If you enjoyed When I Was Joe...

A few weeks ago I wrote a little list of book recommendations for readers who'd enjoyed When I Was Joe and Almost True and wanted something to read during the seven-month (sorry) wait for Another Life.
Here are some more books that might appeal.
If you liked reading about an ordinary boy with big problems - try Fifteen Days without a Head by Dave Cousins. Laurence's mum has a drink problem and has gone missing - but Laurence and his little brother can't tell anyone. Their story is funny, unexpected and heart-breaking -  and really makes you think about what should happen in families where the parents aren't coping. By the end I was all set to call the social workers myself...except that's not the solution that Dave wrote. 

If you're into grappling with thorny moral issues, read Katie Dale's Someone Else's Life (which, by the way has the most gorgeous cover).  Rosie's mum has died of Huntingdon's disease, and she must decide whether to find out if she carries the disease herself -  a devastating diagnosis if positive. But then Rosie discovers long-buried secrets which destroy everything she ever believed to be true. I've rarely read a book which gets you so involved in the lives of the characters -  at times I'd have cheerfully throttled all of them, including Rosie's lovely Gran - or which twists and turns so fast and furiously. The dilemmas faced by Rosie and others -  I don't want to give anything away -  are so huge, that you're left pondering them for ages afterwards.

If you're a fan of psychological thrillers -  and especially if you liked the ghost/hallucination aspect of Almost True, not to mention the unreliable narrator of both Joe books -  then Cat Clarke's Torn is a must-read. It starts off a bit Pretty Little Liars-ish with a motley crew of girls sharing a cabin in the wilderness, then things go seriously wrong when Alice, Cass, Polly and Rae decide to teach popular but bitchy Tara a lesson. Torn is scary, believable and utterly compelling and Cat is completely brilliant at getting inside the head of a teenage girl who lets insecurity and low self esteem lead her to disaster.

New look



Coming your way in September...

  I'm getting a new look! Or at least my books are. To coincide with the release of Another Life, in September, the first two books in the series, When I Was Joe and Almost True are getting new covers to match.


The Egg of Death in Danny's fridge



Ty/Joe's brown/green eyes...

 The new look is bold, bright and eye-catching, the work of designer Arianna Osti, who also designed the cover for Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery. People have been asking me about the inspiration for the covers, so I put a few questions to Arianna.

  Tell us a bit about yourself and your career.

I was brought up with an artist in the family and a house full of books so it’s not surprising I chose a creative career.

After graduating from Camberwell College of Arts and training in a few design studios I started working at Frances Lincoln Publishers. I have always been interested in print design and I have a passion for typography so publishing feels like the perfect industry for me to be in.

What was the process of planning the new jackets? Did you have a completely free hand, or was there a discussion first about which direction to take? (NB The first I heard of the new covers was when they were all done and finished and my editor said 'I've got a surprise for you!')

In designing book covers there is usually a preliminary meeting with the Sales team to discuss the feel and the audience of a book. This is where we thought that, as we had a third book in the same series as When I Was Joe and Almost True, it would be good to launch the third title, Another Life, with a brand new look, re-jacketing the previous titles to boost the series. After the success of the cover

of Lia’s Guide to Winning the Lottery we thought it would be good to stick to a simple but bold cover style. So the direction to pursue was that of a striking graphic and typographic cover.

Did you come up with other ideas and then reject them?

I did come up with a few different ideas.

Ibarajo Road -  out August 2012
and sounds brilliant

It is quite unusual that the first design idea for a cover ends up being the final cover. It can happen, and it did happen for example with Ibarajo Road. However, generally you tend to come up with a few different ideas and then through discussions and meetings some of the ideas get rejected or approved. Some of the ideas I had seemed to work better on some titles rather than others, so they did get rejected, as the same design had to be applied to all three books in order for them to work as a series.

   How did you pick the colours?

The colours were partly dictated by the plot and by the graphic elements (eye, egg and knife) used on each of the books. The background colour came later, first it was Joe’s brown eyes, then the yellow of the egg yolk and the red of the bloody knife – all significant parts of the books. These were the obvious, realistic colours so for the background colours I had to try a combination that would work for each cover and then as a series of three.

The colours are there to create a mood and to help communicate the feel of the book so muted colours seemed to work best for a dark, edgy thriller series.

Saul Bass design

Someone mentioned the iconic cover for Catch-22 was that an inspiration? Others mentioned 1950s film posters and pulp fiction paperbacks. What were your influences?

I’m not sure the cover for Catch-22 ‘caught’ my eye as much as Saul Bass’ work.

Saul Bass again

I

He was a graphic-designer and filmmaker best know for his title sequences and film posters – so yes, in that respect 1950s film posters and typefaces have been an influence. I was also inspired by Agatha Christie’s paperback covers with hand-lettered type for the author’s name. But Saul Bass’ use of type and his concise, powerful and clever illustrations influenced me to create covers with strong type and

Iconic byline

a simple graphic icon. 

Saul Bass poster -
I love this film

You also designed the cover for Lia’s Guide to Winning the Lottery. What was the thinking behind that one?

It’s a sharp, sassy fiction story that deals with girls and the problems arising after winning the lottery – including the art of shopping. So we wanted something bold and striking, but feminine and sophisticated. While thinking about shopping, The Devil Wears Prada came to mind – that was the starting point. Immediately the red stiletto shoe communicates power, sex and elegance. Then the type says girlie, light-hearted and funny.

Power, sex and elegance!

 How much do you think about the target audience when planning covers?

The target audience is very important while designing covers as you have to communicate to the right people. It’s really the first thing to think about as you have to try and get into the mind of an 8 year-old, a 12 year-old or a 16 year-old.

I’ve been designing books for the adult market as well but the children’s audience is certainly more challenging.

What other covers (by you and other people) are your favourites?

Designed by David Pearson

I am very pleased with the poetry fiction covers I have designed for Janetta Otter-Barry Books such as An Imaginary Menagerie, The Language of Cat, Hey Little Bug and Come Into this Poem.

I am always looking at the competition, at other designer’s work and it’s always good to get inspiration from the masters of the past. My favourite book cover designs are by Gray318 (especially the Jonathan Safran Foer books) and David Pearson.

Designed by Gray318

(You can contact Arianna at ianna84@yahoo.it)

How to respond to bad reviews.

Ignore them. It's as easy as that. But, funnily enough, not everyone does.
Julie Halpern is a writer of YA books. I'd never heard of her before this week, when a blogging, twittering storm blew up because she wrote a foot-stamping, tantrumy, Violet Elizabath Bott of a response to a negative review that she found on the internet.
Ms Halpern has now taken down her post, and the equally cringe-worthy 'poor little me' ones that followed. But you can read the original review here and the responses were all about how the author had poured her heart and sould and time into her work, while the blogger had just dashed off a piece of snark, and the author was in a higher place than the reviewer and no one should write negative reviews at all, because it might but readers off, and authors have feeling too, and google should create a negative review filter (I think she was employing hyperbole at some points, but the general hysterical nature of the thing made it hard to tell).
It's blindingly obvious to most of  us, I hope, that  if an author thinks a review is unfair, offensive, wrong, sloppy or whatever, she should not take it personally, and should absolutely not attack the reviewer in public. Find someone to moan to who knows you are not an egotisical brat -  or who knows that you are an egotisical brat, but loves you anyway.
If you absolutely have to contact the reviewer, be humble. Thank her for spending time reading and reviewing your books, point out nicely that she's got the main character's name wrong, or misunderstood the central metaphor, or given a whacking great spoiler, say how much her good opinion matters to you.  But truly  it's best to maintain a certain authorly distance at these painful moments.
A lot of people have told Ms Halpern this, and maybe she will now spend a lifetime lying awake in darkened rooms asking herself why...why....?
But I have a further criticism of her rant.
The reviewer didn't like her fake kidnap plotline - ('Can I just say – uhhh. The entire Penny debacle was kinda ridiculous.') Ms Halpern was shocked that anyone could doubt the premise because it had actually happened to a friend of hers  ('Ugh! I didn't make it up, beyotch! I had a friend who faked her own kidnapping! Grrrr.').
I've heard this defence before. I asked a writer about the baffling relationship of two people in her otherwise delightful book, and why on earth they didn't divorce -  to be told that they were based on two people she actually knew and were therefore, well, true to life.  I felt short-changed, and was none the wiser. A tiny hint at sexual obsession or financial complexity would have worked far better,
Writers, it is not enough to base your characters and plots on real life and real people. You have to make them plausible to your reader.They are reading a work of fiction, not a memoir or a piece of journalism.
Quite often I've had things happen to me that I regretfully realise would not work in a piece of fiction, because the coincidence is too unlikely or the story is almost too neat. It's fine to use real life events and people as inspiration, but it's not a justification or a defence when people don't believe it.
Early on, I had a review for When I Was Joe which doubted that anything so extreme could happen in the UK ('From the onset it is particularly difficult to accept that the initial event really justifies the extreme of witness protection and this makes the attempt to create a sense of urgency and danger rather tenuous.')  and went on to criticise the characters as obnoxious and unlikeable. For that reader, I'd failed to make the situation feel believable and I hadn't managed to connect wth their emotions either. That was my failing. Their opinion was perfectly valid. Luckily, not many other readers seem to feel the same way, but I try to take the view that I can learn as much, if not more, from negative reviews than from positive ones.
Not that I like them, of course.  Bring on that negative review Google filter.

The murder of Stephen Lawrence

When I worked on the newsdesk at The Independent I dealt with dozens of reports every day. It's difficult to pick out individual stories, nearly twenty years later. The murder of Stephen Lawrence is an exception.

I was working an afternoon shift, and the environment correspondent, Nick Schoon came up to talk to me. 'I've got a story for you,' he said, 'and it's a bit unusual. It's a crime story.' The story he outlined was terribly sad. A teenager, stabbed to death on a London street. Racist motivation suspected. It was the kind of story that I'd have thought of as suitable for a local rather than a national paper. It wasn't even that uncommon -  as Nick's report stated, this was the second racist murder in the area in a matter of weeks.

Nick was offering the story because Stephen's father Neville Lawrence had worked for him as a  plasterer and had rung him the night of Stephen's death, in tears, asking him to write about his son's murder. His death did not make the front page of any national paper, and  many did not run it at all. I asked Nick to write 400 words which I placed on page 4. This was his report.  I didn't expect to hear much about it again, perhaps a news-in-brief paragraph saying that someone had been charged and later convicted.  (Nick's memories of his report are here)

Well, I was wrong, and so was almost everyone else. The killing of Stephen Lawrence was described today by a senior police officer as 'one of the most significant cases of its time.'  Two of Stephen's killers were finally convicted today -  an extraordinary 18 years after his death. The Metropolitan Police's original  investigation into his death was appallingly incompetent. Neville and Doreen Lawrence never ceased in their battle for justice for their son, backed by another paper, the Daily Mail, whose editor, Paul Dacre had also, I believe, employed Stephen's father. Their efforts eventually led to a public inquiry which revealed the Met's institutionalised racism -  a racism that reached beyond the police and into wider society. The case changed the UK in many ways -  summarised here - but I believe that not enough has changed.

In his recent book, Out of the Ashes, David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, recalls telling the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown about mothers from his constituency, feeling helpless to stop their sons getting caught up in the violence. "What are we doing for these women?" he asked the Prime Minister.
"Tax credits," replied Brown.
Things haven't changed.  In the aftermath of this summer's riots (riots which overwhelmingly targetted property, not people), the current Prime Minister David Cameron pledged £1.25 million to fight gangs in London. As Lammy pointed out, that sum wouldn't buy a house in many London neighbourhoods.
The trial which has just ended was also notable for exposing the trauma of young people who witness murder. Stephen's friend Duwayne Brooks was quizzed about differences in his account in court and his original statement s to police. Mr Brooks -  now a councillor -  giving evidence just after the death of his father, explained that he had suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after Stephen's murder.  From the BBC's court report:
Mr Brooks' original eyewitness statement was read back to him, and he was asked: "Did that actually happen?"
He replied: "I made a statement some months after when I began to remember other parts of the incident which for some reason I couldn't remember because it was too distressing, it was too scary to remember and it was very upsetting."
.
Stephen Lawrence and his family got some justice today, but the slaughter of young men on the streets of London goes on, and the vast majority are black. Of course, not all are killed in racist attacks, but  -  as Stephen's mother pointed out this afternoon -  some are. Others are victims of gang and random violence.

Stephen's family have set up a charity in his name which works for criminal and social justice: '
fostering positive community relationships, and enabling people to realise their potential.  Through creative methods the Trust addresses the causes of urban decay; youth disaffection and educational underachievement and supports young people by developing pathways into aspirational and sustainable employment.

I do believe that if white, middle-class teenagers were being killed on our streets at the same rate as poorer black children are, far more would be done about it. Supporting the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust is one place to start.

A writer's year..

So. 2011. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I can't remember much of it. Where's my trusty diary...I mean all writers have a diary, don't they? A journal of their literary life...a witty, erudite, insightful record of the year. I bet Marcus Sedgwick has a diary. I bet Jason Wallace...

Disaster of the year. I blame Richard Branson.

Oh well, where's my Tesco Family Organiser?

January:   
 I went to San Diego, to meet thousands of American librarians. San Diego! I hadn't been abroad for work since...hmmm... 1983 when I went to Spain for a conference and spent most of the time flirting and sunbathing .  In San Diego, I was far too English to really push my book, but I did my best. At the booth next to me there was a charming lady promoting her debut book, which, she told me, was a murder mystery narrated by someone with Alzheimer's. I wasn't completely sure about that as a premise, but I bought a copy anyway. .
Also in January, I went to Newcastle for the North East Teen Book Award, for which When I Was Joe was on a shortlist of six. We authors sat on a platform in front of about 200 teenagers. Behind us was a drop of about a foot. I spent the evening convinced that I was about to topple over backwards -  and I very nearly did, when my book was announced as the winner. I gave a speech worthy of any tearful Oscar winner - I was shaking! -  because I'd never, ever won anything before in my life. Afterwards, my lovely editor Emily bought champagne..and then there was some Baileys...Truly, an unforgettable hangover event.

February
Dominated (according to the Family Organiser) by football training for the son, and transporting Freddie and Chester, our guinea pigs to and from the guinea pig hotel, where they enjoy literary soirees and manicures (you think I'm joking? See April) . Oh and I spoke at a school, where I realised five minutes before the speech that I had a massive hole in my trousers. I'd got up so early to get there, and got dressed in the dark, not realising until far too late, that I'd picked up the wrong clothes. I gave my entire speech, plus a question and answer session, with my legs clamped together. No one asked any awkward questions, so I think I got away with it. Or everyone I met that day was super-polite. No, I'm not telling which school it was.

I started work in earnest on Another Life, the third book about Ty. Five chapters in I showed it to my husband, who told me what he thought was wrong with it. 'You know nothing,' I told him. 'You don't understand my Vision.'
  
March 
The page for March has disappeared from my Family Organiser. I remember nothing about it at all, except that on my birthday, my husband and I went to a barmitzvah party, for Asher, son of my old friends Nicky and David. During the speeches, Asher wished me a happy birthday, and the entire marquee of people said 'Who?' and then sang 'Happy Birthday Dear Karen', which was lovely but slightly embarrassing, because we didn't really know anyone there apart from Nicky and David. Then Asher presented me with a huge birthday cake. Again, this was lovely, but a little problematic to transport home with no cake box. In the end we put it in the boot, and drove home, imagining, with every bump or corner, the cake bouncing and somersaulting. But happily it survived intact. Not for long, though.


April
Again, according to the Organiser, almost nothing happened in April. I worked diligently (ahem) on Another Life. The proprietor of the guinea pig hotel, the very wonderful and multi-talented Nicola Solomon became General Secretary of the Society of Authors.
The highlight of the month was meant to be the Royal Wedding on the 29th. My daughter and I planned a girly day in front of our (chavtastically huge) television. We bought snacks. We encouraged the boys to leave us alone for the day.  I organised a Tesco delivery, so I would not have to leave the sofa. We were primed for celebrity-spotting, funny hats and cooing over wedding dresses and men in uniforms.
And then, disaster struck. The night before the Wedding of the Century, our television stopped working. Distraught, I phoned Virgin Media's call centre in India, where the workers are polite and charming, but utterly useless (not their fault, I am convinced they are not trained  properly or given the correct information. I have had to phone them often in the last year.). 'I'll send someone on Monday,' said the man in Mumbai (or whereever). 'Monday???' I shrieked,'Don't you know we have a royal wedding tomorrow? This is an emergency!'  But it was all no good, so we ended up watching at my sister's house, which was nice, but rather more crowded (and on a much smaller screen) than we had anticipated. So Richard Branson cheated us out of the Full Wedding Experience. I will never forgive him.
Naturally the telly started working perfectly, once William and his bride were safely wed.

May 
May was a -may-zing. When I Was Joe won the Angus Book Award. After-win Baileys became a tradition. Then, at the end of the month, we were queuing to check in for a flight to Amsterdam, when I got a call telling me that When I Was Joe had also won  the Lancashire Book of the Year award. I whooped and danced, my children moved away, told me I was being embarrassing and said, 'We're bored with you winning awards. Shut up.'

June
June was busy, busy, busy. I spoke at the Hay Festival. I stood next to Meg Rosoff in a queue and she knew who I was (swoon). I spoke at various schools,and  at the Lancashire Book of the Year award ceremony (at which I told the story of my dad and the banana..You had to be there).  This was possibly also the month (the Organiser is mysteriously silent) when I had lunch with my agent and she told me that Another Life wasn't working at all, and it possibly needed completely reworking. Possibly. She seemed to agree with my husband about what needed to be done (see February), but I explained patiently that this was not part of my Vision.
July
July was the month in which When I was Joe didn't win the Branford Boase Award, the UKLA award or the Redbridge Teen Book of the Year.  Ho hum. Something extraordinarily funny (in all senses)  happened on a train, but I am sworn to secrecy. And  I reworked Another Life a bit ( in line with my Vision) and it began to work.  My kind editors extended my deadline to the end of September.
August
Lia's Guide to Winning  the Lottery was published. Went on holiday. Another Life was nowhere near finished, and my computer power cord broke, the day before we left. So I loaded it onto my kindle, to read when I was there. Read it, and immediately saw what was wrong with it. Yes, my husband and agent were correct. ARGH! Spent the rest of the holiday working out how many extra chapters I'd need to write, where they would go, and how much would need to be deleted.
September
Wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. Completely forgot about various social events, very rudely failing to even let people know I'd forgotten.(sorry, so sorry, sorry). By some incredible miracle, managed to finish Another Life on September 23. Sent it to agent and then to editor. Awaited suggestions involving complete rewrites.
October
Had lunch with lovely editors. They were almost completely happy with Another Life. No revisions. When I worked at the Jewish Chronicle we were banned from using the word 'miracle' in reports or headlines, unless we had definite proof of divine intervention. This may be the one.  
When I Was Joe didn't win the Catalyst Book Award...but it did win the Wirral Paperback of the Year. Woo!
November
Kicked off in spectacular style with Meg Rosoff's party for K M Peyton, author of the Flambards books and the Pennington trilogy, which I read and loved as a teen. Pennington, who tended to fight first, think afterwards, was definitely a sub-conscious inspiration for Ty. The room was full of writers, editors, librarians and booksellers, all united in admiration for Kathleen Peyton, who spoke with wit and vigour about her career as a very prolific, award-winning writer. It took me back to my teeange years, reading and loving her books, and many others, and reminded me again of why I love writing for children. It's not about money, or awards, or reviews or foreign deals. It's about reaching out to anyone who wants to read, and not knowing what they will make of what you've written.
(And despite it not being about foreign deals or awards, it was very nice to hear that Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and has found publishers in Korea and the Netherlands.)
Remember the lady in San Diego and her Alzheimer's murder mystery? In November she won the Wellcome Book Award, the first ever work of fiction to do so. The prize was £25,000 and the book is called Turn of Mind . Well done booth-mate, Alice La Plante! I promise to read your book soon!
December

Proof with adjusted Vision.

Couldn't find address book. So all those people whose parties I ignored in September/October, didn;t get their apologetic Christmas cards (sorry again).  So many social events. It's all a bit of a blur. But the proof for Another Life arrived. And  I did manage to write a chapter of the (hopefully) new book. Showed it to daughter and husband. 'I'm not caring about the characters,' she said. 'It's a bit depressing to start with a suicide attempt,' he said.  This time I'm listening. New start next week. Roll on 2013...oh, hang on, 2012...

Dear Keren...(part 2)

Dear Keren

I really enjoyed your books When I Was Joe and Almost True. When is there going to be another book about Ty? What do you suggest I read in the meantime?                                  

First of  all, let me draw your attention to my third book Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery. True, it is not obviously a 'boy' book, true it has both a handbag and a shoe on the cover. But I think that most people who liked WIWJ and AT would enjoy it. It is not just about money, sex and shopping -  although those are elements -  it also should make you think about about economics, and values (but in a good way) families, friendship and Facebook. There is some suspense and a twisty plot. The heroine gets nicer. Trust me.

New book about Ty coming out in August 2012 in the UK, called Another Life. Covers and tasters coming soon on this blog.

OK, once you've bought Lia's Guide, it's hard for me to know what to recommend because I don't know what aspect of WIWJ and AT you enjoyed. Was it the crime element, the characters, or the lurve story? All I can do is point you to some books that I have enjoyed, and see how you go. Like WIWJ and AT, they feature messed-up, confused and far from perfect male protagonists.

Taking Flight  by  Sheena Wilkinson. I can almost guarantee that anyone who likes my books will enjoy Taking Flight, which I have raved about ever since it came out in 2010. Even more reason to get your hands on it and read it now, because there will be a sequel Grounded coming out next year. In Taking Flight Sheena mixes urban grittiness with classic pony book, with a Northern Ireland setting and  creates an exciting book where you care for each and every character, while competely recognising their many flaws. I've been lucky enough to read Grounded, and it's even better. Add to the travails of our hero Declan, the horse-mad boy from the wrong part of town, a neurotic horse called Folly and a mixed-up kid called Cian. There are truly shocking moments and I was enthralled throughout...and could hardly believe it had ended when it dod. More, please!

Flip by Martyn Bedford. Some brilliant insights in this books about a boy who wakes up in another boy's body -  I esepcially enjoyed the moment when he first takes a pee using someone else's equipment. It would have been easy to play it for laughs, but Martyn Bedford turns it into a moving story which examines the very basics of who we are.

 Paranormal isn't usually my thing, but I loved White Cat and Red Glove by Holly Black which is a clever twist on the usual tropes. Our hero Cassel comes with plenty of problems, part of a family of magic workers in a world where magic is illegal, he's living with the knowledge that he killed his best friend.

Playground by 50 Cent. The usual growling prejudice against celebrities who decide to write children's books had to be suspended for this one, because I loved it. This is despite it being a 'therapy' book, which is a device I usually don't like.  It's the story of Butterball, who starts off as an unpleasant bully who has violently attacked another boy. Without excusing or ignoring what he'd done, the reader gradually comes to hope for Butterball's redemption - something that seems impossible at the beginning when he's full of incoherent swagger. I was fascinated by the US setting - paying for your own social worker? Paying for private school if you're expelled from state school? -  a long way from the anodyne view of American life served up by Disney Channel.The healing relationship between Butterball and his cousellor was truly moving, and might help readers understand what is missing in their own lives. I could not stop reading until I had found out Butterball's secrets. 

Last year's top fantasy read, Gillian Philip's superb  Firebrand featured a truly warped anti-hero, the deliciously dark, sulky, misunderstood faery (but don't let that put you off) Seth.  He returned this year in the sequel Bloodstone , even more twisted than before, and there's another snarling, angry youth, Jed, who I instantly fell for. Do read Firebrand before Bloodstone, so that you have some sympathy for Seth (because he works hard to use it all up in Bloodstone). And if you want a taster for the series, Gillian's written a short ebook prequel Frost Child about Seth's father, available for the bargain price of just 86p.

If you're looking for a laugh, forget the Wimpy Kid, read Dark Lord: The Teenage Years by Jamie Thomson. It's one joke really, but a great one, can Dirk Lloyd. the mysterious boy found in a car park really be a banished Dark Lord stripped of his dastardly powers?

Ask Keren...(part one)

I've  been giving out quite a bit of advice recently, so I thought I'd have an agony aunt blog for a few days before Christmas.  Starting with this..

Dear Keren,

You don't know me, but I was at the dental hygienist recently and I mentioned that I'd written a children's book and his cousin's wife works with someone who knew you from the parent and baby gym group you went to c 1997.  Remember Jason and Mason? Them. Anyway, I've written a few books I'm really keen to get them published. One is for the 5-12 age group, about a boy wizard, and another is for older teens...it's a bit controversial and there's a lot of swearing, but I think it's all justified. Do you need an agent? I've done a bit of research and I've made a list of 179 possibles. Should I write to them all at once? Or should I write to publishers? Or is it best to self-publish?

Hello!  Yes, I remember Jason and Mason well, especially when Mason bit...but never mind. Glad to try and help. Here are my orders....I mean, advice...

1) Check out this website. It is by Nicola Morgan,a children's writer who has been writing for much longer than I have and knows infinitely more about the subject. In fact why don't you...never mind...She has loads and loads of excellent advice about all aspects of writing for publication. There is also a book Write to be Published which is a fascinating and very useful read - basically the same stuff that's on the blog, but easier to navigate. Nicola knows it all.  Another excellent website to read is  Notes from the Slushpile.  (Did I read these blogs before writing to agents, one day after finishing my first draft and without a title for the book?  No, I was too impatient to do any research.)



2) Join the Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators  Attend its annual conference which is in Winchester, mid November. There you will meet agents and editors, writers and artists and you can attend masterclasses and workshops on all aspects of writing for children. Even if you can't go to conference SCWBI holds regular events, masterclasses and the like, an agents' party in September and, every year publishes the Undiscovered Voices, an anthology which is compiled from a competition among un-agented writers.  Being long or short-listed for UV is generally a fast track to being agented and published, and in several cases UV writers have gone on to win awards.  (Did I join SCWBI and enter UV before looking for an agent? No, I thought I'd wait until I had a publishing deal because then the membership would be cheaper).

3) Start researching agents. Which children's authors do you like, and who represents them? Which writers have a similar style to you, and who represents them? Do you want an agent who will be very business-oriented, or one who is keen to be involved in giving you edtorial feedback? It's worth thinking about all of this before you approach people.

Agents will have submission guidelines on their websites. They will tell you what they want - not everyone wants three chapters. Also whether you should print it out, or send by email. Don't write to 179 agents at once. Let the rejections (or indeed offers) trickle through slowly. And don't bother agents if they haven't replied to you within a month. Especially if it is August. (Did I badger an agent mid-August because I hadn't heard from her three weeks after sending her my first chapter? Need you ask?)

4) Start researching the business. For example, a little bit of research will tell you that books aren't generally for 9-13 year olds - 8-12 is the usual age range. The more you know, the better you are able to present yourself to agents. (Unlike me, who though in a vague way that a book about a 14-year-old ought to appeal to 14 year-olds. And who had never heard of most YA writers and had no idea that anyone else might have written about knife crime..that was a nasty shock...)

5) When you do start approaching agents, get ready for rejection. You need to be tough. It is a hideous process. I was turned down by about ten agents - then offered representation by three. Then I was rejected by at least 25 publishers, before getting a two-book deal.  It's really hard but try not to take it personally. (and drop that machete...it will do you no good...)

6)  Self-publishing used to be a no-no..it screamed desperation, incompetence and sub-standard. You might as well put a big label 'Written by a Loser' on your book. But we are entering a new phase of self-publishingand everything is changing.  It is easy-peasy to put your book on Amazon as an e-book, price it low and see what happens. Unlike conventional publishing, you will receive 75% of the cover price. Unlike conventional publishing you will not have to wait for a year to sell your book. The drawbacks -  you have to do (or arrange) your own editing, cover design and marketing (but even with a conventional publisher, you have to do a certain amount of editing and marketing).  Your book will not win awards, nor be bought by libraries or schools. You will not have lovely shiny copies of your book to hold.

Right now, I wouldn't advise self-publishing unless you've become completely jaded by attenpting the conventional route. Whether I'd give the same advice next year..I'm not so sure. And for authors who've had rights revert to them -  go for it.

Tomorrow: What books do you recommend?