This post is late. Please bear with me while my brain shifts gears.

Ah. That’s much better. Sorry about that. I had to finish writing a novel.

This one.

If you’re a writer yourself, you might be interested in this piece I wrote revealing what I learned while writing it.

If you’re a reader please ignore the link. We authors don’t want you to know how much we suffer for your sake.

But what’s this? We’ve been asked to fill out a questionnaire! I’m terrible at answering Q&As because:

1. There is no right answer.

2. I lie.

Nevertheless. I will have a go (but don’t say I didn’t warn you). Read the rest of this entry »

Holidays were few and far between when I was growing up in the Philippines – and when my family did go on the rare vacation, we tended to seek cooler weather in higher altitudes.

It was only when I became a journalist and met my first Westerners that I realized ‘taking a holiday’ was an expectation, not a rare event. Especially the foreign correspondents who all seemed desperate to go away all the time – and always to somewhere by the sea.

Don’t get me wrong, the Philippines is good at oceanside relaxation. Read the rest of this entry »

DFB Story Blog whip-cracker Tilda (pictured right) has requested us Storybloggers to write about our favourite stories of the year.

Well that’s a really tough call for this author who’s read (and LOVED) gazillions of stories this year.

So I thought ’twas more like the season to wax nostalgic for all those stories I have adored in Christmases past.

This past year there has been some controversy about school reading schemes vs ‘Real Books’ … but growing up in the Philippines at a time when there was hardly any local publishing for children, I discovered many of my favourite stories in reading schemes. These were imported from the United States and so featured no Filipino characters whatsoever (but that’s another story) … so it was all fantasy to me.

My Christmas favourite was a short story that never failed to bring a tear to my eye called A Tree for Nick by Mary Lou Brown (originally published in 1959).

A Tree for Nick was about a brother and sister decorating a tree for a Christmas tree competition. Except they couldn’t help thinking about their eight year old brother Nick, who was blind.

So they left out the shiny, sharp edged foil stars and the electric lights that burned Nick’s hand when he accidentally touched them last year. Instead, on went the soft fuzzy sheep and candy canes and the old horn that hooted when you blew it and the old tinkling music box. The tree they ended up with wasn’t pretty – but you could feel and taste and hear it.

‘Wheee!’ breathed Nick, his face shining with happiness. ‘This is the prettiest tree I’ve ever seen!’ Read the rest of this entry »

I was thrilled to hear that DFB was doing a prequel to Frankenstein (This Dark Endeavour is by Canadian author Kenneth Oppel – who was a bit of a child prodigy in the children’s book world like Mary Shelley herself who wrote Frankenstein at age 18) – but when I read the synopsis, I realized that – because it’s a prequel – it is highly likely that one important thing might be missing from the book: Frankenstein’s monster! Say it isn’t so!

1831 engraving for Mary Shelley’s book reveals a buff monster

I’ve loved Frankenstein’s monster since I saw the black and white movie starring Boris Karloff … and I’ve weirdly identified with monsters of that ilk throughout my reading and movie watching life.

You know, the kind of monster whose grotesque exterior conceals a human soul? Read the rest of this entry »

Talking of stories, Candy Gourlay – author of TALL STORY and blogger extraordinaire – is here to spark off our first wave of storyblogs. Thank you Candy!

‘Tilda

I love taking pictures but I hate having my photo taken. I can happily go for years without having a single picture taken of me.

But last year I became an author.

Read the rest of this entry »