Earlier this week Nicola Morgan won the RED award for Wasted, and I’m really pleased. It doesn’t matter how good your book is when you’re up against more fantastic books. And with young readers voting, there is no telling how the vote will go. RED is a Falkirk book award, which I had not heard of before. But it’s nice to know they read good books in ‘my Linlithgow alternative.’ (I’m obviously very sorry about anything I said about Falkirk in the past.)

As for yesterday’s award in Salford, it seems Michael Morpurgo won with his most recent (?) dog book. As I’ve mentioned, he wasn’t present, while several of the other shortlisted authors were.

That leads me to what many people have been saying over the years, about being invited when they don’t know if they’ve won or not. I can see that you’d not want to miss the Carnegie, even if you’re ‘merely’ a runner-up, but for the many-times shortlisted authors (and some really do seem to be involved in nearly every award) for ‘smaller’ awards it’s awkward to know whether to accept an invitation.

It must be flattering, and mostly fun, while also hard work and scary, appearing in front of large audiences of keen readers. But how many days can you realistically set aside for this kind of thing? Many have a day job, not to mention families. And in these cash strapped times, travelling costs can be prohibitive. Who pays? That seems to vary, but suffice to say that some authors, some of the time, foot at least part of the bill themselves.

And then someone else wins, who’s not even there. There are many good reasons why someone can’t make it, even if there is a whisper that they are the winner. And you can’t very well take away their win and give it to the next person, who just happens to be present. Can you?

(In the photo we have Alan Gibbons as MC, and Ally Kennen, publicist Mary Byrne, Jon Mayhew, Candy Gourlay, the Mayor of Salford – I would guess – and Pat Walsh as well as two unknowns, to me.)

Curtis Jobling came to Waterstones Arndale as part of a busy week of taking his Wereworld show round the schools of middle England. (That’s geographical, rather than any comment on what the fans are.) This was his only public event and with me feeling more public than school, I went along, taking my photographer with me. I think Curtis’s Bob the Builder background stood him in good stead and made him sound attractive.

Which he is, and this time Curtis was all pink and red. I pointed him out across the shop, as we’d come in early to case the joint. We take our author chasing seriously. There was a good display of all three Wereworld novels, although the tiddly table provided wasn’t ideal for a serious doodler like Curtis.

He did well though, providing Bob the Builder style princesses on pink paper as and when required, along with wolfy doodles in the Werebooks. I have to admit that the photographer wouldn’t leave before she had a Curtis special, which in this case is a more complex wolf doodle than he normally does, and we had to steal a plastic cover to protect wolfy on the way home.

I didn’t ask any awkward questions. At least, I don’t think I did. Curtis hinted at the developing romances among the were creatures, but I wouldn’t let him say too much in case he said the wrong thing. One young fan asked what is a good age to begin writing, and the answer is ‘early.’ Curtis’s earliest work can be found in his Mum’s loft. He thinks it might be best if it stays there.

The favourite question of the day was whether there are any subliminal messages in Bob the Builder. 12-year-olds are getting older and wiser. Not sure that the subliminalness of Bob was fully addressed, however.

When enough doodling had been done, and there were enough photos of pink checked shirts, we took our leave, and went in search of a tram.

It’s book award time in Salford today, and Candy Gourlay and Pat Walsh checked in early and were looking for dinner companions on Thursday evening. Michael Morpurgo wasn’t there, and Jon Mayhew lives near enough to drive over this morning, and someone had to make up the numbers. So we did.

It’s beautiful in Salford Quays at night, with the lights along the canals and the lit up blocks of flats and the BBC and the Lowry and all that. At least if it doesn’t rain. It didn’t.

We dined and we gossiped. If your ears burned, that will be because we mentioned you, but only in the nicest way. We are nice people. The food was good and as you can see we didn’t leave anything. No mention here of who had three…, no she didn’t. I just remembered that none of us ate too much.

I don’t know who has won, but some time today the Lowry will fill up with Salford school children, and the shortlisted authors will be given one child each (!), but not to take home. The children will take their author onto the stage and say nice things about them, before the winner is announced.

I hope they all win.

So, along came the next walking holiday (this was in the days when I actually got out and did things), and I found myself in a bookshop in Grasmere (probably the bookshop in Grasmere, now that I think of it), and browsing aimlessly I happened upon a book that looked like an airmail letter, and I realised this was what my Aberdonian Librarian had been waxing so lyrically over. ‘I might as well buy it,’ I thought to myself. It seemed as if it was meant.

Last week when I was agonising over what books could be about, I think it was Hilary McKay who mentioned 84 Charing Cross Road, and I have to admit I had almost forgotten about it. Only from a point of view as a book that is not your average fiction or non-fiction book, obviously. You can’t forget Helene Hanff’s collection of letters.

So I hunted  for my copy of the book and failed. Told the Resident IT Consultant to find it for me. (I reckon that’s one of his good sides; finding the very obvious which insists on escaping me.) It was where it should be. Naturally.

I cried a bit, looking through the book again, and that is surely a testament to quite how special 84 Charing Cross Road is? Admittedly, I started at the end where Frank Doel dies. But working my way to the beginning of the Hanff-Doel friendship just brought more tears. ‘I hope “madam” over there doesn’t mean what it does here.’

In more recent years I have come across people who express themselves like Helene did. Americans, I mean. At the time she struck me as ‘different,’ whereas the polite English letters from the bookshop seemed perfectly normal to me. ‘I could rush a tongue over.’ That’s an unusual thing to want to do for a bookshop, but it brings back the lack of food in Britain even as late as 1950. In fact, the whole book is a lesson in modern history.

I loved this book, and I have offered delayed thanks to Aberdonian Librarian ever since. Not that we’ve been in contact. I’m not sure how many copies I’ve bought of the book to give away, but long before I gave up on being a stingy old witch I actually spent good money on giving people their very own 84 Charing Cross Road.

I’m afraid I have no plans for more of that, so you can just go get your own copy. Just make sure you do. The only excuse is already owning one.

Look at me! Or rather, look at the United Kingdom! Is it any worse off for having allowed me entry? I’d like to think not. Although they did their utmost best even towards a ‘nice white witch’ like me.

I liked this country, and I still do. I used to come here as often as I could squeeze the piggybank for the price of another ticket. The last few years before the Resident IT Consultant made me legal I used to come about six times a year. And that involved increasingly closer contact with the black book.

The immigration officers used to have this enormous family bible type of book next to them, into which they looked without fail whenever I attempted to enter the country. Black book = blacklist. Obvious. They always seemed disappointed I wasn’t in it.

However attractive you might think it is to be able to speak a foreign (to you) language well, it’s not good under such circumstances. It indicates you have spent too much time somewhere you aren’t supposed to have been. Hence the suspicion.

The way the book was used was similar to how Santa’s helper in Disney’s film checked if you were allowed what you had asked for in your letter to FC. Eat enough spinach, and you’re OK. I love spinach, and that will be why they always let me in.

I thought nothing of it. I knew they had to do their bit, and I did my bit. Then we could both be satisfied. I must have told the Resident IT Consultant about the black book, as you do when you run out of more meaningful things to base a conversation on.

He probably thought nothing of it, until some 15 years into my legality, when he happened to consult for the Home Office. He mentioned the black book and my experience with it. ‘How do you even know about the book?’ they asked.

It seems the big black book is/was a secret. (Like the Post Office Tower, I suppose.) You’re not meant to know it’s there, and the reading of it could have done with more inconspicuousness applied. Whether they didn’t know, were unable to or simply couldn’t be bothered, I have no idea. But large family bibles are hard to hide under your desk.

I have been reading Wendy Meddour’s debut A Hen in the Wardrobe, and it is true chicken soup material. I absolutely loved it! It’s short and a seemingly easy read, but not at all a simple book. It deals with important issues like where people belong, and what you do when life just doesn’t feel right.

Yes, what do you do? Ramzi’s Dad sleepwalks. That’s why he ends up looking for a non-existent hen in Ramzi’s wardrobe one night. He’s not entirely happy in England, and secretly longs for his native Algeria.

And what do you do about that? Taking professional advice, Ramzi’s family come to the conclusion they need to visit Algeria, so they do. His Dad is very happy to be home again, and Ramzi quite likes visiting. At least for some time. Until he sleepwalks and finds a sheep in the kitchen.

Not everyone can be happy all the time, but what to do when half the family wants one thing and the other half wants something else? Because there is no right or wrong. It’s a case of where we come from, and we only really come from one place, however good somewhere else is.

This story lets the reader actually ‘live’ Algeria. There is no preaching or showing, just an immediate dip into Algerian life. And you can see how people are the same everywhere, but also different.

We can never really solve the puzzle of where to live when families are mixed. There is no single right answer. But it would be a whole lot easier if countries didn’t have so many obstacles in place to prevent free and easy visiting between people who belong together.

This is a lovely tale about families, and about Algeria as well as Muslim life in England, and none of it quite like any other book I’ve read.

(Great illustrations all done by Wendy.)

The word ‘were’ sends shivers down my spine, and not the team Jacob kind of shivers. OK, so I loved Lupin, but there are only so many werewolves a witch can grapple with, and you do tend to think of black books and silly romance. But in this case you couldn’t be further from the truth.

Wereworld is your good old-fashioned adventure story, where some of the characters simply happen to be were-somethings. You need some magic, and pulling on were-powers when you’re in dire straits is about as normal as becoming Spiderman.

We begin with young, innocent Drew who has a very bad day. A creature turns up, does unspeakable things, and Drew’s father isn’t as understanding as he could be, so throws Drew out, leaving him both shocked by what has happened, and having to look after himself in the woods of Lyssia.

After living wild for months, Drew meets people who come to have something to do with his future. He learns that he is a werewolf, and while he makes new friends and allies, there is a lot of backstabbing going on, too. Basically, this is a fast paced adventure where Drew and friends and foes head for the exciting end of book one. There is a temporary ‘happy’ end, but the cliffhanger is good and ready and we want to know what happens next.

If you like adventure, and are ready for weresharks and werebadgers (yes, really) and any other kind of ‘were’ you can think of, this is for you. Hard to say when this is set, if you can ask that about a fantasy world. Mostly it feels historical, but some of it seems more modern. The thing with fantasy is you can do what you like.

Lovely hints at a possible romance, although I suspect Curtis won’t take it in the direction I’d like. There is a warning on the back cover that the book ‘contains scenes of violence’ and it does, but probably no more than readers would expect. It’s a bit gory, but not too bad. Personally I feel it’s the politics that leave you feeling sick.

And I’m afraid they ate Bambi.

This one is about poo. There are some pretty graphic descriptions of Roman toilets and sponge sticks. And poo. For good measure there is a large illustration at the beginning of the book, which I’m fairly sure shows five grown men on the toilet, some of them dark in the face. Constipation, perhaps?

We met young Threptus in a short story the year before last (I think it was), and he’s friends with Lupus. He’s another beggar boy, and he admires Lupus a lot and wants to be like him. So he solves mysteries. His first one gets him a job and a home with a grown-up, and he should be safer than he was.

But Threptus ends up in trouble almost immediately, when he runs into the same old bullies. It’s as he tries to escape them that he encounters the men on the toilet, and you don’t really want to know where Threptus is just then.

We also meet Aphrodite the chicken, and there is a wealthy widow with a problem. And Floridius, Threptus’ grown-up, lets go of something important in the wrong place. (You can guess where.)

Floridius isn’t terribly good at much, but Threptus is. He notices things and he remembers them, and he puts them to sensible use. He will do Lupus proud. There is romance developing for another old Roman friend, as well.

And down in the sewer; it could be mud, or a log, or ‘something worse.’ You just never know what you’ll find there. Or perhaps you do…

The Sewer Demon is a shorter story than the Roman Mysteries, and will make perfect reading for slightly younger children, while not stopping us elderly fans from having fun.

I know. I’m not a native English speaker. I may have been headhunted (hah!) by an agent last week, but I won’t be writing a book. The Resident IT Consultant said he thought I could, until I informed him of my limited vocabulary. After close to 30 years, it’s not as if he will have noticed yet. OK, it’s not bad. But it’s not good. My passive vocabulary is acceptable, but what I am actually able to use confidently is so much smaller.

And on those occasions when I consider saying ‘that word’ out loud (whatever the word might be), I realise I haven’t got a clue how to pronounce it. And you people do not want to know what I do to monasteries on a regular basis. I mean, I know, really. But it just slips out.

So, this morning I’ve been unable to let posturepedic out of my head. (I dare say that’s as good a place as any for it.) I saw this bed advert recently. I have seen the word posturepedic before, and made sense of it. This time I tripped and it took me ages to see what word it was. Try and say it yourselves, using the antepenult rule for where the stress goes. There’s no escape.

It wasn’t beds I set out to have a go at. Just wanted to point out how far from perfect I am before I start complaining. But could someone please tell me why, why, why intelligent and well educated people who work with words will use a phrase like ‘it was a surprise to my husband and I’??? Remove the husband (generally to be recommended) and where are you?

That old teen heart throb David Cassidy used to do a column in my beloved teen magazine, and even he got it right. He reminisced about a girl from school who used to run after her friends, calling ‘wait for I!’. Without a husband it just didn’t work, did it? And I’ve now found it in the book I’m reading, which until then was going so well. Editing? What editing?

I sit up at night, editing. I still leave the odd thing for Son or Daughter to email me about, just to make them feel superior. But I do my best.

Now, at long last, I have found something that I rate below ‘wait for I’. I just don’t know who to blame. David Walliams? Or Penguin? Or the Guardian? At some point there must have been an editor in charge. I quote. ‘…which of course made we kids love it all the more.’

Hrmph.

And that leaves me ‘sat’ here moaning about one last thing. I put my trust in Daughter’s teacher, fondly imagining she would tell her how wrong it is. She didn’t. You now get it everywhere, and the Resident IT Consultant has gone so far as to suggest I could be wrong. (He’s sufficiently scared of me not to say so absolutely…) Am I wrong?

I was beginning to think I was, when a lovely author on facebook agreed with me and even offered up a grammatical rule. (I’m useless at grammar.) Soon after there was another author, busy flogging her newly published book in the Guardian (twice in one week), using the phrase, thereby immediately absolving me from any need to show further interest.

Perhaps we are all reading from the same English work sheet Offspring brought home from Primary school. It was about tenses. Present tense looks like this, apparently: ‘I am sitting’, where it’s the sitting that is the present. I always imagined it was ‘I sit, you sit, he/she sits’ and so on.

Goodness me. It’s Saturday. This is supposedly a Bookwitch bites, and here I am, going on and on. Sorry. It must have been the 66 that bewitched me.

I’ll just proofread this now. It’s a mere blog, but…

(This makes it 666 words.)

In a week that began with Anthony McGowan’s much discussed negative review in the Guardian, and continued with Julie Bertagna’s blog, I have come to the conclusion that it might be time for a policy change. Not to slag off books, but to blog about them, warts and all. I have some way to go before I can do what Anthony did, because he got it just right (not having read the book in question I don’t know if I share his opinions), which requires skill.

What’s the verdict of my review of Advent yesterday? It’s a book I liked for the most part, and in the past I would have concentrated on that, while leaving a bit of a hole in the middle. I now feel that when I’ve invested the time, I shouldn’t do half a review. (Or should I?)

I remember the book by GPT some years ago, which I had to finish because I was leading a group discussion afterwards, only to find that not a single child in the group had bothered, so I needn’t have either. If only I could have that week back!

More recently I was grabbed by the description of a novel by a new author, except the story ended up going nowhere. By then I felt I might as well finish the book, and that’s when it turned out it was the first in a trilogy. So no review. Perhaps that’s where I went wrong? Maybe I should have shared my thoughts?

I tested this idea on the Resident IT Consultant yesterday. In no uncertain terms he pointed out that my review of Advent was negative. At least for me.

So where do I go?

This first part of a new trilogy begins most promisingly. James Treadwell’s Advent introduces troubled 15-year-old Gavin, on his way to stay with his Aunt Gwen in Cornwall, having been given up on by his parents and everyone else. I was very excited by this book from the moment it arrived.

The great start does however make detours into more boring country every once in a while, before leaping back to where it was. And thus it goes on. There were bits of chapters I wanted to prune. I felt I was being given information I didn’t seem to need. (I could be proven wrong, of course. Might be like the polyjuice potion.)

Gavin has had a secret friend all his life. And the woman he encounters en route to Aunt Gwen’s cottage has been hearing voices for as long. When Gwen fails to meet him off the train, weird things start to happen at an ever increasing pace. Things go bump in the night in Gwen’s cottage, followed by Gavin meeting some unusual neighbours. Not all of them as alive as you’d want.

There are some truly interesting characters in Advent. Most of them meet at some point, but remain surprisingly separate. I wanted much more from Hester, who is a tremendously promising character. And the boy Horace has so far been too marginalised.

You have your man-eating dogs and talking black birds (again) and mermaids and a strangely ancient man, as well as people rising from the dead. Evil seems to be returning to the world, after centuries of absence. The people around Gavin have something to do with this, but we don’t get a full explanation.

Advent has plenty of humour and excitement and I enjoyed the good parts enormously, while ignoring the historical flashbacks to Faust. There are a couple of lapses of point of view, and the 21st century shouldn’t mingle with the 16th.

SLIGHT SPOILER WARNING!

By the end I wanted to go on to read the second book, and that is when James went and switched characters with no warning, leaving me wondering about Gavin and co. The next lot seem interesting, too, but will the twain meet? Will enough threads be tied up?

In his Author’s Note James explains stuff, carefully ignoring all that I wanted to know. Oversight, or cunning?

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(Do you want to win a copy of Advent? If so, use the Contact form at the top of the page – not the comments – to tell me about it. And we’ll see.)