Well, I’m afraid I’m still not quite ready to tell you how I ended up eating a squirrel (see previous post), but the post traumatic stress counselling is coming along nicely so it will be any day soon. For any budding writers reading this I will tell you that it was actually done in a vain attempt to make an impression on a publisher.

Top Writing Tip: Do NOT eat a squirrel in a bid to impress a publisher – it doesn’t work!

I promise I will recount the grisly tale soon but until then, here is a selection of the latest reviews / publicity I have been getting for Dear Dylan. If you haven’t read it yet, why not download it for FREE from the Dear Dylan page on this website.

Review on The Overflowing Library

Interview on The Overflowing Library

Review on Bookalicious Ramblings

Review on Darlyn and Books

Interview on Lauren’s Crammed Bookshelf

Hope you enjoy them and remember – you can download Dear Dylan  for free from this website…

Well it’s been quite  a week.

To summarise – I have eaten one of these:

(Please don’t ask why as I’m still feeling sick at the thought so not quite ready to blog about the how and why just yet!)

Been boogying backstage at the Ealing Blues Festival:

Had some lovely reviews for Dear Dylan on  American YA websites:

Lauren’s Crammed Bookshelf

Tales of the Ravenous Reader

Carrie’s YA Bookshelf

Written 20 pages of my new YA novel.

Got a new tattoo – a shooting star with a trail of stardust around my wrist.

AND…………….TRUMPET FANFARE PLEASE!

I have set up Write Club with my friend and fellow author Sara Starbuck.

Write Club is an alternative writing group for young people aged 9-16.

It is designed to spot and develop raw writing talent – in rule-breaking, boundary-pushing ways. Think Fight Club but with pens!

We will be collaborating with some of the best writers, performance poets, editors and publishing professionals in the business and hope to provide young people from ALL backgrounds with a unique opportunity to develop their writing skills.

Write Club has been a long time in the planning so we are very excited indeed.

If you would like more information about Write Club please visit the page on this site (in the Den), or email me via my mailbox or join our group Write Club on Facebook.

At the beginning of last year my life felt as if it had been turned upside down and inside out. My then partner had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, my book deal for Dear Dylan had fallen through (not that that seemd to matter in the slightest in the light of the doctor’s diagnosis) and it was just a case of getting through each day as it came.

But today as I write this, my ex-boyfriend is sitting, a picture of health and completely cancer-free, on my sofa playing with the dog, and Dear Dylan has been nominated for an award and is getting rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic.

My ex decided not to accept the doctor’s prognosis and embarked upon a radical lifestyle change to beat all the odds. And I decided to self-publish and be damned.

The point of this blog?

Never, ever give up on your dreams.

I was invited to write a guest blog on the subject for the fantastic YA website A Life Bound By Books. Please click here to read it.

The  new Young Adult novel I’m writing has a very ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ feel to it, with countless musical references and its very own playlist.

I’m a great fan of pushing boundaries when it comes to writing and I firmly believe in embracing the new technologies currently revolutionising publishing.  So it occured to me that it might be nice to actually compose some original songs for a ‘book score’. Songs that readers could download from this website once the book is out, to play along with the relevant scenes.

As luck would have it one of my best friends is a very talented musician. So yesterday we took ourselves off to possibly the most beautiful part of London – Richmond Park – and wrote ourselves a few songs.

Rock 'n' Roll and Richmond

For those of you who haven’t been to Richmond Park before it is like stepping straight into a Disney movie. Everywhere you look birds, squirrels, rabbits and deer frolic in the sunshine. It is the perfect place to go for inspiration, relaxation and getting back to nature.

It is also as it turns out, the perfect place to write songs. My friend had a cracking, poignant melody which fitted perfectly with the title of the book. So while he played the tune over and over again I came up with some lyrics to fit. And while we played and sang various woodland creatures started gathering around us to watch – see I told you it was like a Disney movie!

Richmond Groupies

Squirrels, blackbirds, pigeons all gathered round like some kind of Disney style chorus.

Do you know the Birdy Song?

It felt really magical – until I realised that they were actually after our picnic and were about to launch an attack!

Coming in for the kill

Thankfully we saw them off with a large bag of cashew nuts and managed to get the title song finished. Now I’ve just got to have a little tweak of the lyrics before Steve records it and then I’ll post it on here as a trailer for the book…

Bonjour!

Comment allez-vous?

I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of an absent blogger these past few weeks, but I have some very good reasons – honest!

Firstly, I went to Paris. Fell in love with Paris and am now learning to speak French. (For when I move to Paris and rent an apartment in Montmartre with my imaginary Parisian lover!)

Secondly, I’ve been mad busy with the day job – devising and editing kids’ books. Recently I’ve been working on a romantic, feel-good series for girls, an action adventure series for boys and a post apocalyptic series for teens – so it’s certainly been varied. Some days I get home from work and I don’t know whether to read love poetry, go capture some baddies or build myself a bomb-proof shelter!

I have also written 40 pages of my new YA novel, Finding Cherokee Brown, which has been a bit painful as it’s about bullying and I’ve had to write some horrible scenes. However, the book is all about how the victim turns the tables on her bullies (in quite spectacular fashion) so I’ve got all the kick-ass scenes to look forward to now. (Some of which I have decided to set in Paris so that I can go back there for research purposes.)

AND, I’ve been busy promoting my first YA novel, Dear Dylan. AND, it’s going really well.

I actually turned down a two book deal to publish Dear Dylan myself so I knew from the outset that I was taking a massive gamble. There is still a lot of snobbery when it comes to self-published books in this country and most newspapers and magazines refuse point blank to review them – even if the author has had previous books with mainstream publishing houses as I have done.

The exciting thing about Dear Dylan is that so far (touch wood) I seem to be getting around the narrow-mindedness.

Firstly, the book has made it to the long-list of the Young Minds Book Award and now it is getting some great reviews on various book related websites. As an author it is so heartening to realise that you don’t always need the weight of a major publisher behind you – that reader power still counts for something. And it has been amazing to discover the wealth of brilliant book-related websites out there – especially for Young Adult fiction.

My Writing Home is going to be undergoing a bit of a makeover soon – I’ve just picked out some very groovy new wallpaper! – and one of the features will be a list of links to some of these book sites. But until then I will post links to the sites that have reviewed Dear Dylan and they in turn will lead you to many more.

I’m off now to practise my relative pronouns. Till then, au revoir mon petit pois…

Links to YA sites who have reviewed Dear Dylan:

I was a Teenage Book Geek

So Many Books, So Little Time

Chicklish

As regular readers of this blog will know, Dear Dylan, my new novel for teens was recently long-listed for the Young Minds Book Awards.

Having selected their long-list of 12 books, Young Minds, the UK’s leading children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing charity is now calling on young people across the country to choose the shortlist for its prestigious annual book award.

The YoungMinds Book Award 2010, which is sponsored by the national reading charity Booktrust, will be given to a book for readers of 12 + which helps young people to cope with the challenges of growing up.

As part of the selection process we are inviting teens to give their views on the plot, characters and unputdownability of the 12 longlisted books. Their six favourites will go on to form the award shortlist, from which a panel of expert judges including three young people will choose the winning book.

The web-based review process is open to all young people, either as individuals or groups. Already taking part are several teenage book groups and schools as well as YoungMinds’ own groups for young people, Healthy Heads and Very Important Kids.

Sarah Brennan, Chief Executive of YoungMinds said: “Books can play a vital role in promoting the mental and emotional well being of young people. They can help break the isolation experienced by young people and demonstrate that their feelings and problems are not unique.

I’ve just started work on my new novel for teenagers. Called Finding Cherokee Brown, it is about a girl who becomes the victim of her school bullies – and how she finds the courage to fight back.

Bullying is a subject very close to my heart. Although my own personal experience was limited to a couple of isolated incidents during junior school, I know several people whose teenaged lives were ruined by long term bullying.

The effects of bullying can be hugely damaging – with victims suffering from low self esteem and other emotional scars well into adulthood. When I was a practising life coach I met many people whose adult fears and insecurities stemmed from childhood bullying.

What frustrates me the most is that it still seems to be so endemic in our schools – and now of course online – meaning that the victim can feel as if there’s no escape.

I appreciate that it is very difficult for teachers to be aware of what is going on in the playground or on Facebook, but surely there must be more that can be done to prevent bullying and to support its victims.

I know of several cases where bullying has been reported in a school only for the teachers to wring their hands and say that there’s nothing they can do until it becomes physical, other than offer the victim counselling.

When I first heard this it sent me hopping around the room in rage. Firstly, why should a child have to wait until he or she is physically beaten up before anything is done to protect them. And secondly, words can be far more damaging than a punch or a kick.

How much longer are we going to sit back and allow young lives to be ruined – or in the worst case scenarios, lost?

I don’t claim to have any answers, but I think that’s why I want to write my next book, to try and provoke some debate on the subject and help those affected.

If you have been affected by bullying and would like to help me in my research, please feel free to email me via this site…

When I was little I used to dream of the time when I would be a mum. In my dreams I was always mother to a loud and unruly brood of at least five kids. My dream home would be chaotic but full of laughter and love. And at the heart of it all would be the rock solid union between me and my husband. (In my dreams he was always slightly chubby, with wavy hair and very musical – I had a bit of a crush on the banjo player from the Dubliners at the time!)

I imagined us all gathering round in the evenings to play music and sing – kind of like the Waltons meets the Osmonds – without the mole and the mountain and the refrigerator-white teeth.

Now before you start wretching from this saccharine vision of perfection – it didn’t turn out like that at all.

I ended up only having one child. And getting divorced. And although I normally love my life there are moments when I do have a pang of longing for that dream family - with all of the kids and the banjo playing husband!

This morning when I was walking my dog I was overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of gloom – had I let my son down? Did he wish he had siblings? And marathon sing-alongs with a banjo?

All morning I felt slightly down. But then a chain of events so random and with hindsight, downright hilarious, happened that it made me think of one of my favourite Rolling Stones songs, ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’.

This morning I did an online interview to promote Dear Dylan. I had another interview booked with a magazine for the afternoon.

At the moment I’m home-schooling my son while we wait for a place to come up in a school. We were about to sit down and do some French when my phone rang. It was my local paper asking if they could also do an interview about the book (I know, interviews are just like buses!). The reporter said she could do it over the phone so I asked her to call back in around 40 minutes.

About 20 minutes later there was a knock on the door.

I ought to explain at this point that I was clad in a pair of shorts, vest top and Ugg boot style slippers – home-schooling has a very relaxed dress code – so when I opened the door to see two women, one with a huge camera around her neck, my reaction was sheer panic.

‘Hi, Siobhan,’ the woman without the camera said. ‘We’ve come to do the interview.’

My first thought was, what interview. Then I thought, it must be the local paper, but they had said they were doing it over the phone -and presumably weren’t able to travel at the speed of sound.

‘For the book,’ the woman continued.

I continued to stare at her blankly. And then the awful truth dawned. A week ago I had got an email asking me if I’d like to be featured in a coffee table book about inspiring writers. I was obviously hugely flattered to be asked – so flattered in fact that in my flustered state I somehow managed to put the wrong date in my diary!

I looked down at my outfit in horror. Then looked at my dog in horror as it set about rounding up the journalist and photographer – he’s a bit of an urban sheep dog.

‘Come in,’ I said weakly. ‘Erm, I’ve just got to go and get changed.’

I raced upstairs, hissing at my son to shut the dog in one of the bedrooms. After a wardrobe change so speedy it would have put Clarke Kent to shame I raced back downstairs to find my guests in my back garden – by far the tidiest room in the house.

While I gabbled on inanely about wrong dates in diaries and how sorry I was, the photographer set to work, arranging me in various positions amongst the nature reserve that is my back garden.

It was while I was crouched over sniffing a tub of lavender in an artistic fashion that I became aware of my next door neighbour peering over the fence. God knows what he thought was going on.

I think it was while I was half submerged in a bush that my phone started to ring – the reporter from the local paper.

I took the call, had to explain that I was now midway through another interview that I had forgotten I had booked and could she ring back later. Thankfully she was very understanding.

Once the interview began I started to relax – things had got a little hairy for a while but now it would all be okay. And it was – until the dog escaped from the bedroom, tore into the room and then lay on the floor – right by the writer’s dictafone – and started chomping really loudly on a bone. God knows what it will sound like when she plays it back to write it up.

Anyway, the interview for the book finished just as the reporter from the local paper rang back, so there was another excruciating scene where I had to usher my first interviewer out of the door whilst beginning my next interview on the phone.

The phone interview went very well and there was at least thirty seconds between me hanging up and the next journalist arriving. 

I invited her in. By now my son was also down in the living room, along with the bone-chomping dog, but the woman from the magazine didn’t seem to mind so we got started.

We were about two minutes in when my son asked, ‘Mum, what’s that weird lady doing in our front garden?’

My first (horrified) thought was, not another interview I’ve forgotten about surely. But when I looked out of the window I knew that the woman who had set up some kind of dressing table on my garden wall and was gaily brushing her hair – ON MY GARDEN PATH – could not have been from any publication, unless there’s a magazine out there called Dotty Old Lady Coiffures Monthly.

‘Never mind,’ I replied in what I hoped was a relaxed, there’s nothing weird at all about an old lady doing  her hair in my front garden kind of voice.

The journalist didn’t look altogether convinced. But we got back to our chat. Before being rudely interrupted by the doorbell.

Oh God, I thought. It’s the old lady come to borrow my hair straighteners.

But when I opened the door I saw one of my son’s friends from cricket standing there.

‘Can I move in with you please?’ he said, walking straight into the living room and plonking himself on the sofa next to the journalist. ‘I hate my house – we never have any oreos and your family is so cool.’

And you know what, I suppose it is. I might not have got all the kids and the banjo playing dad, but I got the funniest, coolest son in the world – and I got the love and laughter-filled home.

As the Rolling Stones said, ‘You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.’

Last Thursday I received some amazing news. My new novel, ‘Dear Dylan’ has been long-listed for the Young Minds Book Award.

It has taken me three days to get back down off the ceiling!

The long-list consists of 12 books – you can find out more about them by clicking here.

There are so many reasons why I am absolutely ecstatic right now. To be long-listed for an award for my first stab at writing for young people is such an honour. And to be long-listed for this particular award means such a lot to me personally.

The reason I wrote ‘Dear Dylan’ in the first place was as a result of the work I do with teenagers in writing and drama workshops. Through getting participants at the workshops to write about what they want and workshop plays about issues close to their hearts I am constantly reminded of the pressures unique to being a teenager.

I wanted to write a novel that dealt with some of these issues and offer advice indirectly through the characters and the choices they make.

The Young Minds Book Awards seeks to raise awareness and create understanding of the mental health needs of children and young people. It is a cause really close to my heart for personal as well as professional reasons. So to be included on the long-list is a dream come true.

For all of you aspiring novelists out there it is also a great example of how you should NEVER give up on your dream.

One year ago I turned down a two book deal for ‘Dear Dylan’ because I felt I was really being messed about by the publisher concerned. After making this decision I was absolutely gutted and thoroughly disillusioned. But then, at the beginning of this year I decided to publish the book myself. This is another reason I am so chuffed right now. Making it to the long-list surely is proof that self-published books no longer need to be the sneered upon, poor relation in the UK book world.

I really hope that this will inspire other writers to choose self-publishing as a positive and empowering option if they can’t find satisfaction via the traditional routes.

Has anyone seen the hilarious advert for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, extolling the virtues of their new ‘InPrivate’ browsing.

“There are times when you might not want to leave any traces of your web browsing actions on the computer you’re using,” the promotional blurb on their website goes, “Such as when checking e-mail on a friend’s computer or shopping for a gift on a family PC.”

Hmm – and visiting certain ‘adult’ sites per chance?

In the television ad we see a man eagerly shopping online for gifts for his wife – yeah right – while the voiceover talks of how Microsoft have now taken the drama out of such occasions, with the knowledge that your good lady wife will no longer find Interflora or Elizabeth Duke on the computer’s browsing history.

How much more entertaining the advert would have been had it shown the real reason many men don’t want their wives to know their browsing habits…