Where has all the fun gone?

I've got music playing - a welcome change from TV. Am I getting old or is telly becoming more and more dismal every day? Programmes used to be fun, especially comedy. Once written with skill, now audiences are expected to find swearing, over-emphasis, and crude jokes funny. I don't. Even crudity needs skill, a good director, excellent comedy actor and a good delivery to make you laugh - not simply words stated with emphasis. Sadly I have also seen most of the re-runs of detective series at least once. The criteria for that is - once you remember 'who done it' they are no longer of interest. Fortunately I have a shelf full of books! They never let you down.

Visit my website Barbara Spencer.

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Authors Grand Launch Festival Blog Train

 

You are cordially invited to attend the 

 Grand Launch Festival Day! 

Join us for what is sure to be a blast with the Most Enticing Book Trailer Contest winner announcement, scavenger hunts, giveaways, Google social hangouts, and our kick off for the 1st Annual Authors' Cave Book Awards where you can win $500 cash, a Kindle Fire or Nook, and free promotion of your book for a year at Authors' Cave!

July 22, 2014

(8am to 11pm EST)

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Back to the train...Get to know the blogger - that's me!

Who am I : A grandmother who writes great books for children and young adults. I live in Somerset in the south-west of England which is a terrible drag for visiting schools or booksignings because I have to be up by 5 a.m. to get to the station. I have also lived in the Caribbean, the United States, Europe and the Middle East. As a result all my books have a little bit of my life in them, including the one above: Time Breaking.

The first three words I would use to describe myself are: Workaholic, chocoholic but not alcoholic

I am currently working on this project: The Amazing Brain of O C Longbotham 
Publication date 27.11.14

 

Running and Turning Point: A Boy : A Missing Computer Scientist: a Secret so dangerous it must stay hidden from the world

Scott Anderson has a secret so big he daren’t share it even with best friends; he and his dad are American. If you’re American, you don’t talk about it. If you don’t talk about that, you don’t talk about any of the other secrets that haunt your life – that your dad’s really a computer scientist and people are searching for him.

Stay on the train and follow these authors next! See how they responded to the same questions!

Get to know: Laura De Bruce : http://theriddleofprague.com/blog/

Get to know: K T Bowes :http://ktbowes.blogspot.co.nz/

Get to know: G H Bright :http://enginemanbright.wix.com/grolly#!authors-cave-train-blog/c1src

 

Visit my website Barbara Spencer.

Check out my facebook page Barbara Spencer on Facebook.

Our changing society

As a children's authors, I am frequently invited into primary and secondary schools to talk about creative writing and, particularly with young kids, increase their enthusiasm for the written word. Returning from a visit to Kings of Wessex I daydreamed the journal home, thinking about how hard librarians and teachers work to keep their pupils reading. Why do we do it? I guess because the sum total of our world's learning has appeared in books. Everything we are today is because some person had an idea and wrote about it in a book.

No longer perhaps ... now it's UTube, Twitter and Facebook. But it is very difficult to break a habit that's lasted for almost 600 years and replace it with something so modern that it hasn't yet reached 25.

And yet tragically fewer and fewer of our teenagers are reading.

I would like to think they go back to books in the future when social media loses its appeal ... I hope it happens and happens quickly; the world will be a much poorer place without books.

Visit my website Barbara Spencer.

Check out my facebook page Barbara Spencer on Facebook.