Birthday books!

"You are the most impossible person to buy presents for!" said my son a few months ago.

"No, I'm not!" I replied. "You know what I like most.'

"Yes, but I can’t just buy you a book every time I have to get you a present!" he moaned.

"Fine, just buy me two books then!" 

And so today is my birthday, and how thrilled was I that he, and his sisters, took me at my word and all bought me books? Pretty darn thrilled, that's how much!  

Interestingly, they all steered clear of buying me fiction since they claim to have no idea what sort of books I like or have already read. But that's okayI'm very happy with what I got, which was:

Writing Fiction for Dummies

OK, I might have been insulted by this, given the courses I've done and the reading I've done and the actual writing I've done. But actually, I know from experience that you can be trawling through a book about the craft of writing, and you are thinking, "yeah, same old, same old," when boom!  Suddenly you see that one tip or trick which makes you see exactly what you have been getting wrong/trying to resolve in your work-in-progress. Or even better, in the bottom-drawer novel which you had expected never to see the light of day again, but which now seems easily resurrected.  And really, until I walk into Barnes & Noble or Waterstones and see a whole shelf devoted just to my books, I won’t stop reading books about the craft.

Writing Great Books for Young Adults – Regina Brooks

I’d come across snippets from this book in something else I read not so long ago and had been meaning to have a look at it.  Having done two courses in writing “for children and young people” I feel I am fairly well versed in the differences in writing for adults and for kids.  But the whole YA field had developed very quickly and very recently – and is still developing into new areas like New Adult – so I am looking forward to seeing what more this one has to add.

Seriously… I’m Kidding by Ellen Degeneres

and

I’ve still got it… I just can’t remember where I put it by Jenna McCarthy

I love reading funny books, though I’m glad that my days of getting strange looks from people as I laugh out loud on the London tube are behind me.  WE are about to go away on vacation and since we are changing places every few days with a couple of hours driving between each place, there’s not going to be huge swathes of time where I can settle down with an enormous novel.  So these two should be perfect!  And in response to that second title – not only can’t I remember where I put it, I’m not actually sure if I ever had it in the first place!

It’s gonna be okay – a journal to reassure myself when I’m overwhelmed by the creeping sense of impending disaster… (An inner truth journal)

Not only is this possibly the longest book title I’ve ever come across, it is possibly also the most challenging for those of us who have hit our mid-40s and find our eyesight is failing as fast as the muscles which once fought to protect our stomachs and bottoms from the sinking effects of gravity.  I am happy to report that I was still able (just) to read to the very bottom line of the cover without diving for one of the numerous pairs of reading glasses now placed around the house and in my bag.

This inner truth journal gives me a wry and thoughtful quote with a blank page opposite, at the top of which is a date box, and the title, What I’m hanging my hope on today:.  At the bottom is a thumbs up, thumbs down, OK sign and fingers crossed sign.  

So perhaps it is time to go back to something I used to do years ago – a Thankful Diary.  Every evening at bedtime, I would fill in a few sentences into a diary about something from that day I was thankful for.  Sometimes, when things were wonderful, it was hard to cram it all into that little space and sometimes, when things were hard, it was difficult to find even one thing to write about, but I forced myself to do it every night, because I knew that I would always find something that I was thankful for.

So perhaps this journal will give me a new regime – not a daily Thankful Diary, but a daily Hopeful Diary.  One of the quotes in the book is from Emily Dickinson:

Hope is the thing with feathers –

That perches in the soul –

and sings the tune without the words –

and never stops – at all.

A new Moleskine notebook

Can’t ever have too many, so ‘nuff said!

Barnes & Noble giftcard

I love listening to audiobooks when I’m driving, cooking, walking, working out, ironing etc, and mostly I download them through the brilliant Houston Public Library website on Overdrive, or get them from the library on CD and transfer them onto my iPhone that way. But sometimes even HPL’s huge catalog lets me down. So this gift card will be kept for that very special audiobook that I just have to have NOW instead of waiting for the library to get it!

So it’s been a lovely book-ridden birthday, and I have been very lucky!  Thanks, kids!

A Slap to the Heart

Last night, I received a slap in the face. Or rather, a slap to the heart.  I was reading through some recent blog posts by writer friends and I came across the line below from Austin writer, Nikki Loftin.  She was writing about Poison, a debut YA novel by Bridget Zinn, which was published in March of this year by Disney Hyperion.

"On those days when I feel like surfing the Internet or eating my weight in M&Ms 

instead of writing, seeing Bridget’s book reminds me that we don’t know 

how much time we have to fulfill our dreams." Nikki Loftin

 
Sadly, Bridget Zinn did not live to see her book in print.  She died of cancer in 2011, aged just thirty-three.   

Poison was originally due for release in 2012, the same year in which Nikki made her own debut with The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, but publication was delayed for obvious reasons until spring of this year.  When Nikki was approached by Bridget’s cousin to take part in an event at The Book People in Austin to promote Poison on Bridget’s behalf, she jumped at the chance.  And then, of course, she blogged about it here – a very moving piece and I think a fitting tribute to a fellow writer.

Bridget Zinn

The slap in the face for me came not only from Nikki’s words - “we don’t know how much time we have to fulfill our dreams” – but also from reading through one of Bridget’s own blog posts - here - about her own path to publication, written shortly before she died when she was clearly in a lot of pain.  Even faced with rejections of her first novel, she had continued to write, to study, to attend conferences and study days.  Then she started her second novel and finished it, and still continued to look firmly towards a future in which she would be a published novelist. At almost the exact time of her cancer diagnosis she heard that her second novel, Poison, had been picked up for publication.  Bridget continued to work on the revisions even after she began treatment, something that requires extraordinary strength of will and courage.

Reading through Bridget and Nikki’s posts, I realized that I have rather thrown away this summer so far.  I have too easily given in to the excuses of having too much to do with the children or the house or visitors, and I have given up whatever writing discipline I had developed during school time.  Other than a few blog posts and one non-fiction article, I have written almost nothing.  Also, because I have been waiting for news from a literary agent who requested my full manuscript a couple of months ago, I had convinced myself that I couldn’t possibly concentrate on the revisions that my second novel so badly needs or on continuing beyond Chapter 4 with my third.  If I take nothing else from Bridget’s spirit and Nikki’s words, it is that I can’t sit around and wait for someone to hand me publication on a plate.  How can I know what lies just around the corner for me which might throw an even bigger challenge than time management in my path?

So tomorrow, I am going to Barnes & Noble and I will buy Poison, not only for me and my kids, but also as gifts for friends back in the UK.  I am also going to suggest it as a novel this coming year for our mother/daughter book club, and I am going to tell everyone I talk to about it too.  Bridget deserves her success, she worked long and hard for it. 

And then, I am going to get my laptop out, find a relatively quiet spot somewhere away from children and the laundry and I will get on with the revisions to that second novel, and then with Chapters 5, 6, 7… of the third!

Thank you, Bridget, you have inspired me.

To read reviews of Poison or to by a copy of the book, visit: www.bridgetzinn.com.

For more information on Nikki Loftin and The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, visit: www.nikkiloftin.com. 

Holding history in my hand

Have you ever felt like stealing a library book?  Just never returning it and saying it was lost?  I never have - until now!

A few months ago, I was researching an article in anticipation of the centenary of the start of the First World War next year in 2014.  I was focusing particularly on the red poppy as a symbol of remembrance in all the countries who were involved in that dreadful conflict.  The reason we all wear red poppies to mark Armistice Day on November 11th each year is because an American lady called Miss Moina Michael read a poem written in the trenches by a Canadian Army doctor called John McCrae about the red poppies which grew in the devastation of the battlefields of Belgium and northern France.  The poem was called In Flanders Fields and begins: 

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row"

Miss Michael decided to sell paper poppies to raise money for the families of those soldiers who did not return and this symbolic gesture and means of raising funds grew and spread across to France and the United Kingdom very quickly.  The red poppy is now worn as a symbol of remembrance every November and poppy wreaths are laid on war memorials across the world.

As part of my research, I wanted to read more poems by John McCrae.  I discovered through the amazingly wonderful resource that is the Houston Public Library website that there was a book of his poems held in the Central Library.  I ordered it online, thinking very little more about it, until I went to collect it from my local library. 

It is called In Flanders Fields and Other Poems By Lieut-Col John McCrae MD, with An Essay in Character by Sir Andrew Macphail.  The book contains the 27 poems which make up McCrae's complete works.  Sadly, after serving at the battlefront as both a doctor and manning the artillery guns, McCrae died of pneumonia in a military hospital in January 1918.  Sir Andrew Macphail, a friend of McCrae's from university days wrote an essay to accompany the poems with details of McCrae's life, his writing, his medical and military careers and his sad death and funeral.  McPhail’s essay is dated November 11th, 1918, the day of the Armistice.  It was a fascinating book to have found by chance, but that was only part of its appeal.  Unlike so many books I have borrowed from libraries in the UK and the US, this book does not have a brightly covered fly leaf protected by a thick covering of plastic. 

It has instead a simple faded red cloth cover with the title printed in white lettering on the spine.  The pages inside are yellowed and a little tatty at the edges.  There is a photograph of the handsome, almost-smiling poet in his army uniform opposite the title page and between the two is a protective sheet of tracing paper, now mottled brown.  It has a lovely pencil-sketch of trees and a village which the poet drew on the back of a postcard.  The only sign that this lovely old book came to me via a hi-tech digital pathway is the shiny clean bar-coded sticker on the front so that HPL can keep track of it.

It was, however, as I reached the back of the book that this wonderful piece of history in my hands came to life.  Inside the back cover of the book is stuck a cardboard holder for an old library card, something I recognized from my childhood library days but which my kids had never seen before. At the top of that card, someone had typed (using a typewriter of course) the name of the author and the title of the book and had written the code number with a fountain pen above it.  Each time the book was taken out by a reader, a librarian hand-stamped the date it was due to be returned onto the card and placed it inside the holder.   

When I started to decipher the dates stamped on the card, I was astonished to find that the first reader to borrow the book from the Houston Public Library was due to return it by July 21st 1919, the year the book was published and less than nine months after The Armistice.  Knowing this book was almost one hundred years old and had been read by so many generations was very moving for me.  I was amazed that such a book wasn't kept under closer supervision, perhaps in the reference section of Central Library.  I became so terrified that I might cause it harm, it's been sitting in a zip-lock bag ever since. 

And thus I fell in love with this book, to the point where I am now finding it hard to return it.  Having extended my borrowing period for the full six weeks I was allowed online, I went to see our local librarian in person and hearing my please of 'vital research source', she kindly gave me another six weeks.  But that deadline came and went at the beginning of last month and now my fine is more than $4 (OK, hardly a fortune, but shaming enough) and I still can't bring myself to return this special book.

The page to which I keep returning is the facsimile of an autograph copy of the poem In Flanders Fields.  It was written with pen and ink by McCrae and signed.  His looping cursive script with linking lines tying words together is very much of its age, only just decipherable and a treat to read.

I know I have to return this book to its rightful place, but I can't help thinking I will take it out again, and again, perhaps every November just in time to remind myself why I am wearing a red poppy of remembrance.

My first Edinburgh Book Festival

I am so excited to have the chance this year to go to the Edinburgh Book Festival for the first time.  I grew up in the city and Festival time has played such a major part in my life, so I can't believe I have never had the chance to be part of it.  I was brought up on the Tattoo, I worked at the International Festival (where I met my husband), and I performed on the Fringe Festival, but because I left Edinburgh for London (then Cardiff, then Houston) more than 22 years ago just as the book festival was just becoming established, I missed it.  But this year we are managing to tie in our family holiday to Edinburgh at Festival time for the first time in years, and I am so excited!

The program has just been published HERE.  Now all I need to do is work out what to see, but given that they have 800 authors taking part in 700 events, I'm not sure quite how I'll do that.  Oh dear, so many events, so little time!

Joan Lowery Nixon Award 2013

I was disappointed to hear today that I didn't win this year's SCBWI Houston Joan Lowery Nixon Award.  But I did get a really lovely email from the illustrious judge and mentor, Kathi Appelt, explaining how hard her decision had been and that she felt my manuscript seemed to be so close to ready for submission to publishers, she wasn't sure how much she could have helped with it.  So a lovely morale boost coming on the back of a disappointment.  Thank you, Kathi, for your sweet words.

And huge congratulations to the winner, Melissa Morphew, whose manuscript titled The Celestial Omnibus Salvage Yard was nominated by Stephanie Hedlund from ABDO Publishing.

SCBWI Houston 2013

As you might have seen from my previous posts about going to writers' conferences, I am a big fan.  I went to another great one last weekend.  The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators chapter in Houston holds is annual conference out in Katy, and it was another really fun event.

I had two incredibly positive critiques from lovely Houston author, Joy Preble, and from Sara Sargent who is an editor at Balzer + Bray, an imprint of Harper Collins.  They both gave me a lot to think about on how to take my YA novel forward.  Their suggestions included redefining the ages of the protagonists - at the moment it is sitting right between Middle Grad and Young Adult fiction, making it a difficult sell for publishers.  I was also told to front load the novel with some of the mythology which permeates the rest of the book.  These were certainly the most positive and useful pieces of feedback I've had, and so I have been busy putting their advice into the next revision of the book.  Thank you, Joy and Sara, I'm very grateful!

Other great things about the SCBWI conference in Houston:

• a fantastic,  funny presentation from picture book writer and illustrator, Peter Brown
• meeting old and new friends from Austin and Houston
• hearing in fine detail how to approach literary agents from Josh Adams of Adams Literary
• winning a weekend at The Writing Barn in Austin in the silent auction - how wonderful it will be for me and three writing friends to go away for a weekend retreat together where we can do nothing but focus on our work.

The other very exciting thing to come out of the weekend was that Sara Sargent nomination my novel for the Joan Lowery Nixon Award which is administered by SCBWI Houston in memory of that wonderful author.  At each Houston conference, each member of the faculty is asked to choose the best of the pieces they critiqued and those form the shortlist.  Since Joan died, Newbery winner, Kathi Appelt, has taken over judging the shortlist and she will pick on of our manuscripts to win.  The prize winner will then be mentored by Kathi over the next year as he/she pulls the manuscript into order read by submisison.

The six nominees this year were: Melissa Morphew, Mike Giles, Jennifer George, McCourt Thomas, Maria Ashworth - and me!  Congratulations to all of them.  I was thrilled to be nominated for the second year in a row, and will be sending my pages off to Kathi as soon as I can draw breath.

World Book Day... sort of!

I was amused to discover this morning that today is World Book Day… but only in the UK and Ireland.  

Facebook was this morning full of great photos of kids dressed up for school as knights and dragons and Hermione Grainger and Horrid Henry, but all of them were posted by my British friends.  Seemingly, the rest of the world won’t celebrate UNESCO World Book Day until April 23^rd (Note to my American friends - thank me now for the advanced warning that your kid(s) will be asking for a costume for school that day - better to hear it now that at bedtime the evening before!).  

Apparently this discrepancy is because April 23^rd often falls within the UK’s Easter school holidays, and not because the British are naturally contrary (although I’m not entirely convinced of that).

I’ll admit to feeling nostalgic for my kids’ elementary school days when they had to dress up for things like the Story Book Parade.  Nostalgia is all I am left with since our family's elementary school days are behind us.  But I know of one particular boy (who might be twelve now and might live in my house) who will feel truly robbed because the overnight maturity required of him as a middle-schooler does not allow him to go to school on World Book Day dressed as his literary heroes, James Bond or Jace Lightwood or Peeta Mellark, in the way he did in previous years as Percy Jackson and Spiderman and Harry Potter (see left). 

Oh well, he’ll just have to wait for Halloween to come round again.

Whenever your country celebrates World Book Day – today or in April – I hope you will make a special effort to make a book part of your day – by reading a book in silence or aloud, by listening to an audio book, by giving a book as a gift, by writing a book or by illustrating a book. Or, if you really want to, why not dress up as your favorite book character (can you imagine coming across Rhett Butler or Mr Darcy at the deli counter in the grocery store, or Jamie Fraser at the gym?) – and remember, sometimes playing dress-up is not just for kids!