Hello lovely blogosphere!
Long time no speak to… but I do have a good excuse, honestly.
For the past few months I’ve been in the ‘hibernation’ part of the writer’s cycle, working furiously on the second draft of my YA novel Finding Cherokee Brown and the first draft of a tres exciting and, for now, top secret new YA series. It hasn’t been all work and no play though – I’ve also managed to squeeze in a visit to my family in South Carolina for Thanksgiving, which was truly turkey-tastic. Other fun events included learning to dance like a Brazilian fisherman (it involves a lot of stomping in case you’re interested) and spending Christmas with my family, including BOTH of my divorced parents. Other kids of divorcees will know what a big deal this is – and no, no-one got killed!
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| View from the porch, South Carolina |
But now it’s time to enter another key part of the writer’s cycle – THE COUNTDOWN TO PUBLICATION!
This time in a writer’s life is both exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Exciting because you finally get to see the book ‘baby’ that you spent so many days, weeks, months, even years, lovingly nurturing into life take it’s first tentative steps alone in the outside world. Terrifying because so much of what happens next is out of your hands. Questions like, Will the shops stock it? Will the reviewers like it? Will the readers buy it? echo through your mind like a really annoying jingle. The interesting thing about the book I have coming out in April is that this will actually be its second publication. The first time round, I chose to self-publish Dear Dylan. This meant that I didn’t manage to get it into any shops (shops hate self-published books), BUT it did somehow manage to win a national book award and the reviewers and readers who managed to get their hands on a copy were lovely about it. Dear Dylan then ended up going to a book auction and the very lovely Electric Monkey at Egmont UK became its new home. So, whenever the fearful questions in my head start to get a little too noisy, I quieten them with the thought that Dear Dylan was voted a winner by young people up and down the country – the very people I had written it for. In that sense, it can never fail.
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| Dear Dylan, out April 2012 |
Next week I’ll be blogging about devising a pre-publication publicity plan (try saying that with a mouthful of peanuts!) and all the fun ways you can let the world know about your book. Till then, happy reading!
