The International Writers Magazine MAY 2013

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Welcome to MAY Edition of Hackwriters Welcome to Hackwriters and hope you'll stay to look around. Read our current edition and look at the amazing archives. 14 years on-line and nearly 7000 articles - reviews- stories - destinations.

Editorial: May 23rd: Yesterday we were in Leeds for the Book Awards. 200 kids and all of them readers and judges of best new fiction in 2013. A nice event in an imposing Civic Hall.

May 10 2013: Went to Lincoln Inspired (Lincolnshire). Heard there was a Bear Hunt going on. (Not real bears I might add in case you think we're going stalking with shotguns). Childrens Writers Workshops and more. Briefly met Emily Thomas of Hot Key Publishing and ended up with a SCWBI dinner at Browns Pie Shop. (In between had a mini heart attack climbing Steep Hill). Need a ski lift Lincoln, sort it out.

The other week I went up to the Wirral (North West England just above Wales) for the first time to speak to students at the ‘Paperback of the Year’ hustings in Bebington.  Met Matt Dickinson, Ali Lewis and John Mayhew (who is very amusing) fellow writers up for the award.  It was a nice surprise to go to a part of England I had never been to and discover just how pretty and prosperous it was.  Port Sunlight was just around the corner, beavering away making Dove soap and Tresémme shampoo and I seem to recall driving past the Vauxhall Astra factory at some point.  Residents assure me it had the highest horse to person ratio in the UK and I can believe it.  Amid all the gloom we endlessly read about austerity Britain, it is pleasant to find somewhere so quaint yet thriving – yep I seem to recall a Waitrose too. A big thanks to Mrs Anya Carr for organising the authors,.
           
Next stop Leeds for the Leeds Book Awards on the 23rd and beyond that Shoreham on Sea for the Amazing Book awards in July.  It would be nice to win at least one, but to be honest it is just great to be shortlisted.  None of this would happen without the effort of librarians who take their jobs very seriously at schools, making students aware of what is out there and encouraging them to experiment. It is worrying to think that schools are cutting back on libraries and the investment in them.

The rational I suppose is that every kid has access to computers, smart phones, iPads etc and they don’t read anymore.  It just isn’t true though.  Kids are reading and engaging and I know one boy came up to me (Leon) and said he didn’t used to read at all but suddenly discovered books and now can’t get enough of them.  Reading fiction stimulates a mind in a different way to gaming or TV.  To be honest I can barely remember anything in detail I ever watched on TV, but books somehow imprint themselves on your mind more effectively. Doesn’t matter what you read so much as how you read I think.  Every kid is different.  Some seek thrills or scares, other seek answers or emotional engagement or knowledge. Seeing them respond to Ali Lewis and her story of life in the outback on a cattle farm the size of Somerset was interesting to say the least. And witnessing the queues for Mr Mayhew's Demonology books makes one realise where the real money is! Matt Dickinson impressed us with images of climbing Everest and it's kind of hard to beat that. Kids will embrace all kinds of books - they are on a voyage of discovery. The Librarians in schools in particular are the captains of this ship and can lead them all to unexpected shores.

I used to haunt the school library when I was a kid.  Might have started off with Captain W E Johns of course and read a few ‘Five Go Mad in Dorset ’ stories but I quickly gravitated to Philip K Dick and all those wonderful Gollanz yellow jacket sci-fi novels.  (Covers didn’t matter then).  For me it was the future that mattered, which is kind of ironic considering I didn’t think I’d ever have one.  I was at school in St Hugh’s in Woodhall Spa, where one field over from the sports field lay a rocket range and just a few miles away lay RAF Coningsby where they kept (at that time) Vulcan bombers ready to be armed with atomic bombs.  Frequently lessons would stop as they flew low over the school and drowned out anything the teachers were saying. 

I was convinced the world would end by the time I was 17 in some great nuclear explosion.  Philip K Dick kept me well primed for such a thing (I didn’t know he was a paranoid delusional at that time) and consequently I never really took education too seriously.  Career?  Not going to need one.  Exams?  Who cares? I suspect I learned a little French, definitely no Latin, certainly no Maths.  My father would despair reading my school reports. I used to fight for bottom in Math and anything science related and he branded me a failure.  Funny he never noticed I came top in English and History and Geography.  For him Math was all.  The reports wouldn’t count the ‘soft’ subjects either as important. I wonder how many other kids suffered the same fate.

I don’t know exactly when I decided the world wasn’t going to end in a big bang.  There must have been some kind of intervention. I reckon it was the librarian by way of my English teacher Reverend Williams. The school librarian made sure there was plenty of fiction in there to read and she'd put aside books she thought I might like. Slaughterhouse Five, The Outsiders, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Man in the High Castle, Catch 22. All made a great impression on a young mind. Still do.

By fifteen I had discovered Albert Camus and discovered nihilsm - perfect match for a boy waiting to die with rats and plagues, even better. I discovered more foreign writers such as Gunter Grass, who started me off in a new direction.  Camus was bleak but he showed the importance of character in a story.  Then I found a Belgian writing exciting thrillers set in French-Africa, and then Ray Bradbury and fell in love with his words, and of course Kurt Vonnegut was waiting at the other end of the row of books.
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
— Kurt Vonnegut

Now I didn’t want the world to end at all.  I wanted to travel and experience new places and well become a writer.  I had a career sitting in my hands all this time and never knew. 

And the great thing of it was, you could earn money with words any time you wanted. Copywriter in advertising, journalism, screenwriting or radio drama, teacher, I did them all.  What I wanted to know was – how come no one ever mentioned this at school.  They probably still don’t.

I kind of hope libraries still exist in schools in ten years time.  Kids need guidance.  I don’t know about you, but if I pop into a bookshop I find it overwhelming.  Having recommendations from booksellers or librarians can be a real help.  True we can get the same advice from book bloggers (Thanks for your support Evie Seo) and I guess that is the trend, but I’m old fashioned and I like to have a real time conversation with someone in person who has read something and feels passionate enough about it to recommend it. 

So here’s to Librarians. Long may they exist. Support your local library.

© Sam Hawksmoor  May 2013
Author of The Repossession (shortlisted for the Leeds Book Awards), The Hunting and Repercussions of Tomas D

If you're looking for an exciting YA book set in WW2 - download 'The Repercussions of Tomas D'.
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The Repercussions of Tomas D
'One Small Lie - Can Change History Forever'

Sam Hawksmoor is shortlisted for the Leeds Books Awards, and the Amazing Book Award, and longlisted for 'Paperback of the Year' Wirral Award 2013

If you write for us spread the word, it you follow us, tweet the stuff you like. If you want to contribute, check out the submissions page

The Repossession by Sam Hawksmoor. View the Trailer here - a fast paced edgy romantic thriller 'The Repossession... will blow your mind and keep you guessing until the very end'. A Dream of Books (SJH) 'Smart, dark and graceful, this story is sure to send chills down your spine...one of the best, and most fascinating, debut novels I've ever read'. Evie-bookish.blogspot Out Now - The Hunting - the thrilling sequel - order yours from Amazon or Waterstones See Sam's previous guest editorial here about THE HUNTING: Hawksmoor

'The Repossession is an absolutely wonderful sci-fi mystery... that will never let you go.’
http://thoughtsandroses.blogspot.co.uk -

Sam North- joint editor of Hackwriters is the author of Diamonds – The Rush of 72 (Print & ebook)) The Great Californian Diamond Rush of 1872 - a grand American West true life story that made many rich and ruined the lives of almost everyone it touched. ipad (iTunes version) *e-book now only £1.99

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