But if I was arguing in 'Trust me, I'm telling stories' for being allowed to play fast and loose with historical (or, indeed, any other) facts, I do see that there's not a lot of point in fiction that doesn't grapple with the realities of human existence in some way. It doesn't need Bruno Bettelheim to tell us that even fairy stories say important things to us: that enchantment has its uses. A fairy story may also be - pace Freud - a growing-up myth; many an opera - pace Jung - is an integration of animus and anima; and a well-crafted modern comedy makes us laugh at our uneasily comfortable modern lives which we never thought to laugh about. And that's not to exclude the science fiction and fantasy branches of the fiction tree either: it's simply that they play by different set of rules about what's defined as 'believable' - dragons, for instance.

So even though the definition of a novelist's trade could be that We Make Things Up, any novel needs a bedrock of human existence - human truth, if not historical or geographical fact - because without it fiction is pointless.

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Ah, the bliss of Bank Holiday Monday - no work, hurrah!!! And even more shocking - a nice, non-rainy day to enjoy it in. Anyway, Lord H and I have taken advantage of the weather and spent most of the day at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum in Sussex, sampling the delights of the Sussex Food and Farming Fair. And very delightful it was too. There's really nothing like pork-in-a-roll for lunch, complete with stuffing and apple sauce. Wonderful. We also came home laden with purchases, including apple juice, beer, a rabbit pie for dinner, hand-made cards (I'm a real sucker for hand-made cards), ginger beer and home-made jam. I can never resist jam, and the odder the better ...

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As editor of the Short Review, one of my tasks is to assign each collection that we review to one or more categories on the Find Something to Read by Category page. I decided from the outset that books could appear under more than one category heading, because it didn't seem to make sense to confine them to only one: Horror, say, or Mystery. There are funny gritty stories, quirky horror, magical realist crime stories, anthologies that contain a whole wealth of different types of writing.

Recently this has led me to think about "genre" fiction: what is it and why do we need this distinction? I am new to science fiction - having been a fan of Star Trek as a kid - but reading two books for review, the Logorrhea anthology and Kelley Eskridge's Dangerous Space, have opened my eyes to what the genre is and what it isn't. It isn't necessarily aliens, starships and space wars. It is often highly imaginative, magical and what some would call "literary fiction" (another genre... more on this in a later blog post.)

On this topic, I was delighted to read this in today's Guardian Books Blog:

OK, I admit it, sci-fi is boring. After endless Star Trek re-runs, innumerable badly scripted Hollywood movies and a thousand video games with pixel-deep narrative, the once wondrous ideas of sci-fi have become yawn-inducing. Fortunately for me, beyond the world of tedious mass media sci-fi, lies the exciting world of literary science fiction or "SF" constantly producing new ideas to satisfy my hunger for wonder. Now a radical sect of SF writers and critics claim that SF needs to abandon all those wondrous ideas, and concentrate instead on the everyday and the mundane. All hail the Mundane Revolution!

.....

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Since my arrival in Bavaria, the action has been non-stop. It usually is with all the sightseeing we like to get in. On my first day there, all of my cousins and friends came to greet me and my family. Upon seeing me my cousin Matthias (whom I appropriately made a leprechaun named “Maddy” in “Laura and the Leprechauns”), he hugged me and said, “On Tuesday you will come with me to school and talk to my class about America, English and writing.” Since he hadn’t posed this as a question, I was a little nervous to say the least. I hadn’t been prepared to be in front of a classroom giving a speech about anything, and I had never done it before. Not to mention my German is elementary at best. He assured me that I would be able to speak in English since it was for his English class and that they would have questions prepared for me. That put me more at ease. But Laura, upon hearing this, decided that she would get permission from her teacher for me to visit her classroom as well. The teacher not only agreed, she decided to combine two classes of 6-7 year olds to form a single group of 60+ kids that I would somehow entertain. That made me even more nervous because they spoke very little English. So at 11am Laura’s mom picked me up and drove me to Grund–und Hauptschule (their school) in Gaimersheim, Germany where I would meet Matthias and await my instructions. The day actually turned out to be fabulous and a lot of fun! It went more smoothly than I could have imagined with Matthias playing interpreter. The kids had great questions for me and were genuinely interested to learn about life in the United States. For the younger kids, I read aloud from “Laura and the Leprechauns” and their teacher then translated what I was reading from the German version of the book. I left a few copies of the German version for them, and they are taking turns taking it home to read. It’s a great feeling to know that I could contribute to their school studies. All in all the day was a success. I never thought my first public appearance would be in Germany but life is always full of surprises.

All my best,

Amber

www.chrysalispress.com

Lord H and I put in an appearance at Shackleford Church today - not many of us there but some rousing traditional hymns, which I always love. There's something about singing which raises the spirits indeed. In the best possible way of course. It does make me smile though that the man with the wine cup holds onto his responsibilities with grim-faced determination - so you always have to grapple with him in order to get a taste of wine at all. I suspect that the Good Lord Himself would prefer one to have a rather larger swig of the goodies. After all, that's His job. Ah well. Other church amusements: the preacher got her robe caught on the pulpit steps so we nearly didn't get a sermon at all. Which would have been a shame as it was bloody good. And quoted poetry, which naturally I approve of. And in our post-service vicarly chat, the vicar hoped that our DIY phase wouldn't cause the usual stresses and strains between husband and wife. On the contrary, I told him, I'm extremely supportive of Lord H's DIY skills, as I'm actually very sweet even though I do look like a kick-ass serial killer. The vicar found this all very amusing - evidently not realising I meant it ...

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THE SIX-WORD BIOGRAPHY

1
Lazy, creative, pragmatic, experienced runaway granny
2
Quietly-verbal, outrageously-opinioned, crafty crazy manic dreamer
3
Optimistic, spiritual, obsessive, cynical, determined hermit

I, voluntarily, picked up this tag from WomagWriter’s blog but I’m not passing it on – if you want it just do it. It reminded me of the 30 second pitch of your novel to an agent you meet in an elevator. Lots of magazines ask for little biogs and I’m always unsure as to what people want, so maybe an experience in snippets is in order.

Here’s one I did earlier:

I fell into middle age when I was 40; sensible overnight – payback for the years of sex, alcohol and trashy high-heels.

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tears refuses
someone like me
some people like us
as if
them tears
became
sick of running
through our faces
they do not want to dry
them our eyes
they
became
dry like a big desert
we do still
feel the pain
just like you
eventhought
the desert is spreading

Knock
Knock
and Knock
I am knocking
at the door
to my soul
maybe
someone
will hear me
will understand
Darfur
pain

I've just realised that this is my hundredth blog post, so thank you to everyone who's dropped by, read, commented, linked, or just said something that got me intrigued and sent me over here to work out what I think. For example:

Poet Sheenagh Pugh has been blogging here about Linda Grant's piece in The Guardian that also set me off on Rogues and Vagabonds. It's apparently even harder to persuade readers of poetry that the persona in the poem is not the poet, than it is to persuade the readers of novels that the author made it up. And then on Friday I had a drink for the first time in ages with a short story writing friend. She has an extremely high-powered professional life and a large family, and she writes strange, dark stories which don't spring directly from her everyday life, and would completely change how people saw her if they read them. So she writes under a pseudonym, and I sympathise hugely with that, and not just because negotiating contracts is hard to do with someone who's read your stories of... well, that would be telling.

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Have spent most of the day having a wonderful time at the launch party for Jackie's new novel, Tainted Tree. A humdinger of a read, if you haven't realised that before, and well worth the purchase! The food was wonderful, the guests lovely and, pleasingly, we sold Ł400-worth of books, so that was a serious result, hurrah! Many thanks, Jackie, for putting on such a great party.

Talking of books etc, I seem to have had huge numbers of people visit either my blog or my website over the last couple of days, with a massive 123 hits to the site yesterday. Well, gosh. Can't imagine what's suddenly made me quite so popular, but welcome anyway - it's lovely to see you all. Even if only virtually ...

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So, sometime next week I have to spend lots of time lounging around Waterstones with piles of animal psychology/behaviour books and Earl Grey. Oh it’s a hard life indeed; my very bad guy from the Josie & Rita novel is going to be some kind of expert on both. I’ve just been reading Susan Hill blogging about writing in cafes, but there’s no need for me to report on Costa because it’s the same all over and everyone knows that Waterstones is Paradise.

Interesting week coming up then, and TopCat is going into heat, see the vibrating tail! She’s vocal again, and rubbing herself on anything that’s not flat; my old shoes; bags; tables; my feet; and don’t forget the galloping through the flat in the middle of the night, leaping across me in my bed, up onto the windowsill above my head, THUMP, down again. For a little cat she makes some noise landing on the floor.

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