Posts tagged Star Author October 2010
October 26, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, Christchurch, New Zealand, Star Author, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, magic, magicians, Star Author, Star Author October 2010, stories
Thanks to Christchurch City Libraries for inviting me to be their ‘Star Author’ during October. It’s been great fun. I’m looking forward to reading the blog of next month’s Star Author.
Last week I visited the Centre for the Child in the Central Library and spoke to students from St Michael’s School as well as to some home-schooled students. I showed them a copy of the first story I had published in the School Journal, back in 1985. It was called The Magic Trick.
I’ve written several stories featuring magicians and magic tricks. I think it’s because stories aren’t that different from magic tricks, especially stories with endings that surprise.
Stories are magical in other ways, too. Stories can take you to amazing places and introduce you to some great characters, all through the transforming power of words and your own imagination.
So, keep on reading and writing, and enjoying the magic of stories.
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October 22, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, Christchurch, Fantasy, New Zealand, Star Author · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, Hippo Ears and the Stargazer, Star Author, Star Author October 2010
I have a new book coming out early next year. It’s called Hippo Ears and the Stargazer. This is what the cover looks like. Underneath is a description of the book, taken from the publisher’s website.
“People like stories that make them feel safe. Most of my stories do that. But sometimes I throw in a new tale that unsettles them. A tale about wandering stars for instance.”
Hipparchus and his sister Sappho live on the island of Samos in Ancient Greece. They spend their spare time listening to the ideas of their friend the Stargazer. They are enchanted by his stories about the stars, the sun and the Earth. But Hipparchus and Sappho discover that not everyone agrees with the Stargazer’s ideas, and stories can be dangerous. They must find their friend and warn him before it is too late . . .
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October 19, 2010 · Filed under Books · Tagged Star Author October 2010
Gecko Press is a small publisher based in Wellington. It has published books by well-known New Zealand writers such as Margaret Mahy and Joy Cowley but what it mainly does is publish books from other countries where English is not the first language. These books have first of all to be translated into English.
I’ve translated four Dutch language books into English for Gecko Press, including this latest one called Eep! written by Joke van Leeuwen. It’s about a mysterious creature who might either be a girl or a bird . . . The book has been made into a film as well.
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October 18, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, David Almond, My Name is Mina, Star Author, Star Author October 2010
I’ve finished reading My name is Mina, by David Almond. What a fabulous book! Mina fills an empty notebook with her thoughts, her dreams, her questions, and her stories. Read the first chapter of this amazing story online at David Almond’s website http://www.davidalmond.com/images/mina.pdf
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October 15, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, New Zealand, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, short stories, short story, Star Author, Star Author October 2010
Theo gave another big sigh, which Augusta made a big show of ignoring. Then he turned away from the world back to the Words, bending his neck to his task, quill in hand, ready to begin copying the first sentence of the Big Book.
The Big Book had no title of its own anymore. Whatever it had originally been was now dust in the wind.
The copy he was working from, which rested on a sloping board in front of him, had been made by Headhabit Ceo himself more than half a century before.
One day Theo’s own copy, if it were good enough, would be sent out into the world. If it survived destruction at the hands of Takeaways, then it might eventually make its way to someone who would be enlightened by it.
Maybe Theo himself would be enlightened, if he could force his tired brain to separate the meaning of the words from the actual words themselves. After all, he had learnt something from all the other books he had copied and this was the Big Book, after all. It must have so much more to teach him than those. And very few students would be as lucky as him to read it in such detail.
Theo tried his best to blot out the sound of other quills as he began to scratch the letters, form the words, shape the sentences, bring the Big Book back to life, like the mythological Phoenix-bird from the ashes.
Nevertheless, the task stretched endlessly ahead of him.
The Big Book
Chap. 1
Dudly Dented
The happiest day of the spring so far was dragging to a closure and a blowsy silence lay over the larger, squarer homes of Privet Drive.
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October 14, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, short stories, short story, Star Author, Star Author October 2010, stories, writing
Headhabit Ceo often said: “The Words you copy here will one day travel far beyond the walls of the Monkery and enlighten many of those who are left. One day Words will once again work their way into people’s hearts. Civilisation as it was will return, and that will be good.”
Why will it be good, Theo wondered. Why would anyone want to go back to the way things used to be, just to risk having the same horrors happen again? Not only that, how on earth would people not brought up in the Monkery understand the old language in which the books were written. Inglesh was difficult, even for Theo.
It was tempting to risk everything in the Wilderness, to forget the endless copying of the Words and take a chance Out There. But Theo knew Augusta was right. And he knew he would never be brave enough to risk escaping. There were stories of students – boys and girls both – who had broken out and whose broken bodies had been returned to the Monkery.
Theo sighed, wishing he hadn’t been so attentive and obedient in lesson-time and, as his teachers had told him, so gifted in Inglesh and quillship. In recognition of his superior skills Theo had recently been entrusted with copying the Big Book.
Only a handful of students received this honour. Augusta was jealous, although she would never admit it. The Big Book was the longest in their whole small library and one copy took at least a year to complete. With such a long and important work any mistake in the copying was a bigger disaster than usual.
Headhabit Ceo personally checked each copy before the individual pages were bound together. Mistakes, however small, meant that both sides of a whole page had to be done all over again.
But who really knew how many errors had been made in the centuries since the last printed copy of the Big Book had ceased to exist? This was another question Theo often asked himself.
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October 13, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, short story, Star Author, Star Author October 2010, stories, writing
Long ago and far away the Burning Days were, although Brother Flammable made them seem like yesterday, as if he himself had been there. But it was all memory. The original Leftovers, who had brought their memories to the Monkery, were ancient dust and bones now. The books Theo, Augusta and the rest were copying were themselves copies of copies of copies of copies.
Theo leaned over to Augusta, his tablemate. She was quiet like him, hardworking too, although not as talented. She had said so herself.
“I feel like a slave sometimes,” Theo whispered. He gazed longingly out of the arched window.
“Don’t even think about it,” Augusta said.
“But I do.”
“Then you’d better stop. You know what’s Out There.”
Theo nodded. He did. At least, he knew what he and the other students had been told.
A rough road led from the Monkery into an unknowable wasteland, frozen solid at this time of year. Nomadic bands of Takeaways scoured the land. Wild animals, strange mutations from times past, beasts larger than buildings, roamed the Wilderness.
Brother Flammable had told them about monstrous birds (now extinct he believed, but who could be certain?) that had once flown across the world, north to south and east to west.
“Those birds had pincer-like teeth,” he said, “and hundreds of tiny eyes that gazed on the earth below. Every eye looked down on the bright lights of great cities as well as on the flickering lights of small towns and villages.”
“Everywhere”, Brother Flammable finished, “was linked by roads, long and short. No-one lived far from anyone else. But now distances are great, and people are scattered far and wide.”
“Do you believe all that?” Theo had once asked Augusta.
She had shrugged. “What else can I believe?” she’d said.
The students in the Monkery would never be able to find out for themselves if Brother Flammable’s tales were true or not. Their lives belonged here, from beginning to end. They were, as Headhabit Ceo was fond of saying, Guardians of the Words.
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October 12, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, Christchurch, New Zealand, Star Author, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, short stories, Star Author, Star Author October 2010, Starting from Scratch
Theo hated the cold of the Monkery. The room he spent so much time in was far too big. In winter, which seemed to last all year, and even with two sputtering fires, the copying room was freezing. Theo could almost hear the ice sharpening in the furtherest corners.
Even more than the cold, Theo hated the sound of scratching all around him. It couldn’t be helped, of course. That was the reason for the Monkery in the first place. But the noise just made it so much harder for Theo to concentrate on his great task.
His thoughts would drift away from him just like his icy breath. Each time they did, he ran the terrible risk of making a mistake. Theo couldn’t afford any mistakes. At the Monkery, each and every error was seen as a disaster. And disasters were something they knew all about. Brother Flammable took delight in lecturing them about the perils of the past. He always began lessons the same way.
“Students,” he said, “remember how lucky you are to be here and not Out There in the Wilderness, and be thankful.”
Then he would drone on: “Although the past is no longer an open book, it has given a warning to us and to future generations.”
Brother Flammable would tell them stories they’d already heard many times before. About the Petrol Wars, the Power Failures, the Burning Days (when all the libraries had been destroyed), the Flood Years, the Return of the Ice. And, since then, about the battles between the Leftovers and the Takeaways. How the two groups had fought each other almost to extinction, until the Leftovers had retreated to Monkeries like this one, walled enclosures, where they had begun the endless task of copying the tattered remains of the world’s books, a handful of which had miraculously survived the Burning Days.
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October 11, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, Christchurch, New Zealand, Star Author, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, Books, short stories, Star Author, Star Author October 2010, writing
This week I thought I’d share a new short story with you. Let me what you think of it.
It’s called Starting from scratch. I’ll post it in four parts, starting tomorrow.
Here’s the reason I wrote it.
One of the things I’m interested in is how stories survive. For example, how come so many of the stories, poems and play written by the Ancient Greeks are still around today, more than two thousand years after they were first written down? One reason is that in the days before printed books – and well before the days of the internet – scribes in places such as medieval monasteries copied and re-copied old stories. And I don’t meant photocopied. They copied them by hand, word by word. It must have been incredibly hard work but it meant that stories stayed alive for future generations.
How come some stories survived while others didn’t? Were they the best-written ones? Or the most popular?
I haven’t set my story in the past even though it’s about the survival of stories. I’ve set it in the future. Dark days. Cold days. No internet. No libraries. No books – except for the ones that are being copied in a place called the Monkery. In some ways it’s quite a serious story, but not entirely. . .
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October 5, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, Star Author, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, book characters, characters, Going Bananas, Old Bones, series books, Star Author, Star Author October 2010
Have just picked up my library copy of David Almond’s new book “My name is Mina.” This is a “prequel” to his fabulous novel “Skellig“. Can’t wait to read it.
It’s fun to meet up again with fictional characters when they reappear. I guess that’s why sequels and series books (and prequels) are so appealing. Someone once suggested I write a sequel to “Old Bones” which is not something I’d thought of doing. I certainly haven’t got round to it but did wonder about letting a couple of the characters from that story make a ‘guest appearance’ in another book I’ve been thinking about.
I do have a couple of favourite characters from stories I’ve written. Patrick and Pete are brothers who have ‘starred’ in a few School Journal stories. They’ve also turned up in my ‘Kiwi bite’ book “Going Bananas” under different names, as well as in a couple of other short books (with different names yet again!).
What are your favourite series books?
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October 4, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, Christchurch, New Zealand, Star Author, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, New Zealand author, Pick n' Mix, short stories, Star Author, Star Author October 2010, stories
Long ones, short ones, in-between ones.
I’ve always liked short stories. I seem to have written a lot of them. Some have been published in the School Journal, the first one way back in 1985. It was about a magician. A more recent story will be in a book called Pick ‘n’ mix. This story is called Cold stranger and it’s a horror story (no blood and guts, sorry).
A horror story I remember reading when I was at school is called the The hand. It was written by Guy De Maupassant, a French author who died over one hundred years ago. It was written in a very matter-of-fact way. Somehow that made the creepiness of it even more creepy.
I never thought I’d write a horror story but it’s good to try different sorts of stories. Pick ‘n mix is being published by Scholastic next month. The book has sixteen stories by lots of different New Zealand writers. It’s the first of two volumes. The second will be out early next year. Something to look forward to, if you like short stories.
This is what the cover looks like.
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October 3, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Children, Christchurch, New Zealand, Star Author, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, Star Author, Star Author October 2010, stories, writing
I mentioned that I’ve been writing stories for a long time. The first stories I wrote and sold were never published as books. Some appeared in the children’s page of a newspaper. Some were broadcast on a television programme called Playschool. Ask your parents if they remember that programme!
Stories come in all shapes and sizes and in lots of different formats. This blog is a story. Computer games are stories. Text messages are stories. So are conversations and television soap operas and comics and newsletters and posters and . . . well, maybe the whole world is a kind of story . . .
Here is a poem about books and stories. It’s written by a man called Klaas Verplancke and it comes from his wonderful book called “Reus”. The book is not available in English so I’ve translated the words from the original Dutch.
‘A book is a roof,
once upon a time is the ceiling,
and they lived happily ever after
lies in the cellar.
In between, lives half the world
on thousands of pieces of paper
and that is my house.
Sometimes I live in a forest,
Tomorrow on an island
And even on top of a mountain.
Every day another page,
and another story,
and another house.’
What do you think?
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October 1, 2010 · Filed under Authors, Books, Christchurch, History, New Zealand, Star Author, Television, writers · Tagged Bill Nagelkerke, Books, Star Author, Star Author October 2010
Hi everyone,
It’s great to have the chance to join you on the Christchurch City Libraries Kids’ Blog. I used to work at the library so that makes it doubly nice to be back, even though it’s in a ‘virtual’ sort of way.
I’ve been writing stories for a long time now. I sometimes get asked why I write stories. One of the answers is that I’ve always loved reading and to be a writer I think you need to be a reader, too.
I borrowed books from the library and bought my own books, too. I seemed to have kept a lot of them. Here are some of the books (and one comic) I enjoyed reading when I was younger.
I’d be interested to know what books you’ve been buying and borrowing recently. A recent book I borrowed from the library, and then had to go and buy a copy of for myself, was Philip Reeve’s A web of air. This is the second volume in the prequel to his Mortal Engines series. Fabulously inventive!
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