Which television series would you like to live in...

Remember how grumpy I was several weeks ago cos I hadn't heard back from publishers about my submissions - I STILL HAVEN'T HEARD! Sorry for shouting. I am doing my very BEST to be patient which is the hardest thing in the world for me and it still isn't good enough because patience is just rewarded with more waiting. Sigh.

I am off on another school visit tomorrow. Last week it was Campbell Bay Primary and the week before Remuera Primary. Next week it is Panmure Bridge Primary. Tomorrow it is Manurewa Central Primary. I hung out in Manurewa a bit in my youth, what with growing up in Mangere and all. School visits are cool. It is the driving there and back that is the stressful part. As a devoted watcher of Star Trek over the years I hoped they would have sorted this tele-transportation business out by now. They've had forty something years to turn their cool idea into reality. Thats plenty of time, surely. Marcus Chown in his book Quantam Theory Cannot Hurt You (not true - it hurts my brain every time I read some) talks about the theoretical possibility of tele-transportation. The way subatomic particles behave it is possible. Except (isn't that word a major drag sometimes - a bit like 'but' really, but not 'butt' which just tends to make me laugh - sad innit) some other aspects of subatomic particle behaviour screws up all the potential. Surely with all the people who hate driving they would have come up with some way better alternative to public transport by now!! Maybe if I lived in the television series it would work. Which television series would you live in, if you could?

And sorry, its my fault its just started raining again - I hung some washing out. Sometimes I think I do it just to thumb my nose at the weather. Sadly the rain always has the last laugh.

Whether we like it or not, writing is a business...

I liked this discussion over at Jane Smith's blog on how it's readers that drive publishing. As we know publishing is a business and publishers are in the business of publishing books they think people will want to read. Okay there are a lot of other players in the game as Jane lists in her post, but ultimately if the reader doesn't pay money for the books they publish, the publisher cannot stay in business. No, publishers don't always get it right (think Harry Potter) when they try to guess what the public wants. And there are plenty of times when they pay big bucks and print thousands of books that the public turn their nose up at. But generally their intent is to find books readers want to buy and read. I've spoken before about not wanting to try and guess at and write to trends myself. I write best when I write what makes my wheels spin. But its good to remind ourselves about this basic tenet of the publishing industry. Sometimes a rejection is not about the quality of the writing or the story, but the fact that publisher just doesn't think there will be enough buyers to cover the costs of publication. Of course I won't always agree with their assessment. Sometimes they don't agree with each other on this either. But its not necessarily a criticism of your writing, its a marketplace decision. I don't like it. I am always writing stories I think readers will like. For me as a writer, I know I need readers. In the beginning I wrote for myself. I tried to write the kinds of stories I liked most as a child. My focus was on finishing the book and sending it to publishers and with luck getting published, but once that happened I knew the readers were who I wanted to connect with. I want to write something people will enjoy, maybe make discoveries from or learn something from as a result. I'm certainly not trying to produce stories readers won't like. But my bottom line is I want to keep writing the stories I want to write. And I guess that means sucking it up when a publisher says no. It won't change the way I write or the things I write about. Getting published is not the goal. It's getting the books I like to write, that I think readers will like, published.

Of course, having said all of this, the biggest issue I face as a writer (apart from convincing the publisher to take on my work) is letting readers know about my stories. Readers may like what I have written but might not be aware I even exist. And readers have a huge choice of titles to pick from. So readers drive publishing? then getting their attention has to be part of the game plan.

Its Jacks turn...

Jack the Viking is a ripping read aimed at boys and girls aged 9 to 13. Adults seem to enjoy it too. What happens when a troubled twenty first century boy is thrust back into the viking world. You can't phone home for help. You can't shut yourself in your bedroom and play playstation. And when your new best viking mate needs you to join the battle to save his family and win back his village what choice do you have.

Reviews can be found here and here. Go check it out in a bookshop and see what you think.

Good book design...the silent hero of many a good book

Awhile back I checked in at this blog and read an interesting post on book design. Book design is one of those things that you probably never notice. But you can be certain that when you have found a book particularly enjoyable and satisfying, good book design has played an important part in this reaction. And when you put that book down five seconds after picking it up in a bookshop, poor book design most likely played a part in that too. Or when a book seems hard to read or confusing. Or gives you a headache.

Great book design is one of those things that is a seamless part of the whole product that makes a book a delight to hold, to read and to pore over again and again. And its absence can make even the most heartbreaking work of exceptional genius a trial to read. Good design can make text books easier to learn from. Good design calls out to you across the bookshop. It makes reading a pleasure.

I know it has made a difference to my books. Which is why its such a buzz to tell you that the book designer for The Were-Nana is a finalist in the picture book category for the 2009 BPANZ Book Design Awards. Its especially exciting because the The Were-Nana was designed by its fabulous illustrator Sarah Anderson who is truly multi-talented. I love that the design supports the underlying themes of the book so well and that everything contributes to the telling of the story and the changing moods and emotions that Sarah has illustrated so well. The winners are announced in September. Good luck Sarah!

A trilogy has such a lovely sense of completeness about it, don't you think...

Last night I had an idea for another Jack the Viking book, the third in what would then be a trilogy. There is however a difficulty. I would need to go to Norway to do some research. Hmmm. I do not currently possess enough funds for a trip to Norway. Could I fudge it and make my trip to Wellington do instead? Perhaps not. Maybe Dannevirke.

I really like the new idea. It will have to get in line and take a number to get its chance to be written as I seem to have about a million things on the go at the moment. A little bit of stewing will make for a better story though so I'm happy to let it sit for awhile. A trilogy has such a lovely sense of completeness about it, don't you think? And Jack has some more growing up to do. And he's a nice kid to hang out with. But investing time in him may not pay off in the long run; not in the dollar sense anyway. However some stories just don't care about such things. They couldn't give a rats bottom about what havoc they play on the writers solvency. They hang around in your brain refusing to disappear, quietly insisting on existing. A trip to Norway would be a blast. Stranger things have happened...

SPOILER ALERT - Jack the Viking: Magnetic North...

Here is how the sequel to Jack the Viking begins...(if you haven't read Jack the Viking yet and don't want to spoil it - DON'T READ ON!! )

I don’t dream so much anymore. I don’t read stories about Vikings any more either. There are two reasons really. One is that the last time my head was full of Viking stories because I read about them all the time, something strange happened to me: I went there, I lived there. The other reason is that having lived as one, stories about them just aren’t as good anymore. When I was a Viking I spent most of my time being afraid: afraid of dying, afraid of never seeing my friends and my family again, afraid of living in a strange world. It was only when I died as Jack the Viking that I stopped being afraid. Stein said being afraid is a good thing. A good thing that sharpens your thinking and keeps you alive. I’m not afraid of anything anymore, except of not being afraid.


Chapter One
“Are you nuts?” Harry yelled, as he ran up to me.
I couldn’t stop myself laughing. My hands stung. “That was fun. Can I do it again?”
“What’s got in to you? You could have been killed.”
A red stain was growing on the leg of my jeans. I tried to roll them up but my knee hurt like blazes. I slowly stood up out of the gutter where I’d fallen, dusting the crud off the seat of my pants.
Harry, first glancing left then right, darted out onto the road and rescued the skateboard from its resting place, flipped up-side-down out in the middle. He scuttled back to the pavement and just stood there holding the skateboard looking at me.
“So you gonna give it to me?” I asked.
“You’ve changed Jack,” Harry said.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m okay. Nothings broken…I think.”
“You’re not bulletproof.”
Yes I am I thought. I laughed.
I looked at my hands. At the shredded palms. I shook my head. Stop being a wuss Harry, I thought.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
Yeah I knew what he was talking about. So I’d jumped off Harry’s garage and only just missed the rake lying on the ground. My ankle had been fine after about a week. And I’d jumped into Eddie’s swimming pool from their second floor balcony. I guess it was lucky my butt hit the bottom first. But it wasn’t about luck. I was doing all these crazy things and I was surviving. I was hardly getting hurt at all. And I wasn’t hurting anyone else.
“So?”
“I liked the old you better.”
I didn’t. The old me had been beaten up by a bully. The old me had been too shy to ask Nikki to be my girlfriend. The old me was terrified of my own shadow, too scared to stand up for myself, afraid to take a risk. There was nothing wrong with the new me. It was a major improvement as far as I was concerned. Anyway, I couldn’t go back to the old me even if I wanted to. I was changed forever.
“That stuff,” I started, “that stuff that happened to me. You’d change too if it happened to you.”
“But it didn’t happen to you. Being with the Vikings - it was all in your head.”
“No,” I said. “You weren’t there!”
“Yeah well, neither were you.”
“You don’t know what it was like,” my nails dug into my hands as they balled into fists. I know it had been for real but I had nothing to convince Harry with. He needed evidence and the only evidence I had was my experience, and that was in my head. There was no point in arguing. “I was there. I…I went deer hunting, and rowed for like days on the ocean in a Viking ship. I fought in a battle.”
“No, ya didn’t.”
“I’d rather be there than here. Here’s boring,” I said. I didn’t say the next bit but I could tell by Harry’s expression that he knew what I’d left out.
“Yeah? Well that whole Viking story is boring,” he retorted.
I charged him, my fists thrust out in front of me. I caught him full in the chest and Harry, a stunned look on his face, fell back hard on the pavement dropping my skateboard. I stood over him; my chest heaving, my jaw tight with anger. The stunned look didn’t disappear. Harry slowly picked himself up and shaking his head at me, he turned and limped away.
“Harry!” I called but he kept going up the street.
“Stuff you!” I yelled after him. My experience had changed me but surprisingly, somehow it had changed Harry too. He was right. If I hadn’t jumped off, I might have been run over by that car, although it did slam on the brakes. But I didn’t want to hear that. I’d jumped. I was okay. He should lighten up.
At least my skateboard wasn’t broken. The man in the car had driven round it after honking his horn angrily. I picked it up and headed up the street back to my house.
“What happened to you?” Dad asked as I walked down the driveway. He wiped the back end of his work van dry with the chamois.
“I fell off.” I could feel my face turning red with the lie.
“Is everything okay, son?” Dad said, his eyebrow raised in question.
“Great,” I said grinning. At least that was true. I did feel great. The more extreme I behaved, the better I felt.

So thats how illustrating is done...

Another school visit today. Remuera Primary in the midst of their bookweek. I like bookweeks. I was impressed by the trouble the school and especially the librarian had gone to, to organise stimulating and exciting events for the students. The'd had a books-to-movie night the previous evening for the children, with any accompanying parents able to attend a talk for grownups. Brian Lovelock had visited earlier in the week and an artist friend of mine Sally Blyth had been along too. Today it was my turn and I was doing the talks together with the illustrator for The Were-Nana, Sarah Anderson. It was a treat for me to hear her side of the story. When I write I don't really envisage the pictures for each page. Someone asked me about this during my tour to Westport and I confess I muddled my answer. Probably because I don't imagine the visual images but I do have an idea in my head of how things look. These might sound like the same things but for me they aren't. My style of visual representation is an odd mixture of picture and description, words and images mingled and untangle-able. A result perhaps of the fact that I can't draw well enough to illustrate my words, so any image I have has to be helped by a verbal description.

On completion of a picture book story I send it off to the publisher and if they decide to publish, they arrange an illustrator. There is a large element of trust in doing this but I believe the publisher is as keen as I am for the book to succeed so they will be working hard to source the right images. With my two picture books so far I have not been disappointed - in fact quite the opposite. But to a certain extent the illustration side of the books production has happened magically and I have had little idea of the process involved in the illustrators work. With my first pb, Clever Moo, I was lucky enough to see the illustrator Malcolm Evans in action, doing free hand drawings of the main character Margaret - I even have one framed on my wall. I assumed that the process for the book's illustrations was just an extrapolation of this. So listening to Sarah today, describing (with power point presentation) how she took my story and created the pictures was wonderful for me. I loved hearing how she started by exploring the emotions of each page and then searched for the right look for each character by finding the right human representative to base her drawings on. Seeing how she planned her illustrations for the whole book with appropriate changes of colour palette and light and dark. Following the process of starting each frame with a rough concept and then adding detail through background, emotion and action. It was all fascinating. It will be interesting to see if this knowledge has any affect on the way I visually imagine my stories in the future.