Wednesday 30 September 2015

Revisiting The World of a Book - Lari Don

I lose myself in all my books, and learn something from each of them. Each book is a little world (or a big world, if it’s a novel) and the time I spend inside each story world becomes part of me. That’s one reason I love doing author events: to share my experience of spending time in an imagined world, hoping to inspire young writers to do the same.

There are creative worlds and creative experiences I revisit more often than others. Even though my final Fabled Beast Chronicles novel, Maze Running, was published a couple of years ago, I still do events about those novels regularly, so I’m used to chatting about working with centaurs, dragons and selkies, about how I came up with the idea and what I learnt about writing adventures.

However, there are other books that were just as important to me as I wrote them, but that I don’t revisit nearly so often.

Drawing a Veil is a novella I wrote about 5 years ago. I revisited it last week, when I was asked by an English teacher to talk to a class who were reading it at school.

He wanted me to talk about how I had researched and written the book. I was a little nervous about doing that, because I honestly couldn’t remember how I’d researched and written it! At a quick count, I’ve written at least a dozen books since it was published, and I’ve probably not done an event specifically about this novella for a couple of years. Also, it’s the only book I’ve written so far that’s set firmly in this world, with no magic or mind readers, so I couldn’t even just witter on about my usual imaginative processes, because they weren’t entirely relevant to this book.

But I said yes, because Denny High is one of my favourite schools to visit, then I sat down and reread the book. (It’s a novella, it didn’t take that long.)

I reread the book with a bit of trepidation. Would I find it clunky or cringe-worthy? I’ve learnt a lot as a writer since I wrote it. Would I be embarrassed by it?

But apart from the usual desire to pick up a pen and alter the odd word, which happens when I read any of my books, even ones published this year, it was fine. I read a couple of phrases that made me think ‘ooh, that’s rather good’ and I laughed out loud once.

Even better, as I read, I found myself back in that world. Not just the world of the book, but the world of writing the book. I remembered what had drawn me to telling the story of a girl who turns up at school one day wearing a hijab, and the reaction of her friends and classmates. I remembered why I’d approached it in a certain way, and the questions and concerns I’d struggled with as I wrote it.

So I was able (I hope!) to do a session that didn’t sound like someone who’d half-forgotten a book, and that opened up the world of writing that book...

But I also did something else. I discovered, in looking back, what effect writing that one book, that one outlier without fantasy or supernatural elements, had on my subsequent writing. Because when you spend time in a story world, you never entirely leave it behind as you move onto the next book. Writing is a journey from one story to another, you take what you learn from one book and one set of characters, and use it to write an even better book next time.

When I reread Drawing a Veil, and when I answered questions about it from the fab S2 class at Denny High, I realised how my time in that book’s world had opened my mind to new ways of asking questions, new ways of seeing this world and therefore new ways of seeing potential story worlds. Which is why as well as reading from Drawing a Veil, I also read from Mind Blind, a teen thriller that I now realise I might never have written if I hadn’t spent time in the smaller world of Drawing a Veil.

 So, in revisiting a world I spent time in a few years ago, I learnt a little more about my own writing, and about my own journey from one story world to the next. I wonder if other writers find it easy or difficult (or embarrassing or illuminating) to revisit their writing processes and experiences years later...




Lari Don is the award-winning author of 22 books for all ages, including a teen thriller, 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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Lari on Facebook


Tuesday 29 September 2015

Hi, Society! - John Dougherty

Today’s post is unashamedly for authors - which, as I tell kids on my school visits, is all of us. So let me narrow it down a little: today’s post is for published authors. Or self-published authors. Or people who would like some day to be published or self-published authors… 

Oh. Still haven’t narrowed it down much. Okay; perhaps it would be better if I told you what this post’s going to be about. Today, I would like to give a shout-out to the Society of Authors. Hello, everyone at the Society! *waves*

I remember the first time I spoke to someone at the Society. I can’t remember who had suggested I join them - it might well have been my editor - but I was very hesitant. As I recall, the conversation went something like this:

VOICE ON PHONE: Hello! Society of Authors! How can I help?
ME: [nervously] Um… hello. I’m… well, I’m not sure if I’m eligible for, um, membership or anything, but, well, someone suggested I talk to you…
VOICE: [encouraging noises]
ME: I mean… I haven’t had anything published yet, but, well, I have a contract for a, um, children’s book with Random House…
VOICE: [cheerily] Oh, well, you’re certainly eligible for membership, then. Let me talk you through it…

Actually, they almost certainly didn’t say ‘Let me talk you through it,’ because there’s not much to be talked through; joining the Society is pretty simple. Anyway, the point is that the Society of Authors is much more inclusive than its slightly grand-sounding name and Kensington address might make you think. There are two levels of membership - full member and associate - but aside from the right to vote on or stand in council & committee elections, there’s really no difference between the two. And you’re eligible for associate membership if you’ve had an offer from an agent or a publisher, or if you've self-published. The Society really is for all authors.

Now, other organisations for authors are available, and I’d encourage you to join as many of them as you like - I’m very glad, for instance, to belong to the Scattered Authors’ Society - but whichever other writers’ organisations you belong to, I really, really recommend that, if you’re eligible, you join the Society. You see, although it’s great that there are other organisations for networking and professional development, that’s not all the Society provides. 

It’s our trade union. It fights for us. It campaigns for writers, and for the book. It protects us and our rights. If you’ve been offered a contract - whether by an agent, a publisher, or someone who wants to adapt your work for another medium - the Society’s legal team will look at it for you, and give you free legal advice. If you’re not sure what your rights as an author are, the Society will happily tell you. And it will help whether you’re just starting out, or have been published for decades.


I’m almost at the end of my term as chair of CWIG - the Society’s Children’s Writers & Illustrators Group - and if there’s one thing I’ve learned serving on the CWIG committee, it’s that the people who work for the Society of Authors are good people who work very hard for all of us. So I hope you’ll join me in thanking them, and if you're not a member, I hope you’ll join us by clicking on this link.

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John's Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face series, illustrated by David Tazzyman, is published by OUP.

John has been a CWIG committee member since November 2010, and chair since November 2013. 

Monday 28 September 2015

Joy of belated recognition - Clémentine Beauvais

One of the most common accusations levelled at children’s books with playful intertextual references is that children ‘won’t get it’. The claim is annoyingly predictable, as much from editors as from (adult) readers. There’s always an underlying sense, in this accusation, that you’re somehow wasting your time if you cram hidden references in children’s books. They won’t know the original, so there’s no point.

No point at all.


There’s two sides to that argument:
  • 1) the child-hating one: pearls before swine, basically: they’re not good enough for your clever references;
  • 2) the child-centred one: they won’t enjoy a passage with a reference they don’t recognise, just like you can’t enjoy a pastiche or parody of a film you haven’t seen, or a book you haven’t read.
There’s also the implicit notion that the author is somehow showing off; worse, that they might be a failed ‘adult’ author, who clearly has to compensate for the shame of writing for children by seducing the adult co-reader. The old ‘talking to the adult above the child’s head’ accusation surfaces here.

I think it’s a huge shame that this antagonistic approach to intertextuality is so common, even among children’s book people; not just because it’s strangely anti-intellectual, but mostly because it’s premised on the notion that intertextual references, in order to function, have to be encountered after the ‘original’. 

There’s an implicit chronology to our basic understanding of intertextuality, especially pastiche or parody: first the original, then the reference; that’s the way to do it. The same rule applies to everyone, but since children have, to put it simply, lived less long, and encountered fewer texts and cultural productions than adults, they’re particularly unlikely to understand most references to films, books, or works of art. This is especially of concern if the pastiched element is part of ‘adult’ culture and literature.

It’s obvious, though, that the intertextual game is much more erratic than that, and for everybody - not just children. Just a few days ago I was reading the slightly obscure 1884 French novel A Rebours, by J.-K. Huysmans. I was staggered when I found in it the gloriously synaesthetic description of a kind of organ which delivers, when played, different kinds of alcohol, forming symphonic cocktails. That description seemed to me to have fallen straight out of another French novel, this time an absolute classic - particularly among teenagers - Boris Vian’s 1947 Foam of the Days (L’écume des jours), which famously features a similar instrument, called a ‘pianocktail’. A quick Google search informed me that indeed, Vian had been inspired by Huysmans’s fictional instrument. The reference, I gather, would have been more obvious to a 1940s audience than to a Millennium one.

someone made a real pianocktail #yolo
So 15 years passed between my discovery of the pianocktail and the entirely accidental encounter with its literary ancestor. And of course I don’t resent, but love, this kind of (very) belated intertextual joy of recognition. It’s happened to me many times, and to you too, I’m sure. With children’s books, the joy is, if anything, even more awesome, because it’s tinged with that special tender hue that memories of childhood reading have. It’s also deeper-buried, so the resurfacing is all the more poignant.

Intertextual references that are ‘not immediately understood’ are not a big deal. It’s not as if you spend years wandering around in utter perplexity, feeling you’d missed out on something crucial, until you finally encounter the ‘key’ that you ‘should’ have had the first time around. You already find it funny and intriguing the first time around; or, quite simply you don’t notice it at all. In Asterix in Britain, everyone Asterix and Obelix meet speaks weirdly - in the original French, they keep saying ‘Je dis!’ before every sentence; and ‘n’est-il pas?’ after each clause.

'Goodness gracious!'

At the time, I thought it was hilarious, because it was so weird and seemed to correspond so well to this odd tribe of red-haired hot-water-drinkers. It’s only much later, in English class, that the revelation hit me: Goscinny and Uderzo were directly translating into French ‘I say!’ and ‘Isn’t it?’. I couldn’t stop giggling. Joy.

My villain in The Royal Babysitters is called King Alaspooryorick. Some schools I go to have gone to great lengths to tell the children where this name comes from. Others haven’t. I like to think that one day, in high school, or at a theatre somewhere, some kids will giggle to themselves when they encounter the phrase for the ‘second’ time. And it’s not as if they’re not giggling now - it’s not as if I’m forcing them to save their giggles for later. Alaspooryorick is a ridiculous enough name to be already funny.

Let’s not be inflexible with chronology when it comes to intertextuality. The ‘wrong order’ is perhaps the best one. It’s not the joy of erudite recognition; the wink, the nod, the handshake between two adults above the head of the child. It’s exactly the opposite: it’s the joy of accidental recognition, in an unpredictable future - the joy of stumbling upon a distant memory, resurfacing in the middle of today’s serious activity - and triggering an unexpected, slightly nostalgic laugh.
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Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia.

Sunday 27 September 2015

Books to Make the Heart Beat Faster by Lynn Huggins-Cooper



I want to write books that make the hearts of readers beat faster. When people tell me how excited they were when they read 'Walking With Witches,' or how the story of Sydney Dobson, the boy soldier from One Boy's War moved them, it thrills me.

Which books excite and move you? For me, it's a long list. Some have followed me from childhood. Phrases from them shine in my mind's eye down the years. The Halloween Tree or The October Country by Ray Bradbury. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner. Practical Magic and Green Witch, by Alice Hoffman. Garden Spells, by Sarah Addison Allen. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. The Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin. Tithe, by Holly Black. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill. Brighton Rock or The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier. Anything by Robert Westall, or Meera Syal. So many books; so much stolen reading time when I 'should' have been doing something else. Pah!

So - what's on your list? Tell me a title I can rush off and relish it.



Saturday 26 September 2015

Are you a Lemon or a Passion Fruit? by Julie Sykes





I’m a Leo. Not the ‘Link Everything Online’ kind of LEO but the astrological sort.

As a Leo I’m charismatic, generous, beautiful, bright and a natural leader. Apparently.

Leo’s can also be arrogant, smothering, not satisfied with their lot and with a resulting tendency for extravagance.

But of course, I’m not any of those things so that just goes to show what a load of rubbish the whole thing is - except the bit about being beautiful, bright and a natural leader, of course!

Everywhere you look, there are quizzes and tests to tell you what sort of person you are. They’re kind of addictive. The paper ones are best cos you can cheat a bit with the answers to get the result you want. Did I really answer a to question 103? But, I meant to say b and I meant c for questions 30, 96 and 89.

Not so easy to cheat when you’re taking those tests on line. Recently, I took a test to find out what sort of dinosaur I was.

The answer came back T-Rex.

T-Rex. Really? NO. No way.  I’m not a big scary, aggressive bully of a dinosaur…am I?

Immediately, I mailed my friends. Take this test. Which dinosaur are you?

None of them were T-Rex. Not one.

‘I’m a Velociraptor,’ said one friend smugly. ‘The intelligent dinosaur.’

‘But, but, but…I didn’t know who the celebrities were in the pictures,’ I protested. ‘I answered question 3 by guessing.’
‘Me too,’ said that smug, intelligent friend.

The dinosaur test plagued me for days. I was incredulous and a little bit scared. That’s not how people really see me, is it?

Then I remembered a very good friend I’ve known for years. We regularly have the same email exchange. It goes like this.

Friend: Fancy getting together for a coffee?

Me: Definitely. Got any gossip?

Friend: No, I don’t think I have.

Me:  Make some up then ; )

Last year, completely out of the blue, this friend handed me a small parcel at Christmas.

Friend: I know we don’t do presents but I saw this and thought of you.

This is what she bought.




Have tea with me. The gossip is free.

Personality tests – who needs them?










Friday 25 September 2015

A Late Prize by Tamsyn Murray

I like to think I'm funny. I enjoy trying to make people laugh, finding a smart remark or delivering a joke with perfect timing. Sometimes my books are called funny, by people other than me. And I've always dreamed that one day, I might win a prize for being funny. That hope faded a little bit this week when it was announced that the Roald Dahl Funny Prize had chortled its last and was shuffling off to that great gigglefest in the sky. It is, as Michael Rosen said on Twitter, 'a late prize.'

Comedy is an integral part of who we are as humans. Ever since the first caveman held out his finger to the second and grunted 'UGH', we've sought out humour as entertainment, as a distraction and as a way of making sense of life. Sometimes the only way to deal with unbearable things is to find a way to poke fun at them. In children's books, funny matters even more. At a time when we're encouraging kids to read for pleasure, reminding them how amazing books are, what could be better than a story that makes you feel good? Children like to laugh so why not give them books to help make that happen? Not solely funny books, you understand, but a wide selection that includes plenty of humour. And why not recognise that these books have their place?

I occasionally struggle with the elevator pitch for My So-Called Afterlife. "Well, it starts off with a murdered teenager, who befriends a girl who killed herself because she was horrifically bullied. The murdered girl falls for a boy who died in a tragic car accident - his father is still in a coma..." I begin and watch whoever I'm talking to take a step backwards. "But don't worry," I go on. "It's really quite funny..."

And it is. I made my main character snarky and sharp precisely because she was in such a horrible, sad situation. I get away with a lot of really dark stuff because it is all lightly handled. And that book, which is really about grief and bereavement and losing everything you know, makes people laugh.

Part of the trouble is that hardly anyone takes funny stories seriously (unless they are written by a certain D Walliams). "They're just a bit of fun," people say. "Let's give the prize to that serious book, the one that deals with hard subjects."

That's why the loss of the Funny Prize is such a custard pie in the face. It was a prize that championed comedy, gave those of us who spend the day chiselling out jokes and jamming them into our text something to aspire to. I sincerely hope that something will fill the gap. Because it seems to me that now more than ever, our children need to be able to find laughter in the pages of their books. Won't someone defibrillate the Funny Prize?

Thursday 24 September 2015

'One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world.' Malala Yousafzai - by Liz Kessler

I’m off to London today to see a film.

Given that I live in Cornwall, it’s a long way to travel to go to the cinema. But then, this isn’t just any film; it’s the movie premiere of He Named Me Malala, which I’ve been invited to see because Malala and I share a publisher.

As soon as I realised that the date of this event coincided with my ABBA post, I knew that there could be no better subject for me to write about.

Malala is not just one of the most amazing teenagers alive today. She is one of the most inspiring, wise, brave and intelligent people you could imagine meeting. Not that I have met her. But I have read her book, I Am Malala, and that left me in awe of this incredible young woman.

As authors, we often get asked to do interviews for blogs. On this occasion, I decided to turn the tables and interview my publisher instead. So here is Fiona Kennedy, publisher of I Am Malala, talking about why this book – and Malala herself – is so important and so special.



LK: Can you tell me how you felt when you first heard Malala’s story?

FK: I first heard Malala's story like everyone else on news broadcasts in 2012 - she was the young girl from the SWAT valley who had been shot at close range by the Taliban for speaking up for her right - and every child's right - to an education.  She was flown to England in a critical condition and no one knew whether she would survive. Like everyone, I was shocked by this, but at the time it was first reported had no idea how significant Malala's story would become to the world.

Malala did survive and is more passionate than ever about everyone's right to live in peace, to have equality of opportunity and to be treated with respect. We particularly wanted to emphasise the importance of her message about education and there's no better way to sum that up than with words from her powerful, memorable speech to the UN on her 16th birthday: 'one child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world.'

LK: Did you face any obstacles/challenges along the process of publication?

FK: I worked closely with my US colleague at Little, Brown, Farrin Jacobs, who came over to England for weeks to work with Malala.  Malala was still recovering from her ordeal. She had a busy timetable: school, first and foremost (she has been studying for her GCSEs and has just got brilliant results). During that time, many, many invitations from all around the world came pouring in to her, and she, her family and her team were always generous with their time.

LK: How do you feel to be the publisher of this book? 

FK: It is a huge honour to publish Malala's story and, in whatever way possible, to help spread her words and message as far as possible. This is a book close to her heart, and it's one that absolutely everyone - not just a teen audience - should read.  It's written in the first person by Malala and really tells the story of the girl behind the icon - from Nobel Peace Prize to netball courts.

She may be the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and one of the most important teenagers in the world, but she's also a girl growing up in a new home, going to a new school, making new friends. It’s been fantastically interesting and a privilege to publish this book – and I know I speak for the whole team involved with it at Orion. We’re really excited for publication of our Indigo paperback edition and the brilliant documentary about to be released in November. The book and film are perfect companions.

As J K Rowling has said: 'Malala is an inspiration to girls and women all over the world'. She's right. Every word counts – and reading this book, it's impossible not to feel a whole range of emotions.

LK: Have you met Malala? What’s she like?

FK: I was lucky enough to meet her and her family at their home in Birmingham.  She's just extraordinary.  Tiny and gentle, but with such presence and such a sense of purpose and determination. I am sure she will fulfil all her ambitions.  She is truly inspiring just to be with.  She's chatty, charming  and witty - we talked about everything from why English schoolgirls roll their skirts up at the waist (very puzzling to Malala given our rainy, cold weather), to her practising for the school debating team, to how she is still recovering, to teasing her brothers, to missing her old home  - all sorts of things.  The family are incredibly close - it was a pleasure to meet them.

LK: What does the future hold for Malala, and for girls the world over still denied the education and the rights that she is fighting for?  

FK: Malala is continuing her studies and her tireless work with the Malala Fund which reaches far and wide.  She brings hope and with that hope, positive change for the future. Her 'Books not bullets' remains such an effective message.

LK: If you could tell young people today one thing from Malala’s story to inspire them, what would it be?

FK: We all have the power to make things better for each other in some way - large or small. We probably have an inner strength that we have never had to test to the full, but it's there.  I'm not saying we could all be as brave and amazing as Malala is, but we all have potential to do more.

Thanks Fiona. And thank you Malala, for being an incredible and genuinely awe-inspiring individual.


Buy Malala's book I Am Malala
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