Fiona the heretic

I’ve just had the privilege of doing a guest blog on the International Christian Fiction Writers’ site. As it is 10 years this month since my first children’s book, Donovon’s Rainbow, came out, I have just been reminiscing about the first time a book shop refused to stock my work because they claimed it ‘distorted the Word of God’. So if you would like to read all about that, please drop by the ICFW site. And while you’re there have a browse through all the incredible fiction authors who are Christians and live all over the world.

19/10/2011 0

David and the Kingmaker is going to press

I’ve just finished proofreading the second picture book in my Young David Books series – David and the Kingmaker. My erstwhile illustrator Amy Barnes has done an amazing job with the illustrations and I can’t wait for it to get into the shops for Christmas.

To read more about David and the Kingmaker and the first book in the series, David and the Hairy Beast, head over to the Young Bible Heroes website. If you are a writer who wants to learn how to write picture books then I give a quick tutorial of this on my writing advice blog The Crafty Writer.

17/10/2011 0

Five Star review for The Peace Garden

Today I’m doing what everyone says you shouldn’t: reading my own reviews! The Peace Garden has had its first review on Amazon Kindle. And I’m relieved to see it’s a good one. The reviewer also manages to communicate the essence of the book far better than I could!

So, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet, here you go:

Suburbia meets apartheid,11 Oct 2011

Steve Pillinger

This is the fascinating tale of an uneasy mix between English suburban values and South African apartheid, which builds up to an unexpectedly explosive finale. The
unlikely starting-point of plants being stolen from the gardens of a quiet Newcastle street draws you in, as does the deftly-portrayed character of young Natalie Porter, a floating trophy of her parents’ ever-shifting
diplomatic/journalistic lifestyle, who finds a semblance of permanence staying with her Geordie grandmother – and leaps at the opportunity to emulate her fictional heroine, girl-detective Nancy Drew.

Natalie’s sleuthing efforts bring her into contact with an enigmatic black South African academic and his teenage son living at the end of the road. Everyone has them down as the plant thieves; and issues of racial prejudice are sensitively explored both in the English suburban context and, later, in South Africa itself.

Interwoven with the escalating mystery of the missing plants and the past lives of the possible perpetrators – which brings the reader unavoidably face-to-face with the tragic history of apartheid – is the delicately portrayed off-and-on romance that develops between young Natalie and Thabo, the bitter South African teenager now forced by circumstances to live with his father in Britain. Is he a `good guy’ or a `bad guy’? Natalie’s doubts on this score – and the reader’s – persist
almost to the last page.

This is a great story, with a compulsively page-turning conclusion, which also gives the reader an inside look at many of the conflicting issues of racial prejudice in its most notorious institutional expression – apartheid South Africa.

17/10/2011 0

Right seed, wrong soil … or vice versa!

I’ve been thinking lately about seed. As a writer covering many different media I always have a lot on the go. My story ideas are seeds and the soil they are planted in the medium of choice: a book, a film, an article, a play. I have a story idea at the moment about a boy from a council estate who dreams of going to space. But what is the right soil for this seed? Should it be a play (which I’m leaning towards) or a book or a film? Or perhaps, even a radio drama. I’m not sure.

seeds, grains, garlic — Image: Rosemary Ratcliff / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have another play on the go that I believe is right for the stage. But I’m struggling to find a producer to take it on. When my proposal is turned down does that mean it’s not good ‘seed’ or just that the soil I was trying to sow it in isn’t the right environment? Perhaps another theatre or another producer might give the play a better chance to grow.

The same principle can be applied to our lives in general. Do you have seed but don’t know where to sow it? Or have already sown it but are not seeing it grow? It could be a seed of relationship or career or finance. Are you investing time and energy into something that just isn’t bearing fruit? You need to ask yourself if it’s the right seed in the wrong soil … or vice versa! Or perhaps it is simply the wrong season.

Jesus, who is a great hero of mine, talks about seed and soil too. His story is found in the Parable of the Sower. There’s a lot to ponder there if you have some time to sow.

14/10/2011 1

Ruso and the River of Darkness

I have recently finished the fourth book in the historical crime novel series about an amateur Roman detective called Ruso. Ruso and the River of Darkness, is, in my opinion, the finest in the series by British author R.S. Downie.

Comparisons with Lindsey Davis’ Falco series are inevitable. In fact it was because I had enjoyed the Falco books (the mock-noir tales of a PI in Rome whose humour is drawn from our familiarity with the style of the detective novels and films of the Forties and Fifties) that I picked up the first in the series, Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls, in the first place.

Unlike Falco, Downie’s sleuth is a reluctant detective. He is an army doctor (medicus) based in Britannia, who gets drawn into murder investigations via his patients (some dead, some living). I suppose he is a Roman version of Quincy – only far better looking! Yes, he’s a very attractive hero and female readers will inevitably fantasise who will play him in any film adaptation (I would opt for Ethan Hawke). However, unlike Falco, he is not a playboy (although in the latter books in the series, Falco has settled down). In fact, he finds romantic attachments a distraction. Despite this, he reluctantly falls in love; with whom I will omit from this post so as not to spoil the plot of the first book.

Again, like Falco, there is a great deal of humour in the books, but there is also a serious side. And that’s what I like about them. Like my own book The Peace Garden and all of my plays, I like mixing darkness and light. I also enjoy writing and reading books and scripts that deal with issues of social justice. In The Disappearing Dancing Girls it is human trafficking, in Ruso and the Demented Doctor it is the domestic oppression of women in forced marriages, in Ruso and the Root of All Evils it’s the issue of class and in The River of Darkness it is institutional corruption. But Downie has a light touch and the books can simply be read as rollicking historical crime drama.

If you’re not already familiar with the series, I would strongly recommend remedying this. For readers in the US, the books are published under different titles. (Medicus, for instance, is the American version of Disappearing Dancing Girls). And now, I’m eagerly awaiting the next in the series …

13/10/2011 0

Staged reading of ‘Marathon’

In 1896 a Greek peasant girl, Stamata Revithi, heard that the Olympic Games were being relaunched in Athens. A gifted runner, Stamata decided to enter the marathon, not realising that women were banned from competing. Inspired by a true story, ‘Marathon’ is the story of how one athlete’s quest for justice came into conflict with the politics, scandal and corruption of the first modern Olympic Games.

A staged reading of my latest play, Marathon, will be held at The Customs House in South Shields, on Monday 10th October, 3.30pm. Entrance free.

Directed by Jackie Fielding. In association with Cloud Nine Theatre Company.

03/10/2011 2

Author: Fiona