Summer tales

It's the summer holidays but I seem to be doing a lot of guest blogging! Come along and see what I'm wittering on about on other people's blogs!

My publisher David Fickling Books has decided to recruit their authors to post on their StoryBlog and I foolishly volunteered to go first! DFB, having just launched I Don't Believe It Archie! by Andrew Norris, asked us to write about something embarrassing.


So here's a piece called Why Candy Gourlay is Not Ready for her Close Up - about appearing on TV.

Why Candy Gourlay is Not Ready for her Close Up on the DFB Blog. Photo by he who likes rugby
I also guested on my friend Kath Langrish's blog Seven Miles of Steel Thistles (Kath of course is the author of many fantasy novels including Troll Fell).

Katherine Langrish author of the Troll Fell books and Shadow Hunt. Photo by Helen Giles

She asked me to reflect on Fairy Tales in the Philippines - which was interesting to me because, growing up in the Philippines where most books were imported from America or the UK, I considered everything I read fairy tales. Read my blog post here.

I decided that the closest thing to a fairy tale was the Philippine penchant to make up legends and I thought the best way to reflect on this subject was to do my own re-telling of one Filipino "fairy tale" ... so here is my video re-telling of The Legend of the Pineapple, an old Filipino story.

 I made the video with the help of my young neighbours, Christiane and Jacob (Jacob very kindly agreed to be the voice of a little girl as long as I used his drawing of a jet plane - watch out for it!):


The Legend of the Pineapple from Candy Gourlay on Vimeo.

On Wednesday, 24 August, I'm guesting on Canadian author Jan Markley's blog - Three Dead Moths in My Mailbox (realizing now that my author friends have cornered the market in interesting blog names).  I'll be talking about my myth-making in Tall Story. Do drop in and say hi. Here's the link.

I'm blogging at my friend Jan Markley's blog. She's the author of Dead Frog on the Porch which has been described as "Nancy Drew for the ipod generation"

Meanwhile, my lovely friend Sarah McIntyre's new book is finally out! Do rush out and buy lots of copies for the sake of starving illustrators everywhere!

You Can't Scare a princess by Gillian Rogerson and Sarah McIntyre

At the beginning of the warm weather, Sarah and I drove up the motorway to visit our favourite author Geraldine McCaughrean (we can do that because we appeared in the Hay Festival on the same panel ... still I was kinda awed).

Here's Geraldine bringing out the Bread and Butter Pudding. Photo by Sarah McIntyre
We loved the wendy house in Geraldine's garden ...

Sarah in the wendy house
It had a horse's head!
Photo by Sarah McIntyre

At the end of our visit, Geraldine turned round and said, "Now, anyone want some books?"

Well, duh!

I very politely requested Vainglory (one of Geraldine's adult books which is hard to find in a bookstore - mainly because Sarah said I just had to read it before I read any other adult books by Geraldine) ... though deep down inside I wanted to have ALL the books on the impressive book case of books she'd written.

Before I say goodbye for now, let me leave you with this photograph of a field near Geraldine's house. It looked like there was a highway to the sky in the wheat!


It probably won't be summer anymore when I blog again. So till then ... have a glorious rest of the holidays!