Victor Boogie ...

... is what my kids used to call him when they were small. By whatever name, he's the man. Enjoy!

A little bit of this and a little bit of that

If I learned anything (and indeed I learned a lot) from yesterday's Society of Authors conference - Information and Inspiration: Everything a Writer Needs - it is that there isn't any single answer, any single way forward. Skilled, imaginative, innovative juggling is what is called for - or perhaps something a little like this ...



Yes. That's my model. What's yours?

P.S. Group Blogs Are Good - one of the messages of the conference. Find me on Girls Heart Books!
P.P.S. Telling About All Events - another thing we're supposed to do. So ...
I had a story (Dissidents and Distilleries) read aloud at the White Rabbit "Are You Sitting Comfortably?" event at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews - fabulous!
I did an author visit at Uphall Primary School - 97 delightful kids and 3 fab teachers - outstanding!
I'm going to be away over next weekend, so I'm setting up another delight for you in my absence - enjoy!

Slightly - Short and Listed!

Slightly Jones - The Case of the London Dragonfish

has been shortlisted for the Younger Readers (8-11) category of
the 2011 Scottish Children's Book Awards!



Me, extremely pleased.

You can find out more about the Scottish Children's Book Awards here, on the Scottish Book Trust site.

Thanks to Kathryn Ross for the photo.

P.S. Getting short-listed is surely something to dance about - for a demonstration go to Just Watch on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure

"Verbing the Noun"

I do not often find myself in the Sports Section of any newspaper. I watch sport. Well, some sport. Well, Wimbledon. And the Olympics. And when I was little I watched snooker on our black and white TV (yeah - challenging) but that was because I liked to hang out with my dad. So, not really sporty, as such.

But then, in a morning search for Doonesbury and the crossword puzzle, I stumbled across Harry Pearson's article "Let's legacy by verbing the noun" (The Guardian, Friday 2 Sept. 2011) -

"It has been all bubbing exuberance at the World Athletics Championships in Daegu. Records have been broken, races have been dedicated, dreams have been dreamed, starts have been falsed and nouns have been verbed ... Track and field leads the world in the important business of converting lumpy, dull old 'naming words' into dynamic and vibrant 'doing words' ... Vocab-wise, medalling and PB-ing are now totally part-and-parcelled, and most experts in South Korea believe podiumed, finalled and all-comered are not far off lexiconing.

Despite the pedants' protests, many elite-performance directors feel even more needs to be done linguistically if Team GB are to potential in 2012. Some have even called on David Cameron to initiative as soon as possible to get noun-emissions three-quartered in the next six months."

Instead of watching sport with the sound turned down, it would appear that a fun option might be to listen to it with the picture turned off. (I may have just invented radio ...) I can almost imaginate it now - a whole new family pastime - "Whoa - did you hear that? Unbelievable! The ref must be deaf! Penalty! Penalty!"

Or maybe not.