Young Adult?

“Teen books are like adult books, without all the bullshit.”

I came across this quote on Editorial Anonymous, and it struck a chord. H. Jack Martin, assistant coordinator of young adult services at New York Public Library said it.

Young Adult wasn't invented when I was a young adult/teenager. I read accessible adult books; like Claudine at School by Colette (not in the original French, alas) The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault (I have a clear memory of being totally absorbed by this, reading it on the beach at the age of twelve) and Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.

Things have changed, and not just so that the publishers will sell more books (though the recent plans to grade every children's book with a tight age range is an evil scheme designed purely for profit). It seems almost obligatory these days for authors writing for adults to include the sort of material that used to be unprintable. Shock and titillate the reader, and he will feel he is getting his money's worth. But you wouldn't want your thirteen-year-old to read such stuff; hence Young Adult to fill the gap.

I believe that genres, though unavoidable so booksellers know which shelves to put books on, are irrelevant. A good book is a good book, and will transcend age groups and genre preferences.

This has always been so, and always will be.

Authonomy

I was lucky enough to be one of the first seven pre-beta testers of the new website for unpublished writers, Authonomy (the link won't let you into the site yet, as it's still beta).

You are able to load anything over 10,000 words of your book(s) - unlike most members, I've loaded all of mine, in case anyone gets carried away and wants to read the whole thing. You also load cover art, a pitch to make others want to read your book, and an image to represent you.

Each member has a virtual bookshelf he/she can load with up to five books from the site. I'm swapping mine around as I read new extracts. And you can leave a comment on other people's books.

It's all rather fun.

Titles...

Those of you who regularly scan my blog for the tiniest activity on my part (I hardly like to say it, but perhaps you should get out more) will have noticed that I have changed the name of the novel formerly known as Rising Fire. I've also tinkered with the covers.

I'm not saying that Torbrek...and the Dragon Variation will be the final title. But that's what it is for now. Thank you Norm, whose suggestion it was.

I'd write a little about titles, but am reluctant to quote the excellent examples I've come across of unpublished novels' titles, as I think that while one's novel is most unlikely to be stolen, an amazing title is actually quite likely to be pinched by the unscrupulous.

Raymond Chandler used to list any good titles that occurred to him in case they came in handy. Sensible man. Wish I'd done that.

No! No! It is NOT weird and wonderful!

Gripped by the dead hand of the cliché...

I am guilty of writing ‘she woke with a start’ in a first draft. ‘She melted into his arms’ really does say it all (this doesn't mean it's a good idea to use the phrase in a novel, though).

But what about clichés that are used with no thought at all? ‘Sea change’ frequently has me yelling at the radio, ‘the sea has nothing to do with it!’ The original Shakespearean metaphor in The Tempest has a point, as THE CHANGE HAPPENED UNDERWATER! But a political party changing a policy has nothing whatever to do with the sea!!!

And as for weird and wonderful, bright and breezy, chop and change, born and bred, each and every, first and foremost, fast and furious, facts and figures, fame and fortune, kith and kin (what's kith?) hale and hearty, part and parcel, prim and proper, rack and ruin, rules and regulations, safe and sound, tried and tested, trials and tribulations, vim and vigour...

All I can say is, AVOID.

Road Rage and Ramparts Rage

My fantasy novels are set in an alternative Middle Ages, so I research the actual period for background detail. I'm currently reading The Medieval Castle by Philip Warner, who has a lively writing style and a first-hand knowledge of battle, having fought all through WWII.

He describes the feeling of superiority engendered by looking down, from a castle or a horse, on the enemy. Castle defenders would jeer at and goad the besiegers. Emotions ran so high that when castles fell, the victors often 'massacred the garrison with ill-tempered thoroughness'.

Also, 'it has been said that this blend of arrogance, quick temper, risk-taking and irrationality is a thing of the past.'

I knew what he was going to say next. Here it is:

'Curiously enough, the automobile has created its own species of knights. Lulled into a false sense of security by the armour around him, flattered by the speed which he controls with a touch of the foot, arrogant towards those with inferior mounts or with no mounts at all, the modern motorist will display chivalry towards an attractive woman, pay grudging deference to the owner of a vehicle which is clearly superior, but otherwise behave with stupid over-competitive hostility to every other road-user.

The clearest conviction of the modern motorist is that every other driver is in the wrong; he is driving too fast, too slowly, too timidly or too aggressively. Even the carnage of the multiple accident leaves him relatively unmoved; the massacre of a few peasants had much the same effect on a feudal baron's emotions.'

*

(Courtesy of Norm, here is a link to Monty Python's French Taunting on the Battlements)

Pedants' Corner

To lay and to lie...

A lot of people have problems with when to use lay and when to use lie. I know that lay is transitive, i.e. you lay something, an egg or a table, but lie is intransitive, i.e. you lie on the bed.

But I blush to confess, I only realized recently they are two entirely different verbs, that happen to share 'lay' as the present tense of to lay, and the past tense of to lie. For more details, see here.

It's left me wondering what else I don't know...

Literary agents' websites

I've been trawling through the lists of agents in Writers' & Artists' Yearbook, crossing off all those who do not look at fantasy or consider Young Adult fiction. Then I went to look up the websites of agents on my shortlist.

But quite a few did not have a website. How is this possible in 2008? To make a relevant submission, and to find the right person to send it to, one really needs to know more than the brief facts listed in W & A Y. I do not wish to waste their time or mine.

When I looked at the websites of those agents who did have them, on the whole they were not inspiring. If I was a published author, I would want my agent to have an exciting website, where there would be a section on me, showing pictures of my book covers, with a link to where you could buy the book, plus a link to my website. Hardly any of the agents I looked at had this.

As unpublished authors, we are told we need to be extremely professional for our work to be considered at all by a literary agent. I am happy to do this. But is it such a buyers' market that the agents don't need to bother to be the best they can be?

.

Final thought: maybe, right now, the next soon-to-be-hugely-successful author is comparing agents' websites, deciding who to send three chapters to...

Amazon, how could you?

Don't buy your books from Amazon while they behave like this!

Try the Book Depository instead - it's good, with free postage.

Amazon has said that all Print-On-Demand (POD) books in America will now have to be printed through Amazon's printing company BookSurge, or be discriminated against by losing the buy now button. Amazon's share of the profits will rise from 25% to 55%.

Amazon is also going to penalize mainstream publishers who sell their books direct at a discount on their publisher's websites. Amazon is taking that discounted price as the book's "cover price" and then applying their own discounts accordingly.

These are bully-boy tactics from a huge business, which will not benefit either writers or readers. Read more about it on Youwriteon.

Yesterday I ordered Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds from Amazon. It will be the last book I shall buy from them until they change their minds.

Chapter headings

Why don't most authors write chapter headings?

Some do, like Jasper Fforde, and JK Rowling; in fact, these days you're most likely to come across them in Y.A. novels. Readers often don't notice them, but they add that extra something and are a lot of fun to write; you can tease and intrigue the reader, and even lead him in the wrong direction.

I've just written them for Rising Fire and Trav Zander. My favourites:

Socks and a revelation

Journey to the edge of the map

A wolf by the ears

Girls and spies

On the run - with canary

Revising Rising Fire (again) and wax modelling...

I've just finished making the goblet on the left for British Silver Week, and while I wax modelled the snakes it occurred to me that this has a lot in common with revising a novel.

You get the outline right, then change some major bits - for instance the snake necks where they meet the foot of the goblet, so as not to show the internal rod. Then there's a lot of smoothing, texturing, measuring and checking it looks good from all angles. Really very like revising Rising Fire.

I have no idea how long it will take in either case. I just go on until it’s done. Which can take ages.

There's another connexion too. I got the idea for the goblet from the design of Tor's dagger, that you can see on the book cover above.

(By the way, I do know the author does not design the book jacket - I did it for Youwriteon, where you can display a cover image).

Show don’t tell…

I read an excellent screenplay, Nightshift, by Oliver L. Jeffery (read it here) which got me thinking about the way writers tell their stories, and the advice one is often given, 'show, don't tell'.

The novel is in a direct line from the storyteller beside the fire, with his listeners gathered around him, who would naturally be doing more 'tell' than 'show'. 'Once upon a time there was...' is pure 'tell'.

Films and television, on the other hand, are relatives of the stage. They deal only in 'show'. With their universal availability the public have got used to pure 'show', and this has infiltrated our attitude to novels.

A hundred years ago Bram Stoker wrote, ‘The Count…was very courteous and very cheery in his manner’ – today you’d be told to show his courtesy and cheeriness by his speech and actions. And indeed, it's often better to do that. But have we gone too far in this direction? I think perhaps we have. A novel is not a film. Actors will not be fleshing out the written words.

Novelists have to make it happen in the minds of our readers, and 'tell' is a useful weapon in our armoury, along with everything else.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves Quiz

This you must try. Lovely graphics. Fun.

.,;:!:;,.

PUNCTUATION GAME

Dragons and bikes

In Rising Fire, I describe the first time the dragon, Xantilor, takes Tor for a flight. I've never flown on a dragon myself, so imagination was called for. I wished I hadn't passed on the opportunity to take a microlight flight a couple of years ago (unlike Tor, I am not good with heights).

I looked up aerial photographs of castles and countryside for Tor's view. Thinking about birds, I realized you'd go up and down with each beat of the huge wings.

Then it occurred to me that riding a bike has something in common with riding a dragon. You're experiencing the sun or rain, the rushing wind, the speed, and in London enough danger to make it exhilarating.*

Though not, thank goodness, the dizzying distance from the ground.

.

*Sometimes I wish my bike had a fire-breathing feature...

If in doubt, go with your gut feeling...

It's your book - write it your way, you're the only one who can

A few years ago I invested 25p at a school fete buying a paperback called, rather clunkily, Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead...But Gutsy Girls Do, by Kate White. It turned out to be one of the most inspiring and thought-provoking books I've ever read.

Its main argument is that girls are brought up to be pleasers, to play by the rules, and while this works just fine at home and school, take this attitude to the workplace and you will never be a high achiever or fulfill your potential.

But it also discusses the importance of trusting your gut feeling. When Kate was editor-in-chief at McCall's, one of her jobs was to select the cover photo, knowing that her choice could make newsstand sales fluctuate by several hundred thousand copies. Deliberating her first cover for September, she saw a paparazzi shot of Demi Moore; 'it practically took my breath away and I decided in that instant, "This is the cover".'

As she showed the touched-up photo round the office, people voiced concerns. Demi did not have the usual 'buy-me' smile; the background was black; a pregnant Demi was about to appear nearly naked on the cover of August's Vanity Fair. Kate began to have doubts.

Then she remembered her initial 'oooooh' reaction. She decided to go ahead.

The issue sold 300,000 more copies than the September issue of the year before. She said she learned how easy it is to get talked out of going with your gut when the pressure is on.

The moral of this post? Listen to the advice of others, but go with your gut feeling. Don't let people talk you out of your own certainty.

By my faith, but you're a bold rascal!

This is Sir Tristram speaking in that great book, Le Morte d’Arthur, finished in 1469 by Sir Thomas Malory:

‘And fair knight, and well proved knight, thou shalt well wit I may not forsake thee in this quarrel, for I am for thy sake made and gotten upon a queen; and such promise I have made at my uncle’s request and mine own seeking that I shall fight with thee unto the uttermost, and deliver Cornwall from the old truage.’

Beautiful; but would a book set in the Middle Ages (or an alternative Middle Ages, as mine are) get away with its characters talking like this? I think the reader would find it hard going. I took the decision to have my characters speak in contemporary language, and sometimes get told off for it. Some readers want what they are used to from films and historical romances; a sort of pastiche, which bears little resemblance to the language used by Malory or Chaucer, but which they feel comfortable with. It's no more authentic than modern speech, of course.

I had a go at writing a bit:

‘Prithee, fair maid…’

‘Unhand me, my lord! Fie, for shame, I am promised to another, as well you know!’

‘Nay, lady, be not so intemperate. What lies, I wonder, beneath that haughty mien? Perchance you are not as cold as you seem…’

‘Sir, if this be jest tis an unseemly one! Take care; my brother rides hither apace, and will wreak vengeance for any affront.’

Hey, that was easy – I wonder if there’s a market for a medieval bodice-ripper?

N.B. I'm sure you all recognized the title as a quote from the Errol Flynn Robin Hood of 1938.

Youwriteon Book of the Year

Not Rising Fire alas, but some good news...

Go here to see who won YWO Book of the Year 2008. I've read most of these extracts, and they are of a high standard, worthy winners, and all very different.

The excellent news for me is that Youwriteon is publishing an anthology of all the short stories in the Best Seller Chart, and I have two in there; Showing Them, about an unpublished writer, and Comforted by Darkness, about a woman's encounter with an enigmatic stranger.

So guess what everyone I know will be getting from me, signed, for Christmas?

Are you all right? You're looking a bit pale...

Cough in real life, and your friends' only reaction will be to back away from your germs. Cough in a novel or on screen, and it's both good and bad news; your friends will notice and show concern, but unfortunately it means you are going down with something serious, maybe fatal.

If you are going to be ill, my advice is to see if you can get one of those fictional illnesses; they're so much better than real life ones. They come in various forms;

1. TERMINAL ILLNESS Now here, fiction is way ahead. No physical decline, or feeling wretched, or looking terrible. No, you will be gorgeous till the end. If you look a tad frail it won't stop you doing interesting stuff like making love with the hero. Coughing delicately into a handkerchief is about the only symptom that will trouble you.

A final plus; a fictional doctor will be able to predict, to the day, when you will conk out. In the film The First of the Few, the doctor told Leslie Howard that if he rested completely he'd be right as rain; if he carried on overworking, he'd be dead in six months. Now that's the sort of certainty a patient needs.

2. INSANITY This is only ever bad news if you are a baddie; if you are a sympathetic character, you can go on much as normal with everyone smiling indulgently at your foibles. See Mr Dick in David Copperfield.

3. SMALLPOX Not a disease to tangle with; but Esther Summerson in Bleak House had a nasty bout of it, and when she recovered her face was pock-marked badly enough to scare off a tiresome suitor. But a year or two later, bingo! She's as beautiful as before.

4. LOSS OF THE USE OF YOUR LEGS Surprisingly common in novels, this. Both Pollyanna and Katie in What Katie Did suffered from it. But, and here's the good news for a heroine, it's ten pounds to a penny that with a little research, a specialist, experimental doctor can be found who will make you as good as new! Beat that, real life.

(And for the odd character who fails to track down a leg expert, like Madame Neroni in Barchester Towers, there is the comfort of being as beautiful and charming as you ever were, possibly more).

Real life versus fiction? No contest.

Take the comma quiz

Can you handle a comma?

I have a slight problem with that tricky little punctuation mark, the comma; I'm sometimes uncertain whether I need one or not. I'm not going to discuss them, as Lynne Truss has done it much better than I could in Eats, Shoots & Leaves. But it's high time I directed my loyal readers to a quiz, so here is one to test your comma usage:

The Comma Test

It gives you handy advice and comments at the top; they are easy to miss.

(Oh, um, I got 76%. Dear me).

The Green Eye Rule

Most rules are made to be broken...

...though not, of course, rules about apostrophes, or spelling, where if you do not get it right, you are getting it WRONG, and there are no excuses.

No, I'm referring to the rules you will learn at a writing class, which you can see an excellent summary of at my friend Norm's blog. Don't misunderstand me, these are all useful points to bear in mind when writing, but like The Pirates' Code, they are really more what you'd call 'guidelines'.

There is one rule, however, that I've been fretting over lately. It was made up by another friend, Alan Hutcheson, and is called The Green Eye Rule. It goes:

'Thou shalt not give thy characters green eyes to make them seem special, intriguing, sexy, mysterious or otherwise memorable. If all the fictional characters with green eyes were stacked together they would reach halfway to Mars. Placed feet to shoulders the monolith would extend well past Uranus. Either arrangement would interfere with weather satellites and likely raise an objection from fringe human rights groups'.

Now before I knew Alan, I wrote Trav Zander, and the heroine, Isolda, is a bewitching blonde with green eyes. I did some low-level worrying about this, then when I went in for ABNA, I became aware that green-eyed heroines were not just two a penny in unpublished fantasy, they appeared to be mandatory.

So, teeth gritted, I went through the novel and changed Isolda's eyes to a smokey grey. I was not happy about this; I see her with green eyes. And she has a matching emerald necklace - emeralds, said to be unlucky - which played a minor part in the story. Star sapphires just don't work so well.

In the end, I changed her eyes back to green.

But not before I'd sent the typescript out to an agent, with, I realized too late, passages where the match between her grey eyes and her emerald necklace were remarked on.

Rats.

Commit to the move!

From the age of nine, my daughter studied static trapeze and flying trapeze. She also learned cloud swing, where you balance on a loop of rope swinging in a huge arc, using its momentum to do tricks. One move guaranteed to make the audience gasp involves winding the rope round your ankles, then at the high point of the swing letting go with your hands, rotating and catching the rope the other side. You can see it on the video of Fabio Dorea. (Click the middle arrow then bottom left arrow).

I used to watch Minty being trained for this. And it's not something you can learn to do slowly, then build up speed. No, you have to commit to the move. If you don't leap out at the top of the swing, it won't work and you'll be left dangling. I marvelled at her courage.

As writers we don't need those sort of guts, but there are occasions when we too need to commit to the move.

The moment comes when a novel is finished: one has done one's best, had all one's second thoughts, got trusted advice and acted on it, revised and revised again till it's the best one can make it.

Time to send it out to find its fortune. Commit to the move.

Youwriteon update

The ups and downs of an unpublished author, Part Two...

Yesterday I came in to find an email from Guy Saville, author of The Africa Reich, which is so kind I'm going to quote it in full;

Dear Lexi
Just seen the YWO longlist and had to email you straight away to say: CONGRATULATIONS!!! I am so pleased for you. I'll keep my fingers crossed you make it to the shortlist... and then all the way. I think RISING FIRE has a really good chance of winning. I'll watch with bated breath.
Well done again, this should be a real boost to your confidence as a writer.
Warmest wishes
Guy x

Which was a nice way to discover I'd made the Youwriteon longlist for Book of the Year.

Quills, typewriters and Word

I had a brilliant idea while mulling over how to get more depth and layers into Rising Fire. I would draw a map! Several maps of the main cities, maybe one showing the three kingdoms! And not just boring old modern maps, I would make them look like something from the 11th century, with quaint thumbnails of dragons and palaces and swineherds. And I would write in medieval-style script.

I could post it on my website.

So I went on the internet and looked up medieval maps, illustrated manuscripts, and calligraphy.

Luckily I had some goose and swan quill feathers to make a pen. (Since you ask, they are used for laying down ground enamels before firing). I trimmed one with a scalpel, tracked down a bottle of ink that had been minding its own business quietly in a drawer for fifteen years, and got started. Several hours later I stopped.

Now I'm not saying I couldn't make a beautiful map if I tried. I'm pretty sure I could. I just can't spare the weeks it would take to get it right; learning along the way calligraphy and the application of gold leaf. I'll do it if I ever get rich enough to take time off.

But it got me thinking about the production of books. Scribes, writing with a coal fire below their desks to dry the ink as they worked; using feathers from the left wing of the bird, as they curved conveniently for a right-hander; devastated by any mistake, which could not be corrected, but only marked in red to indicate an error.

Then the invention of the printing press; but an author still had to write the manuscript by hand. The typewriter was a huge advance, but the enormous labour of producing a neatly-typed, revised novel meant that anyone who accomplished this was serious about it, and likely to be read by a publisher, and receive a two page letter explaining a rejection.

You know what I'm going to say next. These days, with the advent of personal computers and Word, it is child's play for anyone to produce something that resembles a book.

And an awful lot of people do.

I have great sympathy for the literary agents struggling with stacks of bad novels endlessly doing the rounds ('you've got to be persistent, look at JK Rowling') and even more sympathy with the unpublished good writers, unable to be heard above the cacophony.

Alas, Oneword is no more

It was great, and now it's gone...

As a jeweller, I do a lot of work which uses only a part of my mind. The spare bit of mind gets bored easily, but it's quite specific in its requirements. It hasn't the capacity, for instance, to work on plots or characters in my writing; that would detract from the wax modelling or polishing. No, what it wants is something absorbing to listen to on the radio.

Radio 4 is not as good as it once was; BBC7 devotes all afternoon to children's broadcasting, with its strangely manic children's presenters (what are they on, one wonders?) Then I discovered Oneword.

Oneword serialized a variety of books, had lively film reviews and best of all, Paul Blezard's author interview programme, Between the Lines. Paul Blezard (see the photo) is a man of great charm and enthusiasm, who had always read the book he was talking about. He appears in my short story, Showing Them. I wasn't able to ask his permission, but am sure he is too nice to mind.

Another good thing about Oneword; there were virtually no distracting adverts.

And that, I suppose, is the reason Channel 4 returned for £1 the 51% stake it acquired in the station for £1 million in 2005.

If I go now to my Oneword preset, the station is broadcasting a recording of the dawn chorus.

I do miss it.

Gender

Thinking about my heroine, Tor, passing as a man...

A man dressed as a woman is comic, which is why we have the tradition of pantomime dames and Dame Edna Everage. Few males over the age of sixteen can wear female clothes without appearing risible. One's heart bleeds for transsexuals, so many of whom are never going to convince anyone they are even a very plain woman. This in spite of going the whole hog with hair, makeup, nails, tights and handbags in a way most women simply don't bother about.

But a girl cross-dressing; different kettle of fish. Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Annie Lennox were all wildly attractive in drag. Plus there's the fact that right up till recent times in the West, men had the power. Dressing like a man borrowed some of that power.

And in fiction... First there are the tomboys, every girl's favourite character in the book (what girl in her right mind wants to be Meg or Wendy?) Jo in Little Women, chopping off her hair and never able to be 'ladylike'; George in The Famous Five, always pleased to be mistaken for a boy, and rowing her dinghy better than Julian or Dick. Or Viola in Twelfth Night, falling in love while inconveniently disguised as a man, and finding Olivia is attracted to her. Shakespeare made full use of the gender ambiguities in the situation, which brings me on to...

Blackadder. The episode where Edmund Blackadder falls for 'Bob', a girl lightly disguised in doublet and hose, working as his servant. He is somewhat disconcerted by this, so goes to see the doctor:

Doctor: Now then, what seems to be the trouble?

Edmund: Well, it's my manservant.

Doctor: I see. Well don't be embarrassed if you've got the pox. Just pop your manservant on the table and we'll take a look at him.

Edmund: No, I mean, it is my real manservant.

Doctor: Ah, ah. And what is wrong with him?

Edmund: There is nothing wrong with him. That is the problem. He's perfect, and last night I almost kissed him.

Doctor: I see. So you've started fancying boys then, have you?

Edmund: Not boys. A boy.

Doctor: Yes, well let's not split hairs. It is all rather disgusting and naturally you're worried.

Edmund: Of course I'm worried.

Doctor: Well, of course you are. It isn't every day a man wakes up to discover he's a screaming bender with no more right to live on God's clean earth than a weasel. Ashamed of yourself?

Edmund: Not really, no.

Doctor: Bloody hell! I would be. But still, why should I complain? Just leaves more rampant totty for us real men, eh?

Edmund: Look, am I paying for this personal abuse or is it extra?

* * *

Blackadder scripts written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton.

ABNA update

The ups and downs of an upublished author...

This morning I came in to find an email from April Hamilton, a fellow entrant on ABNA, which is so kind I'm going to quote it in full;

'I'm disappointed to find Trav Zander didn't make the semis. I read some of it and thought it was eminently worthy of advancement. As you yourself said in your Amazon blog, sometimes it just comes down to a poor pairing between the manuscript and the reviewer. In any event, this is just one small pothole in a long road, and you're already a seasoned traveller, already making your way in other venues and competitions. Don't let it get you down, and remember, in the end all but one of us ABNA'ers are destined to lose this contest. Take a day off to feel bad if you must, but then, it's right back to the keyboard with you!- April'

Which was a nice way to discover I didn't make the semi-finals.

By the way, I've just read April's entry and it's excellent and made me laugh - do read it here and write her a review.

Rising Fire's professional critique on Youwriteon

I'm pleased as Punch and Judy...

Today Rising Fire got its free literary critique on Youwriteon, that I won for being in the top five at the end of November. It was written by Gillian Stern, who works as an editor at Bloomsbury and Curtis Brown. I'm quoting two extracts, the first praise, the second some of her suggestions.

'In my job personal taste is irrelevant, but I can tell you that fantasy is not my favourite genre. However, happily for me, the extract of your novel is totally accessible and appealing and I found myself hooked and really enjoying the experience of reading it. I like the way in which you write and I like the voices and the characterisation and nothing about the writing or the story is complicated or inaccessible or difficult to take in. In fact once I got into the narrative, I was absolutely swept along – something I really did not expect.'

'My main criticism is that while all these good things are good, I felt that your writing is a little simplistic – not the style, but the layering within the writing. By this I mean that as a reader, I constantly wanted to know more – more about the time and place, more about the cultural, social and political context of the time and more, much more of Tor’s internal dialogue. The fantasy market is crowded and readers are used to complex plots, ideas and imaginings and in order to be satisfied, they need something satisfying and new. And I feel that, apart from your accessible style and the relationship you set up between Tor and Xantilor and of course your plot turns, there is not all that much that is earth shatteringly new here, little that would make an editor sit up and see this above all the other proposed novels on their desk.'

Gillain Stern's advice will be extremely helpful in my next revision. I've just finished one revision, but knew it needed more work, and I could do better. Onwards and upwards.

(If you'd like to read the whole review, it's on my website).

THE AFRICA REICH

Guy Saville's soon-to-be-published thriller

My fellow Youwriteon-er, Guy Saville, had his exciting novel, The Africa Reich, chosen as Youwriteon Book of the Year in 2007, a huge achievement. I've only read the first few chapters, and can't wait till it is published this year so I can read the rest.

You can read about it at his website The Africa Reich.

Diaries – write now, enjoy in the years to come...

I urge you all to write a diary. A proper one, with pen and ink, not a blog. It is unwise to be frank and indiscreet in a blog, but essential in a diary. Years on, it will remind you of entertaining details you have long forgotten. And it’s excellent practice in observation and use of English.

Here are two extracts which may encourage you. Not from my own diary, because of the frank and indiscreet thing. They were both written by my daughter when she was seven. She loved her school. It was a friendly place where more socializing, arts and crafts went on than science, history or geography. Mogg was the headmistress.

'18.9.96

Today in the afternoon it was a desrster in the lavchry.

All because of Luc and Luke. Luc started it because he said “hay it would be funny if oun of us throed a looroll over the prtishon and then Luke said what like this and throed a looroll over prtishon. Then Amelia came upstairs with a lode of driping paint brushes. So now the lavchry is patey AND loorolley.

Do you thing that is afall? Mog did eney way.

Thursday 24/10

I whent to a Halween party. It achly terned out a dsrster. Evrey one amyrerd my coshoom (except horied Veictoryer). Luke was in a bad mood and the fier warks were to loud. After all that was over it straed raing (the ending to evrey outdoor party in my pont of veiw). My mumy made a costuem for Spot.'

[Spot was, and is, Minty’s much-loved soft toy dog. See photo.]

I don't believe a word of it! (And you can't make me).

Five unbelievable characters in fiction

1. The eponymous hero in Little Lord Fauntleroy, which is one of those books people feel they have read when they haven’t. It’s actually rather a good read, but the Little Lord himself is like no real boy has ever been; so cherishing of his mother, and slow to pick up on what everyone thinks of his bullying old grandpa.

It's his cissy clothes, which started a trend in America at the time (see photo) that everyone thinks of in connexion with him. I found a frankly worrying picture of LLF, with excessive ringlets, velvet and lace, astride another boy, that I have spared you.

2. Lyra, in The Praise Singer by Mary Renault. Lyra is a totally bogus depiction of a high class whore. This is not my area of expertise, but whatever hetairai were like, I am convinced they weren’t like this. And I’m one of Mary Renault’s biggest fans.

3. Esther Summerson in Bleak House. Beguilingly written, indeed one of my favourite characters in the book, but again, fake. Prepared to marry one man out of duty and gratitude, when she is in love with another... So good, loving, and modest. A fictional construct.

4. Harry Potter. Unloved since he was a baby, brought up by the ghastly Dursleys, yet he turns out well-adjusted and nice. Improbable.

5. Leonard Bast in Howard’s End. Carrying a weight of symbolism on his frail shoulders, he is E.M.Forster's lone unsuccessful forray into the lower classes. Better in the Merchant Ivory film, as fleshed out by the actor Samuel West.

Who would you nominate?

Amazing goings-on at Amazon

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards extract sightings

Yesterday I was emailed by an ABNA cyber friend, Dwight Okita, to tell me that some of The Chosen One Thousand had been loaded on to the site, nineteen days before they would be officially available. To see them, you just had to go to Books and type ABNA into the search box.

Huge excitement - Trav Zander was not there, alas, but so far only about a hundred were. And you could download them for free and read them!

Or you could, if you lived in America.

Anywhere else, and you couldn't.

Then Josie added the White House as her billing address, and was able to download! I followed her example, using Amazon's Head Office address in Seattle as my cyber piede-a-terre. You can see it in the picture. (I'm right at the top, the middle window. Stunning view). Result!

But will anyone in England be prepared to do this to vote for me? Something tells me the shortlist will be exclusively American...

UPDATE 28/12/07 Amazon noticed that we'd noticed the list, and removed it and the extracts we'd downloaded. They haven't removed my virtual address in America as yet...

Christmas in novels

A seasonal selection...

A Christmas Carol – written to pay off a debt, it sold 6,000 copies in the first week, and was hugely influential. Dickens is to blame for it all, the whole lot, turkey, relatives, spending more than you can afford on presents, it’s all his fault. Bah! Humbug! N.B. The Ghost of Christmas Present, who much resembles Father Christmas, wears green, and favours a bare chest. Chilly.

Emma - the terrific scene where she is confined in a coach on a snowy Christmas Eve with Mr Elton. Mistakenly thinking her in love with him, he proposes; then gets huffy when refused, and never forgives her. He and the vulgar new wife he petulantly acquires are Emma's enemies thenceforth.

Little Women – those pesky small females again – ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents’. 'It's so dreadful to be poor,' (how true). But they discovered they could still be happy! And Jo made money from her stories… Those were the days.

Harry Potter - Harry getting dreadful Dursley presents – a single tissue – and a jumper from Ron’s mum, and having a great time with Ron and Hermione.

The Bachelor – Stella Gibbons wrote half a dozen novels as good as Cold Comfort Farm, the only one in print today. There's a lovely description of a wartime Christmas, capturing all the undercurrents of the characters' hopes and desires. 'Kenneth began to give out the presents and cries of "Just what I wanted!" began to sound in all their falseness upon the festal air.'

Courtesy of Lorraine: a Christmas song.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Calling Names

Names are REALLY important...

I bet everyone with a computer has, at some time, idly googled his own name. It's only when you hope to become well known that you realize being called Mary Jones or John Smith is not good. Not good at all. Though you can get away with it if you excel in your field - John Smith, briefly leader of the Labour Party, at the time transcended his bog-standard name.

I chose my writing name with this in mind. Google Lexi Revellian and it's all ME. Mwah-ha-ha-ha! (Though they do ask if you mean 'rebellion').

There is a magic in names. Yahweh was God's name in the Old Testament, so powerful that his worshippers were forbidden to say it. In an unacknowledged rite of passage, teenagers today often change their name when leaving home. Tessa becomes Tess, Elizabeth Liza, Mark Marc.

Back to writing; a critic once said that you could often guess the quality of a novel by the aptness and credibility of the characters' names. Bad names most likely meant a bad novel. This is especially true in fantasy, where writers have total freedom, and frequently abuse it. A hero called L'tru? Rramis? Gwaal?

Or children's fiction. Bobby Redbreast the Robin, Squawky the Crow, Mr and Mrs Blue-tit, Beady Ey