Michael Pryor's Blog, page 20

Writers Write: My Favourite Book 29

Jack Heath

I have adored so many novels that I regularly change my mind about which is my favourite. On some days I will tell you that it’s Scarecrow, by Matthew Reilly. On others it might be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or Dan Well’s I Am Not A Serial Killer, or perhaps The Messenger, by Markus Zusak. I love Siren by Tara Moss, and Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg, and The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. I could do this for hours.

But today, my favourite book is Diary, by Chuck Palahniuk. I started reading it as a 19-year old boy, sitting in a hotel lobby after my first literary festival. Chapter 1 gave me goosebumps. Chapter 2 brought me to the verge of tears. I have no memory of the limousine, aeroplane and taxi that took me home; I didn’t look up from the book until I’d finished it five hours later.

The power to elicit a physical reaction in the reader, be it goosebumps, tears or laughter, is the mark of a great novel. So is a story that hasn’t been done before; and Diary‘s plot – a failed painter writes a diary for her comatose husband, who scrawled cryptic warnings across walled-off rooms before his suicide attempt – is like nothing I’ve read before or since. Like many of Palahniuk’s books, it begins with a nihilistic protagonist in a painfully realistic world, but then leads you down the rabbit hole so seamlessly that you may not notice you’ve stumbled into a dream – or a nightmare.

“The philistine provides the best definition of art,” Louis Dudek once said. “Anything that makes him rage is first class.” After devouring Diary twice, I discovered that many other people loathed it. “Reading this is like being cornered by a dim-witted and semi-belligerent drunk possessed by an idée fixe he keeps reciting over and over again, jabbing your shoulder each time,” writes Laura Miller of Salon. But this hostility only made me love the book more; I can’t shake the feeling that if everyone else hates it, then it must have been written specifically for me. (Or perhaps I’m just contrary.)

Of all the reasons that I love Diary, this is the most potent: it’s a book I couldn’t write. I’ve produced action-packed sci-fi, philosophical crime and frightening YA, but I’ve never produced anything even remotely like this. I can’t wrap a ghost story in a conspiracy thriller in a tragidrama in a diary. But that never felt like a shortcoming until I read this book.

Actually, it’s not exactly a ghost story, and I’m not even sure if “tragidrama” is a word. I don’t even have the vocabulary to describe Diary, let alone write it.

 

Jack Heath’s latest book is Hit List (Pan Macmillan Australia). For more, visit his website.

Extraordinaires 2 is complete

All done and dusted! ‘Extraordinaires 2′ is finished and in the hands of the clever people at Random House.

Towards Inventing a New Genre

I don’t have to be hit over the head with a trade paperback – or anything else – to understand that it might be a little late to get onboard the Paranormal Romance bandwagon. And I don’t have to be Tased multiple times while trying to explain my stand on civil liberties, either,  but that’s another matter.

It’s a crowded market out there, so I can see that the way forward as a writer is to anticipate publishing trends. This sort of far-sightedness is the province of industry mavens, demographic researchers, market strategists and other cartoon characters. It also sounds like hard work, so instead of anticipating a publishing trend, I think the best thing to do is to invent a publishing trend, thus guaranteeing I’ll be the first cab off the rank.

I thought about making up a new genre out of whole cloth, something like Bit Fic, or Shade Fiction, or Lapidism, but since I had no idea what they were I figure the potential hordes of readers out there mightn’t be too enthusiastic either. That’s when I hit on the idea of riffing off the ‘hot’ genre of the moment. How could I lose?

The trouble is, being one of those ideas guys (hem, hem), I’ve come up with more than one possibility and I’m having trouble deciding which one to hitch my star to.

Polynormal Romance – multiple realities, where a couple juggles different attempts at romance in different life circumstances. Could be good for mistaken identities leading to hilarious complications in the restaurant scene.
Postnormal Romance – full of ennui, decadence and an abandonment of morals while shopping for furniture. Nat King Cole soundtrack.
Quasinormal Romance – where normality itself is a sham that is discovered during a reunion at the airport with optional ironic focus on old couple also reuniting at same time.
Pseudonormal Romance – it looks like normality, tastes like normality, but it’s actually a great big TV show or something. With a montage snowball fight/candlelit supper.
Metanormal Romance – a romance where a couple questions the whole notion of normality and whether it can be ‘about’ itself while they take long walks on the beach.
Ubernormal Romance – normality is heightened! Really heightened! With flowers!
Retronormal Romance – has possibilities, but I think it’s already out there and simply called ‘Romance’.

The best way to market test these is, of course, the time-honoured method of conducting a focus group, compiling the results and running them through some sort of sophisticated statistical modelling package. Failing the time or inclination to do something so systematic, I’ll probably just shout them at random strangers and see which option scares them least.

 

Writers Write: My Favourite Book 28

Michael Wagner

Dibs in Search of Self, Virginia M Axline

I can’t think of any higher praise for a book than to tell you that this one made me sick! Actually sick. But in a good way … sort of. I was so deeply moved by this true story of a troubled boy, Dibs, and his psychologist, Virginia Axline, that when I finished reading it, I had some sort of nervous break down of my own! True. I actually had to take a week off work to recover. Now that’s a powerful book! And, no, I don’t require time off every time I read a good book!

 

To Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee

The last time I looked, this Pulitzer Prize winning book was one of the biggest selling novels of all time, so I’m not exactly Robinson Crusoe in loving it. But what’s not to love? This gentle, wise and poignant account of racism in 1930s Alabama is a monument to human decency. In the character of Atticus Finch, Harper Lee created a father-figure for generations. If you haven’t read it, you really should.

 

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

The power of this book is in the authenticity of the teenage narrator’s voice. Like a lot of adolescents, Holden Caulfield may be judgemental, confused and a little lost, but he’s also honest, gentle and kind. The voice Salinger has created for Caulfield is so incredibly real it’s as if the poor kid is sitting right next you, telling you (and only you) his sad, difficult, but ultimately uplifting story. The final simple scene in the books remains one of the most simple and touching I’ve ever read.

A Visit to Rowville SC

Had a great day today at Rowville Secondary College’s two campuses, talking to Year Sevens. Thanks to the generous and welcoming library staff, too.

Writers Write: My Favourite Book 27

Sean Williams

Like a lot of kids who grew up to become writers, I was a voracious reader from a very early age.* My parents loved books too, and I remember going through their shelves in search of something, anything to try next. They didn’t often deny my choices in this regard–they let me try Alex Haley’s Roots, for instance, even though I must’ve been all of nine at the time–but they were sure also to suggest more age-appropriate titles. Both ways, I discovered a wealth of wonderful writing: my mother’s collection of Agatha Christie’s novels was an early obsession, my growing collection of Doctor Who Target novelisations another. It was therefore very hard to pick a single book out of all the books I loved back then . . . until I remembered this particular one.

I don’t know whether Tom Sawyer came from my parents’ bookshelves or was given to me by them. The edition I read back then, which I still have, is inscribed with my mother’s name and year at school, dating it to 1960 or so. It was therefore on the shelves at home and I could easily have stumbled across it that way. Equally, she could have given it to me to read, thinking I would like it–and what a gift it was.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a tale of mystery, magic, horror and romance that takes place in a world very different from our own. It reads to me today very much like urban fantasy, with all the quirky world-building and complex moral dilemmas of the very best modern writing for children. For anyone. It doesn’t matter that it was based on Twain’s actual childhood experiences; it doesn’t matter that the superstitious practices he describes were actually followed by people he had known (or that none of this magic seems to work very well); it doesn’t matter that this different world of his was separated from my childhood by merely a matter of years, not light-years. Twain’s writing effortlessly demonstrates that there’s magic in the mundane, and that fiction doesn’t have to be fantastical in order to be fantastic. Despite a shocking lack of no swords and sorcerers, robots and ray-guns, the much-younger me was entranced.

I’m still entranced.** It’d be drawing a very long bow to say that reading Tom changed my life forever. But it undoubtedly biased my reading of every novel since. That list I glibly rattled off earlier: “mystery, magic, horror, romance and humour”–I feel like I’ve been trying to corral these unruly elements into stories ever since. Had I not been exposed to them in such perfect form, at such an early age, perhaps I would be a very different writer today.

When Mark Twain learn that the Brooklyn Public Library was considering banning his book, he responded: “The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.”*** I say, may children will continued to soiled by this wonderful book for generations to come, to the betterment of us all.

 

* Whether writers ever really grow up is a whole other conversation.

** Yet I’ve never finished the second in Twain’s diptych of fictional reminiscences, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and it puzzles me that this is the novel that people describe most fondly. Are we reading the same books? To me, Tom Sawyer is one of those rare novels that simultaneously captures and transcends its time. Huck Finn is the inferior sequel.

*** The full quote is: “I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote ‘Tom Sawyer’ & ‘Huck Finn’ for adults exclusively, & it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.”

Sean’s most recent book: ‘Troubletwisters: The Monster’, co-written with Garth Nix, published by Allen & Unwin (Australia), Egmont (UK), Scholastic (US). For more, visit Sean’s website.

My Continuum Schedule

Here’s what I’m up to for Continuum (7 – 11 June):

Workshop: 10 Ways to Improve Your Story – Friday 14:00 until 15:30
Turning The Gears: Steampunk Craft – Friday 18:00 until 19:00
The End Of The World Is Just The Beginning – Saturday 10:00 until 11:00
Playing God – A Guide For Beginners – Saturday 15:00 until 16:00
Where Has All The Sci-Fi Gone? – Sunday 16:00 until 17:00
Steampunk Squalor – Sunday 18:00 until 19:00
Readings – Monday 10:00 until Moday 11:00
Beyond Paranormal Romance In YA Speculative Fiction – Monday 15:00 until 16:00

In between times, I’ll be hanging around , chatting, drinking coffee and suchlike. See you there!

Writers Write: My Favourite Book 26

George Ivanoff

I used to be what is euphemistically termed a ‘reluctant reader’. My words at the time would have been more along the lines of “I hate reading! It’s boring!”. How’s that for a revelation? Not the sort of admission you’d expect from a children’s author. But it’s true. I spent early primary school, back in the 1970s, avoiding books.

Why? I think it was mostly because I didn’t like the stuff I was being given to read. The school readers we had to take home were dry and dull and they put me off even trying to find other material. But all that did eventually change.

Somewhere in mid-primary (and I can’t remember exactly when, as I’m now in my 40s and my memory is on the downhill slide ) a book club program was introduced. And we were expected to choose at least one book. The book I chose was Eleanor Cameron’s The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. I can’t remember why I chose it. Maybe because it had ‘mushroom’ in the title and I’ve always liked mushrooms. But guess what? I liked it! In fact, I loved it! This was a bit of a revelation…

You see, it turned out that I didn’t dislike reading… rather it was simply a case of not having found the right material to interest me. But now I had found it. Science fiction! I went on to read the sequel, Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, and then moved on to Jack Williamson’s Trapped in Space. It wasn’t long before I was reading Andre Norton, Robert A Heinlein, HG Wells, John Wyndham and John Christopher. Christopher’s Tripods trilogy had a huge impact on me, and these books remain favourites to this day. In fact, I recently re-read them and blogged about them.

But it’s the Mushroom Planet books that I am remembering today. I read them dozens of times as a kid. A huge part of the appeal was that the two main characters were just ordinary boys. They build their own spaceship and then with the help of a mysterious scientist named Mr Bass, they end up visiting the Mushroom Planet of the title. I spent ages fantasizing about making my own spaceship and having a similar journey. After all, if these two ordinary kids could do it, why couldn’t I? Since then, I’ve always been attracted the ‘ordinary person doing extraordinary things’ scenario.

I still have my copies of those two books — a little battered, but still in reasonable condition. I have never re-read them as an adult. I’ve been too scared… just in case they don’t live up to my nostalgic memories. But I will, one day, overcome that fear. Especially since I recently found out that there are another four book in the series — Mr. Bass’s Planetoid, A Mystery for Mr. Bass, Jewels from the Moon and The Meteor That Couldn’t Stay (this one is two short stories rather than a novel) and Time and Mr. Bass. This discovery has got me all excited. Of course, they are out of print… so it may be a while before I can track them down. But when I do, I’ll read the whole series… and then probably blog about it.

In the meantime, these first two Mushroom Planet books will remain on my bookshelf. And no matter what the eventual re-reading experience will be like, they will always have a special place in my heart.

 

George’s latest book is ‘Gamers’ Challenge’, sequel to the Chronos award-winning teen novel, ‘Gamers’ Quest’. George writes a bookish blog, Literary Clutter, a DVD blog, Viewing Clutter, and also has a dedicated website for the Gamers novels. All of this, and more, can be accessed via his author website.

 

Writers Write: My Favourite Book 25

Carole Wilkinson

One of my favourite books as a child was the first book I can remember reading. It was a Rupert Annual. I didn’t grow up in a house full of books, but I often got a book for my birthday, and one for Christmas. The Christmas book would always be an Annual. And the Rupert Bear Annuals were the ones I loved most. For those not familiar with Rupert, he is not one of your cuddly bears that you might snuggle up to on a cold night. Rupert is a serious bear, who has serious adventures.

The illustrations are in comic-strip style, except there are no speech bubbles. The text is written at two levels. There are rhyming couplets under each picture cell and then a longer prose version at the bottom of each page. But it’s the illustrations drawn by Alfred Bestall from 1935–1973 that I loved most.

There are hundreds of Rupert stories, but they are mostly set around Rupert’s home in the village of Nutwood.

Nutwood is not your average English village. It is populated by a strange collection of anthropomorphic animals such as Algy Pug, Podgy Pig, Willy Mouse and Edward Trunk (an elephant). There are humans living nearby as well, among them sailors, gypsies and a Girl Guides troop.

Rupert’s adventures involve anything from pirates and cannibals, to fairies and imps. But my favourite stories have always been those that included particular neighbours of Rupert’s. Just over the hill from the Bear family, in the middle of idyllic English countryside, there is a pagoda. This is the home of another of Rupert’s friends, a Chinese girl called Tiger Lily. Her father is a magician.

Distorted and inaccurate as it is, this was my first introduction to Chinese culture. I loved the detail of the Chinese clothing, the interior detail of the magician’s house.

I believe Rupert also introduced me to my first dragon. The bear has another Chinese friend, Pong-Ping the Pekinese dog. He wears a smart Mandarin jacket and shoes with spats. In one story Pong-Ping’s pet dragon is the cause of the adventure. The dragon is small, but has all the features of a Chinese dragon, though I recall it does breathe fire.

Later in life I tried to introduce my favourite books from childhood to my daughter, Lili, and my experience was similar to Barry’s. She rejected most of them, but not Rupert. She loved the stories as well. So the tattered Annuals became even more tattered, and I got to rediscover the stories by reading them to her, over and over again.

Carol’s latest book is Blood Brothers from Walker Books. For more, visit her website.

3CR and ’10 Futures’

Last Thursday, I chatted with David MacLean on Radio 3CR’s ‘Published or Not’. This program is always a delight for authors, for the presenters prepare thoroughly – by reading the book at issue, for a start. David’s interview was excellent, extremely attentive to detail and he certainly made me think about what I’d been up to when I wrote the book. If you missed the interview, it can be downloaded from the 3CR podcast page.