Spam comments

They're smart, these spammers. Sometimes I get gibberish in the "moderate comments" section, but today I seem to have had a comment that looked legitimate, even if it was above a link which I assumed was the person's blog. When clicked, it took me to a web site advertising essays that they would do for you in a particular subject. You pay, they write your assignments for you. And if this had been published and left there, there would have been a link from my site to theirs.

I thought I had the spam comments sorted, but it seems not. I deleted the comment and my reply and I won't do the spammer the honour of mentioning what the web site was.

One of my students, who has set up a blog for English and has kept it up must have some sort of malicious software invading his site, because every time I visit it, it redirects to an advertising site.

I will have to tell the poor kid about it and see if there's some way he can log in and do something in the settings to fix it.

And I was so proud of the work he had done.

STEPHENIE MEYER: The Unauthorized Biography of the Creator of the Twilight Saga by Marc Shapiro. London: Macmillan Children’s Books, 2010.

In 2006, a new phenomenon began: the Twilight phenomenon. A previously minor sub-genre of the vampire novel, the vampire romance, suddenly became big among teenage girls. Harry Potter was coming to an end – the final volume was published in 2007, only a few months later – and there was room for something new.

The author, a Mormon housewife and mother of three, was suddenly being compared to J.K. Rowling. Well, they’re both women who wrote something that appealed to millions of young people and their parents, although I doubt if Twilight will ever be winning any prizes for children’s literature as Harry Potter did, and if there were separate covers for adult and teen editions, I haven’t seen them yet. I suppose they have that in common.

But many folk have her to thank for the fact that they are now able to sell books in the YA fantasy genre, as long as there are vampires or werewolves in them – hey, I’m one of them! Thank you, Stephenie Meyer, from the grateful author of a YA werewolf novel!

I confess that when this book first arrived for me to review, I hadn’t read any of the Twilight novels, mainly because they’re always out. However, I felt that I shouldn’t be reviewing a book to which I had no background, and as a teacher-librarian, I really ought to be reading what the kids were loving so much. I went to Reader’s Feast in Melbourne, where I found the books in the YA section, right next to Foz Meadows’ new novel Solace And Grief (see my review below) which was facing out. Lucky Foz Meadows!

I read the first book and started on the second. It was easy reading as I had expected, because one of our ESL students read it in a weekend and her reading level at the time was about Grade 3. Other readers of the same level made their way through the entire saga without much trouble.

I found the novel pretty slow-moving, with nothing much happening till about three-quarters way through the book, but it certainly told me something about kids’ reading habits that I had never known after all these years of observing their reading: they will be patient if they are hooked early on. (Or maybe what I found slow, they found romantic?) I wasn’t hooked, alas, but I have no problem with anything that gets my students not only reading, but being excited about reading. And they are excited – the girls, anyway. I have seen them sitting curled up on steps and under trees in the schoolyard, noses deep in the adventures of Bella and Edward, and lending personal copies to friends - "Look what I've found!".

Besides, I think I may be able to “sell” Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights to students who have finished and enjoyed this series. The hero of Jane Eyre is even called Edward! (Edward Rochester, that is) He has a Deep Dark Secret, a tragic past and a good woman who wants to help him. Time to head for Collected Works bookshop with an order form in hand - the wonderful Kris Hemensley has already checked and he does have them both …

I had never heard of Marc Shapiro, so Googled him and found that he has written a fair number of biographies and was not necessarily the great Meyer fan his style leads one to believe.

Whether he is or not, he has been thorough in his research. Possibly there’s nothing here that a fan doesn’t already know from the Internet, where he seems to have done a large chunk of his research, but I was certainly enlightened. I found out that the Twilight author was named by a father who wanted a Stephen and got a Stephanie, except he added “ie” to “Stephen” instead. I learned that she got the idea from a dream and that she picked the name of the town off the Internet by looking for the wettest place in the US (and isn't it wonderful that now writers just need to go on-line to check out these things in a few minutes instead of spending hours in the State Library?). There was a list of music she played while she was writing and the information that Wuthering Heights became suddenly popular again after she recommended it to her fans. There was a good deal of information about the making of the films so far. And fans will be pleased to know that Stephenie Meyer has lots of ideas for more novels.

I actually ended up finishing this before I read the novels and quite enjoyed it; it saved me a massive trawl through the Internet. I do wonder where this story can go now. It is already more or less out of date, because the information went right up till the end of 2009, but things had already changed from some of what was said in the book. Perhaps it might have been better to wait a year or two to see how the phenomenon pans out and find out what the author is writing next and how her own life is turning out. A woman in her thirties is really too young to be the subject of a biography. Unlike J.K. Rowling, she hasn’t had a particularly interesting life. She grew up, went to university, got married and had children. Eventually, she had an idea for a novel that did brilliantly. End of story. Apart from discussion of the phenomenon and what happened when the film was being made, there wasn’t much to say.

It reminds me of when Alice Pung was speaking at a Centre for Youth Literature evening in Melbourne. She had written a book, Unpolished Gem, about her upbringing in Melbourne’s west, and it had been doing very well. Someone asked her, “Will the next book be a novel?”

“It will have to be,” she said. “I’m only twenty-five!”

THE WHALE’S TALE By Edwina Harvey. Sydney: Peggy Bright, 2009

I first read this as a manuscript. Actually, I first read it as a short story, entered for the Mary Grant Bruce Award for Children’s Literature, which I was judging some years ago. The practice was to read all the manuscripts with the authors’ names removed, prepare a short list and hand this to children to choose the winner. That year, the story the kids chose as a winner was later published as a short – very short – book. I can’t remember what it was called and I suspect it’s long out of print. It wouldn't be the first time, not will it be the last, that a story that won a prize has been forgotten while one that didn't win has become a classic. Take that book which won the Australian Children's Book Council award for picture book of the year - what was it called? Something about bears? I haven't seen it around for a while, but Animalia, which didn't win, is still going strong.

But I felt that this story, “Restitution”, had merit and deserved a Commended at least, which was in my power to give.

Edwina Harvey worked the manuscript into a novel, which got as far as the George Turner Award short list for a new piece of SF writing.

Once again, I was asked to read the manuscript, then pass it on to a teenager to read. I felt it needed work, for reasons I told the author at the time, but the teenager loved it. What can I say? Samantha now has her copy of the finished product and no doubt loves it even more in print. The issues I had with the manuscript have been well and truly addressed.

Edwina Harvey is the kind of children's writer who can write the most over-the-top things and take them for granted. "What - you mean people DON'T run into unicorns every day, or travel the galaxy with a sentient whale and a dolphin?" And that's what makes her so right for this type of writing.

We all, as writers, have the story of our heart. This is Edwina Harvey’s. And that shows in the writing, as well as a whole lot of humour and wisecracking from a sassy teenage girl.


Japanese teenager Uki, a lonely but brilliant hacker who has been using her skills to make friends, is caught stealing a file from the computer of whale singer Targe. This is some time after whales and dolphins have communicated with humans and started touring the galaxy as performers and diplomats. As a punishment, she is ordered by the court to travel with Targe and his dolphin offsider Charlie on a tour. Targe is angry about being stuck with her. Uki is not pleased either. But as the tour proceeds, it turns out she has gifts neither of them knew existed…

It’s not the first time anyone has written about spacefaring cetaceans. David Brin did it years ago. But you really had to concentrate to get the most out of the wonderful Startide Rising, which was the hardest of hard science fiction as well as an adventure. This one is a lot easier to handle and has environmental messages that don’t hit you over the head.

The cover, by rising SF artist Eleanor Clarke, is exquisite.

And who wouldn’t love to travel the galaxy in the good ship Antarctic Dancer? I sure would!

I am told that this novel has been nominated for a Hugo Award and an Aurealis. Here's hoping!

SOLACE AND GRIEF By Foz Meadows. Book 1 of The Rare. Melbourne, Ford Street, 2010

This latest publication of Paul Collins’s Ford Street Publishing is a first novel. Hearing the author speak at her launch and seeing her sign books, I think she’s going to do nicely as a professional. She’s also lucky enough to have a surname that puts her novel on the bookshop shelves right next to Stephenie Meyer’s books – and it has a snazzy black cover that will draw the eye of any teenager browsing for Twilight stuff.

The storyline is likely to appeal to young vampire fans, too. Solace Morgan is a born vampire. Her parents gave up their lives to produce her to act as a sort of saviour in a war with a nasty female vampire who has been “making” followers by addicting the new vampires to human blood. Most of the children of the night in this universe don’t like drinking human blood because it acts as a sort of heroin – once you drink it, you always need another fix. Solace has been living in a group foster home, uncomfortable out in the sun and limited in what she can eat. She is extremely strong and has other gifts that appear over time.

After some terrifying dreams, she runs away from home, into the streets of Sydney, where she meets a group of other gifted teens. Will her troubles cost the lives of her new friends? And what is her own role? Who is the faceless man? The small grey cat? Why are so many people after her?

This novel has come along at just the right time in the teen vampire fiction revolution. But it’s not quite a vampire novel, despite all the vampire politics The Rare of the title are more like X-Men or characters from the TV series Heroes. And so far, it’s not a romance, though there could be some in the next two novels, depending on whether or not a certain character returns to the group. However, the vampire isn’t the brooding Byronic male, but the girl. To my mind, the fact that this isn’t quite a vampire novel or a romance is a positive feature. Kids like “more of the same” but when they tire of that they will have something different to read.

Worth buying.

The Fascination of Web Site Statistics

A few months ago, I started keeping a counter on the number of hits this site receives. I wasn't brave enough to put it up where everyone could see it and anyway, I wanted more than just how many hits I got. As it happens, I found a lot more people than I had ever imagined were visiting this site - so far, in the several thousands, since I started keeping a tally.

One of the things that intrigued me was the kind of search term people were using that led them to stumble on my site. Some of them were fine - they were looking for reviews or information about certain books and writers or things fannish and hopefully had found what they wanted. And some were coming from the web sites of writers who were pleased with their reviews and had urged their own readers to go take a look.

Then there were kids (I assume) who wanted help with their assignment on an Andy Griffith novel and no doubt decided to cheat just a little. Plenty of folk looking for reviews on Catherine Jinks' Genius Wars. Stacks of hits looking for my review of F2M and Girlfriend Fiction books. Some looking for stuff about filk music or Tolkien's Elves, on both of which I had posted.

In the case of others, I was thinking, "Boy, have you come to the wrong web site!" Some finance web site seekers who stumbled on my post about libraries and ELR (Education Lending Right). Quite a few that wanted fan fiction about their favourite books and writers (no - I don't do fan fiction any more and if I did, it wouldn't be about Kylie Chan's novels, I never did anything but media fan fiction).

To the person looking for a way to contact Kerry Greenwood (one of the search terms), if they ever come back to this site, it's easy: she puts her email address in the back of every book and yes, she will reply. She's a nice lady. If you're that much of a fan, you should be reading the notes at the end of her books.

Someone else was looking for recipes. I don't do that either, though I am considering doing a recipe blog some time, to publish my mother's wonderful recipes. But not this one. "Quadriplegic fan fiction"? Huh? "Cats in Aida" . Maybe the person looking for that had read my short story "Nefer" in the Spinouts series, in which a mummy cat came to life, enlarged and completely wrecked an arena production of Aida while being chased by a werewolf boy who had changed when the full moon came out. There are otherwise, as far as I know, no cats in that opera. If they WERE looking for a reference to my story, I am terribly flattered!

Maybe I need to improve my tags. But then - it's fascinating to see what people look for in Google. And intriguing to think that somehow it led them to my site.

BEAUTIFUL CREATURES By Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Camberwell, Penguin, 2010

Ethan has lived in the same small Southern town all his life and longs to escape. The town is full of people whose ancestors have been there since before the Civil War (known to the younger generation as the War Between The States and to the older residents as The War Of Northern Aggression). The school is full of the standard cheerleaders and sports players and there are only two small places to hang out after school.

Now there's a new girl in town. Lena is beautiful and intelligent and, naturally, gets on the wrong side of the cheerleaders, as heroines tend to do in these novels, but even the boys are avoiding her, because she is the niece of "Old Man Ravenwood", the town recluse.

Ethan is in love. But Lena is under a curse, caused by an ancestress who made a huge mistake - a curse that will take effect on her sixteenth birthday. Or perhaps it won't; her family is magically gifted and has been for centuries, but nobody knows what will happen on their birthday, what gift they will have or even whether they will become good or evil.

The days are passing, and unless Ethan and Lena can find out the truth about the beginning of the curse in time, they may not have a future together at all.

This is just the sort of novel teenagers are likely to devour. Despite the standard stuff about sixteenth birthdays and curses and horrible cheerleaders and evil, it has a few original touches. The story is seen from the boy's viewpoint and the girl's family aren't vampires. And nobody tries to persuade you there's anything scientific about it. The family is magical and there's a curse, right? Simple!

The book is thoroughly entertaining. It helps that one of the authors, Kami Garcia, has worked with teenagers.

I look forward to putting it into my library and watching the fighting over who gets to read it first.

On book signings and such

The thing about book signings is that you never know how many books will be sold, if any. You can only hope. And if you're with other writers and nobody buys your book, but buys the others, how depressing is that! But you have to give it a go.

Last night, I went to the opening night of Continuum 6 on the request of my publisher, Paul Collins. The new Ford Street novel, Solace And Grief (soon to be reviewed here!) was being launched and Paul had hoped that some of his other writers might also be able to sign some books. And Paul has been very good to me over the years, so I went, though normally Friday nights are family-only for me.

The con organisers kindly agreed to let us do this. For once I wasn't going to the con; I just don't have the energy right now, though I am going to Aussiecon 4 later this year. Not after Dad's passing.

After the Chronos Awards had been handed out, Paul got up to speak briefly before heading out into the foyer to set up the book stall. Sean McMullen, who had to go elsewhere afterwards, spoke briefly about his Ford Street novel, Before The Storm, a thoroughly entertaining novel centred around time travel and a fanciful attempt to blow up the first Australian Parliament in 1901. I went up after him to talk about my own Crime Time: Australians behaving badly. It wasn't like my launch last year, when I had a fair amount of time to talk (they sold just about all the books on the stall that time), and in all fairness, it was the evening of someone else's launch, so I did my best with a minute or two, and did manage to get some chuckles when talking about the idiocy of crooks, especially those in my book.

Then Foz Meadows, the author of the book being launched, got up to speak. Lucy Sussex was supposed to launch her book, but was a little late - due, it turns out, to public transport delays. The author spoke about her attempts to sell, her writing at work because the boss was less likely to catch her than if she was on the Internet and read the opening chapter. Finally, Lucy got there and did a good launch.

After that, we went out into the foyer. George Ivanoff, Foz Meadows and I sat down to sign. Sean hung around for a little while, but had family commitments. He did sign some books, but not sitting down.

I told him about my good news, because I have known Sean since before he became a bestselling writer - actually, since before he sold anything at all! - and he was very pleased for me. It was because Sean persuaded me to join the SCA that I learned to write fight scenes convincingly.

i made sure Lucy knew too, because as commissioning editor at Hodder, she had tried to help me get the novel through, and I felt I owed it to her to know that it finally HAD got through.

The thing about non-fiction, even though kids prefer reading it, is that it's harder to sell - especially children's non-fiction. Crime Time has had some fabulous reviews and sold well enough to school libraries, but try finding it in the bookshops! Even when it has been there, I mean. It gets put into the adult true crime section. And naturally, adults who pick it up and realise it's a children's book put it down. And if you put it in the kids' section, it disappears, because bookshops simply don't know how to display children's non-fiction.


The sad fact is that nobody takes you seriously unless you've written a novel. Maybe after my new novel is out, more people will ask for Crime Time.

Meanwhile, Paul did manage to sell two copies while I was there and asked me to sign a third before I left, just in case. One jolly gentleman was happy enough to chat with me about the book, but didn't buy it. Another gent did buy it and I was happy to chat with him! And Bruce Barnes, an old fannish comrade, also bought a copy.

Maybe the third went after I left, eh?

At last!

I've finally sold my first novel. Eleven books, but only one novel as such. I wrote it some years ago and nearly - nearly! - sold it several time. And each time, I got comments and re-wrote on the basis of those comments and sent it somewhere else and almost sold it.

This time it has happened. Leonie Tyle, who used to work for UQP, knows me because I actually sent her the first three chapters some years ago and she rang me - rang Melbourne from Queensland! - to say that she liked it a lot, but they didn't publish this genre and did I have anything else? I wrote something else, but it didn't work out.

Now, I got a totally unexpected email from her saying she had heard I had a novel and could she look at it? Is the Pope Catholic?!? ;-) She heard because of an as-yet unpublished interview in Magpies magazine, by Edwina Harvey, meant to promote Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, which Magpies had reviewed favourably in 2009. Apparently, she had a hole in her schedule due to a novel that had had to be put back to 2011.

Only a few days after that interview, the thing has gone through the acquisitions committee and it will be out later this year. It does need re-writes, but hell, I'd stand on my head to get this one out! I cared about it when I was writing it and had planned to get it out and re-work yet again and see if I could sell it this time.

Who would have thought the publisher would approach ME?

And just for the record, after all I have said about fantasy novels, this one is a fantasy novel, a YA werewolf tale. But it's not fat and it's not part of a trilogy! And it's inspired by a mediaeval romance. Yay!

Specusphere interview

Astrid Cooper has just done an interview with me on that fabulous spec fic web site Specusphere - go take a look and then have a browse around the rest of the site. I have put a link to this on the side bar. Enjoy!

Discovering Charles Stross

Recently, I walked into my favourite SF bookshop, Of Science And Swords, and asked for something science fictional, as opposed to fantasy. "You're in the mood for SF today ... as always," said the proprietor. He knows me. It's not that I don't like fantasy at all - hey, I write the stuff! - but that I'm picky. Any Tolkien wannabe is right off my list, as is anyone who writes about long-lost heirs to kingdoms that have been usurped, anything with a Dark Lord (see above, Tolkien wannabe), any Mary Sue about an ordinary girl who suddenly discovers she is the princess of wherever (well, I'll make an exception for teen fiction, kids love more of the same) - you know the routine. But when I buy a new book, I want something with a little hard science in it.

I had heard of Charles Stross in Nova Mob meetings, but never read any of his books. So I picked up The Atrocity Archives which is a cross between spy fiction and Cthulhu horror, in which things worked a little differently back in the past and there's an entire branch of the public service dedicated to keeping the Lovecraftian monsters out, when they're not having to attend committee meetings and account for spending on paper clips.

And it gives very good scientific arguments for the magic in the book.

It's a hoot and I am about to read The Jennifer Morgue, the next book about Bob Howard (Bob as in Robert Howard ... geddit?) the monster-fighting computer geek.

If you live in/visit Melbourne, drop into Of Science And Swords - it's well worth the visit and the folk there love spec fic, unlike some bigger shops.

By the way, I have just started teaching this year's 8A and have discovered one of the boys is madly into the subject of alchemy. Who'd have thought it of a 13-year-old?

WRITERS: ON NOT ALIENATING YOUR MARKET

I found the above image on a blog called The Physics Geek, which had got it from somewhere else, while I was looking for a cliched image of a librarian, but couldn't resist. Of course, there's always Terry Pratchett's wonderful Librarian...

I wear two hats - well, three if you count the reviewing, but then, I have always thought of reviewing as an extension of my work as a teacher-librarian. I get excited when a new box of books arrives from the publisher, just as I do when there’s a book display at school - what goodies will I find this time? And when I have donated the beautiful new book to the library, I can tell the kids what it’s about, because I have read and reviewed it.

Writing for children is one of my hats, the other is librarianship. Both have to put up with folk who don’t understand what it is they do and why. As a children’s writer, I’m always hearing people ask carefully, “So - are you planning to do an adult book at some stage?” Translation: “When are you going to write a real book?” My answer to that is always:Never! I love what I’m doing and I enjoy the company. I remember one time when I went to a party at Allen and Unwin. When I arrived I chatted politely with those I saw there, but there were no familiar faces. The writers I met seemed nice enough, but the party was very dull, as far as I was concerned. Then Ann James, illustrator extraordinaire, appeared on the stairs and said, “The children’s writers are upstairs.” Up I went and there was a REAL party happening.

Most children’s and YA writers I have met are delightful. They know how to party. They know how to talk to kids. They share information about markets. They’re fun to be with.

But there are some, a minority I should add, who just don’t seem to understand that they are depending on the schools market for a large chunk of their income, who make clear their contempt for teacher-librarians, in their writing or in person. Their publishers really should explain it to them.

For example, there are those who whine about “gatekeepers” at conferences and writers’ festival panels. It seems that these library “gatekeepers” are preventing their works of genius from reaching what would be their adoring public if only...

Has it ever occurred to these folk that maybe their books aren’t going into the libraries for other reasons? Maybe Book Club wouldn’t take them, or Australian Standing Orders, so they didn’t turn up in schools as much as otherwise?

Or maybe the librarians just didn’t think their particular students would enjoy them? Any teacher-librarian worth his or her salt knows about this stuff - some of us write it ourselves. With an annual budget the sze of the average Grammar School’s petty cash, I can’t afford to buy books the kids are unlikely to read. I invite students in to help me choose from the book displays brought to the school and if they are choosing this book rather than that one, it’s the kids themselves who are the “gatekeepers”, not me. Only occasionally will I reject a book for my own library that I have read for reviewing, and that usually goes to our senior campus, so we're not actually keeping it out.

Tell you what, though, I have no complaints of school libraries with my own books! My Education Lending Right payments have always been about three times my Public Lending Rights. I expect a very good ELR payment for Crime Time:Australians behaving badly when the time comes, from what booksellers tell me.

If schools are not buying your book, perhaps a survey might help to find out why. If nothing else, it will bring your books to the attention of people who might not have come across them. But publicly calling librarians “gatekeepers” definitely won’t help!

Then there are those whose idea of a school librarian is based on one they remember from their childhood, who perhaps didn’t let them borrow from the adult shelves or maybe told them to be quiet. You know - the cliched woman with glasses and a bun? I wear glasses myself and ended up haing to get a haircut to avoid the cliche. In summer, of course I had to put my hair up!

The worst offender, in many ways, is J.K.Rowling, with her Madam Pince, whose first name you never learn, unlike the school nurse (Poppy Pomfrey). Madam Pince works her guts out, day and night, every day except Christmas, with no assistance (unless there’s a house-elf doing the shelving) and never even appears at Christmas dinner. (Maybe she has a loving family to spend it with?) She is described as thin, irritable and “vulture-like”. Talk about cliches! Of course, I love the Harry Potter books, but I wish she hadn’t done that. It jars me every time I re-read the series.

Naturally, I wouldn’t boycott her books, they’re too good in every other way and Hogwarts is a fantasy school. And at least there is no doubt that Madam Pince more than pulls her weight at the school and she only kicks out kids who are eating in the library. Well, wouldn’t you? How would you like to remove half-eaten sandwiches from between the books and banana skins from the carrels after every lunchtime, before going off to teach your own class?

Other writers are less kind about their library teachers. I’m thinking in particular of one whose first book I read and loved and showed to all the kids. I even recommended it for a class text.

Then her second book came out and I bought that for the library and opened it eagerly to read it.

I was horrified and disappointed to find her portrayal of the school librarian in her novel. The woman lurks in the library like some sort of spider and throws out any student who dares to enter, let alone want to borrow a book. Pardon me? Any librarian who behaved like that wouldn’t last a week in a modern school! (Well, maybe Rupert Giles of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer would, and he does kick out kids who aren’t there to look up monsters for slaying, but he’s cute. You can forgive him)

And it shows a huge misunderstanding of the role of the modern teacher-librarian which I will come to shortly.

Call me a gatekeeper if you like, but I don’t see why I should spend my precious budget on a writer who has shown not only a misunderstanding of my job but contempt for me and my colleagues. If a student requested one of her books I would buy it, but fortunately I have received some for reviewing, so those are the ones on my library’s shelves. I won’t go out of my way to look for her books othewise. That said, I have never allowed this to affect my reviews of them. I just won't buy them - and if I feel that way, there may be others. Is it worth alienating your market for one moment of satisfaction getting fictional revenge on the horrible librarian who terrified you as a child?

Contrast this with Australian SF writer Sean McMullen, whose first novel featured a world ruled by librarians. Word got around and suddenly Sean was a bestseller. And libraries have continued to buy his books ever since.

Nobody says your librarians have to be heroic, but for heaven’s sake, check your facts before subscribing to the image of the cross woman in bun and glasses! Would you buy books by someone who sneered at what you do? Hey, think of all the people who do sneer at children’s writers! Think of the adult novel image of the fluffy children’s writer. Yet you’re doing a job that requires skills that few people possess. So is the teacher-librarian.

Which brings me to my next point. Teacher-librarians don’t just process books and check them in and out. They work with their colleagues to design curriculum. They use their knowledge of children’s and YA literature and what kids are reading to choose books and match them to readers. They teach research skills, something that is vital in this day and age. They teach literacy skills. They arrange writer events - yes, the events to which you might or might not be invited. They run reading programs.

Yet since Principals got access to the purse strings in the state system, they have mostly had the responsibility to save money and the first place they always save it is in the library. In Victoria, Australia, where I live, you can’t even study teacher-librarianship any more, unless you study it on-line through an interstate university. There is a perception that you don’t need anybody in the library or that any idiot can stamp books when needed.

Pity I didn’t know this when I was one of thirty students chosen out of five hundred applicants to study librarianship. It was the toughest course I ever did, harder and more exhausting than my Honours degree. And you have to keep up to date, as in any other profession.

Of course - it’s all stamping books! Why didn’t I realise this?

Some primary schools have no one at all; a friend of mine is currently fixing up a library abandoned since the school got rid of its library staff altogether. It’s her son’s school, she’s a volunteer and she’s a qualified librarian. Lucky school. At least until he goes to high school.

Of course, there are those who think hard copy books are already out of date; I recall one of our Principals who was furious when a librarian bought a set of encyclopaedias, because “they look it all up on the Internet now!”

So watch out - you could be next.

If you want libraries to keep buying your books and inviting you to speak and run workshops, you should be fighting to keep professionals in them - they are the ones who know what you do and work with you to keep literacy going and get the school to buy your book in multiples for reading circles and class sets. If you think it can all be done by English teachers, forget it - they are busy with their own teaching and I wish I had a dollar for every English teacher who admitted to me that they read very little outside of the class texts because they just have no time for anything else. It’s true, too, they don’t, really they don’t have time, with all the things expected of teachers these days. If they do take on this job because the Principal got rid of the professionals in the library, then something else has to go.

And the few books they read may not be yours.

Think about it.

F2M: The boy within. By Hazel Edwards and Ryan Kennedy. Melbourne, Ford Street, 2010.

Eighteen-year-old Skye is a member of an all-girl punk rock band. Skye has never felt like a girl. Inside, (s) he is Finn, a boy. Making the decision to let Finn be outside as well as in involves a lot of work. How do you tell your family and friends and the members of your feminist rock band that you’re going to undergo female-to-male treatment and surgery? Fortunately, there’s a family precedent: great-uncle Albert … or is that great-aunt Alberta?

Skye/Finn could easily be a victim, but refuses. It isn’t going to be easy for anyone, but (s)he decides, finally, that family, friends and rock band will just have to live with it. And they do.

The book goes into enormous detail about the procedures involved in what is known as FTM. It’s a lot less common than the other way around – male to female – although it has been in the news in the last couple of years, when a man who had kept his female “equipment” had a baby because his wife couldn’t. I knew a female-to-male myself. Unlike Skye, "Jan" became “David” in her/his forties. Nobody, but nobody dared to call Jan a woman, even when she was! And David’s family and friends accepted it as Finn’s family do in the novel. At his funeral, the nephews and nieces referred to "Uncle David", even when he was no longer there to get upset.

The novel also explores the punk rock sub-culture, which is interesting in its own right.

Ford Street Publishing has become known for taking on controversial subjects. It probably needs an author as well-known and respected as Hazel Edwards to get away with this one. Ryan Kennedy, her co-author, is himself an FTM, so knows what he is talking about.

Perhaps an afterword with a URL or organization, if any, within Australia might have helped, so that those to whom the book applies don’t have to do all the web searches that Skye/Finn did in the course of the novel.

It’s well-written and answers a lot of questions. There are some likable characters in it and some nice touches of humour. There’s even the whimsical presentation of a couple who are a female-to-male and a male-to-female. Who are, incidentally, managing just fine. Finn doesn’t like the FTM, Rodney, but hey, he doesn’t have to.

It will certainly appeal to those teenagers who are asking themselves questions about their own gender identities.

Whether or not it will have appeal for ordinary teenagers I am not sure. I suspect they will be uncomfortable with it, though this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be out there. Will kids who say, “That is so gay!” about anything negative get enthused about characters who are not actually gay but have gender issues? I won’t know until I have put this in my library and seen how the students react. Watch this space.

Emel Alp Sari - new link

Recently, I got a "friend" request from SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) from someone of whom I'd never heard. Usually, it's from people I have met. You can never tell with these things; sometimes people's details are hijacked. I couldn't take a chance. So I Googled Emel Alp Sari and found that she was a freelance children's book illustrator of German background. I emailed her to make quite sure the request had come from her, in case it was an attempt at a virus and she replied that the request was indeed from her - she had come across a book of mine, Your Cat Could Be A Spy, in Turkey of all places! Nice, eh? :-)

So I have accepted her friend request and I am adding a link to her page in case you're a publisher of children's books or education titles (she seems to have a lot of those under her belt) and would like to take a look at her web site.

Welcome to my blog, Emel!

What I'm re-reading #3: Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone

I have read this series many times, mainly because it's my comfort reading, like the books of Tolkien, Kerry Greenwood and Terry Pratchett. I know how it's going to end. I know for sure that Snape is a tormented good guy, not a villain (but then I suspected this from the second book onwards, though I must admit, I never suspected why he was with the Forces of Light and I still can't see any hints during the series, but other fans did).

And now I am back at the beginning, back where Harry, the "male Cinderella" (a term we used in second year Middle English Literature at Monash University)discovers the truth about his heritage. I did suspect, even then, that his aunt Petunia was simply jealous of her sister and resented her gifts. I was right about that.

I remember buying this one at the Children's Book Week Fair after it had been recommended to me by Alison Goodman, a fellow writer who has gone on to do a lot better than me in the world of speculative fiction. We were both on the committee of Aussiecon 3, the last Melbourne World SF Convention, and used to chat on the way to meetings.

I enjoyed it enough to buy the next one when I saw it. By Prisoner of Azkaban I had begun to realise that this was going to be more than just another children's series. Already we had a world where an innocent man, such as Sirius Black and even the lovable Rubeus Hagrid, could be imprisoned and tortured by nightmarish creatures on the Minister's say-so. Not to mention that the word "democracy" doesn't seem to be in the vocab of the wizarding world.I knew now that there was slavery in the wizarding world that seemed so glamorous in the first novel. And I was never easy with the casual way in which animals were turned into inanimate objects by the wizards. I mean, why would you need to turn a living animal into a pin cushion?

But mostly, I wondered about the life of a teenager in Harry's world. Think about it: if you're a young wizard, you may be able to do magic (but not at home!) but you can't hang around the mall, except on occasional visits to Hogsmeade. You can't go on Facebook or Myspace or Livejournal. Your probable only source of clothes is Madam Malkin's Robes - hardly the height of fashion!

And forget about being on the phone with your friends for hours on end - not unless you want to kneel in the fireplace with your head stuck in among the ashes. Eeew!

It is indicated in the novels that there are wizarding rock musicians and maybe even that they have concerts, but you'd probably have to go by Floo Powder or with your parents or on your broomstick if they trust you, because the wizarding community is small and scattered and you can't do Apparition till you're seventeen.

And you can probably only hear them play, the rest of the time, on the same radio station as Celestina Warbeck, that star of the sixties! No doubt there's wizarding technology of which we haven't heard, but the thing is - we haven't heard of it, right?

No TV. No movies unless you sneak off to the local Muggle cinema. Probably Fred and George do. But it's not a part of wizard culture and I suspect parents who would rather not take a chance on having Muggle neighbours find out about their world get very stroppy if their kids do this.

As a teacher-librarian, I don't envy Madame Pince, who, with no computers and not even typewriters, must have to put up with hand-written card catalogues and seems to be working day and night, every day but Christmas Day, alone. If she has a budget and a collection policy, we never hear about it. And getting back to the teens, imagine her reaction if some Hogwarts student wanted to read Twilight or Dolly Magazine instead of spellbooks!

No, thanks, I'm glad I was not brought up in Harry's world. But I do love reading about it. And as an adult I love the references to folklore and alchemy in even the first novel. I intend to keep re-reading them.

JESSICA’S GUIDE TO DATING ON THE DARK SIDE By Beth Fantaskey. Camberwell:Penguin, 2010

Jessica Packwood knows she was adopted as a baby by the Packwoods, who were in Romania at the time, studying a local culture. She has grown up in the US and attended a normal high school with the standard complement of bullies, bitchy cheerleaders and nice farm boys.

When gorgeous Romanian exchange student Lucius Vladescu informs her that she’s a vampire princess and his destined bride, their union needed to prevent a vampire clan war, she reacts as you’d expect – no way! But Lucius isn’t that easily deterred. And he has a useful gift for her: Growing Up Undead: A Teen Vampire’s Guide To Dating, Health and Emotions. Of course, there are a couple of things to distract him, such as the above-mentioned bitchy but attractive cheerleader, and his success on the school basketball team…

This is the latest teen vampire romance. The ending is predictable (isn’t it always?), but kids like predictable, so fair enough.

I always wonder, when reading these novels, what would happen if the male vampire was pimply, fat and picked his nose. I’d really love to know why these vampires always seem to be aristocrats (a bit like Tolkien Elves, really), why the heroine is always vital to the survival of the vampire world. (Of course, I did read some years ago that folklore vampires tend to be aristocrats because aristocrats in general are bloodsuckers…)

But then, I’m just a cynical adult who has read far too many of these books since they became popular. And right now, this is what teenage girls want to read. At least this one has a sense of humour. There are some very funny scenes in it, including several letters home from Lucius to his Uncle Vasile about the weirdness of American culture, how you can’t get decent food (apart from pizza, he likes that) or clothes, how they decorate grubby bits of forest in their homes at Christmas and how his betrothed is attracted to a peasant!

The book is well-written and will, among other things, appeal to reluctant readers who will appreciate the shortness of the chapters.

Despite my cynical-adult feelings, I thought it was fun and I know that teenage girls will enjoy it too.

HARRY, A HISTORY By Melissa Anelli. London: Penguin, 2008

Some time in the late 1970s, I went with my family to the airport to wait for my aunt to arrive. It was going to be a long wait and I went for a browse in the airport shop. There, I saw a book called Star Trek Lives! which had been written by some women who’d been heavily involved in Star Trek fandom, right back when it first started in the 1960s.

I’d sort of known other people liked the series and had a vague memory of a campaign to keep it on the air, but that was all. After reading the book, I went off to find fellow fans and the local club and fanzines… Hey, I’d never dreamed that people wrote fan fiction to keep themselves going when there was no Star Trek to watch, or to answer questions for themselves and others – like, what happened in the Mirror Universe after Kirk and his friends went home? What kind of people are Vulcans in a universe where everyone is violent and nasty? What kind of society do the Klingons have? Star Trek Lives let me know that this sort of thing was going on, and what kind of activities fans got up to. For many years, I wrote fan fiction, went to conventions and hung out with fellow Trek fans, some of whom are still my friends.

When I opened Harry, A History, written by Melissa Anelli, American Potter fan and webmistress of the hugely popular web site The Leaky Cauldron, I found myself nodding in recognition. I’d been there. I, too, had found something that excited me and gave me something to discuss, that let me be creative. I’d made costumes, stitched tapestries and appliqués (one as part of a hanging for a children’s ward in a hospital), written dozens of fan stories and articles and zine reviews that led to professional writing. I, too, had been involved in charity fundraising ( still am – a bunch of Melbourne fans go out collecting for the Royal Children’s Hospital during its Good Friday Appeal). I, too, was familiar with fannish politics and the kind of fans who just don’t understand that this is fiction.

Melissa Anelli wasn’t one of the original Potter fans. She discovered the first book when her sister made her get a copy for light reading while shopping for university text books. While she enjoyed it very much, it took another couple of years and a job she hated to get her further into this universe. Somehow, she found herself becoming more and more involved, even taking time off work for supposed family emergencies to go to England when new books in the series came out.

In this very enjoyable and entertaining history of the American branch of Potter fandom, the author also tells how Jo Rowling managed to sell her first book and how many people promoted and supported her manuscript.

And yes, I think as a history of a fandom, it's a Potter parallel to Star Trek Lives!, though not as gushing, thank heaven.

Forbidden Fruit by Kerry Greenwood. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009. ISBN 9781741759822

This is the latest novel about the baker Corinna Chapman, who runs her bakery, Earthly Delights, in the middle of Melbourne, with the help of her apprentice Jason (a muffin-making genius), her two shop assistants, Kylie and Goss, who want to get into soap opera and her cat Horatio. Lucky Corinna has a gorgeous lover, Daniel Cohen, who is the actual detective, but shares in his cases.

As usual, the novel is a hoot. No murders, just a case of a missing couple, Joseph and Mary - er, Manny and Brigid, two teenagers who have run off together just before Christmas, Corinna's least favourite time of year (bah, humbug!). Brigid is part of a rich but nutty evangelist family who subscribe to a cult that believes Jesus was rich and who are waiting for a miraculous child called Shiloh, Child of Peace. Of course, there are miracles and miracles and in the twenty-first century there is more than one way to create your own. Brigid is heavily pregnant and her horrible parents want her back, but not for her own benefit.

And then there is Serena the rose-loving donkey and the carol-singers upstairs who have their own animal-rights agenda, despite their pretty voices.

The author carefully sets up her Christmas story so that you have the full Holy Family scene. But she does it with a broad wink.

As usual, the novel ends with recipes, after the usual group feast at Insula, the Roman-themed apartment block where Corinna lives. I haven't tried the recipes yet, but will - unlike the recipes at the end of some books, Kerry's actually work - she makes them herself.

You could probably read this book on its own, but why not go back and read the rest in the series if you haven't? They're well worth it.

On Writing and Agents

I write. I haven't got one. An agent, that is. I did have one, sort of, for a short time, a nice lady in Perth, who did try, but didn't get anywhere with selling anything for me and went out of business soon after. Well, she wanted to concentrate on her own writing. among other things. I got her through an introduction from a friend who had already signed up with her.

All I wanted was to have someone to concentrate on doing the business side of things and send my stuff around so I could get on with the writing. For this, I was happy to surrender a percentage of any money they got for me.

Also, publishers even then were announcing that they would not deal with anyone who didn't have an agent. This is a lot more the case now.

Strictly speaking, as I discovered, this wasn't quite true. If they knew of you, they would at least take a look at your MS. And by the time I tried getting an agent I had already sold a couple of books. I had a manuscript for a novel that I felt passionate about. It was a YA werewolf fantasy called Bisclavret, pinched from the story by Marie De France and I still think it's good, having come back to it after years. In fact, I nearly sold it a number of times. Nearly.

But when I tried all the big names - you know, the ones people dedicate their books to, "To my wonderful agent Jane Smith, who believed in this book", etc. - the various Jane Smiths were simply not interested. I guess they were running a business and a business works best with a sure thing and a sure thing is someone who has a much bigger track record than mine. But you'd think they would have had the courtesy to reply, at least, or even look at the MS. Those who did reply said that their books were full, so sorry. One even said, "I know of you, you're a good writer, I just don't have space on my books." At least she gave me a little egoboo.

Then there was the Big Name fantasy writer who, having offered to introduce me to a certain Big Name agent who represented him, never replied to any subsequent emails I sent him about it. So I set out to find her myself.

She was Selwa Anthony, praised by so many writers. I Googled her and tried all my librarian research skills, but she was elusive. I finally managed to contact someone who did know how to get in touch with her and was told that she might at least consider me if I got a couple of referees. I did. One was my friend Natalie Prior. The other was Lucy Sussex, who had been the commissioning editor at Hodder and thought highly of my novel, though Hodder had not taken it for their own reasons, unconnected with the quality. At least Ms Anthony did take a look at the MS, though she wasn't interested. She was the only local agent who did give me a go. From overseas, there was Cherry Weiner, who did read three chapters, but said it would have to be at least 100,000 words long and a trilogy for her to be able to get anywhere with it and from what I have seen in recent years, she is right.

There was the Big Name agent who took a year to reply to my simple query, when I persisted, and then with nothing relevant to my inquiry. This was one of the Jane Smiths whom her Big Name clients so raved about in their introductions. Well, whatever her fine qualities, courtesy wasn't one of them. She couldn't just say no?

I contacted a couple in Melbourne. One said, "We're full." The other said no because while I already had a book contract and just wanted her to negotiate for me, possibly followed by other representation, she explained that it was an education contract and she wouldn't touch one of those with a ten-foot pole. At least she gave me a little free advice on the phone.


After doing the rounds for a couple of years, I simply gave up and have been doing it myself since then. It's not as hard as it seems, as long as you have already got some track record. If you haven't, agents are unlikely to take you on anyway.

Mind you, I have come across some abysmal first novels whose authors have raved about their agents, who must be pretty good to have gotten them through and they obviously had no trouble with agenting first books - but not usually by Australian writers. Maybe I should check those out, if I want an overseas agent.


I'm writing this after having seen yet another request for opinions on agents on the Pass It On e-newsletter. The last time there was such a request, I wrote a reply on why you can manage without one and it turned out the lady didn't really want opinions on the necessity of agents, she wanted an introduction to one. So I'm not going there again in Pass It On.

For anyone starting out and trying to get published, there are still publishers out there who will at least look at your manuscript as long as you send it according to their guidelines and as long as you don't mind waiting a while to hear from them. And they're not all small presses. Allen and Unwin's children's section in Australia will read your MS. So will Penguin. There are others. You need to check out their web sites.

Once you're a Big Name, perhaps the Jane Smiths will even come to you. But for the most part, you can live without them.

MY LOVE LIES BLEEDING By Alyxandra Harvey. London: Bloomsbury, 2010

Lucy and Solange have been friends since childhood. Lucy’s parents are hippyish New Agers who make her eat tofu. Solange has a large number of gorgeous brothers, including the especially yummy Nicholas. Solange’s parents have always been good to Lucy. So far, so teen romance. Only one problem: Solange’s family are vampires.

Hey, it’s a medical thing. You’re born with it, though it doesn’t take effect till your sixteenth birthday, around when you hit puberty (perhaps immortal vampires hit puberty late). If you survive it, you become immortal and lose your ability to go out by day or eat anything but blood and maybe human flesh if you’re a nasty vampire. Otherwise, you just die. And Solange’s sixteenth birthday is fast approaching. As the only girl born in her family in 900 years, she’s the subject of a prophecy, which means any number of bounty hunters have been sent after her, as the vampire queen, Lady Natasha, doesn’t want any threat to her power.

And then there’s a secret society of vampire hunters called the Helios Ra, who might consider breaking their treaty with Solange’s family, who don’t kill humans (and why would they when their pheromones just allow them to seduce people and when there are blood banks for emergencies?)

While this is an entertaining teen romance with a variation, plenty of strong female characters and ass-kicking, I don’t think it’s any threat to Stephenie Meyer, if only because it’s so short. It may be a small snack for fans of the Twilight saga who have run out of reading material. Mind you, what with the number of teen vampire romances out now, they’re unlikely to run out any time soon.

As a grumpy old librarian who reads a lot of spec fic, though, I have to ask: what’s with the sixteenth birthday? In all fairness, this one merely has the bad luck to be the umpteenth novel I have read in which the heroine is in danger because of something that is going to happen on her sixrteenth birthday. A curse, such as the one in the novel Beautiful Creatures, is okay. And I suppose there needed to be a deadline, to move the action along.

However, I think this writer ought to have decided on fantasy or SF and stuck to her choice. Puberty doesn’t turn up on a specific birthday, it just turns up when it feels like it. Unless there’s magic, of course. And wouldn’t immortals be a lot less fertile, to avoid overpopulation? Yes, there are Tolkien’s Elves, such as the Sons of Feanor, but they tend to kill each other a lot, so that’s okay, and Tolkien never pretended it was anything but fantasy anyway. When one of Solange’s uncles, a scientist, explained that it wasn’t quite magic and it wasn’t quite science, I thought: ”Cop-out!” Just as well we never found out the formula for Hypnos, a very convenient spray drug that makes the victim do whatever the caster wants.

That said, I suspect young readers will mostly not notice or worry about it. But the only YA vampire novel I have ever read that has believable science elements was one by Scott Westerfeld in which vampirism is caused by parasites and can be spread by breath and touch. It’s a lot of work to research for science fiction and most people can’t manage it. Alyxandra Harvey, alas, is no exception, at least so far. With a deadline to meet for her next novel she may simply not have time.

I really think the next volume in this series should stick to the fantasy and play down the supposed scientific elements. I just don’t think they work.

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SLUSHPILE#2 By a grumpy Andromeda Spaceways slusher

I am still reading slush for Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine (aka ASIM). I read them as a reader, not as an editor. I ask myself, “What would I want to read in a magazine?”

People are still asking me why I do it, given how many of the submissions are truly awful. And I’m still saying it’s because I’m an optimist and always hope that the next story I open is going to be wonderful. And I have still not found more than a handful of wonderful stories in all the years I have been slushing. Some are good, or very good. But very rarely do I come across one that moves me deeply, or touches me, or makes me laugh for all the right reasons.

Still, you never know - the next one, maybe...

Meanwhile, here are some things I love about slushing and far more that are pet hates. Hopefully, someone thinking of submitting may be reading this and it will perhaps give them food for thought. We do buy good or very good stories, after all; it’s too much to expect that every piece is going to be a potential Ditmar or Hugo winner. There is a blurb on the web site about “what we’re not looking for right now” but there are still people not reading it before sending us their works of genius. Maybe a surf for markets might find this.

Things I Love About Slush Reading:

1. Every now and then, there is a truly wonderful story to read (see above)

2. Sometimes there is a good or very good story and it might even be the next one you open.

3. Once in a while, a story I got in Round 1 slush (we have two rounds - the second is “refined”) wins an award and I know I chose well. Of course, I didn’t select it for the magazine, because I haven’t edited an issue yet,, unless you count #38, which I finished off, with a lot of help. But I know I helped the story get into the slushpool, where it was chosen by someone else. (The slushpool is where we keep the stories that are considered good enough to be published).

Things That Cheese Me Off When I Am Slushing:

1. Non-spec-fic stories that I just know came from some mainstream writing student who has simply fired off the piece to every single market on the list supplied by the writing class, whether it’s appropriate or not, in hopes that one of them will take it.

Come on, guys, didn’t your teachers ever tell you to check your market? I bet they did tell you how much publishers loathe multiple submissions. Okay, there are times when multi-subbing is justified. I’ve never done it myself, but I know the frustration of waiting six months and sending inquiry letters only to get the thing back squashed and not reusable, with a printed slip.

But this is not a problem with ASIM. The very most you will ever wait to hear from us is two months and that’s only if your story made it into the slushpool. Otherwise, you’ll get a reply in a matter of a few days - by email, so you don’t have to buy reply postage (and there are plenty of publishers who still want their submissions by snail mail). And you get it with helpful comments.

Of course, you know all this if you’ve bothered to check us out. Also, I repeat, we are a speculative fiction magazine. Don’t send us your mainstream fiction. We won’t buy it. And don’t multiple submit. Keep that for the markets that make you wait six months.

2. Stories that are full of mistakes in spelling, grammar and/or punctuation. I see red when I get a story that can’t even punctuate dialogue correctly. I reject them automatically, only allowing a couple of mistakes in case they’re typos. If you think I’m nitpicking, I’d like to point out that editing is not about fixing your errors, it’s about making a good story look its best. If you don’t care enough about your work to check it or have a friend check it, I don’t care enough about it to finish reading it, let alone pass it on to the next round.

3. One-joke stories that go for several thousand words. Even if it’s a shaggy dog story, you shouldn’t telegraph the fact. It should be a good story that suddenly hits you over the head with an unexpected punchline.

4. Stories that assume you know what the author is talking about, but which only make sense if you come from the same country. I’m sorry to say that the worst offenders in this category - at least in the slush I have read - are Americans. We certainly see a lot of US films and we get a lot of American fiction too, but in the end, a story that has them rolling in the aisles in New York may not make a lot of sense in Sydney or Auckland or London. There’s nothing wrong with sharing your culture with others, but remember you are writing for an international market and don’t assume we know what the joke is.

5. 20,000-word stories which should have been about a quarter the length. Sometimes a story has to be long. Most of the novellas I have slushed are just self-indulgent, written by someone who hasn’t edited. Bear in mind, too, that while we have occasionally published stories of this length, they have been brilliant. Each issue of ASIM has a fiction “budget” of 40,000 words. If your story is going to take up half of that, it has to be something about which the editor is passionate. After all, how would you like to buy a magazine which had one very long story you hated? A story that took up half the issue?

6. Cutesy themes that are the entire point of the story (see above, one-joke stories). It can be short. It can be very short - as long as the punchline suggests there is more. For example, the famous world’s-shortest SF/horror story. “The last man in the world sat alone at home. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.” Think about it.

7. Really good stories that are let down by their endings. When a story has kept me gripped right up till the last page, then suddenly ends illogically, I say, “Huh?” Then I leave it overnight just in case, but thinking about it, I usually realise that there are other bits of illogic in the story. Before you submit, put the thing away for a few days and re-read.

You may find the same thing I would have found if I had read it, and have time to fix it before this grumpy old slusher rejects it!