new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Liz Kessler, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 22 of 22
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Liz Kessler in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
Anyone who knows me (and a fair few who don't as well) will know that my first YA novel Read Me Like A Book comes out this year. I've been shouting about this for a little while now, and have been super-excited about it for lots of reasons, one of them being the fact that I originally wrote this book fifteen years ago, so it's been a long time in the making.
But the same people might not know about the other book that's coming out this year and which in many ways I am JUST as excited about. This book, Emily Windsnap and the Ship of Lost Souls, is the latest in my series about a girl who accidentally found out in a school swimming lesson that when she goes in water, she becomes a mermaid.
Emily and I have had lots of adventures together. She has a tendency to get herself into scary, exciting adventures. [WARNING: Spoilers coming...] Emily has rescued her father from a prison out at sea; she's been nearly squeezed to death by a giant Kraken; she's explored mysterious castles, discovered banished sirens in underwater caves and very nearly been turned to ice by an evil man with too much magic at his disposal.
In August, Emily has her sixth adventure. I can't tell you too much about it yet, as it's still a closely-guarded secret. But what I can tell you is that, in typical Emily style, what starts off as an innocent Geography field trip turns into an adventure involving life and death decisions, a spooky ship and a trip to possibly the most magical place she's ever visited.
For me, one of the most exciting things about this book is that for the first time ever, it's coming out on both sides of the Atlantic at the same time. My UK and US publishers are working together to make this happen, and TODAY, between us, right here, right now, I am very excited to be using the wonderful ABBA blog (thanks ABBA!) to reveal the cover!
So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, children and mer-kids, I give you, Emily Windsnap and the Ship of Lost Souls - the cover. I think it might be my favourite Emily Windsnap cover ever (by the wonderful artist Sarah Gibb). Hope you think it's as beautiful as I do! :) :) :)
PS If you need to catch up with the rest of the series before reading the new one (or you know someone who does) check out the giveaway on
my Facebook page. :)
Follow Liz on Twitter
Join Liz's Facebook page
Check out Liz's Website
A while ago, I wrote
a blog about the Seasons of Writing. It was an idea that my good friend Jen Alexander shared with me, and I’ve loved it and referred to it on countless occasions ever since. The idea is that the process of writing a book is very much like the calendar of seasons in a year.
Well, if that’s the case, it is definitely spring right now.
I’m at the very start of working on a new book. It’s an idea that has been patiently waiting underground for quite a few years, and its time has now come. Just as I’m beginning to see snowdrops appearing in the countryside, and tiny shoots starting to come through the ground in my own garden, my new story is beginning to show its head. Little tiny shoots coming up, one by one, all pretty and fresh and exciting.
For over a decade, writing has been my job, and there are times when I’m very aware of that. I make myself sit at my desk for a certain length of time; I set targets that involve writing a set number of words; I organize events, I attend book festivals, I do publicity, I write emails, blogs, articles; I reply to lovely letters from readers. All of these things are wonderful, and all make me feel glad that this is how I make my living. But a lot of the time, my job doesn’t feel especially creative.
But it does now.
A couple of months ago, I attended a writers’ retreat that I run with my author buddy Elen Caldecott. Four days where eighteen children’s authors come together to share thoughts, ideas, inspiration and workshops all about writing and creativity, set in beautiful countryside.
(I made a kind of slideshow of my photos while I was there. You can watch it here if you want to see why it’s such a lovely place.)
This was the fourth time we’ve run this retreat, and I have to say I think it was the best yet – especially in terms of creativity. But the point of this blog is to share what was, for me, the best thing to come out of this year’s retreat. And that was that my new book started to open up – yes, like a beautiful new crocus slowly unfurling its petals.
Part of the way that this happened was to do with my surroundings. Each morning of the retreat, I got up early and went out for a walk with my camera. The mornings were so quiet and the light was so soft, as a mist gradually lifted from the fields and trees. Something about the mornings felt right for my book, and started leading me towards the background mood and setting.
Then one evening, another writer buddy, Kelly McCain, and I had an amazing couple of hours sharing music and downloading each other’s favourite songs. So on the final morning when I went out for my walk, I took my headphones and listened to these new songs at the same time – and the most amazing thing happened. As I walked, and watched the mist and the dew, and listened to the songs, I started almost seeing my book begin to take shape in front of me. I almost heard my characters singing lines from the songs as I listened to them. Almost felt their moods and their emotions, as I felt the mist rising on a storyline that was starting to take shape after five years of waiting in the shadows.
And it’s carried on like that for the months following the retreat. I’ve added more tunes and now have a playlist of about thirty songs. I play them when I walk the dog, trudging along a muddy coast path and hearing the characters singing the words. I play them in my study, writing away in my lovely new notebook, as I try to capture the feelings, the moods, the words and the moments in the same way as I saw them out on the cliff path.
I have written about fifteen books, and I can honestly say that I have never experienced anything quite like the process that is taking place with this book. It feels so creative, and such a journey of exploration. It’s intense, emotional, exciting and kind of magical. It reminds me that, after all, this isn’t just my job. It is my passion; it is one of the things that is at the heart of who I am, how I see the world and how I live my life.
The book is due to be delivered in September this year. I have two books coming out before then and a busy year ahead – but for now, I’m enjoying taking the time to nurture these seedlings of ideas that are popping up every day.
So yes, this is work, and yes, sometimes it’s hard. But right here, right now, it feels like a privilege that I get to do such a magical, wonderful, creative thing and get to call it my day job. I hope that over the coming months, I can do my characters justice. I look forward to the rest of the spring, and am hoping for a summer filled with bright colours, delightful scents and a beautiful, blossoming story.
I guess this blog might be continuing that theme in a way. It’s about social networking. Only, this time, I want to pick your brains.
Next May, I make my YA debut with my novel
Read Me Like A Book (which, incidentally, I just received the bound proofs for, and I am completely IN LOVE with this cover, designed and painted by my very talented artist friend
Joe Greenaway.
This book is HUGELY important to me and I want to do everything I can to give it a good send off into the world. Because this is a brand new tack for me, I’ll be doing a lot of things differently. I’m already fairly active on Twitter and Facebook – and I do my monthly blog here – but there are all sorts on online hangouts that I know almost nothing about – and I think it’s time to get educated.
Currently, I use my author page on Facebook to write about my books, post lots of photos of sunrises and my dog and the sea, and have lovely chitchat about mermaids and faires and time travel, mainly with my readers, their parents, a few librarians and a bunch of supportive friends. On Twitter, it feels much more about chatting with my writing peers – other writers, bloggers, bookshop people etc. Think publishing party, only without getting drunk on free champagne and making a fool of yourself in front of the MD.
So that’s all well and good, and I enjoy it. But I want to spread my writerly wings. In particular, I want to talk to teenagers – and I don’t know where to find them!
So this is a question aimed mainly at teenagers, parents of teenagers, writers of books for teenagers who interact online…
Where are you? Where do you hang out? Which are your favourite online haunts? And what do look for or expect from in the different places you frequent?
I take a LOT of photos, and should probably be on Instagram. (In fact, I kind of am but I don’t really use it.) I have been told I should get onto Tumblr – and would love to go for it, but every time I glance at it, I feel overwhelmed and bewildered. I’m also kind of half-heartedly on Pinterest, but only so I can look for desks for my new office. And I have got a few videos on Youtube.
The thing is, though, when we try to keep up to date with ALL the places, there’s no time left to, well, you know, write the books. Which I kind of need to keep doing. So I don’t want to join them all. But I’d like to pick the best one (or at most, two) new social networking sites and give them a good go.
So, help me out here. What should I pick? What do you use? Where are my potential new teenage audience most likely to look for me? Any and all opinions on these questions will be gratefully received.
Thank you! :)
As writers, one of the things that lies at the heart of our intentions is connection. We write books that we want people to read. We share our thoughts, our fantasies, the products of our imagination, sometimes our biggest secrets and the deepest angst in our souls - and we put it all out there for the world to read about.
‘Only connect,’ said EM Forster, and, over a hundred years later, this is still what drives us. And I don’t think this desire is restricted to writers. We all want it. That’s why telephones were invented. It’s why the internet has pretty much taken over the world. It’s why Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc etc etc are as massively popular as they are. They allow us to reach out, communicate, share, meet, interact…connect.
So what happened? How did these means of connection suddenly become the very things that keep us isolated and disconnected?
Actually, it didn’t happen suddenly at all. It sneaked up on us so gradually that most of us don’t even realise that it has happened to us.
I used to live on a narrowboat on the canal. I remember the day BT put a line across the farmer’s field and I plugged a phone into it. Out there, on a boat on a canal in pretty much the middle of nowhere, I was connected. It was incredible. (Till the day the farmer ploughed his field and cut the line to shreds – but that’s a different story.)
 |
| Me on my beloved boat, Jester. Crikey, my hair was short back then. |
I remember my first mobile phone. I remember the first time someone showed me how to send an email – and my awe at the notion that the recipient could read it from anywhere in the world moments later. It was all very new at that time, and I’m glad that I am part of a generation that still remembers a time before these things were taken for granted. I still
am in awe of the internet and what we can do with it.
But sometimes I wish we could all take a couple of steps back.
Phones today can do SO much – and the problem is that, nowadays, we so often use them to separate ourselves from the world around us, rather than connect us to it.
A couple of examples.
I was catching a train yesterday. Whilst I waited for my train, I looked around. On the platform opposite there were about eight people. A few of them in pairs and a few on their own, waiting for the same train. EVERY SINGLE ONE of them was looking at their phone. Every one. Not talking to the person they were with. Not smiling at a stranger. Not noticing anyone or anything around them. Each of them was locked away on their own with their screen.
The night before that, I’d been to a Lady Gaga concert. (It was amazing, by the way. The woman is utterly bonkers but WOW – what a show she puts on!)
The best decision my partner and I made (other than to buy 'Early Entry' tickets and get a great spot!) was to leave our phones at home. We met a couple of guys on our way in and became instant friends. The four of us watched, listened, sang, danced and loved every minute of the concert. I took it all in. Gaga, the dancers, the crowds, the outfits, the music. I was there.
Around us, probably half the people I could see spent most of the evening holding out their phones to photograph and record the gig – presumably to then share it on some social networking site and say ‘Look, I was there!’
But were they? Were they reallythere?
 |
| Generic photo off the internet - as I didn't have my phone/camera to take a pic! |
We’d been chatting with a young woman beside us before the show began. Once it started, she was one of those who brought her phone out. At one point, when Lady Gaga was behind us, the woman videoed her back. At another point, when Gaga was too far away to get a decent shot, she videoed the dark stage with the blurry figure at the edge of it. When Lady Gaga and the dancers were out of our sight completely, the young woman held her phone out at the big screen and videoed that!
She wasn't the only one; far from it. All these people around us, so busy framing their shots, zooming in, zooming out, focussing, refocussing, they weren't even aware that in their haste to show they were there, they actually weren't there at all. They were watching an event via a tiny screen held up in the air that they could have watched for real if they put their phones away.
This isn’t a criticism of any of these people. Heck, I’ve done it myself. I’ve experienced something and started composing a Facebook status about it in my head before the moment is even over. I’ve half-watched a TV programme whilst on twitter and spent as much time reading tweets about it as taking in the programme itself. I’ve even sent a text to my partner from one end of the sofa to the other, asking for a cup of tea. (Only as a joke, I should point out.)
But I can’t help thinking that we have to start reversing things before it’s too late and we forget the art of human interaction altogether.
Last weekend, I was told about a site that I’d never heard of, but which apparently most people in their twenties already know about/use, called Tinder. The idea is that you log in to the app, tell it who you are looking for (gender, age group etc) and what kind of radius you are interested in, to a minimum of one kilometre, and the app does the rest. Any time someone fitting your wishlist comes into your specified zone, you get a notification. You check out their photos. If you like them, you give them a tick. If they like you, they give you a tick – then you can ‘chat’ and arrange to meet or whatever. (And I imagine that for many of the users, it’s the ‘or whatever’ that interests them.)
At the risk of sounding like the oldest fogiest old fogey in the room….
REALLY?????
What happened to looking around? To conversation? To gradually getting to know someone? I’m not against online dating. Not remotely. I’m not, in fact, against any of this, and like I said, I'm as guilty of iPhone overuse as the next person. But I'm concerned by the constant speeding up of everything, and the taking us out of our surroundings to make us look at a screen instead of the things and the people around us.
So here’s my challenge – and I make it for myself as much as for anyone reading this. It’s not a super-radical idea. It’s about taking small steps.
Each day, use your phone a tiny bit less than you used it the day before. Make one decision a day where you say, ‘No, I won’t take my phone out of my pocket, I’ll smile at a stranger instead.’ Or one occasion where you decide, ‘I will allow myself this experience without having to share it online afterwards’. Just one small decision a day. Before we know it, we’ll all be connecting up again.
On which note I’m off for walkies with my partner, to chat, look at the waves, feel the salty air in my face and throw some stones for the dog.
And no, I’m not taking my phone.
 |
| Here's one I took earlier. |
Over the last couple of weeks, I’m pretty sure I have developed a few new grey hairs. My nails have been bitten down into messy, spiky shards and my heart has been beating a tiny bit faster whenever a new email pings into my inbox.
Why?
Because I’m suffering from a state that most authors will recognise: a classic case of ‘I Have Sent My New Book To My Editor And Will Be Hearing Back From Her Any Day Now-Itis’. Or IHSMNBTMEAWBHBFHADNI for short.
Interesting things happen during an outbreak of IHSMNBTMEAWBHBFHADNI. One of them is that you look around your study and realise that it doesn’t look much like a study.
You know on those cop dramas when the police suspect a criminal of hiding drugs or stolen goods or something and they go round to the criminal’s home and ransack the place? Drawers pulled out, clothes strewn around the room, photo frames knocked over, shelves upended, piles of paperwork strewn across the floor. Yeah, that’s kinda what your study looks like.
I once heard the wonderful poet and author Jackie Kay talk about writing a first draft. She described it as being similar to organising a huge dinner party – but without doing any cleaning up along the way. After the party, when everyone’s gone home, you look around the kitchen and don’t even know where to start.
 |
| NB This is a random picture downloaded from the internet, not actual Jackie Kay's kitchen after a dinner party. |
I think she nailed it.
My study is a scene of devastation, filled with long trails of things that I have been ignoring/avoiding/not noticing for weeks. In those last few days of the first draft, where I’m working flat out every daylight hour - and a few of the pre-dawn ones, too - I put on my blinkers as I enter my study, carve a very careful path along the narrow channel that is not filled with paperwork glaring expectantly at me, sit down in my chair and start tapping away, noticing only the screen in front of me. And the continually-replaced cup of tea by my side. Actually, if I’m honest, in those last few days, when I’m working into the evening, it’s just as likely to be a bottle of beer by my side.
And then there is that magical moment. With a tiny tear in the corner of your eye that you’re never quite sure if you should really have (I mean, crying at your own book – is that even allowed?) you type, ‘the end’. The euphoria doubles as you write an over-emotional (you’re on your second beer of the evening) email to your editor, attach your baby – aka the manuscript that has taken over the last eight months of your life – and hit ‘send’.
Obviously, you don’t do anything much for the rest of that day. A good friend and special writer-buddy of mine, Lee Weatherly, once told me that you have to have a bottle of champagne when you finish a draft of your book. It’s virtually the law. And I don’t like breaking the law. Champagne, beer, whatever. Bring it on. This moment has been nearly a year coming. It's time to celebrate!
So let’s skip to the next morning. You know you have a fortnight or so before you’ll hear back from your editor. Actually, on this occasion, we're on a really tight schedule so it's more like ten days. Either way, it's time to mop up the mess.
For at least the last month, you’ve told yourself that this is the point when you will attack the email inbox, fill in the forms, sign the contracts, send off the tax stuff, return those shoes you should never have bought. Maybe even, I dunno, clean the house? Ten whole days. Your life is going to be SO sorted by the time you hear back from your editor. You're practically going to be a Stepford Wife.
I love good intentions. Don’t you?
Here’s what I’ve spent the last ten days doing.
- Having lie ins.
- Letting the dog on the bed so she won’t nag me for walkies.
- Mooching around the house in my PJs vaguely thinking about getting the vacuum cleaner out. Ha! As if.
- Meeting up with friends for coffees in the morning. In the morning!
- Watching Dragon’s Den recordings with my lunch. With my lunch!!!
- Reading multiple copies of The Bookseller and Practical Photography which have been arriving and being ignored every week for the last three months.
- Wandering around the garden with my new macro lens, taking photos of spiders, wasps and flowers.
 |
| Plenty more where this came from. If you want to see them, just ask. |
- And yes, just to make sure I feel I’ve achieved something this week, replying to at least two thirds of the emails that have been patiently waiting for me whilst I was busy getting my half-girl half-mermaid heroine out of trouble.
And then, before you know it, it happens. The email. Ping. Fourteen pages of notes. Bam.
A very deep breath. And back in we dive.
Who wants to live in a tidy house with clothes all put away in drawers, receipts filed away in envelopes and email inboxes sparse and empty, anyway?
Not me, it seems. Someone pass me a beer. I’m going in.
Last month, something rather horrible happened. The elections for members of the European parliament led to a widespread vote for far right parties, fuelled by a wave of anti-immigrant feeling.
The day the results came out, I could barely bring myself to get out of bed. I felt depressed, disappointed and quite hopeless. In fact, it started before that. In the voting booth, faced with a ballot paper that seemed to list one far right organisation after another, I felt ashamed and perplexed. Was this really where we were? Was this honestly what people wanted?
Then the results came out, and I felt much, much worse. Was this the best that we, as a society, could do? Had we learned nothing from the lessons that history has taught us? It seemed not.
So what could I do? I spent the day asking myself this question, over and over again. In the morning, the only thing I could think to do was pull the quilt back over my head and hide away from the world until I felt I could face it again. In the afternoon, I decided I would become an MP – despite never having been a member of any political party in my whole life. By the evening, thanks to one of my lovely writer friends, Elen Caldecott, I realised that neither of these options was really credible, but there was a third.
‘We’re writers, we’re artists,’ Elen said. ‘We have a voice. We have our books. That’s where we can make the change. That’s where we argue for a better world. That’s where we have power.’
She was right, of course, and she was the first person to say anything that actually started to pull me out of my slump.
I thought about her words all day, all week in fact. I thought about how privileged we are to do what we do, to have a job that means our words, our thoughts, our beliefs can find their way into the hands and thoughts of a generation of children: the people who will create the future. Could there really be a more powerful idea than this?
But how to go about it? You can’t exactly write a book that says, ‘Hey kids, here’s what you have to do. Treat everyone nicely; go about your dealings in life with fairness; accept others even if they are different from you; and please don’t ever vote for UKIP or the BNP.’ For one thing, it wouldn’t make for a very interesting read, and for another, no one likes to be lectured – especially whilst they’re doing something that is meant to be fun.
So then I thought about it a bit more, and realised that actually I already do say all those things. I say them all the time. I never intend to, but they always find their way into my books. I think I’m writing about mermaids or fairies or time travel, but time and again, I’m writing about social injustice, about standing up for what you believe in, about accepting yourself and others.
My Emily Windsnap books are at their heart a series about two very different societies who have every reason to mistrust and dislike each other, but who learn to coexist. Emily Windsnap’s family is put in charge of making sure this happens. Emily herself stands up in a court and demands that people are legally allowed to love and marry who they want.
My other books have a habit of doing this, too. Readers quite often write to me and say things like, ‘Your book told me it was OK to be me,’ or ‘Your book gave me the courage to stand up to bullies.’
Really? Did it? I thought it was just about a girl and her fairy godsister.
I honestly have no idea that I am writing about these things at the time, but perhaps it is inevitable that they will be at the heart of my books, when they are at the core of who I am and have been ever since I was a teenager. I’m not really that different now. I just do it more quietly than I did in my twenties.
 |
| Yep, that really was me. And yes, Mum and Dad, I really am smoking. Sorry! |
Back then I protested against injustice by going on marches and getting people to sign petitions. Now I do it, mostly without even realising it, in my books. But whichever route it is, fighting for a better world, a fairer society and a place where people learn to be confident about who they are and accepting of others are the things that I care about.
So, in fact, all I have to do is carry on doing what I’m doing. One day I might write a book that deals with these themes more explicitly. In fact, I already have an idea brewing for such a book, and am quite excited by it. But till then, what an amazing honour and privilege it is to be able to simply write stories that I love and feel passionate about, and know that as I do so, I am sharing the ideas and beliefs that are at the heart of who I am. To know that every time a child enjoys one of my books, there is a small possibility that they may in fact take its message to their heart – perhaps without realising that they have done so, just as I don’t realise I’m putting the message there in the first place.
This whole idea feels revolutionary. It doesn’t mean that from now on I’m going to pile a load of messages into my books. I believe that this is the quickest way to kill a story flat dead and I would never do it. For me, books have to be first and foremost about the story and the characters. If you approach it from any other angle than this, I think it shows. But the exciting thing is that, as long as I continue to do this, I can trust that the rest will follow.
What a privilege. What a gift.
So no, I’m not about to seek election as an MP. I’m not going to pull the covers over my head in despair in the mornings, either. I’m just going to carry on doing what I love. I’m going to trust that as I do it, I’m gently, quietly and unobtrusively saying what I need to say. And I’m going to hope, hope, hope that if enough of us are doing the same thing, a whole generation of children will grow up with love, acceptance and equality being the values that rule their world, rather than xenophobia, hatred, fear.
Before I start, let me just make two points. The first is…yes the apostrophe in the title was a joke, not a mistake.
The second point is this: We only know what we know, and I don’t think that it’s up to anyone else to mock us for the gaps in our knowledge.
To underline this point, let me put myself and my own ignorance out there for you.
I rarely read a newspaper nowadays. I stopped quite a few years ago when I found that it was too full of horrific things being done to people – usually children – and it took me days to get over each horrible item I read. This means that, nowadays, I rarely know what’s going on in the world and I often don’t know who people are when I probably should do. I’m not saying I’m completely clueless about politics or the world* but there are gaps in my knowledge which some people could find painful.
Equally, yes, I admit it, I am pained by some of the grammatical gaps in knowledge that I see around me every day. But just as I hope people don’t judge me too harshly for my gaps, I don’t blame the perpetrators of these grammar slips (let’s not call them crimes). But I do want to do my bit towards helping put them right.
The main one that bugs me, and the one that is probably the most badly abused and misused little squiggle in the world, is, of course the apostrophe. But how do you do anything about this without upsetting people, losing friends and generally getting a reputation as a grammatically uptight know-it-all?
The answer is – or might be – you write an ABBA post about it!
I think that most of the people who follow this blog are writers, bloggers, teachers, librarians etc. As such, I'm sure most of you know exactly how to use apostrophes. But I bet you’ve all got a friend who has at some point sent you a text saying “Hope your OK” and you’ve bitten your lip and replied to their kind sentiment rather than replying, as you might have wanted to, “Hope YOU’RE OK! YOU’RE YOU’RE YOU’RE!!!!!!”
So, right. I'm obviously not doing this for you. I'm not even doing it for your friends because, to be honest, most of them probably KNOW how to use apostrophes; they just don't care quite as much as I do if they accidentally use them incorrectly from time to time. Let's just say I'm doing it on the off chance that there's an occasional reader of this blog who's never been a hundred per cent sure when and where to put their apostrophes but is way past the point where it's deemed acceptable to ask. Like I would feel about, say, asking who's the shadow chancellor or something like that.
And yeah, I'm doing it for me. Partly just to get it out of my system and share my pain because I’m tired of seeing things like this around the place and weeping silently to myself.
 |
| With thanks to Candy Gourlay and Fiona Dunbar, who suggested that it might mean you literally get a dog's welcome - i.e. a lick on the face and a sniff of your bum - with your Cornish Cream Tea. |
And partly because, actually, I've always quite fancied writing a guide to the correct usage of apostrophes.
So here is my (very brief) guide to the correct usage of apostrophes.
For those of who don’t care, don’t have a problem with this or would rather move on to the next blog with the cute kitten photos on it** please skip the section in blue.
OK. Apostrophes have two main uses.
1. To show possession of something. Here’s how you do that.
Look at your sentence and decide who or what is the person (or animal or thing) that is owning the other thing. When you know who that is, put your apostrophe after it.
For example…
The boy’s toys. (All the toys are owned by one boy.)
The boys’ toys. (All the toys are owned by a group of boys.)
The lady’s house. (One lady lives there.)
The ladies’ house. (A house where lots of ladies live.) (Make of that what you will.)
 |
| A missing apostrophe at the Edinburgh Book Festival - just to show that even the experts make mistakes. |
The only real exceptions, where you indicate possession without an apostrophe despite the word looking as if it might want one, are “its” and “your”.
Without getting into extended discussions about possessive pronouns, just remember, if they are being used in the context of possession, the words “its” and “your” do not EVER need an apostrophe. OK?
For example…
The cat licked its paw.
Your hair looks nice today.
No apostrophe. Think of the “its” and the “your” in this context in the same way as if they were “his” or “her” or “my”. No apostrophe.
The ONLY times that “its” becomes “it’s” or “your” becomes “you’re” are when they fit into rule number two…
2. To indicate that a letter (or letters) have been left out.
For example…
It’s an interesting blog but can we move on now please?
Same with “your” and “you’re”. If you are using the word instead of “you are” it is always“you’re”. Never (ever ever) “your”. Ever.
Hope you’re OK.
You’re a star.
You’re starting to labour the point a bit now.
And finally, there is NEVER any need to use an apostrophe just because something is a plural. Never. Never. Never.
 |
| Wrong, wrong, wrong. |
OK, that's the end of my lesson. You can come back now.
If in doubt, the main things to remember are:
1. If you are married to a writer/English teacher/other grammatically-obsessed person, you may need to double check your Facebook status updates before posting them, just to be on the safe side.
2. If you are a friend of a writer/English teacher/etc and are asking after their health, please bear in mind that your correct use of apostrophes in the phrase “Hope you’re OK” (as opposed to the incorrect “Hope your OK”) will be at least as pleasing to them as the fact that you are thinking about them. Probably a little more, actually.
3. If you live in a small seaside town in Cornwall and are in the process of writing your menus for this year’s summer season, please send them my way before going to press. I will happily proof read them for free, and you will have no need to hurt people’s eyes with your pizza’s or pastie’s.
And finally…
For those of you who knew all of this already and have suffered all the way through this long blog, thank you! To you, and to those who want to see if they’ve learned anything from reading this, here’s a bit of fun, taken from a workshop I used to run when I was working for the Plain English Campaign. How many apostrophe mistakes can you spot in the following passage? I’ll post the answer at the end of the day.
The Housing Acts main aim is to set down local council’s future role as assistant’s to other housing agencies’ instead of being major provider’s of rented housing themselve’s. After carefully considering it’s options, Bloxwich Councils Housing Committee has decided that local peoples’ interest’s would be best served by transferring the bulk of the Committees’ housing stock to two newly-created housing associations’. But the chairman of the Housing Committee, Sid Wheale, said last night, “If its apostrophe’s your looking for, what about: ‘Its’ the princesss birthday today, isnt it?’”
Thanks for reading!
* Especially now. In fact, I found the results of this week's elections and the advances made by far right organisations so horrifying and scary that the twenty-something-year-old me, who was very loud and active and political and who is still in there underneath everything else, is definitely planning a comeback.
** I think I might have implied that there were going to be photos of cute kittens. Just in case you were holding on for that, here you go...
Earlier this month, I was Author in Residence at Waterstones in Truro as part of World Book Day. It was a fab, fab day where I think most of us came away smiling.
I’m a strong believer in telling people when they’ve done something well, so I thought I’d share what was so good about it. That way, if you are a bookshop person or a library person or even, in fact, an author, you can wave this blog in someone’s face and say, ‘Look! Earrings! Tea! Showcards!’
Eh?
Read on. All will become clear.
1. Showcards.
I didn’t actually know showcards had been organised until a friend of mine who happened to have been in the shop posted a photo on twitter. Which made me very happy.
2. Books.
You might also notice that as well as the showcard itself, the shop had also bought in a large selection of all my books – in plenty of time for the event. It was in fact the first time I’d seen all my books together like this, and made me feel very proud and ‘Gosh, look, I wrote all of those books’-ish.
3. Tea.
It is always advisable to greet your author with the words ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ When this is then followed up by said cup of tea arriving as if by magic in plenty of time for the author to have a few sips before the event, that's even better. (And very nice Earl Grey it was, too.)
4. Radio Interviews.
Local BBC Radio host Tiffany Truscott happened to be in the shop and noticed the showcard a week or so before my event. She invited me onto her programme at the end of my stint in the bookshop.
We talked about World Book Day and about my books and about movies and mermaids. Which made me very happy.
5. Book jackets being turned into earrings.
I had been told in advance that the shop folk would be dressed up for World Book Day. What I hadn’t been told was that the librarian from one of the schools was going to make an outfit that included earrings she had made in the design of my book covers!!!!! That was a first for me, and made me very happy indeed.
6. Amazing librarians.
The above librarian actually deserves two mentions on this list for what she did for her children that day. Her school is in an area of high deprivation, where many of the children don’t have any books at home. For some teachers, that would mean that they would want to warn me that we wouldn't get many book sales on the day. Which would have been fine. But not for this particular librarian. Instead, she went to her Parent Teacher Association and asked if they could buy one of my books for EVERY SINGLE CHILD in the class. They said yes. So all the children from that school went away with a signed book. Happy children; happy bookshop; happy author; wonderful librarian.
7. Two words: Chocolate. Tiffin.
No pic to go with this one unfortunately as I was too busy eating it to photograph it. (Look up ‘Chocolate Tiffin Triangle from Costa Coffee’ in Google images and you’ll see what I’m talking about.) But just so you know, when it comes to lunch, the words, ‘Go up to Costa, order a sandwich and a cake and put it on the Waterstones’ bill’ will do very nicely.
And there you have it. How to make an author happy in seven easy steps.
Please note, if you can't do all of these, just skip to the chocolate and we'll be fine.
With huge thanks to Isobel and everyone at Waterstones Truro, and to Karen and all the librarians and teachers who came along. Hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did!
A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog called
Ten Ways to Put Off Writing Before Breakfast. Always one to push myself to achieve greater and advance further in my work, I’ve decided to revisit this idea. This time, with ten all-new procrastinatory suggestions, I’m taking the bold step of attempting to make it all the way to
lunch without doing a stitch of writing.
The following suggestions are all based on what I actually did on one morning, but can easily be adapted across a number of days, to suit your needs. So, as they say on the reality shows, in no particular order…
1. Play Angry Birds. This could be substituted for any mindless game on your phone, computer or other electronic device. If you don’t have any electronic devices handy, you can always resort to doing a crossword or your daily paper’s Sudoku puzzle if you have to. I have recently rediscovered Angry Birds after a long break, and it's a goodie. It’s beautifully addictive and can easily dispense with half an hour’s procrastination, liberally sprinkled across the morning.
 |
| The beautifully addictive, and recently revamped, Angry Birds |
2. Walk the dog. For this one, it’s handy, but not essential, to own a dog. You can always borrow someone else’s dog if needed. Or just go for a walk on your own. If it’s a nice day, a leisurely walk along the beach, coast path, woods, countryside – or even just round the block a few times – is a great way to convince yourself that you’re clearing your mind ready for work and not actually procrastinating at all.
 |
| Walkies. The perfect way to clear your mind ready for writing. |
3. Look at houses on Rightmove. Ohohohoho, boy, can this pass the time! Please note, you don’t have to be actively thinking about moving house for this. I adore my home and have no intention of moving house at all, but still managed to spend a good hour and a half looking at properties, whittling them down to the one I really liked, checking out all the pictures, the exact position on the map and imagining what it would be like to live there. You can also use the handy new facility that tells you exactly how much all the houses that have changed hands near to you recently have sold for. For property geeks and generally nosey people, this site is gold.
4. Eat an apple.* Yeah, this one doesn’t take all that much time, but for some reason I still managed to combine it with ten minutes of staring completely mindlessly into space.
 |
| * Apple can be substituted for fruit of your choice |
5. Do some back exercises. I mentioned yoga in the previous blog, but you don’t have to be able to do yoga. I certainly can’t, to any standard that anyone who regularly does yoga would recognise as yoga anyway. But you can always do a few back stretches. This one, for me, is genuinely important and if I don’t do it a few times a day, my back feels like concrete the next day. Scatter these throughout the day and they can easily add up to half an hour’s genuine ‘It’s not writing but it supportsmy writing,’ time.
6. Phone John Lewis about a refund they owe you. OK, so this one sounds quite specific and you might think it doesn’t apply to you. But this is just one example of the many ways you can pass a good fifteen minutes waiting for someone at a call centre to answer the phone. Problems with your bank, electricity provider, mobile phone company, broadband etc etc. If none of those apply, you could always google plumbers in your area to find someone who can fix the dripping tap in your bathroom. There’s got to be something that needs doing in your house.
7. Pluck your eyebrows. We've all been there.** You are literally on the verge of actually doing some work and you just nip to the loo while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil. (No one can reasonably be expected to start working without a fresh cuppa.) On your way to the toilet, you walk past the one mirror in the house that has great eyebrow-plucking visibility when the sun catches it in just the right way. Like it is doing now. You have to seize the moment (and the tweezers) don’t you?
** Guys, you’ll have to come up with your own equivalent for this one. Perhaps a beard trim?
 |
| My current tweezers of choice. Have also doubled up to be used as a mini screwdriver for emergency tightening of tiny little screws on bathroom shelves that obviously needed tightening before doing any work. |
8. Go out and buy a TV magazine. Then go through the magazine with a highlighter pen, deciding on all the programmes and films you want to watch over the following week. A glorious half hour’s procrastination here. And it’s writing, isn’t it? Sort of. You're using a pen aren't you? ***
 |
| ***Please note, pic shows TV mag from December, which, due to being a Christmas and New Year special, can double the procrastination time for this activity. |
9. Phone a writer pal. If your procrastinating is going so well that you’re running out of morning, you can always combine this with point two by taking your phone and a pair of headphones on your walk with you. But if you’re nowhere near lunchtime and you’re down to the last two points, get the kettle on, make a brew and settle down for a good old moan, whinge and writerly chat. Again, a great one for the ‘It’s about writing so it counts as work, really,’ category.
10. Finally, if all else fails, go ahead and write a blog. It could be your own blog, a group one like this, or, if you have a new book coming out, you can really go to town and do a blog tour. This last idea can easily pass three whole days as you supply twelve guest posts for other people’s blogs. (Which, by the way, I’m in the middle of doing RIGHT NOW for my BRAND NEW BOOK,
North of Nowhere, which is, in fact, out today!!!)
 |
| If you enjoyed this blog, please feel free to succumb to my shameless plugging and check out my guest posts on the other blogs on my tour :) |
And there we have it. A good morning’s (in)activity in a nutshell, at which point it’s surely time to break for lunch. My work is done.
Join Liz's Facebook pageCheck out Liz's Website
Some writers have an idea and just start writing. Some writers like to do a bit of plotting first. A few of them like to do a lot of plotting.
And then there’s me. I plot, a LOT. In fact, I plot so much that the plotting is the longest part of my whole process. But the great thing is that once I’ve finished plotting, all I’ve got to do is write the book! Oh, and then edit it. And think of a title. And – ok, so writing a book has quite a lot to it!
So here is an insight into how I write my books.
The very first thing is the IDEA. This can come from anywhere and anything. Quite often, it is a place that inspires my ideas. This was the case with Emily Windsnap and the Castle in the Mist. I visited a place called St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, and found it so magical and mysterious that I knew it had to feature in an Emily Windsnap book! The actual place itself isn’t in the book, but it gave birth to the whole idea. Here it is.
Looks like quite a magical place, huh?
So, OK, I’ve got the idea. It’s a brilliant starting point, but that’s all it is – a start. So then I do all sorts of things to try to develop the idea. The first thing I do is either go to the place – if it’s somewhere real that I can actually get to – like Cornwall, or even Bermuda, or in the case of my brand new Emily Windsnap book, the arctic landscape of the north seas. If it’s not somewhere I can get to (for example a frozen land that you can only get to by crawling through a hole in time) then I have to research it online or in books – or purely in my own imagination.
At this point, I need a nice notebook! Here are a few of my notebooks…
I LOVE this stage. I wander around, staring into space and scribbling notes in my lovely book. And the best thing about it – I can call it work!!!
After a few weeks of doing this, I’ll come to a couple of realisations. The first realisation is that I’ve got a LOT of notes and thoughts about my new book – which is good. The second realisation is that I’ve got NO IDEA how any of them fit together. Not so good.
So here’s what I do next. I type up all the notes from my notebook, and then I cut them up into pieces! Yep you heard right. I cut the whole lot into a hundred tiny pieces. (Actually, for the latest book, it was more like 150 – but who’s counting?) Each separate idea goes on a separate piece of paper. Then I spread the ideas all over the biggest table in the house, until it looks a bit like this…
Then I go and make a cup of tea (see the cup in the top left corner?) and I sit staring at the enormous amount of tiny pieces of paper and wonder how on earth I’m ever going to piece them together.
This is usually the time when I suddenly remember all sorts of important things that need doing. Put the washing in, clean the bathroom, phone my mum, check out my emails etc etc etc. At some point, though, I realise I’ve exhausted all my excuses and I really need to figure out the next step.
So I take a few deep breaths and I sit down and I start reading through all the notes. And then something a little bit magical happens.
It starts to fit together!
This piece goes with that piece; this idea has to happen before that one; these three all say the same thing so I can throw two of them out; these two have to happen at the beginning; this one belongs at the end. And so on and so on, until, after maybe a few hours or maybe a few days, a pattern begins to emerge. The story is taking shape.
Once I’ve figured out a rough shape for my notes, I work and work on them, building them up, adding more detail, figuring out the nooks and crannies of my story. Once I think I might have enough notes to make a whole book, I break it into chapters. If I seem to have roughly the right number of chapters, it means I’ve got the plot sorted! Yay!
At the same time as the plot is taking shape, I like to try a few more tricks to figure out what’s going on. This is where I’ll spend an afternoon ripping pictures out of magazines to get a better picture of my characters, or doing big mind maps to come up with more ideas about my story.
Here’s a mind map I made whilst writing Philippa Fisher’s Fairy Godsister.
Anyone who knows this book quite well might notice that only a few of the ideas here actually made it into the book! This is something that happens quite a lot when writing a book. One of the things you have to learn to do is recognise that not all of your ideas fit into the book. Sometimes it’s the ideas you like the most that don’t belong – and it’s hard, but you have to cut them out!
So eventually, I’m happy with the plot and I’ve got to know my characters pretty well. It’s time to write the book!
The good thing is, I usually do this fairly quickly. I’ll usually aim for around 2,000 words a day. I do sometimes make changes along the way. The plot outline is there to help guide me – but every now and then the characters want to take a little diversion along the way.
But after a few months, I get to that wonderful moment where I reach the two words that give any writer a wonderful feeling.
The End
And I do actually write ‘the end’. It gets taken out before the book is published, but I like the feeling of writing it. Except that it isn’t actually the end quite yet. Oh no-ho-ho! The end of writing the first draft means the beginning of the editing.
Luckily, I have BRILLIANT editors and working with them is great fun. Here’s an example of a page of my writing that’s in the middle of the editing process. The black type is my original draft, the blue type is my editor’s notes, and the red ink all over the paper is my re-written thoughts after reading what my editor said.
Bear in mind – not every page ends up looking like this! But quite a few of them do. Sometimes it can be quite a job figuring out how to type up all the changes I’ve made, as there are so many squiggles and arrows and numbers that all made perfect sense when I was writing them but take a bit of imagination to unravel later! Other pages just have smiley faces on them or things like ‘Ooh lovely!’ or ‘I like this!’ That’s because my editor is really, really nice as well as really clever!
What happens next is a bit like a tennis match. I write a draft and send it over to my editor. She edits it and then bats it back over the net. And so on and so on until we both agree that we think it’s done.
And then….ta dah…hip hip hooray…woohooo…it’s DONE! The book is written!!
This is the point where I usually collapse in an exhausted but happy heap, and then take a few weeks off before the next job…
…starting the next book.
PS This article first appeared as part of the US Girl Scouts' Behind The Scenes project, but I wanted to share it with some fellow authors and other adults as well, so I hope you don't mind me posting it here too!
You might perhaps know that I write books about mermaids. If you do, you might possibly also know that I have a new book out this month. In fact, this week! It's called Emily Windsnap and the Land of the Midnight Sun. It is the fifth book in a series about a completely ordinary, modern girl called Emily Windsnap, who just happens to discover during a school swimming lesson that when she goes in water she becomes a mermaid.
People often ask me where I get the inspiration for these books. Well, this month, I would simply like to share something with you which I believe answers that question better than I could ever do with words.
It's something that I experienced a couple of weeks ago and was one of the most magical evenings of my life. I made a video of it, which I've been showing to as many people as possible because I just want to share this beautiful moment. So apologies if you've seen it before. Actually, scratch that, I make no apologies for giving you the chance to watch it twice!
So, get yourself a cuppa, or a bar of chocolate - or both. Settle down in your chair, get comfy, click the link below and treat yourself to a magical four minutes.
Huge Pod of Beautiful Dolphins in St Ives Bay
Love,
Liz x
Find out more about Liz (& this month's Emily Windsnap Friendship Festival!) on her Website
Follow Liz on Twitter
Join Liz's Facebook page
It wasn’t love at first sight. Noooo. Not by a long way.
My first experience of Twitter was actually on Facebook. I noticed that various friends had started writing very strange status updates. They would say, for example, something about how well Chapter Six was going that day, or how they were struggling with a character or a scene. And then for some inexplicable reason, the status update would have #amwriting at the end of it. I would wonder a) why they kept on telling us they were writing; b) why they needed to do so anyway, when it was obvious from the previous sentence; and c) why these people – and I’m talking about folk of the likes of Mary Hoffman in terms of their spelling calibre – kept on writing ‘am’ and ‘writing’ as one word.
Time passed, and about a year ago, my publicist at Orion suggested I go on Twitter. I had massive resistance to this – not just because of the hashtags and the joined up words thing, although that was part of it. With everything I was already doing online, it just felt like a step too far for me at that time. Eventually, she wore me down and I agreed to give it a go.
At first, the whole thing was utterly bewildering. How on earth was I expected to get people to follow me? And what did it mean if I followed them? How was I meant to keep track of anything when it all moved so fast? How did I get to be part of anyone’s conversations? And most of all, what on earth were they all talking about anyway?
I spent a few weeks gradually going through the lists of people who followed writer friends and choosing the ones who I thought sounded interesting. I’d follow twenty at a time, and, bit by bit, some of them followed me back. Slowly slowly, I built up a list of followers and followees. Even more slowly, I began to understand (a bit of) what was going on. I learned what those hashtags were all about. I understood how they bring people together; I even learned how to use them to tell a joke.
But it was still, for the most part, a bewildering place to spend time, and I still hadn’t fully forgiven my publicist for making me be there. How was this place ever going to do anything useful for me if the only people who ever saw anything I wrote were those who happened to look at their twitter feed within five minutes of me posting anything? How could I ever promote any of my books when I knew that I cringed inside every time I read other people’s tweets that were clearly trying to market their books? And how was I ever to feel good about my own books ever again when I was bombarded on an hourly (at least) basis with tweets from others announcing their latest five-star review, their latest book award nomination and their latest twelve-city book tour?
I began to think about how to tell Twitter (and my publicist) that I wanted us to break up. It wasn’t Twitter; it was me. It just wasn’t right for me.
And then something wondrous happened. I read an article that was doing the rounds. The article, on the aptly named ‘Red Pen of Doom’ blog, stated that Twitter did not help to sell books.
You can read the article here, if you want to…
The Twitter, it is NOT for selling books
I certainly didn’t agree with every word of it, but when I read it, something amazing happened. I felt liberated; I felt freed of this need to try to attract thousands of followers and direct them all to Amazon (or, even better, to their local bookshop) to buy my books. BECAUSE THEY WERE NEVER GOING TO, ANYWAY!
Yes, of course, you could see this as depressing,
I'm suffering from location envy, I don't mind admitting to it. Yesterday, Liz Kessler wrote fulsomely about the delights of living in Cornwall, in the beautiful town of St Ives, home to generations of artists and writers, and the inspiration she gains from that living in such a place and living by the sea. Her lovely blog was littered with wonderful photographs of the sea, beaches and harbours, finishing with one of Liz surfing. Go, Liz!
Now, I live in Leamington Spa, in Warwickshire. An attractive town, but about as far away from the sea as you can get. I was about to say, not particularly inspiring, but then I realised that I have used bits of the town, the cafes, shops, the streets, the parks, river, houses, etc. etc. in my books. My latest, This Is Not Forgiveness, is set in a town very like it, not exactly the same, of course, I would find that too restricting, but not dissimilar. It's an unexceptional town, where ordinary people live, so if you are writing a book about ordinary people, I guess it helps to live and write about somewhere that is easily recognisable, ubiquitous even. That's what I tell myself, anyway.
The other reason that I'm suffering from location envy is that I've just had an e mail from a friend who has upped sticks to go and live in Italy. Yesterday, while I was shivering in spitting rain and record lows for Easter, he was wandering round Assisi.
Going to see the Giottos, sitting outside cafes drinking expresso, lunching for €15 and he could do this any time he liked. And if not Assisi, then there are plenty of other wonderful hill towns full of fabulous art. Now, I'm thinking, if I lived there, in that climate, what could I not achieve? Or would spend so much time just looking, just being, that I wouldn't have time to do any writing? I don't know, but sometimes I think it would be fun to find out.
Three years ago, I moved to a beautiful town by the sea. Now I’m here, I can’t imagine ever living in a place where I can’t look at,walk alongside or play in the sea every day.
 |
| What I need a bit of every day |
Part of my obsession with the ocean is that I love surfing (orattempting to surf), swimming and messing around in boats. Ialso write books about mermaids so it’s handy for writing inspiration. But it’s only recently that I’ve realised that, actually, itall goes a lot deeper than that.
With its waves and its swells and its tides, the sea beats a rhythm that I see reflected everywhere. And in doing so, it makes me realise that the crazy roller coaster swirls of life are not crazy swirls at all. They are, in fact, the patterns that lie at the heart of everything.
I am particularly fascinated by tides, by what they do, by their regularity, their predictability, their patterns. Without getting too technical, here is a tiny mini lesson in tides...
Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels, caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the moon and the sun, and the rotation of the earth. We have two high tides and two low tides each day. The reason for this is to do with the earth moving round the sun and the moon moving round the earth. High tides and low tides relate to the time it takes for these rotations to take place, and the journey from high to low and back again takes approximately twelve hours and twenty five minutes.
OK, lesson over; let's cut back to the seaside town. Tides make a huge difference to what goes on here. For example, on a low tide, I can take the dog for a beautiful long beach walk. On a high tide, she will scamper onto the tiny scrap of sand that is visible and whimper with fear as the waves brush her legs. (So much for her pirate dog status!)
 |
| Poppy the Pirate Dog enjoying low tide walkies |
On a low tide, the harbour sits quietly, full of stranded boats. On a high tide, the fishermen can go out and make a living.
23 Comments on Writing On The Tides, last added: 4/10/2012
.jpg?picon=1806)
By: Celia Rees,
on 1/27/2012
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Linda Newbery, Liz Kessler, Celia Rees, Nicola Morgan, The Vanished, Every Step You Take, Blood Sinister, This Is Not Forgiveness, Point Horror Unleashed, ABBA Review, Add a tag
 At the risk of 'bugging the life out of people' (see Nicola Morgan's recent ABBA Post of the 24th below), I've got a new book coming out next week. February 2nd, in fact, and I'm going to mention it because having a book published is one of those things that doesn't happen all that often to me, although with so many books published it is obviously happening all the time to other people, who then bleet and tweet about it, to Nicola's annoyance. I suppose that's part of the problem. In her perceptive way has put her finger one of the profound contradictions of social networking, and publishing for that matter. To an individual author, a book being published is A Very Big Thing; to everyone else, it's another 'so what?'. Cursory glance only before we go on to our own tweet, Facebook page entry, blog or planning our Virtual Launch. At the risk of bugging, I anticipate publication of This Is Not Forgiveness with the usual mix of feelings: pride and a sense of wonder that my name is on the cover, but also complex feelings of nostalgia and loss. When I turn the pages, it is like looking through a strange kind of diary. I remember where I was when I thought that, wrote that, added that detail. It happens over a summer and I wrote it over a summer, so the weather, the descriptions, are like snapshots of particular places at a particular time. And there is something perfect about a book that is about to be published, before it goes out into the world to be the object of scrutiny and criticism, before it has a chance to fail. I have another reason for nostalgia. This Is Not Forgiveness is a topical thriller set in the present and this is seen as a bit of a departure for me. I'm now known mostly for writing historical fiction. If not those books, then the old Point Horror Unleashed titles - Blood Sinister and The Vanished. But my first book was a contemporary thriller for teenagers. Every Step You Take. It was published in 1993. So long ago, that when I went to get the rights back from the publisher, they claimed never to have heard of it. That, too, was a contemporary thriller, so in a way, I've come full circle, returning to my roots. That book was published into a different world. I'm typing this blog on a laptop, it is going straight by WiFi onto the 'net. I'm uploading pictures to go with it. I typed Every Step on an electric typewriter. Laptop, WiFi, 'net, upload? Terms not coined yet. I sent it off as a paper manuscript by Special Delivery, posted at the local Post Office (now a cake shop) not by attachment as I would do now.
 The Internet was in its infancy, so no e mails. Publishers sent you letters. All you had to do was open the envelope, read and file. Everyone sent you letters, so it was easy to keep track of things. No matter how hard I try to be organised, finding things in e mails is like sifting though spaghetti. As for publicity, it didn't take up any time at all because there wasn't any. My first school visit came randomly from a librarian wh
When I was about eight, I decided I was going to be a poet when I grew up. This decision was justified with some early publishing success. At age nine, my poem, Jinx’s Shop, was printed in the local newspaper. A fact I am still so proud of that I carry the battered paper around with me whenever I do school talks – even if I do have to explain that yes, human beings had already inhabited the planet as long ago as 1976.
 | | My early publishing success, and creative peak for about 25 years |
In my teenage years, after I’d got bored of getting caught smoking and skiving lessons, I fell in love with poetry again. I immersed myself in ee cummings, John Clare, Louis Macneice and many, many others, believing the poets were the only ones who really understood the truth, and told it. I still wrote it, too. The tortured, unrequited, angst-filled poetry that only a 17-year-old can write. And then I read something in the newspaper that changed everything. Apparently, poets were twenty times more likely to go mad than anyone else. Suddenly, I wasn’t quite so sure of my long-term career plans. I didn’t really like the idea of throwing myself into something that promised me a lifetime of mental instability. So I became a teacher instead. And then a journalist, and then a combination of the two. The poet quietly sloped away without making a fuss. But whatever I did, the writer was always there in the background. Finally, about ten years ago, I left everything else behind and put myself on the line. I was a writer, and damn it, I was going to make a living being one. But that statistic never went away. Even though I wasn’t writing poetry, I was writing – and surely all writing is a form of poetry anyway? Perhaps I wasn’t twenty times more likely to suffer mental illness than everyone else if I was writing full pages at a time rather than rhyming couplets. But I was pretty sure the odds were still fairly strong. And sure enough, over ten years of writing, my mental health has felt a bit ropey at times. Nothing too awful – although there have been some bad times. But I am definitely prone to high levels of anxiety, insecurity, even panic attacks, and I worry about everything. And I don’t think I’m alone in this. A writer buddy and I have this joke about our mental state. We call it Writer’s Brain Tumour. OK, so maybe that doesn’t sound such a great joke. But the idea is that whilst ‘normal’ folk will get a little twinge of a headache and pop a couple of paracetamol and get on with their day without thinking about it, we are instantly consumed with thoughts of bleeds inside our brain. A tiny itch to most people means they’ve brushed a nettle. To us, it can only mean the most dramatic of tropical diseases. Even if we’ve never been anywhere tropical. It is impossible for us to have a minor ailment without escalating it in our minds to catastrophic levels. But it’s not our fault. Making huge leaps of imagination, upping the stakes, thinking of the most unlikely and unusual scenario - this is our day job! This is how our minds need to work in order to do our jobs properly. If we sat down and wrote about a girl who accidentally walked into some nettles and got a rash, no one would be interested. But give her a tropical disease and a mystery person who gave her the disease, and an exciting adventure that she has to g
By: Linda Strachan,
on 8/13/2011
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Celia Rees, Linda Strachan, Yurt, Nicola Morgan, Gillian Philip, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Hamish Mchaggis, Cathy MacPhail, Spiegeltent, Liz Kessler, Add a tag
Where can you find a Yurt and a Spiegeltent, comedy, politics, cuddly creatures, crime and all kinds of great writing? Well, if you are in Edinburgh in the next two weeks or so there is one place you should not miss. By the time you read this the 28th Edinburgh International Book Festival will have kicked off. Billed as the ' largest and most dynamic festival of its kind in the world'. Now that is a huge claim to fame but for those of us who live in the vicinity - and the some 220,000 visitors it attracts- it is easy to see why. Edinburgh at festival time is a completely different place than it is during rest of the year. It feels looks and even smells different! Playing host to the The Book festival, the International Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe, the Jazz Festival and several other festivals all at the same time, the city is converted into one huge venue, where even the streets become the stage and performers attract audiences in the most unlikely places. In all this exciting cultural mayhem the Book festival is an oasis of calm. You enter Charlotte Square (which for the rest of the year is a leafy private garden) and immediately the bustle of the city is converted into an excited hush, a tranquil setting resounding with gentle roars when the audience in one of the tents begins to applaud.  Of course the Edinburgh weather can affect the Book festival as much as anywhere else and there have been a few years when the rain left delightful little ponds around the square- delightful for the little yellow plastic ducks that suddenly appeared! Their equally sudden disappearance gave rise to discussions about the possibility of a plastic crocodile..... ? But each year they have added more solid walkways, then covered walkways to and from the event tents and the bookshop tents and finally even to the author's green room - the yurt. There was one particular year when there was much comedy to be had watching the staff wielding large umbrellas to shelter celebrity authors in the dash across what seemed to be the only uncovered walkway- the first 2 metres as they stepped out of the yurt on their way to their events. Thankfully that was sorted the following year. But when the sun shines the grassy centre of the book fe
 I'd never been in the ocean. I'd never even had a bath. Hey, I'm not dirty or anything-I do take a shower every night. But there isn't enough room for a bathtub on the boat, so never in my life had I been totally immersed in water. Until the first Wednesday afternoon of seventh grade.
Overview: Emily Windsnap has a secret. She discovers it by accident, in seventh grade swim class - her first time ever immersed in water. Her legs feel like they've fused together as soon as she hits the pool, then feel normal when she hauls herself out, and it totally freaks her out. Later that night, she jumps off the pier near her houseboat to see if it happens again. And it does: she sees her legs morph into a sleek purple-and-green tail, then morph back into legs when she's out of the water. After she gets used to the idea, she's thrilled, and starts taking secret swims in the ocean to test out her newly discovered fishy self. For a while, she's the only one who knows her secret. But then she meets a new mermaid friend, Shona, who shows her a whole other world beneath the sea.
Emily begins to wonder: is this why her mother never let her in the water, even though they live on a boat? Does she know what I am? And then the lighthouse keeper, Mr. Beeston, starts acting strangely towards her, and Emily starts getting suspicious. Why is he always around? And how come her mom seems to forget things Emily had just told her, after Mr. Beeston's regular coffee-and-doughnut visits? With help from Shona, Emily starts piecing it all together, and what they finds out changes Emily's life forever.
For Teachers and Librarians: The Tail of Emily Windsnap is an engaging and exciting story that is a perfect book around which to build a reading unit on the fantasy genre. It could also fit well into a mystery unit, as Emily works to uncover just who she is, and why Mr. Beeston is around so much, and what has happened to her mother, and why her mother seems not to recall her father (she wants to, but can't, and doesn't know why). You can also incorporate lifestyles - Emily and her mom live on a boat. Mr. Beeston lives in a lighthouse. Others live in conventional houses. What type of home do mermaids live in? A discussion on family groups and their similarities and differences could come into play as well: Emily and her mom are a family. Some kids live with two parents, some live with grandparents, or guardians, or aunts and uncles, etc. It is also a great story to use within a friendship unit - how do we meet friends? What kinds of things do friends do with or for each other? How do friends make us feel? And of course, you could use this book as a fun supplement to an ocean unit, comparing and contrasting real ocean dwellers with fantasy ones, for example. The possibilities are endless. Which will you choose for your students?
For Parents, Grandparents and Caregivers The Tail of Emily Windsnap is a fun, yet meaningful book with a great focus on family - in various forms. It shows a positive friend relationship, a good way to contend with kids who aren't very nice (with a bit of fun, feel-good justice thrown in for good measure), and some great examples of problem-solving and working together toward a common goal. And besides all that good stuff, it is a fantastic story that your kids will just love. (And so will you.)
For the Kids: Have you ever dreamed that you would discover some magical side of you that you never knew existed? Well, that's just what happens to a seventh grade girl in The Tail of Emily Windsnap: Emily has never been immersed in water, and she wonders why (since she and her mom live on a boat near the ocean). So one day, she decides to find out, and persuades her mom to let her take swimming for her seventh grade gym class. On the first day of class, Emily's legs fuse together the instant she hits the water. OMG! She's a mermaid! She manages to hide it from her classmates, then goes on secret swimming adventures when no one else is looking. It is on one of these trips that she meets another mermaid, Shona, who introduces her to the mermaid world, and an age-old mystery that goes on there. Could there be a connection between Emily's questions, and the mysterious goings-on down below? There's only one way for you to find out, and that's to find this book and get reading.
For Everyone Else: The Tail of Emily Windsnap is a great story for kids. It's also a fun bit of escapism for adults, along with a couple of side trips down memory lane (dealing with "mean girls" at school, wondering who you are, wishing you had some secret magical "thing" to discover about yourself...oh, that last one may just be me...) Bottom line: magical book, magical story, you'll love it!
Wrapping Up: The Tail of Emily Windsnap pulls the inquisitive mind in right from the cover art, and the story keeps that mind firmly entrenched in the fantasy: willingly suspending its disbelief, and having a grand time in the process. Read the book. Your mind will thank you.
Title: The Tail of Emily Windsnap Author: Liz Kessler Cover Art: Sarah Gibb Pages: 224 Reading Level: 8-12 years, Grades 3-7 Publisher and Date: Candlewick Press, 2006 Edition: First US Paperback Edition, 2006 Language: English Published In: United States Price: $5.99 ISBN-10: 076328115 ISBN-13: 978-0763628116
 Englishwoman Liz Kessler has always wanted to write. Not only that, but she was convinced from a very early age that she would become a poet. She was nine years old when her poem, "Jinx's Shop," was published in the Manchester Evening News, in 1976. Yet, fate had different writing goals in mind for Ms Kessler: by the time she'd reached her 30's, she had decided to write books - switching her job to part-time in order to have more time to write.
She studied English at Lougborough University, then did her teaching qualification at Keele University, then received her Masters degree in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Following university, Ms Kessler lived on a narrowboat on a canal for about 10 years, then moved to a house in Manchester for two years, then rented that house out for another year while she traveled around Europe in a campervan. (You can read about her traveling adventures on her blog: Liz Kessler's Blog.) Her newest adventure is to sell that Manchester house and move, possibly, to Cornwall.
She has been a teacher of English, and of Media Studies, and has run Creative Writing courses. She has been a journalist in local and regional newspapers in Manchester and York, in England. And of course, she writes novels for kids. Her Emily Windsnap series - about a seventh-grade girl who discovers she is a mermaid - now numbers four titles, and she has written two books in the Philippa Fisher series - about an 11-year-old girl and her fairy godsister.
Born in 1966, Liz Kessler grew up in Southport, England, the youngest of three siblings. She has a Dalmatian named Poppy, and enjoys sailing, playing guitar, surfing, and practicing one of her favorite hobbies: poi. (You can catch a glimpse of Ms Kessler and her poi skills here.)
By: Lucy Coats,
on 4/7/2009
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Liz Kessler, Wizard of Oz, Roald Dahl, Emil and the Detectives, Lucy Coats, Julia Donaldson, BBC Radio 4, Mark Damazer, Joan Aiken, Barney Harwood, Go4It, Add a tag
Next month marks the demise of Go4It, BBC Radio 4's specialist children's book review programme. Barney Harwood, the presenter, does a brilliant job, there are some great stories being read (currently Liz Kessler's The Tail of Emily Windsnap and Julia Donaldson's The Giants and the Joneses feature), some newsworthy topics being discussed (the Arctic and global warming). So why is it being axed? We are told that the audience is made up of the over-50's, and that therefore the 'target market' is not being reached. There are simply not enough listeners 'of the right sort'. If it doesn't work, and, for the present, leaving aside the fact that a) there are now many mothers who, having had babies in their 40's, are now well into their half-century and b) that the people who actually buy children's books for the 'target market' are generally adults, surely the BBC should be thinking about how to make it work. Books are an important part of the government's literacy strategy, and as a publicly funded body, the BBC should therefore be helping to promote books and providing their licence payers and their future licence payers with information on the subject. But there is a problem. The weekly audience of 4-14 year olds on BBC Radio 7 is only 25,000--a small minority in the grand audio scheme of things. Children's radio programming will continue there--in the CBeebies 5-7am slot, which could be seen as a boon for early risers or, more negatively a graveyard, and books will continue to be featured on Big Toe. Radio 4 will feature Joan Aiken's Black Hearts in Battersea, Roald Dahl's Matilda, Erich Kästner's Emil and the Detectives and The Wizard of Oz at Christmas . But is it enough? Are the BBC thinking about what children really want, and more importantly how to provide it in a form they want?
For someone such as myself, brought up on a diet of Listen with Mother, listening to the radio is easy and natural. But today's children have so much going on that to sit down for a whole half hour and listen to a programme is, quite simply, an alien concept. A snatch of music here, five minutes on an i-pod there, gaming, downloads--the technology today's children are familiar with is all about fast and furious action. If books on the radio are ever going to work, they must be presented as cool and relevant. In the case of the Radio 4 choices, the books mentioned above are all wonderful classics. But why not introduce younger listeners to some modern classics in the making--by living authors who could be interviewed, could blog, could podcast--all things which kids can understand. Tapping into the 'celebrity culture' will be abhorrent to some readers here--and I'm not too keen on it myself--but if presenting books in this way hooks in more readers then why not? If the BBC wants books to work for those under 16, they must create a buzz about them--find different ways to use the technology which is out there. Don't tell me that there aren't the readers who are hungry for the next big reads, let alone the next good reads--Harry Potter and the current Twilight craze prove that there are. The radio is already linked to the computer--we just need some creative thinking to convince young listeners that books are right up there with the latest pop download. Answers on a postcard to Mark Damazer at the BBC, please.
Ten-year-old Sarah has recently finished reading The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler and here is her review:
It’s all about a human girl who finds out she is a mermaid. Her dad is in prison and Mr. Beeston works for Neptune. All mermaids that work for Neptune can wipe memories away and the sirens can wipe out memories too.
Mr. Beeston is wiping Emily’s mom’s memory out. Her mom gets it back at the end. 
Emily’s dad is in a cell, where he cannot break out, and then Emily gets kidnapped too and ends up in a cell too. Emily gets Neptune to let her dad, mom, Mille, Shona and herself out. Shona was asked if she wanted to go on a faraway island. She said no because she has a family of her own. I think that is why she didn’t go.
Emily, her dad and her mom went to the island and lived happily ever after. I think.
What I like about this book: Emily doesn’t know she’s a mermaid and it surprised me that she is.
How good is this book: So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so Great!!!!!!!! It is a great book more than great.
My favorite part of the book: Is when she finds her dad and they live together.
The End 
       
Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep
Author: Liz Kessler
Illustrator: Sarah Gibb
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Emily Windsnap is just like any ordinary teen-aged girl with all the problems that girls that age have. She’s just a bit more unusual than most girls. Emily is half mermaid. In this charming sequel to The Tail of Emily Windsnap (Candlewick, 2004) she is ecstatic that her parents are back together after years apart, they’re moving to the Bermuda Triangle to Allpoints Island a safe haven where merfolk and humans coexist in peace, her best friend Shona the mermaid is moving there as well, and she is leaving behind her school bully Mandy Rushton. Life should be wonderful indeed and it seems that way at first. Of course, that’s before she and Shona accidentally awaken the Kracken and plunge Allpoints Island into incredible danger.
Like most of us, Emily has a hard time owning up to what she did and taking responsibility for it. Her parents are fighting more and more and she doesn’t seem to fit in with the other mermaids. Worst of all, she runs right smack into her old nemesis Mandy.
Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep is an interesting story and Emily herself is quite the heroine. It's not every girl that can take on both Neptune and the Kracken! She battles the same issues most girls these days do and then some. She’s very plucky, curious and wants to do the right thing. She’s even willing to fight for what she thinks is right. She’s also human enough to be scared, to not want to face up to her own actions, to leave things till the last possible minute. I think there’s a part in all of us that will identify with her. What makes her unique and even more interesting is the fact that she just happens to have a tail.
Another thing that I love about Emily is that she’s a mixture - half human, half mermaid. Emily’s story shows her wanting to be the best of both and fit in with the humans and the mermaids. Her parents trying to adjust themselves to each other’s world and feeling like they don’t fit in strikes a very real note and ties in nicely. I think that girls will identify and love Emily Windsnap. Highly recommended.
About the Author:
Liz Kessler lives on a canal boat in rural Cheshire, England. She knew that her first book, The Tail of Emily Windsnap, wasn’t the end of the Emily’s story. She got the idea for the kraken from the name of an amusement park ride, then went on a snorkeling trip to Bermuda to fill in more details. Emily Windsnap and the Monster from the Deep will be published in 15 countries.
|
.JPG)
23 Comments on Writing On The Tides, last added: 4/10/2012
Hurray! For North of Nowhere! Have checked, tis in my local bookshop. Nipping to a bookshop is definitely 'almost work', isn't it??
I've found than making a loaf of bread is also quite good for wholesome time-wasting (not with a bread maker, but by hand). Yes, it's not writing, but it's good thinking time while you knead...honest.
Congratulations! And thanks for all the extremely useful ideas. Funnily enough, Elen, I bought a bag of bread flour last week, after someone in my writing class was waxing lyrical about what a marvellous thing bread-making is. And Liz, I do think an apple's better than most other fruit for procrastinating - it takes such a long time to eat.
Here's a good one to kill most of a day. Ensure that you need to do a wash while your washing machine door handle is broken so that, in order to access the drum, you need to unplug the machine, get out a screwdriver, remove the top, faff around inside trying to flip the handle switch, slice your thumb off, ferret about in the medicine cupboard for antiseptic cream (anything dated post 1992 is good), bind yourself up like Tutankhamun, put the washing in the drum and, in order to SHUT the door again, THEN DO THE WHOLE THING IN REVERSE. Hours, I tell you. HOURS.
A few other ideas:
1. Social media
2. Read the newspaper. Gone are the days when you had to go out and buy a paper, and it only had today's articles - now there are dozens of them online, all with archives
3. Okay, so most men don't pluck our eyebrows - but after a certain age, we can pluck our earlobes
4. Find a funny and insightful blogpost featuring a list, and think of your own items to add to it
Thanks for that, your post was my 'put off writing for this morning' activity - great fun!
Congratulations, Liz! And thanks so much for the deliciously funny post. I thought I was the only one who had discovered Rightmove as a way to procrastinate. Wandering through a dictionary of etymology in search of fun words is another good one (although that one really might be only me).
Facebook. Suduku. Emails. Twitter. Washing up breakfast. Tax return. Reading interesting books. Post Office. Cleaning out guinea pigs.
ARGH.
This one kills a fair bit of time for me:
1. Fill a glass with water.
2. Put glass down on way back to desk because you have noticed something distracting that needs reading/picking up/throwing away
3. Reach your desk and, when poised to start actual work, realise you are thirsty and don't have that glass of water you just went to fetch.
4. Spend twenty minutes searching the house for the missing glass of water (you could always get another one, but where could that lead??)
Every day this happens. Every day...
Thanks for the lovely comments. I love all the extra ideas. I'll certainly add them to my list. Charlotte - I can so relate to this. Maddening at the time, but then it's such a wonderful feeling when you eventually find the glass of water/glasses case/cup of (now cold) tea etc etc in some random place!
Keep 'em coming!
Here's another: buy a self-help book on procrastination. Read book, make highlights, take notes...
I actually did this one last year.
Greetings! Very helpful advice in this particular post! It's the little changes that make the greatest changes. Many thanks for sharing!
Here is my weblog ; binary options guide
Loved the last blog on procrastinating, and enjoyed this. Looking forward to ten suggestions to procrastinate 'til tea time.
Liz, I think we may have been separated at birth...
This is hilarious. Thank you!
Oh Liz, I've been there and done ALL of those, plus a good few extras.
Cornwall sometime? You, me,coffee etc? When the weather's more clement, though.
Уважаемые господа!Хотите купить одежду не выходя из дому? Тогда читайте новость - каталог одежды лето 2012 интернет магазин одежды низкие цены косметика бижутерия интернет магазин одежды из кореи молодежная одежда 2012 купить футболку street workout ... Удачи Всем!
-====-
Discount 10% - differemce between kamagra and viagra - kamagra soft tablets :.kamagra viagra .: Discount 10 % == ajanta pharma kamagra - cialis and kamagra together
Уважаемые господа!У меня есть хорошая новость Тогда читайте новость - серебряная бижутерия бижутерия цепь джинсы с завышенной талией купить интернет распродажа нижнего белья турецкая одежда интернет магазин обувь для самых маленьких купить ... Всем пока рад был сообщить...
-====-
Discount 10% - Cheap Kamagra Buy pharmacy online now - kamagra nervousness :.Buy Kamagra Viagra India .: Discount 10 % == is Kamagra safe - cialis and Kamagra taken together
Как дела?У меня есть новость магазину он-лайн Тогда читайте новость - одежда турция интернет магазин розница платья для девочек до года сарафаны лето 2012 интернет магазин игрушек и одежды натуральные камни для бижутерии детская одежда интернет магазин новосибирск ... Удачи Всем!
-====-
Discount 10% - Kamagra drug stores - kamagra leverans stockholm :.Buy Kamagra from India .: Discount 10 % == Kamagra Viagra UK - Ordering Kamagra Online Buy
Уважаемые господа!Хотите заказать одежду на выгодных условиях? Тогда читайте новость - коллекция вечерних платьев купить бижутерию оптом и интернет магазин детской одежды села шорты а также польская одежда интернет магазин мужские штаны купить ... Всем пока рад был сообщить...
::::::::::::
generic kamagra review - kamagra tablets cheapest or kamagra same as viagra - working of kamagra jelly !!!!
Уважаемые господа!Оформить заказ выгодный для Вас! Тогда читайте новость - купить костюм мужской одежда оптом от производителя украина купить платье с принтом дженифер одежда каталог купить вечернюю сумку зимние сапоги распродажа купить ... Удачи Всем!
-====-
Discount 10% - liquid herbal kamagra - viagra kamagra :.kamagra by ajanta pharma .: Discount 10 % == sildenafil kamagra - kamagra pills how loing to effects
Привет Всем!У меня есть новость магазину он-лайн Тогда читайте новость - купить школьные ранцы рюкзаки пижама женская и платья оксаны марченко сумки недорого а также распродажа детской обуви брюки женские ... Хороших Вам покупок!
::::::::::::
cialis and kamagra together - buy kamagra chewable tablets or kamagra pills - generic kamagra review !!!!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Доброго времени суток!Оформить заказ выгодный для Вас! Тогда читайте новость - шорты с завышенной талией купить длинные сарафаны и купить подставку для бижутерии купить пальто женское а также интернет магазин французской одежды женские футболки ... Хороших Вам покупок!
::::::::::::
sildenafil kamagra - viagra kamagra cialis or ajanta pharma kamagra st purchase - kamagra viagra !!!!
Доброго времени суток!Хотите купить одежду не выходя из дому? Тогда читайте новость - где купить штаны босоножки и осенняя одежда интернет магазин модная одежда а также где купить дешевую обувь куртки кожаные мужские ... Удачи Всем!
::::::::::::
ajanta pharma kamagra - kamagra tablet picture or no prescription kamagra overnight - no prescription kamagra oral jelly usa !!!!
Уважаемые господа!Хотите купить одежду не выходя из дому? Тогда читайте новость - интернет магазин кременчуг одежда магазины одежды и купить куртку адидас рубашка а также одежда коламбия интернет магазин интернет магазин верхней детской одежды ... Хороших Вам покупок!
::::::::::::
kamagra viagra - what do kamagra tablets look like or kamagra without prescription - what are kamagra tablets !!!!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.