On dinosaurs and castles - Rowena House

 

Joan Lennon’s February post [link below] gave me a lot of comfort.

For a dinosaur like me, raised on traditional books – and still forlornly wedded to outdated notions about traditional publishing – it’s clear from commentaries such as hers that self-publishing is a rational and respectable choice for authors of repute and a solid backlist, and thus for someone like me with just one novel and a short story out there, it would be no shame at all. 

Thank you, Joan. Your post got me out of bed this morning.

That sense of relief follows two bruising encounters with reality this past month, both of which occurred during a research trip to locations where my seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress is set. 

 

Touching the stones that imprisoned the people I’m writing about is depressing. I’ve been to Lancaster Castle three times now, and it is both extraordinarily useful inspiration but also a sobering reminder that real people suffered real horror there.

I’m co-opting their lives for my fiction in the hope that my serious intent justifies that decision. It’s a subject I’ll write about more another time, but mid-development edit, I found those sanitised glimpses of their reality demotivating.

It didn’t help that just before a tour of the former prison within the castle I had tea in the castle’s swanky modern café with its smooth music and yuppy feel to the clientele. It was jarring. The tone of the tour jarred, too, with the guide making light of ‘my’ prisoners, who as ‘witches’ belong to everyone.

Could they conceive of being tourist attractions?

Or characters in novels?

The second unpleasant encounter was with an old version of myself at a book launch event.

The event itself was lovely. Held in Heptonstall, Yorkshire, a large and friendly crowd gathered to celebrate Liz Flanagan’s adult historical novel, When We Were Divided, set in Heptonstall during the civil war. It’s compulsive reading & beautifully written. Congratulations again, Liz. 

Amid all the positivity and fantastic cake, I briefly met Liz’s publisher, and a former self – the pushy woman who got The Goose Road out there – materialised in the space where I’d been standing a second before, all forced smiles and anxiously friendly.

It felt horrible and fake and rammed home this truth: I don’t want to be a needy writer stereotype again. It was unpleasant enough last time around, when I was highly motivated to get published. It would be painfully shabby now. My apologies to the publisher who no doubt spotted the type straight away.

For the time being I’ve retreated to my comfort zone of writing and editing to a deadline. As a pledge that something will happen next, I’ve signed up for an Arvon short course about publication in May and vaguely started looking around at small independent publisher, the whole getting-another-agent thing being way too dismal to think about after mine retired.

Meanwhile, posts like Joan’s and others in the ABBA community have lit a torch in the dark cave of the future. There is another way. Sincere best wishes to everyone battling to get their beautifully crafted words seen.

Good luck and go get ’em.

Link to Joan's post: 

https://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-funny-old-journey-in-childrens.html

Wouldn't you know it. Google automatically hyperlinked a bunch of words in this post, but the link I want to be live, Joan's post, no chance. Google also refused to let me upload a photo of Liz's book cover. It might be my browser. Like I said, dinosaur. 

Rowena House Author on Facebook & Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               

Trying to catch the Fire Horse - by Lu Hersey

 Chinese New Year starts on the second new moon after the winter solstice (17 February this year). Yes, it means it falls on a different date each year, but so does Easter Sunday (which, if you're interested, falls on the first Sunday on or after the spring equinox)

This is an inspirational time to start a new year. The days are getting noticeably lighter and it feels like there's some hope for the coming spring. So much more appealing than January 1st, which is an arbitrary date, not only gloomy and depressing, but a time when the worst of the winter is often still to come. 

If you've already stuffed up keeping your January resolutions (which most people have, because January is horrible and far too long), it could be worth using this Chinese New Year to make some positive changes in your life. You could even try making them more interesting than simply going vegan for a month, or pledging to drink more water. 

New moons are traditionally considered to be the best times for starting new projects. Amplify this with the start of the Chinese year of the Fire Horse, and it's energetically kick-arse time for stamina, growth and independence. A time to look at your life to see what needs clearing out - and what you want to cultivate. 

It's also apparently a good time to take back your personal power. Having spent much of the winter in despair about the blatant lies and corruption involved in daily politics and the news, I decided to start a daily rant on X to dispel the gloom. Yes, the algorithms are against me - I have no blue tick and my aim is to bring down Elon Musk single handed, which he tends not to like. Despite this, I find shouting into the void surprisingly therapeutic.

Perhaps more positively (and sensibly), I've decided to take up opportunities that come my way this year without moaning about the effort involved and ducking out. This Tuesday (which was Chinese New Year) I went to a Banksy exhibition in London, despite the local coach taking 3.5 hours to get there and the same back, which usually I'd use as an excuse not to be arsed. As it is, I met up with a lovely writer friend and had a great time, so intend to be arsed far more often.

I'm also going to try and help the planet out a bit. Tiny things like taking plastic waste off  beaches (a few manageable pieces at a time) and picking up bits of litter (I draw the line at dog poo bags) when out on a walk, rather than my customary ranting about plastics destroying the planet and people who chuck litter everywhere. 

Big problems may ultimately be overwhelming but it has to be worth making an effort. Small steps to make small changes. Managing the despair. Finding some Fire Horse energy and hoping to make a difference. 

And maybe I'll drink more water anyway. 

Lu Hersey

https://www.lu-hersey.com/

Sophia the Sphere by Steve Way

Generally, most ideas come when actually writing though I don’t know about you but for me many can pop up at unexpected, usually inconvenient moments. In my case, it’s often just as I’ve crawled into bed and got comfortable (particularly on a cold evening) or first thing in the morning when I’m just beginning to wake up and could justifiably spend up to another half an hour warm and cosy under the covers. I’ve learned from cruel experience though that if I try to persuade myself that I will easily remember the uninvited ideas at a more convenient time that I’m deceiving myself. When the convenient time finally arrives, the idea has sneaked away irretrievably, into the ether. So, I have to decide to crawl out of bed if I want to preserve the idea. I suppose on reflection it demands that I make a harsh editorial decision… the comfort of my bed or the preservation of an idea…

The genesis of my latest idea was even more mundane. As a friend of mine once pointed out, shaving is pretty boring and becomes mechanical and automatic, allowing the mind to wander. In my case while carrying out this riveting activity, I was thinking about some of my visits to schools where I’d told my story about ‘King Cube’ becoming overweight and turning into a sphere.

The story has a curious history. While studying my PGCE (junior) course, my fellow students and I were asked to prepare a maths lesson about solid shapes. My studious classmates produced – as reflected in many of them receiving excellent grades – a variety of lesson plans and resources. In my case I wrote the above-mentioned story. Our tutor clearly made a deliberate beeline for me as our marked efforts were returned and gently informed me, clearly intending to head off disappointment, that, ‘we couldn’t give you a good grade because it was too original’.

Well, it served me right I suppose…

Sometime later an editor who was considering the story became convinced that the infant children the story was mainly targeted at, wouldn’t be able to cope with the idea of a cube transforming into a sphere. Despite me pointing out that by this time I had told the story to several hundred, possibly a few thousand, children and that none of them appeared to have found this concept beyond them my appeal fell on deaf ears. I appreciate my bias in this situation but the children seemed to enjoy the story, particularly when I kept deliberately-on-purpose dropping King Cube, now in the form of a tennis ball sphere and then ineptly trying to retrieve him as he bounced towards them.

The one consistent difficulty I did notice that the children commonly experienced however, was that many of them found it difficult to pronounce the word ‘sphere’. The most common mispronunciation sounded like the girl’s name ‘Sophia’, though a few pronounced it as ‘spear’ (causing me to duck down in fear of attack – any excuse for getting a laugh!) and occasionally as ‘fear’.

This is where my revelation in front of the mirror comes in – it finally occurred to me that I ought to write a story about Sophia the Sphere, possibly a warrior who wields a spear – and if she’s got any sense does so with fear. In the meantime, I realised I needed an ‘aide-memoire’ and came up with the following attempt at a limerick.

 

There once was a sphere called Sophia,

Who guarded her riches with fear,

But the cube was no fool,

So, he made her a tool,

Now Sophia the Sphere guards her hoard with a spear.

 

For some reason, while I was in limerick mood, the following pair of verses popped up.

 

There was a mad man from Dundee,

Who foolishly married a bee,

They honeymooned in a boat,

Rowed by a pig and a goat,

That mad married man from Dundee.*

*And his wife of course

**I wonder if he ever called her ‘Honey’.

 

There was a mad man from Dundee,

Who decided to marry a bee,

But a keen legal eagle,

Declared the marriage illegal,

For his not yet divorcing a flea.

 

I’m sure some of you are wishing I’d grown a beard!

~~~~~~~~~~

I was once asked to do an extended visit to a school in Preston where they were engaged in a school project about dragons. For the visit I wrote one and a half stories (I still have to finish the second one). However, the first one, which I read to the school in an assembly, is about a girl called Jasmine who turns up at school on pet ‘show and tell’ day with what she claims to be a dragon’s egg

The Egg

By Steve Way

Illustration by Brian Way

 

 

 

ASIN : B0GGJG2YQC  (The 0 is a zero)

Locket & Wilde's DREADFULLY HAUNTING MYSTERIES The Ghosts of the Manor, by Lucy Strange & Pam Smy, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

 

This is an absolutely gorgeous book, heavy and glinting and choc-full of illustration and story. 

Lucy Strange has written a ghostly mystery full of wonderful characters and humour and genuine ghosty thrill  ...   despite one of the child heroes being one of the ghosts. Pam Smy's wonderful illustrations on almost every spread, filling some spreads, properly play the story between words and images, again achieving atmosphere, character and humour. And the odd clue to spot! 

Matilda has to play 'dead Edna', a ghost child brought to life during her Aunt's ghostly stage show, but then the two of them, along with Uncle Barnabus and Colin the parrot, get employed at a mysterious manor house where there seems to be at least one real haunting. There is. But there's also dastardly thievery afoot, and its up to Matilda and the ghost boy she befriends to bring the culprits to justice. Meanwhile, exactly what are her 'Aunt' and 'Uncle' up to? 

Great fun, and offering the highest quality illustration and writing for middle grade readers. I'm very glad there are more stories about these two to come!

 

                     How I Learned to Read by Lynda Waterhouse

I have always been fascinated by the mysterious process by which a child learns to read. In my experience there is always a moment where all the mechanical parts - the letters and sounds, the handling of books, the listening to and shared enjoyment of stories, the musicality of language in songs and poems - all come together and everything clicks into place.

I’m not even sure what reading is. The dictionary defines it as ‘The activity or skill of looking at and comprehending the meaning of written or printed matter by interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is composed.’

That covers the mechanics but what about that inexplicable process where the words transport you into another world? Or provide you with information and food for thought?  As Dr Seuss says, ‘The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.’

It got me thinking about my own reading journey.

Early memories

My grandfather, William Waterhouse, from the age of 11, was a ‘half timer’ working for half a day in the local cotton mill and receiving half a day of schooling. This left him with a thirst for knowledge and he educated himself. As a child we had many of his books on our shelves. Reading was a form of self-betterment for him and his family as well as a form of escapism. He died before I was born but his legacy lived on in the many books he left behind.

At home we had a very old book of Bible stories. Each page folded out to make a 3D image. This book was fragile and had to be handled carefully. We were not a religious family, but my Mum believed in hedging your bets and liked the social side of the local church. My Dad, coloured by his own experiences of intolerance during the war, was scathing about it. I was about three years old and I recall ‘pretending’ to read the words that accompanied the pictures to the delight of my parents who encouraged me to continue doing this.

The subversion of words

I was in infant school, about Year 1, and our teacher read us the A.A. Milne poem Furry Bear. The whole class shrieked with delight and made her read it over and over again for days. The reason was these lines

‘For I’d have fur boots and a brown fur wrap

And brown fur knickers and a big fur cap’

We were making our teacher say ‘knickers’ over and over!

All was going smoothly, I was reading, writing and loving words THEN I BECAME PART OF AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENT.

ITA Experiment

With no explanation nor rhyme nor reason, our school introduced a new way of teaching reading called ITA or Initial Teaching Alphabet. This method was created by the MP James Pitman, the grandson of Isaac Pitman who devised a shorthand system. He was not an educationalist. It was an attempt to simplify English and accelerate learning. I had to learn 44 symbols for each of the sounds in English. To add to my confusion the spellings were presented with sounds of someone who spoke with Received Pronunciation, not an Oldham accent.

It was traumatic and made no sense to me but being a compliant child I went along with it and went from being a successful reader and speller to being a slow learner needing extra help.  Then after a year it disappeared without explanation and I was told to go back to the way I had learned to read before and that I was not a failure after all. It has left me with a distrust at the over reliance on synthetic phonics.

The library is my lifesaver

Once I had recovered from my ITA experience (although my spelling never really did) I became and remain a voracious reader. During the summer holidays I had many reading adventures thanks to Oldham Library and the access to books that it provided to me for free.

Reading for pleasure remains one of the joys of life, alongside making up stories to the ‘pictures’ I see in art galleries and a love of subversive language. How did you learn to read?

USING COLOUR IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS - BLACK AND WHITE by Sharon Tregenza

 BLACK AND WHITE

Children's books usually use bright colours, but black and white illustrations can be incredibly effective. They can have a quiet magic of their own. 

A black and white picture can have the children guessing at the possible colours which deepens engagement. Also, the strong line work and contrast can express tension and movement as much as colour - sometimes even more. Many early reader books use black and white illustrations because the images don't overwhelm new readers, they just reinforce the text. Another plus is activity books where children can colour the pictures themselves.

Here are three examples of children's books using black and white pictures:

In this book, Cybele Young creates beautiful pen and ink drawings to tell a story about ten birds crossing a river. 

BIG CAT, little cat by Elisha Couper. A sweet book about friendship. Here the monochromatic illustrations help set the gentle tone of the story.

Chris Raschka's minimalist picture book uses expressive black and white drawings to convey, movement and storytelling without using colour.

On a practical note - black and white books are often more affordable to print. This means lower costs for publishers and therefore more books for libraries and schools. 

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com

Members' News February

First in our news round-up today, I've been catching up with Helen Larder, whose YA thriller HIDDEN TOXINS was published last October.

Hidden Toxins features six very different teenagers. How did you manage a large cast of characters? And which character was your favourite to write? 

I'm incredibly lucky because the characters I create 'talk' to me in my head and 'perform' their own scenes. Like films streaming in my mind. Once I've decided on the details of the plot, it feels like the characters take off on their own! It helps that in real life, I'm constantly listening to passing conversations, to help me write authentic sounding dialogue. I think the character who was the most engaging to write was Cedar because he's a risk taker, driving the action. I can only wish to be half as as brave as the young people in this novel. 

This is your third novel. How do you keep the ideas coming? Where did the idea for Hidden Toxins come from? 

I started writing stories when I was five and I've never stopped. Ideas constantly interrupt what I'm doing and I have trouble keeping up with them. The starting point for this young adult thriller came from two real life incidents. The first was related to news I read about a corrupt group of men in politics, who were charged with fraud. The second was from my own experience, working in a toxic environment where individuals at the top of the hierarchy were abusing their power. I made a conscious decision to write a diverse thriller for young adults. I'm part of the LGBTQ+ community and everything I write includes a diverse cast of characters. 

What's your writing process like? Do you have a favourite time and place to write? Any special rituals? 

I'm definitely old school. Pen and notebook for my first drafts. I can write much faster than I can type. I only transfer chunks of writing to my laptop when I'm mostly happy with it. Then I edit, edit, edit, over and over again and feel huge gratitude for editing tools like find and replace. I have most energy in the morning, so that's when I try to cram in as much writing as possible. 

I love the video trailer. Tell us a bit about how that was made. 

My lovely nephew is a brilliant filmmaker. I asked him if he'd be interested in making a book trailer and I was very grateful when he took it on, alongside all his other film work for his own company, https://www.reframe.studio We talked through the plot and characters and some of the dramatic scenes and he worked his magic. 

What are you working on now? 

I have a whole cupboard full of notebooks and writing which I have to do something with. A novel for adults which needs editing, short stories that I'd like to find a home for and a screenplay that I'm just finishing. That will keep me busy, unless I'm chased and caught by a new idea. 

Next, some lovely news from Miriam Halahmy. It's so wonderful to see children's books changing lives.

My new book, Pomegranates For Peace, has started the National Year of Reading 2026 really well, with school visits to Portsmouth Charter Academy, Y8 and Y9. and to the Manchester Library Service, where I spoke to Y5 - Y8 in two sessions. The students really enjoyed my PowerPoint which has photos of Peace organisations in Israel with Jews and Muslims as well as Peace activities in Gaza.

I read an extract which describes a peace club in Israel for Jewish and Muslim kids and the things they do together such as chess. This was very well received. The feedback was inspirational and I feel that my message of Peace is reaching around the country.

"A realistic, touching book about how hope can be found in what seems a hopeless situation." Sammy 13 yrs.

"Miriam is an outstanding communicator... and had her audience ( young teens) engaged, and keen to participate and contribute to the discussion." Librarian, Ark Charter Academy, Portsmouth.

"Miriam explained the situation in an age appropriate way... the students LOVE  the cover and can't wait to read the book. They had lots of questions about being a Peace Activist."
Teacher, Manchester High School.

 New book news: Congratulations, Elen Caldecott! WRITING FOR YOUNG PEOPLE: CRITICAL READINGS AND DISCUSSIONS ON CRAFT is published by Bloomsbury Academic.

Sassies' Events

A fantastic time was had by all at the Folly Farm winter warmer retreat. We wrote picture books and poetry, tried our hand at painting, walked in the wet, wet woods and enjoyed great food and company. The next winter warmer will taken place in January 2027.

Finally, you should have received an email about the zoom spotlights, organised by Camilla Chester. The next one is on the 20th February and will tackle self-publishing. It's open to all Scattered Authors members. Check your in-boxes for the link.

Please send your news items for March to Claire Fayers.