Once Upon a Saga – Fables and the Art of Long-Form Storytelling

By Nick Cross

After 13 years, 14 Eisner Awards, 150 issues and almost 6,000 pages, the Vertigo comic book series Fables has reached its end. What began as a simple postmodern twist on fairy tales quickly evolved into a sprawling, beautiful, dark, engrossing, ambitious and occasionally frustrating saga. As I closed the cover on the final volume, I felt both exhilaration and the sad pang of loss. Under those circumstances, it seemed only fitting to introduce this tremendous grown-up comic series to a wider audience and also take the opportunity to explore the challenge of writing truly long-form stories.

Jonathan Stroud: The F Word is Fantasy

By Candy Gourlay

My trophy photo with Jonathan when we met at last year's
Hay Festival

A year ago, I attended a brilliant Patrick Hardy Lecture* on The F Word: Writing Fantasy for Children by Jonathan Stroud (of Bartimaeus Trilogy fame).

Congratulations to Patrick Ness and Jim Kay

By Candy Gourlay

My favourite image from this amazing novel.

A Monster Calls combines an extraordinary idea, a powerful story, and truly terrific illustration to create a winner. When I saw it listed for both the Carnegie AND the Greenaway, it obviously deserved both prizes and I wondered how CILIP where going to deal with it. Well they have - it's a double win for the book, and a second Carnegie in a row for Patrick. Patrick greeted the news with genuine disbelief.

Jealous? Well maybe I immediately had thoughts of putting illustration into my own forthcoming novel. But no other book so deserves both prizes. Congratulations, you two. I love A Monster Calls and weirdly feel like it was ME the reader who won! Additional bittersweet celebrations that yet again the wonderful Siobhan Dowd's voice sends echoes to us from the beyond.  And congratulations to Walker's Denise Johnson Burt, the editor who wouldn't let a good story go to waste.

To celebrate, here is some footage of Patrick Ness's recent appearance at the London Book Fair - I've been holding onto it for a future discussion of Young Adult writing. But there's no time like the present! You can also read this brilliant Guardian article on how they made the book.

Dystopian Overdrive: Teri Terry reports on Foyles' Sci-fi night

It was quite a spread - there on stage Philip Reeve of Mortal Engines fame moderating a panel including Moira Young (Blood Red Road), indy star Kim Lakin Smith and Steve Cole (Dr Who and mooing space cows). Oh and co-moderator was Sarah McIntyre (space princesses!!!!). AND in the audience were some pretty hot sci fi authors - including Patrick Ness, Sara O'Connor and Teri herself of course. Check out Teri's report on the Demention blog.

Dungeons and Dragons, the Rise of Fantasy and Celebrating Imagination

The recent BBC4 series The Worlds of Fantasy had my lovely critique group earnestly discussing children's fantasy this week.

In the course of a discussion that ranged from Did Star Wars lose its credibility with the introduction of the Ewoks? (at which point my 13 year old son suddenly appeared and said, "I love ewoks!") to What is Fantasy? we lurched into an aside about Dungeons and Dragons.

Unbeknownst to us, the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, Gary Gygax had died that day.

Gygax had not been happy with the evolution of D&D from a role-playing game to online computer game.

These days, pen-and-paper role-playing games have largely been supplanted by online computer games. Dungeons & Dragons itself has been translated into electronic games, including Dungeons & Dragons Online. Mr. Gygax recognized the shift, but he never fully approved. To him, all of the graphics of a computer dulled what he considered one of the major human faculties: the imagination.

“There is no intimacy; it’s not live,” he said of online games. “It’s being translated through a computer, and your imagination is not there the same way it is when you’re actually together with a group of people. It reminds me of one time where I saw some children talking about whether they liked radio or television, and I asked one little boy why he preferred radio, and he said, ‘Because the pictures are so much better.’ ” New York Times, March 5, 2008

Chris Klimowitz, my valued critique colleague, had this to say:

A good 4-6 years of my life were richly enhanced by role-playing games as well as strategic board games. Good to see that as an era it hasn’t passed with its co-founder, but has just transformed. (Gygax's views on) online versus paper gaming could be comparable by degrees with books versus other media ...all having something to offer, though hardcopy books too-often considered an outdated medium by those who embrace technological trends exclusively.

The role of imagination – that’s what really fuelled the experience of role-play. It’s interesting to compare the engagement of imagination in different media as well as the social dynamics.

Well, we certainly benefit from having a fuller range of experiences any which way it’s looked at.

Amen, Christopher.