A Trick of the Dark

Bridget Collins’ second book reminded me a little of Tim Bowler. Or rather, of his books. It’s got a modern setting, with something inexplicable happening. Some teenage angst and the supernatural.

I know you can’t really explain the supernatural, but I wouldn’t have minded understanding A Trick of the Dark a little better. I was left with questions. Had the story ended differently I would have been prepared to read a more ordinary meaning into what happened.

It’s almost purely about teen brother and sister Zach and Annis, and after a while I found myself longing for more characters. Their inadequate parents are there to begin with, but even for fictional purposes I found them wanting. There are a few very minor characters at first, who then just disappear. There is a neighbour/friend at the end, and by then I was desperate for people, so he was most welcome.

This is a dysfunctional family, but mainly on a superficial level. Something odd happens to Zach, witnessed by Annis. The rest of the plot is about what follows this event, and we never really understand it. At least, I didn’t. Both teenagers fall out with the parents big time, as they struggle to grasp what’s going on.

The struggle to grasp uses up an unnecessary middle third of the book. I felt that with so much detail, surely something useful would come of it. Bridget’s first novel, The Traitor Game, was exceptionally good, with some interesting and likeable characters, and quite a lot of action on several levels. That’s why this sudden change in A Trick of the Dark really puzzled me.

Zach looks very promising initially, but his ranting throughout made me lose patience with him. Annis is desperate to please her older brother, although that’s almost impossible. And as for the parents, they are barely normal, even for fiction. So I’m left hanging.

Tea with Flora MacLachlan

Sunburn.

That is not the first word you’d associate with the Edinburgh Festival season.

Almost too warm. That’s another unlikely description. (Meg Rosoff; it may not be NYC hot, but then we can’t all be over there.)

Nice day. No rain. Warm. Sunny.

No events either, so although we had to crawl out of bed to get to Edinburgh for the morning of Day 6, it was purely pleasure. Not that the other days weren’t pleasure, I hasten to add.

Gillian Philip, of Crossing the Line and Bad Faith fame, had an educational encounter with 96 school visitors and survived. I knew she would, because we had agreed to meet up afterwards, and I didn’t want to just mop up the remains.

First, however, we had an assignation with Nicola Morgan outside the children’s bookshop. Not too busy there on a Monday morning, but I still took Donna’s Tim’s advice and looked for interesting shoes. They were. Lime green suedy things, beautifully set off with purple shirt and green scarf. That’s my kind of dressing. Nicola being a capable sort of woman determinedly smuggled us into the authors’ yurt, so we hastily hid the red neck ribbons and exchanged them for green ones.

Did I mention the sunshine? We sat out on the authors’ deck area and talked and gossiped for an hour. Nicola does a lot of events at the festival, and was halfway through this year’s talks. She also seems to know everyone. Bali Rai turned up briefly before his school event, and Kevin Brooks sat at the next table with Mary Byrne. We talked about Tim Bowler (did your ears burn, Tim?) while we were on the Swedish connection. And as Nicola knows everyone, she came with us to help identify Gillian Philip, as there is always a possibility that someone doesn’t quite look like their Facebook photo.

Gillian was in the bookshop, just finishing chatting to some young admirers, along with Keith Charters, who wore an author badge, but seemed to be more of an enthusiastic publishing person. We trotted back to the deck and the sunshine, for Gillian to relax and for a chat. Daughter admired her ear-rings, which apparently were purchased in a very recent panic buy. Have to say that Gillian looked stunning with matching jewellery and top. (I know it shouldn’t matter, but I enjoy matching-ness and strong colours. But it probably doesn’t make anyone’s books better.) Keith did some good business moves, handing out his card, and handing out a booklet with chapter one of a book called Bree McCready and the Half-Heart Locket by Hazel Allan.

At the next table we had Melvin Burgess and Paul Dowswell of Ausländer fame, and I kicked myself for not having checked out the schools programme, in order to pack a more suitable selection of books to be signed… I could get used to this part of Charlotte Square. How do I become an author for next time? Preferably one who is allowed in without having to ‘pay’ by doing a public talk.

We skulked back to the wifi in the press yurt to sort out the case of Monday’s missing photos, and let me tell you that I may have a laptop, but my lap does not have a top suited to balancing anything like that for any length of time. Did get the photos on, with minutes to spare before we had to rush down to Waverley. We had an invitation to have afternoon tea with Flora MacLachlan, aka Debi Gliori.

Debi is so wonderfully kind that she had volunteered to have the witch and her witch baby round for tea. She collected us from the train and drove us home to her beautiful garden, and then she plonked us down in the shade in a corner and brought out a groaning tea tray. I apologise to the world for the day of book-writing that has been lost through so much baking and general kindness. But fluffy scones and the most lemony cake and shortbread in a sunny garden is beyond good.

Before we left, we got to have a very early look at the artwork for a new book. I love it already. Picture books often look very attractive, but that’s nothing compared with what they’re made from.

Just a thought; am I turning into a cross between Cheshire Life and Hello magazine?

(All photos H Giles)

Bowler news

Tim Bowler has revamped his website. He now has clever stuff (not that he didn’t have clever stuff before…) like his new Bolthole Bulletin. That’s where you can hear, and see, Tim talking, reading and possibly sing as well? I haven’t tested that yet, as with my recent ghastly internet, moving pictures is beyond all hope. Looking forward to trying it soon, though.

He also has new cover images, interviews, reviews and lots more. What he no longer appears to have, is the picture where he eats his laptop, which is a shame. I enjoyed seeing a grown man act like a child!

I always think of Tim more often when I’m in Sweden. Not that I don’t think of him at other times, too. A gold star to anyone who can tell me why.

And he Twitters. Of course. As long as there is proper written news on the website, I won’t mind this Twittering business too much. New inventions … bah, humbug.

A bonus for anyone who enjoys roller-coaster rides, is the way Tim’s photo seems to fall down the side of his page as you scroll down. Wheee..!

Hear Tim

Found this on Tim Bowler’s website, and I think he says it so much better than I do. So, for a couple of minutes of Tim himself talking about Bloodchild, click here.

Bloodchild

Avoid this book at midnight if you can. Tim Bowler may believe that knives are scary, and they are, but I find all these “unexplained” things in Tim’s supernatural tales pretty scary, too. Bloodchild is another book to read in daylight.

The story about Will, who loses his memory, is set in a beautiful seaside town, but even the lovely surroundings don’t help when Tim gets going on hard-to-explain happenings. The town where Will lives is full of people who appear to hate him or who mistrust him. Will knows something is seriously wrong, but he just can’t remember enough to work out what it is. He has a few allies, but it’s no easy thing to go up against a whole town. Even his parents are at best humouring him.

If you want suspense, this is a good one. If you don’t, it’s still good, of course, but you may want to hold someone’s hand.

I kept losing my copy of the book, though there’s nothing supernatural about it. The culprit was the normal book thief, and I don’t know why he has to read at exactly the same time as I do. There’s nothing wrong with before or after. Is there?

Blade

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?

What authors say

Just as I expect Francesca Simon’s guests on Thursday evening could manage to be both happy for her success and envious that their own sales aren’t quite as good, it’s interesting to observe authors and see and hear what they say, or don’t say.

Some only talk about their own work, and don’t even seem to be too modest to say how good they believe they are. Thankfully not many are like this. And there’s Henning Mankell, who as I pointed out the other day, doesn’t even recognise his own work when he sees it.

Many authors go out of their way to suggest other writers and books that they think I’d like. Sometimes they are wrong, but often they are quite right and I’m grateful for ideas. Linda Newbery has been known to send emails with suggestions.

Tim Bowler spent ages during a school talk some years ago “selling” Melvin Burgess’ book Doing It. I think Tim almost forgot his own books while explaining quite how hilariously funny and worthwhile this controversial book of Melvin’s is.

Adele Geras is also very helpful and recommends books she likes in her website newsletter. Meg Rosoff is forever pointing me in the direction of her friends’ books. Do you people think I have unlimited time for reading?

Then we have Son’s “party trick” of asking every author he meets what they think of Philip Pullman. He even has me do it for him if he’s not there. Whether the authors he asks are always honest I don’t know, but they tend to have good manners, so will usually say something positive. And I’d say that most of the time it sounds as if they mean it.

When Lionel Shriver got the Pullman question, her answer was of the more unusual variety. She said “Who?”

Anthologies for charity

I mentioned the anthology Like Mother, Like Daughter the other day. I have a couple of other story collections too, that were both published in aid of charity. Unlike Amnesty International’s Click, which was one story written by different authors in a literary relay, these are simply short stories by well known authors.

Higher Ground is all about the 2004 tsunami, and was published only months after the disaster. Sixteen children’s authors each wrote a story based on what happened to a real child, somewhere in the world during that period. It’s very sad and very uplifting. Definitely worth having a few hankies standing by for when you read it. The authors are Melvin Burgess, Gillian Cross, Tim Bowler, Bernard Ashley, Eoin Colfer and many more, with foreword by Michael Morpurgo. Highly recommended.

Last year ten authors, hand-picked by readers of Cosmo Girl, wrote a short story each for Shining On, sold in aid of Teenage Cancer Trust. We’ve got Melvin Burgess again, as the lone boy, with girl writers Jacqueline Wilson, Anne Fine, Malorie Blackman, Rosie Rushton, Sue Limb, Meg Cabot, Cathy Hopkins, Meg Rosoff and Celia Rees. The stories are as good as you’d expect from the star-studded line-up.

The witch is slowly – very slowly – collecting her signatures in these two anthologies. It’ll take me years.

No room at the Plaza

And let me start by saying this has got nothing to do with the nice people at the Plaza.

This is where I would have told you all about last night’s glittering ceremony for the Stockport Schools’ Book Awards. Quite logical to cover something so close to home, for a change, with no tiring travel. I thought so. The organiser with the library service thought not. I hadn’t been invited. (So, invite me.)

After months and months of helpful behaviour from publishers and friendliness from authors (thank you), I should have known better than to expect anything at all from those whose pay comes from our rates. They are from the very same organisation which informed me that my (then) eleven-year-old shouldn’t read Terry Pratchett. They are working for the same local council that refused practical assistance for child on crutches to get to school.

Anyway, after I found out about the event (Daughter was invited through school), I spent ten days trying to work out who to contact about getting a ticket/invitation/whatever. You’d think they would have a website/page that can be found. (But I now know that Stockport has a Curry Chef award.)

So, knowing that Tim Bowler had been shortlisted, I asked him. He was coming, he said, but any information would be with his publisher. So, on to OUP, where I now have contacts, and they put me in touch with the right person. She in turn gave me the name of the one who then took such delight in saying no.

A book award in Stockport doesn’t sound like much, but I understand it’s good. Many excellent and well known authors are shortlisted. For Key Stage 4 (where Daughter voted) we had Tim, Michael Morpurgo and John Boyne. In another group Lee Weatherly. This is why I persevered, when I’d normally give up. But my “sparring partner” was made of stronger stuff. What I read in her replies was that I was a suspicious character trying to sneak into a children’s event. (According to Daughter one of my friends was there…)

A very last minute plea to Daughter’s headteacher got a sympathetic reply, but I was too late. At least he was nice.

I don’t know if the Stockport Express was there. They have a larger readership than I do. However, my readers are interested in books, and cover the globe, and my blog reaches parts the SE doesn’t. But who cares about spreading the word about their book awards scheme?

You’ll be pleased to hear that Tim Bowler won the KS 4 award. And from another source of information I believe that Alan Durant won in a younger category.

And you’ll be even more relieved that after this little outburst the witch will attempt to be her normal sunny self for a long time to come. Attempt to, I said.

Carnegie longlist

Here’s the longlist for the 2008 Carnegie prize. It’s a comforting list of what’s best in children’s books. And it’s lovely to see that Siobhan Dowd is on it. I hope she can see this where she is.

At this stage I won’t even begin to predict. I like too many of them. And usually both the shortlist and the eventual winner are good choices.

AHLBERG, Allan The Boyhood of Burglar Bill
BERTAGNA, Julie, Zenith
BIRCH, Beverley, Rift
BOWLER, Tim Frozen Fire
BROOKS, Kevin Being
COLFER, Eoin The Legend of the Worst Boy in the World
CROSSLEY-HOLLAND, Kevin Gatty’s Tale
DOGAR, Sharon Waves
DOWD, Siobhan The London Eye Mystery
DOWNHAM, Jenny Before I Die
DUFFY, Carol Ann The Hat
FISHER, Catherine Incarceron
FLETCHER, Charlie Stoneheart
GILMAN, David The Devil’s Breath
GLASS, Linzi Ruby Red
HAIG, Matt Shadow Forest
HARDINGE, Frances Verdigris Deep
HOOPER, Mary The Remarkable Life and Times of Eliza Rose
JONES, Diana Wynne The Pinhoe Egg
KENNEN, Ally Berserk
KUIPERS, Alice Life on the Refrigerator Door
LAIRD, Elizabeth Crusade
LANDMAN, Tanya Apache
LANDY, Derek Skulduggery Pleasant
LOTT, Tim Fearless
McCAUGHREAN, Geraldine Peter Pan in Scarlet
McKENZIE, Sophie Girl, Missing
MORPURGO, Michael Alone on a Wide Wide Sea
PAVER, Michelle Soul Eater
PEET, Mal The Penalty
PRATCHETT, Terry Wintersmith
REEVE, Philip Here Lies Arthur
RIDDELL, Chris Ottoline and the Yellow Cat
ROBERTS, Katherine I Am The Great Horse
ROBSON, Mark Imperial Assassin
ROSOFF, Meg What I Was
ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
ST. JOHN, Lauren Dolphin Song
SEDGWICK, Marcus Blood Red Snow White
SINGLETON, Sarah Sacrifice
SUZUMA, Tabitha From Where I Stand
THOMPSON, Kate The Last of the High Kings
VALENTINE, Jenny Finding Violet Park
WILLIS, Jeanne Shamanka
WRAY, Sarah The Forbidden Room