I’ve been introduced to Weekly Geeks via Gaskella’s blog this morning. I’m always up for new blogging ideas, and since I’m still wrung out from yesterday’s wonderfully successful Not the TV Book Club meeting (don’t forget you can still add your thoughts on Brodeck’s Report at any time) it seemed like a good morning to do something a little different.

Today’s Weekly Geeks challenge is about author fun facts.

1. Choose a writer you like.
2. Using resources such as Wikipedia, the author’s website, whatever you can find, make a list of interesting facts about the author.
3. Post your fun facts list in your blog, maybe with a photo of the writer, a collage of his or her books, whatever you want.
4. Come sign the Mr Linky below with the url to your fun facts post.
5. As you run into (or deliberately seek out) other Weekly Geeks’ lists, add links to your post for authors you like or authors you think your readers are interested in.

I’ve chosen Michel Faber, the author of my favourite contemporary novel The Crimson Petal and the White.

Fun Fact #1: He was born in The Netherlands, emigrated to Australia as a child, but moved to Scotland in 1993. In Scotland he is considered a Scottish author (or at least Scottish by formation) while in Australia he is considered an Australian novelist thanks to the long period of time he lived there.

Fun Fact #2: Since 1996 he has won the following prizes/awards: Ian St James Award, Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Competition, Neil Gunn Prize, Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award, Whitbread First Novel Award.

Fun Fact #3: In 2001, when the publication of The Crimson Petal and the White was imminent, Canongate urged Faber to become a UK citizen so that the book could be submitted for the Booker Prize, which was at that time open only to authors holding Commonwealth passports. Faber declined, as he did not wish to become British at a time when the British government was preparing to follow the USA into war on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Fun Fact #4: According to one interview, it was Faber’s wife who encouraged his writing, even offering “to put stamps on the envelopes and to take care of all the messy procedures of submitting work.”

Fun Fact #5: When asked about what music he was listening to when he wrote The Crimson Petal and the White, he said that the novel was “probably the first Victorian novel that was written to a constant background of Krautrock and Jazz fusion.”

Fun Fact #6: In 2009, he donated the short story Walking After Midnight to Oxfam’s ‘Ox-Tales’ project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. His story was published in the ‘Water’ collection.

Fun Fact #7: The manuscript for Crimson Petal was about 300,000 words.

So there you go. You should definitely read his work (did I mention how much I LOVE Crimson Petal? It bears repeating). For all his critical acclaim he still seems to be somehow under the radar. One of the things I love about his books – I’ve read most of them – is that they are so different. I would never have guessed that Under the Skin and Crimson Petal were written by the same author, and I think that’s a marvellous skill for a writer to possess.