Why do we like real life drama? by Mary G. Thompson

I'm so pleased to welcome author Mary G. Thompson onto the blog today to discuss why we love real life drama so much. Mary has just published her coming of age thriller, Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee with Chicken House.

Sometimes when I’m reading a book or watching a show about a person in dark or dire circumstances, I ask myself, Why do I like this? Why do I want to read/watch a story about bad things happening to someone?

Is it because I want to imagine myself in the position of the hero, acting much more bravely than I would in real life?

Is it because I want to experience something apart from my everyday boring existence without really risking anything?

I think there’s a more charitable, positive explanation for why we enjoy reading and watching drama. Reading about the deep emotions of others is a way for us to feel like we are connecting with people. As humans, we have an amazing capacity to empathize with people we’ve never met. And reading books is a safe way to experience difficult things. It’s also a way for us to understand what people who are different from us are thinking and feeling. 

None of us wants to be the victim of a kidnapping like Amy and Dee, and the chances that any individual will be kidnapped are infinitesimal. But it’s amazing how easily we can imagine what it would be like to face such a thing. We are naturally prepared to empathize with those who are suffering and ready to root for them to overcome. We have a human need to experience the deep emotions that come with dramatic experiences. 

I think I enjoy thrillers and true-to-life crime dramas partly because I want to feel something that rings true and partly because I want to understand how the human mind works. Real life drama shows people taking the worst of situations and figuring out how to make it through. Even if we’ll never face anything half as bad, we can still take away something from experiencing the strength—even the flawed strength—of others. These vicarious experiences may also put us in a position to better help someone we meet who has been through something terrible, or to advocate for better policies to support victims.

When I was writing Amy’s story, I had all the experiences of reading a true-to-life book times about a million. I hope you too are able to take away something emotional and positive from Amy’s story. 

Summary

Cousins Amy and Dee were kidnapped by a stranger as children.

Now, sixteen-year-old Amy is back with her parents. Dressed in purple and clutching a plastic doll, she refuses to answer questions. As Amy struggles towards a normal teenage life, her family - and the police - press her for information. Unable to escape her past, Amy realizes she has to confront the truth. How did she survive? How did she escape? And what happened to Dee?

Follow Mary G. Thompson on Twitter: @marygthompson 

Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee by Mary G. Thompson is out now priced £6.99. Order a copy here: http://amzn.to/2lleLAZ

The Perfect Present For ... by Maz Evans

As part of the Who Let the Gods Out blog tour, I am so please to welcome author Maz Evans onto the blog. Maz is taking part in my brand new feature Perfect Presents For... where she has to pick the perfect presents for the characters in her book, Who Let the Gods Out. 

Elliot Hooper - Elliot is a 12-year-old boy, so the first thing that springs to mind is some kind of digital device. That said, I need him to save the world, so if my parental insight is any judge, Minecraft could prove a fatal distraction for mortalkind. Like his creator, Elliot is chronically averse to early mornings, so an alarm clock - preferably one of those cartoon ones containing a mallet - would be handy. 

Virgo - Virgo, a constellation from the Zodiac Council, is struggling to get her head around mortal existence, so perhaps some guidance from a great philosopher? A Complete Collection of Winnie the Pooh could offer her some much-needed wisdom. I shall ignore Elliot’s suggestion of “a muzzle”. 

Zeus - What do you buy the God who has everything? Zeus is an omnipotent ruler with mighty powers… but after several hundred divorces, perhaps Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus could provide the insight that several millennia haven’t given him into women. Unless there’s a divorce lawyer who does gift vouchers? 

Athene & Aphrodite - These bickering sisters can’t agree on anything, so it would make sense to get them the same gift. A Frozen DVD might remind them of the importance of sisterly love. Although condemning someone with immortality to Let it Go for the rest of their endless days doesn’t feel like much of a present…

Hermes - The self-confessed God of Fashion likes to stay in shape, so I’d sign him up to The Body Coach’s Lean in 15 plan. Is it cheating to lift weights when you can fly?

Thanatos - The Daemon of Death has been imprisoned beneath Stonehenge for 2000 years, so he’s missed out on a great deal. A boxed set of The Gilmore Girls would not only catch him up on millennial pop culture, but the hours spent in Stars Hollow might chill his maniacal ambitions out a bit. So long as he doesn’t watch A Year in the Life…

Summary

Elliot's mum is ill and his home is under threat, but a shooting star crashes to earth and changes his life forever. The star is Virgo - a young Zodiac goddess on a mission. But the pair accidentally release Thanatos, a wicked death daemon imprisoned beneath Stonehenge, and must then turn to the old Olympian gods for help. After centuries of cushy retirement on earth, are Zeus and his crew up to the task of saving the world - and solving Elliot's problems too?

Published by Chicken House in January 2017

Waterstones Children's Book of the Month. 

To find out more about Maz Evans: 

Twitter / Website

Fantasy Dinner Party with Cathryn Constable

As part of the White Tower blog tour , I'm pleased to welcome author, Cathryn Constable on the blog to pick her ideal guests for a fantasy dinner party. 

I’ve gone over and over who I would want to go out to dinner with and, in the end, came up with a list where I would be able to sit quietly and listen to the conversation. Perhaps I’d stop being overwhelmed for long enough to chip in with, ‘And so, Leo, how did you come up with the name of Count Vronsky’s mare…’ although my Russian would have to be massively improved to understand his answer. 

But, after much deliberation, I’ve managed to get the list down to five, all Russians. 

1 Ivan Bunin

I’m obsessed with the Russian writer, Bunin. I read Ida by accident… it was just the next story in an anthology. I could hardly breathe by the end, it was so heartbreaking. 

2 Anton Chekhov

Ivan Bunin would enjoy having Chekhov as a fellow dinner guest as he idolized the good doctor. Lady with the Lapdog, after years of re-reading, still surprises. 

3 Count Vronsky

I should really ask for Tolstoy, but I’m fascinated by his creation, Count Vronsky. He is such a cipher in Anna Karenina: the perfect gentleman (with all the arrogance of a certain sort of aristocrat) who gets caught up in the ‘wrong’ sort of affair. By the end, he has become a tragic figure, denied the swift release from his anguish that Tolstoy allows Anna. Instead, Vronsky lives on, fully aware of his own culpability in her suicide. The last image of him that Tolstoy shows us is a man in real physical pain, waiting for the train that will take him to war and his certain miserable death at the front. I’m not sure that I’d be able to say very much to him: Vronsky had a powerful effect on women and anyway, he’d be all Anna’s… but still. 

4 Alexander Kuprin

Kuprin wrote a long short story called The Garnet Bracelet which I’ve read many times. He also wrote a rather wonderful novella called The Duel. They’re both about love (or what passes for love) and yearning and loss. Intoxicating.

5 Isaac Babel

The master of ‘savage prose’, Babel’s stories can be cruel and bleak but there are moments of such beauty that he takes your breath away with a sentence.

Summary

When Livy's accepted at Temple College, a school for the very brightest, no one is more surprised than her, though she has always felt different. Recently, Livy's been drawn to the roof, where, among its towering stone angels, she has the strangest desire to fly. But her behaviour is noticed by others, for whom the ability to defy gravity is a possible reality ...one that they'll stop at nothing to use for their own ends.

To find out more about Cathryn Constable:

Twitter / Website

Valentine Joe by Rebecca Stevens

I thought this would be the most fitting book review for Armistice Day, considering all that is going on around us in the world. I do feel that perhaps we have become a nation who have forgotten the lessons of the past and maybe we need a little reminder. 

 So today I will be remembering those who lost their lives in not only World War I, but also the wars our soldiers have fought in since. 

It was the day before Valentine's Day and Rose was on a train, speeding through the misty Kent countryside with her passport in her bag, her phone in her pocket and her grandad on the seat opposite, snoring gently. Rose hoped he wasn't going to dribble. 

Published by Chicken House in 2014

Pages - 154

Summary

Rose's granddad takes her on a trip to Ypres, Belgium to visit the graves of those who died in the Great War. It's the day before Valentine's Day, but Rose can sense the shattered old city beneath the chocolate-box new. And it seems that it can sense her too. When she goes up to her room that night, she hears the sound of marching feet and glimpses from her window a young soldier on his way to the front line...

*****

Valentine Joe might be a slim book but it's a mighty one. An important book. One that should be read by teenagers through to adults, because it reminds us. It reminds us why so many have lost their lives in war. It reminds us of how much people have suffered. It reminds us that we never want to return to those times. They were not coated in a rosy tint of happiness. They were covered with tears and blood. 

Valentine Joe represents the story of the young, innocent boys who signed up way too early to be soldiers. They were desperate to fight for their country like everyone else and many lost their lives because of it. 

 Through Rose's eyes, we get to see what it was really like to be a soldier in the trenches. The scene in the trenches made me feel so cold and depressed and I was only reading them. What must it have been like to live in those conditions? 

This book easily transported me back to Ypres during World War I. It's frightening to hear the bombs going off and coldness seeps through your body.  I've never been to Ypres, but I can only imagine it has the same stillness that I discovered walking up to the 9/11 memorial in New York. It's quite hard to explain. It's the kind of place, silence kicks in naturally as you recall past events. I think the author really brought Ypres alive within this story, because I honestly felt the same sense of quietness. 

Joe steals your heart. He is cheeky yet caring and your rooting for his survival all the way through the book. He never gives up. His beliefs are strong and he won't be swayed. 

Joe and Rose needed each other. They needed each other to help them move on with their lives. They show that you can't control everything that happens to you, but you can learn from it and find peace with it. This book is not only ideal for kids learning about World War I, but also those who have recently lost a loved one. 

I spy with my little eye - gunpowder, treason and plot by Ally Sherrick

Today on the blog, Ally Sherrick, author of historical adventure Black Powder, talks about the secret world of spies and subterfuge at the time of the Gunpowder Plot and how this influenced her story.

I’m intrigued by the notion of people not being what they seem. It’s ripe ground for fiction writers and children’s authors in particular. Especially if you want to keep your readers guessing or alternatively, to give them that satisfying feeling of being on the inside track. Severus Snape in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter, the strange winged man in the garage in David Almond’s Skellig or Tanya Landman’s heroine Charlotte/Charley in Buffalo Soldier are all great examples of characters with more to them than meets the eye. So I guess it’s not surprising that I ended up writing a tale with a fair sprinkling of dissemblers and pretenders myself.

The real-life story of the Gunpowder Plot, the inspiration for Black Powder, is peppered with people busy pretending to be someone else, all set against the historical backdrop of a time and place where you could be executed for your beliefs and when paranoia about Catholic ‘papist’ plots was running high. 

Guy Fawkes himself adopted a false name - the rather unimaginative ‘John Johnson’ - as he set about the business of laying a train of gunpowder beneath the House of Lords where the King and Parliament were due to meet on 5 November 1605. But there were others too, who were employed to go about their business incognito - the network of spies and informers in the pay of King James I’s chief minister and spymaster, Robert ‘the fox’ Cecil. 

These men or ‘intelligencers’, were hired by the wily Cecil to uncover plans for potential foreign invasions and to sniff out would-be traitors at home and abroad - all in the interests of preserving the security of the English state. Tricks of their trade included false identities and disguises, the use of codes to send encrypted messages and writing letters in invisible ink. The ‘ink’ in question was usually made from orange or onion juice, although one spy even tried the noise-wrinkling alternative of urine! They also employed the classic methods of entrapment such as sending false messages to flush their prey out and to get them to confess their wrongdoings.

It was largely thanks to the work of Robert Cecil and his spies - coupled with the plotters’ own lack of discretion - that the Gunpowder Plot came to the Government’s attention and was successfully foiled.

In my own story, there are at plenty of characters pretending to be one thing and turning out to be another. At least two of them are spies - I won’t name them, as it might spoil the fun. But, in the end, in the best tradition of children’s fiction, it is the hero and heroine of Black Powder, Tom Garnett and his cousin Cressida Montague, who really save the day!

For more information about Ally Sherrick and her new novel, Black Powder, visit www.allysherrick.com or follow her on Twitter @ally_sherrick 

For more information about Chicken House visit www.chickenhousebooks.com and follow on twitter @chickenhsebooks

What Scares Me by Rachel Ward

There couldn't be a better post to herald the end of the Halloween blog tour today. Author Rachel Ward bravely shares what scares her the most.  I wasn't expecting such a poignant, thought provoking post and I feel honoured that Rachel wanted to share it on my blog. 

I'm the scarediest of scaredy-cats. My children delight in making me watch slightly scary films because they know I will squeal and gibber on cue. I squealed my way through Ghostbusters, The Goosebumps Movie and the Jurassic Park films. I know. Lame, right? Curiously, I managed to watch Stranger Things on television without wetting myself - perhaps things are a little safer on the small screen. 

So what am I scared of? Heights, spiders, snakes - all the usual things. Failure, obviously. Every time I start a new book or painting, there’s a frisson of fear that it won’t work out, that I won’t be able to make it work. It’s grounded in the knowledge that not everything does work out. You can’t be good at everything, all the time, unless, I suppose, you stick to a formula that works. You never push yourself, or worry away at the edges of what you’re capable of. But I don’t want to live like that. 

And, of course, I’m scared of death. 

Ten years ago, I found I was pondering mortality every day. I realised it wasn’t entirely healthy to be so consumed with it, so I decided to write about it. A character called Jem popped into my head. Jem could see death dates … and so the Numbers books began. 

The Numbers trilogy deals with love and loss - the vulnerability that the former brings and the inevitability of the latter. The books that followed, The Drowning and Water Born, are a different take on the same thing. Unfinished business carried on after death. They are very contemporary ghost stories - ghosts in a damp flat above a row of shops, because our deepest, darkest fears aren’t somewhere romantic, like a castle or spooky country house, they are everywhere, part of everyday life. 

‘I’m scared.’ 

Over the past twelve months, I’ve said it to my daughter, and she’s said it to me, a few times. Sometimes in the middle of the night, when we’re both wide-eyed, unable to sleep. Sometimes they’ve been the first words of the morning, waking up to a day which seems impossible to face. 

I’ve asked my husband, too, ‘Are you scared?’ 

Unable to speak, almost immobile, a slight nod of his head, a flicker in his eyes, a tiny squeeze of my hand has told me that he is. 

‘It’s all right. Everything’s okay.’ 

I’ve stroked his forehead, rubbed his feet, and hoped that my words would soothe his mind, while my hands soothed his body. 

Everything’s okay. Words saying the exact opposite of the truth. But forgiveable lies. They were shorthand for, ‘Everyone’s doing what they can. You’re cared for. We love you.’ And I said those words too. 

I think I also meant, it’s okay whichever way this goes. Knowing that living was very hard, I didn’t want him to be scared of dying. I wanted to try and help him accept whatever was coming. 

The physical response to terror is a surge of adrenaline - fight or flight. But sometimes you can’t run away, and you can’t fight the thing you’re scared of. You just have to endure. 

I’ve talked a little bit with my husband about the fear we both faced. Although we’ve been through the same events, we have very different experiences of it. He has been utterly stuck in the middle of things, often unable to move or talk. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time just breathing.’ (I might say, 

that breathing, too, was difficult for him a lot of the time.) Are you still brave if you don’t have any choice? If you are just enduring a frightening situation? Yes, I think you are. ‘Just breathing’ was one of the bravest things he’s ever done. 

I actively avoid writing about people or situations from my own life. And yet, in strange ways not always clear to me, as a writer you can’t avoid ‘the self escaping into the open.’* I’m currently writing about murder on a space station. Obviously, I’ve never been on a space station, nor have I experienced violence in real life (thankfully), but the environment in this book is very claustrophobic, the terror is real. In my mind’s eye, the cramped corridors and cabins don’t look all that different to hospital corridors and rooms. 

I’ll be glad to finish this book - it’s taken a very long time to write. And I’ll be glad when hospitals are a now-and-again, visiting-for-a-check-up places again. After fifteen months in hospital, my husband is on the mend and having the physio he needs to get him back home. Then perhaps we’ll watch Ghostbusters together … if he can stand the squeals. 

*‘Creative writing is communication through revelation - it is the self escaping into the open.’ -E.B.White.

The Drowning and Waterborn are both published by Chicken House

Summary

What happens if you've done something terrible? But you can't remember what. And you don't know how to put it right ...When Carl opens his eyes on the banks of a lake, his brother is being zipped into a body bag. What happened in the water? He can't remember And when he glimpses a beautiful girl he thinks he recognizes, she runs away. Suddenly he knows he must find her - because together they must face the truth before it drowns them.

To find out more about Rachel Ward:

Twitter / Website

WHAT I’M AFRAID OF by Natasha Farrant

So we have two posts for the Halloween blog tour today. Second up, is the amazing author, Natasha Farrant, who recently published Lydia,  a reimagining of Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.

I am afraid of small, dark spaces. 

I am afraid of being in the Tube, underground. I hate it most at rush hour, squashed against other people, when I can’t breathe and I can’t see. I’m all right as long as we’re moving, but when we stop - in a tunnel, in the dark, for no reason - when there is no way of getting out - my heart beats in my mouth. My palms sweat. I am one scream away from trying to break down the doors. I would rather run down the tracks in the dark with the rats than be stuck in that train. Once I read a book in which all the commuters in the Tube turned into zombies. Once I saw a TV show in which vampires ravaged a commuter train. Once - several times - truly awful things have happened on the Tube in the rush hour, in real life. I’m not afraid of any of these things. I’m just afraid of the small, dark spaces. 

The small dark spaces underground where bad things happen. The small dark spaces in my head where my mind twists reality and the unimaginable becomes possible. That well of fear that exists in all of us, and which come out in me on a train, grinding to a halt in a tunnel deep under London. 

Choking, blinding fear.

Lydia by Natasha Farrant

Published by Chicken House in 2016

Summary

In the tradition of Longbourn, Mr. Darcy's Diary, and Prom and Prejudice...

Lydia is the youngest of the five Bennet girls. She's stubborn, never listens, and can't seem to keep her mouth shut--not that she would want to anyway. She's bored with her country life and wishes her older sisters would pay her attention . . . for once!

Luckily, the handsome Wickham arrives at Longbourn to sweep her off her feet. Lydia's not going to let him know THAT, of course, especially since he only seems to be interested in friendship. But when they both decide to summer in the fasionable seaside town of Brighton, their paths become entangled again. 

At the seaside, Lydia also finds exciting new ways of life and a pair of friends who offer her a future she never dreamed of. Lydia finally understands what she really wants. But can she get it? 

A fresh, funny, and spirited reimagining of Jane Austen's beloved Pride and Prejudice, The Secret Diary of Lydia Bennet brings the voice of the wildest Bennet sister alive and center stage like never before.

To find out more about Natasha Farrant:

Website / Twitter

Halloween #ReviewMonday with @lockwoodwriter : The Halloweeds by Veronica Cossanteli

It was an ordinary, boring Wednesday afternoon. 

Until, quite suddenly, it wasn’t. 

It’s double Science on Wednesdays. Miss Drupe showed us a film about Food Chains. It wasn’t very cheerful. This green stuff called algae got eaten by this invisible stuff called plankton. The plankton got eaten by a fish, the fish got eaten by a seal and then the seal got eaten by a shark. 

The seal had whiskers and big, chocolate-y eyes. When the shark grabbed it, everyone went Oooh! and Awwww! and Maisie Milligan started to cry. Nobody bothered about the fish much, or the poor plankton.As for the algae - well, that’s how it works, isn’t it? 

Plants get eaten all the time, and never get a chance to eat anybody back. 

Or that’s what I thought.

****

Cover by Steve Wells Design, illustrations by Mark Beech

217 pages in paperback

Published by Chicken House 6th October 2016

Summary and extract from Publisher’s Website

Dan promised he’d look after his siblings, but he hadn’t bargained on his scientist parents dying on a jungle research trip. 

Orphaned Dan’s new home is a crumbling castle. Here, horrible Aunt Grusilla reigns supreme, tending to her mysterious graveyard garden. But why are Aunt Grusilla and her curious servants each missing a finger - and what are the hungry ‘cabbages’ in the greenhouse? As Dan struggles to solve the mystery, he encounters a chilling question: what’s the price of everlasting life? 

*** 

If your pre-Halloween wishes are for something funny, scary and grotesque - then this is the book for you! There’s something of the anarchic darkness of the best Roald Dahl, together with a hint of Little Shop of Horrors - and lots of adventure amongst the awfully strange goings-on. 

You can see from the delightfully monstrous cover, by Steve Wells Design and Mark Beech, this isn’t going to be a cosy and cute little tale with fluffy kittens. It’s as weird, daft and as fun as The Extincts - but even more suitable for this spooky time of year. I loved the apparently grubby pages, and you’ll find the writing is just as full of quirky details that are simply so right. 

It does have its deliciously creepy moments - so it might not suit those easily frightened - but then they wouldn’t pick up a book with a cover like that, would they? Despite the chills and the outlandishness, there’s actually a lot of courage and friendship within this strange mystery tale - and a few serious questions to ponder. 

Perfect for any confident reader who likes a good grin along with their helping of gruesome.

---

K. M. Lockwood lives by the sea in Sussex - see the pics on Instagram. She fills jars with sea-glass, writes on a very old desk and reads way past her bedtime. Her tiny bed-and-breakfast is stuffed full of books - and even the breakfasts are named after writers. You're always welcome to chat stories with @lockwoodwriter on Twitter.

Rosemary for remembrance: how Rose in the Blitz began….by Rebecca Stevens.

On the blog today, I'm pleased to welcome Chicken House author, Rebecca Stevens. Rebecca has just had her second book published, Rose in the Blitz. Rebecca has written a rather poignant and personal post about her mother and how she inspired her to write her latest book. 

My mother Rosemary died two years ago, in the spring of 2014, the year Valentine Joe, my first children's book, was published. She was eighty-six, a good age, as people say. Too good really, since the last few years of her life were spent lurching from crisis to crisis as her health and that of my father went downhill. It's a story that will be familiar to many people with elderly parents. First, the move from Somerset, so she and Dad could be nearer to me in Brighton. Then, the falls, Dad's broken hip, the hospital sending him home, unable to walk, into the care of a physically frail and already slightly bonkers eighty-two-year-old woman.  Next, the move to what's called 'assisted living'. A flat with lunch provided and staff on call twenty four hours a day.  But then, another late night fall from Dad, blood on the carpet, Mum found wandering the corridors in her nighty, not knowing where she was, having forgotten about the alarm cord in their flat that she'd never learned to use.  

Mum on her wedding day after the war was over

So, another move. To a lovely place, my sister and I thought, full of flowers and books, more like a cosy country house hotel than a residential home for old people. That didn’t last long. Mum didn’t understand why they were there. She kept asking when they were going home and being found beetling along the main road on her way to buy cheese for supper. When she started throwing oranges at the staff we had to face the truth: Mum had dementia and she needed specialist care. 

Both our parents had lived through the war and it remained an important part of their lives. Dad was a pilot, flying bombers at the age of nineteen, although like many men he rarely talked about his wartime experiences. But Mum did. She loved to tell us about keeping chickens in the garden and the shortage of sweets and being woken up in the middle of the night by a bang and her mum saying, 'Go back to sleep, dear, it's only a bomb'; about being evacuated to a family with a big house in Yorkshire where there were ponies and servants and you had to say prayers before breakfast; about soldiers everywhere (she always thought how boring life would be without soldiers!)  and girls being able to wear trousers and then, on VE day, going up to London with her mum and dancing in Trafalgar Square then spending the night on a bench in St James's Park because they'd missed the last train back to Worthing. 

 All Mum's memories became part of my own memory and my life. They still are. So, when my sister and I finally faced the reality of her dementia, I wanted to make sure they would never be forgotten.  But I wasn't sure how to do it. 

Mum and Dad on their wedding day after the war was over

And then something else happened. Mum started to see things that weren't there.  It's not uncommon with dementia, of course, and is often quite upsetting. It wasn't with Mum though. She used to see two little boys out of the corner of her eye who would follow her round and appear at inconvenient moments when she was in the Co-op or having her eyes tested. I was intrigued by these boys and started to wonder what it would be like if I could see them too. If I could see what Mum was seeing, I thought, then maybe I could really be part in her memories and share the things that had been most important to her throughout her life, before they were lost forever.   

I couldn’t do it myself, of course. So I decided to do it in my second book for children, Rose in the Blitz, when I sent my heroine down an escalator after her Great-Aunt Rosemary, into the wartime London of her memory. I wanted to try and understand the part that memory plays in our lives and what happens to our sense of self when our past merges with our present and our future stops being an issue. 

And I wanted something good to come out of something awful.

Because it is awful, mostly. When Mum became ill, I read everything I could about the condition and found a few things that worked. They're common sense, really, ordinary politeness taken to the nth degree. I was always taught that it's rude to contradict, so when your relative starts talking nonsense, telling you  the manager of the home is plotting against her or her once-cherished husband is in touch with the devil, you don't put her right. You go along with it, in a kind of vague, half-hearted way and then try and change the subject. You buy her chocolate and ice creams, you try and make her laugh. You sing.

And then, when it's all over, you can always write a children's book about it….. 

 Rose in the Blitz by Rebecca Stevens out now in paperback (£6.99, Chicken House)

Summary

It's the night before Rose's mum re-marries. Rose can't sleep for worrying and nor can her muddled Great-Aunt Cosy, her namesake. Rose sees the old lady leaving the house and runs after her to the London underground. Their empty train stops in 1940, in a war-torn London broken by the Blitz. Here, Rose witnesses great romance and impending sacrifice. Tragedy will surely follow - unless she can change what happens next ...

To find out more about Rebecca Stevens:

Twitter / Website 

Also available:

#ReviewMonday with KM Lockwood: Black Powder by Ally Sherrick

Friday 25 October 1605

The hangman stood hunched at the top of the wooden scaffold like a hungry black crow. A mob of screaming gulls wheeled above him, but his eyes stayed fixed on the noose as it swayed to and fro in the cold sea breeze.

Tom’s heart jolted. He didn’t want to watch a man die, but if he ran away now, everyone would know he was a Catholic for sure. He gripped the handle of the pail and steeled himself.

A murmur rippled through the crowd. He craned his neck but his view was blocked by a mass of sweaty bodies.

‘’Ere. Climb on this, lad.’ A pock-faced man next to him seized the pail and turned it upside down. Before Tom could stop him, he’d grabbed him round the middle and heaved him up on to it.

Published by Chicken House in August 2016

300 pages in paperback (without bonus materials) 

Also available as an e-book

Cover by Steve Wells Designs, illustrations by Alexis Snell

Summary  from Chicken House website

England, 1605.

12-year-old Tom must save his father from hanging. He falls in with a mysterious stranger - the Falcon - who promises to help in exchange for his service. But on the long journey to London, Tom discovers the Falcon's true mission - and a plot to blow up Parliament with barrels of black powder.

Tom faces a terrible decision: secure his father's release, or stop the assassination of the king ...

***

There are those in the children’s book world who say historical books are a hard sell. They would think again if they read this exciting adventure!

Have a good look at the cover and I think you’ll get the idea. (The paperback has gold lettering for the title by the way.) There’s red for excitement and danger, black for secrets and people kept in the dark, and sulphurous yellow for potions and cowardice. All those elements and more appear - together with courage, loyalty and friendship. There’s even a glint of humour with Jago (no spoilers!)

Author Ally Sherrick has really done her homework - and there are bonus pages for those who get the time-travelling bug - but all that research doesn’t slow the essential story down. Most of us know what happened in the Gunpowder Plot - but we don’t know how Tom’s story will end. So we just have to read on.

This story matters for at least three reasons: 

We too live in a time where someone’s religion can make other people frightened or cruel. 

It’s important to know the conflict behind Bonfire Night - and why it’s celebrated. 

Stories about difficult choices are never old-fashioned if you care about the characters as much as Tom Garnett. 

Black Powder not a difficult read in terms of literacy, but in keeping with the Jacobean period, some parts are violent and upsetting. The Hangman’s Noose on the back gives you a clue. It wouldn’t be truthful - nor anywhere near so exciting - if it were all quothing, ruffs and farthingales.

Black Powder would make an excellent project focus for KS2 History “Pupils should be taught about events beyond living memory that are significant nationally or globally [for example, … events commemorated through festivals or anniversaries]” because it’s so exciting. I could also see it as a TV mini-series, with episodes ending on cliff-hanger after cliff-hanger.

In short, you want plotting, danger and excitement all in the strange and fascinating 17th century? Then Black Powder is the book for you. Check out the author’s video here.

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K. M. Lockwood lives by the sea in Sussex - see the pics on Instagram. She fills jars with sea-glass, writes on a very old desk and reads way past her bedtime. Her tiny bed-and-breakfast is stuffed full of books - and even the breakfasts are named after writers. You're always welcome to chat stories with @lockwoodwriter on Twitter.

#ReviewMonday with KM Lockwood - Cogheart written by Peter Bunzl

Extract from Usborne Children’s Books

Prologue

Malkin pressed his forepaws against the flight-deck window and peered out. The silver airship was still following; gaining on them. The purr of its propellers and the whoosh of its knife-sharp hull cutting through the air sent a shiver of terror through his clockwork innards.

The fox tore his eyes away and stared at his master. John’s ship, Dragonfly, was fast but she had nothing in the way of firepower. The silver airship, by contrast, bristled with weapons. Sharp metal spikes stuck out from her hull, making her look like some sort of militarized porcupine.

Just then, Dragonfly’s rudder shifted, and she pitched as John twisted the wheel into a one-eighty turn to swoop back past her pursuers.

The silver airship shrunk away, but within seconds she’d swung around to follow. She began closing in once more; her propellers chopping through the clouds, throwing dark shadows across their stern. When the two airships broke into a patch of blue, she fired.

A harpoon slashed across the sky and thudded into Dragonfly’s hull, the point piercing her port side.

Cover and inside illustrations by Kath Millichope and Becca Stadtlander 

(some images via Thinkstock)

384 pages in paperback

To be published 1st September 2016 by Usborne Books

Introduction from Cogheart.com

MEET THE ADVENTURERS

Introducing… Lily, Robert and Malkin

When thirteen-year-old Lily’s inventor father disappears after a routine Zeppelin flight, Lily’s determined to find out the truth behind his disappearance. But she’s not the only one searching for him; there are silver eyed men in the shadows who will stop at nothing to find him.

With Robert, the local clockmaker’s son, and a cantankerous clockwork fox called Malkin, Lily travels to London, where they discover that she holds the key to the mystery…

A mystery closer to Lily’s heart than she could have ever imagined.

***

So you are, or you know, a confident young reader. You’re looking for adventure, thrills and lots of peril in the stories - but you want the main characters to be brave and resourceful enough to meet the challenges. Perhaps you have read or watched some of Jules Verne’s stories. Perhaps you like steam-driven machinery and Victorian engineering. Perhaps you have older friends who love Gail Carriger’s books - and you’d like something like that, without the soppiness romance.

Well, Cogheart is just right for you. It’s chock full of intriguing characters, both human and mechanical. There’s a wind-up fox, grumpy and loyal; an adventurous orphaned girl and a kind, brave boy. They are pitted against murderous villains, treachery and deceit - all in a riot of well-imagined steampunk settings.

If you like desperate peril, can cope with genuine sadness and loss, and don’t mind a few shocks along the way, this will suit admirably. The point of view shifts between the three main characters, and it is quite long - so it’s not suited to a beginner. But the pace rattles along through 26 mostly short and snappy chapters.

I don’t imagine it’s the last we will read about Lily, Robert and Malkin: Usborne certainly feel this debut could start off a classic series. (I do hope the rather wonderful Mrs Rust, Miss Tock, Captain Springer and Mr Wingnut make an appearance in Book 2 due 2017.) At any rate, this first tale would make a glorious animation - check out the moving cover on the Cogheart mini-site to see what I mean. 

Fantastical, immersive - and yet with real heart.

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K. M. Lockwood lives by the sea in Sussex - see the pics on Instagram. She fills jars with sea-glass, writes on a very old desk and reads way past her bedtime. Her tiny bed-and-breakfast is stuffed full of books - and even the breakfasts are named after writers. You're always welcome to chat stories with @lockwoodwriter on Twitter.