The day after Father's Day - John Dougherty

Being a dad is important to me. Whatever else I get wrong, I want to get my dadding as right as I can.

I don't always, of course. But one of the things I think I've managed to do well is the bedtime story. I don't just mean the way I read it - I mean the fact that I do it at all; the fact that I'm still doing it as often as possible, even though my children - now 12 & 10 - have the sort of busy lives many children their age have; and the fact that I've managed to read a wide variety of stories, without ever - I hope - imposing on them something they really don't want to hear.

It would be a huge loss to me if I wasn't able to read to my kids. But of course, not everyone can, for a number of reasons.

This year, the Chipping Norton Literary Festival (of which I'm very proud to be a patron) had a charity partner - Storybook Dads. I hadn't heard of the charity, but I'm glad I have now, because what they do is quite brilliant. They work with prisoners, to enable them to read stories to their children.

The idea's quite simple. They record a prisoner reading a bedtime story, burn a CD, and send it to the prisoner's child. Where the prisoner isn't confident in his reading skills - and there is, of course, a strong correlation between illiteracy and imprisonment - a Storybook Dad volunteer will read the story a sentence at a time, with the prisoner repeating it; the prompter is then edited out.

A representative of Storybook Dads gave a short presentation at this year's Chip Lit Fest, and there wasn't a dry eye in the house by the end of it. The work they do clearly means a huge amount to the children, for one thing. But it's even more important than that. Here are a few facts & stats about imprisonment and family ties, copied from the list here:

• Over half of imprisoned parents lose contact with their families. Those that maintain contact are up to 6 times less likely to reoffend
• Over 160,000 children each year are affected by parental imprisonment - more than are affected by divorce
• Prisoners’ children are 3 times more likely to suffer from mental health problems than their peers
• Although family ties and recidivism are inextricably linked, there is little support or statutory funding for supporting families & maintaining family ties

 That last one is interesting, isn't it? Why, given the other statistics, should this area be so lacking in support? I can't help but think that it has to do with other stories - like the 'Prison as Holiday Camp' narrative so beloved of some of our less empathetic newspapers. And of course these narratives, with their moral that says criminals should be punished as much as possible, ignores the fact that very often it's not just the guilty who are affected by a prison sentence.

Thanks for reading this far. Please take a look at the website, and find out a bit more about the work that Storybook Dads (and Storybook Mums) do in prisons. They're very much needed.


John's website is at www.visitingauthor.com.
He's on twitter as @JohnDougherty8

His most recent books include:

Finn MacCool and the Giant's Causeway - a retelling for the Oxford Reading Tree
Bansi O'Hara and the Edges of Hallowe'en
Zeus Sorts It Out - "A sizzling comedy... a blast for 7+" , and one of The Times' Children's Books of 2011, as chosen by Amanda Craig

Coming soon:   

 
 Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Badness of Badgers, illustrated by David Tazzyman & published by OUP

Return to Hayling Island by Miriam Halahmy

I set my cycle of three novels ( Hidden, 2011, Illegal 2012, Stuffed, yet to be published) on Hayling Island, off the south coast of England, opposite the Isle of Wight. My parents lived on the Island for 25 years and it always feels like going home, even though they passed away a long time ago. But once I finished the books and two came out, I felt my links to the Island began to wane and I wondered if I would continue visiting. For years I was coming down to the Island for weekends and day trips to do my research or just to write in all my favourite places. For three years running we rented an apartment on the beach and I wrote chapter after chapter. But this summer we had no plans to come for a week.

Then Whitsun weekend promised to be hot and sunny, family were planning visits and I felt the old pull of the Island and all its quiet and restful beauty. I booked a B&B, we packed up the boot and off we went. And do you know something? All those wonderful feelings about the Island came flooding back in! Never mind I wasn’t writing a novel in this setting anymore; never mind I didn’t have any reason to research; all my favourite places drew me back in and hugged me as if I had never been away.

We started as we always do at Langstone High street and the Old Mill which is on the mainland, just past the bridge to the Island. This is one of my favourite walks of all time. Neville Shute wrote his novel Pied Piper in the Mill and the mill ponds behind the Mill feature in Illegal.

Then we walked round to the old smuggler path which led up from the beach.

I have been walking this path up to Pook Lane, where the smugglers took their contraband off the beach, since I was nineteen years old and it gives me just the same thrill all these decades later. Pook Lane is a wonderful green tunnel this time of the year, a sunken path between fields which probably goes back to medieval times.

Then we crossed the bridge to the Island  and over the weekend we visited all our favourite places again.

This is one of the sites left over from defences build on the Island for WW2. Nearby was a gun emplacement which was bombed and several soldiers killed in the aftermath of a bombing raid on nearby Portsmouth.

This is one of the houseboats on the Kench,which features in my novel, Illegal. Lindy and Karl spend a couple of nights in a houseboat like this one. This one is a converted D-Day Landing craft. Part of the Mulberry harbour which was towed over to the Normandy beaches was built around this part of the Island and there is still a piece of it sitting out at sea.

 As it was late May, it was poppy time on the Island.

Coming back to the Island made me realise that I still love being here, writing on the beaches and in the cafes and thinking about my next novel, even though it is nothing to do with the Island. I have found a lovely new place to stay, with a balcony, so I am already planning my next writing retreat down on the Island to whip the WIP into shape and of course, breathe in the wonderful inspiring sea air.

Ah, Grasshopper... by Tony Bradman

The nicest thing ever to have happened to me in my writing career has just occurred. My son Tom and I have won the Historical Association's Young Quill Award for the short novel we wrote about the sinking of a rather well known ship. The book is called Titanic: Death on the Water (A&C Black) and was published in April last year, in time for the centenary of the disaster.

There are several reasons to be pleased. Of course, it's always good to win an award, but Tom and I were particularly chuffed because the winning book is chosen by young readers. The book was pretty hard to do as well - we were asked to write it by Kate Paice, our editor at A&C Black, and there was a very tight deadline to meet. Cue lots of moaning, complaining and general harumphing from the writers... Well, all right then, from the older partner in the writing team, especially as the deadline got closer and closer. So it's good to feel rewarded for such a difficult task, although I think we both felt very proud of the story by the time we finished it.

The main reason to be pleased though is that I can indulge in some paternal as well as some writerly pride. The truth is that I started training Tom almost from the day he was born to take over the family business. All those years of reading stories to him, of allowing him to watch inappropriate TV series and films while I droned on about the plot and characters and said things like 'Watch out for this bit, it's a great way of building tension' had finally begun to pay off. Titanic: Death on the Water was actually our eighth joint production, so it's clearly taken us a while to hit our stride, but I think we're there now. I hope so, anyway, as we have two more books to write (and if you're reading this Kate and Saskia, yes, we're working away at them, honest!).

So how does this kind of collaboration work, you might ask? I see it as the kind of relationship the old wise priest had with the young Kwai-Chang Kane, played by David Carradine in the legendary 70s TV series Kung-Fu. Whenever the young man needed advice on how to solve a problem, or how to live his life, he would seek it from the old man, who would say... 'Ah, grasshopper...' and then dispense his words of wisdom ('grasshopper' being his affectionate nickname for the young man). However, I was rather surprised to discover that Tom sees it all a bit differently. Apparently he thinks I'm autocratic ('I hate it when you change the plot without telling me,'), slow ('You've been working on that paragraph for days!'), and irritatingly cunning in the way that all veteran writers learn to be ('We won't tell them just yet that we're going to deliver late, OK?' If you're still reading this Kate and Saskia, just joking, honest!). I might even admit to some of these failings, but it all seems to work out in the end - after all, we have won a prize. Whether or not it's the case that an old man's fading career has been saved by his younger, better-looking and more energetic son is something only posterity can tell.

Tom has actually been teaching English in China (not far from the Shaolin Temple where Kung-Fu had its origins - although I've probably got that wrong and he'll give me a hard time now) for the last couple of years, so large parts of our prize-winning book depended on emails whizzing round the planet. I have to say that's pretty irritating - I used to like it when I could send him upstairs to his room to do his homework. Now I have to depend on the vagaries of Skype whenever I want to tell him that I've changed the plot again, and could he have the next chapter done by the end of the week, please? Still, I'll admit it's a lot of fun working with him, and we do have plans for lots more stories. 'Ah, grasshopper... to win more prizes, you must obey me in everything I say, especially when it comes to working out the plot...'

You can find out more about the Historical Association's Young Quills Award here: http://www.history.org.uk/news/news_1805.html

Let me tell you a story

Story telling is an age old tradition. Long before stories were actually written down people sat around campfires listening to the story tellers weaving their tales. Even today, with ebooks, print books, the Internet and TV there's still something special about sitting down and listening to a story, especially for children. I love to see the expressions on the children's faces when I read out stories on school visits, they love to join in and shout out some of the phrases. It's always lots of fun and we all enjoy it. Not that I'm a professional story teller but I do my best.

And nothing beats a bedtime story. I remember my dad reading bedtime stories to us when we were little, and I did the same with my children. It's really comforting for a child to settle down and listen to a story being read aloud when they are tucked up in bed.

So I was delighted when I was approached by Kaz Coburn, a professional voice-over artist who works for Turquoise Radio, to ask if I wanted any of my children's books read out on the Kidz Time programme. I jumped at the chance. Turquoise Radio (http://turquoiseradio.com/) is a new internet radio with a worldwide audience and my books were scheduled to be read out between 7-8 pm. Perfect for bedtime listening!

She read out two of my earlier titles. The Gold Badge and Cosmic Whizz Kid in  April.

















The Gold Badge is being repeated again tonight on Kidz Time between 7-8pm. So if you have time, tune in and cosy up to listen with your children. Hope you enjoy it!


Please visit my website at www.karenking.net

On Your Marks, Get Set... Write! By Ann Evans

I've always thought that the good thing about writing fiction is that you can do it at your leisure. Well I know you have to 'up' the pace when deadlines are looming. But in general you can let the ideas mull around in your head, then play about with them on the page, plan your story, write it, rearrange it, write some more, edit and polish, put it aside, go back to it. Then eventually, when you realise it's the best it's going to get, you can think about doing something with it, like sending it off to the publisher or your agent.

That's my normal way of writing fiction anyway, but I'm just about to embark on something new which calls for instant writing of a 2,000 word chapter, from idea to going live in a matter of two and a half days; and then repeating the process over the following four weeks!

Fun? Or nightmare? I'm hoping it's going to be fun and a great experience.  

Last year I teamed up with Fiction Express, who have taken on my story The Mysterious Indian Vanishing Trick - or rather they've taken on the first chapter and the concept.  The rest still has to be written in real time.

Chapter one goes out on 14th June – this Friday. If you pop along to their site, there's even a countdown clock, ticking away the seconds!

Screenshot of the front page of Fiction Express website

Possibly some of you Sassies have already worked for Fiction Express, but if you haven't heard of them, they work alongside primary schools, providing online fiction every Friday afternoon where the children say what will happen in the next chapter via three voting options; the author then writes the next chapter in real time, and it goes live the following Friday.

For the schools who enrol there's other activities going on for the children to get involved with, while the author can keep the excitement going through the Fiction Express blog.

So, all in all, I'm looking forward to next Friday – or rather what will be heading my way once the children have voted. The three choices are now written along with the first chapter, but then I've only got the vaguest outline as to where the next chapter will go, as it depends on which option gets the most votes.

I'm praying that when I get told the result of the votes next Tuesday afternoon, I don't get an attack of writer's block! Now what are those tried and tested methods of avoiding such a thing? Walking the dog, doing the ironing...

Or the best one – a deadline looming!

How about you, do you work best under pressure, or prefer a little breathing space?

Here's the link to Fiction Express if you want to find out more: 

http://schools.fictionexpress.co.uk/en

Please visit my website:  www.annevansbooks.co.uk

Pooh versus the Prince

When I was 14 and knew everything, I was surprised to hear a friend of my mother’s – an English teacher, and a funny, intelligent woman whom I much liked – say that she couldn’t stand Winnie-the-Pooh.

I thought I must have misheard at first. It just did not compute. Not – like - Winnie-the-Pooh? It was as unthinkable as not liking chocolate, or Morecambe and Wise, or fresh air. She must be referring to the Disney cartoon, I decided, but she insisted otherwise. “But,“ I spluttered, “how can you not like it?” I tried, none too articulately (it’s hard to find arguments for the self-evident), to explain the many things that made Pooh irresistible. The humour of course, the playing with words, the adorably simple yet accidentally profound conversations of Pooh and Piglet, Rabbit’s bossiness. Tigger’s bounciness, Owl’s sententiousness, Eeyore’s eeyorishness... How could anyone fail to love all these and still be a member of the same species, let alone teach English literature for a living?

When I finally drew breath she told me what had put her off the book. In short, she found it to be saturated in a middle-class, southern English cosiness that might be appealing as a nursery fantasy if you happened to be a middle-class, southern English reader (here she fixed me keenly), but that excluded her, a working class girl from Northern Ireland. There were no Peace Walls in the Hundred Aker Wood.

I can’t remember what I said in reply. I’ve a nasty suspicion that (being afflicted with teenage omniscience) I thought this merely showed her lack of empathy and imagination. Yes, she might have grown up in the middle of the Troubles, but the magical thing about literature was that it could lift you out of your own life into those of other people. With the help of A. A. Milne she could soar across the Irish Sea to Sussex on the viewless wings of poesy – to a place where everybody knows your name (as long as it’s Christopher Robin) and there’s always hunny still for tea.

These days I’m no longer quite so sure I know everything, and although I still love the Pooh books I understand how somebody else might not. More importantly, I’ve come to terms with the fact that the book hasn’t been written (and never will be) that everyone will like. There is no Platonic Book – the book all other books are striving to be and beside which all others must be found wanting, the book that would bring an end to literature if it were ever written because no one would want to read anything else. Instead, there's an ever-growing Library – a Library in the form of a forest that is perpetually sprouting new trees, new branches, new leaves for new readers. Isn't that a more liberating way of thinking about it?

As a matter of fact, there are plenty of classic titles that I don’t particularly care for. Take Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. More than once I’ve had people clutch me by the arm to tell me it’s their favourite book, a miracle of style, magical, profound, a philosophy of life as much as a story. And I nod, and smile, and say, “I’m so glad you like it.” The fourteen-year-old me is still there, yelping all the reasons why The Little Prince is a twee borefest, but I keep these thoughts under wraps.

In the Forest of Literature everyone is entitled to their own Hundred Akers.

Book shower! - Anne Rooney

This is not the post I was going to write. I was planning to write about the scandalous announcement by St John's School in Epping that it is to throw away all the non-fiction books in its library and encourage the children to use the web instead. Children don't need books...

But instead I will share something far more cheerful and inspiring and that proves that St John's School is so very wrong.
 
I know a young person who is expecting a baby. She is 17. (Please leave your preconceptions by the door.) Apparently, these days British mothers  - at least those who grew up to the soundtrack of Friends - have adopted the American practice of having a baby shower. This involves all the friends and perhaps relatives of the mother (and father? I don't know) coming to a party and giving gifts for the embryo in anticipation of its imminent babyhood. Call me cynical, but this strikes me - like wedding lists - as a particularly blatant way of eliciting presents from people who might otherwise have bought nothing, or something cheaper (or more personal) than the items on the list.

When I made this grouchy-old-English-person view clear to the young person she told me that she was going to ask her friends NOT to buy baby clothes or toys or any of the other usual paraphernalia.

Instead, she plans to ask each guest to a bring a book so that she can start a library for her baby. She would like them to bring either a book they enjoyed as a child, or that they have seen since and think looks good. It doesn't have to be a new book, either in terms of publication date or physical object. It can come from a secondhand shop, or their own shelves, or can be bought for 1p from an Amazon reseller. Each person will inscribe the book. She looks forward, she says, not only to starting a library for her child but to what she will learn about each of her friends from their choices.


I asked her if she minded me sharing this story on ABBA and she said she didn't. Perhaps it will inspire other young proto-mothers to do the same. I think it's a beautiful idea, and have completely revised my view of baby showers - at least if they are done like this. And - assuming I'm invited - I shall so enjoy choosing a book! What would you give?

Anne Rooney (aka Stroppy Author)
(and on Facebook)