Poetry Friday: Roses Are Blue

April 17, 2015 by Sally

It’s Poetry Friday, which is always good news, but this week I have some additional good news to share, because my verse novel Roses are Blue was named a Notable Book by the Children’s Book Council of Australia book of the year judges. Hooray!

Roses are Blue

To celebrate the notable listing and Poetry Friday, in the one go, I thought I would share a short extract from the book. It is a little moment where my character, Amber, who is having a really hard time, finds solace in doing something she loves.

Have a wonderful Poetry Friday. I know I will. For the rest of the fun, head over to Life on the Deckle Edge where Robyn is hosting the round up.

Free Books??

April 2, 2015 by Sally

Want to read a book for free? Don’t we all! Twice in the past week I was reminded of this by young fans.

First, a young reader emailed me asking if I knew any websites where she could read 1915 for free.

A few days later, another young reader told me she had read Roses are Blue online. This lead me to Google and sure enough I found a site where people could read Roses are Blue for free. The gorgeous young girl who told me about it had no idea that the online version was pirated – and I’m really glad that she told me, and also that this gave me an opportunity to chat with her about why such sites are problematic.

It’s wonderful that kids want to read my books, and I get that often readers can’t afford to buy the books they are interested in reading. But I do wonder if readers, young and not-so-young realise that sites that offer free scans of books (whether in pdf or ebook formats) are illegal, and that this is a form of piracy.

The pirates who share books online think that they are doing the world a favour. After all, authors and publishers are rich, and books are too expensive, so why not just put the books online for free? And the readers who download them, as I’ve said, may not know that it is stealing, and, if they do, they may also feel that it’s okay because authors are rich.

So, here in simple terms is why you shouldn’t read books through pirate sites (or, for that matter, upload books to those sites):

As a reader, you miss out on quality. Often the scans are not high quality, so illustrations are dull, text is fuzzy and overall, production is missing. A scanned copy is not the same as a legitimate ebook (ie one produced by the publisher, and that you pay for).
Authors are, almost without exception, not rich. When you do buy a copy of a book through legitimate channels, the author gets only a dollar or two per book sold. That’s an awful lot of books that would need to be sold every year just to allow the author to pay rent, buy food and so on. When you deprive the author of that dollar, s/he gets poorer.
When authors and publishers earn money from the books you buy, this enables them to go on writing and publishing more good books. So, if nobody buys books, then this threatens the supply of more well written books with high production quality.
Books are already available to you for free. At the library. Libraries are free to use, and if they don’t have the book you want, will usually get it in for you. And while you are there borrowing the book you want, you have the chance to find out about a whole lot of other books.
I’ve said it already but I’m going to say it again – authors are not rich. We are as generous as we can be with our time and our talents, but we do also have families to feed and mortgages to pay. When you steal our book it hurts. When you borrow it from a library, our heart sings because we still get income from the library purchasing the copy, and from a compensation scheme called Lending Rights.
Lastly, books may seem expensive, but if you compare the cost of a book with the cost of a trip to the movies, or a new tshirt, or a takeaway meal, and consider the value of something which can last so much longer than any of these, then a book is a bargain.

I’m not attacking my two young readers. Neither realised that what they were doing was wrong, and I hope my responses to them educated them but didn’t make them feel ashamed. It’s a shame that this seems to be a growing issue, and one that so many people don’t understand. If you, or someone you know, uses pirate sites to steal books – please reconsider.

Just Quickly

January 20, 2015 by Sally

Some time ago I was asked to answer ten terrifying questions for the Booktopia Blog. I only just realised that the post was published back in December. You can see what the questions were that were so terrifying – and how I answered them here.

Excitement Plus

January 7, 2015 by Sally

Happy dancing here at the news that Roses are Blue has been chosen as outstanding for the 2015 Collection of Books for Young People with Disabilities by IBBY – the International Board on Books for Young People. It’s wonderful to know that this amazing group thinks Amber’s story worthy of this honour.

Smiling today – and every day.

Mandy: The Book I Wished I’d Written

October 29, 2014 by Sally

I’ve been blogging lately about poems which have impacted on me, and there are more of these to come, but today I want to talk about a book which did the same. Of course there are many many books which have stayed with me long after I read them. Often I don’t remember all the details of such a book – just the way it left me feeling, especially if I read it a long time ago.

I remember a lot about Mandy which I first read when I was about seven years old. The book wasn’t mine. It belonged to one of my sisters, and I don’t know if it was recommended to me or if I just picked it from the shelf. I’m pretty sure the first thing which attracted me was the title. Mandy was, along with Wendy and Melissa, one of my favourite names. These were names I considered pretty, and secretly longed to be called. Now that I’m older, I can’t see what I didn’t like about my own name, but back then, I longed for a prettier name.

My copy of Mandy, a treasured possession.

Anyway, that’s by the by. I read Mandy, and I loved it. It was a book that I wanted to hug. It had a character I wanted to hug. It had sad bits – Mandy was an orphan, stuck in an orphanage, and seemingly without hope of being adopted. It also had happy bits – most especially a happy ending. And it had a secret place: Mandy discovered an abandoned cottage in the woods next door to the orphanage and decided it would be hers.

So I loved this book, and secretly wished the book was mine and, more importantly, that I had written it. I wanted so much to have created that world, that character, that happy ending. So, I got myself an old exercise book and I rewrote that story, in a very thinly described take-off. My version was called Tereasa (my main character as named after my best friend – though I misspelt Teresa). Of course, I was 7 and my version was not as good as the original, but I was very proud of that book, which was my first ever novel. So proud that I wrapped it up and gave it to my mum for Christmas, who was equally as proud that her little girl had written a book, and so kept that book for thirty years, before very kindly giving it back to me after I became a published author, so that I could show it off.

Tereasa, another treasured possession: the first novel I ever wrote.

One of the things about books you have loved is that sometimes, when you reread them, they don’t live up to your memories. However, I’m pleased to say that a few years ago I tracked down a copy of Mandy on eBay, and finally owned my own copy. A funny thing happened when it arrived in the mail, though: I was scared to read it, in case I was disappointed and it no longer had that magic. It took me a couple of years before I finally took it from the bookshelf and reread it. And the magic was still there. I still wanted to hug both Mandy the character and Mandy the book.

Incidentally, when I first loved Mandy I didn’t realise that the Julie Edwards who wrote it was also Julie Andrews who I adored in movies such as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. What a clever lady to have managed both a phenomenally successful acting career and to create beautiful children’s books.

I still kind of wish that I’d written Mandy but now what I hope and wish more is that one or more of my books might be making other kids feel the same way I did when I read that one. I hope there’s a reader somewhere hugging one of my books, or wanting to hug my characters, or a writer somewhere wishing that they had written Pearl Verses the World or Roses are Blue, and starting on the path to one day being a published author.

Thank you Mandy, and Julie Edwards, for inspiring me then and now.

Roses!

October 29, 2014 by Sally

Rumsey Rose Garden

I’m on a book tour in Sydney at the moment, having a wonderful time promoting Roses are Blue, and meeting young readers, and teachers, librarians and booksellers. This afternoon I had a few hours free, and went for a walk around Parramatta, where I’m staying.

What could be more perfect in the midst of a book tour to promote a book with Roses in the title, than to stumble upon a garden filled with beautiful beautiful roses like the one above, and like these

Rumsey Rose Garden
and these