Me And Sinbad

                                                              Public Domain

 I’ve recently been searching the markets for potential homes for my existing stories, as well as potential homes for stories I might write, eg themed anthologies. It’s not easy to find a home for the stories I have. There are a few, written over the last few years, which have not sold, for one reason or another. Two of them are novella length, one Arthurian, the other an urban fantasy murder mystery with werewolves. Hardly anyone is buying novellas, or if they are, not the kind I have written. 

So, when I found a themed anthology based on the Arabian Nights, I got very excited for about two minutes, because I have a story on that theme! In it, Aladdin is not a nice young man - well, he isn’t in the original fairy tale, in which he is presented as a lazy good for nothing who is not bothering to run his late father’s tailor shop, so needs a wish-granting djinn to survive. But in my story, he’s thoroughly nasty. The story is seen from the viewpoint of the Princess and the Djinn. 

Yes! A market at last, right? Um, no. Guess which was the only story on that theme they don’t want? I gather they have had too much Disneyfied Aladdin. 

So... I downloaded a copy of the 1001 Nights, though I do have one somewhere in paperback and read it years ago, to reread and get ideas. I am considering having a go at a Sinbad story. There is plenty of potential for a rousing fantasy adventure in this. 

You are no doubt familiar with it, the story of the guy who went on seven voyages and had various adventures. Ray Harryhausen did some Sinbad movies, one of which featured Tom Baker as a baddie, another of which had another Doctor, PatrickTroughton, as a nutty but likeable Greek scientist with a daughter. 

But the original Sinbad isn’t a swashbuckling adventurer, he’s not even a sailor as such. He’s a merchant, though one who gets bored sitting at home, so he likes adventure. 

In the 1001 Nights, Sinbad is telling his story over seven days, to a bunch of friends and a porter who wants to know why he has to work hard for a living while Sinbad is hugely rich. 

“Well, you know, I wasn’t always rich,” says Sinbad over dinner. And he tells his story. Most of the voyages start with Sinbad getting bored and putting together some goods to sell and sailing off in a ship which gets wrecked in a storm. He is always the sole survivor, even if a few others are with him at first. They generally get eaten. 

Somehow, whether he is threatened by a sort of Arabian Nights version of the Cyclops or the Old Man Of The Sea(unlike in Greek myth, he doesn’t shape shift, he sits on your back and won’t let go), he escapes and ends up coming home richer than before, usually due to finding gems of one kind or another. A couple of times he also gets his original goods back because the ship was okay after all. 

Interestingly, Sinbad’s voyages have a bit of the flavour of the story told by Odysseus to the Phaeacians in Homer’s Odyssey. 

So, do I give Sinbad an eighth voyage, perhaps? Even though he is noft a young man any more, and already protested when the Caliph asked him to be an ambassador? Should I slip in some Greek mythology? Am I even allowed to? I will have to ask. Meanwhile my brain is churning with possibilities, and I was playing with them in my mind in the local pool today. I do find I can “write” stuff in my head while swimming.

Wish me luck!   

World Fantasy Awards 2020

                   

                                                      The award. Fair use.

                                                   

 Today was the end of the World Fantasy Convention 2020, though not for me, as I’m still making my way through recordings of panels I missed over the weekend. There have been some terrific panels, which I will share with you as soon as I get them sorted out in some kind of order. Today, I watched one on science in fantasy. One of the panellists was the fabulous Joe Haldeman, author of the classic The Forever War and other amazing books. I’ll post again tomorrow. 

Meanwhile, here are the nominees and  winners of the World Fantasy Awards. Unlike the Hugos, these are judged rather than voted for. The head of the con committee, Ginny Smith, introduced the con guests, each of whom made a speech, then the winners were announced by famous editors Ellen Datlow, who edits anthologies, and Gordon Van Gelder, who has also edited books, but is best known for the many years he spent editing Fantasy And SF, a magazine I haven’t tried yet, as it’s huge. 

Most of the winners knew they had won and had prepared speeches, but one of them, Dr Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, hadn’t been told, for some reason, maybe they forgot. Anyway, her reaction was a delighted, “What, I won?” and somehow she managed to make a decent speech anyway. Her book was an academic tome about the role of race in a number of fantasy classics(see below). I tried to buy it when I went into the city today, but one shop said they didn’t stock it at all, and the other had it on their web site, but said it was print on demand, which is what they do these days when a book is basically out of print, but people still want it. I can only assume that, like many academic style books, they only printed a small number of copies. I said I was happy to order it, but the gent said he really wanted to contact the publisher and would get in touch with me when he heard. So I left my number. You can, it seems, get it direct from the (US) publisher, but if I can get it from a bookshop I would rather do that. 

You can check out any of the titles below(some were on the Hugo short list and I have them)via the links. The winners are in bold.

I was thrilled to see at least one Aussie winner, Kathleen Jennings, for art. She has an unfair amount of talent, dammit - she can illustrate and write! But it’s nice to see our land down under represented!

World Fantasy Awards 2020

2020 Lifetime Achievement Awards

Rowena Morrill
Karen Joy Fowler

Novel

• Queen of the Conquered, by Kacen Callender (Orbit)
• The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook Books/Orbit UK)
• The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
• Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
• The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa (trans.Stephen Snyder) (Pantheon/Harvill Secker)

Novella

• “The Butcher’s Table”, by Nathan Ballingrud (Wounds: Six Stories From the Border of Hell)
• Desdemona and the Deep, by C.S.E. Cooney (Tor.com)
• In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com)
• The Deep, by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes (Saga Press/Hodder & Stoughton UK)
• Silver in the Wood, by Emily Tesh (Tor.com)

Short Fiction

• “For He Can Creep”, by Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com, July 10, 2019)
• “Read After Burning”, by Maria Dahvana Headley, (A People’s Future of the United States)
• “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, July-Aug. 2019)
• “Blood is Another Word For Hunger”, by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, July 24, 2019)
• “Postlude to the Afternoon of a Faun”, by Jerome Stueart (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Mar./Apr. 2019)
• “Everyone Knows That They‘re Dead. Do You?”, by Genevieve Valentine (The Outcast Hours)

Anthology

• Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, edited by Ellen Datlow (Saga Press)
• The Outcast Hours, edited by Mahvesh Murad & Jared Shurin (Solaris)
• The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe (Saga Press)
• New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, edited by Nisi Shawl (Solaris)
• The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (Vintage Books)

Collection

• Homesick: Stories, by Nino Cipri (Dzanc Books)
• Song For the Unraveling of the World: Stories, by Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press)
• Unforeseen, by Molly Gloss (Saga Press)
• A Lush and Seething Hell: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror, by John Hornor Jacobs (Harper Voyager)
• Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea: Stories by Sarah Pinsker (Small Beer Press)

Artist

• Tommy Arnold
• Galen Dara
• Julie Dillon
• Wendy Froud
• Kathleen Jennings

Special Award – Professional

• C. C. Finlay, for F&SF editing
• Leslie Klinger, for The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham (Liveright)
• Ellen Oh, for We Need Diverse Books
• Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, for The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games (New York University Press)
• Sheree Renée Thomas, for contributions to the genre

Special Award – Non-Professional

• Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Laura E. Goodin and Esko Suoranta, for Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research
• Michael Kelly, for Undertow Publications and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction
• Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe, for the Coode Street Podcast
• Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, for Uncanny Magazine
• Terri Windling, for Myth & Moor

Judges: Gwenda Bond, Galen Dara, Michael Kelly, Victor LaValle, Adam Roberts

World Fantasy Convention 2020 - Day 1!

At the start of this year, I was hoping to attend one science fiction convention, ConZealand, this year’s Worldcon. Due to COVID 19 the face to face con couldn’t happen, but as you will know from earlier posts here, the committee rejigged the whole thing and went virtual - and others have done the same. As a result, I have been able to enjoy conventions I would never be able to travel to. I was able to do NASFIC for free, a generous offer by the con committee. 

And today I began my third convention for the year, the World Fantasy Convention, something I have only ever heard of, never attended. 

Due to the difference in time zones(we are 17 hours ahead of Salt Lake City in Utah), it was still Wednesday over there when they held their pre-con workshops, so not really Day 1, but for me it was Day 1, and much enjoyed.

The first webinar, which I saw at 6.00 am my time, was World Building, by David Farland(the pen name of David Wolverton) a man who has done a huge amount of it in his writing life, which has included writing Star Wars novels and bestselling novels in his own worlds, teaching creative writing at university, judging, film production and editing. I confess I’d never heard of him, but he was very interesting and entertaining to hear, and I felt I was learning a lot. Even for his Star Wars novel The Courtship Of Princess Leia he created a planet of his own.

World building, he told us, can be as big as a planet or as small as a room, and should show only the tip of the iceberg. He spoke of the worlds of Dune and Middle-Earth, and pointed out that yes, Tolkien wrote classics, but spent so many years creating his world that he didn’t have time to write much else besides the two novels for which he is famous. I do see his point, though I remember Frank Herbert, whom I met at a session at Space Age Bookshop in Melbourne, saying that he had not written a single world of his classic novel Dune till he had the universe completely worked out. And it’s the only book I have ever compared in my mind to Lord Of The Rings, due to the amazing world building, though I prefer the Tolkien book because I loved the characters, while I didn’t particularly like the characters in Dune. 

But as a pantser, not a plotter, I feel there is much to be said for doing your research, yes, then just getting on with the story bubbling in your mind. I would certainly never get anything written if I did all the work Herbert did before writing my book! 

He went on to talk about all the details you really need to consider when creating your world, whether it’s a planet or a generation spaceship. Even a fantasy world needs to make sense physically. He did say a planet with multiple moons was okay, as long as you had them far enough from each other in orbit not to break each other up. Nice to know, as my world in Wolfborn had three moons, and I hoped it was correctly worked out. 

He had got as far as animals and plants when he was given his ten minute warning. This was a two hour session, but not finished. I would have loved to hear more, or at least see the rest of the slides, which looked intriguing! 

I had time to get up and do a few necessary things while listening to the second session, by David Butler, on query letters, whether for publishers or agents. That was also entertaining and useful. David, another very successful writer, gave sound advice about what to put in and what absolutely not to put in, and why. He said that when you send a query, it should, if possible, contain three paragraphs, 1. This story sounds good. 2. Ooh, this story sounds really good and 3. Business. He got us, as an exercise, to do 1 and 3. Number 1 was basically the sort of thing English teachers tell you to do - the character wants something badly, has a problem achieving it, so sets off on the quest because if they fail there will be consequences. I used this template to write a three sentence blurb for Wolfborn, and he liked it. 

He said this blurb was an exercise his wife’s agent makes her do every time. Number 3 was Business, where you tell them how long the story is, whether it is stand alone or is part of a series, or has potential for a series and paste in the first ten pages, and ask if they want to see the rest. You do not tell them you once had drinks with them at a bar or mention the name of someone famous they represent(why should they invest time in your first novel when they have that big name as a client? Especially if you have written the same type of fiction Famous Author writes!). It’s all common sense.

He said you should keep sending inquiries to agents who don’t answer until they say no. He also mentioned Publishers Marketplace - expensive if you keep subscribing, but you can invest the price of a book in a month’s subscription and use it to find a list of agents to query. They are all professionals, and none of them is running a scam - they are vetted before being included. 

He sent us three templates he uses - of course, I included my email address in the list when he offered.

My final session was a 50 minute panel on the subject of horses. It was three horse-expert ladies, led by Joyce Reynolds-Ward. It was very useful, like the others, and my friend, Gillian Polack, who was in the audience, gave some links to historical coach timetables, much like bus timetables, which gave some idea of how long it would take to get between various places in England.

If you write fantasy fiction you have to use horses sooner or later, let’s face it! And they are all too often treated as furry machines. They need a lot of food and drink. They have to graze to get fibre - oats are not enough. There was talk about how, no, horses are not like dogs, though some authors make them that way, because dogs are predator animals, while horses are prey animals. 

This panel went for 50 minutes. Again, I enjoyed and felt I had learned something new.

Tomorrow morning I’ve set the alarm for even earlier than today, 5.00 am, for a session on Collecting First Editions. It is being presented by Ken Sanders, who is on Antiques Roadshow, and knows a lot about rare books. 

At 8.00 am our time the Virtual Book Bag will  be open and I will have access to a huge number of free ebooks! 

Oh, and I have already bought my first book for this con, a horse-themed story by Joyce Reynolds-Ward.

With all those freebies, surely I won’t be buying more?  

An Interview With Will Kostakis

Aussie writer Will Kostakis is the author of several YA novels and some short fiction. His first novel, Loathing Lola, was published when he was in his teens. I was lucky enough to hear him speak at the Centre for Youth Literature at Melbourne’s State Library when only his first book had been published. Since then, every book has been different from the one before, and it has always been a pleasure to discover something new with each. 

The Sidekicks was published in 2016 and is about three schoolboys mourning the death of a mutual friend. I reviewed it here.

The First Third, which was very popular at my school, is about a Greek boy carrying out his grandmother’s bucket list wishes, to get his family together again. Here is what I had to say about it.

I bought his fantasy novel Monuments at the Melbourne Writers Festival last year, and reviewed it here. We didn’t have to wait too long for the sequel, Rebel Gods, which came out in August this year. I thoroughly enjoyed both books. 

 I don’t want to go into too much detail about Monuments here, in case you haven’t read it and want to, because spoilers, but my review will give you enough information to go on with. 

Today, Will has been kind enough to answer some questions about the duology. Here they are! 

GR: Let’s start with a basic question: how did you get the idea for this duology?

As a kid, my mind would wander. I would press my head against the window of Sydney trains and imagine a sprawling fantasy epic playing out across its rooftops. It was never anything particularly well-formed, and then as I started to tour schools and hear the different rumours about each campus, I realised there was a fantasy idea there: kids raiding the secret dungeons under high schools.

GR: Although all your books are different from each other, they have all, so far, been contemporary fiction. What made you decide to have a go at fantasy? 

I had that idea, but I was fearful of giving it a crack. It helped that after the one-two punch of The First Third and The Sidekicks I was worn out. I needed to write something that would make my teenage heart sing. So I returned to that fantasy epic I was dreaming up… What if gods were real and they had been hidden beneath Sydney’s schools, only to be discovered by teenagers.

GR: Many YA fantasy novels either kill off the parents early on, or send them off somewhere far away so that the hero/heroine can get on with their adventures. What made you decide to allow two of your three main characters to have families - and give the parents personalities of their own?

At first, I thought Monuments (at least, the first book), would be almost parent-less. The gods would be the only family I explored. I quickly realised that it felt hollow. My family has played such an important part of my life, writing an absent parent story felt unpleasant to me. So I beefed up Connor’s mother’s role, and it was like the novel came alive. One of my goals with Rebel Gods was to flesh Locky out, he was no longer the “love interest” we’ve known for three days. I felt it was important to see how his family informed his worldview, in the same way that Connor’s informed his. It was also important that Sally, who tragically lost both her parents, was given a story that trended towards hope and healing, and becoming a sister to Connor and looking to his mum as a mother figure was a part of that. Long story short, I set out to write a story that wasn’t family-focused, realised families are a big part of what make my books my books, and then wrote two family-focused books with gods in them. 

 GR: You have three very different protagonists in these two books. They have to learn to work together quickly, very soon after they meet, yet have different ways of seeing the world. Tell us about Sally, Locky and Connor - and did you plan them out as characters who would be able to work together to save the world? 

I always pictured our three heroes would work together to save the world – and have a few arguments in the process, so they needed to be distinct. They are each quite driven characters, but driven by different things: Connor by family, Locky by politics and Sally by grief. Who they are as characters sprouted from there.

GR Is any of the incident where Locky plants that rainbow lawn and annoys the Red Fern pastor inspired by real world incidents you know of? Obviously not the magic, but a late-night guerrilla action of some sort. 

It isn’t inspired by one particular incident … More a shout-out to moments of rebellion.

GR: Sydney is almost a character in these two books. How much is real and how much imagined? For example, how many of those places where the Monuments are hidden are based on real places?

The hiding places are inspired by different schools I’ve visited, some merged together, others poorly disguised. But overall, I tried to capture Sydney in its ordinary 2020 splendour, so that there was something for the fantasy elements to pop off.

GR:: Are you considering having another go at writing fantasy? If so, tell us about it. 

I would love to return to fantasy some day, but I’ve scratched that itch for the moment. I have a few ideas percolating, but I’m desperate to return to contemporary. The world has changed so much since I wrote The Sidekicks (released early 2016) that I really want to dive into realism again. 

GR: Are you basically a plotter or a pantser? Or something in between? You would, of course, have had to plan out Monuments and Rebel Gods to make them work, but are you the sort of writer who prepares elaborate detailed plots or just rough outlines? 

I plotted the duology extensively, then Monuments changed so radically in editing that my plan for Rebel Gods had to be tossed out. I’ve found what works for me is: settle of 10 essential scenes and an ending, and thread the needle between them. 

GR: What are you working on now? 

I just completed The Greatest Hit, a novella partly set during the Melbourne lockdown, which is out October 27 that I am incredibly excited for people to read. There are a few projects I’m tinkering away on, but mostly, I’m focusing on getting some rest. It’s been a taxing year, professionally and obviously personally (points to everything 2020), so I want to pace myself a little. But you won’t have to wait long for a new book, promise.

Thank you so much, Will, for your great interview. That is especially amazing about your having done such a major re-vamp of your first book and your plans for the second! 

If you’d like to to get these, or any of Will’s other books, they are available in ebook format either in Apple Books( ePub) or Kindle, but the paperbacks are also available at any good online store, except, for the moment, Book Depository, which is out of stock with Rebel Gods, but does have everything else.  

Just Finished Reading...Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. New York: HarperCollins, 2016

     I confess I bought this book because the trailers for the TV series looked interesting - and scary! I still haven’t seen the show, as I don’t have the pay TV service that would let me watch it, but I can wait.

     Meanwhile, I have just finished the book, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I have to say, it’s not particularly scary. It’s good fun. Yes, there are a few monsters from the Dawnatime, as you’d expect from anything with the name Lovecraft in the title, but they are nowhere near as frightening as the racist humans encountered by the main characters. 

     This is not so much a novel as a series of linked stories, each seen from the viewpoint of a different character introduced early in the book, in the first, title story. 

     The year is 1954. Young African American Korean War veteran Atticus Turner is returning to Chicago, his home town, after an unpleasant time spent in Florida, which is part of Jim Crow country. He has a frightening encounter on the way - oh, and also meets some Lovecraft type monsters.

     Atticus is a science fiction/fantasy fan, as is his uncle George, so they both know a Lovecraft creature when they see one. Atticus, George and Letitia, a childhood friend of Atticus, go in search of Montrose, Atticus’s father, who has been kidnapped, and find an over-the-top lodge of sorcerers, the Order of the Ancient Dawn, who want Atticus, not Montrose...

     Each main character who appears or is mentioned in this story gets a viewpoint story of their own. They are good, strong characters, who deal with the issues thrown at them, and in the end, it’s not the ghosties and ghoulies who are the problem, but humans. 

     There is a sort-of-villain who isn’t all that villainous, really, or not towards the black characters, anyway. He does pressure them to do things for him that he can’t do, but compensates them well. However, they find him more annoying than scary. 

     I won’t say more, because of spoilers, but it’s well worth a read, unless you are a devoted horror fan, in which case you might find it not scary enough. I don’t think it’s intended to be too terrifying.

     You should be able to buy it in the usual on-line bookshops; I bought mine on Apple Books, which also has audiobook, but if you want a print edition, or Kindle, that will be easily available too.   

 

And The Last Trump Shall Sound: A Future History Of America, Caezik, 2020

    

 This is three linked novellas by that master of alternative universe, Harry Turtledove, author James Morrow and former SFWA president Cat Rambo, who wrote a guest post here on the release of her novel Hearts Of Rabat.

     The premise: in the near future, Trump is dead, from a second wave of COVID 19, and Mike Pence is President. A number of West Coast states have seceded and formed a new country, Pacifica. 

     The first story, “The Breaking Of Nations” by Harry Turtledove, is seen from the viewpoint of Nicole Yoshida, former Governor of California, now leading the group of states seceding from the US, where things have become very bad. It’s the set-up story, so has the heavy lifting to do in this book. But as it is the set-up story, you have to assume that the secession will work out, as it does. 

     James Morrow’s “The Purloined Republic” is a quirky, humorous tale set a couple of years after Pacifica begins. In it, Polly Nightingale, a former porn star, now running an experimental theatre in Los Angeles, is commissioned to carry out a job that might make a huge difference and persuade more states to leave the US.  She is offered enough money to keep her theatre going. 

     The job? To impersonate the President’s spiritual adviser, Walker Lambert, who has been captured and is imprisoned in Pacifica. She resembles him enough that some Hollywood make up and prosthetics will help her pretend to be a man. The plan is to make Pence look crazy enough to sow doubt about him. 

     The story is hilariously over the top, and is my favourite in the book.

     Finally Cat Rambo contributes “Because It Is Bitter”, a story seen from the viewpoint of GoogleSoft tech Ernst, who has been sneaking in his own research during work time, to complete his late grandmother’s project, involving an empathy serum. When all his files and notes are stolen in a break-in at his office, he must follow the woman he believes has stolen them over the border from Pacifica to the US. There, only six years after the split, the situation has become very bad indeed. Pacifica has its problems, but the US is far worse. 

     And Ernst discovers why he was really lured over the border, and it isn’t pretty...

     I enjoyed the book, though it was scary because so many elements were so very believable. The technology in Cat Rambo’s story was more developed than I would have thought possible in the fifteen-odd years between now and the time of this story, but who knows? After all, only a few years ago Skype was a lot more fiddly to access than it is now, and the Internet as we know it has not been around that long. So, why not? 

     I bought my copy on Apple Books, but it should be easily available on the usual web sites, including Amazon and the Book Depository.

On Researching Selkies

 I’ve been researching selkies for a story - you know, the seals which take off their skins and become human? And then put them back on and turn back into seals? They are a northern thing, mostly Orkney, but also Scandinavian - well, there were Viking settlers up there. It really irritated me some years ago to read a YA novel, Tempest Rising, in which there was a HAWAIIAN selkie! They couldn’t find a genuine Hawaiian sea creature?

   The best selkie story I’ve read was Margo Lanagan’s gorgeous novel Sea Hearts(Known outside Australia as The Brides Of Rollrock Island). I reviewed it here.

Anyway, I had recently written a story - still out on submission, so I won’t tell you about it yet - with a selkie girl in it, and that gave me an idea for another story, of which I’ve written the first 700 words today. 

But it does need more research. I started writing because if I didn’t the story would never get written. I can always rewrite. I usually end up doing around four drafts anyway. Just so you know. Being a pantser doesn’t necessarily mean you are sloppy! It just means you don’t do an elaborate plan first. 

So, I started with a basic Wikipedia search. Amazing what you can find in Wikipedia, including a bibliography and footnotes, which usually give you somewhere else to go. There were other web sites I checked out as well, but that one is a good place to start. I discovered that there is a book by Duncan Williamson, The Land  Of  The Seal People. It was available in Apple Books, and turned out to be one of those books of Scottish/Celtic folk tales, told to the author as a child or a teen by wise old men... Mind you, one of those stories which he said was told to him by a “traveller”(Roma?) was out of the Arabian Nights! Told with a Scottish accent, but definitely one of Scheherezade’s 1001 Nights! Maybe the elderly Roma just knew it and told it to the young boy without knowing he would assume it was a local folktale? 

The book is not all about selkies, though the selkie tales are interesting in that the seal people in it have long sealskin coats, which they seem to wear casually every day, while living as ordinary villagers, instead of taking them off to dance naked in the moonlight. In one story, a selkie gives his coat to a young man who really needs it, saying it’s okay, he has another one. There are none of the sad stories about seal brides who can’t return to the sea because some loser who can’t otherwise get a girl steals their sealskins...

Another resource was a film I read about during my research, and yesterday I discovered it on Prime Video, so I settled down and watched it. It’s an Australian film, called simply Selkie, and was made in the 1990s. It was something like the films made by the Australian Children’s Television Foundation. 

It was a rather sweet story about a teenage boy, with Scottish ancestors, discovering quite by accident that he is a selkie. In this film, you can live your whole life as a human without ever knowing what you are, although at the start of the film he is shown looking at his webbed hands, and sitting in the bath having visions he doesn’t understand, but he doesn’t change till he dives into the water to rescue a girl who has fallen off the pier and hit her head. And suddenly he is a seal - no need for a skin, he doesn’t even have to take his clothes off. There is, however, another selkie on the island, an old woman who is desperate to return to the sea, but needs an ancestral sealskin in a shipwreck off the coast to get what she wants...

It didn’t get very good ratings from the film critics, but I liked it very much. I guess I recognised it as basically a children’s film, and they didn’t. 

I see there are some more films around, at least one of them on Prime, so I’ll watch them, for lack of documentaries on the subject! I might be able to find some documentaries on the history of Scotland in general. 

Wish me well in finishing my story and getting it right!