Gotcha Day

It was a chilly November day, and as we drove over to the Crossing Cottage Retired Greyhound Trust kennels in Nottinghamshire, fog hung over the fields and blanketed the dips in the roads. The trees were wet and black and leafless. But we were paying little attention to the wintery landscape outside. We were going to choose a dog – our first dog – and could talk of nothing else.

We arrived, met the kennel manager and had a walk around. I didn’t really notice him the first time. While the other dogs flung themselves against the wire fronts of their kennels, barking and wagging their tails, he stood there quietly, patiently, not making a sound. I think I glanced at him, but then my gaze slid away to his more boisterous kennel-mate.

We started meeting some of the dogs. The first had been returned from another home a few days earlier. He was so bouncy and energetic his owner couldn’t cope with making him the fourth addition to her pack. He hauled me up the path and back again, me clutching the lead in both hands. D and I glanced at each other and subtly shook our heads. He was lovely, but not for us. Our first dog needed to be one that wasn’t going to drag one of us under a bus if he saw a cat on the other side of the road.

The second dog was calmer, but there was no spark, no connection between us. He was aloof, and didn’t respond to my touch or my voice. Despite this, he was clearly a steady, sweet-natured animal, so we marked him down as a maybe, and moved onto the third dog.

She was tiny, and so nervous she had never raced. So nervous she wouldn’t even walk with us. I tugged gently on her lead, trying to get her to move, but she’d put on the brakes. I knew we didn’t have the experience to deal with a dog who was so frightened of everything, so sadly, we handed her back to the kennel manager.

“Wait,” she said as we began to wonder if we’d ever find the right dog. “There’s one more I want you to meet. He’s big – really big – but don’t be put off by his size. He’s a real teddy bear.”

And collar and leash in hand, she went to fetch…

The Hound.

She was right about his size. Somehow, when I’d glanced at him before – probably because he was being so quiet – I hadn’t really noticed it. But he came to mid-thigh on her. He had a great square head – much bigger than the other dogs’ – and a back as broad as a table. I started to worry again. Could we really cope with a dog as large as that?

And then he walked up to me. He wagged his tail. He leaned on me, and he looked into my eyes.

I felt something, somewhere, go click.

“Look at him,” D marvelled. “He’s like a tiger.” And he was. His coat was fawn and red, overlaid with black and charcoal stripes and flecks. His muzzle, paws and chest were splashed with cream, and there was a narrow white stripe, like a chalk line, it on, all the way from his forehead to the end of his nose. And his eyes were gold-brown and ringed with black, the flicks at the edges making him look as if he was wearing eyeliner.

“Here.” The kennel manager handed me the lead. It stayed slack. Only when I moved did he start to walk too, stuck to my side as if by velcro. When I stopped, he stopped, freezing with one paw lifted mid-stride. The only time he broke away from me was to water a tuft of grass at the side of the road, and then he came straight back. The cars thundering past didn’t seem to faze him. Neither did the boxer that threw itself at its garden gate, barking hoarsely at him. By the time we’d returned to the kennels, we knew we’d be coming back the following week to take him home.

The two years since then haven’t always been easy. A few weeks after he came home he developed serious health problems, and the fight to get him well again took almost eleven months. It was terrifying. But somehow, he pulled round.

Our routine has changed drastically, too – I’ve had to adjust to getting up every morning at a time that, previously, I barely knew existed, and both D and I have had to get used to going out for walks in horizontal rain and feet of snow. Our once-lush lawn has turned into a balding sea of mud. Our carpets have a permanent coating of hair.

And you know what? We wouldn’t change a thing.

The Hound, Asleep

A liquorice nose.

Long legs tangled, ears and paws

Flickering with dreams.

Liebster Blog Award

The lovely Laura E James, a singer and fellow writer who has a blog and website here, has awarded me the Liebster blog award! 

Liebster is a German word meaning dearest, and the award is given to up-and-coming bloggers with less than 200 followers.

If you receive the award, you should:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you. 
2. Reveal your top five picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog. 
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog.
4. Hope that the people you've sent the award to forward it to their five favourite bloggers and keep it going!


So without further ado, here are my picks (although it's VERY hard to choose - there's a lot of awesome blogs out there!):


Abi Burlingham - a really interesting, intelligent blog. Abi – who's the author of the fabulous RUBY AND GRUB books and the forthcoming BUTTERCUP MAGIC: A MYSTERY FOR MEGAN – posts every Friday about all sorts of different things, and I always look forward to reading what she has to say.


Julia Monroe Martin at wordsxo.com - writing, life on the Maine coast, squirrels and more, and the Great Crow Experiment has me hooked!


Martin Shone at Like the Sun Shone - a shiny new site - glad to see you up and running again, Martin.


Mel Rogerson at lifebeyond - Mel is a SCWBI longlisted writer and fellow YA fanatic, and I really hope I'll be seeing one of her books on the shelves soon!


Nettie Thomson at Words and Pictures - not only is she a talented photographer, but her stories about her mum and posts like 'Writing Roolz' always give me a giggle, and her flash fiction is wonderful. 


Thank you, Laura!

First Draft Doubt

As some of my Twitter friends know (because they told me about it - thank you!) ACID was announced in the Bookseller yesterday, along with three other dystopian YA novels by Sangu Mandanna, Lissa Price and Jennifer Bosworth which will be coming out from Random House Children's Books in 2012 and 2013. Their books – THE LOST GIRL, STARTERS and STRUCK – sound amazing and I can't wait to read them! You can see the announcement here: 


http://www.thebookseller.com/news/knowles-signs-dystopian-deals-rhcb.html

And now (ahem), on with today's post…


When I first start a new story, I’m always excited. It’s a shiny new idea, one I’ve thought about for months, even years, and I can’t wait to plunge in and start start that mysterious process of alchemy which brings my plot and characters to life. But as I continue – usually when I get to the end of the first third – uncertainty sets in. And then all my insecurities come flooding in. This is the worst idea ever. I didn’t plan it enough. My characters suck. My writing sucks. I suck.

…You get the idea.

It used to paralyse me. I couldn’t keep going with anything. I’d rip every story up and start over, again and again, until I had to give up on them because I’d completely lost sight of what I was trying to write about in the first place.

Something had to change.

One day, I happened upon a quote from Jacqueline Wilson, where she said that with each book she writes, about halfway in, she starts to doubt whether it’s ever going to work, and that she ‘never write[s] with great confidence.”

Yes, you read that right – Jacqueline Wilson. Former children’s laureate and bestselling, multi-award-winning author of around 90 books. Books which fill almost half a shelf in the library where I work – when they’re there, that is, which isn’t often because they get borrowed so often (she’s one of the top ten borrowed authors in the UK).

I was astonished. Because back then, if you’d asked me who I thought was least likely to have confidence crises in the middle of writing something, I’d have said Jacqueline Wilson.

And it made me think. Apparently, other writers suffered from First Draft Doubt too. Writers who were published, and published many times. So how did they deal with it? How did they get their books finished? Was there a top secret formula which, when applied to wavering plotlines or flagging characters, would bring them round as effectively as a sharp smack in the face (or smelling salts, if violence wasn’t your thing)?

Of course not.

Because there is no secret.

Only this: it’s normal to doubt your first draft. You should doubt your first draft (because that’s what drives you to make it better). And you shouldn’t let that get in the way of you writing it.

That’s not to say if it’s not working that you shouldn’t find out why. These days, I do this by writing letters to myself, starting them “What needs to happen next?” Then I keep writing, trying to switching off my conscious, logical brain and allowing my characters and plot to lead me from my unconscious brain, where the answers have usually been brewing all along.

I also turn to my favourite book about writing and storytelling - STORY: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee. Although it’s not an easy read – I had to take notes the first two times I read it! – I’ve learnt so much from this book. If I’m having a serious plot problem, a combination of dipping into this book and a What Happens Next letter get it back on track.

The most important thing I’ve learnt, though, is that the first draft doesn’t need to be perfect. It can’t be perfect. It’s a sketch, a roughing-out, a shuffling-together of ideas, and if you try to make it perfect, it won’t get done.

Instead, ignore those doubts, accept and note your story’s flaws, and get the damn thing down anyway. Because then you’ve got something to work with. Something to make better. Material for a second draft. And that’s where the real fun begins!

What about you? Is there a particular point in your writing you always lose confidence at? And how do you deal with it when you get there?

Finding Narnia

I'm multi-blogging today - you can also find me over the Lucky 13s, talking about the film that made me realise I wanted to be a writer, here.

Like millions of people the world over, I read C.S. Lewis’s THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE when I was a kid, and afterwards, dreamed of finding Narnia at the back of my own wardrobe, even though it was barely big enough to hold all my clothes, never mind the secret entrance to a whole other world.

It seemed I was doomed to disappointment. But if I’d only stopped to think about it, I’d’ve realised that portals to parallel worlds existed all around me, and that I’d already been through them many times.

Source

The first was a gigantic weeping beech tree which grew at the edge of the grounds of the environmental studies centre where I grew up. In winter, the branches which cascaded from its crown were bare skeletons, the ground beneath them muddy and wet, but in summer, it underwent a transformation. The branches became leafy umbrellas, with a circle of bare, dusty earth beneath each. For my sister and I, this was our ‘house’, with each branch-umbrella forming a separate room – and there were enough of them for a grand mansion. The leaves became walls, the trunk a spiral staircase (although we never tried to climb it), the ground richly-patterned carpets, and the sunlight filtering through the canopy around us the light from glittering chandeliers. We took tea, ordered the maids about (and each other), and generally had a splendid time. At least until we got called in for dinner.

My second Narnia was on the other side of the centre grounds where, just before they gave way to fields, there was a tiny wood of horse chestnut trees. They had grown up around an ice house which dated from the days when the centre was a private home, and the family who lived there needed somewhere to store ice to keep food cold. As well as being my very own conker supply depot, each summer the wood would be transformed into a lush green paradise as a carpet of cow parsley sprung up beneath the trees. I remember my mum helping my sister and I to cook dinner over a campfire there one year, listening to episodes of THE HOBBIT on the radio while we ate, and being surrounded by a frothing sea of scented white flowers. We each had a horse, too (two long branches that grew beside the domed roof of the ice-house, which we’d climb onto to reach them), and would travel many miles to distant and exotic lands.

Finally, next to a little pond in our garden, there was a small box hedge. It was hollow inside, so my sister and I claimed it as a den. There was just room in there to sit upright, using an old plank of wood as a bench, but in my mind it was vast, a giant’s cavern with a ceiling hung with stalagtites and glittering crystals studding the walls. Once, I found a ring in there – silver, with a small blue rabbit on it – that I’d lost several years before. I hadn’t lost it in there, though, so how it ended up there, I was never sure. Perhaps it really was a portal to another world – one where lost things wait to be found…

I left my Narnias behind eventually – like the way in to the real Narnia disappears for the older characters in the series, their doors quietly closed behind me while I was busy getting older – but being a writer means that even as an adult I get to live in other worlds all the time: the worlds I create on the page. Each new story I write is a doorway into another reality, and when the time comes to move on, it’s always a wrench.

But not for long, because there’s always another story forming somewhere. Another world waiting for me to notice it.

All I have to do is start writing…

How YA Saved My (Writing) Life

When I was a kid, I read every book in the children’s section of my local library I could get my hands on – Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, Judy Blume, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys… I loved authors like Anne Pilling and Robert Swindells, too, I was a Point Horror junkie, and I devoured the Sweet Valley High books (well, they had a certain glamour!). I also read each and every one of the Chalet School books, lent to me by a relative. Basically, there wasn’t much I didn’t read. I loved it.

Then I hit my teens. Back then (and it wasn’t that long ago) YA didn’t really exist as a genre – at least, not in the sense it does now. And I don’t remember there being a designated section in our library for books for teens like we have in the library I work in today.

So I skipped straight from kid’s books to adult books – Stephen King, Ben Bova, Michael Crichton. About the same time, I started writing, and as a result, my early ‘novels’ (which I still have, stacked in the top of a wardrobe), have a distinctly hard-boiled flavour as I tried to imitate these authors, both in content and in style. I was thrilled, at fourteen, when my grandmother inadvertently paid me one of the biggest compliments anyone’s ever made about my writing – that I wrote like a forty-year-old man.

Then came the GCSE years, and reading for study, rather than pleasure. And as we analysed the meaning of Scout and Jem’s every word in To Kill a Mockingbird*, and dutifully wrote essays about Macbeth, I began to wonder whether, because, secretly, I still preferred Sci-fi to Shakespeare – despite being told that THIS was great literature! – I was lacking in some way.

So I turned my back on the books I liked to read in favour of the ones I thought I should be reading. Stopped writing the stories I wanted to write in favour of the sort I thought I was supposed to. And pretty quickly, I stopped having fun with them. Just stopped.

Often, I had to force myself to read. The few times I cracked and bought, say, the latest Stephen King, it was a guilty pleasure, one I’d only allow myself every now and then. One strange pattern did emerge, though – the ‘literary’ books I was making myself read nearly always had a young or teenage protagonist. But the significance of this didn’t occur to me then; I knew I felt more of a sense of kinship with these sorts of characters than any other, but I didn’t stop to think about why, or what that might mean for my own writing. In a desperate attempt to revive my fading enthusiasm, I had a go at a story for children, but because I didn’t read children’s books – I didn’t think I was allowed to, somehow (a crazy notion; I realise that now) – it failed, and ended up in the bin.

At the same time, I started to realise that I had no idea how to write a plot that actually worked. I’m not one of those lucky people born with an innate sense for storytelling – I simply couldn’t figure out why the plots in everything I wrote flatlined, or went in circles, or simply went nowhere at-all. Maybe it’s time to give up, a little voice in my head started telling me. Maybe you’re not a writer. Maybe it’s time to try something else.

Then two things happened. I saw a review of a book, STORY: SUBSTANCE, STRUCTURE, STYLE AND THE PRINCIPLES OF SCREENWRITING by Robert McKee, in a magazine. It sounded interesting – the article talked about it as if it could be applied to novel-writing, too – and the library had a copy in, so I borrowed it and found out it does exactly what it says on the tin. I’ll warn you, though, it’s not a book for the fainthearted. I had to read it through twice, taking detailed notes, before I even started to understand what it was trying to tell me. But then it started to click. I started to get it. And started to realise where I’d been going wrong.

At almost exactly the same time, I got the opportunity to go on a weekend course run by the award-winning YA & children’s author Linda Newbery. Better read one of her books, I thought (as shockingly, I never had). So I got myself a copy of THE SHELL HOUSE, which at the time was her latest novel, about two teenage boys separated by almost eight decades but linked by a crumbling mansion, and who are both struggling with issues of identity, faith and sexuality.

It was a revelation. I enjoyed it so much I read it in less than two days. And after the course, which was interesting and fun, I went back to the bookshop and the library for more YA books by other authors. I couldn’t get enough of them.

But still, my brain was slow to catch up. It wasn’t until several months later that something suddenly occurred to me: why not try writing the literary coming-of-age novel I’d been struggling with, on and off, for two years, as a young adult novel?

I remember that moment so clearly. It was an autumn evening, and I was sitting on the sofa in the little rented flat my then-boyfriend (now my husband) and I were living in at the time. I’d been working on another story all day which I was bored to death with. I hated the storyline. I hated the characters. I was constructing it according to McKee’s principles in STORY and it still didn’t work. But I was ploughing on relentlessly with it because I felt I ought to.

The moment the thought of writing YA exploded into my brain (it really was that dramatic) I put the boring story to one side, grabbed a notebook and started scribbling as ideas for this new novel literally tumbled into my head. Everything I’d learnt from STORY (which I’m still learning from – I don’t think I’ll ever stop) collided with the characters and story I’d been trying to piece together, and by that night I had an outline and a first chapter written out.

For the first time ever, I fell in love with my characters, becoming so obsessed with them I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them get on the bus when I was on my way to work. I found myself listening to music that sounded like the story. I was totally and utterly immersed in the world of the story – the first time it had ever happened. It was incredible.

That book was also the first one I ever sent out to agents and publishers, although – quite rightly, because it was terrible – it quickly collected a stack of rejections, and it would take several more novels before ACID was born. But from that moment on, I knew: I was going to write YA. I was going to read YA. And I was going to love it – every single minute of it.

What about you? How did you find your genre? Or are you still searching for it? Whatever stage you’re at, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

*Ironically, I recently picked up my battered, much doodled-in copy of TKAM and it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. Go figure!

Have You Read…

KILL ALL ENEMIES by Melvin Burgess

I’d been good for nearly a week. Only one fight; it must have been a record for me. I should have known it couldn’t last…

Billie keeps getting into trouble - she doesn’t mean to, but somehow it just happens. Chris thinks school is a waste of time - he’s desperate to leave, but his parents are forcing him to stay. And Rob might look big and tough, but his violent stepfather keeps getting the better of him, and inside, he feels utterly helpless. Soon, events take a downward spiral for each of them and they get excluded from their schools and are sent to the Brandt, the local Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). There, their lives collide, with surprising results for all of them.

At first glance, Billie, Chris and Rob seem like the sort of teenagers the media delights in demonising - troublemakers, wasters, no-hopers. But there is more to their stories than first meets the eye. Almost immediately, you start to learn the real reasons behind their behaviour, and why school isn’t – and often can’t – be their number one priority. As the story unfolds, it reveals a hidden world where the characters are unsung heroes, fighting for themselves and their loved ones, while so many of those around them are blind to what's really going on in their lives.

Burgess, author of the controversial and brilliant Junk and Doing It, as well as many other highly-acclaimed novels for children and young adults, visited several PRUs in the course of researching Kill All Enemies – which started life as a project commissioned for Channel 4 – and Billie, Chris and Rob are based on the kids he talked to. They are such engaging and believable characters, and knowing their stories come from real life makes them all the more harrowing, because they could be the stories of people you see every day: that kid slouching at the bus stop with their hood pulled over their face and a cigarette dangling from their lower lip; the one getting into fights behind the school; the one hanging out in the park late at night in the rain because anywhere’s better than home…

Luckily for Chris, Billie and Rob, there are a few people who do understand them – or at least try to – and who help to stop them falling through the cracks completely.

As for the ending… when I read the closing lines, I wanted to punch the air and cheer. Chris, you’re my hero! But I won’t spoil it by telling you why - if you want to find out, grab yourself a copy now!

Author Interview - Abi Burlingham

This week, I’m thrilled to be doing my first ever author interview with my lovely writing friend and fellow Hound minion Abi Burlingham. Abi is the author of the RUBY AND GRUB picture books - RUBY AND GRUB, GRUB IN LOVE and the forthcoming GRUB’S PUPS, out next week! Gorgeously illustrated by Sarah Warburton, they're published by Piccadilly Press, who are also publishing her BUTTERCUP MAGIC series for 6-9-year-olds, with the first book, A MYSTERY FOR MEGAN, out next spring.

So, Abi, tell us a bit about yourself. (Ooh, that sounds proper interviewer-y, doesn't it? *Adjusts microphone*)

 Well Emma (ha ha! you see I can do it too), I live in Derbyshire and teach adults literacy, but mostly, I write. I'm a huge animal lover - all of them, and regularly cry at nature programmes. I love trees and woods and growing things, especially potatoes - there's something so satisfying about planting a spud and then digging out a whole load with your hands. I love the sea, and am a compulsive picker upper of bits of wood and pebbles. I like to draw and paint too, but have less time for this than I'd like. Mostly, I love to write, just love it. It feeds my soul and if I can't do it I am a total and utter misery guts!

When did you start writing, and why?

My first memories of writing were from when I was around nine I guess.  I used to make up rhymes and 'odes' all the time. My mum liked poetry and would buy me funny poetry books, which I loved. I used to pore over her Cecily M Barker 'Flower Fairies' book, and 'The Butterfly Ball'. Then I asked for a portable typewriter for Christmas. I was lucky - I got one. It was in a gorgeous dark green zip up case and I adored it. I would sit and type letters from people who didn't exist to people who didn't exist - often very funny and very quirky. They make me howl when I read them now. After that, I wrote poem after poem, often accompanied by drawings and sketches. I think the 'why' bit is harder. It always felt right.  Also, I was painfully shy as a child and would clam up in front of people. The words were all inside and writing was their way out. 

What made you decide to write for children?

I didn't have a compulsion to write for children at any point, until I'd had my son. I had left my job - I worked in admin for a long time - and moved to Yorkshire with the sole purpose of writing, then I had my son. I was surrounded by baby stuff, mushy food being flicked onto walls, nappies thrown into a corner of the room in haste, the constant drone of Teletubbies and Postman Pat. I also had two dogs at the time - a whappy cairn terrier and our lovely springer spaniel pup, so I was suddenly in a very crazy place, not at all conducive to writing poetry. I am very quick at making decisions and tend to stick to them, so I decided to write some stories for young children and to research the whole process. Unlike many writers, apart from having to write at school, I had never even attempted a story. I had only ever written these whacky letters and poetry. All Grown Up, my first picture book to be published, was one of the very first stories I ever wrote.

How long did it take you to get published?

Between the first stories being written and the first book being published, it took four years. I wasn't working regularly at it because by then I'd had my daughter too, but I had received some really good feedback from a handful of publishers, so kept working away at ideas and trying things out. One particular commissioning editor for a big children's book publisher would spend half an hour or more talking me through ideas and ways of trying things, on regular occasions. She gave me the bit of self-belief that I needed in order to carry on.

What is your favourite book?

Ooh, I love this question. It would be hard to say an absolute favourite, but if push comes to shove, 'The Book Thief', by Markus Zusak. I love his writing with a passion, and this book has it all for me. This is the book I would love to have written.

What about your favourite film?

Philadelphia Story, starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart, to name but a few. I love the old black and whites, and the old actors, the way they spoke, the chivalry, the wit. It must have been 'grand' to be a teenager then.

Your favourite music?

Ah! I used to be a punk - secret's out now. I had the back-combed hair and the weird clothes. In fact, I used to make quite a lot of my clothes from charity shop stuff that I butchered until they resembled something I quite liked. My favourite bands then were people like The Cocteau Twins, The Comsat Angels, The Cure, The Chameleons (I seemed to like bands beginning with C for some reason). But I was also brought up on Roxy Music and David Bowie, Simon and Garfunkel, 10cc, Elton John and The Who. All of these I still love to listen to. At the moment, I have The Horrors 'Skying' on constant replay on my car CD player. I like Arcade Fire, Editors and am a huge fan of Elbow. I also love Sigur Ross and one of my new discoveries, The Black Atlantic, who are from The Netherlands. As you can probably tell, I am a big music fan - music wins over tv for me any day.

And (because I’m nosy and I just have to know!) your favourite joke?

I am rubbish at remembering jokes. I have two - one isn't repeatable here, the other is: What's brown and sticky? A stick. The only reason this is one of my faves is because it's the only one I remember that I can repeat. Mostly, I just like it when people say random funny things that make me laugh.

Describe your perfect writing day…

This is a very good question, because my perfect writing day hasn't happened yet. My perfect writing day would be among the trees in a favourite part of Clumber Park, where no-one else seems to go, or in a wood, just me, a notepad and pen, a big bag of crisps and some water. Otherwise, I guess a day at home where all the words come and I have few other things to do, is fairly close to perfect.

…and your actual writing day.

My actual writing day is punctuated by doing the school runs and walking my greyhound, washing up, and of course, The Evil Menace of Distraction... commonly known as Twitter. Not to mention, answering emails, doing publicity stuff etc etc. I imagine it's much like most writer's days really when we do a bit of writing in the gaps between other things. I am lucky though as I only work 3 half days a week, so at least I can settle down for longish spells and get quite a lot done in that time.

If you could tell your teenage self one thing, what would it be?

This is a bit uncanny actually as I had a conversation with someone today about this very thing. I did tell my teenage self something, and would tell myself the same again. I was painfully shy, and I realised that I'd never get anywhere being like this, so I remember telling myself that it was about time I got a grip and pulled myself together. I can't say it was easy, but I was determined that I wasn't going to end up doing nothing with my life and I knew that my shyness would hold me back. I was bullied quite a lot at school but it gave me a steely determination which has stayed with me and always makes me come up fighting.

And finally, what are you up to next?

At some point I would like to sleep and have tea and toast in bed... but before that, I have Grub's Pups coming out on 27th October and am having my first ever book launch for that, which is really exciting (and a tad scary!).  I've written the first of a series of books for 6-9yrs, Buttercup Magic, and the first of these, A Mystery for Megan, is out in April 2012. This means I have two more to write. I'm also working on a couple of picture book stories, another 6-9yrs novel about a rescue greyhound, a 9-11yrs novel about about a girl who aspires to be someone special, and my first YA book. I have also started a novel. Oh, and a poem or two inbetween. I've two poems due to be published in magazines soon, which I am ecstatic about. Hopefully all of this will be punctuated with feasts of cheesecake and fish-finger and fried egg sandwiches... hopefully!

And can I just say, thank you so much for interviewing me. This is my first ever interview, and these have been lovely thought provoking questions. I've really enjoyed thinking about them and I hope people enjoy reading my answers.

Thank YOU, Abi - it’s been great to interview you and I'm sure they will!

Abi has a fantastic website, and a blog which she updates every Friday - you can find both of them here.

GRUB'S PUPS LAUNCH

If you are in the Chesterfield area on Saturday 29^th October, Abi will be at Waterstones on Vicar Lane at 11am to launch Grub’s Pups. She'll be reading from and signing her books, and there'll be refreshments, colouring, lollies and free Ruby and Grub bookmarks for the children (I might have to pretend to be a child so I can get one!).

The Lucky Thirteens Blog Launches Today!

I'm really excited to announce that a brand new group blog, the Lucky 13s, will be launching later today - and I'm going to be there! 


We're a group of authors with debut children's and young adult books arriving in 2013. We'll be adding members as we go along and blogging about all aspects of writing and the writing life.


So why not grab some balloons and a part hat and come on over to help me and fellow founder members Rachele Alpine, Liz Coley, Jessica Corra, Lamar "L.R." Giles, Kristen Kittscher, Tara Lazar, Nicole Maggi, Ellen Oh, Steven dos Santos, Sarah Skilton and Jessica Young celebrate our launch day at The Lucky 13s? It'd be great to see you. You can also follow the Lucky 13s on Twitter.


Many thanks to all the Lucky 13s for their hard work over the last few weeks, especially to Nicole for getting it all going in the first place!

Unearthing the Ichthyosaur

I grew up at an environmental studies centre, so in our house, being scared of spiders wasn’t an option. If I find one now, the only place I run to is the bookshelf to look it up in my battered Collins Insect Guide, handed down to me by my dad. I like snails. And snakes. And frogs. And I’ve loved going for walks in the countryside since I was old enough to well, walk.

But what I was most interested in when I was a kid (and still am today, actually) was fossils.

The centre is in an area known as the North Downs, a ridge of chalk hills which were formed when much of what is now Britain was covered by sea between 97 and 65 million years ago. In that chalk – itself formed out of the remains of microscopic plants and animals – are all sorts of fossils of the animals that used to live in that sea, some preserved in the chalk, some in flint. Which is why, one summer, I found several almost perfect sea urchin fossils sitting at the side of a footpath, where they’d washed out of the soil.

More often, I’d find a lump of chalk with something just visible inside it, which careful chipping away would reveal to be a shell or a belemnite. And sometimes, we’d visit a nearby quarry, long abandoned, where there were shark’s teeth preserved in the chalk. I can't tell you how many hours I spent hammering away at lumps of rock with a geological hammer, only to find… more chalk. Although my sea urchins were beautiful, they weren’t exactly rare. A shark’s tooth would have been, well, special. But it wasn't to be.

Then we went on a family holiday to the South-West. It was a freezing cold December day, and there we were on the beach in Lyme Regis, with horizontal rain and a sea the colour of roof slates. What on earth were we doing? Why weren’t we inside watching telly like sane, normal people?

The reason was that Lyme Regis, which sits on a band of Jurassic-era blue lias clay, even softer than chalk, is one of the best fossil spots in the UK. If you go in the summer, the beach has usually been picked clean, but in the winter storms lash the cliffs, and they slump, and the fossils inside are revealed.

Fossils like these:

These are four vertebrae from the tail of an Ichthyosaurus, a giant marine reptile that was around at the same time as the dinosaurs. And they were sitting on the sand in plain view. 


I never found any more of that Ichthyosaur, even though on subsequent visits, I combed the beach from end to end. But perhaps that’s what makes this fossil so precious – that it's such a unusual find.

And although I didn’t originally intend this post to be about writing at-all, as I put it together it I couldn’t help thinking how ideas can be like fossils. Sometimes, if you’re lucky – and it doesn’t happen often – you’ll just stumble across one, whole and almost perfect. Other times you have to chip away at it to remove all the extraneous stuff around it. If you’re lucky, you finally manage to get at it, but sometimes it comes out broken and mangled and you have hunt for something else.

But it’s thought of those rare, almost-wholly formed ideas that drives me forward with my writing, no matter how difficult or frustrating it gets at times. Who knows? There could be an entire Ichthyosaur buried in there… and I’ll never know unless I keep on looking. 


What keeps you going with your writing?

And in other news…

I’m excited to reveal that tomorrow a brand new blog, The Lucky 13s, is being launched – and I’m going to be part of it! I’ll post the link here and on Twitter tomorrow, so look out for it.

Those Eureka Moments

They can strike anywhere, at any time. You’re at work, or washing up. You’re at the dentist, or driving somewhere in the car. You’re lazing on the sofa in front of the TV, half-paying attention to the book lying open on your lap.

And then… BAM!

You get an idea.

If you can, you stop what you’re doing to scribble it down. If you can’t, you hug it tightly to yourself and grin when no-one’s looking, drunk on the sensation of it fizzing through your veins. Eureka moments can arrive at any time during a piece of writing: at the start, sparking the whole thing off; when you’re struggling to untangle a snarled plot thread; when you’re figuring out the exact way to decribe something, or trying to work out how to bring the whole thing to a satisfying end.

With ACID, I had several of these moments, but by far the most powerful was the one that brought the book to life in the first place.

I’d been trying to write ACID since I was fourteen (although it wasn’t called that then), after a friend and I challenged each other to come up with a story about someone who breaks out of jail. Like so many of the ‘novels’ I wrote when I was a teenager, I got only part of the way in before I lost direction and gave up. But the idea stayed with me, shadow-like, waiting.

I had another stab at it when I finished university, starting the day my course ended. I’d forced a three-year writing hiatus on myself while I was studying for my degree, knowing if I began writing, I wouldn’t want to do anything else. After so long waiting, sitting down at that computer felt right in a way painting never had, and I knew – as I had all along, really – that this was what I was meant to be doing.

But still, the prison-break story refused to be written. Still, it remained a shadow.

I abandoned it again and spent the next seven years trying other things: short stories, crime novels, picture books, poetry – and somewhere along the way, I discovered I wanted to write for teenagers. Then, not long after my first YA novel had collected its final rejection, I was sitting upstairs and wondering what to start on next when, through the open window behind me, I heard the sound of an car approaching from some distance away. All at once the ordinary village street outside my house disappeared, and instead, I saw a moor at night-time, vast and black and empty, with a single car driving across it on a long, straight road, its headlights two pinpoints of brightness in the dark. I was no longer in my house but a ramshackle cottage at the edge of that moor, standing at a window, watching the car draw closer and wishing I was in it, because I was trapped here and couldn’t leave.

Immediately, I knew this was a scene from my prison-break story. Other ideas began forming, almost too fast for me to be able to write them all down. An hour later I had two main characters, a beginning, a middle and an end. And after a few months of researching and plotting and procrastinating, the first draft of my story was finally ready to be written.

Ironically, the moor house scene was never used, as I realised my two characters, Jenna and Max, needed to be trapped in a more urban setting. But without it, ACID might still be no more than a collection of notes and dead-ended ideas.

Have you had any eureka moments recently? What were they? And what were the results?