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Drake is surprised to find three horsemen of the apocalypse playing snakes and ladders in his garden shed. He's even more surprised when they insist that he is one of them. They're missing a Horseman, having gone through several Deaths and they think that Drake is the boy for the job. At first he's reluctant to usher in Armageddon but does being in charge of Armageddon have to spell the end of the world?
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The 13th Horseman - a tall tales & short stories review
I'll readily put my hands up and say I'm a fan of Barry Hutchison's books, and I'm happy to say
The 13th Horseman does not disappoint. It's fun, funny, fantastical yet full of everyday normality we can all relate to. It's a veritable cornucopia of crazy ideas and zany moments and so charmingly and eccentrically British! And all topped off with an impending Armageddon! What's not to like?
I don't get sent enough books to read where I think, 'Oh, boy, I wish I'd had this to read when I was a kid.' Because I think that's what Barry Hutchison achieves so brilliantly - really entertaining, page-turning books for kids (or grown-up kids like me). They're accessible for all kinds of readers, they feel fresh, modern and witty, and for me that's the key, especially in an age of competing with TV, the internet and computer games. Barry does explore some dark ideas but let's face it many kids have an interest or fascination with these subjects, and Barry does it so well and in such a light-hearted and surreal way, that you're scared and laughing in equal measure.
I don't do spoilers because it takes all the fun out of reading the book. Each reader should discover things about the story for themselves, but I will say that the three Horsemen of the Apocalypse are hilarious.
Would I recommend this book? Most definitely!
TracyAnd I'd also say check out Barry's other books from his
Invisible Fiends horror series for 9+ readers. I've read and reviewed two of the books from the series -
Mr MumblesRaggy MaggieYou can also read a 2009 tall tales & short stories interview with Barry Hutchison
here And in another post, Barry talks about
Writing Horror for Kids~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A few days ago, Keren David wrote an excellent ABBA post querying why women writers sometimes choose to use their initials rather than full names. She felt that women need to stand up and be counted. It's a subject I've considered for a while without coming to a conclusion. My thoughts on reading her post were too long and complicated to fit in the comments section, so I’m returning to the topic here.
I'll start with a confession: I wanted to be published as E. L. Renner, but my then agent convinced me to use my first name. I'm still uncertain that was the right decision.
Why? Partly because initials are more anonymous. My books are about my characters, not me. I want my stories and characters to stand alone, with as little 'author-as-brand' hype as possible. As a child and teen reader I didn't want to know anything about the author of books I loved except when their next book was coming out. I wanted to experience the magic of transformation into another person, another world, another experience. Author photos were a definite turn-off: I wanted magic performed by some unknown alchemist, not a real person. Terry Prachett has the wisdom to wear a magician’s hat for his publicity stills.
Then there’s the delicate question of the critical glass ceiling. It's a perennial topic in adult fiction and it would be naive to believe that children’s books are exempt. It would also take a large dollop of willful obtuseness not to notice that male authors attract more critical attention per capita than their female counterparts. It's not a conspiracy; critics don't exercise their bias consciously any more than did the editors of the publications who recently voted for Sports Personality of the Year and neglected to put a single woman on the list.
I believe that almost all of us, however pro-female we believe ourselves to be, are so conditioned by the constant bombardment of overt and subtle messages in every aspect of our society about the relative value of the male versus the female that we subconsciously take a story written by a man more seriously than we would the same story written by a woman.
I don't think J.K. Rowling's books would have been as successful had she published them as Joanne. I doubt George Eliot would have garnered such a strong place in the canon if she had written as Mary Ann Evans. If Sylvia Townsend Warner, one of the greatest stylists and most original writers of the twentieth century, had been a man, I am convinced that her books would be much better known today. Arguably, Virginia Woolf made it into the public eye not because she had a room of her own, but because she had a publishing house of her own.
Is it, therefore, a cop-out for a woman to write under her initials, in an attempt, however feeble, to combat the anti-female bias that pervades every aspect of our culture? Possibly. It’s a difficult question and one I’ll continue to ask myself. But I also know I'll use whatever tools I can fashion to give my books and my characters, both male and female, every chance I can.
Because the larger point is that, although gender shouldn't matter in life, it does. And the only way I can see to address this issue as a writer is to attempt to be as genderless as possible – a writing androgyne. I enjoy writing both male and female characters. I don't set out to write about a girl or a boy; I choose the gender which seems to fit the story best. And the reason I write at all is because I want imaginative experience. While it's true that I can’t experience what it’s like to be a boy or man in real life, I can imagine it as a writer, and I have never felt closer to any character than I did when writing Tobias Petch in City of Thieves.
‘Only connect.’ E. M. Forster knew that books teach empathy. Between the pages of a book a reader can become another person. Boys can become girls, and girls boys. Men can see the world, however briefly, through the eyes and emotions of a wom
Mary Ann did it. So did Charlotte, Emily and Anne. But why do some of us?
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| Heathcliff, in the new film of Wuthering Heights |
Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot. The Bronte sisters adopted male pseudonyms too. They lived in an age where women were denied the vote, were barred from most professions, and, until 1870 if married, could not own. So it is not surprising that they disguised their gender when presenting their work to the world, especially when the work contains darkly sexual undertones, as does Wuthering Heights.
But now, we’re past all that, aren’t we? Feminism has fought important battles. We’ve had a woman prime minister (soon to be lionised in a new film), we can do any job. We are often the highest earner in the family, we own property, we speak our minds.
Of course there is a long history of authors, both male and female, using pen names and initials, and it was particularly popular in the 1930s,40s and 50s. D H Laurence was not hiding his gender, and nor was C S Lewis. But the practice waned in the less formal Sixties, and with the rise of feminism in the 1970s, one might expect that it would die out. It did not.
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| JK Rowling giving evidence this week |
The most famous recent example, of course, is JK Rowling. Read some accounts and her publisher ‘insisted’ that she dropped Joanne or the more neutral ‘Jo’ for JK in order to attract boy readers. Other reports suggest that she and her publisher agreed on the strategy, but again for the same reason. Watching her give evidence this week to the Leveson Inquiry, I wondered if there was another explanation. I was struck by her concern, even right at the start of her career, for her privacy and for that of her children. Maybe adopting initials felt like a good way of preserving her own identity, even before her magnificent success.
But the result, I think, has been the growth of a myth that women authors have to ‘do a JK’ to avoid being shunned by boys. I was talking to a YA writer the other day, and she told me that the first ‘boy’s’ book she wrote came with a suggestion from her publisher's marketing department that she adopt initials - even though her first books were written, very successfully, under her own name. She refused.
16 Comments on Tiffany-Mae or TM? by Keren David, last added: 11/28/2011
* Hi Colin and welcome to tall tales & short stories.
Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
I work full time as a Teaching Assistant in a primary school. I laugh at my own jokes when no one else does, I like throwing things in the air and catching them, currently trying to learn to ride a unicycle despite being in my forties. I love cartoons, old horror movies, and anything with Simon Pegg in.
CLASH
Alex: school psycho and under-ground cage-fighting champion.
Kyle: talented artist, smart school-boy and funny man.
When Alex witnesses a brutal murder at the club he can't go back to The Cage, but without fighting, he starts to lose control. He soon sets his sights on Kyle, a boy he thinks can help.
But Kyle has his own problems and he's convinced Alex is one of them.
Boys can play dangerous games when they're scared and this one will haunt everyone involved.
What will it take for each boy to confront the truth?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Colin Mulhern on Clash and writing for teens.
First of all, I haven’t got a clue what teenagers like to read, and I think, for writers, it’s a lost cause trying to work it out. I spent several years trying to write for teens, trying to gauge what would work. I missed the mark every time. That’s probably because the market moves so quickly. If you look at what is popular now and try to write something similar, then by time an editor sees it, she’ll know it’s going out of fashion. The only thing you can do is write the book you really, really, want to write. That’s how
Clash came about – total frustration at getting nowhere for a long time. I decided to write something I wanted to read. I didn’t even plan to send it out because I never thought it would get picked up. Weird, eh?
On the subject of issues and moral boundaries, I try not to consider them unless they come into play as the story progresses. If you set out to write an “issue” book, say on a medical or mental condition, you risk it sounding like an “issue” book. There are issues in
Clash, but I never set out with those things in mind from the start; I started with Kyle and Gareth getting chased by the local psycho. It grew from there. The local psycho became Alex, began to develop, and before I knew it I was writing about him just as much as Kyle. Their individual problems developed with them.
I didn’t worry about taboo subjects, otherwise a lot of
Clash would never have been written. There were a few scenes that were calmed down when it came to editing, but I never really considered holding back at th
In the first post of a new series, DIVERSITY MATTERS,
tall tales & short stories talks to author, Phil Earle.
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* Hi Phil and welcome to tall tales & short stories.
Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
I’m a thirty-six year-old dad of three, who spends the rest of his time (which isn’t much, believe me) reading and writing YA fiction. I work for a children’s publisher too, which means most of my waking hours are spent thinking or talking about kids books. I’m a very lucky bloke.
BEING BILLY
Faces flashed before my eyes.
And for every face there was a time that they had let me down.
Each punch that landed was revenge.
My chance to tell them I hadn't forgotten what they did.
Eight years in a care home makes Billy Finn a professional lifer. And Billy's angry - with the system, the social workers, and the mother that gave him away.
As far as Billy's concerned, he's on his own.
His little brother and sister keep him going, though they can't keep him out of trouble.
But he isn't being difficult on purpose. Billy's just being Billy. He can't be anything else.
Can he?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* What inspired you to write Being Billy?
Billy had been in my head a long time before I started writing it all down. About eleven years in fact. I’d met a lot of children like him whilst working as a carer in local authority homes, kids who were angry and disillusioned with their lives. They were the sort of young people you’d cross the road to avoid, the ones you’d label as trouble at first sight.
Having been lucky enough to work with them however, and seen beyond their abrasive exteriors, I started to understand why they behaved like they did: because they’d been let down time and time again, witnessed more violence and neglect than many of us face in a lifetime.
I desperately wanted to make sense of how they viewed the world, to understand what future they saw for themselves when the rest of society had already written them off.
I suppose as well, I wanted to celebrate them, to show people what resilience and strength of spirit they had, their ability to make sense of the utter chaos they’d experienced.
* Did you do much research for your story? Do you think when dealing with issues
* Hi Tracy and welcome to tall tales & short stories. Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
I am not very tall, but swim very fast. I like cycling, because walking is too slow. I eat porridge every day, even if I’m somewhere hot like Greece. My favourite drink is tea and my favourite activity is laughing. I find it very hard to make myself sit down at the computer to write, and very hard to get up again once I’ve sat there.
The Tribe series
JONNO JOINSThe Tribers get Copper Pie out of a heap of trouble when his catapult catapults something it shouldn’t. They sort out some bother in the alley and save a defenceless creature. They have a lot of fun, a few hairy moments, some disagreements and a run in with the Head. It’s all part of the life of your average Triber.Winner of the 2010 Hull Children’s Book Award.
GOODBYE, COPPER PIENo one can join and no one can leave, that’s what they agreed. So when Copper Pie disappears with the enemy, Tribe itself is threatened. When someone else wants to join that becomes another problem, and a thief in school adds to the trouble.Can Tribe sort it all out?LABRADOODLE ON THE LOOSEIt all goes from bad to worse. They lose Bee’s dog, Doodle, somehow get involved in a kidnap, get to know the local police sarge a bit too well and have a disaster of a birthday party (twice).Can they come out on top after all that?MONKEY BARS AND RUBBER DUCKSNothing could make Keener bunk off school, so why is he slipping out of the school gates at luncht
“Why don’t you write a book that’s a bestseller like Harry Potter?”
This question was asked in all innocence by a 10 year old boy – at least I hope it was all innocence – and it got me thinking about just what it is that makes a book successful. Why do people buy one book rather than another? I’m not about to contemplate that here as I don’t really think I’ll come to any definite conclusions, but the question did lead me to think more about my own writing - what I was trying to do and who I was writing for?
As well as writing I have another (part-time) job that just about pays the bills each month. Ideally, I’d like to give up the other job and try and make a living writing but it’s not easy. Of course, if I wrote a bestseller that wouldn’t be as much of a problem.
Many writers say they only write to please themselves, but I definitely have readers in mind and always have. When I first started writing, I wrote picture book stories that would be of interest to both myself and our three daughters (my readers) then gradually expanded my writing into educational reader books, early readers and other books for young children – again, this was to interest both myself, young readers and a commissioning editor. Visiting schools and libraries I soon found myself talking to older children, and though they were entertained by my presentation of books for younger readers they were keen to read something of mine that was aimed more at their age.
After finding myself this group of keen readers I got to work - still writing to please myself, but now with these new older readers in mind. It wasn’t long before I realised that what I was writing could be of interest to boys… Now this realisation brought on a brief panic attack, after all, I’ve heard that boys don’t read, and writing books for an audience that doesn’t read is probably not good if you’d like to make a living.
My Robo-runners series is currently only available in hardback (paperback in the new year) but I’ve talked about the books to groups of boys and girls and have been delighted, and a little relieved, to find that they appeal to both – in fact there’s been lots of excitement - of course this doesn’t mean the books are going to be bestsellers and it doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to make a living out of it but it does make me feel that I still know what I’m trying to do and who I’m writing for… it might not be much of a career plan but it’s the best I’ve got at the moment.
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Thank you for giving us the chance to discuss this further, Elen - it's a challenging question.
'Because the larger point is that, although gender shouldn't matter in life, it does. And the only way I can see to address this issue as a writer is to attempt to be as genderless as possible – a writing androgyne.'
I'm not at all sure about this. *I* think the way to address it is to challenge it by writing good books openly as a woman rather than being bullied by the status quo into hiding behind an ambiguous name. If a writer genuinely thinks their work will get a better or wider reception if they pretend to be a man (or pretend not to be a woman), isn't that perpetuating the iniquitous situation?
It's a bit like people who claim state education should be improved but send their own kids to private schools - the more rich kids with influential parents who leave the system, the less likely it is to change. The more successful authors who don't come out as women, the harder it is for everyone to say 'look at these successful women authors'. It's the old conflict of personal benefit versus common good. So I'm very glad that your success to date has been under the name 'Elen' and not under initials.
I do see the problem with writing a different type of book and not wanting to lead younger readers to it by being the same person - that's a rather different issue. (Every now and then, I get requests from the Library of Congress to distinguish myself from the 'other' Anne Rooney who has the same birth date and writes very different books. Durrrr.)
An excellent post and a good argument for your choice for your next book. I was keen on initials as a neutral name but think my decision against was because my particular run of sounds felt awkward to say.
Now it's a matter authors do need to think about early on because of the author brand marketing approach. I groan when I see how many series exist under made up and heavily gendered male and female names.
I'm afraid I'm with Stroppy on this. You make a hugely powerful case for why we should fight back against gender stereotyping (towards both boys and girls) in our main characters, in book marketing etc, and I wholeheartedly agree - so why doesn't the same apply to the name that goes on the book cover?
Who gives them that message? We do you say. What message does 'I don't want you to know a woman wrote this' give?
I absolutely see why you'd want a different name to distinguish titles a different audience (though I'd hope covers, blurbs etc would do that job for you), but that's a separate issue, I think.
Its not abut disguising gender but presenting oneself as gender neutral - as some male writers also do. I write for boys and girls and while I have written as 'Nicola' am about to write as' Nick' I do not see I'm betraying anyone by writing as 'N M' . My books are about brave girls and courageous boys and I want both to pick up my books. My stories are all about boys and girls saving each other, often written in part from the girl's point of view. I want to seduce boys as well as girls into reading and if keeping my gender ambiguous makes that easier why wouldn't I? My books say - 'it doesn't matter who you are, you can be a hero' I like to think that the neutrality of my name reinforces that.
Since when do we women have to choose to label ourselves in ways that other women have decided is more appropriate? I find the view that there is only one acceptable way to do that deeply irritating.
Whoops - sorry about the punctuation mistakes!
Funnily enough if you called yourself L N Renner you'd hardly notice the difference.
I'm convinced by the urge to remain anonymous. I've been a journalist all my adult life, so it's natural for me to see my name in print, and if I want to disappear I can use my husband and kids' surname (there's another feminist naming dilemma). I can see why an author might want to use initials to let their work speak for them. But I do think it can be harmful, and I doubt it's as useful a marketing ploy as we think.
Very interesting this. In the adult crime genre many of the best selling (Val McDermid) and critically acclaimed (Kate Atkinson) are women. Men seem to have no trouble picking up boo0ks by women there. The key here is why don't boys read? I think saying that they don't read because it's written by a woman is a cop out. They don't read because they don't read (a whole host of reasons for this - I speak having had a teenage son who simply stopped reading fiction for about eight years, Since the age about 22 he started again)BUT this is not us, the writers, fault. So nothing we do will change this. It's like changing the colour of a price sticker to make an item look cheaper. But it's the economic crisis that's stopping people buying not the colour of the price tag.
Having said all this I LOVE the idea of you using initials to indicate a different type of book. Good for you.
My husband, children's author Greg Leitich Smith, and I often travel and speak together.
It's become expected for people to frequently praise him for simply being a man per se who writes.(Or, for that matter, cooks.)
On a practical level, though, I think relying only on initials requires a particularly marketable last name, one that readers (and for that matter, fellow publishing pros) will be able to recognize.
C.L. Smith would be awfully generic, and C.L. Leitich would be awfully tough to pronounce.
That said, much terrific insight to ponder here. Thank you for a thought-provoking post.
I am going, of course, to disagree with Anne and Susie. If I choose to write under my initials I will do so without feeling in the least hypocritical. I have no desire to 'hide behind an ambiguous name'; merely to take gender out of the equation.
My main point being that I am a person first, a woman second (or tenth, actually, after parent, writer, artist, biker, musician, fencer, spinner of wool, weaver and knitter ...).
To tell me I have to put my full name on the covers of my books as an identifying female tag or I risk somehow letting the sisterhood down seems to me as proscriptive as telling a black or disabled writer that they must identify themselves as black or disabled first, and writer second, so I agree with Nicky on that one.
Anne C: good point about women crime writers.
Anyway, the best thing we can do about gender issues is exactly this: talk about them, express differences of opinion and air the subject. We don't have to agree for it to be a useful exercise.
So thanks for all those thoughts!
Well, some boys read. I've had three sons and they all read - not always novels and rarely my books, but they read and I'm not about to give up on boys as a lost cause just because they are a harder to reach audience.
To my mind it is more important to challenge gender stereotypes that suggest that boys will never read or will only read stories about pooh and/or zombies than to waste time worrying about what gender stereotypes we might possibly reinforce in our name choices. It's trivial: the problem of getting more boys to engage with books is not.
This is a really interesting discussion.
Ellen, I don't think that Anne and Susie said that you were 'letting the sisterhood down', or told you that you have to do anything.
I can't help agreeing with Susie's point - which is simply that your whole argument about why we shouldn't stop girls from being the main characters just to get boys reading then seems to be turned on its head with your argument about not identifying ourselves as female, because this might put boys off too! Not saying you should or shouldn't do anything - just that the argument seems a little contradictory.
But I totally agree with you that we must absolutely use whatever name we want, and for whatever reasons we want. I have struggled for some time about a book that I'd like to get published one day, and for lots of my own reasons (which I'm sure some people would argue with if I made them public!) I would most probably do this under a different name. And I have no responsibility to anyone other than myself and my books if I do this - like you.
I think it's perfectly acceptable for us to balance our ideals with a desire for commercial success, and it's up to each one of us where we draw the line between the two.
Good luck with your next book!
Lizx
It's a fascinating discussion. I publish as Katherine Langrish, and I know boys do read my books. In fact I once did a poll of all my online fanmail, wherever I COULD figure out if the writer was male or female writer's sex (not always obvious) and it worked out about 50/50 for boys and girls writing to me. Personally I think cover illustrations have much more effect on whether boys will pick up a book, than the known sex of the author: but I do have a suspicion that male authors get taken more seriously by adult critics.
Whoops, sorry about the mixed up sentence, but you get my drift.