Literature Circles The Movie - Take 1 Done!

Late last night I finished the first version of my DVD and burned a couple of copies. I've been discovering bits I filmed and adding them. I worked out a way to get that upside down bit right side up and realised that one of the staff was being rude to a student. No doubt he deserved it, but the purpose of this is to celebrate what the students have done. Back I went to iMovie and fiddled till that frame was gone.

The credits were a problem of their own. The end credits were meant to be a lovely band I discovered on Jamendo, Celestial Aeon Project, playing a piece called Sunset, but somehow I got the voice of Kerry Greenwood talking about writing! It took a lot of fiddling to get that fixed and I still seem to have her voice underneath the opening credit music, but that will be fixed before Friday.

I just wanted to have something ready in case I don't have time to do more before we show them to the kids.

When I started teaching, there was something called the book report - anyone remember that? You had to tell the story and say which of the characters you liked best and why. If the teacher was being especially imaginative, you got to do a book cover. How times have changed!

I had to do those when I started. I gave them their own choice of book and some, of course, tried to persuade me they'd read a book they hadn't. Invariably, it was one I had read. I remember one boy who gave himself away as I was returning some work after I said, "Someone in this class has written a review of a book that person hasn't read." I wasn't even looking at him, but he blurted out, "I did read it, miss, honestly I did!"

And then there was the girl who read romance novels by a favourite writer. "Hang on," I'd say, "didn't you write about this one last time?"  "Oh, no, miss!" she would assure me. "That was set on a sheep station. This one is set on a cattle station." Which said more about the formulaic nature of some romance fiction, especially that writer, than it did about the student.

I think this is a much better way to appreciate a novel, don't you? Though I have heard that some of our senior campus folk are trying to bring back the class text for junior classes, even though there are two years of class texts before they begin VCE. I suspect some of our staff need to be removed from teaching older students and made to teach the little ones for a while. They just don't get it. Before you know it, we'd be back to book reports!

All the more reason to get this DVD ready and show it at a staff meeting.

Literature Circles The Movie!

The post below is reprinted from my other blog, Sue Bursztynski's Page. I know this is basically a book review site, but this is how we do books with younger kids at school. It's a wonderful way to teach books. The kids read a book they can handle and discuss it, with some guidance - a set of "roles" they play, such as Discussion Director, Predictor, etc. - and the teacher has the pleasure of seeing the young men and women gravely discussing the book they're reading like adults in their book clubs, but better. I have described it to the students as "book club for the classroom".

Later, they have to go back to class texts, because that will be required of them in their older years, but meanwhile, they can work at their own level on a book they aren't struggling with if they're not the best of readers, or that will challenge them if they're good readers and they're learning to discuss a book and think more deeply about it and what it means.

Following this, in my case at least, there's none of this old-style "Book report". They interpret the text in a number of different ways (I have even offered fan fiction as an option for the better readers, because you have to understand the book and the characters to get fan fiction right. Last year, I had a very fine fan story based on Marianne De Pierres' Burn Bright. She was one of only two students who took me up on that, because it's harder than it looks). They can do book trailers - those fill the curriculum requirement for "persuasive language" because you have to persuade people to read the book. Some of the students even prepared interview questions for authors who have agreed to it(we have four interviews this year!) - I check them out before sending the questions on, and they must show they've read and understood the book. I won't take "What's your favourite food?" unless it's a story about food!

Anyway, check this out and see what you think. I'm rather proud of my students and I know they had a good time doing this and learned a lot.

"So, I'm sitting at home on report writing day, having done as much as I could on reports(still things to gather and marking to do anyway) and I'm working on my DVD for Literature Circles - we're going to have a showing for both classes next Friday and I must have it done and burn some copies for those kids who would like to take them home.

It's not easy. I only have one set of actual discussions - every time I tried to film a discussion at least one member of the group would raise her hands over her face and yelp, "Oh, no! Don't film me!" It's not as if I'm putting them on YouTube, I would argue - they're just for us, and for showing to teachers who want some idea of how this works. But it just didn't happen. I had one good discussion being led by Catherine, our integration aide, a multi-talented woman who is an artist and film maker (I have a film she took of the integration students building a model based on the book they had read, The Big Dig, and talking about it. Brilliant!). But for some reason, when I loaded it on to iMovie, it turned upside down, and I still haven't worked out how to right it and the one friend who could help me is in bed with stomach cramps. Even the computer technician at work said, "If you find out, let me know."

So most of the filming is of my voice interviewing the students about the books they were reading at the time and it sort of works, but I really prefer the discussions.

 Some of the students chose to do an author interview and I've arranged these with the authors, though I have only emailed one set of questions, because they really need some editing and I don't want to edit them too much or it won't be the students' questions, it will be mine. One set of questions still needs to be retrieved from our Public Share, where I hope the student who typed them has saved them. Those will go up on The Great Raven when done.

And then there were the book trailers - well, there was one quite good one based on Gillian Rubinstein's Space Demons. I don't think the publishers would use it in YouTube, but it gets the message across and persuades viewers this book might be worth checking out. It was put together smoothly in Powerpoint and saving it to Quicktime gave me no problems. Likewise, the trailer for Cirque Du Freak by Darren Shan, which was produced properly by a student who knew how to use Moviemaker and could be converted to Quicktime via HandBrake. That was a good one too, though I wouldn't post it on YouTube, because the images were copyright. The music came from Jamendo, which is Creative Commons.

I had somewhat more trouble with the book trailer for Holes. It worked fine on a PC, but was missing its music when I loaded it on to my Mac. I was told by our info tech teacher that PowerPoint doesn't work with mp3(yet it worked okay with the Space Demons trailer) and he had recommended .wav, which doesn't work on a Mac. However, I found out the music he used, downloaded it as mp3 and recorded it on my computer, on which the PowerPoint opened as Keynote and Keynote does take mp3. Then I was able to save it to Quicktime and upload it to iMovie. Yay!

The one that REALLY gave me a headache was the trailer for Jenny Mounfield's The Icecream Man, a scary thriller for teens. Despite my warnings, the students produced it in Moviemaker, which should never be used by anyone who hasn't the experience and confidence to make it work. The trailer looked fine, but the file I was given by the student who put it together was not properly saved - it was a 66k wlmp file. And the student with the finished product took it with him and went off to Bangladesh for the rest of the school year!

Fortunately, he had left me a folder with the images and even the music. No text, but I got an idea - I would put it together using their images and music, in KeyNote. And they'd done me a storyboard with the planned text.

Unfortunately, I discovered that the text was plagiarised directly from the official book trailer and couldn't allow it to be used. I just couldn't! I don't know if that was the text they actually ended up using - they finished it off on the last day of Lit Circles classes and I was running around like a chicken with its head off, helping other students, asking them to save to Public share, saving files to my USB stick...

The tune was Pop Goes The Weasel - the original trailer had that, but this version was actually better than the one on the trailer, scarier - just imagine Pop Goes The Weasel sounding scary! So I took the images, placed them in order and recorded the music they had chosen. next year, when he returns, I'll ask the travelling student if he still has the original file and as long as he hasn't used the stolen text I will replace this one on the DVD. I don't think most kids understand the concept of plagiarism. They've done their research, they've found the information, what's all the fuss about? Or they tweak a few words and say, "But Miss, I've rewritten it!" (Rolls eyes).

Anyway, it seems to work not too badly, with the combination of images and music and I have placed it on iMovie along with the rest of the files. Time for a quick lunch and then put it together into a film!"

I'm Finally Reading...

Okay, I admit it: I download far more than I can possibly read in any week or month! (And then I end up rereading my favourites...) And way back in   May, at the Reading Matters Conference, I was downloading books as the speakers did their talks, so that I had nothing to sign! 

I have read some of them, but Libba Bray's 1920s horror novel, The Diviners, was waiting for me, lurking on my iBook shef every time I opened it. I've nearly finished  Going Bovine, her Don Quixote novel with mad cow disease , and will be putting it into the library for Priyanka to enjoy when she gets back from Fiji. Not sure if she will enjoy it, but she asked for it. It's a bizarre road novel! 

The Diviners is horror fiction with 1920s New York as a background and so far, not too over the top, so I can finish it. The screams seem to be happening at the end of chapters. I can live with that.

Dear Teachers And Librarians

Dear teachers and librarians,

Recently, one of my writer LinkedIn groups has been discussing school visits and doing them for free.

Most of them on this list say they don't mind doing the occasional free visit for a local school or as a favour to a friend. Really. And as a teacher-librarian I have benefited from some of these myself, usually from new writer friends wanting the practice, but also from the occasional big name writer -  and have appreciated them.

And this is the thing: lack of appreciation. When I have had a free visit - always offered, never requested, because I 'd never do that, but when someone offers I won't say no  - I have thought the least I could do was promote the author via the local paper if possible, provide a great lunch and a thank you gift. I have asked them whether they would prefer just a lunchtime visit with a small group or a full scale talk to a year level.  They may bring books for sale and because most of our students can't afford it, I buy some from my own pocket for prizes and some for the library. Actually, I make sure the library has some before the visit and that at least a few kids have read them and can ask questions. I have a standing offer of book launches; I would pay for the nibbles myself and get in the papers.

But some of the writers and artists on this list had horror stories. One was of being left with a class to get on with it, with not so much as a thank you and, because this was a festival, there was a bookseller stall and none of that author's books on it, despite her having given the information well in advance. A festival suggests a school that could well and truly have afforded to pay - and probably did pay the other speakers, but this was a favour to a parent friend. Clearly, that school didn't value what they hadn't paid for.

An illustrator who did a free visit gave the school her sketches and was told afterwards that they would sell them and pay their next guest with the proceeds!

This is a controversial subject, on which full time writers blog frequently, usually against any freebies, and I don't blame them, but that isn't what this post is about.

Really, you should be paying, and paying well. If my school hadn't cut my budget in half, to the equivalent of another school's petty cash, I would never accept the free visit offers. But they're usually from friends and I can't help thinking how much my students would love it and I yield to temptation. This is their living and you wouldn't ask a plumber to come and fix your sink for free, would you? (Well, one of the teacher librarians at my school is a qualified electrician who has often been asked to do maintenance work, but still...)

But if your local writer or artist knows your school can't afford to pay much and offers to help you out, the least you can do is appreciate what they've done. Don't leave the visit arrangements to someone else. Do make sure that your guest feels like a star for the length of the visit. Promote them to the press - and for heaven's sake feed them!

Children's Charity Network Dinner - Writers And Artists Of The Future!

Last night I attended the Children's Charity Network dinner. It's a sort of literary lunch/dinner in that each table has a writer or illustrator sitting there, but is really about awards for young writers and artists. The annual competition is run by the same people who do Oz Kids In Print, a magazine for and by children, both on line and, for a fee, print. This is something I need to check out for our students, both the competition and the magazine, in consultation with  some of my colleagues. See? I went there in my capacity as a writer and  ended up thinking of my teaching role! I've bookmarked the web site to look at later - for the moment I have work to prepare for tomorrow.

I was at a table with George Ivanoff, Corinne King and her husband and a proud family who had come from interstate to see their young daughter collect an award for a short story about a volcano. The children's stories and art were published in a magazine that everyone received. The cover was a photograph that had won a prize. It looked very professional, something for which I would pay, but was done by a primary school child.

The young lady who had won a prize for her story was in Grade 5. She said her teacher had helped her, but this was an extensions teacher. Translation: she had this teacher in the first place because she was bright and creative and the school thought she merited extra support. Apparently, the teacher had left the school and still doesn't know she had won this prize! I suggested that if she couldn't get details from the school she try Googling the teacher, as one of my former students did me when she needed help and the school wasn't responding. "But I don't know her surname!" she wailed.

She was a terribly mature little thing. I never talk down to children anyway, though I do confess to the odd endearment. We talked. She told me she really was more interested in music than writing and played two instruments. I made her laugh by telling her that at her age I was reading a book on my music stand while practising scales and my family had to keep coming in and snatching the books away. She said this happened to her too.

The awards were presented over the course of the evening. Unfortunately, despite the screens around the room, there was no way to see the presenters or the presentations unless you were sitting near the stage (I was near the back and with my back to the stage anyway, so had to twist around and stretch to see). Mistake! Sometimes I could barely hear them, especially when people got bored when the awards had gone too long and their own children had had their prizes and chatted, not listening. It might have been better to have kept the photos till the end and perhaps done the awards between courses.

Still, it was a great evening and I'm glad I went. There were some amazingly talented children and teens there who will do wonderfully well in publishing when their time comes. And I got to meet them now.

This Week's Random Reading

I've been having fun picking up random books as I leave my library and taking them home to read.

These last few days, I've picked up a few. Dreamhunter by NZ writer Elizabeth Knox is set in an alternative universe NZ, Southland, which was unoccupied when settlers arrived 250 years before theEdwardian  era. Religion is somewhat different, with an Orthodox Church and Lazarus as a patron saint, whose feast day is celebrated by Southlanders. Some years ago, a young man, who has since become the heroine's father, stumbled into a place called -er, the Place, where those with the gift can find and catch dreams, which they can then share with others, leading to dream palaces and usage in hospitals and even prisons...Something nasty is gong on!

I enjoyed it, though I was a bit annoyed to find a cliffhanger at the end, suggesting a sequel, something not indicated on the cover. A Google search showed that it's the first of a duet.

Barry Jonsberg's My Life As An Alphabet is very funny, with serious underpinnings, but for once there's no nasty twist at the end. Candice Phee is a girl with a lot of family troubles, which she is trying to solve in the most bizarre ways, and a friend who insists he comes from another dimension and is trying to return every night by jumping from a tree. I believe this one has been shortlisted for an award. Oh, and he makes a cheeky reference to his own novel Kiffo And The Pitbull, which you'll only recognise if you've read it.

I'm just finishing off The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda, described by one blurb as "The Hunger Games With Vampires".  Not quite, and I have some issues with the worldbuilding, but it's very readable,  the kids should like it and there aren't too many books for boys these days. The hero is a human boy living in a vampire society in which humans, or hepers as they're called, are a rare delicacy. Thanks to his father's training, he's managed to pass as a vampire, living on his own for seven years. If they smell his blood or sweat, he won't just be bitten, he'll be eaten. Vampires go crazy at the scent of human. They're not undead, they're a separate species.

Alas, another book that probably has a sequel, with no warning on the cover!

On my way out of the door today, I picked up Four Of Diamonds, a collection of four short books in the series about the Diamond brothers, by Anthony Horowitz. Tim Diamond is the worst private eye in England; the stories re seen from the viewpoint of his younger brother, Nick. I've read the first two, The Falcon's Malteser and Public Enemy Number Two. They were hilarious and the frst was made into a film called Just Ask For Diamond.

I'm really enjoying these random reads, though I have a pile of review books to finish as well. It will help me in my library job as well as be fun for me.

Back From The YABBAs 2013!

Today, I took a day's leave without pay to attend the Young Australian Best Book Awards, held this year at Haileybury College in East Brighton. I would have liked to take some students, but I just couldn't. The most interest would have come from Years 7 and 8 and I would have had to come to school and pick them up and then take them to the event and back to school again and East Brighton was just too far from Sunshine. I did ask the late Graham Davey once if my school could possibly host it. "Sure!" he said. "Can you fit in 300 students?" And of course, without a school hall, I couldn't. My library fits 200 and that's if they're all on the floor(which isn't a problem as they usually are on the floor at the YABBAs) but not much space for 20 writers to sign afterwards. So the event tends to go to Eastern/southeastern private schools, although Graham told me it would have been nice to have the event in the western suburbs for once.

So I went as a writer and at the same time, they had a lovely box of books waiting for my library, though it was too big and heavy for me to lug home by public transport, so Sue Osborne, the TL, kindly arranged for the books to be posted. I would have loved to take them in tomorrow to show my book loving students, but will just have to wait. Even better, she said that in future, she would send me anything she got for the Premier's Reading Challenge for my library!

Here are the winners of this year's awards:

Winner Fiction Years 7-9

Morris Gleitzman After Publisher - Viking (Penguin) 2012

Winner Fiction Younger Readers

Emily Rodda The Golden Door Publisher - Omnibus Books, 2011

Winner Fiction Older Readers

Andy Griffiths & Terry Denton The 26-Storey Treehouse Publisher - Pan Macmillan, 2012

Winner Picture Storybooks

Carol Chataway & Nina Rycroft Pooka Publisher - Working Title Press, 2012

Graham Davey Citation

The Very Grumpy Bear Nick Bland Publisher - Penguin, 2008

Of all the winners, alas, only Andy Griffiths was there to collect his award. Morris Gleitzman andCarol Chataway were sick. Emily Rodda sent a video acceptance speech.

And here's something I'd like to say: Andy Griffiths is a delightful man. I bought a copy of his newest book for Priyanka, my most enthusiastic book clubber, and got him to sign it, then asked for a photo with him for my students to enjoy. I don't think he will mind my showing it here.

And then he gave me some signed copies of his Schooling Around series, which has just been re-released with new covers. We do have the series, but the individual volumes keep going missing. The students will be delighted!

I also had my photo taken with Gabrielle Wang, whose book A Ghost In My Suitcase is being read by some of our students for Literature Circles, and who asked after Sweet, my talented student who did a manga version of a scene from her novel.

I was sitting next to Felice Arena, author of the Specky Magee series, and told him some of our students had studied the first book for Literature Circles. I don't know yet what they have in mind for their creative response, but he agreed that he would do an interview if they wanted one. We'll see how they go. I think they were playing around with a book trailer, but weren't too enthusiastic about it. 

Anyway, I thought they might enjoy seeing a picture of him with me, so here it is!

Also a delightful man and very funny. 

I also had a chance to chat with Oliver Phommavanh, a primary teacher and the author of some hilarious books about life in primary school, especially when you're growing up Thai. We saw him at the State Library a couple of years ago, and he could make a living as a stand-up comic, honestly! I didn't manage to get a picture with him, unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control. 

The ceremony included the amusing doodle thingie, where the kids get to do a Mr Squiggle, giving a few lines to authors or illustrators which they have to turn into a picture, which is then signed and put up in the school. This year's illustrators were Bruce Whatley and Felice Arena. I was very impressed at how well someone who isn't officially an illustrator could do the job. It was good fun for all.

There were student performances and then, after morning tea, we all sat down to sign. I was sitting next to my friend George Ivanoff, who has done seventy books in his time and is making a living from his writing. He tells me most education publishers have now gone to flat fee payments, not very good if you're counting on royalties. It was nice to be with him, anyway, and we were both kept busy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Dymock's had brought some copies of Wolfborn and they actually sold some! I wouldn't have thought they could sell it to primary students, but there you are. The young women came and got me to sign their books and I gave them bookmarks(they were Crime Time bookmarks - if I'd known, I would have brought some Wolfborn ones as well). I even signed a copy of Your Cat Could Be A Spy! It was a library copy, but this means someone knew I would be there and sent a student with the book. How cool is that?

We were fed lunch as well and then George took me to Moorabbin station, from which I was able to catch a train to Glenhuntly and then a tram home. A nice day all round!

Just Finished Reading... Ghost Hawk!

Susan Cooper's Ghost Hawk is sitting on my iBooks shelf, just finished yesterday. I learned about its existence on a blog post by someone who had just been to hear her interviewed(and what an interesting background! She has heard Tolkien lecture!). The blogger described herself as a Susan Cooper fan girl and, I must admit, so am I. I remember going to a library conference in Hobart at which she was the guest of honour, along with Jan Needle.

Jan was a delight, a very funny man, considering he wrote depressing YA novels, but we could all talk to him comfortably because we weren't major fans of his, though I did try to read more of his stuff after meeting him. But Susan Cooper was surrounded by a bunch of female teacher-librarians who could barely think of anything to say to her because they were such fans. I was one of them. And this was despite the fact that I had once written her a letter, back in the days before email and Goodreads, and had a reply. I found an address for her in a reference book on children's writers in the State Library. These days, she has a Goodreads profile, but you can't friend her, only become a fan, so no opportunity to communicate. Perhaps she was getting too much fan mail to answer, or her agent or publisher advised her to set up some social media profiles, but not to make herself available for contact - after all, if you answer fan mail, you aren't writing while you answer, and that means less money for the agent or publisher(which is odd because my first publisher encouraged answering children's fan mail). Still, it's ironic that I could write to her directly in the days before the Internet, but not now.

Ghost Hawk is a typically beautiful Susan Cooper book, a fantasy set in the early days of the settlement of America. Little Hawk, a Native American boy, is the narrator, but I can't say much more about him without spoilers. It's also about John, a white boy who is considered rather too sympathetic to the indigenous people. Reading this, especially the author's afterword, makes you realise just what a poor deal the Native Americans have had over the centuries. I mean, we know about it, but this gives you the gory details. Even Presidents you're supposed to admire, such as Lincoln, did horrible things to the indigenous folk who, by the way, didn't even get the vote till after everyone else, including women and African-Americans!

I also learned, to my delight, that the couple who befriended Ishi, the last member of the Yahi tribe(the whites had wiped out the rest of them) were the parents of the wonderful Ursula K LeGuin!

I am always going to love The Dark Is Rising best, but this one is at least as good as King Of Shadows and The Boggart, two of my other favourite Cooper novels.

Amazonish Goodies: The Final List

In the end, I missed out on the Asimov book and the Crime novel with Agatha Christie in it. The  problem was, Foundation, the ebook version thereof, refused to release price details, after quoting $5.99 the day before. And I don't like uncertainty where price is concerned.

Instead, I bought another Arthur C Clarke book, a rather large selection of short stories, starting with The Star, a favourite of mine, where there is a team arriving at a store of alien treasures on the outer world of a dead system whose star has gone supernova. The narrator, a Jesuit, asks God why it was necessary to wipe out this beautiful civilisation just to have the star of Bethlehem. I wish the anthology also had The Nine Billion Names Of God, but can't have everything.

But this book was rather more expensive than the Asimov had been, so there was not enough for a fifth book, with only $1.20 left. Ah, well.

So my final list includes the two Clarkes, this one and The Songs Of Distant Earth,  the Colin Falconer novel, Isabella: Braveheart Of France and Winter Is Coming.

I've already got stuck into the Falconer novel and started the others. Thank you again, Stephanie Carroll, lovely giveaway host, for your gift!

Sunday Morning And Books

I'm lying in bed on a Sunday morning listening to classical music on ABC FM. I woke at 6.20 am and knew I wouldn't sleep any more. The dishes I didn't wash await me in the sink. A house needs cleaning. They can wait another half hour or so. After my breakfast of fruit, toast and something herbal in the way of tea, I will do them all, but now is mine.

Yesterday I bought another print book while waiting for a tram outside my local bookshop, so will have to donate another few to the library to make space for it. It's Simon Schama's The Story Of The Jews. It's going into my reference collection - you never know what you'll need for writing. I like Simon Schama very much. He hosted the wonderful TV series The History Of Britain and brings the same chatty, laid-back style to his writing. The Jews in this book are ordinary people, not the famous history-makers we usually read about in other history books. A father writes to his soldier-boy son about why his kit hasn't arrived, tells him he hasn't been able to arrange the young man's back pay yet and adds that Mum is worried, something every Jewish boy has heard at one time or another, as Simon Schama adds. Someone in business writes to a less-than-reliable colleague and makes dire threats as to what he'll do if the man doesn't turn up on the docks to collect the goods. A woman divorces her second husband and he sues her for his share of the goods(and loses). This is history, who needs kings and generals? And I didn't know about the Jewish community in Elephantine, Egypt, who had their own Temple, much to the annoyance of the folk running the one in Jerusalem. This book is already proving to be great entertainment.

I'm well over halfway through Rachel Hartman's Seraphina, which I like very much for its worldbuilding, and I hear that her reason for human-shaped dragons started in her original  graphic novel, because she couldn't draw dragons very well! Who would have thought you could take a problem and solve it by making it such an integral part of your universe? I like the charm of the characters, the humour and the fact that she has some knowledge of the Renaissance and uses it as a starting place only.

 But is it really a YA novel, despite the heroine's youth? I don't know. This far into the novel, not a lot has happened, except offstage. There's a buildup, but teens aren't patient with buildups. Heck, a LOT of people are impatient with buildups! There's one Goodreads reviewer who panned my novel Wolfborn because not enough happened in the first eight pages(she stopped reading it)! My main action started in Chapter 2, after a buildup in Chapter 1.  And here's a book in which there's a conspiracy going on and the heroine having visions, but nothing happening onstage hundreds of pages into the book. That isn't going to please young readers, though they might hang around for the romantic interest, a nice young man called Prince Lucian Kiggs, who's Captain of the Guard at the palace,  though he can't be much older than the teenage heroine, a brilliant musician who is already assistant music mistress of the palace musicians. Lucian feels like someone at least in his twenties, who is calm, mature and handling his responsibilities well. But something he says early on suggests he's in his teens. Oh, well, keep going. But as an adult, I am enjoying it very much. It has a lot of charm.

I have chosen for this week's random reading My Life As An Alphabet by Barry Jonsberg. I really have to admire Barry, who manages to write novels regularly despite having a day job in teaching. Teaching is a worthy job that lets you make a difference, but it tends to use up your creativity, leaving little energy for other forms of creativity such as writing. People manage - look at all those art teachers who do exhibitions - but it's not easy. I haven't started reading the book yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

This week's download is Susan Cooper's Ghost Hawk, set in early America instead of Britain, where most of her earlier books are set;  she has, after all, been living in the US since the 1960s. The novel starts with a  Native American boy, Little Hawk, going on his manhood vision quest, during which he must survive in the woods for three months and fast till he finds his Manitou, or totem animal. Susan Cooper is always worth reading and has done some wonderful books since The Dark Is Rising series, though I, personally, think that series is her classic and will continue to be read after the others are long out of print.

Time to get up now. Maybe I can unfreeze my writer's block and do some writing today other than blogging!

Unveiling My Choice of Amazonish Goodies

Okay, I've made my choices! I get five ebooks, adding up to just under $25.00! Ghu, I'm good! ;-)

One of them is Colin Falconer's new novel, Isabella, The Braveheart Of France. He's been talking about it endlessly on various blogs recently, so let's see what it's like. $4.99.

Number 2: Winter Is Coming, another analysis of Game Of Thrones. I already have one called Winning The Game Of Thrones, but for $2.99, why not? Always nice to see someone else's ideas.

The London Blitz Murders is yet another crime novel with a real person as sleuth(this time Agatha Christie). This sort of book is a guilty pleasure of mine. And only $3.99!

  I decided to finish off with a couple of SF classics: Arthur C Clarke's Songs Of Distant Earth and Asimov's Foundation.  I have never read the Arthur C Clarke book at all and I remember curling up with the Asimov when I was babysitting my nephews David and Mark, now grown men with children of their own. Yes, that's how long it's been. These two are, respectively, $6.83 and $5.99. Total: $24.79.

Some time tomorrow, when I have a bit of time to myself, I'm going to sit down with my iPad and my redemption code and follow the instructions.

Five lovely, delicious new books! The only pity is that I can't stroke their shiny new covers or open the crisp fresh pages to other worlds of delight. But there's still plenty of delight to be had in pressing a button and downloading them to read immediately instead of waiting days or weeks for delivery.

I'll live with that.

On Winning Giveaways You Don't Remember Entering!

For the second time in a row, I've won a book giveaway contest I don't remember entering.   The first time, it was an informal one on The History Girls website. That one I definitely didn't enter, because I checked. I simply put a comment on a post which they must later have decided was their September Giveaway. They give the prize to the comment they like best, in this case a historical novel from HarperCollins. In that case, I didn't actually get the book, because the publisher had specified  UK only, another reason I wouldn't have entered if I had known, but  they offered to send a copy to a British friend, so I put them in touch with my friend Jackie Marshall, who lives in Norfolk and loves historical fiction as much as I do.

This time, I won a $25 Amazon gift voucher from a website I don't recall visiting, but must have, because when I followed the website link, there was my name among the winners. I still don't recall the website, but I have a vague memory of entering one of those centralised giveaways which have a long list of sites giving away books. I don't do it, usually, preferring the more informal ones on English Historical Fiction Writers or, now and then, at the History Girls(rarely the latter, who offer only print books and so don't usually send books outside the UK).

But there are so many of these online giveaways and I must have thought, I have done this myself with very little to show for it, what the heck! And added my name to the Rafflecopter list.

So now, how do I choose? I have discovered that the book being promoted by this author is available for $1.99 on iBooks, so I will leave it for now and buy it later with my iTunes account. I prefer iBooks anyway; I don't have a Kindle and rarely use my Kindle app, which is clumsy, IMO, and doesn't make me feel like I'm reading a book, just a professionally laid out manuscript.

But I must be practical in my choice. A print book would waste several dollars of my precious voucher in postage. And this lady had to work to earn it in order to be able to give it to me, so I will buy as many good ebooks as I can find and get the best value out of it.

And thank you very much, Stephanie Carroll, author of Victorian Gothic novel A White Room!

Random Reading

I've been picking up books at random from my library library shelves lately and taking them home to read.

It's nice just picking up a book that I might never normally read - or, in some cases, never getting around to read - and taking it on the train with me.

One was ACID, a YA dystopian by British writer Emma Pass. I'm not hugely into dystopians, with a few exceptions, but this one was quite readable. In this novel, Britain has become literally a police state. ACID is an organisation that started life as the police force and took over after a global financial disaster known as the Crash, instead of the usual nuclear war. Different! In this country. - England only, it seems, not Europe or the rest of the world - you enter an arranged marriage(LifePartnering) at sixteen and go into an arranged job while you wait for permission to have a baby. The  heroine, Jenna Strong, is in an adult all-male prison for killing her parents, ACID agents. When a rebel organisation called FREE springs her from jail, she discovers her memories have been tampered with big-time. I enjoyed going along for the ride, despite some difficult-to-swallow premises and for an oldie like me there were hints of the 1980s British series Blake's Seven. No spaceships, of course.

I put that back and, yesterday, picked up a book by Heather Brewer, the beginning of the Slayer Chronicles. This one was American and featured something called the Slayer Society, built on the premise that vampire-slaying skills are genetic, running in families, and seen from the viewpoint of thirteen-year-old Joss, who has agreed to go into this because his little sister was murdered by a vamp. I couldn't help wondering whether the author gave the boy the same first name as the creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer on purpose. Bet she did!

It didn't take long to finish this book, which is readable by a late primary/early secondary student reading at their right level. Today I finally borrowed Seraphina by Rachel Hartman,  which has had some good reviews and which I bought last year for a dragon-loving girl. It has dragons who can take human shape and a kingdom sort of like Renaissance Europe. The heroine is a part-dragon musician. So far, lovely, but I'm on page 47. It may take longer to read than the others, but never mind, there will be more random reading to come. Stand by for more reports!

Gamers' Rebellion By George Ivanoff. Melbourne: Ford Street Publishung,2013

When the Ford Street anthology Trust Me! was published a few years ago, one of the short stories was "Game Plan" by George Ivanoff. It was based on a simple idea: where do the characters from video games go for their holidays? The real world,  of course! There, teen thieves Tark and Zyra become ordinary teenagers John and Tina, who do homework and go to school. It was an entertaining and amusing idea.

Who would have thought this little story would be expanded into not one but three novels? 

Tark and Zyra, after many adventures, managed to leave the Game, but we discovered that they had gone for their holidays to another game environment called Suburbia, not the real world. 

In this book, they finally arrive in the world outside the Game and it's not remotely like Suburbia. And the lovely Tina and John, on whom their own appearances are based, are respectively Designer Alpha and Beta and both are thoroughly nasty pieces of work who haven't been teenagers doing homework and going to school for years. Tina had managed to get John to spend all his time in the virtual world while she ran things from  the huge complex which houses the Game. Their former partner, Robert, is Designer Prime and works from his quarters, opposing them with the help of his clone assistant, who... 

You know what? It's a complicated story with a lot of running around, some tributes to Dr Who, teen rebels and much more than I can describe. Best just to read it - after the first two novels, Gamers' Quest and Gamers' Challenge. It won't make sense without them.

Reading this is like playing a video game without having the family complain because you won't get off the computer. Do yourself a favour. Do your family a favour. Read this instead of playing on the computer. The kids will thank you, at least until they pinch your copy of the Gamers' trilogy.

Greylands By Isobelle Carmody. Melbourne: Ford Street Publishing, 2012

Jack is dreaming of his mother, who died after a fall from a height in a fun park. She had been suffering from a form of depression, whose cause we learn late in the book - and Jack blames himself, because it happened on his birthday treat. He is close with his young sister and their father, but since his wife's death, the children's father has been unable to smile or show affection. Soon after the dreams, Jack finds himself slipping in and out of the Greylands, which are strangely bare of humans, apart from a few individuals who appear now and then when necessary to the plot, and are colourless. The Greylands are, in fact, the country of depression and grief, where flying represents escape. There, he meets a little girl he calls Alice, who is clutching a bundle which she refuses to put down for even a moment, a caged being known as the laughing beast who laughs at the absurdities of life and so is not popular, and the terrifying creatures known as wolvers, whose howls and growls are heard, though you can only hope not to see them. There is a puzzle to be solved here, and Jack knows it's connected with Alice and her bundle. It needs to be solved, because another tragedy is on its way...

This novel, one of the author's few stand-alones, was first published some years ago by a much bigger publisher than Ford Street. It's strange to think that anything by a wildly popular writer like Isobelle Carmody would ever go out of print, but this one did, and is now back, in a revised edition with a new cover. The introduction speaks of the background to the novel, her feelings after her father's death, when the world was just going its normal way while her family was grieving its loss. I confess I haven't read the original version and would have liked some hint as to the difference between that and this version, but it doesn't matter, really. You take the story as is, and if you have read and loved the original, you will know as you read and can make your judgement on the changes. I get the feeling that this book is very important to the author, whichever version you read.

This is really something of a literary novel rather than a straight fantasy. There's enough adventure that children might find exciting, though it mostly involves escape from wolvers, but really, it's about family and what happens to a family suffering loss, and which family hasn't? There are some nice references to Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen and it's likely that the author has this in mind; Jack sometimes enters the Greylands through a mirror and his sister suggests that perhaps their father has a piece of mirror lodged in his heart, like Kay in the Andersen story.

Greylands is a bit too sad for me to think of rereading any time soon, but is worth recommending to a good reader of about thirteen upwards. It will become a classic.

Thoughts On My Female Characters

Today, a Year 7 girl returning a copy of Wolfborn asked, "Miss, are you a writer?" - making sure I was actually the author of the book she had just read. When I said yes, she smiled and told me how much she had enjoyed the novel, adding, "especially the girl". It was not just a bit of egoboo, but it made me feel good that finally someone had said they liked my heroine, Jeanne. I have had far too many reviews that have said they liked the book, but not Jeanne, or that the romance was "tacked on".

It wasn't. Jeanne, daughter of the werewolf knight, Geraint, was strong, but vulnerable too. She wanted her father to be rescued and returned to his rightful place, but knew that if and when he did, she would lose the freedom of the forest where she had been brought up and be a castle-bound knight's daughter. And Etienne, the boy from whose viewpoint the story is told, made a huge sacrifice for her at the end, after making his love for her clear all through the story. If that's "tacked on", all I can say is, please, reviewers, go find a nice YA vampire romance. This book isn't for you.

One or two reviewers got it, and made me cheer.

This made me think of my female characters in general. When I wrote Wolfborn, I had fun with the wife of the werewolf knight, who had betrayed him. I deliberately gave her the soppiest name I could think of -  Eglantine, with a nod to Chaucer's Prioress. I ended up feeling a little sorry for her. She had a history, having discovered that a boy she had cared about and nearly married was a werewolf. Mind you, when I wrote a short story based on that incident ("Midwinter Night", published in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, issue #54, edited by Simon Petrie) I went back to being unsympathetic toward Eglantine, indicating that it served her right to end up married to a werewolf after she had betrayed her previous fiance, though it would be best for her new husband if she never found out. But she was limited in many ways; still, I gave her a chance to make a better life for herself at the end of the novel. I just couldn't make her a total villain.

Geraint's first love, Sylvie, Jeanne's mother and the local wise-woman, was meant to be strong and was in some ways, but had made some mistakes in her life and never quite gotten over them. I have a confession to make: there's a scene between her and Geraint, late in the novel, which was inspired by one in that lovely movie Ladyhawke, which I was watching while working on the edits. She's tougher than Eglantine(who isn't?) but she lost her family at a young age, due to what she was born, and had to grow up fast, alone in the forest. Only near the end of Wolfborn does she find out what happened to her family.

Of course, she wasn't completely alone after a while. She had a teacher, Lysette, who doesn't appear in this book but is the heroine of the one I'm working on - minus a publisher for the moment, but sooner or later I will feel confident to offer it around. She gets a mention, because my editor wanted to make a sequel possible, but that hasn't happened - there was a shakeup in the company and the Woolshed list and I no longer know anyone in editorial at Random House Australia. On my own, I went back to a prequel I'd already been working on.

Alys is Eglantine's waiting-woman and the wife of the castle's steward. She is the real chatelaine of the household, a woman who knows her domestic tasks well and performs them because Eglantine won't; she never had to, as a spoilt child who went straight from home to court to marriage. Alys is a more traditional woman than the others, but she isn't weak or passive. Women who ran such large households couldn't be. In some ways,  they were like hotel managers who also had to look after the whole estate. Etienne mentions that before his birth, his mother once had to defend the household from invaders while his father was away. Alys doesn't do that, but without her, some of the vital things that happen in the book wouldn't have happened.

Lysette is the heroine of my as-yet unfinished novel set in the same universe, at an earlier date. She is the result of my wondering what would happen if you were born a werewolf in the peasant class. Mostly, they'd be likely to be killed, of course, as soon as they were caught raiding the flocks, but Lysette has to escape from a bunch of local louts, having turned into a wolf for the first time in their presence. After that, she meets a Merlin-like wizard she accidentally releases from a tree, and travels the country with him, searching for a long-lost prince who had gone missing when the wizard's previous apprentice had locked him in that tree.

I've found myself getting Lysette to make a decision, late in the novel, that will not make me popular with girls, hence the fact that I'm still working on it. The problem with prequels is that there are some things you can't change. And one of them is the fact that the romantic interest of the book is a long-lost king and they don't usually marry peasant-girls, let alone werewolf peasant girls. And we know what happened to her later, anyway. Help!

I'm starting to understand why there are so many YA novels where the girl has to choose between two or more boys!

If you don't know what I'm talking about, but are intrigued, I have read from both Wolfborn and the manuscript, The Sword And The Wolf, on Youtube, there's a Wolfborn sample chapter on this web site and you can always order a copy from your local bookshop or library.

Marketing 101: How NOT To Do It

So, I got yet another request for a book promo. I could have had a copy of the book, but the blurb told me it was not my kind of book, though YA. Because the PR firm handling the marketing had addressed me by name instead of making it sound like a mass mail-out, I replied. I wasn't really interested in reviewing the book, but that didn't mean it wouldn't interest my readers. I was prepared to offer the author a guest post. I've done this many times before and it has worked nicely.

They didn't get it. Either that or they hoped if they bustled about enough, I might just go along with what they had planned, which was a blog tour with a press release, a character profile from a book nobody has read yet and one of those fancy Rafflecopter giveaways. Giveaways have never had much success on this web site anyway, except once, when it was being hosted by another site that specialises in giveaways. I think the best result I ever had was about six entries and that included my Goodreads invitation. Honestly, you guys, anyone would think you don't want a free book! Maybe you just love reading my fabulous posts. ;-)

No, I said. I had offered a guest post and ONLY a guest post. I was, however, happy to include a less formal giveaway with the post. And I sent a link to a guest post on my site to give an example of what I had in mind. They admitted that the giveaway was US only. I don't live in the US and neither do half of my readers. I asked them to give my email address to their client so I could explain what was required.

This morning, they sent me their press release again, asking if this was okay for my post today! Today?

I said no, it's a press release. I don't publish them. I explained why the author should write it, and suggested that as I was clearly holding up their blog tour, perhaps we'd better forget about it for now and get the author to contact me later to do the guest post outside the blog tour. I would even CC them.

So that's that. Can you see what these PR folk have done wrong? The only right things they did were to choose a YA site and address me by name. After that, it was a waste of my time and theirs.

And it's a pity. I have, out of curiosity, visited the author's web site and was quite impressed. Yes, it's a self-published book, but this person didn't just rustle up something on CreateSpace or whatever and start emailing blogs to please, please review my book. It's bigger than Ben-Hur! A boutique publishing company with admittedly only one book, printers, distributors, editors, quotes from friends in the business and a crowd funding campaign. And getting copies into bricks and mortar stores. You have to take your hat off to that sort of enterprising nature. I was almost tempted to make direct contact, but thought no, that's what the PR firm is being paid to do. Up to them. They wouldn't like it.

I hope still to do that post, because I think this person deserves promo, so I'm not naming author, book or PR firm.

So, what do you think? I know I did the right thing for my blog, but what would you have done if you had offered one thing and they had tried to push something else on to you? I know it's a PR firm's job to be pushy, but I don't like pushiness. Sorry!

SF To Science Fact: Michael Crichton's Mosquito

Anyone out there read the novel Jurassic Park? I did, a while before the movie came out. Remember the mosquito trapped in amber with a bellyful of blood and they used the DNA to create a dinosaur? Well, they've found a fossil prehistoric mosquito with a bellyful of blood, though they won't be creating dinosaurs any time soon. For one thing, it was about twenty million years after the last dinosaurs  died out. For another, the DNA wouldn't have lasted.

Still, it's exciting. And it was lurking in someone's basement in Montana, US., for about twenty years.  I love it when science fiction becomes science fact, which it has been doing for a very long time now. For example, those mobile phones with the flip tops. The inventor admits he got the idea from the original Star Trek communicators. We'd never have had them if Captain Kirk and his crew had tapped their shoulder gadgets to contact each other, as they did in the later series. And floppy disks, which we admittedly don't use any more, first appeared in Star Trek. And then there was Murray Leinster's A Logic Named Joe, which predicted the Internet, back in the 1940s.

Is it any wonder I love science and science fction?

Parke Godwin, 1929-2013

Having read a post this morning that reminded me that in the northern hemisphere it was still October 14, anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, which brought Norman rule to England, I thought it might be fun to discuss Parke Godwin's Sherwood, which sets the story of Robin Hood in William's England - it makes as much sense as Richard the Lionheart, which was basically Walter Scott's idea. I went searching for a suitable picture of the book's cover when I discovered, to my dismay, that the author had died in June this year!

So let me be a little broader. Parke Godwin could  and did write fantasy, award-winning fantasy, but he was also, in my opinion, America's answer to Mary Stewart in writing historical fiction with just a touch of fantasy, and, at that, an American who wrote some of the best fiction about British legendary heroes I have ever read. He comes close behind Rosemary Sutcliff and Mary Stewart in my favourites list.

Let's start with his two Robin Hood books, Sherwood and Robin And The King. Robin is actually Edward, a minor English country gentleman when the Normans arrive. Robin is his mother's pet name for him - "Puck Robin". For various reasons not his fault he is outlawed and his property given to Ralph, the new Sheriff of Nottingham. But Ralph is actually a decent man who treats Robin's peasants well and when the loony Earl of Huntingdon tries to start a rebellion that Robin knows will lead to civil war, he finds he can't support it. As he and Ralph are locked up in the Earl's dungeon together, they must co-operate to get out. What happens then, I will let you find out.

It was a delightful book, though the sequel was much darker. There are also implications about what Robin wrote, once he learned how, and became interested in law, which I won't go into due to spoilers. Just read them, but keep a few hankies for the second book. It's sad!

The Arthurian duo is Firelord and Beloved Exile. They're set in fifth century Britain. Arthur is a stiff -as-a-poker Roman officer. One day, he is kidnapped by the faerie, who are neither Tinkerbell nor Galadriel's relatives, but the indigenous folk of Britain, scorned and mistreated by everyone, the poorest of the poor. And they're his mother's people - Ygerna was left by a faerie midwife with a Roman matron who hadn't been able to give birth to a live child and was persuaded the little girl was her own. Arthur becomes third husband to Morgana, the polyandrous tribe's leader, who loves him but says she can't just dump her other husbands for him. He must leave her to solve an emergency among his own people and never returns, leading to tragedy much later. But he becomes a king who has empathy for the poorest of his people.

The second book, Beloved Exile, is seen from the viewpoint of Guinevere, after Arthur's death. This Guinevere is tough, intelligent and arrogant. She also has a way of staying friends with men she has let down, such as Ancellius(Lancelot), whom she used when depressed and dumped to return to her husband. Now she has been kidnapped and sold into slavery among the Angles. Over several years, she comes to have a respect for the people who were her enemies, and see things their way, impressed by their democratic system.

Both books drew me in and swept me away. The characters were ones I cared about, but not perfect. They had major flaws and so were human and believable. And one of my favourite bits in Firelord is where Arthur tells a Christian knight, "Oh, go and look for your silly cup!" ( The Holy Grail). 

Americans, be proud you produced a writer who could do such a wonderful job with other people's stories! 

I'm going to miss him.

Image taken from Creative Commons.

Launching Murder And Mendelssohn

This morning I left my mother's place early, to go across town to the Sun Bookshop in Yarraville, which is in the nicer part of the western suburbs(the nicest is Williamstown, which is by the sea). The occasion was the annual launch of Kerry Greenwood's latest piece of crime fiction. Usually, she alternates between the Phryne Fisher mysteries, set in the 1920s, and the present day stories centred around Corinna Chapman, baker extraordinaire who lives in a wonderful block of flats in Melbourne's CBD.

No one gets murdered in the Chapman mysteries. Teens go missing. Shonky televangelists do their thing to make money. The local chocolate shop's products are sabotaged, mysterious drugs are causing unintended deaths, but not murders. That sort of stuff. I love them and was looking forward to the next one for this year, but instead, there was a new Phryne Fisher adventure with not one, but two murders! Both victims are choir conductors of the same amateur choir about to perform Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah. And we discover that Phryne has choral experience(what has this chick not done?). The author has fun with Sherlock Holmes, creating a character who is like Holmes in personality, suggesting that a real-life Holmes, as opposed to Dr Bell, his inspiration, would be impossible to live with for most of us. The venue is Scots Church on Collins St, which is still there, and I think one of the characters lives on the site where the Education Department was located when I started teaching, a tower building considerably bigger than the digs of the choir's accompanist. This is one of the things I love about the series - Melbourne is familiar, and not.

I arrived at Yarraville in plenty of time and as I approached the bookshop, a voice called to me from behind: it was Kerry herself. We sat on a bench for a chat before going on to to the launch. She was wearing a robe which had hand painted titles of all her books on it.  I think she may have done  that herself. She is multi-talented.

As usual, there were plenty of people, though I only saw one familiar face apart from Kerry and her partner  David - a gentleman called Steve, whom I have known since my days in the SCA and now see at the Nova Mob science fiction club meetings. He knows Kerry and  David through the SCA. However, it was a nice event as always. David, who sings, runs the launch and organises the choir
which sings every time.

The bookshop is next to the Sun Theatre and the launch spills over into the cinema foyer. I bought my book - I had already bought the ebook, but I share these books with my family - and wandered into the foyer.

They always have munchies, soft drink and celebratory champagne and catering people hired to serve them. I enjoyed some sushi, cupcakes and toast with cheese.

It was impossible to get a decent photo with my poor little phone; every time I tried, someone woud wander past or bob up in the crowd to put their heads in front of me. And when I did get in a shot, there was strong light coming from outside, removing David's head! Ah, well...

Afterwards, I lined up to have my book signed - ony one this year, alas, since my poor friend Jan Finder the Wombat passed away.

I asked Kerry's Mum to be in a pic with me for my mother, whom I couldn't persuade to come along, though she loves Kerry's books, because she doesn't like travelling all that way from home; Jean Greenwood is five years older than Mum and more fragile. She kindly agreed and one of her other daughters took the photo. I came out blurry, alas, but never mind.

I believe that this afternoon there's to be a singalong of Elijah, but I am home, writing this and about to watch this week's Miss Fisher's Murder Mystery which is the Jock McHale's Hat story with a murder added to it.