Fire Watcher

Coming up!

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This week I’m heading up the Calder to one of my favourite events, Bendigo Writers’ Festival. It’s always an excellent program and a fun bookish vibe around town.

I’ll be talking with school students as part of Word Spot on Thursday 4 May about the Blitz, mudlarking, Vikings and Romans in The Firewatcher Chronicles.

And then on Friday 5 May I’m hosting what should be a fascinating discussion on writing fiction about the colonial past (and present … and futures), with Claire G. Coleman, Jock Serong and Paul Daley.

On June 2, I’m part of the Wheeler Centre’s Telling Tales series, in which three YA authors and three teen writers each read out a new short story – in this case on the theme of Reality Bites. Alice Pung and Will Kostakis are on the bill, so it is going to be the excellent fun, I just know it. If you’re around Melbourne, I’d love to see you there.

Vigil is out now!

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Vigil, the final book in The Firewatcher Chronicles, is officially published today in Australia and New Zealand.

In this, the third of the Chronicles, Christopher faces life in London after D-Day, when Hitler’s dreaded secret weapons – V1 and V2 rockets – blasted the city. But he has his own private challenges too, racing across time to discover the secret of the Roman ring he found in the Thames, and to help his friends uncover an ancient temple. It seems simple enough to slip through time back to Roman London, rally his own ragtag troops through the centuries, and beat his arch-enemy Brother Blowbladder. But mastering the power of the ring is never easy.

You can read more about Vigil here.

Look out for it in your favourite bookshop (they’ll order it for you if they don’t have it) or online store.

Published by Scholastic.

The Firewatcher Chronicles are headed to Russia

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I’m delighted to announce that Eksmo, one of Europe’s leading publishers, has bought the rights to translate and publish The Firewatcher Chronicles in Russian.

Eksmo publishes more than 8000 authors  and 80,000,000 copies of books in Russia each year, and I’m so pleased that my stories of Christopher and his friends will soon be in the hands of young Russian-language readers.

Three new book covers

A little tour of Blackfriars

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Hi everyone,

Hope you’re staying safe and well in these strange times.

It’ll be a while until we can travel overseas. But the last couple of times I was in London, I made this brief video for readers of The Firewatcher Chronicles, so you can see some of the sites where action happens in the books.

I’ll post another one on mudlarking, and what we can find in the Thames (besides magical Roman rings) soon.

PS I just made it on my phone, racing around the laneways – it’s not going to win any Oscars! But hopefully it will help kids who haven’t been to London to imagine some of the places where Christopher and his friends race against time to fight fires and solve the mystery of the ring. And how you really wouldn’t want to fall in that river.

Coming soon: February & March 2020

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The past couple of months has been both hectic and diverting. I had a couple of weeks in the UK, attending the Herstory Reimagined conference and researching a couple of projects.

Then I had an actual holiday – a couple of weeks off in my second home, New Zealand. What a relief. I hadn’t had a break for such a long time.  There was lots of ocean staring and eating fish and chips on the beach (it’s summer here, in case you’re wondering), swimming and even fishing. I also bought a little dinghy, which is the cutest thing ever.

small yellow boat

And I, like everyone, was stunned by the impact of the bushfires, so pitched in to help support the amazing #AuthorsForFireys fundraiser, which raised over half a million dollars for firefighters and recovery.

Then it was back to business, finishing Vigil, book three of The Firewatcher Chronicles.

I feel a bit odd, bringing the series to a close. Book 2, Phoenix, comes out in February (so, like, soon!) and Vigil is slated for July. Can’t wait to get the books into young readers’ hands.

Three new book covers

Stay tuned for more on Phoenix as we get closer to release day.

In the meantime, here are my next appearances in Melbourne and Auckland. If you’re around, I’d love to see you there.

4 February: Josephine’s Garden

In conversation with the lovely Stephanie Parkyn to celebrate the release of her new book, Josephine’s Garden. It’s a historical novel, set in France, with Napoleon and gardening and even an emu. What’s not to like?

Details: The evening is at Earthbound Café, 5/266 Bolton St, Eltham, and hosted by my friends at the Eltham Bookshop. 6.30pm until 8.00pm, Tickets $40.00 which includes a copy of the book and refreshments. Prepaid bookings are essential – phone 9439 8700.

(That’s Eltham in Victoria, not Eltham in Taranaki.)

14 & 15 February – Same Same but Different Festival

I’m delighted to be participating in this year’s Same Same But Different festival in Auckland – the brainchild of the dear, departed Peter Wells. This year’s theme is Writing Queer Worlds.

I’ll be one of the speakers in the Opening Night Gala on Friday 14 February, so come spend Valentine’s Day with us. Starts at 7.30pm.

Then the next morning (10.30am), I’m on a panel about writing queer-themed books for kids and young adults.

The other guests in these events, and throughout the programme, are absolutely brilliant, so we’re in for a treat.

Here’s the programme and all the details.

21 February – Sisters in Crime: The past is never dead

I’m hosting a panel of crime writers whose books are set in the past: Sulari Gentill, Kirsten Alexander and Kirsty Manning.

Looking forward to discussing research, plotting, mysteries, crimes of many kinds, character, and writing practice with this stellar line-up.

Sisters in Crime nights are always good value and this will be a cracker, if I do say so myself. (I’m also a Sisters in Crime convenor this year.)

It’s at the The Rising Sun Hotel , South Melbourne, 8pm – 10pm, and we usually get there a bit early for dinner upstairs from 6.30pm. Tickets are $10 – $22, and you can book online here.

10 March – Suffragettes and philanthropists

So pleased to be part of this panel at the gorgeous State Library of Victoria alongside Celeste Liddle, Dr Carolyn Rasmussen and Carolyn Fraser hosted by Santilla Chingaipe.

Here’s what we’ll discuss: At the turn of the 20th century, Australia was an international exemplar of progressive welfare reform. Philanthropists like Janet Lady Clarke built a strong foundation for social welfare; suffragettes like Fanny Finch, Vida Goldstein and Doris Blackburn ardently fought for equality for women.

But the 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act only granted white Australian women full and universal suffrage. As Clare Wright says in You daughters of freedom, ‘This racial qualifier takes a good deal of the gloss off patriotic gloating.’

My Creative Fellowship at the Library in 2017 was  focused on my project Sisterhood, on that generation of suffragettes around Vida Goldstein (and my great-grandmother, Edith) and then later in the 1980s. I’m still working on that, and will be for some time. So I am keen to hear these amazing women’s perspectives on the issues.

Starts at 6pm in the brand spanking new Conversation Quarter in the Quad – all revamped and ready to go.

Free but book here.

21 March –  Learn how to write historical fiction with me

People often ask about my classes, and there’s one coming up. I’m teaching one of my full-day workshops on writing historical fiction for the good folk at Writers Victoria. We’ll cover:

  • Expectations of readers and writers of historical fiction
  • Practical approaches to voices and dialogue
  • Research tips, sources and tools
  • How to integrate research and imagination
  • Writing about real people from the past.

Writers Victoria, all day from 10am. Details and bookings here.

That ought to keep me out of mischief for a bit. (I know what you’re thinking – I always say that, and it never does.)

 

Vida Goldstein

Suffragette and anti-conscription campaigner Vida Goldstein (Photo: State Library of Victoria)

 

Layers of London

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Honestly, we’re so lucky. Doing research now, with all the incredible collections at our disposal, and a huge range of digital tools, is both a whole lot easier and a whole lot faster than ever before. And it helps you imagine past worlds in different ways.

I’m finalising Vigil, the final book in The Firewatcher Chronicles at present, and one of its motifs is the many layers of history in London.

And look. Here’s a website called Layers of London, which helps us see through the centuries – perfect for schools and readers of the books (and me, of course).

It lays digital map over map, decade after decade or century, and adds local collection items. Take a look here: Layers of London.

And another very smart website traces all the major Blitz bomb sites in London. Handy (Although I have to admit I did make some of the bomb sites in Brimstone up – buildings that were destroyed in a raid were sometimes hit directly or sometimes destroyed by fires started by bombs landing elsewhere, so it’s  also a bit confusing trying to trace the history.)

Bombsight maps the official bomb site census for the Blitz months. Here’s the map for Christopher Larkham’s part of the world.

Fascinating stuff. Researchers (and readers of all ages) everywhere give thanks to inventive developers, libraries, museums, publishers and archives who create new ways for us to access and visualise information.

Coming up

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We’re hunkered down for winter here in Melbourne. Especially me, as I’ve managed to come down with a boring cold and my head’s too thick even to read.

But the good thing about winter in this neck of the woods is that it’s writers festival time.

So here are a few of the events and classes I’ve got coming up.

Woodend Winter Arts Festival: June 10

A panel with Robert Gott,  Eliza Henry-Jones and Mark Brandi, hosted by Kate Cuthbert. We’ll read a bit and talk a bit and answer your questions.  It’s help to celebrate 30 years of Writers Victoria, our wonderful state-wide writers’ organisation.

Details here.

Emerging Writers Festival: June 29

One of my favourite writers’ festivals, because it is for writers, and it’s always innovative and so helpful to people who are starting out. So I’m delighted to be part of it again this year, with a workshop on how to write historical fiction.

And it’s free!  Details here.

Bendigo Writers Festival:  11 August

Bendigo Writers Festival 2019 logo

Another of my favourite festivals, in one of the most interesting areas of Victoria. This time, I’m chairing a session with two lovely writers: Kate Forsyth and Ilka Tampke. We’ll talk about researching the past, and knowing the three of us and our enthusiasm for the topic, they’ll have to drag us off stage with a shepherd’s crook. Details here.

I’ll also be quizzing the editor and some contributors of Kindred, a new anthology of YA queer stories, just out last month. I haven’t read Kindred yet, but I’m very much looking for to it, and to talking to Michael Earp, Claire G Coleman, Erin Gough and Nevo Zisin about their work. Details here.

Gender and Love conference: 25-27 September

In Spring, I’ll be back in South Africa for the Gender and Love conference and  doing more research for my YA novel, Roar, which is set in the late 1980s in London and Apartheid-era South Africa.

HNSA conference: 25-27 October

By October, the sun will be out again, and I’ll be in Sydney for the Historical Novel Society of Australasia conference at historic Parramatta. I’m teaching writers how to use Scrivener in a craft workshop  on the Friday, and then in the weekend program will be chatting with Sophie Masson about our approaches to writing for different age groups. And I’m co-convening the academic stream on the Sunday.

In between, I’ll be recording podcasts, teaching, attending some other writers festivals and events, moving house, releasing the new editions of  the Firewatcher Chronicles … oh, and finishing Vigil, book three of the series.

If I can just shake off this cold!

Three new book covers

 

Brimstone and the Blitz

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The Firewatcher Chronicles are set during the Blitz in London, and in a very specific area by the banks of the Thames: Puddle Dock and the City, up to St Paul’s Cathedral.

Street sign - Puddle Dock

When I was first researching the books, I wanted to set them in a specific place that was affected by the many fires covered by the series. So it had to be somewhere inside the old Roman city but close to the riverbank. I wanted somewhere that’s not famous, just a place where the hero, young Christopher Larkham, and his family – normal working-class people – worked and lived and watched for fires during the Blitz. It had to be somewhere close to the river, so the kids can go searching the riverbank at low tide, and surrounded by those wonderful narrow, winding streets of the old city – streets with fabulous names like Addle Hill and Bleeding Heart Lane. This is how the area was laid out around the seventeenth century:

Puddle Dock map 17th century

I chose Puddle Dock because there are few traces now of the place it once was, and also I loved the name. This is how it looked in the 1940s, with the tide out and the dock itself filled with debris from bombed buildings:

Puddle Dock 1947

Here’s what that area looks like now, from across the river.

Puddle Dock form the south bank

I admit it’s not all that glamorous (besides that glorious cathedral, glowing in the evening light). Puddle Dock now houses a theatre, apartments and offices, and is tucked in between two busy roads.  There’s no dock any more. Great swathes of the City are like that, not just because it is still one of the great financial centres of the world and therefore filled with office blocks, but also because so much of the area was flattened in the Blitz.

Southwark bridge to Blackfriars in the Blitz

Brimstone, the first book in the Chronicles, takes place on  the night of 29 December 1940, when wave after wave of German air force bombers dropped 100,000 incendiary bombs, followed by more than 20,000 high explosive bombs and parachute mines, starting a series of fires that devastated the City.

That night became known as the Second Great Fire of London. Among the worst-hit areas were places burned in the first Great Fire of London  – Paternoster Square and the area around St Paul’s Cathedral, right down to the banks of the Thames, including many of the churches rebuilt after the Great Fire by Sir Christopher Wren. And much of the area around Puddle Dock.

St Paul's surrounded by bomb damage

Hundreds of years before the Blitz, on the night of 2 September 1666, the original Great Fire of London started in Pudding Lane.

This is how the city looked before the Great Fire (that big cathedral on the hill is old St Paul’s, where key scenes happen in Brimstone):

London from Southwark before the Fire

And during it:

Great Fire

How terrifying that must have been!

And here, hundreds of years later, is how the same area looked during that one night of the Blitz:

Herbert Mason's photo of St Paul's

This is Herbert Mason’s famous photo, ‘St Paul’s Survives’, one of the most iconic images from the Blitz, and taken on the night of 30 December 1940 – the night on which Brimstone is partly set. This photo meant so much to Londoners, and people across the world who were watching with horror as the Nazi attacked Britain and many other places. London had just copped a beating, but the cathedral was still standing – surrounded by smoke and flames.

So you can see what poor Christopher has to deal with in Brimstone, time-travelling between not just one but both of these enormous conflagrations.

And, perhaps, why I couldn’t resist writing a story about a kid who fights both of the great fires of London in one night.

 

Photo sources:

  • Imperial War Museum
  • Museum of London
  • Wikimedia 
  • A London Inheritance
  • Me.