...the latest Benjamin January novel by Barbara Hambly. This is the twelfth in the series of historical crime novels that began with A Free Man Of Color. I love crime fiction anyway - not for nothing am I a Sister In Crime! And historical crime fiction is good fun. There are so many in which the sleuth is  a real character out of the history books, whether Shakespeare or Jane Austen, even Elizabeth I. I recently read one in which the heroine is Josephine Tey, author of the Inpector Grant series, though the actual crime solver is a weary police detective.

But this series has a fictional hero, Benjamin January, an African-American ex-slave who was educated by his mother's protector when he bought her and her children and freed them. He's a trained surgeon who studied and worked in Paris, but makes his living as a musician, which actually pays better, especially in 1830s New Orleans, where even the coloured community aren't comfortable with a coal-black doctor. However, he has family and friends, including policeman Abishag Shaw, a white man who wouldn't be allowed into Ben's mum's home for being so vulgar, and Irish musician Hannibal Sefton, who is suffering from consumption and plays a Stradivarius, suggesting his family background is a bit wealthier than his current poverty would suggest. (Actually, he's an aristocrat back home, as we discover in another novel). And Ben January is a first-class sleuth, for whose services people are prepared to pay.

This novel takes Ben to Washington, still a Southern city where any free black unlucky enough to be out after dark runs the risk of being kidnapped and sold, and everyone who dies runs the risk of being dug up by "resurrectionists" for sale to surgeons who want anatomy practice. A mathematician friend of his sister's protector's wife has gone missing. One of the characters is Edgar Allan Poe, who still can't make a living out of his writing and is in town looking for a job. I got the sneaking suspicion that Ben is something of an inspiration for Poe's private eye hero(he wrote the first detective fiction, long before Sherlock Holmes.)

I don't know how she does it, but somehow Barbara Hambly manages to keep up the quality even after twelve books. I pounce on these with a cry of delight as they appear and haven't yet been disappointed.

It's strange, really. There don't seem to be too many women in the universe of Harry Potter who are both professionals and married. Okay, Neville's parents were both aurors, but look what happened to them - both tortured into insanity. I think the author mentions somewhere that Ginny became a quidditch player, but it doesn't happen in the books themselves and frankly, I think it wouldn't be a good idea to go on playing that particular game during pregnancy and we know Ginny has been pregnant at least twice.

For now, let's talk about two housewives in this world. One is a witch, the other a very determined Muggle who's been throwing herself into Muggledom since she was turned down for Hogwarts.

I'm talking, of course, abut Molly Weasley and Petunia Dursley. Both are career housewives who make sure their homes are just right for their particular families, as they see it. Both love their husbands and children. Both are very good cooks.

But the differences are obvious from very early on and not just in the way they treat Harry.

You really wouldn't want to live in Petunia's house. It's sparkling clean, but only because she makes sure no one tracks mud on to her nice floor or lets anything go into the wrong place - a place for everything and everything in its place! It is the sort of home that would be showcased in Home Beautiful, but not because of its liveability. Dudley's second bedroom is a mess, full of his broken toys and unread books, but nobody sees this, so it doesn't spoil the look of her house. It's a house, not a home.
.

I think Dumbledore is right to say Dudley has been abused. Petunia adores him, but she lets him eat himself into obesity as well as become a bully. In the first novel, when he makes a fuss over the number of gifts he has, it's Petunia who offers to buy him two more, supporting his spoiled brat nature.

If Petunia ever did anything other than run a home, we aren't told. She relies on Vernon to make the decisions and protect the family and it's his career she supports.

Molly Weasley's home couldn't be more different. It's shabby, relaxed and comfortable. Part of this is because they don't have much money, but when the Weasleys won the Daily Prophet prize, the money was spent on a family trip, not on renovations. Family doing something special together had priority over making the house look nice.

Molly loves her family, but doesn't spoil the children. She is small, plump and kind, but heaven help the child - or husband! - who does the wrong thing. Nevertheless, however frustrated she can become with them, it's only because she loves them so much and wants their best. She knows the twins are smart and could have done better in school, but eventually accepts their dream of running a joke shop. She is proud of them all, whatever they end up choosing to do with their lives.

Her kitchen is the heart of the home; the family live there and there is where she cooks her wonderful meals, food being how she shows love. There's a rubber pot which seems able to stretch to feed however many guests they have, whether it's Harry and Hermione or all the members of the Order of the Phoenix, whom she feeds regularly in 12 Grimmauld Place.

She was a founding member herself and is still sharp with a wand, after many years of running a home.

But ultimately, Molly is a mother. Her Boggart nightmare is the death of a child.  She kills evil Deatheater Bellatrix Lestrange in defence of her children, not as a warrior, though she is.

"Not my daughter, you bitch!" says it all.

Well, I finished the delightful new Neil Gaiman book, which will get its review very soon, and by the way, the father who has all those adventures going out for a carton of milk is definitely drawn as the author! More anon.

My birthday brought me one book from my nephew David. It's a biography of Steve Jobs, written on request by the subject, while he was already dying. He didn't require to be shown the manuscript before publication or to have control over it. He just wanted it written.

I admit it wasn't a book I would have bought for myself, although I quite like biographies, depending on the subject - usually a historical bio of someone dead for a few hundred years, though I have read quite a few of Tolkien and C.S Lewis. But I began reading it yesterday and got through 100 pages. It's a fascinating story. Did you know he was born the same year as Bill Gates? Well, I didn't, and it's a nice way to be able to compare. I hadn't realised he was adopted either, or that he refused ever to meet his biological father, considering his adoptive parents as his real and only ones. Which is nice to know, because he gave them a lot of troubles in his childhood and teens. He wasn't a nice man, but a nice man couldn't have achieved what he did. The nice man he worked with wouldn't have gotten those wonderful computers past the hobbyists. I have left it at my mother's place,to be read in bed while I'm there, as it's a thick, heavy hardcover I can't carry in the train.

And early yesterday morning, when I couldn't sleep, I discovered, to my delight, that Poul Anderson and Gordy Dickson's Hoka stories were available on ebook. If you haven't read them, go get them NOW! The Hokas are a loveable race of ursinoids(think giant teddy bears). They simply adore Earth history and literature and enjoy playing with them. In fact, they live them. A Hoka delegation on Earth are charmed by Don Giovanni and take on all the roles, nearly causing disaster. Another bunch of Hokas become the Space Patrol of a popular children's series. On the planet itself, there are Hoka versions of everything from the French Foreign Legion to Victorian England, including a Hoka Sherlock Holmes. It's all seen from the viewpoint of Alex Jones, a young man given the job of Plenipotentiary, who keeps getting caught up in various Hoka adventures. The one I downloaded first was Earthman's Burden, but I mean to buy the others, Star Prince Charlie and Hoka! 

Star Prince Charlie has a Hoka in it, but isn't set on the Hoka homeworld. A young man, Charlie, and his Hoka tutor, who is playing the role of an Oxford don,  visit a world with a situation similar to Scotland in the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie and this inspires the Hoka to become a Scottish clansman, with his charge as Bonnie Prince Charlie. Delightful!

Time to arise, eat, clean and prepare classes. Sigh!

As I write this I'm on the way home. See, I was idiotic enough to drag myself in to work this morning, before I was ready. But I had emailed someone on the weekend to say I probably wouldn't be in and they had already covered me, so I handed over today's work for the class and my friend the welfare teacher took me to the station. And when I get home, I will be warming up the living room and maybe putting on the radio, though more likely a CD if this morning's talk is about the disaster that happened in Australia on the weekend(I will allow myself to be in denial for a little longer) and I will curl up on the sofa under a blanket with some comfort reading.

My comfort reading varies. Sometimes it's Kerry Greenwood's mysteries which I almost know by heart by now. Sometimes it's Tolkien, because his "beautiful writing" really is beautiful, with its emphasis on characters you care about and journeys that matter and sometimes just the plain joy of a good meal and a pint at the pub or a luxurious bath after a long and dangerous trek.

Right now, it's Terry Pratchett, physical book chosen at random - Carpe Jugulum, the vampire sendup that was having a go at the Ann Rice style of vampire, but which ought to be compulsory reading for anyone who thinks Edward Cullen is a hunk.

Also, I have all four Tiffany Aching books on my iPad and I have just started to reread them from the beginning, with Wee Free Men. There's something wonderful about following Tiffany from the nine year old girl who loves words like sussurus to the young woman who has found her place as witch of the chalk country and, incidentally, got an intelligent boyfriend by the end of the final book.

And having read Nicola Upson's crime novel with Josephine Tey as heroine, I'm back, rereading Daughter Of Time for the umpteenth time.

You can't read new stuff when you're sick and get the best out of it. Well, I can't.

So, off to bed and on with the comfort reading.

Anyone out there got their own favourites in comfort reading?

If, like me, you used to read media-themed fiction(books as opposed to fan fiction) you may be familiar with the name of Ann Crispin, who has written some fine books in the Star Trek and Star Wars universes.

Over the last few years, she has done writers' workshops and more and, with some friends, has set up a wonderful blog called Writer Beware, in which they have exposed some shonky publishers and publishing deals and goodness knows, with so many books being self-published these days, there is a need for this sort of information, though it's not only the self-pub companies or even the small presses that rip off writers. I have been following it out of general interest.

Now, Ann has written this post to announce that her life is coming to an end, with no certainty of how much longer she has. If you have read her work or even have an interest in this subject matter, do wander over and take a look. I've left a comment and so can you, if you like.

We're losing too many wonderful creative people. Fred Pohl, a writer from the Golden Age of spec fic, has just passed away. Mind you, he lived to be 94 and was getting Hugo nominations for his fan writing in recent years! So he was at least using his time well, even if it was just fan writing.

See you beyond the stars, Fred!

This is the first year in a very long time I've not gone at all. I don't even know what was on this year, though I'm on their mailing list. I haven't been well, I have had other commitments, or I would have made an effort to attend something.

But I had been attending fewer events anyway in the last few years. I used to take a chance when you could get ten events cheaper, and my membership card for the Australian Society of Authors made it even cheaper. Both options disappeared, though you could still get a bit of a discount as a member of the Victorian Writers Centre(I joined for a couple of years). So I booked events that I was pretty sure I would enjoy. I am a genre fan - history, crime both fiction and true, spec fic. And children's and YA. I'm not into literary fiction or philosophy or the kind of authors everyone has heard of but very few have actually read, the ones who can't actually tell you what their novel is about, just that it's "beautiful writing". Not for me, sorry! For me, beautiful writing has to include a story, and characters I care about, the kind of book I can read for comfort late at night when I can't sleep.

But over the years, they stopped doing the kind of things I might enjoy in the evening. And while there was the occasional children's or YA writer on the weekend, there were not enough to satisfy me, and nearly anything I really wanted to hear was on during the day, during the week, when I was at work. Don't get me wrong - Kim Stanley Robinson spoke a couple of years ago, when Aussiecon was in Melbourne, and as I had whooping cough during the con, I was very glad I had been able to hear him speak at the MWF. Another time I heard Michael Robotham and other crime writers on a weekend panel. (I happened to be sitting next to his wife, who told me she missed his time as a ghostwriter, when she could hear about the celebrities whose "autobiographies" he used to write).

There just wasn't enough of it, and I really loved to go in the evening after work.

Ah, I remember the Harry Potter readings and trivia quizzes and the interview with Graeme Base! I remember going to hear Ben Bova and Robert Jordan slugging it out on stage, and stopping Kerry Greenwood to get my book signed.

Last year I went to one event, I think, and it was free, a book launch by Twelfth Planet Press.

I actually got a phone call from someone in the box office this year, who thought I'd been complaining about the prices on Twitter(I hadn't, though as she was there I did complain about the programming). She assured me you could still get discounts for five events(I think it was about fifty cents an event, or maybe fifty cents altogether.)

And one last complaint, though it's not connected with why I've been missing the Festival: you guys have invited a teenage blogger this year,for heavens' sake, but NEVER me with my ten books, including two Notables. Sigh!

This evening I finished reading Josephine Tey's first novel, The Man In The Queue, published in 1929. It's the first Inspector Grant novel. I had been rereading, yet again, The Daughter Of Time, which put me in the mood for Richard III fiction(and I'm still rereading We Speak No Treason). That, in its turn, made me think of Josephine Tey's other books. I wanted to see what Inspector Grant did when he was not confined to a hospital bed researching Richard III. I discovered the title of his first appearance and bought it in iBooks. And while looking up the titles of Tey's other novels, I found one by Nicola Upson, a murder mystery in which Josephine Tey is the sleuth! It was only $2.99, so what-the-heck. I have just started that one. I also, on an impulse, bought and downloaded Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief, which I have just finished. It was basically a road story with Greek mythology slotted in, quite entertaining, though the author surely must know that Athena is a maiden goddess, unlikely to have children, but chose to ignore it for the purposes of the story. I can see, though, why the series is popular among our kids - not hard reading and the characters meet a fresh challenge in each chapter.

Speaking of road stories, I've finally begun to get stuck into Libba Bray's novel, Going Bovine, which I bought at the Reading Matters conference. It's the story of a boy who has been diagnosed with mad cow disease and is taking a road trip, with a Little Person friend from school, to find a cure which he has been promised by a punk angel. They have several bizarre encounters and I get the feeling it's meant to be a version of Don Quixote... Not sure if it's really YA fiction, though the hero is a teenager. It just has too many references which will go over the heads of many teens. I'll make up my mind when I've finished it; I'm halfway through, having read quite a bit when I woke up at 4.30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep.

There are some review copies awaiting their turn, so I'd better get going on those!

Any interesting reading going on out there, readers?

I get these cravings. With stacks of unread books, I feel like rereading. I've recently reread Josephine Tey's Daughter Of Time, which put me in the mood for Richard III fiction. At one stage, I was reading a whole pile of Richard novels. Of course, I stopped after a while, because when it's history, you know how it's going to end and the ending of that story is just too sad. I wish I could get hold of the fabulous The Dragon Waiting (John M Ford) on ebook, because in his universe it ends differently, but all I can find in iBooks are some of his Star Trek novels, and I prefer iBooks, as I can simply buy an iTunes card without giving my personal card details online.

So, after a reread of the Tey novel, I couldn't resist buying the ebook versions of Rosemary Hawley Jarman's classics, The King's Grey Mare and We Speak No Treason. Personally, I think her first novel, We Speak No Treason, is her masterpiece, but I quite like her other Richard novel. I remember my first discovery of Treason, with its simple red and purple covers(it was in two volumes and oddly, the ebook is also two-volume). I was blown away by it. The feel of fifteenth century England was all there - the music, the banners, the clothes, the food, Maydays,  the smell of the streets... I've just read the section devoted to a character called only the Maiden, Richard's first girl, the mother of his daughter Katherine - the daughter was real, we just don't know who her mother was, and the author creates a possible one. On a reread, I was thinking, "Aargh! You idiot! Don't spill your guts to the smiling lady in waiting!"

The King's Grey Mare starts as a sort of historical romance and goes on into history. Elizabeth Woodville can't live happily ever after with her John Grey, and after she does what it takes to become Queen of England, knowing what she knows about something really stupid Edward did to get into another woman's pants, Elizabeth can no longer be the heroine of a romance and the book has to be seen from other people's viewpoint. Which may be a flaw, and why it isn't quite as good as the first novel. But it's very readable anyway and I bought that ebook first.

While rereading that one, I went to Project Gutenberg for Sabine Baring-Gould's Curious Myths Of The Middle Ages. I do have that somewhere on my overloaded shelves, but couldn't find it and I wanted to read his version of the story of Melusine, rumoured ancestor of Elizabeth's family. I know it's in there, but can't find it in the ebook! Rats! PG is wonderful, but doesn't always have complete texts.

Still, I also downloaded some of his other books, including what seems to be a collection of short stories about ghosts. There's one amusing one about a ghostly waiter who turns up to collect tips.

I now have Tara Moss's Blood Countess, which I hadn't read, but thought I might enjoy, as I did the sequel. It's sort of Buffy meets The Addams Family. I also have a keynote speech from a Harry Potter conference, The Great Gatsby, Prickle Moon, Longbourn(Pride And Prejudice seen from the viewpoint of the servants) and Shakespeare's Cymbeline.

Review copies to finish and review - stand by.

Meanwhile, I have a lot of reading to do.

And here they are. I only buy the Older and Younger Readers books for my library, and I confess I haven't read them all. Of the Older Readers winners this year, I have read two. The first is Sea Hearts, a beautiful book which has already won a swag of awards, including both Best Fantasy and Best YA in the Aurealis Awards for speculative fiction. Whether it's YA I don't know. I don't think it is, really, though good on Margo Lanagan for getting a fantasy novel winning in the CBCAs! I have had a copy in my library for some time. It has been borrowed once, and I don't think Paige, a very good, intelligent reader, liked it much. And I do promote it. The author herself grumbles a little about still being called a YA writer after all these years. Personally, I don't know why any writer would want to write for adults when they're good enough to write for kids, but there you are.

The second is The Ink Bridge, which is terribly sad, with a horrible scene in which one of the two young heroes gets his tongue torn out by the Taliban. One of my Year 8 students is reading it now, because she's bingeing on refugee fiction and she's already read the Morris Gleitzmans and the Deborah Ellis and such and the literacy co-ordinator thinks she's ready for something more advanced. Not sure what I'll find for her after this. I'll be interested to hear her opinion on it.

I have not finished Friday Brown, but have it in my bag as I travel to work.

There's something terribly depressing about most of the books in this year's shortlist, actually. And I don't like depressing. There's enough tragedy in the real world as it is without adding it to fiction. Granted, kids sometimes like depressing books - I can remember being asked for one by a student once: "Can you suggest a depressing book, Miss?" I looked at him and when I saw he meant it, I found him a copy of Margaret Clarke's Care Factor Zero. A suicide on the last page, you can't get much more depressing than that!

My students were disappointed that Morris Gleitzman's After didn't make even an Honour Book in the Younger Readers winners. Many of them come from primary school having read Once, Then and sometimes Now and grab this one eagerly to finish off the series; Gleitzman's books are sad, but not depressing. I have read and quite enjoyed Pennies For Hitler, but not, yet, The Children Of The King. One of our students borrowed it, so it's out. I have heard a bit about it, but not got around to reading it. I am sorry to say I'm not a fan of Sonya Hartnett, who is too depressing for my taste. The only book of hers I enjoyed was The Silver Donkey, and that was spoiled for me during a radio interview, when she said that the pilot who told those lovely stories to the children was probably shot for desertion when he got back to England. And she said this is what she tells children on her school visits! In other words, it has to be depressing, even if you don't have that bit in the book itself. And in case you read this, Sonya, and put in a comment, as writers with Google Alert do, there's nothing personal here. I just don't enjoy depressing books and I'm really not into literary fiction. You can't please everybody, eh? ;-)

I know that she has won about a million awards and good luck to her, wish I had even one! I just don't see why some folk can't understand that you can make a serious point using humour, for example Terry Pratchett. Surely we have some local equivalents?

I have known some of the CBCA judges and have nothing but respect for the job they do. I doubt if I could read hundreds of books in the time they get, write reports for them all and make a shortlist. And I can't deny their good taste in giving two of my books Notables. ;-) (Of course, I would have preferred a shortlisting...)But I don't often understand what they have in mind when they choose. Sometimes they get it beautifully right, others...I disagree with them. And the beautiful In The Beech Forest didn't make it for the Crichtons or even get a Notable. Why? There is a report, but you have to buy it and that's something I haven't had time to do; if it was available in a bookshop I would, but I was never even able to get it at the Children's Book Week Fair when it was going.

I haven't had time even to do my annual Book Week trivia quiz, as I have to finish applications for a student scholarship that has to be in this week, so I will have a small Book Club party at lunchtime today.

What do you think of this year's list?

Author Title Publisher
WINNER Lanagan, Margo Sea Hearts Allen & Unwin
HONOUR Grant, Neil The Ink Bridge Allen & Unwin
HONOUR Wakefield, Vikki Friday Brown Text Publishing
Top
Younger Readers Book of the Year 2013

NOTE: These books are intended for independent younger readers
Author Title Publisher
WINNER Hartnett, Sonya The Children of the King Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
HONOUR French, Jackie Pennies for Hitler Angus & Robertson Harper Collins Publishers
HONOUR Millard, Glenda
Ill. Stephen Michael King The Tender Moments of Saffron Silk ABC Books, HarperCollins
Top
Early Childhood Book of the Year 2013

NOTE: Intended for children in the pre-reading to early reading stages
Author Title Publisher
WINNER Allen, Emma
Ill. Freya Blackwood The Terrible Suitcase Omnibus Books, Scholastic Press, Scholastic Australia
HONOUR Cox, Tania
Ill. Karen Blair With Nan Windy Hollow Books
HONOUR Dubosarsky, Ursula
Ill. Andrew Joyner Too Many Elephants in This House Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Top
Picture Book of the Year 2013

NOTE: Intended for an audience ranging from birth to 18 years. Some books may be for mature readers
Author Title Publisher
WINNER Brooks, Ron
Julie Hunt The Coat Allen & Unwin
HONOUR Gordon, Gus Herman and Rosie Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
HONOUR Lester, Alison Sophie Scott Goes South Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia)
Top
Eve Pownall Book of the Year 2013

NOTE: Intended for an audience ranging from birth to 18 years. Some books may be for mature readers
Author Title Publisher
WINNER Weidenbach, Kristin
Ill. Ide, Timothy Tom the Outback Mailman Lothian Children’s Books, Hachette Australia
HONOUR Kerin, Jackie
Ill. Gouldthorpe, Peter Lyrebird! A True Story Museum Victoria
HONOUR Murray, Kirsty Topsy-turvy World: How Australian Animals Puzzled Early Explorers National Library of Australia

I went out to the station with one of my colleagues, Janis, to pick up our guest with his box of books for sale. He had decided to come early, to make sure of not being late, I suppose.

When we returned to school, we had a bit of time to talk and wander around, but then I had a literacy class, to which I took him, leaving the staff member supervising the students whose teachers were away to organise the library setup, since the library was full of reading students. We were having Years 8 and 9, as Year 10 was doing two excursions this week and couldn't afford to take more time out of class, and I didn't want to make the poor guy speak to almost the whole school. The students would have to sit on the floor, as we don't have enough seats for everyone, so it was only going to take a few minutes to set up.

In Literacy, Will chatted with my tiny class and helped one of the girls with her word list. Of course, the girls were charmed with him.

This charm continued on into recess. I'd been about to take him for a cuppa before his speaking session, but the door opened and Book Club and their boyfriends walked in. Emily had read and loved The First Third, a semi-autobiographical novel which featured Will's grandmother as a character. Imagine her thrill when his phone rang and it was Will's Yiayia! He turned it on speakerphone and she said hullo to them.

Recess ended, the speech began and he managed to charm a whole two year levels with his funny stories about how he sold his first book, what it was about, and his new one, which has several scenes inspired by real-life happenings. The first one, Loathing Lola, was a sharp commentary on reality TV shows and this, he told them, was ironic in light of the fact that he later worked for Big Brother.

I bribed the listeners to ask questions by offering to buy two books for those Will thought best - it can be hard to get questions started, but once one or two people have asked, others follow and it happened this time too. I bribe kids the same way when I do talks.

Then Will went to sign books and some mini-posters I had made up for those who couldn't afford to buy the books; there were some left over afterwards, which I gave him for his next school. We took lots of photos of kids getting stuff signed and asking questions. Emily was delighted with her inscription as "the President of the Yiayia fan club".

The truth is, it was the Will Kostakis fan club. The boys enjoyed, but the girls were the ones who hovered around him like flies to honey. There were definitely a few jealous boyfriends! ;-)

I had ordered lunch from the canteen, as we have a canteen that produces a very good salad roll with fresh tiger bread and the lady had done up a lovely platter of fruit. Will chatted happily with staff, then we saw him off at the station; he was going to see his publishers that afternoon with hopes of a new novel to come.

I will look forward to reading it and so will my students. Thanks again for coming, Will!

Today my school will be honoured by a visit from young writer Will Kostakis, who is in town launching his new book and offered to visit us. Two of my book clubbers, Priyanka and Emily, are reading his novels. I've bought three copies of The First Third, the new one, in preparation for the demand I'll have after his talk, and Literacy may buy some for their program.

Both girls are, so far, enjoying his books. Emily said, "Goodness, there are a lot of Greek words in it!" Of course there are, since the book is, in many ways, about being Greek, as well as about family. I'm not Greek, but I recognised the family relationships, though I admit I don't have a gay brother and have never known my grandmother. But the family closeness is very recognisable.

Priyanka is liking Loathing Lola, the book written when the author was a teenager. I liked it too, and said so at the time it came out(see my post, some time in October 2007). It was funny and serious at once and showed a wisdom you wouldn't have expected from a boy of that age, whom you would expect to be wanting to be on a reality show himself rather than sending them up.

Anyway, let's see how he goes with our students. I've ordered lunch from the canteen and bought a small edible gift for our guest, which will be presented by two students, along with a card. The press will be attending. Well, there will be a photographer from one local paper, anyway, and another said I could supply them with a photo and a press release. The camera is in my bag, as I can't get a good shot with my iPad or my phone, alas, and the school camera keeps dying on you after a few shots, even with a new battery.

I have let the students know he's coming and will be bringing books for sale. Some of them should be able to afford it and for the rest I've made up mini-posters to be signed; if you put them on school books and diaries, that makes great publicity for the author.

Hopefully, a great day!

Even big name writers still get rejection slips sometimes. I have just learned this about a writer I admire. Of course, they will almost certainly sell it elsewhere. And at least one writer friend of mine was working on a series when the last couple of volumes were turned down. Another had her whole series published, but they were not a huge success and she never sold another thing, as far as I know.

I wonder if it makes me feel better or worse about having a full time day job and having to fit my writing in where I can, to know that no matter how far you've come you can still be pushed back.

Deep down, I suspect we all say to ourselves, It won't happen to me! or at least, Let's sell this book first and worry later. We have to, and develop a thick skin, or how would we ever write again?

After selling four short stories last year, I had three rejections in a row. One of them deserved it, as I had written it in a rush to meet a deadline. The other two were for a good story which I will try elsewhere. And I know I will sell it eventually, which keeps me going. My novel was rejected by every major publisher in the country before the sudden sale to a publisher who'd originally had to reject it. My story in Mythic Resonance had been rejected years ago, before finding its perfect home.

Even selling your book, however, doesn't always mean massive sales. Crime Time, which should have sold massively, hasn't earned back its advance because of the difficulty of selling children's non fiction in the shops, unless your name is Terry Deary. Australian Standing Orders didn't want it, as they rarely take non fiction. I haven't heard of any Ford Street books sold by Scholastic Book Club. That would have sold it all right! On the other hand, Your Cat Could Be A Spy sold out, but most were Book Club sales and those don't pay much. So I never got any royalties for it. Ah, well, it's still available on POD so it might sell yet.

And yet, my education books are still selling, though overseas. My archaeology book is still bringing in royalties after about ten years. I recently found a child's review of it online! Who would have thought an education book could get a rave review?  :)

So writing is one of those things like music and acting and other arts that might work out and might not, no matter who you are. You just have to develop the thick skin necessary to a writer, no matter how well known you are.

 There are some writers following this blog. Want to comment on your own experiences with rejection slips? 

This time last year, I asked my class,"Who can tell me whose birthday it is today?" One of my students, the younger brother of my previous student, book clubber Dylan, called out,"My brother's!"  and of course, it was, and I felt sorry I had forgotten. If you read this, Dylan, hope it was wonderful!

But I had someone else in mind, someone whose writing had not only given a lot of children and teens great pleasure, but who had persuaded adults to read children's books and see how good they are. I meant J.K. Rowling, of course, and I posted about it, and alas, hardly anyone read it at the time, so if you want to read a great post on this subject, check out my archives for this date in 2012.

So tonight, as my last post for July, I will use other things that happened in July. There are plenty of them, but I will skip the disasters and the battles and just mention a couple of book-related incidents.

According to Wikipedia, in 1703, poor Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, journalist and spy, got into trouble for writing something satirical and was put into the pillory, where normally people were pelted with disgusting stuff, but he was pelted with flowers! Nice to know he had fans in his lifetime, though while I was researching him for my children's book on spies, Your Cat Could Be A Spy, I read that he spent a lot of time running away from his creditors and when he died, nobody bothered to turn up to the funeral. Still, he was quite a character, and I have no trouble imagining him writing things that the powers that be didn't like!

A sad thing that happened on July 31 in this century was the death of Poul Anderson, spec fic writer extraordinaire. I love his books. I have found, over the years, that whatever I was in the mood for, he'd written a book about it, whether it was SF, high fantasy, humour, space opera, adventure, romance. And he was a top filker, too. And big in the SCA. I discovered him in my twenties and have never lost my love for his work, though some books are better than others, but hey, when you write as many novels and short stories as he did some are bound to be better than others.

So, hurray for July 31!

Anyone else got a bookish July 31 event?

Rosalind Franklin, July 25, 1920-April 16, 1958

Here's another tribute to a woman of science mentioned in my second book, Rosalind Franklin, the radio crystallographer without whose work we might have been talking about the triple helix of DNA.

Some years ago, I was researching my second book, Potions To Pulsars:Women doing science, written for Allen And Unwin's True Stories series. It wasn't easy to find books about women scientists in those days, and the Internet was in its early days, no Google or Wikipedia to help. The books were there if you knew how to look for them, though, and I was a librarian, so I did. I found a wonderful book called Hypatia's Heritage and used it as a base to look up some of the women in there, and their biographies led to others... One of these days, I will do a post about my adventures researching this book.

This is a woman of whose existence I didn't know until I started looking for women in science. It's not surprising. She isn't mentioned much in the general history of science. When we hear about the discovery of DNA it's the men who are mentioned, Watson, Crick and Wilkins. They survived her(she died of cancer at only 37) and got the Nobel Prize for it and she was relegated to a footnote in history. Even recently, an Austalian newspaper had an article about the discovery of DNA that didn't so much as mention her.

The research was happening at the same time - a cousin of hers who wrote her bio said that as an American, Watson would have been used to the US system, in which there was plenty of money for research, so you could compete with other labs, while in England, with far less money, you didn't waste it on doing the same stuff as someone else. In this case, they were getting it wrong and her notes were shared with Watson and Crick by her colleague Maurice Wilkins, enabling them to correct their mistakes and rush into print. She, on the other hand, was too careful, wanting to be sure of getting it right, so she lost out.

I have heard that when they got their Nobel Prize, only Wilkins mentioned her.

But today is her birthday, a reason to celebrate. If she was alive today, she would be 93. Happy birthday, Rosalind Franklin!



                             

Rosalind Franklin. Creative Commons image

But this isn't what is about to happen here! Young Aussie writer Will Kostakis has just had another book published! I was the first to give a positive review(or maybe even the first review?) to his first novel, Loathing Lola, published when he was only nineteen. It was a delightful, funny and clever look at the cult of celebrity and especially celebrity of reality TV shows, in which the teenage heroine suddenly finds she has a lot of friends when she is chosen to be the star of a new reality show. Her idea is to be a role model for younger kids, but the producers have different plans. This was not only a wonderful novel in its own right, but impressive that a boy with no sisters could get into the mind of a young woman so well.

Now Will is back, with The First Third, a novel that I think is even better than the first. This one is closer to home for him, about a Greek boy and his family, and it's funny, sad, warm and charming, all at once, and says things about family. I received a copy at the Reading Matters conference and the author has kindly agreed to an interview, which I will prepare shortly. It's nicely appropriate, too, that the cover comment should be by Melina Marchetta, whose first novel, Looking For Alibrandi was also about multicultural family issues, but also, like Will, was an author whose second novel (Saving Francesca) came out several years after her first.

Dear Hackers,

Please get a life. You have no friends or you wouldn't waste your time and everybody else's trying to get into people's accounts. If you're that good with computers, do something useful and help people in your lives to solve problems. You might actually make some friends then - not the online kind you meet  on Facebook, but real people who might be willing to hang out with you, instead of disrupting other people's lives just because you can't make a go of your own.

Or turn off your computers altogether and get out into the fresh air. Play sport. Go for a walk. Join a club. You never know, you might make some real friends, even fix their computer problems and get their  respect and admiration instead of their anger and hatred.

Again I have had to change my password, this time to block some loser in South America. Get a life, kid, whoever you are. You couldn't possibly have anything against me, you don't even know me, and there's no money in it, as there is for spammers. You just want to show off how smart you are.

You aren't. You're just a total, complete loser. Grow up!

And having wasted a morning fixing things up, I will go and do some real-life stuff. With real friends, the kind you don't have.

A cranky author.

Today, my sister and I will be seeing Arthur Miller's McCarthy era play The Crucible, being performed by the Melbourne Theatre Company. The lead role of John Proctor is being played by the delicious David Wenham, whom most of you probably saw last in LOTR. Luckily, he seems to be keeping up the theatre performance stuff and he's going to make a terrific Proctor.

In case you aren't familiar with the play, it's set during the Salem witch trials, but it's really a comment on the dreadful political witch hunts of Miller's own time, when it wasn't enough to confess to being a Communist, you had to dob in someone else. The wonderful Howard Fast spent time in jail, where he wrote Spartacus, and when the movie was made, the script writer was Dalton Trumbo, one of those who had been blacklisted, though some had gone on writing behind "fronts"(there's a Woody Allen film of that name, in which he's a front for blacklisted writers). This was, I think, the first time he'd written under his own name since the blacklisting began. And it was because Kirk Douglas, the producer, basically said,"Stuff that!" and insisted on using his name.

When I was at high school, we did a production of The Crucible in which I played Elizabeth Proctor. I sort of spoiled it for myself by going to the library to research the actual story of the Salem witch trials and finding that John Proctor, the hero of this play, couldn't possibly have had an affair with Abigail Williams unless he was a truly sick man, as she was eleven at the time, so his motivation would have been different. His children were older than in the play and one was tortured with him. Oh, and Elizabeth, the wife with whom he reconciles so dramatically at the end, was cut out of his will.

Oh, well. As a piece of drama, with a bit of license, it is wonderful. I can't wait!