Hell's Belles! are on their way

My new cover's up on Amazon, so I guess it's okay to show it here. Hope you like it. Let me know! I can't wait for this one to come out. Brenda book four, already! It gets published on the very day I turn forty. 'Twelve Stories' is published by Salt books at the same time.

(While I'm here... it's interesting, hearing some responses to stuff I wrote about reviews and reviewing. I'm still mulling it over.

Things that get on my nerves most in this world: pretentiousness, privilege and unearned kudos. And reviewers and people in the so-called lit-world seem afflicted with these more than most, in my humble opinion and limited experience of writing, teaching, being reviewed, knocking about through the years... )

I'm really enjoying The Borribles. Michael De Larrabeiti's trilogy from the 70s / 80s seems more relevant than ever. Some lovely, crunchy, chewy writing when it comes to describing the seamier side of the city. Some lovely terse nasty language that must have given the children's fiction 'gate-keepers' pause for thought back in the day. And a lovely distrust of pettifogging, duplicitous adults and figures of authority. Wonderful action sequences, too.

It turns out I've only got the second book in the trilogy. I must rectify that.

So much of fiction for 9-12 year olds is so anodyne these days. There was that complete schism between fluffy fantasy and gritty realism in about 2002 or thereabouts, it seems. Now it's all flowery pink fairy books for girls and guns and trolls for boys.

Come the autumn, I'm teaching an MA class at MMU on children's lit from Edwardian times to the present. I want it to be an investigation into those twin strands of so-called fantasy and gritty realism... starting with E Nesbit and Eve Garnett and coming up to date with people like David Almond. I'm really looking forward to working my way through the last century again.

Strange to note, too, that the further I get into my 'Brenda and Effie Mysteries', I'm pushing further and further back in time with the flashbacks. At the moment I'm in the thick of book five - and Brenda's on her way to Edwardian times, where I think she's going to be a good fit. (I should be more superstitious and protective of talking about a work-in-progress. Pretend I never said anything!)