Authors Electric

Writing Children’s Fiction  by Yvonne Coppard and Linda Newbery  (Bloomsbury) ISBN 978 1 408 15687 2 Yvonne Coppard and Linda Newbery interviewed by Dennis Hamley When, a few month ago, I was asked to interview Yvonne and Linda for Armadillo, the on-line children's book magazine,  about their new book I was both pleased and slightly daunted. Yvonne and    Linda (herself once an AE blogger) are authors of high achievement and real quality - and also very different.  I knew there would be so much in this book and in the space of an 1800 word interview we were only going to scratch the surface.  However, just three days ago, on Wednesday September 11, Julia Jones wrote a superb review of Writing Children's Fiction on Eclectic Electric and, if you haven't yet seen the book itself but want a good taster before tackling this interview, you can't do better than to turn back to it. Don't go to Writing Children's Fiction thinking it's ...

A couple of weeks ago my brother and I got into a heated argument on the subject of Bob Dylan’s voice. He reckoned Dylan had lost it.  I reckoned [and PS. I was right] that Dylan’s singing better than ever.  Singing differently maybe, but different in a good way.  The difference of age and experience, and of having lived a life. Certainly in his latest offering, ‘Tempest’, Dylan has things to say and he says it in good voice. I came across it recently, and found it to be as powerful as anything he's written for a long, long time – which is saying something because these last few years Dylan's writing has been good. The album gets off to an impressive start with 'Duquesne Whistle' and 'Soon After Midnight,' but then Dylan really starts to dig in, dig deep and suddenly he's off like a sky rocket. 'Long and Wasted Years. Oh, my. 'Pay in Blood'.  He sings it like he has.  ‘Scarlet Town’. Been there? Recognise anything? ‘Tin Angel’. Dy...