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I love the fossil vs. barbeque analogy! I’m finding these posts absolutely fascinating – thanks for offering a window into the process. 🙂
And I say yay to the dragon story!!!
Tristan seems like a man of many talents – the photos are beautiful! Congratulations on a splendid launch. 🙂
I was never a big reader as a child. But my early years included a stable diet of Enid Blyton and sporting magazines. As a young teen, my time was taken with Douglas Adams, Heinlein, Wells, and Tolkien.
I’m total amazed these days of the breadth of reading available for young readers, and how hard it is to get children to read with the alternative of multimedia products.
I loved Enid Blyton too, though I still think Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons adventure stories are better – they’re far less sexist for one thing.
The multimedia thing is interesting – on the one hand, as you say, it can take kids away from books, but on the other it’s making new opportunities for interactive storytelling that I find quite exciting. I’m developing a choose-your-own-adventure-style game as a complement to Greythorne at the moment using Twine, which is pretty cool, and some of the new games that are coming out (especially the indie ones) are stunning examples of visual storytelling. That said, there’s still nothing quite like a good book, and I think it’s great that young adult fiction as a genre has undergone such explosive growth in recent years (I still read it, and one of the more interesting statistics I saw was that most young adult books are actually bought by people aged 18-35). I also love writing YA fiction because there’s quite a lot of freedom in the genre to explore all sorts of ideas, and I love writing for readers who get really passionate about books (as teens often do).
Its really not an irrational fear. What goes up has to come down, and there is the concern, how will it come down….
For me I find life exhausting, so despite the attached anxieties (if you listen carefully on take off or landing you’ll find me praying to whichever deity I think will help me most), as soon as I’m airborne I’ll fall asleep.
I wish I could fall asleep on planes – I have so much adrenaline coursing through my veins that the best I can usually manage is one of those light dozes where you’re not really sure if you’ve slept at all.
I don’t mind if planes come down the way they’re supposed to!
Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! CONGRATULATIONS!!
Ah the Circus. I too broke the drought, last year taking my son to the circus. It has changed a lot from days of old. Less caged animals and feats of strength, agility and illusion. But the magic was still there.
One of my favourite books is Circus by Alistair MacLean. Again this book captures the magic of the Circus with a little espionage as well.
There were a few animals in this one (camels, llamas, water buffalo and a macaw) but I actually prefer the human acts – the acrobats were amazing. Thanks for the book recommendation – I’m not familiar with it so I’ll check it out!
Best of luck with your future endeavours! And I have to say, the writer’s retreat sounds absolutely divine.
Thanks Emily! I hope your book is going well!
Thanks! I have been snowed under with uni work ever since releasing it, but somehow a few people have still heard about it! I’m hoping to be a bit more promo-y about it once semester ends.
I’ve been reading some great books on indie publishing recently that might help (if you haven’t come across them already) – in particular, Dave Gaughran’s ‘Let’s Get Digital’ and ‘Let’s Get Visible’ have lots of good marketing tips, as does basically anything by Joanna Penn.
An interesting photo essay which makes a really strong statement. And, as I’m sure you realise, it is so much worse in some other countries where just being a woman walking along a street on your own after dark is interpreted as an invitation for trouble.
Thanks, I’m glad you like it. Of course gender inequality is relative, but I think it can sometimes be hardest to see the problems in our own society because we’re so close to them. Many of the other artists in the exhibition chose to focus on international issues such as child marriage and sex trafficking, which are obviously very serious, but I decided to look at something a bit closer to home because I wanted to highlight that, even though women’s rights in the West have made great strides, we still have a long way to go, and inequality is still pervasive. On the one hand, the perceptions that I’m exploring may seem small, but they have very real consequences in that they add to a narrative that contributes to domestic violence, abuse, sexual harassment and assault, and discrimination against women more broadly. I’d really recommend reading the PLAN International report referenced in the essay (there’s a link at the bottom) if you haven’t already – it reaches some disturbing conclusions, especially around how young women in see their place in society.