Archive for August 2010
As a new author of a children’s book, I have very little chance of reviewers or those who recommend titles for teachers on their websites, to pick it up. I accept that there are too many books being published, and it’s very difficult to get past the first hurdle of no-one knowing my name. Surely if I am a nonentity, then my work must be of little merit or interest they might think? In our celebrity-obsessed culture, it’s probable that children only want to read a book by a famous author. Are they able to search out a book for themselves on the library shelves? The only way a child will read Leo’s Heroes, is if parents have heard the name somewhere and decide to buy it. Do they take notice of 5-star ratings on Amazon? Someone says that these help – so please get reviewing everyone!
The publisher will be promoting Leo’s Heroes to bookshops, and the book will be featured in their catalogue and distributors’ lists. I am thinking of all the ways in which I can promote the title myself.
1. I’ve created an Author Page on Amazon.
2. I am listed on the National Centre for Language and Literacy website, where teachers can search for an author to visit their school.
3. I shall read an excerpt at the book launch on 26 September and upload a video on You Tube.
4. Val and I will be signing books at The Stables Theatre on two dates in November, when she is exhibiting at the Gallery.
5. I shall contact local schools in September, once the new term has started, and I shall be encouraging children’s independent bookshops to stock the book for these schools.
If you are a teacher, here is the information with ideas for lessons. Remember that five of the chapters can stand alone as short stories.
Leo’s Heroes – an exciting story of a boy’s mysterious travel through time
Cross-curricular themes and ideas for Ks 2 & 3 lessons
Victorian toy theatre. Children’s toys of the past. Collecting.
Television inventor John Logie Baird. Kids’ TV programmes.
Sydney Camm, Hurricane aircraft inventor. Model flight.
WW2 Blitz. Evacuation. Winston Churchill. Children’s games.
Victorian poverty. Fakes & antiques. Museum collections.
Investigating a family tree. Ancestors’ lives.
Time travel. The Universe. Aliens.
Sessions with the author:
Telling the story of Leo’s Heroes with short extracts from each of the six chapters. 30 minutes.
A reading of one chapter chosen from the themes. 45 minutes.
As above, with additional discussion and workshop as required. 90 minutes.
Dramatic, lively and fun!
Moving Images
Posted on: August 19, 2010
Stephen and I started a modest publishing enterprise The Projection Box in 1995 at the time of the Centenary of Cinema celebrations. Stephen is an expert in pre-cinema and early film — the hardware rather than the motion pictures themselves. (He’s recently been advising on cinematic props for Martin Scorsese’s new film The Invention of Hugo Cabret.) We published monographs by other specialists, such as the history of the Kinora — a home viewing device available around 1912 — and Phantasmagoria, the story of ghost projection.
We’re members of The Magic Lantern Society, a group of people from around the world who are interested in not only lanterns, but other myriad optical inventions from before cinema was born. Early projection has a fascinating history, and even what we call today, optical toys, were marvels in their time, studied and analysed in learned terms by philosophers, academics and mathematicians. Zoetropes, phenakistiscopes, flip books, all give the impression of movement. You might be amazed at the hundreds of designs for children’s film projectors, most of which use different methods to throw a moving picture (or usually a series of still images) onto the wall / sheet / ceiling.
Although it was not a projector, I was given a present of a small blue plastic television toy for one birthday. I had to wind a short piece of film round, with each frame appearing in sequence on the screen. My television set couldn’t show a movie but it was still a desirable object – and remains so still in my memory.
To see a magic lantern show is a wonder of wonders! Our friend Mervyn Heard (no relation) presents brilliant shows around the world — he is one of the best performers we have in this country, and has performed at most of the major London art galleries, as well as in a Tokyo department store! Find out more on his website: http://www.heard.supanet.com
The subjects of the glass pictures (slides) used in the magic lantern, cover anything you could think of: nursery rhymes, fairy tales, Temperance dramas, raging conflagrations, angels in heaven, erupting volcanoes, travel, astronomy, even pornography!
Many slides reproduce movement by using various mechanisms; thus we can see eyes swivel, a nose grow longer, a skeleton frantically dance, fishes swimming in a bowl. Bodies are comically decapitated, windmill sails turn, swans dip beaks into a stream, day turns into night and the lamps are lit in cottage windows, ghosts appear through walls, and beautiful flowers wither and die. Today, we can imagine the nineteenth-century audiences enthralled by the travelling lanternist and his patter. Other visual amusements were the itinerant showman’s peepshow: peer into the mysterious darkened box to see changing scenes of wondrous delight revealed, artfully manipulated by strings and flaps.
The cover of this book published by the Magic Lantern Society, incorporates a slide of a ferocious tiger. (Sorry, the title is no longer available.)
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I recently went through all my clothes to pull out those I no longer wear — or have never ever worn. How much money have I wasted on impulse buys? Several journeys to the charity shops resulted from this drastic thinning out, and now that the clothes are no longer hanging in the wardrobe I can’t even remember what they were.
However, there are still some old things (items mouldering away and which I still don’t wear — of course not! — what do you take me for?), which I’m convinced will be perfect gear for an end-of-the-world situation. The frayed, shapeless sweater; the baggy cardigan; the paint-stained trousers; the tattered shirt with the missing buttons; moth-eaten scarves. I’ll be thankful for them when the heating’s gone, and scavenging for food is a daily, dangerous enterprise. The thing is of course, that these rags are too scruffy for the charity shops now, but I know that they’ll ‘come in handy’ one day, so I just cannot throw them away. (Some have of necessity, already become dusters*.) My imagination has me wrapped in this sartorial dross and I feel comforted at my foresight. Also, my piles of smelly, scabby garments will be cover for my hidden hoard of tinned sardines, packets of jelly cubes, and bottled water stowed away out of sight from the predatory eyes of the marauding gangs. Cue for creating a Survivors LIST of Essentials (which naturally would include thousands of pain killers and several first-aid kits), but I would also make room for safety pins, books on how to trap, kill and skin a marmoset for the barbecue sort of thing, boxes of Kendal Mint Cake, fly spray, wind-up torches, matches, binoculars ….. you see how thrilling it is to write a List! So, go on, create your own! Enjoy the buzz and twitch of your thought processes for the end-of-life-as-we-know-it scenario.
…. cake tins, black bags, Sellotape, rope, tin openers, pea shooters, fireworks, glow-in-the-dark plastic necklaces, loo rolls, jumbo joke books, vegetable seeds, casserole pots, OS maps of England …
We could compare notes and bet on who might last out the longest in the apocalypse, should we want to indeed. But that’s something else.
Survivors-type novels and stories set in dystopian futures, can enthral but also repel. And it’s not only these tantalising portents of our impending doom; you can find dystopian fiction that shows previous times of violence, lawlessness, and stark battles for survival. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is set around the inhospitable border between Texas and Mexico in the 1850s. The vast terrain and the savage degradation are primeval to a horrific degree. But what a fantastic read!
* I don’t do much housework, and I think that living in an apocalypse will mean I shall do even less.
Ordering Leo’s Heroes
Posted on: August 11, 2010
By the way, if you are thinking of ordering Leo’s Heroes, do support your local independent bookshop. Also, please ask the local children’s library, and your child’s school library to order it. Anything you can do helps the book’s profile.
Comments on Amazon apparently really matter; your reviews would be appreciated. I especially would welcome children’s reviews.
LEO’S HEROES ISBN: 978 1 84624 469 8
Book Guild Publishing. £8.99 H/B.
Publishing date is now 28 September.
More Connections
Posted on: August 10, 2010
It was wonderful serendipity to meet a lovely local lady, Denise Hoyle a few years ago. She is the widow of artist Walter Hoyle, who knew and worked with the artists living in Great Bardfield during the 1950s. I have a book published by Previous Parrot Press by Walter Hoyle, To Sicily with Edward Bawden – again that fleeting connection. Denise, whose work has a gentle naivety, paints charming pictures of delicate flowers and creates fantastical pottery. My daughter Louise was so struck by what she saw that she put on an exhibition for Denise; I bought a small picture of a bunch of flowers set in one of those souvenir Victorian mugs, with A Present from Hastings round the side. I love these mugs and have a small collection; Leo’s mum collects similar mugs but with the motif A Present from Ramsgate — and one of them has a mysterious part to play in the book…….
Promotion
Posted on: August 6, 2010
I’m looking forward to promoting Leo’s Heroes by arranging readings in museums, schools and bookshops. I already have one booked at the Cuming Museum in Southwark for 29 October at 2.30. I’ll be reading the chapter where Leo washes up in Victorian London, aiding and abetting a couple of mudlarks in a forgery scam. The Cuming has a good collection of the fakes – Billys and Charleys they’re called. Hannah, the Education Officer will let the children handle some of them in a follow-up workshop.
Val and I had a meeting this week with the marketing team at Book Guild. Their campaign is pretty comprehensive, and I should see any media results by the end of the month. A lot of the exposure though is down to me; by getting bookings to read or sign, I can spread the word.
Here’s an unbelievably spooky kitsch thing I found in my collection. It’s still wrapped so I haven’t tested its wierd secret!
Dedications
Posted on: August 4, 2010
Lizzie Enfield [www.telegraph.co.uk 25 Jan.2010] tells us that: Dedications have been around for as long as people have put pen to paper. And it appears to be a fascinating subject. She gives many examples of the discreet, the humorous, and the obscure. I loved Cornell Woolrich’s “Remington Portable No. NC69411” in The Bride Wore Black. And one of Jeffrey Archer’s dedications is to “the Fat Men” who turn out to be his two infant sons. Ah, bless!
I always read the dedications (and the acknowledgements, the publishing history and the source of cover illustrations shown in minute detail hidden at the bottom of the back cover. It’s amazing how some cover images can be broken down into two or three elements where even the smallest parts have a different source, and have to be credited.)
In ‘Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema” edited by Luke McKernan and my partner Stephen Herbert [BFI 1996], they decided on a poignant dedication: “To Gus, who came so close, but got lost along the way”. The book records all the people who made cinema happen before 1901. One of the talented pioneers was Louis Aimé Augustus Le Prince, who filmed a moving picture on Leeds Bridge around 1888, but was unable to project and view the result. Gus disappeared on a train from Lyon to Paris in 1890…….
Leo’s Heroes is dedicated to Orson, my only grandchild. It’s a legacy hopefully he will treasure. I pondered long and hard about adding the other men in my life – my son (in his thirties) and my partner, but finally it felt right to have just one child honoured!
My dad left me a letter welcoming me to the world which he wrote for me at my birth. I kept it all through my childhood folded carefully, and hidden at the bottom of my Snakes and Ladders box of dice and counters. My parents weren’t writers in the usual sense, but this letter shows a creative desire to express an important emotion. And far too late in her life, I realised that my mum could have been a writer despite her background – I enjoyed her letters (from Australia – my parents were Ten Pound Poms in the Sixties) which were well constructed, informative and a joy to read. She expressed herself in paint at the end of her life, and all I can think is that she might have enjoyed a productive creative life if she’d been born into a different family, at a different time and had the money to pursue a dream. (Then came the War ….)
My mum in a play at Elfrida School, Bellingham around the late 1920s. She’s the very still one in the middle of the back row.
Lists
Posted on: August 1, 2010
Leo likes to write Lists. I too write lists, but delight in reading them more. When an author has incorporated a paragraph of lists into his or her novel, I experience a frisson of alertness, my brain twinkles with recognition. A list creates a visual landscape with words. A list on the page slows down our reading, we can picture each object without the distraction of indefinite articles, or the author’s descriptions.
A lot of people found Georges Perec’s massive book Life A User’s Manual, hard-going; but to me the pages of lists were mesmerising. For example, Chapter 33, Basement 1, covers two and a half pages of the contents of a cellar. ‘A place for every thing, and every thing in its place, nothing has been left out: …’ Then comes the list of provisions stacked on the shelves … bliss!
Jane O’Brien writing an online article for BBC News [March 2010] about an exhibition in Washington on the art of list-making, considers the psychological aspect of those artists who were obsessive list-makers. The accompanying catalogue To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Archives of American Art is available from Amazon. Even the title is a feast on which to gorge.
Do these list-makers need control of their lives? O’Brien asks what lists tell us about the personality of the list-maker, and says that the exhibition ‘reveals the obsessive and controlling sides’ of some of the world’s greatest artists and architects with their idiosyncratic designs. In chapter one I mention that Leo does a few doodles on the paper before composing a list; I wish I’d asked Val to recreate Leo’s artwork!
I love my Collins Thesaurus in A-Z Form. A book of Lists! A book of words!
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