The Book and Me

When I took long service leave, I'd hoped to get a book to write while I was away from work. I had taken an extravagant twelve weeks, only a small part of which was to be spent travelling. At some stage I'll be grabbing my superannuation early and hoping to write full-time, so now was the time to establish a relationship with, perhaps, an education publisher or any publisher I've worked with or hoped to work with. I even had an idea, forensic science, which I'd just spent a lot of time researching for my article in the NSW School Magazine. Not that I wouldn't do whatever else was required.

One publisher after another was not interested. Great idea, forensics, but we're not doing non-fiction right now, it's not on our list of subjects, we're full for this year, try again in July...

And then, out of the blue, came an offer from the new Ford Street Publishing, run by Paul Collins, whom I have known since he was running a bookshop in St Kilda and who has published some of my short fiction. His partner, Meredith Costain, once did very well with a children's book about "Fifty famous Australians" but never got around to the infamous ones. Would I like to have a go?

Someone has offered me a book? I'd write it if they wanted a book about deep-fried squid!

So off I went, on-line, to the library, wherever I could find information about Aussies on the other side of the law - or illegal things going on in Australia, whoever did it. Fascinating stuff, from the Batavia mutiny to the cannibal convict Alexander Pearce, from the bushranger Matthew Brady to the Melbourne Gangland Wars. I found some funny stories, some bizarre stories, some sickening stories that had to be toned down for kids. I'm 39 down and 11 to go as I write this, although I also have to do a pile of "Did You Know...?" snippets. My favourite Did You Know is that until a few years ago, convicted criminals could claim all their guns, bullets, etc. on tax as a business expense!

This is my ninth book, hopefully not the last. It's a fascinating subject and I feel strange to be so near the end of the research process. Over the years, I have been working differently on each book. The first one, on monsters, was mostly researched at the State Library. Those were the early days of the Internet. My little Mac Classic 2 computer wouldn't take it. I used to travel a long way on the tram to an Internet cafe which actually was a cafe; you could buy coffee and cake while you went on-line. I did this once a week. It cost $12 an hour, but you got a discount ticket each time you went on, so I ended up paying only $6.

I also used the State Library for the second one, though I went on-line a bit more. I had to buy a few books on various sciences, because the book was on women scientists and I wasn't much of a scientist myself. Each book had a higher level of personal books and Internet research. My last book, Your Cat Could Be A Spy, had some books involved, but mostly for background to help me find more on-line. The CIA web site, where I found a lot of stuff about gadgets, was a lot more fun than the Australian equivalent, which was a public service web site.

I think I've been going about half-half with this one. Not everything is on-line. But you have to be careful with the books, because sometimes things have changed since they were published. For example, one of my criminals had hanged himself in jail since the book I was reading came out.

I ran out of dialup time for the month, so I have been visiting the local cafe, the Presse, which has wifi facilities, to send off my stories and do some more research. I don't usually do this, of course, because I;m at work during the week. I will miss it when I get back. There are so many regulars in here, so many others with their computers, doing what I'm doing, going on-line, checking their e-mail. One woman I spoke to yesterday has no Internet connection at home and can't get even dialup right now, because she has no landline phone!

They're really getting to know me at this place. I will have to go on weekends once I'm back at work.

The place is peaceful and I can get my work done better than at home, with the temptations of DVDs, CDs, the fridge and the kettle... I buy a pot of tea here and someone else makes it for me while I work and it lasts me till I'm finished.

And no telemarketers ringing me!

Trust Me! Published by Ford Street Publishing

Okay, I can't review this book, because I have a story in it. Still, I can't resist giving it a plug. It started life as an anthology of historical fiction, commissioned by an education publisher. The publisher and Paul Collins, who was editing, disagreed about enough things that he withdrew and decided to publish it himself, through his new company. Oddly, there are only three pieces left under "historical" - mine being one of them - but the theme of this anthology is "genre". That gives a wide variety of choices and there are stories under romance, crime, horror, fantasy, SF, humour, adventure, etc. It's a big, fat book, with about fifty contributors, mostly big-name Australian writers and artists, and as a teacher-librarian I think it will come in handy in classrooms, because you can choose a genre for whatever work you are doing with the kids. I've been reading the stories and enjoying so far.

Isobelle Carmody wrote the introduction, in which she gave my story a whole paragraph - nice!

My story, Countdown to Apollo 11, was one of the historicals. I had a lot of fun researching it; I went to the State Library and browsed through the newspapers of July 1969, to find out what people were concerned about, what things cost, what was on at the movies and the theatre, even what Star Trek episode was on just before the moon landing, because my hero was a Trek fan. The episode was "The Enterprise Incident", by the way. Most of it had to be left out, because I only had about 2000 words, but the story was better for it, and I know all that information, anyway. 1969 was a different world, wasn't it? No Internet, no mobile phones, no personal computers, in Australia TV was still black and white, not even answering machines on phones. I found an article about an anti-Vietnam rally outside the US consulate on July 4th and used one of the individual stories as the background for this one. One of my friends from work told me he remembered that rally and had been there.

So now I know I can do historical fiction if I want. Good to know for the future.

Anyway, conflict of interest or not, I do think this book is worth getting.

New YA fiction series begins!

GIRLFRIEND FICTION 1 and 2: MY LIFE AND OTHER CATASTROPHES By Rowena Mohr and THE INDIGO GIRLS By Penni Russon

When I began my first job as a teacher-librarian, in the 1980s, there were a lot of teen romances around, mostly American, some British. They were a sort of junior Mills and Boon. The girls loved them, of course, though to be honest, most of them weren’t very good. They were churned out like the junior horror novels of today and had one basic plot, with minor variations. High school Cinderella, after having to compete with the beautiful school witch, finally gets the school Prince Charming, or else the school Prince Charming turns out to be shallow and vain and Cinderella discovers she’s happier with the nice boy who has been her shoulder to cry on throughout the novel. The heroines were always, always middle class and white, of course.

In Australia around this time, a new teen romance series appeared, Dolly Fiction, which was actually written by some of the country’s top YA and children’s writers, though they wrote under pseudonyms. Consequently, the series was better-written than most of the other books of this genre. Alas, it didn’t last long. Possibly, the kids preferred their cotton candy literature. or maybe the writers had other things to do.

Now, though, we have a new series along the same lines, Girlfriend Fiction. I should add that if these don’t work out as teen romances, they will succeed as perfectly good YA novels. The romance elements are light and don’t overwhelm the stories. This may disappoint girls who have bought or borrowed them because of the hearts on the cover, but at least the books won’t fizzle out in favour of cotton candy romance. The well-known writers writing them are using their own names this time.

The first two have just come out and more are promised, one of them by Kate Constable, best known for her fantasy novels.

My Life and Other Catastrophes is written in the form of a diary - you know, the usual “my English teacher says we have to write a journal, so...” beginning. This diary is being typed up on computer, though, which plays an important role later in the novel. Kids like novels written in the form of diaries or letters, anyway - the “chapters” are nice and short.

Sixteen-year-old Erin’s life is a mess. Dad has left the family for reasons she can only guess (wrongly, as it turns out - very wrongly!). Mum has a new boyfriend Erin dislikes intensely - and worse, he’s a teacher at her school. Her little brother is making suspiciously large amounts of money, far more than you’d expect from a fourteen-year-old nerd. Erin is playing Mina Harker in the school’s musical version of Dracula, but her Jonathan is not her idea of “hot” and the potential boyfriend material playing Dracula, Brendan, seems more interested in her greenie friend Rami (who is currently not talking to her anyway).

Is Kid Brother (or Sucky Little Brother as she calls him) selling drugs? Is “Creepazoid”, Mum’s boyfriend, about to start a drug dealers’ turf war? What’s wrong with Brendan’s mother? Will the school witch, “Mandozer” actually win Australian Idol, as she’s been bragging?

All will be revealed in the course of this very funny story, which includes a laugh-out-loud local newspaper review of the school show that completely fails to notice there was a real police raid in the middle of it. And, yes, Erin gets the guy and is reconciled with Rami. This should be no secret.

The Indigo Girls is more serious in style. The story is told, in alternate chapters, by Zara and Tilly, two very different girls. Every year their families meet at Indigo, a bayside town with a camping ground. Summer is the only time the girls meet and they have very different lives in the meantime. Usually, they’re part of a threesome., but this year Mieke is going to be a few days late and Tilly and Zara wonder if the two of them will get along without her to keep the balance. Tilly is a nerd who’s going straight to university. Zara seems to have all the friends, but dreams of taking a trip around Australia alone after school.

Zara has become the victim of cell phone stalking. Since she broke up with her boyfriend under particularly nasty circumstances, she has been receiving obscene and threatening anonymous text messages. Because it is her policy never to share secrets - they break up friendships, she believes - she has kept it bottled up, not even telling her brother, Ivan. Zara is beautiful and popular, but has no real friends. Her parents aren’t talking to each other, for reasons we never find out, and her father isn’t talking to her, for reasons we do find out, but which aren’t her fault. She just can’t tell him, because it’s a secret.

Because of this, she wistfully admires Tilly’s close-knit family and Tilly herself for her strength and honesty, while Tilly admires Zara’s beauty and seeming confidence. She also fancies Ivan, briefly, though there is another boy in the story with whom she ends up.

Zara takes comfort in sneaking out to surf by night. It is a time when she can rejoice in the waves and having to do it by feel. Tilly asks to join her and the accident that follows makes both of them think about their lives.

Eventually, Zara discovers who is really sending her those text messages - not her ex, as assumed - and has another think about what friendship really is.

What about that cute - and intellectual - waiter at the golf club, Sawyer? Does he like Tilly for herself or just because she’s dressed like Zara at the time?

It’s a story that teen girls will enjoy, as long as they think of it as a story about friendship more than romance. It’s just a pity that Zara’s family is still "toxic’" at the end, though she does reconcile with Ivan, before being made welcome by Tilly’s family.

Oh, well, can’t have everything. Both books are suitable for girls in mid to late high school.

Books and Writing: SCBWI conference, Sydney (1)

Books and Writing: SCBWI conference, Sydney (1)

This is a link to Sherryl Clark's con report, a lot tighter-written than mine! Both types are good, so I thought I'd put in this link.

Sydney SCBWI Conference, February 23-24, 2008

This was the second conference in Australia of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Like last time, it was held at the Hughenden Hotel in Woollahra, a very expensive suburb of Sydney.

Last time, while I enjoyed the conference, it was rather illustrator-heavy, which was great for the illustrators, but I'm a writer. This time, the balance was a lot better, and those of us who scribble instead of paint, draw and do elaborate stuff on computer were introduced to the wonderful process of producing a picture story book, with the partnership between writer and artist.

And the difference in rooms! If you have read my report in my other blog, at http://greatraven.blogspot.com, you'll know I had a bizarre experience in my room. I am used to sharing a dorm and a bathroom at youth hostels and at least I would have this room to myself. A shared bathroom was fine, especially as it was just across the hall.

I got there to find that my heavily discounted room was directly opposite the laundry, which did its washing late at night. The room's bed was a bunk whose lower level had a low roof (ouch!). There was a bent plug on the reading lamp, a non-working TV remote control, plenty of tea and coffee but no kettle (I got one on request - the staff were very kind and helpful - but then discovered there was only one power point and I had to unplug the TV and put the kettle on the floor to boil!). While at the conference this time, I walked past that room and the door was open on what looked like an office. Very wise! ☺

This time I booked well in advance and explained my problem from last time. I got a room which was unbelievably luxurious! The bed was big enough for four people to loll in (oddly enough, I got four towels…). My friend Edwina Harvey, who is a very good children's writer but wasn't coming this time, suggested a six-pack of Legolases when I told her about it on the phone. I tested the width by lying across the bed and found that my feet didn't go over the edge. Mm…

I chose the side of the bed which had a clock on it, because breakfast was served early at the Hughenden and I didn't want to miss it. No problem about bed lamps. There was not only a bed lamp, but also one on a stalk. And ceiling fans, which were much appreciated in the heat.

The TV was one of those huge flat-screen things. Pity there was not much on late at night, though I did lie in bed and watch the end of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." The bathroom was large and elegant, unlike the squashy things in modern hotels. And there were a couple of comfy chairs to curl up in if you didn't want to lie on the bed.

I decided to see if I could rustle up a room party at some stage, but when I suggested it to Meredith Costain, she said firmly, "No, Sue, this is NOT a con!" Oh, well. I might do it next time anyway, because it's fairer to the staff than hanging around in the dining area late at night, when they want to switch off and go home or to bed. And it needn't be the riotous affair it can be at a science fiction con. It can be just a few folk sitting, chatting over coffee, BYO cup. Goodness knows, the room parties I've hosted have been peaceful enough.

After I'd settled in, I wandered downstairs to see if there was anyone I knew, or anyone I could chat with anyway. There was a small group drinking wine and chatting in the dining area, which is open to the small foyer. They kindly invited me to join them, though I didn't know most of them. One of them was a US guest of honour, Ellen Hopkins, who writes YA novels in verse. That interested me because I can read verse novels to my literacy class. It's very hard to find material suitable for young men and women in their late teens who read at a low level. Verse novels are perfect, because they are simply worded and you can stop at the end of each poem. My students last year loved Steven Herrick's The Simple Gift. As it happened, she had read his work and had a lot of respect for him. I ended up buying two of her books.

Brian Caswell wandered past, though he wasn't staying for the conference. He was with Leonie Tyle, formerly of UQP, now working for Random House, who was going to be at the conference. He's working on another book in the science fiction series he began in the 1980s. I'll look forward to reading it, though, I have to say, nobody has borrowed them from my library for quite a while. I will have to promote them to the good readers.

I went back to my luxury room and stretched out happily on my king-sized bed to sleep. Next morning I woke up around 6.13 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep. Still nothing much to watch on the giant TV, but I turned it on anyway and watched cartoons from bed while sipping tea. What's the fun in staying in a hotel if you can't do that?

Breakfast was a very nice buffet. My usual breakfast, at home, is fresh fruit and toast and a pot of tea – herbal during the week, regular or green tea on weekends, but while I couldn't resist a little of their fruit, I mostly piled my plate with scrambled eggs, grilled tomato and a hash brown, because I wouldn't have that at home. I drank brewed coffee, for the same reason.

The conference opened at 9.00 a.m. – definitely not a fannish event! A science fiction convention is run on the assumption that the members will have been partying till late at night and are sleeping in. Which is not to say that they don’t have early panels. I have done some myself, one on a Sunday morning, when you really wouldn't expect anyone to turn up, but that was a Harry Potter panel and it was the day after the release of the latest book in the series. We got a full hall.

The first day of the SCBWI conference was packed. There was one session after another and it was all so useful you really didn't want to miss any of it. It was broken up a little by morning and afternoon tea and lunch.

In the goody bags were a lot of leaflets for this and that book, a pen (but no stationery – I ended up writing my notes on the backs of leaflets and then finding a small supermarket where I could buy a notepad) and Dianne Bates's useful book about self-editing. Later in the conference, Dianne explained how, despite giving the book away, she actually managed to get money out of it, tax-wise, in a win-win situation.

Julie Romeis from Chronicle Books in the US gave a very interesting talk about trends in the US market and offered to look at stuff sent by conference attendees if we addressed it to her attention, with "SCBWI Conference, Sydney" on the envelope. She urged us to set trends rather than follow them, because this year's flavour-of-the-month might be gone by next year.

During morning tea, there was a launch of Meredith Costain's new book, Rosie And The Bunyip, which I bought for Amelia, my niece, who is about the right age to read it. I have given it to Amelia, who got stuck into it right away. Meredith made some of us go up and do bunyip noises. I didn't win, but what-the-heck, it was fun.

The next session was about agents. Rick Raftos admitted that it's hard to get one in Australia, mostly because there are too few for all the writers who want one. He suggested getting recommended by a Big Name Writer or a publisher. Sigh! Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. I did manage to get a newish agent in WA for a while, but she went out of business to concentrate on her own writing, and never found me any markets anyway. I tried so many agents, all of whose books were full, even one who actually bothered to write to me, saying, "I've read your books, I know you're a good writer, I just don’t have any space." Another agent who is a big name around the country was at least willing to consider me, but I had a lot of trouble finding her – she was nowhere to be found on the Web and a certain big-name writer who had promised to introduce me never replied when I followed up with an e-mail to him, or several e-mails. Needless to say I have never bought any more of his books.

I finally managed to find someone who could pass on my inquiry, but suggested I get a reference from a big name writer. I got one from Natalie Prior and one from Lucy Sussex, who was a commissioning editor for Hodder at one stage and had wanted them to buy a novel of mine, but hadn't been able to get me through. I managed to contact the agent, who at least agreed to look at the MS, but said no. I tried Cherry Weiner, an Aussie-born agent living in the US, who said anything she offered to publishers had to be LONG and part of a trilogy.

Finally, I decided that I'd just have to do my own work. I've sold enough books that publishers will at least look at anything I send, whatever their policy on manuscript submissions. It just means I have to spend time searching for markets and working out my own contracts and payments if I'm lucky enough to sell, instead of having someone to take care of it. All the same, I see red whenever some writer sits up on the dais gushing, "Oh, I couldn't possibly manage without my agent!"

Dianne Bates spoke very well about the business of writing, sort of like a briefer version of Bjo Trimble's talk on the subject at a con I attended years ago. What Dianne doesn't know about selling isn't worth knowing. To my surprise, I found that she knew what I do and asked me about the It's True! Series (dead, alas!).

After lunch, there were two wonderful panels on picture books. I don't write picture books, which require a skill I haven't mastered, so I put aside my notebook and enjoyed.

I did take notes on the YA fiction panel. Leonie Tyle, who has moved to Random House, is now only taking literary fiction. Alas, I don't write literary fiction, which is a shame, because Leonie is very good about reading her slush and only rejected one title I submitted to UQP because they didn't publish that kind of fiction. She actually rang me to talk about it. I had hoped that now I might have a chance, but I just don't write that kind of fiction. Pity.

I went out for a half –hour walk and returned to the launch of Felicity Pulman's new book, a Janna mystery. I've only read one of those, myself, but we had some fans in my school library and I have bought a copy for the library.

Saturday night was the conference dinner. I shared a table with Meredith and some others I didn't know. It was a pleasant evening and we sat outside, under cover. As there was no chance of a room party, I went up to the room about ten p.m. and rang Edwina, who was going to pick me up on Sunday and have something to eat before I went to the airport. We had a long natter.

Sunday brought some more fascinating panels, in one of which publishers talked about their discoveries and what they were looking for. I made a note of some potential markets which I have followed up with inquiries and intend to do properly during the holidays.

There was a panel on education publishing in which it was suggested that if you’re versatile you can have a good market there. This has certainly been true for Meredith and has been generally true in the past, though it's not as easy now. Meredith showed off something called Space Race, which would be great for reading to a literacy class, except that my students would consider it babyish. Of course, it's not aimed at them and I asked my question as a teacher and librarian, not as a writer: what was happening for students like mine, who are sixteen or seventeen and reading at Grade 2 level? It is terribly frustrating to be unable to find materials that really get the concept of "high interest/low reading level". Meredith said that mostly, education publishing is aimed at no higher than Year 8. She suggested that I make an appointment with an education publisher to talk about my needs in this area. I just might do that, and see if I can get a book or two out of it myself.

I had to leave early so I could have a little time with Edwina before heading for the airport. Really, I only missed one panel, which was the "two minute pitch." Fun, no doubt, but I could live without it. Edwina arrived shortly after 3.00 p.m. and we got a bus to Central Train Station, where we had a fast-food meal before I took the train to the airport.

All in all, it was an enjoyable and productive weekend and I will certainly go if there's another one.

STRIDE’S SUMMER By Jenni Overend

Allen and Unwin, Crow’s Nest, NSW, 2007. 163 p.

It starts with a funeral - Stride’s father’s - and pouring rain.

Stride’s father Frank, a fisherman, had died at sea, leaving behind his wife and two children, Stride and his older sister Annie, and Ferd, a sulphur-crested cockatoo which Frank had raised from a chick, during his own childhood. Now Ferd becomes Stride’s constant companion and comfort as he coaxes the bird to recover from the loss of his master. Both boy and cockatoo make a new friend, Jess, who helps them both.

But things aren’t going to stay the same forever. What about Stride’s artist mother, who never really wanted to live outside the city? What about Gramps, his grandfather, who is now alone on the farm, with no one to help him? Will Stride lose his beloved home by the sea?

Stride needs to overcome his grief and sense of loss before he can go on with life. A bushfire forces him to learn about himself.

This is a gentle, easy-to-read story with a style reminiscent of Colin Thiele's. The author lives in the mountains, but she gives a convincing picture of life in a coastal town, surrounded by bush. You can feel the storms and the sea spray, smell the eucalyptus and see the pounding surf. Australia's on-going drought is also well-drawn.

The only quibble I have with it is that it reads like a story aimed at primary school children, but it becomes clear, before the end, that Stride is a teenager - to be honest, I’d assumed he was about twelve or thirteen at most. It might have worked better if he had been.

But it’s not a major issue - children don’t mind reading about characters a little older than themselves and this is a book I would give to children in late primary school.

Recommended.

Review: Teeth Marks By Rose Moxham

It starts with a bicycle crash. Nick, the crash victim, ends up on his back in the local hospital, remembering how it all happened, in flashback, and getting used to the strange variety of characters with whom he is sharing a ward.

When two boys from the city go to work on a farm for a few months, all they have in mind is a working holiday and a little money before starting university. Nick’s friend, Robbie, had grown up in the district and knows everyone. He also has a way with girls. Nick hasn’t, but when he meets Robbie’s childhood friend, Jude, who sings rockabilly and has two dogs, he is immediately attracted. The two start a relationship.

But Jude has a problem - one about which everyone in town knows but which nobody tells him. Jude is desperate to find someone who will be true to her and hopes that she can get commitment from Nick before confessing the problem to him.

So, what do you do when someone who might come down with a genetically-inherited medical condition which will leave them helpless and demented wants you to commit yourself to them and you’re only nineteen, far too young to be able to make such a serious decision? At the age of nineteen, thirty, when the illness might begin, seems a lifetime away. It certainly seems that way to Nick, who is a young nineteen and needs some growing up.

In the hospital ward, unable to move, he does some growing up and manages to find sympathy for people he would never have mixed with in his regular life., and, when he leaves, makes sure he does something to help some of them.

Despite the action-packed opening, it took me a while to get into the story. Most children and teenagers simply won’t take trouble over a book if it doesn’t capture their attention immediately. And there’s the question of this book’s intended audience - the main character is a boy, but to me it feels more like a girls’ book, about relationships and coming-of-age.

Still, it’s worth sticking with; in the end, it’s a gentle tale, sad but with a positive ending. And it isn’t the standard “coming-of-age” tale - the reader can wonder what he or she would do if they fell for someone who was going to lose their health and wanted you to look after them, ten years from now. It might just be an interesting topic for class discussion when, as is likely, this book is set on the school English syllabus.

Worth checking out.

Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony By Eoin Colfer. Published by Penguin Books.

ARTEMIS FOWL AND THE LOST COLONY By Eoin Colfer

When Artemis Fowl first came out, it was, as usual for children’s books at the time, acclaimed as being just like Harry Potter. Come to think of it, that’s still happening today - if it’s a fantasy story and the main character is a boy, it’s Harry Potter, please buy it. Which is a pity, because I think the Artemis Fowl books, at least, will become classics in their own right and attract their own audiences, without any need of support from J.K. Rowling.

Of course, this series isn’t remotely like the Potter books. About all the protagonists have in common is that they’re both eleven year old boys in the first book and grow up in the course of the series. The same can be said of The Dark Is Rising, which was written long before either the Potter or the Fowl books and even has a wizardly mentor (Merlin, actually, still around in modern Britain) - so what?

Harry was a good boy, having adventures with his friends. Artemis was a young criminal genius. He didn’t, at the time, have any friends except his bodyguard, Butler, who genuinely cared about him. While Harry was trying to save the world by finding and destroying the philosopher’s stone, which confers immortality and turns base metal into gold, Artemis was busy kidnapping a fairy, in order to steal gold from her people. Just like Harry Potter? Hardly!

Now we’ve got that out of the way, on to the review.

Fairies in this universe are technologically advanced centuries beyond humans, though they’re magical beings who need contact with the earth to keep themselves going, but have been driven underground long ago. Still, these fairies kick ass, especially their police force, the LEPrecon (get it?). The fairy races are many things, but cute and sweet are not among them. Take the dwarfs, for example. They tunnel by unhinging their jaws and eating their way through the soil - and of course, the gas has to come out somewhere, to help propel them along, hence the “bumflap” in the dwarf’s garment... Ouch!

I haven’t read an Artemis Fowl novel for some time - the last one was the second, in fact. This novel is the fifth and it makes me want to go back and fill in the gaps. I found myself falling comfortably back into the universe. One character, alas, has died since the last time I read a Fowl novel. Artemis is now fourteen and has matured. He’s made friends among the fairies, including the one he kidnapped in Book 1, and is starting, shock horror, to act like a good guy! Oh, yes, and trying to handle puberty.

Just as well, then, that there’s another junior criminal genius to attract him, a sort of female Artemis called Minerva. To be fair, Minerva doesn’t want to harm anybody or steal anything, she just wants to be the youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for physics and has no problem with grabbing a magical being to do it. The trouble is, her ambitions might, unintentionally, destroy an entire lost fairy race, the demons. Time is running out to save them, and Artemis and his friends are relying on a small imp who’s the last demon warlock alive...

A series like this could quite easily have gone downhill by Book 5, but it hasn’t. You really want to know what happens next and this one has an ending that lets you know, quite clearly, that there’s more to come and that the author has been thinking quite carefully about Artemis’s future. After all, he is a teenager now, one who is starting to notice girls, but he needs a girl with his own intelligence. It would have worked better if Minerva had played a larger role in the events at the novel’s climax, but I’d be very surprised if she wasn’t back in the next book.

There’s a “gnommish" alphabet at the end of the book, with a long message throughout the book, disguised as a pretty border. Anna Ciddor’s Viking trilogy had rune messages in it, but at least she put them at the end of each chapter. Runes might have worked better in this one than the picture-based letters, because children can actually copy runes and write their own messages. Oh, well.

Excuse me, I’m off to make my way through the book again, to see what the message says...

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Before The Storm By Sean McMullen

BEFORE THE STORM By Sean McMullen


This is one of the first two books to be published by Ford St Publishing, a new company formed by Australian writer and editor Paul Collins, co-editor of the Quentaris series of children’s fantasies. The company seems to have got off to a good start, with two young adult tales by a couple of Australia’s better writers.

Teenagers Emily and Daniel live with their parents in Melbourne. The year is 1901 and the Australian colonies are about to become one country, with a huge ceremony in the beautiful Exhibition Buildings. They go to their nice middle-class schools and row on the Yarra river on weekends and the last thing they are expecting is a visit from two young refugees from a future in which the world is at war and teenagers like themselves are brought up to fight. Something bad is going to happen at that ceremony which makes Australia one country and if it isn’t stopped, that future world will happen. Emily and Daniel’s help is needed urgently.

The story was huge fun, an entertaining romp with a lot of humour. Emily is a strong character who has been frustrated by not being allowed to do the things she wants because of being female, but there’s a lot of humour in her flirting with the wounded BC, one of the two visitors from the future, especially when she finds out the truth about BC late in the book. Her brother has been doing some not-strictly-legal things with Barry the Bag, a teenager who helps his father at the railway station and sells - er, French postcards, among other things (and in this era, French postcards don’t just mean postcards from France...), but both boys help with the urgent mission to save the future.

In the end, we find that it isn’t necessarily going to be the middle-class characters who save the day - and when Barry does save the day, it isn’t necessarily for the right reasons, but whatever works...

It’s also nice to visit a part of Australian history that isn’t often the subject of historical novels, though it’s sometimes studied at school in Australia. We do forget, in this day and age, that Australia was once just a bunch of different colonies. The author has researched the era carefully, making it believable, and the history is just as important as the science fiction. I happen to live near some of the places described in the book, and it’s fascinating to think of how different they were over a hundred years ago. Even if you live on the other side of the world, though, it is an interesting bit of history.

Sean McMullen is best-known for his adult science fiction; most of his books have become international bestsellers. In his first book for young people, the Quentaris novel Ancient Hero, he showed that he has considerable ability in writing for younger readers. With Before The Storm, he’s confirmed he can do it and it’s to be hoped that he will continue along this route and write some more YA fiction. The universes of his adult books are highly complex and they require a lot of concentration to read, but when writing for children or teens, a writer needs to refine his or her universe and tell a story that the young reader can enjoy without having to worry about complexities. In this one, and the previous story, Mr McMullen has shown he can keep his story simple and keep it going.

I had the feeling, at the end, that there might be a sequel at some stage, but even if there isn’t, it stands well on its own and should entertain readers about twelve to fourteen. Well, someone might have to explain the French postcards for the younger readers, but I suspect most of them have seen worse on the Net...

On seeing a movie of a beloved book

All I can say, after watching the movie supposedly based on Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising is - thank goodness J.K. Rowling had control over what was done to her Harry Potter novels!

I first discovered The Dark Is Rising series in the 1970s. I remember a lot of people were reading it then. I loved the mood, the atmosphere and the British background. I suspect, like a lot of people, that a certain J.K. Rowling got some ideas from these books, though she made them her own.

Anyway, when someone asked me what The Dark Is Rising, the novel, was about, I said it was about a boy who finds, on his 11th birthday, that he's a wizard. Well, a lot more than a wizard - the last of the Old Ones. With the help of other Old Ones, he has to collect a number of Signs, created over the centuries for him, so that they can be used to beat back the Dark in the battle between Light and Dark. His mentor was a gentleman called Merriman Lyon, an Oxford University professor in our time, though you know, through hints, and it's finally confirmed in later books, that he's Merlin. There was a large, loving family who lived in Buckinghamshire, a thrilling night chase with Herne the Hunter, travels through time and a tragic character who betrayed the Light and suffered for it.

So when I heard, recently, that they'd made a movie of it, I got terribly excited. I was impressed to hear that the villainous Rider was Christopher Eccleston (who, in the end, was the only thing that made the film worth bothering with, with a deliciously evil performance, so you could hold down the notion he was going to invite Will into his TARDIS).

This morning I went to see it. Urk! Why did they bother to use Susan Cooper's name? Even if I hadn't read the novels, I wouldn't have cared for it. One kid who's on a quest for the Signs and being nagged by the other Old Ones to get on with it, a final fight with the Rider, in which the Old Ones attack him physically, a scene in which two of them are attacked by the Rider's rooks in a deserted pub - - yeuk!

Will's family has become American, his age upped to fourteen, probably so he can be nearly seduced by the evil Maggie Barnes, his huge, loving family is dysfunctional, his brother Tom is suddenly his twin, being held by the Dark instead of a first baby lost to illness, Miss Greythorne of the Manor is the boss of the Old Ones and Merriman just her not-too-cluey butler (in the novel Merriman was playing the role of butler while her regular one was away, so he could be near enough to help Will)who happens to be an Old One. If this guy is Merlin, no wonder Arthur stuffed up!The tragic Walker, evidence that Merriman once made a huge mistake, is just not there.

I have nothing against American actors as long as they get it right - look at the four wonderful American actors in Lord of the Rings - they were the perfect Aragorn, Arwen, Frodo and Sam - well, Viggo M was probably a few years too young for the role of Aragorn and Elijah Wood way too young for Frodo, but when you saw the movie, you didn't care. But why, oh, why, did the CHARACTERS have to be American? How would they like it if some British film-maker set Huckleberry Finn in England? Or if Tom Sawyer was re-set in the Australian outback? Why do these folk think their audiences are too dumb to be able to handle anything "furrin"? Hadn't they noticed how well Harry Potter did, without being Americanised?

I know that you can't make a movie exactly like the novel, but surely you can avoid making it so different that it's like a different story altogether.

I have been re-reading the series and finding it just as good as the first time around.

I didn't want to comment on this movie, despite all that I had heard, without seeing it, but if they do any of the sequels, I'm not bothering.

Anyone who reads this post - go read the book. And wait for the movie The Golden Compass - despite the change of title, it looks, from the trailers, like a wonderfully faithful adaptation of Northern Lights, well-cast, stunningly beautiful visually.

Watch this space.

New link added - Moira Dahlberg

Moira Dahlberg is a Western Australian teacher, writer and science fiction fan. I met her through Blake's Seven fandom and remember her wonderful fiction. She is also writing some great stuff to support teachers in the classroom and believe me, when you're trying to come up with some ideas that will entertain them and teach them something at the same time, it's always worth checking out books and black line masters by people who know how to do both! We used her writing game as an activity in the children's room at Aussiecon 3, back in 1999. The kids loved it.

When I first knew Moira, she had only a manual typewriter. Now she has a web site, with not only her own stuff, but links to other writiers and artists. Go take a look - all you need to do is click on the side bar.

Fremantle Impressions review

This review is currently awaiting publication by January Magazine. January Magazine has quite a big backlog of my reviews and I have kept the publicity folk at Fremantle Press waiting a while, so I thought I'd publish it first, till JM has the time.

FREMANTLE IMPRESSIONS By Ron Davidson. Published by Fremantle Press

The port of Fremantle in Western Australia is old. Founded in 1829, it's actually older than Melbourne, which didn’t begin until 1835. It has been a centre of whaling, of imports and exports, it has had convicts and Aboriginal rebels and union strikes and has seen the foundation of business dynasties. In the 1980s, it was the site of the America’s Cup. This was the first time in many years that the Cup was won away from the US - won by a millionaire yachtsman who later lost his hero status in Australia when he was arrested for crooked business dealings.

“Impressions” is probably a good description of this book, written by journalist Ron Davidson, who has lived in the city most of his life. Although it begins with the early days of the colony, describing the characters who lived there at the time, and the place itself, this is not a history of Fremantle - not really. A history, even a local history, is usually in some sort of chronological order. This book is more of a stroll through town, from place to place, with comments on what has happened over the years in each spot.

First, the book’s positive aspects: Fremantle is a fascinating place, and this is made clear in the course of the literary wander around town. As well as its long-past history, the author interviews people who have their own memories of the place and what was happening during the historical events. Every second page is a beautiful sepia photo of Fremantle’s past.

Ron Davidson clearly loves his town. If you’re visiting a place as a tourist, it’s always good to learn something about it - and have something to take home, to remind you of your holiday. You don’t need to read about famous historical figures to get a feel for the past of any place. The lives of ordinary people tell you far more than battles and politics ever could. Even the notion of a stroll around town gives you the feeling of being there, with a guide.

The trouble is, if you actually do want to wander around Fremantle by yourself, and learn something about the various buildings and wharfs you pass, this book isn't going to be as helpful as it might be. There are no chapters, no themes and no index. If you want to find your way around, how do you do it if you can’t even look up the information about where you are? If you simply enjoy reading local history, it won’t help much either, as it doesn’t run in chronological order. Even chapter divisions with a theme for each would help - the history of a particular part of Fremantle, for example, or of an industry, or even a family dynasty.

If there is a new edition of this book, it really would be a good idea to give it an index, if nothing else. It’s too dense for a coffee table book - and too small in size anyway - but would come in handy as a self-guided tour book if the tourist could look up information about where he or she was. A current map would also be useful.

This is a good book, but could be better, with a better layout.

Review: Heart of Gold

This review has been sent to January Magazine and will probably be published there sooner or later, but probably later, as there are a number of my reviews awaiting publication, so here it is!


HEART OF GOLD By Michael Pryor

In Blaze of Glory, first novel in the Laws of Magic series, we met Aubrey Fitzwilliam, son of an aristocratic family in the land of Albion, an alternative universe version of Edwardian England. In this world, magic is a science, totally unconnected with superstition or the summoning of demons, ouija boards or midnight rituals. Well, admittedly it’s done best in such ancient languages as Chaldean... The laws of magic of the series title are a lot like the laws of physics - “ye cannae change them, Captain” although you can mix and match and adapt them if you know what you’re doing. Unlike the magic of the Harry Potter universe, it isn’t genetically-based, but something you can learn at school and then practise as a career.

Aubrey is a magical genius. Like other geniuses, he simply can’t resist experimenting and at the start of the first novel, he did something truly stupid, experimenting with horribly dangerous death magic. As a result, he ended up dead.

Well, sort of. He is - literally - holding body and soul together, to avoid having his soul float off into the realm of true death, and finding that being dead can really mess up a chap’s lifestyle.

With his schoolfriend George and a brilliant and feisty young lady called Caroline, he saved the Crown Prince Albert (otherwise known as his cousin Bertie) and foiled a plot by the realm’s head magician which would have started this world’s version of World War I.

At the beginning of Heart of Gold, Aubrey and George, who desperately need a holiday before starting university, head for Gallia (France) where Caroline is already studying at the university of Lutetia (Paris). Aubrey isn’t allowed to relax, though; each member of his family gives him an item to add to a “shopping list” of tasks to perform while he’s over there. His grandmother wants some embarrassing letters back. His mother wants contact with a fellow scientist. His father wants him to keep an eye out for certain things he needs to know. Cousin Bertie needs some important information about his ancestors. All of them, of course, end up being connected and sending Aubrey and George into danger .

Aubrey being Aubrey, he can’t stay out of trouble, and while filling the shopping list and trying to find a magician who might have information that will cure his condition, he finds himself contending with more plotting, spies, a city full of lurching zombies (living folk whose souls have been stolen by a nutter with a magical camera), prehistoric animals erupting all over Lutetia, terrorists, the theft of a magical artefact - the Heart of Gold - that must be kept in the city’s centre, in a nun’s lap, or Gallia will fall apart - oh, and inviting Caroline to an embassy ball...

Like the first novel, Heart of Gold is great fun. The action is almost non-stop - even in the first few pages, Aubrey and George are flying an ornithopter to rescue an airship in trouble. Immediately on arriving in Paris, they’re fighting a zombie. Among the prehistoric monsters they have to face is a scary dinosaur, probably a tyrannosaurus.

Despite all the action, the author never forgets that as well as story, you have to have characters the readers can believe in. Aubrey is brilliant, but not perfect; he does something idiotic yet again, though this time it could lose him Caroline’s affection rather than his life. George, while filling the role of the comical sidekick, is really not dumb at all, and Aubrey doesn’t underestimate him for a minute, though others do. Possibly only Caroline is too perfect; as well as intelligence and beauty and ability with a gun, she turns out to be a martial arts expert.

Still, the characters are likeable, the plot funny and delightful and I do like this universe. Women don’t yet have the vote, but they are respected as scientists and artists and their strength is taken for granted.

The series has been compared with Harry Potter, which seems about standard right now. Sorry - not remotely alike, except that both protagonists are teenagers who are good at magic, hang out with two other teenagers and can’t get up the nerve to ask a girl to a dance. If anything, it reminds me of Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom trilogy - Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen - and the world of Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy. Fans of both series should enjoy this one.

Anyway, much as I loved the Potter books, I’d rather go out to a party with Aubrey than Harry; at least he doesn’t whinge or worry about what the Dark Lord is plotting when he’s supposed to be giving his partner a good time. Sorry, J.K. Rowling.

Vale Centero!

Centero is no more, alas!

I remember getting my first copy of what was then a print newsletter centred around Blake’s Seven, which was the reason for the name of the zine; in the British TV science fiction show, Centero was the location of the federation’s communications centre.

Nikki White, the editor, has been a passionate media fan for many years, though she has also been writing for periodicals relating to Dracula, a favourite historical figure, as well as having an interest all the literature about him, and, in recent years, has become a member of the rabbit-breeding community, writing for this “fandom” as well. Her activism and energy in many areas has been amazing and I, for one, am really going to miss Centero, though I do understand her reasons for finally dropping it.

Centero started as a duplicated zine. I remember going to the newsagency to pick up stencils on which I carefully typed my contributions, getting really upset every time I made a typo. I rolled them up and sent them to Nikki, who duplicated them on her machine and, at her own expense, sent the fanzine out to the contributors. Eventually, she had to charge something towards the postage expenses. Also, with the end of Blake’s Seven, quite a few fans found other interests. At this point, Nikki considered cancelling, but expanded into media science fiction and fantasy in general and there was a re-birth of the zine, as people wrote articles and letters about whatever their favourite shows and films were at the time. Nikki wrote reviews of quite a few media-related books and brought us up to date with whatever was happening to actors from Blake’s Seven and other shows.

Stencils gave way to photocopies, as the years went on and technology changed. It meant we no longer had to worry about what happened when we made typos, especially after we all got computers. This went on for some years – and, to be honest, it became my last contact with media fandom in between cons, because I dropped out of one Star Trek club and another closed down, and the Blake’s Seven club to which I had belonged went on-line.

Media cons, for that matter, thinned out; older fans retired from active fandom and new ones seem to think a con means you get an outrageously expensive actor and charge hundreds of dollars for people to sit in an auditorium and be entertained, as the actor who played second Romulan from the left in some obscure Trek episode talks about how great it is to be here in “Mel-born.” Well, it’s a con all right, but not in the way they think. Media fanzines, in Australia at least, have gone the way of the dodo, for the most part, as people discover the joys of the Internet. Viacom closed down Trek fanzines in Australia, one of the few countries where there isn’t a technicality in the law that allows them to continue, but they would probably have died anyway, as people decided that it was more fun to go on-line and choose stories by theme and character and, for that matter, write and publish their own stuff without having to go through the filter of an editor.

Eventually, fed up with the incompetence of her local post office, which had been messing up deliveries, Nikki declared that that was it – no more Centero! It was not as if a whole lot of people were writing any more anyway. Around then, I suggested she have a go at doing it as an e-mail newsletter. It continued in this form for some time; Nikki even kept print copies going for a few people who didn’t have the Internet, and goodness knows, she has to be considered a saint for patiently reproducing contributions from some folk who didn’t even have a computer.

It was a joy to read the reviews and the news and the articles about films and media-related books and new TV shows, and stay in contact with other fans. I looked forward to it every quarter, and made myself sit down and write something every time (I did miss the odd issue for one reason or another, but I think I’ve been in all but three or four issues since the start).

However, I was one of the few who did have that self-discipline, so Nikki finally decided enough was enough. With Issue #103, the party is over.

I’m considering re-publishing some of my own contributions on a new blog and will be inviting anyone else who is interested in writing media-related stuff, to submit. Stand by.

Meanwhile, thanks for everything, Nikki. You deserved a Ditmar Award for this zine, but you at least have the Sue Bursztynski Award for giving me a lot of enjoyment over the years.

Me 'N Harry

In a few hours, I will be going to the offices of Allen and Unwin in East Melbourne to collect my reviewer's copy of the very last Harry Potter book. It's been quite a journey, for me as well as for millions of other people. Thing is, I discovered it by word of mouth in 1999, when a fellow member of the committee of the 1999 World Science Fiction Convention, recommended the first book in the series. I'm a regular reader of children's books, but I hadn't heard of that one. I picked up a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone at that year's Children's Book Week Fair, and quite enjoyed it, though I thought it rather reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones' Lives of Christopher Chant and its sequels(and not for nothing - when the Potter books became a world phenomenon, guess which series was reissued in bright new covers?). Then there was Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, which not only had a boy wake up on his 11th birthday to find he was a wizard - well, okay, the last of the Old Ones - but had a rather Dumbledore-like version of Merlin as his mentor. Luckily Merlin - or Merriman Lyon, as he was known in the 20th century - didn't die.

I also thought HPPS read like a cross between Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton's boarding school stories. The boarding school story has always been popular, because it's a fantasy in its own right - who hasn't imagined for themselves the midnight feasts (read "Gryffindor common room parties"), the sports matches, the noble heroes and heroines solving mysteries and fighting crooks?

While I liked the first two stories very much, I only became a fan with Prisoner of Azkaban, which was starting to become dark. There had been a hint in Chamber of Secrets that the wizarding world was not as glamorous as it seemed, when an innocent man, Hagrid, was sent to prison, to be tormented by Dementors, merely on suspicion, with no evidence whatsoever. But in Prisoner of Azkaban, I, at least, decided that I wouldn't want to live in the wizarding world! Mind you, this was the last book in the series in which nobody died.

While it's true that the novels published since really needed severe pruning, there's no getting around the power of the storytelling. I became well and truly hooked and the nice thing was that I could discuss the novels with colleagues and students alike, and go on-line to read lengthy posts on Harry Potter forums, with everyone having their own theories about what would happen, what had happened in the past, whether Snape was or was not a villain, what really happened to Professor Umbridge when she was carried off by those centaurs. I was even sucked into some of the fan fiction, I blush to admit - a guilty pleasure, but then I used to write fan fiction myself, based on media universes and there was just as much discussion of, and arguing about, those universes, just as many people coming to verbal blows over their respective theories. At least in the Harry Potter forum I frequent, there are moderators to request everyone play nice and remind them that they're just books, for heaven's sake, not Holy Writ!

There has been much arguing that harry Potter has 'got kids reading." Wrong. As a teacher-librarian, I know that kids have never stopped reading - and I work, not at some exclusive select-entry school or a middle-class private school, but a secondary school in the working-class suburbs, where many of the students are the children of parents on benefits - those of them who aren't refugees living with older siblings or aunts. What they read may not be to the taste of some of those who say so, but they read - books, magazines, newspapers, graphic novels, web-based manga...

No, what I love about the series is that it has drawn adults' attention to how wonderful children's literature can be. Before the series began, you'd constantly be meeting folk who sneered at "kiddielit" and asked children's writers like me when they were going to write a "real book". Now, they have had to set up a separate list on the New York Times because this kiddie series was hogging the regular one week after week, and you see everyone from workmen in uniforms to businessmen and women in suits reading the books on the train and the tram and not all of them with adult covers, either.

Whatever happens, I'll miss Harry after tomorrow, but always be grateful to his creator for making my life as a lover of children's books so much easier!

Further musings on the slushpile and rejections

I'm one who has seen the slushpile from both sides - I have made a number of sales, books, short stories, articles, though I have received enough rejection slips to wallpaper the smallest room in my house, and I have also done slush reading for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Once, I was called on to do a reader's report for a book proposal. The writer concerned was a personal friend. The publisher wanted to publish it if they could, but had problems with it. However, they wished to be fair. As it happened, I felt that there was nothing wrong with it that a bit of chopping and changing wouldn't fix, about two hours' work. I said so, the publisher agreed and the book was duly published. Just as well - I would have hated to have found it unpublishable!

As a member of the ASIM list, I have found a bunch of people who feel terribly guilty every time they have to turn down a piece and have long, long discussions about what we should and shouldn't be considering in our reading. But with about 8200 submissions over the years, we just haven't been able to take everything, not even everything publishable.

Most submitters understand this and appreciate receiving comments, even when they hurt a bit. Occasionally we get someone who is so angry that we have called their baby ugly that they complain about it on their blogs. One, recently, referred to ASIM as "an amateur" publication in Australia - sorry, semi-pro, which means that everyone gets paid for their work except us - and us as "those clowns" because his (already much-rejected) masterpiece had been rejected again and he hadn't liked the comments and - shock, horror! - had been kept waiting for a couple of months. I admit that we rarely keep anyone waiting for longer than a couple of weeks, unless they are in our "slush pool", which means they have some chance, at least, of being published. This was an unusual case, but there was good reason for the delay. In this case, my opinion is that the only amateur was the author. Such unprofessional behaviour is unlikely to get him published by one of the bigger magazines, and if he does succeeed, it will probably be once only, after which his behaviour will get the hard-working publishers offside.

My experience with rejections has been varied. In the early days, there was the printed slip. I usually get a personal response these days, though occasionally still a printed slip. Once, I even got a slip, in an envelope, from a publisher to which I had not actually submitted anything! Well, I had, a couple of years previously, but that MS had been returned and I had had a phone call from the head honcho, who explained that they didn't publish that kind of fantasy, but that she had liked it very much and did I have anything else to submit? I was very flattered! She had CALLED me! No doubt, there are some folk out there who would have been upset by it. Anyway, when I got the puzzling slip two years later, I wrote to ask what it was they were rejecting, and received no reply. To this day, I don't even know who sent it.

Once, I got a printed slip from a publisher which had published two of my books - now, that did hurt, but I am prepared to believe that there had been a mix-up somewhere along the track as I had handed the MS to the publisher in person. She must have dropped it on the slushpile, from which it was given to a reader, or lay around the office, and some publishing assistant who was new to the company sent it back without comment. In any case, I didn't take it too personally and that company has since published another of my books.

It also hurts when the MS is returned after you asked the publisher to dispose of the MS and just send you a yes or no in the supplied envelope and postage. If it's covered in coffee stains, at least they probably read it, but you can't re-submit it anyway, so why return it if they have been asked not to do so? It hurts when you do your calculations and figure out that it was sent back the day they received it. I don't try any of the tricks people do to see if something was read - publishers are on to the hairs and such. I just check the postage date.

My usual reaction to rejections is to mutter, "Stuff you!" and submit it elsewhere - immediately! That way, I can hope again.

In the end, I don't take it personally. I may not agree with their decision, but I just get on with it and I smile at the publisher if I meet her at some event, and talk about other things. (One lady felt so guilty about turning down my MS, twice, that she avoided me at such events for some time, until the company accepted my next MS, then it was all smiles ... poor woman!) You just can't afford to take it personally. If they send you comments, you have to be flattered - they liked it enough to tell you why. When the company gets several thousand MSS a year and yours is probably the latest of a huge pile that this particular editor had to look at in a few days, you just have to be pleased if they took that trouble. If you don't want to be hurt, there's no point in submitting. Self-publish or leave it in your bottom drawer.

Bjo Trimble once said you should cherish your rejection slips, because they prove you're a writer. Only writers get rejection slips. By that definition, I am many times a writer ...

By the way, on an unconnected topic, I would like to thank the person who took the trouble to say something nice about my last published story. Unable to find my e-mail address, he/she sent it to this blog as a comment. (The reviews of that story have varied between the glowing and the utterly negative ... can't please everyone, eh?)

Collected Works Bookshop - 84 Charing Cross Rd in Melbourne

I have just added a link to the new web site/blog of the Collected Works Poetry and Ideas Bookshop. It's located in Melbourne in the Nicholas Building, on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane. You go in through the Cathedral Arcade and walk up some steps to the first floor, which is shared between the bookshop and the Victorian Writers' centre. A lot of writers and artists have rooms in the building, on the upper floors. There are two old-fashioned lifts with those double doors you have to close by hand before they will go up.

If you loved the book 84 Charing Cross Road, this is the closest you'll get to that kind of bookshop in the middle of Melbourne. It's the sort of place where you can go and ask for a prose translation of the Iliad and be asked which version you'd like, they have two. I never know what I will walk away with, though I do have my favourite corner, which features the Inklings books and books about them, as well as mediaeval literature and books about it, nineteenth century books, both the well-known ones and some lesser-known books by well-known writers. Who would have thought Edith Nesbit wrote suspense fiction? Or, for that matter, Rudyard Kipling?

I have also bought a copy of Alice B Toklas's cookbook there, a history of drinks in England, some children's classics, poetry... whatever I was in the mood for at the time.

It's run by the personable Kris Hemensley (a poet) and his wife Loretta, a teacher, who have Bloomsday celebrations each year. complete with drinks and homemade Irish soda bread.

There are so many chain bookshops around these days - and,yes, they serve a purpose and I do go to them - but it's nice to find a shop of the old-fashioned kind, a small business, right in the middle of Melbourne.

Go and take a look if you're in town, but be warned - you will almost certainly go out with books under your arm, they're just too good to resist.

Nullus Anxietas - Australia's first Discworld Con

This is my report of a con held at the Carlton
Crest Hotel, Melbourne, February 2007.

I hadn't planned to go. It was almost the last minute when, on an
impulse, I sent in my money. My friend and fellow Andromeda Spaceways
co-op member, Lucy Zinkiewicz, was on the committee and asked if I
wouldn't like to do a panel. As it happened, the panel I volunteered
for didn't run, but I was invited, instead, to do a public reading of
Terry Pratchett's picture book, Where's My Cow? It sounded like fun
and I agreed.

Alas, I had to miss the con's beginning on Friday; I have to
work that day, and you don't get flex time in the school system, plus
I have a standing commitment to go to my parents' place on Friday
nights. But there was plenty of good stuff left for the Saturday and
Sunday, including the con banquet. I hadn't been able to get a ticket
to that, but they'd put me on the waiting list and in the final week
before the con, they told me someone had dropped out and I could go.

I arranged to meet my friend Jasna, a fellow teacher, on the Saturday
morning. Jasna is a passionate Terry Pratchett fan – and a media fan
who has, in the past, attended cons, worn costume and even read media
fanzines. She hadn't been in years and, though she could only afford
to go on the Saturday, was very much looking forward to it.

Jasna was a little late that morning, but while I waited, I looked
around. The huckster's area was in the main foyer, consisting only of
a couple of club tables and a major spread of Pratchett books by
Dymock's book store. In every other respect, it felt like a good
old-fashioned con of the kind I remember from when I got into fandom.
The "fan lounge" was an area where people sat playing Thud, a game
based on Pratchett's novel of the same title. In his GoH speech,
later, Terry said he was lost in admiration at what fans could do – he
had just made up the game for the book and here were people actually
playing it! A bit like three-dimensional chess, I suppose, for those
of you who are old enough to remember the early Trek episodes and how
people were making 3-D chessboards and working out how to play the
game that way.

People were wandering around in hall costumes, something I haven't
seen at a con in years. The beauty of Discworld is that you can really
put on just about any historical costume and it will work, because
Ankh-Morpork, in which many of the stories are set, is a mish-mash,
with suggestions of the Elizabethan era, but often Victorian or late
seventeenth century – and, of course, you can always come in black,
with a pointy hat, and be a witch. Some of the best costumes turned up
that evening, at the banquet, but even during the day there were
people doing terrific things. One "Granny Weatherwax" not only dressed
up, but stayed in character throughout the con. There was a delightful
"Death of Rats", who won a prize at the end of the con.

Jasna turned up and, after coffee, we went off to choose our first
event of the convention. There were a lot of things going on, but we
went to see a performance of Mort, based on one of Pratchett's novels.
A man called Stephen Briggs has been adapting a number of the novels
as plays and, furthermore, adapting them especially to be performed by
amateurs, though I do remember hearing that there was a professional
production of Guards! Guards! in which the lead role of Sam Vimes was
played by our own beloved Paul Darrow, who was well and truly old
enough to play the role by that time. He hasn't aged gracefully, but
in the photo I saw he looked pretty good in his Elizabethan doublet
and tights.

Mort was performed by a group of students from Melbourne University,
who have been doing the plays for some time and one of the cast turned
out to be the daughter of a former colleague of mine, so that was
nice. It was very well done. Jasna and I had to sit on the floor,
because we got in late and all the seats were taken, but nobody
minded.

There were a few panels during the day, and Terry Pratchett gave his
GoH speech, in which we heard about the film of his novel Hogfather.
It's a telemovie, which, alas, hasn't been shown here yet. Terry was
very pleased with it, and had played a cameo role, of which there are
pictures on the Net. There was a good cast, including David Warner and
Tony Robinson. And there were thousands of plastic teeth, for the
scene at the Tooth Fairy's castle. He'd brought a large bag with him
to Australia, much to the bemusement of the customs inspectors, and he
wasn't taking them home! I managed to get a few, though I'm not sure
yet what I'll do with them – earrings, perhaps.

I stood with Jasna in the autograph queue, though I wasn't getting
anything signed, because I have quite a few of his books autographed
already and wanted to let others have a go. The queue was good-natured
and chatty, and it was an enjoyable three-quarters of an hour when,
hopefully, Mr Pratchett didn't get RSI.

At six o'clock, I got up to read Where's My Cow? This is based on a
book which Sam Vimes has to read every night, at precisely six, to his
little boy, and is a lot of fun. The idea is to read it to the
audience and get them to make the animal noises as you go. The whole
thing took only a few minutes, so we spent the rest of the half hour
making animal noises and guessing what they were.

The banquet started late-ish, but it gave everyone a chance to see
some of the clever costumes people had made. I wasn't in costume, but
was wearing something formal, and one of the band members kindly let
me put my tote bag under the stage, so I could wander around freely
and not look silly. The band was very good, though it seemed quite an
expense for a fan-organised con.

The really exciting thing happened later that night, after the
banquet, when Terry did a reading from his as yet unpublished novel.
The man was amazing – he read for nearly two hours, non-stop, and only
ended then because his laptop computer's batteries ran out. So now I
know what's happening next in the Discworld.

The hotel wasn't too far from my home by car and I got a lift from a friend.

Sunday was a little quieter, but there was still plenty to enjoy. I
ordered a T-shirt, which I have recently received – black, with "Ook!"
on the front (the cry of the Librarian at Unseen University – I mean
to wear it to work…).

I was sad to say goodbye at the end of the day, but with luck there
may be another con next year, when Terry Pratchett will be touring
Australia again, to promote a book. He suggested to the con committee
that they make it then, if they could, and save themselves the expense
of bringing him out. Nice man! And it was very nice to attend a con
that was so much like the ones I remember from my early days in
fandom. Only the art show was missing, but few cons have those
nowadays.

The Last Days - review

Although this book is new in Australia, where the author spends part of every year, it has appeared in the US already, in 2006. I thought it well worth commenting on. Here's my review.

THE LAST DAYS By Scott Westerfeld

Scott Westerfeld is a prolific - and versatile - writer for teens. His characters are believable teenagers in situations that are often bizarre. His novels begin with lines that pull the reader in. I won’t quote the opening of this one, but it’s no exception.

This novel is a sequel to Peeps. The main characters are new, but it’s set in the same universe and the protagonists from the previous book appear towards the end. While you can more or less pick up what’s going on in this one without having read Peeps, it’s probably a good idea to have read that novel first. It saves time and means you can pick up clues that the novel’s characters can’t.

In Peeps, we met Cal, a nice young man from Texas who had lost his virginity to a woman he met in a New York bar one night. He discovered, soon afterwards, that he’d caught something a lot nastier than a venereal disease - and he’d spread it. Joining a mysterious organisation called the Night Watch, he tried to make things right.

Vampirism, in Westerfeld’s universe, is not about being undead, but about being infected by a parasite. Vampires don’t need to bite you to make you one of them, though they might eat you if they think you’re pretty enough. A kiss will do it, or even a cat breathing on you while you sleep. If you’re lucky, like Cal, the hero of Peeps, you might be a carrier, rather than a victim. If you’re not lucky, you find yourself hating things you used to love, running away from it all to live in holes and tunnels, with rats for company and possibly having a taste for human flesh. It’s controllable; the vampire members of the Night Watch, known as angels, go “vampire hunting” with the aim of catching and treating other victims. Vampires are always hungry and usually horny, because the parasite needs feeding and wants to spread. In exchange, the vampire gets unusual speed and strength and centuries of life, just like the traditional kind. And they’re here for a reason. They’re the only ones strong enough to fight something much worse...

In The Last Days, five teenagers form a rock band in a New York which is being gradually abandoned. Parts of the city are overflowing with rubbish and rats, because the rubbish collectors will no longer go there. The lead singer is a vampire girl whose parents have tried to keep her illness under control. The drummer is a girl with some psychic abilities. There are two boys and a rich girl who doesn’t understand, yet, why all her friends from music school are leaving the city.

As they come to realise the truth, they also find that their music has the power to help save the world - at huge risk to themselves.

This is one helluva rip-roaring thriller. It’s also closer to SF than horror. Westerfeld takes a lot of trouble to explain how it might work, and very convincing it is, too.

Well worth a read.