odyllicforce.blogspot.com
Dreaming In Text: My Symbolic Life
http://odyllicforce.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-symbolic-life.html
The blog of UK children's/YA writer Brian Keaney. Wednesday, 11 June 2014. Yesterday, I had to go into hospital for an operation to repair an inguinal hernia. Today is one of the days my wife and I look after our grandchildren. My daughter emailed me to say that she had explained to two year old Noah that they wouldn't be going to grandma and grandpa's today because grandpa was poorly. I can clearly recall how I spent all of my childhood and young adult years in a furious battle to be seen as an individu...
odyllicforce.blogspot.com
Dreaming In Text: Activate Kadinskis!
http://odyllicforce.blogspot.com/2015/07/activate-kadinski.html
The blog of UK children's/YA writer Brian Keaney. Monday, 6 July 2015. My five year old grandson was running around the house last week with his four year old cousin shouting out, "Activate booster-packs! At regular intervals and then, from time to time, "Activate Kadinskis! After a while I stopped him and asked, "What's a Kandiski? As I watched those Kadinskis being activated it occurred to me that I shouldn't complain. This is exactly what I have been doing all my life - getting hold of half-unders...
odyllicforce.blogspot.com
Dreaming In Text: There Is No Such Thing As An Ordinary House
http://odyllicforce.blogspot.com/2013/06/there-is-no-such-thing-as-ordinary-house.html
The blog of UK children's/YA writer Brian Keaney. Monday, 17 June 2013. There Is No Such Thing As An Ordinary House. One of my students asked whether she should describe the ordinary house in which her character lives. She could see that somewhere exotic like a fairy kingdom needed describing but the house in her story was more or less like her own childhood home and she was afraid to bore the readers with it. Then the grandchildren arrived. Very soon there were crayon marks on all those white-with-a...
odyllicforce.blogspot.com
Dreaming In Text: Hold Your Nose!
http://odyllicforce.blogspot.com/2013/06/hold-your-nose.html
The blog of UK children's/YA writer Brian Keaney. Tuesday, 11 June 2013. In my experience writing is like raising children. There’s lots of work to do and a lot of boundaries to set if you want to get the job done properly. Of course, if you choose to bring your children up without any rules then that’s entirely up to you. Just don’t bring them anywhere near me while you’re doing it. Stop talking about it and do it - then we can go to the swings. 11 June 2013 at 15:02. Thanks. Good to hear from you.
odyllicforce.blogspot.com
Dreaming In Text: Pillow Talk
http://odyllicforce.blogspot.com/2014/11/pillow-talk.html
The blog of UK children's/YA writer Brian Keaney. Thursday, 27 November 2014. I've always had a problem knowing what day of the week it is. I'm not talking about just being a bit absent-minded. I really have experienced considerable difficulty with this all my life. The woman greeted me and I thought at first that her accent was Irish but after a while I began to doubt this. I felt quite sure I had never met her before yet she seemed to know me well enough. After saying this, she told me I should go now ...
odyllicforce.blogspot.com
Dreaming In Text: Narrative Focus
http://odyllicforce.blogspot.com/2014/11/narrative-focus.html
The blog of UK children's/YA writer Brian Keaney. Saturday, 8 November 2014. We spent last week at our house in Leitrim. I needed a break from looking after grandchildren, helping people write novels and trying to find time to write my own. I'd spent a week in which I found myself constantly having to explain about narrative focus to people who seemed never to have thought of it before. On the Sunday we went to the little town of Strandhill on the Sligo coast and walked out along the dunes, watching as t...
odyllicforce.blogspot.com
Dreaming In Text: Inside The Mind Of A teenage Girl
http://odyllicforce.blogspot.com/2013/07/inside-mind-of-teenage-girl.html
The blog of UK children's/YA writer Brian Keaney. Friday, 26 July 2013. Inside The Mind Of A teenage Girl. During July and August I teach Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge. Students come from all over the world and they’re mostly pretty wealthy. Last week in a tutorial we were looking at a short story one of my students had written. In places her English was a bit shaky. 8217; She didn’t mean the mother. The answer was simple. As the father of two teenage girls I was exactly the person ...
odyllicforce.blogspot.com
Dreaming In Text: Je ne suis pas Charlie.
http://odyllicforce.blogspot.com/2015/01/je-ne-suis-pas-charlie.html
The blog of UK children's/YA writer Brian Keaney. Thursday, 15 January 2015. Je ne suis pas Charlie. I'm sorry if this doesn't accord with fashionable liberal sentiment but I thought those cartoons published in Charlie Hebdo were an unnecessary and offensive provocation. The thing is this: Islam is much more than a religion. It's a matter of identity. None of this means that you should go around attacking people, obviously. But I find this huge media circus involving all sorts of dubious people sudde...
odyllicforce.blogspot.com
Dreaming In Text: Do You Go To Dublin?
http://odyllicforce.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-spent-last-week-in-ireland-at-our.html
The blog of UK children's/YA writer Brian Keaney. Wednesday, 21 May 2014. Do You Go To Dublin? It was a blissful few days until, towards the end of our stay, I was obliged to drive into Sligo town on an errand. I like Sligo with its old grey stone buildings and its ridiculous over-supply of bookshops, but it still felt like a betrayal of something to venture back into the busy world we had so briefly and willingly left behind. Round here,' the woman said, but she was beginning to edge away from him.
