Of Fan Fiction Based On Books - A Whinge!

There’s a lot of fan fiction around these days. Some of it is published professionally- not only official Star Trek novels and such, but books based on original classic novels and approved sequels. Stephen Baxter’s Time Ships is, for example, an approved sequel to H.G Wells’ The Time Machine(personally, I prefer David Lake’s The Man Who Loved Morlocks and short story “The Truth About Weena”) 

And then there are web sites crammed with fan fiction based on everything from Star Wars to computer games! Take your pick, universe of your choice. Rainbow Rowell’s wonderful novel Fangirl takes us into the world of on line fan fiction. More of this anon.

I enjoy fan fiction; I used write it myself and have book cases crammed with media fanzines. We started writing this stuff, way back when, because our favourite TV show - Star Trek, in my case - had been cancelled and this was the only way to get more. As we were dealing with scripts rather than novels, there was always something that we felt could be developed. There were plot holes we wanted to fill. Sometimes we created our own characters to have adventures aboard the Enterprise. Some people pretty much created their own universes within the universe of Star Trek - they developed entire cultures for Klingons or Vulcans, not to mention languages. That, of course, was before spinoff TV shows and films came along, bringing details that had not been there before. Then it became Alternative Universe. 

I have no doubt that there were those who thought their versions were better than the originals, like the heroine of Fangirl. In case you have missed it, Cath is a fanwriter of a book series rather like Harry Potter. The last volume is about to come out and Cath is hurrying to finish her own version before it becomes non canon. She actually has her own fandom with thousands of followers loving her on line fan novels. Because of this she comes to think her work is better than the original author’s.

Which brings me to the next point: the fans who think they own the material. “I love it, so it should be the way I think it is. If the author does it any other way, they have betrayed me!” Like the ones who are carrying on about the Doctor being female. Or the woman who told me on line that “JKR is a hypocrite and we are entitled to our black Hermione.” She never said why JKR was a hypocrite and this was the response to my having said that JKR was fine with the black Hermione in Cursed Child. Hmm, according to this entitled fan, this wasn’t good enough, it seems. Hermione belongs to the fans, not to her creator. Yeah, sure. I pointed out that JKR had given us Hermione, but was fine with this, and left it at that. She never replied - for all I know she may have muted or blocked me. 

Ah, that old fannish entitlement! There are plenty of real-life Caths. My main reason for this post is a Twitter discussion among authors I generally respect, one of whom has recently published a novel based on a classic written about 150 years ago. I’m reading her novel now and yeah, it’s amusing, but mostly, for me, the entertainment lies in working out which character corresponds to which original character and which event corresponds to one in the original book. This author can write, yes. But I’d rather read the original. In fact, I’m rereading it now and having a good giggle.

 Personally I don’t know why this author did it when she writes such very good original fiction, but there you go. However, I was irritated to read posts by other authors(one of whom has done her own fan fiction) telling this one that her novel was better than the original. 

Huh? No way! I read the original in about two days, all 650 pages, and loved it. I am still ploughing through the fan novel. The original has been read and loved for a century and a half, been dramatised over and over, has inspired other work - other work that didn’t simply take an entire novel and play with it - and it’s not as good as someone’s revamp? I could suggest that if this revamp is still getting read and loved even a few years from now let alone 150, it will be doing well. 

However, I didn’t respond, as it would have just upset all the people discussing it, with no positive result. What would be the point? Which is why I’m not naming the book or the people here. 

What do you think, readers? Have you ever come across a derivative story you thought better than the original? 

Book Blogger Hop: What Drives You Bonkers About Authors?

This week's Book Blogger Hop asks you to talk about what drives you nuts when authors do it and makes you want to tell them a thing or two.

Okay, here's mine: I find that I drop completely out of a story when an author has not done their research. Occasionally, this includes non fiction, when the book tells you, for example, that criminal Carl Williams dropped out of school at the age of 11! It was YEAR 11, thank you, they would not have allowed a primary school child to drop out, but I blame the editor for not picking it up and the authors of that book - one of them very well known - didn't pick it up on a proofread. I confess I did it myself, once, when I got the year of Madame Curie's death wrong in my second book, due to a typo I didn't pick up until a student at my school asked politely, because she had read a different book with a different date. And I had a very good editor, but she trusted me to get something like that right. I am quite sure she would have picked up a typo that said a big name criminal left school at the age of 11!

So, what irritates me? I'm not one of those who make a huge fuss if a word that didn't exist in a certain time is used, as long as it's used outside the characters' mouths, sometimes even if it's used by the characters themselves, if it's supposed to be translating from a different language. Of course, you'd draw the line at plain anachronisms!

And that includes fantasy novels set in a secondary universe. I recall a conversation on Twitter, in which an author of hard SF said that if she wrote a fantasy novel, it was her damn universe and she could do what she wanted with it. This is an author who wouldn't dream of writing science fiction without doing her research. If you're writing a secondary universe, chances are that it will be inspired by a society in our own world. You can change things, but only if you have a logical way of making it different, and a reason for it. But you really, really can't convincingly write a scene in which a horse is basically a furry machine, which doesn't stop quite a few authors from doing it. There are other problems with writing fantasy. Here's a link to an essay by Poul Anderson, On Thud And Blunder, written many years ago, but still relevant, on the SFWA website.

Sorry, but I can't stand Americanisms in a novel set in historical England, used by British characters. There is a certain book I will never finish. It was seen, in first person, from the viewpoint of Agatha Christie's daughter's nanny, who used quite a few American terms. In the 1920s. And, by the way, made reference to things she remembered that happened the 1990s, when the historical person died in about 1975.

I don't mind a bit of poetic/dramatic licence, as long as the author says, "I know this is not quite how it happened, but I did it because...", in other words acknowledges they knew what they were doing. And some do - but others don't.

It isn't just historical issues. If you are writing a story set in the present day, you need to make sure you have that right too. If you're writing a police procedural, for example, you need to make sure that you get the procedures right, the details of any weapons they use, etc.

If you're writing a children's or YA novel, set in a particular time and place, that needs to be checked. Some authors doing much better than I am have got things wrong. In Victorian schools, for example, you aren't allowed to leave students on their own. If you do, and something happens to them while you are absent, guess who gets sued? This hasn't stopped quite a few of my favourite authors from writing scenes where kids in detention are left alone by their teachers. One of them was a good friend of mine and rewrote that scene on my advice, but there are some classics out there which have jarring scenes in them. Well, jarring to me, anyway. Probably nobody who doesn't work in a Victorian school would notice. (Not, mind you, that it doesn't happen at all, but in those cases the teacher has done the wrong thing and knows it)

Another otherwise-excellent YA novel had a character who was looking after her sister's children when her sister disappeared...and collected the child support cheques and lied to the Department about it. Guess what? At the time I read this novel, admittedly a long time ago, I was working for what is now Centrelink and I can assure you, the aunt was entitled to that money. She didn't have to lie. I say this as someone who has had phone calls from people who demanded the tiny amount of money they were entitled to if the kids were in their care even for one night. They knew their rights - oh, yes! And we had to pay them, even though it cost more for them to call us and us to arrange the transfer, than it was worth.

Another matter for irritation is when things change in the course of a series, especially a hugely popular series, so that you can only assume that by the later books, the author is so popular that the editor either doesn't dare to ask them to fix it, or the publisher doesn't care because the books will sell anyway.

You probably know many of these, especially if, like me, you have a tendency to read and reread your favourite books. I won't name mine, but perhaps you can think of some and comment in the box below?

Here are a couple of books I recommend. I found them on Apple Books, but possibly you can also get them in print form.

How Not To Write A Novel by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman. An amusing, entertaining and chatty book which goes through some of the truly awful errors that can be made by authors who don't check their facts.

What Kings Ate And Wizards Drank by Krista D Ball. Currently reading and enjoying. Focuses on food and drink and what you need to remember when you send your heroes/heroines out on that Quest. This author knows what she is talking about when she speaks of what is, and what isn't, physically possible, due to doing a lot of this stuff herself. She suggests what you might like to try instead of the unlikely things.

Personally, I'd rather just write the thing and then correct it than spend months on research before writing a single word, but I usually have some idea of what I'm writing about, or I wouldn't have any ideas in the first place. But you do have to look it up sooner or later, and if it's wrong, rewrite, preferable before publishing!

What do you think?

Katrina Nannestad: An Interview

Recently, I received a copy of this book, which is available here.

It's an anthology of short, humorous stories for children, the fourth in a series. There are contemporary tales, such as Felice Arena's story about a Dad who embarrasses his son by dancing at the school dance, over-the top humour like Andy Griffiths' short piece taken from one of his early books, fantastical stuff about families confronted with aliens and much more. The story "The Feral Fairies Of Foggarty's Field" is different again from the others, featuring, as it does, three very unusual fairies - I'll let the author tell you about it below.

Katrina Nannestad is the author of several books for younger readers. She grew up in NSW and now lives with her family and a dog called Olive in Central Victoria.

 The book below is the first in a trilogy and the third will be out later this year.

SB: Let’s start with a simple and obvious question - where did your idea for “The Feral Fairies of Foggarty’s Field” begin? 

KN: This is always a tricky question because one story may spring from many sources. I’m sure that childhood memories, current experiences, musings, random words and strange imaginings all bubble and bloop around in my mind until, suddenly, a few bits collide, stick together and begin to grow into a story. But I’ll do my best to answer in a normal, sequential manner.

When I was little, my mother gave me a book that she had owned as a child - Flower Fairies of the Spring. The fairies were pretty, polite, clean and graceful. I was loud, clumsy, scabby kneed and little bit cheeky. The fairies lived in a land filled with European flowers with strange names like lady’s smock, wood-sorrel and stitchwort. I lived in country NSW in a world stuffed with gum trees, melting tar roads and a menagerie of strange but beloved pets. In short, I thought my world and my life were far more exciting than those of the prim flower fairies. The flower fairies did not make for exciting or relatable reading. 

Years later, searching for a fun story idea, I started writing about the kind of fairies I would have enjoyed reading about as a child - rough, rude, fairies who would laugh too loudly, eat too much cake and fly into closed windows and parked cars. I began to write a chapter book called The Feral Fairies of Foggarty’s Field, but it was a little too raucous. Kids might have liked it, but parents and publishers would not. Even though I was having great fun in Feral Fairyland, I put the book aside. 
Last year, I was asked to write a short story for a fun anthology. So I dusted off the feral fairies novel and turned it into something short and sweet … or, rather, short and naughty. But not too naughty. 

SB: Your feral fairy heroes, Bob, Kev and Darren seem to be very Australian, but the other fairies aren’t. Was this deliberate? 


KN: Absolutely! There are enough books filled with pretty, graceful fairies who look and speak like they have just stepped out of a posh British boarding school or a Swiss finishing school. We need some fairies of our own - Australian fairies like Bob, Kev and Darren.

But any good story needs a problem at its core. Setting my rough Australian fairies in a world filled with traditional European fairies provided a good starting point for conflict and, of course, humour.

SB: Tell me about Bob, Kev and Darren. They seem to be kind-hearted, even if they do mess up their supervisors’ rounds. What did you have in mind? 

KN: I wanted the feral fairies to be funny and likeable. Having poor judgment or being rough around the edges doesn’t mean one has a wicked heart. Just look at Kev and that dreadful mishap with the tooth. Shoving the tooth back into the child’s mouth was really stupid, but it was meant as an act of kindness.

I love to write about characters who are high-spirited (naughty in the eyes of adults) but likeable - like Wes and Fez in my Red Dirt Diary series, Inge Maria in The Girl Who Brought Mischief, and the students at Mrs Groves Boarding School for Naughty Boys, Talking Animals and Circus Performers in my Olive of Groves series. I was a bit like this as a child - well-meaning but inclined to misjudge situations. I hope children will identify with my impulsive characters - or at least get a giggle out of them.

SB: Did you read stories about flower fairies and pony fairies, etc. in your childhood? If so, did you take them seriously or did you find them annoying even then? 


KN: After that initial experience with Flower Fairies of the Spring, I was not interested in reading about fairies. Had there been a chimpanzee fairy, a chocolate cake fairy or a mud-wrestling fairy, my interest might have been piqued. But, alas, there was not. The fairies I met were all boring little do-gooders. I cannot recall thinking kindly of the fairy fraternity ever again.

I preferred to read comics - especially ones about Donald Duck and his friends. The characters were very naughty and got themselves into ridiculous scrapes. Comics were far more exciting and humorous than that fairy book, or any other book I was shown. 

SB: What are you working on at the moment? And when will it be available? 


KN: I am currently working on a novel called The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Lucerne. It is the third and final book in a mystery-crime series.  I’ve had an enormous amount of fun writing these books and travelling through Europe in my imagination. I’ve gossiped with pigeons in Rome, I’ve wandered through fields of lavender in Provence and now I am scaling mountains and nibbling chocolate in Lucerne. And, all the while, I’ve been developing - and solving - mysteries. I get to be creator and sleuth!

I’ll really miss my characters when I am done with this series - especially Finnegan, the overgrown Irish wolfhound. Finnegan licks, raids rubbing bins, chases his tail and gobbles with gusto - pizza, croissants, sausages, schnitzels, socks, bed linen, books….  He also has a heart as big as his appetite. Dear, faithful hound! 

The Girl, the Dog and the Writer in Lucerne will be available in October. 

Here is where you can get Katrina's novels on Booktopia. 

They are also available on Amazon and Book Depository.

In Which I See Lots of Escher’s Work And Get Ideas...

Yesterday I went with my friend Jasna to see the exhibition of work by Dutch artist M.C Escher, Escher x nendo: Between Two Worlds at the National Gallery of Victoria. All I can say about it is - wow!

 You will have seen his work at one time or another, even if you don’t think you have, because people use it - a lot. There is that picture of a hand coming out of a sheet of paper and drawing another hand. I’ve seen that on the cover of a graphics textbook. There is the picture of the staircase which twists through an extra dimension and is upside down. I have seen that one in the film Labyrinth with David Bowie, and read it in Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. And there is that one where a praying mantis is perched on the breast of a marble bishop in his tomb, with a dark crypt behind. I saw that in one of the art books we used at school.

Fair use. I don’t own the rights.

Basically, he was an artist of the fantastical. He did it all in prints and - this is great - simply LOVED experimenting with different kinds of printmaking. According to the blurbs at the gallery, he is about the only artist to master all three kinds.

 There were pics from his early years, when his work was naturalistic right up till his last work, with tangled snakes. He spent a lot of his early years in Italy, drawing the landscapes and seascapes, but even those have fantastical touches to them. They are like seascapes or villages on another planet or an alternative world. Magical!

The layout was amazing too. A bit dark, to preserve the works, but the snakes print was shown in a snake-y area. Even the benches were a part of the show. There were all the birds turning into fishes and vice verse and characters rushing out of pictures and becoming three dimensional and rushing back into the pictures... and at the end of those, there was this.

You could walk through it after seeing it from above, and there seemed to be steps, but weren’t. We assumed this was the end of the exhibition but no...

There was something very Alice In Wonderland about the perspective corridor, which shrank until anyone there looked as if they were about three metres tall!

I rarely buy a catalogue these days, but I decided to do it this time, because I was already coming up with ideas for stories just looking at the art. So, I’m going to do a bit more than drool over the book this time! Watch out for some new stories! 

Just Finished Reading... Natural Born Loser by Oliver Phommavanh

Raymond is a Year Six student at a primary school which has a poor reputation. There are bullies. The place is shabby. The last few Principals have been in and out with incredible speed, and are not missed. Now they have a new Principal, Mr Humble, who has some good ideas and is prepared to back up students who have ideas of their own. The first thing he does is audition for prefects - and Raymond, who has never considered himself a leader, goes along with his soccer-playing friend Zain and is startled to find himself chosen. In his first speech, he blurts out that the new prefects will do something about air conditioning their terribly hot classrooms.

With Zain and two girls, Ally and Randa(the Hermione Granger of this team), he works at fundraising. They need $20,000 for just two classrooms, and decide that the youngest students should not roast. Suddenly there are activities everywhere. There is parent support and donations from the local shops. There are bullies trying to sabotage the fundraising...

This is a sweet and gentle story with characters you can care about. Raymond is learning to be a leader - and that you don’t have to be a superstar to be respected, when someone points out to him that as an ordinary person he is the one other kids are most comfortable with. He also discovers that there are plenty of former students who have affectionate memories of the place and are willing to help out, including his mother.

I liked that this was a multicultural school like the ones where I have worked for many years. Raymond is Philipino. Zain is from Ghana. Ally is probably white, though we aren’t told. Randa wears a hijab, including a waterproof one for fundraising water balloon fights. The school bully is just a bully, not a racist. The only issues are the school’s reputation and how to raise a lot of money. Oh, and it was nice to read about a primary school that still has a library and someone to run it!

I did wonder why it might cost that much money for two classrooms. I guess it depends on the kind of air con, and my school had a qualified electrician(the campus teacher librarian, in fact!) to install them for free when our kids did a chocolate drive.

But the author is a former primary teacher, who even wrote himself into his first novel, Thai-Riffic! as the teacher, so he would have some idea of these things.

I will be donating this book to the multicultural primary school where I volunteer, after the holidays. I am sure there will be plenty of takers! 

Australia’s Favourite Author 2019 - Nominating Now!

Each year, the Booktopia website runs a competition to see who is the most popular writer in Australia. I have posted about this before, during January, as the list goes down from hundreds to fifty to the final “there can only be” one! It’s an Australian web site, which only sells books here, but nothing stopping overseas fans of Australian books from nominating and voting, although you won’t be able to enter for the $1000.00 book prize. Mind you, I see that this year you have to order an Australian book from them and cite the order number before you enter for the prize, so not everyone here can enter either. I do order on line occasionally, when I can’t get the book I want in my local shops, or, better, in ebook, but still... I guess you can’t blame them for wanting to make a buck from this when they work so hard organising it.

So, right now, all you have to do is nominate an author, not a book, and you can nominate as many as you like. I’m going to nominate several children’s and YA authors, myself, and have already nominated Carole Wilkinson, author of the amazing Dragonkeeper books and the more recent Inheritance, which I’ve reviewed.

Check it out here and have fun, wherever you are! 

Happy Birthday, Tolkien!

On this day in 1892, a very talented boy was born to an English family in South Africa. Most of his childhood, though, was spent back in England, in a village called Sarehole.

Public domain. The baby is Tolkien!

Well - you probably know a bit about him already. In case you don’t, here is a link to the Wikipedia entry. Thinking about it, his life greatly affected how and what he wrote. He was a devout Catholic and that comes through in Lord Of The Rings, but he doesn’t hit his readers over the head with his religion. It took me a while to notice it!

His wartime experience in France is certainly the background for the Land of Mordor. He did lose two out of his three closest friends from school.

When I was at university I was about the only student who hadn’t read the book. And even so, it took me years to get around to it. Once I did, I was hooked. There was a girl in my Honours English class who wanted to write her thesis on it and most of the English staff wouldn’t supervise it because “It’s not literary enough.”

Clearly, they hadn’t read it! In the end, she got her supervisor - Professor Brown was a huge Tolkien fan, who had a manuscript hand written and bound as a Christmas gift for one of Tolkien’s friends, which he used to hand around reverently in his tutorials, back in the days when a tutorial group was five or six people.

I love the power of the writing, the characters and the story. It’s not written for children, but has some of the things I love best about children’s fiction. Story and characters you can care about are more important than mere “beautiful writing”, although the writing is beautiful too.

And then there is The Hobbit, which was written for children, and has a hero who develops from a man who has to be dragged kicking and screaming from his comfort zone into one who is brave and quick thinking and is willing to trust his life to adventure. The elderly Bilbo, in the sequel, rejoices at being “back on the road with Dwarves!” 

I have several copies of The Hobbit, including one illustrated by Michael Hague, one by Alan Lee, a couple illustrated by Tolkien himself and one annotated edition which, as wrk, as the annotations, features art work from around the world. I have my eye on a newer edition, which I bought for my great nephew, Eden. Oh, and there’s the special ebook I have, which has a number of goodies, including the option to hear Tolkien sing. As I hear the story, he got hold of one of those newfangled tape recorders and had a bit of fun recording some of his songs and poems. So these were worked into the enhanced ebook. (I also have some CDs of the Tolkien Ensemble performing the songs to their own music, one of which has Christopher Lee singing Treebeard.)

Something I learned a while back is that the meeting of the Ents, that race of walking trees, is cheekily meant to represent a faculty meeting, and Treebeard is meant to be Tolkien’s best friend, C.S Lewis, who did have a deep, booming voice like Treebeard’s.

Anyway, happy birthday, Professor! I am off to bed to reread some of your greatest book!

Harry Potter And The Cursed Child - Tickets Bought!

I did it, only yesterday- I bought my tickets for Part 1 and 2 of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child! It’s something I’ve been promising myself I’d do since we had word that the show was coming to Melbourne. Finally, I started my new year yesterday by sitting down at my computer and whipping out my Visa card. Not only that but, considering how expensive the tickets were, I took out insurance - only an extra $3.00.

I was very surprised to find that there were tickets available for this very month as is! It probably helps that I’m only wanting one ticket, but... very nice!

As a Potterhead, I think this will be very special!

An interesting cast. Harry is being portrayed by Gareth Reeves, a Kiwi actor who has an acting bio as long as your arm. Paula Arundell is Hermione. She, too, has a respectable list of films, TV and stage shows. I have heard of her, though I haven’t seen her in much. The two young men playing as Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy are a bit older than the characters from the novel. The younger of them, William McKenna, playing Scorpius, is still at high school and this is his debut. What a production to start your career!

The show will be on at the Princess Theatre, one of Melbourne’s landmarks, located across the road from Parliament House. It’s been around since 1854! I used to go there to see the Australian Opera before it moved to the Arts Centre. I haven’t been in a while. The theatre has its very own ghost, though I’ve never seen him. He must be stressing out at all the shows he’s had to sit through since he died!

Just a suggestion to anyone considering going: it’s really for the fans. If you haven’t read the books or at least seen the films, it will not mean much. These are characters we fans have come to know and love - or hate. They have developed. There are twists to events and characters from the original stories. We even find out more about one minor character from the books, but it won’t mean anything if you haven’t met her.

I know what the play is about, having bought a copy in ebook the day it came out. It was a rehearsal script, so may have changed, but probably not all that much. So, should I reread it before I go? Or should I let myself be at least partly surprised? What do you think?

The Joy Of Talking Books

My first experience with books that talked was when I was the teacher librarian at a disadvantaged western suburbs school in Melbourne many years ago. Not the one where I’ve spent the last twenty years, but my first. We had a Talking Books program, run by a feisty lady called Alva who has passed away in recent years, may she rest in peace. They were offered to students who would sit with headphones on and read books while listening to them being read. It was not intended as a slack off - teachers who sent their students to the library to do this were expected to supply Alva with work for the kids to do while they listened, which gave meaning to the task, plus ensuring that they didn’t just slip in a music tape and pretend to read! Alva knew all the students and their habits. They got away with nothing on her watch!

Thing is, we didn’t have professional recordings. Those cost money we didn’t have, but also, Alva believed - correctly - that the kids would get more out of hearing familiar voices, the voices of their teachers - which also meant that a teacher who had a specific book she wanted recorded and offered to her students could do it herself.

I recorded several and had a lot of fun doing it. After our school was closed down, the entire collection went to another local school, which would have thrown them out long ago. You’ll notice I said “tapes”!

There were some very good recordings, though, amateur or not. No Stephen Fry or Richard Armitage, but the Vice Principal, a good friend of Alva’s, was amazing. His strong Australian accent suited some of the classic humorous stories of Australian literature - and Ron was very funny!

On to the present day, and audiobooks, as they are now called, are a big thing. Famous actors do them. People listen to them in their cars and while they are jogging and while they do housework. Some people listen to them instead of reading the book. That’s absolutely fine except that when they review them on blogs, the review is often only for the book and not for the performance.

What’s the point of having a Stephen Fry or a Kate Beckinsale reading to you if you’re only appreciating the story and not the art of the narrator? If they don’t read it as they should, you will miss a lot about the story.

I once read an interview with Jim Dale, who read the American audiobooks for the Harry Potter series. In the one he had just done, he had created 143 different voices for the dialogue! And some jogger listening to this amazing work of art will just talk about J.K Rowling. Sad!

So I almost never buy an audiobook I haven’t read before. I enjoy it as a performance of a book I have read and loved. I delight in Stephen Fry’s interpretations of the various Harry Potter books. I feel that Stephanie Daniels does a very good Phryne Fisher, but can’t manage broad Australian accents. I enjoy Clive Mantle reading Geoffrey Trease’s Cue For Treason admittedly because hey, he was Little John in Robin Of Sherwood, but also because of his wit and the twinkle I can imagine in his eyes as he reads. Geoffrey McSkimming reads his own books in the Cairo Jim and Jocelyn Osgood series, and does them hilariously. Not all authors can do their own. Neil Gaiman is another author who can. I salute them both.

I am hoping, at some stage, to download Lord Of The Rings read by Rob Inglis. I have his audiobook of The Hobbit, on cassette, and it’s brilliant. He has done The Hobbit as a one man show.

So, if you prefer to listen to an audiobook rather than read it physically, don’t forget to appreciate the actor who brings it to life for you.

Do you enjoy audiobooks? Any favourites? 

Book Blogger Hop: Did You Get Any Books For Christmas?

This week’s theme asks what books you got for Christmas. Last Christmas the answer was Hidden  Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, about the African American women “computers”of NASA in the 1940s/50s. A wonderful book, but I had it in ebook already. Still, I took it to the beach on Christmas Day. This year I got something even better: a $70 gift voucher for Dymock’s Bookstore. It’s a big  bookshop that feels like a small one, because I know the staff at the “special orders” counter and the children’s section and they know me and greet me by name.

So, a bit before Christmas, I went to spend some of my voucher in hopes that I might find Black Tudors, a book I have wanted for some time but which the shop didn’t have last time I looked. This time it was right there on the history shelves and that was my chosen book for Christmas Eve reading, in honour of Yule Book Flood. I told my mother what I was planning and she shrugged. “What’s so special? You read every day!” True - but I read over meals and on public transport and at bed time. This time I allocated a whole evening to my new book, with music - Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band’s album “Carols And Capers” which has a Christmas theme, ranging from the Boar’s Head Carol to 19th century American songs. Lovely and soothing to hear as I read about Africans in Tudor England, starting with one of Henry VIII’s trumpeters, John Blanke, who was part of a very well paid group of musicians who had to do everything from fanfares for the King to tournament fanfares. Those could last all day, so the musicians were paid about ten times their usual fees(and to think our curr net government whines about double time for weekend retail work here!) I’m currently reading the second chapter, about divers employed to retrieve stuff from sunken ships such as the Mary Rose. Africans were used for this because most English couldn’t swim and Africans could. Not sure which countries they came from, but nice to know some people were teaching their kids to swim!

I’m also reading another book I bought that day. This one.

The subject matter is sad, but the book is very entertaining, written in a relaxed, chatty style. I’ve never heard of Stacy Schiff, but will certainly look around for more of her work. She doesn’t just tell you what happened or even, like the average historian, speculate as to whether this must have happened because someone said or did that. She does say that the records are confusing, mainly because the courtroom - actually the village’s meeting house/church - was so crowded and noisy it might have been hard to see or hear what was going on.

What I liked was how she goes right back before all this happened, what was the politics, who was orphaned by Indian raids, what were Puritan customs as opposed to others(one bit tells us about kids captured by the Indians who didn’t want to go home - apparently they let their  children have a bit of time off! How dreadful!). Elderly Rebecca Nurse, who appears in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, was very rare in not having lost any of her children, and that would have made her suspect.

The author even cheekily quotes from Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows! Who would have thought that this tragic bit of American history could be told in such a witty and amusing way?

Finally, here is a book I bought on Boxing Day but haven’t begun yet. Hey, Oliver Phommavanh, how could it not be good? And hilarious!

Books I Enjoyed This Year

Everyone seems to be doing a “best of 2018” so I thought I’d do a few - not all of them published this year, but books I’ve read this year and enjoyed.

In no special order, here are a few:

The Boy And The Spy by Felice Arena. A wartime adventure about a Sicilian boy who helps an American spy who falls from the sky near his little fishing village. Check out my review here.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, which has been turned into a film we haven’t yet seen in Australia. Here is my review. I thought it well worth all the hype it got. It features a strong heroine who stands up for justice when her friend is murdered by a police officer.

Perhaps not quite as dramatic but similar in flavour is Watch Us Rise by Renee Watson and Ellen Hagan, about a couple of girls, close friends, one white and one black - and fat - who work to make a difference at their school, which is supposed to be progressive in its philosophy but shuts up girls who don’t appreciate being treated as stereotypes. I won’t go into detail here, because it’s not out in Australia yet - I got an ARC at the YA Showcase recently - but it will be out in February.

Inheritance by Carole Wilkinson, which I’ve reviewed here. This is a time slip novel reminiscent of Kate Constable’s Crow Country, which has a very similar theme and which I’ve also reviewed.

Idylls Of The Queen by Phyllis Ann Karr. A reread, really, but I enjoyed it again, as I said in my retro review. It’s set in Thomas Malory’s Camelot, based on a very short story in Malory, expanded into a full length murder mystery, in which Sir Kay, the king’s foster brother and seneschal, plays the detective. I thought it would be out of print, but I believe you can still get it on Amazon.

Swallow’s Dance  by Wendy Orr. A wonderful children’s book set in the Minoan era. Wendy’s previous Minoan novel was Dragonfly Song, about a young bull dancer. This one is centred around the Thera explosion. It has a strong heroine who does all she can to help her refugee family when they have escaped with not much more than the clothes they are standing up in. I think this might be my favourite book of the year. 

Well, that’s six books I have enjoyed this year, what are some of yours?  

Apollo 8 And Christmas Day

Fifty years ago today, three astronauts - Jim Lovell, Bill Anders and Frank Borman -  were orbiting the moon and reading the first few lines of Genesis to their worldwide audience. Here is a link to the NASA account, which also has a link to the message itself.

And here is a photo taken by Bill Anders, Earthrise, which has been all over the Internet and won awards. I got it from the NASA site.

Gorgeous, isn’t it? Bill Anders was taking the photos, among other things, because his original job, Lunar Module pilot, for which he had trained, was not happening. I don’t think the astronauts minded too much, because they were not originally going to the moon, even to orbit it. But they did, and they took film, both black and white and coloured. Most of them were in black and white, but Bill decided that this picture was too special to take in black and white and asked for a roll of coloured film.

The year was 1968 and dreadful things were happening, such as the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. The Vietnam War was happening. Not a nice year. But Frank Borman said that the most memorable of the many telegrams they got thanked them for saving 1968 - I guess people desperately needed a good news story among all the bad news.

You might be interested to know that Frank Borman was offered the place on Apollo 11 that went to Neil Armstrong, but turned it down as he had decided to retire. Jim Lovell, of course, was on Apollo 13. Bill Anders was a rookie on that flight, but decided not to take any more voyages.

In case you want to read more about this flight, there is a wonderful book by Jeffrey Kluger, who also  wrote Lost Moon, on which the film Apollo 13 was based. This link will take you to the Booktopia page, where you can buy it in Australia, but you should also be able to find it on the usual book web sites.

I read it as research for an article I was hoping to sell to a children’s market that had been an excellent source of publication for a long time, but they had changed suddenly - without telling me, though I had been writing for them for years - and I discovered that they were now doing themed issues and the email address was mostly automated, unless they wanted to ask you for a hold.

As it happens, they still have two of my articles on hold, as I write this, this one and an article about the Eugowra robbery, a topic in which the previous editor had expressed interest. I’d hoped that the anniversary would be a good chance of selling, but... We will have to wait. The theme for the issue is “Voyages” and that should suit, but with a pile of slush competing, who knows? Fingers crossed!

Look What I Bought!

Today I went to Dymock’s Bookshop in the city to spend some of my $70 gift voucher given to me by my friends Gaye and Robin. These days I prefer to buy non fiction for my print collection, usually history, which I can use for research, and keep my fiction in ebook. 

I kind of miss my shopping trips there as a teacher librarian, and even more so as I encountered one of the staff who knows me from those days as I browsed the children’s shelves for another day(I still have $25.00 left and I just might get one novel...). But I’ve kept up my tradition of rewarding myself for my book buying with afternoon tea at Ganache afterwards, so I’m here, enjoying a pot of tea and three delicious chocolates(walnut, Cointreau and Irish Cream), and drooling over my purchases before writing my final Yuletide cards for the year. They will come late, but my friends will know they aren’t forgotten. 

Now my problem is...which of these do I read on Christmas Eve, in honour of Jolabokaflod? I’ve been after Black Tudors for some time, but I’m also fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials, and have been since I was a teenager performing The Crucible at school. In later years, I was disappointed to find out some truths about the characters in the play, but this book has a cover quote from Hilary Mantel, saying, “Was it like The Crucible? No, it was worse...” 

So, which do I read on Monday night? Any suggestions? 

Puddle Hunters by Kirsty Murray and Karen Blair. Melbourne: Allen and Unwin, 2018

When the rain stops, it's time to go puddle hunting. Ruby and Banjo go up the street, through the park, over the bridge and down to the river flats where the puddles lie waiting... Splosh it, Ruby! Splosh it, Banjo!

Author Kirsty Murray, best known for her YA novels, shows in this charming picture book that she can also write for younger children. Picture books are harder in some ways than writing for older children. The theme needs to be kept simple, but engaging and you can only use a few words to tell your story.

The theme of this gentle story is simple. Children love splashing around in puddles. Two siblings, Ruby and her younger brother Banjo, put on their boots and go out with their mother and their dog, searching for puddles to splash in. It takes a while to find any, because the sun has come out and dried quite a lot of the puddles, but eventually the little family find some and the children splash happily - in fact, in the last puddle their mother joins them. It's a simple joy, followed by the joy of having a bath to clean off the mud.

The art is lovely watercolour by illustrator Karen Blair, with sharply drawn figures of humans and dog, with the background softly painted in large single strokes to suggest sky, grass  and trees.

A good book to snuggle up on the couch with, to read to your toddler, or for an early childhood teacher to read to a class.

Available in all good bookshops.

My New Audiobooks!

I’ve been listening to the free audiobooks I downloaded from iBooks ( thank you, Apple!). In the end, I chose four out of the six on offer - The Secret Garden, The Wizard Of Oz, Pride And Prejudice and The Time Machine. I’ve only listened to the official sample of Pride And Prejudice and am keeping it for last.

However, I’ve been tasting the delights of the others and having fun. The Secret Garden is being read by Karen Gillan, aka Amy Pond(Dr Who companion), complete with Scottish accent, though she does manage the upper crust English accent for little Mary, the heroine. She is doing a very good job of the voices so far. I read the book years ago and am enjoying just having it read to me.

The Wizard Of Oz is such a very American classic that it sounds completely appropriate to have it read by American actor Tituss Burgess, who does all the voices beautifully, with some variations on different US accents. I’m up to just after the companions have been joined by the Cowardly Lion.

The voice of Kelsey Grammar is so recognisable in The Time Machine! He tries for Transatlantic, but in the end, Wells’s Time Traveller is, well, an American. I can’t help thinking of him as Frasier, alas! (Maybe they got Dr Frasier Crane into the studio to read an audiobook...).  Still, I’m enjoying it.

I love audiobooks, but my general rule is only to buy ones I have read before, so I can enjoy an actor’s interpretation. One exception so far: Georgette Heyer’s Sylvester, read by Richard Armitage because, well, Richard Armitage. I would listen to his shopping list!

Do you enjoy audiobooks? Already-read or new?

An Awards Afternoon At My School

Yesterday I went to the awards afternoon at my old school. I was invited as part of the tradition by which retired staff get a speech made over them by the principal at the student awards day following their retirement. It has really been a year, but I was officially on long service leave till July of this year, so they left it till this year end, and I’m glad they did, because it gave me the excuse to go and find out how my former students were doing.

And oh, how proud they made me! One of my former students, Thuy, was dux of the school, with an ATAR of 96.85! She was one of my most enthusiastic library users(she read my novel Wolfborn in Year 7) and in my Year 8. She was an EAL student, but the quirks of the timetable also put her into my English class. When I did my first Hero’s Journey writing exercise, this young lady wrote nine thousand words! With a Vietnamese accent... She had to move to one of our other campuses the next year, but settled in okay. She is a quiet, shy little thing, but they made her do a speech, poor kid. She politely thanked her teachers and her family and then got off stage with relief!

Only about half a point behind her in ATAR(Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank) was Simon, another of my students. He was in my Year 8 history class. When he was doing his assignment on the Vikings, he wrote his heading, “Viking Daily Life”, in runes! I also got the kids doing iMovies for their Middle Ages assignment and he and his friend did a very impressive one. I think I still have the file somewhere. Simon was good at everything, but maths and science were his best, and he got high scores in both physics and maths in his external exams.

The third student who made me extremely proud yesterday was his friend Loc. Loc got a top score in Further Maths. He was also in my Year 8 history class. I met him on the way to the hall. We had a chat, when he thanked me for his Western Chances scholarship - I got one for him and Simon - which he said had been very helpful. I told him he was most welcome, but that he had deserved it. He said he wanted to do audiology at Latrobe University; with his score of 92.15 I rather think he will get there. His dream, in Year 8, was forensics. He might yet use his audiology for that, since forensic scientists specialise in an area.

Simon already got a scholarship to Melbourne University, the careers teacher told me. Maybe he will do Engineering as he dreamed of doing in Year 8. My Western Chances scholarship boy can do anything he wants now! And  I am so proud I could burst!

I saw and chatted with colleagues, but what made me happiest was the number of students who came up to me or waved me over to chat and tell me they missed me. One of the young men who was in my literacy class last year gave me a hug.

So glad I went! 

Free Audiobooks Found on Flipboard!

I subscribe to Flipboard, which sends you a daily collection of links to news items based on your interests. Mine happen to include books, so I get a lot of book-themed links, and this is the most recent.

What is it? Apple Books is offering six free audiobooks of classics, read by well known actors. It’s connected with iOS 12, which I have just downloaded to my iPad, I believe... Anyway, I have just downloaded H.G Wells’s The Time Machine, read by Kelsey Grammar of Frasier fame. I intend to get some of the others when I’m in the library, where I can use the free wifi.

Here they are:

Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice, read by Kate Beckinsale.(Her film debut was as Hero in Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing, with Emma Thompson as Beatrice)

L.Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz, read by Titus Burgess.(Broadway musical and TV comedy star)

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, read by Karen Gillan(yes, that Karen Gillan, the Doctor’s companion!)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, read by Aaron Mahnke(podcaster)

And a bit of Winnie The Pooh read by the Disney Book Group.

So, in case you have an iPad and love audiobooks of classics, here is your chance!

An Arvo In The Theatre With The Bard!

On Saturday afternoon, I finished my year in theatre with a wonderful performance of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I went with my sister to the Melbourne Theatre Company’s Sumner Theatre, which I have to say I don’t like much, as the seats are cramped with only a few inches between you and the person in front. However, I soon forgot when the play started. 

My sister admitted to being unfamiliar with this play, much to my surprise. It meant I couldn’t talk about the ending, for fear of spoilers. So we just sat down and enjoyed. 

I have seen this play several times, including a Botanical Gardens production, plus the 1996 film with Toby Stephens as Orsino, Nigel Hawthorne(Yes, Minister) as Malvolio and several other big names. 

So far, as a stage show, this is my favourite. The thing about Shakespeare’s comedies is that they always have several things going on, to confuse you, and then everything comes together in the last scene or two. A Midsummer Night’s Dream has two sets of young lovers, a royal wedding, a quarreling married couple(fairies), a bunch of tradies getting together to perform a very silly play for the royal wedding and finding themselves getting mixed up with the quarreling fairy couple... The Comedy Of Errors takes you all over Ephesus with two sets of twins being confused for each other, a missing mother, a father looking for his sons and being arrested... As You Like It has a lot of storylines and characters and a girl disguised as a boy, who would have been played by a boy who was playing as a girl disguised as a boy...

There is a set of twins in this play and a girl, one of the twins, disguised as a boy. I think the author forgets very quickly that Viola has decided to present herself at Orsino’s court as a eunuch! Anyway, there is a lot of running around for Viola, who has to woo Olivia for Orsino while being in love with him herself and finding herself having to escape Olivia, who has fallen in love with “Cesario”, her boy identity! 

This production started with the funeral of Olivia’s brother, using that song from Cymbeline, the one with “golden lads and girls all must/As chimney sweepers come to dust.” It goes immediately to the shipwrecked Viola, mourning for her brother, then the scene with Orsino’s, “If music be the food of love, play on” speech.

I have to say, these actors were multi-talented. They could sing, they could play musical instruments. The role of Feste, the jester, was played by Colin Hay of the rock band Men At Work. Feste has to do a lot of songs - the play is the closest Shakespeare gets to musical comedy. But all of them had to sing at some stage, and some of the lesser roles were filled by musicians, who popped up from under the stage every other scene with a piano, guitars, tambourine, penny whistle(the show ended with a mass performance of “Hey, Ho, The Wind And The Rain”, in which even Malvolio(Russell Dykstra)got to join in, playing the kazoo!)

I hadn’t realised how hilarious Olivia could be till I saw Christie Whelan Brown playing the role, but the other women, Esther Hannaford(Viola) and Tamsin Carroll(Maria) were also very funny. And Lachlan Woods also had a lot of fun with the pompous, pretentious Orsino. 

Even the originally minor character, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, was played by Frank Woodley, of the comedy team Lano and Woodley, and the director gave him plenty of hysterical business to perform. 

Malvolio and Sir Toby Belch are plum roles for veterans and I was very pleased to see that old hand Richard Piper playing Sir Toby.

 Sir Toby is basically the embarrassing old uncle who gets drunk at the family barbecue and gropes the female guests, and who is - let’s face it - a parasite, both on his niece and his friend Andrew, but he does have that wonderful line, “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” which is a great comeback to the wet blankets of this world. 

And Richard Piper played it very well indeed! 

Anyway, a wonderful afternoon in the theatre, and if you live in Melbourne it’s on till about January 9. If you  don’t, and haven’t read or seen the play, please do! 

YA Showcase 2018 At The State Library!

I haven’t been to this annual event in a few years and the last time I went there was no goody bag on offer, just someone’s non fiction book with a camel on the cover, help yourself.

This time, there were several publishers or publishers’ reps, each of whom had five minutes, speed date style, to tell us about some of the books coming out next year, including my lovely publisher Paul Collins of Ford Street, who had come with his partner Meredith Costain, who must have just returned from her trip to an Indian writers’festival, and one of their new authors, whose debut novel, a futuristic thriller, will be out next year. There were also two panels of authors talking about their books.

There certainly seemed to be some fascinating titles coming out and, on examining my goody bag, I found three books, two of them ARCs/proof copies of books mentioned. I’ve started reading the American one, Watch Us Rise, by Renee Watson and Ellen Hagan, which seems to be powerful stuff and has a rave from Laurie Halse Anderson on the cover.

Another book I got was an Australian one with the theme of animal treatment, Sky. The third was a sample of books from that particular publisher - not really interested; short stories would have been fine, but I don’t like samples.

We were invited to go on social media with the hashtag #YAShowcase. There were several people discussing it there, including two authors who couldn’t make it, but were watching the event live streamed on the Insideadog web site; they both followed me on Twitter when I said I was glad to see there were some rom coms in the offerings. To be honest, I have been missing Lili Wilkinson’s over the top rom coms, as have my students, as she has gone all serious rccently and is unlikely ever to go back. So it’s nice to hear there are some new rom com YA authors.

I only saw one person I knew, but he was sitting right behind me, so we chatted before and after the show.

People were taking notes around me and I did start, but finally gave up and took photos of the slides, which reminded me of the details. The only trouble was that someone on stage was taking photos of the audience, which included me taking a photo with my iPad, and ended up on Twitter!

Anyway, I had a good time and came home with more books to read, which is all that matters!

Year 4 And A Book Launch!

Today was the day we launched the book of stories and poems by the group of wonderful Year 4 students I’ve been working with over the last several weeks, as a Writer In Residence.

The original plan was for us to go to the local library to present a copy of the book, tomorrow. The librarian had even offered us a tour of the library, a story time and forms for joining the library. Unfortunately there was a clash in the school timetable. That happens in schools. I remember when we had to reorganise our State Library Persian Exhibition excursion because there was suddenly a sports day nobody had mentioned, and my colleague came on a day she normally didn’t work. 

But this was the second last week of the school term, no time to reorganise a library excursion, so 

I suggested we have a book launch at the school a day before and they could do the library excursion next term. That suited everyone. Jemma, the classroom teacher, organised a morning tea for the kids, on the suggestion of Angela, the Ardoch rep, who also arranged some money for the goodies. 

I launch the book! 

Angela brought the box of books. I hadn’t it yet, as a book, but it had turned out well. The children’s drawings were bright, vibrant, the whole thing joyous. I’d alternated stories with poems and ended the volume with the authors’ headshots. 

Kaye, the volunteer art teacher who had helped me, and I both made short speeches and handed the books to the excited children. And they were excited! It had finally hit them that the stories, poems and art they had been doing by hand were in print! Published! They were published authors! 

I asked the children to autograph their pieces and that gave them the idea of autographing each other’s copies. There was a happy babble around the room as they munched on the goodies, flipped through their books and signed each other’s copies. Some of them asked Kaye, Angela and me to sign. 

I think there will be some proud parents tonight.

Compulsory Pre-Christmas Post - Happy Jolabokaflod!

In case you haven’t heard of it, this year’s compulsory pre-Christmas post is on the theme of Jolabokaflod, “Yule book flood” the Icelandic tradition of giving books for Christmas. It’s one tradition that almost makes me wish Christmas was my holiday, though I don’t really need an excuse to read. Neither, apparently, do the Icelanders. According to this this article, 93% of Icelanders read at least one book a year. Do follow that link, by the way - the author mentions doing it herself, though not how it went over.

The event started with World War II restrictions on imported stuff, but paper was cheap, so...who knows a terrific thing made of paper? Also, the publishing industry isn’t likely to be huge in a fairly small country, so they release the new books in a binge later in the year - and every home in the country gets a catalogue of new releases in time to do their Christmas shopping!

The idea is this: you exchange books on Christmas Eve and then settle down to read for the evening. That alone would get me on side - imagine being able to curl up with your new book right away without having anyone complain about your rudeness for not being sociable... sigh! Only one of my family members would get this,one with whom I have had afternoon tea enjoying our new purchases. We all love reading, but everyone else is too polite to crack their new book open and start reading immediately.

I can well imagine that it would be a terrific way to spend a cold winter night, in a place that looks like this.

Aurora Borealis in Iceland. Public Domain

But on Christmas Eve here we have daylight saving and potentially a long evening to sit in the sun reading. I just might do that, on my balcony with a cool drink, if I can’t get down to the beach.

Happy Yule Book Flood, everyone!