Movie ‘Pan’ – Brilliant!

I have just taken my grandson to see ‘Pan’. I went with mixed feelings because it seems to have bad critics’ reviews. Ignore them, they are rubbish. Pan is a very credible prequel to Peter Pan. J M Barrie would have approved. It is well acted, has a well crafted storyline and stunning graphics. After so many Harry Potters and Lords of Rings this is a welcome and refreshing break. The 9-year-old loved it, as did I. Just remember, you are not going to see yet another remake of Peter Pan. You are going to see how Peter Pan came to be. It does the job well. Believe me, I wouldn’t go to this trouble if I wasn’t so incensed by the critics’ rubbish reviews. This is a box office gem, not a turkey. Why are so many reviewers bitter and destructive? Is it because they realise that if they had more real talent (or any at all) they could actually produce such excellent stuff themselves?

Reading allowed

I managed to read three books in thirty minutes: Shark in the Dark; The Night Pirates; and Mog, the Forgetful Cat. I read them aloud, something I don’t often do in a bookshop (or haven’t done since I was about five – the TYO gets them from the shelves and I have to read them to him. The bookshop people don’t seem to mind, especially as I often buy a couple of books). I wasn’t brought up with ‘Mog’ books, but I’m guessing a lot of people were because the first one was published in 1970. It would be interesting to know how the total income from these over the last forty years compares with flash-in-the-pan ‘bestsellers’. I don’t suppose that kind of statistic is of particular interest. I’m guessing that knowing how much you are going to make on a book over the next forty years isn’t part of the equation when deciding on which books to publish.

For myself I’m reading The Dying Light by author Henry Porter (NOT Harry Potter). I am halfway through it, and it seems to have something of Le Carré about it. Oh… one of the books I bought after I had read Mog, etc., is Le Carré’s latest, ‘Our Kind of Traitor.’ That’s next in my reading quietly to myself queue.

Deathly Hallows

Trailer to final Harry Potter films (Deathly Hallows, which will be in two parts) here.

Seems I was wrong about Toy Story 3, it has not yet been released in the UK.

Balamory replaces Harry Potter

I have changed my header pic. The viaduct on the route travelled by the Hogwarts Express has been superseded by the town used for the TV series Balamory. At the time of writing (as they say…) there is WordPress snow falling across my blog, which is at odds with the photo, taken on a bright, sunny summer’s day. Hang around for six months and it will look more realistic – unless I decide to change it before then, of course. I have a VERY nice photo of the Forth Bridge that I would like to use.

Rankin’s pie and pint at the Oxford Bar

My ten year old granddaughter wants me to write another book for children. She knows I wrote three novels for her dad, and that he passed them around his friends when he was at school. She has read Keewatin, the first of the three, and now she is passing it to her friends. After she read it she said it was better than Harry Potter (if only that meant something in the real world!). Keewatin took six months to rewrite and then another two to edit, but it was worth it just to hear her comments.
Except for these blogs I haven’t written much original stuff lately. I am trawling through my older novels, rewriting and editing. It is a full time job and nowhere near as satisfying as writing new material. Every writer goes through it. The stuff you wrote years ago was put aside for reasons best known to yourself: stories that seemed to go nowhere, plots that got lost. There are moments of ‘did I really write that?’ – either because it now seems exceptionally good or appallingly bad.
Ian Rankin (Doctor Ian) is auctioning on eBay a pie and a pint in the Oxford Bar. In his company, of course. The last time I checked the site the bids had reached £460 (not much for a meal, judging by the money I saw being spent in St.James and Mayfair last week). All the money raised will go to Rankin’s favourite charity.

NOT HARRY POTTER

My ten year old granddaughter just phoned me. Over the school holidays she has been test reading my children’s novel, Keewatin. ‘I’ve just finished it,’ she said, ‘it’s really good. I loved the way it ended, the way they found …….’ ‘Only the way it ended?’ ‘No, I mean I loved it all, it was cool.’ ‘What did you like best?’ ‘It was like I was there. It was real.’ Then her mum’s voice in the background: ‘Tell him what you told me.’ Then GD: ‘It’s better than Harry Potter.’ ‘That’s daft. It can’t be. So why’s that?’ ‘It was like I was in the story. There was no magic, it was really real (sic).‘

Nice way for me to start to the day. To be fair to J K Rowling, GD has just finished a marathon read of all the Harry Potter books and has been watching the DVDs, so she is no doubt supersaturated with wizards and needs something different. Maybe other children are feeling that way about fantasies. Time will tell. 

Ironically, when I wrote it in draft about ten years ago I intended it to be a ‘boy’s book’, to help address the lack of adventure stories for that age group. Then, perhaps stupidly, I put it away and turned to crime (well, you know what I mean), no doubt influenced by Ian Rankin’s growing success at that time. I told GD that unless I can get Keewatin published, then she will be the only one who will read it. She didn’t like that, she thought it was sad. I told her I would start attacking agents with it. She seemed happy with that.