Roald Dahl Day

13th September 201525th May 2016Leave a comment

13th September is Roald Dahl Day. The date was chosen because this was his birthday.

The name Roald Dahl is spoken with such reverence by teachers and librarians. Surely he is the greatest children’s writer of all time? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Fantastic Mr Fox. James and the Giant Peach. The names are so familiar now. If Roald Dahl was a category on the quiz show Pointless, the contestants would really struggle to think of a Roald Dahl title that no one else knows. Roald Dahl is famous. Everyone has heard of him. Every child has read his books.

But I have a confession to make.

The edition I owned as a child

I have only ever read one of Roald Dahl’s books.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I really loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It was a book I owned, rather than one I borrowed from the library, so I read it many times. This is the cover of my edition. I’m afraid I don’t know the illustrator’s name but it doesn’t look like Quentin Blake.
This book sat on my shelf in among a hotch-potch of other titles by lots of different authors. I didn’t have complete sets. I only had the Voyage of the Dawntreader, not the whole Chronicles of Narnia. (Was it called The Chronicles of Narnia back then?)

Roald Dahl wasn’t a phenomenon when I was a child.

There was no requirement to buy the complete set of Roald Dahl’s books for children. I don’t even know if they existed as a set.

I read books based on the cover or the blurb or a recommendation. Once I had read that book, I read something else and it may have been by a different author. In my case, it was definitely written by a different author. I didn’t even know who the author was.
There were some series, like The Little House on the Prairie. I read all of those. But I don’t think the author as a brand existed back then. So I wasn’t compelled to read the complete works of a selected author. I loved the Flambards books by KM Peyton, but I didn’t read anything else by her.

I wasn’t interested in authors, I was interested in books and because I wasn’t caught up on a wave of a phenomenon, I read very widely. Much more widely than my children do. Sad but true

I’m an author now and I hope that children will want to read my books. Most will be read because of the awesome covers or the exciting blurb on the back. Some will be read because a teacher or a parent has seen a review and some will be read because the child has met me at an event and is curious enough to know what this mad book woman is on about. I am unlikely to become a phenomenon. I’m not sure I want to be.

So enjoy Roald Dahl day. Read his books. Marvel at the illustrations by Quentin Blake. Laugh at the antics of the crazy characters, but next time you go to a library or a bookshop, pick up a book by an author you have never heard of. Read it. You might be surprised.

A book does not have to be a phenomenon to be a great read.

When is your book going to be published in the UK?

2nd September 201525th May 2016Leave a comment

When is your book going to be published in the UK? This is the question I get asked all the time. By my friends, by my family, by the postman, by every stranger on the street, by children I meet at events, even by my own children. When I look at them blankly, they go on to ask ‘Why isn’t your book published in the UK?’

I suppose it’s a fair question. I am English after all. I write in English. I don’t speak any foreign languages. I don’t even go abroad that often, but I currently don’t have a book published in the UK, only in Germany, USA and France.

Why is that?Publishing is an international business. Books are bought by publishers from publishers or agents from other countries all the time. Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Hunger Games come from America. The Moomins are Swedish. Tintin is Belgian. Many of my UK writing friends have their books published in other territories, but I guess most of them have them published in the UK first.

Every publishing deal is different, but often when a publisher buys a book they buy World Rights. That means they have the right to sell the book on to other publishers. They have a rights department that sell books abroad. That doesn’t mean they sell the printed UK book abroad, that’s called Export (not something I know about at the moment as I don’t have a UK publisher). They sell the right for another publisher to take the manuscript and translate it for their market. This may happen when the book is first bought by the UK publisher or it may happen once the book has been published. It’s a good way for the publisher and the author to make more money from the original manuscript.

Sometimes a UK publisher only buys UK rights (or UK and Commonwealth or some other combo). The author retains the foreign rights and their agent tries to sell the rights to foreign publishers. Again this may happen while the book is in production in the UK or it may be any time after the book is published.

However, some manuscripts are turned down by UK publishers. Let me clarify that, MANY manuscripts are turned down by UK publishers. Even long established authors get rejections. Just because an agent can’t find a UK publisher for a manuscript, doesn’t mean that manuscript is rubbish. It just means the agent can’t match it to a UK publisher, who needs a book like that, at that precise moment.

That’s what happened to me with Help I’m an Alien.

I am extremely lucky, I have a wonderful agent – Anne Clark – and she has a brilliant Foreign Rights Consultant – Margot Edwards. They matched me up with a publisher who did want me book. That publisher, Coppenrath, happened to be in Germany. So my first published book appeared in print, translated into German. The good news continued. They liked my book so much, they asked for another two.

But Anne and Margot didn’t stop there. They have also sold Alien to the USA and France.

To me these publication successes are as important as other author’s UK publications. I can’t do much to publicize my books. I can’t do school visits because I don’t speak German, but I do get fan mail from German readers and I always reply to them – in English.

I think some of my author friends think I’m mad going on about my foreign deals. They seem to think they are insignificant. Maybe they only see their foreign deals as a bonus, they don’t have a relationships with their foreign publisher like I do and don’t bother trying to promote their books abroad. Or maybe they think the credit should go to the translator. Maybe they don’t have any foreign deals at all!

For me, because these foreign editions have materialized before a UK edition, I take a different view. Three different publishers like my writing so much they have turned my manuscripts into books for their market. They didn’t read a translated version, they read the raw manuscript and liked it so much they paid for someone to translate and illustrate it. My German translator is Christine Spindler and the illustrator is Der Anton for the Help series. They have done a terrific job, but it’s still my book. I’m very proud of it.

Even the US edition has been edited/translated for the US market. The title has been changed to I’m an Alien and I Want to go Home. A character has a different name, Freddo has become Eddie. All the punctuation has been US-ified (we don’t use the Oxford comma in the UK or double quotation marks and we think putting a full-stop after Mr and Mrs is very old fashioned) and of course there are the usual sidewalk/pavement, dollar/pound Americanisations. Alien-US is set in America.

Next up France. I haven’t started work with my French publisher, Albin Michel, yet so I don’t know how it will be, but I can’t wait to find out.

So that leaves only one question – when are my books coming out in the UK?

Wait and see.

Fiction Express

1st September 201525th May 2016Leave a comment

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I’m thrilled to announce that I have a new book in the making.

After the October half term holiday, I am going to be writing for Fiction Express. This is a brand new venture for me.

Fiction Express are an online publisher that works with schools. This is what they say about themselves on their website :

“Fiction Express for Schools e-books are published in weekly chapters at 3 pm (UK time) each Friday. At the end of every cliffhanging chapter there are voting options to decide where the plot should go next. The readers have the following Monday and Tuesday to read each chapter in school, and will vote by 3 pm on Tuesday afternoon. The author then writes the next chapter, in ‘real time’, according to what the readers chose.”

The book I’m writing is called ‘The Bushcraft Kid’. I’ve already written the first chapter which will be published on the Fiction Express website after half term. Each class that has signed up to Fiction Express will be able to read my chapter and then vote on what happens next. Then I have to write it.

Just to clarify (to myself as well as to everyone else) I have to write a brand new chapter between Tuesday evening and Friday lunchtime every week for five weeks. Holy Moly! I’ve never had to write to such a tight timescale, but I am very excited to join the Fiction Express team of authors and look forward to the challenge. Apparently, I also get to blog directly to my readers. I can’t wait to meet them all and explore the world of The Bushcraft Kid with them all.

If you want to find out more about Fiction Express click here

If you use Fiction Express in your school, I’d love to hear from you. Either Contact Me or message me the usual Fiction Express way. You know what that is. I don’t, I’m new around here.

What I did on my Holidays

16th August 201525th May 2016Leave a comment

The most amazing thing happened to me while I was on holiday

I found my brain.

It’s been missing for a while. Not the brain that makes me breath and move around, or the brain that makes me a parent. I mean my creative brain. It’s been lost for a while and I can assure you that losing your brain is a lot worse than losing your phone when you are an author.

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While I was away, I spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to work on next. I haven’t been writing for a few months. I’ve been too busy worrying about whether I am a real writer and whether I will ever be able to write another good book.
I was totally out of touch with my creativity. Even though an idea has been kicking around in the back on my imagination for a while, I haven’t had the courage to begin writing it.Then something totally weird happened. Sleeping in a strange bed made me have a vivid dream one night.

I dreamed that I was writing a new book. Actually writing it, instead of thinking about it. The words were coming out of my pen at great speed and I had three characters who were all a little bit oddball. They had issues and secrets and didn’t really like each other at first, but were thrown together in an interesting setting with a problem to solve. I no longer had an idea, I had a story. Even more amazing was that I felt like an author again.

It was only a dream, but when I woke up the feeling was still there. I had total belief in myself and my ability to write a book.

Somehow I’d lost touch with my creative soul, which is a pretty scary thing for a writer. I felt that I would never write again, but going on holiday gave me the space to renew my spirit, find my creative brain and now I am ready to begin the new story.

I can’t wait.

A Writer’s Friends

11th May 201525th May 2016Leave a comment

I belong to a few different writing communities, but the one I couldn’t do without is my crit group. Over the years the membership has changed slightly, but today in May 2015 the members are Alli Jeronimus, Jennifer Miles, Tasha Kavanagh and Emma Styles. We meet monthly and discuss a chapter or two of each of our work.

We are a team. We each give our individual feedback and then discuss the work as a group. There are often similarities in what we are saying. Occasionally there are big differences, but we all come to our meetings with an open heart. We want to help each other succeed. The crit group team celebrate and commiserate together.

This week was a particularly lovely celebration. Tasha’s novel ‘Things We Have in Common’ has hit the shelves to wide critical acclaim. It’s an absolute chiller of a book. Not one I could have written, but I am so proud to call Tasha a friend and so proud that the book was developed with the support of our crit group.

Well done Tasha!

Things we have in common snipped

First Draft – Finito

21st April 2015Leave a comment

On 29th March, I announced on Facebook that I was about to crack open a new notebook and start writing the first draft of a new book.

Before I started

I’d spent ages on the outline and agreed it with my agent. In fact I sent her a seven page synopsis! Any authors out there know that seven pages is a complete no-no when submitting work to agents, but luckily my agent is prepared to put up with my idiosyncrasies. If I give her the usual one pager she sends me loads of queries. The answers are all in my head but they didn’t fit onto one page, so she gets the full monty whether she likes it or not!

I’m afraid I neglected my parental duties, I didn’t do any admin, I didn’t write blog posts or do any chores. In fact I didn’t do anything for anyone else during that time. It’s very hard to be super-productive as a writer as well as doing other stuff.

But today, twenty four days later, I finished the first draft.

My notebook now looks like this :

The End

I wrote all the way to the end and then turned the book upside down and wrote on the reverse of the pages. There were 160 pages at the beginning. There are 18 half used pages left. The rest have gone to recycling and I have a hundred page typed up document which I am very proud of.

I think it is important to edit off a hard copy, so I sent a pdf to be printed to spare my ailing printer and depleting toner cartridges. It’ll come back with it’s own snazzy spiral binding.

Next week I will start the second draft and I rashly told my agent I would send it to her before half term. Yikes! That’s four weeks away and in my blog post here, I said the second draft took me months rather than weeks.

Guess I am going to have to neglect my family and friends all over again. I hope they forgive me.

A Very Ancient Library

8th April 2015Leave a comment

I haven’t been to the library for ages. That doesn’t mean I’m not writing. I am and it’s going very well, thanks for asking, despite having two children home for the Easter holiday.

Don’t bother asking how the parenting is going. I find it impossible to be a focused, prolific writer and a good parent at exactly the same time. Some would say I’m never a good parent (my daughter for example) but the word ‘good’ is subjective , don’t you think?

Anyway – the library. I miss it. But the library won’t give my dog a library card so I’ve been writing at home. The great news is I’ve finally got over my ‘I can’t write at home when there are people around’ hang up and am well over 10,000 words in 10 days so I’m obviously doing something right.

Today I wandered into the Bishopsgate Library for twenty minutes because I was early for my regular appointment. It’s usually pretty quiet.

It’s a fusty sort of place. A bit like the bank in Mary Poppins. The books are mostly behind locked glass cupboards and there are no windows, only a gorgeous stained glass dome that casts a yellowy light over the library.

The radiators are in the middle of the room and during the Winter there is a bum scrum for the seat nearest the heat. It might be a little old fashioned, but there is still something comforting about the old books and the weight of learning that could go on there if only you had the key to unlock the cabinets.

But I got a bit of a shock today. The library was busy. Nearly every seat taken by someone with a laptop or a mountain of fat textbooks. The tables were littered with files and notebooks covered in highlighter pen and sticky post it tabs reminding the owner of important information according to a strict colour code.

Writing at home with my dog by my side, I had completely forgotten, it is now revision season. Anyone studying has exams coming up and anyone studying rushes to the library to make it look like they are working hard. The people at Bishopsgate probably were. In Peckham library there is a flood of GCSE students sent home on study leave at this time of year and unfortunately they don’t respect the tradition that libraries are supposed to be quiet.

I manage to find myself a seat among the students at Bishopsgate, although I noticed no one asked the librarian for the key to any of the cupboards so I couldn’t help wondering – did anyone learn anything new today?

My Writing Process – Third Draft

1st March 2015Leave a comment

The third draft should be easy. I’ve planned, I’ve edited, I’ve spotted and solved every problem. The comments from my agent tend to be minor and easy to fix. I should be able to do the third draft in a matter of days.
However sometimes my agent spots something more fundamental. If this is the case, I go back to first draft mindset and run through my whole writing process again.

My agent, Anne Clark, was an editor for many years. I respect her views and always try to address the issues she raises. She is the first professional editor to look at the manuscript but she is also my sales executive. She has to have total confidence in me and my work to be able to sell it.
We are a team. We work together to get my manuscript right enough to convince a publisher to publish it.

But luckily I don’t usually have to make too many changes to the third draft. I might add a line to strengthen a character or crank up the tension another notch.
And then I’m done. I’ve made every change I’m going to make at this stage, my To Do list is empty and I’m dying to work on something else for a change.
It’s time to hand my book over to Anne, who either forwards it to my publisher if the book is already under contract or she starts her process of submitting it to publishers hoping to find someone who loves it as much as we do. I try and forget all about that book and start pinning cards on the board to develop a new story

My Writing Process – Second Draft

5th February 2015Leave a comment

The second draft is where all the real work happens. My first draft has been left to gather dust while my brain has been focused on something else, but I can’t put it off any longer. I choose a day when I’m not going to be interrupted and I read my printed out first draft straight through.
I’m not interested in the punctuation or vocabulary at this stage. I might mark a paragraph with ‘Extend’ or ‘Cut’ or ‘Dragging here’.
I also add things to my To Do list.

It’s a weird mixture of research points I need to check (I try not to interrupt my first draft by browsing the internet), reminders of things to check over all – 40 illustrations is the number of illustrations the publisher has budgeted for – and nitty gritty stuff like how I refer to the competition in the story – National Brainiac Championship Final.
Often it has more scribble than typed out notes, although if it gets to the point that I can’t read my own writing, I’ll type it all out afresh.

If I feel the book is dragging, normally in the first half, I print it out in small font and lay it out on the floor and mark the chapters that need condensing. If I’m lucky someone helps me.
I find looking at the manuscript as a whole, rather than the words on the page, allows me to be more subjective and therefore more brutal with my axe.
If the beginning part of the novel is dragging, then I need less pages. I don’t argue with Louie the editing cat because I’m working with the door open now. If something needs changing, I change it. I go back to my cards on the board (see my blog post on planning) and work out which cards to pull down or condense into less chapters. I often find the flabbiness has crept in because I ignored my plot outline and wrote a few extra chapters I hadn’t planned. But I needed to write those chapters to make certain points. So I try and work out how to make those points in less chapters so I can get back to the lean book I wanted to write.

Now it’s time to start writing the second draft.
On the first day I work on the first chapter. On the second day I look at Chapter One and Two. Day Three – Chapter One, Two and Three. On the fourth day I don’t bother working on Chapter One any more.
I work through the book working on three chapters at a time. I’m on the computer now. If I need to write anything more than a sentence, I go back to pen and paper. Sometimes I’m cutting and sometimes I’m adding. The word count doesn’t change that much, but the story becomes clearer and stronger.
Once I’ve worked on some of the early chapters, I share my work with my critique buddies. These writers are some of my closest friends. We share our work and share our thoughts on our work. I reflect on what they say and then adjust my work again until the second draft is finished. The second draft takes months rather than weeks. For me, it is the hardest part of the process.
When I’m done, I send the manuscript to my agent and then it’s time for the third draft.

My Writing Process – First Draft

4th February 2015Leave a comment

I prefer to write my first draft longhand, in A5 notebooks. The handwriting is illegible. The pages are scruffy and full of crossings out full of half finished sentences with not much punctuation. The most important thing is to get it written not get it right. It feels fantastic when I’ve finished a chapter and I don’t have the energy to write another crazy jumble of words. So I type up what I have written, adding a few full stops and commas but not much else.
Stephen King, the great horror writer, describes the first draft as ‘writing with the door shut’. No one else is going to see what I’ve written so I can write anything.

I feel good when I’ve finished a chapter, but I feel ecstatic when I’ve finished the book. This is a very dangerous time for me. I am invincible. I have written the best book ever. I am going to be more successful than JK Rowling.

I am totally deluded.

I don’t need anyone to confirm my delusions. I don’t show my first draft to anyone. I print it off, file it away and go and work on something else for a while.

The first draft is my way of ensuring that the story hangs together. That it is ‘enough’. That I have enough characters, enough action, enough theme, enough subplot.

I’m dressing the skeleton I created in the planning stage in loose fitting clothing and I’m the only one who thinks it looks beautiful.

It’s only in the second draft that I make my skeleton something I can share with others.