So you want to write, by Sophia Bennett

Back to school time.

I always love this time of year. The occasional smell of burning leaves, the autumn colours, the trip to WH Smith to fill up your pencil case with new rubbers and gel tip pens you probably won't use ...

Except, now I'm the teacher. I teach at St George's Hospital, where I'm the Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Funded by Winnie the Pooh, my job is to help medical students who haven't written an essay in years suddenly tackle a research proposal of 2,000 words, or a final year dissertation.

I also (because, as we all know, very very few writers these days can afford to write full-time, and also, it turns out, because I really love it) teach writing for children at City University. This is not 'writing' for-children-at-City (that would be weird), but 'writing for children' for adults who choose to attend a short 10-week course at City, because they think they have a children's book or two inside them, and they're not sure how to get it out.

I've done both for a while now, and while a medical dissertation and a gripping chapter book for seven year-olds may not seem to have a lot in common, here are a few tips I've learned that help if you are stuck, whatever kind of writing you are trying to do.

1. Don't try too hard to make your writing look 'difficult'. This is especially true of new students trying to impress their professor with their medical knowledge, by using as many long words, sentences and paragraphs as they can think of.
2. If in doubt, start on chapter two. Or section 2, if it's an essay. I suggest that at first, my medical students leave out that all-important introduction. It's a nightmare! I get them to try writing the bit they know well first, and go from there. They can go back to the introduction later, when they have a structure and know what they're introducing. And if it's a book, students may just find they don't need that missed-out Chapter 1 at all. You started with the action. Somehow you fitted in more of the backstory than you expected to, without going overboard with it. The reader is gripped. You just saved yourself a month of worry. You're welcome. 
   
3. Read your work aloud. 
4. Read your work aloud. 
5. Read your work aloud. 
6. READ YOUR WORK ALOUD! If they do only one thing, it should be this. Best of all, at City I ask them to get someone else to read it for them. (Not my idea - Keren David taught it to me.) Instantly, they hear what jars, what doesn't make sense, what takes too long, what's boring, what's really-quite-good-actually, what works. Medical students get so much from it too. They see where their argument has gone a bit flabby, and where they used words whose meaning they weren't entirely sure of (see point 1) and didn't entirely get away with it. 
7. Don't try to say too much at the beginning. Grip the reader. Let me know what direction I'm heading in. (See point 1 and point 2). I don't want detail yet. I want to trust you as a writer. Tell me what this is about. Let me hear your voice. Give me an intriguing image or two. Get me on your side. Then you can bamboozle me with facts and backstory.
8. Ah, voice. As Joan Lennon recently said on this blog, it's the thing that matters. I liken voice to the late Terry Wogan. (Not to the medical students who, bless them, would have no idea who I'm talking about. I am about 104.) Remember - do you remember? - when his dark honey voice reached you from the radio? He sounded so confident, so pleased about what he was going to tell you, and he was going to tell it to only you. It was as if he'd put his arm around your shoulder and was walking beside you. A great voice sounds incredibly easy, as if the writer simply couldn't do it any other way, and it is SO BLOOMIN' DIFFICULT. I struggle with it every single time. It takes me longer than anything. But without it, I might as well not bother because it's what makes the reader want to know my story. 
   
9. If a sentence can be short, great. 
10. Read. I know we all know this. All the best medical students I see have one thing in common: they read in their spare time, or they certainly used to until recently. Many of them didn't discover reading for pleasure until their teens, but then they read voraciously. They're embarrassed about doing it now ('It's only novels', 'It's only biographies', 'It's only things I like from magazines') because they think they have to be studying medicine 24/7, but simply by reading, they've absorbed by osmosis most of the things I have to tell their friends. And my City students delight me with how much reading they do between classes, on top of their regular jobs and looking after their families. They learn. They grow. You can see it in their writing. 
    
    
    
    
    
    Reading for pleasure is the most important thing. It's why I cling on to every school librarian, teacher and bookseller I meet. I know we all work so hard to keep libraries open and support our indie booksellers, because we know what a fabulous job they do - not only making our work available, but opening up the world of the imagination to a new generation. If you have ever encouraged a child or a young adult to find a book they love, you have my undying appreciation. Thank you! You're educating new writers more than I ever could. 

Sophia Bennett

www.sophiabennett.com

Blog - You read it here

Twitter - @sophiabennett

Facebook - SophiaBennettAuthor

Living Paintings - bringing stories alive

I’ve always loved discovering “book charities” who work to share the benefits and joy of reading with people who would otherwise miss out. Not everyone has easy access to books and reading. There are as many reasons for this as there are situations in which people find themselves.

My mother loved books, but from the age of about 65 her sight began to deteriorate. Most of us would find this a source of huge frustration and annoyance, particularly if one of your favourite pastimes is reading. My father spent time every day reading aloud to my mother so that she didn’t miss out on her favourite authors, books or newspapers. She also signed up to a listening book library who delivered audio books to the house.

But what can it be like for children who have lived with sight loss their entire lives or who lose most of their sight after an illness or accident?

Living Paintings – books for the blind,  create the most amazing tactile and audio books.  They go beyond recordings of favourite or bestselling stories. Their team of talented and dedicated creators make tactile books and items that accompany the audios so that listeners can feel and sense the world of the characters or story.

Back in 1989 the idea had been the brainchild of Alison Oldland MBE, formerly a lecturer in Art History.  After adopting a rejected trainee guide dog she gave a lecture to raise money for Guide Dogs for the Blind. The then Head of Appeals for the charity attended and made a special request: could she record descriptions of works of art for him? This seemed like such a novel idea to Alison as she realised that blind people valued and got a lot out of enjoying pictures. She was inspired to do more and came up with the idea of Living Paintings.

With feedback from blind and partially sighted people she set up a registered charity that would make  accompanying relief images for audio tracks or pages of a story. Living Paintings was born and began creating beautiful Touch and See children’s books (as well as the books for adults) – thus opening up the wonderful world of stories for children who were blind or partially sighted in a new and unique way.

Alison received awards for her brilliant work including an M.B.E in 1997. She died in 2008 but her charity is still going strong along with her ethos and goal to “break down the barriers in a sighted world”.

Those with sight loss “see” through touch in a way the rest of us do not. Living Paintings enables children to explore and discover stories in a tactile and exciting way using this heightened sense and ability. Such books mean these children can enjoy sharing stories –and story times are  important for social, communication and emotional development. The books and products are available to any family, school etc in the UK and members can borrow braille versions as well as tactile accompanied books and audios. Take a look https://www.livingpaintings.org/marking-national-garden-week-with-tactile-books-for-blind-children

All children should have access to the benefits, fun and educational value of stories and books. The wonderful Living Paintings makes this possible for many who would otherwise be excluded or find themselves with limited access.

Official site:  https://www.livingpaintings.org

Photos © Living Paintings website, with their permission.

Hilary Hawkes

Literary Translationese - Clémentine Beauvais

Last Wednesday, my latest YA book came out in France :

It’s the culmination of 12 years of observing the British, and gradually sort-of-becoming one myself, a process of transformation not as painful as it sounds. It’s the very first time one of my French books is set in Britain, and, as its almost-500 pages testify, maybe it was long overdue. 

Here’s my pitch, elevator-ready : in post-referendum Britain, a canny entrepreneur, 21-year-old Justine Dodgson, sets up a start-up – the eponymous Brexit Romance – to match young Europhilic Brits to generous-minded French people, for the purpose of entering into arranged marriages. Five years later, in theory, the former would gain the nationality of the latter, and thus get back their European citizenship. The only condition, however, is to Not Fall In Love. In practice, this is difficult. 

Aside from Justine, the main characters include an innocent and romantic French girl, her grumpy Marxist-Leninist singing teacher, a young lord – and son of the leader of UKIP – and a beautiful British-American lawyer. As you may have guessed, it’s a rom-com of sorts, often verging on screwball comedy, and it’s also, as the title indicates, not too far from social and political satire. But it’s also, eminently, about cultural and linguistic tensions, often endearing, sometimes exasperating, between France and Britain, and French and English.

Form matching content, it’s written in a kind of Frenglish, or rather what I’d call ‘literary translationese’. 'Translationese' is generally used derogatorily, to refer to sentences that 'feel translated' - think, for instance, of Facebook translating your international friends' statuses. But I mean it here positively, creatively: literary translationese, as I use it in Brexit Romance, is a way of writing in French that deliberately uses lexical calque and syntactic mimicry of English, as if to imitate the feel of a translation. It allows for a lot of fun things, from basic wordplay to painstaking rendering, in French, of the convoluted sentence structures of British politeness – je ne suppose pas que vous soyez libre dans trois semaines ?

 

Literary translationese occurs, famously, in Asterix in Britain, where all the ‘Bretons’ in the French version preface every sentence by ‘Je dis’, answer every statement with ‘Plutôt !’ and reinforce their assertions with an ungainly ‘n’est-il pas ?’, all of which baffled and delighted my 10-year-old self.

available in English translation by A. Bell and D. Hockridge

 More recently, francophone Swiss writer Joël Dicker wrote The Truth in the Harry Quebert Affair, which reads, in French, ‘like a bad translation’ of an American crime novel – quite in keeping with the story, which is about an American writer writing about a crime involving another American writer (available in English translation by Sam Taylor). Another favourite of mine in the literary translationese category is Marie-Aude Murail’s sprawling teenage novel Miss Charity, a fictionalised biography of a Beatrix Potter figure, which audaciously espouses, in French, the phrases and lexicon of 19th-century British novels and of their classic translations into French. 

 

Literary translationese pushes to its comical and beautiful extremes the daily involuntary instances of translationese that texts all around the world occasionally slip into. It aestheticises Globish, glorifies lazy Englishisms. Few people are more guillotine-worthy, in French, than those who use the verbs ‘réaliser’ or ‘supporter’ to mean ‘become aware of’ and ‘support’ (a team) – but use them in the right literary context, and suddenly the repulsive statement ‘Il supporte l’équipe de France’ can take on a new texture, turning football devotion into some kind of existential burden.

I particularly love literary translationese when it elevates to the rank of the finest surrealistic devices two things which we learn at school to be ultimate crimes against literature : the calque, and the cliché. He stormed out of the kitchen, says the English author who’s completely run out of energy to find non-banal ways of expressing the character’s anger. But nothing cliché in the outrageous French calque il s’oragea de la cuisine, halfway between orage (very much not a verb) and s’arracher (a familiar way of saying ‘to get out of here’). That sentence is intolerable in any literary context that doesn’t firmly invite a reader to delight in its being written in literary translationese. Once it’s there, though, it speaks its own quirky, playful language.

Learning other languages, one dreams sometimes of multilingual adventures in literary translationese ; women who would ‘give light’ to babies, as they do in Spanish, or bold experiments in the acrobatic word orders of declension languages, in languages that aren’t graced with the same toolbox of suffixes. The point of literary translationese, however, is not to turn readers into supersleuths, working out which expressions in which language have been borrowed and exploited. It’s to create a literature that joyfully, weirdly and, sometimes, nonsensically, celebrates the impossibility of maintaining watertight boundaries between literary languages in the first place.

In doing so, it also celebrates, indirectly, translation and its literary influence. The texture of translations has profound consequences on the literature of any country ; translations and their conventions condition our reading, and they also modify our writing.  

We catch ourselves writing, in French, a million times per page, ‘Il haussa les épaules’, or ‘Elle cligna des yeux’, because English is a real spendthrift when it comes to telling us about people’s body language – even though French handles much more clumsily those innocuous He shrugged, she blinked. We are contaminated by the inbuilt English precision as to whether someone is currently standing or sitting, and we end up writing ‘elle était debout dans le couloir’, because we’ve read countless translated books where people are ‘debout dans le couloir’, instead of simply ‘dans le couloir’ – because in conventional French we can safely assume, unless otherwise stated, that a person in a corridor probably isn’t sitting, crouching or doing a headstand.

One interesting phenomenon of this ‘contamination’, as far as YA is concerned, has been the rise of the use in popular French YA of the term ‘marmoréen’ to refer to skin. ‘Marmoréen’ is an extremely literary, high-register way of saying ‘marble-like’ (‘marmoreal’ in English), and its incongruous use in contemporary popular YA otherwise written in low to mid register can probably be traced back to Luc Rigoureau’s French translation of Twilight, which used the word repeatedly to refer to Edward’s skin, translating Meyer’s more neutral ‘marble’. The word has become its own meme, and I can't imagine, as a French YA author, ever using the term ‘marmoréen’ today in any way other than humorously. But with the right crowd – one attuned to precisely those connotations of ‘marmoréen’ in French YA today – that humorous use could be very powerful indeed.

From accidental translationese to literary translationese, the difference can be subtle – it’s about self-reflectiveness, artistic playfulness, and, to an extent, low-key political activism in literary form. It is indeed a political statement of sorts, especially when literary translationese is used with English as its point of reference, to calque English, and thus by definition make its influence visible, and thus makes its domination visible. It calls into question the ‘accidental translationese’ that happens all the time in countries where translations from English are ubiquitous (i.e., most countries), and suspends the transparency of that process for a moment. 

I suspect it is exactly the same for other languages that might use literary translationese with French, or other locally hegemonic languages. It’s an act of linguistic love, but also of linguistic teasing, or even linguistic nagging.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of any novels in other languages than French that use literary translationese with English. For a good reason, doubtlessly : those novels don't get translated into French, because literary translationese is horribly difficult to translate. It’s possible, of course – no such thing as untranslatability ! – but you can sort of understand why publishers are wary of it. And it’s also tricky because literary translationese is a linguistic love affair between two languages, so it would be quite difficult to get the gist of, say, a translation into French of a German novel that mimicks English turns of phrase. It’s the kind of in-joke that doesn’t travel very easily. 

Long post, sorry. Let me know in the comments of your favourite instances of literary translationese in English or other languages…

-----------------------------------
Clémentine Beauvais is a writer and literary translator. Her YA novels are Piglettes (Pushkin, 2017) and In Paris with You (trans. Sam Taylor, Faber, 2018).

Changing the Narrative

I'm currently nearing submission time for my next novel, Every Sparrow Falling, which is out next year. It's the story of a girl who is in state care and is placed with new foster parents in Ballybaile, a fictional town in the North Coast of Ireland. Cariad find herself torn between living the life she wants to have and living the life she needs to have. A recurring question is why she feels she must behave better than everyone else in order to have the life that everyone else has around her. The threat of being moved on looms large. The threat of being dropped if she doesn't play along in the way that she is expected to.

I am thinking a lot lately about the narratives we accept as reasonable and 'normal'- the playing along that we expect people to do if we, who are already accepted, are to find them acceptable. I am thinking about the language we use about those who don't fit the acceptable narrative. Earlier in the week I wrote this on my Facebook account in response to an incident where two speakers, one who works for an LGBT organisation and the other who is a campaigner for reproductive rights, were dropped from what was billed as a progressive rally in Belfast, because their message was seen as potentially divisive.

Can we change the narrative please? Queer rights and Reproductive rights are not 'divisive issues'. Homophobia and misogyny causes division. The struggle for rights is only a struggle because some people wish to prevent them. Human rights should not be seen as radical things. We need to stop talking about LGBTQ people and women as if they're militant revolutionaries when they are expecting to be treated like human beings.

I live for the day when homophobia and misogyny are seen as the unacceptable and divisive thing. When people who don't fit in so easily are listened to. When we can stand beside people who disagree with us, not because we are so tolerant and good, but because we have decided not to stand in the way of their liberation- even if we can't understand it. We're a long way off. At the times when I can't muster up any hope about it I will find those who understand and stand by them, outside the 'progressive' rallies.

Last night I went to see Public Image Limited in Bangor. I don't agree with all of John Lydon's politics (show me someone who does and I will show you someone who isn't very familiar with him), but last night, standing in Bangor with a bunch of strangers, all of us yelling Anger Is An Energy... well, it was necessary. I hope that we can all find what is necessary when we feel darkened out by the acceptable ones.

And now back to writing the end of Cariad's story. Making novels, writing stories or poems which aim to address these things is really the main way that I am able to deal with my place in the world. What a great privilege to have the chance to share it. But we can all do this. Please do it. Share your story. You will find people who will listen, and people who will care. It might not be a lot of people, but this is no measure of the importance of your story. The world is a weird place where what is rewarded is what is vastly popular, even at the expense of some who may be left behind. But our own worlds don't have to be that way. xxx

Pic by my sister, Mags

Found In Translation, by Saviour Pirotta

Children's books in translation have been notoriously difficult to find in the UK. Lately, however, there's been a move, initiated mostly by small, independent publishers, to introduce English-speaking children to the delights of books from other cultures.

Here are two continental authors I discovered this year at the London Book Fair. The first is Bjarne Reuter who is considered a national treasure in his home country of Denmark. Born in 1950, he has been twice a finalist for the Hans Christian Andersen award. He wrote his first book, Kidnapping, while preparing for his final exams to become a teacher. He taught only for five years before the film version of Kidnapping and the financial success of his subsequent novels allowed him to write full time.

Penguin published an English version of his most famous YA novel, The Ring of the Slave Prince, in 2004 but this soon went out of print and second hand copies are quite difficult to find, even on the net.

This year Wacky Bee Books launched Elise and the Second-hand Dog. Like many of Reuter's books, it's set in his native Copenhagen and mixes a wacky sense of humour with clever storylines and characters full of heart and emphaty.

The second author I'd like to introduce you to is Luize Pastore. She comes from Latvia where her 'Art Detectives' series of picture books aimed at older children has been wildly successful. She was the official author of the Latvian delegation at the LBF this year where Firefly launched Dog Town, a novel aimed at 7 - 11 year olds. Like Reuter's work,  Pastore's books are full of quirky humour, cracking plots and wry observations about society.  Check out both authors. Their work deserves to be on every bookshelf in the country.

Interview with Sharon Tregenza by Steve Gladwin

Talking at the Scattered Authors Charney retreat recently, Sharon and I came up with the 
idea of swap interviews. We thought this might give a chance to learn one or two more interesting facts about a couple of children’s authors and be a little more in depth than the usual interview.

Sharon and I have some things in common - we both came to children’s novel writing later in life and we’ve both been short-listed for the Tir Na n-og Welsh Children’s book of the year and not quite made it to the main prize.

Sharon has had what you'd call a varied life, full of adventures far and wide and numerous careers. And yet throughout her life there  has been her love of books and perhaps a certain kind in particular, something which I believe is reflected in the children's books she has written, which are full of engaging characters in believable situations, with the next peril just round the corner. 

Q. Let’s start with the prizes that you did and didn’t win. You clearly know what it’s like to win because your first book ‘Tarantula Tide’ won both the Kelpies Prize and The Heart of Hawick Award and was also nominated for the Branford Boase. More recently, ‘The Jewelled Jaguar’ won the Calderdale Prize. They must have been very different experiences.

A. They were. For the Calderdale I travelled from Bath to Halifax. I wasn’t expecting too much as the competition was fierce, so I was thrilled to win. We spent the day in the extraordinarily glamorous town hall giving workshops to the most enthusiastic children I’ve ever dealt with. They were brilliant.

Q. Now, let’s take a look back at your childhood and the first time you picked up a book which turned out to mean something to you. Can you tell us what it was and what it was about the story that first captured your attention and imagination?

A. This:

The idea of sneaking out with your sisters at night AND dancing the night away was thrilling. I wasn’t too bothered about the princes at age 7 or 8. 

Q. Can you tell us a little bit about your career before being a children’s writer? I gather you’d written quite a lot before that but give me a flavour of life’s highways and byways. It’s clear you’ve travelled widely and lived in a number of interesting places.

A. Pffft. How long have you got? I’ve had several businesses including a guest house in Mousehole, Cornwall, a run- down holiday park in North Wales and apartments and a fishing lake in West Wales. Chuck in there somewhere, five years as library assistant for an American school in Dubai and teaching conversational English to local girls in Sharjah. Most of that time I was also writing children’s copy for a large newspaper group in the Middle East.

Q. Let’s talk about ‘The Jewelled Jaguar’ which I’ve just read and greatly enjoyed. In its story of secret caves, deadly knives and an enigmatic mathematician it’s an adventure mystery for which the word skulduggery might have been invented. The same applies to your other books. Was it a conscious decision you made because it’s the sort of book you enjoyed reading as a child?

A. I haven’t really thought about that but I suppose the simple answer is yes. Being Cornish, beaches, caves and coves were an integral part of my childhood and who doesn’t enjoy a bit of good ol’ skulduggery.

Q. Now, as well as completing an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales you have another MA in ‘Writing for Young People’ from Bath Spa University. I’ve met a lot of graduates from that course – what did you appreciate most about it.

A. There was such a lot to enjoy there. Firstly, the campus – Corsham Court:

Corsham Court is a country house, surrounded by stunning gardens complete with peacocks.

Add to that the first-class tutoring by established children’s authors, the camaraderie of other writers and the opportunities available as a direct result of the course. I still miss it.

Q. What about authors you admire and why? They needn’t be children’s authors.

A. Ooh, too, too many. I’ll pick one from each age group for now and I could write an essay on why (don’t worry, I won’t) 

Children’s: Norton Juster

YA: Louis Sachar

Adult: Toni Morrison

Q. And finally for a bit of light relief, let’s do…

Favourite Book? ‘Holes’

Favourite Film? ‘In Bruges’

Favourite place? Cornwall

Favourite Food? Souvla or Gumbo

Well, thanks Sharon for talking to us and all the best for your future plans and ideas.

Thank you, Steve and I look forward to hearing the results of my interview of you. 

NB For anyone who missed that interview, you can find it on August 3rd.

​

Steve Gladwin

'Tales From The Realm' - Story and Screen Dream

Connecting Myth, Faerie and Magic

Author of 'The Seven' - Shortlisted for Welsh Books Prize, 2014

My Life in Comics, by Dan Metcalf

I love comics. There, I said it. I’m a geek, and proud. I grew up with comics, but in the British tradition. I first bought a copy of Buster comic at age 5 for a paltry 20p and then bullied my parents into getting it added to the newspaper delivery every week for years. I couldn’t even read at that point, and comic strips like Cliffhanger, X Ray Specs, Faceache and Buster himself replaced my old Enid Blyton books as the bedtime story of choice. As I grew and developed, Buster taught me how to read. I could sort of tell what they were saying from the pictures, and as I learned new letters and sounds (no phonics in those days) I could begin to piece together a story.

I was hooked. Comics had everything: Excitement! Jokes! Slapstick! Exclamation marks at the end of every sentence! There was even a gateway drug comic strip to get older kids hooked on grown-up comics in The Leopard of Lime Street.

From then on, my reading widened and broadened, becoming the top reader in my class at school (I was so far ahead of the class that I was allowed to choose my own books from the tiny school library. Once I came back with a guide to the European Common Market because it contained – yes – comics.)
I began reading everything I could get my hands on. The three-panel strips in my dad’s Daily Mirror, a bumper pile of Roy of the Rovers mags from a school fete (even though I had no interest in football) and well-meaning relatives would buy me Beano summer specials, even though I was a Buster fan (It’d be like buying a Man Utd fan a Man City shirt, and vice versa. I still read them though). The anarchic OINK! served my purile, disgusting sense of humour, and I even got my sister to create a strip for me – The surprisingly good Thing’m’jig, about an alien with deelyboppers who lived with a little boy.

Sadly, it was very clear to me that I couldn’t draw. Not even a straight line. Never have, probably never will. This saddened me, and as I realised that I would never be able to draw my own comic, I let my enthusiasm wane. I soon grew apart from my comics, as school dictated that I read ‘proper’ books.
A fallow period began, punctuated only by the few pages of comics in my beloved Red Dwarf Smegazine. It would last until my tenure in the now-defunct Ottakars, a delightful chain bookshop in which I was entrusted with the Graphic Novels section. I immersed myself in them and was soon hooked again. I’ve never been much for superheroes, but Batman was lovely and violent, and Spiderman zippy and witty, so I read all I could. I longed for something a bit more…crazy.

And then I met Spider Jerusalem.

Spider Jerusalem is the manic futuristic mash up of gonzo journalists HL Mencken and Hunter S Thompson. I first found him lying in his own filth on the bottom shelf of a comic book bay in Ottakars. I picked him up and dusted him off. I had long been looking for something with a bit more bite, something that didn’t try to cater to both the children’s market of comics and the adult. Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darick Robertson was just the thing; a sick, foul, pungent smelling world of the future with sex puppets, bowel disrupters and a double-headed cat that smoked twenty a day.

I was drawn in by the humour and the twisted sensibilities of the comic, the crude jokes and very graphic pencilling of Robertson, but most of all the voice of the writer was present, and it was a voice I was compelled to read more of. A quick search on the then-creaking internet found that this Ellis chap was…notorious.

By the time I reached the tenth trade paperback, I was amazed at the quality of the writing, the series arc, and the perfect circularity of the series as a whole. And I was hooked. I read all the ‘proper’ adult stuff I could find, and particularly anything I could get by Ellis. Ministry of Space, Crecy, Frankenstein’s Womb, and Global Frequency showed me what could be accomplished in the genre, and by golly I was impressed. Comics seemed so free, so creative and so direct that I made it my goal to write one (a task I still haven’t accomplished).

Series such as Y:The Last Man and Watchmen only compounded the notion that works of greatness could be achieved in this format, and I began to drink in the single-volume novels too; Blankets and Ghost World spring to mind.

The library service was amazing in getting anything I wanted – the fact that I worked for them and didn’t have to pay for reservations was good too. And it was during the long hours spent staring at a screen in a library, pretending to work, that I stumbled on the future, and the murky world of webcomics.

Back in the noughties webcomics was a wild west frontier and I struggled to wrap my head around the concept – amazingly talented writers and artists writing pages weekly, sometimes daily, and putting them up for FREE. I could read all I wanted! I could gorge on ink and funnies! For FREE. Did I mention they were free?

The titles I managed to hook myself on were the strip panels of Nate Wooters, the long form story telling of Templar Arizona, the hilarity of Convicts and my old pal Warren Ellis waded into the world with a weekly offering of Freakangels. (read ‘em all. They’re good). 

The webcomic world never really managed to monotize itself though and Amazon’s comixology app really sucked up the digital readers. The advent of the iPad should have made comics more digitally friendly, but it seems a lot of comic fans like their paper copies still. This doesn’t stop comic book shops in the US closing down frequently (I blame this on economics, which it should be blindingly obvious that I know nothing about).

Which brings us up to date. I continue to scour every library I visit for new titles and it has got to the stage where trade paperbacks (collected volumes) are the only books I buy now. My current jam, and some notable recommendations, below. See ya next time.

1 – Saga by Brian K Vaughan

2 – Paper Girls by Brian K Vaughan

3 – Runaways by Brian K Vaughan (Ok, so just check out all of BKV’s work)

4 - Lighter than my Shadow by Katie Green

5 – DMZ by Brian Wood

6 – Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O’Malley

7 – Seconds by Bryan Lee O’Malley

8 – Y: The Last Man by Brian K Vaughan (Him again, I know, sorry!)

9 – Hilda by Luke Pearson

10 – Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. 

___

Dan Metcalf is the author of Dino Wars: Rise of the Raptors. The second book in the Dino Wars series, The Trials of Terror is out next month, 28th September 2018. Checkout danmetcalf.co.uk/dinowars for more.