SAVE OUR SCHOOL LIBRARIES

I am not here. To all intents and purposes - stupid phrase - I do not exist. I am having a rare weekend off. And when I say "off", boy, do I mean "off"? Indeed I do.

Let me tell you what I am doing. (And there will be a serious point to this post, as ever.) When I say "am", this is confusing, because actually I "am" writing this post in advance of doing the thing that I "am" doing. But, having an imagination, I can tell you what I will be doing when this post automatically wings its way to you. What I am doing is ... prepare yourself ... relaxing.

See, Jane Smith thinks I'm working really really hard promoting Deathwatch, and she is in awe of my energy. Little does she know that this weekend, from Friday afternoon till Sunday afternoon, I am going to be alternately in states of bliss and euphoria and my only exertion will involve trying to work out if there is any difference. (I will report back.) Two friends are coming to stay, both female, which is important, because otherwise this wouldn't work - hang on: what did you think I meant?? - and we are indulging in a weekend of pure, well, indulgence. This involves, in almost equal measure, chocolate, sparkly wine, laughter, friendship, reminiscences, sparkly wine, chocolate and ... spa treatments. Oh yes! I am having a rejuvenating facial (increasingly necessary, according to a man close to me - too close for comfort if he says that again) and a "sports" massage (the closest I plan to come to "sports" this side of death).

While I am doing this - in preparation, I may say, for a horrendous week of all the things Jane thinks I'm doing - you are going to be doing a very, very simple task. You are going to go on-line and sign an incredibly important petition. I think you have to live in the UK to do this, but if you don't, please cheer us from the side-lines.

The petition is simple. It calls for school libraries to be statutory.

Now, OK, so I am children's author and perhaps therefore care more than some about school libraries. But every author should care equally. Because school libraries create the readers of the future. The readers of your books. Without readers we can no more than whisper in a storm.

Every children's author knows the wonderful work that school librarians do. They inspire reading; they have myriad ways to entice even the reluctant or afraid into the magical world of books. They can, quite frankly, save people. We, keen readers, take reading for granted. We assume that reading is an optional hobby, just because you don't die if you don't do it. But we forget that you don't live if you don't do it. Or not properly, not fully.

Only someone who takes for granted the pleasure and power of reading, or someone of extreme callousness, could not want to support something which offers that power and opens that world to all. Without the reader paying anything.

In a couple of weeks' time, I'm doing a key-note speech at a librarians' conference and I plan to show them what goes on in the human brain when we read fiction, why it is necessary for our soul and our humanity, our health, our decision-making, our morality. I'll be preaching to the converted, but I want them to understand and value the immense importance of what they do. I want them to go away knowing that they are doing one of the most relevant jobs possible and one that is needed more than ever in our fast-paced digital world, where we are bombarded with data too quickly to process it properly, too quickly to generate wisdom.

Please, please sign this petition. Your future readers depend on it. You depend on it.

Meanwhile, I've signed it, so I am allowed to have rejuvenating collagen facials and relaxing sports massages. But I will not be so relaxed that I won't be absolutely furious if lots of you haven't signed it.

Listen, someone told me I was scary the other day. Hooray for scary. I can be even scarier if called upon.

Just sign, OK?

I'm even going to harangue the masseuse into signing.

DANGEROUS READING

I now bring you a heartening school story.

Message from an English teacher to me today: "Some of my pupils were reading Deathwatch under the desks last lesson as they needed to find out what was happening next - very gripped! (No I didn't tell them off!)"

Hooray for teachers who so much like the fact that their pupils read that they turn a blind eye when they read in the wrong place!

But it leads me to ask you: what books did you risk punishment to read when you were young? What stories helped turn you into the readers and writers you now are? What exactly was it about those books that tranpsorted you to a place where detentions were worth courting?

One of my favourite reads, which I read over and over again and would certainly have gone to many detentions for, was The Black Tulip, by Alexandre Dumas. Oh, the romance, the swords, the horrible torture, the blood-curdling pain, the honour and bravery and all that bejewelled swash-buckling!

So go on, share your favourite books from your youth, if you can remember that far - and maybe jog our memories so that all those illicit moments of dangerous reading come flooding deliciously back.

Whatever it is that you identify as the must-read factor, I bet you that if we all put a bit more of it into our own writing, we'd end up writing stories that more people would want to read. And publish.

Because it is my firm belief that it's not just kids who want to be gripped by a book, gripped so that the real world fades away for a while.

PIGEON COMPETITION RESULTS

Well, well, my husband surprised me. He went for the literary novelist. Hmm, note to self: the pen is mightier than the sword.

Here's Harry's verdict on your pigeon post pieces. (By the way, he is a man of few words so don't expect any gushing):

"I congratulate the bloggers and their creativity. Every entry brought a smile or a shiver. All should win prizes. (Steady on there. You're not that nice to me.)

I especially commend:
For wacky, original, left fieldness - bshanks (the Geisha girl)
For cool language - Jan
For wit - Rebecca (the troll) (don't make personal remarks about my blog-readers, please)
For nice try but too many words - Ebony (yeah, Ebony, read the submission guidelines, why dontcha? He liked that one a lot but he's a rule-follower so you had to go)
For management training advice - Phoenix (heh? He doesn't normally like management training advice.)

But, the winner for me - and this is because I find the evocation of war zones heartbreaking and scary - is Sally Zigmond - "when her window shattered she knew he had lied."

Well done everyone. A humble capitalist salutes your skill - all of you.
Best wishes, Harry Morgan"

Aww. Thank you, Harry. (Edited to include the words, for Sally's benefit: A very good choice - you are, after all, a man of taste.)

I should add (because it's my blog and I can interfere if I want to) that, because he hasn't been following this blog properly, he missed the cleverness of Sandra and Sarah, who both did pigeon-related spoof query letters (and one in rhyme and mentioning Werther's toffees, no less). I also loved Emma's disappearing garden idea, and Elen's detective-themed one. Really, there were loads of others he or I could have mentioned but life's a bitch. We laughed, a lot, and then we laughed again. And then we realised that a decision had to be made so I went and had another glass of wine and he made his decision. Which is as it should be.

I thought the whole thing was fascinating. So many different writers, so many different personalities, so many different takes on the same subject. Every genre was there, and every mood, from urban to surreal, from literary to chick-lit, from dark to light and from sensual to prosaic. There were the ones who'd done their research, the ones who'd used local knowledge and political topicality (comparing us to our fairly near neighbour, Fred G, are you??) and the ones who led others in new directions.

It was the world of books in microcosm.

Then too, there's the reader. Oh, the reader. The unpredictability of another person's response; the need for a writer to understand that not everyone will "get" what you were trying to do; the knowledge that your reader will judge you while not knowing what was in your mind, or without appreciating your talent or wit. Every reader comes from somewhere different, brings different desires and meanings and pleasures to the words he/she reads. And likes it differently. You don't know the reader but the reader will judge you as though you were writing especially for him.

So, when you write, and then you send it out, you take a leap into the unknown. You can't know how it will be received.

Which is so the scary bit. Trouble is, readers just don't know how hard it is. Damn them.

And then, of course, there's trying to sell books, which I've just realised I have spectacularly failed to do: my husband just picked as the winner the one person who'd already said she was going to buy Deathwatch anyway. So, that's one lost sale and we don't get to eat today. Thanks, mate. Back to my garret.

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone, congratulations to all the named writers and especially to Sally.