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BRINGING CORNISH MAGIC TO MIDDLE GRADE FICTION. by Sharon Tregenza 9 Mar 8:21 AM (18 hours ago)

 

It was a no brainer really. Being brought up surrounded by stories of mermaids, giants and mischievous piskies they were always going to seep into my work. Cornish folklore has a wonderful cast of magical beings so why wouldn't I use them in my stories.

The series I'm working on now consists of five or six books for middle grade each a collection of myths based on a particular legend but with a child-friendly take. There's some VERY bloody and gruesome stories mixed in with the legends so I had to pick and choose. 

The Cornish landscape is a gift too. The rugged cliffs, misty moors and ancient standing stones for starters and then there's all those secret sea caves and castles - perfect for a mystery story. I've added a contemporary touch to some and others I've left to do their own thing. 

Members' News March 6 Mar 10:00 PM (3 days ago)

 No news to report for March. Wishing safe and happy travels to everyone doing school visits or going to the London Book Fair. If you have any news you'd like publicised in April, please send it to Claire Fayers.

Teaching and Learning by Paul May 3 Mar 9:00 PM (6 days ago)

I've been dreaming a lot lately about teaching. I don't know why, because It's more than ten years since I was last in a classroom, and the children I dreamed about last night were in a class way back in the 1980s. I taught in primary schools for about 30 years in the end, despite the fact that I never enjoyed school myself as a child. And, probably because I didn't enjoy school, I've spent most of the rest of my life teaching myself to do various things. 

When I started making jewellery, a friend showed me how to solder silver, and after that I was on my own. I bought a book the friend recommended, Metalwork and Enamelling by Herbert Maryon, and that book became my bible. I taught myself to make chains and rings, to set stones and forge shapes and eventually made a precarious kind of living from doing it. I can see now that I would probably have been a far better silversmith if I'd signed up for a course and learned in a more systematic way. Who knows? I might have become rich and successful and never become a teacher or a writer.

I taught myself to play the guitar and the banjo, too. That was the way most people did it with those instruments back then. It was kind of a rebellion against the kind of music you were taught at school and against the way most people learnt to play the piano. I still kind of hate the idea that schools today often teach rock music. Half the fun was doing something teachers hated. So, as with the jewellery making, a friend showed me how to play a chord on the guitar (A minor, probably) and then we'd just strum the chords and make stuff up. I've had the odd lesson along the way since then, but if I want to learn new stuff I mainly learn it from books or people I'm playing with or, these days, from YouTube.

What else have I taught myself to do? Well, there's plumbing, car maintenance, carpentry, house painting, gardening, bicycle maintenance and, oh yes, writing books for children. Of course, my education extended beyond school. I spent three years studying English Literature, which may or may not have helped with the children's writing. I used to say that spending years reading long and often difficult novels gave me a taste for fast-paced thrillers and children's books, but the truth is that I went to university to get away from home and studying was a very minor part of my time there. 

After university I spent a couple of years travelling around the UK on a bicycle, and then working on farms before I decided to do a PGCE in primary education. Back then the PGCE included courses in the sociology, psychology and history of education. Among other things, we were expected to read Rousseau, Freud and Ivan Illich. Illich's book, Deschooling Society, was published in 1971 and was highly critical of institutionalised state education. It wasn't just critical, though. Illich proposed solutions. He suggested that networks might be developed whereby individuals might use the telephone to find teachers, and that they'd be able to seek out teachers who could teach them just what they needed to know, and with whom they were in sympathy. In those days, before the Internet existed, Ivan Illich was imagining YouTube.

I thought Illich was right about the pernicious effects of state education but, at the same time, it seemed as if English primary education at least was doing a decent job. My friend, Derek, who was a GP, told me he'd become a GP because general practice was said to be 'the last refuge of the English eccentric.' I felt a bit that way about the world of primary education. I even thought we'd be able to survive the National Curriculum when it arrived in the late 1980s, but I was wrong. Luckily, YouTube and the Internet arrived just at the right time, especially for confirmed self-educators like me.

Now, before I proceed to give instances of the wonders of online education I'd better tell you what my local bike shop owner said about YouTube. 'It's been great for business,' he told me. 'People watch a video and think, I can do that. So they take the thing to bits and then can't get it back together again. That's when they come to me' What this tells you is that it's essential, if you're going to teach yourself to do something, whether with the help of the Internet or with the help of books, that you learn to follow instructions carefully. Actually, that's true of any situation where someone's trying to teach you something. But, having said that, I use YouTube to do all kinds of jobs on my bike, to learn new things on the guitar, to solve plumbing problems, to fix a variety of different broken household items, to sew neat seams, to grow new crops on the allotment, to cook . . .

Nowadays I could even use YouTube to find valuable advice on how to write books for children. I just checked and there's plenty there. But I never asked anyone's advice about writing children's books. It was another one of those things that I taught myself to do. The only writing experience I had was writing essays at school and university, and keeping a sporadic diary. As I was thinking about this I remembered that when I was at university I used to ignore the essay titles I was given and make up my own. Unfortunately, this gave me some problems when I came to do my Finals, but it does indicate that I was always determined to do things my own way.

I figured that I'd read a lot of children's books and I knew what I liked, so therefore I should be able to write one myself. It was a slow process. Maybe here too I could have cut some corners, and saved a lot of paper, by doing some kind of a course, but I don't think so.  I think the years of writing and throwing away were a crucial part of the learning process. And I also know that in everything I do I'm an improvising, trial-and-error kind of a person. (I don't like the modern version - trial-and-experience. The errors are essential.) My approach wouldn't work for everyone, but it worked for me. I might have gone on a course and not got on with the teacher, after all. It might have been like my swimming lessons.

When I was 40 I decided I ought to learn to swim, so I signed up for adult classes at the local pool. The instructor walked up and down the side of the pool calling out things like 'two widths of front crawl leg kick.' Then, while we did it, he called out, 'Well done, well done!' There was nothing more to his teaching than that. The experience peaked when he decided one week that we should all get in the deep end and tread water. I said I hadn't done that before, but he ignored me. He looked on, calling out, 'Well done! Well done!' as I slowly sank.

After that I bought a book of swim tickets, found a time when there weren't many people in the pool, and taught myself to swim.

There are good teachers in the world, of course. I was taught to drive by Lawrence 'Max' Bygraves, my next-door-neighbour's cousin. He had long, straggly hair and glasses, drove school buses morning and evening, and spent the days teaching people like me to drive. He was very calm, very patient, and very surprised when I passed my test first time. 

What the no-longer-small boy said - Joan Lennon 2 Mar 4:30 PM (7 days ago)

I'm looked back a lot lately, reconsidering my writing life. Twelve years ago, this happened:

'The author was packing up after a boisterous session with 5 classes of 8-9 year-olds in a large, echoy gym.  She became aware that someone was quietly trying to get her attention.

It was a small boy.

The boy was bespectacled, goopy-looking, earnest. A boy who did not now, nor probably ever would, find the world his oyster. The author looked at him. It was like looking at a small boy version of her own small self.

The boy looked at the author, as the noise of the dispersing classes swirled around them.  "I keep your books in a box under my bed," he said.  "And when I can't sleep in the night I take one out and read it." 

The author babbled.  She thanked the small boy for saying such a lovely thing and that he couldn't have said anything nicer to her.  Ever. 

"That's all right," said the small boy, and walked away.

The author knows that she cannot go round schools and libraries and festivals saying, "Hello!  I'm an author and I'd like to live under your bed."  But in her heart, she thinks it would be the nicest thing.  Ever.'

What the small boy said to the author - 20 May, 2014

He's 20 now, that small boy. He'll have forgotten that day years ago. But I haven't. Thank you, no-longer-small boy, for letting me be for even a moment a part of your life, and I'm wishing you all the luck in the world.

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

WORD POWER by Penny Dolan 28 Feb 10:32 PM (9 days ago)

Today is the first day of Spring, which always feel hopeful. The crocus are already out, and the other spring bulbs are appearing in the tubs and pots in the garden, though I’m not sure what or which they are, and winter has destroyed any labels. The leaves will soon tell tell me which will be bright blue grape hyacinth and which will be King Alfred’s golden trumpets. As long as I am not too distracted.

For - lo! - a new distraction has come to my devices. I can now almost ignore Facebook, with its images and variable information. I can, on Instagram, skip through favourite people’s posts, while Threads and Bluesky were quick pop-in visits. All, mostly, under control.

However, Substack has now appeared on my screens and it is a far worse temptation. Why? Because Substack is made of words, and words have power. Their hypnotic symbols offer such a range of thoughts, ideas, facts, interest, emotions. Words can have the power to simply say anything and everything. When words appear, it’s impossible for me to ignore them!

I began as an early reader. My eyes spied out words everywhere, scouring that familiar litany of domestic texts: the HP sauce bottle, the Weetabix box, the News of the World headlines, the cover of Womans’ Realm, the envelopes on the sideboard, a rare batch of comics from my cousin, and so on. A whole circus of interesting mass communication surrounded me. And, there was school too.

A Beginning 24 Feb 9:00 PM (13 days ago)

I've been working on a new story these last few weeks - years, actually, with all sorts of gaps and delays for all sorts of reasons. But the end is coming into sight. And since the writing takes up nearly all my concentration at the moment, I thought I'd offer the first chapter here rather than try to come up with some thoughts about writing in general. 

Before most of the characters in this story were born, a tree began to die in the north of England. Nobody noticed at first, because it was just one tree in a forest full of trees. But then a second one died. And a third. Only when all the leaves on all the forest’s trees had turned white and the branches and trunks had stiffened and dried into dusty husks did anyone pay attention.

But by then it was too late.

The whiteness spread. Nothing was immune. Grass, flowers and crops withered. Water turned the colour of milk and grew sluggish and oily. Cows, sheep and horses - all the animals we see each day in the fields around us – were led away to safer pastures. 

The land kept dying.

Villagers left villages. Towns were deserted. The roads and trains filled up with refugees heading north to Scotland and south to Wales and the rest of England. Many people fled the country altogether. So many that France blew up its entrance to the Channel Tunnel, to stop the migration and the threat of possible infection.

That wasn’t the only border.

Scotland built a new Hadrian’s Wall. A line of towers stretching from Port Carlisle on the west to Whitley Bay on the east. Between the towers came posts. Between the posts, a wall of electricity that incinerated anything – seed, leaf, speck of dust or animal – that tried to pass through it. 

England matched it with The Strip. From Liverpool to the Humber, the land was bulldozed, flattened and covered in a two-mile wide band of asphalt that smothered everything in its path. A fleet of drones patrolled both edges and destroyed anything living that tried to cross it. 

By the time all this was done though, the White Wood – it had a name now – had stopped growing. Nobody knew why. Nobody could explain. All they knew was that it was no longer spreading. But the borders stayed. And the land the wood had swallowed stayed white, choked and dead.

Two impassable borders on either side of a deserted landscape. A landscape with a core of dead whiteness in which nothing lived.

Or so people thought.

An Ordinary War 2 22 Feb 10:00 PM (15 days ago)

 One of the intriguing - and delightful - things about doing research, particularly, perhaps, when you're doing it, as I do, in a fairly haphazard way, is that often, serendipity steps in and points the way forward. 

I explained in last month's post what decided me to write An Ordinary War, and how I began to do the research at the Imperial War Museum and at the National Records Office at Kew. Now something happened which could not have been foreseen or planned, but which turned out to be enormously helpful. My son had a new partner - and she was Polish! Hitherto I had known very little about Poland and its turbulent history, but now I had a personal reason as well as a research-related reason to get to know much more. I talked to Richard and Joanna about what I had found out so far - including the location of the two main prison camps Dad had been in. Gradually the idea emerged that I would meet them in Warsaw and we would go in search of the camps at Thorn/Torun and Marienburg/Malbork. (Dad knew the camps by their German names: it's a feature of Polish history that the land changed hands over the centuries, and so place names changed too.)

The staion at Torun

It was in the summer, and it was a hot train journey from Warsaw to Torun. But, I reminded myself, Dad's train journey into captivity from Trier to Torun would have been infinitely more uncomfortable: he would have been in an overcrowded cattle truck, and he would have been utterly exhausted from lack of food on the long march across France to Trier. He wouldn't have known where he was going, or what was coming.

I thought the station at Torun probably hadn't changed all that much since 1940. (This was about seventeen years ago: it may well look different now.) I knew that the prison camp was not purely a purpose-built camp: some sections of it were based on old forts built during the Franco-Prussian war, many years earlier. I had a map of these forts which I'd printed off from the internet. As we left the station, I could see an old wall, which I thought was probably part of these same fortifications.

Looking over the rooves of Torun

Torun is a beautiful town, with copper-coloured rooves, built beside broad waters of the River Vistula. It's famous for being the birthplace of Copernicus, and for its delicious gingerbread. As we sat that evening enjoying a drink outside a cafe, it struck me that Dad would probably have seen very little of the actual town: I knew that from the station, the prisoners were marched across the bridge to the camp on the other side of the river. 

The next day, we set off in search of the camp. There was no mention of it anywhere: even today, if you look Torun up, you are unlikely to find any mention of it. We were at a bit of a loss - but then serendidpity stepped in again. Joanna suggested taking a taxi - and the driver turned out to know all about the camp and its different locations, because his father had been imprisoned there, as many Poles had been. Different forts were used for different nationalities. He showed us where the hutted camp had been. There was nothing there now. We looked across a barbed wire fence - not, I think, the original one - at the plain which rolled out as far as the eye could see. I imagined the winter winds driving across it straight from Siberia, finding their way through the gaps in the wooden huts.

And then he took us to what looked like an old quarry. He said when he was a boy, he and his friends used to play here. We pushed open the tall metal gates - and there was the brick-built fort which I had read about in contemporary accounts: the place where Dad and many others had been imprisoned for part of the time. The place, surrounded by high banks, was dark and dreary. But at least there were trees there, and birds.

My son on the bridge over the moat surrounding the old fort, which his grandfather once marched across.

Torun and all we saw there made a great impression on me, and much of it found its way into the book. It was very moving to walk, at least partly, in the footsteps not just of Dad, but of all those other young men caught by the war, and to imagine something of the bewilderment and fear they must have felt.

We had intended to go on to Malbork, known to Dad as Marienburg. But our time was limited, and in the end we decided to head in the opposite direction, right down to Lublin in the south-west, where my small grandson was staying with his other grandparents. Lublin too has its camp, which I also went to see. But this was Majdanek, a concentration camp, and its story is far darker, and one for another day. Unlike the one at Torun, this camp has not been forgotten. And nor should it ever be. 

On dinosaurs and castles - Rowena House 20 Feb 3:30 PM (17 days ago)

 

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 18 Feb 4:00 PM (19 days ago)

 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 17 Feb 3:44 AM (20 days ago)

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 14 Feb 3:30 PM (23 days ago)

 

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!

USING COLOUR IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS - BLACK AND WHITE by Sharon Tregenza 8 Feb 4:00 PM (29 days ago)

 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.

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

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.

James's Book About Fighting by Paul May 3 Feb 9:00 PM (last month)

There was a time when it was my job to help small groups of children learn to read. These were children who found reading difficult. Because we wanted to know if what we were doing with them was working, we assessed their reading very carefully before we began and then checked afterwards to see if their reading had improved. In most cases the improvement was huge. As you may know, reading is often assessed in terms of years, as in 'she has a reading age of 12'. By this measure many of those children progressed years in a few months.

A Funny Old Journey in Children's Publishing - Joan Lennon 2 Feb 4:30 PM (last month)

It began back in the 20th century with writing short stories (and I still recommend that as a really useful place to learn, especially for writers who want to write novels) and peddling them to Cricket Magazine. They would take maybe 1 in 3 of what I submitted. Enough success to keep me going.

Stories grew into novels. I had an agent who was, well, useless. And then I was taken on by Fraser Ross Associates. Best move I could have made!

Over the next decade or so, my agent (Lindsey Fraser) worked her tiny socks off, and got my books accepted by different traditional publishers at a rate of 1 or 2 a year. (Different publishers liked different kinds of books from me, so that's the way it went, since I kept writing different kinds of books.)

The grass was green, and time passed.

And then, it stopped. Getting published dried up. I hadn't run out of ideas. I wasn't writing worse (I think I was writing better - well, I mean, it'd be pretty sad to have spent all that time and effort and not got better.) I still finished things on time (I understand that deadlines for writers are hard even when deadlines for publishers are squishy soft), took editing on board, wasn't a diva. I'd done school visits, festival events, taught creative writing workshops, blogged and been polite online. My agent worked hard and harder. But that particular stage had come to an end.

My last YA novel Walking Mountain was traditionally published in 2017. It was nominated for the 2018 Carnegie and went out of print. And though I've gone on writing and my agent has gone on submitting, nobody since has said yes.*

Sound familiar? I know I'm not alone in all this!

So I'm nailing my colours to the mast: once I've finished the current WIP, I will have 2 young adult and 2 adult novels ready and raring to go, and they and I will be setting sail on the sea of self-publishing.

The next stage. Interesting times...**

* I'm talking about children/YA fiction here. Because of a kind invitation from Joan Haig to join her in collaborative non-fiction books, there have been 3 non-fiction yes's from Templar: Talking History, Great Minds, and a solo venture Revolution! (out later this year).

** Since writing this blog, I have been wallowing about in contradictory information and advice about different self-publishing routes - DIY, aggregators, retailers, etc. - and how and if the way the world is going suggests NOT going down the Amazon/Kindle road. Onwards, regardless!

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

FEBRUARY FIRST by Penny Dolan 31 Jan 9:00 PM (last month)

February, and I'm pondering on why it so often seems a hopeful month.

Perhaps it's because all the December and early January festivities are over? The glitter, the tinsel, the lights and decorations are packed away in boxes. The guests have come and gone, and all the events and outings enjoyed. Rooms have been righted, sheets and duvet covers washed and dried, and spare pillows stowed in the linen cupboard. Even that Ghost of January's Past - the haunted dread of the tax return - has been faced, sent and paid. All is done and over, and the new year has truly begun.

Today, the first of February, is a traditional Irish celebration known as St Brigid's Day or, in older traditions, as 'Imbolc'. The feast falls halfway between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox, and marks the start of the lambing season, the time for plant new seeds and, with the growing daylight, the beginning of Spring.

February 2nd is Candlemas, a day in the Catholic calendar associated with the blessing of candles and candle-lit processions. This feast is also known as the Presentation, the day when the Holy Child was taken to the Temple for the first time. Liturgically, Candlemas is also the conclusion of Christmas season, so any fading fir trees or sets of nativity figures should definitely disappear from view.

Meanwhile, February 2nd, in America, is also famous as Groundhog Day and not only for that film. From a Pennsylvanian-German 'hibernation' tradition, this day is when a groundhog emerges from its burrow. If the groundhog - or, back in Europe, a bear or badger - sees its own shadow, the animal will retreat into its den, and winter will continue or six more weeks. However, if the groundhog pops its head out and sees no shadow, spring will be arriving early. 

The Wrong Handle by Sheena Wilkinson 28 Jan 8:00 PM (last month)

 Writing is so weird. 

This time last year I finished a book. Nothing weird about that; I'm a writer. My agent sent it on submission. Nobody bit in the first round – sadly, nothing weird about that either, these days. But this wasn’t the usual ‘it’s too quiet to be commercial and too accessible to be literary’ verdict. Instead there was a suggestion that the book lacked something more fundamental; people didn’t even like the pitch.

I wasn’t thrilled, obviously: in my mind I had written a fine historical novel, women-centred, gritty and heartfelt. Exactly the kind of book I – and, I thought, thousands of women, liked to read. But that didn’t seem to be what editors were picking up on. My agent was keen to pull the book from submission rather than flogging a dead horse. I was working on three something elses – True Friends at Fernside and Miss McVey Takes Charge, which came out in the second half of last year, and an untitled and troublesome dual timeline, so the fiction-writing-and-editing part of my brain was not idle.

Sometime, my agent and I agreed, I would have a good look at the abandoned book and see if I could rejig the pitch to make it more appealing/commercial. I didn’t envisage having to do a major rewrite. 

And then, on retreat in December, I read the book again for the first time in months. Not only did I now agree that there was something fundamental missing; I knew was it was. Not only that, but all the ingredients to make the book hookier, tenser and darker were already there. Always had been. There was even – something new for me – a murder. Or rather, there was a death which I – the writer – hadn’t realised was a murder. As for the murderer? Well, she’d been there all the time too. 

Puzzling 25 Jan 1:31 AM (last month)

I wonder whether other SASSIES suffer from the same problem I'm regularly confronted with?

I have an idea for a story. I start to write and the ideas flow. I'm enjoying myself. But when I reach - roughly - the halfway point, the ideas that got me going just... dry up. I sit there, trying to think of ways to proceed and everything I come up with feels wrong. I might even write it. But it keeps feeling wrong. 

And I know it.

What started out as fun becomes anything but.

I haven't found a solution yet.

An Ordinary War 22 Jan 9:00 PM (last month)

 This year, I am planning to publish a book which has been a very long time in the making. It's inspired by the experiences of my father during the war: he was one of those who didn't escape from Dunkirk. He was captured on the way there, and was a prisoner of war for five years.

Like many - probably most - survivors of war, he didn't talk very much about his experiences. Eventually, he began to tell a few stories, mostly funny ones. Towards the end of the last century, when I started writing seriously, I began to write some of them down. We would sit by the fire drinking whisky - me with ginger, him with water - and he would talk about things that happened in the forests of Poland all those years ago. Often, the stories were the same ones repeated: sometimes, his face would darken, and he would say something that hinted at grimmer truths. Once, we were talking about eating - he always ate hearty meals, but never snacked, never put on weight. He said something to the effect of: "You don't know what you're capable of until you've been really hungry." And then lapsed into silence, clearly remembering things that he wasn't going to talk about.

Some time after he died (in 2004), I decided I wanted to write a novel based on his experiences. Because the books I was writing were for children and young people, it seemed natural to aim it at young adults. I soon realised that there were massive gaps in my knowledge about what had happened to him, and I began to do research. I'm not a trained researcher, I'm not an academic - I have a degree, but it's in English, not history. So it was an exploration, perhaps, rather than an investigation.

And it was fascinating, and immensely rewarding.

I will write more in future posts about this process. But in this one, I just want to tell you about one little thing - the thing that, if I was trying to be poetic, I could say fanned what was a spark into a flame.

I knew that at the end of the war, Dad had ended up in a camp called Fallingbostel, in north-western Germany, from which he was liberated and then repatriated. In a wonderful book I was reading called The Last Escape (by John Nichol and Tony Rennell), I came across a picture of several emaciated prisoners sitting on the ground, smiling and chatting. One of them looked very much like Dad. The photo was attributed to the Imperial War Museum, so I rang them up to see if they could tell me any more about the men in the picture.

They suggested I should make an appointment to go and see someone there, so I did.

They couldn't tell me any more about the identities of the men in the picture, but they did give me useful suggestions about other avenues I could follow. Their first suggestion was to go to the National Archives in Kew. Every prisoner who came home was supposed to fill in a form, detailing how they'd been treated, which prison camps they'd been in and so on - information which I didn't have.

So off I trotted to Kew, and explained what I was after. The assistant warned me that the records were not complete: everyone was supposed to fill in a form, but not everyone did. My heart sank. A trait I shared with my father was a deep dislike of form filling. There wouldn't be one for him, I felt sure.

The assistant produced for me a large folder - I expect  that everything's online now, but that wasn't the case then - containing the forms for Dad's section of the alphabet. I turned the pages carefully, aware that this was a precious resource, not really expecting to find one for Dad.

But then, there it was. Reginald Bernard Course. I hadn't expected it to be in his handwriting, instantly recognisable from all the letters I'd received over the years. And it wasn't just the handwriting. The answers were brief and to the point, and some were quite brusque. I could absolutely picture Dad, impatient with forms and pen-pushers, wanting to be away, wanting to go home, not interested in making a fuss about what had happened to him. I could almost hear his voice.  I stared at the form, and tears came. I wiped them away surreptitiously, and hoped that no-one had seen.

Brief as the form was, it gave me some answers. It told me where he'd been. It told me he'd tried to escape, three times, once with his old pal Shep, whom I'd taken him to see a few years before.

And it gave me the urge to carry on, to follow the trail.

On deadlines & writing deliciousness - Rowena House 20 Jan 4:00 PM (last month)

Oops! Long time no post. Apologies. My excuse: I’m finally on a deadline after nigh on six years nibbling away at my seventeenth-century witch trial work-in-progress, with three (max four) months to get Draft 1 developed, polished, and proof read, including an entirely new narrative perspective on the same events, told in alternate chapters, decided upon last year.

So, about one quarter to one third of a novel to write in three/months. That’s do-able, right?

The writing gods are [ATM] being kind in letting me get on with it, but that’s very unlikely to last on recent form with life duties, so I’m writing and editing daily whenever I can.  

Updates on RowenaHouseAuthor on Facebook if anyone feels like joining me for this last dash, followed by more reflective thoughts about the story, its history, how I’ve bent history and invented stuff, and whether that’s justifiable etc. That’ll be from May-September as I write the critical commentary for the PhD, of which the novel is the main part.  

More good news. I have four readers! Two supervisors and two examiners. Hurrah. While not exactly No. 1 bestseller stuff, four readers are enough to order myself not to waste their time with any residual Draft 1 slop (slop being a 2026 version of Hemingway’s more graphic/honest description of Draft 1). 

Luckily, last November, when I should have been writing an ABBA post, I was en route to one of the classiest, most instructive and motivational retreats I’ve ever been on.

It was a week at the Moniack Mhor writing centre in the hills outside Inverness, Scotland, a place that lots of fine writers have recommended and was high on my wish-list even before they announced that the historical fiction retreat would be led by Lucy Jago, author of A Net for Small Fishes, set just after mine and a lovely, very well-researched read, and Andrew Miller – squee – fresh off the Booker shortlist, whose Land in Winter was the winner in bookshop if (sadly) not on the podium. His Pure has been a touchstone for the voice of this WiP for years and a comfort go-to read for more than a decade. 

To top it all, the other retreaters were super talented, including a dear writer friend off the MA in writing for young people at Bath Spa, Eden Enfield, whose prose for both young people and adult I vastly admire. Honestly, who needs to get published when such deliciousness awaits?

To keep the deliciousness going, I’m thrilled to have been invited by another writer-for-young-people-turned-adult-historical-novelist, Liz Flanagan, to one of her launch events for her English civil war novel, When We Were Divided. 

So looking forward to celebrating its publication with her up in Heptonstall next month (where I haven’t been since 1985) and then getting lost in her story.

Happy writing, editing, reading, plotting, dreaming.

PS I got both copies signed. :0)

Turning an argument around? By Steve Way 19 Jan 10:00 PM (last month)

 

Hello. I hope it’s not too late to wish you a happy, healthy, prosperous and well published 2026!

Just sharing a few idle thoughts, the tenuous link between them being that they are linked to the fascinating way we use language, often in ways that don’t make logical sense.

For one thing, why do we insist on calling it a ‘duvet’ when the French call it ‘une couette’? If we’re going to steal from other languages, we could at least do so correctly! For years the adverts for Audi cars ended with the phrase ‘Vorsprung durch technik… as we say in Germany’. I once asked a German student what that phrase meant and he looked at me blankly. He’d never heard that phrase before and insisted that they would never say it in Germany!?!

This morning, quarter of an hour before I was due to give an online lesson to a couple of Spanish students, we had a power cut and therefore no internet connection. I sent an email explaining the situation to the teaching agency I work with. The reply asked me whether I thought we should cancel the lesson, or whether I would be able to sign on in five or ten minute or not. I wasn’t sure if I should feel complimented or exasperated at the thought that they believed I could psychically predict how long a power cut would be.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard used many times, though one occasion that sticks particularly clearly in my mind was when I heard a lady passionately describing a heated discussion she’d had and declared, “And then, she turns around and says…” My first thought was to wonder if that meant that the lady she’d been arguing with now had her back to her. How rude. No wonder lady number one was upset. Alternatively, was object-of-derision lady originally facing away from deriding-lady and had she now turned around to confront her? More bizarrely, did she perhaps spin around balletically through 360 degrees, believing this would add drama, weight and credibility to her cause? As on other occasions I was too timid to interrupt deriding-lady, who was now if full flow, to explore these options with her, which on reflection was probably for the best.

I also find it funny when people say things like, ‘It was the last place I looked’. Would you continue looking for something you’ve already found? When someone for example ask a lady, ‘Can you give me your number?’ I always want to say ‘One… there’s only one of her’. Do you perhaps want her phone number?’ I’m also tempted to pick a chair up off the floor when someone says, ‘Pull up a chair’. Shouldn’t it be ‘pull along a chair?’ My long-suffering wife often insists, when sharing a cake or such like, ‘you have the bigger half’. Well in my defence on that last one, I do sometimes teach maths. Wouldn’t it be somehow wonderful though if the concept of ‘the bigger half’ could be introduced into the GCSE syllabus? Technically inaccurate, though real life.

A comment that amused my wife recently was when she asked about the length of a coat being sold online. The brilliantly unhelpful response was, ‘Well, I’m five foot two and it comes down to my knees’. In my case I can’t help wondering if those are metric knees or imperial?

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

I’ve just self-published what’s effectively a work of many years, a compilation of ideas I’ve used to inspire creative writing called ‘Reluctant Writers Resource’. What amuses me most, as it contains many sections, is that the paperback version weighs over a kilogramme!*

The original idea was to provide ‘an idea a week to stimulate creative writing’, with the aim of giving teachers springboards for writing to encompass the 38 weeks of the school year, though in the end there are a lot more than 38 sections. The example pieces used to get the children’s creative juices flowing vary in length and complexity but the core of them are deliberately short, with the aim of not outfacing the children and supporting them in believing they could write pieces of similar length. I’ve road tested the ideas in many schools in the UK and abroad and they’ve always worked well. Many teachers told me that they’d never seen their children, including the reluctant writers, produce so much work!

*At least there’s one way in which it’s a weighty tome!

 

 

Kindle ASIN : B0GF8RQ7WX

Paperback ISBN : 979 – 8241950987

Hardback ISBN : 979 - 8242528680

 

 

Let's all talk about ourselves - by Lu Hersey 18 Jan 4:00 PM (last month)

When I was a child, my grandmother came to live with us. Born and bred in Yorkshire, she still had a strong Yorkshire accent after half a century of living in Surrey, where she and her husband moved after their first child was born. Here's a photo of her with me and our dog Bumble (a long time ago, obviously).

One of Grandma's favourite sayings was "I've that many stories to tell, I should write a book!"  In fact her stories were almost on a tape loop, consisting entirely of things she wanted to remember, and many that made her laugh, As a teenager, I'd bring my friend Gina home for tea sometimes after school, and buy jam donuts on the way - just so we could hear her jam donut story. It went like this:

"Our Pauline once had a job int' donut factory, but she got t'sack for putting too much jam int' donuts!" 

She'd laugh at the memory, and being mean teens, we'd laugh too, but only because we'd set her up to tell the same old tale. Of course I'd love to hear her tell it again now. To this day I miss my grandma and her collection of stories, and regret not asking more about the rest of her life outside the golden moments. Things my mother told me later, that grandma never mentioned. 

Like how Grandma was the one who found her father after he'd slit his throat in the bath, the year before she was due to be married. About her child, Bessie May, she'd loved so much, who died of pneumonia when only two years old. The tragic side of the life of a woman who was the thirteenth of fourteen children, had knitted socks for a brother fighting in the Boer War (she told me about that herself, though the story was about learning to knit socks, not what happened to the brother). She'd survived two world wars and a lot of harrowing experiences. But the stories were always about holiday larks, and pranks her Percy (my grandfather) had played, and fireside tales of her family life back in Yorkshire. The first car that drove through her village, the first aeroplane she saw. Things of joy and wonder. And I admire her for having such a wonderfully selective memory. Seeing the best in life. 

Of course, many people want to relate the sad, or tragic elements of their lives, and their stories are equally valid. I'm currently on a memoir writing course - not because I want to write my own memoir, but because remembering forgotten aspects of your own life is a fascinating exercise, and I'm really interested in how everyone tells their stories. 

The course is held by writer Jenny Alexander, who holds inspirational workshops on various aspects of writing (see https://jennyalexander.co.uk/) for anyone of any writing ability. In the memoir writing workshops, I'm learning that by focusing in on something small - a favourite object or perhaps one seemingly insignificant experience - you can suddenly bring back memories of an entire era in your life. 

Whether you're interested in memoir writing or not, focussing on detail is an important key to any story. I see an element of truth in what my grandmother said all those years ago. You don't have to write a book about it, but we all have interesting life stories to tell. AI just steals stories from us. If nothing else, writing about your own life reminds you that you have something AI can never have - lived experience.

by Lu Hersey

PS Here's my grandma's Yorkshire parkin recipe, hand written by her. One of my favourite memories is the smell and taste of her wonderful parkin...

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

New You For Ever, written by Steve Cole, illustrated by Chris King, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart 14 Jan 3:30 PM (last month)

 

The title of this book makes it sound like a self-help manual, but its actually a futuristic thriller aimed at teenage readers. Published by Barrington Stoke, it's a short novel designed to be accessible to struggling readers. It's fast-paced, exciting and thought-provoking.

Anders works with his Dad on a short good news slot of television news. But this is in a future where climate change has destroyed much of our world and enabled those in power to manipulate world populations. The immediate threat is being advertised as a panacea. Swap your human body for a Pleeka one, short of 'Replica'. Those fake bodies are perfect, not needing food or exericise or to learn anything, and they'll never get ill. They're already programmed, even promising perfect dancing skills! They're sold as a solution to climate breakdown because they save on foods and medicines. But their batteries die, and only the richest can afford to replace them. And how much power is used to create them? Worse than that, the authorities can control Pleekas. In a clock-ticking life or death adventure, we battle with Anders to get the truth out to the world, and change things for the better. 

A story to make young people think about the future ahead for themselves and their world, and to question what is, and isn't, true. 

The Rock From the Sky, by Jon Klassen (Anne Rooney) 13 Jan 12:53 AM (last month)

This is perhaps a bit of a cheat but instead of waffling on to you today I'd like to direct you to this interview with Jon Klassen from 2021 about his book The Rock From the Sky. There are three things that make it particularly interesting. One is Klassen's stated desire to write a quiet book, and his explanation of the static images. I often hear authors complain that agents and editors turn down their books because they are too quiet; it's great to see this defence and explanation of quiet-done-properly. Second, Klassen cites his influences as including Samuel Becket and Stanley Kubrick. I love this. It never occurs to people outside the sphere of children's books that children's authors are influeced by (or even read/view) work by serious intellectuals whose work is intended for adults. (A book I'm currently working on is influenced by Kant and J.S.Mill, among others.) Finally, and most importantly, I love Klassen's account of how he likes to challenge the picture book format and how some of his books have been spawned by anger yet spin that anger into gold. This brilliant challenge to the dreary, oven-ready 'show don't tell' advice, for example:

"I want boring pictures that have something exciting as their context. So usually that’s emotional. If you tell the audience that this character is having a horrible day or that something’s really wrong, but you don’t draw that, then they get to load that drawing with emotion."

See read this interview on Tyger Tale instead of waiting for me to say something insightful.

Anne Rooney

Out now, Dec 2025, Arcturus publishing:

The Essential Book of AI