The third in the Grimhilderness series...

This unpleasant-looking fellow also
plays an important part in the story. 

I've been blogging a bit recently about the new children's book I'm in the process of writing. Only a couple of weeks ago I said it was no longer going to be called The Disenchanted Wizard. At the moment it is called The Disenchanted Wizard. Unless something better turns up. 

On the other hand I wrote a bit later that the book was no longer a prequel to Grimhilda! This at least is still correct, and likely to remain so. The book was to have been set about twenty years before the events in Grimhilda! Now they take place about the same time as the events in The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, but in a different city altogether. 

And another decision has been made. I'd be thinking of the books as a series for a while, but with only two on hand it seemed a bit pretentious to call it a series. However, with the third in the pipeline, I'm now able to go forward on the series idea, and they will be given the overall name of Grimhilderness. 

As anyone who's read the books knows, this is the place where Grimhilda's diamond mine is located, and it was where the Mumbersons arrived home from. You discover things the more you write about a place: it seems that Grimhilderness is reasonably easy to get out of; it's not so easy to get into. You'll understand more of this when you read book three. Of which two chapters have now been written...something I've very excited about!

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My first e-book for children: Grimhilda! a fantasy for children and their parents, is available on Kindle or Smashwords

The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret - the 'sort of sequel' to Grimhilda! - is available as an e-book on Kindle, and at Smashwords. 11-year-old Billy lives an ordinary life. But one day people start wanting to get hold of his blood...what's the secret his blood holds?

My non-fiction e-book, Diary of a Prostate Wimp, is available on Kindle or Smashwords.

Rosanne Higgins interviews me....

Back in December last year, I interviewed Rosanne Higgins about her books. Recently she returned the complement. You can see the original interview on her blog, but with her permission I'm reproducing it here.

Rosanne: Hi Mike, thanks for joining me. You are a musician, a composer, and, occasionally, an actor.  What made you want to write children’s books?

Me: I’ve been a writer for at least as long as I’ve been a musician, so writing is nothing new. It’s just taken me a long time to get to the point of publishing books.

In the past all the books I’ve written (but not necessarily finished) have been for adults, with one exception. However, there have been some children’s short stories in the past, at least a couple of which have been published. The first children’s book I completed (Grimhilda!) was based on a musical a friend and I had written a couple of years earlier. I thought it had some ‘life’ beyond the theatrical version, and that’s proved to be the case.

How do you balance your writing with your other creative pursuits?

It can be a bit of a juggling act, but usually it’s a matter of which creative venture needs priority. A deadline helps, but at the moment I have deadlines in two different areas, one musical and one writing. It’s not unusual for two things to be running along together: they just have to give each other elbow room.

You have referred to The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret as a sequel of sorts to your first children’s book, Grimhilda!.  Please explain what you meant by that.

In terms of the ‘sequel of sorts’ I mean that only two of the characters from the earlier book appear (though Grimhilda is mentioned several times). In other words, it’s a story about a new lot of characters who have some connections to what happened in the previous book.

You mentioned that Grimhilda! was adapted from a musical that you wrote. What motivated you to write The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret?

I’d had a sequel in mind for Grimhilda! when we produced the musical, partly because some of the cast talked about what happened next and were enthusiastic about me writing another musical. However, the idea I had in mind didn’t seem to work as a musical, or as something that could be done on stage. And I enjoyed the freedom a book version gave me to let things happen that would have been far too complicated to put in a script.

Do you foresee a third book in the Grimhilda series? 

I’ve since written a draft of a third story which will probably be described as a prequel: it’ll take place some twenty years before the events in Grimhilda! and will again only have a couple of characters in common with the first book. But it will (probably) also explain how something that was rather curious in Grimhilda! actually came about.

You have 10 grandchildren and one foster grandchild.  Have they read your books?  If so, what did they think of them?

Strangely I don’t think any of my grandchildren have read the books! They are all readers (at least those who are of an age are) but it’s mostly been their parents who've read them. I think it’s probably not entirely unusual that family members are so close to you they can’t see you as someone separate: a person who writes books. However a number of the grandchildren did come to the musical, and enjoyed it, so I’ll have to do a bit of promotion amongst them in terms of the books… Thanks for the reminder!

What are the challenges unique to writing children’s books in your opinion?

I think everything has to keep moving; you can’t have too much reflection on what’s happening, or too much description of things that aren’t immediately related to the action. On the other hand, someone did comment that The Blood Secret didn’t seem to have any breathing places as the book headed towards its climax. It’s a tricky balance.

I’ve just been reading more of Diana Wynne Jones’ books. She wrote a large number of fantasy stories, with lots of magic and big events. She was a highly successful author of books for children, and yet the books vary enormously in pacing. The one I read most recently had a rather long patch towards the end when things went rather slowly and then suddenly, all of a rush, everything was sorted out and the book was over. Even one of J K Rowling’s books ˗ I think it was the last ˗ had a long stretch in it where very little seemed to be happening. They tightened this up considerably in the movie. I’m not sure that children worry too much about these things; maybe it’s adult readers who do. (I think adults should read children’s books regularly; I certainly do.)

I have noticed that your blog covers a wide variety of topics, some are about writing, some are religious in nature and some are observations.  What motivates you to write your blog?

As I said earlier, I’ve written since I was young, and it seems part and parcel of my nature to record what I think about things. Before blogging came along I used to do it in exercise books or in diaries or journals on the computer. Blogging just became a way of making these things more public! I wrote a weeklycolumn for a local newspaper back in the 90s, for five years, and in it I was free to write on anything I fancied. I guess the blogging is an extension of that. For me, blogs that keep on hammering away at the same subject week in and week out get a bit uninteresting after a while, just the same as newspaper columns that are focused only on one thing. I like variety!

Do you find social media to be more useful in marketing or in helping you to learn more about the self publishing universe?

I don’t know that I’ve made a distinction like that between them. I tend to read anything and everything that’s going when I’m first learning about something. Social media’s certainly been helpful in discerning what’s useful in terms of marketing ˗ though you have to sift between what are often opposing viewpoints. Equally there’s a heap of information about self-publishing out there: some of it is excellent, some rubbish, some marginally informative and so on. It’s the nature of the Internet. But it often points you to books that are of value: I’ve discovered several books about self-publishing/marketing, and these have probably been more helpful because they’re more focused. Deb Vanasse’s book What Every Author Should Know is one I’ve read recently that I found very good all round.

If you could ask any question on social media about self publishing and get an honest answer, what would it be?

“How can I guarantee that my books will sell very well?” I’m sure I’d get plenty of honest answers, but I don’t think I’ll get one that will guarantee sales!

I would ask “How many books have you sold?” There are so many of us out there and I think it would help to have a better understanding of the goals (in terms of sales) that other authors set for themselves and the timeline they set for achieving them.

With e-books by relatively unknown authors, the secret seems to be perseverance: keep on reminding people about the books through social media. But don’t do it in a way that makes it sound like you’re insisting on a sale, or like you’re advertising. Make it part of the overall conversation. Encourage people to help your books to sell by word of mouth. An endorsement from someone who’s enjoyed your books to one or more of their friends is still one of the best ways of getting the books known, even better than good reviews.

I was pleased this morning to find a tweet from a friend saying: My daughter is again reading Grimhilda, by @mcrowl. She thinks it’s ‘awesome’.  That sort of publicity is invaluable, because it’s sincere.

Well, judging by your reviews on Amazon, others find Grimhilda! awesome as well! I really enjoyed The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret and I look forward to reading Grimhilda! (I agree with you that adults should read children’s books, and I do!). Mike, thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I wish you success in all of your endeavours!

Interviewed by Ognian Georgiev

Christmas has come and gone and my mind has become a blank on some things in all the rush.

For instance I can't quite remember now how I happened to come into contact with the Bulgarian sports journalist, Ognian Georgiev. It may have been on Google+, but I honestly don't remember! Anyway, Ognian is doing a series of interviews on his blog. These are conducting digitally, with the questions being sent to various authors around the world. The authors reply at their leisure, and the result, with a bit of additional comment, is uploaded to Ognian's blog. Apart from being a journalist (he covered the 2012 London Olympics, amongst other things) Ognian has himself written a book, The White Prisoner – Galabin Boevski’s secret story. This is the story of the way in which Boevski's Olympic fame vanished overnight when he was caught at the Sao Paulo airport with cocaine in his luggage, and imprisoned for nine years. 

Ognian has posted interviews with a wide variety of authors already on his site, and is continually adding more. The authors write in a variety of genres, and most of them are people I've never heard of, so it's an interesting way to discover a heap of new authors.

My interview, which mostly relates to The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, is number 130 and can be found here. 

Review of The Blood Secret

Nice review of my second children's book, The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, has just appeared on Amazon, from Rosanne Higgins. I'm sure she won't mind my copying it here...

I found The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, by Mike Crowl, to be a most delightful story. Billy Mumberson, and his friend, Olivia, risk life and limb to uncover a long kept secret at the factory where his father is employed. The children have in common parents who are preoccupied and spare them little attention or affection. Billy’s life is particularly confusing since the departure of his mother, nearly a year before. His father is grumpy, becoming even more so after the sudden appearance of his own parents, who arrive after a 20 year unexplained absence. Billy’s grandparents move right in, providing both children with the care and comfort they have been missing in their lives.

As the tale unfolds, we learn how Billy’s blood is critical to the story’s villains in their quest to reclaim something lost to them a long time ago. Through a series of adventures sure to keep young readers turning the page, Billy and Olivia expose the clandestine activities of the factory’s mysterious owners and save a few lives in the mix.

Although this is the second book in the series, I enjoyed it without having read the first book (however, I am planning on reading the first book, Grimhilda, anyway!). The story moves along and is an easy read for children just starting to tackle chapter books. It would also be a fun story to read aloud to youngsters not yet ready for big kid books.

Rosanne Higgins is the author of a couple of novels based on the real history of events in 19th century Buffalo, in the US. Orphans and Inmates, and A Whisper of Bones. I'm reading the first of these two at the moment, and finding it very good. 

Interview with Jim Heskett

I've been doing some promotional work on Google+, getting to know some other writers and interacting with them. It's been fruitful for me, and hopefully for them. I asked a few of them if they would like to read my latest book, The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, and give me some feedback. 

Some have responded, and the first one to read it, Jim Heskett, who's published a book of poetry recently, Love Poems, Hate Poems, was the first to come back to me. I gave him a list of questions that I thought he might like to answer, and here are the unadulterated responses. 

Me: Did the book entertain you, keep you wanting to know what happened next?

Jim: It did. The first chapter had a nice mystery hook with the blood-taking barber. The suspense had a nice ramp-up over the first half of the book.

Me: Did the characters come across as real people for you?

Jim: Hard to gauge, since I’m not too familiar with children’s literature. It felt like a fairy tale, a bit like Neil Gaiman.

Me: Were any of the lines or situations amusing to you?

Jim: The banter between Olivia and Billy was pretty clever.

Me: Did you find the situations plausible, given that there’s an element of fantasy in it?

Jim: I did, but it seemed odd to me that Jerry wouldn’t recognize his own parents after only twenty years. Also, that Billy thought of his dad as “jerry” and not “dad.”

Me: Did you feel that the language was at a suitable level for younger readers (given that it’s intended for kids from 6 - 12, roughly)

Jim: I think so, it seemed comparable to the first couple Harry Potter books.

Me: Did you enjoy it as an adult reader? Would you read it to your kids? (Well, when he’s ready...)

Jim: I did enjoy it! Good suspense, fun situations, and a satisfying ending.

Me: Did you find there were any cultural differences that you queried while reading it?

Jim: A little, but I lived in Australia, so I was able to puzzle out most of the slight language differences. Referring to the skateboarders as Ninjas was a new one to me.

Me: This is intended to be a stand-alone story, but it has links back to the first book in the series. Did it make you want to find out what the first book was about?

Jim: Since I knew nothing about the first book, I didn’t know what any of those links back to the first book were. Maybe adding some mystery by making vague references to things that happened before might help.

Me: Was there anything that really irritated you...?

Jim: I found some POV problems that stuck out to me… the POV seemed mostly in Billy’s head, but occasionally it would jump into another person’s head for a few sentences here and there. That’s a small quibble but those things always pull me out of the story.

You can also buy The Blood Secret on Smashwords, Kobo and iTunes. 

Revolving Secret Santa gifts

The other night my wife's workplace had their Christmas meal together, and during the course of the evening (which was held at the home of one of the senior staff) we played a form of Secret Santa which apparently was originated on the TV series, The Office. It's rather complicated to explain but basically the first person whose name is drawn out of a hat goes to the pile of little gifts, picks one, and then draws the next name. 

If the person who's drawn second thinks he or she would like the first person's gift, they're entitled to take it off them (!), or they can go and get a new present from the pile. And then the third person comes into the game, and again can choose someone else's gift or get a new one. It's gets quite complicated once a number of gifts have been opened, because things start to move around the room quite rapidly, especially if they have appeal to more than one person. 

The gift I got didn't have appeal to anyone else, so I wound up with it, and couldn't snaffle anyone else's gift. My wife, on the other hand, managed to get something she wanted from someone else, lost it, got it again and finished up losing it completely before winding up with a jar of tamarillo chutney.

My gift was a box of three little scented candles. Maybe we'll find a use for them sometime, or else we'll put them in someone else's Secret Santa parcel if the occasion arises...

Unlike these Diptyque candles shown in the picture, mine were modest little fellers. The left hand one of the three in the picture is called Feu de Bois or firewood, the one on the right, Figuier, means fig tree. The middle one doesn't appear to have a translation. While the site where these candles are advertised talks about how the company came into existence, it doesn't give any indication as to how the name came about, with its curious spelling, easily mispronounced. However, good old Wikipedia tells us that the word is related to the Greek diptykos, and relates to a painting or sculpture composed of two panels or parts. I'm not sure how that connects to the candles, but I'm sure there's someone out there who'll know.

Doing the nanowrimo

At the beginning of the month I suddenly decided to take up the National Novel Writing Month challenge, normally abbreviated to nanowrimo, an abbreviation I have to look up every time because I can't remember it.

For those who don't know about this challenge, the idea is that you write what is basically the draft of a 50,000 word novel from the 1st to 30th of November (inclusive). That's the goal. I'm sure a lot of people start off intending to get there, and wind up some 1000s of words short. Or give up.

Having started I decided I'd be content with doing a thousand words a day, since that's about the length of my two previous children's novels. But now that I'm close to the finishing mark, with 34845 words in the can, I'm inclined to want to get to the 50,000 word mark just to prove I can do it. Tonight has been a real slog; the characters have no idea how they're going to get past the latest problem (well, actually it's a problem that's been looming for a while because I wrote a section the other day that came much later in the story, and now I'm trying to work out how we got there.)

This has been a common issue throughout the book. Because you're not supposed to plan or do a structure in advance, you're writing blind, and while this means things arrive out of the blue that you wouldn't have otherwise thought of, it also means you put your characters in situations they struggle to work their way out of. It doesn't help that two of the characters seem to be intermingling, and we're never quite sure which one is which. (By 'we' I mean 'me', of course.)

The story is a kind of prequel to the other two books I've published this year, Grimhilda! and The Blood Secret. And that's also meant that there has to be a scene in it in which two of the characters (a married couple) wind up permanently attached to each other - attached in the literal sense, unable to separate themselves. Quite why this should happen, how it's going to happen, and what will be the consequences, is all in the future at this point.

Ah well.

The Blood Secret uploaded

I've been very neglectful in not telling people who read this blog that my latest e-book, The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, is now available from Kindle, and Smashwords. I'd love to say it was also available in print, but that's not the case at the moment, although it's a possibility. One of the many options I've explored that haven't quite got off the ground yet.

Anyway, last Saturday the book was uploaded online, and is sitting waiting for people to buy it....

The Blood Secret is the sequel to Grimhilda! the story that began life back in the late 70s, and finally turned into the musical which we presented in Dunedin in 2012. And then it became the book. At the time some of the cast asked when the sequel was going to happen. They were thinking of another musical but such a venture is fairly overwhelming, even with a good team behind you, and so the sequel, now that it's finally arrived, is also in story form rather than musical.

It would be interesting to adapt The Blood Secret for the stage, however: though it has a number of challenges that might be tricky to overcome: a car that changes its colour, skateboarders whizzing around at impossible speed, a huge door that doesn't want to be a door, and something special that wants to remain invisible.

Only a few minor technical problems...!

I'd have loved to have given the four actors Grimhilda! the chance to fly, as they were supposed to do in the script, but in the end the audience had to imagine this. Another production, however, might achieve it. It would certainly add a Wow factor to the stage version. There's one moment of 'flying' in The Blood Secret too, but that would be a challenge even greater than the one in the musical...

Read it and see what I'm talking about!

A nifty line

Every so often, when you're writing, a line appears that comes so wonderfully formed, you think someone cleverer than you wrote it. In the first chapter of my next book, due to be published in November, there's this line:

He put a stopper in the top, and popped it in his upper pocket. 

It's a bit like a line from a poem, except that this is an ordinary prose story. I love the way the letter p appears all over the sentence, along with the letter t, and the rhythm of the words in the sentence.

Did I say what the name of the book is? Nope? It's The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret - a sequel of sorts. It's a sequel in the sense that it happens about a week after the first book in this series, Grimhilda!, but there are only two characters from the first book who make an appearance in the second. A couple of others are mentioned, but that's it. Almost an entirely new cast...!

The Mumbersons ˗ and the Blood Secret

I'm pleased to say that my co-writer on Grimhilda! has come in to help with the last stages of the book about the Mumbersons - the 'sequel' (of sorts) to the earlier book. Currently the title is The Mumbersons ˗ and the Blood Secret. 

She read it through a couple of weeks ago, or so, and said, Wonderful. Love it. That's very encouraging. And then of course the work started, rejigging lines, cutting phrases, sentences, paragraphs, adding in things that were missing, and tightening up the plot so that awkward persons (like herself) don't come along and say, But why.....?

Someone will always come along and ask, But why?even when you think you've covered all the bases, but you have to live with that. One of our aims is to see that these kind of people are in the minority!

The story's two main characters - Billy and Olivia - have been friends for a short while before the story starts, and together find themselves having to deal more than one curious thing involving Billy's blood, and why someone should want to have some of it. The connection with Grimhilda! becomes evident at the end of the first chapter, and increases as time goes on. More than this I'm not prepared to reveal just yet! 

I'm aiming to have it ready before Christmas 2014, and hopefully it will encourage people to go back and read Grimhilda! if they haven't already done so. 

Secret Life of Bees

I read Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees last year while my wife and I were in England. I'd heard about it over the years, because Kidd's name was well known to me from when I managed a bookstore, but I'd never read it. (I'd enjoyed an earlier book, When the Heart Waits a lot, but found the following book, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter too feminist for my tastes at the time.)
Anyway, The Secret Life of Bees has hit the big screen now, and Dakota Fanning is the star. Fanning is one of those extraordinary child actors who seems to be able to take on any role and invest it with an intensity that's beyond the ordinary. She's been in movies (or TV) most of her life; in fact, they've been her life. How's she as down to earth as she seems is quite a miracle. She has the ability to be very ordinary, and yet continue to move us. She even managed to make the nasty movie, Hide and Seek, watchable.
I'm not sure that I'll go and see The Secret Life of Bees. Even though it wasn't one of my favourite books, it left memories behind that I don't particularly want overlaid by a movie version. This has happened a few times, with The Shipping News, The Horse Whisperer, and, worst of all, the TV version of Middlemarch, in which the main role was miscast - at least as far as my reading of the book was concerned. (The main role of the TV version of Bleak House was similarly miscast, but it's all a matter of perception - these actors weren't the way I'd imagined the characters, and they spoilt my imaginative version.)