Sandy Fussell's Blog, page 24

I've heard it said a million times: You can't judge a book by its cover. But we do. Myself included. And right now, I'm glad we sometimes do - because I've seen the cover for Jaguar Warrior and it's wonderful.

Going out on a limb, I'll even say it's the sort of cover that boys would walk from one side of the library to the other, just to look at. There's lots of embossing and gold bling but the real focus is the eyes. They seem to glow.
So I started to think about covers I've particularly...

One of my New Year resolutions was to put something back into the writing community. I feel as if I have taken my fair share of late. But what can I do? Some people might laugh but despite having had six books published, I don't know anything about writing.

I don't even write by the seat of my pants. It's more primal than that. Recently I read a wonderful article by Margo Lanargan in Newswrite (the magazine of the NSW Writer's Centre) about writing from the gut. Everything fell into place for ...

Last month the NSW Writer's Centre asked a few authors, myself included, what we thought the next big thing might be for YA and children's books. At the time I hazarded a guess that maybe it would be ghosts, as vampires had already had their moment in the sun and zombies had been finally laid to rest. Awful puns I know but I'm keeping them because that's about as good as it gets for me!

I wish someone would ask me again because my future-telling skills have surged and I think I am a lot...

Call me old-fashioned. Traditional even. But I think every book should have an ending. I'm not saying every thread has to be tied up or even that the reader shouldn't be allowed to choose their own resolution. What I am talking about is series books where at the end of a book, the plot is left wide open in an attempt to ensure the reader doesn't stop at that point. To me, there's more marketing than storytelling in that.
Just before Christmas I finished The Keeper of the Grail , the first...

In no particular order:

1 Silk by Alessandro Barricco . Exotic, erotic and beautiful. I can't believe I haven't blogged a review. It will follow later today ... and on that note, enough said.
2 The Plum Rain Scroll by Ruth Manley . CBCA Book of the Year in 1979. A wonderful blurring of fact and fantasy in a traditional style folk tale. My review here.
3 The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. This 17th century work on strategy, tactics, bushido and swordsmanship, by the greatest samurai...

My friends and colleagues are often involved in writing challenges like NaNoWriMo where they write a novel in a month. The mind boggles in admiration - I have neither the time nor the ability to produce this mega output.
But recently I found that I have accidentally set myself a challenge after all. I have always believed that there is no such excuse as "I don't have time to write." While logistically there are always time constraints and it is very true some people have extremely small...

I was fortunate to be a Storyteller at the 2009 Sydney Children's Festival. The audience were too young for my own books so I took along a selection of my favourite picture books. Including Snowy's Christmas which got more encores than all the other titles put together. I must have read it ten times. I know I was eventually reciting pieces off by heart.

So I am very thrilled today to welcome Snowy's friend and author, Sally Murphy.

How important do you think it is for children to have...

I have been expecting to receive a 'Worst Blogger in the Universe' award any day now. But *phew* it seems I have avoided the dishonour and managed to take up the blog pen again just in time. So now for my excuse... I have been busy both writing and being a writer. The latter has been the most time-consuming of all with lots of school visits, workshops and speaking engagements. I'll be blogging about those over the following few days.

I have also been working hard *cough, splutter* to finish...

I usually begin my author talks with a quick discussion about where authors get their ideas from. I've found if I wave a few books from the Captain Underpants series right from the start - I have immediate credibility. Especially as I know the names of all the titles. Then I talk about my own ideas, where they came from and how I turned them into a story.

This is my all time favourite end-of-talk question. A Year 5 boy put up his hand and asked: "Do you get headaches?" I was surprised...

"What if you had to write another Samurai Kids book and you couldn't think of anything?" a Year 6 boy asked. "Oh that could never happen," I said.

Or could it?
I've always had a safety net to protect me from worrying about this. Samurai Kids White Crane began with just one sentence: "My name is Niya Moto and I'm the only one-legged samurai kid in Japan." Another one soon followed. " Famous for falling flat on my face in the dirt." And for a long time that's all I had. That and the increasing...