THE ARROW OF APOLLO hits 50 %

Jubilations today, as the funding for my latest project, THE ARROW OF APOLLO, reaches 50 %.

You can read more about it here, on the Unbound website. It's a classically based children's novel, set when the heroes of the Trojan war have settled, and their children must face new dangers. 

The Fall of Troy: Part 3

Waiting for the result: By Rubens

THE FALL OF TROY:
Part 3

By Philip Womack

It was almost midday. The sun was getting too hot, and Paris was beginning to feel hungry, and wasn’t sure whether eating in front of three powerful goddesses might not count as disrespectful, when finally Hermes, who had been arbitrating between Hera, Aphrodite and Athene, announced that they had decided in which order they would be presented to be judged. 


Hera’s peacocks displayed their tail feathers, and clustered near their mistress. News of the judgement had spread far throughout the hills and plains of Troy, and many minor deities had appeared to watch, the tree nymphs rustling and clutching each other with anticipation, and the river gods poking their weedy heads out of the spring water.

It must be said that Hera, the queen of the gods, was beautiful, in rather a stern way, and some even said that she was strictly speaking more beautiful than any of the others. 

As she approached Paris, the folds of her dress crackled, as if to remind him of the power of Zeus. A golden diadem gleamed upon her head, and as she adjusted her long purple robe, her golden bangles clattered together. It was as if a mountain had taken female form.

Paris gulped. Hera did not smile at him, but simply touched him on the forehead.

Suddenly he was no longer on the hillside, a poor shepherd, but sitting on a high golden throne. Below him were arrayed all the kings of the world, their crowns in their hands, and below them all the princes and lords, all hailing him as their High King. 

HELP SUPPORT: THE ARROW OF APOLLO by Philip Womack on Unbound

All around him his domains stretched, full of fat cattle, tin mines, merchant ships, potteries, forges and farms. They stretched further than he even imagined.  A dark man with a red spot on his forehead laid a huge diamond at his feet. A woman, with long black hair, dressed in fawnskins of a sort he’d never seen before, and with feathers in her hair, put a strange animal’s pelt around his shoulders. An Emperor from the east with a long pigtail opened up his palace full of dragons for him.

And then he saw everything. Bronze statues that moved; huge, stepped palaces full of ingots; a giant stone sphinx; enormous stone heads; even a herd of elephants with rubies glinting on their foreheads. He saw things he did not even understand: things that flew, and moved quickly, belching steam, and things that hummed and crackled. He felt it all rush through him.

Paris, who had only known the wealth of sheep and hides, of wooden drinking cups and fat wineskins, had seen the ships bringing treasure and silks to the shores of Troy and its citadel, and something stirred inside him.

Was not all this for him? Did he not deserve all this as his right? He lifted his palm, and fifteen high kings fell prostrate; he stood from his throne, and the fur clad lords of the north knelt to him, and the horse-taming queens of the plains, and the empress from the southern islands who wore a snake around her neck.

He did not want it to stop.

But it did, as suddenly as it had begun, and when he came back he looked into Hera’s dark eyes, and almost gave her the golden apple there and then.

Hermes coughed, and Hera drew back with a satisified grin, the peacock squawking, and Athene took her place. Hera believed she had won, and withdrew with as much grace as she could muster, but her peacock nipped Athene’s owl as it swooped past. The owl, put out, ruffled its feathers, and settled on a rock.

Athene knew that Paris was at heart rather a silly young man, who fancied himself as a fighter, and so she said, “Hera offers you kingly power. I offer you more.” And she touched him lightly on the forehead.

Now Paris was riding in his chariot, leading his army into war against the clamouring barbarians, and he could feel the landscape inside him. He could tell how many fighters they had; where the plain turned into mountain; how their horses would founder at the ford. He was at the forefront of the advance, and he was like a comet through the night.

He won, his men streaming through the gates of tall cities. They poured their drinks on the ground for him, and yelled his name, and gave him women and cattle. And there was more. When he looked at the stars,  he knew each of their names, and he knew when the sun would turn black, and how to navigate between the most dangerous straits; he knew the habits of the hawk, and where the bear sleeps.

He felt this knowledge in him, and something more tugged at his mind. He didn’t really like fighting, it was true, preferring to shoot arrows from a distance. But to know all these things, and to have the world come to him and call him the best fighter, the most intelligent strategist; this was better, wasn’t it, than simply to be loved for power?

Once more Hermes cleared his throat, and Athene withdrew. Athene never smirked, but there was a slight crease in her forehead that those who knew her would tell you meant she was well pleased.

There was only one goddess left. Aphrodite. She had not even bothered to comb her hair, and she was looking, if truth be told, a little flustered; her doves were sulking, and her nymphs, cowed by Hera’s commands, had not been in attendance to help her.

Aphrodite looked into Paris’s inmost heart, and she smiled. She knew that this rather foolish young man did not want battles, or power. She knew that he liked to oil his beard and to look at his reflection in the forest pools, practising pouts to catch the eye of a pretty youth or maiden. Aphrodite smiled secretly, reached out her gentle hand, and touched Paris on the forehead.

And what Paris saw this time was a stone room, with a simple divan in it, and a bearskin rug on the floor, and a table set with a jug of wine and two cups, and a plate of grapes and pomegranates, and, eating a grape, popping it into her mouth, was a woman.

Helen, Queen of Sparta, the wife of Menelaus, the most beautiful woman, not just in the world, but in all of time and space.

There was no need to think any further. The sounds of the soldier’s clashings, of the diamonds pouring on stone, of the acclamation and the glory, all faded away, and all there was, was the feel of Helen’s soft hand in his, and her calm, intelligent eyes on his, and then she smoothed the hair away from his brow, and said his name.

If we are looking for causes, we have already pointed the finger at Peleus and Thetis forgetting to invite Eris to their wedding; at the apple that she threw down; and at the judgement Paris was forced to make; but really, perhaps the cause of the Trojan War was this: a hidden look, a secret smile, and a hand grasping an elbow after a feast. Maybe there were no gods, or judgements, or goddesses; maybe all it was can be telescoped down to a single, fatal glance across a hall.

Paris had already made his decision. He knelt, and profferred the apple to Aphrodite, who took it slowly, enjoying every moment, her doves cooing to each other with delight.

The other goddesses, who had sworn on the Styx to abide by his judgement, disappeared in a huff. Athene in particular glared; she had always thought Aphrodite the most irritating of her divine relations.

Paris was left alone with Aphrodite. Aphrodite tidied her hair, acknowledged her prize, yawned, called her doves, and departed. When she got home to her cool mansion on Olympos, she placed the golden apple carelessly in an alcove, where soon it was forgotten, although she always made sure that if Hera came by it was placed to its advantage.

King Priam, meanwhile, had heard about this contest on the borders of his kingdom, and had made haste to see it. And there was no doubt, when he saw Paris, that here was one of his sons. There was nothing for it but to embrace him, and restore him to his place. But when Priam brought him back to the citadel of Troy, Hecuba, though she smiled outwardly, knew that the end was near. 

The flame that she had tried to quench  was burning still.

NEXT WEEK: Helen of Sparta. 

Read Parts One and Two here.

Ursula Le Guin: In Memoriam

Everybody who has read Ursula Le Guin will remember the first time they chanced upon her. I was 12 or so, snug and safe in the library that looked down onto the old stone courtyard and the river Arun below. Opening The Wizard of Earthsea and being thrust wholly into that fully developed fantastical world was like entering through a portal: into somewhere that the reader wished, wholeheartedly, existed. To know the true names of things seemed a wondrous power, but one that was entirely within reach; and so I would look at stones, and trees, and beg them to reveal themselves, and long for the hawk to come down from the sky to my wrist, as it did for Ged, her mage-hero.

I have always used her when teaching creative writing: even today, re-reading the opening of the novel for perhaps the 100th time, I saw something different; that Duny, who would become Ged, or Sparrowhawk, is part of the landscape he lives in: he's described as a weed, and he roams the small island of Gont, testing its boundaries, ever alive to the notion that there might be more - a whole other world of islands, and a more dangerous and exciting world of magic. I try to keep the book alive, as fewer and fewer read it now. Its themes - of ambiguous power, of dangerous metamorphoses, of the evil that can come from one's own heart - are timeless. Here was a wizard school where things really mattered.

Encountering her as an adult, her fiction was always wise, well-wrought and thought-provoking. The twin planets in The Dispossessed, one a kind of communist world rapidly descending into totalitarianism, and the other a big mess, do more than any lecture on politics to show how different systems work. This book is one I always recommend when people say - well, what's the use of fantasy? The answer to which question is, of course, why need there be a use to anything? But the kind of people who want an answer to that question can find it in The Dispossessed.

She was an eloquent, elegant critic; a passionate defender of fiction and fantasy; a tireless worker. I never met her, but I did once dream about her, sitting in the top of her house, at her desk, working.

The world of letters gained a great deal from her contribution; and there are none to fill her place. 

THE FALL OF TROY: PART 2

Paris by Desmais

THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS: I

by Philip Womack

About fifteen years before King Peleus was marrying his sea-goddess wife Thetis, and Eris threw down that famous golden apple among the goddesses, in a large, tapestry-hung chamber in one of the topmost towers of the citadel, Hecuba, Queen of Troy, gave birth to a little boy. 

It was an easy birth; easier than any of her many other sons and daughters had been. Some of them were out breaking horses on the plains below the walls, others were washing clothes in the river, and the younger ones were scampering about the room as she lay with her new son tucked into the crook of her arm. She rather liked him: he had a gleam in his eye that she'd not seen before.

But that night, after the nurses took him away and placed him in his cradle, she dreamed.

It was not unusual for Hecuba to dream: but this one was particularly vivid, and it woke her up, gasping, sweating, panting with fear. Instead of a boy, she had given birth to a flaming sword.

She ran through the halls, her yawning maids pattering after her, and went to wake the seers from their sleep. Being seers, however, they had already seen her coming, and so they were prepared, heads bowed, to deliver the sad news. Hecuba asked them to wait until Priam, the King, was there. Kings do not enjoy being woken from their slumbers any more than the next man; and so rather crossly he paced around the room, hands clasped behind his back, hoping that they would get on with it.

Eventually, after much consultation, the chief seer threw back his hood, and said, “The flaming sword is your new son. This boy, my lord, will destroy your city.”

They could not kill him: he was their own son, after all, even though they had so many others, some of whom had crept in, and were listening, hanging off the stairs and railings like so many monkeys. So Priam and Hecuba did what most kingly parents would do in such situations, and after a night and a day of discussion, and with much sorrow, they sent him away with a shepherd, with some firm instructions to abandon him.

(They might have taken note from others who tried to abandon babies with prophecies hanging over them: it never works, and it always comes back to bite you on the nose when you’re least expecting it.)

The shepherd, who was at heart rather a kind man, reluctantly left the little boy by himself on the hillside, where he might be devoured by wolves or die of exposure. That night he could not sleep. And so as soon as dawn broke he returned to the hillside, and to his surprise, found that the boy was still there, finger in his mouth, gurgling. A bear had given him milk - or so the story went. Much relieved, the shepherd took him home in his backpack, and named him Paris.

The boy grew up, ignorant of his princely blood, into a fine, long-haired young man, who would search all night for a lamb, and could set bulls to fight against each other, and could hurl a spear further and with better aim than anyone who lived in the villages around the foothills of Troy. He also had rather a liking for fine clothes, and would run his fingers with enjoyment through the materials that traders brought from the coastal cities.

Because he was such a fine young man, and because they knew anyway what was going to happen, he came to the attention of the gods; and they saw that he was honest, and could judge a dispute well. And also, perhaps, because gods like symmetry, and they had noted that just as Achilles was being born, the man who was to kill him would be making his great decision.

Help fund THE ARROW OF APOLLO by Philip Womack on UNBOUND

So it was that, one afternoon, much to Paris’s surprise, when he came wandering down the mountain path with a belly full of meat and a wineskin on his back, he found a young curly haired man, much his own age, sitting lazily on a rock with a smirk on his face, a stick in his hand, and a winged helmet on his head; and behind the young man, were arrayed three women. A peacock was pecking at the earth; perched on a tree was an owl; and a pair of doves was glaring angrily at the owl.

Those who have met gods know that there is a power about them which makes the air tremble.

Paris felt it; he pulled his cap off his head, and knelt down at their feet.

Hermes - for that was the curly-haired young man - looked Paris up and down, as if to say, well, you’ll do. He yawned. It was especially tiring being the messenger of the gods, and he had had a lot to put up with keeping Athena, Aphrodite and Hera from tearing into each other on the journey here; not to mention the birds, who had done everything they could to slow things down by trying to peck each others’ eyes out. Fortunately, he had a pocketful of corn from Demeter, and he’d been using it to keep the peace; the goddesses he’d left to themselves. He could feel the tension crackling between them, like the lightning bolts that Zeus would throw when he was in a temper.

 “You’ve been called up,” Hermes said to Paris. “Go on, you can look at them. You’re meant to.”

Gingerly, Paris stood. The three goddesses spread out into a line, like dancers, ready to prepare themselves.

“What do you want me to do?” said Paris.

“Easy,” said Hermes, and threw him the golden apple.

When he had read the message, and understood, Paris bit his lip and put down his wineskin. He would have to make a decision. How could he choose between these three divine beings? Hera was the queen of the gods. Aphrodite - whose glance alone was enough to make him quail - commanded desire. And Athene's weapons glittered brightly. And what, whoever he chose, after all, was going to prevent any of these goddesses from making sure that he never went bull-fighting again?

NEXT WEEK: PARIS MAKES A CHOICE

Read Part 1 Here.

Philip Womack's seventh novel, THE ARROW OF APOLLO, which takes place after the Trojan War, is now raising funds on Unbound.

THE FALL OF TROY: Part 1

The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis by Cornelius van Haarlem

The fall of Troy is one of the most important events in myth and history. Its causes and consequences ripple backwards and forwards through time and space. You could draw a line from pretty much any character in Greek myth and find a connection towards someone who had fought and died in that war.

I have always been interested in connections and causes: and in the following weeks I will be exploring the main events that led up to the Trojan War.

You could say, then, that it began with an apple. A golden apple, thrown down onto the grass during the wedding of the sea-goddess Thetis, and her mortal husband, Peleus. Thetis had not wanted to marry Peleus: but he had grappled with her as she changed forms, like Proteus, from snake to fire and back again; and so the gods were called, and the wedding celebrations began.

But in the bustle of preparations - one could not say, necessarily, that they were happy -  Peleus and Thetis  forgot to invite one god. The original wicked fairy, Eris, the goddess of strife, was passed over. The gods, careless, feasted and drank, and gods can feast and drink with the best of them. One guest - a young nymph, perhaps, yawning as she longed for her bed, unable to leave before her divine mistress decided it was time to go - picked up something pretty and golden that had rolled towards her feet.

It was an apple, gleaming and golden, and on it were inscribed the words: “To the most beautiful.”

Goddesses are not known for their modesty. Dignities will be stood upon, privileges invoked. The minor goddesses and nymphs bowed out of the way, as, flashing to the fore, the queen of the goddesses herself stood forwards. Two peacocks pecked at her feet; a diadem flashed upon her forehead; proud and haughty she did not even have to glance at her husband Zeus, the king of the gods, as she knew that he would give the apple to her.

But her husband hesitated. And what was this - Aphrodite, the goddess of love, in a dress embroidered with dolphins, long hair falling down her white arms, was looking as if she might have an interest in the matter. And even Athene - so dear to Zeus’s heart, having sprung out of his own head - was adjusting her helmet and looking at herself in the reflected sheen of her warrior’s shield. Concealed behind a nearby tree, Eris watched all, and laughed. She had picked the apple herself, and had inscribed those fatal words with her long fingernails. She lazily picked up a grape from a bunch held by an attendant, and strolled off, delighted with the conflict she had caused.

Zeus, looking at his wife, his daughter and the primal goddess of love, could not bear to be the judge. Choosing between these three mighty goddesses would bring untold strife to the calm mansions of Olympos. Zeus was not a god who enjoyed conflict, and, although he was not necessarily known for his tact, did tend to spend rather a lot of time mopping up after his own mistakes. Sighing - because he, after all, knew what was going to happen, even if nobody else did - he decreed that a mortal man would be found who would be arbiter; and he, Zeus, would wash his hands of it, and go back to enjoying his wine with Ganymede.

Laughter began again in the wedding, and the guests returned to their carousing, glad that the strife had been put off - for now. Peleus and Thetis were joined in marriage beneath the leaves of a broad oak; and the Fates, who were attendant in their white robes, spinning, whispered of the son that would be born to them: the mightiest warrior of all the Greeks: Achilles. The three goddesses retired; and plotted.

NEXT WEEK: The Judgement of Paris

THE ARROW OF APOLLO is a novel that takes place after the fall of Troy. Have a look at the funding page on Unbound here. 

The Other Book: A Ten Year Anniversary

Ten years ago yesterday, on the 7th January 2008, my first children’s novel was published by Bloomsbury. It was called The Other Book - a dark, strange tale of a magical tome and the bloodline of Merlin and his sorceress bride Vivien, set in a Sussex preparatory school - and it duly appeared on the shelves (and, largely, stayed there). Also first published in 2008 was a certain other children’s author, to whom I will return later.

I had been counting down the days, quite literally, marking them in my diary with fervent exclamations. On that day, I thought, my life would change; on that day I would become what so many wish, for reasons usually unclear, to become: a published author. I’m not entirely sure what I did expect - a bottle of champagne from my editor, perhaps; or a card, or even an email. But the day went on as days usually do, and no email, card, or champagne appeared. It was the first moment of reality. Your book enters the world, and, for the most part, the world shrugs and turns back to looking at cat videos.

In the ten years since, the things that have changed are, mostly, to do with the inescapable rhythms of life, and of earning a living. The things that I, and many other writers do, are manifold, necessary, often dull, and, crucially, take you away from the actual act of writing (itself, I am aware, a very privileged thing.) I wish, however, that I had known then, when my first book burst, in its gorgeous gold and red livery, into the world, what I know now (but then again, who doesn’t.) Would things have been different? Sometimes I like to think so; other times, I am not so sure. One thing, though, will never alter: at a dinner party, if asked that terrible question - “What do you do?” - if you reply that you are a writer, the first question will always be, “Have you written anything I’d have heard of?” My answer used to be self-deprecating; now it veers towards the sardonic.

When The Other Book crept into view, I had no notion of the children’s book world: I was not on Twitter (embryonic, then); not in any children’s book groups or associations; I did not know any other children’s authors; I had not spent years building up a profile or engaging with other people in the industry. I did not know what it meant to publish a children’s book, or to be a children’s book author.

I had no idea of the “market”, or of the things that people do to sell books. I was, in other words, entirely unprepared. Looking back at my journal recently I was amazed to see that in 2008 I only gave a couple of talks - one to a library, where I sold no books; and one to a school who had booked me to talk to a group of three year olds. My book was, very firmly, for the 11+ bracket. Nothing I have done since has been more terrifying.

When I see debut authors appearing now, they often seem, to me at least, to have been trained, or to have had access to a kind of toolkit: they spring up, fully formed, giving talks, tweeting, blogging, and all the rest, with beautiful book following beautiful book annually. Even now I have no idea how these things work: what to say on Twitter, what to write about on this much-neglected blog. The only thing I ever wanted to do was write books - jagged, mysterious children’s books -  and to hope that those books found readers.

The publishing world moves to invisible currents. Since that first novel was published - to the kind of review that said “promising”, or “shows potential” - I have published five more, with three publishers. Each novel was a labour of love and hope, sweat and anxiety; each one bore on its shoulders the same weight and dreams; and each one did find some readers who loved it. None, however, has yet crossed the barrier into the general consciousness.

I have always received good reviews - one hopes that one grows better as a writer, after all. When I look at the first pages of The Other Book now, I wince: there are so many things wrong with it (I even sometimes use it as an example of how not to start a children’s book with my students.)

With The Liberators, in 2010, I touched some kind of nerve: the book was set after the financial crash, and saw a young boy battling a cult who wanted to bring chaos to the world. Readers enjoyed it; it was reprinted; for a few moments it seemed like it might have broken out into general view. I remember a friend joyfully texting me a picture of a pile of copies he’d seen in a bookshop in Vienna.

Whilst many enjoyed it, there were those who thought that its hero was too privileged, and his world of boarding schools, artists, bankers, civil servants and London townhouses too remote from the general reader. I have never understood this complaint, because what is fiction for if not to open a window onto a different life?  What is interesting about this is that I never heard this point made by children, who simply read, and absorbed, and were thrilled.

After The Liberators, a hiatus ensued. One thing that is not generally known about the publishing world is that writers are quite dependent on the people who actually work at the house: if your contact moves, then it can leave you stuck. My editor left Bloomsbury; a new one came along; and I, having no contract, and being inexperienced in the ways of the book world, decided not to take what now appears absolutely sensible editorial advice on a manuscript, and instead tried to sell it elsewhere. The result was a lost MS: “Cave”, set in a co-ed boarding school on a hill which is besieged by ecological terrorists. My agent thought it was great; my lay readers thought it was the best thing I’d written: publishers however were not so sure, and though I was called in for meetings, it was usually to say: “we’d love you to do something, but this isn’t quite it”, and the book was rejected everywhere.

What does a writer do when faced with rejection? Start again, of course, with the glimmer of a new, better book in your mind. I returned to the things I loved as a child, and particularly to the depths and weirdnesses of Alan Garner and Ursula Le Guin. Perhaps overly enthralled by them, I began work on another MS, which was to become The Broken King, published 4 years after The Liberators. It underwent many revisions, many false starts: it was intended to be the first part of a trilogy called “The Darkening Path”. I had ambitious plans. It would be cosmic, reaching through time and space and touching on the mysteries of the universe. Readers loved trilogies, didn’t they?

When The Broken King was published, I had not realised quite how arduous it would be to write parts two and three in, effectively, about six months each (whilst also dealing with what amounts to a full time job, and a growing family); I am still not sure that the sequels were the best that they could have been. And whilst the trilogy did find enthusiastic readers - the early reviews from children were superlative, and there were of course those who noted the echoes of Alan Garner - it did not touch the hearts of enough people. On occasion I receive messages from children who are obsessed with The Broken King: but, to coin a phrase, fine messages butter no parsnips.

Again, one returns to things one loved as a child: so The Double Axe was born, from the myth of the Minotaur. What if, I thought, the Minotaur had been a convenient fiction for other, darker purposes?   How would this story work from the point of view of one of Minos’s other children?

Once more, there were ambitious plans: for an interlinked series of up to ten novels, each revisiting a particular myth. Several large publishers were interested in the concept; but there was no firm offer, and in the end, I settled for a one book deal with a small publisher. They wanted to get the book out before the final part of The Darkening Path,  so I had a rather absurd situation in which people were expecting the end of a series, and in fact were reading the beginning of another. (Even now, my Wikipedia entry records The Double Axe, erroneously, as part of The Darkening Path trilogy.)

The book - which I considered my best, the sharpest, the most stylish, the one that, at last perhaps, was really beginning to know what it was doing, the one that received the kindest reviews, from readers, reviewers, and other children’s authors - was published, was briefly lifted by some generous praise; and then drifted, lost on the bewildering currents of fashion.

So many factors influence a children’s book’s reception: do librarians like it? Does it fit into a curriculum? Can it get onto a table in Waterstones? And sometimes all those factors need to come together for a book to fly: and most of the time, they don’t.

I’m now onto my seventh full length work of fiction, which, for various complex reasons, and a combination of happy chance and dogged industry, I have decided to crowdfund with Unbound. The Arrow of Apollo is now, after two months, 40 per cent funded, and with it I hope to bring an enjoyment of myth and classics into schools, as well as providing an epic and exciting story. You can see more about it here.

I have learnt much over the past ten years. Festivals, talks, school visits, are the life-blood of the children’s author, although there have been as many humiliations as triumphs. At a windy, cold children’s festival in a tent full of hay bales, about to start a reading, I overheard a lady in the front row say to her daughter: “That man’s going to read us some nice Roald Dahl!” I hated to disabuse her. I’ve driven hundreds of miles to speak to 7 adults and a dog, and not had my travel expenses reimbursed. Nobody bought a book (not even the dog.) I was due to give a creative writing workshop in a library in East London: after waiting for ten minutes, the only other person in the room was  an old lady who wanted somewhere warm to sit where she could eat her peanuts.

Does all of this help to sell books? The jury, as they say, is still out.

I have learned that good reviews do not sell a children’s book. I have learned that publishers have many other books to deal with apart from your own, and many pressures on their time, and a budget that is often directed to something else, and that there is only a small window during which your book will be promoted (if it is even promoted at all). I have learned that disappointment is embedded into writing fiction: I have spoken to authors whom I consider wildly successful, who have won prizes and had film deals and have sold half a million copies or more: they shake their heads, purse their lips, and say their careers are hanging on a thread. What hope then for those of us hanging on by even more slender threads?

Of the other children’s authors who were first published in 2008, the one I referred to at the beginning of this article was a certain unknown called David Walliams, whose books now don’t just corner the market: they swamp it. Celebrities are everywhere in children’s book writing, and the message that sends worries me. Must writing now become part of your “brand”, like launching a scent or a line of underwear? Why bother continuing with the manuscript you’re plugging away with, when you know it won’t receive a tenth of the publicity or attention that some C list comedian or supermodel’s ghost-written debut will?

Well. The only thing that one can do - the only thing that I will do - is to keep writing: keep rethinking, revising, reworking. I don’t think I will ever be able to prevent myself from writing. I will always feel fond of The Other Book, despite its many faults; and those faults are partly what make me want to continue. Recently, a student I taught at Royal Holloway stopped me in the corridor: he remembered me from a visit I'd made to his school (my old prep, Dorset House): he'd become obsessed with the book, and mentioned a scene where the hero, Edward, lays the body of a dead raven onto a the tombstone of a knight. The student's connection to my writing touched me deeply: that image had been the genesis of the book, and to know that it had found its resonances in someone else's mind was thrilling.

I will never want to give up the joy of composition; the delirious rush when a hodge-podge of ideas comes together into a whole, like flecks of paint onto a canvas: the music of words on the page. The perfect book is always in the back of my mind, dappled in shadow, its brief glimpses beautiful and unattainable, as furtive and shy as a unicorn. I hope that one day, I will manage to find it.

Or rather, I should say: I hope that I wil never find it: as surely, once it had been written, there would be no point in writing any more.

The Arrow of Apollo hits 40 %

Great news - The Arrow of Apollo, which I am raising funds for on Unbound, has now reached 40 % funded. Thank you so much to everyone who's contributed so far. Onwards and upwards!

Interview with Holly Black for Books for Keeps

I've interviewed Holly Black about her new book, Cruel Prince, for Books for Keeps. Read it here.

Books of the Year: 2017

I have written elsewhere about my children's books of the year, and have been reviewing more children's books than usual this year; most of my reading has been to do with the children's literature course I've been teaching, and I have enjoyed revisiting Lewis Carroll, J M Barrie, C S Lewis, J R R Tolkien, J K Rowling and others, and developing and tracing connections between them.

Here, then, are my three fiction choices for 2017:

Missing Fay by Adam Thorpe

A compelling, sensitive novel about the disappearance of a schoolgirl. Both intelligent, emotionally charged and gripping, Thorpe surely ranks as one of our best novelists. 

House of Names by Colm Toibin

Though it is difficult to turn the marbled horrors of Greek Tragedy into fiction, Toibin makes a good stab at it with this, in which Euripidean uncertainty treats the story of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra and Orestes, with shades of the Troubles in the background.

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman's light touch imbues these icy, strange stories with new life, smooth and wry.

A book I managed to finish this year (all 1,000 pages or so of it) was Robert Tombs's magnificent The English and their History: a book which anyone with an interest in history or the way things have unfolded should read, all told in lucid, flowing prose. I've also been enjoying the Penguin Monarchs series, with a lively biography of Queen Victoria by Jane Ridley, and Tom Holland's evocative account of Athelstan. I look forward to more of these this year. 

I also recommend Bruno Bettelheim's study of fairy tales, The Uses of Enchantment, which has provided meat for much debate; and Patrick Leigh Fermor's account of his walk across Europe, A Time of Gifts, a book I have been meaning to read for years, and which I finished on New Year's eve, sitting before a fire, and about to set out on a journey.

Those of you who pay attention to my Books of the Year will remember that I have been reading Pepys for about ten years: I am still reading Pepys, though I have now got beyond the Great Fire. It's an excellent companion in the small hours: not much can be wrong with a world in which Pepys can be pleased with buying a new coat, or eating a particularly fine pie.