Z is for The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Link to Goodreads

Apart from being a fantastic story, this book stood out for me because it's narrated by Death. As a result the viewpoint is pretty much omnipotent. Done badly, using an unexpected narrator can either be a gimmick or a mistake. But done well, like in The Book Thief, it makes the story very special and memorable.

I've recently completed a story narrated by a ghost. Now, I'm actually foolish enough not to pay attention to rules or conventions, so I'd probably have always written that particular story in that way; but it's reassuring to know that non-conventional narrators are accepted - and can really add something to the way a story is told.

The Book Thief takes the very serious and important issue of Nazi Germany and weaves a wonderfully poignant and sad story amongst the plight of the Jewish people. I cried, several times. Whatever I say here won't do the novel justice - I'm not a great reviewer - but I highly recommend this book to everyone.

And this brief post concludes the A-Z Challenge. I'm not sure how to finish - it's been lots of fun and I've discovered some great new bloggers, but I'm also a little bit glad I'll be able to get back to normal. My laptop could do with some down-time.

Thank you to everyone who's stopped by or followed me this month.

If you've followed me during the course of the challenge, and I haven't yet followed you back, please comment and let me know - it was just an oversight and easily rectified! I'm looking forward to getting to know you all in the coming weeks and months.

Y is for Yesterdays by Guns N Roses

As it's the last Saturday of the challenge, and yet again I'm struggling to find a good Y book/author that I've been inspired by (I'm really not a fan of this last section of the alphabet), I've decided to have another musical post.

There is absolutely no reason for this song, I just love it and I hope you do too. There was no video on YouTube, so just lie back and enjoy the music!

Happy Saturday, and happy last two letters of the challenge! See you on Monday :-)

X is for Extras

My post for X was going to be the rock band Extreme, who I listened to almost on a constant loop, when I was writing my first submitted novel (submitted, but probably never to be published). However, YouTube didn't want to share their best stuff, just the easy listening selection, so I bottled it - I didn't want you to think I had bad musical taste!

So this post is about the other stuff that inspires me, the eXtras! (Hubby is disappointed I haven't used xylophone or xenophobia, but I hope you're more forgiving.)

My Manchester City mug! I like football and this is my team! (Just so you know, it's only first on this list because it's the first picture, not because it rates higher than my kids!)

My fountain pen, given to me by my uncle for my 21st birthday. I promised myself I'd only use it to sign my first published book. However, I was young and stupid and didn't realise how long it would take to have a book published (or that when I finally did, it would be an ebook with no cover to sign) - so a couple of years ago I started using it to write my first drafts, and I'm sure it adds something very special to my work.

Pretty notebooks - I've always been addicted to stationery shops. I love looking at notebooks, folders, pens, files! The notebook in this picture was a present from my son for my birthday last year. I'm waiting for ideas before I use it - I don't want to waste it - I want this to be the notebook that I compose my Booker winner in :-)

My kids. Of course. I don't write childrens stories, but what I really hope is that when they are older, they'll be interested in the things I've written. I've spent all their lives huddled in corners with pads of paper, sometimes letting them spend just a little too long on the Playstation while I finished a chapter. It would be nice to show them what I've been up to!

And Hubby. I wrote a post about him here, so I won't repeat myself. If you're interested, I'd be delighted for you to read it. Here's a gratutious link to his blog - he's a musician, by the way: Peter Crawford.

W is for Fay Weldon

The Goodreads link

Fay Weldon first came to my attention when I was 12, and my mum was watching the BBC version The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, which tells the story of one of the most extreme acts of revenge in literature. If you are unfamiliar with the story, an unattractive and downtrodden housewife embarks on a complete plastic-surgery reinvention of herself and procedes to irrevocably punish her ex-husband for the suffering he caused her. (Dennis Waterman played the husband - I am unsure whether he sang the theme tune :-))

Link to Goodreads

(Rosanne Barr made a version in 1989, if you're interested, called She-Devil.)

Years later, when I was 18, ITV adapted The Cloning of Joanna May. This time, an aggrieved man clones his ex-wife.

I've since read a couple of her novels, and marital relations play a big part in her work, particularly those relations which are no longer working, or no longer what they seem. On the whole, her writing is good, but what drew me to include her in this series (apart from the W in her name!) is the sheer scope of her ideas. Plastic surgery when it was still quite a bizarre thing to do; cloning when the idea of clones was first being mooted.

If nothing else, she is inspiration to keep an eye on the news and pick up on those tiny little 'and another thing...' snippets that appear at the bottom of the page, or the end of the new bulletins. You never know what you'll pick up on!

V is for Henry V by William Shakespeare

Did you see what I did there? V. Ha, inspired! Actually, I've never read/seen Henry V, so this post is going to be about Shakespeare in general. Because I hate him. No, sorry... I used to hate him.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare

At school, I hated him. I studied Antony and Cleopatra at GCSE, and it put me off. Far too much politics!

Then I started A Levels and we read Much Ado About Nothing. This was much easier to understand: firstly it's about love - simple! - and my teacher was fantastic at explaining line by line, and pointing out all the rude bits, and when the Kenneth Branagh version was released I could understand it all! Yay for me!

Jump forward to 2011 - my son aged 12 saw that Hamlet was coming to a theatre near us and wanted to go. So, fearing he wouldn't understand or enjoy it - and fearing I wouldn't either - I took him. (Just him and me, which rarely happens, and probably helps to explain my fondness of this memory.) We had a great time. What amazed me the most was how caught up in the action my son was. He asked a couple of questions at half-time, and explained a couple of things to me too!

Shakespeare should not be read from a book. It is pretty much incomprehensible. Seeing it on stage should be compulsary for anyone attempting to study it. Shakespeare wrote plays! Plays belong on the stage!

I wouldn't say I love Shakespeare now, but I certainly appreciate everything that has happened in literature because of him - and I'm looking forward to seeing another production with my son one day - and therefore Shakespeare has to be part of this series.

U is for Un-studying Literature

Back on D Day (no, not the one in 1944, the one at the beginning of this challenge) I wrote about Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and what I'd really have liked to say to the English teacher who made me study it. As I am totally lacking any U references at all, I thought I'd use this post to continue my rant.

About three days into my English Literature A Level, I realised I shouldn't be on the course, because that was the time I realised literature shouldn't be studied, it should be enjoyed.

I know... that's a mind-bending statement, isn't it? Well, no - not unless you're an English teacher.

Think about the writers we study:

• Shakespeare
• The Brontes
• Thomas Hardy
• Charles Dickens
• Wordsworth

And, what do all these writers have in common? They were all popular writers. They weren't writing high literature - that's the mantel we've placed them on. They were writing prose that the common man in the street would find enjoyable. They probably didn't place too much store on the symbolism and metaphors used. They just wrote, the same way you and I do, telling their story in the most effective way.

So, this week, what I'd love to say to my English teacher is:

We shouldn't be doing this. We should be enjoying the books the way they were intended. We should think about the themes, enjoy the story, perhaps even consider the moment in history they are portraying - what better way to understand history than through the eyes of people who lived in it. Yes, these authors had important things to say about the world they were living in. They don't deserve to have their prose broken down into blocks of text for 18 year olds to pour over in sticky school halls, extracting every last significance out of every last full stop and semi-colon. Sometimes, Mr English Teacher, Sir, I'm sure they chose to describe the sky as cloudy because it just was, not to foretell something terrible in a hundred pages time!

T is for Tasting the Grass by Annalisa Rowe

Okay, so I admit, this is another cheat post, because it's about me! (Rowe is my maiden name.) I tried very hard to come up with an inspiring T, but I obviously have a huge gap in my literary knowledge. At this point, U isn't looking too good either! Anyway, back to T...

Tasting the Grass (I posted it here last year - feel free to read and comment, either here or there) was published by New Fiction magazine in October 1994, back when there were a proliferation of small press magazines to submit to.

It was my first published story, and - as you can see - I still have the magazine.

I started writing for submission - as opposed to just writing - in 1993 when I left school and was unemployed. I wrote loads that year, and the next, and finally I was accepted. I had another acceptance the following month... and then nothing. Every couple of years, I'd maybe have one or two stories accepted or win a prize - if you check this link to my CV page, you'll see my stop-start career. My big break never came.

Over the years, I've had some wonderfully encouraging rejection letters and critiques through competitions. Each time I thought I was on the verge. I'd see the same names alongisde mine in the longlists, and then gradually those names would start moving up into the winning places, and finally they'd have their books published. Names like Helen Dunmore and Sally Zigmond.

But I'm happy. In that time - has it really been 18 years! - I've got married, had two children, worked and re-trained. Each time I've truly thought about giving up, I've had success with a submission, and of course carried on. Because, really, I never want to give up writing.

And then, last year, my biggest success so far came with the acceptance of Cat and the Dreamer.

So, in a roundabout way, this post isn't about me at all - it's about saying don't give up! If you truly want to write, then write and see where it takes you - it's taken me 18 years to get to this point. If you want to make lots of money, perhaps you should try a different career. 

And as Joanne Trollope famously said about her own career: "It's taken me 20 years to become an overnight success."