Paul Magrs's Blog, page 14

'Callum and the Mountain' by Alan McClure

I'm giving some space on my blog today to Alan McClure to talk about his first novel, which is about to be published...

Over to Alan!

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"I have a slight issue with children's books which try to explain every bit of magic and mystery in them. Callum and the Mountain, as well as being exciting and funny (I hope!), is supposed to create a whole in-world atmosphere which leaves a lot of questions only vaguely answered and trusts the reader to apply some imagination. I want it to haunt readers, to pop back into their heads years after they've finished it, and I want the language to leap off the page. I'm a primary school teacher by profession and I've huge faith in the intelligence and judgement of young readers. Despite the march of technology, today's kids still have the access to magic that we all had as children, and I hope this book  provides a gateway for that. Finally, I wrote this as a man who reads aloud to his kids - if you're a parent, I'd love this to be a story shared at bedtime so that you can jump into the peculiar world of Skerrils along with your kids!
Writing is my passion and I do it because I'm compelled to - this became crystal clear during a week long course at Moniack Mhor in 2018, led by Paul Magrs and Joan Lennon and attended by a diverse and talented group of writers. I'm tremendously grateful to them for their encouragement, and for making writing a thing to be shared and not hidden away."


You can pre-order copies by following the links below...
Beaten Track: https://www.beatentrackpublishing.com/callumAmazon: http://mybook.to/CallumandtheMountainBarnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/callum-and-the-mountain-alan-mcclure/1132533600?ean=9781786453266Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/callum-and-the-mountainiBooks: Callum and the Mountain

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Back to me... and here's what I wrote about the book when I first read it:

There’s a lovely musical dialect running through the whole of this book, with all these sweet, sparkling, squashy and sometimes unfamiliar words. We get glimpses of a place with its own lore and legends – of Trogs and strange green Things. The second person address means that the book is speaking straight at us, confidentially, with great panache, giving us the feeling that we’re listening to a born storyteller, and he’s unpacking a great shaggy monster of a tale for us.
I love the feeling in the early chapters, that something is turning everything Callum knows upside down and that some ‘sleekit beastie’ has him in a ‘total dwam.’ These sections remind me a little of Edith Nesbit’s Psammead stories, especially when the magic has unpredictable results, like in the brilliant scene when the dog starts talking so politely, and is at such pains to reassure his humans.
There are touches of Susan Cooper, Diana Wynne Jones and Alan Garner, too, when the elemental forces of the Things enter fully into the story. There’s something primal and disturbing about their amorality and their reminder to us that nature isn’t always ‘friendly, or even safe.’
There’s a great zest to all of this book: it reminds us of being Callum’s age, when everything is both perplexing and exciting: ‘another day, another adventure.’ Though it rattles along at a good pace, it’s never at the expense of lovely, descriptive language: especially in the rather beautiful episode, underwater with the selkies. I found that this tale of ‘crazy cavemen, treacherous friends and troublesome nature sprites’ was exciting and rich, but it also wasn’t without realistic jolts of sadness, like when Callum thinks his beloved Papa might be dying.
The book builds to a very unusual, poetical climax. It’s a spartan, lyrical interlude that feels a bit like we’re reading a guitar solo. It’s the bit when our hero is isolated and facing all the forces that his story has unleashed.
Following that, there’s a coda that has a lovely logic to it, as it talks us through the magic of forgetting at the end. Everyone in town seems to benignly remember that something tumultuous has been sorted out, and our heroes have forgotten some of the specifics of their adventures. Yet everyone agrees that the day has been saved by Callum, and this leaves us with a sweet sense of closure.
I really like the inclusion of a glossary, and that description of the way Scots words can be said to spice the English.

Lovely Workshop Feedback

Last week I gave a writing workshop at a government office in Stockport, as a part of the Pride week activities. I just received the nicest email about it, including this report from one of the participants:




                                             Summer of Pride Event
Workshop with novelist Paul Magrs
I attended this workshop, arranged as part of the DWP’s  ‘LGBT Summer of Pride ‘ celebration. I really enjoyed the session with the novelist and artist, Paul Magrs.Paul immediately made the group at ease, with his friendly manner. Paul explained what he tends to do in these workshops, and usually starts by reading to the group. On this occasion; as most people in the room had attempted to, (or were thinking of ) writing a novel. Paul decided to get us all ‘Burning off steam’, as he phrased it.This exercise was to get our brains in action but not racing. It was the first step in Paul’s list of 9 pointers. He asked us to think of a favourite word, and then write something about that word. Mine is aardvark. Never been sure why, but now I’m thinking about it! What is an aardvark? Where do they live? What do they eat? Who thought of the name?  Who named everything in the world?  Is it a favourite word because it breaks the rules? Two vowels together, but not e’s or o’s! Absurd!‘Ok’ says Paul, breaking my thoughts. ‘That’s enough of that exercise, 10 mins should be enough to get you prepared’. ‘I want to tell you all of someone who inspired me as a child, and maybe this will encourage you too. My first school  Teacher, gave each of the class an exercise book   , to be known as ‘your busy book’. She explained that no one will be reading it ; She would not be looking at it. It was your private book to write in, draw in, anything and everything you want to put into it.  I still have a ‘busy book’ on the go, and find it enormously helpful, when I want to write.’What a great idea, I’m thinking. I have 2 helpful hints already, and we have only been here for 15 mins.Paul gradually listed the other 8 helpful hints on his list. All really valuable , to the ‘budding writer’.He encouraged us to use all our senses, to remember through sounds and smells as well as the spoken word.Paul, cleverly, manipulated the group into interacting with each other, through conversation and thought processes. He showed his note books which ‘live’ in his leather bag. I identified with the contents as; like me, Paul writes on bits of paper, backs of envelopes, bills etc. He notes ‘trains of thought’, situations, overheard conversations and characters, he encounters each day. All of which can provide invaluable material, for when your ready to start that book!   Before I knew it, the session had to come to an end.
Well, I’m truly inspired! I feel more confident, feel empowered , feel I could actually write my memoirs that  have been stored in my head for ever !Watch out! Maybe the next J K Rowling is about to emerge!!Thanks Paul

Distilled Writing Advice...

Asked elsewhere for writing advice, I've managed to distil almost everything I've got left to say into a few sentences...Roy covers it pretty well in his answer! I hope my books that he's kindly recommended will help out. I think - having mulled this over for years - that the best way to find out is by doing. Not studying, necessarily. Forming or joining a writing group that gets together because it wants to. To have writing peers and critics and a chance to read your work aloud to other people. Having a chance to read widely and to read fiction in genres that you've never tried before - that's very important. To write every day and to learn to keep writing journals, and do writing practise. And not to feel harried and hampered by the market and the idea of publication. All these things are somewhere near the heart of the thing, for me. Best of luck with it all! and don't let anyone spoil it for you.

Summer Cats and Dogs

I've started a series of drawings of people's cats and dogs. I'd like them to have the nostalgic glow of an old, favourite children's book. Thanks to those friends who've helped by contributing photos and telling me their stories.

Judith Krantz

Bizarre that, the very weekend that I immerse myself in the giddy and gaudy world of her books, Judith Krantz dies at 91. She's someone I was aware of being in the bookcase at home, and I'd never read her properly until recently. She's in that wonderfully frothy, catty, gossippy tradition that goes from Jackie Susann to Jackie Collins and I am delighting in her work. What a fab career - ten stonking, huge-selling glitzy novels and then dead at a fantastic old age. Well done her! Now I've got Princess Daisy and all the rest arriving from Ebay.
In 'Dazzle', which I'm reading now, two of the characters have dinner in a fancy LA restaurant and their intense conversation is interrupted by the arrival of one chatty character after another. Gradually you realise that they are all the lead characters from her previous novels, butting in and doing a cameo, one after the next, and frustrating the lovers. It's hilarious and wonderful - and a reminder that literary games and novels themselves are supposed to be scandalous *fun*.

Another bunch of 'Lost and Found Toys'

More Drawings of Friends' 'Lost and Found' Toys

'Lost and Founds' - drawings of friends' old toys

It's a Fairy Tale Conceit...

It's a fairy tale conceit, isn't it? The complacent people start listening to the wicked blandishments of tricksters and goblins, who tell them that their wise protectors have been playing them for fools. They can get a better deal, a better relationship with the gods, elsewhere, somehow. The kingdom decides to invite in the terrible ogre and they cower and act craven around him. He comes to the castle and eats with the princesses and princess and king and queen and seems quite civilised, for a moment.
Some of the peasants shout and complain outside the palace walls: You have let in an ogre and his whole family - can't you see? They will eat us all. But those inside don't listen, and the ogre looks over the battlements and frowns: 'There's no one out there. No naysayers. All I can hear is grateful applause.'
Then he gets up to speak and everyone cringes at what he might say. And like ogres always do, he says: You've let me into the castle and you think we can have a special relationship. But like ogres always do, I'm going to throw my weight around. I'm gonna tell you who should be in charge here, in your funny little kingdom. I'll take my pick of which foolish popinjay will lord it over you lot. And then, I will ask for the thing that you prize most of all, and you will give it to me. Simple as that. Didn't you know, didn't you remember, that's how these tales always go?'

When Life Brings You a Homophobic Aunty...

An aunty from my mam's side of the family came into my Facebook ken recently, bearing very welcome photos of all kinds of wonderful moments from the distant 60s/70s past. But you have to be careful. I realised her timeline was full of really homophobic and transphobic Christian trash propaganda. When challenged on it, she said it was her right to disagree with who and what I was and if i couldn't agree with her point of view, I was free to defriend her. She kept calling me 'love', all through this.
I didn't defriend her. I asked a couple of questions - about how maybe tolerance, love, respect and understanding were things that we should all be aspiring to, regardless of faith? And that if your religion tells you to deny human rights and respect to those unlike you, then maybe that's your problem, and not the LGBTQ communty's?
Well, then she defriended *me*, of course. And it makes me sad. She isn't old. She's in her 60s. She isn't beyond help. She lived through the amazing changes of the 60s, 70s, 80s... There's no excuse for being as blinkered and dogmatic.
Her page was also full of dimwitted Brexit crap, too, I realised - all that 'we voted out' and 'will of da people' etc. That kind of crap - usually spouted by people who've had it pretty good, intent of shitting up the future for those that come next.
It makes me sad for the little kid in the photos she sent. Me as a toddler, visiting these relations in Yorkshire in the early 70s. Glad, all that time later, to see the pictures. But knowing now that they don't even really think of him as worthy as the same human respect that they'd give to others.
Yech. Depressing thoughts in a week that's made me depressed all round. I've been fighting depression all week and the gloom's been winning.
Be nice to each other, everyone. Here was a woman who seemed friendly. Seemed reasonable. She wasn't frothing and crazy. She just wanted to post nice old lady messages about how gay people can be cured and how trans people talking to school kids are emissaries of Satan. She wanted to say it and not have the likes of me call her out on it.


I've had a shit week, like I say - and I'm trying not to let the gloom win.