Arabesque Shortlisted for Award

Arabesque has made the shortlist of the Stockport Schools Book Award in the KS4 section. It is up against Cracks by Caroline Green and Someone Else's Life by Katie Dale.

There is a Q&A interview page on the Stockport site. Click here to take a look.

Review: Brock, by Anthony McGowan

I love Barrington Stoke. I love the feel of the paper, the dyslexia-friendly yellow tint, the left justification, gaps between paragraphs... but best of all, I love that they give reluctant readers, or kids who have trouble reading, bloody good stories. Stories you can really get your teeth into. Stories that the author could so easily hold back, expand and release as a "proper" novel.

But sometimes a novella really packs a punch.  

Brock, by Anthony McGowan is like that. From the author of Henry Tumour and The Knife That Killed Me, Brock tells the story of Nicky, who has a tough enough life with a mother gone, a dad on bail and an older brother who has such special needs, he's little more than a child. Things take a turn when they are dragged along to witness the horrific, senseless killing of a wild animal. But when Nicky saves something from the destruction the other kids have caused, his and his brother's lives are changed forever.

Brock is about as lean as you can get, using simple, effective language to keep a great pace while maintaining atmosphere, tension, action, empathy... look, it's just brilliant, right. It's one of those books that might help kids who hate books, realise that some books are all right. And that's good enough for five stars from me.

A novel in 7 days?

Sounds impossible, right? Well, Dean Wesley Smith is planning to do just that next week.

Dean is a best selling author, has written over 100 novels and over 200 published short stories. He gets a lot of ghost-writing jobs because he can make such tight deadlines. Editors also turn to him when they have novels that the paid author failed to deliver on, and need it finishing quickly.

This time, he isn't writing to an editor's deadline, but his own, just to prove it's possible. The novel he's planning to write is a ghost writing project for a major name, destined to become a bestseller when it comes out, because as Dean says, "This author's books always are."

And just to add to his workload, he's going to be blogging about every step of the journey.

So, if you want a masterclass on how a novel can be written at high speed, or how an author can work to incredible deadlines under insane pressure, check it out.

deanwesleysmith.com

Moon Bear: Review

A few weeks ago, I had never heard of moon bears, or bear farming. My first thoughts was, who would farm bears anyway? And why? The answer is utterly abhorrent, and is the base for this powerful, horrible, brilliant novel by Gill Lewis.

Moon Bear is the story of a Tam, a boy whose family is moved, without choice, from their mountain village so the area can be cleared of forest. They are given a new home, but after his father is blown to bits by a hidden landmine, Tam is given a job in the city in the hope of making money for his family.

Tam has never seen a bear farm, and he's shocked by the way the bears are kept, living their entire lives in cages so small they can barely turn around. The cages are up on legs so that waste and urine falls directly to the floor. Tam's job is to clean up beneath the cages, avoiding the swipes of any bears strong enough to attack. Moon bears are a large black bear with a moon-like crescent of white on their chest, hence the name.

A small bear farm, where the bears spend their entire lives.

The reason they are kept like this is Bear Bile. In many parts of Asia, bile from the gall bladder of a bear is considered a powerful medicine, believed to cure anything from a cold to cancer.

Tam witnesses the procedure of the bile being removed, and how the bears are sedated, but not so much that they can't feel the pain of a needle as The Doctor tries to locate the gall bladder and syphon off the bile.

Bear bile - believed to be the cure for... everything!

Things become much more difficult for Tam when a bear cub is delivered to the farm. Tam nurses the cub back to health, and promises, against the odds, that he will find a way to get free and return himself and the bear back to the mountains.

Moon Bear doesn't hold back, without being gratuitous. The language is simple, yet colourful - a deceptively lean style that pulls the reader along. More importantly, it doesn't play to the audience for sympathy, but earns the reader's emotions through honesty, cruelty and hope.

Highly recommended.

Review: Irresistible by Liz Bankes

This is is right out of my comfort zone, being teen chick-lit, and normally I'd never even pick it up, but that's the advantage of meeting the author.

I first met Liz Bankes at an event for Arabesque at Foyles Bookshop, London. Liz was there as a blogger. What I didn't realise was that Liz was also in the process of nailing a job as an Editorial Assistant to an amazing indie publisher. (Catnip!)

We met up again at the FCBG conference where I discovered she is also an author. So I grabbed a copy of Irresistible, but stupidly forgot to get Liz to sign it (doh!). Actually, I came away with loads of books, so I thought I might do a few reviews. Here's the first...

Irresistible is a 1st person YA romance with a sprinkling of black humour. Mia gets a job at a right posh restaurant/club/castle type thing. The sort of place that has £1000 bottles of wine in it's cellar, secret passageways in the walls and gardens to get lost in. Posh! Now, bearing in mind that I'm totally unqualified to review chick-lit, let's put this into terms I understand. Love triangle: Mia, Dan and Jamie. Dan works in the kitchen. Simple, safe. Jamie is the son of the owner, spoilt, good looking and an utter twat.

Erm... I really enjoyed it, probably because what Liz does well is create a believable, likeable, fallible baddie. Jamie is arrogant, controlling and destructive. At first, he comes across as all-powerful and completely condescending, but bit by bit, the power struggle shows signs of shifting and that he might possibly develop some level of respect for another human being, to the point where Mia has him eating out of her thighs hands. Actually, that joke isn't far fetched. I found it very interesting to see how far YA chick-lit goes. At the start, we are given a hint that Jamie can give orgasms just by kissing. At some point, the author had to deliver on that one. Ding dong!

Anyway, moving on... there is a lot of humour in this book - well timed and well delivered, but not enough to make it a comic novel. After speaking to Liz in person, I get the feeling that she's got a lot more to offer in this vein, so if laugh-out-loud, embarrassing, gut churning rom-com is your thing, then Liz Bankes is an author to be watched.

FCBG Conference 2013

The Federation of Children's Book Groups is a national organisation made up of volunteer parents, teachers and librarians who love children's books so much, they actively promote and introduce them to children in their local areas. Each year they have a conference. This year, I was lucky enough to be invited along.

Culford School - big, old, and probably haunted.

I was gobsmacked really, considering other writers included Melvin Burgess, Eoin Colfer, Michelle Paver and Marcus Sedgewick. Well, okay - they were on the main stage and my seminar was on the second floor in a haunted classroom, but it was still cool to be in the same place.

A snow storm battered the country this weekend, which made the drive up to the school postcard perfect. I even saw little deer-things. Like dogs on long legs, so I think they were deer, or deerlets, or something.

The driveway leading to Culford School

Still on the driveway to Culford School, passing a church.

The talks were fantastic. Gill Lewis even gave us a home-made animation, Sally Nichols sold the Black Death as an alternative to dystopian fiction and Melvin Burgess debunked the myth that YA novels are all negative, misery and issues.

Rachel Ward, Graham Marks and Melvin Burgess

I loved Emma Chichester Clark's amazing PlumDog blog (here's a link) which made me want to go out and get a dog (I really hope my kids aren't reading this). Liz Pichon was equally brilliant. The result of these two talks got me to buy a few pencils, come home and doodle - and thanks to a breakfast conversation with Pip from Bounce, I know exactly what I'm going to draw!

My own seminar went well. It covered time management, family stories, warts, blood splatters, acoustic guitar and the reason I'll never be a rock star.

To end this post, here's a photo of the toilet I found when I got lost. It was installed in the school back in 1905 to get ready for a Royal Visit and has since been referred to as the King's Toilet.

The King's Toilet - a 100 year old bog!

The Magic of Facebook

When I was 10 or 11 years old, me and my best friend decided it would be a good idea to get well and truly lost. We walked for miles and ended up a wooded area on the far side of the West Park in South Shields (in reality, it wasn't that far, but in the days before mobile phones and having any real idea where we were, it was far enough). This is the only photo I've got of us at that age.

Me and Wardy in our first year at Harton Comp

We were mucking about in those trees, sliding down the mud slopes and climbing on the rocks down the bottom part of the bank when my friend just disappeared. I could hear him laughing, but no matter where I looked, I couldn't find him. Eventually, he lifted up a small curtain of ivy that was hanging over a rock. He'd been hiding in the space behind.

His name is Layton Ward - Wardy to me, back then - and I haven't seen him for over twenty years. The story of what he did that day stuck with me and ended up inspiring a good chunk of Clash. So much so, that I wrote about it in the Author's Note at the end of the book, not really knowing whether he'd ever see it.

I'm dead chuffed to say that now he has. He found me through Facebook, heard about the book and ordered it online. He also posted that photo of us in our first year at Comp - age 11!

Computers are ace!