GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS 2012

If all else fails in my library at lunchtime, the kids get stuck into World Records. There’s something addictive about looking up the biggest this, the longest that and continuing onto the most of the other. Once you start... And isn’t this year’s looking gorgeous, with a cover featuring striking holographic bubbles and colourful photos throughout, showing the bizarre zany things people do just to get in. I mean, come on - most swords swallowed underwater? World’s tallest lederhosen? There are also plenty of educational items in there, such as information about the continents and bird migrations. My own favourite, for personal reasons, is the title page, which shows the largest object lifted by helium balloons. It was the house from the movie “Up” recreated for a TV series called “How Hard Can It Be?” The house weighed 1966 kilos and there were 300 helium ballons 10 storeys high. It went up to a height of 3050 metres. It was, in fact, in the newspapers earlier in 2011, just in time to be of use to me, when I was teaching the movie for English. One of my Year 8 students asked, “Miss, would that be possible?” and when I showed her the article she was delighted to see that it was, indeed, possible. Now it’s all there in the Guinness Book of Records and I can show it to my class next year. That’s if the book hasn’t been stolen by then.

SheKilda Yet Again

On October 8th I will be doing two panels at SheKilda, the second women's crime convention to be held in Melbourne. My co-panellists will be Goldie Alexander, who has written far more books than I have, for younger kids, and the wonderful Catherine Jinks, author of a wide variety of YA novels in a huge variety of genres - SF, fantasy, mystery, ghost stories, historical fiction (the fabulous Pagan series set during the Crusades) - you name it, if it's a YA genre she's probably written about it. The convention itself should be terrific, if it's anything like the last one. People would yell out, "SheKilda!" and others would respond "No she didn't!" There were some great guest speakers and there was even a panel on fan fiction, with Kerry Greenwood admitting she wrote the stuff just for herself, very steamy, while Jenny Pausacker was happy to admit that she, too, wrote fan fiction and published it on-line. Also steamy. ;-) I met a lot of people I knew, because SF and crime fandom overlap. The con committee are all SF fans as well as crime writers/readers. I remember the time we all went off to see the Star Trek movie in Gold Class and afterwards walked around Borders putting our books facing outwards. Well, the others did - and they had to do mine as well, I was too embarrassed! (Hides face while Cecilia Dart-Thornton finds a copy of Crime Time and faces it outwards...). Come along if you can. It will be a great weekend. Check it out on the web site - SheKilda Again - and there's a single day pass if that's all you want to attend. The program is up so you can decide what you want to see. Come and hear me? :-)

This Year's Hugos

I've just read this year's Hugo and John Campbell Awards, which are up on the Locus web site. Go take a look. For once I've actually read a little of what's on the list. I loved the Connie Willis books and am slowly savouring Cryoburn. Connie Willis's time travel stories are always wonderful. The first I read was The Doomsday Book, then To Say Nothing Of The Dog, then some of the short fiction. These two were really one very long novel broken up, in which the time-travelling heroes are in wartime Britain. Lovely stuff! I'm going slow with the Lois McMaster Bujold book because it has been so very long since there was a Miles Vorkosigan novel. And nice to see a couple of Aussies there too. Shaun Tan for Best Professional Artist - yay! I've been a big fan of his work for years now. Well, why wouldn't I be? I'm a teacher-librarian, after all. I was lucky enough to have a long chat with him at last year's Aussiecon. Sean McMullen and I used to be in a Melbourne SF writers' group together; he was the one, by the way, who persuaded me to join the SCA and learn what you could and couldn't do with a sword and shield! Good on him for getting on the Hugo short list. I couldn't be more proud of him.

Wolfborn Giveaway 2

Thanks to those who have requested a sample chapter. The winners of the signed copies are Saskia Largent of Teamouse Book Reviews and Tina Young of Book Couture. Enjoy, ladies! I've sent off your copy, Sas, and will send off Tina's as soon as I can get to a post office. Lan Chan of The Write Obsession asked for a copy, although she'd read it, so she could do a giveaway herself and this is now arranged. If you'd like a sample after all, do drop me a line, but also go to The Write Obsession, where we're doing the giveaway and I'm answering questions asked by readers there. I've also sent Lan a copy of the MP3 CD with George Ivanoff reading bits from his novel and mine. I'll be happy to send this to anyone who wants it, but read the PDF first if you're interested - and then feel free to share both of these with friends - it's all promo for me! :-) It would have been nice to have had more inquiries for this freebie, but let's see if Tina and Lan can get more interest on their web sites - so far, there are several on Lan's and Tina has just put up a post about it. Thanks, everyone!

Blood Song by Rhiannon Hart. Sydney: Random House, 2011

Zeraphina is the younger princess of Amentia, a small queendom in the south of her continent. It's cold, getting colder and the crops are failing regularly. Her mother needs to make an advantageous match for her older daughter, Lilith - to be blunt, a rich one. When an offer comes from the northern country of Pergamia, which is much warmer - and wealthier - than Amentia, the queen is thrilled.

Zeraphina is happy, but for different reasons. Unlike her red-haired mother and sister, she is dark, with pale blue eyes, after a strange childhood illness. She craves blood. And something is calling her north. She isn't sure what, but she knows she needs to go. The worrying thing is - what if something dreadful is about to happen, not only to her but to her beloved sister?

And why won't anyone talk about the mysterious Lharmellins, who live in the bleak far-north country of Lharmell?

Despite the Gothic cover art (which girls are going to love, by the way!) the novel is a fun read. The language is colloquial and chatty and Zeraphina is a likeable character who isn't planning to be Cinderella waiting for a prince, even if she wasn't worried that she might end up biting him. She's no swooning Gothic heroine either, unless they've started doing archery and going on dangerous quests. When she does something stupid, she admits it, to herself if no one else.

It's the first in a series, it seems, so there will be something for young readers to look forward to.

This one is going straight into my school library.

Crow Country by Kate Constable. Melbourne: Allen and Unwin, 2011

Sadie and her mother have moved from their lovely Melbourne home by the sea to Boort, her mother's home town in regional Victoria, where there is a drought. Boort has a history, both for her mother and further back. The same families have lived in the town for the last century and more.

The local artificial lake has dried up, leaving behind some old graves and indigenous relics. When Sadie is exploring the dried lake bed, with its small cemetery and a circle of stones set up by the indigenous people, she finds herself confronting Waa the Crow, the local totem bird. A past tragedy has influenced the present. Sadie must find the end to that story, which is dark to the Crow.

Time-slipping back to the 1930s, when her mother's grandparents were running the local store, Sadie discovers the truth behind the tragedy. The key to the story's end lies in the present - and she will need help to find it.

Kate Constable is a master of the time-slip fantasy. Actually, she seems to do fantasy pretty well whatever it is. Whether it's the present-day fantasy of this one and Cicada Summer or the Tamora Pierce-style world-building of the Chanters of Tremaris series, she creates a wonderful sense of the fantastical and characters you can care about.

In this case, we have not only the time-slip but the indigenous theme and the reminder that the racism of the past hasn't gone away in our own time.

A touching story, beautifully-told.

In My Mailbox

Received recently: Crow Country by Kate Constable, finished and soon to be reviewed. Shake A Leg by Boori Monty Pryor and Jan Ormerod, Blood Song by Rhiannon Hart (halfway through, good fun so far), Michael Pryor's final Laws of Magic book, Hour of Need (likewise halfway and trying to slow down and relish it, because it is the last!), today Vicious Little Darlings by Katherine Easer, which I suspect will appeal to kids who enjoyed Rebecca James's Beautiful Malice. These are only on the top of my pile, but I have plenty more I'm trying to get through when I don't have to prepare classes or go to meetings or doing stuff in my library - or writing my own books and short fiction...

Selena Wang Interviews Cath Crowley

Greetings Great Raven readers. Once more, Selena Wang, guest blogger, is with us to interview yet another terrific writer. This time, it's award-winning Cath Crowley, whose book, Graffiti Moon, has already picked up a number of awards - the Ethel Turner Award for Young People's Literature, the Prime Minister's Award and an Honour Book in the CBCA Awards. It's currently on the short list for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. With good reason, by the way - it's a funny, gentle, delightful story.

Cath kindly agreed to the following interview. Enjoy!

SW: Where did you get the idea for this novel?

CC: The idea for Graffiti Moon came from a few places.

Shadow and Lucy, the main characters, connect through art. So the conversations that they have are inspired by the artists I love - Mark Rothko, Sam Leach, Rosemary Laing, Jeffrey Smart, Pablo Picasso, Johannes Vermeer, Michael Zavros, Rosalie Gascoigne, Bethany Wheeler, Ghostpatrol and Miso. I wanted to write about two people who speak through images as well as words.

I met a boy, one night in park who, told me he was a nighttime poet. I met a girl who told me she was psychic. I met a boy who told me he knew someone who had blue haloed on his hands. I met a boy who had egged his girlfriend and then she’d dumped him.

But all of those things were just the initial sparks. Then I made the characters.

I think probably the real idea for this novel started about five years back, when I was working with a group of very smart students. They were the most creative, determined people I’ve ever met and they had to be – they had learning difficulties and they had to learn how to survive and do well in the school system.

SW: Why graffiti? Has any particular piece ever caught you or do you know someone who does it?

CC: Only part of the novel is about street art. A lot of the art that Shadow and Lucy love are works in galleries.

When I was writing I had it in my head that Shadow loved artists like Ghostpatrol, Miso, Regan Tamanui and Banksy (maybe because I love them). I found some of these artists myself. Some I found by asking questions of young people. Some I found by having conversations with artists like Marcus Jobling, who has an interest in the area. I also spent quite a bit of time on trains looking out at walls.

I did a little bit of looking at the street art in Melbourne – and it’s amazing. Hosier Lane, in the streets that run off Brunswick Street in Fitzroy – I went there at night and during the day. I went to Union Lane in the city and Smith Street and Flinders Lane.

But I stopped pretty soon – because Ed is a total outsider – I didn’t want him fitting into any group. I wanted to write about someone who was outside the outside. And I knew the book would be about art – in all forms – and I didn’t want it to be about a street artist. I wanted Ed to love Ghostpatrol but also love Jeffrey Smart and Vermeer and Sam Leach.

I had a feeling if it was too much about that then people might not see that the book is about seeing – how we see art, each other, the world.

I knew too that the art he made would show the reader that landscape inside his head – so all of his art had to come from my imagination and I was worried that if I kept looking at the walls around Melbourne I wouldn’t be able to get that out of my head and I wouldn’t be able to create Ed’s inner world of ghosts trapped in jars and hearts rocked by earthquakes and birds trapped on bricks walls, trying to escape.


SW: Were any of the characters based on real people?

The characters weren’t based on real people but the people I met inspired me. That poet in the park gave me an idea that I couldn’t get out of my head. What if someone who looked dangerous, who looked nothing like we think a ‘poet’ might look, wrote words in the night? When I met that poet I thought he was going to rob me. Instead, he asked me to go the tattoo parlour with him. He needed someone to pretend to be his mum because he was underage. (I didn’t go.) But instead of being robbed, he gave me a story. Fitting, considering that Graffiti Moon is about how we perceive and misperceive people.

SW: Was any event based on fact?

CC: I did meet a boy who egged his girlfriend, but I changed their personalities to suit my book. I did meet a girl who told me she was psychic, but I changed her too, of course. When you make a character you have to build their whole inner world. So I get ideas from meeting people, but that’s never enough to make the whole character.


SW: Why Year 12?

Graffiti Moon is set on the last night of Year 12. That night has a strange sort of momentum to it – I remember feeling as though my whole future would happen the next day. I wanted to write a narrative that had that same urgency, so keeping a tight timeframe was important.


SW: Reading about glassblowing made me want to try it. Have you ever done any yourself? If not, how did you research it?

CC: No, I haven’t! I would love to try it, though. I did watch a lot.

The inspiration for Lucy’s glass came (in part) from an artist called Bethany Wheeler. You can see her work at http://www.bethanywheeler.com.

I love Bethany’s work and she generously agreed to an interview. I spent some time in her studio where she explained the process of fusing and slumping glass. She talked about her experiences as a Year 12 student learning about glass. I knew after meeting Bethany that Lucy would want to be a glass artist.

SW: Have you ever seen any verse on walls?

CC: I haven’t seen verse on walls, but I’ve seen words written like this below. It’s not a poem but it make me think about who wrote it and why. I think fear is at the core of Leo. He has to overcome that so he can tell people about his poetry and so he can be with Jazz.



I’ve also seen personal stories on walls like this photo below. These words are actually on a bridge in Footscray. They’re the personal stories of asylum seekers. It’s quite overwhelming to read them all.




SW: Which Melbourne suburbs were you thinking of in this book? Did you see them by night? Do you have any stories about this?

CC: I drove around Footscray, so I was mainly thinking about that suburb when I wrote the book. I did mix it with other places, though. When Lucy and Ed are in the park I had the Merri Creek track in mind. There’s a path I used to walk and there’s quite a big drop there.

I don’t have a car, and I needed to drive past the docks on Footscray Road at night. I hired taxi drivers, which was a bit weird! I bribed friends to drive me over the Westgate and back and past the docks. Some nights I hired cars and parked in different places hoping to see people doing things at night that might inspire me. That’s a bit strange too, I guess. But it worked.

SW: Why did you choose to do the book from different viewpoints? If you could only do it from one viewpoint, which character would you choose?

CC: This is a great question. I think I would have to tell the story from Ed’s point of view. He is the main character to me. (Although I’m attached to them all.)

I often write from different viewpoints. I think it’s because I love writing in first person. And also because I’m preoccupied with how we perceive the world. How we see ourselves is different to how everyone else sees us. It’s fun using two narrators to explore this idea.


SW: Favourite book?

CC: Of mine? Graffiti Moon. Of someone else? I loved Fiona Wood’s Six Impossible Things.

Wolfborn Giveaway!

I had this bright idea that I would post a sample chapter from my novel Wolfborn on Goodreads. Unfortunately, I haven't worked out a way of doing it. My publisher sent me a PDF of Chapter 1 for the purpose, but copy-and-paste is simply not working properly - it looks awful! - and I have no idea how to just upload a PDF file.

I then went to the Goodreads Giveaway section, but it seems to be for the purpose of giving away preview copies of your forthcoming novel and this one is out.

So here's the deal: anyone who asks me, by September 4th, for a copy of the sample chapter, will get it emailed to them on that date. The first two people after that who have read the sample and liked it enough to ask will get a signed copy, wherever they are. The very first will also get a CD with an MP3 file of writer and actor George Ivanoff reading a sample - not the same chapter! - from my book and one from his novel Gamer's Quest.


If you're interested, post a comment here letting me know.

TEMPEST RISING By Tracy Deebs. London: Bloomsbury, 2011

Tempest Maguire is a half-mermaid. She lives with her father and younger brothers, since her mother went returned to the sea some years ago. She has been living a normal human, middle-class life, with friends, school, boyfriend and surfing.

But now her seventeenth birthday is approaching. Despite a letter from her mother telling her that she will be able to choose, when the time comes, whether to stay on land or become a mermaid, she is suddenly sprouting gills and has – temporarily, anyway – grown a tail while in the middle of surfing.

Then there’s the evil sea-witch, Tiamat, who is after her for reasons connected with a prophecy and a hunky surfer, Kona, who is more than he seems.

How do you go on with your normal teenage life when all this is happening?

This paranormal romance has the elements that girls look for in this sort of fiction – a heroine with supernatural gifts, a romantic triangle with two gorgeous boys, both crazy for her, one of them a supernatural being – we’ve had fallen angels and angst-ridden vampires and werewolves, why not a sea-creature? – a prophecy concerning the heroine and a villain who wants to use her gifts to get power.

The author has played with elements from different mythologies/folklores. Tiamat is the name of a Babylonian creatrix-goddess connected with the sea and selkies, the seal-people, properly belong to Celtic folklore but appear Hawaiian in this novel and seem to live in the tropics. It would have been nice if there had been some acknowledgement of this at the end, which might have sent young readers to look it up.

Although it can be read standalone, there are elements towards the end which suggest a sequel to come. The girls at my school will almost certainly be nagging me for it when the time comes.

CBCA Winners 2011

Here are this year's winners of the CBCA awards for children's books. I'd like to congratulate all the winners. I admit I've only read the Older Readers books, because I work in a secondary school and had no budget left to buy any of the others. However, I have heard of/read other works by some of the other writers - Isobelle Carmody, Michael Gerard Bauer, Leonie Norrington, Ursula Dubosarsky.

To be honest, I would have given the prize to either one of the older-reader Honour Books, if I'd had my druthers. Cath Crowley's book was a delightful piece of young adult fiction, gently funny and understanding of how teenagers think, while Doug MacLeod's was over-the-top black comedy. I asked my student Selena Wang how she would vote and her preferences were for these two books - and she has read all the books, but doesn't know, yet, what the results are; I asked for her vote before she went off to school camp. ;-)

Both books are, however, on this year's Victorian Premier's Awards short list and Graffiti Moon has already picked up some other awards, so at least they haven't gone unrecognised. And there's a People's Choice, so if you have read these books and think one should get a prize in the Premier's Awards, stroll across to the Wheeler Centre web site and vote.

One nice thing is that funny books are getting a look-in these days; I can remember being told, by one CBCA judge years ago, that funny books had no psychological depth!

Older readers:

WINNER
Hartnett, Sonya
The Midnight Zoo
Viking Books, Penguin

HONOUR
Crowley, Cath
Graffiti Moon
Pan Macmillan Australia

HONOUR
MacLeod, Doug
The Life of a Teenage Body-Snatcher
Penguin Books

Younger Readers

WINNER
Carmody, Isobelle
The Red Wind
Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)

HONOUR
Bauer, Michael Gerard
Just a Dog
Omnibus Books, Scholastic Australia

HONOUR
Branford, Anna
Illus: Davis, Sarah
Violet Mackerel's Brilliant Plot
Walker Books

Early Childhood

WINNER
Ormerod, Jan
Illus: Blackwood, Freya
Maudie and Bear
Little Hare Books

HONOUR
Champion, Tom Niland & Niland, Kilmeny
Illus: Niland, Deborah
The Tall Man and the Twelve Babies
Allen & Unwin

HONOUR
Norrington, Leonie
Illus: Huxley, Dee
Look See, Look at Me
Allen & Unwin

Picture Book

JOINT
WINNER
Baker, Jeannie
Mirror
Walker Books

JOINT WINNER
Greenberg, Nicki
Hamlet
Allen & Unwin


HONOUR
Bancroft, Bronwyn
Why I Love Australia
Little Hare Books
HONOUR
Riddle, Tohby
My Uncle's Donkey
Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)

Eve Pownall (non-fiction)

WINNER
Ursula Dubosarsky
Illus: Riddle, Tohby
The Return of the Word Spy
Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)

HONOUR
Brooks, Ron
Drawn From the Heart: A Memoir
Allen & Unwin

HONOUR
One Arm Point Remote Community School
Our World: Bardi Jaawi: Life at Ardiyooloon
Magabala Books

Riley and the Grumpy Wombat: A Journey Around Melbourne. Text by Tania McCartney, art by Kieron Pratt. Clifton Hill: Ford Street Publishing, 2011

This latest publication from Ford Street Publishing is a picture book. Photos of Melbourne are mixed with delightful art by Kieron Pratt as the hero, accompanied by various critters, including a panda and a koala, flies his biplane around Melbourne's various landmarks in search of the Grumpy Wombat. Hmm, maybe this explains why I keep seeing biplanes flying overhead when I'm on St Kilda beach...


The idea of the picture book travelogue goes back a fair way, with such classics as Possum Magic, but it can never go stale.

It might be best suited to reading to younger children, so that you can do the gestures and have fun with the long words and silly gadgets Riley uses in his search.

I'll enjoy watching my nephew read it to his little boy.

More Phryne Fisher TV series stuff

The casting has been announced - Essie Davis as Miss Fisher. She is, in fact, the author's choice, and Kerry says that she also gets to vet the scripts, so that's a relief. So far, she's pleased with what they're doing to get 1928 right.

It sounds very exciting. I can't wait to see it. There's something quite wonderful about historic Melbourne. I was listening to a program on the ABC, "By Design", in which Alan Saunders and a guest were travelling around the CBD on a tram, discussing the buildings on the way. If you get a chance, and you're interested in Melbourne and architecture, go check out the podcast on the Radio National web site.

More Hobbit movie excitement

I've finished my evening with a wander on to the Hobbit movie blog site - The Hobbit Blog - and can heartily recommend it. It's full of good stuff such as the video blogs of the production. Apparently Andy Serkis is now a second unit director as well as Gollum... and the bits with him doing Gollum shown in the blogs were ... preciousss... :-)

There were scenes in Bag End, with the Dwarves around the table having their unexpected party, and Rivendell, with Hugo Weaving as Elrond again. Not sure what Galadriel is doing there, even if she is Elrond's mother-in-law, since she wasn't in the book, but what-the-heck, Cate Blanchett is just gorgeous in the role, and that wonderful white gown trailing on the floor - "Just don't ask me to walk in it," she quips.

John Rhys-Davies popped in and assured them that they'd now go all over the world with women chasing them. "As long as you're in costume," adds Peter Jackson.

I really like that every single Dwarf is different and has his own personality and it shows. I found this picture of the Dwarves together - isn't it delicious? Just click into it to get it bigger. I may use it for a computer desktop.

The CYL Comes To Sunshine College

A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from Adele Walsh, the new head honcho at the State Library's Centre for Youth Literature. For a number of reasons she explained to me, she was offering to bring the Teenage Booktalkers to us. Would we be interested?

Would we?!? I've taken my book club to the CYL for one Teen Booktalkers last year and to the youth day at Reading Matters this year, but this way ALL our kids could have the treat and no excursion forms to fill in or collect and no transport issues, just set up the library and welcome the guests. When I went to the evening session the night before, Paula Kelly, the head librarian, told me they were thinking of regionalising the youth days, taking the show to schools and letting other schools in the area come over instead of into town and this was going to be an experiment to see how it would work.

I chased up copies of the books The Comet Box, All I Ever Wanted and Five Parts Dead by the visiting authors and read them in a weekend - yes, all three of them! I got them processed and promoted, although by last Wednesday only one student was reading any of them (and loving it - the book was Five Parts Dead, the student Dylan). It didn't matter - after the talk, every last copy of all the books was checked out!

Wednesday morning, the first visitor, Adrian Stirling, arrived about 10.15 am as I was finishing my setup. We had a lot of students missing - an ESL excursion, that included half my tiny literacy class, the netball team, the Bridge-Building science team that included two of my book club members who would have loved to be there. So I'd invited a bunch of students from our Ardeer campus. I would also have invited students from another local school, but the teacher-librarian doesn't work on Wednesday and in the end, it was just as well, because we had a big audience for each of the two sessions and only just enough chairs for them all.

I got Adrian to use the remote control to bring the screen down - the computer was set up ready for the presentations, as it had been used the night before for a year 10 info evening and the principal kindly left it set up for me. Meanwhile I did the finishing touches elsewhere. I knew there would be an autograph session and thought it might work well to print out some book covers. Some of my book clubbers not on an excursion turned up offering to help. There wasn't much to do, it was all set up, but I introduced them and asked Dylan to set out the book covers on the autographing table, which he did.

The rest of our guests arrived soon after. Tim Pegler was last. Adele was there, with Christine - a lady I knew well from her time at The Little Bookroom - and a lady whose name I didn't know but who helped the speakers with their presentations and later booked a cab for Vikki Wakefield.

We started with the Year 9 and 10 students. Adele did the intros and the bribery that helped move the sessions along. She has been a teacher and is quite comfortable talking to kids - and bribing them to answer questions. :-) She'd brought along books left over from the conference and bits of CYL stuff, such as "Insideadog" tags, which she gave out for a good response from the audience. At one stage she was running low on the tags and I gave her some chocolate frogs, which were plenty good enough.

Adrian is also a teacher - he'd had to negotiate a day off work to come - so he had a good clear voice ands knew how to speak to teens. He explained where he'd got many of the ideas for his novel The Comet Box and his memories of the excitement people felt last time Halley's Comet came around. This is his second book; the earlier one, Broken Glass, had won a Notable. He spoke about that too.

Vikki Wakefield has a background in graphic art and had done character sheets before writing anything. She showed these in her presentation I did mean to ask her if the publisher might, perhaps, do a reprint with the illoes, which were very nice indeed, but the students had plenty of questions and they took priority, of course. She showed a picture of the street where she had lived as a child, if briefly, and of the huge dog that was the inspiration for Gargoyle, the scary mutt in All I Ever Wanted. There were quite a few elements that she'd based on her own memories.

Tim Pegler is a journalist who has turned to writing YA fiction. I really enjoyed Five Parts Dead and have bought my own copy of Game As Ned to read when I have five minutes off from teaching, library, review books, etc. He showed some photos from Kangaroo Island and the graveyard which had a rather sad grave set apart from the others that had given him his idea for Five Parts Dead. He also showed some of the articles he'd written as a journalist, including the one which he'd used as part of his inspiration, about a woman who had killed someone in an attempt to do an exorcism.

The students were highly entertained and there were plenty who went up to get autographs done in the middle of the session.

I'd ordered lunch from the canteen and we had it in the staffroom. After lunch came the Year 7 and 8 students, who also enjoyed the event. Adele very kindly left us a whole box of leftover books from the conference and Adrian donated copies of both his books to our library. The books are being processed and will be out in the library next week.

All in all, a successful event and I am most grateful to Adele for arranging it and the speakers for entertaining our students.

Hobbit movie excitement

Anyone excited about the Hobbit movie? I am! They are gradually releasing pictures of the cast in costume and make-up and I have to say that Thorin Oakenshield is going to get more drooling female fans than Bard the bowman, that proto-Aragorn! I would have imagined Richard Armitage as Bard rather than Thorin, but I guess we have to trust Peter Jackson. Some of the cast of LOTR are going to be there - well, Gandalf, obviously, so yes, Ian McKellan, and Elrond. I would have thought they could give Orlando Bloom the role of Thranduil, Legolas's dad, but it seems they're slipping in Legolas himself. Of course, Andy Serkis doing Gollum again. I think Martin Freeman will be a good Bilbo. Having seen him as Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, it suddenly occurred to me that there were some similarities between Bilbo and Arthur - both are dragged kicking and screaming from their comfort zone - but Bilbo matures and develops leadership qualities, where Arthur doesn't - although the movie Arthur did, to some extent. So yes, I can see him in the role (and have seen photos of him as Bilbo).

I discovered The Hobbit as an adult. It charmed and delighted me even after reading Lord of The Rings. It was funny and sad, exciting and over-the-top. Anyone who doesn't sniffle just a bit at that last scene between Thorin and Bilbo has no heart, IMO.

And if anyone can make a movie in the spirit of the novel, it's Peter Jackson.

Happy Birthday, J.K.Rowlng!

And Harry too, of course. It's weird, you know, I'd forgotten and yet last night I was googling various facts about religion in the Harry Potter novels. And what a variety of articles there was, too! Some argued for the Christian elements, others that Christianity had nothing to do with the various decisions Harry and his friends made and then there were the anti-HP ones, but I didn't bother with those, because I was after symbols in the books.

I discovered this series when I picked up a copy of Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone on the book stall at the Children's Book Week Fair, back in the days when they HAD a book stall as a regular part of the fair. I'd heard about it from Alison Goodman, author of Singing The Dogstar Blues (her only book at the time)as we sat in the back of a car going to a meeting of the Aussiecon 3 committee. It sounded interesting and I bought the book when I saw it. I enjoyed it enough to buy the next, Chamber of Secrets, thinking at the time that it reminded me of Roald Dahl, but even more of Diana Wynne Jones' Lives Of Christopher Chant (and so, it seems to me, did DWJ's publishers, who happily brought out a new edition of all the Christopher Chant books) which I'd loved.


By Prisoner of Azkaban, I was hooked. The universe was becoming more complex, as were the characters. I was getting review copies now - that one was for Festivale On-Line, the ones after for January Magazine.

I'm remembering the day I picked up Deathly Hallows and went down to the food court at the Australia Hotel to read over coffee and cake. I looked around and at every other table was someone doing the same! There were brass bands and at Dymock's a choir was singing songs from the books. All this to celebrate a book... As a librarian, I was thrilled. I know kids have never stopped reading, but in this day and age, with people spending so much time on-line and playing computer games, it was nice to have it confirmed. I remember spotting a small girl with a huge Harry Potter book tucked under her little arm.

I had to finish the book and hand in my review within the next twenty-four hours, but I don't think I missed anything in my reading. I just promised myself that I'd read it again at my own pace when I could.

I'm now reading Philosopher's Stone to my Literacy class, which is willing to listen because the last movie has just come out.

If you want a really good summation of the phenomenon, google the article by Stephen King, who is a big fan of the series and has done a very good job of discussing it. I won't get the URL here, it's too fiddly, but trust me, it's worth reading. Google J.K.Rowling's Ministry Of Magic Stephen King.

More egoboo!

After several months out in the world, my novel is still getting some reviews and some of them are nice! The following is by Virginia Lowe, in her "Create A Kids' Book" e-newsletter. She does have a web site, and a good one, but is not currently posting her newsletters there, so has given me permission to post this. For those of you who don't know about Virginia, she is a big name in the Australian children's/YA book community and does a very useful newsletter, good for writers, teachers and librarians.

Here it is, my latest egoboo:

Wolfborn by Sue Bursztynski (Woolshed Press)

I have only, to now, read Sue’s non-fiction titles (her Crime Time: Australians behaving badly I reviewed some years ago) but this is the first fiction I have read. I must admit my heart dropped a bit at yet another werewolf title, but instead it is a wonder.

She has based it on medieval legends, while bringing the characters very much to life. It is another world, not just ours hundreds of years ago – the three moons are a giveaway – but everything else seems just like a feudal Europe, which is still heavily forested and still has packs of wild wolves.

Etienne has come as a page to Sire Geraint’s castle, to finish his education. Geraint is a kindly, gentle lord, much loved by the peasants, other pages, and his household. But he also has a secret – even from his beautiful young wife. Etienne is suspicious, and looking for him one day, comes upon Jeanne and her mother Sylvia, who live together in the forest. Of course he falls in love – but it is not an easy relationship.

There is feuding between the local barons, and some passing between worlds, with a faerie hunt prominent – as in many Celtic tales.

His dog and one of his horses are also not entirely of this world – but are brilliant characters, as are the ones in human form, whether gods, faeries, bisclavret (born a werewolf) or loup-garou (made a werewolf through a pact with the Dark One) or just as human as they appear.

A tangled tale told brilliantly, with a strong feeling of the ancient legend coming through as well

Writing With A Day Job

I wrote this, originally, for the SCBWI newsletter, after reading articles about how you can make the best of your working day as a writer and others about how the education industry was still pretty good (not for me, or for some others I know, not for some time now). I never got around to sending it, so decided to pop it up here instead.

* * *

In Australia most writers have day jobs. The population is too small to buy a lot of books. The few who don’t have other jobs are usually married to someone who can support them as they work from home, at least until they earn enough to help pay the bills.

There are, of course, a few bestsellers, some more who have grants and the lucky few who are still selling education books; the market for that has slowed down here in recent years. One artist who had depended on the education industry for his bread and butter told me he was getting less and less work. I have had no luck in this area myself lately, despite having written several books for an education publisher, books that have done well. I did finally manage to score some literacy cards, after a lot of nagging, and that paid very well, but I don't think I have the energy to go back and nag again.

I work full-time as a teacher-librarian. That has some advantages, but mostly means I can forget about school visits, because I can’t get time off for visiting other schools! When my publisher invited all his authors to attend a writers’ festival at a rich private school last year, I was teaching English while everyone else got to promote and sign their books.

So how do you write let alone promote when you leave for work at 6.30 a.m. and get home at 6.30 p.m., to eat quickly and prepare classes?

If you have a car, leave it at home. Write on the train. I write late at night and listen to radio talk shows. Then I write some more on Sundays. If I’m having trouble focusing, I go out to a cafe and write there - but only on weekends and holidays. As a writer of mostly non-fiction, I can break up the work - research each individual chapter, draft, edit, then do the next one. It does, of course, take a lot longer to write a novel than if you don’t have to prepare classes and mark work. Try thinking of what’s happening with your hero when you have to mark Year 8 assignments, attend meetings and jump through hoops for the Education Department’s latest bright idea!

But I do have advantages when it comes to promotion. As a librarian and writer of genre fiction, I can get on panels at science fiction conventions, where sessions on children’s and YA fiction are the most popular. Everyone has an opinion on children’s books and would like to hear others talk about it. At last year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, where I live, I didn’t have my new novel, Wolfborn, which only came out in December, so I asked my publishers for some goodies and they came through with bookmarks, posters and sample chapters. I asked to do a reading and a signing and when everyone was in a long queue at the next signer’s table, I smiled sweetly and said to those at the end, “As long as you’re waiting, would you like a sample chapter? A signed bookmark?” Quite a few people happily came over for the freebies.

At school, I can arrange a launch for the students and call in the local press. I don’t have to get the librarian on-side - I am the librarian! The Principal loves it because the school is promoted when I do this. Before the launch, I run a themed trivia quiz - spies or crime or, in the case of my novel, werewolves and folklore. The winner gets a signed copy of the book. Some others get signed posters or bookmarks.

Because Wolfborn is a medieval paranormal novel, I had the chance to get the history teachers involved. Year 8 studies the Middle Ages. I invited the kids to check bits of the manuscript for historical accuracy (I’d done my own research, but it was a fun activity for them). Those who responded got extra credit, a certificate, a signed copy and a mention on the thank you page.

I do feel jealous when I read chirpy little articles about overcoming writers’ block and arranging your writing day; it must be so nice to be able to concentrate on the writing!

But I work with my readers. And they’re proud of me. They borrow my books - I rarely have to shelve them before the year is over - and sometimes buy them. One girl said, “I’m going to borrow it from the public library during the holidays, Miss, and I’m going to say, ‘My teacher wrote this and I am so proud!’ ”

How many people who write all day and go jogging between chapters to overcome the writers’ block can boast of that?

Currently Reading...

There's a pile of review books in my living-room and some others I have to read for school, with the authors coming to visit or because they're CBCA short-listed books. I've finished Sonya Hartnett's Midnight Zoo. I'll wait to see what my student Selena has to say about it. She is busy preparing an interview with the delightful Cath Crowley. I'm still reading About A Girl, which Selena liked in the end though she was uneasy with the lesbian angle when she started. I'd like to have her comments about these two and Six Impossible Things and will post them when she does. After About A Girl I just have to read Melina Marchetta's The Piper's Son and I'm done with this year's Older Readers shortlist.

I'm halfway through Michael Pryor's Hour Of Need, last of The Laws of Magic steampunk series, nearly finished Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld, a little way into A Clash of Kings, reading Adrian Stirling's The Comet Box (he's coming to visit my school week after next) and about to start All I ever Wanted (Vikki Wakefield - also visiting) and Tim Pegler's Five Parts Dead. Starting the latest HIVE novel, Zero Hour, which I should have read and reviewed some time ago. I have a copy of George Ivanoff's Gamers' Challenge and a couple more Ford Street titles, just received, plus a couple of adult (as opposed to YA) novels sent me for reviewing, will read and review them as soon as I get through the YA, which is what my blog specialises in. I also got some more titles from Allen and Unwin to review. I have the latest Kate Forsyth book, yum! And there are all those small-press titles I bought at Swancon and Continuum. I'll get through them all eventually! :-)

But this is why I'm being rather slow with my reviews, plus wanting to get on with my own writing.

HAUNTING VIOLET By Alyxandra Harvey. London:Bloomsbury, 2011

Alyxandra Harvey is best known for her popular Drake Chronicles series, about the likeable family of vampires, the Drakes, with all those truly hot sons and an ass-kicking martial arts mother. They’re among the few vampire books I enjoy, mainly because they have a sense of humour and aren’t really about vampires biting people but about fights between various vampire clans, ranging from those who think humans are cattle to those who, like the Drakes, are happy to get their blood without harming anyone.

In Haunting Violet, Ms Harvey moves from present-day rural America to Victorian England, when séances were a regular part of middle-class entertainment and there was an entire spiritualist movement.

Violet Willoughby's mother is a phoney medium, making her living from convincing grieving families that she can communicate with the late Horace or Amelia. Violet has been helping out in the business since childhood, unhappy but knowing there isn’t a lot she can do about it. It’s a living –and her domineering mother is scary! While at a house party where her mother is expecting a triumphant performance, Violet is horrified to find that there really are ghosts – and she can see them. Even worse, the most persistent ghost is the murdered twin sister of one of the other guests. If Violet doesn’t find the murderer, the killer may strike again.

It’s either solve the mystery or end up an old woman with the carpet still dripping with the water in which the body was dumped - that's if she isn't murdered herself!

Despite the gloomy cover, there is plenty of the over-the-top humour that makes the Drake Chronicles books such fun to read. The image of Violet turning up at a society ball in her soggy, muddy underwear after fleeing the murderer is unforgettable. The class structure of the time as seen through Violet’s eyes is bizarre but funny. It's wise to set this in Victorian times, when it might be possible to get away with a murder of this kind. If it had happened in the present day, the forensics team and detectives would be all over the crime scene before coming to the conclusion that it was an accident - especially with the victim having bruises at throat and wrists.


Definitely recommended!

New link added - Rhiannon Hart

If you look over to the list of links on the right, you will see the latest - the blog of fellow Melbourne writer, Rhiannon Hart, whose first YA novel is being published by Random House Australia in September. I discovered Rhiannon's blog while net-surfing and found some enjoyable posts. There are book reviews and travel reports and trivia and all sorts of good stuff.

Welcome to The Great Raven, Rhiannon! Nice to have encountered you!

Changing Yesterday By Sean McMullen. Melbourne: Ford Street Publishing 2011.

In Before The Storm, Liore and Fox, two young cadets from a dystopian future travelled back in time to 1901 Melbourne, to prevent a terrorist group, the Lionhearts, from blowing up the first Australian Parliament. The disaster will start a century-long war which the British Empire loses, resulting in a militaristic society and six billion deaths.

The time travellers were helped by four local teenagers – siblings Daniel and Emily, artist Muriel and petty crook Barry. They succeeded in preventing the explosion, but as this book starts, the Lionhearts are trying again. It is clear that whatever happens, history is going to try mending itself.

The situation is not helped by some personal disasters. Muriel and Fox run off together to Paris, breaking Daniel’s heart, and Barry runs off with Liore’s advanced weapon, with plans to make money on it. When Daniel’s parents send him off to England and Barry must flee Australia one step ahead of both the murderous Lionhearts and an enraged Liore, the action starts all over again, this time moving out of Australia.

Changing Yesterday , like Before The Storm, is a deliciously entertaining romp with a steampunk flavour. Despite the seriousness of the situation – the world could come to an end, for heaven’s sake! - there’s plenty of humour here. Emily is replaced as a protagonist by a young woman from Ballarat, Madeline, who has a yearning to become a private detective and just might make it. Liore may be a spectacularly good warrior, but she has no idea how to relate to others. She badly needs a local ally and Madeline is perfect for the role. Characters need to learn some life lessons – Liore comes to regret having had affection cut out of her genetic make-up while Daniel needs to become stronger.

Sean McMullen is well known for his bestselling adult speculative fiction, but his last few YA novels suggest to me, at least, that this is a promising new direction for this author. Here’s hoping he will continue to write for teens!

I’m inserting here a guest post Sean did at From Hook to Book, Christine Maree Bell’s blog. It will give you a fascinating insight into the research he did for this novel.

MOLE HUNT (The Maximus Black Files #1) by Paul Collins. Melbourne, Ford Street Publishing, 2011.

The “mole” of the title, Maximus Black, isn’t the blind, digging creature but the spy kind. Only in his teens, Maximus Black is a brilliant cadet in RIM, a galactic spy agency. - that is, until he commits a murder or two and plays with some advanced technology as part of his plan to dominate the galaxy. But Maximus is not without opposition. Anneke Longshadow, another star recruit whose guardian he’s wiped out, knows he has to be stopped before he finds some frightening information left over from the old Empire, information that will allow him access to battleships of a kind no one is able to do any more.

Mind you, the technology in the universe of this space opera is pretty advanced in its own right. Even death doesn’t have to be permanent if you know how to make the right arrangements.

There's some fascinating world-building here. This universe has an elaborate system of law and order - or should that be disorder? While the heroes/anti-heroes are running around breaking into bases, exploding things, nearly killing each other, whatever world they're on gets on with its own daily life, generally a pretty grubby one. Big corporations run things and send out assassins against each other. Even the CEO of one of them isn't safe from the others. If the board don't like what you're doing, you can expect a lot worse than a large dismissal payout. If you're an ordinary person on the street, you're probably safe enough unless Maximus Black gets to you.

The action, which alternates between the two main characters, is non-stop. Another review of this book I have come across says the pace would give Matthew Reilly a nosebleed and I can see why. Nobody seems to eats or sleep, except Anneke, and every time she stops for a rest, something disastrous happens. I’d describe it as Matthew Reilly on steroids. I can see this as a graphic novel, complete with explosions and crashes every other page. It reminds me, in some ways, of those Mad Magazine cartoons, Spy vs Spy.

One thing this author does that Matthew Reilly didn’t, in the one novel I managed to read, is create at least one sympathetic character, Anneke. Anneke isn’t wishy washy. She’s just as good at sneaking into bases and stealing as he is – and surviving afterwards. It’s just that she has a conscience – he doesn’t.

Oddly enough, dreadful as Maximus is – and at this stage, at least, he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever – you still want to see him escape whatever fix he has gotten himself into. Anneke does manage to outwit him a number of times, but she isn’t actively trying to kill him.

For kids who like action, action, action.

Here's a link to the YouTube book trailer, if anyone's interested:

Mole Hunt Book Trailer

Some more favourite reviews - egoboo rules!

About time I gave some publicity to the lovely folk who enjoyed my novel and said so. There are more, for another day, but here are a few.

One of my earliest reviews was right after the book came out in December. It was on the Burnbright web site run by Marianne De Pierres, written by a lady called Belinda Hamilton. The same web site did an interview with me as well, which you'll see in the Big 4 Interviews on the left of the page.

I did an interview on 3RRR with Rob Jan, whom I've known forever and who said he'd been relieved to find the book was better than some of the other stuff he had to read as a radio reviewer. Rob actually created a world with me for our fan fiction and the rather silly shaggy unicorn in the novel comes from that universe. His media spec fic program, Zero-G, has been on for years.

The review on Buzzwords was written by Oliver Phomavanh, who is a very funny man and a delightful children's writer in his own right - several of our Year 7 boys are loving his books.

George Ivanoff, who is a children's writer and the only person I know who actually manages to make a living out of his writing, reviewed my book on the blog Literary Clutter, as well as interviewing me on the same site.

Katherine Peterson reviewed the book on Specusphere, the same wonderful web site fellow blogger Satima writes for.

These are some of my egoboo reviews. There are some that are quite good, but hate this or that sentence. There are others that hate the book for one reason or another, including one that said it was badly-written but he couldn't put it down!

As long as he contributes to my royalties. ;-)

New stat counter

Today I decided it was about time to let you all see how many hits I'm getting. There are other web sites getting more, but I'd say I have a respectable number. Thing is, I don't have 695 public followers like some other bloggers and those I do have don't comment very often, so I thought I'd like to reassure anyone I review on this web site that yes, people WILL be reading about your book here, whether they comment or not. There are writers out there who are aware of this site and like it very much - and others who don't put links up from their own sites even when I've given them a very good review.

I had a chat about this issue with Paul Collins, who suggested it might be because I seem to have so few followers, so I thought it might be a good time to show the hits. These don't count my own checks of my site after I've published; you can select this as an option on Blogger.

Speaking of putting links up, here's one to Anthony Panegyres' site - he's on my blog roll, but has recently given Wolfborn a nice review, go take a look. And thank you, Anthony!:

A Brief Look At Wolfborn

There have been plenty more, by others, I just haven't got around to putting in links, but really must put in some of my favourites in the next day or two instead of complaining others don't do links to my reviews!

SheKilda preparation

Now I'm on term holidays I have started to rustle up the stuff for the SheKilda web site. It's very exciting to be doing this. The pics, to start with. I've downloaded some of the bio blurbs. I'd assumed I only had one thing to offer to the field of crime writing, Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, but after I had a look at the web site of my co-panellist, Goldie Alexander, I realised that her children's crime book looked like a chapter book and I suddenly remembered I did a chapter book mystery called "The Sea's Secret" for Pearson. And a short story in Paul and Meredith's Thrillogy series, "The Egyptian Figurines Mystery". And an article on forensic science for the NSW School Magazine. An article that required at least as much research as for any of my education titles, because before they commissioned me to do it, I hadn't known anything about forensics. I had some help from Dr Shelley Robertson, who will also be at the con. She checked my article for accuracy and answered some questions. I can meet her, finally, and maybe see if we can add another person to the panel, to make it a proper panel. It's kind of hard to do anything with two people, though I have done it in emergencies at cons when someone got sick or forgot to turn up. I do hope there will be one more person!

Welcome Kevin Lee!

If you read my post about the Reading Matters conference - and I know from my stats that a lot of you did read it, you just didn't comment - you'll have seen the picture of Kevin Lee. I've known Kevin for some years; we meet regularly at Booktalkers, where he comes for one reason and one only: he loves children's and YA books. Now he's been rewarded for his love of this fiction with a job as one of this year's Inkys judges - and he's set up a blog, Someone To Write With, which I've popped up on the links at the side. I hope he'll use it fore reviewing, though not the Inkys books, because judges can't do that. We can always use another YA review site.

Go check out Kevin's site!

Things I Learned In Research

I'm doing research on the year 1964, specifically the visit of the Beatles to Melbourne in June of that year, for a potential story. I have been invited to submit something and was asked for historical fiction. I've already had a look on-line and downloaded some personal reminiscences and had a quick look at the Beatles interview and clips from the concert.

There isn't more than the slight beginnings of a tale as yet and who knows, maybe it won't work out, but I decided to immerse myself in 1964 anyway, and hoped to find a human interest story or two that might help. So I took advantage of term break to visit the State Library today, using the wonderful microfilm collection.

Here are some things I learned from the Sun, June 1964:

Women weren't allowed to serve on juries in Victoria. They also didn't get equal pay in teaching. Probably my nice old teacher that year, Mrs Jamieson, didn't care particularly; she was already in her 70s at the time. Most of my other teachers in those days were male anyway.

The movies playing in Melbourne cinemas included Lawrence of Arabia, 40 Pounds of Trouble and Cleopatra.

Big stage musicals starting that month: Carousel at the Princess, Camelot at Her Majesty's. Star of that one was Paul Daneman, who'd played the lead in London - and if you're a Blake's Seven fan you may remember him in an episode of that show.

There was a new opera singer called Robert Allman - I remember him in his later years, singing for Opera Australia, as Rigoletto and other baritone roles. A wonderful singer, and here he was in his youth, just starting out.

If you put in more than 30 shillings worth of orders at Spotless Dry Cleaners you got a free Beatles beaker (suitable for hot drinks!)

The Vietnam War was hovering. Oh, we weren't involved yet, except for a few military advisers over there, but it was coming. There were several chilling articles about it - chilling if, like me, you knew what was going to happen! I printed out some of those articles.

Human interest stories; a teenage schoolgirl called Susette Belle, President of the local fan club who desperately wanted to meet the Beatles and was granted her wish. A slightly older girl, Carol, who wanted to come to their concert, but lived in Tasmania and couldn't afford the trip over. After writing a 70,000 word letter to the Beatles - 814 pages! - she too got her wish, courtesy of the Sun. Cripes, 70,000 words! The length of a novel!

There was a lot of detail about the crowds outside the hotel. I have had a chat with my brother-in-law Gary, who was there. He didn't get to the concert - the tickets were sold out. He did remember standing in that crowd of 10,000 outside the Southern Cross and outside Festival Hall.

Another thing I learned was that you can save these pages on to a USB stick, so tomorrow I'm going back and take one with me!

A POCKETFUL OF EYES By Lili Wilkinson. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2011

Bee is spending her summer holidays working in the taxidermy department of the Melbourne Museum of Natural History before beginning Year 12. She has enough problems on her plate, what with her best friend running off with her boyfriend and her geeky mother bringing home a new boyfriend of her own from the Dungeons and Dragons group, when her grumpy boss is found dead in the Museum’s Red Rotunda one morning. The police say it’s suicide, but Bee hasn’t been reading lots of crime fiction from Trixie Belden to PD James for nothing. Can she and the cute but exasperating Toby solve the mystery with nothing but their logic, a few clues and asking “WWPD?” (what would Poirot do?)?

You do need to suspend disbelief before you can enjoy the usual over-the-top Wilkinson humour in this one. How likely is it that the police would declare suicide before so much as moving the body from the museum? What about forensic samples? Why are there no police officers asking questions? Also, Bee and Toby seem to get away with an awful lot of nicking important clues from suspects’ offices without anyone wondering where the documents have disappeared, let alone saying, “Hang on, weren’t those pesky kids here five minutes ago?”. But belief is worth suspending.

I think it’s a bit premature to be comparing this author to Agatha Christie, as the back cover blurb does, but it’s still a very entertaining romp through the halls of crime fiction, with red herrings, winks and nods to various writers and I have to admit that, while there were a lot of clues – or, rather, Clues – leaping around yelling, “Hey! Hey! Clue! Look!” at the reader, I didn’t see the rather Poirot-ish conclusion coming.

It was worth reading for the heroine’s personal life alone. With a house full of D and D, a mother who’s on the Playstation duelling Darth Vader and a Celestial Badger in her mother’s life, who can blame her for fleeing into the world of logic and reality? At the same time, her mother is quite lovable and there is no doubt of her affection for Bee. There are definite coming-of-age elements in the novel.

Girls will get a chuckle out of this. I did.

The Web and historical research

Isn't the Internet WONDERFUL? Not only do I get to keep this blog and not have to rely on someone else publishing my reviews, but I can look up stuff. Lots of stuff! I'm beginning to research the year 1964 and when I went on Google Videos, there were all these videos of the Beatles performing in Melbourne in 1964! The Beatles interviewed! There wasn't as much of what I wanted about the 1967 Referendum, just a couple of reminiscences and one bit of silent footage of Gough Whitlam making a speech, with text telling you what he'd said. But it's very exciting being able to just go on-line and find stuff. There are newspaper archives on-line, but I'll be going to the State Library for that part of the research, because they take ages to load and I'm not quite sure, yet, what I want to find. I'll be looking up prices and what was on at the movies and on TV and what was on the letters pages and the headlines. The Web is great if there's something specific you want, but if you just want to wander around the year 1964 - or 1967 - the good old-fashioned microfilm and the State Library is best.

Roll on the holidays!

Selena Wang's thoughts on Graffiti Moon

Guest blogger Selena has been helping me to read the books on this year's CBCA short list. Here are her thoughts on Cath Crowley's Graffiti Moon:

The best thing about this book is how the author put this amazing story in one night.
Graffiti Moon is a lovely and interesting book, and I enjoyed every page of it. I never thought I would enjoy a romance story, but I loved this one very much. When the author talks about Shadow’s painting, it’s as if I can see it with own eyes; the author made Lucy’s glass work so interesting, now I just want to try them myself.

Getting hooked on small press

I've just come back from another con with another small press collection - this time, Ticonderoga Press's More Scary Kisses. I bought several small-press books at Swancon, others at Aussiecon 4 - locally published volumes of short stories by some terrific writers. I've been getting hooked on these anthologies. There's something wonderful about opening a crisp new collection of stories which are a mix of big-name writers and others I have either just discovered or have read only in other small-press books and magazines. I'm becoming a big fan of, among others, Thoraiya Dyer, whose beautiful stories have appeared in our own Andromeda Spaceways (one in the new issue, which I've just received) and Stephen Dedman, whose collection Never Seen By Waking Eyes has a lot of my favourite stories and some I missed when they first came out. I've delighted over the collection of New Ceres stories, New Ceres Nights, and Dirk Flinthart's New Ceres novella Angel Rising (Ninja! Nuns!) and those delightful Agog collections. I have a stack of them by my bed, waiting their turn to be opened and loved.

One of the stories in More Scary Kisses, "The Sword Of Darcy", was submitted to ASIM. I got it in slush and thought it was a hoot. It got as far as the slushpool, but alas, nobody took it before it dropped off the list. It's just not possible to take every delightful story in the pool - there are only so many we can publish and each issue has to have balance. So i was glad to see it had found a home and enjoyed the re-read as much as I did the first time around.

The big publishers don't do a lot of anthologies and, with some exceptions, the few they do tend to be either re-prints or stuff by big-name writers. It's possible to experiment more in small press and those people published in it can eventually put together a collection of their own and - who knows? - sell something book-length to a big publisher.

Meanwhile, we can all enjoy. I'm off to curl up with More Scary Kisses.

In the midst of the con - Continuum 7

I missed the Friday night, because I spend Friday evenings with my family, but turned up bright and early on Saturday. One of my Sunday panels had been brought forward to Saturday, so I was doing my reading at 2.20 and panels on trilogies and YA fiction back to back at 5.00 and 6.00 pm. This meant that some folk who had expected to hear about "Dark Disney" found they were in the room where a panel was discussing the oddities of the trilogy/series - and, I believe, some turned up for trilogies this morning only to find it was about Dark Disney. It meant I could sleep in a bit this morning.

I met some friends and made the acquaintance of some people I hadn't met. There was the very nice Crisetta MacLeod, who was running the trilogies panel and said she'd read and reviewed my novel for Aurealis Express (still can't find the review and might have to ask her to send me a link). Richard Harland was with us and George Ivanoff. I was probably the only writer on the panel who hadn't yet been asked for a sequel to my novel. We discussed some of the difficulties of the series novel, not only because of the problems they make for readers and librarians, but the problems they make for writers who might already have planned them out and then not get to write them. After this, Richard and I whisked across to a smaller room to do a panel on YA fiction in Australia, with two eastern suburbs secondary teachers. A bunch of us went out to dinner, one of the pleasures of going to conventions.

This morning I got in on time for an event at 11.00 am, the launch of Lucy Sussex's reprint anthology, which of course I bought, because although I've probably read many of the stories over the year, I haven't read them all and it's handy to have them together. Emily, one of the con committee who sings, dressed up as a sort of Dolly Parton character to sing a country and western version of Waltzing Matilda. She's a member of a band and is looking up stuff about a certain female bushranger. I told her about Mary Anne Bugg,, of whom she hadn't heard, and showed her the chapter in my book.

At noon, Dave Freer gave his GoH speech. Such a nice man and I really think his books sound worth reading - haven't read anything yet, but will pursue it. He and his wife live on Flinders Island, which sounds a peaceful place if you can make a iving without having to go to the mainland daily, because there's one ferry a week.

Five of us went to lunch together and again, the company was good, though I'm afraid I have rather lost my taste for Asian cuisine in the last few years and two days in a row is a bit much. I do still go once a month with Nova Mob to a quite nice place in Chinatown, where they have some vegetarian options and of course, everyone eats sushi. Still - tomorrow I'm taking my lunch with me and maybe just going somewhere, perhaps a food court, where I can get a smoothie to drink with it.

More when it's over.

What I'm Reading: The Billionaire's Curse by Richard Newsome

It's fast-moving and funny and a clear case of a writer wanting modern kids to be able to enjoy the kind of adventure he got to read as a child. There are a lot of them now. There's plenty to be said for those old adventure stories, so if current writers can do them too, good on them.

I'm still two-thirds of the way through, so I'll keep the main comments for the review, but so far - what a hoot! Villains, kids running around trying to find a stolen diamond, the boy who's suddenly the richest kid in the world and finding himself a target for murder. Can he and his friends find the missing treasure? Can he solve the mystery before the villains succeed in killing him?

I'm betting the answer to those questions is yes! It always was in Enid Blyton. But then, Julian, Ann, Dick, George and Timmy the dog were never in any real danger, were they? Not in the books I remember reading.

I can't wait to read the sequel, which is waiting on my to-be-read pile.

CBCA short list 2011: GRAFFITI MOON By Cath Crowley. Pan Macmillan, 2010

I'm making my way through the short-listed books as I can get hold of them. My own opinions are just those: my own. You needn't agree with them. If you've been following this blog, you'll know that I have already reviewed Six Impossible Things by Fiona Wood. My opinion on that one hasn't changed: it was an enjoyable book with a lot going for it, but a number of things that made me say, "Ouch!" such as the notion that a real-life school would, a. give the important job of organising the school dance as a punishment and, b. more importantly, in case someone writes to tell me that their school did it, so there, that a real school would then allow this dance to be unsupervised by teachers, putting itself at great risk of being sued if anything went wrong, as it does in this novel.

Now, on to my comments on the lovely Graffiti Moon.

I really should have read this some time ago, as I got it for reviewing, but was distracted by this and that and suddenly I had a million more review copies piling up. Now I've finished, I wish I had read it immediately! It's a lovely, gentle romantic comedy with coming-of-age elements. The whole thing takes place over one magical night in Melbourne, as glassblowing artist heroine Lucy spends the last night of Year 12 searching for her hero, graffiti artist Shadow, not knowing he's closer than she thought - and has his own problems. Like the fact that she broke his nose on their first date?

The teens in this are teens, with all the troubles teens have -it does help that the author has been a teacher herself and worked with teenagers - and there are so many times in the story when the characters are near disaster!

I loved the wacky relationships - Lucy's parents who have split with her father going into the shed to write while Mum finishes her novel, but not having the decency to want a divorce, and her friends Dylan and Daisy who adore each other but may also split after he threw eggs at her on Muckup Day. Or maybe not.

It's deservedly on this year's CBCA short list for Older Readers and I hope it does well. Fingers crossed!

THE SHATTERING By Karen Healey. Melbourne: Allen and Unwin, 2011

This is the second novel by Kiwi author Karen Healey, who lives in Australia. It’s not a sequel to Guardian Of The Dead, but a fine cracking mystery in its own right.

Keri, a teen living in the West Coast town of Summerton in New Zealand’s South Island, has recently lost her brother to suicide and is still grieving, as are her parents. In fact, the funeral is barely over. Nobody can understand why Jake killed himself. There was no warning, no suicide note. He simply shot himself – and Keri found the bleeding body.

And Jake is only one of a bunch of teenage boys who have killed themselves over the last several years. Two friends, Janna and Sione, have also lost brothers. When Janna suggests there are connections, Keri and Sione are willing to consider it.

Something must be going on. The town has been beautiful one day, perfect the next, for years now, since the boys started killing themselves. Summerton is the only town in this area that seems to have survived the financial crisis with weather and tourism intact. Janna is a witch, one of a number in Summerton. She believes magic is involved – could she be right? Are there really supernatural elements? Read it and decide for yourself. No spoilers here!

This is not only a thriller, but explores teen issues. Each of the characters must learn a lesson to help him or her grow. The nerdy Sione is not really sure how his brother felt about him and often can’t see what is under his nose. Keri has her own issues, apart from the grief, but to tell you would spoil it. Janna has some hard decisions to make about her life.

The book takes you into the heart of a small town in which everyone knows everyone else and any secrets will spread like wildfire.

If you like adventure and folklore and mystery, you should get a lot out of this one. Recommended.

SheKilda Again!

A few years ago I went to SheKilda, ("No she didn't!" people cried out) a convention on women's crime fiction run by Sisters In Crime, held at the St Kilda Town Hall. It was great fun - and you couldn't throw a stone without knocking over a science fiction fan! There's this overlap, which I understand because I'm a part of it.

Well, there's another one coming up in October, though at a different venue, and this time I have been invited to do a panel on writing crime for children. Hopefully, I can use the opportunity to promote Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly, and you never know - people might ask for it in bookshops before then once they see the program. It's my only crime-themed book, but it's a good one, if I do say so myself, and I need to let people know it's there.

It will be a good con, if it's anything like last time and I hope all my Aussie blog readers will come.

More later.