this writing life – Page 19

Inside a Dog Index

I’ve just finished a month of blog posts at Inside a Dog, the website of the Centre for Youth Literature, so I thought I’d post the links to each post here, for my own reference and for the benefit of anyone else who might be interested.

Introduction

How To Write a Historical Novel in Seven Easy Steps

1. Think up a good idea for a story
2. Do lots of research
3. Get organised
4. Write lots of words
5. Edit, edit, edit
6. Gaze upon the efforts of the designer and typesetter
7. Admire your finished book

More About Writing a Historical Novel

Planning vs Not Planning
Real People in Historical Fiction
Same Book, But Different (editing for an international readership)

Life in Wartime

Keep Calm and Carry On
Looking Good in Wartime, Part One
Looking Good in Wartime, Part Two
Eating Well in Wartime
Blackout
Animals at War

An End and a Beginning

I promise my next blog post will not mention the FitzOsbornes. Or the Second World War.

Miscellaneous Memoranda

– Look what I received yesterday!

It’s the North American ARC (Advance Reader’s Copy) of The FitzOsbornes at War and it’s even bigger than the Australian edition, at a very hefty 554 pages. If you dropped one of these books on your foot, you could do yourself some serious damage. I should point out that the North American edition has more pages because the typeset is bigger, not because it contains more words. Although it does have one extra feature – a FitzOsborne family tree, dated 1955, so you can see the next generation of FitzOsborne cousins. Anyway, now I am busy proofreading all the pages.

– Someone has also created a book trailer for A Brief History of Montmaray. It is excellently done, although the sea monster does look a bit like a whale. (But then, sea monsters are very sneaky and are Masters of Disguise. People sailing through the Bay of Biscay will be innocently strolling about on the deck of their ship and say, ‘Oh, look, is that a whaAARRGGHH!’ And that’s the last you ever see or hear of them.) I was also very impressed that the book trailer’s creator carefully cited every image used in the trailer. Well done.

– Congratulations to all the Australian authors whose books were recognised in the Children’s Book Council Awards last week. Congratulations also to the New South Wales government, which, after a review, decided to continue the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. The awards will be presented in November this year at the State Library, rather than during the Sydney Writers’ Festival in May, as they have been in previous years. No congratulations to the new Queensland government, who decided, without a review, to cancel the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. It’s the National Year of Reading everywhere in Australia except in Queensland, it seems.

– Back in Sydney, the Museum of Sydney is running a Home Front: Wartime Sydney 1939-1945 exhibition from 31st March to 9th September. There will also be various ‘Life on the Homefront’ events, including ‘Dig for Victory’ kitchen garden tours, children’s activities and a ‘Victory in Europe’ GI dance on the VE Day anniversary.

– The Sydney Writers’ Festival programme is also out, with lots of interest for all readers, including those who like historical and young adult books.

– And I’m still blogging at Inside a Dog and will be giving away a Montmaray book at the end of the month, so come over and say hello.

Inside a Dog and Book Giveaway

My new book, The FitzOsbornes at War is out now in Australia and New Zealand! Very exciting. I haven’t actually seen it in any bookshops, but I’m told it’s out there.

In other exciting news, I’m also Writer in Residence at the Centre for Youth Literature’s blog, Inside a Dog, throughout this month. This week, I’ll be explaining how to write a historical novel in seven easy steps. Come over and say hello! I’m giving away a signed Montmaray book to a commenter chosen at random, so you might even score a free book.

Attention Aspiring Authors

If you’re an aspiring author of children’s or YA books and you live in New South Wales, you might like to check out the Children’s Book Council’s Frustrated Writers’ Mentoring Program, which awards mentorships with a professional editor or published author. There are separate categories for writers who are Juniors (under 15 years), Young Adults (15-20 years old) and Seniors (anyone over 20 years), with entries closing on the 1st of June. Some of the successful Australian authors who’ve entered the program include J.C. Burke, Jacqueline Harvey, Kirsty Eagar, Oliver Phommavanh, Aleesah Darlison, Nathan Luff, Jenny Blackman and er, me. I won a CBCA mentorship in 2003 with Alyssa Brugman, and not only did Alyssa give me a lot of useful advice for improving my manuscript, she also helped me find a publisher and an agent for my first novel. So I think this program is pretty good.

The CBCA and the State Library of NSW are also getting together this year to offer four days of creative writing workshops for teenage writers, led by Anthony Eaton, Michael Pryor, Ursula Dubosarsky, Tony Thompson and the Bell Shakespeare Company. The first Master Class is on the 29th of March and you can find all the details here.

Same Book, But Different

There’s an interesting post at The Readventurer about the significant differences between the North American and Australian editions of Cath Crowley’s YA novel, Graffiti Moon*. The reviewer, who has read both editions, concludes that the American version “felt a bit…sanitized, which I didn’t like.”

Interesting. Especially as there didn’t seem to be anything particularly edgy or controversial in the Australian edition of Graffiti Moon, as I recall.

American publishers do tend to change spelling and punctuation when they publish Australian YA books, and they also change any vocabulary that might prove confusing to American teenage readers. I remember reading the American editions of some YA novels by Barry Jonsberg and Melina Marchetta, in which the settings were clearly Darwin or the inner western suburbs of Sydney – yet the characters talked about ‘dimes’ and ‘sidewalks’. Even J.K. Rowling’s first book was subjected to Americanisation, with her American publishers making more than eighty changes to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, including the title. (And some of the changes seem pretty silly to me – surely American readers could work out that ‘multi-storey car park’ means the same as ‘multilevel parking garage’.)

For the record, the North American edition of A Brief History of Montmaray is very different to the Australian edition. Apart from a much-needed structural edit (for example, I completely re-wrote the final chapter), I spent a lot of time wrangling with my American copy-editor over words such as ‘biscuit’ and ‘jersey’. This was complicated by the fact that my narrator spoke a posh 1930s British version of English. But The FitzOsbornes in Exile and The FitzOsbornes at War are pretty much the same (apart from the spelling), wherever you buy a copy in the world. Maybe my American editors figured that readers who’d made it through the first book in the series would be able to cope with the characters eating ‘biscuits’ rather than ‘cookies’, and using ‘torches’ rather than ‘flashlights’, and so on. Or maybe my editors just got tired of arguing with me.

*Thanks to Bookshelves of Doom for the link to the Graffiti Moon discussion.