This is the WASTED BLOG. For my main author website, click this link.

Awards: WASTED won the Read it or Else category in the Coventry Award and was runner-up in the North East Book Award. It is longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for the Manchester, Grampian, Angus, and RED Awards.


Showing posts with label Jack's Game. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jack's Game. Show all posts

Saturday, 22 May 2010

ST JOHN'S RC SCHOOL & CHANCES

I do loads of school visits - I couldn't really guess how many different schools I've visited but we're talking hundreds. And some stand out as being exceptionally exciting.

One school like that is St John's Catholic School and Sixth Form Centre in County Durham. I did a school visit there a few years ago as part of the Northern Children's Book Festival and the response from the pupils was really special. They had incredible ideas and dynamism and the questions were fantastic. Actually, one boy asked my favourite question ever:

"How does someone as nice as you write such nasty books?" Love it!

Anyway, as I went back home on the train, I got thinking about how I could respond to their enthusiasm. To cut a long story short, I handed over the promotion of my next book, The Highwayman's Footsteps, to them. They did the most amazing job, involving the English, art and history departments for the whole of Years 7 and 8, and it culminated in a launch in front of 700 pupils, with press and photographers and all sorts of coverage. The project was led by two remarkable pupils, Brogan and George, and Brogan even mentioned it in her personal statement when applying to Oxford University - she got a place, she told me recently!

What has this got to do with Wasted? Well, the connection continued and about a year ago I had a vibrant and excited email from another pupil there, Amy, who had remembered being in Year 7 and in the audience when HF was launched. We got chatting. (You can't not get chatting with Amy...) And I thought, hmmm, it would be wrong to ignore such enthusiasm - what could we do? I asked Amy if she'd like to be my teenage marketing person (along with another vibrant teenager from the other side of the country, Iffath at lovereadingx). Amy is known for her enthusiasm and her reply kind of went off the scale of excitement.

Amy and her friends have been reading and planning and talking and thinking and getting their school involved. I'm going to report on that later - but for now, suffice it to say that I am in awe of them and St John's.

But there are some interesting chance happenings to do with this, and since Wasted is about Chance, I thought you should know them.
The St John's librarian, who has been hugely important in all this, is called Miss Heads. Considering this is about a game with a coin, don't you think that's quite a coincidence?

It gets more spooky.

The pupils and Miss Heads were trying to think of a game involving a coin that they could get the whole school to play, as a way of sparking interest in the book. At this stage, most of them hadn't read it so they were a bit in the dark, but they kept thinking. The night before the copies of the book were due to arrive, Miss Heads's husband went to a fund-raising event of some sort and there they played a game called ... Heads or Tails.

Result! And that is the game they played in assembly for the whole school on Publication Day for Wasted.

Here's the game. You need a room full of people, and one coin.
  1. Everyone stands up.
  2. On the count of three everyone puts their hands either on their heads or on their hips / buttocks / whatever. 
  3. Everyone keeps their hands where they've chosen until the leader tosses the coin and calls out the result.
  4. If the coin landed heads up, all those with hands on head remain standing. Everyone else sits down.
  5. This is repeated until only one person is left standing. That person wins a copy of the book!
Do you fancy doing this in your school? If so, the school could win a signed copy. All you need to do is get your school librarian or teacher to contact me if your school would like to do this. I have three books to give away as priazes. If more than 3 schools sign up, I will pick 3 at random. The only conditions are: that you agree to spend a few minutes explaining to the assembly / class why you are doing this; that you agree to receive some posters of Wasted and recommend Wasted to readers who you think will like it. The book will be bought and posted at my expense so I hope you don't mind my asking this.

Pass it on!

Meanwhile, if you'd like me to come to talk to your school about Wasted and my other books, the page about my events is here. I love doing events so I'd love to hear from you. I have some vacancies in the autumn and lots of space next year but I do tend to be booked far in advance so don't delay!

WASTED BLOG TOUR - WHERE AM I TODAY?  Over at the remarkable Jesse Owens's blog - Books4Teens - where, by chance, you'll see a picture of me after a school event.

Thursday, 20 May 2010

JACK'S GAME + KEREN DAVID

Jack plays a game of risk. Often. And very dangerously.

Warning: do not try this at home! There are plenty of games you can play with a coin which will not risk anything dangerous happening to you. Jack means no harm - he's somewhat damaged by stuff that happened to him when he was younger. Also, Wasted is a story, not real life... So, if you choose to play games with a coin, use your common sense and don't do anything dangerous to yourself or anyone else. (Sorry to sound like a boring adult, but I have to say this otherwise I'll be in trouble!)

Jack's Game is simple. Every now and then he decides to sacrifice himself to "luck". Although he was very unlucky as a baby and small child, he's pretty lucky now - and a bit cocky about it. He thinks that the reason he's lucky now is that he makes sacrifices to luck. He promises to do what the coin says, and if the coin brings him a bad result, he is fine with this because it means (he thinks) that this increases his chance of good luck next time.

One night, for example, he goes out of his house in the middle of the night (BAD idea!) and uses the coin to tell him whether to go left or right; then, at every corner he spins it again. This random journey takes him into huge danger and will affect the rest of the story.

Have you ever let a coin help you make a decision? If you have, or if you would, tell me about it. It's easy to imagine situations where it would be a good way to choose. For example, suppose you can't decide between two different garments in a shop, or your family is arguing about what to do on holiday, or about whether it's going to be chicken or fish. But you wouldn't get obsessed about it. Or would you?? I've had readers of Wasted tell me that they now look at coins differently, see a power in them they never saw before, think of luck and chance in an entirely new light.

Tomorrow, I'm going to show you what the pupils of St John's RC Community School in County Durham have been doing, using Wasted as a prompt for ideas. They came up with a way of playing Jack's Game in school assembly!

WHERE IS THE WASTED BLOG TOUR TODAY? Hop over to ace YA writer Keren David's blog and find me there. I absolutely massively loved her debut book, When I Was Joe, and I'm lucky enough to have read the sequel, Almost True, before publication. It's so gripping, so gritty, and SO good. It's just the sort of YA book I'm naturally drawn to.

Saturday, 1 May 2010

SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT - VERY WEIRD

Jack's band is called Schrödinger's Cats. I'd like to tell you why.

It relates, as many of you will realise, to a scientific conundrum commonly called Schrödinger's Cat or The Schrödinger's Cat paradox. It's one of the weirdest things to think about in the whole of physics and philosophy. Hardly anyone really understands it - I certainly don't! - and scientists argue about what it means.

It's called a "thought experiment" because it can't physically be proved. (Luckily for the cat.)

Here's the wikipedia entry.

And here is a nice clear video featuring a scientist with mad hair.

But I prefer this one, because you get to click a button and see whether the cat lives or dies - very like tossing a coin at the end of Wasted.


Confused? You're not alone! You are supposed to be confused. The scientist Niels Bohr said, "If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them." And also, "If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet."

(If you are stumbling on this for the first time, I blogged about quantum mechanics / physics here, and do read the comments, too, because they're very helpful.) 

Schrödinger wasn't saying that we have to believe that a cat can be dead and alive at the same time. He was saying that our current understanding of quantum physics suggests that the cat is dead and alive, which doesn't make sense, and either that therefore we haven't yet explained it properly, or that quantum science doesn't follow the rules of the rest of the universe. (Which we know is true - but we want to know what rules it follows.)

But the reason that Jack in Wasted is so interested in Schrödinger's Cat is that it's all about tiny (really tiny, invisible and impossible to observe even with a huge microscope) particles that change just by being observed**. And the idea that nothing is true until it's true. This is my explanation of Schrodinger's Cat - bearing in mind that I'm not a scientist but a philosopher by nature and training. "Everything is possible until it isn't." So, his idea is that if our lives seem ruled by chance (even though they're not - it just seems that way because we can't see or control the causes) then we can CHANGE what happens to us just by thinking about, or watching, or talking about what might happen.

For example, leaving the house five minutes earlier might make a big difference to your life - you might meet someone, or have an accident, or AVOID an accident. (I'm going to talk a lot more about that in later posts and ask you for your stories on May 4th.) Because we can't predict these things we don't bother to think about them - so, we don't think, "Hmmm, if I leave the house five minutes later, this will make a difference." We just leave the house without thinking. But Jack thinks that if we take control of small actions, we will affect our luck. We still won't control luck but we will affect it and feel in control.

**(Though, according to one of the helpful commenters on my recent blog post in the link above, the idea of observation here is not just the act of someone looking, but the measuring, which involves a physical act likely to change the particle. However, this is still why Jack is fascinated and why he calls his band Schrödinger's Cats.))
When I was at university, I studied philosophy, and specifically metaphysics, the discussion of how the world works beyond physics. We talked about truth, reality, knowledge, relativity, and a whole load more. Some of the things you have to puzzle over can drive you nuts! A philosopher can claim to prove that the table in front of you isn't real, which is very disconcerting if you want to put your mug of tea on it. So, you have to live your life as a normal person, and reserve the philosophy for fun. I think it's the same with quantum physics - we have to live our lives ignoring it, and just puzzle about it for fun.

Unless your job is to be a quantum physicist... In which case, I am happy for you to be dead and alive and work out for yourself just how that feels.

I'd love to know if any of you have any thoughts about Schrödinger's Cat, or if you can help me explain it better. But those of you who are serious scientists need to be careful - the rest of us are simple beings and are probably confused enough already...

THE WASTED BLOG TOUR - WHERE AM I TODAY? I am delighted to be over at Mary Hoffman's blog. Mary, aka the Book Maven, is a hugely successful and well-known author for young people and she's been kind enough to support me in lots of ways. Over there I'm talking about how writers prey on make use of the fact that readers can be made to suspend their disbelief; how even rational, sciencey people can, when engrossed in a story by a skilled story-teller, believe what we want them to believe. The reason I was thinking about that when I blogged for Mary is that last night, April 30th, was Walpurgis Night and I was doing an after-dinner speech at the Scottish Arts Club. Head over to Mary's to see what on earth that's got to do with anything!

PS - the speech went really well, though this was definitely the oldest audience I've ever spoken to and, although they were charming and laughed in all the right places, I don't think most of them had a clue what teenage fiction was about or why anyone would bother to write it! Maybe they should read this fabulous piece by one of my blog readers, womagwriter.

Saturday, 24 April 2010

TOMMY ALLSUP'S LUCKY COIN - AND A COMPETITION!

Tommy Allsup is alive and well, but he should have died on Feb 3rd 1959. And he would have done if another man hadn't challenged him to toss a coin.

Tommy was a guitarist with Buddy Holly's band. (Their music should play automatically when you open that link!)

On Feb 3rd 1959, band members were due to fly on an eight-seater plane from Clear Lake, Iowa, to Fargo, New Delaware. All the seats were booked and Tommy had one of the bookings, but Ritchie Valens wanted to join them.

"I'll toss you for it," said Ritchie. And Tommy agreed. Tommy lost the toss and gave up his seat to Ritchie. The plane crashed, killing all on board. The Buddy Holly band had been incredibly successful and this night became known as "the night the music died".

How many times must Tommy Allsup have thought to himself, "What if?" What if Ritchie hadn't wanted to go on the flight? What if Tommy had refused to toss him for it? What if...the hand that flipped the coin had spun it just slightly ... fractionally ... teensily a different way? After all, the way a coin lands depends on so many things. What if a breeze or air current had caught it differently, or if the coin had been the other way up when he picked it up... Arghhhhh! Those unknowable things! You could drive yourself mad thinking like that.

In some ways, that's what Jack does - playing what I call Jack's Game. (I'll tell you more about it another day.) This is what Wasted is based on - those events that seem like "chance" and which rule our lives. But it's not chance, is it? It's about the physical properties of that coin, the way it was spun, the strength of the fingers, the way the wind blew. We can't control it but it's not chance - it just seems like it. It is luck, though. Or it certainly was for Tommy Allsup.

You think Tommy was lucky? Not as lucky as the person I'm going to tell you about tomorrow... Any ideas who it is? Could be the luckiest person alive today.

COMPETITION: guess the name of the person I'm going to blog about tomorrow. I will use a coin to pick a winner if there's more than one correct entry and the winner gets a copy of Wasted. Or, if you already have Wasted, you can choose one of my other books. Hurry - you'll have to post your comment before tomorrow's blog post goes out! So, deadline 09.00 UK time. The post goes out at 09.01 - you get a lie-in for a Sunday!