Bookwitch bites #109

If my bites didn’t already have such an excellent title, I’d call today’s post Hoffman & McGowan. It’s got a nice ring to it. Solicitors. Or television cops. Yes, that’s more like it.

Ladies first, so we’ll go to Mary Hoffman who has a new website design. Again, you could say, but that’s OK. Mary has been writing books for a while, and needs to go through a few web designs. They are like shoes. You must have them. They wear out. And with so many books, Mary simply has to be able to organise all the information sensibly. And beautifully. Like the shoes.

We’re not leaving Mary yet. Earlier this month she wrote this beautiful blog post on the History Girls blog about her mother-in-law. I find it fascinating to read about the lives of ‘reasonably ordinary’ people. Because once you start looking at an individual, you soon discover that many people have something special or exciting in their past.

On to Anthony McGowan, who is excited about his upcoming film. Or more correctly, the upcoming film of one of his books; The Knife That Killed Me. I gather it’s just appeared at Cannes, which in itself is pretty exciting. I’m a little wary of knives, so I don’t know how I feel about watching the film. I found the build-up in the book almost unbearable. Well done, but hard to cope with.

And from the topic of knives, it’s a short step to bullying, and to another couple of ‘solicitors/cops;’ Morgan & Massey.

Nicola Morgan blogged about cyber bullying on the Huffington Post. And about teenage stress, also on Huffington. (I suppose I need to find out how to get blogging there…)

Finally, awards time! You remember how I mentioned David Massey a couple of weeks ago? Like, he was at the Chicken House breakfast, and I helped myself to a copy of his book Torn? Now he’s just gone and won the Lancashire Book of the Year, which just proves I move in the right chicken circles. The ceremony isn’t yet (can’t find when…), but the announcement came yesterday.

Walker Books and a witch with wet hands

As usual it was a case of waving your hands (or in this case, my hands) under the drier for absolutely forever, wipe them on your clothes, or go wet, hoping there’d be no hands to shake. You can guess which I chose, and what happened next, can’t you?

I was at the presentation of Walker Books’ and Constable & Robinson’s Autumn Highlights in Manchester on Wednesday evening, when I came face to face with Jo for the first time, and had to quickly get out of the handshaking she had in mind. This flustered me so much I forgot to mention my name. (But everyone knows me, right?) Besides, I’d already got the decrepit old woman treatment. Staff at the venue saw me negotiating the steps outside (which had NO handrail) and quickly bundled me into the lift before I caused more trouble.

Super-Jake was there, but I forgot to check his footwear. Representatives of our local LitFest and bookshops and that most Wondrous of blogs could also be seen. I was quite restrained prior to the talk, as I noticed there were partybags in one corner, which meant I did no stealing or anything beforehand.

Constable & Robinson went first, and I’d not realised that books on prescription, which I have heard of, is for non-fiction self-help type books, rather than patients being made to feel better after a dose of Pride and Prejudice…

They are big on halogen oven books. (Don’t ask.) They are the leaders in cosy crime. You can have books on WWII pets for Christmas. Obviously. C & R have begun offering children’s books, and they had an instructive video on how to fight zombies. (Head removal is recommended.) Gross. Shaun Ryder on UFOs. (It would have helped if I knew who Shaun Ryder is.) Joan Collins is nearly 80, in case you wanted to know. They have a book titled Going on a Bar Hunt. Droll.

This being very much a presentation for booksellers, I now know a lot more about which books are commercial, something I rarely consider in my narrow little world. There will be joke books for Christmas. And they have just begun a relationship with Brian McGilloway, who I am very interested in.

On to Walker Books, who are planning a picture book party. I think that means they have lots of picture books to offer. Vivian French has something new going; Stargirl Academy. Looks good. Pink. Anthony Browne is a Marmite author, which I can understand. That gorilla still scares me.

Cassandra Clare was there last year, before she grew so big that she doesn’t do this kind of talk. She has a film on the way. Nice for her.

Walker have travel guides, and there is new stuff for fans of GHMILY (Guess How Much I Love You books). Mumsnet have done a story collection. In fact, I reckon there is one thing parents want more than anything else. They want their children to fall asleep. Lots of books for that purpose.

Manatees and bears. A book about someone pecking (I’m thinking – hoping – woodpecker) all the way through.  Going on a Bear Hunt is out again. Michael Morpurgo will be 70, and four of his books are being re-issued, including one about funny old men who are famous artists.

Speaking of funny, Tommy Donbavand has a new series called Fangs. Walker are really really really really thrilled to be working with Anthony McGowan and his new book Hello Darkness. Patrick Ness wasn’t there except on video, where he did his best to sound interesting while not giving too much away about his new novel More Than This. His Chaos trilogy, meanwhile, is being revamped for old people.

My notes say ‘spider skeleton.’ I think there’s a book about things like spider skeletons. Kate DiCamillo and her dog spoke to us all the way from their Minneapolis dining room. While the dog made dog noises, Kate told us about her mother’s obsession with her 1952 vacuum cleaner and what would happen to it after she died. Kate’s new book Flora and Ulysses also features squirrels.

Anthony Horowitz has finally come to the end of his Power of Five books, so has had time to write Russian Roulette, the Alex Rider prequel he has had in mind for absolutely ages. He is quite satisfied with it.

Lizzy Bennet (I apologise for sounding so informal) wrote a diary in her pre-Darcy days, which will give us an opportunity to find out all kinds of stuff.

Finally, Walker are publishing the Little Island imprint, which is foreign fiction. I spied a Swedish title in among the covers they showed us, and think it’s high time there are more books from other countries.

As you can see, they had a lot to tell us. They hadn’t rehearsed, so were surprised to find it took them so long. But at the end there were canapés and more drinks and even a few authors; Steve Tasane, Sarah Webb and Katy Moran. Someone else, too. At least I think there was.

I grabbed my partybag and hobbled away home. There was NO handrail on the way out either…

Mortal Fire

Let me tell you, I have had to twist arms to get this review. My very dear friend L Lee Löwe reads a lot and she reads well, and she has a lot of opinions on all that she reads. But she has this strange notion about writing reviews. She thinks they have to be good. So there is no problem, because this is a good review. Both in the respect of it being favourable, but mostly because it is well written.

I know very little about Elizabeth Knox, but she happens to be a favourite of Lee’s. I know that much, because when I sent Daughter to her for a visit, she returned home with a copy of one of Elizabeth’s books, and simply had to buy the next one… And the trouble is, after reading the excerpt from Mortal Fire, I happen to think it looks really very tempting.

Before I ado even more, here is the review:

“In a perfect world, we’d all be canny. Or Canny, the heroine of Elizabeth Knox’s latest YA novel, Mortal Fire. Canny is a 16-year-old maths prodigy whose genius is matched by her loyalty to her only friend, Marli, a polio victim confined to an iron lung, and by her own uncanny ability to see Extra – ‘cryptic letters salted like frost between a certain pair of gate posts, or floating like thistledown above the grandstand when she was at the racetrack with Marli’s family’, a script only Canny sees yet whose purpose has always been incomprehensible to her. A fully stand-alone story, Mortal Fire is set in the same alternate South Pacific world as Knox’s award-winning and well-loved Dreamhunter Duet, but about 50 years later.

Canny is obliged by her famously fierce mother and professor father to accompany her stepbrother Sholto and his girlfriend to a remote region of Southland, where they chance upon the Zarene Valley. Canny is left to her own devices while Sholto researches an earlier, and increasingly suspicious, mining disaster for his father. There is magic in the valley, and Canny soon recognises its affinity with her own Extra. As if driven by the power of her name – ‘canny’ derives, via Scots, from the Old English word ‘cunnan’ – she is determined to know more. Once she encounters the reclusive and hostile Zarene family, who use magic signs to protect themselves and their valley, and then the intriguing 17-year-old Ghislain, imprisoned in a house since 1929 by a powerful spell which keeps him from ageing, she learns just how powerful her own magic can be.

And it takes the magic of a fine writer to bring characters as complex, idiosyncratic, and infuriating as Knox’s to life. She writes with a lushness about the natural world which at times can be overwhelming, but we never doubt that we are right there in the valley, struggling  alongside Canny to discover her true nature and use it to free the many prisoners in Mortal Fire - her friend Marli, Ghislain, the Zarenes themselves. Life is indeed as intricate as Knox’s plotting, as vivid as her insights, and though the device by which Canny proves to have acted cannily – far-sightedly – seems rather too convenient, and I’d have wished for a glimpse of Ghislain’s despair during the three years which precede the final chapters, Mortal Fire is an exceptional fantasy novel – not perfect, but a perfect choice for the canny (and discerning) reader.

Read an excerpt of Mortal Fire.”

(The book will be published in the US on June 11th.)

Bringing it down to 40

The idea for some kind of Desert Island Books has been with me for years, but I’ve not got round to doing anything about it. Yet. Relax, I’m not going to start now, either.

But as the panic over pruning my library was beginning to slosh around in my brain, someone posted a link to a rather interesting article. Geoffrey Best in History Today mused about his book collecting, and then the reverse; the process where he’s had to get rid of one category after the other.

It makes for sad reading, actually. (Much sadder than the chap in the paper the other day who sold off his wine collection…) On re-reading the article I noticed two things. One was that as this was a collection, Geoffrey had not read all the books. That made me feel less inadequate. I sometimes believe I’m the only one who can’t keep up.

The other was that his potential final goal wasn’t for five books. It was for one.

Shudder.

His first awful ambition was which books to choose for when you can only keep 40 books. He arrived at this figure when visiting someone in a home, where he looked around and worked out that 40 might be the limit.

I reckon 40 might be possible. Hard, but doable. You’d need good criteria for how you pick, and that probably depends on who you are. I’ve always marvelled at the choice of the Bible and Shakespeare in Desert Island Discs. Obviously they had to become standard issue once almost everyone felt they had to ask for them, whether because they genuinely loved them that much, or felt they wouldn’t be seen on a desert island without them…

Yes. Quite.

While I don’t know what I’d choose, I’m fairly certain it would be neither of those.

And while I thought the end goal was five books, I toyed with the idea of How I Live Now and Code Name Verity. Both favourites, both quite short. So perhaps you can’t do it that way?

Right now I am also having some problems with working out if I’m going to be sitting on an island or in some old people’s home. Would it be more of a blessing if – when the time comes – I am past reading, to save me doing the final prune, or am I better off with any small pile of books?

Will the grandchildren visit the old witch and bring books?

Life after Artemis

What to do now that Artemis Fowl, that loveable rogue, has ‘retired?’ Luckily, the fact that Eoin Colfer writes hardboiled adult crime novels these days, has not prevented him from coming up with more outlandish plot ideas for us younger readers.

In W.A.R.P. The Reluctant Assassin he returns to the Victorian era, with a crime thriller complete with a sci-fi twist. As Eoin warns in his author’s notes, there are neither vampires nor werewolves on offer, but he can give you mutants, murderers, magicians, and other dreadful types. And an ‘Injun princess.’

We have Victorian urchin Riley and 21st century FBI agent Chevron Savano, age 17. (So, totally unrealistic. Or not. How are we to know what those alphabet agents really get up to?) What’s more, we have a wormhole. And Riley and Chevie couldn’t meet without one or other of them travelling through said wormhole.

Other people go through the wormhole, too, and in some cases it doesn’t end so well. W.A.R.P. is the witness relocation scheme with a difference. Witnesses are stashed in 1898, which is so safe.

There is a villain, who – I think – is actually quite charming. The blurb describes Garrick as a terrifying assassin – which he is – but I quite liked him. Not sure if I was meant to.

So, a thriller set in London, now and in 1898. The advantage being that even an FBI agent will recognise the landmarks in the past. They are the same, but smell worse. And Riley’s reaction to television was quite something.

This book has the usual humour that you come to expect and crave from Eoin, and whereas at times I was afraid that it would turn out to be only a Victorian FBI through the wormhole kind of affair, when you get to the end – which is not really an end at all – you understand that there is much more to it. Temptingly so.

Lulu and the duck, and the dog

Only a very skilled author could make a non-pet kind of person want to find and befriend a wild dog, and then keep it. Hatching a duck’s egg under your clothing is another almost attractive animal adventure (although I’d worry about accidentally harming the egg).

I have been reading about Lulu, one of Hilary McKay’s lovely heroines. She is only seven, and normally I wouldn’t pick a young book like these for my own entertainment. But I know I’ll be all right with Hilary.

Lulu, and the Duck in the Park, and Lulu, and the Dog from the Sea are the first two in the series about Lulu and her love for animals. True to Hilary’s story telling style, we have another set of lovely parents, and Lulu’s best friend is her cousin Mellie, with whom she doesn’t seem to have any quarrels, either.

It’s very refreshing, not to mention soothing, to read about characters who don’t fight every step of the way. No tantrums needed. No tedious misunderstandings. There is enough excitement in the story itself. And humour.

I just love them. I know I won’t be adopting a stray dog, but it’s still very charming. And I don’t mind admitting I shed some tears over that duck.

Bookwitch bites #108

Please open your wallets and empty your bank accounts (just a little) for Donna Moore. After a year of almost complete silence this lovely writer and fan of crime emailed to ask for money. Seeing as it’s for a good cause (Glasgow Women’s Library), I decided not to object, and even to pass her request on to you. Donna’s already got 98% of what she hopes to raise, so you (yes, you) could be the one to tip the scales and make her agonising ten km run, excuse me, walk, a total success.

Rather her than me, I say. It’s tomorrow, so don’t delay. (It’s going to rain, isn’t it?)

Aside from her work for this unusual library, I believe Donna is working on the Bristol CrimeFest, which is now sold out. That’s great news, except for those of us who are not travelling down to Bristol in three weeks’ time to rub shoulders with the best of crime.

Someone who’s going to be there is Martin Edwards, who recently did some travelling of the kind that instantly caused his facebook friends and blog readers to turn green. Martin travelled on the Orient Express, and it looks even more marvellous in his photos than I had imagined. And as I went looking for the link, I couldn’t help noticing that his crime blog currently resembles a seductive holiday brochure. I’m going to have camp outside Martin’s house and follow him wherever he goes.

Instead of sponsored running or walking, I can see myself living it up on an elegant train. Or hotel. Or just some downright wonderful seaside.

I should get out more.

Sesame Seade

I enjoyed this first Sesame Seade book very much. To begin with I was merely amused, because the style is, well, amusing, and I could see it would appeal to nine to twelves, or thereabouts. But Sleuth on Skates by Clémentine Beauvais rather grew on me, and by the end I couldn’t put it down. Almost as if I’m no older than about ten, in fact.

Its author, Clémentine Beauvais, whose name I can’t even pronounce, is young and pretty and writes in her non-native English, which she learned by reading Harry Potter as a child. Then she came over here, went to Cambridge – naturally – and after a degree or two is writing books in English. (She has already written books in French…)

To top it all, she is funny. (I’m beginning to turn an unattractive shade of green here, but no doubt it will pass at some point.)

‘But what about the book?’ I hear you asking. It’s a crime story set in Christ’s College, Cambridge. It’s where 11-year-old Sesame lives with her parents, and she has the run of the college. She almost has the run of all Cambridge. She does what children have always done in fiction; she goes all over the place detecting and seeing her friends. As well as a bad guy or two.

Something funny is going on, and it’s not the pregnant duck. There are swans too, in lakes. Ballet, Russians, intrigue and inexplicably large cheques. Sesame rollerskates everywhere, and she finds things out. She solves the mystery, which is good, but reasonably innocent, so there is no need to disapprove of an 11-year-old detective at large in Cambridge.

Sesame uses large words. Her slightly dimmer friends need them explaining, so you too find out what they mean. This is an excellent way of teaching young readers a new vocabulary without them even noticing.

The plot is fun, the setting is charming, and the writing is simply funny. We like funny.

I could even see myself looking forward to Sesame’s next outrageous mystery. OK, OK, I am.

The Drowning

I must agree with Rachel Ward here, and suggest that if you have any hang-ups regarding water, you’d better not read her new novel The Drowning. It’s a bit spooky, and it contains a lot of water based horror.

But if you don’t worry – any more than normal – about water, this is a great horror thriller, set in a gritty, poor area of an English town, featuring some not terribly savoury characters. And that’s another thing; I generally don’t enjoy too much of this kind of background in a book, but The Drowning is quite spectacular.

Also, you can’t really work out how it will end. It could be bad. It could be good. The big question is whether something supernatural is going on, or if it’s all in Carl’s head.

Carl wakes up half drowned, not remembering what has happened. His older brother Rob is dead beside him. There is a muddy looking girl nearby. And he just doesn’t know what’s been going on. But water sets him off on a peculiar journey for the truth.

That truth isn’t particularly nice. Carl finds that Rob wasn’t always a nice boy. He discovers that quite possibly he himself wasn’t all that nice. Their single mother drinks, and they live in a dreadful little house. People in the neighbouhood seem to fear him.

What did he do? And how did Rob die?

And what is that water doing?

Drip. Drip…

The #3 profile – Michelle Lovric

I expect I’ve left it too late to get Michelle Lovric to be my godmother… Sigh. Anyway, here she is, my profile #3, and as you can see Michelle has a great profile. And she looks relaxed, for someone embroiled in writing three novels, and working, and answering stupid witchy questions.

How many books did you write before the one that was your first published book?

None. I was amazingly lucky. I took six weeks off my work as a book packager to go to Venice and write Carnevale, my first novel. I got an agent in a month and a deal with Virago a month later.

Best place for inspiration?

You’re all going to yawn hugely, but, yes, Venice.

My part of London is also inspiring: I live in gritty Bankside, in the shadow of the Shard.

I also like to write anywhere there’s a chance of the sun on my face, or a cup of good coffee. In both cases, Italy is more likely. But recently I had both at Chartwell and Nymans.

Would you ever consider writing under a pseudonym? Perhaps you already do?

I have used the initials M.R. Lovric, when publishers thought it might be better if my gender was ambiguous. Given my shape, that was not something that was going to remain in question if a journalist or a reader ever met me.

So, with the increasing demand for authors to put ourselves about, I have re-acquired my first name.

Of course I’d rather be called Mimosina Dolcezza, or Amneris D’Ago, or Temistocle Molin, or Ermintrudina Fava, like some of my characters … but my parents had other ideas. In fact, I was named after a black poodle.

What would you never write about?

I honestly can’t think of anything I would baulk at. It is the way you write it that counts. I’ve done child sacrifice and cat cruelty in The Fate in the Box … and cat sacrifice and child cruelty in The Mourning Emporium, come to think of it. So long as there is redemption, there can be evil.

Through your writing: the most unexpected person you’ve met, or the most unexpected place you’ve ended up in?

The great eccentrics of this world always gravitate towards writers, even if you’re just sitting on a bus. I think they have a homing instinct. But you also meet people who are dedicated to their trades and who are only to happy to see a writer come to share their passion with a wider audience, especially when that involves children. So I’ve met an interesting casts of real characters while writing each piece of fiction.

With The Fate in the Box, I’ve really enjoyed meeting Margherita Fusco, a curator at The Natural History Museum in Venice. She’s one of the nicest and happiest people I’ve ever met. She grew up by the museum as a child, went to school nearby, loved visiting it, and now works there herself, and still lives in the vicinity, working at what she loves. It was she who told me that the fearsome gorilla killed in the Congo in 1929 has a hairless belly because of all the generations of children who have stroked it.

Which of your characters would you most like to be?

None, really, because I tend to put them through hell.

That’s what a story is about. One makes characters uniquely equipped to deal with uniquely awful things. And then the awful things happen.

However, I endowed Amneris, the girl in The Fate in the Box, with a skill in maths I’d love to have. And then I turn her into a human sacrifice.

See what I mean?

Do you think that having a film made of one of your books would be a good or a bad thing?

Most of my adult books have been optioned for films at one time or another, but one learns not to expect anything more than a mild ego massage and a small cheque to result. The kind of books I write would require casts of thousands, costly costumes, special effects because of all the magic, a lot of latex for the creaturing etc. Teaching cats to talk and fly would be quite expensive and time-consuming, I imagine. So I don’t see much hope for a film of my books, unless animated.

Of course I would like a film made because it would bring my characters to life. Whether they would still be my characters at the end of the process is another question. One would need to have the clout of J.K. (Rowling) to have one’s oeuvre treated with the cherishing respect one would like.

That said, I am enchanted that a very nice company called VooDooDog currently have an option on making a picturesque animation of The Undrowned Child.

What is the strangest question you’ve been asked at an event?

I have been a reluctant eventer, as I prefer to be in a darkened room, writing. But I’ve done a few, and I’m going to do more. The funniest thing that happened to me at an event was when a boy bought a book and told me to keep the change.

Do you have any unexpected skills?

I can truly cook. I am a devoted aunt and godmother. I give great themed parties, the latest being a Victorian Gothic party for my god-daughter. Apart from everything you’d expect by way of skulls, crows and blood to drink, I took the girls, fully gothed up, out into the darkening streets bearing candles, and they stood silently and motionlessly in front of diners in the local restaurants, scaring the hell out of them.

But it is more that I am lacking in skills. I can’t sing, knit, ride a bicycle. So it’s just as well that Venice is my favourite place. Not much call for bicycles.

Speaking of film treatments, someone wanted to animate one of my books and their treatment introduced a new character, a mouse on a motorcycle. I had to explain to the disbelieving American producer that this would not work in Venice.

The Famous Five or Narnia?

Narnia!

Love men with goaty legs. Love cruel witches. Love big cats.

Who is your most favourite Swede?

I have my favourite Swede all ready: my role model through my life, the late Swedish publisher Solveig Nellinge, who was my friend and mentor for years. I used to spend a couple of weeks at her publishing company, Trevi, every February, working and devouring semlor, delightful light buns with cream and marzipan inside.  Trevi had a lovely tradition of meeting in their beautiful dining room every morning by candlelight, with coffee and cake, to discuss the important things happening that day. Trevi translated many of the twentieth century’s great women authors, including Doris Lessing, into Swedish. I learned a great deal about being a human being as well as a publisher from Solveig, who tucked me under her wing like a cygnet. She was wildly intelligent, gracious, kind, loved cats, good manners, sharp wit. I even wear Solveig’s perfume still. It is called Antilope by Weil, and it is very surprising… and works very quickly.

How do you arrange your books at home? In a Billy? By colour, or alphabetically?

By genre. Which, to hear recent gossip from the London Book Fair, should now include ‘Hot Dragon Sex’. I don’t have any Hot Dragon Sex yet, though I’m sure it’s better than Fifty Shades of Grey. So I have a poetry cabinet, sections for letters, biographies, novels worth keeping and my particular interests, the history of medicine and drugs,

Which book would you put in the hands of an unwilling eight-year-old boy reader?

Ros Asquith’s Letters from an Alien Schoolboy.

If you have to choose between reading or writing, which would it be?

Writing. If I didn’t write, I would probably explode. There’s still a lot pent up inside. Have to go now and do a bit more …

Thank you for asking me, Bookwitch!

You’re welcome, Michelle. I’m so pleased to find you are not only slightly crazy, but that you have picked a good Swede. Thank you too for all those fantastic photos.