Neil Gaiman at the Royal Society of Literature (by sarah)

After an amazing weekend of being a panda on a fire engine (don't ask but there will eventually be photos!) I was abandoned in London by Alaric and the girls but this was so I could stay an extra day and see Neil Gaiman at the Royal Society of Literature. He was being interviewed by Claire Armistead. As his new book was being launched here in the UK the next day he did a reading.

Neil is really good at captivating an audience when he reads so it was a pleasure to listen too. The crowd was quiet a mix as would be expected from the variety and wealth of works he has produced. I tried to tweet from the theatre but alas my new touch pad couldn't get the wifi!

He spoke about the book and the memories and ideas that had gone into it and abit about being a writer, then they opened the floor to questions. I put my hand up (I always put my hand up1) and some how the microphone found me and I got to ask my question :)

I asked (after saying hello and umming), 'Did you set out to become a cross genre author, with novels, comics, kids books etc... or was it a happy accident?'

Asking questions has always been something out of my comfort zone but I am getting better at it and when he responded with that's a good question and that he hadn't been asked that before I was chuffed :) I'd been pondering the question since I read this year Artists and Writers Yearbook which has an article from Neil himself but also sees him mentioned by others in the book. The gist being that you can't aspire to be a gross genre multi-market writer/artist, I got a bit incensed about this at the time and wrote about it here.

And as Alaric has said to me everytime I worry that I am too 'broad' - it is like putting all your eggs in one basket and if you can do more than one thing it is almost gambling which is going to be noticed and be the most popular!

So I listened to Neil's response avidly although I think I ended up with a fixed grin during it (I get very nervous but hey I'm going to be doing journalistic things in the autumn so I'd better get used to it!). He said he started as a journalist and was interviewing writers and they all had stories about the piece they couldn't get published and he thought - no way is that going to be me (I'm paraphrasing as I don't have a photographic memory in case you hadn't guessed!), he didn't have a career plan he had a wish list that he has been ticking off. He didn't want to turn out books that were formulaic and turned down a publishing deal after American Gods as they wanted him to just do more of the same. He wanted the scope to do new things without it being seen as him diverging from his established path.

He had known he'd wanted to be a writer and had assumed he was going to be a fantasy writer - the sort with maps in ;) This made me laugh - Dad brought down a note book of a story I started when I was thirteen or rather an epic series and there at the beginning of the note book was a map I had drawn. My dad still lives in hope that I will write this particular story - I used to dictate chunks of it too him and we would talk about naming schemes and stuff like that - there were even warrior monks.

He said a lot more inspiring stuff and funny stuff and it was an interesting and fun outing for me. Through it I have discovered the Royal Literature Society which I didn't know existed before to be honest! As we were all leaving I head people talking about how they were going to get back to writing that story that had stagnated on etc....

I bought a copy of the pre-signed book before the event started and started reading it on the way home to my parents house and then the rest on the way home the next morning to Gloucestershire. The book swept me in, being written from a small boys point of view though it is not for children it plunged me into memories of my own childhood (something Neil had mentioned people kept telling him the book did).

I have been in a bit of a reading a writing rut recently but the weekend (which was actually last weekend and not the one just gone!) has shaken me out of this - for a start I was beta reading my friends epic novel and then read Neil's book and then I wanted more - I am in a book club but this is our first month so I am still trying to get hold of the book to read our local library didn't have a copy - I like my book club it has Good Omens on the list :) I still need to decided what book I'm setting in October!

Anyway so I am now ploughing through books again and got two books out of the library one fact and one fic and am enjoying it especially as I ended up writing a couple of short stories as well - I just wish my body could keep up with what the mind wants to do!

I found Art in London too between Holborn Station and the Peacock Theatre were the event was held (3 times the capacity they normally go for but the tickets sold out!).

The next morning on the way to Paddington I found more fun stuff too by Aldgate Station :)

Of course I went the wrong way out of Fenchurch Street Station but hey I had plenty of time and found fun things to photograph - it was a wooden skeleton of a house except it looks newish and had stuff painted on it!

I'm ending this post with perception and preconceptions. Now I turned up early to find the theatre and wonder around taking photos of the area - but I'm having a mild pain flare up at the mo so was quiet tired and found a pub to sit in.

There are two completely true ways of writing about my waiting time but they paint completely different pictures and this interests me as it is generally assumed that the truth is a corner stone but a truth isn't always the whole truth the way information is presented can be misleading but in this case it isn't even that it is peoples preconceptions of what it cultured and what is not.

I could say 'I was in the Shakespeares Head working on my friends epic novel whilst waiting for an event at the Royal Literature Society' - which sounds very high brow and you can imagine the cut glass and what not or...

I could say 'I was chilling in a Weatherspoons pub (this is the chain of pubs I could be found in as a teen) reading about my friends space vampires whilst waiting to see the king of comic books' - I know people who would stare at me were I to say either of these to them but would find the other acceptable due to their own ideas of what is acceptable/fun.

Anyway I will stop wibblying now - basically I had a fantastic time.

National Flash Fiction Day 2013 (by sarah)

Sadly I am not performing this year and nor do I appear to have gotten anything into story collections so a bit of a let down on last year (boo hiss) but my friend Dan Holloway is performing in Bristol tonight and I have decided to do another day giver way of my Dooms Day Collection like I did in December. Just for today June 22nd!

So just click on the book below and you get a PDF :) It's a collection of flash fiction, short stories, a novelette and poems with the theme of worlds ending or changing - enjoy p.s. it is not for kids this one - too scary in places!

Construction Toys (by sarah)

Construction toys like stickle bricks, lego, play mobile and umpteen others are fabulous but soooo expensive. We tend to get them in lu of other gifts which seem funkier as they are the toys that just keep giving. They are not that age dependent as the older the child gets the more complex the items they build with it. It improves spacial awareness and hand eye coordination, it taps straight into engineering and with things like lego technic it begins to be something more.

But it is not just science and engineering that it feeds into, it relies on the child's imagination, it is design skills and then it is pure and simple play, once they have made the set up they want. Above is Jean's Antropolis or Ant City. She imagines all the little ants making their homes in the stickle bricks and how they would interact with each other, how they would get there in the first place. The stickle bricks were a christmas present for Mary who is happy to act as stickle brick goffer fetching the little spiked rectangles for her sisters latest piece of ant arctecture.

It has gotten to the point that I am story boarding the escapades of these ants which Jean reads when she remembers.

Maybe one day I will draw up the adventures of Ant Ee Matter and Antropolis and yes he has a cape.

The point is that we think construction toys are one of the best things to give children and we have also found a set of convertors you can print on a 3D printer so you can make lego and stickle bricks and all the others fit together into one huge great big uber construction kit!

I'm not sure who is more excited about this - me or the kids or Al!

Of course you need access to a 3D printer - oh look - hello Bristol Hack Space have we told you how much we love you?

The Dangers Of… (by sarah)

The danger of home schooling is that the kids only learn what the parents wants
The danger of forced schooling is that the kids only learn what the governments want
The danger of religous schooling is that the kids only learn what the religons want
The danger of military schooling is that the kids only learn what the soliders want
The danger of no schooling is that the kids only learn what the streets want

Teach the kids to think and question and root out the answers for themselves
Teach empowerment and watch them bloom
Teach don't preach

Find the technique that fits the kid
In a group or on their own
A mix of both
Repeating, making, playing, mimic and more

Weaveworld (by sarah)

I follow Clive Baker's page on Facebook and he/his admin posted a piece on concept art surrounding his novel Weaveworld which is my favourite of his books and one I found important in my development as a reader and writer.

I read Weaveworld when I was thirteen/fourteen - it was a struggle and it was the second of what I think of as full length novels that I read, the first being The Eight. I pretty much had been on point horrors until then. I picked it up on a second hand book stall in Romford market whilst out with my friends Helen and Nikki - It was dark and scary and romantic and lovely and enchanting and it introduced me to Literature - before each section there are quotes and many of these I fell in love with and wrote out into my diary with illustrations, they are from the text book greats but at the time I had never heard of them, it was also the first time I saw poetry coupled so intensely with the prose of a book.

The story made me hungry for more stories and I moved on the James Herbert and Stephen King and Anne McCaffrey and a mirrade of others but the quotes made me want these other things and so I found a plethora of ancient and not so ancient writings that resonated with me and I began trying to craft complex multi-threaded stories, to think of stories within stories and to realise there a wealth of legends and histories around the globe I could 'steal' for my own writing. I would walk home from school with my nose stuck in these books and sleep on the floor of my bedroom as I'd filled the bed up with books from the school library, town library, charity shops and friends. I would set myself the task of reading more and more each day - I was in love with words and stories which had so recently been nothing but the bain of my life.

The memories of this washed over me as I saw the post on facebook. I am sitting here with the book that I last read at 21 - it has been lent to a lot of people and is starting to fall to pieces but I am wondering what I will make of it now? The way I used to choose books from the second hand book stall was to go in and close my eyes and see what book 'called to me' - this yielded a jem everytime though this is probably because I was always starting off in the speculative fiction (Horror, scifi, fantasy) section, The first book I got via this process was The Eight which years later proved to be a wonderous cross over of reading between me and Alaric. I love books - I now have a shelf devoted to Clive. I should read Weaveworld again.