Behind Sally's Books Mark 2

  Max and Anjelica Harris had music in their veins. Other people might cut themselves and ooze red, but Sibella was convinced that her parents would bleed the tonic sol-fa. It was a ghoulish notion, but that was Sibella all over. Half-past normal, she sometimes thought. Luckily, no one seemed to notice. The marvellous musicality had sprung from who-knew-where. Granny Alice Harris played the piano in a competent fashion. Grandpa Piet de Jong had briefly played with a band called Dutch Treat when the usual drummer was off on paternity leave. None of that explained Max and Anjelica. “It’s a gift,” Grandma Deb said with a shrug. When the couple moved in together, she portended, “Like calls to like.” It was a gift, but a little bit magic. Sibella grew up with two musical magical parents and five magical musical instruments. These instruments; two violins, a flute, a French horn and a cello, were old, polished and beautiful. They whispered and promised from their rack i...

  Spooky Stories! I have always been a scaredy cat. I’m frightened of things that don’t bother most people, including driving in traffic, going to the dentist and arguments. On the other hand, I can happily address a large crowd, I wear what I want and read what I want, and I drink out of the river. On the other other hand, I used to not be scared of heights and now I am. I used to be scared of the dark and now I’m not. I used to fear being alone and now I enjoy it. So there it is. My relationship with spooky stories has followed two paths. When I was a child, I was prone to sleeplessness and nightmares so my parents tried to shield me from scary stuff. We were allowed to read more or less what we wanted, but since Mum bought our books, I’m sure she kept a close eye on the content. Unfortunately, she overlooked two sources of creepy fear. We subscribed to a magazine called Look and Learn, which was a cheery compilation of educational pieces about other countries, ballet...

Hi, everyone! Skye has set us an interesting subject for this month's round robin, so here we go...   Planner or Pantser? That's a common question for writers. No matter how we answer, we're going to disappoint some readers and, specifically, other writers. That's as ridiculous as a marathon runner despising a gym bunny who despises a daily dogwalker, or vice-versa.  As some wise person put it; the best exercise is the one you do. I think it's the same thing with writers. If planning works for you, plan. If you’re better at pantsing, pants. Mind, I have a caveat or two about this. A good analogy is cooking. There are those who follow the recipe minutely, weighing out each ingredient, and those who follow it sort-of, adapting adlib. There are those who know what they want to make (i.e. chicken curry, chocolate cake, scones, or something-with-the mince-pumpkin-and-tinned- tomatoes-that-need-using) and simply make it up as they go along. The analogy is not ...

So... Skye has challenged the blog hoppers to recall how we became authors. It's a long time ago for me, because I've been writing stories ever since someone taught me to write. My sister Anne and I used to roam about the farm playing a game which was really on-the-spot story creation. I was surprised to learn, later, that the Bronte sisters did almost the same thing. I was good at story writing in school, and when I was in Grade Four, our teacher told us we'd be writing books, the best three of which would be entered in a state-wide competition. I worked painstakingly on my story...mainly in trying to get my handwriting legible enough to not get a "do this again" note from the teacher. I illustrated the story with photos which I enlisted my sister to help me stage. We went so far as to take one of our ponies in the river with a calf across his withers. Why stage photos (which had to be taken over a week before I needed to use them) instead of drawing the way my c...

    This month's blog hop topic is  What was/is your all-time favourite character(s) in literature and why . I feel War and Peace coming on (if not Poor Fellow My Country ) but I shall endeavour to keep this post brief and to the point. As with favourite tunes and books or even foods, I put my favourite characters into categories. I remember a time when I was asked to write about my ideal dinner party guests, choosing from a range of deceased and fictional characters.  The seven I chose then would probably be different now. I might also consider whether the guests would get along—or even be able to converse intelligibly. For example, Geoffrey Trease’s Alexis Leonides, though he speaks with colloquial 1950s English (though he doesn’t use 1950s idioms) in The Crown of Violet , would really be talking in Socratic Greek. I wouldn’t understand him, for that matter. Even English speakers from too long ago would be a challenge. I looked into how many centuries it takes fo...

 This month's blog hop topic is  Creating Compelling Characters who drive the plot and keep readers reading . My heading is somewhat of a cheat, in that it's the title of one of my how-to writing manuals which I produced years ago in concert with my assessment and editing service. Eventually, I combined a dozen or so of the manuals into one giant edifice (truly, you could use the thing as a stepladder) with a long title. Characters to Go became a part of that. Mind, I'm not simply reproducing chunks of that book for this post. That really would be cheating! I've been creating characters for more than fifty years. My earliest ones were generally girls of about my age (then) or animals. The human characters tended to be fascinated by animals, fantasy, stories and country adventure, just as I was. I suppose most of them were offbeat, just as I was, and am. I never had any desire to write about immoral characters, or MCs who were cruel or nasty or unlawful or even disobedie...