Bookwitch

As Daughter and I watched, yet again, one of her favourite episodes of our favourite NCIS, I was reminded of how easy I have it. There, poor Agent McGee who writes crime novels in his spare time, found that the characters from his as yet un-finished next novel were being bumped off. So, who had access to his top-secret manuscript? We were assured that the really keen fan will search through authors’ rubbish bins for clues as to what they are writing.

The witch didn’t have to do anything as crude as that. Declan on Crime Always Pays emailed to ask if he could (!) send me his next novel as a Word document. I allowed him to do this, because I’m a kind witch. Also, because I was fairly desperate to read the new book.

The Blue Orange, as he calls it, is a continuation of The Big O, with all the same characters, except those who may have died in the first book. Plus a couple of new ones. The Big O was very funny, if rather full of four-letter words, and had endearingly inept, mostly minor, crooks.

In The Blue Orange we meet them again, and this time I found myself quite fond of even the less charming ones. It’s a mad-cap race across the Continent, with everyone ending up in Greece, where Declan has totally taken over his favourite holiday island, which I understand was quite nice before this.

As is to be expected, there are so many double-crossings that the witch developed a squint trying to cope. The best thing is simply to sit back and enjoy, while laughing quite a lot. The story is crying out to be made into a film, and I know which part I can play.

And as Mother-of-witch so rightly said, crime is not nice. But this kind of crime is as nice, and as funny, as it gets. The worst baddies are killed or have lots of blood removed in interesting ways, and maybe the rest lived happily ever after. I’m hoping for more. And sooner rather than later, Mr Burke.

Anyone who by now has the slightest inclination to read The Blue Orange, will want to murder me. The book will be out in the US in the autumn of 2009. If he gets round to it, Declan might just publish it in Ireland in the spring. 2009 again, I’m afraid.

And he is checking I’m not selling it on ebay, so I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do. But I just felt I had to rave about it now. I can always re-rave when the time comes.

I love Michelle Magorian’s books, and her new one after an exceedingly long ten years doesn’t disappoint. Just Henry continues in the same vein as Michelle’s earlier books. It’s post-war, 1949, and it’s set in the world of cinema goers.

14-year-old Henry is in his last year at school, and lives with his mother and stepfather and his little sister Molly, and his gran. It’s a house fraught with bitter disagreement, added to which you have post-war rationing and hours of queueing. There’s also the added complication of popular prejudice in those days, which is hard to understand now.

Henry’s salvation lies within the cinema. He goes several times a week, which might seem extravagant by today’s measures, but then they didn’t have television or computers. Even the radio is seen as a luxury. Through his massive interest in films, Henry makes new friends, which is lucky for him, as he soon stumbles across a mystery, which threatens to tear apart life as he knows it. He needs his new friends.

There’s a fascinating background of popular films and the history of film making, and it’s a wonderful story about woman power. The fairy godmother character in the book teaches Henry to look for diamonds in dungheaps, and there’s plenty of dung before the story ends. It’s quite a nice way of looking at things, I feel, and more people should look for diamonds. Daily, if necessary.

And I really, really don’t feel up to waiting another ten years for another book from Michelle.

My heart felt as if it was a lot further up than its normal position, as I raced through Blade, two new books by Tim Bowler.

The quality of his writing is as good as ever, but Tim is going in a new direction with these books. They are short, and for a confident reader they’ll be over in no time. It doesn’t say anywhere, but I’m guessing Tim wants to reach less able readers, and slightly older ones, too.

I’ll call him Blade, because we don’t know his name, and he is only fourteen, but very good (or should that be bad?) with a knife. Tim confesses to a terror of knives, which I probably share with him, but to be honest, I had no time to think about knife crimes per se, because of the pace of the story.

Blade, Playing Dead is first, with an almost introduction of the main character and his life on the sidelines of society. He’s already in trouble, and just ends up deeper in trouble still. But there’s something decent and likeable about him, nevertheless. Blade, surprisingly, has a love of reading, which sometimes gets him into trouble. More trouble.

In Blade, Closing In the story continues and worsens. Whatever he does and no matter how much he tries, Blade just gets deeper and deeper in his black hole. I’m a bit concerned that I felt so strongly for him, that I almost egged him on to kill a man.

I’m wondering a bit, how Tim, who is a very nice man, can even write like this. And I’ll confess here and now, to not understanding all of the slang.

The story is told in the first person, present tense, with no chapters. This adds to the reader’s agitation, and makes you go on an on. Like Blade himself, who can’t stop.

There’s to be more of these, but a cliffhanger ending, and a year to wait, Tim?

The Derek Landy interview is now available, as some eagle-eyed readers have already discovered. I like sneaking things in to see if people notice at all. Lack of confidence, probably. This one is slightly different, with a straight Q &A part, which I don’t normally have, but which seems to work well. Many thanks to my wonderful helpers, Phoebe and Charlie. You can come and interview with me anytime. In fact, this ties in well with the mention of Hannah Pool the other day. It was Hannah who thought it was a very good idea to go round accompanied by children, when I was afraid it’d look more like a lack of babysitters. And then the dratted children grow up. But borrowing works just fine. Rather like the urge to borrow a young person to be able to use the Family Railcard discount.

The tale of last Monday’s meeting with Cathy Forde can be found here. Cathy is lovely, and it’s good to meet someone new, to me, that I can like instantly. Don’t know why this matters, but it’s nice. I’ve combined this interview with a brief review of Cathy’s latest book, Sugarcoated. I started reading her Fat Boy Swim while waiting for Cathy to turn up, but she was so early that I got almost no way at all… Looks promising, is all I can say.

I introduced Declan at Crime Always Pays to Sara Paretsky, and he fired off his standard list of questions at her.  Sara has now answered and you can find the results over on CAP. He found a great photo of her, too, so go across and have a look.

Don’t know if we have to be superstitious about this graphic book. Maybe not. After all, I’m sort of in it. I mean Macbeth, in his new graphic form. And he meets some witches, but none of them are anywhere near as good looking as I am.

As one of the enthusiastic quotes on the back says, it’s surprising nobody has done Shakespeare in graphic form before. It’s such an obvious thing. And an easy way to proper literature, I’d say. Thinking back to my university days, far too many people seemed to read the study guides instead of the book, rather than as well as. Not me.

On the other hand, I had never read Macbeth before, so this was a nice way of doing it. Shakespeare as a comic, albeit with a good many complicated words. But the pictures really help, and I’d hope the illustrations would entice young readers of the Bard. It can’t even count as cheating, surely, as it’s all there.

A comic full of well known quotes, half of which I didn’t know where they came from. But now I know it’s Macbeth. And a Harry Potter rock group, if I’m not mistaken.

If schools had money, this would be a good book to buy. But they never have any.

Authors have been like buses here. Several days have passed with no author in sight, and then you get two in 24 hours. Catherine Forde and Derek Landy have both called in at Simply Books, while the owners are away. So, the witch has played at being a shop owner, with none of the inconvenient hard work they have to do. Just swan in and greet people and have tea and chat to them. Not bad.

Catherine is doing a tour this week to talk about her new book Sugarcoated, a teen thriller. She turned out to be lovely, despite professing a wish to kill off her main character.

And we already knew Derek is a sweetie, but it doesn’t hurt to check again. He, too, has a tour and a new book, Playing With Fire. Derek admitted he quite liked killing his characters, so that makes two murderous visitors to start the week with.

I got to act as go-between, as well. We’re back to coincidence here. Cathy had a desperate need to send a thank you card to Derek, but didn’t have his address. Seeing the posters advertising his imminent arrival, she wrote a card and asked the witch to revert to her old profession of postal worker for a moment. I’d like to think it was MEANT. What’s more, I remembered to do it.

As a new idea, I met both Catherine and Derek in the company of two young readers, thinking I could get them to do my work for me. Not a bad idea, at all. I don’t have to think so much, and get to feel good with starry eyed fans who like meeting authors. The coconut cake can also be recommended.

The results of these interviews will appear here. Some time. Hopefully soon.

This week’s game would seem to be some blog tagging exercise where the victim has to bore their readers with three sentences from their nearest book.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

I am rather belatedly reading Jacqueline Wilson’s latest book, My Sister Jodie. Sentences number six to eight on p123 go something like this:

She kicked too hard and hurt her foot. “Ow!” she moaned, hopping on one leg. She wasn’t good at balancing on just one high heel and nearly toppled over.

This mad chain blog thingy could only have come from one place, Crime Always Pays. You silly man. Haven’t you got nappies to change and sleep to catch up on? Oh, well. But you people who I’m about to tag had better remember it’s nothing to do with me. The lucky victims are Lowebrow, Julie Bertagna, The Green Knight, Sara O’Leary and Jen Robinson.

Not a good idea, obviously. Unless you are Valkyrie Cain, in which case you should do things with fire every now and then. Playing With Fire is Derek Landy’s second offering of Skulduggery Pleasant, and Valkyrie is his sidekick. This time last year I was saying I was looking forward to meeting them again, and the really sharp eyed amongst you will now point out that Skulduggery’s sidekick was called Stephanie. She was. Then she went and changed it to Valkyrie. Gave her more power, or some such thing.

It was still nice to see the two of them again. I think I could be in for the duration, here, for however many books Derek will give us. (For all that money he’s got, he jolly well should provide a few books.)

I have got used to bad language in children’s books. Sometimes I don’t even notice it. What’s so good with Skulduggery Pleasant, though, is that there is no need for it. You can be cool and exciting and full of action without four letter words.

What the book does have is “wall-to-wall deadpan sarcasm”. I had to steal this one over at Crime Always Pays, and even there it’s a quote, but it’s such a good one. I love the plot, but more than anything, I love the humour. It’s rather like The Thin Man. Lots of very commonplace polite phrases, but used slightly eccentrically.

We like that.