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The Crocodile on the Bus – Capturing memories before the Elephant forgets by Lynda Waterhouse 10 Dec 10:00 PM (9 hours ago)

This is the second community short film I’ve produced in two years with funding from Southwark Council’s Neighbourhood Fund. It was twelve months in the making, on an excruciatingly low budget, drawing on tons of favours and goodwill and leaving me a bag of nerves.

Never one to make life easy for myself  by  following the exact same model as its companion, ‘The Old Cow in the Kitchen’ completed in 2024.

 https://www.southwark.gov.uk/southwark-presents/film-month-old-cow-kitchen-and-other-stories-2024)

I wanted this film to generate some new creative work so I invited Paul Taylor to write a poem using some of the old photographs of the area. He produced three stunning poems.  Sara Byers composed a song based on some of the accounts of cinemagoers to the iconic and long demolished Trocadero Cinema.

Our filmmaking process to the onlooker must have appeared lackadaisical and random but it was a deliberate decision on mine and filmmaker Ludmilla Andrews’s part not to simply ‘interview’ people. We wanted to take our time, share conversations, laughter and cake, trusting that the stories would eventually unfold. This meant that we built lasting friendships but also that Ludmilla had a huge task editing all the material. It also meant that some surprising stories emerged.

How many times have people said, mainly at funerals, ‘I wished I had asked them about... and now we’ll never know.’ Another aim of the project was to remind people to have those conversations and overcome any shyness about asking certain questions.  

Working on this project also held up a mirror to my own writing process reminding me that I always start a writing project with a character who interests me and often come up with a title long before the story is fully formed. Then comes a first draft followed by a long editing and cutting period.

So as the holiday season approaches and family and friends gather, now might be the perfect time to ask those questions.  Go on I dare you!

USING COLOUR IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS - ORANGE 8 Dec 4:00 PM (2 days ago)

 ORANGE

Orange is a bold warm colour. It can make young readers feel excited and ready for adventure. The mix of yellow's cheerfulness and red's excitement creates a perfect mix.

Orange will boost imagination and grabs attention in a fun friendly way.

Here are some examples of illustrators using the colour orange to it's best advantage:

The Gruffalo's bright orange eyes are instantly recognisable and create a feeling of warmth and affection for the lovable menace.

This book is fully created around the word and colour orange. It's used perfectly in the storytelling as well as the artwork. 

Who doesn't recognise Judith Kerr's wonderful orange tiger in her famous book "The Tiger who came to Tea". His bright orange coat dominates the pages and makes him a friendly rather than frightening character. 

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com

News Round-Up of 2025 6 Dec 10:00 PM (4 days ago)

 A big thank you to everyone who sent their news in this year. It's great to see so many books published, schools visited, awards won.

Here's a run-down of the whole year. If you're looking for Christmas gifts, do take a look and support your fellow Sassies.

January - March

Dancing Dumplings by Eva Wong Nada, illustrated by Natelle Quek
My Mum, by Susan Quinn, illustrated Sarah Mathew
The Welsh language edition of Behind Closed Doors by Miriam Halahm
World of Wanda by Karen McCombie
Gathering the Glimmers written and illustrated by Ffion Jones
I Don't Do Mountains by Barbara Henderson
Paperback edition: Talking History: 150 Years of Speakers and Speeches, by Joan Haig and Joan Lennon, illustrated by Andre Ducci.

Plus hundreds of school visits, putting thousands of books into the hands of excited readers.

April - June

July - September

October - November

Reading in Spanish by Paul May 3 Dec 9:00 PM (7 days ago)

Lately, as part of my attempt to improve my Spanish,  I've been reading books mainly in that language. The first book I got hold of was a set of literary short stories in a dual-language edition. This proved unsatisfactory in several ways. Firstly, and I should have thought of this, literary fiction of most kinds is often more demanding than thrillers and romance. Text in Spanish is demanding enough for me without having to struggle to understand what the writer is getting at. Secondly, a dual-language text is not necessarily a word-for-word translation and it turns out that, for me at least, it works better to translate individual words and figure out the sense for myself. And, thirdly, the selection of stories in that particular book didn't grip me.

Next I picked up a copy, in Spanish, of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls. But with this one I became distracted by the fact that the English text was so beautifully written and the Spanish translation never seemed quite right. In fact I was so distracted that I ended up reading the whole Country Girls trilogy in English.

Then, browsing in Foyles, I came across a thriller. This seemed like a good idea. Up-to-date dialogue and a page-turning plot to motivate me. Best-selling author. What could go wrong? Not much as it turned out.

The book I chose was Todo Vuelve by Juan Goméz Jurado. This is a violent, action-filled thriller, and it was the first book I read from beginning to end in Spanish. However, this was only possible with the help of Google. If I'd had to sit with a dictionary by my side, pausing every dozen words or so to look something up, I'd never have done it. My process was to try to read a page and get the sense of it, then take a pic and translate the text to clarify everything. The book was about 500 pages long, so a dual-language version could never have worked, but I was amazed by the sophistication of Google Translate. It can even translate idioms into their English equivalent - for example, the Spanish pull your hair rather than pulling your leg and Google knows to translate one with the other.

It was after I finished that book that I began to think about matters of style and judgement. It's very hard to judge the pace of a book when you're reading it a page at a time and stopping frequently to translate. For almost the first time in years I was reading every word. I had the feeling that the pace of the book was a bit slow, that everything seemed to take a long time, but of course it was taking a long time, for me. Maybe it was like the Reacher books, where one of Lee Child's trademarks is his ability to spend a couple of pages describing Reacher opening a door or taking a weapon apart. 

And then there was this author's fondness for strange similes and metaphors. Was it because I wasn't Spanish that they didn't really work for me? I couldn't tell. But there was no doubt that the whole process was helping my Spanish, so I went looking for more thrillers and found a writer called Roberto Martínez Guzmán. His thrillers were set in Galicia and it helped that I'd been to that part of Spain and recognised many of the locations. There was enough interest in his books to carry me along, and I could see that the author had used various mechanisms common to many English language crime writers, for example the detective's liking for a type of music that acts as a shorthand for outlining their character. However, as my reading became more fluent I began to notice things that could have been helped by a bit of editing and I also suspected that these books had started out self-published on Amazon. My suspicions increased when I asked after the author in a bookshop in Spain and the proprietor had never heard of him.

Next I discovered the novels of Cristian Perfumo, thrillers set in Patagonia and Barcelona. These were fun, too, but as my ability to read improved (and my Kindle started saying things like 'ten minutes left in chapter' rather than 'three hours left in chapter') I began to notice things I hadn't noticed before. I started asking myself, if this was in English would I have read it? Finally, it occurred to me to search for lists of the top Spanish crime writers on the internet. None of the authors I'd been reading appeared on those lists, and when I looked for Kindle editions of these recommended books they were all much more expensive than the ones I'd been reading. Maybe this was a clue. I bought one of them (the cheapest!) El último barco by Domingo Villar. I noticed immediately that Villar has a distinctive style. The plot proceeds slowly but the detailed descriptions of landscapes and interiors are of a different quality to the other books I've read. All children's authors know that making description interesting is both tricky and essential. Like Guzmán's books, these are set in Galicia, but the landscape comes to life in an entirely different way. There came a moment, about three chapters in, when I finished a paragraph and thought, Wow! that was really great writing.

I've also read a couple of children's books in Spanish. I've written quite a few football-based books, so I couldn't resist Los Futbolísmos when I found the first volume of the series in a bookshop. It's a completely different kind of football story to anything I've come across in the UK - aimed at 8-9-year-olds and above, it's almost 300 pages long! It's also highly illustrated. And the series is incredibly successful in Spain. The best thing about it from the point of view of a learner of Spanish is that it's full of natural, up-to-date (ish) idiomatic dialogue. But, despite the fact that I am considerably more than 9 years old, I still needed help from Google to read this. If I could read, speak and understand Spanish as well as a 9-year-old Spanish child I think I'd be happy.

And, finally, I should mention Don Quixote. I've tried and failed a few times to read this hugely long book, and I have succeeded at last. I found a children's edition in Spanish and it was only 70 pages long. Maybe one day I'll read the original. Maybe.

Bish, Bash, Bosh - Joan Lennon 2 Dec 4:30 PM (8 days ago)

It's hard to believe it's nearly a decade since I posted about adjective order in the insane world of English language. Definitely time for another snippet of something that has no immediately obvious good reason behind it, but just sounds right.

Yup, I'm talking about Ablaut reduplication. (Thank you Merriam-Webster's recent Facebook page.)

English words have vowels. If you have a string of three words, you put them in an order where the vowels are 

I - A - O.

If there are only two words, the order of vowel is either

I - A

or

I -O.

Some examples, you ask? Merriam-Webster and the internet are happy to oblige:

tic-tac-toe, Big Bad Wolf, Live Laugh Love, splish splash splosh

click-clack, riff-raff, zig-zag, chit-chat, mish-mash, pitter-patter

King Kong, hip-hop, flip-flop, TikTok, ping pong, ding dong

Go on - swap the order round and hear just how wrong they sound! Dear English, you are bonkers, but we love you anyway.

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

OH DEAR, LOOK WHAT I GOT! and a 36-year-old BEAR HUNT. Picture book thoughts by Penny Dolan 1 Dec 2:43 AM (10 days ago)

Greetings for December 2025!
Doing Library Storytimes over the year has led to a fascination with words & illustrations and more in picture books for young children and how they work, both the new and the old favourites. This month I intended to write about ‘OH DEAR, LOOK WHAT I GOT!’, Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury’s 2025 collaboration, but somehow their 1989 picture book hit, ‘WE’RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT!’ padded in on its big paws too.

HOW was the imaginary part of the story managed? As each ‘problem’ presented itself - ‘Oh no! We’ve got to go through it!’ – Oxenbury used ordinary, everyday black-and-white but then, as if the moment is brightened by the imagination, she switches to beautiful full-colour spreads while they solve each problem, Even so, she maintains the sense of realism, of being in this world: for example, as the family cross the river, they hold their shoes in hands, the older girl bunches up her skirt, and the boy grasps the collar of the swimming dog, all while the particular sound effect - ‘Splash splosh!’ - presents itself three times in a simple ‘capitalised box’, as happens almost all the way through.

THE PACE of the story? When at last we get to the big brown cave, where the huge bear appears – One shiny wet nose! Two big furry ears! Two big googly eyes! – he seems rather cross about unwelcome visitors ands. Oxenbury now has to cope with a big problem. So far all has been slow, steady adventure, using a complete spread per scene. When you are using your voice to tell a story, speeding up is easy and quick. How, though to manage it visually, so the story won’t drag and, furthermore, will fit within the page count? Delightfully, Oxenbury uses six quickly-glanced, quickly-read sequential panels placed horizontally across one spread, the narrow images speeding us towards home – but then? Will all be safe? Is this the end?

The child – the main narrator/character - is not swiftly relatable or cute. Oxenbury has added a touch of the fairytale, a hint of the not-quite-now, to his androgynous appearance. He has a slightly timeless look to his face, wears an fitted red jacket, dark leggings, and a black peaked hat. Moreover, his slight frame, his manner and his curiosity suggest a child who is a thinker, a logician, a quiet solver of problems.

On the story progresses, through about four more ‘beats’, until the wriggly pup, that final mistake, sets off an uproar. This, if you study the images closely, follows the traditional format of ‘So A did this, which made B do this, which made C do this, etc.’ I wonder if you recall that ‘old woman needing to get her pig over the stile’ folk tale? But fortunately, there is a loud knock at the door. The shopkeepers have arrived, all is righted - seen through the pictures not in the words -and a happy party ensues. The end.

OH DEAR, LOOK WHAT I GOT! needed a read or three to find the rhythm of the text, to consider the limited vocabulary, and watch for where the word-count offered extra opportunities for repeating phrases or joining in with animal noises, which always goes down well. 

‘Do I want that? No, I do not!’ the adults and children started to echo as I read out the pages, However, as far as OH DEAR, LOOK WHAT I GOT! goes, I decided I did want that! 

As tired as a very tired person who can't find a metaphor by Sheena Wilkinson 28 Nov 9:00 PM (12 days ago)

Readers, I am as tired as a very tired person. A person too tired to find an actual image even though I am, in fact, a writer.

I FEEL as though, in the last five days, I have:

Organised and hosted a book launch attended by many people, involving a great deal of planning and wine-buying and speech-writing, and also involving leaving my dress behind and only realising it when we were already on the motorway;

the dress was worth going back for

Delivered a workshop on poetry writing at my local primary school;

the kids were worth it too and no, we weren't focusing on spelling

Engaged in online essay one-to-ones with Scottish sixth year students, as part of my work with the Royal Literary Fund's Bridge project;

Facilitated an in-person but not at all local personal writing workshop with trauma-experienced adults as part of my work with the RLF's Writing for Life project;

Been interviewed for an online literary 'salon' mostly with pre-published writers;

this was fun!

Visited a Belfast independent bookshop to sign copies of Miss McVey Takes Charge, which they are stocking;

Thank you NO ALIBIS!

Attended an Arts Council workshop on dealing with disappointment and rejection, and been very amused when a writer I know, who's at the pre-published, querying stage, said, 'What are you doing here? What can you know about rejection?' (Er, how long have you got?)

some writers I know were cynical about this, but it was very helpful

Looked forward all week to getting to my desk for the first time today, Friday (apart from admin) to work on my novel, only to realise my ABBA post is due...

The writing life. It's certainly varied. 

Ability, Motive, Opportunity and Goblins, by Claire Fayers 26 Nov 10:00 PM (14 days ago)

 Hi all,

I'm going to be taking a bit of a break from the blog after Christmas so this will be my last post for a little while. I do intend to start up again once I've got some new ideas together.

Recently, I've been talking to libraries again, taking part in an online librarians conference and then visiting libraries to run school sessions.

I love visiting schools, but I am really enjoying having classes come into the libraries. The scheme is paid for by the Welsh Books Council who always pay promptly. As the classes come in, the sessions generally start a little later in the morning so there's no leaving home at the crack of dawn. And it's great fun. Maybe not quite so much fun for anyone else in the library at the time (if you were trying to work this morning when a rowdy group was creating goblins, I apologise!)

Part of my talk at the library conference centred around getting children to read, which got me thinking about why we want kids to read, and what's stopping them. In the grand tradition of murder mysteries, I think it comes down to ability, motive and opportunity. If kids struggle to decode every sentence, the whole thing becomes a hard slog, meaning they have little motive to read. And if they don't have access to books, they can't read.

Schools do a lot to address ability. Libraries are primarily about opportunity - making books available. We, as authors, can have a big impact on motive, engaging with young readers, making reading fun.

Bringing all three together feels very special. Children who've never been to a public library get to see the place for the first time whilst also meeting an author who can talk enthusiastically about the library, read, play games and generally have fun. 

My sessions are based on Welsh goblins, and the highlight is when I pass a marker pen around and the children take turns at designing a goblin to live in the library. I give them all a design-your-own-goblin postcard to take away and the class goblin stays in the library to encourage them to come back and see it some other time.

The fact that the goblins are very badly drawn just adds to the fun.

Have a great Christmas all!

Publication or pleasure? Or both? 24 Nov 10:00 PM (16 days ago)

A recent BBC interview with John Grisham caught my attention. The first half anyway; the second is more Grisham being quizzed about why he writes what he writes. But that first half, where he discusses shrinking readership and the prevalence of 'screen time' is something I think about a lot, especially when I'm sitting in a train and look up from my book to find myself surrounded by faces bent over mobiles. When I left the UK 35 years ago, nearly all those faces in trains were bent over books or newspapers and magazines.

Reading.

(Yes, I know some of those people may be reading an article, but I see an awful lot of scrolling through TikTok videos.)

Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm now beginning to think fiction writing may be going the way of poetry. Perhaps not as fast, but certainly heading there. Becoming a niche pastime. And it makes me wonder why I write and what I hope to get out of it. When I started, it was dreams of being published. But that seems to be a horizon receding by the month. Not just for me, but for many, many others.

So is writing to be just a source of pleasure? With any prospect of publication a welcome, but really rather an unexpected bonus?

I'm still thinking about this.

Still puzzling it out.

And wondering where I'm heading.

Anyway, here's the Grisham interview. (You have to cut and paste the URL into your browser to play it.) He seems like a nice man. And I like his books, too.

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0mjb83d/john-grisham-on-why-he-still-writes-as-trends-shift

Constant noise and blinding lights - by Lu Hersey 18 Nov 4:00 PM (22 days ago)

 Weirdly, it's a strangely enjoyable experience. It's just what a West Country Carnival night is like. If you've never been to one, I'd recommend making the effort, at least once in your life.

November is generally a bleak month, filled with rain and cold weather - and even though it's likely you'll have to endure this standing out on the street for hours, the onslaught of light and sound should more than compensate. Besides, the folklore calendar has gained popularity over the last few years, and Carnival deserves to be up there. It may be loud and brash, but it has roots going back over 400 years.

The tradition started in the Somerset town of Bridgwater. The population of the town was staunchly protestant back in 1605 when a group of catholic conspirators plotted to blow up the houses of parliament - the failed attempt which has been celebrated as Guy Fawkes night ever since. 

But although Guy Fawkes was a conspirator, the main instigator of the gunpowder plot was a man called Robert Parsons, a Jesuit priest from Nether Stowey - which is a village very close to Bridgwater.

Each year following the uncovering of the plot, the town folk of Bridgwater celebrated Robert Parsons' demise on 5 November by lighting a huge bonfire, built from a wooden boat filled with 100 tar barrels and anything else people found that would burn. Local groups (known as gangs) added effigies (or guys) to the fire, and processions started up as the gangs paraded their guys along the route. 

The processions became more elaborate over the years, adding music and costumes, until eventually the carnival procession became the main focus of the event (especially after over-enthusiastic locals had to be stopped from burning any boat they could pinch from the harbour). The people who dress up and take part in the event are known as Masqueraders or Features.

The Carnival Circuits now feature a parade of up to 50 illuminated carts (the local name for floats), mostly pulled by tractors or lorries, and often needing massive generators to power the fantastic light displays. Carts can cost over £40,000 to build, and local clubs spend thousands of man hours creating them over the course of the year. The aim of the carnival (one of the biggest of its kind in the world) is to raise money for local charities, but it's also a chance for everyone to enjoy a fantastic spectacle at a very dull point in the year.  

Although the Carnival travels to a number of other West country towns over a period of a couple of weeks, it's only in Bridgwater itself that they keep the tradition of squibbing. A squib is a firework held up on a long wooden handle (called a cosh) by a squibber, and a hundred squibbers stand in line in Bridgwater town centre, making a brilliant, if slightly scary display. (link) 

For a quieter, but possibly more disorganised night, come to see it in on the last night of the circuit, in Glastonbury. Just ignore the timings on the website here, as in Glastonbury time, a 6.45pm start can mean 8pm if you're lucky. And don't rely on buses as they all stop an hour before the procession starts, whatever the timetable tells you.

Still worth it though. The themed carts vary enormously, so you'll never see exactly the same float two years running, and yet somehow the atmosphere is timeless. And although there's no chance your work will ever be featured on a cart, on the plus side, Carnival makes a brilliant setting for any fictional murder and mayhem you might want to write later... 

Anyway, where else can you see ghost chickens?

Lu Hersey

Perplexing Problems By Steve Way 16 Nov 7:00 PM (24 days ago)

 Several children’s stories involve the protagonists overcoming all sorts of problems and challenges, which is one reason why I wanted to share a couple of intriguing bureaucratic challenges set for my wife and I by HM Gov, in case it inspires any of you with ideas for characters who might deal with quandaries in an imaginary, rather than a real context. The second reason is because I would love to know how you would have dealt with a similar seemingly insoluble dilemma.  

My wife and I now live in France and needed to apply for a form from the UK NHS called an S1. This means that as Brits our healthcare is covered in France. After we’d made our online applications – the process of which seemed to go quite smoothly – we were told that we would be sent a unique 6-digit code that we would need to use to download the documents.

The codes duly arrived, and we logged on to the site again. We found the space allocated for typing in our unique code and were faced with the statement, ‘Now enter your 8-digit code’.

So what to do now? Take a gamble and add two 0s to the beginning of our 6-digit number… or at the ending? Maybe one at the beginning and one at the end?

Instead of taking a gamble, we found a need help section and hoped we could communicate our problem to the powers that be.

We found a page that required our details, beginning with our surname. Well, my surname is Way, so obviously I started by typing in a W. As soon as I did so a message popped up below the box which said, ‘Must be a least 5 characters’.

In a 3-letter name? What do we do this time? Add two # marks? Two extra Ys as though someone had stood on my toe while saying my name? To add to the irony of the situation, we couldn’t even give my wife’s maiden name as it’s Bell. 

Could it be that those of us with 3-letter or 4-letter long surnames make the most complaints and this is the authority’s way to filtering us out? Could this be another one for the conspiracy theorists?

Answers on a postcard please. PS No more than three million characters!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recently published, “Spell Binding Stories UKS2” contains stories, sketches and poems to support the learning of spelling for juniors age 9 – 11

ISBN 979-8297102361

My Book of Classic Nursery Tales, by James Mayhew, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart 14 Nov 3:30 PM (26 days ago)

    This beautiful new book is my book of choice to welcome my new wee grandson to the world, and I hope it will accompany him through his life as a joy and comfort. I suspect that these images of the classic tales, and the voice telling them, will be the ones that always feel to the be the only right ones for him forever! 

    James Mayhew has both written and illustrated this collection of eight stories, seven very familiar, one new to me. We have Goldilocks, the Gingerbread Man, The Enormous Turnip, The Tortoise and the Hare, and more. These stories come to life with lively and beautiful collage artwork.

    And then there's the one story which is new to me. The Vain Little Mouse is of Spanish origin, a sweet story of a foolish mouse who thinks she wants more than kind Senor Perez mouse for a husband ... until he rescues her from the toothy jaws of the cat she was flirting with. 'So they got married at once, by the light of the moon, dressed all in ribbons and lace.' James tells these stories with a lovely storytelling voice, drawing his audience in. 

Better late than never 13 Nov 2:04 PM (27 days ago)

I have realised that it is the 13th at the very last minute, and am very sorry for being late, so just wanted to post something quickly. Tonight I was out at a rehearsal for 'A Christmas Carol,' an amateur dramatic production we are putting on to raise money for our local village church. My husband and I play Mr Cheerly and Mr Heartly, the charity collectors who try unsuccessfully to get money from Scrooge in the first half of the play, and then, as Mr Cheerly, I benefit in the last part, from Scrooge's changed attitude, and a big donation to my charity. It's been a lot of fun rehearsing and watching the others play their parts, and sadly the message of 'A Christmas Carol' feels more relevant than ever - greed is not the way to reach happiness and is really messing up the world. However, what I love about Scrooge is that he DOES change and the predicted terrible  future does not happen. As I say as number one narrator at the end , 'Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more: and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father.'  Before I went to rehearsal tonight I was feeling a bit panicked and depressed by world news, but a dramatised work of fiction has cheered me up and lessened despair. We don't have to repeat old stories and we don't have to be manipulated by societal  scripts written by people with vested interests - we CAN be kind and we can look after each other and change predicted pessimistic outcomes - and I think, as writers for children, we are very lucky to have the chance to write stories which bring hope. So as Tiny Tim says, 'God bless us, every one,' and Good luck to all who write to make the world better.

Pliosaurs vs. AI (Anne Rooney) 13 Nov 2:08 AM (28 days ago)

I've posted several times here about AI and how it is making work as a children's author increasingly difficult. I also have a book on AI and its social impact coming out this month. The book was written a year ago — that's publishing lead times for you — so I was not particularly impacted by the relentless flood of AI slop at that point. But now I am. It's harder to find reliable information and, particularly, reliable images to gives to illustrators. The bits of consultancy I do for publishers on other authors' books are getting harder because I can't assume authors have used sound sources. This is all aside from the threat of wannabe writers submitted AI-generated trash to publishers, the pillaging of our corpus by AI developers, and the slow decay of once-nurtured and cherished resources such as the websites of NASA and USGS, now eroding under US policy. 

Is it time to get out? Possibly. Maybe it will all settle down and there will be good ways of producing books in five years' time, or maybe this is the start of something terminal for well-researched and illustrated children's non-fiction.

I can write in ways AI can't and won't for a long time, if ever. It's about seeing connections that will speak to young readers, and knowing what will be funny or fascinating not because it's been done before but because I am human and they are human. 

But it's not just the writing. If the research and picture sourcing become harder, the work takes longer and becomes less and less viable. Publishers aren't about to start paying writers more. So maybe it's time to move on, after 25 or so good years making a living from this thing that I love. Or at least time to diversify further.

That's where the pliosaur comes in. I want to do something that brings together different parts of my life and interests and that can't be taken over by AI. I think I've found it. So — stained glass made using medieval methods (I was a medievalist before I was a children's writer) and depicting the extinct animals and other scientific things I have been writing about for the last couple of decades. If I can't trust children to read, or be able to read, at least — like the stained glass workers of the Middle Ages — I can show them with pictures some of the wonders of the world. 

Maybe I'll never make it work as a job, but I'll have fun trying. 

Anne Rooney

Out this month: The Essential Book of AI, Arcturus, 2025

USING COLOUR IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS - GREEN By Sharon Tregenza 8 Nov 4:00 PM (last month)

GREEN

The colour green is associated with nature, healing and balance. It's often used in children's books to represent forests, meadows and all things natural.

It invites a sense of calm and connects text to the natural world - plants and trees. Illustrators will also use it to subtly embed environmental themes. When a child reads a book where the colour green is prominent their subconscious is already primed for themes of nature and calm.

Here are three books that illustrate how well green works in picture books:

In 'The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo' by Judy Blume the colour green here signifies "difference". The green kangaroo becomes  a symbol of finding one's place. It's used here not just for nature but for identity.

Because it's unexpected it creates something for children to be curious about. The use of green for eggs is playful and memorable. 

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com

Members' News 6 Nov 10:00 PM (last month)

Welcome to our latest news update from members. If you'd like anything included in the December post, please send the details to me, Claire Fayers by the end of November.

Congratulations to Sophie Kirtley on the publication of Swanfall from Bloomsbury on November 6th.

Pip lives with Mum in their isolated cottage on the wetlands. Pip struggles to feel like he fits in at school. But at home, amongst nature, he truly feels he can be himself.
Just like every winter, Pip is waiting for the swanfall – when the flock of majestic Arctic swans return from Siberia on their annual migration. He knows every swan by their unique markings, and he loves to help Mum record the flock as they soar, shining through the sky, to their home. But this December, Pip's favourite three swans haven't appeared. Instead, Pip notices strange footprints in the snow, whispers on the wind and the sense that someone is watching him.

A thrilling new adventure story inspired by Irish folklore from Sophie Kirtley, author of The Wild Way Home. Perfect for fans of Sophie Anderson's The House with Chicken Legs, Amy Wilson's A Girl Called Owl and Aisha Bushby's A Pocketful of Stars.

Something mysterious is afoot, and the adventure to discover the truth leads Pip to follow clues to an ancient curse that he had always believed was simply a fairytale.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/swanfall-9781526642820/

Anna Bowles, well-known to many of us for her reports from Ukraine, has a pamphlet of poems about her experiences coming out from Mica Press on November 17th. Cover art is by Mariia Pronina, an IDP artist from Donetsk now living in Kyiv. Contact Anna for details.

You can read one of Anna's poems here: https://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-90/poems/landscape-with-mines/

Miriam Halahmy's  MG book  Pomegranates For Peace, Zuntold Books, comes out on November 20th, World Children's Day.  What can you do for Peace? The book shines a spotlight on the 160 grassroot Peace Organisations in Israel, with partners on the West Bank and in Gaza. 

Set in November/December 2023, following the terrible atrocities by Hamas in Israel and the outbreak of the Israel Gaza war, the book follows Tamara Cohen, a 12yr old Jewish girl   and her Jewish and non Jewish friends in their  London High School. With antisemitism rising and polarisation at school, things become very heated. Tamara finds a swastika on her locker one morning. Then her cousin Gidi, from Israel, staying with the family, talks in school about his club, Pomegranates For Peace,  bringing Israeli Jews and Muslims together. Gradually he begins to make a difference. 

https://www.zuntold.com/book-store/25

25 Years Later by Paul May 3 Nov 9:00 PM (last month)

I got an email from my cousin in Australia a couple of weeks ago. Her 9-year-old granddaughter had started playing football and was becoming a little obsessed. My cousin remembered that I'd written books about football and she'd looked for them in Australia but been unable to find them. I had to tell her that those books were published about 25 years ago and she wouldn't find them in this country either. Not new ones anyway.

But then I remembered that one of the things on my 'to do' list is republishing the books myself, now that I have the rights back. I took a quick look at Troublemakers, the first book I wrote, and decided that there were too many things about it that I wasn't completely happy with. Many of my original intentions to do with challenging racism and sexism in the world of football had been diluted in the process of publishing, so that now it seems a little lightweight to me, though it is an entertaining read. Nice One, Smithy! is a shorter chapter book aimed at younger children, but it's heavily illustrated and thus presents a much bigger challenge to a self-publisher. And then there was Defenders.

It's an interesting book because, although it has a central character, Chris, for whom pretty much the only good thing in his life is scoring goals for the school football team, and who definitely does not want to be the defender his coach asks him to be, the character who really makes the book for me is Ian Rawson. Ian is an ex-Premier League defender who's been forced to retire through injury and who's helping out with the local team, who are on a miraculous run in the FA Cup. Ian will try to get on the pitch at any opportunity, even though he knows that another injury to his knee could put him in serious trouble. Luckily for me I knew an ex-First Division footballer, Phil Hoadley, who had retired after a knee injury, and then ran my local pub and coached my son at Norwich City holiday sessions. Definitely worth re-publishing. 

There's one little problem, though. This was written on an electric typewriter, saved on floppy discs that I threw away long ago (mistake!), printed out and sent to the publishers. I once had a couple of large boxes of typescripts and proofs and stuff like that, but I chucked all that away too. Then it occurred to me that my scanner software has Optical Character Recognition (OCR) built in. It's not unusual to find cheap editions of books on Amazon that have been scanned in this way. They are almost always full of errors and weird misprints, and that's how it was with the sample text that I scanned. I quickly realised that if I wanted clean, error-free text I was going to have to type it all out again. While it might be possible to produce a print-ready PDF from the scanned text it would be much harder to make sure it was clean enough for conversion to an ebook and it would be mad to have to do all this work twice.

There was a considerable amount to learn here, and if you're already an expert on this self-publishing stuff you might want to look away. The first necessity was to get to grips with MS Word. I've used Word for a long time, and used to be able to find my way around quite well, but each new update brings subtle changes and added complexity and I haven't really kept up. Most of the time I just want to start typing. Anyway, there's plenty of help on the Internet and I've figured out what I need to know and it may seem like a lot of work (and expense) in order to supply a book to my cousin's grandchild, but luckily I quite enjoy this kind of thing. Well, up to a point. Software never seems to do quite what you expect and it can take a stupid amount of time to make it do what you want!

There a lot of companies out there nowadays who will print your book for you without even turning to Amazon (who, sadly, are the cheapest). 50 copies of this book would cost me about £250 with subsequent copies coming in at just over £3. This is not a huge amount of money, and I'd be quite prepared to spend it just in order to see if I can do it, and without a view to selling the books. I reckon I could easily give them away to the grandchildren of friends and relations.

I mentioned that Amazon is cheap. In fact, it's free to publish your book there, but there are many reasons, too many to go into here, why you might not want to do that. There are many other options available. The one I just mentioned involves considerable economies of scale, as in printing just one copy would cost £100 and 25 copies about £180. The company I use for photo books, Blurb, produce very high quality books, but they are expensive and if you lay out your book using their free (and very good) software, you are stuck with a limited number of formats. (They print trade books too). On the other hand if like me you think you're only likely to really need a few copies you can do that with Blurb for around £10 each, and as you get a high quality PDF when you order you could always use that to print in bulk from another source if you were suddenly deluged with orders. This will probably be the route I take in the end.

But back to Defenders.  Before I upload it, first I have to type it out. And that in itself is an interesting experience, examining every word and sentence that I wrote 25 years ago. The kids don't have their own phones! Do I need to update it? No, best to leave it alone. Best to just type the whole thing out exactly as it is in the original edition. It's been edited after all, by professionals. It also seems to have been written by a professional! It's very strange, at times like reading something written by someone else, someone who actually knew what they were doing, which is not how it felt 25 years ago.

So it's back to the keyboard, and there is one thing I learnt to do back then that is one of my top pieces of advice to new writers. I learnt to touch type using all my fingers. It didn't take long and it wasn't hard to do and I've been reaping the benefit ever since.

Sadly, Phil Hoadley, who I mentioned earlier, died last year at the age of 72. He was, as he would have said, a lovely geezer. 

Fair Isle Writing Retreat - Joan Lennon 2 Nov 4:30 PM (last month)

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

Fair Isle Studio

WHOSE VOICE WAS THAT? by Penny Dolan 31 Oct 5:00 PM (last month)

Yesterday, browsing in the library, I picked up a book. I hadn’t intended to pick it up, or read three pages, or bring the book home with me. But I did. What made me choose the book? It was in a mildly interesting non-fiction section, but the main reason I opted for that particular book was the voice of the title and writing, welcoming me in to the opening pages.

‘I’d like more of this,’ my reading mind told me.

‘Then that is what you shall have’’ I replied.

So now the book has added a teeny tiny smidgeon to the writer’s PLR and is waiting at home here, by my bed.

I often fall in love with a book for its ‘voice’, that magic quality that brings a subtle wit to the way the writer writes, gives glimpses of the writer’s stance on their story, adds cadence and rhythm to their style – and is often lost when a book is ‘translated’ into a film. 

Voice is there from the very start, confidently carrying us into the story. How about this opening to Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate diCamillo?

My name is India Opal Buloni, and last summer my daddy, the preacher, sent me to the store for a box of macaroni-and-cheese, some white rice and two tomatoes, and I came back with a dog. This is what happened. I walked into the produce section of the Winn-Dixie grocery store to pick out my two tomatoes and I almost bumped right into the store manager. He was standing there all red-faced, screaming and waving his arms around.

‘Who let a dog in here?’ he kept on shouting. ‘Who let a dirty dog in here?’

Or this from ‘I Catherine, Called Birdy’ by Karen Cushman, set in the 13th Century:

12th Day of  September: I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family. That is all there is to say.

13th Day of September: My father must suffer from ale head this day for he cracked me twice before dinner instead of once. I hope his angry liver bursts.

14th Day of September: Tangled my spinning again. Corpus bones, what a torture.

15th Day of September: Today the sun shone and the villagers sowed hay, gathered apples and pulled fish from the stream. I, trapped inside, spend two hours embroidery on a cloth for the church and three hours picking out my stitches after mother saw it. I wish I was a villager.

Or even this opening, written many years ago:

This is the story of the different ways we looked for treasure, and I think when you have read it you will see that we were not lazy about the looking.

There are some things I must tell before I begin to tell about the treasure-seeking, because I have read books myself, and I know how beastly it is when a story begins, “‘Alas!” said Hildegarde with a deep sigh, “we must look our last on this ancestral home”’—and then some one else says something—and you don’t know for pages and pages where the home is, or who Hildegarde is, or anything about it.

Our ancestral home is in the Lewisham Road. It is semi-detached and has a garden, not a large one. We are the Bastables. There are six of us besides Father. Our Mother is dead, and if you think we don’t care because I don’t tell you much about her you only show that you do not understand people at all.

Dora is the eldest. Then Oswald—and then Dicky. Oswald won the Latin prize at his preparatory school—and Dicky is good at sums. Alice and Noel are twins: they are ten, and Horace Octavius is my youngest brother. It is one of us that tells this story—but I shall not tell you which: only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is going on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don’t. It was Oswald who first thought of looking for treasure. Oswald often thinks of very interesting things. And directly he thought of it he did not keep it to himself, as some boys would have done, but he told the others, and said—

‘I’ll tell you what, we must go and seek for treasure: it is always what you do to restore the fallen fortunes of your House.’

From, rather obviously, The Story of The Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit, with that proud but quietly voiced aside: ‘I will not tell you which’.

I love the completeness within those three first-person openings, and the way the writer leads the reader securely into the whole ‘amusement’ of the story, with no doubt, continuing small asides and comments throughout the whole narrative.

 

The Jericho Writers website, which offers writing tuition and other services, says that: ‘Voice is to writing as personality is to humans’ and ‘refers to the author’s writing style, or authorial voice. It is the stylistic imprint of the individual author – their unique, signature style, if you like.‘ 

It ‘should have an instantly recognisable quality, or personality, and it should remain present throughout the novel. It’s what will captivate your readers and hook an agent.’

A distinctive ‘voice’ can hook an agent, but can be a mixed blessing. I never read a certain historical writer’s popular tomes because I can hear no ‘voice’ within his writing. However, after indulging in a vivid series of crime novels set and around in and around the Florida Everglades, I wanted no more, no more, no more of that once-captivating tone.

Does the same fate affect strongly-voiced writers on social media too? When does the distinctive tone that so interested us in a blogpost or Sub-stack article suddenly become too much, and turn readers away? Or, worse, be too strong a reminder of the personality’s real voice, and all that comes with it? 

Oh heavens. I’d like to have a ‘voice’, but please let it be a good one!

Wishing you all Happy Reading and Writing for November.

Penny Dolan

ps. For anyone still curious, the chosen book came from the Cookery shelves in the library, and is 'Midnight Chicken (& Other Recipes Worth Living For' by Ella Risbridger, who describes herself as 'Writer, bit of everything. More butter than toast.' I hadn't heard of Ella either, but the book does start more dramatically than most cook books, and is full of the kind of simple enjoyment that can bring comfort on too-wide-wake nights. She is also a poet and has a newsletter You Get in Love and Then You Die. Which contains, surprisingly recipes and other stuff.

Thirteen Steps to Book Thirteen by Sheena Wilkinson 28 Oct 9:00 PM (last month)

As regular readers know, because I may have mentioned it occasionally, I will shortly be self-publishing a book for the very first time. 

Will Miss McVey Takes Charge, the sequel to Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau be a one-off venture, or am I moving into a hybrid phase of my career, where I use different publishing models for different projects? I have no idea. At this stage all I know is that I am nervous, excited and determined to do all I can to make it as successful as possible. 

It's easy to see that these books belong together

The big difference of course is that the buck stops with me. I have worked with excellent professional editor, typesetter, proofreader and cover designer, so I know the product is as good as ever, but there’s no publisher behind me making marketing decisions or anything else. 

Thankfully I have the support of Writers Review Publishing, the author-led co-operative who invited me and Miss McVey on board. Their logo, and my biog which makes it clear that I am an established professional, endorse the project, give it that stamp of approval which I’ve realised I need and want. 

Writers Review Publishing

It's easy to think of this book as an outlier  – I’d be lying if I said that self-publishing would be my preferred option for future books – but Miss McVey Takes Charge is as much a Sheena Wilkinson book as any of the previous twelve, and they have all been steps along the way to its publication. Even a pony book, even a gritty contemporary teen love story, even a cosy 1920s school story – all contain the same DNA as Miss McVey. 

Just for fun – and hopefully to generate some interest in the book! – I have written a series of (very short) blog posts – 13 Steps to Book 13 – which I will publish over on my Substack platform as I countdown to publication day on 13 November. 

It’s been fascinating looking at my thirteen books not only as a body of work, but as steps along the path to the publication of Miss McVey Takes Charge. 

Readers might be more excited than Stroller

I hope some of you might like to come along for the ride! 

Giant-Sized stories by Claire Fayers 26 Oct 11:00 PM (last month)

 How did you spend your extra hour on Sunday? I had a nice lie-in, worked out a knotty problem in the book I'm editing and remembered that I needed to write a blog post. So here's one I wrote earlier for a Welsh fantasy kickstarter campaign. 

Think of Wales, and you’ll probably think of dragons. Maybe sheep. But giants? When I started researching stories for my Welsh Giants, Ghosts and Goblins, I knew about Idris, of Cadair Idris fame, and Bendigeidfran – Bran the Blessed – who led a war against Ireland in the Mabinogi. But, digging deeper, I was surprised how many different giants wandered our landscape. They largely fall into three categories: hero giants who carry out good deeds; villainous giants who stand in the way of heroes’ quests; and random, chaotic giants who have a penchant for rearranging the landscape.

 Giant heroes

John o'the Thumbs got his name because he had eight fingers on each hand. (I don’t know why he’s not called John o'the Fingers in that case.) In some versions of the story, he’s a giant, in others he’s a warrior, but he definitely killed a dragon at Denbigh castle following an epic battle. 

The frightened townsfolk, however, refused to believe the dragon was dead and so John hacked off its head and paraded it through town, which finally convinced them.

Giant villains

My favourite of all giant villains is Yspaddaden Pencawr, father of the peculiarly normal-sized Olwen in the tale of Culwch and Olwen. He’s truly enormous and as blood-thirsty as any giant you might hope to meet. The sort of giant who’d grind your bones to make his bread then use what’s left of you to make marmalade. His most notable feature is his skin, which is so saggy and wrinkled that great folds of it droop over his eyes and a team of servants have to prop them up with long forks so he can see:

“The greeting of Heaven and of man be unto thee, Yspaddaden Penkawr,” said they. “And you, wherefore come you?” “We come to ask thy daughter Olwen, for Kilhwch the son of Kilydd, the son of Prince Kelyddon.” “Where are my pages and my servants? Raise up the forks beneath my two eyebrows which have fallen over my eyes, that I may see the fashion of my son-in-law.” And they did so. “Come hither to-morrow, and you shall have an answer.”

In the grand tradition of angry fairytale fathers, the giant sets Culwch a set of impossible tasks to win the hand of Olwen – a list that goes on for pages. Culwch and his team of Arthurian heroes complete every one of them, after which they kill the treacherous Yspaddeden. Olwen doesn’t seem to mind very much.

Chaotic giants

Where you find a stone, or heap of stones, there’s often a tale of a giant who put them there. 

The burial mound, Barclodiad y Gawres (Giantess’s Apronful) on Ynys Mȏn, was formed when a cobbler carrying a sack of worn-out shoes for repair came across two giants who asked him how far it was to Ynys Mȏn because they intended to build a house and settle there. Thinking quickly, he tipped all the shoes out of his sack and told them he'd walked from there and had worn out all the shoes on the journey. The giantess was so disgusted, she dropped the apronful of rocks she'd brought to build the house and the two giants sulked off back to England.

In a similar story further south, Mathilda the giantess built Hay-on-Wye’s castle in one night, carrying the stones in her apron. 

Jack o’Kent is variously described as a magician, a trickster and a giant. He lived on the Welsh borders and had a habit of making bets with the devil. In one story, he and the devil have a stone-tossing contest, resulting in the three standing stones that give the South Wales town of Trellech its name. Two other stories relate to Mount Skirrid, just outside Abergavenny. The mountain gets its name from its distinctive split peak (the Welsh name, Ysgryd, means split.) In one story, Jack and the devil meet to play cards on top of the mountain and Jack bets the devil he can jump from Skirrid to the top of the Sugarloaf, a distance of about three miles. He succeeds, but kicks out a giant piece of the Skirrid as he leaps. The second story has Jack betting the devil that the Sugarloaf is higher than the Mendips. Again, he wins, and, in a motif you'll recognise by now, the devil grabs an apronful of earth from the top of Mount Skirrid to add to the Mendips, but he drops it too early, creating a hill which is known as Little Skirrid.

Good or bad, metaphorical or literal, giants are larger-than-life forces that can send your stories off into unexpected directions. As with all magical creatures of Wales, treat them with respect.

www.clairefayers.com

Do we protect the children? 25 Oct 1:55 AM (last month)

It opens with father declaring that Christmas won’t take place this year because he’s annoyed with his son’s school report. He then hits his wife with a spoon, stabs her by accident with the carving knife, reminisces fondly about brutal public school traditions and says that if he’d talked to his father the way his son talked back to him, he’d have been forced to drink a gallon of petrol.

So the son gets sent to Groosham Grange, to toughen him up. He discovers strange things happening, meets gruesome teachers and watches the boy and girl who arrived with him gradually fall under the evil influence the school holds over all its pupils. The brave boy hero he is, he escapes.

But…

… and this really surprised me, everything I expected to happen at the end doesn’t. I can’t write about it because that would spoil it for others. Not fair. I’ll just say it took me by surprise.

Here’s the thing, though: reading it, the Protective Adult reared its head inside me. Should children be permitted to read this? Shouldn’t they be protected? Isn’t it too violent? Too grotesque? Too… well, just not nice?

And then I thought that if I’d found such a book when I was 12, it probably would have been just the thing. Weird, wild, funny, delightfully odd! It wouldn’t have been Biggles bashing the Hun and vanquishing the natives. It wouldn’t have been Enid Blyton. It wouldn’t have been all the traditional, jolly good stuff I grew up on, with all its faded Empire glory, rippling heroes, wet girls and snivelling foreigners.

It would have probably been The Best Book In The World. And it wouldn’t, ever, have turned me into an axe murderer.

Writing historical fiction - Sue Purkiss 22 Oct 9:00 PM (last month)

It's an interesting thing, writing historical fiction. I've written several books in this genre: one set in the 9th century, one in the early 19th, and one in the mid 19th - plus there are two yet-to-be published books set in the Second World War.

There are practical reasons for writing books set in the past. For one thing, you don't have to grapple with modern technology - if you're writing in the present, and your hero/heroine is stuck up a mountain or has missed the last bus, you can easily - too easily - extricate him/her by means of a quick text or phone call. On the other hand, you know your context - the world of your story. Whereas I remember when I was writing Warrior King - about Alfred the Great and his daughter, I'd been researching for months, if not years. Finally, I came to the point where I was actually ready to start writing my story. In the first chapter, Alfred reaches for a drink. But what would he be drinking out of? A goblet made of metal? Wood? What? Or would it be a cup? And later, someone serves cakes (no, not THOSE cakes!). What would they cakes be made of? No sugar around then - honey, perhaps? What would make them rise? Or would they just be flat?

And then, of course, there's finding out, as far as possible, the truth about what was happening in your chosen period. Of course, the closer to the present you're looking at, the more information there is available. With Jack Fortune, for instance, which is about a plant hunter and his young nephew who set off for the Himalayas, I found online a detailed journal written by Joseph Hooker about his own adventures doing the same thing. Hurrah! But then that all gets complicated. You have access to how a person of that time perceived the world - but nowadays, looking through the lens of a 21st century view of imperialism, and recognising that Hooker's thrilling adventures were carried out in the sevice of the Empire with all that that entails - well, do you write from the point of view of a person of his/her time, or do you take account of a contemporary view of the same issues and actions?

And then there's the language. Do you try to approximate to the language as it was spoken in the time period of your story? If you're writing about the Elizabethan era, do you scatter your dialogue with 'thees' and 'thous' and the occasional 'Odds bodykins, forsooth'? To me, that's a no-brainer. If you're wrting about the 9th century, they would all have been speaking Anglo-Saxon, or some variant of it. So of course, your dialogue has to be in modern English. But it's not as simple as that. You have to avoid modern slang, obviously; you have to attempt to get the right sort of register for the person who's speaking - Alfred, for instance, will speak differently to a shepherd. Well, probably... So much to think about.

What's set all this off? Well, I've just read Ken Follett's latest book, which is about the building of Stonehenge and is called The Circle of Days. So it's set several thousand years BCE.

Now, I've been fascinated for a very long time by the era of prehistory. In particular, I'm intrigued by the cave paintings of south west France. They are so beautiful, so sensitively done - and how does this square with the version of the Stone Age that I was taught in school, with brutish early humans struggling to survive and engaged in a constant struggle with nature and with each other? Well, it doesn't of course, and that view of the distant past is being constantly revised. But when you start to write conversations between people of that era - how do you do it? How complex was their language - were their thoughts? Did they have similar notions about relationships to us - and about so many other things, like loyalty, friendship, duty, community?

So I found Follett's book interesting in terms of how he dealt with such issues. I'm still mulling it over - but I'm certainly impressed by the confidence and imagination with which he re-creates a world about which, really, we know very little. It's interesting that he uses very simple language and short sentences throughout - is that a nod to a simpler time?

As L P Hartley famously said, 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.' But how different,  really, in terms of what people were like, was the past? It's an interesting question - I think! - and one to which there are no easy answers.

The whoosh of a collapsing plan - by Rowena House 20 Oct 4:00 PM (last month)

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, I love making plans. I like the whooshing sound they make as they collapse.

His original quote was about deadlines flying past. But having watched Master Blasters on TV years ago, I'm going to say edifices collapse with a whoosh as well, and a satisfying mushroom of dust, leaving a pile of rubble from which to start building again if that’s what takes your fancy.

The plan thus demolished?

That having finished draft one of the seventeenth-century witch trial work-in-progress back in April, I would power into the development edit on retreat in June and finish it in time for an historical writing course at Moniack Mhor in November.

However. 

A series of well-placed detonators went off in the real world, starting in May, and reverberating until now, leaving me surrounded by rubble, wondering if I’ll be able to pick up a trowel again before November.

Which is fine. My sort-of deadline for this story is end-September next year, and since I don’t have writing plans after that, there’s no pressure to finish this manuscript early.

Where, therefore, is the WIP in its fragmented state of becoming a story?

The A-plot is undergoing a thorough development edit to bring out its protagonist’s character arc as it evolved during the drafting. Before the latest detonation, this edit had reached the midpoint of Act 2 part 1, with the outline of further structural revisions tucked away safety in various synopses. So I should be able to pick up these pieces as soon as time allows.

The development edit must also integrate an entirely new B-plot into the A-plot. I’d planned to draft this B-plot before plaiting the two together, but in practice I found myself writing both in tandem – in alternating chapters – so I’ll carry on with that when I can. Meanwhile, I’m hoping the ‘backroom girls’ of my creative unconscious are already working out how to dovetail their dual denouements.

The shape of this ending is mostly being driven by the internal logic of each plotline, but external drivers are in the mix, too. 

For example, back in September, at another super-productive writing retreat at Chez Castillon [pic below], our leader, author and writing tutor Rowan Coleman, recommended the A- and B-plot protagonists have a closer relationship than the one I have plotted. She wondered about a romance between them – as had the tutor at the June retreat – an option I don't think is plausible in the world I've created for them. 

In two previous iterations of a female protagonist for the B-plot, both women were in a significant relationship with the A-plot hero, Tom. However, neither the role of lover nor surrogate mother suits the current B-plot heroine, Alys.

On the other hand, Tom's story would benefit from a more dramatic Q-factor to catalyse the final battle. So that is the specific story problem I have set the BR girls: how can Alys trigger Tom’s climax action during a face-to-face meeting?

For those not a fan of plotting via story beats, the Q-factor is – from memory – James Scott Bell’s term for the beat where a character or event that happens early in the story enables a critical action later on. It’s named after Q in the Bond films, the character who gives James Bond a gadget which will save the day.

Away from such structural plotting, the contours of Alys’s character arc are also growing in the cracks and dusty corners left in the rubble of my plan.

Earlier this month, for instance, the BR girls suggested a more relatable emotional wound than the one I had plotted, resulting in more poignant psychological scar and consequent immoral action. Perhaps her confession/self-revelation about her wound might factor into Tom’s Q-factor scene. Who knows.

Meanwhile, a separate suggestion arrived from the backroom last weekend. Since Tom’s story is at its core about a conformist who learns to think for himself, perhaps Alys’s story should - at heart - be about an outsider who chooses to come in from the cold.

Perhaps her self-revelation about her wound is what decides her to end her self-imposed exile, and finally meet with Tom. Hmm...

However it happens, the need for this significant meeting between Tom and Alys was reinforced last weekend by another serendipitous event. 

The leader of the Moniack Mhor historical fiction writing course in November is the author Andrew Miller. I adore his Costa prize-winning Pure and find his blogs and interviews about his approach to writing fascinating. So, for National Bookshop Day, I bought his 2025 Booker Prize short-listed novel The Land in Winter and read it over the past two weekends.

Now it’s finished, I don’t know what to think about it. Atmospheric, yes. Beautifully written in parts. But it's not my kind of book. Wrong era, wrong characters. It happens. But [spoiler alert] right at the end, all four point-of-view characters meet.

I'm not into signs, but this was a sign, right? Tom and Alys must meet. I just hope the BR girls are onto the case. 

Rowena House Author on Facebook and Instagram.

Folklore into fiction - by Lu Hersey 19 Oct 2:30 AM (last month)

 I've recently been writing up some folklore stories as part of an ongoing project, and can't help noticing how easily I'm distracted. So many questions come up about each tale, I spend hours researching (which mostly means going down google rabbit holes), and of course there are no definitive answers. Which possibly goes some way to explain why folklore provides ongoing inspiration for fiction writers. Every story provides so many opportunities to speculate on what really happened.

By way of example - this is the story of the Mermaid of Zennor. (I'm unlikely to write a fiction story based on this in the near future, so if you feel there's something you'd find useful in it, go ahead!)

The basic story goes something like this: there was once a young man called Mathew Trewhella, son of the churchwarden, who sang every Sunday in the church choir in the tiny village of Zennor, Cornwall. His voice was so beautiful that it attracted the attention of a mermaid, who took to sitting on a rock in Pendour Cove, below the church, to hear him sing. (In some versions, she also had a beautiful voice, and when she sang, Mathew was captivated by the haunting sound, drifting up from the Cove)

Unable to stop herself, the mermaid came closer to the church every Sunday, until one day she ventured inside to find the man with the beautiful voice. Matthew was enchanted by her, they fell in love, and the mermaid enticed him to follow her back to the sea. The couple were last seen swimming out of Pendour Cove, and no one in Zennor ever saw them again. 

There are a few different versions of this story, but the basic elements are the same - choirboy Mathew Trewhella falls in love with a mermaid and follows her to the sea. Did they live happily ever after, or did he drown when they got into the ocean? The answer isn't part of the original story. But stories can grow over time...

In one version, a ship drops anchor near Pendour Cove many years (possibly centuries) later, and a mermaid appears, angry that the anchor has landed on the home she shares with her husband, Mathew Trewhella, and their children. The captain weighs anchor immediately, because every sailor knows mermaids have the power to send ships to the deep, but his telling of this encounter adds an extra layer to the original. 

In another version, Mathew's mother is heartbroken by his disappearance and mourns him ever after, but fortunately she is well looked after by her many other children. This extra snippet made me wonder if Matthew was simply fed up with the responsibility of looking after his elderly mother, and when he found a lover outside the village, made good his escape. 

Of course there's the basic question - do mermaids actually exist? Belief in the existence of intelligent sea living entities crosses many cultures, and there's often an element of truth, however slight, in most folklore tales. People believed in the existence of mermaids until very recently - and some (myself included) still think it's a possibility. Certainly something for a fiction writer to consider...

The only definite in the story is that someone, or maybe something, came to the church, unable to resist the sound of Mathew's voice. Was she really a mermaid? If she was, what happened to her tail? It's hard to believe a mermaid came into the church without the congregation kicking up a more of a fuss - traditionally mermaids only carry a mirror and a comb, Maybe this one wore a dress to cover her breasts and her fish tail, or the villagers were too scared - or in awe of mermaids - to say anything. It might even simply be that she was an outsider (Zennor is a very small village) who wore unusual clothes, and Matthew eloped with her. 

The point is that no one really knows what happened, and it was a very long time ago - which means you can make the story into anything you like. Perhaps it was originally intended as something as basic as a parable about the power of hymns drawing a heathen mermaid into the church (even if she didn't stick around long).

However you tell the story, the mystery of Matthew's disappearance has lived on for half a century - and legend has it you can still hear him singing out in the waves on a stormy night. And best of all, a beautiful mermaid chair, carved well over 400 years ago in memory of Mathew, still resides in Zennor church today. Enough to inspire any writer...

And that's the beauty of folklore.

Lu Hersey

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