E-readers and me - from The Doghouse

This was yesterday's post. I have suddenly realised that putting "Residence" into the link meant you had to be logged in to find the page that way. And of course, you can't log in unless you're a member. But you can just go to Insideadog and find the page. However, to save hassles for everyone, here it is. I'm working on this morning's post, whoch is about my visit to Bendigo Catholic College.

  
I don’t have an e-reader yet. When I was growing up, you never saw one outside of science fiction. You’d read novels set hundreds or thousands of years in the future and everybody in them would have shelves of book spools or tablets. Come to think of it, in the TV series of Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, made in the 1980s, the alien Ford Prefect handed earthling Arthur Dent what looked like something we’d recognise now as an e-reader.

Now that they’re all over the place, not that far into the twenty-first century, what are they going to do in three or four hundred years? Have a chip installed in their heads, perhaps, to deliver books directly to your brain? Urk!

There’s something magical about choosing a book on-line and downloading it straight to your e-reader or even your phone. A friend who had bought his Kindle at the supermarket  demonstrated by buying my novel Wolfborn from Amazon and downloading it straight to his e-reader. “Ooh!’ I breathed in wonder.
Another nice thing about it is the lightness instead of carrying a load of books with you, you can carry a whole lot on your little reader that goes in your bag or pocket. You can change the font  size– terrific for people with poor eyesight.
The fact that a lot of these readers have pre-loaded books means that you might read something you wouldn’t choose in a bookshop of a library; one of my students is reading Frankenstein because it came free with the reader. That has to be a good thing.
And yet – for me, there’s nothing like the feel and smell of paper, the curling up in bed with your book, the overcrowded book cases in my study. You could put an entire encyclopaedia on e-reader, I suppose, but why not just go on-line where it would be up to date?
Because I don’t read non-fiction just for research, I like to browse the bookshops and libraries for books I might enjoy; you’d have to have some idea of what you want to get it from a web site. It’s just not the same as discovering that book about astronomy of the Middle Ages or the Faeries of Brittany.
Tell me you can do that on-line, ordering from a catalogue!

Guys, this post is shorter than most I’ve done so far because it’s getting late and tomorrow I’m heading up to Bendigo with a bunch of other writers from Ford Street Publishing to do some workshops at a school there. Wish me luck and if you’re going to be there, do come up and say hi!

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For the Dog: On E-readers

I don't have one. I say so. Go take a look on the Dog and I hope you enjoy. Me, I'm going to bed - I have a long trip to Bendigo to do my first writer visit and I really, really hope it works out. I'll be one of about sixteen guests and we all have to do workshops with students who have paid to be there.

Fingers crossed for me!

Books and Covers

Today's Dog post is about the importance of book covers. Go check it out. Sorry i can't be witty right now, but I've returned from the Year 12 Formal, I'm still sitting here in my fancy clothes and longing for a shower and bed. I have a very short time to sleep. But I'm determined to get a post a day on to Insideadog till the end of the month - it's my very own NaNoWriMo.

Today's Insideadog post - Books and Travel

Once every few years I travel overseas. When I do, I’ll try to go somewhere connected with a book or a writer. It’s just a nice thing to do, to know that where you are is where a writer lived or a favourite story happened in the book world.



I’ve been to England twice. While I was there, I visited some places connected with writers I loved. A friend took me to Stratford-on-Avon, where I visited Anne Hathaway’s cottage. Anne was the wife William Shakespeare left behind when he went off to London to be an actor. The house was where she lived with her parents and Will would have visited her there before they got married.



Passing the Stratford Tourist Information Office, I spotted a small plaque on it that told you how old the place was; Shakespeare’s daughter Judith lived there with her husband.


I also visited the mediaeval town Shrewsbury, which is on the border of Wales. It’s a very beautiful place. At the time I was reading Brother Cadfael, a series of mediaeval crime novels by Ellis Peters. Ellis Peters was actually Edith Pargeter, a woman who wrote both historical fiction and crime fiction. She put them together to create Brother Cadfael, a mediaeval monk and amateur detective, living at the abbey in Shrewsbury during the mid-twelfth century, when there were two people fighting over the British throne.

In Shrewsbury, there were Brother Cadfael walks, Brother Cadfael souvenirs, bookshop windows with Brother Cadfael displays. The church which was a part of the abbey mentioned in the books was still there. I snapped photos outside it. A gentleman walking past called, “Dare I ask if you’re a Brother Cadfael fan?”

I smiled: “Need you ask?”

After that, he told my mother and me about the church and pointed out some places mentioned in the novels. What was really wonderful was that you could walk along the streets and recognise the layout from the novels.
In Oxford, a friend took me to the Eagle and Child, a pub where J.R.R. Tolkien and his friends used to go regularly for a drink. It was known locally as the “Bird and Baby”.

And speaking of Tolkien, I couldn’t go to Hobbiton or Gondor, but, after the release of the Lord of the Rings movies, I could go to New Zealand, where the movie was filmed. New Zealand is a gorgeous country, whatever your reason for going.

In 2003, I booked a tour on something called Magic Bus, travelling New Zealand and went.

One place I visited was Queenstown, in the south. Queenstown is a place well-known for its sports facilities. You can do everything from skiing to bungee-jumping. Only one member of the tour group wanted to bungee-jump, though, and while we all cheered her on, we stood on the bridge across the river and gazed at the water that had played the role of the River Anduin in Fellowship of The Ring. Of course, they’d had to remove the traffic from the background and add in giant statues of Aragorn’s ancestors, but it was pretty impressive anyway.

During the three days we were there, my mother and I went on a half-day Lord Of The Rings tour. The tour guide was a pleasant American-Kiwi gentleman who had been cast as an Uruk-Hai orc. He took us to the Remarkables, where the Misty Mountains scenes were filmed.

We also got to see a bit of stream where the Nazghul had turned up to threaten Frodo.

Once we’d seen all these places, it was easier to notice them next time we saw the films.

Book – and movie – travel is a special thing to do.

Tomorrow's Dog post: My own world-building (and chocolate)

It's Sunday night and I need desperately to get to bed, so I'll just urge you all to go along to Insideadog and check out my post for Monday. I give a lot of detail about what I did in my world-building for Wolfborn and add a recipe for chocolate truffles, just because I can.

Good night!

The Eagle movie

A part of the Ninth Legion went to Scotland and never came back. Some years later, Marcus Flavius Aquila, the son of the cohort commander, comes to Britain and, when he's invalided out of the army, goes north to find out what happened and retrieve the legion's lost Eagle, without which the legion is shamed and can't re-form. He finds out, perhaps a lot more than he wanted to, but comes to accept what he can't change and get on with his life...

I finally got the chance to see the movie of The Eagle of the Ninth (called The Eagle as a movie), on DVD. While watching it I wrote my post for Insideadog and it was about Rosemary Sutcliff, not the movie. Watching it made me think again of her books.

I'm glad I saw it on DVD, because I got to see the alternative ending, which I think better than the one they used, if not like the novel either. I also got to see two deleted scenes which showed bits that were in the book - the one where Marcus is trying out a chariot and horses belonging to a local and the one where Esca goes into detail about his family's death. Those were right out of Rosemary Sutcliff - why did they scrap them? I have some ideas about that and about why the ending was changed, but won't go into them here. I also watched the doco, in which the director says he read and loved the book as a child ... so why did he do things to it?

If you haven't read the book, you may not know the point was that the legion had become corrupt before they ever went north to Scotland and, while the hero's father was not a part of that corruption, the legion really is better off not re-formed. This point was missed in the movie, even in the alternative ending. A LOT of the original points were missed, in the producers' eagerness to shout, "Look! American imperialism! Aren't we clever?"

Whatever your politics - and I'm not going into mine here - why shove it into a story where it wasn't written or intended? The book was written in 1954 and it was about Marcus and his coming to terms with his life - and the adventures he has while it's happening. In the end, he stays in Britain and marries Cottia, a British girl who was left out of the movie, probably because it would have been less of a buddy movie if she'd been there.

Here are some of my thoughts about the film: It was better than I expected, though I have a number of issues with it.

 Unlike a lot of people who complain about Tatum Channing as Marcus, I don't mind him. He looks like a Marcus to me, if a little older than the original; he had to deal with the script he got and he did it well, in my opinion. And let's face it, Anthony Higgins, who played the role for the BBC, is WAY  too old to do it now! :-)

 I did prefer Jamie Bell's Esca, the British slave who goes with him. What I didn't like was that in the movie he's still a slave when they go north, because the producers are planning to change the storyline and if he's not a slave at the time they can't make you wonder what he's up to. In the novel, Marcus frees him before they leave on their journey because he can't ask a slave to go into danger with him. And he does ask, not demand.

In the book, Marcus goes as an eye-doctor, as they're welcome everywhere, and actually does some healing - not in the film. Would he be dumb enough to take no thought for what might happen if the two of them just turn up in Scotland and are caught? It seems so.

The scenery is amazing. The second part of the movie was actually filmed in Scotland and who's to say that the blue-painted Seal People with the mohawk hairdos, or their historical equivalents, weren't ancestors of the extras who charged across the landscape? I liked that they took the trouble to have the Seal People speak in Gaelic, because we don't know what the Picts spoke. I believe that they searched for a Gaelic-speaking boy for the Seal child.

The costumes are believable and look lived-in. The music is beautiful, lots of Celtic-sounding pipe skirls in it, and I will get the soundtrack when I can.

Marcus's uncle lives in Calleva, which was a Roman town - so why is his house surrounded by acres of open land? I wouldn't mind so much, but he actually says that this is Calleva.

In the novel and the film, Marcus meets Guern the hunter, actually a Roman, one of his father's legionaries, who tells him what happened, but in the novel he isn't interested in coming back. He's settled into this life, has a wife, family and friends. In the film they seem to decide, after all this talk about imperialism, to let a bunch of elderly ex-legionaries redeem themselves. And, just to make sure it's okay for them to fight the pursuing British victims of imperialism, the Seal Prince does something very nasty in front of them.

I'd give this film a B rather than an A, if I was scoring it, perhaps 3 1/2 stars. It has a lot going for it and at least the makers loved what they were doing. It just doesn't respect the spirit of the novel as much I would like.

Finally Found A Copy!

My previous post, written for IAD, talked about the joys of stuff you find in discount and second-hand bookshops. Well, I've unearthed Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber collection - finally! I thought it was out of print, or, at least, you'd need to order it on-line, but there it was at the Bookgrocer in town, and I got it for $10 in the spring sale.

I'm halfway through already and I can see why it's a classic. More on this when I've finished. I also have a Ranger's Apprentice volume to finish and some review books. I don't often put up "reading" on Goodreads because the computer message comes and nags you if you haven't updated it for a while. So this will go up when I've finished it.

Latest on the Dog - bookshops!

 Posted on Insideadog this morning - enjoy!

I woke up this morning listening to the rain on the roof, one of my favourite sounds. That’s the time when I make up stories in my head for later. Right now, I’m trying to think up a story for a science fiction and fantasy anthology about how things started. I don’t know much about it yet except it’s going to be something about the Trojan War and begin with, “It started with that stupid wedding invitation. The one I didn’t get…” and be seen from the viewpoint of Eris, goddess of trouble.

At some point I’m going to hit the discount and second hand bookshops to see what I can find to help. I already have plenty, but you never know and any excuse will do. I just love the kind of shop where you can find books on everything from chocolate to gladiators and what they ate in London in Shakespeare’s time, along with recipes. I found most of my folklore collection in a second-hand bookshop in the middle of Melbourne. It came in handy for my research for Wolfborn and I was interested to find out that Melissa Marr, author of the Wicked Lovely series, found her fairy information in a lot of the same books I used.

 (Not my shelves - I'm not at home to take the pic. But these shelves also belong to a writer...)

Between book commissions, I just like to read non-fiction, any non-fiction that looks good. You never know when information will come in handy. Like that history of the Roman games I found in a discount bookshop last summer. Did you know that executions happened at lunchtime, between the real entertainments? While Christians faced the lions, in the stands above people were digging in their picnic baskets for the last of the olives, wondering if they should go to the lavatory or the hot food stands and risk losing their seats. And if you think fast food began with Macca’s and the Colonel, forget it! Most Romans lived in flats. The cooking facilities were pretty much non-existent and dangerous anyway, because the buildings were wooden, so they’d go to their favourite cook shop and buy dinner there.

Will I be writing a book set in ancient Rome? Who knows? Who cares?

I’ve just found a biography of Nicholas Culpeper, a seventeenth century guy who wrote a book about herbs (I have it somewhere on my crowded shelves). Herbs are important to someone like me, writing mediaeval fantasy. So I keep it on my shelves for when I need to know the properties of a particular herb or what they might have used to treat a wound before modern medicine. Meanwhile, it’s nice to know about the author.
There’s lots of great stuff out there, but buying it on-line or ordering it for your e-reader means you have to have some idea what you want. Bookshops mean you can browse and discount and second-hand bookshops have a wider variety than regular ones.

 Libraries are great too. I found some wonderful craft books in my school library that no one had read in years and got to take them home. I now have a book or two on weaving, something I may need to know one day.
Now excuse me, I’m going back to bed to read about food in Shakespeare’s London.

Insideadog - on book blogs

Well, this is a book blog and a lot of teenagers do write them, including some of my on-line friends, so why not post about it? This will be up on the Dog tomorrow morning at 7.00 a.m. Why not check it out?

I'm over the hump now, past the halfway mark on my Residency. It's been a challenge, so far, coming up with a different topic every day, but worth it.

And, interestingly, it seems to be raising the hit rate on this blog! I do hope you'll all continue to read this one after November.

Insideadog - Doing Research The Hard Way

This is an adapted version of a post I wrote originally for the Random House blog back in February, soon after my novel was published. It will be up on the Dog on November 17.

In it, I talk about being hit on the head over and over at the Society for Creative Anachronism, in the interests of research. My favourite fight arranger is Terry Walsh, who used to do it for Robin of Sherwood.  Nasir, the Saracen warrior, seemed to have only a couple of moves, but on the whole, I could believe the fights in that show. I did gape over the scene in one episode where two Saracens are fighting in Sherwood using Japanese katanas...

Anyway, the IAD post is just about me and the SCA and how I used it in my fantasy writing. And my friend Robert, who was bashing a light pole for sword practice, when a watching policeman asked, "Is it dead yet?"

Names In Harry Potter

First posted on Insideadog November 16 2011

Have you ever wondered what writers have in mind when they name their characters?

 I’m going to take a look at some names in the Harry Potter books because there are so many that are appropriate for the characters.

 Let’s start with the staff at Hogwarts.

Albus Dumbledore means “White Bumblebee”.

 Professor McGonagall’s first name is Minerva – the Roman goddess of wisdom, which certainly seems to suit this wise lady.

 The school nurse is Poppy Pomfrey – poppy, in the old days, was used as a painkiller.

 The Herbology teacher is Pomona Sprout. Apart from the obvious “sprout”, Pomona was the Roman goddess of orchards and fruit. How appropriate is that?

 Professor Remus Lupin is a werewolf. Remus was the name of one of the twin founders of Rome, who were raised by a she-wolf and “Lupin” is connected with “lupine”, wolflike.

 The school caretaker, Argus Filch, has a name taken from Greek mythology; Argus was a guardian of the goddess Hera’s herds. He had a hundred eyes. What better name to call a character who is always spying on the students? To filch something is to steal it.

 All the members of Sirius Black’s family have starry names, but his is so appropriate. Sirius is the Dog Star and combined with Black, it’s “Black Dog” which is his Animagus shape.

 Bad boy Draco Malfoy has a name that means “Dragon Bad Faith” – nice!

The Minister of Magic is Cornelius Fudge. To fudge something is to cheat on it in a sneaky way. Another meaning is “to fail to perform as expected” or “to avoid commitment”. All of them work for me as a description of Cornelius Fudge.

 Voldemort means “ flight from death” or “steal from death” which makes sense for a man who wants so badly to avoid dying.

 There are stacks more over-the-top names with meaning in the books and all I can say is, J.K.Rowling must have had great fun choosing them!

Speaking of choosing, how about another cast member for the Ranger's Apprentice movie? For the role of Gilan, that yummy former apprentice of Halt's, I think I'll have Orlando Bloom. :-)

Insideadog - Names in Harry Potter

Tomorrow's post will be on the subject of names in the Harry Potter books. There are so many appropriate ones. The author has a good classical education and uses it. Really, this post is just a list of names (nowhere near all of them) and what they mean or where they come from and how they work in the context.

Go check it out?

I'm halfway through my residency. I hope the lurkers out there are enjoying it!

Competition judging as discussed on the Dog

Here's my full post on judging the Mary Grant Bruce Award from Insideadog ... just in case you didn't check it out...

So - why would anyone volunteer to judge a writing competition? Especially one where you don't at least get a bunch of free books out of it? Is it the power? Mwa ha ha! All those trembling writers who have entrusted you with their magnificent stories and you alone have the choice of which one wins? (Clap of thunder! Again - mwa ha ha!)

Or - maybe you're just terribly flattered to be asked?

Years ago, I won a writing competition called the Mary Grant Bruce Award for Children’s Literature – twice (see my post on writing groups). The first time, I shared the prize with Robin Klein, whose novel Hating Alison Ashley was made into a film, at my school (I was an extra, but you won’t see me, as they cut my scenes). It told me I was a children’s writer – and I never looked back.

 One day I got a phone call from Adrian Penniston-Bird, who ran the Victorian Fellowship of Australian Writers. Adrian said that I’d won twice, so would I judge it this year?

 I agreed and the FAW sent me seventy-five stories. On request, the stories had been submitted without names except on a cover sheet. Well, mostly; I got one story which not only had the author’s name on it, but the fond mother’s information that the author was only twelve. (Remember what I said about Alexandra Adornetto’s submission to HarperCollins? She didn’t need that sort of back-up to sell her book.)

 After I’d weeded out the stories clearly not for children and those with awful grammar, I read the rest thoroughly.

 On a side note, I had a friend who had entered the competition before. I told her that if she’d entered this year I didn’t want to know about it! I read a story that I strongly suspected was by her, because I knew her style. Still, I didn’t know; it was a good story, so it made the short list of seven.

 I handed the short list to two children to read, as I’d been asked. Once they had made their choice, I decided that I’d at least give an honourable mention to a couple of stories I had liked. One of them was the story I suspected was by my friend.

 When I rang Adrian to announce the winner and honourable mentions, he confirmed that one honourable mention was, as I’d thought, by my friend Edwina Harvey! She had won that fair and square, so she received a certificate and came to Melbourne to collect it at the prize-giving dinner.

 The winning story was published later, though I can’t remember the title or the publisher, it has been so long, but Edwina worked her story into a novel, which was published in 2009 as The Whale’s Tale.

 I haven’t judged any competitions recently; it’s hard work, and I only had to read short fiction. Imagine what it’s like to read hundreds of novels for a major competition like the Children’s book Council Awards, never mind a few dozen short stories as I did! It was an interesting experience and I’m glad I did it.

 Still, I’d much rather be writing.

Latest cast member of The Ranger’s Apprentice movie (which seems to have John Rhys-Davies playing two roles, so I guess I must have been tired) is Sean Bean for the role of King Duncan.

My First SCBWI Meeting

I don't get to these, usually. Somehow, they always seem to clash with theatre or opera or some other thing I have to attend. But yesterday, I managed to get to my first meeting of the Melbourne chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, being held in a restaurant in Carlton, Lygon St.

Children's writers tend to hang out together or at least meet at conferences. It gets embarrassing when someone calls you by name and you can't remember who they are.

Luckily, we all had name tags, but I found there were a few people I knew - Errol Broome, an older writer who says she's had enough of writing for now, Goldie Alexander, with whom I did a panel at the crime conference, my friend George Ivanoff, whom I have known since before either of us sold anything or even realised we were children's writers and Gabrielle Wang, that wonderful writer of gentle fantasy tales for children and a gentle YA fantasy, Little Paradise. I was a bit embarrassed to meet her because my students had prepared an interview for her and the file got lost!

I explained and, while I plan to have it on this blog, she says she will have it on her own as well, if I can get them to find that file!

Meanwhile, I bought copies of her book, A Ghost In My Suitcase, to be signed for them, and one copy of Little Paradise, which I think will be enjoyed by the one who has read the others.

There were two guest speakers - Alison Reynolds, who wrote a series of choose-your-own adventure books with an environmental theme with Ranger Sean Willmore, and a lady who teaches editing and talked about common grammar errors, giving us examples taken from real books, starting with Thomas The Tank Engine. Both were fascinating. I always wondered how you'd do a CYOA-type book - it must be very difficult.

My grammar is pretty good already, but I did agree that any story that doesn't get its grammar right is far less likely to be picked up than one which does.

There will only be two meetings in Melbourne next year, the others will be outside, but there was a tantalising hint about another Sydney conference - must check it out!

Tomorrow's Dog Post: Judging The Mary Grant Bruce Award

Yes, I judged it once - many years ago. Because it was a short story competition, I didn't even have free books to show for it,  and there was no anthology of MGB fiction to give me, but you get so flattered when people think you're worthy to judge others' writing. I did get a free dinner at the awards ceremony.

Would I do it again? Maybe not; I've been slushing for ASIM  for so long, it would feel like a case of "been there, done that!"

I'm not sorry I did it then, though. It was a good experience and I'm sure I learned plenty from it.

Anyway, if you want to read about it, trot along to the Doghouse from 7.00 a.m. November 13.

Insideadog post - Remembrance Day Stuff

Here's what will appear on my Insideadog blog tomorrow morning.

As I write this, it’s still Remembrance Day. I thought I’d put in a short post on the subject. November 11^th 1918 was the official end of World War I, or the Great War as it was known then. There hadn’t been any previous world wars. So if you ever read a novel set at that time and find a character referring to World War I (and I have come across it) you can feel free to laugh.

It really was a great – in the sense of huge – war. Millions died during it, on truly horrible battlefields from France to Gallipoli.

And it led to some amazing writing. Just go look up Wilfred Owen and Siegfriend Sassoon, the two most famous war poets of that time. Sassoon lived to a ripe old age, but Wilfred Owen died in the war. The really sad thing was that he was killed in battle in France only a few days before the war ended. Go check out his poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est, which gives you a real feel for the horrors of that war, with its trenches and gas attacks.

Another writer who was involved in that war was J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit. Tolkien served in France, on the Somme. It’s said that when he thought of hobbits and their personalities, he was thinking of the ordinary English soldiers (he was an officer). When you read about Frodo and Sam trudging through the Dead Marshes  you’ll have some idea of what it was like in the French battlefields; that’s what he imagined when he was writing those scenes.

Strange to think some of the most powerful writing ever created came out of such tragedy!

Writing in Groups

This is now up on Insideadog. I mean to do an extra post today, dedicated to Remembrance Day. After all, Tolkien was in the Great War and.. stand by.

Let’s face it, writing is lonely. No matter what you do or who you hang out with, in the end, it’s you and the computer. Nobody can write it for you. Well, yes, they can write it with you if you’re doing a collaborated piece of work, but I find the quickest way to lose friends is to write a book with them.


You can have “beta” readers for feedback, though, and this is one reason why people join writers’ groups. On-line you’ll find communities, forums, discussion groups. Some of my Year 9 students have joined a web site called Inkpop, an on-line community where you can choose a cover for your book and have other members read and comment. Anyone can join.


Some on-line groups are for experienced writers, including those who can commit to a story a week, which other members can then critique.


The advantage is that it makes you feel less lonely and you can have access to far more people than when I started writing. Do you sell more stories this way? Sometimes.


I was part of a science fiction and fantasy writers’ group back in the days before email. We wrote a story a month, but actually had to finish the story before the month was over, photocopy it and send it to the other group members by snail mail. A lot harder than now, eh?

Some of us became professionals – not all. I’m one of those who made it, another was Sean McMullen, who has written a lot of books for adults, but, more recently, a Quentaris book and two novels for the YA publisher Ford Street. George Ivanoff, later author of Gamers’ Quest, came to some meetings too.


Did I sell some of the stories I wrote then? Yes. Two won the Mary Grant Bruce Award for children’s literature. One of those, a ghost story set in a library, was published in a library themed anthology. Another, a funny story inspired by a Grimm fairy tale, sold to Family Circle (my first sale). People in my group could be very rude in their comments; the thing was not to take it personally. I must have learned something for my stories to sell.


Bear in mind that if you do join a writers’ group you will have to have a thick skin; at least when I was in a group, I knew the other writers and could make rude gestures back at them if they annoyed me, and have a laugh afterwards. One time I wrote a member into a story as a ghost. On-line, nobody knows you personally or cares if you’re upset or insulted and if you get into an argument about it you learn nothing.


Up to you if you want to have a go. There are plenty of teens doing it; I just spotted an interview with one on Inkpop. So good luck and good writing!


Still casting the Rangers’ Apprentice movie. My choice for Oberjarl Erak is … drum roll! – John Rhys-Davies!

A Clayton's NaNoWriMo

Thinking about it, while I haven't signed up for NaNoWriMo, that month where you have to write 50,000 words, I do seem to be committing myself to writing a post a day this month. I will, of course, never be able to sell my blog posts and the wordage  is nowhere near 50,000 words, but I figure a regular piece of writing fits the bill for committing yourself. I only have to do three posts a week for IAD, but have decided to do one every day,  and have done one on something different each time, so yay me! :-)

Latest post on The Dog: fan fiction!

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This post is appearing on Insideadog on November 10. I love fan fiction. I think I wrote 150 fan stories before I ran out of ideas and, anyway, people started paying me to write. But reading it is still a guilty pleasure for me, So, but many of whom I thought I'd share it with the readers of IAD, some of whom will actually be writing their own and will be familiar with Fanfiction Net, but others may never have heard of fanfic.

Hope you all like it too!

So, what happens when you’ve finished a book or a series of books and there will be no more? Well…you could always write your own. And sometimes the series isn’t finished, but there are holes you just have to plug, or stories you just have to tell about a minor character from the book. That’s where fan fiction comes in.

 I have heard that fan fiction as we think of it began when the original series of Star Trek was cancelled after only three seasons and Captain Kirk, Mr Spock and other members of the Enterprise crew had swooshed off into space for the last time. Fans couldn’t bear not to have any more stories, so they wrote their own. They typed them up and shared them. Then they began to produce fanzines, collections of these stories.

 Now, with the Internet, we can go to Fanfiction Net and take our pick of fan fiction based on our favourite stories. I’m looking at the web site now – OMG! Books, movies, TV shows, manga/anime, comics, musicals, even games, all turned into stories! There are books I’ve never even heard of on the books list. And others I can’t believe. People have written their own stories about Jane Eyre! I think the site has at least 100 Ranger’s Apprentice stories.

 I read fan fiction, though it’s been years since I’ve written it. Some of it is truly awful, some is very good indeed, written by authors who have gone on to be published professionally. I know of one popular young adult novelist who used to write Harry Potter fan fiction which you’ll probably still find up on Fanfiction Net.

 The Harry Potter fan stories range from romances between characters you’d never imagine together but someone has, to adventures, to humour, to epics. Bad boy Draco Malfoy is the hero of quite a few. Snape, that teacher you pray you will never find in your classroom, even if you cried for him at the end of the series, got the girl many times in fan fiction before we found out why he would never settle down with anyone. Girls from our world got to marry Legolas the Elf from Lord of the Rings or save Boromir’s life.

 You can’t sell this fiction – that’s breaking copyright – but people don’t write it for the money. They write it for love of the books. It’s not always good, but it’s always written with passion.

 And then again, there are some professional writers out there who still write fan fiction for fun. What greater tribute could fanfic have?

 The pictures at the top of this post show two of my fanzine collection. The cover art of Beyond Antares was done by Marianne Plumridge, who has become a professional artist. The other fanzine contains several stories by Melbourne writer George Ivanoff, now living from his writing and the author of two novels.

Other stuff: I’d like to thank the two commenters who appeared in the post on Putting It off. They have won the first two sets of Crime Time bookmarks.

 Here’s another cast member for my proposed Ranger’s Apprentice movie. For the role of Horace, how about … Lincoln Lewis?

THE SPINOFF OF THE SEQUEL TO THE FOURTH BOOK OF THE TRILOGY - Eighth post on Ye Dog

This is what I posted on today's Insideadog. By the way, the offer for bookmarks or mini-posters holds for this web site. However, the first two sets are going to Lan and Miffy, who commented on the IAD web site, many thanks, ladies! Lan, I'll be in touch by email and I'll send a message to Miffy on Goodreads. Tonight's IAD post will be on writing. I'll think of something after dinner and Dr Who.

In the old days, most books were stand-alone, and then J.R.R. Tolkien wrote this thick book called Lord Of The Rings (which, by the way, was a sequel). The publishers thought it was just too long to publish as one big book, so they broke it up into three volumes. It worked so well that publishers of fantasy fiction have been doing books as trilogies ever since. Also, tetralogies (four books) and spin-off series and … and … and.. You get the point.

Here are some of my favourite series:

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld: It’s flat and sits on the backs of four giant elephants which stand on the back of a massive turtle. There are 39 novels so far and they are so funny I don’t mind reading and re-reading them. There are a number of characters who appear in more than one book – the City Watch (police), the witches, Death and his horse Binky and a totally useless wizard called Rincewind.

Quentaris: this is sort of like Renaissance Florence with magic. It’s written by a lot of terrific Australian writers. There are things called the Rift Caves, which lead into other worlds, so people can travel back and forth, with the help of Rift Guides. That means almost anything can happen and usually does.

The Cairo Jim series. Cairo Jim is an archaeologist based in Egypt, but travelling all over the world with his wonder-camel Brenda and a macaw called Doris. They’re hilarious and also excviting.

Harry Potter – no need to go into detail here, of course! I’ve read them over and over.

The Ranger’s Apprentice: I’m still reading the series (six books in), but loving it. There are eleven, including the Lost Stories, and the author said, at the launch of Brotherband 1 (the spinoff) that there would be one more book at some stage, in which the hero Will takes his own apprentice and her name is Madeleine. Stand by.

There are plenty more, but I’m going to leave it to you to share your own favourites.

Anyone got some they’d like to share here?

So far nobody has cone up with a suggestion  for the cast of a Ranger’s Apprentice movie, so I’m going to add another character to the cast list. (There are plenty on Youtube, by the way, and I’ve had fun checking them out.)

How about David Wenham for the role of Halt? It’s kind of hard to find people of the right height and David Wenham is quite tall. But take a look at this picture and tell me  that doesn’t look like a Ranger!

I’d like to encourage you guys to respond to this and other posts, so there will be six Crime Time bookmarks or some mini-posters that you can stick on your school books for  each of the first ten comments. I’m planning on bigger prizes for later, including a signed copy of one of my books, Crime Time or Wolfborn. I also have a laminated Wolfborn poster to give away.

So – who’s first?

Latest Dog Post

If you go to Insideadog tonight you'll see my post about putting off writing, but I've done my post for tomorrow, on the subject of series books. I've listed some of my favourite series - Quentaris, Harry Potter, Discworld, Ranger's Apprentice and such - and invited readers to list theirs. And because people are STILL lurking, I've offered some small prizes for the first ten comments and mentioned larger prizes for later.

I have to say that I've had quite  few hits for my IAD posts  on this blog, so I might copy and paste some more.

Meanwhile, why not wander over and take a look?

BROTHERBAND 1: THE OUTCASTS By John Flanagan. Sydney: Random House, 2011

This is a spinoff from the Ranger’s Apprentice series, through which I’m currently making my delighted way. I admit I had only read the first book in that series, The Ruins Of Gorlan, when I read this, and saw some resemblance to that book, although it’s set in another country, Skandia, the Norse analogue, rather than Araluen, which is clearly Britain.

Hal Mikkelson is the son of a Skandian warrior and his Araluen wife, who was brought to Skandia as a slave, then bought and freed. Hal’s widowed mother is now running a successful food shop.

Boys of Hal’s age are required to undertake training in the skills they will need as warriors – fighting, ship-handling and so on.  It involves being divided into teams called brotherbands, which live, train and work together in a sort of boot camp and compete for the prize at the end. The only problem is, brotherband teams are the same in Skandia as they are in the average school in our world: there are always the ones nobody wants on their side, who are left over when the choices have been made. Hal is part of a group nobody else wants, for various reasons. There’s a boy who has a tendency to lose his temper, twins who are always fighting each other, a thief and other unpopular boys. But Hal has something the big lumbering types don’t have: a brain. He’s an inventor who has built a boat much more efficient than the traditional Skandian wolfship, among other things. His Heron team may have more of a chance than they think.

Like Ruins of Gorlan, this book has a hero who isn’t a tall, muscular warrior type, but has a friend who is. Like Will, he has other skills he can use. And like the first Ranger’s Apprentice novel, it's about the training and not a lot happens till near the end, but stick with it. It’s an introductory volume that concentrates on building up the characters and the background. Somehow, it manages to end on a cliffhanger and I fully expect a much more action-packed sequel.

You just have to love the Skandians, despite their culture of “liberating” stuff from outside and then getting upset when someone steals from them. Their idea of battle tactics is, “Charge!” By the time of this novel, there’s an Araluen archer team in the town of Hallasheim, started at the end of Oakleaf Bearers when Will, Halt, Horace and Evanlyn helped push back Temujai (Mongol) invaders.

Things I really like about this book and the original series: the character development, the humour, the believable societies, the way it feels like history set in another world rather than standard fantasy. I love the world-building. I love the fact that even Mr Flanagan's heroes make mistakes, sometimes with hilarious results, such as the mayhem that results from Hal's attempt to supply his mother with running water in the kitchen.

I do advise you to read the original series to get more of a feel for this universe, not to mention the great fun of the series.  It’s  well worth the effort. 

Seventh Post On the Dog - The Joys of Putting It Off

You'll have to wait till tomorrow to see my IAD post on procrastination, with a touch of NaNoWriMo, but go check it out - and do comment! Comment here, if you don't want to register. Thing is, I know people are reading this blog. The stats tell me, even if readers don't. They tend to lurk on Insideadog too, so I'm told - and I haven't seen much in the way of comments there for anyone - but I can't check out the stats there. So do let me know when you've taken a look. Today's post, of course, is the one on The Book of The Movie. I had trouble inserting my pic of choice, for some reason, and it's pretty small, but I've added a link to the Hobbit movie web site.

Later today I will be reviewing John Flanagan's Brotherband 1. Keep an eye out for it.

SIXTH POST FOR INSIDEADOG - BADLY BEHAVED AUSSIES: PUTTING TOGETHER A BOOK ON CRIME

Here it is - my sixth post as Writer In Residence on Insideadog! Go on, visit the web site - you know you want to...

The best cover I ever had!

When I was commissioned to write Crime Time: Australians behaving badly for Ford Street Publishing my brief was to do a volume of “Fifty Infamous Australians” to go with Meredith Costain’s Fifty Famous Australians. (“Infamous” means evil, not very famous.)

It was not, repeat, not, going to be a book for homework It was for entertainment. Mind you, when our Legal Studies students were looking for specific crimes, my book came in handy!

.As well as the fifty main stories, there had to be around the same number, or more, of “Did You Know?” boxes.  Plenty to choose from; we’ve had crime here for  centuries, since the ship Batavia was wrecked off the coast of WA in 1629, long before the First Fleet arrived from England in 1788. While the captain went for help in a boat, several of the crew mutinied and killed passengers. There were huge battles going on between mutineers and loyal crew when the captain returned. For the record, there’s plenty of fiction about it, from Gary Crew’s horror novel Strange Objects to Kirsty Eagar’s fabulous Saltwater Vampires, in which the mutineers did it to become vampires and are still around.

 I went for some silly crimes to break up the horrible serial killer ones – like the Russian librarian who rescued her boyfriend from Silverwater prison by helicopter and was identified because of an overdue library video.Then there was the couple who robbed a restaurant in the Dandenongs and escaped with a bag of stale bread rolls – on April Fools’ Day!

While researching Caroline Grills, a dear old granny who poisoned people with her cakes and pikelets and was sentenced to life in prison, I travelled to Northern Territory, where I met an elderly couple in a pub. I mentioned what I was working on and the wife said, “Oh, I met her when I was working in Long Bay jail as a nurse. Such a sweet woman!”

You couldn’t buy that kind of research help!

Looking for an angle to write about career criminal Tony Mokbel, who escaped the country while on bail and was caught in Greece, I went out for coffee one day and opened the newspaper to see a double page spread about that escape, along with all the silliness it involved. There was my angle. I called the chapter “The Adventures of Tony Mokbel” and it finished the book.

 I keep coming across terrific newspaper crime stories and thinking, “Oh, I wish I’d had that for Crime Time!” Still – there are plenty more stories out there for me to tell.

Today's Post On The Dog

I seem to have fallen into a pattern - one post on reading, one on writing. Which is not to say I'll be doing only that, but for today, my post on Insideadog is on putting together my book Crime Time: Australians behaving badly. It was quite an experience and for those of you who STILL haven't wandered over to the Doghouse, I'll post it here later today.

Commenting on Insideadog - how to

Hi guys,

Lan Chan asked about commenting on the Insideadog web site and I checked it out. Firstly, yes, you do have to register, then log in - I assume it stops spam comments, so fair enough.

I was confused about the process of commenting, so I asked Adele Walsh, who said you need to click on the title of the post you want to comment on. Once you've done that, a comment box opens underneath. Do go check it out and feel free to comment. That might encourage others to do so; Adele says most IAD readers lurk rather than comment.