talking to me and I get forced to hand in my writerly membership card, there's a good reason for this; we don't do books at bedtime because we do them all day. There's a big box of utterly fabulous picture books in our living room and my son has always been encouraged to understand that they are his. He takes them out of the box, he puts them back in. He mountaineers on them, often unsuccessfully. He sits on the floor and leafs through them, babbling away to himself. The pages are dog-eared and torn. We play Spot The Book, where I spread out all the books and he brings me whichever one I ask for, one after another. And, of course, we read them together; at breakfast, through the morning, in the afternoon and sometimes in the evening. Books and stories are part of our everyday lives, they're not a special treat reserved just for bedtime.

So that's why I'm not necessarily a fan of initiatives that call for more bedtime reading. Don't get me wrong, it's a good start and I'm well aware how busy parents are. But if you make books a part of your everyday life, you stand a much better chance of fostering a love of stories that will last a long time, with all the benefits that conveys. I've even come up with a slogan: A book is for life, not just for bedtime.

So what do you think? Who's with me?

Monday 24 June 2013

To Share or Not to Share - Liz Kessler


I’ve been thinking quite a bit about sharing recently. How we do it, where we do it, who we do it with, and why?

Thanks to the technology that exists today, particularly the internet, we live in times where we could in theory share pretty much anything with practically anyone in the world.

So how do we work out where to draw the line?

Obviously, we each have a different reply to this. My dad, for example, doesn’t really like it when I share what he considers to be overly personal Facebook posts (that are only seen by my friends). Equally, I don’t really like it when he shares what I consider to be overly personal photographs of other people (that are only seen by people who visit the exhibition that the photos are part of). Somewhere along the way, we have each made our own rules about what we feel is and isn’t acceptable to share. As has everyone else in this modern world.

Luckily, my dad and I have found that the occasional discussion over these differences of opinions has never done our relationship any harm! But it’s not always as easy as that. The very nature of ‘sharing’ is that it’s not something we keep to ourselves – and so, ‘our’ rules about it will constantly bump up against other people’s.

In recent weeks, I have come across this issue numerous times, in numerous different guises. Authors arguing over what some consider to be excessive levels of self-promotion. Heated debates about whether moaning about toothache on twitter is strictly necessary. Discussions about people not getting jobs after their potential new boss found what they believed to be unacceptable photos online.

It’s a minefield. It’s worse than a minefield. Most of us don’t have to walk across minefields to get anywhere, but most of us do use – sometimes depend on – these sites in our daily lives.

So what do we do? ‘Unfriend’ ‘Unfollow’ and ‘Hide’ those who post things we don’t like, and risk losing touch with people we are otherwise fond of? Challenge them on what they share, and risk falling out over something so trivial we probably won’t remember it in a year’s time?

Or perhaps work extra hard within ourselves to understand, accept and live alongside everyone’s different definitions of what is an appropriate level of sharing. Make our lines more bendy so they can accommodate each other’s more comfortably.

Think of the world today as a tube train, where it used to be a horse and carriage. In the past, we would only have shared our journey with one or two fellow travellers. Now, we might be squeezed into a tightly packed chunk of metal with a hundred others. We’re all going somewhere. We each have our own journey. But for those few moments, we have to share it with other people. So we do what we can to make it more comfortable. Move our bags closer so someone can get past. Shuffle along so more people can get on. Stand up for the elderly couple. Possibly, even – shock horror – smile at the stranger sitting across the aisle. We adapt, because we know that our journey means sharing a few minutes with these people and, more often than not, we don’t hold that against them.

The point is, our world enables us to reach more people, and whilst some of the time, this might be hard, mostly it offers opportunities.

Opportunities to read articles that stretch our minds; to congratulate family members on their achievements; to wish friends happy birthday even if they live on the other side of the world. And a million other things, besides. Sharing can in fact be the most amazing thing a human being can do. It connects us, brings us closer and allows us to relate more deeply to our fellow travellers.

And I don’t think it’s too much of a coincidence that this issue is so prevalent amongst writers. After all, what are books but the ultimate sharing of the truths we carry deep inside us? No wonder we are so often the ones who get accused of ‘over-sharing’. It’s what we do for our day jobs. In many cases, it’s what we live and breathe.

I don’t really have a perfect solution for how to keep everyone happy on this issue. Perhaps we never will. But in the meantime, how about we simply forgive each other the occasional difference of opinion on the matter? Try to engage fully with the person doing the sharing, rather than stand back and judge them for doing so. 

Let’s make our lines more flexible. And while we're at it, let’s go ahead and smile at the stranger on the tube. It’ll make the journey much more pleasant – for us as well as them.

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Sunday 23 June 2013

Ten Reasons To Be A Writer - Lynne Garner

I recently read a blog post by author Matt Haig giving 10 reasons not to be a writer. Some of the reasons I admit I agree with, these include:

Number one:
They have bad backs.

Number four:
Financial uncertainty. Writers don't get fixed wages.

Number seven:
Dan Brown, Dan Brown ... 

Note:
Although as a children's writer mine are The Hungry Caterpillar and The Gruffalo - don't get me wrong I love these books but please book shop managers there are other good kids books out there.     

However writing for a living (who am I kidding, I refer you back to number four) does have a  lot of positives. So here are my ten reasons to be a writer:

Just two of my friends, Dog and Boris 
One:
I get to create my own friends. Although they only live in my head I can have fun with them, laugh with them, cry with them. I was there at their 'birth' and just when I think they've grown up and left they pop back for a visit and insist on telling me a new story.

Two:
As a writer I get to share my imaginary friends with family, my real world friends and even people I'll never meet.

Three:
I can legitimately sit on a park bench musing, cogitating and pondering and call it work.

Four:
Family and friends are always eager to share amusing anecdotes with me and often will add "you can use that in your next book." And I have!

Five:
Writing is the cheapest form of therapy I know. When I'm mad I write, when I'm sad I write, when I'm happy I write and when I'm done for the day I feel better - even if what I've written will never be used.

Six:
As a writer I get to play. Play with ideas, the lives of my characters and with words.

Seven:
I can get your own back on someone by 'hiding' them in plain sight. They may never know but that doesn't matter - I refer you back to point five.
Tasha enjoying a game of ball

Eight:
I can sit and work in my dressing gown until noon and not feel guilty because if I leave my keyboard I'll 'ruin the flow.'

Nine:
I'm never stuck in a traffic jam or have to de-ice the car. The most treacherous part of my journey is stepping over the dog as she sleeps.

Ten:
I get to plan my day. If I want to take Tuesday afternoon off to take advantage of 'cheap Tuesday' at the cinema I can. If I'm not working to a tight deadline I can take the dog for an extra long walk on a gorgeous sunny day and play ball. I can simply make up those hours later in the week when I chose to.  

So that's my ten reasons to be a writer. Do you have any to add to the pot?

Lynne Garner

P.S.

I have three new distance learning courses commencing on the 6th July via Women On Writing:

Saturday 22 June 2013

Abroad thoughts from home - Nicola Morgan

I'm writing this in Edinburgh on June 4th. The weather is gorgeous. The sun has been shining without pause since first thing this morning, crimson peonies are exploding into bloom, and the air around my garden office is filled with crazy blackbirdsong and the familiar smells of this part of summer - mown grass, crisp lilac, sweet hyacinth bluebells and Mexican orange blossom from the bushes outside the open office door. I'm hot, but not too hot. My skin is drinking in the sunshine and a slight burny feeling heralds a bit of a tan that I know I shouldn't welcome. I know these smells, these sounds, these feelings. I could write about them in February, because my imagination could conjure them back again. In fact, the ability to conjure them up again is pretty much the only way I can get through February.

When this post goes out, however, I will be in Kuala Lumpur, doing some talks for the Cooler Lumpur #Word festival with the Edinburgh World Writers' Conference and the British Council. I've never been to Asia, never been anywhere tropical. I cannot conjure up the sounds and smells and the feeling of humid heat because I've never experienced them.

I could try to use my imagination. I could think about Malaysian food and con myself into believing I know what it smells like in its own place - but I know I'd get it horribly wrong. I could try to recall experiences of being far too hot - Crete in a July heatwave at 40+ degrees, every day, with no air-con; Phoenix, Arizona in August, with a lot of air-con. but somehow my imagination doesn't bring it properly to me. I can't feel it. Besides, it was dry heat and KL won't be.

Or I could make it up, but that would be unsatisfying.

There are only two ways for me to know what I'm going to be feeling like as you read this. One is to be there, as I will be. And the other would be to read the words of a skilled writer conveying it.

Because that is what words and good writers can do. They can make us feel the cold and the heat and the smells, as though we were there. I have never believed that "write what you know" thing because writers have imaginations to fill the gap but there are some things I think you do need to know. I think the more we know and have experienced the more real and more natural our writing can be.

So, writing what you know may not be a good restriction but it's a valuable tool. It adds spice and flavour. And heat.

And I think that what good writers try to do when we describe something is to convey that reality and to share the heat. To make people feel and smell and taste and see.

Friday 21 June 2013

Dog Days - Ruth Symes/Megan Rix



Back in March of this year I blogged about how my golden retriever, Traffy (short for Old Trafford) was going to be a reading therapy dog and would be visiting schools so children could read to her. 

So far this has been far more successful than I’d even imagined it would be.  On our first visit we took assembly for the whole of the Lower School so everyone could meet Traffy. As I read the children a book about her the children started saying 'Miss, Miss' and pointing behind me. When I looked round I saw that Traffy had helped herself to a bag of her favourite chicken donut treats from my bag (which is really her bag as it only has her toys and water bowl and treats and special mat in it) and was throwing the treat bag up in the air in the hope that one would fall out. As I looked back at the children's laughing faces I thought I couldn't have planned a better introduction for them to her. Who could be frightened of a dog who helped herself to her own treats.
                                                   
         ‘Shall I give her one?’
         ‘Yes!’ came the resounding reply.

After that initial assembly our real 'work' began. Each week we go into the school for an hour and the children come one at a time to read to Traffy in the library (the carpeted floor is always a lot furrier by the time we go.) We're helped by one of the Mum's who brings the children to us - which speeds things along. And at the end of each child’s visit they get a special paw-print stamp in their reading record book.
        
I love listening to the children read and Traffy does too; lying next to the reader and often watching as they turn the pages – although occasionally she faces the wrong way and once or twice has had a little doze.


This week 2 of our regular readers were missing so the teacher said she'd pick two extra children who'd finished their books and were starting new ones to come to us instead. We were told some of the fastest reading in history happened as a consequence!
             
As well as her reading job Traffy's also recently been along to 
the East Sussex Children's Book Award Ceremony at the De La Warr Pavillion in Bexhill where my book ‘The Great Escape was runner-up.

She wagged her tail at the 300 or so oohing and aahing children in the audience and would have gone down the steps there and then to meet them if I’d let her. 

Kate Saunders won the beautiful engraved glass first prize for her book ‘The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop’ and as we answered the children's questions Traffy sat down on the stage and then lay down looking at us and then back out at the children - totally unfazed by it all. Although she'd have preferred it if there were more chicken donuts.






Ruth and Megan are the same person.

Megan Rix's latest book is 'The Victory Dogs' published by Puffin and set during the Blitz in WW2. Her website is www.meganrix.com

Ruth Symes' latest book is 'Witch Camp' published by Piccadilly. Her website is www.ruthsymes.com




        

Thursday 20 June 2013

Off he goes again... by Sue Purkiss


First, many thanks to Joan Lennon for letting me have her slot. I've just managed to publish a book on Kindle, and am feeling ridiculously proud of myself, so wanted to jump up and down and shout about it - just a little bit!

Admitted, I had it pretty easy really, because I still had the original Word document, which makes it much easier to create an ebook. And those nice people at Walker let me use the original cover, so I didn't have to make a new one. All in all, then, it's really pretty ridiculous that it's taken me well over a year to get round to what was actually a pretty painless and very interesting procedure.

The book concerned is called The Willow Man. It was the first 'serious' book I wrote, and it was very close to my heart. I felt unbelievably proud when I held the new book in my hand, it garnered some very nice reviews, and it was taken up by Hodder for use in a reading scheme. All of this was very satisfactory - but unfortunately, it didn't sell shed loads of copies - or even wheelbarrow loads - and so it went out of print. But now, thanks to the glories of the digital revolution (or is it the electronic revolution? Whatever!), The Willow Man is on the move again!

So what's the book about? Well, interesting you should ask. Because when I came to edit the original Word document before converting it for Kindle, I realised that it wasn't about quite what I'd thought it was.

The Willow Man, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The Willow Man is a real figure - that's him in the picture. A lot of those of you who live in the UK will have seen him as you've driven down to the south-west. He stands beside the M5, and was created by willow sculptor Serena de la Hey in the year 2000, to celebrate the millenium. He used to be unmissable: now not quite so much, because a massive Morrison's depot is encroaching on one side and a housing estate on the other. But he's still there, tall and proud. I used to drive past him on the way to work, and I was fascinated by him. There he stood, poised ready to stride forward: and yet he never would.

So there he was, waiting to be written about. Other ideas gathered round him. One was what had happened to my daughter some years before, when she was seven. She had a stroke. One minute she was bouncing about all over the place, the next she was paralysed on her right side and couldn't speak. Should I have written about something so close to home? Well, I'm a writer. Writers write about things that matter to them, and nothing had mattered more.

Then there was the work I had just started doing, with young offenders - not locked up, but in the community. Here were young people who were almost always out of school. Few of them could read very well - John Dougherty wrote an excellent post about prisoners and literacy a couple of days ago which will provide you with some of the figures. Most of them had an absent father, and a mother who was struggling desperately to survive. The pattern seemed always to be the same - they struggled in school, they got into trouble, they truanted and/or were excluded, they got in with older youths and began to drink, they got into fights and damaged things, they went before the courts, and then they came to us.

So the book was to be about children who were stuck in one way or another. After it was published, I went into schools and talked to lots of children about it, and it was always so rewarding to hear the boy at the back - the one with that look about him that tells you he's teetering on the brink - say that he'd enjoyed it, because Ash was like he was. Someone else would always ask, rather shyly, about my daughter: had she got better, as Sophie does in the book? (The answer was yes: she did and she's wonderful!)

Reading it through before uploading it to Kindle, I saw that it was indeed about all these things. But it was about something else, too. It was about communication - or the lack of it. At the beginning, Sophie can't speak. She has to struggle to regain her words. Her brother Tom doesn't know how to cope with his feelings about what's happened: he certainly can't express them. Ash can't tell the teachers not only that he can't read, but also that the reason he keeps being late is that he has to drop his little brother off at school so his mum can get to work on time. His mother has never told him why his father isn't around. Perhaps, Sophie thinks, the Willow Man can help - but then something terrible happens...

When I was nearing the end of writing the book, I went to see Serena de la Hey. I wanted to explain to her that I had, in a way, hi-jacked her creation, and I wanted to know more about the way she worked, in order to write the final scene. The Willow Man - her figure, not my book - has had a huge impact. His image has been used in advertising for Somerset and the County Council, and people who are interested in the arcanery  attached to willow/whicker figures used as a kind of sacrifice are drawn to him. She shrugged. She'd made him, she said. That was her job, done. What he went on to do after that wasn't up to her: he took on a life of his own.

Her figure wasn't meant to last; it was made of willow, not stone or bronze. Yet there it still is, and, thanks to Amazon Kindle, there my book still is - whatever it's about!

Incidentally, Lucy Coats wrote on this blog a month or two ago about Pinterest, and how she's begun to use it to create her characters. Emma Darwin has written elsewhere about how she's also used it to gather images to do with her books. I decided to have a play myself, and I've done a couple of boards, one about the landscapes inThe Willow Man. It's a work in progress - I haven't done Bridgwater yet - but if you'd like to take a look, it's here. The photo is taken from Brean Down, one of the key locations in the book - it's not on the board yet, but it will be!

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