Lari’s Writing blog

After all my stress (see previous post) about being nominated for two awards on the same day, it all worked out fine.  I didn’t need to summon up an evil twin, I didn’t need to time travel or manage an out of body experience.  However I did win one!  The Big Bottom Hunt won the Heart of Hawick Picture Book Award, which was voted for by Primaries 1, 2 and 3 pupils in lots of schools in and around Hawick.  And the prize, oddly, is a beautiful carving of a heron, which leads wonderfully into my next picture book!

So, that was a good week (win one, lose one seems fair enough – and congratulations to Tommy Donbavand, who won the Hackney Short Novel competition), and now I want to turn my thoughts to writing the next book.  It’s amazing how a pat on the back from real readers can help you overcome a lot of very early mornings and a lot of rattly Borders buses to say – Chapter One, here I come…

I’m having one of those problems that football managers are criticised for moaning about – when they say they have too many players fit, so they don’t know who to play, and the folk in the studio with stripy shirts and unlikely hair say, “that’s the kind of problem everyone would like to have!”

So here’s my problem:

The Big Bottom Hunt has been nominated for the Heart of Hawick Book Award

The Mountain’s Blood has been nominated for the Hackney Short Novel Award.

That’s good, so far, isn’t it?

It’s just that both award ceremonies are on the same day.

So don’t moan, you say.  That’s good.  A bit of an odd coincidence, but good.  Yes?  But I’m attending the Hawick ceremony (sitting on stage in front of all their voters) and the Hackney organisers have asked me to be available for a live phone interview into their award.  And now I’ve just discovered that they both need me at exactly the same time.  Not nearly, or roughly, or almost the same time.  But EXACTLY the same time.

1.15.    Tomorrow.

How likely is that?  I’ve never really felt the need of an evil twin before, but she’d be handy this week.

Don’t worry.  I’ll cope.  With incredibly helpful people in both places, someone answering my mobile backstage, a bit of fancy footwork (and a time machine?) – I’ll be fine.  Probably.

And will I win? Either of them?  Not likely… The Hackney award has Sophie Mackenzie and Alan Gibbons on the short list, for goodness sake.  And the Hawick one has a very eclectic mix of birds, bunnies and bottoms.  But both are voted for by real readers, so whoever wins, I’m sure it will be the right result!

I’ve just opened my new Floris Books catalogue, and the page promoting Storm Singing looks lovely, but it also has a little circle beside the details of my very first book saying “Now available as an eBook”.  I shouldn’t be surprised, because it’s the sort of thing my agent does tell me about, but it did make me step back a bit.  Because I suddenly realised that my books, my characters, are now more technologically advanced than I am.  I’ve never read an e-book.  When I leave the house I still stuff my rucksack full of secondhand collections of Scottish myths and dog-eared novels.  I’m sure the extra weight keeps me fit.  So now I’m trying to imagine Yann the centaur and Sapphire the dragon not on pages of paper but on gently glowing screens.  Are they happy there?  Do they feel a bit out of place?  Or are they, like me, mainly interested in what happens next, not in the details of how and where the story is read?  Anyway – if anyone does get First Aid for Fairies and Other Fabled Beasts on eBook, and wants to let me know what it’s like reading about Greek mythological monsters and Neolithic stone circles on 21^st century technology, then do get in touch!

AAAAARGH! I’m normally a fairly confident person, but for 10 minutes yesterday I felt like a spotty teenager with everyone staring at a ladder in my tights.  Really embarrassed and self conscious and wishing I was invisible.  I was on my way back from a book festival in Hexham and I was sitting on the train beside Philip Ardagh, who had also been talking to local kids about his books.  Philip Ardagh is a very well known, very well respected, very successful writer of very funny children’s books. He is also extremely tall, with an extreme beard.  The train was crowded, and we were sitting beside each other to chat about writery sort of things, which was lovely.  Then he asked if I had any of my books with me so he could have a look at them.  (I didn’t have to ask to see his books.  I see them in Waterstones all the time…) So he got my rucksack down from the luggage rack, and I pulled out the bag of my books that I show to kids, and I sat there on the train with the rucksack between us, my briefcase on my knee, crushed up against the window, while an writer I admire (who is also HUGE and scary) glanced through my books.  And commented on them.  He even read one of my picture book BACKWARDS.  Why would you do that?  I felt like making excuses for them.  I felt like hiding INSIDE the rucksack. I wanted to go for a wander up the train and not WATCH him read them.  AAAARGH!  But he was really nice about them.  About the first line of Rocking Horse War, about the dramatic description of Yann at the start of First Aid, about the pictures in The Mountain’s Blood (yes I know I can’t take credit for those, but when you’re squirming, you take anything you can), and just generally about the concept of Bottoms.  So, that’s alright. Praise from high places (and that’s just where his beard is when he stands up). But goodness me, I’ve never felt so squashed and embarrassed.

I write in a very small room.  A box room with a window, really.  And most of the room is filled with bookshelves.  But the wall to the right of my desk doesn’t have shelves.  It’s just clear white wall.  And while I’ve been writing the last couple of novels, I’ve always put pictures up on the wall to inspire me, to keep my mind focussed on what I’m writing.  Pictures of mountains for Rocking Horse War.  And for Storm Singing – seals, waves, tents, a picture of a selkie drawn by a reader, various other things which I won’t mention in case they give too much away… (but if you look closely at the photo, who knows what clues you might see!)

Storm Singing wall

But I’ve just taken all those pictures down.  It was quite a sad moment.  Bye bye Storm Singing.  And a fairly scary moment too!  What do I do next?  I’ve discovered that it’s pretty much the hardest decision you make as a writer.  What do I write next?  It takes more than a year of my life to write a novel.  So I want to pick the right idea!  So – what’s gone up on my wall now?  A line from a Foo Fighters song – ‘Done, done, onto the next one.’  A beautiful picture of a well drawn by one of my daughters.  A photo of a Mexican buzzard.  A printout of a hero and a horse from a 1000 year old Persian epic.  And a picture of Loki from the film Thor.  What on EARTH am I writing next?  No, don’t try to work it out – because those pictures are to keep at least three different projects on track at the same time.  But soon, very soon, I’ll take them all down, and start building a wall of inspiration for the next year of writing…  Scary.  But very very exciting!

lari and heron

I’ve spent most of my kids’ Easter holidays doing events to promote How to Make a Heron Happy. But it wasn’t all bad – we went to some really fun places, like Pollok Park (see photo of me with stuffed, and therefore not too happy, heron), and Lochwinnoch Nature Reserve (where they have excellent pond-dipping – I found a caddis fly in its little house) and this past weekend, Kelvingrove Museum, where I worked with the RSPB’s fabulous staff and volunteers.

At the end of these events, once I’ve read the book and told some silly animal and bird stories, I always hang around to sign books for anyone who wants to take a book home (after buying it, of course!) On Saturday, I was signing a book for a very chatty 5 year old girl, and I wrote in it, “I hope this book makes you happy” (notice the clever link to the title – I try to come up with new stuff to write in each book…) and when I read that out to her, she grinned and said “THE WHOLE UNIVERSE MAKES ME HAPPY.” Then she trotted off to look round the Kelvingrove, which contains pretty much the whole universe.

But wasn’t that a wonderful thing to say. A fabulous thing to believe. And a brilliant way to look at life.

Yesterday I went to the ballet in Glasgow.  And I spent a lot of time thinking about defeating baddies.  It was Scottish Ballet’s Alice, which was weird and wonderful and daft and complete nonsense (entirely in keeping with the books).  But they added something new – they had the writer on stage, dancing with the characters, being part of the (almost) story.  Sometimes he would come and rescue Alice from the other characters, and I kept thinking, “There’s no point looking surprised and upset, mate, you created them, you can’t complain about how they act!”  But there was also a baddie, the Jabberwock, fabulous in silver and blood.  And it was the WRITER who fought with the baddie and persuaded him to mend his ways.  Which I suppose the writer always does in a story, though he doesn’t usually take personal credit for it.  And I spent most of the second half thinking about whose job it is to defeat the baddie.  Isn’t it the writer’s job to create CHARACTERS who defeat the baddie, rather then doing it him or herself?  But maybe that’s in books, not in dance… and that’s what I love about ballet, that you can enjoy the dance, and think about lots of other things at the same time, because there aren’t any words to miss.  What do you think?  Whose job is it to defeat the baddie?

When does a story become a book? Anyone who has come to my author events and seen one of my manuscripts will know just how MESSY they are, because I tend to write the story all in a rush of enthusiasm and excitement, and then I have to do a lot of work tidying it up. Turning the story, slowly, painstakingly, into a book. But when does the story actually become a book? For me, I think it’s when I’ve stopped being able to fiddle with it.

With Storm Singing, the third Fabled Beast book, that moment has just arrived. Right now I’m printing out the page layouts from the publisher. These aren’t pages of text covering whole sheets of A4 paper, but blocks of text the size of novel pages, with lots of white space round them. And they do look like real pages! Page numbers at the bottom, proper chapter breaks. It looks like a book! And I can’t fiddle with it any more. I can point out spelling mistakes or missing apostrophes (I can get quite passionate about apostrophes) but I can’t suddenly change the outcome of a fight, or introduce an entirely new character, or even decide that a line of dialogue doesn’t work. I can’t fiddle with it, it’s printing out looking like real pages from a real book, and I think it’s nearly ready!

But you can’t read it for another – let me count – nine and a bit weeks. Because it’s still got to go to the printers, then come back and get put on the bookshop or library shelves. But you can look at the cover on Floris’s website. I love the cover! (But don’t read the blurb under it – it gives away a LOT of the plot. Better wait til the story, which is now a book, comes out!)

Now I’m off to hunt down stray apostrophes …

It’s the official launch day for How to Make a Heron Happy! And it’s raining … Which isn’t usually a problem, but I’d been hoping to launch the book, which was inspired by my local park, IN THE PARK. With 50 Primary Ones from my local school, Hermitage Park Primary in Leith.

But to read a book to lots of infants in a park, you need a bit of luck with the weather.  And I kept waking up last night, hearing the wind howling round the house, thinking “Oh no! The books will blow away! The children will blow away!”

But I’m a natural optimist (you have to be, to write books when you’ve no idea whether anyone will ever publish them, or read them!)  So I got up this morning and put on thick jeans, fluffy wellies, lots of layers, and the raincoat I usually use for researching mountains and caves, and I went out.

In the pouring rain and driving wind.

Luckily the school staff have more sense than me, and cancelled the event.  So I ended up in the lovely school library, reading the book (and telling a monkey story) to all the P1s, some bonus nursery kids, as well as photographers, journalists and park rangers.

In my wellies, and my old jeans, and my lots of layers to keep me warm.

So if you do see any pictures of this launch in the Evening News, or on STV local, or anywhere else, that’s why I look such a mess!

But the kids were great, they seemed to enjoy the book, and guess what … I’ve just got home, just typed up this post, and the SUN HAS COME OUT. I bet the park is lovely now….

heron cover

How to make an author happy?  I don’t think there’s ANYTHING quite like seeing a new book (a new book which I’ve written!) for the very first time.  No book ever seems entirely real until I’m holding it, in its proper cover, with the pictures all shiny and bright.  

And I now have my own copy of How to Make a Heron Happy.  And it’s making me very happy!  It’s the shortest book I’ve written, with the simplest story (no minotaurs, no sea monsters, no slightly untrustworthy tall boys) but I LOVE the pictures of the heron (by illustrator Nicola O’Byrne), and I hope that anyone else who loves herons, or their local park, or cares about making animals and birds happy, will enjoy it too. 

Here’s the book (at the top of the post, I hope, I’m still struggling to get photos on the blog, so I hope you can see it!)  I took the photo just after the book arrived in the post, but not before I’d given it a cuddle.  Yes.  I do cuddle my books.  So, there you are: how to make an author happy?  Give them the very first copy of their new book!

(How to Make a Heron Happy comes out next week, and if you want to see me read from the book and tell a few connected stories, then check out my diary page.  And if you want to read some very silly heron jokes on my publisher’s website – here they are (thanks to Chani!) (There are big Bottom Hunt jokes there somewhere too!)