Have I made a Difference?

 

We all like to think we have and in particular we writers hope that our words might have.I can now tell you three little stories of where I think I may have had a little impact.

Gavin and the Isolation Room

After I gave up the day job in order to concentrate more on my writing I still did some supply teaching and in particular for the school where I’d previously been head of languages.  Most Fridays I would run their isolation room. This was where students were parked for the day rather than being suspended. They arrived at school a little earlier than the rest and went home a little later. They were allowed breaks and bathroom visits but not at the same time as the other students. We ordered a “room service” lunch from the school canteen. .

They beavered away all day at work I extracted form a huge cupboard. There were lessons for each subject for each year group. Sometimes teachers supplied very precise things they wanted certain students to do.  I could take my laptop with me and get on with my own work. 

By about two o’clock we were all fidgety, me included. They would often ask me what I was doing. I would explain about writing, drafting editing and about the publishing process.

One day Gavin met me in the corridor. “I’m not in isolation today,” he boasted. “But I’ll carry your laptop to the isolation room if you like.”

He was very chatty as we walked along the corridors. “Have you found a publisher yet for that book you read some of to us?” he asked.

“No yet,” I replied.  “It isn’t quite right yet.”

“What will you do if you can’t get a publisher to take it?”

“I’ll be a bit upset, I guess.”

 “And if it is published and you get bad reviews?”

Well, if nothing else I’d taught Gavin something about the publishing industry.

Competing with Harry Potter

I would allow the students to stop working at what would be break time.  They weren’t at this point allowed to talk but I would let them read a book instead of working. Oddly they would more often than not opt to carry on working. Yet they did seem to like me reading to them, even though many of the stories I read to them then were really for a younger age group.

One day Rachel came along with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire under her arm. She was a frequent visitor to the Isolation Room but this week she was the only student. She was never any trouble. In fact the students weren’t on the whole. Only once did I have to call for extra help with an aggressive student.

Also, when I looked in the cupboard for some English work for her it transpired that she had competed everything,  I happened to have  a hard draft copy of one of my novels with me and I asked her to write down what she’d found out about the characters in the first four chapters. This would be useful to me as well: had she understood what I’d meant her to understand? Was my writing working?

Break time came along. She was now working on maths.

“You can read your Harry Potter book now,” I said.

“Actually, can I read some more of your book?” she asked.

Wow!

Lines in the Sand

I had a short piece of fiction published in this anthology. The book was a protest response to the war in Iraq and contained short stories and extracts from longer pieces by many diverse writers.  I based a school workshop about tolerance and empathy on my story. I dressed up as one of the characters and invited the children to ask me questions.

We sold copies of the book.

At the end of the day the headteacher came up to me very excited.

“Alex had bought a copy of the book.  He enjoyed your story and he wants to read more like it. This is wonderful.  He’s our most reluctant reader.”

Even if I eventually write a bestseller that enables me to buy a house with a book-shaped swimming pool I’ll remain proud of these three moments.               

News 1 March 2021

 

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/       

And now I’ve become a cookery writer: https://talkingaboutmygeneration.co.uk/riceandpeas/

 

The Young Person’s Library

This month I’ve added:

South & North, East & West by Michael Rosen

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.

 

Beauty and the Bin by Joanne O’Connell  

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.

 

The Proudest Blue Ibtihaj Muhammad, S.K. Ali, Hatem Aly

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.

 

Writing the World

Writing the World  

We have faced a few challenging incidents in the past weeks in the UK. Always when these big things happen we want to do something. Perhaps we add flowers to a memorial site, perhaps we attend a vigil or we might give money. What we choose to do may not directly make it better for the victims but it nevertheless expresses something.

I belong to a choir and some members sang at the children’s hospital last Sunday. This was a reaction to the terror attack on the Manchester Arena. 

As writers and artists we often want to do what we do best. We put together anthologies of stories and sell books, donating the profit to the victims. We paint pictures or we make music.

I was delighted to have my short story The Gift Child published in Lines in the Sand, a collection of writings and illustrations by those who had protested about the war in Iraq. This was my first piece of fiction to be published. It very much told the same story as my novel The Prophecy. It also helped me to feel that I was doing something practical about my anger. Up until then I’d had a lot of time for Toni Blair and New Labour. That government also stopped compulsory language learning in school. That also horrified me. My story, included in the Seeds of  Hope section, addresses that also. Lines in the Sand not only gave all profits and royalties to UNICEF but also tackled the topic of war for children.

We published 100 Stories for Haiti. All profits go to the Red Cross.

It’s our experience that the books don’t make a lot of money. Even when Gentle Footprints starred at the Hay festival we barely covered our costs and then the money we did donate to Born Free got tangled up with VAT. It might have been much simpler just to donate from our own pockets. However the sentiments expressed remained really important. Animals should be allowed to live in the wild. Our collection contained stories from animal points of view – very tricky, and Richard Adams made us a fantastic contribution- or from the point of view of humans who help them to stay or become free. Debz Hobbs-Wyatt, my publishing partner on this venture, has continued to work with schools on this.

Perhaps if we can make others re-examine these situations we make a valuable contribution. Isn’t it the artist’s job to make the viewer look back at the reality? 

What’s up next? Well, we’re working on a collection called Citizens of Nowhere. It’s all about the global citizen. It embraces diversity and multiculturalism. It contains characters that have no fixed cultural identity. Now then, Madam May and co.     

         

A writer, counting blessings

Recently a few small things have pleased me no end. They really have. They all add together and contribute to the bigger picture.

Northern Venetians

I was extraordinarily pleased to be involved in this project. Partly because I was commissioned, partly because I’m rubbing shoulders with some significant people and partly because I’m growing rather fond of producing these very short texts.

I asked my colleagues to see if they could spot my text. One managed straight away – she recognised my style and a reference within the text. Another colleague is still puzzling it out.

Can you spot my work here? Because it’s nearly Christmas I’ll send you a signed copy of one my books if you spot it. You choose which!