On the Gallows by Nina Milton: Now on Kindle!

 

The two detectives had arrived as the body was trundling on a gurney over to the white tent where the pathologist waited like an adjudicator at some macabre contest. The woman was found stripped of any clothing and the technician had thrown a green sheet over her poor mutilated and rotting body for that short journey, but the gurney jerked as its wheels stuck to the walkway, which was so burning hot it was melting the policemen’s thick soles, and the woman’s head slid to the edge, her heavy locks falling free, as if she’d just unpinned them. Despite the river weed and silt, her hair was still glorious; as black as a nighttime lake, not tampered by bleach or dye. 

Detective Sergeant Gary Abbott had stepped forward, his hand outstretched, and touched the woman’s hair, crying out like a distressed relative. “Take care with her, for God’s sake!”

Hinkley Point

I'm proud and delighted to announce that a new Kindle edition of the second of the Shaman Mysteries by Nina Milton is up and running. Revised and now called On the Gallows it continues the adventures of Sabbie Dare, the Somerset shaman who has burst upon the crime fiction scene. The series is famous for it's dark landscapes, and this second one features the waterways of the Somerset Wetlands, the grim, 

Bridgwater Bay (Wikipedia)

bare coastline with its 'drowned forest' and the continually controversial nuclear power station, Hinkley Point. Nina Milton is also known for her wonderfully descriptive and atmospheric shamanic journeys, undertaken by Sabbie in her search for answers. In this book, she meets a wolf by a Roma camp fire;

    'Beware. If a wolf comes in friendship, it will offer you inner strength and the deepest kind of wisdom. But if it comes as your enemy…'

    'What?'

    'It will bring you down by the neck.'

    'Your otter is right, of course,' said the wolf, as it came up to me. 'I will grant you nothing but the right of terror.'

   'I am here to find Kizzy Brouviche, for good or ill.'

    The wolf grinned as I spoke, as if I’d said something that amused it. 'You will listen to me, Sabbie Dare. You will be show directions. Follow, and you will discover.'

    'Where will I find these directions?'

    'There are many that will appear to you.' His tongue lolled

from his muzzle and saliva drooled and pooled on the ground.          'The place of blame. The place of absolution. The dark place. The place of no escape. You will find little in some, and confusion in others. In some you may be rewarded. Do not expect satisfaction from any answer.'

    'Do I know these places? Or seek them out? Should I look in the obvious places first?'

   'That is shrewd. Now you show me your gums, as we wolves say.'...

On the Gallows (Unraveled Visions in the US edition), opens on the hottest day in August, when a young girl is pulled from a Bridgwater wharf, her body so mutilated that it makes identification impossible. Months later Sabbie Dare’s nemesis DS Abbott is found dead after the Bridgewater Carnival. The Bridgewater police are on high alert.

Meanwhile, Romanies Kizzy and Mirela Brouviche have come to England from Bulgaria in the hope of finding their fortune, but soon after Sabbie meets Kizzy at the carnival, the Roma disappears, leaving her young sister Mirela stranded and afraid for her sister. Sabbie is determined to help her in her search, but her shamanic journeys are confusing…her visions unravelled…and they lead Sabbie into dangerous territoriy. This includes being chatted up by immigration worker Fergus Brown, who is reticent on what he knows about the Romany sisters. And while she begins to suspect that the owners of Papa Bulgaria, where Kizzy and Mirela worked, are somehow involved with Kizzy’s disappearance, she also needs to factor in Eric Atkinson, the leader of a sinister cult, who seems too interested in Sabbie's new neighbours, Drea and Andy. Sabbie journeys into Drea's spirit world and is confrontated with a terrifying anaconda. Drea is shocked and distressed by Sabbie’s revelations and shortly afterwards disappears.

Are Kizzy and Drea’s disappearances related? Is Eric Attkinson's cult a danger? What led Garry Abbott to die alone of a single gunshot to the head in a darkened alleyway? Is his death linked to Papa Bulgaria's carnival float of gypsy dancers? Should Sabbie accept a date with charming Irishman Fergus? While Sabbie is facing these questions, she also has to cope with the discovery of her long-dead mother’s family, whose surprising appearance is set to take the wind out of her sails. A disapproving DI Rey Buckley instructs Sabbie to stay well away from his case…and away from him. Naturally, Sabbie does the opposite, on both counts. Her headstrong nature leads her towards romance...and right to the heart of trouble.

Terri Bischof, the acquisitions editor at Midnight Ink says of Unravelling Visions…I loved the masuscript.The Shaman Mysteries are among my favourite series... this is a great book!

Library Journal says...Sabbie Dare is the most compelling protagonist and Milton’s tale is riveting. 

The visceral suspense Milton creates is commendable, not to mention terrifying. I like pairing her work with Elly Griffiths’s  atmospheric English mysteries.

I hope you'll enjoy it too. Of course, if you haven't yet obtained your copy of In the Moors, it is also on Kindle at just 99p; free with Kindle Unlimited.

Walking into Stories.

Many writers walk to invent their stories. Dickens apparently

 wrote most mornings and walked every afternoon. 

 I think his characters and their senarios walked with him, ready for their creation by pen the following morning. 

I've used this method for years. It doesn't matter if the surrounds are urban or rural, but naturally it's nicer if there are trees and birds. The most important thing is that I am on my own. When I walk with others, I'm bound to chatter. When I walk alone, I chatter to my characters, and they chatter back. In this way, stories develop through my feet. 

I've walked my way through dialogue, scene-building, description, interior monologue, action, development of plot. Holding it in your head is the hard part - I've been known to race back on the home stretch, my hands itching for the keyboard.

 A more recent development has been to walk into my stories. I know where I want to set my scenes, of course, and some of them are fairly imaginary, some of them set exactly in that place. Either way, I like to wander round, explore actual sites, and, even better, I can take other walkers with me; someone who knows the story a bit and can help you chew the fat over, so that, as we walk, we chat about the interweavings of plot and character with landscape, throw ideas at each other and iron out problems.

My son Joe is a great walking buddy. We explored the Somerset moors and the Somerset Levels (which are slightly different places in actual fact, although easily muddled; it's all low-lying, reclaimed from marsh, boggy, peaty and full of beautiful wildlife). At that time I was writing In the Moors, the first Shaman Mystery, and we were looking for a good place to hide bodies. Now, we laughingly call these 'murder walks'
On them we search out the best place to dispose of bodies, the best place to commit the crime, the best place to hide from the cops...whatever is required, really. Actually seeing the landscape enhances the final descriptions from guesswork to atmospheric reality and the process of making sure things can really happen - all the hows, whys, thens and theres - becomes accurate and simplified. Luckily, there was no one near to hear our conversation;

 'How about digging a hole at the edge of a marsh?'

 'Easily spotted. How about just dropping them into the huge pools of water that were once peat bogs?'

 'They'd bob up, wouldn't they?'

 'Well, look at those ancient willows over there, in that rhyne. You can see right down into the roots. That would hold a body down. Stop it floating...' 

And so, the scene where Sabbie Dare walks the levels in increasing darkness, until she finds the shallow grave of the little stolen-away boy, was born. The zig-zag route she took, taking bridges over the rhynes and ditches between the boggy fields, the balancing act as she navigates the deep black pools, even the ancient, 'old man willow' who holds the secret of murder, was all there on our walk.

The Shaman Mystery Series is mostly set in Bridgwater, Somerset, UK. My friend Sue was born in Bridgwater, and knows the town far better than I. We've had several great trips down, a couple of them staying for the weekend so we could explore properly, chat to the people, wander the streets, work out which shops are in which centres, getting the 'feel' of places like the library, the town hall, and (most importantly!) the police station. Some years ago, we went down for the November Carnaval and the late-night squibbing event that fills the opening pages of the second Shaman Mystery - On the Gallows (called in it's US edition 'Unraveled Visions').

Squibbing in Bridgwater

For that second book, I needed to visit Hinkley Point power station, and the forsaken coastline beyond; we walked the coastal path to see the sunken forest and the strange cooling tower that stands out to sea. In my head, this is where a body would be found, and the story how how a character found it, all came in start reality as we stared out, against the high, chilly wind.

On the Gallows is to be released in Kindle ready for Christmas reading this year (we may need Christmas reading!). The next blog on this site will be the new cover reveal, so keep a lookout for it!

Such a walking buddy has to be trustworthy...and a bit of a writer themselves, if possible, but mostly any good friend with a pair of lace-up boots would do. In this way, we've marched through forests, along coastlines, been blown off mountains and squelched into bogs.

I once walked all around a Killarney lake and ended up with a love song which, foolishly pen and paperless, I had to carry in my head all the way back to where we were staying. 

With our ability to escape from our own houses being limited a lot of the time at the moment, walking at least is allowed, even if we can't always enter private or even public buildings. If you're in the middle of planning your story, give it a go, take a walk.

AN ARTISTIC FUTURE FOR WELSH WOOL

We are once again limited in what where we can go, and who we can be with. I’ve been spending some happy hours recalling the summer of 2019 (bet you have too...). That was my 'arts and crafts of Wales' summer, when I spent sunny days visiting some of the working mills of West Wales. 

These mills, and the work they're now doing, got me interested in the history of  Welsh tapestry wool. I had conversations with the workers, who told me about their finished products and the sustainability and the carbon footprint of traditional weaving. I chatted to some of the designers about their contemporary artistic endeavours. I had many cups of coffee and quite a few delicious lunches, and took in quite a lot of the lovely countryside and coast.

  The tradition of weaving sheep's wool in            Wales expanded from prehistoric times through the middle ages, relying on the fast-running streams of west Wales, especially around the Teifi, (which runs through the heart of Ceredigion where I live) to provide power. Rural mills,  processing local fleeces, produced the Carthenni double-weave tapestry, which is unique to Wales.

Deeply rooted in Welsh tradition, double weave uses a strong 

2-ply yarn producing a hard-wearing reversible fabric. In past centuries, every mill had its signature design. Two layers of fabric are woven one above the other, interchanging at points forming ‘pockets’, and enabling bold areas of pattern to be created. However, when the Wool Marketing Board came into being in the 1950s, Welsh yarn found itself blended mostly into carpet yarns. The weaving mills began to fail and the iconic Carthenni patterns were almost lost.

National Woollen Museum

I started my discoveries by visiting the National Woollen Museum, 20 minutes from my house. Formally, it was 'Melin Teifi', and produced  shirts and shawls, blankets and bedcovers, woollen stockings and socks, which were sold in the surrounding countryside – and to the rest of the world.  Reopened now after Covid, you can see the sympathetically restored  machines in operation, and follow the process from Fleece to Fabric.

But I also wanted to find the working mills around my way, because recently there has been a renaissance – a new fusion of tradition and modernity – using contemporary marketing techniques to secure a future. However, there is an issue with both attracting apprentices and maintaining the desire for sustainable, artisanal, small scale, locally based goods. 

Melin Tregwynt is a whitewashed mill in a remote wooded valley It's been continually used for nearly 200 years, so the buildings have an industrial feel of oily cogs, dusty air and busy weavers, while the shop’s display style is distinctly high-end high street.

They supply John Lewis and Mulberry and say, ‘Weathering wars, recessions and the passing of time, the looms have continued to work their magic since the 17th century, when local farmers would bring their fleeces to be spun into yarn  and woven into sturdy Welsh wool blankets.'

     The design team take centuries-old Cartheni    and ‘revive and design’ unique pattern ideas. They describe their technique as, '…inspired by our heritage, the archive built up over a hundred years of production and love of colour. Some fabrics in our current collection…are brand new but still inspired buy the landscape and tradition of Wales.' Tegwynt has regenerated the tradition of Patagonian double-weave (where Welsh-speaking immigrant weaves took on a South American flavour). The designers are also influenced by the Welsh landscape, Welsh lace, traditional Welsh quilting  and the ‘sense of spirit of place’.

In the visitor centre, a poster shows dying methods of previous centuries. These generated  muted colours and I noted the mill’s contemporary colour combinations are equally muted – grey and beige, lilac, ochre yellow, powder blue, amber and pink. 

Jayne Pierson, who previously worked for McQueen and Westwood, uses the mill’s fabrics to create fashion items which have starred in a Vogue fashion shoot…'I've created something that is a slow, sustainable fashion that is taking something age-old and reinventing it and upcycling it and making it relevant now to a younger consumer. Maybe younger people aren't so familiar with the heritage of Welsh wool - [they can] look at it again and be introduced and turned onto something that is actually very beautiful…'

Solva Mill is only a mile from the splendid Pembrokeshire beach of the same name.

Solva spent quite a lot of cash on restoring the mill wheel to working order, to reinforce their ethical credentials. By using carpet quality Welsh wool, Solva have become specialist weavers of exceptionally long-lasting floor rugs, runners and stair carpets. They feature symbolic designs synonymous with Welsh textiles.

To extend their marketing, the shop stocks locally designed textile art that fits its underlying ethos, including designs by seamstress Emma Iles, who has been inspired by the rugged Solva landscape to develop Seaforth Designs. She is

first inspired by fabric. 'I’d find a piece of soft woven grey herringbone wool with different weft and weaves that would look prefect for a dunlin. But now the collection is evolving. I see oystercatchers in the harbour and decide to add them to the collection, so go on the hunt for charcoal tweeds, and work that way round.' 

Felin Fach is extremely proud of remaining as close to traditional methods as possible. They use a high percentage of wool, alpaca, mohair, linen and silk sourced from local farms or smallholdings. They hand dye  using natural botanical plant extracts such as Madder, Weld, Indigo and Logwood.                      

The fixing agent is Alum, a nontoxic water-soluble

metallic salt and they hand finish using water from springs at the Mill.…Whilst botanical dye is a more time consuming option there is a beauty and depth of colour to natural dye that becomes more beautiful with age…Our Welsh Tapestry Blankets are woven on traditional looms and created in limited numbers with personal care and attention.

Just a mile from my house, is  Curlew Weavers, a centuries-old family business which originally made its own dyes and used the little river Ceri (my local river, that nuns into the Teifi)  to drive looms. Roger Poulson owns and runs the mill at a profit. When I needed curtains, I went to him, knowing that I'd be hanging real Welsh Carthinni woven wool,  hand-made on machinery that hasn’t much changed over the centuries.                                                                  Roger told me, 'I use an artist’s eye to evolve new designs, choosing colour combinations from available dyes and allowing the ‘weft’  to dictate patterns.'                                                           

My curtain design features three yarns close

on the colour spectrum, and one from the opposite end – gorgeous autumnal oranges and browns, with royal blue. Stand back and the blue subtly turns the entire thing to a golden hue. 

Rodger upgraded his family’s business model radically, focusing on the sustainability of small-space production. 'I offer carding, spinning and weaving for Rare and  Specialist Breeders and organic farmers, while making a range of upholstery fabrics, throws, garments and dyed, spun yarn in skeins.' He supplies the Welsh Office, the QE2 and even Downing Street. 'My products have a small carbon footprint. Sheep are part of a natural carbon cycle, because wool is a planet-friendly fibre with a long, recyclable lifespan which takes far less water than cotton in the manufacturing process.'

Unable to cope with the vast industrialisation of textile production, the Welsh woollen industry has reinvented its intent and objectives, using the romance of its esteemed past and the revival of hand-made crafts to create a future for the family mills. It now has to concentrate on the next generation skill-set by offering attractive apprenticeships

and keep a close eye on textile trends.

If you would like to know more about this subject, why not start with Wikipedia, Woollen Industry in Wales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woollen_industry_in_Wales 

The National Woollen Museum is open to you, by rebooking free tickets; https://museum.wales/wool/

Most of these mills are open right now, but check their websites;

Melin Tregwynt,  https://melintregwynt.co.uk

Solva Mill https://www.solvawoollenmill.co.uk/wondersofwool 

Felin Fach https://www.felinfach.com 

 and you can find Emma Iles, Seaforth Designs, here; https://www.seaforthdesigns.com 

Writing a Young Person's Novel, Nina's Seven Basic Steps.

People are asking me regularly now, about the book I began writing two years ago. Questions like 'how long does it take to write a novel' and 'however do you start' and 'do you have a process for writing a book?' and, 'how do you know that you're done?'

In his famous and much-loved book on writing (which of course he called  On Writing), Stephen King advocates that you; start with an idea and some characters, and seeing where it takes you...

I still follow this plan, but I've found it works better if it's better defined, not so vague as see where it takes you... So I break  idea/characters/write on into 7 basic steps. What are they? Read on, dear subscriber...

1. The idea

I've recently written here about how my idea of my children's novel Just

My Luck came into being, using the unlikely-named 'Commonplace Book' But I also like using a mood board, and when I started my latest book The Wrong I Did,  which is for 14+ to adult readers, I blogged about the mood board I created here.  These pictures, postcards, snatches of little items and cuttings from magazine made me learn a lot about my characters by looking, rather than by writing. It helped me get a feel for the two characters I started with, Caitlin and Lily, sorting out how they met, and why that was important to the story.

2. Decide on a location

Caitlin and Lily grew up in my hometown of Bristol. They met on the day Caitlin's father died from a heart attack; the day her mother went right off the rails. Lily was the pharmacist's daughter and Caitlin thinks she is the wonderful person she has ever met.

But I really wanted to set some of the book in Aberystwyth. It has huge atmosphere as a West Wales seaside town, but it's also full of culture, with a big university. The countryside is wild and atmospheric. Caitlin arrives  as a traumatised, but streetwise, 16 year-old. She begins to find her way round, allowing the reader to engage with the starling murmurations, the cliff railway, the seafront, where her 'sort of' boyfriend serves pulled pork sandwiches to the punters, and the National Library of Wales, where her  Welsh-speaking foster mother works.

3. Get to know your characters

Steadily, as Caitlin revealed her story to me, I could see that there would be a few important other characters in this story. To start with, I thought about Caitlin's relationship to each other those.  The way she hates £££ on sight, because she wanted to go back and live with her mother, of course. The way she remembers (( her social worker at the secure unit she's been detained in since she was fourteen, and the terror his image strikes in her heart. The sudden fear when $$ approaches her in Chapter One, telling he wants to tell her story. She thinks he's been sent from !! who was in charger of her movements all those years ago, when she was a tracker. And the powerful bond she forms with && after finding him half dead next to dumper bin at the back of the Aberystwyth shopping centre.

4.  Decide on themes

The best stories speak to us on multiple levels, an opportunity to explore key issues within society. I wanted to explore the newish phenomenon of 'County Lines', which seem impervious to police intervention. They are secret, clandestine. They use children as a front for drug-related activities. This is Caitlin's past, but she's now trying to leave it behind.

5.Outline the story into 3 acts

 This  formula may be old, and a bit  mechanical, but it helps maintain a structure as you write the words of your story. There are many more complex ways for structuring but sometimes the  simplest way is the best. 

Even so, I wasn't simple about it! I needed an outline of the story as it happens to Caitlin, before I could start looking at the story as it appears to the reader. 

1 Caitlin's father dies when she's 11. She tries to help her mother, who is hooked on sleepers and tranquelizers. She approaches a tracker – a drug dealer at school – and is soon sucked into the life of supplying. 

2 The second act is told in flashback, like the first. Caitlin is found guilty of murder and supplying heroin and serves two years in a secure unit for young people. But is this actually 'the wrong she did'?

3 She moves to Aber to get away from all these memories, but of course, they follow her here. She realises it's not going to be easy to escape from her previous life. The trackers want her back. 

6. Create a chapter summary for the entire book.

Once I had my three acts of young Cailin's life, I needed to plot out what happens in real time. The story starts in Aber. Caitlin has been there for six weeks, and she now knows she pregnant. She won't tell Melissa, though, and plans to go back to see her mum and get a medical abortion. At the same time, she's got to avoid $$, who wants to tell her story in his newspaper. And she's really worried about @@ because he's be rushed into ITU with sepsis. Oh, and as well as working at the care home, she's suppose to start College, even though that's the last thing she has time for right now.  I spend a lot of time working out how  each chapter will work; where I'll drop in the flashbacks, and when I should ramp up the tension and the action or drop a twist into the story. My roadmap is 25 chapter headings, although I know any of these can change if I think of something better  I use the headings as roadsigns to keep on the right route.

7. Get to the end first. Go back to the beginning after.

Some of you will know that this is a Lewis Carol quote. It makes sense. Don’t get lost in writing bits and pieces and trying to shoehorn them in somehow. If you go from start to end then the story will flow much better. Should inspiration strike for a later part, you can write it and use your chapter summary to slot it in, but don’t get distracted by things that aren’t relevant to this book.

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible: Creating great character voices

 

Creating the voice of characters who feel realistic, authentic and engrossing is one of the most difficult parts of writing. My latest blogpost for the OPEN COLLEGE OF THE ARTS blogsite looks my favourite Barbara Kingsolver novel, The Poisonwood Bible, where she creates five independent and distinctive voices. Each female member of the Price family narrates their version of this story. The magic trick Kingsolver achieves as a writer is to make their voices entirely original and independent of each other. When I read the book, this was the remarkable thing that struck me hardest. It was as if Kingsolver truly knew the five women whose stories she will tell.  You can read the blog post here; https://www.oca-student.com/weareoca/creating-great-character-voices-barbara-kingsolver’s-poisonwood-bible

In the summer of 1959, the Price family carry everything they need on a lumbering plane and fly to the Belgian Congo to take up a missionary post in a village called Kilanga on the Kwilu River.  The Poisonwood Bible, (1988), follows three decades of their lives in postcolonial Africa. Barbara Kingsolver spent time in the Congo as a small girl "We were there just after independence, but I had no idea of the political intrigue of that era," she says. For Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible is an “allegory of the captive witness. We've inherited this history of terrible things done, that enriched us in the US and Europe by

Just My Luck by Nina Milton: out in paperback!

      I'm proud to announce Just My Luck is

    now available as a paperback from Amazon.

...

Just My Luck is a book for confident readers of around 8 to13 years old. Dynamic and radical, Just My Luck deals with race issues in inner cities in the present day and in a historical context. 

I first had the idea for this book when skimming through the Sunday supplements one afternoon and was suddenly absorbed by an article on genetic history….the story of people who’d discovered that they have ancestors that did not belong to the cultural, social, national or even racial group they always imagined they were part of. I cut it out, for no better reason than it was interesting. As a writer, I keep things that are interesting, putting them into my Commonplace Book...a shoe box full of little snippets of interest.

I  started to write a story about a girl who discovered she had black African ancestry, despite being blonde with blue eyes. This girl became Helen, who, at the end of the story, is still a little discombobulated by the discovery... “I thought I knew who I was. I’ve always known who I was. And now, I’m not sure any more.” 

 

Researching racial tension and prejudice closely, it became clear that, despite huge awareness of these problems, things were almost no better for black and minority people...and especially worrying for children, who are often taunted, bullied and even physically attacked because of the colour of their skin. My main character and narrator, Brandon, doesn't articulate this directly. Instead, after thirteen years of warding off what other people think of him, believes he's been handed all the bad luck in the world...I’m the one who gets ketchup down me when we all bite into burgers. I’m the one who gets the puncture when we all ride over broken glass. That’s my luck – non-existent. It doesn’t worry me too much. I’m a bit of a comedian, I usually turn things into a joke.

Bristol dock at the height of the slave trade

On a trip to the Bristol ice rink with Helen, a racist gang threatens the two friends. Brandon insists Helen gets her dad to take her home, while he stays to face the gang. Brandon knows this is just his luck...and his problem. But Helen and her Dad have not gone home. They arrive just in time to save Brandon from a beating. But this scare makes Brandon clam up; he refuses to acknowledge what has happened and refuses to go to the police, even though he could identify the gang.

While his own story is developing, Brandon tells us the story of Jake Silver. Helen has discovered a perplexing sepia photo among her late grandma's effects, and they find themselves uncovering the story of Jake Silver, an eighteenth century slave brought to Bristol from the West Indies to be a page boy to an evil mistress...We had to make him up, partly, fill in the spaces of his life by imagining it, like doing a jigsaw where a lot of the pieces are blank, tossing ideas between us, trying to work out what it would be like to be Jake. As Brandon learns of the courage Jake showed 200 years ago, he sees how his actions lead to the sort of luck he deserves. He puts his fears to one side – in life, you make your own good luck..

He’s standing on the dockside. People walk round him, eye him up, check if his teeth are sound. He doesn’t exist for them, except as something that might be of use...

 

Because Brandon likes to be thought of as a joker,  the  writing style is witty, upbeat and easy to read, even for children who are still struggling to read. The action begins quickly and builds into several thrilling peaks. The hard-hitting themes of the story effect children’s lives today, opening  out issues and information that will widen the understanding eight to thirteen year olds of both genders.  

Just My Luck is a modern adventure story, which allows its characters freedom to have exploits in the ‘real world’, to follow a ‘quest’, and to learn about the history of slavery, and
its aftermath, as Helen and Brandon grow through the discoveries they make within their story. 

A treasure trove for ten-year-olds that deals with big issues without ever sermonising. Encompassing family history, slavery and modern-day racism this should be a gem for teachers looking for fiction that will bring the curriculum to life while providing a cracking read. Ali Bacon, author of  In the Blink of an Eye         

Embark on Nina Milton…and you won’t stop reading… Naomi Lewis, Book Review, Sunday Observer 

Buy your copy by clicking here.

This edition of Just My Luck 

is dedicated to every person

who has lost their life 

in the fight for racial justice

STARTING TO WRITE: Villains; what would do without them?

In my latest blogpost for the Open College of the Arts, I ask the question, "What would we do without villains?"

I examine the idea that fiction needs villains, and ask; can stories survive without active opposition or  hostility from any quarter, human, or not? Can a writer completely do without an antagonist? Even the most worthy literature falls very flat without dramatic tension, and that does have to spring from some kind of conflict, which is usually described as the antagonist, whether this is a supernatural entity, an internal struggle, a jealous lover, or tsunami. 

I look at different types of antagonists, contagonists and protagonists through some interesting books, from Misery to Gone Girl. From Les Miserable to One Flew over the Cuckoo's

Nest. From the Catcher in the Rye to Big Fish.

And what conclusions do I reach? Do we really need the evil villain in our stories? Just remember the first principle of writing is – no conflict, no story.

You can read the entire blogpost here, at WeareOCA