Happy Birthday Richard III!

Here are some famous folk born on October 2: Mahatma Gandhi, comedian Bud Abbott, Avery Brooks( that velvet-voiced actor who played as the commander of Deep Space 9), Sting, Groucho Marx... All have helped, in their own ways, to make the word a better or at least nicer place, even if only to make us laugh or sing along.

But today's post is about King Richard III, the subject of a lot of books and at least one play, who was born on this day in 1452 and died long before he could get to my age. I used to be in the Richard III Society, though I dropped out when it got too hard to pay my membership to England and some friends who went with me to local meetings had other commitments. But I never lost interest in the subject.

 So, why join a fan club for a man who has been dead for over five hundred years?

It was because of this book:

When I was in Year 11 at school, I had a wonderful English teacher. We were studying Richard III by Shakespeare. She was the first teacher I had had who took Shakespeare seriously enough to discuss it, not just make us read it at home and show us the film. And one of the things she told us was that, wonderful as the pay was, it wasn't strictly accurate historically. She recommended we read Josephine Tey's novel, which I did as soon as I could get hold of it.

And then, when I was out of school and earning money, I found and joined the Richard III Society.

I recently got hold of the ebook and started to reread it yet again last night. I posted about it when I bought it online, but I hope you don't mind my mentioning it again.  It's the kind of book that stands up to a reread. When I was in my teens, I didn't realise how long ago it had been written and thought some of the references confusing, but now that I understand the world of the novel is different from now, I can just get on with it.

If you haven't read it, it's very simply a police procedural which never leaves the hospital room where Inspector Grant, the hero of some of Ms Tey's other books, is stuck with a broken leg he got in the course of his police duties. He's bored, the books he has been offered to read are not to his taste and the nurse won't even move his bed around so he can look at a different part of the ceiling. He is set a challenge: who really DID kill the Princes in the Tower, if it wasn't Richard? Was Richard really the villain Shakespeare portrays? Quite apart from the cleverness of setting a mystery novel in a hospital room, there's the fascination of the research aspect, something that I, as a librarian and writer of several non-fiction books, can only approve.

But there's more. The book is timeless, but also a product of its time, years before the Internet. If Grant was stuck in hospital today, he would be given a laptop or an iPad and could just google the information instead of relying on books and an earnest young research assistant to bring them. In fact, he'd probably, being what he is, demand and get his paperwork! There would be no story. :-)

I read my way through quite a bit of Richard III-themed fiction over the years, as well as the non-fiction books. There were some other mysteries, such as Jeremy Potter's A Trail Of Blood. The author was part of the Richard III Society, so would have an obvious bias in Richard's favour, but it made a fascinating mystery novel in its own right. The novel is set in the time of Henry VIII, who is about to close down the monasteries. A monk is sent on a search for a possible surviving Yorkist heir, in hopes that the heir, once found, might depose Henry and save the monasteries. It leads him through the story of Richard and his times.

There was one by Sharon Penman, who has since gone on to write about other English rulers, The Sunne In Splendour. That one is definitely for fans of the thick-as-a-brick historical saga, but is better than most of those.

One writer I discovered early on in my Richard III fan reading was Rosemary Hawley Jarman. Her novel, We Speak No Treason, kept me on the edge of my chair. Here's what the author had to say about her book in 2011, on the 40th anniversary of its publication, on her website.    

It's been a long time since I read it and I'm not sure how I would feel about it on a reread, but there's no doubt that it hooked me in at the time, with the beauty of the language and the descriptions - I could shut my eyes and picture every stitch of embroidery in the clothes, every banner fluttering from the towers, hear the music and the trumpets. The novel has a number of viewpoints - the Nut Brown Maid, Patch the court fool and the Man of Keen Sight. The girl falls in love with Richard and becomes pregnant with his daughter before being sent off to a convent(the daughter, Katherine, was a real person). Patch is not sure how he feels about Richard,  but becomes loyal. The Man of Keen Sight is an archer whose family appear again in another novel, The Courts Of Illusion, about Perkin Warbeck.

This novel was the one in which I first discovered Sir Edward Brampton, who was a real person, a Portuguese Jew who came to England and became a major member of Edward IV's court. He is only a minor, though important figure in this novel, but I became interested enough to look him up and wasn't he a character! In the novel, he is a dignified figure. In real life, he was much more colourful. Think cheeky Errol Flynn. The really interesting thing about him is that this loyal servant of Edward IV and Richard III(who knighted him) managed to charm Henry Tudor into welcoming him back to England, where he lived happily ever after. When you think of some of the things Henry did to many of those who had served Richard, that's quite an achievement!

Rosemary Hawley Jarman gives him an important task to do for Richard at the end of the novel, but I won't tell you what it is in case you want to read the novel.

I believe Ms Jarman is now writing fantasy. Interesting indeed...

Someone ELSE'S Giveaway

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

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

Anyway, why not wander over and check it out?

Editing "Book Club Fights Back"

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

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

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

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

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

Crime Time Giveaway On Boomerang Books

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

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

Blood Moon by Alyxandra Harvey. London, Bloomsbury, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

Celebrating Banned Books Week Around The Blogosphere

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

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

See you on YouTube for the virtual readouts!

Banned Books Week Virtual Readout Posted!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Be warned! It ends on a cliffhanger this time.

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

One Week Countdown! And Shameless Self Promotion

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

Looking it up

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

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

Marianne De Pierres Visits My School

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

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

My Choice For Banned Books Week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Banned Books Week - Book Club Fights Back!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Banned Books Week - Book Club Fights Back!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Banned Books Week 2012 - September 30 to October 6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Great Blog Stuff

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

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

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

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

Karyn's awesome book trailer

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

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

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



Here it is:

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

Burn bright, baby bats!

The Last Book Shopping Of The Year

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Birthday, Star Trek!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning Something New - Book Trailers With Moviemaker

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mousetrap Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visiting Collected Works Bookshop

Collected Works, in the Melbourne CBD, is my very favourite bookshop. I don't go there as often as I did because family commitments mostly keep me away when it's open and, to be honest, I know I'm going to overspend. It calls itself a "poetry and ideas" bookshop. Well, you can get poetry there, and philosophy books. You can also get history, mythology, classics, biographies ( I have so many bios of Tolkien and C.S Lewis that I really have to wrench myself away from the most recent.) You can find classic horror fiction by H.P. Lovecraft and by others you wouldn't have thought would write the stuff. Did you know that Rudyard Kipling wrote ghost stories? Well, I didn't, till I found them there. And children's writer Edith Nesbit, the author of Five Children And It wrote some pretty scary horror fiction. Robert E.Howard's works lurk there. Classic SF also is there, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells - and one day I found Russell Blackford's early novel Haunting Of The Witch King, published by Paul Collins back in the days when he and his then-partner Rowena Corey were running Corey And Collins and a secondhand bookshop called Autumn Leaves. Kris, the jovial bookshop owner, had no idea how it had got there, but let me have it for free. They also stock Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

Yesterday I got away from work earlier than I usually do and decided that as it had been months I would go there just for a few minutes. One of our students is interested in reading Oscar Wilde's novella "The Canterville Ghost". I hoped Kris might have it standalone or maybe in a small collection. He only had a thick works of Wilde, but it was so inexpensive for what it was, I bought it anyway. And then we wandered past my favourite shelves, and he had halved the price of a book I have had my eye on for some time,  The Vikings And The Victorians: inventing the old north in Victorian Britain, about how the Victorians got all mushy and dewy-eyed about the Vikings and actually invented the word. I also spotted Lord Raglan's The Hero, which was a part of my research while I was writing my Honours thesis back at uni. This guy was writing in the 1930s. He says that if it isn't backed up by writing it probably isn't history and spends the first couple of chapters  arguing his case, with examples of faked genealogies that couldn't possibly be genuine for reasons such as the way Normans did their naming which don't mesh with people's beliefs about, say, ancestors who came over with the Conqueror. He feels about local traditions the way Indiana Jones does in the scene where he tells his students that local folklore has ruined a lot of archaeological sites. And folklore, he believes, is based on ritual.

What a spoilsport, but fun so far. I am just starting the chapter about Robin Hood.

More of this later. If you happen to be in Melbourne and want to visit this wonderful shop, it's on the first floor of the Nicholas Building which gets the occasional write up in the papers for being so bohemian with a colony of writers there. It's on the corner of Swanston Street and Flinders Lane, opposite St Paul's Cathedral.

And again I have overspent!

Off To The Festival!

I've been attending the Melbourne Writers' Festival for many years. It used to be wonderful. You could buy ten tickets in advance cheaper than individually and if you were, as I am, a member of the Australian Society of Authors, it was even cheaper. So I took a chance and tried out authors and sessions I might not otherwise try and probably bought books I read once and that then gathered dust on my shelves, but still, it was fun. And there was plenty going on in the evenings, including children's and YA writers I wanted to hear. And there were Harry Potter readings and trivia quizzes when that was the flavour of the month. Science fiction and fantasy writers were around in the evenings and on weekends; I can recall a very strong disagreement between Robert Jordan and Ben Bova during one panel. And China Mieville telling  us how wonderful he was,as opposed to, say, that overrated J.R.R Tolkien... ;-) ( If people are still reading YOUR books in sixty years, Mr M, you can talk then, I thought).  And Tara Moss saying that she had been considering writing science fiction, but prefers a genre where you have to do research- yes, she said that! If I hadn't been sitting next to her publisher, to whom I was still hoping to sell a book, I would have asked her, at question time, just how much SF she has read and what makes her think it doesn't need research. And crime fiction sessions galore, along with true crime panels. Them was the days!

Now you can mostly only hear the children's writers during the daytime, when I'm at work; I did take a class once, but we really had neither time nor money to hear more than one speaker. (It would be nice if I got a chance to be on a panel myself, but don't get me started on this! Grrr...)

In fact, most of the writers I want to hear are on during the day time these days. So my attendance at the Festival has gone down to two or three sessions a year. I was very lucky, in 2010, to hear Kim Stanley Robinson on the weekend, but he was in the country to speak at Aussiecon and if I hadn't been sick with whooping cough I could have heard him anyway. There was a session on crime fiction yesterday I wanted to attend but I got into town too late due to family commitments and there was nothing on between five and eight PM apart from a couple of launches that didn't interest me and one sold-out session.

So these days I mostly just turn up, see what's on and hope there will be something for me. Today I have to attend a child's birthday party, but I will head into town after brekkie, buy the gift and see what's on. Late this afternoon there's a Twelfth Planet launch where I believe Kerry Greenwood and Margo Lanagan will be, so hopefully I can excuse myself from the birthday in time to go to that. If anyone in Melbourne is reading this, why not come along and say hi?

Book Week In The Library

I had to celebrate Book Week somehow. There isn't the money to get in guest speakers or  people to run workshops. I'm alone two days a week and my technician was sick on the day I hoped to decorate the library.

But I can do a trivia quiz and I run one during Book Week every year. And as the theme this year was Champions Read and I couldn't find a single photo of an athlete or sports player with a book in hand, I found some of my more obliging students and got them to pose with books during their PE period, then put them up on a podium with medals around their necks and books in hand. I printed out and laminated the photos and put them up in the lbrary. Two students helped me to prepare a trivia quiz, which I ran in the library today at lunchtime. Two of my colleagues helped by taking up and marking the answer sheets - I couldn't have done it alone, as there were twenty-seven students competing! Last time I only gt sixteen, so it was nice.

They enjoyed the event, especially when I had extra questions for chocolate frogs( I also gave frogs to all competitors and Mars Bars  to the winners).Alas, someone walked out with two of the Mars Bars, so I was short of prizes - I think some kids just don't get that there is no more of it to replace the ones they took, They just see the chocolate there and help themselves. The winners were good about it, being my foundation book clubbers, who will be gone soon, dammit, and nobody went without chocolate of  some description, so really, it was a successful event. I will probably do another one for Halloween, on a paranormal theme.

Wolfborn Lands In The Library of Congress!

Here's the link to the record of my book, proving to me that it has arrived! YAY!

Library of Congress record here.

I even know that it was catalogued by a lovely teacher librarian called Judy, who is now 
cataloguing children's and YA books for America's answer to our National Library.
 It's nice to have it personalised that way. 

If you're a US reader who enjoys medieval fantasy, you can buy it in hard copy from October 1, in all good bookshops.

Shadowfell By Juliet Marillier. Sydney: Pan Macmillan,2012

In Alban, a land loosely based on Scotland, fifteen year old Neryn and her father are on the run. Here, anyone with a hint of magical ability who isn't working for the king is condemned to death or a mind wipe by the official sorcerers. They have already lost the rest of their family and now Neryn is in danger, due to her ability to communicate with, and call, the Good Folk, what we think of as the Faerie. One night loses her everything she has left, when her father gambles her away and dies in a raid by the king's men.

Now she is travelling with Flint, a mysterious young man who has his own troubles and may be working for the king - or spying on him. Neryn doesn't know and isn't sure she can take a chance; if she gets it wrong, not only will she be turned into a mindless king's servant, but she will be used to destroy any resistance to his tyranny...

I like what the author has done with the characters. Neryn could easily have been a whining heroine, but puts aside her own troubles for the safety of others, especially the Good Folk who have become her friends in the course of her journey, sacrificing her own safety when she must and finding sympathy even for ghosts with whom she has no connection. For their part, the Good Folk are by no means minor gods, creatures of mischief or Tolkienesque elves, appearing as various kinds of creatures, rather like Arthur Rackham's fairies. They have their own troubles and emotions and reason for being as they are. They disagree with each other as to whether or not they should trust and help Neryn, who may or may not be a Caller who can save Alban. Each of them has a separate personality.

There is some good world building here; it has a Scottish feel, but this isn't Scotland as we know it. The characters aren't nobles or princesses, either; Neryn is the daughter of a peasant family. In this world magic can turn up in any family. And Neryn's magic can be based on something as simple as a nursery rhyme.

If you enjoy Juliet Marillier's fiction, this YA novel won't disappoint.

What I Did At The E-Literacy Conference (from my other blog)

First published in our staff newsletter March 23 2012

Back in March I had the privilege of attending what may be the best conference I have ever done, run by the School Library Association of Victoria. I am still getting my head around all the wonderfully useful information I received and the notes I took; I have been downloading teaching apps on my iPad and started following teacher-librarians i met there on Twitter, though that's blocked on our school network. Pity - it's a useful tool. (And I encountered and started following a tech-loving ESL teacher in Canada, who shares information in his tweets).


Attendees were encouraged to use their devices – laptops, phones and iPads. I had my iPad with me and I was able to go online in the conference’s wifi connection. As the speakers shared their web sites and software information with us, I went on-line, checked and bookmarked some sites we can use in teaching. We were able to tweet on the conference’s special Twitter session; some used it to take notes, others for comments on the session. I came away with a couple of new followers and teachers I am now following.


We had a demonstration from Mill Park Secondary College, a school which had been part of a program that enabled students to use various bits of software and hardware to produce a science presentation that went way beyond the usual PowerPoint. There were also speakers from VCAA.


Dr Ross Todd of Rutgers University in New Jersey was our keynote speaker. Dr Todd had done a survey of New York school libraries and chosen twelve that had the most positive attitude towards their libraries and library professionals, considered part of the curriculum team to improve student outcomes. These were schools like ours, with very little money. They were prepared to put it into their libraries and the teacher-librarians running them. (Actually, the sentence he used was "the schools where the principal had the guts to invest in their libraries did the best". That didn't go into my school report, I'm adding it here.)

His talk was very inspiring, as was the entire day, and I rushed off to check out all those new sites. I've used some since then and run PDs using them.

Going There Because Of Books

Today I'm going to the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne to meet the family for one of their famous High Teas. This will be my fifth time - once I went with my friend Natalie, who stays at the hotel when she's in Melbourne, because it's where they put you up when you come from interstate to speak at the Melbourne Writers' Festival and she'd decided to spoil herself after that treat she'd had once. The other times it has been to celebrate something, usually to do with publication( today we're celebrating Wolfborn's trip to the US).

But I got the idea of going there in the first place because of Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher novels. It's where Phryne stays when she first arrives in Australia and where she takes Julia Chivers for tea when looking for Julia's missing friend in Murder In Montparnasse.  It just sounded like such a classy thing to do. The price of afternoon tea there is horribly expensive, but I worked for it and once in a while I can take out family and friends if I want, to be happy with me.

I also went for lunch at the Queenscliff Hotel after reading Kerry Greenwood's  Flying Too High , which ends there. In the book, Phryne solves a case just outside Queenscliff, rescuing a kidnapped child and taking the girl, her family and friends to the hotel to recover and have breakfast. The place sounded gorgeous and as I was staying at Sorrento on my holidays, I caught the Queenscliff ferry and went. You could get your meal cheaper if you ate on the veranda than in the pub, but that was fine with me; I sat gazing out at the sea as I ate a wonderful meal. The hotel is beautiful, with stained glass all over the place and I think there are tours. I have promised myself to stay there one weekend.

Then there are some overseas jaunts. When I was in England, of course I made pilgrimage to Stratford On Avon to see places where Shakespeare had been, but I remember how thrilled I was,passing the local Tourist Information Office, to see a small plaque informing passers that this had been the house where Judith Shakespeare had lived with her husband. Imagine it - a historic building being casually used for an office! It was everywhere in England, of course. Five hundred year old pubs, for example.

In London I walked along Charing Cross Road, once famous for its bookshops and one bookshop in particular. Passing number 84, I was relieved to see it was still selling something nice- records.

My friend Maureen Kincaid Speller, who was walking with me, smiled, reading my thoughts. "I think Frank would approve, or wouldn't mind, anyway." (Frank was the bookshop's manager when Helene Hanff was ordering books from her home in the US).

I wanted to visit " merry Carlisle" which got a mention in the medieval ballads, such as Adam Bell, but it was on the border and there really wasn't time. I did make it to Nottingham on the weekend of the Goose Fair, a centuries-old event in early October, because I had heard about it in a song. Buses were laid on to go there every few minutes. Not much was happening there - all the rides were child sized - but the fairgrounds were lined with fortune teller stalls and Mum and I had our first taste of chip butties, chip sandwiches, which we've made at home since then. We did, of course, visit Sherwood Forest and the Major Oak, six hundred years old. Not quite old enough for a Robin Hood connection, but still a historic tree.

One day I went to Oxford to visit my friend Margaret Draper, who worked there. On my first trip to England Margaret had taken me to see the Eagle and Child pub where the Inklings met, and I hoped to find it again. Margaret didn't turn up; she later explained she had been stuck in a meeting at work and these were the days before mobile phones. After waiting an hour, I decided that as I was there anyway I would simply plunge into the streets of Oxford and see what I found. And what I found was very much book related. Christ Church College was where Alice Liddell's father worked in the days when Lewis Carroll wrote her into his fiction. Across the road was Alice's Old Sheep Shop, an Alice-themed shop which was the original shop used as the basis for Tenniel's illustration in Through The Looking Glass.

 I went to Bath because of Jane Austen and it felt as if she or her characters might still walk along the Regency Streets. It was also a good place to start from to visit Glastonbury with its Arthurian connections. We couldn't stay long, alas, due to limited bus timetables, but did manage to get to the ruins of the monastery which made good tourist money in the Middle Ages by telling everyone they'd found King Arthur's bones. Of course that was mainly so people would stop believing he was coming back, but if it got tourist silver, why not?

Shrewsbury, on the border of England and Wales, was where we went to celebrate Ellis Peters' wonderful Brother Cadfael. My mother hadn't read the books at the time, though she read the lot when we got home. I was delighted to see that the author had described the streets so well that I could find my way around. The layout was still the same. We went to the church where Brother Cadfael had prayed with the other monks in the novels, and met one of the parishioners outside as I was taking photos.

After some joking round about being a fan, he pointed out some places mentioned in the novels.

Shrewsbury, which was a gorgeous little town with plenty of historic buildings, was doing nicely out of Brother Cadfael in those days, though the church itself needed some serious renovation, with hoes in the roof and such. Outside it had aVictorian look, but inside there were still medieval tombs.

As it's nearly time to get up, I will stop here, before I get to New Zealand and Lord Of The Rings. I'll keep that for another time.

Bookish Things Today

This afternoon, after saying goodbye to my mother, I took the train out to Notions Unlimited Bookshop in Chelsea, where I haven't been since the grand opening. It was pouring as I stepped off the train, so just as well I had my big umbrella, but the shop was cosy and I found a game of Dungeons and Dragons happening in the comfy chair area in the middle. The gamers were friendly and happy to chat with me; they even offered me a piece of freshly made cheese cake as we talked. I browsed in the small press shelves, where they had a bunch of books from Australia's various spec fic publishers. Not everything, but a good variety. I finally picked up a copy of Tansy Rayner Roberts' Love And Romanpunk and the new collection by Margo Lanagan.

 And then I REALLY overspent by acquiring A Feast Of Ice And Fire - a Game of Thrones cookbook! If you remember all those yummy-sounding dishes the characters are always eating in the series, you can now cook them. The authors went off and researched medieval  foods and cooked them, adapting them for modern cooks and to go with the novels, though they have some medieval and modern versions side by side. There's an introduction by George R.R. Martin, admitting he can't cook, but saying how delighted he was when these fans, Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, started bringing baskets of goodies to his book signings. I also learned from this intro that they had a blog, The Inn At The Crossroads, where all this stuff is discussed, so of course I had to go and find it and bookmark it, it as so very good. Here's the link, do check it out.

I was about to go drool over my new purchases when my brother Maurice rang to say that he was dropping off my nephew, his son Max, at the Astor to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and was I still interested in coming? So I put everything away ad went home for a quick meal and browse before heading for the cinema with its famous cat, Marzipan.(Maurice was thrilled when she came to him in the foyer and sat on his lap - I got a photo or two).

I have finally received my review copy of Rhiannon Hart's Blood Storm and also got sent a book called Throne Of Glass by Saah J. Maas, which apparently started off as an on-line effort, but sold to Bloomsbury. We'll see how both go, and I will also be interviewing Rhiannon when I've read the book.

Wolfborn In The Library of Congress

Yesterday I got an email from a librarian at the Library of Congress, the US version of our own National Library, which has a deposit collection of everything published in the country. She just wanted to confirm that I was the author of The Sea's Secret, which they had a record for, and a bunch of non-fiction books she had seen listed online. I confirmed it for her - she must have been wondering what all those non-fiction and children's chapter books had to do with a YA werewolf fantasy. :-)

Thing is, this is, for me, a confirmation of the fact that my werewolf knight and his friends and enemies are really, really going overseas at last! There's nothing like a deposit collection record to say that, yes, your book has been printed and published in that country. I have asked the lady to let me know when the record is up, because it should be possible to access, as you can access the records of the National Library here. If it is, I'll post a link here.

(Sue does an excited Snoopy dance)

Doing Star Trek: A Virtual Author Visit To Perth

Wednesday I paid my very first virtual author visit. I have always wanted to do things like in Star Trek, where they were doing Skype calls in the 60s! ;-) And we'd been talking about virtual author visits on Twitter.

I work at a school in Melbourne and the class I visited was in Perth, across the country and  two hours behind us. It required a LOT of organisation on both sides, but especially on the host school's part and I have to say, Anthony gave it.

Anthony is an ASIM writer whose wonderful story "The Wine Endures" I plucked out of the slush pool as my selection for ASIM's 50th issue. We have kept in touch since then and he has started his own blog. And one day we were talking about author visits and he said if I ever came to Perth I would be welcome to visit his school and I said innocently that I'd be happy to do a virtual visit by the wonders of Skype and next thing I knew he'd begun rushing around to arrange it. On my side I had to consult with the computer techs at my school to make sure it was possible. Our wonderful head tech Vien assured me it was. He offered to set me up with a webcam and headphones; at that point I decided to bring in my own laptop, which has a built-in webcam and doesn't need headphones. For one thing, Vien had enough work on his plate without rushing around to my campus to set me up. For another thing, I wanted a computer I knew I could trust.

Anthony had been using my blog posts in his lessons to Year 8, so his students already knew who I was. He asked the library to get in some copies of my novel and I promised a couple of copies of Crime Time if he'd put me in touch with his library. (That still hasn't happened, but hopefully soon).

He arranged with his school's techs to be there in case of connection problems. He booked the big screen area so he could get in a lot of students. He asked me to talk to them about fairy tales and werewolves and read from my book.

We did a trial run last week, on my insistence, and I'm glad we did. The connection in the staff room was fine, but woeful in the library, where I hoped to do my visit. I consulted Vien and Tam, another tech, and our info tech teacher, and was advised to use an ethernet cable, which I could connect in my office and which was more reliable than wifi. Leaving nothing to chance, I bought a new ethernet cable. Mine was about ready to be replaced anyway.

So the great day arrived. We were due to start 10.45 my time, two hours earlier Perth time. We ended up starting a bit later due to technical hiccups on their end, but finally we began. Anthony's students are all girls - possibly a religious-based school judging by the uniforms.  I waved at them. They waved back. Anthony introduced me and I began my talk. To them, he is Mr Phillips and I had to remember to call him that. I told them that I, too, was a Year 8 teacher and a library teacher and was pleased to meet them. I waffled on for a while about the things Anthony had requested, including that the wolf in Red Riding Hood was probably meant to be a werewolf - how else could he possibly pose as Grandma?

But I like interaction. This is a lot harder when you're way over the other side of the country than when you can throw book marks at the audience and invite members up to assist you. Still, there were questions. After a short time I paused to invite a question and next thing I knew they were coming thick and fast and lasted pretty much till the end of the session, when we squeezed in a short reading, not from Wolfborn but from Crime Time("hands up those who'd like a crime story?" and a huge number of hands shot up).

During the event, I was interrupted several times, once by the office lady, who didn't know I was doing this(my fault, I should have told her) and wanted me to go look for someone. I had to explain I was talking to a Year 8 in Perth and couldn't get up. Sometimes it was by students needing computers and  keys to the computer lab. I called them over and introduced them to my audience before giving them what they wanted, without, of course, getting up. Two of them were Brittany and Paige, two of the girls I met for Claudia Gray earlier this year.

It was hilarious!

Thinking about it afterwards,  I realised how much could have gone wrong if Anthony hadn't been such a professional in his organisation of the event. I have no doubt there are writers out there with horror stories about virtual visits.

I also had my own private agenda. I thought if it ran smoothly, perhaps I might try a relationship between his class and mine. It's something to discuss for the future.

Meanwhile, I hope the students enjoyed it as much as I did!

Book Week Coming... ( from my other blog)

...and I still haven't read all the books and the winner will probably be one I haven't read. The shortlisted books are mostly out anyway, which I suppose is a good thing, though it meant I couldn't use them on Friday afternoon, of which more presently.

My friend Sharon Hayes, who hosted us a week ago, emailed me some photos of my students with Isobelle Carmody. I printed one of them out. There was a lot of red-eye and Braydon looked like a demon child out of The Omen. I did fix the red- eye on both photos, using iPhoto, but not till Thursday night and in one of them, the demon-Braydon stayed demonic! Is there something we don't know about him?(g)

 Braydon didn't turn up to book club, where I showed the photos to his friends, and later came to ask me,"Miss, is it true I look weird in the photos?" I told him yes and he wanted a look and then he wanted the photos as they were! Seems he likes looking scary.;-)

Anyway, at the book club meeting on Thursday we discussed Book Week. No real plans for the week beyond the usual trivia quiz ( and Braydon said later he wanted a Readathon, perhaps a bit late to arrange, but we could have readings at lunchtime or I could film them reading aloud from favourite books). But as the theme is "Champions Read" I asked them who would be okay with being photographed for a library display doing sport while reading a book. My class were finishing the week with PE so it was a perfect opportunity. Most of the shortlist books were out, so I decided just to get a pile of books they could choose from. Natasha suggested a podium with readers holding books and wearing gold, silver and bronze medals, a great idea if we can get something to pretend is a podium. I will check tomorrow with the woodwork teacher, whom I am pretty sure has a step somewhere, and there are a couple of library steps to shelve books from. I will have to find some way to fake the medals, perhaps get the students to make them in cardboard. Dylan and Kristen suggested table tennis tables with readers playing but holding books ( Kristen wanted to slump over the table with her book).

Friday afternoon I took my camera out to the basketball courts where 8B were throwing frisbees ( it was a lovely sunny afternoon) and Natasha, Karyn and Braydon happily posed with frisbees and books. Ann-Marie and Nusaiba thought it looked like fun and joined us. Nusaiba did ask if she could hide her face behind her book lest someone laughed at her, but I pointed out that with her headscarf people would recognise her anyway. She had to concede that and agreed not to hide.

Hopefully this year we will have a good Book Week.

Want A US Agent? Look what I found!

Received at the ASIM Inquiries email the other day. We're still discussing how we can get this information out to people; this is a big-name agency with some top clients. It's the real deal, and I wish they'd been actively looking for clients back when I was desperately trying to get an agent. If RHA hadn't already made arrangements for the US release of Wolfborn, I'd be checking them out myself. Never mind, next time. I do have a novel going, but it's in frst draft mode and no one gets to see it till I've done a lot more work on it. But I know a lot of writers read this blog, so here is the information and good luck!


"We’re writing to introduce you to The Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency and to let you know we are actively seeking clients in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres. We are a full service agency, representing writers at every stage of their career.
The agencQy opened in 1984 and has always had an interest in both genres.  We’re privileged to represent a number of top talents in science fiction and fantasy such as John Scalzi, Karen Miller, Sharon Shinn, Gail Z. Martin, Ian Douglas/Bill Keith, Kay Kenyon, Mel Odom, and the recently signed James Cambias for whom we just sold his first novel.  We are also proud to represent the estate of Gandalf Grand Master Award winning author Andre Norton.
Our success in this area is not confined to the adult market, either.  The agency has negotiated publication deals for young adult fantasies by Karen Miller, Mel Odom, Sharon Shinn, and Ed Willet as well.
We are a very active, successful seller of translation rights with agents in all foreign markets and a track record of approximately fifty new licenses per year. We also successfully license film rights, audio-book rights, e-book rights and rights for publication in the United Kingdom.
The ideal submission for us is an introductory letter, synopsis and the first three chapters of manuscript. We welcome electronic submissions to fantasy@ethanellenberg.com. We also welcome submission by mail with a self-addressed, stamped envelope for response. Please check our website (www.ethanellenberg.com) and follow the submission guidelines carefully.
We remain upbeat, active and committed to the highest standards of professional conduct and representation. We are members in good standing of the Association of Author’s Representatives and consistently receive high marks from all the top professional writers’ organizations. We look forward to your submission.
Sincerely,
Ethan Ellenberg, President Evan Gregory, Associate Agent"