Sandy Fussell's Blog, page 12

Aussie Author Challenge – The Anchoress

The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwaller is my first title counting towards the  2015 Aussie Author Challenge hosted by Jo at Booklover Book Reviews.

It ticks the boxes as a female author, fiction, published 2014-2015 and an author I haven’t read before. I’m not sure which box I’ll allocate it to. Ask me in a month or so!

Review

England. 1255. Seventeen-year-old Sarah chooses to become an anchoress, rejecting both her comfortable life as the daughter of a cloth merchant and the advances of Sir Geoffrey’s son, who wants to marry her.

She’s escaping the grief of a beloved sister lost in childbirth and a father now looking at her as a pawn to rescue a failed business venture, but she is firm in her conviction. She knows where she wants to go.

An anchorage is a small cell attached to a church. Its occupant, the anchoress, is a virginal woman who forgoes all the pleasures and contacts of the world to live in seclusion and focus on the teachings of the church.

Sarah welcomes this life and paces its breadth. Seven by nine paces. She has the Bible and her Rule, the book of guidelines an anchoress lives by as she spends her life in spiritual contemplation. It’s all Sarah wants.

Two maids look after her basic needs and the priest comes regularly to hear her confession. The villagers visit to ask for her prayers. All this happens through a small whole in the wall, a squint, covered by a curtain. There is no physical human contact and no warmth from the sun. The door to the outside world is nailed shut.

It’s the smallest and sparest of settings but the story it contains is rich, expansive and thought provoking. It had me riveted to the pages, until it was told.

In this room, not only is Sarah’s faith tested but her sanity too. Before Sarah, the anchor held two others. Pious Agnes whose bones are buried in the cell and Isabella, whose story is told in whispers. The lingering presence of these two women comforts and challenges Sarah.

A wooden door isn’t enough to keep the world away. The practical issues and problems of the villagers become her own. The new priest is prepared to risk all to protect her. A child infiltrates her isolation. And there’s a cat too.

How much story can one small room hold?

This book is above all a wonderful historical telling, rich with details of the times. It is also an exploration of many issues, as relevant now as they were then. Sarah’s life is constrained not only by religion but also by the men who surround her. They influence her decisions before and after her enclosure in the anchorage. Faith continually tests her. Being a woman defines her in the eyes of the church and it’s men, as lustful and deceiving. Only her virginity makes her sinless.

But Sarah is not a victim. She is a woman finding her way in the unique world she has chosen, learning her strengths and her weaknesses.

I love the cover and the inner story that inspired it. Sarah remembers a time when she watched a tumbler perform. She called the boy Swallow and he made her wonder what it was like to fly through the air. Once she is enclosed, she often revisits this memory.

I love the title. It rolls off the tongue. Anchoress.  A wonderful exotic medieval word.

And I loved the ending. I didn’t see it coming.

Aussie Author Challenge 2015

As part of the reorganisation of my writing life, I’ve decided to do a Reading Challenge.

It sounds like fun to read and review along with other avid readers and I’m looking forward to discovering new titles.

I’m going to start with the Aussie Author Challenge because I like to read Aussie authors anyway (who doesn’t?) and this is one thing I can do to show my support. The challenge is run by Joanna at Book Lover Book Reviews where anyone interested can find all the details.

There’s a choice of reading levels but I’m feeling committed and enthusiastic so I’m going for gold. That’s Kangaroo level. 12 Authors, 4 female, 4 male and 4 new to me. At least 6 fiction and at least 2 nonfiction. Plus 2 published 2014-2015.

I’m a little late to the challenge that runs from 1 January to 31 December 2015 but the way I read, there’s plenty of time left. I’ve already got one box ticked with Fairy Tales for Wilde Girls by Alyse Near which I read and reviewed in January so I’ll be reproducing that review on the blog shortly.

I’ve almost finished The Anchoress which is a debut historical novel by Robyn Cadwallader. She’s Australian and I am loving the book so I’ll that will be going into my list too.

There’s a non-fiction book on my desk that I’ve been meaning to read for a while. The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper, which won a swag of awards in 2009, has been on my  TBR list since then!

A few other Reading List have caught my eye but this one is the best fit to begin with.

The week in review #1

Do you ever feel like you get nothing done? And you can’t believe you wasted all those hours with zilch to show for your effort?

I’m like that most of the time. I read a few productivity blogs (maybe that’s where the time goes!) and I learned that even though I might think I achieve nothing, I would be very surprised if I made a list.  So each week I’m making a list and already feeling better for it.

What I wrote

Almost final edits to 17 chapters of my WIP. The chapters aren’t as long as my usual ones but the total word count is eerily the same as always (42,000 words)
Post on  cyber safety for young children  for Brisbane Kids where I’m now the Technology Blogger

What I read

The Anchoress by Robyn Cadwallader – a marvellous Oz debut historical fiction novel about a fascinating corner of medieval history  I hadn’t even heard about. I’ll be reviewing it on  The Reading Stack  this week.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Second time round. Why? Read on…

Gems I found in the Ether

More Gaiman  - This post on the Striking Keys blog made me rethink my own approach and re-read The Ocean at The End of the Lane.
Where the Magic Happens for Cath Crowley - As an unashamed Cath Crowley fan who remains in awe of the beautiful language in Graffiti Moon , how could I not love this post on Kirsty Eager’s blog ?
How to survive as an illustrator – Advice for a student On James Foley’s blog was some of the best advice I’ve read. It’s equally applicable to writers and not too far removed from my experience.
Top Tips for Great Storytelling - An excellent resource from the wonderful Story Box Library where I’m a subscriber.
Meet the Rarest Natural Element on Earth  - The Science Alert blog always has super interesting information. I often find myself thinking – now there’s an element for a science fantasy story. Fact truly is sometimes stranger than fiction. There’s less than 30g of Astatine in the Earth’s crust at any time.
University Study Regrets and Insecurities  - From Susan Whelan at ReadingUpsideDown , this post struck a kindred spirit chord and inspired a blog post of my own (to be posted later this week).

What I learned

How to tag notes in Evernote – I have 172 notes and they are now all tagged!
To use Google Drive and to be a more practised user of gMail and Google Docs. I don’t like them much but I need them for an external project I’m working on with a friend. My only Google product of choice is Google Calendar.

What I discovered

Pablo . Buffer’s new product to create social media banners. My first attempt is on this blog. I can see some educational and promotional uses for Pablo too. The good thing is the claim that you can do in 30 secs is almost true. It took me longer because I didn’t want one of the offered backgrounds and uploaded my own. Even then, it only took 3 mins and was brilliantly easy.

Other stuff

I had a long overdue lunch with my first writing mentor,  Di Bates . Some know her as a prolific author, the dynamo behind the  Buzz Words  and  The Australian Children’s Poetry website  (now managed by Teena Raffa-Mulligan) but for me, she’s the lady who inspired me to get serious about writing and in the process, became a valued friend.
I distributed a new OZKYAI (OZ Kids & Young adult Authors & Illustrators)  It’s an awful acronym but it’s a great read. This Scoop-IT curation contains recent blog post snippets (with click through links) from Australia’ s wonderful literary creatives for young people. I love showing off the work of my friends and colleagues.

 

 

Ditching the Excess Baggage

[image error]This year I’m cutting down and ditching the excess baggage.

No, it’s not about weight. And it’s not about chocolate either.

It’s not about books even though I could fill a baggage container with those.

It’s about information.

You see, I love information. I’m fascinated by it all – the newly born (scientific research, medical advances…), the inner (philosophy, creativity…), the outer (nature, space…) and the old (ancient history, past lives…).

The ironic thing is I’m no use at all on a Trivia Night table. Few of these facts are stored in my head. I keep them in digital form. Too many Pinterest Boards, too many Twitter lists, too many email folders, too many Facebook Interest Groups, too many Feedly blog feeds to follow and far too many Evernote notebooks.

It’s got to stop. So 2015 among other things, will be the year I lose the excess information baggage and blog about how I get it done. I’ve promised to ask myself – Do I really need to remember that? Is it useful to me? Am I ever going to write a story about it? Or a blog post? And if not, it’s gone. I’ll close my eyes and pretend I never saw it and won’t be tempted to store it away “just in case”.

I guess there’s one positive in all this information clutter. After I’m gone, cleaning up  the things I’ve left behind will be easy for my kids. They’ll just have to hit the delete key.

And do something about the baggage containers of books. There’ll be  a lot more books by then.

A New Beginning

Today I am saying goodbye to blogging at Stories Are Light and setting up in my new blog home at www.sandyfussell.com/blog . I hope you'll join me there.

Workshop Ideas: Start with a Map

I love maps in books. One of my treasured possessions is a beautiful leather bound volume of Lord of the Rings, given as a gift on my 18th birthday. Full of maps including a large fold out.

Maps are a wonderful way to visualise a new world. I was an avid fantasy reader long before I knew about genres. The first map I found in a book was Narnia. I started drawing my own then.

None of my published books have a detailed map although Polar Boy has a simple geographical map to show the path Iluak and his family travelled by dog sled but it turned out to be trouble.

 My story idea had Iluak travelling across the top of Canada to a place where the Vikings landed from Greenland. But as I wrote, Iluak and the dogs chose their own path, above the Arctic Circle. They found their own Viking landing place on Baffin Island. The map had to be redrawn.

I use world maps in my Mapping the Story workshop. I find many primary school students struggle to find a plot for their story. Beginnings, characters and endings are much easier for them. To get kids thinking about plot, I show them maps from some of my favourite stories, like this one from The Princess Bride.

I ask them to draw their own map with coloured pencils and textas.

There are some landforms they have to include such as river, forest, desert and mountain – and they also add their own. Then we decide what lives or exists in these areas and add that to the map as words or pictures.

Lastly we introduce the character, and maybe a sidekick, and draw the path they take across the map to the place where they end their journey. It might be a castle or a cliff.

By looking at the places the characters go, ideas for what happens along the way are easier to find. We decide where the critical big scene happens – often the one they are now most looking forward to writing – and move it towards the destination so it occurs in the right place of the plot. Mountains have been moved to accommodate this.

I wish I had some drawings or photos from these workshops to share. I get so involved I forget to take photos but you can find some wonderful maps from books here and here.

A Togethery and Remembery Christmas Wish

I've been inspired by Christmassy crafting particularly the advent calendars on Tanya McCartney's blog and Children's Books Daily.

Next year I will start earlier and make Advent calendars. I've filed the instructions away in Evernote. For this year I decided to start with something less ambitious.

My immediate problem was Christmas Cards. I couldn't find anything I liked so I decided to make my own. Pinning down my family for photos proved to be impossible. No way, Mum!

I'm not very visually talented. I prefer to paint with words but I do like to cut and paste. I figured the trick was to keep it simple, basic Christmas colours and traditional motifs.

The best part was the fun I had making them. I found the perfect book quote to go inside each one:

"Christmas is a togethery sort of holiday," said Pooh.
"That’s my favourite kind," said Piglet, "Togethery and Remembery." – A. A. Milne
For 2014, I wish everyone a togethery and remembery Christmas.

I found something shiny in my email

Image by Vicky Brock via FlickrI found something shiny in my email.
Email is not one of my favourite tasks. It’s a never-ending pile and it’s always in danger of collapsing on me. I’ve tried many strategies to manage it but nothing is working so far.

There are four sorts of email I do like – emails from friends, emails from people who love to read or write, emails from my editor and emails from kids whose school I’ve visited.
I always encourage kids to email me. I love to hear they enjoyed my session or that they like to read and sometimes, not very often, I get an email from a kid who likes to write.
Two days ago an email arrived headed: Can you help me with my story? from a girl at a school I had visited last month. I responded to say I would love to but I was drowning in work for the next two days and I would get back to her then.
This afternoon I opened the email attachment. It wasn’t a lot – a beginning and an end. Her problem was finding what went in the middle.
The writing was wonderful and beautifully crafted. I sat there stunned.
Sure, it needed a little polishing. It was obviously the work of a young person and I would have chosen different words from my own wider adult vocabulary but I know she’ll find those herself if she keeps writing. She doesn’t me to pre-empt that.
I don’t know how old she is, I would guess maybe Year 5, probably Year 6. What she had was laid out with headings – beginning, complication and ending – the things she had learned in class. I do know that I’d be pleased with myself if I had written that beginning and end - the immediately engaging character, the perfectly timed humour, the visual action scene - and in the end, a killer last line.
I edited a little, explaining why – pruning an unnecessary sentence, removing a piece of “telling” and correcting the speech attribution punctuation. I wasn’t game to touch anything else. And it didn’t need me to.  Finally, I made a list of suggestions for how to find the story for the missing middle. I hoped she might share the next installment with me.
I polished lightly because it was already shining. The shiniest thing I’ve ever found in my email.

Snap! It's a Magical Blog Tour

You know how when you visit friends, some are super organised and have the coffee and cake ready but others, although just as welcoming, are still trying to find where they put the coffee and whether there are any biscuits left in the cupboard that will do instead of cake? Today, as a blog tour host, I’m the latter.

But being a little behind in my preparation helped me uncover something I didn’t know about Angela Sunde. When I visited Kids Book Review, the first stop on her Snap Magic blog tour, I discovered Angela is also an illustrator and she did the illustrations for the title page and front cover.

Snap Magic is the sequel to Aussie Chomp Pond Magic and continues the magic-plagued adventures of twelve-year-old Lily Padd.
I wondered whether Angela imagined herself as a future author or illustrator when she was Lily Padd’s age. So I asked her:
I liked to write poetry and song lyrics at 12 and desperately wanted to be an artist/illustrator. I tried writing a novel at 12, but set it in the USA, because I didn't think anyone would want to know about a NZ kid. So I failed that one, as I knew nothing about the US.





A Review: Snap Magic by Angela Sunde
Lily Padd has problems and they’re much bigger than her embarrassing name. First there’s the hair on her chin and the others that soon follow.
She’s on the run from Rick, the bra-strap snapper, but it’s not the painful flick that bothers her. It’s anyone discovering that she doesn’t even wear a bra yet.
Her beautiful dress for the Halloween Dance is ruined by her terrible twin 6-year-old sisters. Mrs Swan, the witch next door, offers a solution. Lily’s had trouble with magic before but she’s willing to take another chance.
It gets worse. When Mum becomes a seller for Snap ‘n’ Pack, Lily has to dodge mean-girl Ellie Middleton at school and in the Middleton home, when Mum drags her there to help with a party demonstration.  
Still the hair keeps growing. Other people around her are looking a little hairy too.
Lily knows it’s magic. Ellen has worked it out too and she’s going to tell Lily’s secret at the Halloween Dance and destroy her chances with the new boy.
That’s the biggest problem of all.
Told in easy to read short chapters, Snap Magic is perfect for tween girls. Lily is a feisty character who refuses to be defeated by the troubles and challenges thrown at her. Even magical ones. With the help of her best friend, Maureen, she faces them all.
While Snap Magic deals with mature themes such as bullying, trust, friend and parent relationships, developing adolescence, and preoccupation with physical appearance, it does this with gentle and sensitive age-appropriate humour. This book could be a starting point for first mother-daughter discussions.
Check out the other blogstop on the Snap Magic Blog Tour
Monday 13 Oct  Kids Book Review  Tuesday 14 Oct   Sheryl Gwyther Wednesday 15 Oct   Robyn Opie Wednesday 15 Oct   KarenTyrrell Thursday 16 Oct   Alison Reynolds Friday 17thOct   Chris Bell – From Hook to Book  Saturday 18 Oct   Boomerang Books Blog Saturday 18 Oct  DimityPowell Sunday 19 Oct   Sandy Fussell - Stories Are Light  Sunday 19 Oct    The reading StackMonday 20 Oct    Aussiereviews Tuesday 21 Oct   Dee White Wednesday 22   Angela Sunde’s Blog Tour Wrap Up 

Internet Roadtrip #1: From The Plot Whisperer to Kathleen Duey

I am an seasoned internet traveler. Every day I spend up to an hour hitch-hiking from website to website. It’s good for my soul and it keeps my brain buzzing. My starting point might be a link that turns up in my morning Feedly. Or it might be a link someone posts on Twitter or Facebook. Or an article in my StumbleUpon feed.

One blog post or website always leads to another. Sometimes I jump via a link within the post, sometimes via a popular post in the sidebar or a category, even from a tweet displayed in the site Twitter steam. It reminds me of the two weeks the Love of my Life and I spent motorhoming around Canada. Before we could recover from one sign-posted Scenic Viewing Spot, another signpost appear. There's always somewhere interesting to go on the net.
I thought I’d share some of my journeys and the things I find on the way.
Image credit: libertyandvigilanceToday I was looking at picture book courses. My first picture book, Sad The Dog, will be published by Walker Books Australia next year and I feel rather spoilt. It’s a format that’s alien to me. The idea came to me reasonably fully-formed and with some pushing and poking by my excellent editor, it easily fell into shape. I was lucky.
But I need more than luck to write a second one and to learn more about the craft of picture writing is on my To Do List.
This afternoon, I opened the Saved For Later folder in my Feedly. I follow the Plot Whisperer blog and its host, Martha Alderson, has a “Write and Sell a Picture Book” series of vimeos with Jill Corcoran.[Viewing Spot 1:The Plot Whisperer]. I heard Jill speak at the Australia New Zealand SCBWI Conference and she gave me more good advice at a subsequent manuscript assessment session. That was for a YA but I was impressed with her considered feedback. I was keen to have the advice of both Jill Martha on writing and selling picture books.
Off I went to the website. [Viewing Spot 2: How to Write and Sell a Picture Book ] Unfortunately I missed the half price weekend by a few days and the full price of $125, although excellent value, is a stretch for my budget at the moment. So that’s still on the To Do List. I’ll be hinting in the appropriate direction for a Christmas present.
I headed to Jill’s website [Viewing Spot 3: Jill Corcoran Books] and under How to Sell a Picture Book found  a number of recommendations including one from my author friend, Dee White. That reminded to detour and call in to her blog and see what was happening [Viewing Spot 4: DeeScribe Writing Blog].
Back on Jill's website now, I was still gathering information [Viewing Spot 5: What makes a book sell?], I found this excellent analogy:
 Let me quote my friend and 80+book author Kathleen Duey: Almost no one expects musicians to get good on an instrument without years of lessons, books, years of practice. There is a similar learning curve for writing. (read full post here)
So I read the full post on Kathleen Duey's blog [Viewing Spot 6: Publishing Old, New, Self, Indie]. But even more interesting was the current post I found on Kathleen’s blog. The post was titled Limori: Book 3 post #17. [Viewing Spot 7: Limori: Book 3 post #17] It was 418 words that hooked me right in.
Limori: People are hiding. The City is changing hands again. The old families, the boys in the cliffs, the people in South End and all the Eridians …all of them are in danger now. I am afraid for all of them.

I had this wonderful sense of place, history and exoticism. I might be wrong but I’m going to find out. I tracked back through Kathleen’s books to find the series I was looking for: The Resurrection of Magic. Book 1 is Skin Hunger and book 2, Sacred Scars.
One title was familiar. I almost read Skin Hunger, seven years ago. In 2007 it came into The Reading Stack where I review books. It landed in my In Tray but another reviewer was seduced by the cover and asked if she could take it. I handed it over without even reading the Press Release.
And now, the internet has brought me back to that place.