Ahoy there, and a Happy New Year to ye!

Over the next 2 months, the storyblog is going to be awash(ho ho) with nautical tales - of sea, sand, salty air, and sailing!   Last week, we published A Boy and a Bear in a Boat by Dave Shelton and Heart of Stone by Melanie Welsh, and next month we’ll be releasing The Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan.  Although very different, all three titles share some common ground: a journey over water, a harbour town with magical history and Selkie legend.  That’s right, all three stories take place in, on and besides the sea!   So, the DFB Storybloggers – authors and ilustrators all – will be sharing their thoughts, memories and ideas based on the seaside – these might be photos, jokes, artwork, prose…  We’ll have to wait and see.   Watch out for the first post from Linda Newbery this Thursday!

OUT NOW! The paperback edition of Margo Lanagan’s TENDER MORSELS – one of the most illuminating and heartbreaking novels I have read in the last, ooh, about thirty-eight years.

When I read Margo’s short story ‘Singing my Sister Down’  from her collection BLACK JUICE (which someone else  published, grrr), I nearly fell off my chair. Here was a writer who was just so skilled at storytelling but also managed to blast the whole young adult genre out of the water – the story was/is beautiful, terrifying, empathetic and wise. I recently had lunch with her lovely agent, Jill Grinberg,  much of which was spent simply sighing  in awe at  what a wonderful writer Margo is.

I urge ANYONE  (above perhaps fourteen years old, before any Daily Mail journalists start hyperventilating) to read this book now. It’s extraordinary and gripping and beautiful. And not only TENDER MORSELS -  there’s a wealth of thrilling worlds in Margo’s collections of short stories, BLACK JUICE, RED SPIKES and WHITE TIME. If every secondary school in the land had copies of Margo’s books… well, forget Fabio, there just might well be a Literary World Cup.

PS: this really isn’t supposed to be a raving-about-all-our-books-blog-because-surely-by-publishing-in-the-first-place-we’re-showing-we-love-them blog (you’re right, bookwitch). But sometimes you just can’t help it.