An Awfully Big Blog Adventure View RSS

Constant noise and blinding lights - by Lu Hersey 18 Nov 4:00 PM (yesterday, 4:00 pm)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some themed floats are based on Children's novels (classics like Alice in Wonderland or Pinocchio rather than anything contemporary) - but if you're a film maker, you stand a far better chance of seeing a tribute to your work. Although it's unpredictable. This year I expected to see a lot of variations on Wicked and possibly a few K-Pop Demon Hunters, but there was only one Wicked themed cart - instead there were several Western movie style bar fight themes, a few ghost trains, the Titanic, and a brilliant Day of the Dead cart.  The music blaring from each cart reflects the theme, which makes for a mix no DJ would ever consider - and tbh, once a year is probably enough.

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

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

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

Anyway, where else can you see ghost chickens?

Lu Hersey

Perplexing Problems By Steve Way 16 Nov 7:00 PM (3 days ago)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ISBN 979-8297102361

My Book of Classic Nursery Tales, by James Mayhew, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart 14 Nov 3:30 PM (5 days ago)

 

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

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

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

    

A very special book. 

Better late than never 13 Nov 2:04 PM (6 days ago)

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

Pliosaurs vs. AI (Anne Rooney) 13 Nov 2:08 AM (7 days ago)

 

Do you like my pliosaur? 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

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

 

Anne Rooney

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

 

 

USING COLOUR IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS - GREEN By Sharon Tregenza 8 Nov 4:00 PM (11 days ago)

 

GREEN

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

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

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

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

Laura Vaccaro Seeger pays homage to the colour green and invites children to notice just how many greens there are - jade green, pea green and forest green for instance. Because this book focuses on just one colour it supports visual literacy as well as encouraging connections to the natural world.

In Dr Seuss's famous book the colour green is in the food. The choice of green here is deliberate and meaningful - it's used to denote novelty.

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

www.sharontregenza.com

sharontregenza@gmail.com

Members' News 6 Nov 10:00 PM (13 days ago)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

25 Years Later by Paul May 3 Nov 9:00 PM (16 days ago)

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

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

Defenders is the book I wrote immediately after Troublemakers at a time when the publishers were still optimistic about developing a football-based section within their Corgi Yearling imprint. I like this book very much. It was inspired by watching my (then) eight-year-old son's Sunday League football team where the role of striker was always the glamorous one. I thought there ought to be a book for the un-glamorous defenders and so I wrote one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fair Isle Writing Retreat - Joan Lennon 2 Nov 4:30 PM (17 days ago)

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

Fair Isle Studio

WHOSE VOICE WAS THAT? by Penny Dolan 31 Oct 5:00 PM (19 days ago)

Thirteen Steps to Book Thirteen by Sheena Wilkinson 28 Oct 9:00 PM (22 days ago)

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

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

It's easy to see that these books belong together

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

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

Writers Review Publishing

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

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

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

Readers might be more excited than Stroller

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

Giant-Sized stories by Claire Fayers 26 Oct 11:00 PM (24 days ago)

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

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

 Giant heroes

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

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

Giant villains

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

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

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

Chaotic giants

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

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

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

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

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

www.clairefayers.com

Do we protect the children? 25 Oct 1:55 AM (26 days ago)

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

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

But…

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

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

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

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

Writing historical fiction - Sue Purkiss 22 Oct 9:00 PM (28 days ago)

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

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

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

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

The plan thus demolished?

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

However. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Rowena House Author on Facebook and Instagram.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that's the beauty of folklore.

Lu Hersey

web: Lu Hersey 

Patreon: Writing the Magic

Substack: An Old Hag's Snippets of Folklore, Myth and Magic

Instagram: LuWrites

Bluesky: luwrites

Signing out By Steve Way 16 Oct 7:30 PM (last month)

 Goodness! 'Blog Day' came round quickly again! I couldn't think of anything new to say since last month but I have thought of some more signs since we last met, so I thought I'd share them with you.

Welcome to the village of GALLOPBURY ‘Like Canterbury on a wild night out’	ASHFORD No smoking area by the river
NORWICH (nor wizard either come to that)	SHEFFIELD Twined with Cookmeadow
CENTRAL YORKSHIRE ‘Not just a point on the map’ … Disregard the previous statement	Welcome to MEXICO Soon to become MEXI Plc Ltd
_BAN Welc_ome to _ban ‘A w_onderful Sc_ttish t_wn’	Welcome to LEEDS Sponsored by Dog Supplies Inc Electric Tools Co & Jones and Smith Private Detective Agency
Bury St Edmunds! (though we thought we already had)	Weston-Super-Mare Twined with Easterly-Brilliant-Stallion
Welcome to STIRLING Enjoy shopping here ‘Where your pound goes further’	BELFAST (So we can’t make it ring any more)
Welcome to the Isle of Wight (PS We can’t spell blook either)	Welcome to the Isle of Mann Visit our many caves
JERSEY Home of Christmas fashion	LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYMDROB.WLLLLANTY……              Smith Standard Signs  Size A
Welcome to LIMERICK Here’s a city with a famous name, That you’ll want to come to again, It’s a right lovely place, Where we live our own pace, (Located in Ireland not Spain)	Welcome to LIMERICK A lady from Limerick found, A wallet containing five pound, She told the police, Who ordered a feast, Paid for by the money she found
Welcome to LIMERICK A city with its own style, You’ll want to stay here for a while, You’ll have a good ‘craic’, And want to come back, Our welcoming city with style.	MACHYNLLETH (Bless you!) (Might be worth having that seen to)
Welcome to WIMBLEDON ‘It’s Ace!’	Welcome to YORK Where much is grand and old (though curiously lacking in hills)
Welcome to GLOUCESTER Sign sponsored by Foster’s Medical Services	Welcome to GREENWICH Hope you enjoy your time here

The Coming of the Iron Man, written by Ted Hughes, illustrated by Mini Grey, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart 14 Oct 3:30 PM (last month)

 

Ted Hughes' Iron Man is one of Faber Publishings treasures, and this new picture book edition, carefully edited and beautifully illustrated by Mini Grey, is a total treat. 

The story starts in the familiar way -

    'The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff.

    How far had he walked? Nobody knows.

    Where had he come from? Nobody knows.

    How was he made? Nobody knows.'

- and we are in the hands of a poet. 

The story, as ever, thrills as the gigantic Iron Man falls and crashes apart, then his component parts find each other and re-make him. As he eats the farmers' tractors and they dig a trap to bait him to his death. And small boy Hogarth lures him by clanking iron things together. And then .... But you must read the book to find that out! Exciting, scary, funny, satisfying.

But it's Mini Grey's illustrations which are new. They are wonderful, similarly full of drama and beauty and humour (note the riveted divide between images!) -

I love the details of light and natural settings -

Printed on luxuriously thick paper, large format and with almost twice the number of spreads of a standard picture book, this book is stunningly good value at £7.99

Glad to be Hopeful by Anne Booth 12 Oct 11:04 PM (last month)

 I think that being a children's writer is a great help for me as an adult, because the discipline of finding something to be hopeful about is essential for our job. We shouldn't be twee, or superficial, or bury our heads in the sand, but I do think we have to find something hopeful for our child readers. 

As soon as I write this I can think of arguments against it - what about funny books which have exaggeratedly negative endings, or the fact that some children find scary books thrilling and comforting, maybe because they remind them that real life isn't all that bad ? Maybe even the presence of humour is enough to give an escape from a difficult present and let hope in, and the thrilling scary books do have hope in that they have heroes and heroines who survive. Beautiful illustrations and typeface and design  can also provide something deeply uplifting and  positive apart from the narrative, but as a story teller, I do think the narrative itself is very important.

All  I know is that I am a bit biased about hope in children's books, because as a child I certainly had a life and a personality where I really needed comfort and hope (and humour and escapism )  in my stories, and I have spoken with teachers who work with looked after children, and they say that they look for stories which are hopeful and comforting, as the last thing the children they work with need is to be re immersed imaginatively  in traumatic situations with no happy ending. I would need to do more research, so please take this as a prompt for thought rather than an essay. I know that there is a way of looking at stories in books as mirrors or windows. Mirroring narratives help us see ourselves and our place in the world, and windows help us see others' lives and develop empathy. I still think that in both those models, for both adult and child readers, but especially for child readers, we still need to have Hope, especially in these days, and as a writer, I think it helps us to put Hope in our narratives.

I remember some years ago  reading  the present Children's Laureate, Frank Cottrell Boyce, saying that there was a need for more Utopian fiction, for imagining better futures, better societies, and as a writer I love that idea, for my own self, not only the children I write for. I have to live in the world and in the worlds I write, and personally, it helps me to  put Hope into my stories, so that after working on a story with Hope in it,  I can put down my pen or close my laptop and  look back into the world I live in, and recognise in 'real life'  the Hope which always existed but which rolling traumatic world news makes hard to find sometimes. These days there are just too many bad news stories about, but it helps me to remember (and I think it is essential for children and many adults to be taught)  that even the news is written - that we are getting narratives which serve the narrators - and hateful or hopeless narratives are no more true than relentlessly positive, head-in-the-sand ones.  There is a sweet spot where we recognise that the world is full of good and bad things, and that there definitely ARE bad things, (which as children's writers, if we need to present them, we must present in age appropriate ways) but fundamentally, love is stronger than the bad things, and endures. That's the happy ever after bit, the thing we hope for, because we know deep down that is true.

So I have to get on now - my own hopeful story is that I am on a part-time MA in Children's Book Illustration. I had to take a year off for various reasons, but I am back on the course now, and it really is giving me Hope to be studying alongside the other students, and to be immersed in such a wonderful world. I am also  illustrating a picture book at the moment, and I hope very much that anyone who reads it  feels more hopeful at the end.  I must go and do some work, as I only have two days before I present it again at our weekly tutorials, and I have to hope that it will be good enough by Wednesday! 

I hope everyone has a good day.

The Boy and his Comic by Lynda Waterhouse 11 Oct 8:42 AM (last month)

 Image ©Harry Townsend

I am drawn to this image. This moment in time. A boy absorbed in his comic. It is well worn and battered copy. How long has the boy had to wait a while for this treasure to be passed on to him?

Ten minutes to ten in the morning. Sunlight through the window. The mess on the mantelpiece including a treasured candlestick. The stillness of a child lost in reading. Only a tousled head, a slightly grubby hand and the cuff of his jumper on display. At this time of day it must have been taken on a weekend or the school holidays.

It was taken by Harry Townsend (1891 – 1964). Harry was a chronicler of everyday working class life in my area of South London. He was taking photographs from 1910 until the 1960s.  No-one apart from his family and a few friends, and now you, have ever seen his work.

Henry Percy Roy Townsend was born on 13^th January 1891 in Regent Street, Lambeth. He was the seventh or eighth child born to Charles (a cabman/groom) and Emma (an opera hat maker). Eventually Emma had 10 or 11 children born between 1868 and 1895 of whom two girls and eight boys survived. By the time Harry arrived there were nine family members plus five lodgers living in the house.

His granddaughter Gina says, ‘by the time we grandchildren were old enough to remember him, he was near the end of his life. He had put away his cameras and developing and printing equipment and stacked his hundreds of negatives in old biscuit tins.’

And so to the photographs; we know that he was an avid photographer probably from the 1910s to about the early 1960s. His wife, Kathleen, frequently bemoaned the fact that Harry had to put blackout up in order to develop the photographs, then had strips of negatives slung from lines across the wash house whilst they dried.

As the wash house had the only tap and sink for everyone in the house, not to mention the boiler and mangle that had to be used on wash days, Harry’s photography must have been carried out under considerable time constraints that were definitely a ‘bone of contention’.

Harry took two sorts of photographs: those of family and friends and those of local subjects doing every day activities, which give us a glimpse of domestic life in this corner of Southwark during the first half of the 20^th Century.’

 

USING COLOUR IN CHILDREN'S BOOKS -- BLUE. by Sharon Tregenza 8 Oct 4:00 PM (last month)

 

BLUE

Colour in children's literature helps to communicate feelings and establish mood. The colour blue is often associated with peace and trust. Illustrators use soft blues in pastel tones to create a sense of serenity.

There is also a sense of dimension in the colour blue when it signifies the openness of the sky or the depth of the sea.

It usually functions as both comfort and invitation. Whether its the gentle blue of a bedtime sky or the deep blue of the ocean.

Here are three books that use blue in the illustrations to create emotion...

'Goodnight Moon' by Margaret Wise Brown illustrated by Clement Hurd

Members' news 6 Oct 10:00 PM (last month)

 

Books

Another shout-out and congratulations to Teri Terry and Helen Larder. Teri's first adult thriller, The Stalker, is out now in a multi-book deal from Boldwood Books. And Helen's YA thriller, Hidden Toxins is out from Hawkwood Books. 

Happy book birthday to Jo Cotterill. THE PONY WHISPERER, fourth and final book in the Starlight Stables Gang books was published on October 2nd (and had an Amazon best seller flag when I checked - congratulations Jo!)

Christmas is coming but while most of the Starlight Stables Gang are excited about the annual seasonal party at the stables, Daniel isn't feeling very festive. His mum isn't well and he's struggling to manage caring for her and helping at home, alongside school work and finding time to go to Starlight Stables - the place he loves the most.

Then Daniel finds an abandoned horse in need of his help and suddenly he's got another thing to worry about. . . But will it prove one thing too many? Or will Daniel finally trust his friends enough to open up and ask for help when he needs it the most?

Courses

Looking for some inspiration? Jenny Alexander's popular writing workshops are back. https://jennyalexander.co.uk/writing_workshop/

And Penny Joelson will be teaching a Writing YA course for City Lit, starting January. Full list of courses is here: https://faberacademy.com/product-category/courses/

Finally, there are still a couple of places available on the Scattered Authors' Winter Warmer retreat at Folly Farm. If you're a Scattered Authors member you'll have an email about it. Contact Alex English if you're interested in coming.

Do you have a book coming out in November? Any news you'd like to be publicised? Send the details to me, Claire Fayers by the end of October for inclusion. 

Suggestions for Teachers by Paul May 3 Oct 9:00 PM (last month)

As I can't think of anything new to say this month I'm going to repost this short piece that I wrote ten years ago and that certainly hasn't lost its relevance.

In front of me now I have PRIMARY EDUCATION, subtitled "Suggestions for the consideration of teachers and others concerned with the work of Primary Schools." (1959)  How polite HMI used to be!

I read the pages of this book and find myself nodding in agreement with almost everything it says.  Don't be put off by the use of 'he' and 'his' for every child and teacher - this, from the introductory pages, still makes perfect sense to me.

The primary school should not (...) be regarded merely as a preparatory department for the subsequent stage, and the courses should be planned and conditioned, not mainly by the supposed requirements of the secondary stage, nor by the exigencies of an examination at the age of eleven, but by the needs of the child at that particular phase in his physical and mental development.

And this:

No good can come from teaching children things which have no immediate value for them, however highly their potential or prospective value may be estimated.

These 'Handbook(s) of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers' were published at intervals from 1905 until 1959.  The next passage was written in 1918, repeated in subsequent editions, and quoted again in 1959.

'The only uniformity of practice that the Board of Education desire to see in the teaching of Public Elementary Schools is that each teacher shall think for himself, and work out for himself such methods of teaching as may use his powers to the best advantage and be best suited to the particular needs and conditions of the school.  Uniformity in details of practice (except in the mere routine of school management) is not desirable even if it were attainable.  But freedom implies a corresponding responsibility in its use.

However, the teacher need not let the sense of his responsibility depress him or make him afraid to be his natural self in school.  Children are instinctively attracted by sincerity and cheerfulness; and the greatest teachers have been thoroughly human in their weakness as well as in their strength.' (Handbook 1918)

Oh my, this is a noisy world (Mr Rogers) - Joan Lennon 2 Oct 4:30 PM (last month)

Charlie Rose: Who's made a difference in your life?

Mr Rogers: Oh, a lot of people. But a lot of people who have allowed me to have some silence. And I don't think we give that gift very much any more. I'm very concerned that our society is much more interested in information than wonder. In noise rather than silence. How do we do that? In our business - yours and mine - how do we encourage reflection? ... Oh my, this is a noisy world.

1994/1997 interviews with Charlie Rose

He wasn't part of my childhood, nor my children's, but I'm discovering him now with my grandson. Mister Rogers was a quiet man in a noisy world, and when he spoke, children breathed out, snuggled in and listened. I'm grateful for the chance to spend time with him.

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

BACK FROM THE BRINK or 'EXCUSES, EXCUSES’ by Penny Dolan 1 Oct 1:17 AM (last month)

So much for September’s ambitions and hopes!