An early career story
In late 2000 several of my suggestions for educational material
were taken up. A few years later my first full book was accepted and published
in June 2003. This was a guide to learning languages. Well I had been a language teacher for town-five
years up until then.
However, I upstaged myself by getting a short story accepted
in a collection for children about war. This was published a few days before
the language book. Lines in the Sand was edited by Mary Hoffman
and her daughter Rhiannon Lassiter. Some witters had sent in stories or extracts of stories
they had already written, others, like myself, made up a story
especially for the book. Artists send it pictures they had in their portfolios
and these were matched to the stories. My The
Gift Child was included in the “Seeds of Hope” section. All profits and royalties
went to the special UNICEF fund for the children damaged by the war in Iraq and
the book was our protest against that war.
My
copy of the book arrived. I opened the book eagerly and was delighted to see that
the girl in the illustration that accompanied my story looked just as I had imagined
my protagonist. I turned to the page after the illustration to find that one
third of my story was missing.
I phoned
the publisher straight away but the office was not yet open. I went for a swim.
When I got back to my phone there were about twenty missed calls.
Of course
they were very apologetic. They sent a full copy of the story to everyone else in
the book. This has had the not entirely unwelcome effect that everyone remembered
my story and my name. No such thing as bad publicity?
They
also found one name misspelt and that another picture gave away the ending of a
story. So, another edition was created but the book retained the same ISBN. So,
there are a few unusual books around.
Collectors’ items? I have a copy of the original book and the one with the
corrections. Both of them are signed by Michael Morpurgo. Unfortunately to fit the rest of my story in
we had to lose the lovely illustration. All of the original illustrations were auctioned
off but alas I didn’t have enough money to buy that one.
News about my writing and other
creative projects
The Class Letter, the fifth book in the Schellberg Cycle is now almost completely edited. I also now on the
second edit of Not Just Fluffy Bunnies. I’m
currently going through the rather tedious process of checking all of the
references. I’m still working on The Business of Writing. I’m interspersing all of this with short stories
and flash fiction.
I
continue to write for Talking about My
Generation:
I’m writing a series of creative writing prompts for
lockdown.
These are very similar to the exercises I provided for the
Bury Art Museum. Readers are invited to send in their work. I’ve provided six
of these and they’re publishing one a week. So far we have:
https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/lockdown-adventures-mining-art-galleries-for-stories
https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/writing-with-the-senses/
https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/meet-in-the-middle-story/
https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/lockdown-adventures-creative-writing-making-names-and-words-into-poems/
https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/creative-writing-adventures-in-lockdown/
The Young Person’s Library
This month I’ve
added:
Her Michael Rosen retells in his fabulous story-teller voice several folk
stories from around the world. This is suitable for upper primary school children.
This is a story
for early teens, Key Stage 3, about an enterprising young lady who makes beauty
products from what she can find in the kitchen.
There is a lot more to the story however.
This is a picture
book that may also be suitable for emergent readers. It tells the story of an
older sister who has to start wearing the hijab. The illustrations are
delightful.
Current reading recommendation
This month I’m recommending Dawn Knox’s Fearless
Heart . It is a story set during
World War II and tells of the adventures of Genevieve who speaks fluent French and
joins the Special Operations Executive.
Genevieve has to learn
to behave as a man in occupied France. Yves is at first very wary of her. She falls
in love with him. But will her love be
requited. Will they both survive?
Knox engages us from
the beginning and keeps our attention through her carefully drawn characters about
whom we care about a lot.
Fearless Heart is an historical romance by experienced 1940s Dawn
Knox. It is published by the Linford
Romance Library. This is a large print book.
Giveaway
Note: these are
usually mobi-files to be downloaded to a Kindle. Occasionally there are PDFs.
I’m offering this
time the mobi-file (for Kindle) of my flash fiction collection, January Stones 2013.
They were originally published on a blog called "Gill’s
January Stones". In fact, they were published in reverse order. The first
one you read here, "When Physics Got Sick", was the last one to be
written and originally published on 31 January 2013.
Sometimes the stories would come right at the beginning of the day. Sometimes
they would take a while longer.
Do they have a theme? Not really, though the idea of ‘stones’ is one of turning
them over slowly on the beach until we find the right one. It’s not a bad time
of year, anyway, right at the beginning in January, as the New Year starts and
the days slowly become longer.
There was no strict word count. Each story is as long as it needs to be. It had
to be finished, though, by midnight of that day.
Please, please,
please write a review when you’ve read the book.
You can download it
and lots of other free materials here.
Note, that
normally my books and the books supplied by the imprints I manage sell for
anything from £0.99 to £10.99. Most on
Kindle are about £2.99 and the average price for paperback is £7.00. Writers have
to make a living. But I’m offering these free samples so that you can try
before you buy.
The Schellberg Project
The posts may be helpful for teachers who are familiar with
the Schellberg stories or who are teaching about the Holocaust and also for
other writers and readers of historical fiction.
Sometimes I also write about what might be of interest to
other writers.
There were three posts in February:
This includes two book reviews:
Fearless Heart by Dawn
Knox (also mentioned above)
The
Last Correspondent by Soraya M Lane another celebration of women doing
their bit during World War II.
I have also included an article about a rather nice
connection we now have with the people who live in the house on Schellberg
Street:
Read the account here.
School visits
I’ve suspended these until further notice. I’m now starting
work on a series of on-line materials.
Some notes about my newsletters and
blogs
They do overlap a little but here is a summary of what they
all do.
Bridge House Authors For all those published by Bridge House, CaféLit,
Chapeltown or The Red Telephone or interested in being published by us. General
news about the imprints. News for writers. Links to book performance. Sign up here.
Chapeltown Books News about our books. Sign up here.
The Creative Café Project News about the project and CaféLit –
for the consumer rather than for the producer.
Sign up here.
Gill’s News: News about my writing, The Schellberg Project, School
Visits and Events. Book recommendations and giveaways. Find it here.
Pushing Boundaries, Flying Higher News about conferences and
workshops to do with the young adult novel. (infrequent postings) Sign up here.
Red Telephone Books News about our books and our authors. Sign
up here.
A Publisher’s Perspective Here I blog as a publisher. Access
this here.
The Creative Café Project Listings and reviews of creative
cafés. See them here.
CaféLit Stories Find these here
Gill James Writer All about writing and about my books. View
this here.
Gill’s Recommended Reads Find information here about books that
have taken me out of my editor’s head and a reminder of the ones I’ve
highlighted in this newsletter.
Gill’s Sample Fiction Read some of my fiction here.
The House on Schellberg Street All about my Schellberg project.
Read it here.
Writing Teacher All about teaching creative writing. Some creative writing exercises. Access this here.
Books Books Books Weekly offers on our books and news of new
books. Find them here.
The Young Person’s Library The children’s
book catalogue. Access it here.
Fair Submissions Find
it here.
Opportunities for writers are added several times a day. Roughly once a
month I send it out to a list. If you would like to be on that list, sign up here.
Happy reading and
writing.
