From now on I will be blogging at my new site, The Faded Bookmark.

The Faded Bookmark is a blog dedicated to book news, reviews and interviews, with a focus on YA fiction but a love of all things book.

Please add it to your list of favourites and pop by regularly. I want it to be as interactive as possible so would love to receive your comments…

Greetings blogosphere! I hope the new year has been kind to you so far.

2011 has been very kind to me so far.

The year began with the auction of my first YA novel, Dear Dylan and the surreal experience of actually having to turn publishers down. In the end I signed a two book deal with one of my favourite children’s publishers – more on this exciting news anon.

In the mean time I’m delighted to be able to tell you that Dear Dylan is being re-launched later this year and my second YA novel, Finding Cherokee Brown will be published next year.

I just got my first French book deal too, with the publishers Flammarion for Dear Dylan. I was absolutely delighted at this as I love all things French (most especially the cheese and wine. And the bread. And Paris. And the Louvre. And, and…)

I’ve also run my first few writing workshops of the year. One was for adults at the Poetry Cafe in Covent Garden. It was a Writing Resolutions Workshop designed to help people get focused on their writing goals for the year ahead. It was great to be able to tell people about my experiences of the past year – and give them living proof that if you stay focused on your goals and keep the faith anything is possible.

Covent Garden Workshop

 Then last week I ran a couple of writing workshops at a primary school in Lewisham. The kids had been studying the Vikings as part of the curriculum so I was asked if I could somehow incorporate Vikings into what I had planned.

Here I am preparing for the day!

Getting in touch with my inner Viking!

I have to say I love being able to go into schools as a writer. And the thing I find most rewarding is when I manage to get the more reluctant kids to realise how much fun writing can be. Having a Viking theme proved to be a real blast. I got the pupils to create their own Viking characters and used plenty of role plays and interaction to keep them engaged. Some of the more *ahem* disgusting hygiene habits and aggressive pastimes of the Vikings certainly helped to keep the boys engaged!

This year looks like being my busiest yet in terms of running writing workshops for young people, what with the official launch of Write Club coming up. We just got a sample of the artwork for our website and I can’t resist giving you a sneak peek:-

Write Club Artwork

 If you are a teacher or run a youth organisation and would like to book a writing workshop then please email me via this site.

More soon re my new publisher…

Last night, on the way home from work, I thought I’d pop into WH Smiths to have a browse of their books while I waited for my train. But when I got to Euston Station I found that it had become the scene of a student protest about the controversial proposed hike in tuition fees.

Student Protest at Euston Station

For those of you not in the know, the British coalition government want to dramatically increase the annual university tuition fees from £3,290 to as much as £9,000. And although these fees don’t have to be paid back until after the student graduates and is earning £21,000 per annum, many people are vehemently opposed to such measures.

I am one of those people – and that’s why I ended up making an impromptu, impassioned speech at Euston last night.

I went to university back in the 1980s – in the glory days of student grants and minimal fees.  This was also back in the day when only 10% of people went to university (now I believe that figure is something like 46%).

I was the only person in my (very wide) friendship group who came from a council estate. And most of my friends were lucky enough to have wealthy parents who would magically pay off the debts they had run up each term. Several friends even had credit cards given to them by their parents so that they  could spend to their heart’s content while at uni. 

By the time I returned home for my second year summer holidays I was deeply in debt and deeply depressed. I remember (to my shame) actually being resentful that my parents didn’t have the means to pay off my overdraft. I got a summer job in a video store, felt a massive sense of relief at being financially solvent, and never returned to university to complete my degree.

All of those who argue that students from poorer backgrounds will be put off applying to university by the prospect of accruing massive debt are absolutely right. When you are eighteen years old and have experienced financial hardship your entire life the last thing you want to do is saddle yourself with thousands of pounds worth of debt.

I found the students at yesterday’s protest really inspiring. And it was really nice to see people voicing their concerns in such an articulate and passionate way.

To echo a sentiment from my last blog – what kind of society indirectly denies huge swathes of its population the access to further education? As one of yesterday’s speakers so eloquently put it, us coming together to protest about the cuts to further education is what ‘big society’ is all about, David Cameron – not targeting the poorest and most vulnerable. 

To see a video of highlights from yesterday’s protest please click here.

When I was a kid we didn’t have a TV.

In the playground this could be a real source of embarrassment but most times it didn’t matter at all because I always had an endless supply of books.

And I always had an endless supply of books because of my local library.

Every Saturday my mum would take us to the library and I can honestly say it was the highlight of my week. This was back in the day before barcodes so I would browse the shelves clutching my scruffy cardboard library tickets, wondering what magical worlds they would take me to this time.

Who needed a TV when you could escape through the back of a wardrobe to a place called Narnia or experience pioneer life in a little house on a prairie?

I can honestly say without a shadow of doubt that it was my local library that instilled in me the love of books that would ultimately lead to me becoming a writer.

I even used to play at being a librarian, setting up a pretend library in my bedroom and forcing my younger siblings to come and ‘borrow’ books from me. I would issue them with home-made paper tickets and pretend stamp their books with the end of my biro. Over and over again. No wonder none of them have set foot in a library since!

But all jokes aside, libraries have always played a key role in my life – from providing me with access to shelves full of of dream worlds when I was a kid, to a quiet place to study for my A levels as a teenager, to a place to take my own son for story-time when he was little. And more recently, as an author, I have run weekly writing groups in two London libraries for six years. And countless workshops for children in between.

Giving an Author Talk in a Library

Recently, when I moved to a new area, one of the first things I did was join my local library. When the librarian was telling me all about the fantastic services they offer apart from books she finished with the rather ominous, ‘of course that’s if we’re still open next year’.

Because right now the austerity axe hangs over our library service, poised to cut up to half of the libraries in some boroughs.

Now I understand the need for cuts in the current economic climate but really, what kind of society decides to deprive its kids of books?

And it will be the poorer kids who suffer the most. The kids like me, growing up on council estates whose parents can’t afford to buy them four new books every week.

As someone who has run many writing workshops for kids in deprived areas I have seen at first hand the power of books and writing to transform lives.

For the government to target these kids whilst bankers’ bonuses continue to soar is to me unforgiveable. Other writers have described it as ‘cultural vandalism’. I would say it’s a cultural travesty.

So let’s break with tradition and rather than be silent, let’s shout for our libraries before it’s too late.

The writer Alan Gibbons is running a fantastic campaign on his website and you can also join the Facebook group Campaign for the Book for more details of how you can help.

Hands up who’s snowed in?

This week in my new home village (and most of the rest of Britain!) we got the first snowfall of the winter and I have to say it’s so much nicer in the countryside than the grey slush we would get in London.

I’ve spent most of this week feeling as if I’m walking around in a Christmas card.

Here’s a picture of a cottage I pass when I’m walking my dog…

See what I mean?!

I also love the way the snow shakes things up a little – schools and offices are forced to shut and people are able to break from their rat race routine to do fun things like sledging and have snow ball fights.

In my job as a children’s fiction editor I normally commute to East London but this week I’ve had to work from home, snuggled up on the sofa with my dog Max.

Max helping me edit a manuscript!

I’ve also had a massive snowball fight and drunk mulled wine by an open fire.

I think it’s a really healthy thing to break from routine. It makes you feel fresh and alive. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for snow to come along to prompt us into doing crazy things… Maybe we should make at least one day a week a ‘snow day’ and do something fun and different…

Well, I’ve just about come back down to earth following the YoungMinds Book Award and it has been an amazing week.

First Amazing Thing to Have Come Out of Winning a Book Award:

Literary agents contact you – and get back to you within days not months!

Second Amazing Thing

Your teenage son, who is usually far too cool to express any kind of excitement about his mum, is genuinely gob-smacked and utters the immortal words, “I’m well proud of you!”

Third Amazing Thing

You get a ton of requests to come and run workshops in schools – which I absolutely LOVE doing by the way so please email me if you’d like me to come to your school…

Fourth Amazing Thing

You feel vindicated for all of the times you felt like knocking the writing on the head but didn’t.

Fifth Amazing Thing

You know that no matter what happens in the future, one of your books was awarded first prize by a panel made up of your target readers and writers whom you hugely respect. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Sixth Amazing Thing

You sign up with an American literary agent who lives in Paris and eat your body weight in pain au chocolat in celebration….

Well, having said I had no chance of winning – I won! Still feeling a little speechless so I hope this blog won’t end up being one long blank…

Giving my acceptance speech

In summary, Dear Dylan’s journey to award winning status goes something like this:

• After running countless workshops for young people I decide to make the transition from adult to young adult fiction and I decide to write fiction that will hopefully help young readers with the various issues they face growing up.
• I decide to take a creative gamble and write a book entirely in emails, both for the challenge it presents and because I felt it would be a form that would resonate with young readers.
• I finish the book and send it out to agents.
• It gets rejected.
• The general consensus seems to be that the email format won’t work.
• Then I hear that a publisher is starting a new YA list and looking for writers.
• I send it to the commissioning editor and she offers me a book deal within a week saying how refreshing it was to receive something a different, and how fed up she was with agents sending ‘safe’ submissions.
• I feel very happy and celebrate with red wine, chocolate and a blast of Bruce Springsteen.
• The publisher asks me if I will write a book about a teen wag that they can publish before Dear Dylan as they feel this will be more commercial.
• I drown my sorrows with red wine, chocolate and Bruce Springsteen’s album, Nebraska.
• The publisher then offers me far less money than they originally had.
• I tell them to sling their book deal.
• I indulge in more red wine, chocolate and Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town.
• I decide my career as a writer is over.
• But I still have a burning passion to write.
• I decide to self publish Dear Dylan.
• I see an article about the YoungMinds Book Award and I think, I’m self-published they won’t touch my book with a barge pole.
• I play Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’ and decide to send my book off anyway.
• I get a thank you email from YoungMinds – Dear Dylan has been entered for the competition.
• I jump around for a bit.
• I get another email from YoungMinds – Dear Dylan has been long-listed.
• I go to the toilet at work and I cry with joy.
• A couple of months pass and I get another email from YoungMinds – Dear Dylan has been short-listed.
• I ring my dad and we both cry. And say ‘Jesus!’ A lot!
• I drink some red wine, eat a box of Ferrero Rocher and play ‘Glory Days’.
• I read in The Bookseller that the publisher I had my book deal with has gone bust, owing authors thousands of pounds in unpaid advances.
• I go to the YoungMind Book Awards.
• I am convinced I won’t win.
• I don’t even prepare the opening line for a speech.
• A gold envelope is opened.
• My name is called out.
• I think I’ve come sixth!
• I get on to the stage and see an award trophy with my name and book title engraved upon it.
• I try really hard not to cry.
• I fail.
• I think about all of the things I went through as a teenager.
• I think that now I really will be able to help other teens going through similar experiences.
• I am about as happy and as proud as I think I’ll ever be.

Trying really hard not to cry!

Next time I will blog about YoungMinds and the excellent work that they do. Their annual lecture before the Book Award was inspiring and if you are looking for a charity to support I would throughly recommend them.

Tonight I’m going to my very first book awards as a short-listed author. 

The fact that it is for the organisation Young Minds makes it even more special to me. One of the main reasons I started writing novels for young people was because I wanted to explore the issues and pressures that they face through my fiction in the hope that it might help.

The Young Minds Book Award is all about fiction that helps young readers deal with the pressures of growing up. For my first YA novel DEAR DYLAN to be short-listed is a real honour.

When I run writing workshops for young people I like to focus a lot on confidence building. When I was younger I really struggled with a lack of confidence when it came to my writing – to the point where I actually dropped out of university because I didn’t think I could compete against people from such wealthy and well-connected backgrounds.

It took me years to find the courage and drive needed to overcome my self doubt and pursue my dream. Now I am a published author and have a career in publishing as an editor I am proud of the fact that I grew up on a council estate and got where I am through hard work alone. And I love being able to go into schools and tell the least confident of kids, ‘if I can do it then so can you.’

I am up against some formidable writing talent tonight so I think it’s very unlikely that I will win. But in my mind I’ve won already just by being on the same shortlist as them. If I could time-travel back to tell my eighteen-year-old self I’m sure she’d never believe me!

And to any aspiring young writer reading this who might be having a crisis of confidence -NEVER GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAM COS YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE IT MIGHT LEAD!

Well, I’m hoping that blogging is just like riding a bike and you never forget how to do it – however long you leave it!

Being a single parent (and ordinary human being!) sometimes real life takes over and demands that your writing life takes a back seat for a while.

It happened a couple of years ago when my former partner was diagnosed with cancer and it happened again this year when I realised that it was time for a brand new start. In a brand new location.

At the risk of alienating any readers currently embroiled in lengthy house moving chains I decided to move on a Thursday, googled a map of possible locations on the Friday, went to check out one of the places (that I’d never been to before) on the Saturday and we had moved there three weeks later!

It was crazy and rash but sometimes you need to shake life up a little.

My son and I had been through so much over the past couple of years we both felt all London-ed out. So now we are settling into country life in a cottage in a village. And so far we have loved every minute of it.

Max checking out the new view

THREE THINGS I HAVE LEARNT ABOUT COUNTRY LIFE SO FAR

1. Buses come about once a day -  and nonece a day on Sundays!
2. You can actually see the stars – and the night sky is black not orange.
3. When complete strangers talk to you it doesn’t mean they are angry or mad – or both.
4. Pubs have these great things called ‘lock-ins’.
5. Houses have fireplaces that still work and haven’t been filled with nasty dried flower arrangements.

My dog Max is loving it too, although he got a shock the first time I took him to our local woods and he saw deer for the first time. He looked at me all dazed and bemused, as if to say, ‘those are some mighty scary squirrels’!

Anyway, now life is returning to normal, the writer in me is itching to be set free (she’s currently trapped in one of the packing boxes from the move) and it’s a good job too because next week I have a book awards to go to – FOR WHICH DEAR DYLAN HAS ACTUALLY BEEN SHORT-LISTED! I also have a brand new YA novel to find a publishing home for and a brand new idea that is burning to get written.

Back soon – I promise!

Dear Dylan, my first novel for young adults, has just made it from the long list to the short list of the Young Minds Book Awards.

I am beyond thrilled.

There was a time, when I had been messed about by a publisher over this book, that I considered scrapping the whole thing.

In the end I decided to self publish and give away the e-version for free. I guess it was my way of getting back to my initial reason for writing the book – to try and help young people who might be dealing with the same kind of issues as the main character.

The Young Minds organisation is all about supporting young people through what can often be a very challenging time of life. Their annual book award was set up to highlight the role fiction can play in helping teenagers deal with various emotional issues.

I’m therefore thrilled that Dear Dylan has made it through to the final six books in the competition, particularly as the shortlist was chosen solely by young readers.

And I’m also thrilled that my decision to self publish has paid off so spectacularly. I hope it can be an inspiration to other writers out there to never to give up hope if you really believe in a book.

For more information on Dear Dylan and to find out how to download it for FREE simply click here.