Someone ELSE'S Giveaway

Simon Petrie, ASIM colleague and SF writer, is celebrating the release of his new two-novella book from Peggy Bright Books with a giveaway from his Livejournal blog I Should Find A More Catchy Name For This Thing - yes, that's the name of the blog, I kid you not. I have read one of them, 404, in  PDF, a sort of space opera murder mystery, and the other is a story in the Gordon Mamon series set in a space elevator hotel, very silly and funny, but scientifically accurate.

And here's the thing: there will be two copies, but one of them is being offered right now for anyone who can suggest to him the best idea for how to run a giveaway. I suggested he try I Am A Reader Not A Writer, which hosts weekly giveaways, but I'm not entering; I know him and actually "porfred" one of the novellas(novellae?) so that copy is still available. I'm betting there are plenty of you out there who have entered giveaways, even if you haven't run one. You should have plenty of ideas. Or you might offer to give his book and giveaway a plug on your web site?

Anyway, why not wander over and check it out?

Editing "Book Club Fights Back"

I have to turn off and head for my mother's place shortly, but after a long evening spent on editing my book club movie last night I had to come back and do a little more today. I still have to add Emily's reading when i get back; I couldn't get it downloaded before I left, or the scene where my students all gave the finger to book bans crying, "Book bans suck!" For some reason the computer didn't recognise the card reader that it had happily recognised for all the other downloads from the camera, but the day I get back I will have a computer technician to consult, Tam, who is with us for another term or so.

I've done this before, with last year's Literature Circles movie (and I finally managed to download the last video to this year's Lit Circles movie), but I still have plenty to learn. For example, putting together the first set of credits and the first scene into a single chapter. I'm hoping that if I do Play All on the DVD it might work. The tune I chose to go with the opening credits also plays over a delightfully silly scene Dylan shot by accident, in which some of our Psychology students (also book clubbers) are on their laptops between the library shelves while Selena is choosing her reading and Dylan jokes that he is filming them before realising he actually IS filming, then another credits page which pays tribute to a certain space TV series, before the first reading. It works well and that scene was too good to put in the bloopers, but the chapters are separate.

I put the readings in a certain order, with individual books broken up, but also readings in order from the first three Twilight books - Natasha, Taylor and Braydon and three Harry Potter books - Caitlyn, myself and Dylan. Then there are the bloopers, readings that were messed up or interrupted - we did this in the school library and there were bells between periods, announcements over the PA and students coming out of the library's interactive whiteboard room, on their way to their next class. Finally, there is me doing the reading I put up on YouTube, in the DVD "extras" - and a final bunch of credits giving names and books they read. The final credits need some music to go with them, but it's a matter of finding something appropriate that fits within the length. The music may not be Creative Commons because it's not going on line, just in my library and given to the readers, so I have a bigger choice.

Anyway, it's been great fun and highly successful and I look forward to showing it in the library at lunchtime when we get back, and hopefully to staff at a staff meeting, as an example of how you can engage students. These were all enthusiastic readers, but I think I could find a way to use it to engage reluctant ones. I have a few in my Year 8 who might enjoy it.

Fingers crossed the finished product works as well as I think it will!

Crime Time Giveaway On Boomerang Books

George Ivanoff, fellow Ford Street writer and blogger at Boomerang Books  has kindly agreed to host a giveaway of my children's book on crime, Crime Time: Australians behaving badly. If you're curious to read a sample chapter, there's one right here on this web site. Then why not wander over to the Boomerang site and enter? It's a competition rather than a straight giveaway, but you just have to answer one of two simple questions to be in the running for a copy. There's no country limit, You just have to tell me what's your favourite crime story or which crook you would invite to dinner. I will choose the winner. 

George has recently launched a new edition of his first book, Life, Death and Detentions, a collection of short stories with a school theme, published by Morris Publshing Australia. He will be talking about his writing next week on the Great Raven, so hang around!

Blood Moon by Alyxandra Harvey. London, Bloomsbury, 2012

This is the fifth in Alyxandra Harvey's Drake Chronicles,about the likeable Drake family, vampire couple Liam and Helena and their eight children. The Drake children are human till their sixteenth birthdays, then turn - if they're lucky and don't die in the process. Frankly, I don't know how someone who is technically dead could have sex let alone produce children, but this series has been so entertaining I was happy to suspend disbelief. With luck, cheerful scientist Uncle Geoffrey Drake will be able to work it out and explain it before the end of the series. The Drakes don't kill anyone with the possible exception of Hel-Blar, unlucky vampires who have been infected with something that turns them blue, gives them extra sets of fangs and makes them insane, causing them to attack anything that moves, including each other. Actually, the vampires in the district of Violet Hill, which has as many scary beings as Sunnydale, tend to carry stakes and crossbows as a matter of routine.

If you haven't been following this series but would like to, stop here and read the first four novels, without which this one will make no sense. If you have, you'll know that at the cliffhanger end of Bleeding Hearts Drake daughter Solange attacked her human boyfriend, Kieran. Now she is starting to act even stranger, allowing herself to be persuaded to drink blood from the veins of "bloodslaves", humans who have an addiction to being bitten, who offer their blood freely to vampires, and listening to an inner voice that may not be herself. Much can happen during Blood Moon, an international vampire conference happening in sleepy Violet Hill. These vamps have political disagreements, from whether or not vampires should co-operate with the vampire-hunting organisation Helios-Ra, which stays away from vampires who don't kill anyone, to who should be in charge. The only thing keeping them from going for each other's jugulars is the fact that the penalty is staking.

This series, till now, has had plenty of humour, which is what attracted me to it; as a teacher-librarian who reads a lot of YA fiction, including stacks of paranormal romance, I am relieved to find a series whose author is clearly a Buffy fan and whose characters have wit and charm. This novel still has some humour, mostly in the chapters seen from the viewpoint of Lucy,  Solange's human best friend, who is now at the Helios Ra high school which, believe it or not, has an annual senior prom( Lucy wonders if they wear glittery cargo pants on the night). But on the whole it's becoming darker - much darker. One of the characters is tortured. Solange is not her usual self though she is horrified at what she did to Kieran. Lucy is hit on the head a number of times(and seems to recover rather quickly). And the novel ends on another cliffhanger, with some unexplained matters that had me saying, "Hang on, how did he...?"

I have no doubt that my students who have been following the series will pounce on this with cries of glee and enjoy it very much. I preferred the humour, but at least there are no soppy heroines clinging to their vampire boyfriends, unless the bloodslaves are a sendup of regular paranormal heroines, which, from what I have seen in this author's other books, wouldn't surprise me.

And the good news is that after that cliffhanger is a Drake Chronicles novelette, "Lost Girls," which shows the sixteen year old Helena, who has just met Liam. Helena is a street kid, something I wouldn't have expected, but it does show her as a gutsy young fighter who is a member of a girl gang that hunts vampires who have been killing girls in her town. We also meet the young Scottish bikie Bruno, one day to be the Drakes' security chief; he is just twenty. The book is worth getting for this story alone.

Celebrating Banned Books Week Around The Blogosphere

Want to win your very own banned book and help give the finger to book bans? There are two giveaways hosted by blogs I Am A Reader Not A Writer and I Read Banned Books. There are, so far, eighty blogs participating, giving you plenty of chance to win and all you have to do is visit them and sign up. I found this information and links to the above blogs on Bookhounds blog, here. Mary of Bookhounds is giving away a $10 gift voucher to the Book Depository, and also gives you a link to the lists of banned books and why they were banned.

As a matter of fact, I learned about Banned Books Week from Mary's site, so it's nice to see it here again.  I've learned a lot from book blogs and the YA book community are a great bunch.

See you on YouTube for the virtual readouts!

Banned Books Week Virtual Readout Posted!

Okay, I have done it! I can never remember from time to time how to upload properly to YouTube, because when I just "share" in .mov format I get something that looks like a badly dubbed movie of the kind sent up in Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes, where the lips and the voice are just not in sync! There is a help page on YouTube, though, which says that YouTube really doesn't work well with .mov and suggests you save (share) it to Quicktime. I did this once, but saved it to the wrong format, for iPhone and iPod, but not for computer.  Whoops! Did it again, this time correctly, then clicked on Share, which had a YouTube option. And here it is! Why not watch it and have a go at doing your own? I will be happy to put in links from here if you let me know. If you don't have your own YouTube channel, you can set one up on the Banned Books Week web site. Don't be shy - if I can do it, middle aged and overweight, why not you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lnpRzvayms&feature=youtube_gdata_player

It's a bit longer than last year's, because this year, according to the criteria, you have to say why it was banned or challenged and, hopefully, why you chose it. I had to do my readout twice, because I want it up on the Banned Books Week channel as well as my own.

I chose the scene in Fahrenheit 451 where the hero, Montag, is called out on a job and sees a woman burn herself along with her books rather than give them up. This changes his life, although he was already thinking his life needed something more.

An interesting situation: many US film versions of books published elsewhere Americanise them. This one, written by the quintessentially American Ray Bradbury, was filmed by Francois Truffaut, with mainly British accents - Julie Christie, for example, played the wife and the landscape was very British. Oscar Werner played Montag, though not, of course, with a British accent. It was a long time before I realised the novel was written by an American ( I was in my teens when  I saw it, then read the book later). The edition I read for this was a 50th anniversary one, with an introduction by the author, who says the film version made some changes, but in the end, he realised Truffaut was right.

And yes, I know the cover is mirror-reflection, backwards. I still haven't worked out how to flip it, no matter what software I use. The reading is what counts.

Blood Storm by Rhiannon Hart. Book 2 Lharmell. Sydney, Random House Australia,2012

Princess Zeraphina and Rodden, the King's right-hand man, are both "harmings", a kind of vampire who isn't actually undead, but does need blood; it doesn't have to be human and Rodden and Zeraphina make the most of small creatures such as rabbits and squirrels. 

But now beggars and other unlikely-to-be-missed folk have been found drained of blood in the streets. Sailors and their ships are going missing. In the previous book, Rodden and Zeraphina made their way north to Lharmell, home of the vampires, and stopped a mass Turning, killing the leader of the harmings. Back then, the harmings weren't too bright, but now someone is actually planning. They have to be stopped, but Rodden's kingdom has been refusing to believe anything is wrong and Zeraphina's mother wants her to come home and get married. And they are both running short of yelbar, the stuff they need to tip their arrows if they're going to kill the horrors up north...

This novel is better than the first - unusual for the dreaded middle book of a trilogy!  The universe is more developed and we learn why the south part of the continent is colder than the north, and it isn't because Antarctica is nearby. We also learn about Rodden's past, which isn't pretty. There are touches of humour, rare in this sort of fantasy.

The novel is not, despite the romantic cover, a standard paranormal romance; it's an action adventure with romance in it, although Zeraphina's love for Rodden is an important part of her motivation.  It's not, though, her entire motivation - she knows how vital their quest is and cares about the victims, including children who have been turned into harmings. The heroine is not a Mary Sue, nor a Chosen One, and if she's good with a bow and arrow, she has earned it with a lot of practice; any other abilities she has are the result of being a harming, if a special harming who has experimented. She has a brain she is willing to use and Rodden is also happy for her to use it.

Be warned! It ends on a cliffhanger this time.

Because they aren't standard paranormal romances, I might try these books on the boys who have been reading our collection of Tamora Pierce and Kate Constable books and Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy. It isn't entirely true that boys won't read a book with a girl on the cover...

One Week Countdown! And Shameless Self Promotion

I have tried to insert a countdown counter on my web site before, but Blogger wouldn't let me, so I have to post instead. If you're living in the US and have wanted to buy Wolfborn in your local bookshop, next Monday is your chance! Why not ask at your local bookshop? Request it at your local library? Give it to a friend or family member who likes medieval fantasy and werewolves? Demand that it be made into a movie! ;-)

Looking it up

Okay, I have published a comment by an organisation known as "Safe Libraries" recommending we read something by a guy called Thomas Sowell. I had never heard of him, so I looked him up. He is a right wing "laissez faire" economist and so, of course, thoroughly qualified to talk about subjects such as Banned Books Week.

As for SafeLibraries I do recommend you take a look at their web site which will help you understand why Banned Books Week is important and hopefully you will join in the virtual readout in the next few days. 

Marianne De Pierres Visits My School

Actually, it happened last year, soon after Supanova, but Marianne has just blogged about it and also added Karyn's book trailer to the page, so here's  the link. It was a ŵonderful visit. Marianne spoke to my Book Clubbers in our interactive whiteboard room. She spoke about what was then a new book, Burn Bright, which some of them had read and loved already and showed them the official book trailer, which had had music composed especially for it. There were also slides of Marianne herself, including one of her with actor John Rhys Davies, who, despite playing Gimli the Dwarf, is a BIG man. Thing is,  Marianne is a very tall lady and in this picture she was taller  than him! She did say she was wearing heels, but I suspect she is at least his height.

Marianne, who was delighted with Karyn's trailer(what's not to like?) kindly offered her a copy of the third book in the Night Creatures series when it's out, so I had better find the library's copy of the second volume, Angel Arias, for Karyn to read first.

My Choice For Banned Books Week

I have decided to read a sample from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a book about banning books which, in 2006, was challenged in Texas because of "discussion of being drunk, smoking cigarettes, violence, dirty talk, references to the Bible and using God's name in vain." It apparently went against the challenger's religious beliefs.

Well. Can't please everyone, can we? And I should point out that the hero, Montag, doesn't smoke, drink or talk dirty. He watches as his overdosed wife has her stomach pumped by technicians who stand around SMOKING while they do it, upset by their casual attitude. Reading the Bible is an act of rebellion on his part; he feels there must be something more to life than four walls talking at you, kids killing each other in speeding cars, talking about the latest TV show.

Re-reading it, I thought about how it reminded me, oddly, of some aspects of Brave New World, but also how much of it has come to be. Montag's boss, Beatty, tells him that it wasn't imposed, people just lost interest and the book burning firemen are there because, with houses fireproofed, it was a way for firemen to keep their jobs! English professors wander the countryside as tramps because no one was signing up for their courses any more.

How often do we hear, now, about kids' short attention spans? Even films have to be fast-moving to grab them. Some years ago I went back and re-viewed Zefirelli's exquisite Romeo And Juliet, which was big when I was growing up. Kids loved it because it actually starred real teenagers in the leads. And having seen the new, speeded-up(also wonderful) version, I concluded sadly that the Zefirelli version was just too slow for the current generation.

One thing that suggests to me that Fahrenheit 451 is set in an alternative universe is that Benjamin Fanklin is referred to, if only in fire brigade propaganda, as the first fireman instead of the founder of America's first public library.

It's also interesting to note that this is all happening  in the US- perhaps other countries still read? We'll never know, now that Ray Bradbury is gone.

I will put up a link to my readout when it's done.

Banned Books Week - Book Club Fights Back!

Today Book Club and I, and one of the staff, Faye, filmed readings from banned or challenged books. Dylan wanted a copy of his file so he could put it on YouTube, but otherwise the understanding was that the readings would go on to a DVD which will only be used at school. Of course, all my readers will get a copy of the DVD and hopefully I can show it to staff at a meeting.

The project was a huge success! I have never seen my students so excited about anything. I am not sure how I could have done this with kids who don't like reading, but I'll think of something. Meanwhile, they looked at a list I had prepared, of books, some of them classics, that have been challenged or banned over the years. I only chose some that we probably had in the library so that they were available to be read immediately. They read the list, exclaimed in amazement - "They BANNED Harry Potter?" - and sat down to work out what they should choose. I had readings from Harry Potter, Vampire Academy, Twilight, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Hunger Games, Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider novel Snakehead and, from Faye, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time. That one is being studied by our Year 10 students, who love it. Faye didn't want her face to be seen("I'm too ugly today!") so Dylan had to film her with her face behind the book. She said she thought she knew which bit had probably caused the ban and made sure that was the part she read.

We even had a Year 7 student who said,"How wonderful!" and joined in. My Year 8 student Robert went to his locker to fetch a Robert Harris book, which was well-loved, judging by its battered state. I didn't hear his reading as I had to go check out a library book, but I overheard someone say "My God, no wonder it was banned!" Well, I'm not his mother and she is okay with it, as far as I know.

Dylan took over the filming, only stopping to get Selena to film him reading from Harry Potter And The Half-blood Prince. Selena was halfway through her reading of Snakehead(she read the entire Alex Rider series, followed by  Charlie Higson's Young James Bond and Gabrielle Lord's Conspiracy 365 series... For such a mild-mannered young woman, she is amazingly keen on action-adventure!) when the camera battery ran out and we had to recharge it. There were three more readings to do at that stage and while Dylan, Selena and Ryan were going to be there, Kristen had to go to her Foods class, so I promised to come and fetch her when the camera was running again. In the event, she changed her mind, as she was not feeling well and had substantial work to do in class, so I did a reading instead, from Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets. I am sure I can film her early next term if she's up to it, because nothing is actually  going on YouTube except Dylan's file and maybe mine; these holidays I will edit it in iMovie and I can simply add a scene for her before I finish and burn it to DVD. Thando was reading while I was off in Kristen's class, so I have no idea what she read, but it should be a nice surprise. Paige may not have been at school today and will perhaps want to add to the film when she returns; I can film her if/when I do Kristen.

 Taylor made a mistake and stopped, waving her arms in frustration; I might keep those bits for a blooper reel. Brittany, like Faye, read with the book held up to cover her face, while her little brother Braydon, a true camera ham, read with his face showing, of course.

After the holidays, the first Book Club event will be a premiere screening of what Dylan wants to call "Book Club Fights Back". He suggested we have a group scene with all the readers giving the finger to censorship. Perhaps, if time, but not on YouTube, I'm afraid - I'm not allowed!

This is one of my National Year of Reading events. It's nice to be able to do something, even after my budget has run out, and I am very lucky to have such wonderful young men and women in my class and my library.

Banned Books Week - Book Club Fights Back!

Today Book Club and I, and one of the staff, Faye, filmed readings from banned or challenged books. Dylan wanted a copy of his file so he could put it on YouTube, but otherwise the understanding was that the readings would go on to a DVD which will only be used at school. Of course, all my readers will get a copy of the DVD and hopefully I can show it to staff at a meeting.

The project was a huge success! I have never seen my students so excited about anything. I am not sure how I could have done this with kids who don't like reading, but I'll think of something. Meanwhile, they looked at a list I had prepared, of books, some of them classics, that have been challenged or banned over the years. I only chose some that we probably had in the library so that they were available to be read immediately. They read the list, exclaimed in amazement - "They BANNED Harry Potter?" - and sat down to work out what they should choose. I had readings from Harry Potter, Vampire Academy, Twilight, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Hunger Games, Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider novel Snakehead and, from Faye, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time. That one is being studied by our Year 10 students, who love it. Faye didn't want her face to be seen("I'm too ugly today!") so Dylan had to film her with her face behind the book. She said she thought she knew which bit had probably caused the ban and made sure that was the part she read.

We even had a Year 7 student who said,"How wonderful!" and joined in. My Year 8 student Robert went to his locker to fetch a Robert Harris book, which was well-loved, judging by its battered state. I didn't hear his reading as I had to go check out a library book, but I overheard someone say "My God, no wonder it was banned!" Well, I'm not his mother and she is okay with it, as far as I know.

Dylan took over the filming, only stopping to get Selena to film him reading from Harry Potter And The Half-blood Prince. Selena was halfway through her reading of Snakehead(she read the entire Alex Rider series, followed by  Charlie Higson's Young James Bond and Gabrielle Lord's Conspiracy 365 series... For such a mild-mannered young woman, she is amazingly keen on action-adventure!) when the camera battery ran out and we had to recharge it. There were three more readings to do at that stage and while Dylan, Selena and Ryan were going to be there, Kristen had to go to her Foods class, so I promised to come and fetch her when the camera was running again. In the event, she changed her mind, as she was not feeling well and had substantial work to do in class, so I did a reading instead, from Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets. I am sure I can film her early next term if she's up to it, because nothing is actually  going on YouTube except Dylan's file and maybe mine; these holidays I will edit it in iMovie and I can simply add a scene for her before I finish and burn it to DVD. Thando was reading while I was off in Kristen's class, so I have no idea what she read, but it should be a nice surprise. Paige may not have been at school today and will perhaps want to add to the film when she returns; I can film her if/when I do Kristen.

 Taylor made a mistake and stopped, waving her arms in frustration; I might keep those bits for a blooper reel. Brittany, like Faye, read with the book held up to cover her face, while her little brother Braydon, a true camera ham, read with his face showing, of course.

After the holidays, the first Book Club event will be an opening screening of what Dylan wants to call "Book Club Fights Back". He suggested we have a group scene with all the readers giving the finger to censorship. Perhaps, if time, but not on YouTube, I'm afraid - I'm not allowed!

This is one of my National Year of Reading events. It's nice to be able to do something, even after my budget has run out, and I am very lucky to have such wonderful young men and women in my class and my library.

Banned Books Week 2012 - September 30 to October 6

This year is the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week, the annual celebration of books that have been banned or challenged in some way. The lists of books banned or challenged in the US over the last several years is here  at the ALA web site if you'd like to take a look and if, perhaps, you want to take part in the virtual readout on YouTube , there's a link to the actual Banned Books Week web site where you can find instructions on what to do.

Some of you may remember that last year at this time I did a virtual readout from To Kill A Mockingbird. I haven't yet decided which beloved book I will choose this time, but this year I'm hoping to get students and perhaps even staff involved.

Our Year 10 students are currently reading The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time by Mark Haddon. They simply love it and those I talked to were shocked to hear it's a challenged book elsewhere in the world. Some have expressed interest in my project, which will involve filming them for a library DVD; as I am not allowed to put them up on the Net, they can do that themselves, with the files I will give them. Meanwhile, I've also spoken to some of the younger students. Brittany, Taylor and Paige are all keen to be involved, reading something from Twilight, The Hunger Games and Vampire Academy. Kim, a Year 7 student, has also asked if she can have a go. I am hoping to get some of my Year 8 class involved, but we will see who turns up on Thursday, my first chance to get out the camera for them. It will have to be finished by Friday, because Banned Books Week is on during term break and those who want to do the virtual readout will need to take the files home.

It's amazing what is on the lists of books that somebody, somewhere, has believed should come off the library shelves - often somebody who hasn't actually read it. Harry Potter's enemies, for example, are often people who haven't read the books. Classics such as Brave New World, To Kill A Mockingbird,  Huckleberry Finn are up there with books that probably aren't that wonderful but haven't been put there for being badly written, just for saying something that the objectors don't want said.

These books are banned or challenged in the US, but some have been banned here too, if on a small scale.  Harry Potter has enemies here, too, but I was once confronted by a teacher who objected to a fantasy novel whose cover featured one of those babes in a chain mail bikini. I agreed that the cover was woeful and the woman in the picture would be horribly uncomfortable,  but the novel itself  featured a woman warrior and it was rather absurd to object to it on the basis of "equal opportunity". And no, she hadn't read it.

My friend Natalie Prior's picture  book The Paw was banned in some schools because the heroine was a cat burglar and this implied that crime pays. The fact that she was a Robin Hood figure who robbed wealthy organisations to give to the poor was not of interest to the objectors. I like to think it led to more sales for the book.

At my own school, a mother objected to Tim Winton's Lockie Leonard, which was a class text, because the young hero, who was growing up like his readers, had a wet dream. Yet it's a wonderful book and one of our staff had a word with the mother, who was a reasonable person in general, and she withdrew her objection.

I will be putting a link up here to my own virtual readout when it's up on YouTube. Why not do your own and let me know? I will be pleased to add your link too.

Come on, let's celebrate our favourite books and give the finger to censorship!

More Great Blog Stuff

A few weeks ago, I spoke of my visit to Notions Unlmited bookshop, where I bought A Feast Of Ice And Fire, a Game Of Thrones cookbook, and I mentioned the attached web site,  Inn At The Crossroads, where there are recipes and posts in general about the kind of food and drink you'll find in George R.R.Martin's epic series where, let's face it, characters always seem to be eating and drinking in between stabbing, poisoning, hitting each other, pushing each other off high towers, beheading people, etc., etc. A bit like another favourite of mine, Babylon Five, really, though those characters either eat at the station restaurant or cook traditional foods in their quarters in between backstabbing each other diplomatically, discovering dark plots, turning into Minbari or flying small spaceships...;-) That, too, has a  fabulous cookbook, by the way.

The thing is, the authors of the Game Of Thrones cookbook and web site have their own blogs. One of them, Chelsea, who writes as "Needs Mead" has a terrific food blog called Food Through The Pages. This web site, which you should check out here, concentrates on food to be found in various books, such as The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, the Pern series, Neil Gaiman's American Gods, even Moby Dick! I am going to have a lot of fun surfing this site, both because I can't wait to see which universes she uses and because she researches historical recipes for those connected with books set in history-themed fiction.

For example, Harry Potter Butterbeer. You'll find recipes for this all over the Net, but they tend to be based on what the creator imagines it might taste like. And that's fine and kudos to those who can come up with original recipes for something from fiction. But J.K. Rowling's wizard community has been around for centuries. They have been doing many things the same way for hundreds of years. And Ms Rowling knows her history and folklore; where she invents something it's using a real base. So instead of making up her own recipe from scratch, Chelsea has done some historical research and found a 16th century recipe for something called buttered beer!

It makes me feel bad about being so vague about food in my own writing; I know something about historical foods, have even made a bit for SCA banquets and such, but not a lot and in my books characters don't eat much . Once my oven is fixed I will be doing lots of physical historical food research for future fiction. Meanwhile, I will let Chelsea do it for me.

Karyn's awesome book trailer

My student Karyn, who has a YouTube channel under the name  "awesomekarynx" was so pleased with her book trailer, made for English, that she posted it before I could warn her about copyright issues, but I got her to put up a disclaimer, and the music is from Jamendo, which is a Creative Commons site. And I am rather chuffed that she was proud of something she did in my class.

Oh, and she's the sister of Kristen, who did the book trailer for Wolfborn.

The book is Burn Bright by Marianne De Pierres, which she read for Literature Circles, and the author was delighted when I sent her the link.



Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx9kJ6_jx5w

Burn bright, baby bats!

The Last Book Shopping Of The Year

I'm in Ganache chocolate shop having a pot of chai tea and some truffles as a reward to myself for making the best of my tiny budget. I do have a little more money, but most of it has to pay for renewals.

With the $300 I allowed myself this time(including postage) I've bought sequels to things the students are reading, a  joke book- something the younger ones always want, but I can't supply new - a couple of Horrible Histories and a Horrible Science, an Inky Shortlisted book, some football books(one AFL, one soccer and one Rugby League, sports books are so expensive!), two new Oliver Phommavanh books for his fans, Oscar Wilde's short stories for Ryan, who is finishing The Picture Of Dorian Gray and is keen to try "The Canterville Ghost", a new YA novel by Louis Nowra for Selena, who is interested to read it, some Shakespeare for Natasha, who wants to read A Midsummer Night's Dream - this one is a beauty, with original and translation on facing pages and it was CHEAP - After by Morris Gleitzman for Michael, an Ally Carter book for his friend Mung, a Pittacus Lore book for Dylan, who would otherwise miss out, as there were no Catherine McPhail thrillers on the shelves - sorry, Dylan, maybe next year when you can borrow them on inter library loan from Senior Campus.

They should arrive next week, perhaps in time to process a few to take home for the holidays.

I wish I could have bought more, especially in sport; most of our sports books are old and battered and I want to cry when I see a student with an ancient soccer book. But I have to work with what I've got and sports books aren't cheap, alas! Next year I will call Melbourne Sports Books and pin them down to a date.

Still - the new Guinness Book of Records is available for review...

Happy Birthday, Star Trek!

This morning I went to Google to look up something and found a Star Trek cartoon on it.  Of course! It was the 46th anniversary of the show. A click on the picture took me to a Google search on various aspects of the show, but I didn't have time to check those out, so will look at them later.

I already loved science fiction when I discovered this series. I had plundered my sister's shelves ad borrowed what I could find from the school library(which was not very good, alas; I had to go to the State Library for my research materials).

Looking back at it, the special effects were not very special; it had a budget similar in TV terms to my own library budget. The set artists had to scrounge in the Mission Impossible bins for stuff they coud spray paint silver for futuristic statuary and such and I think Dr McCoy's equipment was a set of salt and pepper shakers. Creatures were people in costumes, pretty, much like the ones in Doctor Who.

What it did have, like Doctor Who, was top-class writers, some of whom had been famous in the golden age of SF. We're talking here about Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, Jerome Bixby, Harlan Ellison(who, admittedly, was furious at the rewrite of his episode) and others whose names have escaped my memory for the moment. Isaac Asimov never wrote an episode, but liked Star Trek and said so. Larry Niven wrote an episode of the animated series, though he later decided he didn't want to be involved with Trek after all and withdrew his Kzinti and Slavers from the universe. There was also "Arena", an episode based on a story by Fredric Brown, a golden-age writer.

David Gerrold, who later became a well-known SF novelist, made his first sale with "The Trouble With Tribbles", which nearly won him a Hugo - the winner by about five votes was Harlan Ellison, for that episode which was totally rewritten. Later, both of them wrote for Babylon Five, and Harlan Ellison became story editor for that series, as well as playing some walk-on roles. Dorothy Fontana, who had written some of Star Trek's better episodes and been story editor, also wrote for B5.

I loved the series and still do.  It was intelligently written and you could care about the characters. I liked Kirk precisely because, in the words of one of his former lovers, "he was never a boy scout". He was a con artist supreme, capable of persuading the gangster rulers of a planet that he was a bigger gangster than they were,  of pretending to be the captain of a ship where promotion came though murder, of picking a Nazi's pocket, of inventing an explosive that didn't exist, but persuading the enemy it did. Spock was,admittedly, my favourite, not only because he was smart - actually, the captain could manipulate him - but because of that gorgeous velvety voice. McCoy was their conscience, but could also be funny and I was absolutely with him on the idea that it was not a good idea to let yourself be pulled apart and reassembled in the transporter! Uhura might say,"Captain,I'm frightened," but then she got on with the task at hand, however dangerous, and tiny as she was, she could throw a big hulking male when she needed to.

And it's interesting how many writers got their start in fan fiction. Lois McMaster Bujold says that her Cordelia Naismith and Aral Vorkosigan started life in a fan story as a red-haired Federation officer and a Klingon. I have some fanzines with stories by the likes of Phyllis Ann Karr and Diane Duane. In Australia there are plenty of us who wrote a lot of fan fiction before we made our first sales. I think I wrote about 150 fan stories in my time, most of them in the Star Trek universe, and there's a scene in Wolfborn with a very silly unicorn of a shaggy pony variety which I first created for a series of fan stories; Maggie the Shetland unicorn embarrassed poor Pavel Chekhov, who was trying to get romantic, long before one of her kin, the pony Dapple, turned out to be a unicorn and embarrassed my hero Etienne's best friend Armand in the Otherworld. Just take a look through the fanzines produced back in the days when we had Gene Roddenberry's permission to do them and you'll probably see the names of some writers you know and like. We learned to write short stories and we got plenty of feedback from readers, believe me.

Here's a toast to Gene Roddenberry and his creation!

Learning Something New - Book Trailers With Moviemaker

Today I learned how to use Windows Moviemaker, with music. I have really only used iMovie, which I use at home and, of course, Keynote which you can save into a nice little movie with music. But at my school, we have everything in Windows and the students need help sometimes. And if I'm going to invite them to use technology I need to know how to use it myself.

We have finished Literature Circles and I gave them some options, such as "interview the author" (stand by for an interview with Justin D'Ath on this site, by my wonderful students Braydon and Rhiannon, when they have finished arguing over - er, discussing - what questions they can use and which ones make no sense, then Mr D'Ath has had time to answer), a straightforward PowerPoint presentation and book trailers. Much to my delight, some students have taken up the book trailer option. I had some wonderful ones last year, and though I couldn't put them up on YouTube due to copyright issues Idid burn a DVD for the whole class, both of their discussions  and trailers, and made a copy for the library so teachers could see them.

The thing is, some of them had never tried Moviemaker. Well, I found out easily enough how to add slides, though Omar told me that he had, after all, worked it out. But Joy, who had made her trailer, asked, "Miss, how do you add music?"

I didn't know, but said I would find out, though in the meantime I suggested she ask one of last year's students who had done a good job on his.

But this afternoon, I had a quiet time, while the art class sketched and printed out around me in the library, and decided that now was as good a time as any to learn. And I have a favourite group of musicians who allow their music to be downloaded free on Jamendo, Celestial Aeon Project, who seem to have a theme for anything I'm doing. I found a lovely piece of music that went perfectly with Pool (the novel Rhiannon and Braydon studied, as well as Joy). I admit that just under two minutes it's really too long for a book trailer, but hey, it's an experiment and now I can show Joy what to do, so what-the-heck!

And now I have learned something new, which will always stand me in good stead. I may do some book trailers for the library and have a festival, using those and the students'. Yay!

The Mousetrap Today

I'm in bed, having failed to wrestle open the cling-wrapped newspaper, sipping chamomile tea from the lovely orca mug sent me by leecetheartist as thanks for her copy of Wolfborn and listening to the music on ABC Classic FM.  It's 7.21 am but I can't sleep any more, so am treating myself. 

Around this time last week, I was looking forward to my one and only stop at the Melbourne Writers's Festival. This time my treat is Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which, after sixty years in London, is now on here. We aren't seeing the London cast, of course; they would have to stop performing there and I suppose that's unthinkable.

 Fact I learned this morning: it has never been filmed. The reason for this is that when it was first on, Agatha Christie thought it wouldn't last more than a few months and specified that it shouldn't be filmed till six months after the London run closed. Sixty years later it shows no sign of closing. So no film and my sister had always wanted to see it and I bought a pair of outrageously priced tickets - about another twenty dollars would buy us a decent seat at a musical. And it's not as if they had to import the cast and set. But I suppose the licence to perform it cost $$$$$$! Anyway, Mary is worth it and so am I and anyway, tomorrow is my birthday, so there!

One other fact about the title and what I suspect may be the reason for it: In Hamlet, when Claudius asks Hamlet the name of the play which he is about to use to get a reaction to Hamlet's suspicion of his guilt, he tells him it's called The Mousetrap. I haven't checked this out and won't until after the performance, but I bet that's where she got the name. It would be appropriate since Hamlet is, after all, the "detective" in a murder case at that point in the pay.

So after breakfast I will walk through Balaclava to drop off a library book and maybe take the tram from St Kilda. If time I may even stop off for a hot chocolate in Acland Street on the way. 

More later. I have photos of my mother icing the cake she made for my birthday, which I may add to a new post.