Dinner with Neal Shusterman

Californian-based writer, Neal Shusterman, is currently undertaking a mini European tour, with school visits and signings, to publicise the forthcoming publication of Everwild, the follow-up to Everlost. We caught up with him in the middle of his busy London schedule and he kindly shared some of his thoughts on the writing process, school visits, and current projects.

Intriguingly, for someone who lives so close to the cradle of information technology, Neal chooses to write the first drafts of his novels by hand in spiral-bound notebooks. He describes his typical Californian writing day as: dropping the kids off to school, heading on over to Starbucks and getting out the notebook to write, then with a chapter under the belt he returns home, avoids the ever-present call of the kids’ laundry and types up the chapter, editing as he goes. This first edit is then re-edited and re-edited until he reaches what he likes to call his ‘first draft’, typically the fifth or sixth edit since the hand-written original. This is the draft that goes to his publisher, and then, as he says, the real work of writing begins!

Of course, with his busy speaking and school visit schedule, quite a few of the chapters also get written in planes, trains, hotels and coffee bars, all round the US and further afield. This, he says, suits him fine. He regards school visits and talking to children and young people about his stories (his Californian number plate is STORYMAN) as integral to his creative process. He gets honest feedback from the kids and they energise him to create more.

What he is actually scribbling in those notebooks at the moment is Everfound, the follow-up to Everwild. This will be the last book in the trilogy and should be out mid 2011. He has also just finished writing the script for an Everlost film for Universal, which, he is told, has about a 50% chance of being made. (Apparently that is rather better than average.) He has found this a rather challenging project, in spite of his considerable screen-writing credentials, largely because the studio has asked him to rethink the Everlost world from a more cinematic point of view. This has led to major changes and he hopes it will be seen as a work in its own right, related to the book, for sure, but not simply a filmed version of it.

So, with Everwild, to be published on 4^th February, Everfound coming next year, and a potential film of Everlost in the offing, it looks like being an exciting year or so ahead for Neal Shusterman fans.

It's out - finally!

Sadly the anthology featuring The Rock House didn't make it out in time for Christmas and it's called Twelve Days. Still, better late than never, I guess. Here's a picture of the cover:

You can buy a copy at Amazon, or direct from the publisher: Bridge House Publishing.

There are lots of good stories in this one, even if it is aimed at adults. I just wish it had made it out before Christmas.

Ah well, there's always next year!

Review: Islands of the Blessed by Nancy Farmer

The malevolent spirit of a vengeful mermaid is wreaking havoc on Jack’s village and it’s up to him, the old Bard and Thorgil to confront and vanquish the restless draugr. But the task will not be easy and the three find themselves travelling once more with Thorgil’s Northman brother and his crew in to the most dangerous of waters. Their quest to right old wrongs leads them from a village plagued by a hogboon to the fin folk land of Notland and via every danger in between.  Can they escape the perils they face and return in time to help the undead-spirit find peace.

This is the third and final volume of Nancy Farmer’s trilogy, but fear not, if you haven’t read the previous two. Apart from a slightly slow, scene setting start, the story rips along at a brisk pace and the back history is fed in subtly but sufficiently tantalisingly to make the reader want to go back and read the other two novels.

As the blurb indicates this is a quest, and a fine one too, that weaves a variety of folk tale heroes and monsters into a believable historical setting. A well-read Year 6 or 7 will recognise several names: Hengist, and Beowulf, amongst them and the less familiar (such as the Shoney or St Columba) are explained in the Appendix.  There’s also a fair amount of social history, with the cultural differences between the Northmen raiders and the Saxon farmers handled in an often light-hearted and always entertaining way, and the depiction of the monks’ asceticism is deadly.

My only complaint is that the quest actually finishes four-fifths of the way through the book, the final 90 pages or so being dedicated to a sort of tying up of loose ends and sealing of the protagonists’ fates. And the final sentence, frankly, made this reader cringe! 

It’s a shame that the book tailed off like this because the resolution of the quest is a bit of a jaw dropper and the book is well worth the read for that alone.

Originally written for writeaway.org.uk

Review: Wicked: Legacy and Spellbound by Nancy Holder and Debbie Viguie

Holly Cathers is not the same person she was almost a year and a half ago. After discovering her connection to an ancient legacy of witches, Holly has accepted her destiny as a descendant of the House of Cahors and is determined to end an intergenerational feud that has plagued her family for centuries. But Holly will have to overcome unworldly obstacles as she battles to protect her loved ones – including Jer, a member of the rival House of Deveraux and her one true love. A war of magical proportions is being waged, and Holly is right in the middle of it. Lives will be lost, and sacrificed will have to be made.

This chunky volume comprises books three and four of the Wicked series by Nancy Holder and Debby Viguié and follows the publication of Wicked – Witch and Curse, the first two books, last September. The fifth and final book, Resurrection, is due for publication in April.

Legacy picks up where the second book, Cursed, left off, both in terms of the plot and the continued magical development of Holly and her Cathers cousins, Nicole and Amanda.  It opens with Holly, and what remains of her coven, en route to London to rescue Nicole, who has been abducted by members of the Deveraux family and the Supreme Coven to whom they hold allegiance.  Newly found abilities enable Holly to rescue first Jer and then Nicole and they all escape back to America where they come under an attack of almost cosmic force from Jer’s father, Michael Deveraux.

By the end of Legacy, the coven is once again in complete disarray with neither Jer nor Holly in any state to help. Spellbound provides some resolution and introduces an entirely new character, Alex, to the coven. Whether he is a force for the good or the bad, however, remains to be seen.

There is plenty of action, mostly involving a vast array of magical pyrotechnics, although with a few conventional arms thrown in to leaven the mix. When not in the middle of the action, Holly and Jer struggle to disentangle their own personalities and desires from the weighty expectations of their family histories, and to understand their personal positions in what is essentially a conventional battle between good and evil. As with the previous books, an assortment of Cathers , Deveraux, and now Moores (the Supreme Coven’s controlling family) ancestors play their role, taking the reader to thirteenth century France, and also early twentieth century USA and late eighteenth century Australia. Add elements of Wicca, Voodoo, Shamanism and even Christian exorcism into the mix and you have a story that rips along at a ferocious pace and is a real page turner.

Hide and Seek is born

I did it! I completed 50,000 words in November and a complete novel (all 55,000) by the end of the first week in December. And yes, I have bought the T-shirt!

Of course, it's pretty raw at the moment but it was an exhilarating ride and I heartily recommend the process. I've never written a book without plotting it pretty tightly before hand. So this was a seat of the pants sort of exercise but it meant that I could let the characters really take control and I have to say I really enjoyed doing that.

The working title is Hide and Seek - I only came up with that when I was about two-thirds of the way through - and is set in modern day Venice. That's all I'll say for the moment. After all with such a raw draft anything might happen in the rewrite!

Busy November

Well, the bad news is that the Rock House won't be coming out in November after all - bit of a delay at the publishers. But the good news is that I'm uber-busy. Why? Because I have decided to participate in the annual Nanowrimo event and am attempting to complete a novel, from start to scratch during the month of November. (Actually. the target is 50,000 words, but I would rather like to make that the first draft of a new novel.)

That means, of course that by the time I have knocked out an average 3,000 words, or so, on the days my other commitments allow me to write, I will have little finger power left to copy, paste, photograph, reformat etc anything for the blog.

Please bear with me for the time being and I do apologise for the hiatus. I will start posting again in December.

Review: Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

I have a confession to make. When I picked this book off my pile of review books my heart sunk. First off, I’d scanned the promotional material and knew it was yet another high school teenager falls for inappropriate male story. Then there was the small matter of the black feather that had fallen out of the envelope that accompanied the promotional material. So, there was no doubt about it. I wasn’t going to enjoy this.

Yeah, well, OK.

Approximately 150 pages in and I had to put it down because the kids were screaming to be fed, and that’s pretty much how it carried on until I had reached the final page.

So what makes Hush Hush worth reading?  To start with, there’s the two lead characters. Leaving aside the problem of their names (Nora and Patch! I ask you. Those names might work in the US but in England I have an image of a decrepit and irritable old woman getting down with the dog. But I digress), these two are as well-drawn and attractive as any. Nora is a feisty number. She is self-reliant and not easily spooked and no one could be more surprised than she when she finds herself drawn towards the mysterious new boy at school. Indeed, she refuses to give in to the inevitable, does her utmost to avoid Patch and even starts dating another boy, until she comes to suspect that he may have been involved in the death of another girl.  All of which makes the final submission to Patch all the more convincing.

Patch, too is a multi-dimensional creation, no mean feat given he’s the supernatural one. He remains difficult to read, right up to the end. Yes, he’s the fallen angel and yes, he fell, we learn, for all the right reasons. But there are hints a many of the evil he has perpetrated in the past and neither Nora nor the reader can be sure that in the end the evil side of his nature will not triumph.

And then we come to the writing style. This is lean and pacy and dominated by sassy and believable dialogue. Hush Hush is a book you can read quickly, indeed that you want to read quickly. It’s fun and exciting, intriguing and not a little bit sexy; it’s a different twist on the high school romance and a stupendous first novel.

I gather Becca Fitzpatrick is now working on a sequel.  I won’t be picking that one up with a sinking heart, but I do hope I don’t get another black feather.

Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpartick, published by Simon & Schuster, October 29^th 2009