Me and my new T-shirt!

Isn't it great what you can do nowadays? I decided it might be nice to promote my new book, so I went to the local camera shop and using a simple JPEG file, I got a T-shirt in an hour, promoting my book for about the same price as promoting someone else's product (and I never have understood why people pay to wear a shirt advertising a brand of shoes or jeans! You'd think the company would hand out the shirts for free). I also got a shirt with my last book, Crime Time, on it, but haven't yet worn it. As soon as I can, I'll get someone to take a photo of me in that one.

Meanwhile, I got my nephew Mark to take some photos of me in my lovely new shirt and am considering getting some mugs made up for friends who have already bought the book, so what do you give them?

I know this has been possible for years, but hey, this is my first time!

Here I am in it!

UNEARTHLY By Cynthia Hand. Sydney: HarperCollins, 2011

Clara is part-angel. She has known this since she turned fourteen a couple of years ago. Like others of her kind, she expects to learn her “purpose” on earth, a task she must perform. According to visions she has been having, this seems to be saving a boy from a forest fire somewhere in the US state of Wyoming. Clara, her half-angel mother and her younger brother move to the small town where the boy, Christian, lives.

Clara knows she must get close enough to Christian to be on the spot whenever the disaster happens. She’s also learning to use her hidden wings, in case she needs to carry him.

But there are problems. Christian, a sweet boy liked by everyone, has a girlfriend whom he loves. Can Clara help him without interfering with his love life? Does she even want to? And what about her own love life, in the shape of the gorgeous Tucker, her friend’s brother? What happens when she’s carried out her angelic mission?

And how does she survive the Black Wimgs, a group of fallen angels who have plans of their own?

After some years of one vampire tale after another, it seems that angels are taking over the popular teen paranormal romance. In fact, when I told one of my students that I was reading this book for reviewing, she asked, "And is she red-haired?"

"Er, no, she has had to dye it red," I replied.

"Blonde, then."

She was right about that. So it seems that already there are conventions in this form of fiction. On the other hand, another character, who is also a part-angel, is dark.

This is the first angel romance I’ve read, myself, and it’s good readable stuff which the girls should enjoy, even if the main angel character is the girl rather than the boy. What would it be like to try to work out how to use wings? To have to hold back in athletics, dance and such because you’re so good at them that even if no one asks questions you feel you’re being unfair to the competition? And being good at everything doesn't necessarily mean you're good at getting every boy you might want.

I liked the author's description of Wyoming, which made me think it's a place I'd enjoy visiting; she lives not far from there herself, so knows about it. I'd never ski, but found it fascinating to read about in this book; there's a lot more to it than just Girl-Angel and the boys in her life. I suspect the author is a keen skier herself.

The girls will like it for certain; several were eyeing my copy of this book before the holidays began and I had to promise it would go into the library when reviewed before I could get it out of their clutches.

They will be even more pleased to find out that it;s the first of a series.

What I enjoy about Christmas Day

Christmas isn't my holiday. I don't have any need to spend it having lunch and exchanging gifts with family members. I think we had a barbecue once, but not to celebrate Christmas, just because it was nice.

But I do enjoy Christmas Day. My usual routine on Christmas Day is: a. get up earlyish and bake bread. b. pack a picnic lunch, using my homemade bread for the sandwiches, with something gourmet as the filling - perhaps a good-quality cheese or two. The rest of the meal is a hard-boiled egg (what's a picnic without a hard-boiled egg? I was, after all, brought up on Enid Blyton, though I admit I don't take lashings of ginger ale with me), a piece of chocolate of some variety (again - taken from Blyton), some of the Christmassy baked-goods given me by friends, fresh summer fruit and a thermos of coffee. c. head for the beach with the above-mentioned lunch and whatever book or six that I'm reading at the time. d. wave at people having picnics in the park on the way. e. arrive at the beach, have my picnic and read, occasionally waving at other beach-picnickers. On the way, I enjoy the peace of the streets, hearing only the odd rattle of crockery from the houses as someone prepares lunch.

One year, a kindly lady invited me into her garden where she and her friends were having lunch together, probably thinking I was a poor soul forced to spend the day alone. I appreciated the thought, but declined the offer politely, not telling her about the yummy lunch in my backpack or the pure pleasure I get from spending the day doing just what I want.

Another year, there was a storm on Christmas Day. I had my picnic in the living-room, bingeing on episodes of Angel.

Last year, unfortunately, my family and I were in the palliative care unit where my father was spending his last days. :-(

This year, because I'd spent the Friday night at my mother's home, I managed to drag her along to enjoy the picnic with me. I did offer to bake some bread, but she thought I'd be better off having a rest, so I bought a baguette for us to share and we had it with Gorgonzola and Brie cheeses, the thermos of coffee, fruit and the world's best vanilla slice, bought from a wonderful bakery near my home.

Mum dozed a while after lunch and I read my new book, a very readable history of gladiators - anything to help with the research. Not that I have any fiction planned set in ancient Rome, but you never know. According to this book,the movie Spartacus was more or less correct, with a few exceptions (such as the ending, of course, and the fact that they didn't have retiarii for sixty years after the time of Spartacus) but Gladiator got it completely wrong - fascinating!

A peaceful day, and Mum enjoyed it too.

Seer Of Sevenwaters By Juliet Marillier. Pan MacMillan, 2010.

Reviewed by guest blogger Thando Bhebe.


Seer of Sevenwaters is about Sibeal, a girl committed to becoming a druid. Before her final vows she travelled to the northen island of Inis Eala to spend some time with her sisters. An unusual storm sinks a ship and there are only three survivors, one of which she stumbled across. He is an amnesiac with no name that the other survivors knew. Sibeal names him Ardal and he's fighting for his life.

The island community discovers that there is something strange about the shipwreck survivors. Strange things happen and secrets unravel. Sibeal is drawn into a perilous quest and has to face a decision that may break her heart. Spiritual life or love?

It's the fifth book of a series. I have read the first three before this one, but for those who haven't, there is a family tree that may help you along.

First of all, the front cover and the blurb drew me in. I liked the prologue. It went straight to the action. The way the author wrote it was so that the first chapter is fairly interesting, but then after that it keeps getting better and bigger. I liked how it sort of got a little twisted and out of control. The lies of some of the characters, the secrets and each time I flipped to the next page, it was what kept it rolling.

The good thing was that the author showed the amnesiac's point of view as well, because the reader had a bit of an idea about his struggle to stay alive, the things that happened to him when to one else was there which was added clues. Some of the clues the author gave were a bit obvious but the major ones were much harder to decipher.

The author kept to the point and didn't wander off into anything else, which was one of the things I enjoyed. To me, the ending was perfect, though a little bit predictable considering what the main characters had gone
through.

The book wasn't confusing at all, the language was proper and was very descriptive. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and sympathised with Ardal the amnesiac. It's a book worth re-reading.

If I were to rate it, I'd rate it four and a half stars.

Interview with Juliet Marillier

This interview was conducted by guest blogger Thando Bhebe. Thando is a passionate reader who is currently diving into 30 library books she took home for the holidays. She is also an emerging writer whose work is up on Internet writing community Inkpop.

Thando is a major fan of the wonderful fantasy novelist Juliet Marillier, who has kindly agreed to an interview. Welcome to The Great Raven, Thando and Juliet.

Interview questions by Thando Bhebe, a teenage reader of the Sevenwaters books and Heart’s Blood.

1.Why is the Sevenwater series set in Ireland?

Daughter of the Forest (first book in the series) is based on a traditional story called The Six Swans, a fairytale set somewhere in Europe. Irish folklore contains many stories about swans, and in particular people turning into swans. The Irish landscape suited the sort of tale I wanted to tell, with a mysterious forest and lake. So I chose Ireland as the setting for the first novel and then, of course, for the ongoing series.

2. Is it in the south or the North of Ireland?

It’s the north. Sevenwaters is based on an area called the Ring of Gullion in County Armagh. There used to be a very big forest there, though in the past it was cut down for grazing. They’re currently replanting the hillside with trees.

3. What types of books do you enjoy reading?

I like a wide variety of books and I always have. I think that’s essential for a writer! I enjoy books with strong female characters, ranging from classics such as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women right through to recent novels such as The Distant Hours by Australian author Kate Morton. I read a lot of non-fiction, partly as research for my writing. I like books that are original and well-crafted. I have a small list of writers from whom I read every new book: Iain Banks, David Mitchell, Jodi Picoult.

4. The women of Sevenwaters seem to go through a lot – why is this?

Human journeys and relationship are at the heart of storytelling for me. My characters feel quite real as I travel with them on their adventures. I think real life is all about meeting challenges and finding out how brave you can be in times of adversity. Would you want to read a book in which the central character lived happily at home the whole time?

5. How did you think up Bran the Painted Man?

Bran’s tattoos are based on the Maori traditional tattoos of my homeland, New Zealand. Tattoos have a lot of meaning in tribal cultures and I liked the idea that Bran made a new identity for himself this way. I’d also been reading a lot about men who were traumatised by experiences in the past, for instance, servicemen returning from active duty who could not escape their memories of what they’d seen on the battlefield. All of this combined to create Bran. From the start I saw Son of the Shadows as a story about peeling away layers of memory one by one to get at the heart of his fear and alienation.

6. Are any of the characters of your books based on people you know?

No, though I use characteristics of people I’ve met. But I mix them up so no character is exactly like anyone in real life.

7. Are any of the characters based on yourself?

Oh, no! Of course a certain amount of my own experience and attitudes is going to make its way into the characters, more in some books than others. The character with whom I have the most empathy is Caitrin, the protagonist of Heart’s Blood, who is struggling to get back her sense of self after suffering a breakdown. There are also a few older women in the books who are a little like me. I’d like to be Draguţa, the witch of the wood from Wildwood Dancing, and ride around on a white fox!

8. Do you ever write a certain scene, then get emotional over it (if it’s a sad one for example)?

Scenes in which good characters have bad things happen to them are always hard to write, and can be very hard to re-read. When I’m editing my own work I often have to go over a scene many times. There is a death scene in Blade of Fortriu that I found extremely hard to revisit. The person in question was one of my all-time favourite characters. But the plot required him to die in particularly cruel circumstances.

9. Heart’s Blood is based on Beauty And The Beast – why set it in Ireland?

I was originally going to set Heart’s Blood in Eastern Europe, either in Romania or Bulgaria. My American editor thought would not be very appealing for US readers, and so the setting was revised to Ireland. There are many people in the USA with Irish ancestors and they tend to love my Irish stories. The new setting worked pretty well, and allowed me to include the historical context of the Anglo-Normans moving into Ireland and helping themselves to the territory of the Irish chieftains such as Anluan.

10. With the Sevenwaters series did you make it a big family because you wanted to make it a series or because you like big families? Do you have one yourself?

I have quite a small family, though it’s getting bigger as I acquire more grandchildren! The story of The Six Swans features a girl with six brothers, so the big family was there even before I began writing. The whole Sevenwaters saga simply grew from there. I had originally intended writing only one book. The story got longer because I thought I should investigate the effects of the swan transformation on future generations of the family. Happy endings are usually not happy for every single character, only some, and that is certainly true of Daughter of the Forest. I wanted to go down the paths of some of the characters whose lives were forever changed by what had happened. Once you get into the third and fourth generations of a family, as I’ve done with Sevenwaters, you have a big cast of characters to choose from.

11. I have noticed that in your books (Sevenwaters series and Heart’s Blood) there is always some romance. Is this because you enjoy romance or is there another reason?

I love reading a book with a good romance in it, and I think that’s my main reason for including a love story in every novel. As I mentioned earlier, I am fascinated by human journeys and human relationships, and love stories are a vital part of that.

12. Which is your favourite book, if any, and why? Your favourite character and why? For what age group do you recommend them?

My favourite book is usually the one I’m currently writing – at present that is the first instalment in a new series for young adults, called Shadowfell. If I was pushed to choose a favourite from the earlier books it would probably be Son of the Shadows because I really loved creating Bran and his motley band of warriors, and Liadan is the heroine I would most like to be. Favourite character: I have so many … Perhaps Faolan, the anti-hero from the Bridei Chronicles.

Age group for readers: Wildwood Dancing and Cybele’s Secret are written for young adults, age 13+. They are also a good read for adults. The Shadowfell series, first book due out in 2012, will suit age 14+.

All the other books are intended for adults, but they do have a keen readership among young adults, age 14+. They include ‘adult’ content, so it really depends very much on the individual reader. I’d suggest young adult readers start with Wildwood Dancing and Cybele’s Secret, and then try Daughter of the Forest or Heart’s Blood.

13. Would you like it if people wanted to turn one of your books into movies?
Only if it was really well done. A bad movie with cheap special effects would be ghastly. Now if Peter Jackson were interested …
14. If they asked you, which book would you most like to be made into a movie?

Wildwood Dancing, which is very loosely based on The Twelve Dancing Princesses, would make a great animated movie. I’d love to see my Viking novel, Wolfskin, as an action adventure film.

15. In the first Sevenwaters book the brothers turn into swans. Why swans?

The book is based on a traditional fairytale about a girl whose brothers are turned into swans by their jealous stepmother. The girl has to make shirts for each of them from a prickly plant and throw them over their necks, to win her brothers back their human form. While performing this task, which takes years, she is not allowed to utter a word.

16. In Sevenwaters, there seem to be an awful lot of twins. Is it in the Sevenwaters gene to have twins?

Yes, twins are definitely in the family’s genetic makeup. Both girl/boy twins like Sean and Liadan, and same sex twins like Conor and Cormack, and Deirdre and Clodagh. They’d be fraternal twins, not identical twins.

17. If you had a choice to pick one of your characters to come to life, which one would it be?

Gosh, difficult question! I’d have to consider who would cope well when transplanted into the extremely different setting of the twenty-first century. It might have to be one of the uncanny characters.

18. My favourite Sevenwaters women are Sorcha, Liadan and Sibeal.
Is there a reason why these women are more or less similar? Sorcha’s husband’s from Harrowfield, Liadan’s husband was once an out law and although I have not finished SEER OF SEVENWATERS , Sibeal meets Felix (Ardal ) who’s from another island. Is this because you like that type of romance, with people from different places coming and joining the Sevenwaters family?

Because the series is based around the Sevenwaters family, and because the central characters are women, their romantic partners will tend to be people from somewhere else. Sevenwaters itself is quite a big territory, so it’s not surrounded by close neighbours whose sons can provide a handy social circle for the Sevenwaters girls. In those days, young women from a chieftain’s family would usually have arranged marriages to men of similar social rank, perhaps the sons of other local chieftains. But of course, the Sevenwaters girls are unusually strong-minded young women and many of them end up on rather different paths in life, Liadan and Clodagh especially.

DYMOCK’S BOOK-SIGNING AT SOUTHLAND

I organised this months ago, with Alice, the lovely lady who arranged the mass-event for Ford Street. It could have gone better than just a few copies, given that it was Christmas and a teen paranormal book and I was in costume – but it was still a nice day.

I arrived very early and parked my stuff in the back room. Alice told me that, as I’d explained why I couldn’t get any books from the publisher (they’d run out – gloat!) her boss had kindly agreed to let me have the needed copies for my launch for 25% discount.

Last night, I sat up late, watching a guilty-pleasure DVD and sewing myself a new kaftan to use for today and my launch. I embroidered it just a little around the neck, as it was already getting late, but I thought it would be nice to wear a costume. Alice said that was fine – they’d had another writer come dressed as a dog! I experimented with wearing a cloak and a veil and ended up just putting a silver cord around my head. That worked okay. I wore my silver Cyndi Smith wolf’s-head brooch – a gorgeous piece of jewellery which I commissioned her at Aussiecon, as a birthday gift to myself.

In the end, I gave away a lot more bookmarks – including Crime Time bookmarks – than I sold books, but never mind. I talked with people, I was friendly and perhaps they will come back for a copy. I signed quite a few for the shop – they had bought an embarrassingly large number of copies – and asked if they might put some in the paranormal. YA is good, but paranormal teen is also good – even better. So you cover two places and have two chances to sell..

Best of all today, I got to meet Romy of Lost In Stories blog (here we are in a photo) and her delightful parents, who took the trouble to come and support me. Romy offered to take some bookmarks (signed, of course) to use for a give-away on her web site and I also gave her several Crime Time bookmarks. It will work well there. It has occurred to me that, apart from Tina and Dylan, I’m fairly sure that most of my regular readers are older than Romy’s – and Dylan is my student, Tina found me through Romy. So when I do my next bit – a “cast Wolfborn the movie” competition, I might ask Romy if she’d like to run it on her site as well.

That’s for later. Meanwhile, it was fun to meet her – thanks for coming, Romy!

Wolfborn - lots of happy-making stuff

It finally came out officially on December 1st, although the shops had it before then. I wandered into Dymock's in the city, where I had been told they would be getting it in, and offered to sign any copies they had. "Yes, please!" said Zoe, the lady at the special orders counter, and her manager brought twelve copies out. I then offered bookmarks to go with them, because the bookmarks counter has been cleared for Christmas wrapping. This offer was happily accepted and then I had another thought: since the counter usually used to put advertising bookmarks was being used for wrapping - why not give away a few signed bookmarks with the first few wrapped gifts? Zoe liked that idea too, so I signed a dozen bookmarks for those. Nice!

Tomorrow I will be going to another Dymock's, at Southland in Melbourne, to do a book-signing, and see how that goes.

Meanwhile, the reviews and interview offers continue - very nice! George Ivanoff reviewed it in Literary Clutter, the blog connected with Boomerang Books,AND did an interview, there was, of course, the very first one in AsIf, written by Tehani Wessely, teacher-librarian extraordinaire, editor, reviewer and former ASIMite. There is a fabulous one in ReadPlus and Tehani has done a very nice extra review for Fiction Focus.

But two especially exciting promos - a wonderful rave review on Marianne de Pierres' blog,Burn Bright, by reviewer Belinda Hamilton, not to mention the lovely interview.The other bit of excitement came the other day when one of my students looked up from her Dolly Magazine and said, "Miss, your book is in this!" You really know you've scored when you get a mention in Dolly - think of the thousands of girls who read it, not to mention quite a few boys. For any of them who might be reading this, Wolfborn has lots of adventure and a touch of romance. Well, it has to - it's based on a story that was one of a bunch of tales with romantic elements, not just the standard "mediaeval romance" which might not be what we think of by the term, although it often is.

The nicest thing of the lot is the reason why I couldn't get extra copies from the publisher to hand out at my school book launch on Monday and will have to buy a few at full price: the book was out of stock. I'm told it has already gone into reprint. After a week! Okay, it just means shops have bought up big for Christmas. There could be returns afterwards. I hope not. Fingers crossed!

Watch This Space for Juliet Marillier

Recently, the publicist at Macmillan sent out a press release offering the latest of Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters novels and an interview. I have only just discovered this writer myself (see my review) but one of my students, Thando, has been reading and loving all of them. The publicist was fine with Thando doing the review and interview, so Thando and I sat down during a Book Club meeting to prepare her questions for the interview. When they're done, Thando will become my guest blogger and the questions will be posted right here on this web site!

I must say, I am enjoying this writer's work. She knows her mediaeval Ireland and uses fairytales to start off her books, and it works. There's something reminiscent of Caiseal Mor, another Irish fantasy writer living in Australia, only his books are mostly set in a much earlier Ireland, around the time Christianity wandered into town.(Well, there are later ones. I simply adored Carolan's Concerto!)

Stand by for a very interesting interview, followed by the review when Thando has finished the book.

What I'm re-reading: Sword At Sunset

After all the stuff I have been saying about Rosemary Sutcliff, I felt in the mood. I went to my overflowing bookcases in my lovely but messy study and found my Tor Publishing copy of this book, with the American spelling. For quite some years you could only get the abridged version which left out the gay lovers and Artos and Guenhumara's wedding night, when he finally gets it that his half-sister Ygerna has really damaged him. It was meant for kids to read, but really, it made me scratch my head when I was near the end and Artos is stressed out because he's only once been more than half a man to her, he says when he finds her with Bedwyr. The author, when interviewed, said that she had met kids who had read and loved the full version.

It's set three days after the end of The Lantern Bearers, but it's Aquila's son, Flavian, who appears in most of this book. A beautiful, beautiful novel. You feel so strongly for Artos - and it was the first time I'd read an Arthurian novel told by Arthur, though since then there has been Parke Godwin's fabulous Firelord.

There have been others, wonderful others, but Sword At Sunset is my favourite.There are some books you just know you will have to read over and over again.

My student who has just finished The Lantern Bearers agreed it was wonderful, but he will now have to wait for next year for this one, unless he can find it in the Sunshine Library. After that I might wave the books of Mary Stewart and maybe Jack Whyte under his nose. Parke Godwin later.

Meanwhile, I will curl up with Artos the Bear and his friends at bedtime tonight. Lovely!

Eagle of the Ninth movie - I wonder...?

They're turning Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth into a movie. It made a wonderful TV series years ago, with Anthony Higgins in the lead. I don't think that's available on DVD - anyway, I can't find it, although maybe now ...?

Meanwhile, what will this one be like? I can only hope that it's a whole lot better than, say, the abomination that was made of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising. Checking out the cast list, I see that the role of Marcus Aquila has gone to an American actor, Channing Tatum - the guy who played "Duke" Orsino in "She's The Man" and Esca will be played, would you believe by "Billy Elliott" Jamie Bell, who is about 24 now. Well, there's no doubt Tatum looks like a Marcus. Whether he can act it or not we'll have to see. This fan will be difficult to please!

It's fascinating to see all the on-line blog comments by folk who haven't read the book but hope it will be an sword-and-sandal epic of the kind that has been appearing lately. Apparently, it's a small budget, so that's not likely.

I'm re-reading The Lantern Bearers, the third book in the series. It's not easy to get the Sutcliff books these days. They've put three of them under one cover - perhaps because of the movie? - but for the most part, you have to hunt for them on the bookshop shelves or order them.

Let's hope the movie is good enough that people start asking for the books and they re-print the lot!

Shameless self-promotion

Okay, here it is, sent to me by Paul Collins, my Ford Street publisher. I'll be there, if any of you are in Melbourne and feel like coming, and so will some much bigger names than me. I'll be bringing bookmarks. The priority will be Crime Time, my non-fiction book for Ford Street, which is nice easy reading and great as a Yuletide gift for the child in your life, or even for yourself, but with luck the shops will also have my new novel.

"Authors Paul Collins, Meredith Costain, George Ivanoff , Felicity Marshall, Foz Meadows, Sean McMullen, Doug MacLeod, Hazel Edwards, Jo Thompson and Sue Bursztynski will be signing their books at Fairfield Bookshop, 117a Station Street, Fairfield (11am) and Collins Booksellers, Shop D1/2 Northland Shopping Centre, East Preston (1pm) on Dec 4. All welcome if you’re in Melbourne on that date."
Ford Street Publishing Pty Ltd
2 Ford Street
Clifton Hill, Vic 3068
Australia

The Book Clubbers

Okay, they're the same students. Book Club and Writers' Club - they overlap, although the Year 7 girls don't turn up to the latter. They did come on the Book Club excursion. Last week in Book Club, we had a lively argument, everyone talking at once, about which was better - Twilight or Harry Potter? Nobody wanted to wait for anyone else to finish and in the end I let them just do it as they pleased.

This week, Dylan read the latest instalment of his epic "Three Brothers" series to the gathered group. I asked Ryan for the file of his Japanese martial arts story, which he says he's finished, so I could print it out and we can discuss it next time, but we became a little distracted by various things. I will have to ask again.

We all stood at the computer, where Thando explained about www.inkpop.com, an on-line writers' community to which she belongs. We couldn't get a Word copy of the story - I think it's a web site security issue to protect the writers - so we printed it off and Thando read some of it to us. It's about a girl who lives on Venus and has been admiring an Earth boy from afar. Willis did discuss with her the scientific issues about Venus as a planet. I suggested she just get on with it, so the story is written, then go back and check out her research facts for the purposes of correction; I believe that one should write while ideas are flowing, THEN do the research and re-write - unless, of course, you're doing some reading and get the ideas from that. I think I vaguely recall Robert Silverberg saying at Aussiecon 3 that this is how he works, that he'd never get anything done if he stopped to do all the research first.

So no, I wasn't going to tell Thando that Venus might be a bit hostile to life. Not yet, anyway. I just suggested that she look it up later. The story so far is charming. I'd hate for that to stop.

I think it's well worth giving up one lunchbreak a week to be with these delightful students and give them space for their writing and reading.

OUT FOR BLOOD: Volume 3 Drake Chronicles. By Alyxandra Harvey London: Bloomsbury, 2010

This is the third novel in the series about the peaceful vampire family, the Drakes, and the humans in their lives (or should that be their undeaths?) In this universe, you can be turned, but you can also be born to the vampire state, although you don’t change states until you’re sixteen. The Drake family has a born-vampire father, a mother who turned by choice and is now queen of the local vampire tribe, a single daughter, Solange, and seven gorgeous sons, two of whom are dating human girls, one a kick-ass vampire girl, while Solange’s boyfriend Kieran is not only human but a hereditary vampire-hunter. Fortunately, the Drakes have made a treaty with the vampire-hunting society, the Helios-Ra. Not everyone on either side agrees with this treaty, which is probably a good thing for the purposes of the storylines or there would be no more novels in the series.

The entire series, so far, has been set over a fairly short time, only a few weeks. Each one takes up shortly after the last. Each novel is seen from the viewpoints of different characters.

This one is seen alternately from the viewpoint of Quinn Drake, the fourth son, and Hunter Wild, a Helios-Ra girl who appeared briefly in the previous novel and is teasingly called Buffy by Quinn. For the first time, we see inside the school where the young hereditary vampire-slayers are trained.

Hunter has been at the school for four years and is just finishing up, but just when she’s falling in love with the annoyingly attractive Quinn, who has a huge number of groupies, she finds that something strange is going on at the Heios-Ra Academy. There are unexpected attacks by the truly horrible Hel-Blar vampires (they’re blue and insane). Students are coming down with mysterious illnesses. Someone is handing out “vitamin” tablets that may be more than vitamins.

Can Hunter and her friends stop it in time? Can she get Quinn’s attention away from all those other girls - and will it matter if she and the others don’t stop whatever is happening at the school?

What do you think?

This series is a lot of fun, unlike many other vampire romances. There’s certainly enough romance to keep girls reading, but the heroines of these stories are not the standard maiden-in-distress. They kick ass. Even Hunter’s girly room-mate, Chloe, is a computer hacker genius. The gorgeous Drake brothers are turned on by strong women, possibly because their mother is one.

The girls will enjoy this one as much as the others. I can’t wait to put it in my library, where the first two books are almost always out on loan.

At last!

Here it is - my book. I got my first advance copy on Thursday. I ordered some extra copies because my author copies won't be arriving for a couple of weeks. Yesterday I handed out a few copies to those students who had helped me early in the year. to their history teachers and to a friend on staff, then took some home for my mother and sister.

But there was no excitement quite like that I felt coming home on Thursday, finding the envelope and ripping it open. The students at my school have been sharing the excitement of the process. They got the first look at potential covers. I have to say, this is not the one most of them chose, but they have been pleased to share the process with me, asking now and then how it was going, when it would be out, could they read it when it did.

I'm hoping to do a school-based launch, if I can do it before all the end-of-year stuff catches up. Exams, assemblies, end-of-year activities... We'll see. If I can't do it now, I will have a belated one first thing next year, but I'm hoping not to lose the impetus.

It doesn't matter how many books you've done (this is my tenth if you don't count the manuscript I did for that small publisher who then informed all her writers that she couldn't publish because the Canadians didn't have the money to give her, but that's another story). It's always, always exciting to see the finished product for the first time. You never get used to it. Well, I don't.

Oh, joy!

LOW RED MOON By Ivy Devlin. London, Bloomsbury, 2010.

Avery Hood’s parents were killed brutally in front of her, but she can’t remember a thing. The family lived near the forest next to the small historic town of Woodlake, where there has been a constant argument going between the pro and anti-development lobbies. Avery’s parents were environmentalists who recycled everything and fought to keep the woods. Is this what caused their murder? What about the strange stories about the town’s foundation and the wolves who were more than wolves?

Avery starts to wonder about that when she learns that gorgeous new boy at school Ben Dusic is a werewolf. But Ben has a bond with her; each knows what the other is feeling. They’re in love. He has even saved her life. Can he possibly be her parents’ murderer?

This is a paranormal romance with the emphasis on the romance. I liked the fact that when Avery asks Ben how long he has been seventeen, he says about six months and expects to be eighteen, nineteen and so on. One can have enough of the vampires who have been seventeen for a hundred or more years and are still romancing teenage girls. Ben is a boy - one who has had as much tragedy in his life as Avery has, losing his parents and sisters to werewolf hunters - but a boy. I suspect the author is having a cheeky poke at the vampire romances in that scene, before turning back to the drama.

There’s also a murder mystery here and the clues are scattered through the book, as they should be.

The only thing I found irksome was not the novel itself, but the tendency to print the word “moon” in red letters every time. It’s unclear why. At one point in the novel, Ben tells Avery that actually, the only effect the full moon has on him is to make it impossible to change back before dawn, so he tries not to change on those nights. So why all those red “moons” in the text?

Girls will enjoy this. Although it reads like a stand-alone story, there are ends left untied that suggest a sequel. They’ll like that too.

THREE THINGS ABOUT DAISY BLUE (Girlfriend Fiction #20) By Kate Gordon. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010.

Two girls keeping diaries. One of them making lists of three. One trip to Bali with their mothers.

Daisy Blue and Paulina Gifford are the daughters of government speechwriters. When their mothers are going to Bali for a conference, they come along. Daisy (or Zee as she prefers to be called) calls her diary Angelina and complains non-stop about everything - the probable lack of Diet Coke in Bali, having to miss her favourite TV show and, by the way, that geek Paulina. Geeky Paulina is looking forward to learning lots of stuff for school while there and trying local cuisine and, by the way, is unimpressed by Daisy, that lemon lollipop (Daisy is very thin).

As the book goes on, we learn that Zee has an eating disorder for a number of reasons and Paulina has her own reasons for her nerdy attitude to everything. Each is able to help the other. There are also the two boys - Cody the young Aussie film-maker doing a documentary in Bali, who has a lot in common with Paulina and Wayan, the gorgeous Balinese student who works part time as a waiter and is dreaming of becoming a volunteer doctor in East Timor. Will something come from this or are they just holiday romances? Are they romances at all? Read and find out.

It’s funny and genlte and easy reading, broken up into diary entries. The message bewhind it is perhaps a little too obvious, but I suspect that this won’t be as obvious to this book’s natural readers.

This series has proven very popular in my library, both among the girls who need the high-interest-low-reading-level stuff and those who just want a break from Dickens a nd Bronte and such. I’m looking forward to adding this one.

DEMON STORM: The School of Night. By Justin Richards. London: Faber and Faber, 2010

Ben Foundlling lives with his sister Sam in a home - the modern equivalent of an orphanage, if not quite as awful. They have been moved from carer to carer because nobody can cope with the fact that Sam sees dead people - all the time. When Sam disappears shortly after looking into a strange box as part of a test by the mysterious Mr Knight, and everyone, even the police, just assumes it’s a matter of teenage running away, Ben is determined to find her - or at least what happened to her. This leads him, eventually, to the strange School of Night, where other kids who can see ghosts and evil spirits are trained to fight them. Sam isn’t there - and Mr Knight didn’t kidnap her. He’s one of the good guys. But if Ben is going to find out what is going on, he has to pretend to be one of the children with the Sight. And meanwhile, he’s wondering whether he really has seen his sister whenever he needed her, or if it’s all in his head...

Justin Richards is always good value. He has written many thoroughly entertaining fantasy adventures for young people, usually with tongue in cheek elements behind all the seemingly serious ones. Even with the villains planning to take over the world via human sacrifice to demons, he just can’t resist the puns. I mean - Dirk Knight? School of (K)night? I chuckled all the way through.

This is very readable adventure fantasy fiction, which shouldn’t be too hard even for teens whose reading levels aren’t high. It’s the first of a new series and young readers will be demanding when the next one is due out.

Recommended for children from twelve upwards.

DEMON PRINCESS: REIGN CHECK By Michelle Rowan. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010.

This is the second in a series. I haven’t read the first book, Reign Or Shine; this one closes with loose ends untied, so will probably continue for some time.

Nikki Donovan is an ordinary American teenager who has a tendency to sprout horns, wings and a tail when she’s highly stressed. A nuisance for clothes, of course, and really not a good idea to do it in front of others, especially if your best friend is in training to be a demon slayer. So far, it’s only been seen by a boy who went too far after a school dance and Nikki hopes he might be persuaded that he saw nothing.

Somewhere in the Shadowlands lives Nikki’s father, a demon King who once visited our world, just long enough to become her father. King Desmond can’t leave his castle – and if Nikki ever becomes Queen, she’ll have the same problem. Meanwhile, there’s the gorgeous Shadow, Michael, who is bound to her as a servant, though she’d rather have him as a boyfriend. There’s the rather cute teenage Faerie King Rhys, who has heard a negative prophecy about Nikki and come to investigate. Two hot boys! Decisions, decisions!

The writing style and the tongue-in-cheek punning title show that the author doesn’t take the whole idea too seriously; whether young readers will or not is another matter. They’ll certainly enjoy the usual paranormal romance theme, plus the idea of the heroine being a princess of whatever variety. Mind you, I’m not too sure anyone would really want to sprout horns and tail under stress, even if it did mean being a princess and falling in love with hot paranormal boys. Which is probably the point of the story.

Good fun for girls from about fourteen up.

DEAD MAN’S CHEST By Kerry Greenwood. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010

When Kerry Greenwood created the rich, beautiful, intelligent Jazz Age sleuth, Phryne Fisher, she was expecting the series to last for about two books. Because she knew all about 1928, that was the year in which it was to be set, permanently.

Seventeen books later, the author has finally had to move to January 1929. Phryne Fisher has returned to coastal town Queenscliff, scene of her second adventure, Flying Too High. That time she was in Queenscliff as part of a kidnapping case, and stayed at the gorgeous Queenscliff Hotel (where, because of the novel, I used to have lunch once a year on the veranda, looking out to sea).

This time Phryne is back with her faithful maid and companion, Dot Williams, her two adopted daughters Ruth and Jane and her dog Molly, and they’re staying in a borrowed holiday home. There will, of course, be absolutely no investigations!

But where Phryne Fisher goes, mystery follows – or, in this case, precedes. When the family arrives, the live-in servants, Mr and Mrs Johnson, are missing. No property is missing except food, and valuables have been stashed away for safety. But the Johnsons’ furniture is gone and a removalist was seen arriving at the house.

This gives Ruth, the would-be cook, a chance to make meals for the family while Phryne investigates the disappearance. Queenscliff is never dull, with the missing couple, a group of surrealists next door, a nosy old lady across the road, who might have seen something, a historical film being made down on the beach and some nasty goings-on nearby.

Phryne investigates, but she takes a step back in this novel and lets other characters come to the fore. She also has a new sidekick to add to her entourage; it will be interesting to see where he goes.

As always, the story is a lot of fun, with adventure, baddies, plenty of lovingly-detailed descriptions of meals and Phryne’s clothes. This author knows her era, but doesn’t overwhelm you with it.

If you’ve been following the series, go and buy it. If you haven’t, go back and read the rest – then buy it!

What I've just re-read: The King Must Die

Unlike many of my other favourite books, I actually did read this when I was a child. Well, I didn't know it wasn't a children's book, did I? I was madly into Greek mythology at the time (still am, actually). And I had recently read Robert Graves' The Greek Myths (another book I hadn't realised wasn't for kids, so I made my older sister borrow it for me four times and puzzled everyone in my primary school class with my talk of sacred kings and triple goddesses...). So when I heard about this novel on the radio - probably the ABC - I just had to go and get my own copy. It is still on my shelves, falling apart, and a couple of weeks ago I plucked my biography of Mary Renault from the shelves, finally able to read it. It's by David Sweetman, if anyone is interested. He had interviewed the author for a TV documentary and finally decided to do a book. It's a fascinating read, mingling her life story with some of the possible reasons why she wrote as she did.

Interestingly, she studied at Oxford and one of her teachers there was J.R.R. Tolkien and another person from whom she learned there was related to Arthur Evans, who dug at Knossos.

After all this, I just had to go and dig out my copy of The King Must Die and re-read it, of course. I will have to get hold of a new copy if I want to read it again without it falling completely apart. Meanwhile, I found it just as wonderful as when I was eleven, only now I get all the bits that went over my head when I was a child.

It tells the story of Theseus from his childhood to his return from Crete. She does a very fine job of explaining how the various things might have happened. She sets it in a specific time; at one point, there's a conversation about this Pharoah who's good for craftsmen and only worships one god. Theseus kills "Kerkyon" at Eleusis as part of the yearly king-sacrifice in the matriarchal society and becomes "Kerkyon" himself, that being the king's title, not his name. He clears up the bandits on the Isthmus with his army and allies, not by himself - and he's a short, assertive man, not a hulking six-footer, because a big man couldn't have been a bull-dancer. The youths and maidens are taken to Crete to be bull-dancers, not to be eaten by the Minotaur (and Minotaur is the title of the heir to the throne, like "Dauphin" or "Prince of Wales") - the bull-headed man is a heraldic device, not an actual monster. Despite all this, Theseus believes firmly that he has a relationship with the god Poseidon, even though he knows King Aigeus is his actual father. And there's the odd fantastical touch - Theseus knows when an earthquake is coming. Mainly, it's about the clash between old religion and new. Women don't get very good press in this book, apart from the odd Amazon and the hero's mother, who respects and serves the Goddess, but is a part of the male-based sky-god worship. Theseus really loves Ariadne, but she lets him down. He understands why, but can't bring himself to take her home. The reasons for all this are probably more about Mary Renault than about the characters, but I can see it happening this way. Having read Robert Graves, I understand the background.

If you just want a great action-adventure which gives a fascinating interpretation of a Greek myth, you can still enjoy this. You're unlikely to find it in your local bookshop any more, but it's available. I'm going to order my second copy on-line; I think I'm going to need it.