As told by Peter Andre by Lynda Waterhouse

During one of my writing breaks this week I watched the latest celebrity recruit to the world of children’s literature, Peter Andre, talking on TV. He spoke passionately about the need for parents to read to children at bedtime and to make up their own stories using the illustrations in picture books if they weren’t confident readers themselves. He was charming and modest about being approached by Ladybird Books. It was hard not to like him. His appearances in book shops will bring in new customers and hopefully they will also buy some of the brilliant books written by Sassies.The rest of the interview was mainly concerned with his music career and whether or not he should appear next on ‘The Bachelor’ TV show. Writing a children’s book was only a part of his portfolio.

It was the words ‘As told by..’ on the cover of his books that got me thinking…….
I am not short of ideas. They are literally bursting out of me. What I am short of is that special mixture of time, solitude, self belief and humour to wrestle my sentences into submission on the page. Writing for me is a physical struggle that often leaves me punchdrunk and dazed. Sometimes it feels like torture. It certainly is for poor Frugal Husband who has to put up with my moods.


So I allowed myself a ‘Barbara Cartland’ moment imagining myself bedecked in jewels lying on a sofa dictating my ideas to an earnest Creative writng MA graduate who was now working for me – as an unpaid intern of course.
‘Just finish off that chapter Orlando I have a box set of The Killing to watch!’After all ‘daybed’ is one of my favourite words.

NO, NO, NO. This won’t do at all.
I can’t tell my story to someone.
If I told my story to somebody else it would dissolve in the telling.
If I told my story to somebody else I would miss out on those magic writing moments like the one I had on Monday. After staring at a picture in the Wallace Collection the elusive words of an opening chapter began to take shape. My lips are sealed for the moment.
It’s my story to tell.

Fiction but not as we know it... Celia Rees

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by Armadillo, the Online Independent Children's Book Magazine, to review a book for teenagers. I don't know if the review is up yet, but home is http://www.armadillomagazine.com/ - for reviews, author interviews, and much, much more. If you don't already go there, you really should check it out. Anyway, the book arrived and I began to read. SF/fantasy is not my favourite genre - so easy to do badly - and this seemed to be a kind of Twilight with Aliens. It was sloppily written with every fantasy cliche jammed in there from Tolkien to, oh, anyone you like to think of, by way of Marvel Comics, Star Trek and Avatar. Suffice it to say, I didn't like it much. More than that, I thought there was something wrong with it. It was as if I wasn't reading a novel, as much as a novelisation - a print version of a film, or a comic, or a video game. It was written under a pseudonym, purportedly that of an alien. It certainly read that way. It seemed destined for great things, however, soon to be a major motion picture, a sticker said on the cover, the focus of an aggressive publicity campaign. Recently, I saw it has been picked out as a 'teen book of the year' in a major newspaper. So who am I to say? All I know was that it was not a book for me, and it didn't read quite right.

Some weeks later, I saw an article in the Guardian about bad boy American author, James Frey (the one who upset Oprah when she found out that his autobiography was, at least in part, fictional). He is in trouble again, it seems, for setting up a Fiction Factory, employing unknowns to churn out books to order - one of which is the one I read for Armadillo. I felt vindicated. I knew there was something wrong about it! He defends himself by citing artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons who come up with a concept and leave it to others to do the hard work. There seems to be a difference. Like these artists or not, the concept is often startling and original. The same cannot be said of the Fiction Factory, if the product that I sampled is anything to go by. And yet, and yet... major motion picture, ad campaign, reviews, Waterstone's placement, how many real writers of genuinely original fantasy fiction get that kind of treatment? Even more disconcerting is the idea of relays of energetic wannerbes churning out books one after another. How many writers of series fiction could keep up with that? And if writing style, storytelling ability and originality no longer matter, how long before we have e writers as well as e readers, cyberbots producing books at the click of a mouse?

It will be fiction, Jim, but not as we know it...