Norman Jorgensen | Author

Norman Jorgensen

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25.01.2022 "The Wrecker's Revenge." I have found that kids generally like my books, and very often those who have hated reading in the past are won over, which absolutely delights me. One problem, though, is that children do not read book reviews or explore shelves, but get their book recommendations straight from their friends. Word-of-mouth is very strong in playgrounds. But how do we spread the word further? Those running school libraries are usually great at matching books and kid...s, but there are far too many books for them to read. Here's a taster of the "Revenge". It is one of my favourite scenes where Mrs Crawford and Anna fight off a bunch of potential people traffickers, or white slavery, as it was known back then, much to the astonishment of Red Read, the heroic cabin boy. Those of you who are my age may like to know that I based Mrs Crawford on Anna from the Rogers And Hammerstein musical, "The King and I". The real Anna Leonownes, originally Anna Crawford, taught the King of Siam's children for several years before voyaging to Perth in the 1870s where she opened a school. :) You can buy copies and find the Teaching Notes at: https://normanjorgensen.com.au/

25.01.2022 So excited about this book, one of my koalas was used as a model for the book and is on almost every page. Thank you Wendy Binks and Stunned Emu Designs by Wendy Binks for the honour

25.01.2022 I am just back from running a week's course on creating children's books at Albany Summer School. Apparently, if you have had a dozen or more published then you... must know what you are talking about. Hahaha, little do they know. :) Anyway, it must have been reasonably successful as on the last day the students presented me with all sorts of gifts, including pickles, wine, chocolates, home-made jam, and this book from Darren who must have worked me out pretty quickly, don't you think? :)

22.01.2022 While you are in the midst of this current cyclone of publicity from me - this constant onslaught on your senses with seemingly no way of escape, comes a new po...ster just released by Fremantle Press. Now you know how my hero, Red Read, feels when I heap constant misery and misfortune upon his poor suffering head. xN See more

22.01.2022 Yay! My new book with Jennifer Mars is ready to be Launched!

21.01.2022 It is over ten years now since I wrote Jack’s Island, a book about my father, uncle and grandparents living on Rottnest Island during World War II, with the constant threat of the Japanese Invasion. Back then, I had no idea that this old-fashioned story would be discovered by teachers as a great class set to study. It incorporated WA history with the Home Front during WWII, but did it against a background of sometimes high adventure, and modern days kids seem to love it. I... found that hard to believe initially as my characters had no TVs, no phones, no devices and no one to run them about all the time. However, they did have complete freedom and disappeared from dawn to dusk while swimming, making canoes and hill trolleys, trespassing in military areas, climbing trees, and firing air rifles. Maybe it is the sense of longed-for freedom that has attracted our young modern readers. I wondered too how kids would react to the old movies and movie stars I mentioned, the 1940s songs, old-fashioned clothes, food rationing, and the racist and sexist attitudes of people from those times, but I gather it all adds to robust class discussions. Fremantle Press has kept the book in print all this time, and happily, orders have started flowing from schools again this year. Jack, Banjo (Rob) Norm and Nell have all gone now, but I know Jack, especially, was so proud that his stories were being relived by a new generation of enthusiastic readers. He even mentioned it to me on his very last day, wondering if he had given me enough stories for a sequel. Of course he had.

20.01.2022 It is 18 years since this was published and Fremantle Press has kept it in print the entire time. It still sells reasonably well thanks to their fabulous crew a...nd the wonderfully evocative and sober illustrations by Brian Harrison-Lever. Even though most school librarians include it in their Anzac Day and Remembrance Day displays, I actually wrote it as a Christmas story. It even begins: "On Christmas day the guns stop firing. A deathly silence creeps over the pitted and ruined landscape..." and ends with, "Merry Christmas, Digger." Here's hoping it still brings a tear or two to teachers' eyes for a few more years, especially at this time of the year. Thanks for buying it, and Happy Christmas. xN

17.01.2022 After my doom and gloom post last week, these charming messages from a boy called George arrived, so I have picked my self up, dusted myself off, and started all over again. "Hi my name is George. I was wondering how old Red Read is please? Thanks George." "I do like the books. My favourite parts were the battles and the Shakespeare. I think Red is 12-14. I am 10. I love reading. I am definitely looking forward to the next book. Do you know when the next book is ...going to be out so I can get it." Thanks George" See more

17.01.2022 Reluctant readers? Disengaged kids? "Books are so boring?" This might work. Treasure hunting on a grand scale, guns and cannons firing, shipwrecks, killer sharks, rampant disease, murderous wreckers and bloodthirsty pirates. I keep hearing that kids of all ages seem to love the stories, especially the hair-raising adventures of the swashbuckling hero, Captain Black Bowen, the most notorious smuggler ever to sail the wild west coast, and his Ship's Boy, young Red Read, who ...was sold by his mother, and recently expelled from school for defending a small boy against a sadistic school teacher. Time to go adventuring! Winner of the children's choice - WA Young Readers' Book Awards. Published by Fremantle Press, The Smuggler's Curse and The Wreckers' Revenge are available from all bookshops. Turn up the volume! See more

16.01.2022 It occurred to me that while I have been posting countless photos of the cover of The Wreckers' Revenge, no one knows what the story is about, so here is a brie...f outline, below. The sequel is to be called "Red Read Gets a Great Christmas Present." And if that isn't the most blatant hint you have ever heard.

16.01.2022 The publicity onslaught continues...This time it is an interview with the fabulous and uber-enthusiastic Imani the Author. What an inspiration she is.

14.01.2022 What, suitable for 16 years and over? I hope there is not an entry test rather than just an ID check or Karratha Library might find themselves without a presenter. I spend my whole life trying to remain 12. .

13.01.2022 Here's an easier to read version. :)

10.01.2022 Getting ready for Love Your Bookshop Day tomorrow. What a great idea that is.

10.01.2022 My young friend, Imani Bliss, huge supporter and friend to most of WA's book creators, just made this. Isn't it fabulous! Well done Imani, but now back to your author interviews posts. :) xN

09.01.2022 Teachers, do not use my writing as an example of how to do it. :) I break all the writing rules, especially the one about planning correctly. I have colleagues... who write an outline of every chapter on postcards, spread them on the floor and move them about. Others, use creative writing software like Scrivener, Focus Writer, The Quill and Smart Edit. Me, I just sit and write, one word after another, making it up as I go along, often on Microsoft Word, or sitting under a tree with my old leather notebook and German Lamy fountain pen. Occasionally I'll use my Black Dragon fountain pen I ordered from China. Usually, about a quarter of the way into the story, and after all the characters have developed personalities and minds of their own, they start demanding special treatment from me. It is usually around then that the ending will become clear, so I'll write the final pages, but other than that, I go on the adventures along with the characters, surprising myself as much as them. I warn them that if they don't behave, I'll kill them off. I set them challenges and place them in impossible positions with no idea of how they will escape or be rescued or resolve the problem. And then I have to wrack my brain to find a solution for them. Unfortunate young Red Read, the hero of The Smugger's Curse and The Wreckers' Revenge, and, hopefully, The Dragon's Blood, cops it the worst from me. I have almost dropped him from a masthead on numerous occasions, had him face killer cyclones, nearly had him hanged, almost killed by head-hunters, and murderous relatives when he showed too much interest in a village girl. I have nearly drowned him, had him seconds from being gored by a wild boar, almost taken by a massive shark, had a ship sink under him, had him shot at far, far too many times, faced cannon fire, and almost bitten on the face by a Krait, one the most lethal snakes in China. Deadliest of all, though, he is threatened by Mrs Crawford, the mother of Anna, a girl he likes, and the scariest, most capable gun-toting woman I could invent. Phew! The most challenging situation I put Red, Captain Black Bowen and the crew of the Black Dragon schooner, though, was in The Wreckers' Revenge where I shipwrecked them at an abandoned Guano mine on an island in the Indian Ocean. I then had a bunch of murderous pearling lugger crews came after them, determined to kill the whole crew. Researching and soaking up the atmosphere, I sat on a beach under a coconut palm tree on Cocos Island, Lamy pen ready, and played out the entire scenario as if it was taking place in front to me. It felt a bit like an HD movie on an enormous screen. The soundtrack of waves lapping on the beach and the breeze through the palms was most realistic too. Some of the solutions for the unarmed crew of the Dragon in the upcoming battle with the weapon-wielding pearlers intent on their deaths came from fiction - books and films I have remembered from distant past, but the majority were straight out of real history. During the Spanish Armada and the invasion of England back in 1888, Captain Francis Drake sent out fireships among the galleons. Dry wooden ships with decks sealed with tar and holds full of gunpowder caught alight and went off like firecrackers. In the mighty battle, England lost just 100 men compared to the Spanish loss of 20,000 men and 51 ships. Now, my crew don't have fireships, but with a little ingenuity, they can make fire rafts, and they do to devastating effect. Some weeks before, Red had been reading about medieval weapons, so he suggests to Captain Bowen they try making an Arblast, a large version of a crossbow. Arblasts are silent and can fire a steel arrow over a thousand metres. Red puts it to deadly use, but the most effective weapon turns out to be one I borrowed from Gallipoli. The Anzacs invented jam time bombs to throw at the Turks. My variation of the bombs came about after seeing the millions of coconuts that litter the undergrowth. It didn't take much to reimagine a coconut, instead of a jam tin, filled with gunpowder with a wick and hurled at a pearling lugger. Bang! "What the heck was that? Look, we are on fire! Abandon ship!" And one final use for all the fallen coconuts was to fill them with sand, have Red haul a load of them high into a tree above a narrow pathway, then lure the baddies onto the island and along the path. At the exact moment they pass under the tree, Red releases the weighted coconuts. Thump! Thump! Thump! The heavy shells crash down on the pearlers' heads from a great height, and it is good night! After that, it is just a matter of rounding up the stunned (literally) survivors. This is two-thirds of the way through the book, and I still have the crew stranded on the island, and because I didn't think too far ahead, I am stuck. How do I get them home to Broome and what other mean events can I inflict on them on the way? I set a word count limit of 70,000 words, about the extent of my planning, and I still want Red finding William Dampier's lost chest of gold, the reason the Black Dragon went to Cocos Island in the first place. Will I be able to fit that into the remaining words available? No doubt I will find out at the same time Red does.

09.01.2022 More from last night

04.01.2022 The death of Sean Connery just reminded of how I really became a writer. The trouble is whenever I tell this story, I sound like such a prize wanker. Back in 19...90, Roald Dahl was touring Australia, and to my gobsmacking amazement, on one Saturday morning, he came into the bookshop where I worked. He looked around, talked to some kids and then asked if I’d order him a taxi to take him back to his hotel. I refused, and immediately closed the shop and drove him the Sheraton, where he asked me in for a cup of tea in the lobby to thank me. I had written the manuscript of Ashe of the Outback, about a pilot, but had not shown to anyone, being too embarrassed, but, pretending to be doing research, I asked Roald about his experience as a pilot during WWII and crashing his Spitfire. Eventually, we got onto James Bond, as Roald had written the screenplay of the fifth Bond movie, You Only Live Twice. I then sat there like a wide-eyed school kid, literally open-mouthed as he told me stories about meeting Ian Fleming during the war, then Walt Disney who wanted to make a cartoon of his book, Gremlins. Roald later worked with Sean Connery in 1966 and also wrote the screenplay for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang similarly by Ian Fleming. Roald told me he got his start in writing and his successful career when he met CS Forester, author of the Captain Hornblower books series, who suggested he write about his war adventures in Libya. I told him I was a huge Hornblower fan, which he seemed to appreciate. Surprisingly, he then asked about the plot of Ashe of the Outback, said it sounded promising and made me promise I’d show it to a publisher. In case he might have had James Bond kill me for disobeying him, that afternoon, I posted the story to Catt Books. I got home, and my wife asked, did you have a good day? Sadly, and tragically for me, Roald Dahl died later that year. If not for his encouragement, though, just like CS Forester encouraged him, I’d have a proper job now and be earning real wages. Meanwhile, I’ll quietly sit here and wait for the Walt Disney Corporation to call me and make it all worthwhile.

04.01.2022 Here I am back in 1899, between the pages of The Wreckers' Revenge, predicting a Great Pestilence. I wrote this in 2018 and it was published in 2019, so how psychic am I? Now I wish I had just given the characters boils instead. :(

03.01.2022 Jo and Robin and the library staff at Aquinas College made this uber-fabulous display for my visit for CBCA Book Week. The treasure chest was even full of (choc...olate) gold coins, until the borders arrived the evening before and ate them all! By the time I got there, we had a chest full of gold foil wrappers. :) :) :) But well done, Jo and Co. I really appreciate the effort you went to to make me welcome. The boys were overflowing with enthusiasm and I had a great time. xxN

03.01.2022 Sometimes, when you are writing a book about schooners and seafaring you can get bogged down. I was at 35,000 words and we were on a slow ferry from St Malo, so I decided to rest my eyes instead of plugging on with the increasingly stale story. Just before I completely nodded off, this damn thing appeared. If ever I didn't believe the gods (Norse, of course) weren't watching over me, this instantly cured me. The next 35,000 much-improved words danced out of my Black Dragon fountain pen in rapid order.

01.01.2022 My editor is probably falling about laughing as she reads this, but someone must think I can write okay. I have been invited to conduct a course at ALBANY Summer School next January. Here's the outline of what's in the brochure: 107: Writing Books for Children and Young People. ... This course will help you begin writing or polishing the children’s books you have always wanted to write. We will unleash the creativity lurking at our fingertips and begin crafting a manuscript that will appeal to young readers. I will work with you while you create memorable heroes and villains, interesting backgrounds and exciting or moving plots. I will share the publishing industry’s unspoken requirements for getting a manuscript ready for submission, and share my experience in getting books completed, edited, published, distributed, publicised, and, finally, sold to excited young readers, hopefully, in the thousands. After reading that, I decided I need to enrol as a student myself. :)

01.01.2022 How cute is My Little Bookshop? And they obviously have really excellent taste in books, or even book, singular, in this case. Well done, My Little Bookshop. I hope you sell shiploads of The Wreckers' Revenge and share the hair-raising adventures all over the state.