A Different Kind of Juggling, or The Terror by. Sheena Wilkinson

I’ve often written on here about the juggling nature of the freelance writing life – the workshops and talks; the zooms and the travel; the admin and the hussle and the endless this-invoice-is-now-overdue chasing. It can be a struggle to find time to write, though not, I admit, anything like as hard as it was in the days when I had a day job. 

But what’s exercising me this month is a different kind of juggling. Juggling writing projects.

Right now I have four books at very different stages of development, and though I try to concentrate on one book at a time, that’s not always practical. If I get a last-minute proofing query about the book that’s being published in September, I’m not going to tell my editor that it’s not my week for that book because my mind is in a different one. Just as, if I had four children, and I was helping one with her homework and another one popped in to tell me her leg was falling off, I wouldn’t tell her to wait her turn. 

Of course I need a different mindset for each project. Here they are, in reverse order of finished-ness:

The almost-ready-to be-published book 

True Friends at Fernside, the sequel to First Term at Fernside is due out in September from O’Brien Press. The cover (another cracker from the wonderful Belfast illustrator Rebecca Elliott) has been finalised, with recent emails saying things like, ‘Please just check the colour of all the girls’ eyes’ and ‘which leg has the puppy lost?’ We’re planning meetings for publicity and marketing, and I’m also making plans for the launch. It’s one of my favourite stages of book production, though there’s always the Terror: what if we miss a proofing error? What if nobody likes it? What if nobody buys it and the publisher won’t commission a third book in the series? I can’t quite relax. 

The first-foray-into-self-publishing book

Miss McVey Takes Charge, the sequel to Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau is being published in November under the auspices of Writers Review. I won’t go into details as last month’s post was all about it, but that’s also at an exciting stage, as I’m meeting with the wonderful freelance editor later this week to talk about all the finer details. She’s also going to be a doing a fair bit of hand-holding as self-publishing is so new and scary to me. I’m excited and thrilled to be taking control of getting this book out to all the people who loved the first one, and hopefully to many more, but there’s always the Terror. What if self-publishing is too hard? What if nobody buys it? I can’t quite relax.

The out-on-submission book

A historical novel is with an editor who expressed great interest in it as an unfinished project at last year’s Romantic Novelists’ Association conference. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written – a 1920s school story from an adult perspective, less jolly than Mrs Hart but a real celebration of women’s lives and friendships. It’s exciting to be at this stage – but scary. What if she doesn’t like it as much as she thought she would? What if she loves it but nobody else does? What if she wants big changes that I’m not on board with? It was great to have a genuinely interested editor as a first port of call for this book, but there’s always the Terror. I can’t relax at all and my tummy goes funny when I think about it. 

The first draft

Hooray for the first draft! It’s messy and complex and I may have overreached myself. There are two timelines and I’m not (yet) sure how well they work together. Sometimes I think it’s fresh and funny and zeitgeisty (my contemporary heroine is a novelist with Opinions); other times I worry it’s banal and clichéd. It requires a different energy from the other books: they are all finished or more-or-less finished, and any further work is very much about refining and making them the best versions of themselves. Whereas here, though I have planned the story, I surprise myself every day – or the characters do – with things I hadn’t planned for, but which instinct tells me are ‘right’. This morning, for example, I woke up realising that my protagonists’ parents aren’t dead: they’re in Spain! And at this stage, it’s easy to bring them back to life and send them off to their retirement in the sun. Anything can happen. 

It's like cleaning an old painting; you think you know what’s under all the dust and grime; you unearth a little at a time, but it’s only when you clean off all the dirt, and then give it another wipe and maybe another still, that you can see the true image below in all its brightness and detail. 

So what about the Terror? 

The Terror always lurks, but for me, when I’m deep in a first draft is the time I can most easily hold it at bay. When it’s not about editors and deals and small details; it’s all about the story.

Because at the end of the day, that’s why I do it. 

Conference Report - The Federation of Children's Book Groups, by Claire Fayers

 Two weekends ago saw me in Monmouth for the Federation of Children's Book Groups conference and it was a real antidote to everything that's happening in the world right now. I've known about the FCBG since my first book was shortlisted for their annual award, but it was my first time at the conference and I was blown away by the commitment and hard work of the volunteers who keep the Federation going.

It was lovely to see fellow Sassies and Firefly Press authors, Camilla Chester (whose Project Pony will be out on the 1st May) and Julie Pike (whose Flame Chasers is still blazing a trail.)

Having fun

The Saturday and Sunday programmes were packed with delights. The FCBG doesn't currently have a group in Wales but the organisers had done a great job of giving the conference a bit of a Welsh flavour. Lesley Parr talked about her background growing up in industrial South Wales and how Wales is not all daffodils and dragons. Manon Steffan Ros began her talk by explaining she was wearing a newly-bought dress because she'd stopped to rescue a dog on the way to the conference and got covered in muck. It was a great example of engaging the audience with a story at the start of your talk and I'll definitely be looking for animals to rescue on the way to my events from now on.

Lesley Parr and her new book

Manon Steffan Ros tells the story of how she got a new dress

On the Sunday, I was lucky to be chairing a panel on myths and legends, which included superstar authors Piers Torday, S.A. Reyhani and Ash Bond. All had very different approaches to writing, and surprisingly personal stories behind their connections with the myths and legends in their books. It was a fascinating discussion and over far too quickly. 

Then it was time for our last session, and, wow, it was a good one. Nicola Davies is always passionate and inspiring and she held the audience spellbound talking about climate change. We've grown up with the story that human beings are special and that has led to overconsumption and destruction of our environment. We need to change that story, and children's books are the ideal place to start. We, as children's authors, can make a huge difference.

And, of course, there was cake!

All in all, it was an inspirational weekend and I came away with my head full of ideas. The hard work of the volunteers is incredible and it's great to know there are groups all over the country working to get books into the hands of readers. I will definitely go to the conference again, given the chance.

Here's a final photo of the Hertfordshire FCBG group, with Camilla Chester.

Thanks to Julie and Camilla for the photographs. I was enjoying myself too much and forgot to take any.

Sometimes, things just don't quite work out... Sue Purkiss

 Well, I tried to write a really interesting post, about the kind of things that spark off memories. Trust me, it would have been a humdinger. But sometimes, Blogger - the template we use for writing these blogs - just won't play ball. And this was one of those times. Pictures shot about all over the place, text leapt about in an alarming fashion, captions played peekaboo. And I have things to do, people to see, places to go, and a healthy equilibrium to maintain.

So I will leave you with - I hope - one of the pictures that would have furnished an elegant epilogue to that sadly departed post. It's a sculpture, from a woodland trail at Crich Tramway Museum in Derbyshire, where we recently went with small grandchildren. Somehow, it really spoke to me.

I guess we all have days like this sometimes, don't we?

Verbal gymnastics

Curiosity's the reason for this particular post. I really would like to know what others think about a style of writing I can't stand. 

Actually, that's too harsh. I may not like it, but I'm not about to assemble the villagers, pitchforks and flaming torches to go hunting Markus Zusak down to that burning windmill on the hill. He doesn't deserve that.

But I've just finished reading The Book Thief and on almost every page I came across a sentence using words and phrases that pulled me right out of the story and made me think only of the writing. Instead of focussing on the characters and what was happening to them, all my attention went to such constructions as:

Breath collapsed from Schmeikel's mouth. It collapsed down his throat.

A single word leaned against the girl.

Fingermarks clutched the book.

A patch of voice escaped his mouth.

And my (least) favourite:

Her nerves licked her palms.

In every single case, I knew what was meant. But in every single case, it also stopped the flow of the flow of the story. I was out of the book, not in it. And I know as I write this that people could come back with a list of authors recognised first and foremost for their 'style': Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Annie Proulx, Mervyn Peake... 

So I suppose it all comes down to personal taste. (Doesn't everything?) But I'd have liked The Book Thief an awful lot more if Markus Zusak had toned down the verbal gymnastics.

I do like his website, though.

https://www.markuszusak.com/

Draft 1, Book 2. Talk about tough! – Rowena House

It’s done! A 77,300-word first draft of the seventeenth century witch trial novel-in-progress is now backed up, awaiting printing and the start of the development edit.

What a blooming marathon. Five years almost to the day from starting the research seriously until I typed 'The End', even though I'm calling it 'An End' out of superstition.

Everyone says the second book is tough. Boy, they aren't kidding.

The biggest creative eye-opener of finishing the full draft was an entirely unexpected release of pent-up creative thoughts which arrived in a rush AFTER I spent a week tweaking the resolution. Years of fiddling with single sentence commercial pitches fell away, replaced by a solid plot one-liner (15 words).

More importantly, a character one-liner arrived out of the blue, too, which, with hindsight, I can see is the heart of the story, the universal wood hidden within the story trees. The specific character journey on which I had been fixated turned out to be a metaphor for something simpler. Wow. Good to know.

I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that feeling confident about the ending at this stage represents progress since (from memory) I didn't figure out the grand finale of The Goose Road until the end of the first of two rounds of development edits.

Back then, I had the luxury of working with a wonderful cohort of fellow writers on the Bath Spa MA, plus the insight of the inestimable Marie-Louise Jensen, my MA manuscript tutor. The Goose Road then went through a second development edit, requested by Mara Bergman, my editor at Walker, before she bought the manuscript. 

You could therefore say it's too soon to congratulate myself on reaching An End for Book 2 when I’ve no idea what the future holds for this story. Reworking the synopses has, however, been encouraging.

Which ever way I look at them, An End is satisfying. The rest of the story needs at lot of work to get there, but it is a worthwhile place to arrive at. Thus, An End has resolved a deep-seated worry of mine for the past five years that there wasn't a real story within the history I’m re-writing.

Basically, I’ve been afraid each iteration of ‘the story’ was a bolt-on, something to carry the external plot, and the protagonist merely a vessel for that plot. The universality of the character one-liner therefore came as a shock as well as a huge relief. There is a story in there after all.

The other main lesson I’m taking from finishing Draft 1 is just how much perseverance it's taken. The trade publishing environment has got even more precarious in the past eight years since The Goose Road came out, with advances apparently even smaller than they were, or non-existent. Thus the juicy carrot of an (imagined) paid publishing contract which kept me going last time simply isn't there. OK, this manuscript might get published, but there’s a good chance it won’t, and even if it is, we all know that’s no guarantee of anything in terms of marketing or sales.

On the upside, self-publishing has all but shed its second-hand status in the intervening years, so that option is now a matter of personality and whether one can handle all the marketing involved. Having perservered thus far, I guess I will just press on and worry about all that later.

Meanwhile, a delightful and very welcome surprise since I locked the manuscript away for the requisite four-to-six weeks is news that Sara Grant is publishing an editing guide with Writers & Artists, The Ultimate Guide to Editing your Novel, coming out in June. 

My copy was instantly on pre-order. The advice from her and her fellow tutor/mentors at Book Bound and Scooby were the foundations for developing The Goose Road into its publishable form. I've every confidence that Sara's new guide will become a bible for loads of us, me included.

What else to say in this pause between drafting and editing? 

Draft 1 owes its existence to a bunch of writing gurus, which I've talked about here for years, including Story Grid, Save the Cat for Novels, James Scott Bell's oeuvre, John Yorke's Into the Wood, Robert Mckee' Story, John Truby, and Will Storr to name but a few. Jeff Lyon's patterns of decline and elevation are also a good way of thinking about character development, imho. 

I'm also reviewing my own OCEAN-based personality profiling system - that's the Big Five personality traits openness, conscientiousness, extraversion/introversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism - which I developed for The Goose Road and blogged about here yonks ago. I've changed computers since then so these ABBA posts turned out to be the best archive for all that work!

This time, I'm linking OCEAN person-based traits to my protagonist's social identity as a lawyer, imagining how his in-group's group think about witchcraft influenced him, both in terms of his beliefs and his behaviour. I think this is going to be super instructive for the development edit, and I'll blog about that in the future.

So, there we go. Eighteen years of writing fiction on and off, and I can says with confidence that everyone sticking with their Book 2 is a hero. Solidarity to y'all. And a huge hat-tip to every author with a shelf full of titles. Awesome, guys. Just awesome.

@HouseRowena on Musk’s cess pit

Rowena House Author for a live Facebook diary about the WIP 

PS Apologies again for the lack of photos. I've got loads to upload, but whenever I try a big Google message shows up and just sits there, blethering about accessing cookies. Also, it's Easter Sunday and my dog is telling me in no uncertain terms I've been on the computer long enough. 

All the best!

Ever feel like you're in the Truman Show? by Lu Hersey

 I'd only gone for a walk to get some steps in after a busy day. Crossing a field on the way back home, I ran into a woman called Cathy, who needed directions. Or did she? 

Looking back, it's possible Cathy had set a trap to lure me into her alternate universe, forcing me to question the nature of reality - but she started off by asking for directions back to Glastonbury High Street. Despite her apparently normal (well, normal for Glastonbury) attire, and soft Canadian accent, before she even began her Do You Know What's Actually Happening In the World? speech, I'd mentally planned a route home that would avoid me having to walk with her.

What's Actually Happening In the World? began quite subtly. How did I find the vibe on Glastonbury High Street? Did I notice some low energies there? 

I mean, there are usually a few noticeable mental health issues going on, too many terrible bongo players, and a lot of people with terrible dress sense - but that's Glastonbury and I wouldn't want to be that judgemental. Not sure she even waited for my reply before she carried on to the next question. Had I noticed the frequencies up on the tor? Because, she said, that's where the higher energy is found. 

I started to feel uneasy. How long was this energy zapping conversation going to continue? Several minutes passed by while she talked higher frequencies, before reaching the first major point of her view of How Things Really Are. 

The nub of it was that they (whoever they are, they came up a lot...) are desperate to hold on to all the power, but those who see how things really are (that's Cathy and people like her) know that a paradigm shift is coming and they will lose the fight. 

The following half hour (it might have been only five minutes but it was starting to feel like eternity) was mostly about who she considered they are in this alternate world. Barack Obama - yes, the former president of the USA - started all the evil. Apparently he was the worst. Whereas Trump isn't that bad. He's right about climate change, it doesn't exist - it's them that control the weather. 

You can't be serious, I said, forgetting my veneer of polite. Cathy was unfazed. She told me she'd once thought just like poor, unenlightened me. But now she knows about the huge weather making devices in various remote places that they use to control the climate to induce fear in the population. I blinked in disbelief. You'd better believe it, it's true, she said. All enlightened people know it to be true.

I glanced longingly at the gate out of the field as she moved on to the subject of coronavirus. You guessed it. They released that into the world deliberately to control us all. By this point I was horribly fascinated, like a rabbit watching a dancing stoat. How could this seemingly normal woman, who had worked most of her life in a bank on Vancouver Island, possibly believe all this? You think? I asked.

Of course. They designed the vaccine to kill half the population, in case I hadn't realised. Hadn't I noticed how people were suddenly getting ill and dying? 

People were always getting ill and dying, I said, fidgeting and trying to edge away. She ignored me. The Good News (FINALLY, she was reaching the climax of her world view) was that there were enlightened people whose eyes had been opened, who knew what was going on, and there are more and more of these people every day! In fact The Enlightened (obviously including her) were half the population now, because of the paradigm shift. Believe it, open your eyes! she said. 

Fortunately for me, she could put me in touch with some people who understood, who had the knowledge from civilisations that had come before like Atlantis and Lemuria, and the shift was coming. Let me tell you some good people you can google later, she said. She gave me a couple of names to look up, which I've since forgotten. I had to be quick though, because apparently they kept taking these enlightened people's websites down. Thanks I said. I really need to go now. 

But when I got home, I did look them up, out of curiosity. She'd told me to keep an open mind. To open my eyes. And you know what? Sure enough, these people were in touch with the ancient Lemurians and Atlantians and could read the stars. And they had massive followings, because strangely they hadn't taken their websites down after all. 

Try to imagine for a moment that she was right. Who's to say who's being gullible and who knows what's really happening? I considered the possibility that nothing is how it seems, and I'd go as far as to say it's not unreasonable. Yes, we get a very distorted, one sided view of the world through the news. 

But it's one thing to acknowledge the news is distorted, but a very different thing taking the quantum leap to believe Trump is good and Obama bad, and that anyone who's had a vaccine is now under their control. That in the paradigm shift that's coming, the ancient Lemurians and Atlantians can lead the way to a new world.

What chance is there for anyone writing dystopian fiction these days? In a world filled with power-mad oligarchs, is Cathy's view any stranger than reality? Maybe we're all caught up in a real life version of the Truman Show and it's time we broke through the illusion to find those enlightened ancient Lemurians to follow. Or maybe we simply understand that Cathy's world view is a new folklore/religious belief in the making - because the world is potentially ending and people are looking for an alternative way of living. The Cathys are looking to the returning Lemurians and the Elon Musks are looking to Mars for escape. Maybe we need to work with what's actually here and try and fix the world we have? 

All I can say for sure is if I see Cathy again, I'll hide behind a bush.

Lu Hersey

Website: lu-hersey.com (site coming very soon, mostly about my books and sadly nothing about Lemurians)

Patreon: Writing the Magic

Substack: An old hag's snippets of folklore, myth and magic

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This is how we're going to make you redundant, please let us show you. By Steve Way

 

It seems that many of us are worried about the impact of AI and associated technologies on our craft and livelihoods, particularly as authors. I thought you’d like to know about another situation occurring in my corner of another profession, teaching. Like me, as with the other ways in which the carpet is forcibly being pulled from underneath us, it may make you laugh or cry.

I get much of my work from an agency based in Madrid. Recently they sent out a round robin email inviting my colleagues and I to attend an online presentation of their new chatbot, which students can call whenever they want to have a conversation in English. I couldn’t help feeling that it was like inviting the Luddites to a lecture on ‘The care and maintenance of textile machinery’. Please let us demonstrate the technology that is going to make you redundant!

I read recently about a study in Japan the found that people under 20 preferred learning from a chatbot, whereas the over 20s preferred learning from a human. Although I’m not a WASPI like my wife my state pension has been deferred (could I be Waspish?) but I hope that there’ll be enough over-20s to keep me going for a few years yet.

Another change the agency has made, also based on AI, has made me wonder if I’m willing to sell my soul to the devil. At the end of each term, we’ve always been expected to write a report on each student’s progress even though a) they don’t pay us for the extra and considerable amount of time this takes to do so and b) the students are predominantly extremely busy executives who hardly have time to attend the lessons, let alone read anything not directly work related. Indeed, two of my favourite long-standing students have previously suggested that I used ChatGPT to complete their reports. It turns out in their case it’s an example of be aware of what you wish for. Possibly because the agency got fed up with chasing us up to do the ####ing things and because it sounds like results were far from standardised, we now have a list of options to click on based on their progress and then, if we wish, their AI churns out grandiose paragraphs that fill in all the gaps. Now in theory we can fill in the gaps ourselves but the click here, here and here option takes a tiny fraction of the time it takes to do so.

In the past, when I’ve been knowingly wasting my time writing these reports, I’ve been constantly thinking about how I could be doing something worthwhile instead, such as doing some of my own writing, which I at least hope has some use or purpose. It’s for this reason friends I have chosen the click here approach for this term’s reports. I hope you won’t consider me completely tainted and cursed.

PS I wrote this on my own!

The Biggest Breakfast, written and illustrated by Richard Jones, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

This beautiful new (hardback) picture book from Richard Jones is a simple joyful story of animals and food, giving and receiving. And counting. But the counting, if you want to engage with it, comes in doublings of numbers to dramatic effect.

The child narrator meets a little blue bird, and offers crumbs to be pecked from a hand. 'See you tomorrow'. And next day the bird is joined by two mice. The day after that, by four squirrels. And soon the breakfast feast is getting out of hand with increasing numbers of wolves and elephants and puffins and ring-tailed lemurs and round-bellied frogs in a glorious gate-fold -

It's all a bit much, so, next day, the child stays in bed, wondering, 'Who will make breakfast for ME?' Just then there was a knock at the door ... '  And you can guess who come, delivering '1 huge, ginormous, delicious breakfast!'

 

AI can't replace a real donkey, or art made with love.

 It's the 13th, the new date for my post, and I apologise for missing my previous ones. As I have just remembered, I am rushing to write something. The birds are singing outside my window - I can hear wood pigeons and crows and a blackbird nearer me, and traffic, and very soon I will get washed and dressed and walk five minutes to the local primary school, where there will be a donkey. It is the Christian feast of Palm Sunday, when traditionally Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, and every year, in our village, one of the parishioners of the local Anglican church brings her gentle donkey and we walk from the school to the church singing hymns and waving Palms. I absolutely love donkeys, and it is really the only time every year I get to see one up close and pat it. I am so excited! This year, because I am trying to improve my drawing skills, I am going to bring a sketch book, and will try to draw it too. 

Two of my books were used by META to develop their AI , and I have signed petitions and contacted my MP about how wrong and unfair it has been that artists and writers and other creative people have effectively had their work stolen and copyright laws ignored. It was already very hard to be a creative - our income is already very unpredictable and we are increasingly competing with celebrities for contracts. Smaller publishers are struggling and it can feel like AI is the last nail in the coffin, and I definitely think big publishers need to step up and treat their writers and illustrators better, and their shareholders should respect and care equally, if not more, about the writers and illustrators and publishing staff, who create the books, than their profits. There are days when I feel really bleak about it all. But, maybe it is the thought of seeing a real donkey in less than an hour, but today I feel more hopeful.

I may have to think about different ways to earn money in the short term, but I don't think AI can ever replace our human need to create and encounter human art, and I don't think you can ever stop creatives creating, and I have hope that this is not going to be the end, but perhaps heralds a change. I have been watching the BBC programme 'Make it at Market' and have felt heartened by the number of creatives who are making things and selling them, and how the actual act of creating by one person, rather than AI, empowers both them and others.  I don't want to buy AI generated art. I have ordered an embroidery kit from one person on the programme, and I am looking forward to using it. I am looking forward to actually getting a pencil and sketchbook and trying to draw the donkey today, and although it won't be in any way as accurate as a photo or an AI generated image, I hope that it will communicate something about how much I love it, and I know that just looking carefully at it as I draw it will do me good, however embarrassing the result. When I go to a school soon, or do a workshop at a festival, I want to communicate the joy of creating. When I read a book, I want to read something written and drawn by a real person. When I express what I really feel I change myself, I grow as a person.   I think people will always care more and long more for human-sized art, which really comes from the heart, and the people who make it. It's good for humans to tell and listen to stories, and no computer programme (which apparently is terrible for the environment in itself) can ever compete to art made with love, or with the sound of real birds singing outside my window, or a real little donkey in a school playground, or hopefully, an imperfect drawing which will attempt to show how beautiful it is.

Fridge Philosophy Part Two by Lynda Waterhouse

 

 I posted Fridge Philosophy Part One in 2011. I still have the same fridge although like me, it’s now a little rusty round the edges, but still functioning. Some of the same magnets remain but there have been some additions.

Lately I’ve found myself staring at my fridge door in preference to looking at the news. My eyes skimming over the rust and dust and focusing on the magnets searching for clues.

Clues for what you may ask.

The meaning of life? The essence of myself? The remembrance of things past? Or simply the urge of the collector to ogle their horde?

Consider the Fridge.

There is the vibrant ‘The Springtime of Flight’ by Tirzah Garwood. This painting was one of a series of stunning works made in her bed during her final months in a nursing home. She is gaining more recognition as an artist in her own right and not simply as the partner of a well-known artist. She reminds me to always try to capture the beauty of a fleeting moment.

Close by is a black and white still from the first comedy film ever made in 1895: ‘The Sprinkler Sprinkled.’ It was created by the Lumière Brothers. A souvenir from a recent visit to the Musée Lumière in Lyon. Watching the film made me smile. Laughter is timeless.

There are a couple of magnets featuring Frederick Prince of Wales, the eldest son of George ll and the father of George lll. A cultured and artistic man who, to put it mildly, was not liked by his parents. He died prematurely at age 44. His son became King George lll and Frederick is a forgotten footnote. I am fond of Frederick and the way he parented his own son with love and attention.

The cat by Elizabeth Blackadder is there because my life contains a black and white cat. Mimi, whose tail you can see, is the latest tuxedo cat who came into my life when her previous owner went into a care home.

Whenever I look at a Holbein drawing or painting I am awed by the freshness and humanity he depicts. Holbein is my direct line to humanity.

John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Dr Pozzi stands on my fridge as a reminder of the Sargent and Fashion exhibition at Tate Britain. So good that I visited it twice. It was thrilling to see Ellen Terry’s Lady Macbeth costume beside the painting and to stare in horror at the glistening green beetles sewn into her gown.

The woman dressed in black with the large white collar reminds of how I marvelled at Frans Hal’s addition of a fly to the painting, some kind of memento mori I supposed until the fly moved. Life does sometimes imitate art.

The Paolozzi magnet came from an exhibition of his work in The Whitechapel Gallery. Many years ago I was fortunate to meet with Paolozzi and he gifted me a maquette of an alligator called Meezles as he liked my idea for a story about a boy with measles who travels to a mysterious land and meets the strange creatures, Meezles and Scarletina. The idea of writing a story about measles was rejected as being ridiculous as vaccination had everything under control. Art does sometimes imitate life.

What secrets does your fridge contain?

 

MERMAIDS IN FOLKLORE. by Sharon Tregenza

MERMAIDS IN FOLKLORE

The rugged coast of Cornwall is the perfect setting for the mysterious and magical - the sudden sea mists, the constant rush of the waves crashing against the dark granite cliffs. And nothing is more mysterious and magical than a mermaid. 

In Cornish lore these beings are more than just alluring sirens with flowing hair and fish scale tails. They're more complex - sometimes guardians, sometimes omens. Their stories are passed down from generation to generation and whispered by fishermen to this day. 

Certainly some Cornish mermaids were malevolent - conjuring up sudden storms or luring sailors to a watery grave and often people believed a mermaid sighting foretold a drowning or shipwreck. This duality, both dangerous and beautiful, echoed the moods of the sea.

Today, writers, artists and musicians continue to be fascinated by stories of the half woman half fish creatures and local souvenir shops sell plenty of trinkets and books with a nod to their myths and legends.

Whether you believe in these elusive sea spirits or just enjoy a good story, there's no doubt that that there is something undeniably attractive about them.

wwwsharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com

News from March

March is a busy month for children's authors. Here are a few snippets of what some of us have been up to:

Miriam Halahmy 

5 visits, with hundreds of children from years 5-8. Books were sold, read aloud and scenes acted out.

Sue Klauber

200 year sevens at Saint Thomas Moore Catholic school, hearing about Zinc and Cobalt.

"The school bought a book for every pupil! I’ve never done a group that big and was very apprehensive, but I did so much preparation that it went well!"

Kelly McCaughrain

Kelly is celebrating awards and school visits!

"I'm delighted about the awards! My first book won the Children's Books Ireland Book of the Year so it's lovely to be on that shortlist again. And I believe the last Northern Irish winner of the Carnegie was CSLewis so it feels very special to be in the running for that!"

School visits to Ashfield Boys School in Belfast, and Victoria College Belfast.

Penny Joelson 

184 books signed at Chalfonts Community College, Buckinghamshire. A talk at St Columba's College in St Albans, Herts, where her book, ‘I Have No Secrets’ is the current whole senior school read. And North London Collegiate School, a private school that invited students from a nearby state school to come and share the visit. 

"Their three-storey octagonal library was a sight to behold and a lovely venue for my ‘Mystery Twists and Turns’ workshop."

Savita Kalhan

"Northwood school was the best WBD ever! The librarian, Annie, painted a cover of my book for the library door, and made the whole day really special for the kids and me!"

Claire Fayers

I spent a happy and exhausting few weeks taking my giants, ghosts and goblins to school groups in libraries around Wales. And I'm excited that the book has been been shortlisted for the Tir na n-Og award.

The Genesis of Artificial Intelligence In Today’s World -- by Eva Wong Nava

I'm glad the headline got your attention. By now, creators from around the world have either been informed by their publishers or told by their agents and/or writer friends that their work has been pilfered from Library Genesis or LibGen for AI training. LibGen is essentially a free file-sharing platform allowing people access to books, journals, magazines, and academic papers, amongst other forms of literature that are otherwise paywalled. 

It is good to note that LibGen isn’t strictly legal, though it is out there in the internet like everything else these days. You can access PDFs of almost anything you care to download but users have warned against malware and viruses entering their systems. I guess the Universe (even the Metaverse) will find a way to punish thieves. 

The recent thievery involves M__ta (whose name shall not be uttered) stealing over “7.5 million books and 81 million research papers” — i.e., copyrighted bodies of work — to train their AI. Artificial Intelligence, unlike artificial sweeteners, is not sweet at all.  In fact, AI leaves a bitter taste in most people’s mouths whose works have been stolen. And like consuming too much saccharine and aspartame can be carcinogenic, using too much intelligence purporting to be intelligent can be mind-numbing. 

On a sunshiny day in March, my WhatsApp pinged with a message telling me ‘Eva your work has been stolen to train M__ta’s AI!!!’ This was from a friend on the other side of the ocean who had read an article in The Atlantic — The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem — by Alex Reisner that detailed how M_ta had “pirated millions of books to train its AI”, and you can search for them using the search tool provided in the article. 

So I did. 

And this was what I found. 

Am I to feel relieved that only ONE book of mine has been stolen? Was I to question why they only picked The House of Little Sisters and not the others? Surely the rest of my books are equally good for the pilfering and to train AI, even though they're not award-winning ones? 

Hang on a minute! What is this madness? Nobody should be stealing anybody’s books — this should be the first thing I should’ve thought of. The madness of it all, and I am mad. Not crazy, but crazy angry! And I am not the only one! There are millions of crazily angry authors out there! 

It is mad and maddening that a tech bro who goes by “MZ” could’ve given his team permission to download the “7.5 million books and 81 million research papers” from LibGen for purely selfish reasons — his artificial intelligence machines needed to be trained -- and he could gain more gazillions training AI. Apparently, according to the Society of Authors, the tech bro’s company had “discussed licensing books and research papers lawfully”. However, “it was faster and cheaper” to just steal them!

Since then, the Society of Authors has started a petition, asking authors for their signatures. 

“We have written to the Right Hon Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, demanding that Meta is held to account by the UK government following allegations in the U.S. that authors’ works have been used without permission or remuneration to train its AI model. Please add your name to the open letter to help us raise authors’ voices.” (source)

The irony is that we’re all using the platform of the company whose lack of moral compass we despise to spread the word about their lack of moral compass and to garner support to bring M_ta down. Perhaps there is something very meta about all this, after all. I may jest but the reality is that we’re all trapped in the Metaworld. 

Okay, maybe we can’t bring them down, because they are bigger than us. But we can knock them asunder, cause havoc, run amok, or use our voices to raise awareness of what M_ta did! This is also about living authors speaking up for dead ones, because although copyright lasts for the authors’ lifetime plus 70 or more years, there are some recently deceased authors who can’t speak up. If you admire Hilary Mantel, you might consider speaking up. 

We can also read this book: Careless People: The explosive memoir that Meta doesn't want you to read. Written by Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former “MZ” employee, whose memoir outlines the 7 years of madness Wynn-Williams saw and heard first hand. MZ tried to ban the book… but of course he would! This is a memoir that “will change how you see the world.” 

Double this by signing the SoA Petition. 

I’d like to end this article with an ironical screenshot because hashtag if you know you know. I wonder if she’s leaning in to sue her former boss for theft!