July 31 Birthday Meme

This time last year, I asked my class,"Who can tell me whose birthday it is today?" One of my students, the younger brother of my previous student, book clubber Dylan, called out,"My brother's!"  and of course, it was, and I felt sorry I had forgotten. If you read this, Dylan, hope it was wonderful!

But I had someone else in mind, someone whose writing had not only given a lot of children and teens great pleasure, but who had persuaded adults to read children's books and see how good they are. I meant J.K. Rowling, of course, and I posted about it, and alas, hardly anyone read it at the time, so if you want to read a great post on this subject, check out my archives for this date in 2012.

So tonight, as my last post for July, I will use other things that happened in July. There are plenty of them, but I will skip the disasters and the battles and just mention a couple of book-related incidents.

According to Wikipedia, in 1703, poor Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, journalist and spy, got into trouble for writing something satirical and was put into the pillory, where normally people were pelted with disgusting stuff, but he was pelted with flowers! Nice to know he had fans in his lifetime, though while I was researching him for my children's book on spies, Your Cat Could Be A Spy, I read that he spent a lot of time running away from his creditors and when he died, nobody bothered to turn up to the funeral. Still, he was quite a character, and I have no trouble imagining him writing things that the powers that be didn't like!

A sad thing that happened on July 31 in this century was the death of Poul Anderson, spec fic writer extraordinaire. I love his books. I have found, over the years, that whatever I was in the mood for, he'd written a book about it, whether it was SF, high fantasy, humour, space opera, adventure, romance. And he was a top filker, too. And big in the SCA. I discovered him in my twenties and have never lost my love for his work, though some books are better than others, but hey, when you write as many novels and short stories as he did some are bound to be better than others.

So, hurray for July 31!

Anyone else got a bookish July 31 event?

Happy Birthday, Rosalind Franklin!

Rosalind Franklin, July 25, 1920-April 16, 1958

Here's another tribute to a woman of science mentioned in my second book, Rosalind Franklin, the radio crystallographer without whose work we might have been talking about the triple helix of DNA.

Some years ago, I was researching my second book, Potions To Pulsars:Women doing science, written for Allen And Unwin's True Stories series. It wasn't easy to find books about women scientists in those days, and the Internet was in its early days, no Google or Wikipedia to help. The books were there if you knew how to look for them, though, and I was a librarian, so I did. I found a wonderful book called Hypatia's Heritage and used it as a base to look up some of the women in there, and their biographies led to others... One of these days, I will do a post about my adventures researching this book.

This is a woman of whose existence I didn't know until I started looking for women in science. It's not surprising. She isn't mentioned much in the general history of science. When we hear about the discovery of DNA it's the men who are mentioned, Watson, Crick and Wilkins. They survived her(she died of cancer at only 37) and got the Nobel Prize for it and she was relegated to a footnote in history. Even recently, an Austalian newspaper had an article about the discovery of DNA that didn't so much as mention her.

The research was happening at the same time - a cousin of hers who wrote her bio said that as an American, Watson would have been used to the US system, in which there was plenty of money for research, so you could compete with other labs, while in England, with far less money, you didn't waste it on doing the same stuff as someone else. In this case, they were getting it wrong and her notes were shared with Watson and Crick by her colleague Maurice Wilkins, enabling them to correct their mistakes and rush into print. She, on the other hand, was too careful, wanting to be sure of getting it right, so she lost out.

I have heard that when they got their Nobel Prize, only Wilkins mentioned her.

But today is her birthday, a reason to celebrate. If she was alive today, she would be 93. Happy birthday, Rosalind Franklin!



                             

Rosalind Franklin. Creative Commons image

Things To Come On The Great Raven!

What I have just finished reading, first: Meg Cabot's Avalon High. I've not read her Princess Diaries series, which are supposed to be her classics, but the girls at my school love them. This one I bought for  my library because there wasn't much else by her on the bookshop shelves and this one at least had teenagers in it. It's a retelling of the story of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot in a high school setting and, as such, works oddly well. Ah, if only she had left out the fantasy element! And I say this as a lover of speculative fiction. It begins to get silly when people turn out to be reincarnations of others, and the "forces of darkness" mentioned never actually seem to make a physical appearance, you just hear of them from a schoolteacher who is a cross between Merlin and Giles from Buffy. Still, I found it an entertaining bit of froth, though I got a little irritated with the mention of Mordred as Arthur's half-brother. I can understand that Mordred as Arthur's son is impossible in a high school setting, but if you're going to introduce youngsters to the legend, you don't want characters who are supposed to be Arthurian scholars say this of the original story. I did like the fact that the heroine's likably goofy parents were not gotten rid of, but played some role in the story.

But this isn't what is about to happen here! Young Aussie writer Will Kostakis has just had another book published! I was the first to give a positive review(or maybe even the first review?) to his first novel, Loathing Lola, published when he was only nineteen. It was a delightful, funny and clever look at the cult of celebrity and especially celebrity of reality TV shows, in which the teenage heroine suddenly finds she has a lot of friends when she is chosen to be the star of a new reality show. Her idea is to be a role model for younger kids, but the producers have different plans. This was not only a wonderful novel in its own right, but impressive that a boy with no sisters could get into the mind of a young woman so well.

Now Will is back, with The First Third, a novel that I think is even better than the first. This one is closer to home for him, about a Greek boy and his family, and it's funny, sad, warm and charming, all at once, and says things about family. I received a copy at the Reading Matters conference and the author has kindly agreed to an interview, which I will prepare shortly. It's nicely appropriate, too, that the cover comment should be by Melina Marchetta, whose first novel, Looking For Alibrandi was also about multicultural family issues, but also, like Will, was an author whose second novel (Saving Francesca) came out several years after her first.

Stand by for good stuff and meanwhile, why not read Will Kostakis's books?

Dear Internet Hackers

Dear Hackers,

Please get a life. You have no friends or you wouldn't waste your time and everybody else's trying to get into people's accounts. If you're that good with computers, do something useful and help people in your lives to solve problems. You might actually make some friends then - not the online kind you meet  on Facebook, but real people who might be willing to hang out with you, instead of disrupting other people's lives just because you can't make a go of your own.

Or turn off your computers altogether and get out into the fresh air. Play sport. Go for a walk. Join a club. You never know, you might make some real friends, even fix their computer problems and get their  respect and admiration instead of their anger and hatred.

Again I have had to change my password, this time to block some loser in South America. Get a life, kid, whoever you are. You couldn't possibly have anything against me, you don't even know me, and there's no money in it, as there is for spammers. You just want to show off how smart you are.

You aren't. You're just a total, complete loser. Grow up!

And having wasted a morning fixing things up, I will go and do some real-life stuff. With real friends, the kind you don't have.

A cranky author.

Dolly Fiction

This morning, Tehani Wessely was talking on Twitter about Dolly Fiction, a series of Australian YA teen romance novels published in the 1980s and 1990s. I remember that series, because I was just starting in school libraries at the time. It was particularly well written, which is not surprising, considering some of the writers who, mostly under pen names, wrote books for it. I knew about Jenny Pausacker, of course, and if you have followed this blog for a while you'll know that Susan Green, most recently on the CBCA short list, started out with this series.

But out of curiosity, I decided to look up some of the others.

Here's the link to a site I found, with that information on it:

 https://sweetheartsromancebooks.com/wp/2013/04/25/dolly-fiction/

Ulp! Margo Lanagan, Felicity Pulman, Ruth Starke, Meredith Costain,
 Tor Roxburgh, Merrilee Moss, and possibly fantasy novelist Karen Miller, 
or at least someone with that name. 

I remember at the time wondering if I could find a market there,
 but I've never been much good at a romance story, as opposed to having 
romance in a story that was mainly something else.

There's a special talent to writing romance, especially for teens. 
You have to be good with story, good with capturing readers' attention
 immediately, 
and have to remember what it feels like to fancy that boy at that age, 
but also be good with the fantasy elements, whether it's a vampire romance 
or one set in the real world. Nobody seriously believes that the
rock star/famous athlete/ whatever will really fall in love with me, Gemma in Year 11,
but it's fun to pretend and a good romance can help you.
.

It's nice, though, that the publishers who did Dolly Fiction 
and, more recently, Girlfriend Fiction, took it seriously enough 
to make sure they had top class writers doing these books.
 It would have been easy enough to cash in by hiring just anyone,
 but good writers meant a series that could be respected and that
 school libraries would be happy to buy, and that perhaps 
the young readers would read those writers' other books
(Girlfriend Fiction does books under the authors' real names).

I think a course in romance writing will help me with my writing in general. Watch this space.

Book by Linda Hallan aka Tor Roxburgh

Black Spring by Alison Croggon. Sydney: Walker Books Australia, 2012

I've only read one of Alison Croggon's novels before, the first Pellinor book. I'm not a fan of the Fat Fantasy Novel genre, but she had such a lovely web site, I couldn't resist. It was not bad, but not interesting enough, to me at least, to tempt me to read further. I know she has a massive fandom, and wish I had half her luck, but I'm not a member of it.

However, I heard about this book, inspired by Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, at the Reading Matters Conference, where the author spoke, and decided to give it a go. I read Wuthering Heights for English Literature at school and was curious to see what this author would make of it, so bought a copy, which will be going into my school library to see what the students make of it.

First, the language: the author has done a very good job of getting that right. It reads pretty much like a nineteenth century book, to my eyes at least.

The story is very similar to the original, with some changes - for example, Lina, the Cathy character, has no older brother and Damek, the Heathcliff of this novel, is related to the king and is imposed on the family. That makes a big difference to the storyline, as you'll see if you read it.

The technology is about the same, but the social structure is somewhat different. The north has its own royal family, which raises money by means of the Vendetta. Only those related to the ruler are exempt. If someone kills a person related to you, you must kill them and, in turn, be killed by someone in that family and, before you go off to commit your murder, you have to drop off some cash at the palace. Entire villages are wiped out because it's compulsory. If the royal coffers are low and nobody has a vendetta going, the king ensures one is started. Oh, and the victim not having a family doesn't prevent vendetta; in this case, the last family who hosted them must avenge the death.

Then there are the wizards, who don't seem to do a lot apart from terrorising villagers and issuing orders. On the other hand, if a girl is born with the violet eyes of a witch, she is killed. Presumably the wizards don't want competition. Lina is a born witch, but the family move south for some years and then are allowed to move back without her destruction.

Interesting as all this is, I'm not sure that the Vendetta, at least, adds anything to the novel, and it doesn't make a lot of sense as a form of taxation. I mean, why wipe out potential taxpayers just to make a quick buck? If the author wanted to have a disaster in the village, a plague would surely have done the trick.

Despite all this, I'm sure the novel will have a lot of fans. It may do well for fantasy fans who aren't ready to try the original. Those readers who, like me, have read the Bronte book, will have the fun of following the storyline and seeing how connected it is to the original. And I have to say that Lina is a somewhat more sympathetic character than Cathy - I have long thought that Cathy and Heathcliff are among fiction's more obnoxious lovers, who thoroughly deserve each other. 

But as a YA novel, it really needs very good readers, the kind who could handle the original, and if they can handle Wuthering Heights, why not give them the original?

 I know I'm hardly in a position to speak, since my own novel is inspired by something written centuries ago! 

But the average student is unlikely to read the Breton Lais, while Wuthering Heights has become a book of interest to teens in recent years, since it was mentioned as Bella Swan's favourite.

Still, it's well worth a read and hopefully, anyone who discovers and enjoys Black Spring first will check out Wuthering Heights, and that can be no bad thing

Anticipating The Crucible!

Today, my sister and I will be seeing Arthur Miller's McCarthy era play The Crucible, being performed by the Melbourne Theatre Company. The lead role of John Proctor is being played by the delicious David Wenham, whom most of you probably saw last in LOTR. Luckily, he seems to be keeping up the theatre performance stuff and he's going to make a terrific Proctor.

In case you aren't familiar with the play, it's set during the Salem witch trials, but it's really a comment on the dreadful political witch hunts of Miller's own time, when it wasn't enough to confess to being a Communist, you had to dob in someone else. The wonderful Howard Fast spent time in jail, where he wrote Spartacus, and when the movie was made, the script writer was Dalton Trumbo, one of those who had been blacklisted, though some had gone on writing behind "fronts"(there's a Woody Allen film of that name, in which he's a front for blacklisted writers). This was, I think, the first time he'd written under his own name since the blacklisting began. And it was because Kirk Douglas, the producer, basically said,"Stuff that!" and insisted on using his name.

When I was at high school, we did a production of The Crucible in which I played Elizabeth Proctor. I sort of spoiled it for myself by going to the library to research the actual story of the Salem witch trials and finding that John Proctor, the hero of this play, couldn't possibly have had an affair with Abigail Williams unless he was a truly sick man, as she was eleven at the time, so his motivation would have been different. His children were older than in the play and one was tortured with him. Oh, and Elizabeth, the wife with whom he reconciles so dramatically at the end, was cut out of his will.

Oh, well. As a piece of drama, with a bit of license, it is wonderful. I can't wait!

ASIM 60 And First Go At Editing

Actually, I have edited before, apart from the individual stories I did for two multi-editor ASIMs. I've published a few lovingly-crafted media fanzines. And that was before I owned my first computer. Everything was typed on a typewriter - my electronic whiz bang typewriter Merlin(because it was a w(h)iz) with the snazzy daisy wheel that let you change fonts, and that allowed you to check a sentence before printing it. We didn't have email in those days, so all my edits had to go back and forth by what was not yet known as snail mail and some of my writers were overseas. I edited a couple for other people, such as a convention I was involved with, but my own three were Tales from New Wales(Blake's 7), Trek Tales From New Wales and my Robin Of Sherwood zine, Under The Greenwood Tree. These are worth a post of their own and will get one at some stage (the ROS one got about eight awards!)

The thing is, it was a similar process, but not the same. I had to do my own layout and that just involved making it look as nice as possible, and neat. No InDesign or any such thing. And even with all the care I took, there were typos, and my choice was to fix them with liquid paper, making it messy, retyping the whole page with the potential for more errors or leaving it as was.  Not a problem now. The authors were mostly invited, as I knew they could do what I needed, and their "payment" was a contributor's copy. When it was time to print, I had help from a friend who did photocopying for a living and an overseas friend who got a master copy and printed it for me and sold it there, refusing so much as a single cent towards her dealer's table.

With this one, I am learning as I go. The stories have, so far, been mostly taken from slush, though I did ask to see a story by someone who writes the kind of fiction I needed for balance, but didn't have at the time. She is currently rewriting and has a friend who is one of Australia's best writers in that area to help, but it's a good story and will work. Our slush wrangler, Lucy, has been kindly sending me stories that have just made it to the slushpool with good scores and kept in mind the balance I needed.

And you do need balance - fantasy, SF, horror, though as I'm not a horror fan I have gone for stuff that is not too gruesome - it won't be shortlisted for the Stokers, but it will fit nicely. You need some poetry - I have three poems, one space-y, one fantasy and one Steampunky.

I am being careful with the SF. My knowledge of science is limited to what I read in New Scientist and what I read when I was researching my book on women in science. My physics knowledge is almost nonexistent! But fortunately, we do have some members of ASIM who do science for a living. I got one very beautiful story that depended on physics for its premise and, just in case, sent it on to a member who knows more than I do. He came back with a report that said there were some glaring errors. Turns out the author knew, but hadn't been able to think of any other way to express it. He thought of something else, went back and fixed it. And it's now, I think, ready to publish!

With standard mediaeval fantasy I'm on safer ground, as history is something I know better, or at least know how to look up, but I didn't have any - none that I wanted to publish, anyway.

I'm just a small way into the editing and have discovered we have some first sales here. ASIM loves first sales. It will be nice to see how these writers go in future, or if they will even come back to us when they're getting paid more than we can. Some do. In Australia, anyway, there are a lot of well known writers who do small press.

Only a few thousand words more to buy!

I will have to decide which of the stories I have to use as the basis for a cover and which artist I will ask to do it. There are some wonderful artists out there and we have some of them on our books. Which to ask?

A long way to go yet!

Sophie Masson's New Venture

Hi lovely readers. This morning I got the following email from Sophie Masson, author of so many wonderful fairy tale books (some reviewed on this blog), this time producing a children's picture book which contains two Russian fairy tales:

Dear everyone

This is to let you know about an exciting new adventure which I'm embarking on with two artist friends: illustrator David Allan and illustrator/designer Fiona McDonald(yes, at whose gallery we had the expo and launch). We have started a very small picture book publishing house called Christmas Press(print books, not e-books), and are preparing our launch title: Two Trickster Tales from Russia, featuring my retellings of the lively, funny folk tales Masha and the Bear and the Rooster with the Golden Crest, illustrated by David Allan in classic Russian-inspired style and beautifully designed by Fiona McDonald.

We're going to be printing a limited edition of 500 softcover books, in full colour, with an Australian printer, and plan to publish in October. And we have just started a 'crowdfunding' campaign for the book to help with printing costs. The way it works is people directly contribute to the campaign through its Indiegogo page:  http://igg.me/at/christmaspress/x/3485227 and hitting whatever amount and perk appeals to you.

You'll see there's lots of possibilities for contributing, but basically a $25 contribution is a pre-order for the book. But even if you don't contribute(and I totally understand if you don't want to!) I hope you might be able to tell lots of people about it through your personal contacts and social media contacts.
Thanks so much for reading this!

Best wishes

Sophie

If you follow the link, you'll find that there are other options, including getting a print of one of the illoes, but really, if all you want is a copy of the book, the price asked is about what you'd pay in a bookshop and it includes postage! Why not buy a beautiful book, written by one of Australia's best children's/YA writers and full of gorgeous illoes? They're hoping to raise $3500, which shouldn't take long, given the track record of the author and artists.

I'm not sure what the deal is for overseas, but if you live outside Australia and your mouth is watering at the sight of this, it should be worth emailing Sophie Masson to ask about postage.

The style rather reminds me, not only of Russian art, but of the Victorian/Edwardian English artist Walter Crane. Take a look:

This is an illo from the new book, from the story Masha And The Bear.

And here's one from Walter Crane's Little Red Riding Hood.

Both are gorgeous, eh?

If you're interested, follow this link. 

Anniversary - Gone With The Wind

On June 30 1936 the massive writing/publishing/cultural phenomenon Gone With the Wind was first published. It sold 1,000,000 copies in six months! It won awards and not too long after that, they made the movie, which is a phenomenon in its own right. When you think about it, Margaret Mitchell's book was the cause of creativity in others. Music, costume, screenplay, acting...

Perhaps not the best time to admit I don't greatly care for the book, which I read in my teens and thought a 1000-page Mills and Boon. That's before we even get to the racism and the fact that you want to give the heroine a huge boot in the backside.

Nevertheless, I went to see the movie -also in my teens - and didn't much care for that either. And that was before my PC period began. A friend wanted to go see it and the trailer advertising it at our local cinema looked good, so I agreed to see it a second time and still didn't like it.

As an adult, I realise the film is a masterpiece of cinema - and I suspect that if I watched it on TV, say, I would get sucked in and watch the lot. And I'd have fun spotting the well-known actors in cameo roles, such as a very young George Reeves, before he put on the cape and suit and took to the skies as Superman, playing one of Scarlett's suitors. And knowing that Vivienne Leigh was British behind that southern drawl would be fun; I didn't know that as a teen. Actually, the actress who played one of Scarlett's sisters said that it was better she was British, because an American from the North would roll their r's in a way a Brit wouldn't.

But I'm never, I'm afraid, going to find it romantic or go gaga over it, or over the novel on which it was based. So, I'm a philistine. Sorry!

As a Pratchett fan, though, I will always have a giggle remembering the "click" Swept Away made in his novel Moving Pictures. Now that book would be worth filming!

On Reading, Rereading And Introducing Books

Yesterday I persuaded a student to try Douglas Adams. We have a volume of Hitchhiker's Guide 1-4 on the library shelves. Mark was in my homeroom last year and I know him to be a Monty Python fan, so suggested that if he liked Python, he might enjoy Adams and then, if he likes that, I will introduce him to Terry Pratchett(evil chuckle!). We have a fair number of Pratchett books from a few years ago when a young man called Jake was reading and loving them. Poor Mark, he was looking for a missing volume of Skulduggery Pleasant, which the catalogue said was on the shelves, but wasn't. Happily, he was willing to try something else while I hunt for the other one or add it to my shopping list.

Meanwhile, I have finished my reread of Wintersmith, the third Tiffany Aching novel, and felt like starting again from the very beginning, with Wee Free Men, so I downloaded it and have realised, I'd forgotten how very good it is. Terry Pratchett is magical, and not only because he writes fantasy. I think he expresses himself best in that genre, but what he says is not just for fantasy fans. He has something to say to everyone, whether he's sending up popular genres such as vampire fiction or having fun with Shakespeare or turning fairy tales inside out. His characters are real people, even if they're witches or wizards. And he's funny, even when he's saying something serious - laugh-out-loud funny!

I do hope I can get Mark hooked on Pratchett.

Excuse me whie I go read some more.

Recently Downloaded Ebooks

There's something magical about ebooks. In my case, I get a credit from iTunes via those cards which you can always find discounted somewhere. I put it on my iTunes credit and I can confidently download, knowing the money is there. And I see a book that looks interesting and zap! It's on my little computer, all ready to read.

This week's goodies include Connie Willis's Bellwether, a classic which for some reason I had never got around to reading. I have finished it already, delighted with its humour. It's free of regular SF tropes, but it's SF all the same, with statistics used as the theme, as the heroine tries to work out where fads begin, along with a fellow researcher whose passion is chaos theory. Very funny and touching and there are sheep and Browning poetry involved. And because Browning is being quoted constantly, I dropped in at Project Gutenberg for some of his poems, though as it's only a selection, the key poem from Bellwether, "Pippa Passes", isn't there.

I was also in the mood for Tolkien-related stuff, but as I already had most of the bios in print form(did I ever mention my favourite bookshop, Collected Works?), I skipped them and bought a title on masculinity in Tolkien, The House Of The Wolfings - part of a series of his influences - and Inheritance by his grandson Simon , who has begun writing a series of police procedurals. I like crime fiction and it wasn't dear, so what the heck! Definitely wise of him not to attempt fantasy, as he would be constantly being compared to hs grandfather and found wanting.

I also downloaded a couple of volumes of SF by Howard Fast. I read them years ago, finding them a bit too philosophical for my tastes, but then, that's his style and it's nice to look at them again with years of spec fic reading and writing behind me. And he is capable of humour, as shown by a story about a hoop that sends things elsewhere and is used to dispose of garbage. That one would stand up very well today, as would the story about digging so far into the earth that what comes up us not oil but blood. Another, "The General Zapped An Angel" was updated and turned into a short telemovie. Although we know him best for his historical fiction, Howard Fast's first sale was spec fic, when he was about eighteen. And his son Jonathan became a spec fic writer.

Lots to read! See you all on the other side...

Spam Comments Again!

Ack, I've been spammed again - and published a spam comment, since removed.

Mostly, they're easy to spot - they make a vague comment about how much they enjoy the blog without saying anything about the post itself, they slip in an ad for something at the end and when you check their profile it has been in existence for five minutes and "follows" a bunch of advertising blogs. Or the profile links to an advertising blog.

Occasionally, you aren't sure and you publish the comment. After all, some people who don't have their own blogs keep a profile so they can read other people's. Nothing wrong with that; I don't, after all, allow anonymous comments, so you have to have a Blogger profile to comment here. So I have taken chances- once I even responded! Then you get a swarm of other advertising "comments" and you know for sure that you've been had.

I don't allow advertising on this blog, not even the Blogger-arranged AdSense. I know some of my friends do, and that's fine. I tend to ignore ads on their blogs, but if it gets them a little free money, no problems. It's just not for me. The closest I get is to run guest posts by writers who can then put in a link to further info about their books and where to buy. This is a book blog, after all, and if readers are interested, they'll want to know where to buy.

So, to genuine commenters, I say, I will publish your comment if it's about the post. I won't publish anything that says vaguely,"Hey, great post" or,"I really like this blog" without saying why in a way that tells me you've read it. Especially if it leads back to a profile that tells me you're an advertiser. ;-)

Just Finished Reading...

Some of this is on ebook, some print. I managed to get three of the shortlisted titles for this year's CBCA awards on iBooks - I'm still waiting at school for the print versions, which tend to go out of stock the minute the shortlist is announced. Of those three, I have just finished reading Jackie French's Pennies For Hitler and Neil Grant's The Ink Bridge - still reading Doug Macleod's The Shiny Guys. I have just finished Myke Bartlett's Fire In The Sea, which I downloaded from iBooks while the author was speaking at Reading Matters. A nice entertaining fantasy adventure which the kids will enjoy if I can ever get it in print.

This evening I finished Stephen Chbosky's The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, which I bought for the library on student requests and I must say it was nice to have further requests from them for some of the classic novels mentioned in it. I haven't seen the film, but I became curious and I believe that if it doesn't become a classic(I suspect it will) it may at least be the cause of reading classics. The hero, Charlie, is doing a class in advanced English and has a teacher who gives him a stack of books such as To Kill A Mockingbird, The Catcher In The Rye, On The Road, Hamlet and some F. Scott Fitzgerald books - actually, there are about fourteen classics mentioned in the novel. In general, it's a coming-of-age, very well-written.

I will rustle up whichever of the books we have on our shelves and maybe do a special display on this novel and those mentioned in it.

Time to return it and grab something else. I believe we have quite a few of the Inky long list in the library. - next on the agenda!

Continuum - The Rest Of It!

So after lunch yesterday, I got back on time for the readings. In the end, we had to read to each other, because nobody turned up till Narrelle Harris came from her panel, followed by others. I ended up sticking around for a panel on historical realism in fantasy, which was a good, lively discussion of what you use and what you cherry pick from history when you write fantasy. Alison Goodman admitted to cherry picking for her fiction, for good reason. She is currently writing something with a Regency setting and has been researching the period thoroughly. There was a lot of talk about standard mediaeval fantasy. Of course, as the author of a mediaeval fantasy I had an interest in this. My novel was what it was because it was inspired by a mediaeval romance I loved and because that's what I know about, not because I thought this was the market. And I researched, even though it was my own universe.

The two anchor figures were Paul Poulton, an old friend from my Austrek days, who is currently studying history, and a young SCAer. The other author was Jane Routley, who said her novels were not mediaeval.

I enjoyed it very much and it was overflowing with audience, some on the floor.

Last night, looking at the program for today, I suddenly realised I had a panel at 10 this morning! It was on the subject of dark YA. Whatever did I have to say about that?

I was with Richard Harland, Amanda Pillar and a guy called Ander Louis, who has just self published his first YA novel, apparently dark. I haven't yet read Richard's new novel, Song Of The Slums, which is sitting on my cyber bookshelves, but I gather that has some dark in it too. We discussed what you can and can't put in YA or just how far you are willing to go. As my novel isn't especially dark, despite one scene with the Wild Hunt, I wore my teacher librarian hat for this one and stuck to what kids read, what they ask for and some of the truly dark stuff that has turned up on the CBCA short list.

It was an enjoyable panel, with much audience participation, and after that I bought a couple more books from the dealer's room - the Joanne Anderton collection from Fablecroft, which includes the title story, which she had originally in Light Touch Paper, and the Alison Goodman novel originally published in the US and now republished by Lindy Cameron's Clan Destine Press. Yesterday I bought a collection of true crime stories from them, with some of Australia's top crime writers in it, and going for $5!

Then I went to the panel on watching the new Doctor Who, which I enjoyed very much, and followed it up with one on British TV SF and fantasy of the 1980s. Amazing how much there was!

I had lunch with my old friends Kathryn Anderson and Sarah Murray-White, both from my days in media fandom.

After lunch I was on two panels, one on dystopias and finally one on reviewing. I finally got to meet Tsana Dolichva, a book blogger currently studying in Sweden, but home for six weeks, and put a face to a name, and Michelle Goldsmith was with me on the reviewing panel; both have given lovely reviews to Wolfborn, so that was nice. I have actually accepted a story by Michelle for ASIM 60, making it four local pieces so far. I need more!

I've overdone the SF so far and have enough horror fiction for now, so I am having to go for fantasy in the interests of balance.

That was the final panel and we waited a while for the closing ceremony, where it was announced that next year's Continuum will be the Natcon and the GoHs would be, local, Ambelin Kwaymullina, author of The Interrogation Of Ashala Wolf, and, international, Jim Hines, a writer of humorous fantasy who has been published in ASIM and some of whose novels are in my library. The kids enjoy them very much. Nice to see both guests are writers of YA fiction, or at least fiction that teens can enjoy!

After the closing ceremony was over, I went for tea and a bowl of wedges with Helna Binns, a friend from my Austrek days, and we chatted about the new Trek movie - a pleasant end to an enjoyable convention.

Continuum Day 2 So Far

I arrived lateish this morning due to wanting a sleep in, then stopping at Haigh's to buy chocolate. I wanted to have it with tea, but still have it in my bag.

There was a panel called Plot 101 going on in the foyer, because they had been kicked out of their room,  probably to make way for the GoH speech at noon. So I sat and watched(photos will be inserted as soon as I get home tonight). The participants were Trudi Canavan,  Richard Harland, Amanda Pillar and David Witteveen, who was moderating. I sat on the floor and listened to their discussion of plotting a novel. One question asked was one I wish had come up yesterday on my panel, on what happens when you have to make a major plot change. In my case it's what you do when you suddenly lose your villain, who turns out to be okay, and have to replace her, THEN you realise that as the heroine's potential romantic interest is a long lost prince, who will eventually become king , she can't have him and you now have to find a new character, because your girl readers will NOT like a Prisoner of Zenda ending! I am starting to realise that there may be a reason for the standard YA romance triangle.

After this, I went to Paul's GoH speech, which was mostly a workshop on the twelve thingies making up the Hero's journey and we had to get into groups and work out a plot. Five of us came up with a very silly plot, but I took notes because it may come in handy in the classroom.

This was followed by a second launch of Richard Harland's new Steampunk novel. I downloaded it on iBooks - I just don't have space on my shelves any more and the library has a copy.

I had a great chat with Michael Pryor before going out for lunch at a Mexican place, where I'm writing this. I may sit in on the rest of the auction and then go to author readings in hope that mine can be fitted in before audience wanders off!

More anon.

Continuum Day 1

Yesterday I arrived late for Continuum, because I spend Friday nights with my mother, then take her for lunch. Friday nights are sacred to the family, so I missed the opening night of the con as well, including the Chronos awards. Probably just as well, as I didn't win and would have had to smile at whoever did(still don't know), but it was nice to be shortlisted and I want to thank whoever did vote for  me and put me on the shortlist. Yesterday morning Mum and I went out just for coffee and cake in her local shopping centre, at a delightful restaurant called The Goat House due to the fact that a goatherd discovered coffee. Then I headed for town.

Continuum takes place every year at the Ether part of the Swanston hotel. I remember when this small conference centre used to be an Asian food court - how things change! I like Continuum and have gone to every one since the beginning; it was a follow up to Aussiecon 3, where I worked on the children's program, and the idea was to train up a new generation of con organisers.

I was on two panels, one on the heroines of YA and the other on the YA writers of Melbourne. Today I have only a reading, assuming anyone turns up(people mostly don't, but you never know). I arrived a litte before the launch of George Ivanoff's new novel, Gamer's Rebellion, which I will be reviewing here as soon as I finish it(nearly finished) and wandered into the dealer's room, where my novel was on Justin Ackroyd's table, so I gave him some bookmarks and more to Chuck McKenzie of Notions Unlimited bookshop, who had some copies of Crime Time on his. (Chuck sold lots of copies of Wolfborn when he was running a Dymock's).

A man near Justin's table made my day by telling me he had just finished Wolfborn and loved it, after his teenage daughter had said,"Dad, you've got to read this!"

Happy sigh!

I had a chat with the folk at the horror fiction table, which was nice, and was asked about ASIM submissions.

The panels went well. I was on the first one with two Amandas - Elliott and Pillar - and David Witteveen. Richard Harland as well, though he came a bit late. Only a few people admitted to reading YA fiction, but when we asked, "Who has read this or that series?" we got most hands up, and there was much discussion. Michael Pryor was in the audience to hear me say one of my favourite YA heroines was his character Caroline in the Laws Of Magic series, who is intelligent, attractive and kickass. Of course, I also like JKR's Hermione, who doesn't need to kick ass, as she uses her brain.

I rushed off for a belated lunch at the Australia Food Court before returning to my next panel, which I did with Paul Collins, Michael Pryor, George Ivanoff and a lady called Amie Kaufmann, whom I had met once before, at Flinders Street station, where she admired my fannish t shirt and told me about her forthcoming novel(not yet available in Oz). Paul was moderating and when the question of "Melbourne influence" came up, I was the only one who could say I had had some Melbourne settings, even if only in my short fiction. There was a lively, if irrelevant, discussion, of what education publishers will censor. I also mentioned a scene in Wolfborn, stolen from Petronius's Satyricon, in which a werewolf, about to change to wolf shape, urinates around his clothes to hide them. I offered to remove it if necessary, but my publisher said it was fine. The audience had a chuckle over that.

Soon after, we were shooed out so that the evening's Maskobalo could be set up, so some of us went upstairs to the bar, then went down the street for dinner at a Greek restaurant, where I chatted wit writer and fellow Year 8 teacher Steve Cameron. We ended up talking teacher shop all through the meal! Steve said we should add it to our PD hours. ;-)

I didn't go back for the Maskobalo, which is good to look at, but far too noisy for my taste. An evening at home was nice.

Back to the con today, ths time for more hours, though I won't be there for long after my reading at five - home to my family, as Sunday is another family evening.
More tonight!

A Baby Boomer In The Age Of Technology

While I was at the conference last week, I was asked to fill in a survey form and  had to borrow a pen because I had forgotten to bring one, even though I'd brought an exercise book. I hadn't been using the notebook, you see, I had been taking notes in Pages on my iPad. As speakers did their thing, in between taking notes, I was googling those of whom I hadn't heard and downloading their books where available, to be read later. Now and then, I would lift the iPad and take a surreptitious photo of the stage for my blog, though on Day 2 I brought a good old fashioned camera(well, old fashioned in that it  was a camera - it was digital and later I downloaded the photos, correcting the red eye as I did so). The reason for that is that you can't get a close up on an iPad, or if you can I haven't yet worked it out, but I will. Next to me, a teacher librarian with grey hair was working her own iPad like there was no tomorrow.

Where am I going with this? The other day, I agreed to run an eye over an assignment on library digital services for a nice young librarianship student. There was something unintentionally patronising about the discussion of "digital illiteracy" but when it got to a sentence in the notes about libraries teaching people this stuff and "baby boomer statistics" I went, "Whoa! Who does she think invented this stuff? Taught her how to use computers in high school?" It's bad enough getting the constant refrain of "baby boomers are selfish" but at least you can see where that comes from and why. This was sheer patronising. Definitely not intentional, which may be worse.

My father discovered the Internet in his seventies and eighties. He was a true silver surfer. Every morning he would get out of his nice warm bed in the cold early light and go read the international newspapers online. Every visit I heard,"Hey, guess what I found on the Internet today?" If he'd still been around, I would have bought him an iPad and a digital subscription to his favourite papers. He could have taken it off the charger and back to bed.

Some years ago, I met a teacher I'd known in my first job, when he was teaching science. Now he was head of infotech.

See, when I was growing up computers were the size of a room and only universities and government facilities had them. I had a typewriter on which my uni assignments were written and on which my Honours thesis was typed. If I wanted someone to look at my assignment, I had to show it to them personally, not email it. In fact, when I was with my first writer's group, we had to make carbon copies or find an institution with one of those wet photocopiers and mail our stories to each other. I published a number of fanzines. By then I did have easy access to photocopying, but I was still on a typewriter, though an electronic one I had bought with the prize money from my first win in the Mary Grant  Bruce children's writing award. It wasn't until I wrote my first book that I had a computer, an Apple Mac Classic 2. When I was in my first library, I had catalogue cards - five for each book, and then, during stocktake, we had to pull all five out for any missing books. And there were lots of books missing every time - hundreds!

Can you see why I was so delighted when technology made my life easier? No more having to fix typos  with whiteout or retype whole pages. No more pulling five cards out for every missing book. In fact, now I can just download a catalogue record for most books(I can still catalogue from scratch). We do still have a typewriter(electronic) for spine labels, because it's not a good idea to put a sheet of sticky spine labels in a printer or photocopy tray with rollers to catch them. In fact, where I work, with everyone sharing the photocopier as a printer, chances are that someone will go to print out a piece of written work and find it spread across a page of spine labels. Our students who visit my office are intrigued by the typewriter."What's that?"

I love my Internet passionately! I love that if it's not in a book I can help my library users find it online. I love that I can write this n the way to work on a little computer the size of an A4 page and publish it to the world before I get there and then use the same little computer to read a book or a newspaper or slush for my issue of ASIM.

"Baby boomer statistics"?!? Being patronised, however unintentionally, by a girl who thinks her generation invented technology - Urk!

 I can only hope it never happens to her generation.

On Editing ASIM

I've been a member of the Andromeda Spaceways Collective(now Association, long story) since it was in single digits. Now, I'm finally going to edit an issue, #60.

I never intended to do this. I have done some subediting and participated in the multi-editor issues where each of us chose one or two stories to edit. That was fun; I got to pick something special and didn't have the responsibility of the full job. It will certainly mean I have to put aside most of my own writing. But I offered to subedit this issue for a member who has since vanished into the blue, nobody having heard from her in months, without having started and now it's up to me. This has sort of happened to me before, with #38, but that one was nearly ready to go when the editor vanished for several months, to the point where some authors assumed the magazine had died and sent their work elsewhere. She had even chosen the cover artist and paid from her own pocket. We rolled up our sleeves and got it out in time. I had help. I will have help this time too, but in the end, it's my job to make the decisions.

I will post about the process as it happens.

Right now, I'm reading. And reading. And reading. Lucy Zinkiewicz, our slush wrangler, has come up trumps, sending me slush that has passed all three rounds of reading as soon as she gets it. I need a  balance of SF, fantasy and horror fiction. Fantasy is the easiest, as most of our submissions fall into that category. SF is harder, because we get less of that and what we do get is not always believable. Fortunately, we have scientists in the collective to check the physics for me. I have found one wonderful piece that is believable and has an emotional punch too. Not many can do that. Off the top of my head, Stephen Baxter can, among the current crop of hard SF writers. I don't really like horror fiction, so I have asked for opinions from someone who knows the genre better than I do. In the end, I still have to care about the characters and the writing has to be excellent to get me to consider it, whether it's a space opera or a brooding Gothic horror. When I have chosen stories in the past, they have mostly been ones that I couldn't stop thinking about two days after I had read them. I may not have that luxury for a whole issue, but I still want stuff that is better than just "quite good".

I'm reading this as a reader, not an editor, asking myself,"What would I want to read if I bought this?"

And it's not just a balance of genres - you can't have a bunch of stories that all all grim or even all funny, despite ASIM having been founded to create a market for funny stories. There's also poetry, reviews, possibly articles to choose.

Ah, the challenge! Stand by for the next exciting instalment...

So Many Books, So Little Time! Reading Matters Splurge

Just got back from three days at Reading Matters, the biennial conference run by the Centre for Youth Literature in Melbourne. More when I have the energy and have sorted the photos. I have to share anyway, with the staff at school, as the school paid for my ticket.

The con proper was two days, but Thursday was student day and I took book club. I bought far more books than I should have, including downloads of some on iBooks as the authors spoke - I didn't have an iPad last time. Danger both from the bookstall and the iBooks Store!

There was also the goody bag, that contained a manga comic which goes straight in the library, and Will Kostakis's new novel in ARC form. A lovely, lovely book, which I have finished in a day, but can't yet review due to a mid July embargo. Will has agreed to an interview, which also has to be July. I will have to write it all now, while it's in my mind, and save it for July. Something to look forward to!