London Book Fair and the Author Blog Awards Party

It's been a busy couple of days for me at the London Book Fair, what with the Author Blog Awards party, meeting lovely SCBWIs and SASSIEs, signing with a new agent--oh, and doing a little volcanosquatting (more of that later). 

First, the Awards report, as promised.  Despite all your lovely votes, I didn't win.  The honours went to The Shopgirl Diaries written by Emily Benet.  I've had a look, and it's a really good blog, so I'm not feeling too bad about it!  I'll be getting a nice shiny blogbadge for being shortlisted, anyway. Here I am at the party,

where I met all sorts of twitterites and literary folk, including:

Emily Benet, winner!

and Jon Reed of Publishing Talk along with Anna Lewis and Jon Stark of Completely Novel and lots of other nice bookie people too numerous to mention. The wine flowed and the chat was chatty and I even wore my eBay Jimmy Choos (which I'd promised Sam Missingham of The Bookseller I'd bring to the party in a rash moment on Twitter). 

Here I am with one of the Jimmys in an empty LBF stand--which brings me to the matter of 'volcanosquatting'.  I'm not sure if any of you have noticed, but Iceland seems to hate us because of all that banking malarkey. So a special plume of volcanic ash was organised by the Norse Gods so that none of the foreign publishers or agents could fly through it to LBF.  This created a certain amount of empty space at the fair, (and a certain amount of Facebook and Twitter conspiracy chat among those children's authors who were going). All I will say here (for fear of being arrested after the event) is that we took the opportunity to brighten up a sad, lonely and deserted space by putting our books, posters and leaflets up in an entrepreneurial sort of way.  People liked it.  We even met some lovely student illustrators who joined us in our anarchic public-spirited activities.  Here are some of us posing in our newly acquired premises....

Culprits Entrepreneurs Kathryn Evans, Candy Gourlay and Tabitha Suzuma (and me).  Other culprits entrepreneurs (like Anne Rooney and Jackie Marchant) cleverly avoided photographic evidence of their crime clandestine activities.  

Other News from the Fair: At the end of last year I was very sad to find that Rosemary Sandberg,  my lovely agent of 10 years was retiring. However, after a long and fruitful meeting in the (scarily empty and bereft of foreign agents) International Rights Centre, I am delighted to make an Official Announcement!  Sophie Hicks of Ed Victor Ltd is going to be my new agent, and I couldn't be more delighted. She's lovely--and she immediately won huge brownie points from me by introducing me to Eoin Colfer, creator of Artemis Fowl and an extremely nice and funny man (who is obviously James Bond in disguise despite his protestations that he is 'too short' to be a glamorous international spy).

I'm going away to have a lie down now, after all that excitement.  I'll be back on Friday, bringing you a Mythic Interview from no less a luminary than Michelle Paver.  I AM lucky to be keeping such starry company these days!

Mythic Interview Friday: Number 3 - Amanda Craig

When I first started to think about these Mythic Interview Fridays, I decided I wanted to get as diverse a group of people from the book world involved (and talking about the importance of myths) as I possibly could.  Hence, I am delighted to welcome Amanda Craig--one of the UK's foremost children's book critics--to Scribble City Central. Amanda has long been familiar to me as a journalist and as children's book reviewer for the Times--indeed she's been kind enough to review my own books there on several occasions--but the other hat she wears, that of a writer, was less familiar to me until earlier this year.  I've just finished her novel, 'Hearts and Minds', which is currently long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010.  The shortlist is announced next Tuesday 20th April, and if Amanda is not on it I shall wonder if the judges were temporarily bereft of their senses, because it is a wonderful and moving book.  Reading it, for me, was like having a curtain drawn back—seeing the life and movement inside a stranger’s room all the more clearly for having been in the darkness on the London street outside. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Anyway, now it's Amanda's turn to sit in the Mythic Interview Chair and answer my searching questions on matters mythic!

1. Do you think that the retelling of Greek and other myths is important or relevant for the children of today? Why should they care about some "dry old stories" which come from ancient cultures they might never even have heard of?
I think it’s hugely important, yes. Myths, especially Greek ones, are not only the best stories we have apart from fairy-tales, but form the basis of European culture. You can’t begin to understand great literature, art, music, architecture and philosophy without knowing them. However, they need to be re-told for each generation.

2. What age were you when you came across your first myth or myths? Tell us how you felt then about the myths you first discovered. Did you love them or hate them? Did they scare you, excite you—or were you indifferent? What kind of myths were they? Greek? Norse? Native American? Celtic? Or from another culture entirely? Were they in a book you read? Or did you hear them as oral storytelling from someone else?
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know them. My mother gave me an ancient book she’d had, which I re-read so many times it fell to bits. It had illustrations in which everyone looked as if they were made of marble! My favourite in that book was the myth of Orpheus, probably because of the dramatic picture of his losing Eurydice. Soon after, I got Roger Lancelyn Green’s marvelous Tales of the Greek Heroes, which my own children loved. My favourites there were the Labours of Hercules. I very much responded to his choice of paths – the pleasant, easy path of ordinary life, and the hard, arduous one of the hero. I was thrilled by his strangling the snakes in his cradle! Also, cleaning the Augean Stables in such an ingenious way. It’s all very well to be super-strong, but that was housework hero-style. I’m never as impressed by feats of strength as by intelligence.  I liked the Norse myths too but they were too full of evil and darkness. Both ended with a climactic vision of the end of days, but the Greeks had heroes helping the gods, and winning against the Titans. Greek myth has individual tragedy but is on the side of life. It’s also on the side of intelligence, mercy and justice, albeit of a gruesome kind.

3. Looking back, what is your favourite myth of all time, from any culture? And why would you choose it?
Right now, my favourite myth is Demeter and Persephone, perhaps because my own mother is ill, and I feel that fierce mother-love in both directions. But I also adore the story of Perseus, partly because he uses his wits, and is the only hero who ends happily. He saves not only the princess but his own mother.

4. Who is your most hated and also your most loved mythical hero or heroine, and what made you feel that way about them?
Most hated, I suppose Loki. I’m always interested in trickster figures, and write about them, but Loki moves from mischief to pure evil. He’s like Iago, destructive for the sake of it. I also loathe Paris. If he’d chosen Wisdom instead of Love he’d probably have had both, because women always love a wise young man.

Most loved, Odysseus. He is both a hero and a family man. His long battle to get home to his wife, protect his son and survive is one that speaks to all of us. I also love Penelope for being so clever despite the passivity forced on her. She would have understood about the nymphs on the way.

5. Is there a mythical beast you are particularly fond of? If so, which one?
Pegasus is definitely one! A winged horse is part of every writer’s dream of freedom. And Cerberus. I love dogs, and always feel so sorry for him, chained up in the Underworld; though feeding three heads doesn’t bear thinking about.

6. Have myths had any influence on what and how you write, your reading choices, or in any other areas of your cultural life? 
Yes, loads! I’m always interested in archetypes, which derive largely from myth – at present I’m writing about an unhappily married couple, somewhat in the mould of Zeus and Hera.

7. If you could choose to be the demigod child of any one mythical god or goddess, which one would it be? Which power would you like to inherit from them—and what would you do with it?
I’d choose Athene, both wise and a warrior. She’s the original feminist – and the protector of Odysseus. I can think of quite a few uses for her shield with the Head of Medusa….

More about Amanda:
Amanda Craig was born in South Africa in 1959, and brought up in Italy and Britain. After reading English at Clare College Cambridge, she became an award-winning young journalist in the 1980s. She is the author of six novels, Foreign Bodies (1990), A Private Place (1991) A Vicious Circle (1996), In a Dark Wood (2000) and Love In Idleness (2003). Her novels and short stories carry characters on from one book to the next, and her new novel, Hearts and Minds (2009), which has been long listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, is a sequel to both A Vicious Circle and Love in Idleness. She lives in London, is a reviewer and broadcaster, and is also the children's book critic for the Times.
Amanda's website and blog are HERE and her @AmandaPCraig Twitter Page is HERE

Last Hours to Vote In Author Blog Awards! You Have Till Midnight GMT

PLEASE...VOTE for SCC!

because voting for the Author Blog Awards closes at midnight GMT Thursday 15th April--that's in 5 hours from now!  Just click on the button to the right of the page if you want to boost my chances of beating Neil Gaiman to the top spot!  And thanks once again to those who have already voted!  You are stars...
I'm off to the awards party on Tuesday, so I'll take lots of photos and post them and a report of all the awardy happenings!

Coming tomorrow on Scribble City Central in the Mythic Friday Interview chair is Amanda Craig--top UK children's book critic.

Guest Post with M.G.Harris: Mayan Myths in popular culture – 2012 and all that

A big Scribble City Central welcome to M.G.Harris, author of the wonderful Joshua Files books, riproaring action thrillers with just the sort of ingredients I like--ancient prophecies, car chases, sinister baddies and a good dash of mythic mystery! It's all a bit like Indiana Jones crossed with James Bond--only better.  Scribble City Central is the 5th stop on M.G.'s blog tour, and I asked her to tell us something about Mayan myths and how they relate to her books.The Mayans are a people I've always found fascinating and don't know enough about.  Now I'm itching to learn more after reading her post...over to you, M.G. and thanks for visiting!

M.G. says: The 2012 movie, The Joshua Files and an upcoming series from the Syfy channel all feature a Mayan ‘prophecy’ that the world will end in December 2012.  In fact, whether or not such a prophecy even exists is controversial. The Mayan Long Count calendar ends on a date which is translated variously as 21st (or 23rd) December 2012 – that is something which all Mayan scholars agree on. Then there’s the mysterious ‘Tortuguera 6’ monument – the single known written reference to the end date – known in Mayan as 13 Baktun. The translation of the legible part of the inscription is tantalising enough to add further intrigue. And how cool is it that it becomes unreadable just beyond the mention of the date…? 

Except that…an evidence-based approach to this doom-laden ‘prophecy’ casts huge doubts over any actual threat. 2012 is a myth, a Nostradamus-style prophecy that’s apparently embedded in the culture of an enigmatic lost civilisation.

What storyteller can resist a myth like that?

Other aspects of Mayan mythology have also provided inspiration for The Joshua Files. Theirs is a pantheistic religion with a creation myth that was written down by Spanish-speaking Mayans in a book known as the Popul Vuh. The Mayan world is divided into the world, the sky and the underworld – Xibalba. There are gods who represent the Sun, Moon, the sky, the Earth, and many more.

Like most Mesoamerican peoples, the Maya have their version of the feathered-serpent god Quetzelcoatl: they call him Kukulkan. The Aztecs mistook the Spanish conquistador Cortes for the legendary Quetzelcoatl, something which almost certainly hastened their doom.

After Kukulkan, Itzamna is perhaps the Maya’s most enigmatic figure. Itzamna; bringer of writing and agriculture to the Maya: who else to cast in a Chariot-of-the-Gods style plot strand…? But whilst the mysterious Itzamna who leaves his mark in The Joshua Files is a real person (readers are still waiting to find out just who), the Mayan Itzamna is purely mythological. In temple adornments Itzamna’s features sometimes decorate the corners, or an occasional frieze. Itzamna the Earth Monster!

The Itzamna of The Joshua Files, like the mythological figure, left behind four sons to continue his legacy. In Mayan legend these four sons, the Bakabs, hold up the four corners of the world. In The Joshua Files this translates to the Bakabs becoming the guardians of four crucial Mayan codices: books of ancient knowledge.

The Mayan worldview saw the earthly province split into four directions equivalent: Ix, Kan, Muluc, Cauac, centred about the central World Tree – the Mayan version of the commonly-held myth of the Tree of Life. Under the tree was Xibalba, the underworld of demons and trials. At the top was the Heart of Sky.

The Heart of Sky brings us back to 2012. A popular ‘theory’ for the 2012 myth, concerns an alignment of our own sun with the centre of the galaxy – perhaps the Mayan ‘heart of sky’. What catastrophes could we dream up as a consequence of such an alignment? The 2012 movie imagines earthquakes, a polar shift, tidal waves. In The Joshua Files it’s a superwave of energy from the galactic core: a gigantic electromagnetic pulse.

Modern-day Mayan elders have gone on record to say that their legends hold no such prophecy of doom, that the calendar end-date is no more significant than our annual December 31st. A culture which believed in time as cyclical, the Mayan myths seem to point more to rebirth and new beginnings more than to an ending.

A misunderstanding that amounts to a clash of cultures was perhaps inevitable. Western culture has been overwhelmingly about linear progress; from basic civilisation to some imagined future like the utopia of Star Trek’s Federation. Yet over in the Americas, the Maya constructed a civilisation in which everything was as predictably cyclical as the Sun, the Moon and stars, as the growth of crops and the harvest.

It’s a safe bet that whilst thousands of people all over the world are anxious or excited on 21st December 2012, most of the six million native Mesoamerican people with Mayan heritage will be, in the words of Voltaire, simply ‘cultivating their garden’.

N.B. For child-friendly information about the Maya and 2012 see HERE
Next on the ZERO MOMENT blog tour - One Hundred Years of Solitude – a bluffer’s guide at http://theviewfromheremagazine.com/ (17 April)

Mythic Interview Friday: Number 2 - Mary Hoffman

Time for the second Mythic Interview Friday--and you're in for another treat. It's strange to think that I first met Mary Hoffman nearly 30 years ago when I was the young and enthusiastic editor of the first Yellow Banana Books.  I worked on Beware, Princess which she wrote for the series (and which, if I recall correctly, was the first book illustrated by one Chris Riddell, then fresh out of art college). In those days, I trembled in the face of Mary's towering reputation as author, critic and journalist (I still do), but we have got to know each other well over the years, and I am proud to call her my friend.  Mary's Stravaganza sequence has become one of my 'must-read' recommendations for any teenager who likes a fabulous mix of adventure, romance and magic.  I recently read the latest--City of Ships--which came out in March 2010 and is just as wonderful as its predecessors.  If you haven't come across these books yet, go and buy them at once! Now, enough from me--here are Mary's answers to my seven mythically-minded questions. I love how different they are from Caroline Lawrence's set last Friday. That's what this interviewing business is all about.

1. Do you think that the retelling of myths is important or relevant for the children of today? Why should they care about some “dry old stories” which come from ancient or forgotten cultures they might never even have heard of?
It’s absolutely vital! And what’s with this “dry” nonsense? These are stories as juicy as any you are likely to find.  I once had a most successful session with quite disaffected secondary students in a rough East End school, when I just walked up and down the classroom telling them Greek myths and legends. They then wrote their own contemporary versions and had Phaeton stealing his dad’s Merc, for instance. They agreed that the sort of thing you came across in the myths could be found any day of the week in soaps like EastEnders – doubtful parentage, incest, adultery and what they called “bad parenting”!

2. What age were you when you came across your first myth or myths? Tell us how you felt then about the myths you first discovered. Did you love them or hate them? Did they scare you, excite you—or were you indifferent? What kind of myths were they? Greek? Norse? Native American? Celtic? Or from another culture entirely? Were they in a book you read? Or did you hear them as oral storytelling from someone else?
I was really quite small because I remember my next sister up, who is seven years older than me, reading me the story of Baldur the Beautiful from the Norse myths. It's one of the central Norse myths. Baldur the god (roughly equivalent to Apollo) has been rendered almost entirely invulnerable to weapons because his mother has made all the plants and minerals in the world promise never to harm him. But of course there is one she has forgotten (as in the legend of Achilles). Hodur, Baldur’s blind brother is sad because he can’t join in the hurling of weapons at Baldur in the hall of the gods. The trickster god, Loki, who is always left out of everything in Valhalla, fashions Hodur a spear out of mistletoe wood (of course that was the plant their mother had left out) and helps him to aim it. Baldur is killed instantly. And Hodur is devastated.  It made a huge impression on me, hard to describe – a feeling of mystery, grandeur and tragedy which I find irresistible to this day.

3. Looking back, what is your favourite myth of all time, from any culture? And why would you choose it?
Well, the one above is a strong candidate! But really I love all such stories except the Mayan and Aztec ones, which feel too alien to this European. Of the Greek ones I think Persephone being kidnapped by Hades and kept under the earth for six months of the year, because she ate six pomegranate seeds.

4. Who is your most loved mythical hero or heroine, and what made you feel that way about them?
I’ve always loved Artemis, even though she is the goddess of the hunt and I am a vegetarian. I love her association with the moon. All moon goddesses appeal actually – Isis and Astarte too.

5. Is there a mythical beast you are particularly fond of? If so, which one?
My first published book, White Magic, was about a unicorn, so I think I have to choose that. Not a soppy, Disneyfied beast skipping about through flowers and rainbows but a sacred animal who can detoxify polluted waters; we need him now in our tainted world.

6. How have myths had an influence on your writing, if at all?
Myths and legends and folk and fairy tales and Bible stories all influence everything I write and think every day of my life.

7. Finally, if you could choose to be the demigod child of any one mythical god or goddess, which one would it be? Which power would you like to inherit from them—and what would you do with it?
I wouldn’t mind having the Dagda for my father! He was a Celtic god who doesn’t really have an equivalent in the Greek or Norse pantheons. He was the god of hospitality, which is important to me, and he had a magic cauldron – my kind of guy. If I had been able to inherit a power from him I should like it to have been endless expansive hospitality.

More about Mary:
Mary Hoffman is a published writer of over 90 books, mainly for children and teenagers, including bestsellers like the Grace series and the aforementioned Stravaganza sequence for older readers. With her 'critic hat' on, she founded and ran the review journal, Armadillo, for ten years and reviews regularly for the national press. She is also on an international "Comitato Scientifico" in Florence and writes articles about the UK children's publishing scene for Liber magazine. Mary Hoffman won a scholarship to James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich, which she describes as “an exercise in punctuation in itself.” From there she went to the University of Cambridge to study English at Newnham College and then spent two years studying Linguistics at University College London. Since 1998 she has been an Honorary Fellow of the Library Association for her work with children and schools. She worked at the Open University for nearly five years, contributing to courses for teachers on reading, language and children’s literature. For eighteen years she was Reading Consultant to BBC Schools TV’s Look and Read series and wrote the teaching scripts. Mary lives in Oxfordshire. 

Mary's website is HERE, her blog is HERE, her Facebook Fanpage is HERE, and she tweets as @MARYMHOFFMAN HERE

SCRIBBLE CITY CENTRAL ON FINAL AUTHOR BLOG AWARDS SHORTLIST--PLEASE VOTE ONE MORE TIME!

Thank you all so much, lovely blogreaders!  Scribble City Central has made the final shortlist for the AUTHOR BLOG AWARDS (along with Neil Gaiman), and it's all down to your hard work and votes.  Now we just have to make one final push to get it to the very top spot.  Please can you vote just one more time for it
HERE 
I'd be hugely grateful and love you for evermore!

PS: You have three votes in all, so you might also like to vote for Nicola Morgan, Jackie Morris or Barry Hutchison--all great children's authors. 

Mythic Interview Friday: Number 1 - Caroline Lawrence

The very first Mythic Interview Friday is here!  I am so excited that Caroline Lawrence, author of The Roman Mysteries has agreed to be first up to answer my seven  searching questions on the important subject of myth.  I've been reading Caroline's books since The Thieves of Ostia was published back at the beginning of the century, and have followed her detective-heroine Flavia Gemina's adventures with ever-increasing pleasure (and awe at Caroline's murderous inventiveness). Her latest, The Legionary from Londinium and Other Mini Mysteries has just been published, and I devoured it at a sitting. It's been lovely for me to find someone else who is as obsessed with life in the Classical World as I am.  Caroline is much better at Latin than me--but I shall risk getting it wrong and say: "Gratias tibi ago, Carolina."

1. Do you think that the retelling of Greek and other myths is important or relevant for the children of today? Why should they care about some “dry old stories” which come from ancient cultures they might never even have heard of?
Absolutely myths are important. They are the stories we crave most, especially that of the quest or ‘Hero’s Journey’. This is because our whole lives are a kind of journey and we go on many quests every day. I believe mythic story structure is inbuilt and that it is part of what makes us human. That is why myths are so similar across so many cultures and time periods. Also, the mythic journey makes up maybe 80% of the stories we tell even today.

2. What age were you when you came across your first myth or myths? Were you a child—or were you already an adult? Tell us how you felt then about the myths you first discovered. Did you love them or hate them? Did they scare you, excite you—or were you indifferent? What kind of myths were they? Greek? Norse? Native American? Celtic? Or from another culture entirely? Were they in a book you read? Or did you hear them as oral storytelling from someone else?
I was about six or seven when I was first introduced to the Greek myths. My mother used to read to me and my brother and sister every night. In among other children’s classics like The Cat in the Hat and Curious George, she read us the Greek myths. We also had one beautiful illustrated volume of Greek Myths in the house that I used to pore over. My mother was an artist and also had lots of art books with sculptures, paintings and frescoes of scenes from the Greek Myths. Though I am Californian I rarely heard Native American folklore and although I’m half Jewish, it was only as an adult that I came across the wonderful midrashic stories surrounding the Old Testament.

3. Looking back, what is your favourite myth of all time, from any culture? And why would you choose it?
I love any quest but my favourite is probably the story of Perseus, because he got all the magical tools to help him, like winged sandals and a helmet of invisibility.

4. Who is your most hated mythical hero or heroine, and what made you feel that way about them?
I hated Helen of Troy, because she seemed imperious in her beauty, and caused the deaths of so many people. While heroes were dying, she was dallying with Paris on silken cushions!

5. Is there a mythical beast you are particularly fond of? If so, which one?
I was never as captivated by the beasts as I was by the people, but I have utilized mythical beasts in my books, even though they are historical fiction and not fantasy. Pegasus is a theme in The Charioteer from Delphi and the Hydra also haunts Nubia’s dreams in that book.

6. How have myths had an influence on your writing, if at all?
Myths have had an enormous influence on my writing. I am a great devotee of Hollywood story structure techniques, and one of my favourites is The Hero’s Journey as described by Christopher Vogler (and others) and based on Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Almost every one of my 17 Roman Mysteries incorporates at least one Greek Myth. The first book is based around the myth of Cerberus, the second around Vulcan, the third around the myth of Dionysus and the Pirates, etc, etc. One of the most obvious is the myth of Hercules in The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina, the sixth book in my series.

7. Finally, If you could choose to be the demigod child of any one mythical god or goddess, which one would it be? Which power would you like to inherit from them—and what would you do with it?
I would love the winged sandals of Mercury/Hermes, so that I could fly!

More about Caroline:
Caroline Lawrence is a Californian who was inspired to study Greek and Latin at the age of 19, after reading Mary Renault’s Last of the Wine and The Iliad in translation. She won a scholarship to Cambridge, taught Latin for ten years, and now writes the Roman Mysteries books for children aged 8 up. She says her happiest publishing moments were when she passed the million sales mark, when she got to visit the Tunisia and Bulgarian sets of the BBC TV series based on her books, and when she won the Classical Association Prize for ‘a significant contribution to the public understanding of Classics’.

Her website is HERE and her main blog is HERE. She ‘tweets’ under the name @CarolineLawrenc (without the final ‘e’).