An Evening with Nicolette Jones

 On  the evening of Tuesday, 17^th May, the upstairs room at the Theodore Bullfrog pub in Charing Cross was once again the home of the Professional Series, and this time we were treated to the musings of the elegant and witty Nicolette Jones, children’s books reviewer, journalist and literary scout.

Candy, Lucy et al before hand

Tim and Paolo getting ready

 She started her talk by outlining what she does:

• Contributing a ‘supposedly’ weekly slot in the Sunday Times culture section, paperbacks page (although she sometimes gets nudged out by advertisements!)
• Providing a round-up of children’s books for the Sunday Times at Christmas, Easter and in the summer
•  Freelance reviewing and author interviews for the Telegraph and Independent
• Writing on rights for the Bookseller
• Director of the children’s programme of the Oxford Literary festival (for the last two years)
• Scouting for the Louise Allen-Jones agency, looking for English books that might be suitable for overseas publication, particularly Germany (Nicolette actually mentioned this later but I’ve included it here for tidiness!)

She then explained how she got there, reading English Literature at Oxfords and then as a post-grad with a scholarship at Yale, working in the rights department of a London literary agent, then writing for the Readers’ Digest, Publishing News and finally the Sunday Times where she was a general critic (of theatre, cinema, etc) before focussing in, first on fiction in general and then on children’s books.

Her focus on children’s books came when Harry Ritchie, then literary editor, recognised that children’s books should be reviewed by adults using the same objective approach to analysing the writing as they used for adult literature: did the book fulfil the ends it set out to achieve, was the language appropriate, was it funny, etc. Prior to this, children’s books had been languishing in a ghetto where it was assumed that only children’s views of them were of any relevance.

Nicolette finds that she is as stimulated by children’s books as by adults, if in a different way. When choosing books to review (and she has to choose given that nearly 20 parcels of books land on her doormat from publishers each week!) she looks for things that are special and in particular what will turn children into readers. She believes that children will love any book, even a bad one, if it is read to them by a parent, but only a good book will speak directly to a child.

So it isn’t easy to choose, and it can be difficult too to carve out a reviewing slot for such gems. It took three different editorial regimes before Nicolette achieved her weekly slot and even now she sometimes has to bend to editorial considerations which will put reviewing the blockbusters above all else. This isn’t to say she doesn’t have the support of the literary editor. She most certainly does, but there is a lot of competition for space and even Andrew Holgate can’t always pull the shots.

She does however believe that there is more curiosity about children’s books amongst adults than about any other books. After all, a third of publishing income comes from children’s books and that represents one half of all books by volume. 

The attendant audience

After this short introduction, Nicolette offered to take questions:

1.  On the subject of crossover books, Nicolette believes these help to raise the profile of children’s books no end. The main difficulties are who should review them (children’s or adult’s reviewers) and where should they go in the bookshops. She noted that in Australia bookshops have a 15-25 section and that works really well. She also mentioned that they help dealing with the legacy that you grow out of children’s books. Her own daughter’s teacher said that at 15 you shouldn’t be reading children’s books. Nicolette emailed her list of so-called children’s books that were suitable for 15 year olds! She finds it is often difficult to put age ranges on books.
2.  Her view of bloggers was generally favourable. She welcomes the conversations that can be had between writers, reviewers and readers by means of the blogs and notes that some of the bloggers are good reviewers, although the whole phenomenon does raise the question of the point of the critic after all bloggers do it for free and so why should someone pay? But, you do need people to tell others about the books. The traditional media have little space for this, bloggers have plenty. Maybe newspaper web-sites might be able to fill the gap, after all, as one of the delegates commented, traditional media reviews tend to carry more weight with the reading and purchasing public.
3. Having her own blog was not really an option, however. Nicolette does have web-site and she does participate in things like webcasts, but she doesn’t have time to maintain a blog and she couldn’t review more than she does already.
4. She doesn’t believe that publishers are over-publishing. If anything, lists seem to have shrunk. There are definitely fewer picture books but there are some exciting new illustrators coming through recently. She is also encouraged by the new imprints at Macmillan and Random House, Nosy Crow and prizes like the Branford Boase. She would like to see a broader stock in booksellers though. The independents are good and some local branches of the chains do well but more could be done.
5. She can’t be bribed to review a book although she has received some ‘amazing’ things as inducements. Flowers and chocolate are always acceptable! She’s not so sure what she was meant to do with the enormous pair of Y-fronts, plastic rat, plastic spiders, and mechanical sperm she has been sent in the past! She tries to look at everything she is sent and she tries to balance the types of books she reviews over a period of time, but whatever she reviews she is looking for a Wow! factor. So she reads a lot of first chapters and if the book hasn’t got going by then, too bad. This has also led her to collect first lines. A favourite is: ‘Her life might have been different if she hadn’t become known as the girl whose grandmother exploded.’
6. Self-published books do not tend to attract her and she recommends against it for serious writers as both reviewers and booksellers take far more notice of books that have been published traditionally.
7. She is very fond of poetry but says it can be difficult to get poetry reviews included and, except in anthologies, it is difficult to get it published too. She would like to see poetry pamphlets for children.
8. She rarely does bad reviews. This is because she chooses books as book of the week. Occasionally she is told to review a blockbuster and if she doesn’t like it she won’t hold back.
9. She believes that boys are often very good readers. They just don’t read conventional books. She believes there is a risk of gender stereotyping: boys are non-readers and girls like pink. There are some good books with boy protagonists that could be targeted at boys but get packaged in pink.
10. She agrees that books for younger readers do not seem to get many prizes largely because they are too short and wonders if there should be a special prize for shorter fiction series.
11. She is happy to review graphic novels, particularly if they use a cinematic technique (although she steers a wide berth around manga).
12. Her role as a literary scout is to find books that are particularly suitable for the European market. She often receives manuscripts from publishers as well as books, but she doesn’t look at any unagented, unrepresented manuscripts. For the Germans she is particularly looking for fairy tales for 8-12s but they don’t buy picture books as they prefer their own style in these.
13. She is very negative towards book packagers and is saddened by how little parents know about this side of the business. She thinks it’s up to booksellers to explain.
14. She would support a children’s book programme on TV providing it was a varied magazine type programme with features (eg inspiration behind a book), controversy, prize news, etc and was aimed at adults.
15. Finally on the subject of Sainsbury’s as a bookseller Nicolette took the view that any channel to get books to the public was a good thing and it might actually be less challenging for some potential readers to buy books in a supermarket than in a bookshop.

Nicolette smiling as usual and Nick noticing the camera!

And all that was said in a matter of a busy hour or so, during which this aspiring writer wished she’d studied short-hand and gave thanks that her pen didn’t run out. There were of course lots of further one to one questions before Nicolette left but the individuals concerned will have to reveal the contents of those conversations themselves. It is fair to say, though, that everyone had an informative and entertaining evening and we would all happily welcome Nicolette back to talk again.

The Power of Dreams

I suppose I'm not unique in finding dreams a pretty useful source for story ideas. My first published story, Behind the Mirror, originated in one of those half asleep moments on a Saturday morning when you're hoping that no-one will notice that you're almost awake and you desperately try to hang onto the snooze a little bit longer.

But last night was different. Maybe it was because I had spent the day really getting back into the book I'm writing at the moment, unravelling all the little mysteries, and layering on the different sub-plots. Maybe I shouldn't have watched the Sopranos before going to bed (though I doubt that had much impact). Maybe it was the white wine. But whatever it was I woke up in a cold sweat and distinctly spooked, and it was my own novel characters that had done it to me!

So where does that leave me? With a previously innocent sort of character taking on a whole new, and much more menacing persona, and a complete sub-plot to go with it. And that means I'm energised, enthused and creeped out in equal measure about where the book is now going.

My lovely critique group buddies, who've seen the first 10,000 words or so have already commented on how mysterious this novel is. Well, I've got news for them. It's about to get a whole lot more strange.

Oh, and that picture - just something to dream about!

Review: Ghost of a Chance by Rhiannon Lassiter

I have to confess when I first heard Rhiannon Lassiter read an extract of Ghost of a Chance at the OUP Dark Fantasy event I didn't quite engage with it. Maybe it was sitting on a hard floor, maybe it was the wine I'd drunk, maybe it was just being overawed by such august company. But whatever it was, I felt entirely differently when I actually got my hands on the book and started to read.

Eva Chance, the hero, lives in the House. It's always referred to like that, the House. It's been inhabited by Chances for generations and is falling to bits and Eva's grandfather is now too old, frail and, frankly, poor to do anything much about it. Eva half loves, half hates the House. She's spent too much of her time there, raised by her grandfather and without any friends her own age. She has friends, of sorts, in the ghosts that inhabit the House, ghosts that nobody else can see and as the novel progresses she starts to think that maybe she can see them so clearly because she has in fact become one of them. That's the only explanation she can come up with for why all the live inhabitants and visitors to the House act as if she isn't there. The only problem she has is that she can't remember ever dying.

And that sets her off on her search to find out what happened. On the way she meets an assortment of helpful and distinctly unhelpful ghosts, falls in love with a living boy, Kyle, and with his help takes on the might and venom of the witch in the House cellar. Now, that all makes for an impressively eerie and spine chilling ghost story and one that has you struggling all the way to the end wondering how the author is going to bring that ghost-human love story to a successful conclusion.

But this is not just a ghost story. There is a whole cast of assorted live Chance relations, all of whom seem to have motives for killing off Eva, her grandad, and anyone else who might get in the way so that they can get their hands on the House. There's also a rather androgynous house agent, Kyle's sister, their dad and a bunch of pretty incompetent police officers. Oh, and a couple of murders and attempted murders too. All of which means that the story is as much a mystery as it is a ghost story, and as such it trots along at a pretty pace and keeps you guessing right to the end.

I won't give away the ending, that wouldn't be fair, but I will say that, for me, it didn't quite live up to everything that came before. The witch was such a wonderful creation, depicted with real menace, so I think I found her demise a bit of a disappointment, and as to the resolution of the mystery, well, it just stretched this reader's imagination a bit too far.

Having said that, this is a fantastic foray into young adult fiction, There are some truly scary bits and some wonderfully atmospheric writing. And as an example of gothic it introduces a raft of interesting new ideas which certainly enrich the genre.

The lovely folk at Oxford sent me this review copy. If you want one of your own please order it via the link below and then Amazon will make a contribution to maintaining this blog.

 

Review: Gallows at Twilight by William Hussey

This is the second book in William Hussey’s Witchfinder trilogy and in now characteristic style it opens with a horrifying tale of child sacrifice, plus one of those memorable images that Hussey conjures so easily. In the first novel it was the exploding poisonous toads. This time it is the sacrificed children’s fingers and toes that have been ‘laid out like a row of little sausages’!

Once again Jake Harker is the only thing that stands between the Demon Father and the annihilation of mankind and at the beginning of the book he is in no fit state to fulfil that task. The magic that he found at the end of the first book seems to have left him and although he now has an odd assortment of monsters, friends and his dad on his side, they are no match for the Demon Father and his father appears to be dying. To make matters worse, the girl he’s started to fall in love with, Rachel, appears to be sweet on his best friend, Simon.

So in a teenage pique fuelled quest to re-find his magic, cure his dying father and put a stop to the Demon Father’s plans, he plunges back through time to the seventeenth century, which is where matters start to get seriously dangerous for him.

As with the first book, this is another page turner, packed full of action, horror and a cast of some of the creepiest characters you will find in fiction. There is also a light touch at play: the Badderson father and son combo, for example, are quite adorable, for all that they are trolls, and I became rather fond of the many-armed Pandora. The domestic scenes with the Hobarron family in the seventeeth century are handled with great delicacy too. Will this make the book more acceptable to girls? Probably not unless they like stomach-churning gore as well. But it does make for a more rounded book and a lot more to think about.

And one final warning: the cover. This is definitely not a book to be left face up on the bedside table!

The last book in the series, The Last Nightfall, is due out in September.

The lovely people at Oxford sent me this review copy. If you want one for yourself please order it via the link below and Amazon will make a small contribution to maintaining this blog.
 

Review: Finding Sky by Joss Stirling

Finding Sky is the latest in a stream of American high school romances that pitch good girl against bad boy with extraordinary powers.  Sky, like Bella before her, is the new girl in the school who finds herself drawn, against her better judgement to the mysterious cool guy that her friends warn her against. And Zed, the cool guy in question, like Edward before him, is a member of a tight-knit protective family all of whom have their own special powers. But there the analogy dies.  There are no vampires here, just ‘savants’, human beings just like any other with the exception of super-tuned senses that enable them to talk telepathically, read the past or future or move objects without touching them.

Sky is no Bella either. For starters, she’s English and that fact alone provides the equally English author with no end of opportunities to have fun at the expense of our so-called shared language. She’s a feisty number too, more than capable of holding her own, and of making, often difficult, decisions. And that points to another difference: because in many ways this is as much a book about the choices people make when they are given power as it is a romance or a fast-moving thriller.

This also happens to be one of the best written books about at the moment. The prose is pacey, witty and a delight to read. It sucks the reader in effortlessly, placing them firmly in the mindset of a shy and emotionally damaged English girl struggling to come to terms with her natural attraction to a fine specimen of adolescent manhood, her appalling past and her exciting potential future.

The lovely folk at Oxford sent me this review copy. If you want one for yourself please order it via the link below and Amazon will then send a small contribution towards the maintenance of this blog

Review: Curse of the Wendigo by Rick Yancey

This, the second of Yancey’s Monstrumologist series, does not disappoint. Gore, horror and general yuck-factor opportunities abound along with an evocative depiction of early twentieth century New York and further development of the two key characters of Will Henry and Dr Warthrop.

The Curse of the Wendigo is almost two separate novels rolled into the one. The first half follows Will Henry and Dr Warthrop as they track down Warthrop’s old sparring partner John Chanler who has disappeared in the Western Canadian wilderness. This is the landscape that adults will know from Twin Peaks and X-Files and Yancey draws all that televisual eeriness into his book with an expert’s touch. The second half takes place in a richly drawn New York where appalling slums nestle alongside exquisite high society and both Will Henry and Warthrop get to interact with the opposite sex. This is new territory for the series and bodes well for the next book. The poignant description of Warthrop’s liaison adds a level of complexity to his character and provides something of an explanation for his enigmatic personality. Will Henry’s new friendship, by contrast, provides light relief and a tempting glimpse of what might be to come.

This is a book for horror fans who are bored sick of vampires, werewolves the usual array of evil characters. And, speaking from experience, this is definitely not one to read at twilight in an empty room!

Originally written for writeaway.org.uk

OUP Dark Fantasy Event

On the evening of Wednesday 27^th October Oxford University Press hosted a Dark Fantasy event in The Drawing Room of the House of St Barnabas in Soho. The purple uplighting, chandeliers, and mirrors of the room were complemented by a liberal scattering of carved pumpkins, not to mention a furry spider and a rather wonderful Venetian mask. Where better to gather for an evening of literary chat and spooky readings?

William Hussey, complete with large and distinctly hirsute spider adorning his left shoulder, opened the readings with an excerpt from Gallows at Twilight, the second book of his Witchfinder trilogy, out on 6^th January 2011. His relish in describing the Crowden sisters feasting on children reassured us that the stomach churning gore and shudder fest of the first book will be continuing in the second, right down to something he tantalisingly described as the ‘infamous shopping-bag line’!

Rhiannon Lassiter came next with a reading from Ghost of a Chance, also out on 6^th January. Rhiannon came to the event with a large supporting cast, including her august mother, Mary Hoffman, sporting the be-feathered mask previously mentioned.  Rhiannon came to dark teen fantasy via science fiction, magic realism and thrillers and it was clear that all had played a role in shaping this book. There were shudders aplenty in this reading: definitely not one for the faint-hearted.

Joss Stirling completed the evening’s readings, with an excerpt from Finding Sky, her first novel in this persona  and published earlier in October. Dressed in a sparkly black dress she more than looked the part and opened her talk with a brief discussion of her theory that the English are prone to periodic bursts of the gothic (or should that be gothick given the historical nature of the discussion?)  The book was written with a very specific teenage girl audience in mind, and several had come along to the event to vouchsafe their approval.  The reading gave more than a glimpse of the nature of the book: psycho-horror underpinned by the humour inherent in an Anglo-American culture clash. Sadly we didn’t get a glimpse of what Joss described as her deep hatred of Las Vegas in the reading but I am assured that we will find it in the novel!

This was an exhilarating event that gave a suitably murky teaser to some very dark books.