Shark Tale

Two blog entries on one day – I’m on fire!

I was Googling my own name (‘How vain!’, I hear you cry. Well, I wanted to see if this blog was being picked up yet*. Honest.) and came across some alarming results. Seems the Steve Altons of the world are not faring well. One chap of the same name has been diagnosed with a pituitary gland tumor (sic) and another has recently had a tumour the size and shape of ‘two conjoined golf balls’ removed from his brain.

I’m getting nervous. Bad things come in threes?

But the point I wanted to make (there is a point, just be patient) is that there are a lot of Google results coming up that refer to giant sharks. That’s because people are forever getting me mixed up with Steve Alten, author of ‘Meg’, a tale of a giant prehistoric fishy on the rampage.

So if you came to this page, or any of my others, hoping for shark-related fun, please check your spelling. Poor chap – perhaps he should change his name. He must get mountains of fan-mail intended for me…

Steve (Alton. With an 'o'. Nothing to do with sharks. Oh, no. Not me.)

* No, it isn’t.

The white heat of technology

I’ve also set up a MySpace page. I’m not so sure about the value of this – MySpace is supposed to be the ‘next big thing’ after blogs (I haven’t even caught up with blogs yet!) but I’m yet to be convinced. Most of the pages I’ve looked at so far seem to say very little (‘I’m Lisa, I’m mad, me! Here’s a list of all my ‘friends’ – they’re all mad too!) and I’m not sure mine is going to be much better.

Only time will tell…

Anyway, it’s here if you want to have a look.

All I need to do now is work out what a Podcast is…

The Grapes of Wath

Back from a frantic day around Rotherham – 4 school visits in one day, plus a 5-hour drive home! The sessions went well, mostly. One of them I won’t speak about, because I don’t want to use this blog to openly criticise people. But for any teachers reading this – getting an author into your school does not mean a free lesson for you! We are not supply teachers (or at least most of us aren’t), we are a resource to be used to enrich the work you are doing in class. You don’t ‘get an author in’ like you would a plumber – ‘the loo’s over there, give me a shout when you’ve finished.’ Or at least in my view you shouldn’t. No doubt there are plenty of authors who are so used to school visits that they can handle a class of 30 uninformed and totally unresponsive kids and keep them engaged for an hour. I’m not one of them.

Rant over.

Wath Comp was fantastic – the perfect example of a teacher who had prepared for an author visit and was determined to get the most out of it for herself and 3 classes of English students. A dream come true for me after my experience earlier in the day. A big ‘Hello’ to anyone from Wath who is looking in.

It was great – as always – to call in at Newman School. It’s always so welcoming, it’s starting to feel like home. And the drama group at Oakwood were fantastic (Hi, everyone!). I haven’t laughed so much in ages, and I’ve got some cracking bits of dialogue out of the improvisations (I’m shown up!).

All in all, a brilliant (but very long) day. A big thank you to everyone involved – Jack (as ever) and the Newman Crew, the library staff behind the Rotherham Reading Week, everyone at Wath and all the kids who took part and made it a fun day.

I’m going to have a little lie down now…

Malifex Country

Well, no sooner do I start this blog than I go off on holiday and abandon it! I thought it might be difficult to keep this up…

Anyway, I’m back now from 4 days camping on the Isle of Purbeck, which readers of ‘The Malifex’ will know isn’t an island at all, but a very special bit of Dorset between Corfe Castle and Swanage.

It was something of a pilgrimage for me – it’s the first time I’ve been there for many years, well before I wrote ‘The Malifex’, and I wanted to visit (or re-visit) some of the places I had written about. And it was a strange experience. Many of the locations looked just how I remembered them, but for some of them my memories had faded and it was like seeing them again for the first time. I even went to a few locations that I had written about but never actually visited before – they were just names on a map.

All in all it was a great experience and made me want to spend more time in Dorset. I didn’t get everywhere I wanted to go (the rest of the family had other ideas – Monkey World, the SeaLife Centre, etc) so I’ve got an excuse to go back again soon!

I took plenty of photos with the plan of up-dating my website. I’m going to have separate pages for Dorset, as featured in ‘The Malifex’, and Hastings for ‘The Firehills’. Check the site in the next month or so to see if I’ve got around to it!

I’m off up to Yorkshire this weekend to do a series of school visits around Rotherham, including my old school, Aston Comp, which will be spooky to say the least.

I’ll let you know how I got on next week.

Steve

That takes guts...

I spent an interesting evening working out how big your small intestine would be if you ironed it out flat. Turns out the surface area is one and a half times the size of a tennis court!

Now why, you may be asking, does a grown man spend his evening doing this? Well, it's for a series of pop-up books I'm working on with my friend Sally. Book 1 in the 'Gorgeously Gross Guides' series is about the digestive system, hence my calculation.

They're going to be great fun - artwork by the wonderful Nick Sharratt http://www.walkerbooks.co.uk/Nick-Sharratt and pop-ups by a very talented 'paper engineer' called Keith. They've already sold to more than a dozen countries, so they're going to be big!

I'll post some images on my website as soon as I can.

I'm here...

Well, that seemed to work!

So - welcome to my blog. I've always avoided these, because I thought they were only written by depressed students and the like, but apparently they are the 'next big thing', so I've decided to have a go.

Mainly, it's because I'm rubbish at updating my main webpage (plug, plug) and I thought this might be easier and quicker, thus inspiring me to write more often.

We shall see...

Testing

Well, this is my first attempt at posting to my new blog - hope it works!