A heartening piece of news

You can't get away from libraries, even on this personal blog! I have been covering the movement against cuts and closures in Oxfordshire over on http://bookmavenmary.blogspot.com but this post is about a bit of good news.

I told on Radio Oxford a week or so ago and repeated at the Oxfordshire Anti-Cuts Alliance (OACA) meeting last week the story of my local secondary school. Council Leader Keith Mitchell made the fatuous suggestion that the public might use school libraries because "every secondary school in the county has one." I challenged this with the story about my local one.

Carterton Community college had a library but the Headteacher threw out all the books and installed IT equipment in the space. Now, I have nothing against IT equipment. I love my laptop, I blog, Tweet, use Facebook, Skype-text daily and generally embrace the new technology. (I have a Kindle too) But I also have books in every room of my house and owe my career as a writer largely to the free, well-stocked school and public libraries I encountered in my childhood and adolescence.

After the OACA meeting someone came up to me - and I'm cursing that I didn't catch her name - with a heart-warming story. What I had said about Carterton was true, she said, but that was done under a previous Head. Now they were re-stocking the library and re-opening it in September! I couldn't be more pleased.

No guesses where my review copies will be going in future!

Why I don't celebrate New Year's Eve

36 years ago today my mother died. It was only four months after my father's death and she had spent her first (only!) Christmas as a widow with us in North London. She went back to her home with my sister and a few days later I got the devastating phone call.

Seven years earlier one of her best frinds - the mother of my best friend in my girlhood - had died, so it was already a sad day in our calendar.

I can remember celebrating New Year's Eve on only a handful of occasions - all sad or disappointing in some way: the time my boyfriend went back to his secret fiancée, the one with gay friends when everyone wanted to kiss my husband, the Hogmanay on Princes Street in Edinburgh when we stood around in the cold waiting for something to happen, the Millennium Eve under Big Ben - actually that one was the best, with great fireworks.

Tonight we'll have a home-made Chinese meal with our youngest and her partner, drink some good wine by the log fire and maybe stay up till midnight, maybe not. But I'll think of my mother, who never met her grandchildren, and was such a loving woman and a great cook. To her I owe many Celtic qualities to do with hospitality and imagination.

Thank you, Ivegh Lassiter.

What do you believe on the Internet?

Not long ago I saw someone on Twitter saying that they were looking forward to reading David, my latest historical novel. Naturally I was flattered but also a bit intrigued because the book won't be out till next year. I didn't know this person and I was pretty sure she hadn't been to the Troubadour launch party where I talked about it.

So I Tweeted back something along the lines of "that's lovely but you'll have to wait until next year" and she replied that she'd seen it advertised on Amazon. Intrigued, I looked it up myself and there it was. Nothing wrong with advertising well in advance but - and here's the killer - a dealer was advertising secondhand copies!

The book at that time, although written, had not yet been edited so it was a neat trick to have a published copy already "in good condition" though "used." I reported it to my publisher but it's still there on amazon.co.uk. I advise you not to buy it even at the knock-down price of £1.98 plus postage!

Now that I have a couple of websites, I have regular contact with my readers and some of them say the darnedest things. Here is a recent selection:

"Why don't you have an Interesting Vegetables section on your website, like Robert Muchamore?"

"I think you should write a story about cheese on toast"

"Why your books dosen't arrive in my country (Chile)? "

"I felt that you book "Boundless Grace" sends the message that polygamy and absentee dads are acceptable occurences that children should be pruod or happy of." (I didn't answer this one!)

"Dear Mary Hoffman, this is my email:" (Um, yes. What should I do with it?)

Then I got told off on Twitter for revealing too much about the plot of Malorie Blackman's Boys Don't Cry in my recent Guardian review - this was described as a Critic's Crime.

I don't read my Amazon reviews and NEVER look at Amazon rankings - that way madness lies - but I do get Google Alerts into my name and also "Stravaganza", which I also tap into www.whostalkin.com. That way I have found lots of lovely positive reviews to send on to my publicists at my publishers.

But there is no sensitivity filter and I have also stumbled across some real stinkers!

If I were not so clued in and genned up, I wouldn't know about them but then I wouldn't know about the lovely ones too. Truly the Internet is a sword with two edges!

Feeling like a writer

This has been one of those weeks when a lot of writerly things have happened without my having done much writing. Having sent off the edits for my latest historical novel, David, to Bloomsbury, I was preparing to roll up my sleeves to start writing The Great Big Book of Feelings for Frances Lincoln.

But then I was derailed by the arrival of the layouts for Grace at Christmas. So seasonal! But not available till next year. It was written in December last year and it felt suitably festive to check it all through in the same season: it makes it feel a genuinely Christmassy book.

Cornelius van Wright and his wife Ying-Hwa Hu have done a really lovely job on the interior illustrations. I'm sorry you'll have to wait a year to see those but  here is the cover. My Art Director at Frances Lincoln says it will be "a more Chrsitmassy green" which I'm glad to hear as the background looks a little cold in this image.

On Monday one of our dinner guests was Linda Aronson, who became a friend after I gave her hilarious Kelp a rave review in, I think, The Telegraph. It's always fun talking plot ideas with Linda, who is a Hollywood script doctor in her other life.

Then on Thursday I went to a book-signing at my local Waterstone's - twice actually, because they were having a late night opening. I have done this so often and in so many places that it no longer strikes me as odd. But it IS a bit strange - isn't it? - to do what children often call "scribbling in a book."

So there I was, "scribbling" in copies of my Stravaganza novels and Princess Grace and The Great Big Book of Families, knowing that I must start writing Stravaganza 6 next month, that the next Grace would be out in a year's time and that I must write the text for the next Great Big Book of ... before Christmas. So that's it - it's my job. Even after 90+ books, I still can't quite believe it.

How are the might-y fallen?

There was a news story this week that the Leeds Building Society is employing a retired teacher to give their graduate staff remedial grammar lessons. Meanwhile Emma Thompson berated some schoolgirls for the over-use of "like" and "innit" saying it made them sound stupid.

I thought I'd save any other institutions from spending money by starting an occasional series of posts about some of the regular blunders found in newspapers and heard on the radio.

I'm currently reading a book published by a small academic press in which the author uses "infers" when she means "implies." Having those two words which mean something different is one of the many strengths and richnesses of English.

I'm implying that such distinctions are worth making and retaining - you might infer, correctly, that I'm a stickler, or pedant if you prefer. Of course language use changes over time: "whom" is rapidly becoming a fossil and most people don't use "nice" to mean "precise" though that meaning is retained in " a nice distinction."

I'm all in favour of nice distinctions. I think they're nice. 

Here's another: to "flaunt" means to show off, to display; to "flout" means to disregard or disobey something. And yet you see the one used instead of the other every day. A senior figure in the library service in the London borough I used to live in used to say "mitigate against" confusing "militate" (contend)  and "mitigate" (soften, make less harsh).

But one of the most annoying common usages (to me) is the global replacement of "might" by "may." Recently, I heard and read everywhere "Raoul Moat warned police that he may hurt his ex-girlfriend."

Well, his words might have been "I may hurt her" but when it's reported speech the "may" changes to "might." Except that these days it doesn't! (And yes, I do know that what happened to Moat and his victims is more important than the grammar used when telling us about it).

Steven Berkoff in the Guardian a week or so ago wrote about the relations "between my father and I" and even the last Prime Minister said in a speech "my mother brought my brother and I up" to do something or other. I don't remember what; I was probably screaming at the radio too loudly to hear.

So, these are a few examples in the fields of meaning and grammar, semantics and syntax. What the ones that really annoy you? Give examples in the comments.

Celebrity

Well, this was nice! I haven't had such a close brush with fame since my kiss with Marty Wilde, aged 13 (me I mean, not him). Unless you count 15 minutes with George W Bush at Downing Street in 2003.* Which I don't. Marty and Jeff were both much nicer experiences.

What was really strange was when Jeff Goldblum offered to sign my programme for "Prisoner of Second Avenue" for me. Of course I said yes. But I had a tiny moment of hesitation and here's why:

You see, usually people ask me to sign things for them. Now, in case this sounds incredibly arrogant, I am speaking of book-signings at bookshops, festivals and schools etc. I have never had anyone stop me in the street and ask for an autograph. And I hope I never shall.

But because of my experience in this department, I have often mused on autographs and fame. I can understand someone liking to have their book signed by the author; I like that too and am lucky that many of my friends are also writers.

But the kids who come up with scraps of paper torn from exercise books - what does a signature do for them? Is it a brush with fame? Or perceived celebrity at least? If I saw one of my heroes or crushes in a public place I wouldn't dream of rushing up and asking for an autograph. The most I would do is wear a big soppy grin (see photo).

I would NEVER have bothered Jeff Goldblum for an autograph if I'd bumped into him in a restaurant, say. But since we had been introduced and he was asking ... Well, of course.

What do you all think about this? Writer friends who sign and non-writer friends and passers-by who collect autographs? And what do you do with them afterwards?


* I should like to make it quite clear no hugging or kissing took place on that occasion. Eww!

Skype "visits" - the future?

Last week I was contacted, via my website, by a school in Texas at short notice, to see if I would agree to a Skype "visit" with the Grade Three class taught by my correspondent. I had said on my site that I was open to such suggestions.

So we managed to find a time that worked for us both - 5pm for me and 11am for them - and tackled the technology.

They wanted me to read Amazing Grace and answer a few questions, which didn't sound too hard. I have only the camera on my Apple Mac - no webcam as yet - so the image is not wonderful but of course the user can see only a tiny square in the left corner; it's much bigger for the viewers at the other end.

There were some introductions and then I read the story, without any problems. The children were all very quiet and attentive and gave me a big clap at the end. It was only when the first child got up to ask a question that our problems began. I could see and hear them but they could only see me.

We re-connected several times but always the same problem. So I started to Skype-text them. (I'm a very experienced Skype-texter because I do it with one of my daughters almost every day). The children asked their questions and I answered them by text. They could see it scrolling as I wrote and corrected, though it was a bit of a pain because I had to switch away from the main image while I was writing and couldn't see them.

This is what their nice teacher wrote: "Thank you so much! The kids LOVED their experience, even if we had technical difficulties.  It was probably on our end, except I'm not computer-savvy enough to know what caused it. So no apology needed.  I thought it was so neat for them to hear you read your own story. They loved your accent.
Again, the kids LOVED it, and I know they will be talking about it all year long.  :)

Thank you, thank you, thank you!  You have inspired our kids to love stories as much as you do!"



So  a high score on the warm glow front but the technical problems were frustrating. I did a test-call afterwards, which was fine on sound so I expect the problem developed at their end but this is something we need to be aware could happen.

The whole business calls into question what author visits of the future might be like.

On the plus side, a half hour visit without any travel fatigue or problems, no question that the school wouldn't know you were coming, good interaction with kids and teachers, enhanced librarian awareness of other titles and obviously distance no object.

On the minus, no book sales on the day (though maybe later) no possibility of signing books unless you possess Margaret Attwood's Long Pen, no close eye contact, no ability to stroll up and down when talking or to show pictures clearly as you read.

There are probably others I haven't thought of.

I didn't charge for this visit, as it was experimental, but was the first question I was asked by another author and we've been having a bit of a debate about it on my writers' forum. "Is this a way of getting cheap visits" and "won't it undercut other authors who don't (want to) Skype?" being considerations. I haven't been in touch with the Society of Authors about it yet but would be interested to hear others' experience of this new technology.