An Awfully Big Blog Adventure View RSS

Out of Date by Paul May 3 Oct 9:00 PM (2 days ago)

It is incredible how fast children's books can become dated, especially if they're realistic fiction with a contemporary setting. 25 years ago I wrote a short football novel that referenced Michael Owen and held up Brazil as the team that exemplified a style of football that's now more associated with Spain. I wrote my first books when mobile phones were a novelty and there was still a phone tethered in the hallway in most houses. I always did my best to avoid writing dialogue in imitation of contemporary slang because I knew how that would seem out of date by the time the book was published, but I had no idea how fast the world would change. I see now why children's writers love fantasy and historical fiction.

An adult reader will pick up a John Le Carré novel and they'll recognize a past they've lived through. They won't be puzzled by characters having to visit a library or an archive to find information that today is available in a couple of clicks; they'll understand that, in a crisis, the hero can't just whip out a phone and call for help - they'll have to find a phone box, they'll need money . . . Jason Reynolds said in his film Dear Dreamer that he thought if his books were still being read forty years from now, 'I've failed.'

'Forty years from now we ain't figured out new books yet? Language is living, it's growing, it's changing, it's evolving . . . Books have to do the exact same thing in order for me to see eye to eye with the young people.'

Maybe it'a a bit like the way you don't worry too much about a word you don't know if the plot's propelling you forward or you're desperately involved with the fortunes of a favourite character. Then you won't stop to worry about why they haven't made that phone call or sent that message.

Jason Reynolds has a point though. Everything these days is so instant and young people are tuned in to a constantly changing stream of information. Books are so slow. They're out of date before you've even finished writing them. It can take years to get from the first idea to the published book, and the potential readers of your book might not even be born when you have that first idea.

Thank You to Bookmarks - Joan Lennon 2 Oct 4:30 PM (3 days ago)

This is where having bookmarks come in. Instead of staring at you, for a few moments they're staring at the bookmarks and the picture of the cover is right there, saying 'Look at me - I'm legit!' A few moments during which they just might journey back from the foothills of disdain, start checking on the computer and possibly crack a smile. If they don't have a copy, you can still be Lady Munificent and give them some bookmarks. And if they DO have a copy that they produce for you to sign, well, you've got your own pen.

*This is more of a big book chain kind of response. The little independents warm up way quicker!

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

THURSDAY 1ST OCTOBER - and it's NATIONAL POETRY DAY 2026 ! 30 Sep 6:01 AM (5 days ago)

    Hooray! Thursday 1st October, is POETRY DAY 2006 . . . 

. . . a date the National Literacy Trust has chosen for exploring poetry in all its forms, a day for celebrating all rhymes and rhyming picture books in Storytimes, for re-reading and sharing familiar poems they have enjoyed before, discovering new poems and new voices, and even writing poetry and sharing their work and thoughts with others. 

This year's National Poetry Day is WONDER AND LOCAL COMMUNITY, a theme that invites students to explore the world around them them, to consider all the people, the places, the stories and the moments that make their environment unique.

The National Reading Agency offers a great online collection of poetry resources, all chosen to support the writing, reading and performing of poetry in schools, all designed to showcase poetry as a way for students to grow in confidence, creativity, empathy and self expression, and a language form that can easily be accessible to all students, whatever their age, and hopefully for more than a single day. 

In fact, at the end of the month, between 2-6 November, comes Young Poets Week, with the Young Laureate scheme offering some schools and pupils free poetry resources, online masterclasses and all sorts of ways of playing with words and poetry. For information on the new Young Laureate scheme, go to https://literacytrust.org.uk/writing-for-pleasure/poetry

Naturally, this is the time of the year when publishers highlight poetry books for schools. Among titles I've come across are 'Cosy Poems', Gaby Morgan's anthology for 11+ students, and Attie Lime's 'Poems on Toast' for KS2 children. Michael Rosen's website has videos of the poet performing his own poems, of course. My choice for the youngest children, though not strictly 'poetry', would probably be a rhyming picture book, such Rosen & Helen Oxenbury's charming 'Oh Dear, Look What I Got!', or a book I heard again recently: Kes Gray & Jim Field's very first 'Oi Frog!'

                       Happy National Poetry Day! 

Penny Dolan

Two writers in one house?! by Sheena Wilkinson 28 Sep 8:00 PM (7 days ago)

This week I played a part in a book launch, standing onstage, telling the audience -- and it was a packed house -- about this wonderful book they should all buy and would certainly enjoy. No, it wasn't my own book this time. This book, Punters on Tour: Around Ireland in 26 Racecourses is by my husband, Seamus Hynds. So now we are two writers in one house! 

the latest literary power couple? (photo: Raphael Mason)

Will we suddenly become like Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard? Leonard and Virginia Woolf? Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath? I don't think there's any danger of that -- Seamus has always said it would be 'one and done', whereas I can't imagine ever stopping writing. 

this is what it's all about

the finished book -- cover design by Emma Pass

some of the audience at the launch (photo: Raphael Mason)

The launch was fantastic, with about a hundred people from all aspects of Seamus's life packing out the Seamus Heaney Home Place, one of Northern Ireland's best literary venues. Seamus, first as a supportive old friend and latterly as a partner, has been to all my book launches, so it was fantastic to be at his -- actually I MC'd it: it would have been even more surreal to have been simply in the audience! 

The Company of Writers 24 Sep 9:30 PM (11 days ago)

Just over a year ago, a member of the Society of Authors who lives in Amsterdam, thought it might be a good idea to bring other Netherlands-residing members together. More than 30 people turned up, and not all of them from Amsterdam, but from all over the country. It was a lovely, convivial encounter and one that has led to more. 

We now meet once a month or so. The numbers have dropped off since that initial get-together and are now confined – mainly – to people who live in, or near, Amsterdam. (There’s talk of holding a meeting in another city, in a bid to relieve the capital bias.) At most, 10 or so people attend. And they’re not all writers of fiction. We have translators, educational writers, journalists, writers of guide books, historians. A good, wide mix. (I’m the only writer of fiction for children.)

There’s no fixed setting. Last week, we met in an old, converted warehouse next to the water. It's now shared work spaces.

And they've left the gloriously worn-down staircases.

Nor is there a fixed agenda. Recently, Ben Coates was invited to come along to talk to us. About his work, his research, his juggling both with family life. (He’s the author of – among others – How the Dutch are Different, which is a terrific read even if you don’t know a thing about the country.) A month from now, we’ll be talking about fantasy fiction. At other times, we just meet to chat and swap stories.

*The SASSIES get it too. I don’t deny that. But you’re almost all in the UK and as much as I enjoy following you on Facebook and here on the blog, I do miss the chance to just talk. In person.

An Ordinary Man - by Sue Purkiss 22 Sep 9:00 PM (13 days ago)

In my book, recently published by Writers Review, the hero, Harry Pilgrim, was captured back in May 1940 on the way to Dunkirk. By this time - the end of September - he is in a POW camp in Poland, in what is now called Torun but which was then known by its German name, Thorn.

He, and many others, reached the camp after a punishing march across the north of France in the summer heat. They were given very little food: they slept in the open, occasionally in barns. If you couldn't keep going, you were shot. They didn't know where they were going or what was going to happen to them. They eventually reached Trier, in Germany, where the streets were lined with scarlet banners emblazoned with swastikas and the people jeered and pelted them with stones and rotten vegetables. Then they were crammed into cattle trucks and entrained to Poland.

Much later, when things were more organised, their families would be notified where they were, and they would begin to receive letters from home and Red Cross parcels which would augment their meagre rations. They would be sent out on work parties - some of which weren't too bad: my father, on whom Harry is very loosely based, really quite enjoyed working as a forester.

But for now, there was nothing to do, except to sit around and wonder just how it was that they'd ended up here - wherever 'here' was.

My father - and Harry - came from Ilkeston, an industrial town between Derby and Nottingham. His father, who had worked at Stanton Ironworks, died of lung disease when Dad was about 14, which was also when he left school, leaving a wife and six children - five girls and Dad, the second youngest. They were a close family. The older girls were already working and bringing in money, which was just as well, because there was no other money coming in.  Dad worked in a coal yard - there were lots of pits around - eventually graduating to driving a lorry. When the war started and he joined up, that's what he did - drove a lorry in the Royal Army Service Corps.

When I began to work on this book, it really struck me what a culture shock the war must have been for a twenty year-old who had never been further from home than on a church trip to Blackpool. Would he even have known where Poland was? Would he have had any idea what had led to the war - apart, of course, from what he'd seen on news reels at the cinema? (To which, in any case, as the son of an evangelical family, he was not supposed to go.)

What a setting in which to do his growing up. But there he was, as were so many others, for five years.

He came through. But not without scars.

To find out more about Harry and what happened to him, you can find the book here.

And to all those of you who have read the book already, and sent kind messages or written reviews - thank you!

The creative writing PhD is all but done, so what’s next? - Rowena House 20 Sep 4:00 PM (15 days ago)

On the Monday this post is published on ABBA, I’ll be trying [again] to upload my completed creative writing doctoral thesis to the university website and saying goodbye to a big phase of my writing life. 

Hurrah! But also, oh heck.

The future just uncurled, stretched, and looked me in the eye.

So, what’s next? Another novel? Non-fiction? Different adventures entirely? It’s too soon to know, but that’s okay; thinking time is a big part of decision-making.

When I started to write this post yesterday, I focused on the past, trying to express some sort of preliminary judgement about the overall value [and downside] of writing an historical novel in my particular academic setting.

One thing I can say with confidence is that the university’s formal reporting requirements and supervisor feedback kept me going through tough patches. After an intense month completing the thesis, it also felt as if the seventeenth-century witch trial manuscript was the main output of the past six-and-a-half years.

The story is now a respectable 80,700 words, having been cut back circa 7K words in the latest edit over this summer, with 1K +/- new words added. Whether this is the version I’ll query agents with is yet to be seen. I’m hoping to find the stamina for a read-through on the iPad where I can’t fiddle with it. On the laptop, I can’t help but edit. It may need professional editing, but I’ll probably test the agent waters first.

However...

This morning I remembered that the critical commentary that accompanies academic creative writing is also a significant output. As are six-and-a-half years’ worth of ABBA posts, mostly honest snapshots of that month’s ups and downs. Together with Facebook diary entries and dozens of notebooks, that’s a lot of data.

Within this data, I have made many useful discoveries, like where exactly the creative process mostly happened: first, when planning via synopses templates [which I’ve written about often here before] and second, AFTER a planned scene got rejected by my inner editor-critic in the act of typing it.

While these scene setbacks were frustrating at the time, they were also the moments when the imagination worked hardest, and not just consciously: by asking the subconscious to consider why a plan hadn’t worked, creative epiphanies happened.

Or at least, pre-dawn musings on why I couldn’t move forward.

These early morning ‘thought-edits’ became a kind of auto-workshop, where the inner editor-critic negotiated with the planner-craftswoman and more intuitive [and more elusive] creator-artist. It happened a lot over the past month, during the intensive final phase of editing. This morning, for example, the five am slot reminded me of an idea that I wrote about here [or on Facebook or in a notebook] years ago: my process notes might make a book. Write, Think, Create or something more gentle and English.

It’s well known that mistakes are better learning opportunities that happy successes, so looking back honestly should illustrate where I went wrong and what, if anything, fixed it. An example is planning synopses, which in the early years I felt convinced were the secret to nailing the story. I blush at this from my ABBA post in May 2022 about John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story: 

"Among its many excellent features is a recommendation that rather than developing the main character arc from its beginning, better to plot backwards from the protagonist’s psychological self-revelation near the end. Intuitively, I wanted this to be ‘right’, partly because I’ve conspicuously failed to make progress by starting the current seventeenth century witch trial work-in-progress with Chapter 1."

That turned out to be nonsense. Plotting backwards didn’t work. The story evolved in the writing: start, plod forward, fail, start again. Sure, I needed a plan; without one, I waffled. In the end, what these synopses provided was direction, a theoretical map of where the story could go. Where it went proved to be more intuitive – but I needed a plan to divert from. No wonder it’s taken six years. But it’s good to recognise paradoxes and take comfort from irony, right?

Anyway, more nonsense from May 2022: 

"For most of this year I’ve been using template synopses to outline the WIP, including (at last) a full Story Grid for the protagonist’s A-plot, plus the detailed backstory of his wound and its implications, thrashed out during Jeff Lyons’ intensive Anatomy of a Premise Line online course. Truby, then, is the third leg of this stool: a way to check my workings before moving on.”

Oh, the confidence! OK, knowing an emotional wound might need healing was useful for the protagonist’s character arc, but again it was the writing, not planning, that led me to his psychological weakness and its consequent moral flaw.

Another howler from May 2022:

“Proof that [synopsis-based plotting] is helpful for subplots as well came this morning when I was reviewing my preliminary notes about Truby for this post, and suddenly found myself in the middle of the spontaneous creation of the best working outline of Beth's B-plot I’ve managed in two long years.”

I spiked Beth entirely as a point-of-view character in 2024. Sigh.

So, which writing guru would I go back to if there is another novel? All of them! Truby especially. His equation Weakness x Action = Change remains the single most useful thing I’ve ever read about character-led story development.

Truby also insists there can only be one core action per story. Luke FIGHTS to defeat the empire. My pamphleteer WRITES his way out of brutal group-think about witches. Whether or not any publisher picks up this manuscript, it’s internal coherence as a story is largely due to Truby’s equation.

Another constant in all these years of revision was James Scott Bell’s advice in Write Your Novel From the Middle. Deciding on a midpoint crisis and ‘mirror moment’ of deep self-reflection for the protagonist was the most critical milestone of this project. With this one pivotal scene in place – a gruesome one, as befits a story about injustice – the plot had a structure, even if the exact route to and from that moment remained fluid.

[As late as this August, I cut out the ‘mirror moment’ when the protagonist articulated his big change of heart. I trust a reader will get that it without me spelling it out.]

So, my current verdict on using synopses to plan? They’re invaluable testing grounds for ideas, but not story templates. If X doesn’t work, go back to the synopses and explore the consequences of Y without necessarily rejecting what came before or what had been plotted to happen next. Frankly, I can’t imagine how to write a story without them.

Had I picked a different ABBA post to compare ‘now’ with ‘then’, no doubt I’d be writing a different conclusion. Every post will have a story to tell. Hence Write. Think. Create. Or not. 

Meanwhile, yesterday’s pre-dawn debate yielded one firm decision: to attend the annual Folly Farm gathering of the Scattered Authors Society in January 2027. It’s been so tempting to go in recent years, but by New Year the retreat budget was always spent and the tax man was knocking. Now, I’ve got a big decision to take, HMRC can shove off for once.

What’s next? I’ve set Folly Farm as the time and the place to decide.

Beauty in decay - by Lu Hersey 18 Sep 4:00 PM (17 days ago)

This year has spun by, despite the never-ending cold, wet January and the bake-us-all-alive summer - and here we are at the autumn equinox already. A brief point of balance in the year, when night and day are of equal length. It always makes me think of TS Eliot's Four Quartets (even though I never really understood them) and a few lines of Burnt Norton that resonate:

The signs are there By Steve Way 16 Sep 7:30 PM (19 days ago)

 Hi, I hope all is good with all of you. It's been that crazy beginning of term time again, so I haven't made time to write something more substantial (presuming I ever write anything substantial!) so I'm sharing some more sill signs and limericks that I doodled down in amongst tasks. I hope you enjoy them!

BATH Can you take a hint? A shower would do…	Now you’ve been to STONEHENGE Why not visit BEATLEHENGE?
DORSET So we can’t get in or out, unfortunately…	CHESTER Somewhere great to buy furniture.
MEDWAY A great place to rest on a long journey.	DORCHESTER Even more stock available than in Chester!
COVENTRY Visit the tree popular with witches.	MANCHESTER For all your specifically masculine furniture requirements.
COVENTRY Where you’ll always find someone to talk to. (If you’re already here, no one can send you here.)	WINCHESTER Wardrobes to be won every week!
Coventry Riding School Yes, we’ve heard that suggestion hundreds of times…	Welcome to the city of EN-SUITE ‘Even posher than Bath’.
Welcome to CIRENCESTER A noisy place	Welcome to SWAFHAM A town largely free of flies.
Welcome to the city of BILBOA A magnificent city with much to offer but with absolutely no connection with ‘The Hobbit’.	Welcome to the city of BATH Soak in the sights.
Godalming v. a harmless but pointless activity involving turnips (M.Eng) ‘Verily we went a Godalming amongst the turnip fields’ Shakespeare The lost plays
There was a daft fellow from York, Who travelled to Leeds on a stork, The problem he found, When reaching the ground, Was losing the power to walk.	There was a young man from Leeds, Perpetrator of nefarious deeds, Pleading ‘not guilty’ at court, The witnesses thought, He’s done for however he pleads.
There once was a girl from Dunblane, Who hiccupped again and again, Her mum tried a scare, By releasing a bear, Before realising her idea insane.	There once was a huge man from Maine, Who suffered a curious pain, When asked where it hurt, He pulled up his shirt, Where he’d clearly been hit by – a train!
An inept inventor from Rhyl, ‘Invented’ a curative  pill, He went on to say, ‘forget RNA’, For my cure-all is here to stay’. But doctors use RNA still.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Liliana the Strong, written by Quentin Blake, illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart 14 Sep 3:30 PM (21 days ago)

New ways with old dead things - Anne Rooney 12 Sep 11:24 PM (23 days ago)

Card index and cake — back to the 90s!

The very best stage of a new book is when the idea arrives, flaunting its pretty possibilities. It's full of shiny promise that hasn't yet been tarnished by reality. And then as you start to work it up, it's still exciting and you keep thinking 'and I'll add this; and this!' piling on more insights and tricks until the idea truly sparkles.

And then you get down to work. You bump into reality. The book as you exactly want it comes to a number of pages that can't be accommodated, like 77 or 109. Do you pad it out to 96 or 128 or cut it down to 64 or 96? And your book is a new concept. Publishers prefer things which are a familiar concept even though they say they are looking for the next new thing. They're really looking for the next new take on an old thing. How are you going to explain it without rambling on for longer than their attention span? I'm obviously getting old and jaded as these issues occur to me earlier in the process than is healthy. I don't want them to kill my enthusiasm for the shiny new thing. I try to ignore them and hope the page extent will somehow fix itself further down the line and I will suddenly be blessed with astonishing explanatory and marketing skills.

Wiwaxia, 520 million years ago, stained glass 2026

This is actually my second time with this New Thing. No sooner had I started it in spring when I had a couple of new commissions which took over that bit of time and headspace. But now I'm back with my old dead things, and my book that spans 500 million years. And back with my paper database that is part of the I-didn't-use-AI paper trail, should it be necessary to show that [sigh]. Autumn is a good time for a new project.  The black squirrels squabble outside, and often on top of, my garden office, the rain (at last!) drums on the roof, and escaping to the house would mean getting wet so I'll stay a bit longer. The light filters through the trees and then through the stained glass hanging in the windows, and as the stained glass is all of extinct animals it's just further encouragement. Give these old dead guys their moment in the sun again. Or the rain. I add 'rain' to the artwork notes. 

Anne Rooney

website
bluesky

Out now: Science Museum 2027 Space Annual

Members' News September Special Edition 7 Sep 10:00 PM (28 days ago)

 Hot on the heels of the last September round-up, come two more pieces of celebratory book news. Do check them out.

SOMETHING IN THE DARKNESS by John Doherty, illustrated by Matt Schu, is a spine-tingling treat for 3-5 year-olds. Packed with suspense, this unputdownable story will keep young readers on the edge of their seats, eventually revealing that some things are more frightening in the darkness than they are in the light.  

Published 17th September from Post Wave Children's Books.

SPOOKY STREET by Jonathan Emmet with illustrations by Ingela P Arrhenius is a spooktacular, rhyming lift-the-flap alphabet book that is also a play scene and a Halloween frieze to decorate your room! 

Published by Nosy Crow on September 10th.

Congratulations, both!

Members' News September 6 Sep 10:30 PM (29 days ago)

The long, hot summer is finally over and we can look forward to huddling under blankets to write, and the Scattered Authors winter retreat in January - there are still places available so get in touch if you're interested.

This month we're celebrating the publication of three books and a special edition. Please do take a look at them and give them a shout-out on your social media. If you have anything you'd like included in October's round-up, send the details to Claire Fayers.

Congratulations, Michelle Lovric, whose new adult novel comes out on October 8th, from Salt Publishing. 

Michelle is the much-loved author of The Book of Human Skin and a former Women’s Prize nominee. Known for her lyrical prose, dark wit and impeccable historical detail, she now turns her gaze to Venice in 1817 – a city of intrigue, revolution and romance.

In The Puffin, a disfigured traitor, a revolutionary milliner, a sadistic assassin – and, yes, a puffin – become entangled in a plot to ransom a Habsburg princess. The result is a heady mix of radical lovers, poets, smugglers and spies. By turns thrilling, tender and gloriously eccentric, it is historical fiction at its most seductive.

Full details here

Publisher link

Next, a book for younger readers. Yvonne Banham's third book for young adults, Delores Mackenzie and the Dead of Winter, will be published by Firefly Press on October 8th.

The third in the Delores MacKenzie series sees Delores facing her greatest challenge yet, chasing beyond the Arctic Circle in search of a mysterious book, a legend and a killer.

Publisher link

Cover: Nathan Collins

Publisher link

Cover: Becka Moor

Congratulations to everyone celebrating this month.

Claire

Book Launch - Joan Lennon 4 Sep 4:30 PM (last month)

Book launches are a worry. Will anybody come? Will the venue sell enough books? Will I forget everything I know about my book and quite possibly my own name?

Despite the worrying, the book launch for Revolution! went ahead and none of the disasters happened!

 

Big thanks for everyone who came, to Lindsey Fraser for making the conversation flow, and to my favourite bookshop The Edinburgh Bookshop for hosting the event with such warmth and charm. 

Book launches? Worth every worry!

Joan Lennon website

Joan Lennon Instagram

Mountain, Sea, Holiday, by Paul May 3 Sep 9:00 PM (last month)

By the time this very short post is published I'll be somewhere in North-West Scotland. It's probably fifty years now since I first heard the poet, Norman McCaig reading a poem on the radio, and forty years since I wrote out one of his poems on an index card and pinned it to my noticeboard. It has been pinned to various noticeboards ever since, along with a couple of other items that have somehow survived.

Here is the fisherman's cottage on the shore at Diabaig in Torridon where I spent a week with a friend in 1993. We paid £30.

Then there is this little cutting from The Guardian from a similar era which I bring out from time to time when I want to show someone the wonderful possibilities of the language of football. 

But the poem is a different kind of thing:

Between mountain and sea 

September - and a Library I knew long, long ago. 1 Sep 3:01 AM (last month)

At the foot of Jolly Butcher’s Hill was a busy crossroad, where long-gone tram rails were still embedded in the tarmac. On one corner was the almost-Art-Deco Wood Green Tube station, where a warm nicotine fug seeped out into the damp air.

Across Lordship Lane, on the other corner, was a basic brick ‘retreat’ for drivers from the big Bus Terminus,which intruded on the more ancient and interesting expanse beyond. This was Spouters Corner, with its weekend flower stall. Here, strange men stood on boxes, ranting about diet, grievances or God while pigeons circled overhead or dived for crumbs. The third corner, to me, was merely a row of bus stops, and a narrow public house.

But the fourth corner? That held our destination, Wood Green Public Library, whose Victorian facade was decorated with ornate carvings and pillars and, at least to my eyes, glorified by the beautiful green copper dome above the entrance. The library was,to me, a book palace from the times before, when there had been no rationing or grimness.

I followed my mother up the steep stone stairs, through the carved door to the mosaic floor into the library, and then life felt safe again. I could feel the power of the library, the silence, the rows and rows of books and the sense that, for a while, nobody could get at you. Almost like a church, it was, without the hymns and statues. My mother gave me a gentle push, and trotted off up the short flight of steps, through the double doors with their stained glass panels, and into the vast mysterious space where only adults were allowed.

Down the echoing stairs I went, with their green tiled walls, to the basement, where the Junior Library welcomed me with its whispery silence. A subterranean daylight seeped through half-moons of wired glass high along one wall, where the passing feet and pram-wheels created flickering shadows from the outside pavement. But I was here, now, in this calm other world, rarely reached by sunshine. The room was wide and generous, with shelves around all four sides: one wall for my ignored non-fiction, and three satisfactory walls for the fiction, in alphabetically arranged rows.

In the centre of the carpeted floor stood the Librarian’s desk: a square wooden fortress, with a creaky gate to keep children away. With her tight rolls of mousy locks, pinned in a net, she reigned grimly over wooden trays of tickets, her date stamp, pens and ink pad at the ready, and her eyes watching for any child who stayed too long. Good behaviour, silence, few chairs, power & suspicion.

I recall no enticing prints or paintings hung high on the grey-washed walls. The only glow was over by Non-Fiction where, beyond the impressive set of encyclopaedias, was a table, holding a bubbling tank where tiny fish hid under loops of water-weed. Nearby there were books with pictures, made for children who could not yet read yet. Imagine that?

The books on the fiction shelves were bound in subdued tones of cloth: drab browns, faded blues, weary moss-green, withered rose, with gilt letters sparking on spines here and there. Occasionally, small black images were embossed on the front covers, hinting at the line drawings of the illustrations within. Occasionally, a coloured frontispiece appeared facing the title page. But, for the most part, then, colours came from the pictures that words made in your imagination.

Though the stock was old, that barely mattered; the books on our three shelves at home were old too. Newness was not something that mattered in books, other than the fact that ‘old’ writers like Dickens were revered. Did the book have pages? Yes. That was enough. 

(No wonder I found a recent ‘Get them while they’re hot!’ message, posted on a current fiction site, such an abomination. Don't stop for that: move on to this or be a failure!)

The books had probably been purchased when that Junior Library was created, part of the inspired movement for Children's Libraries and Children's Librarians pioneered by Eileen Colwell during the Twenties and Thirties, and which received much support, especially from the poet John Masefield, and which also led to Storytelling and Storytime sessions in libraries. But by now that original starting stock was a lot older. 

Book publication, and books available in schools and libraries, would have been affected for Wartime Rationing Restrictions some years before and taken a while to recover. Certainly this was the era of all the second-hand bookshops along Charing Cross Road.

George Orwell, writing in Tribune in 1944, protested about the severity of the cuts in paper allocation:

‘A particularly interesting detail is that out of the 100,000 tons allotted to the Stationery Office, the War Office gets no less than 25,000 tons, or more than the whole of the book trade put together . , . At the same time paper for books is so short that even the most hackneyed "classic" is liable to be out of print, many schools are short of textbooks, new writers get no chance to start and even established writers have to expect a gap of a year or two years between finishing a book and seeing it published.’

(Oh, just two years? Might just go check on publication waits now . . .)

However, back then, as a quick and early reader, I sped through fiction greedily. I re-borrowed and re-read favourite stories, although now I remember few titles specifically from the library. Black Beauty? Call of the Wild? Christmas Carol? Children of the New Forest? The Silver Skates? Heidi? Arthur Ransome? Where did I come across all of those?  My strongest passion was for myths and legends and fairy stories. I loved Andrew Lang’s famous Blue, Yellow, Green and Red Fairy Tale collections, which I borrowed time after time.

Another fondness was for the ‘Twins’ series, such as ‘The Dutch Twins’, ‘The Cave Twins’, ‘The Irish Twins’ and others. Recently, I found the books were written by an American, Lucy Fitch Perkins. She wrote the first – The Dutch Twins - in 1911, to help children and families understand the homelands and cultures of all its immigrant population. The last title of her 26 book series, ‘The Dutch Twins and Little Brother’ was published in 1938. Below is a 'library edition', not one of the more beautiful versions.

 

I did say the books in Wood Green Library were very old when I came across them, even then, but maybe some of that Lucy Perkin's cultural understanding would be useful in the States now.

My job, while my mother chose her latest crime novel and my father’s new cowboy adventure, was to behave myself, keep quiet, choose which three books to take home and, I’m afraid, to avoid thinking about needing the toilet as there were none available. So I waited and read on, basking in that bookish library scent until I was collected.

That beautiful copper domed library was a huge and significant part of my life, or whoever my self was trying to be just then, but three things happened, at almost the same time.

One: As a very good reader, I was granted an adult ticket, taken to find John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrims Progress’ among the cavernous adult shelves, and carried it proudly all the way home with me. How or why I seized upon this heavy tome and title as the book my young self needed to read, I do not know, other than my delight in the alliteration of the title. Afterwards, I felt in a sort of limbo, neither of the unfamiliar adult nor the junior library and lost heart. That children’s librarian was probably pleased that I disappeared.

 

Two: I had another birthday and another school report, All at once, my time at home was strongly directed away from burying my head in books and towards the pages of the Progress Papers for the 11+ Exam booklets. Over and over again. Saturdays disappeared.

Thirdly: The Progress Papers exercises worked. I became a pupil at St Angela’s Convent Grammar School, where I had to learn a whole new culture of homework and subtle religious snobbery, and that there were ‘wrong’ authors and 'wrong books'.

And we moved away, to another area. So there were no more visits to that Wood Green Public Library. Soon, there could be no more, as the library was transferred to a new, accessible open-plan site within the vast Wood Green Shopping City nearby – for all sorts of valid, rational reasons, I know - and my lovely, copper-domed building was demolished. Please note: in pictures,it doesn't, look as big as it felt.

Those ancient slippery tram lines? My mother, cycling back down Jolly Butcher's Hill on her way to work one rainy day, caught her front wheel in a tram line and the bike crashed down. Luckily, thankfully, she was not run over by any bus or lorry but had mild concussion and suffered a bad back for ages afterwards. Double luckily, she had already delivered my young brother off at his nursery school and so the child seat was empty. I think they have since been removed.


Penny Dolan

Up to my elbows in flour by Sheena Wilkinson 28 Aug 7:30 PM (last month)

This will be a short post because this week has found me mostly up to my elbows in flour. The reason? I am baking, not for a book launch this time, but for a charity coffee morning. 

current state of kitchen

Susanne's novel, with cover design by Emma Pass

Our birthdays were a fortnight apart, and we always had a joint treat halfway between the dates (22 August and 4 September). Women of modest, bookish tastes, our  outings generally involved book-shopping, having a cuppa or (best of all) once visiting a litter of puppies which my sister had thoughtfully bred around the right time of year.

tea and chat

What has this to do with books, reading and writing? Not much perhaps. I started writing it mostly as an apology: I have been so busy baking (and cleaning!) that there's not much else on my mind -- apart from Dolly Parton, but I'm guessing that by Saturday everyone else will have had their say about the wonderful Dolly. 

Susanne, unlike Dolly (and me) was a very private person -- she would be mortified by this public post, but I think she would forgive me. I offer it not only as an excuse for having nothing more literary, but as a reminder that the friends we make through books -- and what is Awfully Big Blog Adventure if not friends made through books? -- are very much to be cherished. 

the dedication to Name upon Name (2015)

A Love letter to Reading 24 Aug 10:06 PM (last month)

Since everybody reading this blog will be an avid reader themselves, I thought my little review of this book would fit right in. I loved this book.

(It did introduce me to Gwen Grant’s Private – Keep Out though, and for that I’ll be grateful for the rest of my days.)

Bookish: A Love Letter to Reading is – well, for me at least – far more accessible. Mainly because I’ve read just about all the books she writes about and so can involve myself more deeply in her thoughts and judgements. 

And it’s pure pleasure to discover them. She takes in everything from early YA, to set texts at school, to an English Lit degree at Cambridge, bonkbusters and bestsellers… Lucy Mangan likes to read! And her enthusiasm makes me want A) to run right out and ransack my nearest bookshop and B) take another crack at The Da Vinci Code. (Which I think is probably the worst-written book ever published, but which she continued reading, even when a snotty colleague at the Guardian wondered out loud why she was wasting her time on such rubbish. Because, she says, she was enjoying the story, and if that isn’t the definition of a good time with a book, what is?)

Lucy Mangan just likes to read, and Bookish is a loving, wonderfully entertaining tribute to doing just that.

Letters - a treasure trove. By Sue Purkiss 22 Aug 9:00 PM (last month)

 Far back in the distant past, O Best Beloveds, there was a time before emails, before WhatsApp, before Messenger - before any of these things which we now rely on. And in that time, if you wanted to communicate with someone far away, you wrote a letter. If you were in the same country, that letter might arrive very quickly - the post then was very efficient. It had to be, because apart from telegrams and the telephone (land lines only, of course, no mobiles), it was pretty much the only means of communication. If the letter had to go abroad, of course, it took much longer.

Many people kept the letters which were most important to them - indeed, some people kept the vast majority of the letters they received, but they were more likely to be people in the public eye, who had an eye towards future memoirs and biographies.

In the later years of his life, my father knew that I was interested in his stories about his childhood and family and about his experiences during the war. So he gave me this old chocolate box, which contained a few old photographs, his army record book and that of my Uncle George, who was a rear gunner in the RAF and was shot down just before the end of the war - a tragedy, one among so very many. 

It also contained a number of letters from Dad's mother and some of his five sisters. The reason these letter survived is that they never reached him. This was because at the end of May 1940, he was part of the British Expeditionary Force to France, about 400,000 men, which was retreating with all possible speed towards Dunkirk, where they were hoping to be picked up by the navy and taken back to Britain. This was the famous effort, involving hundreds of small boats, which did indeed rescue the majority of the men. But not all. Many were killed, and others were captured before they ever got there. Dad was one of these, and he spent the rest of the war in prison camps in Poland.

But back at home, my grandmother and Dad's sisters had no idea of this. So they kept on writing letters, chatty in the case of his sisters, increasingly anxious in the case of Granny Course. And eventually - extraordinarily - these letters were not just chucked into the nearest bin: someone examined them, investigated, and some months later, returned them to their senders, stamped 'Addressee reported Prisoner of War'. Granny kept them, and years later, gave them to Dad, their intended recipient.

Dad with his company at the beginning of the war - he is sitting on the front row on the far right. He was in the RASC, the Royal Army Service Corps. I don't know how many of these survived the war.

There's a little side story to this. For months, in the chaos of war, no-one knew what had happened to Dad. At some point a telegram arrived back at home, saying that he was missing in action. My Aunt Connie intercepted it, and decided that Granny wasn't to be told: they would wait until they knew for certain whether he was alive or dead.

It's so moving to read these letters now, in the knowledge of what was happening in France. This is from a letter Granny wrote on the 15th of May, when Dad still had about ten days of freedom left. She is hoping that he will have leave before long.

...I have cleaned the house ready waiting to hear that quick step. I often fancy I hear you coming home early (in the) morning, so I do hope things won't be so long. It seems hard and furious now...

And then this one, written on the 25th, around the time that he was captured. She is obviously desperately worried, beginning:

Dear Bernard

    Do just let me know how you are as soon as possible, I know I am impatient... I am only wanting to know if you are well, and are quite alright...

And ending:

...if you are too tired I am sending you some ready addressed envelopes if you can only just say I am alright mam, that will suffice for your loving Mother/too anxious.

These letters were one of the many strands that fed into my book, An Ordinary War, which is very loosely based on Dad's experiences. I found, and still find, that image of my grandmother writing to her son, pausing and listening for his 'quick step', not knowing that she wouldn't see him again for five years, just so moving. If you'd like to read more, the book is available here.

Hunting the Generated Subject - by Rowena House 20 Aug 3:30 PM (last month)

It’s the last lap, the final six weeks of a six-and-a-half year creative writing PhD, which, terrifyingly, has taken up (or, at least, often took over) one-tenth of my lifetime.

I’m line-editing and proof-reading at the moment, ten pages a day of an 80K manuscript, cut down from 87K at its longest. It’s mad to try to do both at the same time, but that’s how it’s turned out and by this stage I’m not questioning my process, just getting on with it.

Hopefully, I’ll have time to read it through again on the iPad in a different format as reformatting always seems to throw up those glaringly obvious typos that have slipped past me, oh, probably hundreds of times.

I’m getting all sorts of deja-vu with the comparable stage of editing The Goose Road, my debut for young readers. Like asking, where did I put that sentence I liked so much, and really worked? And, for goodness sake, what on earth were you on about there?

There’s also been a nice moment of circularity or closure this month. 

Right at the start of this project, when Arvon began online masterclasses during Covid lockdowns, I listened to author Hisham Matar recommending that we stay open creatively during our first drafts (which I’ve taken to mean over multiple drafts) so that we don’t get trapped by our original idea and fail to access our deeper level of intuitive invention.

That became a kind of mantra for this novel: stay open to whatever comes along. 

Then, on August 7th, an email came in from Writers.com, an American organisation which I often find useful and thank very much for all their inspiration. This email offered up a notion from poetry which struck a chord. The article is by Sean Glatch, whom I’ve quoted here before, and is titled, Writing Titles of Poetry: How to Title a Poem, which has a lovely internal rhythm, which I guess is the point.

Mr. Glatch quoted Richard Hugo’s The Triggering Town, which he called ‘a great grounding in the craft and mindset of poetry writing’. To quote him quoting Mr. Hugo:

To Hugo, all poems have two subjects:

· The Initiating Subject: the topic, idea, or thing that led you into writing a poem.

· The Generated Subject: the subject that the poem discovers or was actually, secretly, about the whole time.

I really like this idea. It makes a whole lot of sense. For the work-in-progress, a seventeenth-century witch trial was the initiating subject, and the importance of writing to critical thinking is the generated subject.

Looking back, I realise I spent a lot of time in the early years trying to think up a generated subject, to plan it, to plot it, to do exactly what Hisham Matar said you shouldn’t do. It’s the theme thing, innit. We’re supposed to know it, but if it’s the storytelling that generates it, how can one plan it?

They say that writing a novel is new each time around. If there is another one in me, I’ll try very hard to remember this lesson and stop hunting for a theme and let it wade out of the story sea in its own good time.

All the best, everyone. Nearly there. 

A small step for me, potentially a giant leap for humanity - by Lu Hersey 18 Aug 3:30 PM (last month)

Do you remember a time before Google and smart phones?  When people had typewriters or word processors to write with, and if you wanted to speak to someone at a distance, you had to call them on a landline? Research was done in libraries, which held so many books, there wasn't even room for a student cafe. People still respected creativity and the arts and no one used AI to write, produce art or music, or had GoogleMaps telling them where to go.

It honestly wasn't that long ago. The last twenty-five years has seen such a massive expansion of AI, we've all become accustomed to it. No one reading this would use it to write their books for them (hopefully!), but we live in a world where if you wanted to produce a readable manuscript from your idea in under ten minutes, you probably could. All thanks to AI's pirating of everything ever written by us. 

There's a rumour going around that AI centres burn books to stop us going back to print copies. Scary shades of Fahrenheit 451, and though it might sound like an urban myth, there's actually some truth to this rumour. Anthropic, a mega AI company with an 'AI assistant' they've named Claude (presumably to make him sound more user-friendly), is known to have sourced thousands of books, removed the spines to enable easy scanning, then pulped (I believe they call it 'recycled') all the pages. 

This has been public knowledge for over a year, but people only started getting seriously worried when another massive company called ISBNdb began ordering books in bulk, including rare books, from booksellers - and apparently destroying the originals. ISBNdb's website is really something - they manage to make it sound like they're doing you a huge favour by allowing you to access any book you want to read (at a price, obviously) instantly, online, from your desktop. 

Not long ago you could order a hard copy of any book you needed from a library (and up to a point you still can). Although it might take longer to source, the point of libraries is to conserve the original books, rather than destroying them. 

But there's a costly, sinister pay-off. Look at the rising numbers of data centre buildings being constructed to support it - no need for proper planning permission because the people financing them promise the earth, while systematically destroying it. 

The wonderful Erin Brockovich (remember the film? She's a real person) is currently fighting the rise of data centres, which are springing up everywhere (including the UK) with no proper public consultation or planning consent, despite the fact they seriously contaminate land, make a constant, deafening noise and use vast quantities of water at the expense of the environment. If you're interested, you can read about Erin's campaign in an article published recently in the Guardian.

I'm now ranting about the potential destruction of the planet by AI, while intermittently using it to research this piece. The irony isn't lost on me. So could direct action be the only possible alternative route to save the planet from the rise of data centres? This week saw Wynd Kaufman, aged 69, jailed for chaining and locking the front doors of Open AI's HQ last year. She's a member of a protest movement called StopAI , whose website describes them as a 'grassroots movement of everyday people using democratic and non-violent methods to disrupt the reckless development of destructive artificial intelligence technology'. As the first person jailed for taking direct action against destructive AI, she's been hailed by some as akin to Rosa Parks. Of course others might view her as a modern day Luddite. (Though if you follow that thought through, the Luddites had a point. Technology isn't always a good thing...)

Maybe we need to use Gandhi's example, using his charkha (portable spinning wheel) to spin cotton into yarn, a form of passive resistance against British colonial textile imports. OK, I'm not giving up my laptop to write for the time being - and I freely admit I used Google to help research while writing this piece. 

So what's my first step towards independence from AI? 

I'm trying to get places without using GoogleMaps. It involves using actual paper maps and road atlases like everyone had to, only a few decades ago. Amazingly, it works just like it always did.

A small step for me, right? But if we all remember how to do basic things without using AI, it could be a giant leap for humanity. 

Lu Hersey

lu-hersey.com

Oh you silly things By Steve Way 16 Aug 7:30 PM (last month)

 I’m sure, like me, several children – and a few adults – have asked you, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ I know some authors have said it’s the question they most expect and least know how to answer. I’d be interested to know if, as I do, you feel that one of several ways we snatch onto possible ideas is by watching out in our daily lives for interesting incidents, events and situations in our daily lives. One possible consequence of that might be that we notice much around us that doesn’t necessarily spark off an idea – at least straightaway – but which we maybe consider in more depth than others might do. In this case, I want to describe a few things I’ve observed which struck me as particularly silly.

It hadn’t occurred to me before until I began writing this, that all of what I’m going to describe were observed on, or by roadways. I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I currently live in a small rural town in France (though we’re seriously thinking of moving back to the north of England after this year’s unending sequence of heatwaves – we realise that moving to the south would be a living example of the adage about moving from the frying pan into the fire).

A windy road, barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, stretches about five miles to the next town. Halfway along that road, just before two right-angled bends, is a sign indicating that lorries larger than a certain size should not use this road. There are no other signs like this anywhere along this road, i.e. at the beginning of the road at either end, offering said lorries the chance to re-route. Also, the sign only faces one way, so drivers coming the opposite way may only ever see the sign in their rear-view mirror. As I’ve intimated the road is so narrow and twisted that even if a driver considered honouring the restriction, it would be nigh on impossible for him or her to turn their vehicle around, leaving reversing their lorry nearly three miles backwards along a windy road as the only remaining option.

Ultimately this explains why we have to drive very carefully along this road, as regularly lorries patently far to large to drive on the road bear down on us and I have to drive as close to our edge as possible, while avoiding ending up in the deep drainage ditches dug alongside the road, only a foot or so away from each side. How we laugh at the ridiculousness of the sign at these stimulating moments…

But roadside stupidity isn’t confined to France. Years ago, I was driving on a hill road between Wakefield and Huddersfield and came to a small roundabout at what in the past had probably been a crossroads. The roundabout was grassed and rose gently towards the centre, like a small mound. Two signs had been placed near its peak. Both simply read, ‘Diversion’. One pointed to the right, the other to the left, creating a completely uninformative diversion lottery. There had been no signs about roadworks, or other obstructions coming up to this point – presumably there should have been two  - and as it happens none after as I continued on my way, in that sense ignoring the signs. I particularly couldn’t help wondering about the person who set up the second sign. The first was hardly helpful, or particularly informative but surely the person putting up the second one must have realised the implications of the conundrum they were setting up for me and my fellow drivers? Too much to explain to an unsympathetic supervisor perhaps…

Meanwhile, back in France, a country famous for encouraging cycling, they have been setting aside a section of several roads, on both sides, for cyclists. These areas demarcated by thick broken white lines marked along the road, with regular images of cycles painted in the lanes themselves. All very good and righteous of course – at least in theory. The only problem is that the space left between them available for cars and other vehicles on some of the roads where this has been done, is far too narrow for them to pass without colliding virtually head-on.  Another windy road near us is an example. Drivers have to decide between avoiding the cycle lane areas and facing the danger of colliding with a vehicle doing the same thing coming the other way, as we both drive around a curve in the road, or drive in the cycle lane in which cyclists assume themselves free of danger from vehicles and where, by doing so, we might be penalised by the authorities. I also feel that the massive cost, time and effort it took to set out these impractical zones would have been better spent on setting up regular signs reminding drivers to watch out for cyclists. (Though arguably there should be also be signs reminding cyclists to wear bright clothing and helmets – I don’t know if it’s the same in the UK these days but it seems half the cyclists in France don’t consider a journey without wearing the dullest colour clothing on the dullest coloured bikes, usually without a helmet.)

I find the French word for pavement quite sweet – it’s ‘trottoir’ – making is sound as though you should trot along them! However, certainly in our neck of the woods, they only have a cursory relationship with pavements. In many cases they are too narrow to walk along except by experienced tightrope walkers. The ‘trottoir’ in our street, close to the centre of the town, is far too narrow in both directions for a wheelchair. Speaking of wheelchairs, our post office – ‘La Poste’ – is near the end of our street, the last in a series of buildings and with the entrance in the corner nearest the road. It faces along the street, rather than into the road. The entrance is above the level of the pavement and so for the benefit of customers it can be accessed from one direction by two steps and from the other by an adjoining ramp. Given that the two steps face the centre of the town, able-bodied customers predominantly use them. However as the ‘trottoir’ to the side of the ramp is so narrow, wheelchair users – for whom presumably the ramp was mainly constructed? – would either have to lean precariously, half on the pavement, half on the road, to get around it or dismount the pavement, move along the road (in the potential face of oncoming traffic) and then remount having done so, presumably at the same time swinging their chair around to face the beginning of the ramp.

Having finally made it to this point by the way, they would then find that the ramp is so steep they would either need to have the strength of a paralympian to haul themselves up it, or a fit and healthy companion to push them.

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

A series of stories, sketches and poems to support the NC requirements for learning spelling in a creative way. Also editions for KS1 and LKS2.

Two is a Crowd, by Cath Howe, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart 14 Aug 3:30 PM (last month)

    Hattie tells her own story, covering the end of her primary school time, summer holiday, and her start at secondary school. We first meet a Hattie who is loud, funny, confident, and sure of her long-term best friend, Amber. But then something very big happens. Hattie's family one ordinary evening suddenly face having to take in Mum's dead friend's daughter Seren for the foreseeable future. The room which was to become Hattie's is now Seren's, and family life focuses on the newcomer. Hattie had always thought she wanted a sister, but Seren is unrewarding to try and chat with. She's 'blank'. And she's allowed to have and do things that Hattie isn't. Everything is unfair, and that feeling of the world being against her escalates for Hattie when she and Seren begin secondary school. Shockingly, Amber no longer wants to be Hattie's friend. Hattie's behaviour is getting her labelled as 'a bad influence'. We feel her pain and her determination, even as we smile at her bhaviour, and oh, we long for her to regain her place in her family and in school! 

    All comes good in an exciting finale up on a roof when Seren finally shows herself (and her bedroom wall under a hanging) to be very far from blank.

    Brilliantly written, this is a fast-moving easy read that delivers at a profound level. Highly recommended. 

Unleash Your Creative Monster (AGAIN) by Andy Jones, illustrations by Olaf Falafel, review by Lynda Waterhouse 10 Aug 10:00 PM (last month)

This post includes a review of a book that I first posted three years ago. I’m partly reposting it because I’m short of time but, mainly, I’m reposting it because of a recent encounter with some young writers, aged 9 and 8 years. They are daughters of our friends, very keen readers, and they love writing. They had both brought a story to read to us as part of their trip. I was put on the spot and asked to give them some writing tips.

PHEW! This book sprang to mind and I raced to my bookshelf and brought it out.

The book is packed full of advice, tips and writing prompts FOR EVERYONE. As the blurb states ‘this book contains essential skills for storytellers, the secret weapons of successful authors, and over 50 prompts and exercises to inspire not only young writers but old and gnarled ones like me too’.

There are four sections: Training your creative monster, Monster mistakes, When your monster gets stuck, and Feeding your creative monster. You don’t have to follow it from section to section, it’s designed for dipping into.

The first exercise invites you to create your own creative monster and give it a name. It suggests keeping your name secret because the mystery – that secret bond between writer and monster - is part of its power. Some monsters do reveal their names as Olaf’s illustrations point out and that is OK too.

On every page, Olaf Falafel’s illustrations make you smile, illuminate the concepts, and at times reassure you. For instance, the scary wind–up monkey says, ‘I wouldn’t say I’m evil but I do eat beans straight from the tin’.

It is not patronising or dull. The muses are mentioned, rich vocabulary is used, and grammar and literary concepts are explained with clarity and warmth. You will find an explanation of Chekhov’s gun and quotes from Stephen King. It shows you how to create FSPs (Fantastic Story Possibilities) and to play with metaphors but to mix them at your peril! It encourages you to make mistakes, because at least you are making something, and to write fearlessly. There is advice on how to start and run your own writers’ group and support on drafting and editing your work. The editing checklist is brilliant. The pages of advice on adding rhythm and variety to your sentences are the best!

The book emphasises the importance of developing your own style and reminds us that, ‘There are a lot of so-called “rules” for writing, but rules are like eggs. Not everyone likes them, some are bad, and all of them were made to be broken’.

A creative monster should visit every school in the land and deliver a copy to each classroom, but only after making the head teacher say ‘bum glue’ three times in morning assembly.

ISBN 978-1-4063-9662-1

www.walker.co.uk

WHY SCARY STORIES ARE GOOD FOR KIDS by Sharon Tregenza 8 Aug 4:00 PM (last month)

As I kid I loved to read them as an adult I love to write them - scary stories. Give me ghosts and witches, throw in the odd zombie or vampire and a haunted house - the thrill is always there.

I think they build resilience in children. Young readers watch as people their age overcome fear and survive danger in the best possible way. Most kid's horror will also add a strong dose of humour to release tension. The laugh after the scare shows kids that "that was frightening - but I'm all right" giving them a sense of achievement.  

Three good scary books that I think accomplish all this and more are...

"Coraline" by Neil Gaimen.