{"id":44,"date":"2024-11-13T19:53:43","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T19:53:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/?p=44"},"modified":"2024-11-13T19:53:43","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T19:53:43","slug":"im-the-storyteller-and-my-stories-must-be-told","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/2024\/11\/13\/im-the-storyteller-and-my-stories-must-be-told\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201dI\u2019m the Storyteller, and my stories must be told\u2026\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As explained in my \u201cabout me\u201d blurb, I\u2019ve written a couple of books, and here they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Day the Strangers Came\u201d is a short novel in which a young girl finds herself unexpectedly mixed up in the affairs of elves; it features a slightly dodgy trickster who watches at the boundary between our world and theirs, a beautiful young \u201cfairy godmother\u201d character, a disturbing discovery about her own family, an enchanted forest, and a boo-hiss villain heading for some well-deserved comeuppance. \u201cThe Winter Garden and Other Stories\u201d, on the other hand, has four short stories, centred on the idea of witches. In these, an ancient English legend is reawakened, bringing danger with it; a teenaged girl struggles to come to terms with the death of her beloved grandfather who taught her lessons in the Craft; a small group of squabbling boys accidentally piss off the wrong strange old woman who lives down the lane; and a boy\u2019s life takes an unexpected turn when he catches a glimpse of another world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, they\u2019re fantasies, or fairy tales, set in the modern day but belonging to that tradition, with a basis in English folklore. But, although the main characters in them are children, they\u2019re not written only for children. And I will tell you why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During my efforts to hawk my books at craft fairs, I\u2019m almost always asked the same question – \u201cWhat age group are they for?\u201d – and it\u2019s one I don\u2019t like answering. For one thing, it\u2019s reductive; you can\u2019t assume that all children of a certain age are interested in the same things and want to read the same things. \u201cOh, that\u2019s just for children\u201d – stop right there. So what? Why shouldn\u2019t adults read fantasies, if they enjoy them? I can tell you that a lot of adults have bought my books to read themselves, saying, \u201cOh, this looks right up my street; I love all that.\u201d I also once met a customer – a boy of eleven-going-on-fifty – who announced, in patrician tones, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not really <\/em>a reader, but I will <\/em>buy it, because I believe in supporting local authors.\u201d Bless him!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the books that were important to me as a kid are still among my favourites now, and I don\u2019t give a crap if that makes me look as if I\u2019ve never grown up. Edith Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner\u2019s early books\u2026 fantastic. Books read in your childhood, when they\u2019re well done, can stay with you for life. The way you read them changes; you find a story behind the story, of the characters and their relationships, that you missed as a child, and parts where the writer pokes fun – however gently – at adult absurdities. (Yes, Miss Nesbit, I am looking at you.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s another side to this. Someone who writes for and about children has to stay in touch with his \u201cchild mind\u201d in a way that most adults possibly don\u2019t, because a child reader needs to feel that the author is on his side, and understands certain things about his world that the adults around him are unaware of. Because – and this is why Mum and Dad tend to be bundled smartly away into the background before anything significant happens in children\u2019s books – adults, when you\u2019re a child,\u00a0don\u2019t get it.\u00a0<\/em>Being told \u201cThat\u2019s too old for you, dear\u201d is frequently not helpful, because while adults often think they know what worries or unsettles children and can shield them from it, the things that are actually going on for them, which they don\u2019t want to talk about, can remain unaddressed. There\u2019s a vein of darkness running through life, of things feared and not understood, and not all endings are neat or happy. Children understand this more than adults think they might, and they respond to seeing that others understand it as well; I\u2019d argue that they need that. There are things that, while they might make them nervous, they\u00a0want\u00a0<\/em>to look at, to face and puzzle out in the safe context of the world of story, and if they learn that there\u2019s hope to be found in an ending that\u2019s less than \u201chappy ever after\u201d, that\u2019s important too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d never for a moment claim to be a \u201cgreat writer\u201d; I\u2019m just some bloke, writing the stories that tell me they want to be told. If people are up for that, young or not-so-young, I\u2019m always delighted. If they enjoy them when they read them – and, going by the Amazon reviews, they do, both adults and children – then that\u2019s even better. Because it shows me that there\u2019s still some space for magic in people\u2019s lives, and I love to be part of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As explained in my \u201cabout me\u201d blurb, I\u2019ve written a couple of books, and here they are. \u201cThe Day the Strangers Came\u201d is a short novel in which a young girl finds herself unexpectedly mixed up in the affairs of elves; it features a slightly dodgy trickster who watches at the boundary between our world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daddyogg.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}