Page 4, in which the falconer tells the falcon a bit about his parents, his roots, and his destiny. He is old money, like the royals – a lot of responsibility is going to be coming his way soon.
In another of my Edinburgh Festival guest posts, Mara from Toto Tales explains why they got involved with the fringe and why adults and children alike will be drawn to their colourful brand of theatre.
Performing in the Fringe is an experience not be missed. The panic stations, the chaos, the utter joy, the thrill of audiences coming to see your work, and of course the anticipation of reviews…
This year Toto Tales is collaborating for the first time with iTheatre, a Singapore based childrens theatre company. It’s an exciting time for us all, as there is so much newness to this experience.
Our show Under the Baobab Tree (‘A Must See’ in The Stage yesterday, WOOHOOO!!) is an exciting blend of puppetry, ridiculously interactive storytelling and plenty of music and dancing to keep anyone happy.
Continue reading “Toto Tales: What we’re doing and why it’s different”
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I have received the following missive on the subject of the very first performance at the Inky Fingers Mini Festival. It sounds entertaining, and I for one will be heading along to find out more.
HELLO.
On Monday the 8th of August at half past of the twelve, in the downstairs boudoir of The Forest Cafe, in Edinburgh, comma, myself and Mr James Anderson (Apprentice Tailor) shall be performing unto you a historical presentation regarding – I just saw a chicken, go me – a historical presentation regarding an unexplored nugget in the Edinburghian Fish’n’Chip Emporium that is Time.
‘The Life and Times of an Edinburgh Monster’ is a title that, in hindsight, gives away quite a lot.
Continue reading “Inky Fingers Minifest (Thar be Monsters)”
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It’s the third day of questions courtesy of Elaine from the Dreams and Whispers Blog, and she asks something I’ve never really thought about before… to choose which of my children I love the most!
Today’s question is about the characters in your books. For me as a reader, I find that interesting characters can really make a book brilliant. With you being on your fifth book now, you must have invented and thought about a fair few people, so which of them stand out the most – which two have been your favourite and least favourite so far?
I agree with you that characterisation can make or break a book. Good characters stay with you and you want to find out more about them – this is presumably why so many authors write in series. Whereas bad ones can make it difficult to carry on reading (although I’m pretty tenacious – it’s rare that I don’t drag my way kicking and screaming to the end of a book).
So far my favourite character is probably Caligula, if I can legitimately claim him as a character! I enjoyed trying to get into his mind and second guessing why he did the crazy things that he was meant to have done – that’s the revisionist historian in me trying to come out, I think. The sources on Caligula are fantastically biased but it makes for interesting reading.
I have a lot of affection for Victor McGlynn as well – he was the main character in the Western and I gave him quite a rough time of it with a pretty sad back story and a not amazing here and now, but he coped with dignity! I am also really looking forward to writing the main characters in my kids’ book in July, because I’ve been developing them in my head for about two years.
There aren’t any characters I haven’t enjoyed writing at all, but I suppose my least favourite is Jennifer, the protagonist of the last book. This is partly because I swithered an awful lot over how to write her – this has been the most difficult book so far.
I was trying to write her as a stroppy teenager but I think I may have gone a bit overboard with her lack of empathy and self involvement, so I’ll have to sort that out when I go back to edit it! Think I should make her a bit more likeable! Although having said that, Stephanie Meyer didn’t bother making Bella likeable and she did alright. Maybe I’ll just leave it….
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Yesterday I dedicated a not inconsiderable amount of time to attempting to get the 12 Books in 12 Months Facebook page more ‘likes’ – 100 by 10pm, as a matter of fact. I failed.
However, some nice people did help out, and I think you should check out their work to help me say thanks.
Props to my lovely retweeters:
– Kirsty Wilkinson is an Edinburgh-based genealogist. She runs her own business called My Ain Folk, and if you are looking to find out about your family tree, she can almost certainly help. Her blog, The Professional Descendant, covers all kinds of information about genealogy and family history, and of course you can also follow her on twitter.
– Emma Livingstone is studying for an MA in publishing at the University of the Arts in London. She blogs about publishing, arts, music and culture here, and you can also follow her on twitter. And if you’re good, maybe one day she’ll help you get your book published…
– Sam Kurd is a writer and philosopher who reviews sci-fi and fantasy games, books and telly for places like Den of Geek, Sci-Fi Heaven and Cirque Des Geeks. He has also recently started work on a film script. Follow him on the twitter too.
And thanks to the people who helped me get from 85 to a more respectable 97 – Rab, Ian, Rachel, Juliet (aka The Crafty Green Poet), Bob, Alastair (overlord of STV Local North Edinburgh and Greener Leith), Emily (Jewellery Designer), Caro, Ellen (St Andrews Uni DoSDA contender 2011/12) and Cougar. If any of you want any links publicizing, let me know!
I appreciate that Facebook is deeply annoying in a lot of respects, but social networking feels like a pretty crucial part of getting this project into the public domain and that makes it a necessary evil. So please keep liking the 12 Books page and spreading the word through the power of stalkerfeed! Books 4-12 will thank you!
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As I suspected a few posts back, Roman historians like Suetonius were pretty biased against Caligula, and had a tendency to write down the most outrageous rumours without assessing their validity in any way. So whilst what I have written so far is stuff a bit like:
Had to have a consul executed today. He forgot to announce my birthday in the public records. Seriously. A child of five could have remembered to do that.
Now I’m wondering whether he was actually as bad as all that. The gaps in historical evidence make it hard to judge, but it seems pretty clear that it was in the interests of all the sources that survive from the time (Suetonius, Dio, Claudius, Seneca) to make Caligula out to be an evil nutjob. So, the question is really whether to go with them and write him in a sort of cartoony, madder than a box of snakes type of way, or to take on board the revisionist work available and write him with a bit of empathy.
My answer to this is to try both.
Perhaps I should use Incitatus [the horse he was meant to have made a consul, according to Suetonius] to upset senate a bit more. That’s always fun – I still get a kick out of the time I made them run alongside my litter for ten miles in the blazing sun. Served them right – all that time feasting and sitting indoors and conspiring to kill me makes them pasty and unfit. They should try going to battle, see what that does for them.
I think I will commission a legion of men to carve Incitatus a stable of marble. And he will have a collar blazing with precious jewels, and a manger of ivory. I’ll have the grooms mix flakes of gold into his food, too. He will live in as lavish and decadent a manner as the gods themselves. Senate will be furious! But frankly that horse is twice as clever as all of them put together. Self important, plotting dunderheads that they are. They’ll soon learn that they can’t have any effect on me.
12 Books in 12 Months 