Authors Electric

When does using traditional, or well-known and loved stories such as those by Hans Christian Andersen (one of my all-time favourite writers) and the like, become plagiarism? There must be a HCA estate of some kind, yet versions of these stories appear everywhere - in film, theatre, books and whatever. It's said that there's no copyright on ideas, that ideas are universal, and we all know where Shakespeare got a lot of his from. Might there be, as in Salman Rushdie's children's novel, a "Sea of Stories" into which we dip? I'm mentioning this, because I've recently spent some time re-structuring and shortening one of the stories from the John Bauer illustrated collection of Swedish tales, all of which, I think, must be re-interpretations of much older ones. If you're not familiar with John Bauer's work, here's an   idea of it on the left - magical! Most traditional folk and fairy tales seem to centre on fairness and honesty. The one I'...

Traditional pantomime: Joyfully strewn with terrible puns   The first day of December dawns and, abracadabra , we’re in pantomime season.  For those who’ve never had to sit in a British theatre among a deafening audience of 6 year-olds, dodging penny sweets being hurled from the stage, while gamely shouting ‘He’s behind you!’ to Snow-White, or Aladdin, or Little Red Riding Hood, some explanation is needed.   And my goodness, have I tried to explain this particular loud, brash, clunkily scripted, outrageously overacted, joyfully strewn with terrible puns and altogether much-loved piece of our Christmas tradition to bemused visitors from other countries down the years… never with the slightest success, unfortunately. You just have to be there, really.  And none more surprising than his appearance in a pantomime Or not. But it only struck me a couple of weeks ago (slow, that’s me) what an odd collection of stories makes up the pantomime r...

Last month it took me far too long to discuss metafiction , though I must admit that I'm now halfway wishing they'd reboot Moonlighting . They're doing it for The X-Files and Twin Peaks , why not Moonlighting ? I mean other than that David's womanizing might seem creepy now. On a side note, I could toitally get behind a reboot with this new casting . Anyway , let's start right in on the countdown , shall we? 2. Fables - Bill Willingham (author) various artists This title is a shoo-in for this list. It's very premise about metafiction: Characters from fairy tales, fables, children's literature, and other folklore are  literally aware that they are characters in stories. They have moved into our "mundane" world as refugees from a murderous tyrant, known only as the Adversary, who has conquered each of their worlds (each of which is part of a loose conglomeration of fictional universes called The Homelands). These refugees, who call ...

An embryonic prince... OK, it's election day in the UK . The day which decides which particular line of bitter, divisive rhetoric will soften and which, in its frustration, will become even more strident and destructive. Tomorrow the UK will be full of sickening triumphalism and gloomy despair as hapless voters (and non-voters) contemplate a state of affairs that few of them wanted. I hope I'm wrong but I'm resigned to five more years of lies, hypocrisy, platitudes, an ever-widening gap between haves and have-nots, and further proof that not only can we not live the dream, we can't even dream it any more. But this is no place for political speculation, so instead, I’m combining the election with that other great UK (and, it seems, global) news item - the fact that the Cambridges have spawned again. Serendipitously, I have a blog I wrote a year ago which, with some adjustments, will serve as a commentary on today’s double-whammy news. The original was a respon...

          Well, it's been available on Amazon's Kindle platform for some time now. But at last, at last , it's available as a paperback book, published by PriceClan. A paperback, that will clatter through your letter box, wrapped up in brown card, and solidly thump onto the mat. Or carpet. Or floorboards, or whatever you have under your letter-box.           I set out to achieve this more than a year ago, when I received lots of emails from teachers, asking where they could buy copies of the book. It's always gone down rather well in schools, when I've read it aloud, and it seems many schools want to use it as a class reader.           But it was out of print, and second-hand copies were selling on eBay and through Amazon market-place at silly money.           So I commissioned new illustrations from Andrew Price, and published the book on Ki...