An Awfully Big Blog Adventure View RSS

Members' News July 6 Jul 10:00 PM (yesterday, 10:00 pm)

Congratulations to all Scattered Authors with books out this month. There's lots for younger children here, nicely timed for summer reading.

Animagicals: Noah's Bear, by Paula Harrison, illustrated by Erwin Madrid

Book two in Paula's magical series published by Nosy Crow, follows the adventures of children who can turn into animals.

Noah loves changing into a bear! He’s sure it’s the animal he’s destined to be. So why do his friends at Wild Haven School say he should choose something else? A mysterious magic brings a terrible storm to the land of Animagia, putting every animal in danger. Noah is determined to help. Can he stay true to himself and prove how great he can be as a bear?

Details here

Tales of the Wild: Animal Families by Alice Harman, illustrated by Becca Hall

How to Build a Human by Moria Butterfield, illustrated by Clare Elsom

Another in the Builderbot series, published by Ladybird, 2nd July.

Meet the Builderbots – the best building crew in the universe! They can build just about anything.... but can they build a human?

Take a fascinating tour through the incredible body, and discover all the things that make a human – from the weird to the wonderful!

Leaving the House by Sally Nicholls, illustrated by Ellie Snowdon

Frogs and Toads by Paul May 3 Jul 9:00 PM (4 days ago)

On my allotment in Friern Barnet I have an old cast-iron bath. When Friern Hospital closed in 1993 an Italian named Mario laid claim to the bath, and transported it a few hundred metres to the allotment site. The hospital was originally known as Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum and at one time had more than 2000 inmates and hundreds of staff.

There are many Italians who have allotment plots near mine. Many of them arrived after WW2 when the British government was recruiting staff for places like Friern Hospital. Others, like Mario, followed family members or friends who were already here. Mario came from Naples in the early 1960s to work on the hospital's farm. Yes, a farm! On its 75 acres the hospital had extensive workshops, kitchens, recreation grounds, a gasworks and a brewery. It had its own water supply, chapel and cemetery, and even its own railway station. Where once there was farmland, now there is a huge retail park stretching down to the North Circular Road. The hospital also had the longest corridor in Britain and quite a few cast-iron baths, one of which ended up on my allotment.

Source: Wellcome Collection

I took on the allotment in 2016. Half of it was then planted with grapevines which I quickly discovered had been planted by Mario. Apparently at one time the whole plot had been covered with vines. Mario had taken cuttings from a vine belonging to a neighbour of his with the intention of using the grapes to make wine, only to discover that these particular grapes were useless for winemaking. At one time he had cultivated three adjacent plots but now he only had the one next to mine, from which he dispensed horticultural advice to anyone who'd listen, and where he kept a vast collection of stuff that he'd salvaged from skips because it might come in handy one day. He had also salvaged the bath, which was now partly a water store and partly a seat. Mario sat down often because he was really very ill, but he continued coming to the allotment, digging and grumbling and dispensing unasked-for advice despite the efforts of his family to stop him. Looking at his plot, which, despite all the junk he'd collected, was very picturesque, a friend said to me that it could have been anywhere in rural Europe. 

Mario

It was to try to preserve something of that atmosphere that I took over Mario's plot, in addition to my own, after he died in 2019. I cleared all the junk and turned the bath into a pond. I'd already moved the bath once, from my plot to Mario's, but now I had it back again. I moved it to a new location and planted yellow flag iris and marsh marigold. I made a mound so that wildlife could get to the water, but recently I decided that it would be better if the bath was sunk into the ground, so I started clearing it out in order to move it. That was when I found the frogs. They keep themselves to themselves, those frogs. I never see them out and about, but there were at least four in the bath. Hopefully they've all survived their move to a new location.

I like to think that the frogs are like Arnold Lobel's famous Frog. I love the Frog and Toad books and I was delighted to discover, in a children's bookshop in Bologna, that they have been translated into Italian. It's very good fun reading a book like this, one that I could almost recite with my eyes closed, in another language. Toad sounds great in Italian: "Questa casa è un distastro. Ho un sacco di lavore di fare." It's almost better than the English.

And there's a great story for gardeners where Toad's seeds don't seem to be growing and he shouts at them so loudly that Frog tells him he's scaring them and he needs to leave them alone. Mario didn't need to be told how to grow things and he would no doubt have offered slightly scornful advice to Toad. Like most of my allotment neighbours who come from Kurdistan and Italy, Macedonia and Albania, for Mario growing his own food was just something you did, not a lifestyle choice. Perhaps that was why Mario was so keen to offer advice to those he thought were bungling part-timers. The trouble was, there was only one proper way to do things, and that was HIS way. He also ordered me not to cut the grassy path where the oregano was growing. He'd brought it all the way from the hills above Naples, but he really didn't need to worry about losing it because it has seeded itself everywhere. I also have a very fine white-flowered variety of oregano that was brought by another elderly Italian, Giacomo, from his home in Sicily. Giacomo has also since died. 

Most of the Italians are now in their 80s. Half a dozen have died in the ten years since I came to the allotments. But for at least two of them their memory is preserved in the plants that they brought with them from their childhood homes, and that are now flourishing in North London. And the memory of London's most famous lunatic asylum is preserved in a pond in a bath. The asylum was once a byword or perhaps a synonym for lunacy, and even gets a mention in a children's book. "Three cheers for the Hempress of Colney 'atch," jeer the Londoners in The Magician's Nephew when Jadis, escaped from Narnia, proclaims herself Empress.

Oregano from Naples

Oregano from Sicily

The bath in its new location

* There is a famous philosophical article inspired by the Frog and Toad story Cookies entitled Frog and Toad Lose Control by Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith which is only available via subscription to JSTOR, but there are also numerous discussions of the story online, and if you search hard enough you might even be able to find the mentioned article republished somewhere. I know I did manage to read it once.

Fair Isle Filling the Well - Joan Lennon 2 Jul 4:30 PM (5 days ago)

Like Penny's post a few days ago JULY - and NO DAY WITHOUT A LINE, I too have been filling the well, though I was taken in the opposite direction and as far from the delights of cities as it's easy to get.

Time on Fair Isle has become an essential part of my year. The big skies and the sea that change by the moment, the weather and the birds and the flowers and the people - photos give just the barest flavour of how vivid a place and an experience it is - images and sensations to feed me and my writing until I can return - next year! 

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

JULY - and NO DAY WITHOUT A LINE by Penny Dolan 30 Jun 10:55 PM (7 days ago)

There’s little writing angst with this first of July post, as I am still in a ‘What I did in my Holidays’ kind of mood - so do grab a cup of tea or coffee or whatever and read on.

Star by Star Keeps Shining -- Sheena Wilkinson 28 Jun 8:00 PM (9 days ago)

It hasn't been the jolliest of years, publishing-wise. In 2025 I had two books out within three months -- True Friends at Fernside, and Miss McVey Takes Charge, so it's probably natural that this year should be a time of building things up again. I've always wanted to be a writer contracted to publish a book a year -- that would fit my natural book-producing rhythm very nicely, but so far that's eluded me, and my publishing career looks more like this: 2010, 2012, 2013, 2015 (2); 2017 (2); 2020; 2023; 2024; 2025 (2). (I THINK that adds up to 12!) I suppose, written down, it looks regular enough, but every single one of those books represents a one-book deal, so I have always lived with uncertainty. 

The Polar Bear and the Butterfly 25 Jun 10:16 PM (12 days ago)

 APOLOGY

I missed my day for the blog yesterday. Completely forgot about, as I'm currently deep in revisions of a new story. So by way of apology, here's a short chapter from that story. I hope to resume normal service next month.

(Syl is escorting five wolves through a strange English landscape and has just struggled across a river with them.)

The Polar Bear and the Butterfly

Secret Rooms - Sue Purkiss 22 Jun 9:00 PM (15 days ago)

 The other day I saw a mention somewhere of the Grandmother's secret room, as featured in The Princess and the Goblin, a 19th century children's book by George MacDonald.

It's a strange book in some ways, but I remember being enchanted by it when I read it as a child. It's about a princess, Irene, who lives with her nurse, Lootie, in an isolated castle in the countryside. Nearby under the mountain there are mines, which are worked by local people (including a brave  and enterprising lad called Curdie) and by a race of goblins, who hate humans. Irene does not know about the goblins - and actually, now, it seems rather odd that her father, the King, should have chosen a castle so near them as a home for his daughter. But still, there we are - I suppose kings aren't always sensible. 

Irene climbs the stairs...

One day, Irene decides to explore the castle. At the top of several staircases, she finds a room in which a beautful old lady, also called Irene, sits spinning. The lady tells the princess that she is her several-times-great grandmother. She's a magical lady, who clearly intends to protect Irene from the dangers that surround her. She can only be found if she wants to be. As well as the workroom, she has a bedroom...

What was Irene's surprise to see the loveliest room she had ever seen in her life! It was large and lofty, and dome-shaped. From the centre hung a lamp as round as a ball, shining as if with the brightest moonlight, which made everything visible in the room, though not so clearly that the princess could tell what many of the things were. A large oval bed stood in the middle, with a coverlid of rose colour, and velvet curtains of a lovely pale blue. The walls were also blue - spangled all over with what looked like stars of silver.

The Grandmother. (Both illustrations are Arthur Hughes' original ones.) The Grandmother's appearance changes every time Irene sees her: sometimes she looks old, other times quite young.

I forgot the details of the rest of the story, but that image of a secret room, which could only be found when its owner wished it, intrigued me and has stayed with me. I dug out the book - falling apart, but with Arthur Hughes' beautiful original illustrations - and as I revisited the Grandmother's secret room, it made me think of another 'secret' and certainly unexpected room, which I saw last year in real life.

I live in Somerset now, but I'm from Derbyshire. Last year I was holidaying with family in the Peak District, and on the way back, my son decided he wanted to show his family the place where my parents had lived - Stanley, between Ilkeston and Derby. 

The house is an end terrace, down a little unadopted road. My guess is that the houses were originally built for miners at the nearby pit, but it is only a guess. Dad bought it in 1968. It was a big thing for him: we had lived in council houses up till then, and I don't think anyone, on either side of the family, had actually owned their own house before. So he was immensely proud of it. It looked out onto fields at the back, Mum made a beautiful little garden, and they were very happy there.

Our old house.

So, there we were, outside the house, me taking a photograph, when the current owner popped his head out of an upstairs window, and, understandable curious, asked if he could help us. I explained, and he invited me in for a look round.

Like Dad over fifty years before, Andy was very proud of what he and his wife had done with the house. Apparently, the people who'd bought it after Dad died in 2004 had let the house and garden go, and it had been in a terrible state when they moved in. So they had completely renovated it - it was amazing to see what they had done: it was lovely. But the very best bit was this.

At the top of the stairs was a door which led, in our day, to a cupboard where Mum and Dad stored suitcases and suchlike. Andy paused. "I think you're going to like this," he said. He opened the door.

And there, instead of a cupboard, was a staircase. And at the top was a light and spacious room. To say I was astonished would be a huge understatement. In our day, there had been an attic, yes, but the only entrance to it was through a small trapdoor. I had never seen inside it, and I'd had no idea that there was all this space up there.

There was something very special about this. Knowing how much the house had meant to Dad, I was delighted to see that it was being loved and cared for and brought back to life by a new generation. And that unexpected room - well, it wasn't the kind of magic of Irene's grandmother's room, but there was nevertheless something quite magical about it: an utterly surprising new space.

Occasionally, I have dreams where the house I'm living in suddenly turns out to have extra rooms or outbuildings that I hadn't noticed before. I suppose it's something to do with finding out new possibilities, unexpected avenues. Secret rooms in literature can be pretty nasty places, where unfortunate victims are imprisoned or whatever. But they don't have to be. Sometimes, they can open up a whole new vista.

 

How to divine your future at Midsummer - by Lu Hersey 18 Jun 4:30 PM (19 days ago)

More taxing times with ALCS by Steve Way 16 Jun 7:30 PM (21 days ago)

 

As, appropriately I suppose, the plot regarding repayment of tax paid by ALCS to HMRC thickens, and because many of you kindly read the post and/or commented on it, I thought I would explain the developments since last month’s post.

Firstly, thank you to all of you who commented on the post. Penny Dolan and Rowena House, I appreciated your supportive comments… and you’re right Rowena, if I owed HMRC 20% of something, the boot would definitely be on the other foot and communication between us would be far more rapid! As you mentioned Stroppy Author, it’s more effective to get letters posted to HMRC by family (or in my case friends) in the UK rather than from abroad, when they either seem to get ‘lost’ or considerably delayed. Thank you Nick Garlick for sharing your experiences, I had been considering approaching ALCS to support me in this matter and I’m sorry to hear that you got no help from them.

As I mentioned in last month’s blog, I sent my application form for repayment of tax paid to HMRC by ALCS in January. This was based on me being a taxpayer in France and therefore, under the ‘double tax’ treaty being theoretically eligible to reclaim that tax.

A while after posting the blog I did finally hear from HMRC! It is actually dated from before my last blog but arrived by what’s known around here as ‘snail mail’ a month later. However, to my surprise and frustration, they stated that, ‘We cannot deal with you claim because it is not on the appropriate Double Taxation claim form for France’.

Since I cannot for the life of me understand why the form I sent them is not the or an ‘appropriate’ form I am thinking about sending them the letter below. As fellow ABBA and Scattered Author friends I would be interested to know whether you think it would be a good idea to actually send the letter, or if you think by questioning them in the way I have that they may lock me in The Tower and throw away the key!

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

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing with regard to the letter of 29^th April 2026, which I received from #### ##### stating that I had not sent you the appropriate Double Taxation claim form for France.

I am enquiring about this, not only on my own behalf but because I contribute to a blog (An Awfully Big Blog Adventure) produced and read by many authors, particularly children’s authors, and I am aware that there are other authors like me, living outside the UK, trying to reclaim tax paid to you by ALCS, based on the double tax agreement. I would therefore ask if you could kindly explain why the form I sent you is not the appropriate form as several factors seem to indicate that it should be.

The form I sent you is titled ‘Form DT-Individual’. I have assumed the acronym ‘DT’ refers to the Double Tax Treaty, or am I incorrect in doing so?

Further to this (in bold type) the sub heading of the first page of the form itself (copy enclosed) describes it as an ‘Application for relief at source from United Kingdom (UK) Income Tax and claim to repayment of UK Income Tax’. The form then goes on to state that it is, ‘For use by an individual resident of a country with which the UK has a double taxation treaty that provides for relief from UK Income Tax on… royalties arising in the UK’. I believe that France and many other countries in the UK have a double taxation treaty with the UK, which would seem to further imply that this is an appropriate form to use.

In addition to this, the accompanying notes (copy enclosed) state that one of the purposes of the DT-Individual forms is to apply for ‘relief at source from UK income tax on… royalties… paid from sources in the UK.’

Finally, which I am sure you can understand made me even more certain that I was sending you the appropriate form was that my local tax office in France kindly confirmed my status as a French taxpayer. I assumed that if the form was inappropriate, or unfamiliar to them, that my local tax office would not have ratified my form. As you can no doubt understand I am reticent to send them a second form to sign, having to explain to them also that the original form that seemingly purports to be the correct form is not in fact appropriate. Should it be that there is a special form to use unique to France, despite this not being stated on the one I sent you, surely the officials at my tax office would know this? If this is the case, it would be useful for authors based in other countries if this idiosyncrasy applies elsewhere.

If indeed, for some reason, which as you can see currently eludes me, the ‘Form DT-Individual’, despite apparently strong evidence to the contrary, is indeed incorrect, please could you explain to me which form is indeed the correct and how I access it – I don’t want to send you a second inappropriate form! Also, for the purposes of my fellow authors can you provide a clue as to how they distinguish between the appropriate and  inappropriate form? It would also be intriguing to know which applicants can actually use the form in order to reclaim royalties paid in the UK via the double tax agreement, if any.

I, and I suspect a number of my fellow authors, await your reply with interest.

Yours sincerely,

…

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

Are any of you good at baking as well as having access to sturdy cake -sized metal files?

Waffles & Julius NO HUGS PLEASE! by Ed Vere, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart 14 Jun 3:30 PM (23 days ago)

Meet the Artist – James McNeill Whistler by Dide Tengiz; review by Lynda Waterhouse 10 Jun 10:00 PM (27 days ago)

 

It is heartening to read that that children’s enjoyment of reading and their daily reading habits have risen for the first time in five years. Good news but let’s not forget that in 2025 it reached a record twenty year low. The report also showed that the disadvantage gap was widening.

Check out the National Literacy Trust’s report on children and young people’s reading in 2026 here.

https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/children-and-young-peoples-reading-in-2026/

In the report, nearly half the children (48.7%) said that reading helps them explore their interests. This got me thinking. How are the other 51.3% supported to explore their interests? Online, shared conversations with fellow enthusiasts, collecting e.g.  football stickers or building up a fossil collection? When I’m working with school groups at The Wallace Collection, I often ask them what they collect and, after a moment’s hesitation, I’m given a long list. So far, however, no-one has spoken about building a book collection or collecting comics.

Perhaps it is the right sort of book that is required to explore interests. Yesterday I went to Tate Britain to see the James McNeill Whistler exhibition and I bought Dide Tengiz’s art activity book about the artist.

 Meet the Artist is a series of activity picture books that introduces children to the lives and works of artists. The accompanying activities are designed to encourage children to use art to explore themes, express their own ideas, and develop a lifelong love of art.

It is a good size book, approx. 24cm x 28cm, with the feel of an artist’s sketch book. Some of the activities include an invitation to go on a walk and sketch a street scene, listen to your favourite song and draw how it makes you feel, design patterns or write a poem, or identify places where you felt happy or sad.

Dide’s illustrations capture Whistler’s art whilst maintaining her own unique and beautiful style. Dide says, ‘I love storytelling and creating a sense of place and feeling in my work using colour and observational drawing.’

Check out Dide’s website: https://www.didetengiz.com/

I hope her unpublished silent graphic novel, Slow Things, gets snapped up by a publisher soon. This wordless novel would make a perfect, enjoyable ‘read’. Now that is another theme for a blogpost!

Tate Publishing

ISBN 978-1-917055-12-3

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

Welcome to the June round-up of Scattered Authors news. The weather has already swung from scorching to torrential and the school summer holidays are looming. We have a lovely batch of informative and fun books for young readers this month - clearly the month of non-fiction. Do take a look at them and help celebrate.

BODIE AND THE GHOST SHOWDOWN, Ffion Jones. Illustrated by Kara McHale

Ffion Jones is well-known for writing books supporting kids' mental health. Her latest book from Jessica Kingsley Publishers will be published on June 18th. 

Bodie has a secret fear: being sick. She is haunted by a ghost who whispers warnings and worries, convincing her to avoid buses, sleepovers, and even her favourite basketball games. She misses out on all this fun to keep her "safe" from the scariest thing she can imagine - throwing up!

At first, Bodie listens. The more she obeys, the stronger the ghost becomes. But with the support of her best friend Mina, Bodie learns to challenge his tricks, find her courage, and take back control of her life.

Bodie and the Ghost Showdown is a heartwarming story that gives children 7+ the tools to understand and overcome emetophobia. Blending humour and hope, with relatable characters, it's an empowering read for any child facing anxiety. The book also includes a guide for parents, carers, and professionals offering step-by-step suggestions for supporting kids with emetophobia. With practical tips and discussion prompts, it equips adults to assist children in applying the lessons of the story to real life.

Buy here

LOOK WHAT I FOUND AT THE PARK, Moria Butterfield, illustrated by Jesus Verona

Double Exposure by Paul May 3 Jun 9:00 PM (last month)

I've been using a film camera a lot lately. Although it's handy having a phone in your pocket that you can use to make instant photos when someone dents your car or you need to read the small print on a medicine bottle or a gallery wall, using film feels much more like making something special. These days it feels as if technology is trying to do everything for you, remembering your phone numbers and addresses, curating your Google searches and sorting your emails, and making all your photos look lovely - perfectly exposed and lit with a weird iPhone light.

With an old-fashioned film camera you actually have to do something more than just pressing a virtual button. On my camera I have to think a bit before I shoot, and I have to think a bit more because what I really like doing, especially on a trip to a new city or country, is taking double exposures.

This is not the same as putting a couple of pictures into Photoshop and layering them over each other. That's far too intentional for me. I stick the film in the camera and shoot a whole reel of backgrounds first. These might be patterns, or landscapes or fields of flowers, anything really as long as it's consistent. Then I rewind the film, hopefully without the canister swallowing the leader, and reshoot the whole film, often mainly with people, but in reality not worrying too much, simply trying to bear in mind that if the backgrounds are soft then the second layer will need to be more graphic. For me it's a perfect combination of randomness and planning, which is kind of how I used to write children's books.

A digital photo

The thing is, if you go to a much-photographed place like the Alhambra in Granada you'll probably only go once and the weather and the light might or might not be great for you, and the perfect, atmospheric pictures will already be available in books and on postcards and it seems slightly pointless to take a photo like this, although I did take it, as you see. This was twenty years ago.

But the atmosphere of that visit, and of the place, is recaptured far better for me by the double exposures I took at the same time, even though, not having done it before, I forgot that it would be a good idea to keep the camera the same way round all the time. The added oddness comes from using slide film and then processing it as if it was colour print film - an extra layer of random.

Cross-processed double exposures

When I start writing a story, I love the idea that something is coming into life that wasn't there before, and that even I don't know what it's going to be. Sure, there's a certain amount of planning involved, but I never know exactly what a character is going to say, or where they're going to end up. The end result may be terrible, or it may not, but it's always something new. And that's exactly how I feel about this kind of photography.

Looking Back at Flamingos - Joan Lennon 2 Jun 4:30 PM (last month)

Back in 2011, I was thinking about how good books breed more good books. Fifteen years later, it's still true.   

A PAUSE FOR THE START OF JUNE by Penny Dolan 31 May 8:07 AM (last month)

 A short post today. I'm just back home after a wonderful few days away with family, celebrating a birthday.

Nothing amazingly exotic: sitting on pleasing gardens, strolling along nostalgic streets,  a quick visit to the V&A where children splashed in the sunshine - young spirits among the antiquities - and on to the delight of  an elegant Afternoon Tea and a small evening gathering afterwards. So many happy moments and dear people to see.

Right now,  my  head is full of all those thoughts and that's where I'm staying for now.

Tomorrow I'll pick up ordinary life again but not right now.

Have a very fine June.

Penny Dolan

It's reading, isn't it? 24 May 10:36 PM (last month)

I was in a bookshop in England a while back, when a mother came in asking for help finding a book for her son, who was 11. He loved to read, she said, but was frequently coming from home from school with a book that his teacher wouldn't let him read. Because, the teacher said, it wasn't appropriate. 

What he liked, his mum said, was books with adventure. Horror. Monsters. But he couldn't take those to school because the teacher would stop him reading them. (I have no idea what the teacher thought was appropriate; the mother didn't say.)

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. At a time when kids are reading less and less, when lessons set aside for reading are being scrapped and book sales are declining, we have a teacher stopping a child who wants to read, from reading.

I can't remember all the books we recommended, but I do know we put a copy of The Call by Peadar o' Guilin her hands. 

I'll bet he loved it.

Taking part in an arts festival - Sue Purkiss 22 May 9:00 PM (last month)

 The first bank holiday weekend in May is known in these parts for being the Chaff weekend. 'Chaff' stands for 'Cheddar Arts Fringe Festival', and it began eleven years ago, when a group of artists in Cheddar decided that it had become too expensive to take part in the county-wide arts festival, and had the notion of developing a trail in Cheddar - the idea was that people would walk from house to house, and see the artists' work and chat to them about it. There were various add-ons: one was a grant for a local willow weaver, Sophie Courtier, to create a group of goats made of willow (wild goats are endemic to the gorge) which would be placed at the bottom of the gorge. They're still there, though they need attention every few years - willow doesn't last as stone or bronze does, but it's very embelmatic of the Somerset countryside. (Pause here for a very unsubtle plug for my children's book, The Willow Man).

For the first couple of years, I offered a free writing workshop as part of the festival. In 2020, there were exciting plans for the festival to be themed around the 75th anniversary of the end of the war. I decided with my writing group to produce a book, a collection of memoirs and short stories to do with the war. We called it Encounters With War. Putting this together was a really interesting process. I particularly remember the piece written by Phyllis Goddard, a hugely valued member of the group - sadly no longer with us - who was living and working in London at the time of the Bltz, and had written in a previous collection of an encounter with General de Gaulle, and of crossing the Thames one evening when the river itself seemed to be aflame.

But of course, we all know what happened in 2020. Covid came along, and the festival that year had to be cancelled.

After that, for a few years we had a table as a writing group, to publicise it and hopefully sell a few books. But this year, I decided to take part fully as one of the artists. Of course, taking part as a writer is rather different to taking part as a visual artist. If you sell a painting, you will hopefully make a reasonable amount of money in return for your work - and you can sell cards too. If I sell a book, I will make two or three pounds' profit if I'm lucky. It's just the bizarre economics of writing, and there it is.

So I knew I wasn't going to make any money - but that wasn't why I was doing it. So why was I? Well, mostly, it was about feeling part of a bigger community. For this reason, I wanted to be in a venue with other artists. (Well, and let's be honest, I also hoped to benefit from the footfall that the artists would attract.) And this worked beautifully. I was in a venue with Ellen Watson, who is a textile artist; Gemma Lane, a painter; and Nico Mann, a sculptor of beautiful abstract shapes. It was a delight to spend three days in the company of such talented, interesting, creative, and thoroughly nice people. For more information about their work, and the work of others, please take a look at the Chaff website, which has information about all the artists and examples of their work.

The venue. My books are on the table on the left, Nico's sculptures are on the table and shelves. The hangings were done by Ellen's textiles group.

We were in a busy spot at the bottom of the gorge, so we got quite a lot of tourists coming in to see what was going on, as well as people who had come specifically to take part in the trail, and there were lots of interesting conversations to be had. I'd hoped that my forthcoming book An Ordinary War might be ready in time. That wasn't to be, but I had the cover on display and was able to chat to people about it. And there were extra treats too: friends I used to teach with back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and lots of other more recent friends whom it was lovely to catch up with. And it was specially precious to meet the remarkable Phyllis Goddard's daughter-in-law, who said how much the writing group had meant to her. I sold a small but respectable number of books too - Warrior King, which is about Alfred the Great and his daughter Aethelflaed and is mostly set on the Somerset levels not far from here, was the most popular.

But before the festival could take place, an enormous amount of work had to be put in by the committee, who were all fantastic organisers, and very patient with those of us who were at times slightly bemused by the requirements of social media communication. In partuclar, I'm thinking of potter Jo Brimble, who came up with brilliant posts on Instagram etc (and helped me to concoct some photographs of my work which weren't just book covers), and Adam Clutterbuck and Lucy James, who sorted us all out with charm and patience. 

All in all, it was an overwhelmingly positive experience. My only regret is that I wasn't able to get round and see many of the other artists' work - and there are a lot of them now: over 40 this year. Next year, perhaps!

Chips away: the new metaphor – by Rowena House 20 May 3:00 PM (last month)

For years now my favourite writing metaphor has been the sand castle one. Your pour your words into a sandbox called Draft Zero or just Draft if you’re feeling optimistic, and when the box is full of story, you start shaping it into a wondrous castle for however long it takes.

This month, though, I’ve met the marble block metaphor. The idea that a story is a thing waiting to be revealed as the writer chips away at it. My process has never felt like chiselling before. Nothing was found; it’s all been built.

Why the change? Feedback on the development edit AKA Draft Gazillion of the seventeenth-century witch trial work-in-progress which my supervisors read (it’s a creative writing PhD novel) for the first time in April. Amid kind words, they said (in subtext) that Act 2 Part 1 was a pup. 

‘One more run through ought to do it,’ they suggested.

Then I had a good close look at what I’d sent them.

How? After YEARS working on my wordsmithing, how can I have got it so wrong? I coined a new editing acronym for the margin: CUT. Complete and Utter Tosh. [Actually, it was CUS, but this is a family-friendly blog.] So, chisel out, spit on the hands, cut, cut, polish and cut in pursuit of Draft Gazillion + One AKA Development Edit Mark 2.

The sensible editor bit of the brain said I needed a Book Map (copyright The Golden Egg Academy) or similar (copyright Book Bound UK), charting the whole thing.

But you know how some writers hate writing synopses? It’s book mapping for me. However sensible it is, I loathe it. There are at least three versions of a map for this WIP languishing in various folders, to which I dutifully added another this month, then ignored it. 

What I did instead was analyse each CUT chapter to see for myself what ailed it. Result: I think it’s a combination of slow pace, unclear progressions, and hidden rising stakes. Which are all sort of saying the same thing. Tackling them individually seemed simpler, however,

Thus, 1.5K words are gone and I’m only half way through Act 2 Part 1. I also buffed up cliff-hanger chapter endings and changed chapter breaks so they could all end at a cliff-hanger.

It’s also been good to have a run through for micro-pacing, achieved by tightening sentences and making sure, e.g., that they end on the most powerful word.

For progressions, I’m trying a sentence-based system, too, copy-and-pasting key passages, with their respective page numbers, to track my protagonist’s state of mind and make sure it is progressing in a logical way. By shuffling back and forth between them, altering phrases subtly or wholesale as I go, I think I’ve now linked them together and arrived, ta-dah! at the turning point of Act 2 part 1. Which is the chapter I’m chipping away at now.

Raising stakes is proving trickier. For this WIP, I’ve used a hierarchy of needs system adapted from John Truby’s Anatomy of Story which in turn borrowed from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. (I might have got Truby’s title wrong. Anatomy of Stories? The Story? Sorry, in a rush today.)

Tom, my protagonist, starts in survival mode, protecting his physiological needs: shelter & his livelihood. He then tries to catch a criminal, then faces incrementally-rising moral jeopardy until he finally challenges institutional corruption.

For me, the rising stakes are inherent in this pattern and therefore readable in the subtext. That’s where my instinct says they should stay. If the reader knows from Act 1 that Tom is out on his ear if he messes up the Inciting Incident task that’s been set him, why repeat it in Act 2? And isn’t moral jeopardy by definition a higher stake than keeping your job?

My very clever beta readers didn’t seem to think so. Thus, it’s hammer and chisel to the fore, hoping they’ll be able to see it once I’ve chipped away at more of the dross.

WHERE THE HELL IS MY AGENT? - by Lu Hersey 18 May 4:00 PM (last month)

 In case you didn't realise, I hacked the title from Raye's song, WHERE IS MY HUSBAND? The point of song being she doesn't actually have one, but she's ready and waiting for one, so where the hell is he? 

And that's how I feel about my agent.

I did have one once. I learnt many useful things from him. Like how to cook simple Italian dishes, and where to find great fossils on British beaches. Basically he was fun to hang out with as a friend, but being an agent really wasn't his priority. He spent far more time diving with sharks.

He genuinely couldn't cope with the increasing pressures of the publishing world. In the end he disappeared in a cloud of mental health problems, leaving his entire business behind. He'd definitely chosen the wrong career path for someone with chronic anxiety, and I hope one day he'll resurface as a marine biologist or something he'd really enjoy. He's certainly clever enough.

But meanwhile, what about me?? 

What have I done about finding another agent? 

Not a lot, to be honest. I tentatively tried a couple I liked the sound of, and they were very kind and gave me positive feedback, but sadly... (Another thing I learnt from my last agent is that they have to not only really love your work, but believe they can sell it. Which they didn't.)

I also tried a couple of publishers, whose websites informed me I didn't need an agent to be considered. Result? They simply ghosted me like they were online dating or something. Which seems unnecessarily rude when it's easy to email back a standard rejection from a template, but sadly that seems to be the publishing industry's attitude towards writers. We're all totally dispensable. I ended up feeling like a piece of used clothing, destined for the charity shop. 

I guess all publishers need to see the potential for commercial success in your writing - unless you're celebrity so they know your books will sell anyway (they can always find a ghost writer to actually write the books). Publishing is an increasingly competitive market - and getting worse. Don't even get me started on books being written by AI...

However, once a writer, always a writer. I told myself I simply needed to change direction for a while. So I've been writing a non-fiction book about Somerset dragons, which will come out sometime before Christmas. Seems there's not so much stigma attached to self publishing local books, as no agent or traditional publisher would consider the project anyway. It's kept me busy and I love research...

But unfortunately, what I like writing best is teen fiction. And any writing for children involves gatekeepers like parents and teachers, who need to know the book is good (preferably traditionally published and well reviewed) before they buy. Which means you still need the publishing industry to back you. 

And for any publisher to even consider your book, you need an agent to present it to them - practically no publisher takes unsolicited manuscripts. (Ignore all those stories like JK Rowling's sending out to zillion publishers and how it only takes one, blah blah - that simply doesn't happen any more.)

So I'm stuck with a hole in my bucket syndrome and there's only one way out... 

WHERE THE HELL IS MY AGENT?

Lu Hersey

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

Taxing times with ALCS By Steve Way 16 May 7:30 PM (last month)

 I imagine most of you reading this are registered with ALCS (Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society) – membership is free for members of the Society of Authors. Like the SoA, ALCS is a wonderful organisation supporting writers, in their case collecting funds for use of our work that’s not paid for through royalties.

If you have published work of any kind and you aren’t registered with ALCS, I highly recommend that you do so. On one memorable occasion my (usually annual) payment from ALCS arrived more or less at the same time as my six-monthly royalty payment and both were almost equal in amount. It was a good month! As I understand it, which explained the fairly generous pay out, a teacher training college was photocopying all or part of my science story books for schools for their students – possibly because the stories also came with associated lesson plans. Occasionally, if they have collected sufficient funds, ALCS pay out twice a year. The first time I received this payment was a pleasant surprise. It wasn’t a huge amount, but it paid that month’s council tax during a lean month, so was particularly appreciated as I didn’t need to steal as much from Peter to pay Paul.

Just over ten years ago we moved to rural France, but of course that didn’t prevent ALCS still making annual payments – the peak interest in the story books had waned though not disappeared! However, although the first one or two payments arrived in my UK bank account as usual, I received an apologetic letter from the accountant at ALCS explaining that unless appropriate permissions were given, due to me living abroad, ALCS were obliged to deduct 20% tax from my payments.

Of course, as intimated above, 20% of the total they’d kindly collected for me at that time, didn’t amount to a great deal. Certainly not really enough to warrant my time and energy during a period when I had enough on my plate learning the ropes in a new country etc. But now we’re ten years on and as they say in Scotland ‘many a mickle maks a muckle’. Gradually, with each passing year, it grated a little more that I was effectively only receiving 80% of what was due to me. Finally, I spent some time looking into the issue and discovered that if I sent HMRC the appropriate form, then both gaining permission to receive the full payment from now on and claiming back past payment should be straightforward.

The first stage was to send the form to my local tax office, so that they could stamp it and thereby confirm that I am registered as a taxpayer in France. They did so quickly and efficiently, so the next job was to send the form to HMRC.

Just as I believe you can  order and download stamps in the UK, you can do the same here via ‘La Poste’ in France. I ordered a ‘tracked international’ stamp and duely sent the form on its way. This was early in January. Well, I could track the form but as it turns out ‘international’ tracking means ‘only to the border’. So, all I know, and still know, is that the form reached the UK border. I know nothing more because here we are in May and I’ve had no response from HMRC.

It didn’t take me until now to lose patience waiting for news, so about six weeks after sending my first letter to HMRC, I sent copies of the form and an apologetic covering letter (‘So sorry if you’ve already received my form…’) to them. Once again I ordered an online ‘internationally’ tracked letter. This time however, the most I know, is that La Poste seem to have let me down somehow. All that the tracking section of the website is able to tell me about that package is that the stamp has been downloaded. Well obviously I know that because it was me who downloaded it. However, I posted the form only minutes later. My main guess is that they managed to lose the letter somehow.

Undeterred I came up with Plan C. I’ve mentioned before the kindness of family and friends who, like the Red Cross in times of war, bring us supplies of a brand of tea associated with the north of England. (It is available here but it would possibly be cheaper to buy bags of gold leaves rather than tea leaves.) Two of our wonderful friends not only brought over supplies just as things were getting desperate in the beverage department but they kindly agreed to take a second copy of the original form back to the UK with them and send it to HMRC by signed for recorded delivery.

I’ve just double checked royalmail.com to make sure this missive is as up to date as possible. The only tracking history that’s recorded is that the letter was posted on Saturday 18^th April at 11.18 at Brenchley Post Office. In other words, nearly a month ago. The only other thing it can tell me is,

‘Your item has been posted at a Post Office. As you've used our Royal Mail Signed For service, the next update you'll see is after we've attempted to deliver to the recipient.’

I can’t believe that Royal Mail would take more than a month to attempt to deliver a letter. Have the HMRC offices become completely impenetrable? Do any of you have any suggestions for a Plan D attempt to get through to them? Do any of you live in or near the BX9 postcode? Perhaps you could knock on their door for me, provided it’s not, as it seems, locked up and fortified?

I’ve wondered about approaching ACLS directly, maybe they have a secret tunnel under HMRC’s fortifications and could deliver the missive on my behalf. What do you think?

This is in danger of becoming a boring and bureaucratic version of an epic tale of frustrated enterprise … which I suppose is at least ironic given the circumstances…

Wishbound, by Clemency Brown, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart 14 May 3:30 PM (last month)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about magic, friendship, families and bravery.

Do art, stay young - Anne Rooney 13 May 1:09 AM (last month)

Most recent piece: medieval fish

Looking back through some ABBA posts, I'm struck by how many of us not only write or illustrate but also make other things, whether knitting, collage, or gardens, and spend time viewing art in galleries, museums, theatres and concerts. It's not surprising, perhaps, that those who create for a living also enjoy other creative endeavours, but now it seems it's really good for us. 

A study which has gained some publicity this week reveals that engaging in artistic activity at least once a week slows the ageing process up to four per cent compared with people who don't engage with the arts. That's as much as the benefit of exercise and, in one of the ways of measuring, twice as good as exercise. You could gain both benefits by running to an art gallery, I suppose. I could stop getting the bus to my stained glass classes and cycle. (I would if it weren't for the dangerous potholes, but currently cycling seems more likely to shorten my healthy life.)

With this added benefit of enjoying the arts, there should be even more pressure on schools to make sure art, drama, and music lessons are given the support and funding they need. Yes, it's a long time before today's kids will reap this particular benefit of the arts. (It's most noticeable over 40, when age-related decay starts to set in.) But we need them to grow up to be arts practitioners so that the rest of us can gain this extra bit of happy life, seeing new art and drama and listening to new music. 

This isn't about adding years to your lifespan but to your healthspan — the time when you are in good health. So encouraging engagement with the arts from a young age, and careers in the arts, will save the health service money and us all the pain and despondency of age-related decline. All good, surely? And the kids will likely enjoy it. It's a win-win situation.

Work in progress: Ediacaran animals

All that said, I'm likely decreasing my healthspan with all that exposure to lead and sharp glass. But no matter, it makes me happy!

  

Anne Rooney
website

Coming soon: How Big Is the Universe, Arcturus, September 2026; illustrated by Darcie Olley

  

  

WRITING VILLAINS by Sharon Tregenza 8 May 4:00 PM (2 months ago)

I have more trouble writing villains than I do heroes. It's difficult to get that mix right. It seems they can't be just EVIL, BAD, HORRIBLE folk they need a little back story - a little understanding. It made me think about the popular villains in children's literature and why they work so well.


First we have Miss Trenchbull from "Matilda".

Members' News May 6 May 10:00 PM (2 months ago)

 Welcome to the May round-up of members' news. 

Congratulations to Paula Harrison on the publication of her latest Kitty book: KITTY AND THE MOONFLOWER MYSTERY, from OUP.

 The purrrfect series for newly confident readers, beautifully illustrated by Waterstones Children's Book Prize winner, Jenny Løvlie, and written by bestselling author, Paula Harrison. Kitty is a superhero-in-training with feline superpowers. She dreams of being just like her superhero mum one day, but she's still got a lot to learn.

Join her for a series of enchanting adventures by the light of the moon. It's night-time at the Botanical Gardens. Kitty and her cat crew are there to catch a glimpse of the new rare flowers exhibition.

But someone has stolen the prize exhibit: the exotic moonflower, with its beautiful glowing petals that shine like the moon! If it isn't found soon it might not survive, so Kitty must use her cat-like powers to find the thief and save the moonflower just in the nick of time. Kitty and the Moonflower Mystery is the seventeenth book in the Kitty series, featuring a charming main character, cat-packed exploits, and striking two-colour art on every page. 

https://global.oup.com/education/content/children/series/kitty/

 

The Story of Cat Patrol by Paul May 3 May 9:00 PM (2 months ago)

Books sometimes need input from many different people as they make the journey from idea to reality. I am tempted to begin this piece with the words Once upon a time . . . 

It was 1974, and I was a student at UEA in Norwich, but living in a shared house in the town of Hingham, about 12 miles from the city. More than 100 Puritans emigrated from Hingham in 1638, among them one Samuel Lincoln, the ancestor of Abraham Lincoln. This has nothing to do with the story I'm about to tell, though it did mean that we'd quite often meet people from the USA wandering around looking lost. Hingham was once a market town and has a marketplace surrounded by fine Georgian houses, but now feels more like a village.

One summer afternoon we returned home to find a small bird fluttering in the bushes of our small and unkempt back garden (it was a student house, remember). I managed to catch hold of the bird, took it into an open area and let it go. It flew across the garden, crashed into the bushes, and tried to flap its way over the grass. We put it in a box with a bowl of water and wondered what to do with it. We couldn't think of an answer, so we went to the pub. We told the landlord about the bird and he laughed. 'That's a swift,' he said. 'You take that up on the roof and let it go. That'll fly, you'll see.'

So that's what we did. Back home, I took the bird out of its box and climbed out of an upstairs window onto the flat roof of the kitchen extension. I threw the bird into the air and it was gone. We all felt a little stupid, because one of our favourite activities that summer had been lying on the roof in the early evenings watching the aerobatic displays of the swifts as they fed on insects above the rooftops of the town. We didn't know then that swifts almost never land on the ground and that they feed and sleep on the wing.

Fast forward 20 years or so and I was sitting thinking about stories that might make a good picture book when I remembered the incident of the swift. I very quickly scribbled down a couple of paragraphs describing a small boy sitting in a garden as a bird crashes into bushes, the boy picking up the bird and his mum (I think) telling him to throw it into the air. There were some very quiet picture books around at the time, and I thought that with the right illustrations it might work, so I sent it off to my agent. She got some positive feedback (ie polite rejections) from editors, along with the suggestion that it might be a bit slight for a picture book, but could maybe be expanded into a short chapter book.

Some things stayed the same from beginning to end. Apart from the first two lines the rest of the page is unchanged from the first hastily written text.

Some time later there was a lunch with editors and my agent and we got to talking about this. I can't now remember whose idea the cat was, but I do know that without that lunch, without the collaboration, Cat Patrol would never have existed. The 'something else' that was needed to make the story work had its origin in that meeting, in the idea that the boy wanted to protect the birds from the new neighbours' cat, but there was still a very long way to go before we had a complete text. There are about 2,000 words in the book's five chapters and those 2,000 words took me as long to write as a full-length novel.

Peter Bailey did the lovely black-and-white illustrations which fit the story perfectly, but the publishers weren't happy with his cover and asked another illustrator to have a go. There was some back and forth about the next version but in the end that was rejected too, and the final cover was drawn by a third illustrator, Guy Parker-Rees. The funny thing about it is that Guy Parker-Rees's cover depicts a cat and a bird who seem to be in a kind of 'Tom and Jerry' relationship rather than the life-and-death one which appears between the covers. As Ben says in the book, 'Cats kill birds. You know they do.'

Ben was right. Cats kill up to 55 million birds a year in the UK. The cat is, in fact, the villain of this story. The new neighbours introduce Ben to their pedigree Siamese, Samuel Pennyfeather Lexington Star the Third, or Sammy for short:

'Ben was horrified. Sammy was a cat - the most enormous cat he had ever seen. It stared at him through the wire of its basket. Its eyes were cold and blue. It yawned, and its teeth were like razors.' 

It's a lovely cover, but it has nothing much to do with the story.

Robin collecting food for young. Maybe male . . . maybe not.

One of the difficult things about writing this book was the pronouns. Ben calls the cat 'it', though his sister, who doesn't believe the cat is dangerous, calls it 'he'. But then there was the bird. From the moment he sees it, Ben calls the bird 'he', and everyone else in the story takes their cue from him. I considered using 'it' for the bird but 'he' seemed the most natural thing for an 8-year-old boy to say. And, in case you're wondering, male and female swifts look exactly the same as each other. And, as I'm handing out information here, male and female robins also look identical. I say that because I've met many people who just assume that the male robin is the only one they ever see. The adolescent Robin is a very different thing!

Young Robin

 

Anyway, I'm telling this story just to indicate that books don't just appear out of nowhere and that often the input of an editor is crucial. I would add that when an editor or an agent tells you, 'this needs work', they don't mean, 'you're a terrible writer and it would be best to give up.' A friend of mine who wrote plays sent some work to a Radio 3 producer a lot of years ago and they INVITED HIM TO LUNCH! Then they told him they liked the play but IT NEEDED WORK. Being who he is, he took this to mean that he was wasting his time and his play was rubbish.

If my agent hadn't seen the potential in those early paragraphs and sent them out they'd probably still be sitting in my drawer today.