The Scattered Authors Society and Time Travel

In my ceaseless quest to meet famous children's authors, I accepted an invite to speak to the Scattered Authors Society (about websites, of course. I would have nothing to tell them about getting published!).

"Scatty authors?" my husband said. "You would be perfectly at home with them."

But the SAS see themselves as more, well, special forces than scatty.

Anyway, one of the famous people I met was Sue Price, winner of the Carnegie Medal in 1987 for her book The Ghost Drum. When I got home from the conference, I Googled 'Sue Price' and found this:

She doesn't look like that in real life, I assure you. Here is Sue's website. Go there. Buy her books.

We got to talking about time-travelling, as one does at conferences like this (my favourite stories as a young girl had to do with either time travel or amnesia. Don't ask). Two of Sue's books, The Sterkarm Handshake and A Sterkarm Kiss, had to do with time travel.

"Where would you go," Sue asked. "If you had a time machine?"

I was about to say something corny like I love where I am now when I realised that there was a time that I would love to revisit. Here's what I said:

I'd love to go back to my late twenties when I was just starting to have babies. I would tell myself to get on with writing. I had no idea at the time that it would take so long to get published

"So you think you would meet your younger self?" Sue asked. Famous authors are like that. They ask follow up questions.

The mind, at that point, boggled.

What would my younger self say if she ran into me as I was time travelling?

Thank you to the Scattered Authors Society for the warm welcome!

A Children's Book David Takes On the Amazon Goliath

The mighty Amazon was rather startled today when a small publisher objected to its listing of his children's book on Amazon's site.

David Walker, a self-avowed aviation nut, wrote Tales From An Airfield (illustrated by Keith Woodcock) - a hardcover picture book featuring Archie the Airplane (the first story: The Wrong Airport can be downloaded on the Tales from an Airfield Website and you can buy postcards, a CD and a floor mat of Archie's airfield at the website's online shop.

Walker was determined to support the cause of independent/local bookstores and keep his book out of the grubby virtual shelves of the Amazon juggernaut and the big chains. The website lists the websites and locations of local bookshops that stock the book.

To his dismay, Amazon listed the book.

There was a face-off between Walker and Amazon book buyer Kes Neilsen on BBC Radio 4's You and Yours programme. Walker declared:

We didn't like the way the high street volume discount sellers take these things to market in such an offhand way. We are big fans of local independent bookshops ... we specifically didn't want to be lined up with these volume discount houses.

Neilsen was incredulous.

It's an incredibly unusual situation. We usually find that the millions of authors and many thousands of publishers who have books listed on the site are usually absolutely thrilled to see them. And certainly authors spend hours everyday looking at the site and checking their ranking.

Neilsen said the listing appears on the site but admitted that they didn't have any copies of the book.

"Isn't it a bit naughty then, to have it listed on your site?" the BBC presenter chided him.

Listen to this children's book David take on the Amazon Goliath here!

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.