Moved!

This blog has been very quiet in  2013, but it's not dead, it's just found a new home. From now on it'll be at kerendavid.com and I hope to see you there.

Lia at the Bridewell - edited highlights

So, here are the edited highlights of Lia's Guide at the Bridewell, performed by the wonderful students of the MTA.
We're now going to work on rewrites, so I'm not sure when it will be on next - I'll keep you posted.

Lia's Guide at the Bridewell

As promised, some pictures from the production of Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery which was on at the Bridewell Theatre June 12 to 15.
The production was pretty scary for me, as we haven't had long to work on Lia, and all my friends and family were lining up to see it, but luckily I was blessed with fabulous collaborators, creatives and cast, the audiences were enthusiastic and we sold out almost every performance. Special  thanks to Paul Herbert, Andy Barnes and everyone at Perfect Pitch, Ryan McBryde who directed, and Lizzi Gee, the  choreographer. The cast were the best advert possible for their college -  the MTA, which offers the UK's first accelerated training scheme for musical theatre professionals. I hope Lia's Guide brings them the luck they deserve. Remember these names..got to be some stars of the future..
.As for me, it's back to the rewrites...

Lia gets her cheque...and look who signed it

Imogen Fowler as Lia

Winner's advisers, Gilda and Kevin, played by Sian Watkins and Richard Watkins

Ashton Charge as Raf -  a vampire sings...

Clark James and Pamela Wernham as Lia's mum and dad

Shaz and Jack on the trail of Lia and Raf...amid the topiary of Primrose Hill

Lia and mates go shopping

Phoebe Rose White as Ball 23. You'll never see such glam lottery balls again

Imogen Fowler as Lia

The three bitches...Jade Jordan, Jenny Webster and RoxyHowells-Davis

Lia and her supernatural crush, Raf

Passion in the internet caf..

Alice Ferreira and Joe Toland as Lia's mates, Shaz and Jack

The seven brilliant lottery balls: Laura Jane Cook, Becki Dobbin, Simone Murphy, hannah Shaw, Remy Moynes, Rose Shalloo and Phoebe Rose White

 

 (thanks to the MTA for the pics)

Cover reveal: Salvage

I'm very happy to be able to reveal the cover for my next book, Salvage, which will be published in hardback by Atom Books in January 2014 -  only six months to wait!

I adore this cover. It shows brother and sister Aidan and Cass, who haven't seen each other for  twelve years, since Cass was adopted by a wealthy family. They meet again through fate and Facebook, long-buried secrets are uncovered and the reunion changes them both forever.
I love the tension in Cass's shoulders, the vulnerability of Aidan's neck. I love the colour, the font and the clean uncluttered feel of it. And I love the way it is genderfree, in its assumptions about readers and writer.
Thank you Atom! I promise to have my copy edits back with you very soon!

(The first night of Lia the musical went very well -  a report tomorrow)

First Night for Lia

 

Some people get lucky on the lottery. I got lucky  just over a year ago when I received an email from a guy called Andy Barnes. He runs Perfect Pitch, a company devoted to creating and supporting new musicals. ‘We were wondering if you’d ever thought of adapting your book Lia’s Guide to Winning the Lottery into a musical?’ he wrote.

 

Well, no, I have to admit that I’d never given it a minute’s thought, my daydreams being more  about Hollywood blockbusters. And, err, winning the lottery. But as soon as I read the email I had visions of a big department store number with flying shopping bags and clashing stilettos.  I liked the idea even more when I met Andy and the rest of the Perfect Pitch team and they shared their idea of singing lottery balls. They showed me clips from a workshop they’d held with students from the Musical Theatre Academy, a college in Islington. My characters, singing and dancing...it was like magic.

I’d written Lia’s Guide in 2010, setting myself the challenge of making a book about personal finance attractive to teenagers. It’s a book about chance and fortune, relative values and valuing your relatives. It’s about being very rich and very poor. Because  ‘dark romance’  dominated teen fiction at the time, I added in a moody, mysterious love interest, a boy who was almost definitely a vampire, an angel or a lovely, fluffy werewolf.

I’ve learned a lot in the last few months as we set about turning the book into the show. I’ve learned to let go of characters who worked fine on the page but are dull or peculiar on the stage. I’ve grappled with lyrics, and learned to love stage directions. I’ve learned that writing a musical is more like my previous existence as a news reporter than my current one as an author of teen fiction (the team work, the brutal deadlines, the swingeing cuts).

I am a print-media person. I work with words on paper, I work for readers. Learning to think about staging, about how words sound, how an actor will interpret them, how to get people on and off a stage -  it doesn't always come easily. But it's exciting to feel as though you are learning, and to be trusted with the opportunity to have a go. I'm very lucky in that Perfect Pitch partnered me with Paul Herbert whose music is so wonderful that I've quite often wanted to cut all the dialogue so we can just have back-to-back songs, and I've also been privileged to work with brilliant directors Ryan McBryde and John Brant, and choreographer Lizzi Gee.

Tonight is the first night of a run of performances of the show, performed by those talented students of the MTA, many of whom took part in that initial workshop. It's a developmental version -  changes will happen afterwards, but it's come on a long way from the first  version of the musical, put together with the help of a valiant bunch of students in Carlisle who work shopped the first stages of the script.  I hope Lia brings them all the luck they deserve. I'm making a list of stars of the future, and will be boring people for years now with my tales of how I knew the big names of musical theatre when they were just starting out.

It's on at the Bridewell Theatre, just off Fleet Street, just around the corner from where I started my career in journalism 32 years ago (I was a child reporter!). Fittingly, Lia the musical, even more than the book, is about journalism. It's about misunderstandings and misinterpretations, gossip and mis-reporting, the courage it takes to tell the truth.

I've neglected this blog in recent months because I've been writing the musical, and two books as well. I hope that anyone who comes along will think it's been worthwhile! Details here.

 

 

Don't throw the baby out with the Sick Lit

 (This post contains spoilers for When I Was Joe and Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery. Don't read it if you haven't read them!!!)

 I followed the 'sick lit' debate this week with great interest. It started in the Daily Mail with this article by Tanith Carey. Here's an extract:             

While the Twilight series and its imitators are clearly fantasy, these books don't spare any detail of the harsh realities of terminal illness, depression and death.
Most are also liberally peppered with sex and swearing. The blurbs for 'teen sick-lit' - as it's become known - trip over themselves to promise their books will drive readers 'to tears' or leave them 'devastated'.

Carey seems to be suggesting that teenagers should be shielded from detailed 'harsh reality' including sex and swearing, and that authors and their publishers are exploiting their emotions, trying to make them cry. Furthermore:

Publishers set about commissioning a raft of morbid novels, which all too often inadvertently glamorise shocking life-and-death issues.
'When you write for children, you have a moral and social responsibility,' says Amanda (Craig, children's book reviewer for The Times) . 'I think there is a cavalier attitude towards this in the publishing industry, especially as children as young as 11 are likely  to be reading these books.
'They are aimed at young teens at the time when they are most likely to go through  self-harm or experience suicidal thoughts.'

So, added to the charge is a far more serious one, that these books can encourage or inspire self-harm or suicide.

There have been several responses to the original article. This one by Kate Wilson of Nosy Crow  makes many good points, including:

Books that deal well with difficult topics can be a safe way for children to encounter those topics.

And  this one by Vanessa Harbour points out that


Reading as a child/teenager is all part of working out who you are. It is all part of the search for an identity. Books are a chance to try on different voices and identities to see how they fit in the safe environment of between the pages.

Tanith Carey responds to Vanessa's post in the comments. She says:

The feature also suggests that if young children are going to read these books, they should have an adult to talk through such issues.
Also do please address the issue that the press no longer reports anything except the most broad facts of a suicide, even though they have all the details at inquests - for fear of inspiring copycats.
Yet books like By the Time You Read This I Will Be Dead centres on a 15 year old bullying victim using a suicide website to set herself a deadline to kill herself - and considering how best to do it.


Michele Pauli in the Guardian was scathing about the original Mail article, calling it 'daft' and saying:

Frankly, I'd be more worried about a teen who wasn't a little moist-eyed after reading a well-written book in which the main character, whom they've grown to know and love, dies at the end. Generation of cold-hearted psychopaths, anyone?

But in the comments, Meg Rosoff, one of our best YA writers says:  

Sorry guys, I completely 100% agree with the Mail on this one. I hate these books. I am sick to death (HA) of all these dead/dying teen books that somehow make you cry without any of the sense of the actual ugliness of cancer and death. In all the books mentioned there's a definite sense of "well at least she lost her virginity first/fell in love", allowing the reader to sigh with misery/pleasure at the outcome. Kids dying is unbearably ugly and awful and doesn't allow you to sigh and cry. And most dying kids aren't thinking about getting laid. Lord knows, I don't hate gritty subjects for teens. The grittier the better in my opinion. But not this faux-grit. For an honest book about death, try Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls. Or Maurice Gleitzman's holocaust books Once and Then.


And another top YA writer, Anthony McGowan joins in too:

The dying child has become an equally lazy trope in Y/A fiction - just as formulaic and silly and the wizards and dragons. Judging by these books you'd think that there's a 50-50 chance of any kid dying of cancer. The field is ripe for satire ...


There are now so many strands to this argument, that it's hard to know where to begin.  It seems to me that these are the most important.

 - Is there something intrinsically more shocking/dangerous/upsetting about books which deal with strong emotions, death, sickness, and so on in a contemporary realist setting, as opposed to fantasy?

I think not. Many adults feel easier with children reading fantasy. Perhaps they feel there is a mutual understanding that it is 'only a story', that vampires don't exist, that the book will not be taken too seriously. But I believe that teenagers are able to understand that a contemporary story is as much a fiction as Harry Potter. Some of them prefer to read about the world about them. Others don't. It's a personal choice.

 - Is there a trend towards mawkish and exploitative books about cancer and death?

Maybe. I haven't read all of them. There are certainly a lot of them, and a cancer book won the Carnegie Medal last year (A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness) The ones I have read by John Green (The Fault in Our Stars), Sally Nicholls (Ways to Live Forever)  and Sophia Bennett (The Look)  are  well-written and engaging. They include  some medical details, and don't dodge uncomfortable and difficult emotions. In The Fault in Our Stars the boy had another girlfriend with cancer -  and he didn't like her, because her cancer affected her moods and she was not nice to be with. This seems to me to be honest, unsentimental, interesting.
I haven't come across a book which is written solely to be a Love Story type weepie, but I'm sure they exist. Of course you cry. A book about a child sick or dying would be a failure if it didn't move you to tears. That doesn't necessarily make it mawkish, sentimental or exploitative. Sometimes it is hard to cry about the things that actually matter in one's life. A book, a film, the death of a celebrity may provide catharsis. I remember weeping over the death announcements of strangers in the week after my mother-in-law's death. So a book might be sentimental, it might be shallow, but it might also help a teenager release difficult feelings.

Tanith Carey in the Mail doesn't like 'harsh realities' and Meg thinks 'the grittier the better'. I think a book needs to be as gritty as the story and characters demand. I don't like fake emotions, I don't like feeling manipulated by an author or film maker (Spielberg, pah) but I don't like gratuitous gore either. Tell the story. Be honest. Think about the affect on your audience. A teen audience is different from an adult audience in that your book may be their introduction to important questions. So don't assume knowledge or cynicism in your reader, just give them enough detail to understand more, empathise more, care about the story they are being told. 
 
Can books for teenagers about self-harm or suicide actually encourage vulnerable teens to try these things for themselves?


I think the answer to this has to be yes...a qualified yes. Teenagers can be vulnerable, volatile, emotional, self-destructive. They can seize on anything -  a book, a film, a song lyric - and use it as an inspiration for terrible things. So there is, as Amanda Craig says, a huge moral responsibility for authors and editors when they write about any subject. In general they take that responsibility seriously.

In the case of self-harm, I doubt that many teenagers will first hear about it from a novel. Sadly it is a common part of modern life. I first got the idea of making my character Claire in When I Was Joe a self-harmer when I read a news story saying how common it was for teenage girls to cut themselves. I immediately made the link with boys arming themselves with knives -  a link also picked up by my former colleague David Aaronovitch in this column for The Times. I thought a lot about how to introduce this theme, and how my main character Ty would respond (he finds it sexually exciting, which disturbs him). I thought about how to convey this in a responsible way, with just enough detail, so it is realistic but not salacious or attractive.
 I would never recommend When I Was Joe for a 10 year old, because of this aspect of the plot. The only child that I know of who tried to self-harm after reading When I Was Joe was primary school age -  too young for the content, in my opinion.

When writing the book I asked my daughter, then aged 12, what she knew about self-harming. She showed me an article in Sugar magazine offering advice on what to do if a friend is self-harming. The advice was to encourage the friend to talk about her feelings -  no mention of talking to adults. So I mirrored this advice in the book -  it doesn't work -  and eventually it is made clear (I hope) that the appropriate action to take is to tell a parent or teacher. Claire's problems are not easily solved. I don't like books where a counsellor magically solves all the problems. I can see myself returning to her as a character in future books.

It seems to me that it is possible that a child might get the idea of self-harming from a book -  but that the book is never going to be the only cause of that self-harm. But books can also show you what to do and what not to do when you are supporting a self-harming friend.  Or a friend threatening suicide. I have been involved in real life in advising teenagers what to do when their friend threatened suicide. It helped enormously to have thought and read about this in the past. I advised them to tell their school. Teens should not be bearing this sort of responsibility.

It also seems to me that if a group of friends all start self-harming then the idea could come from a book, but also that there is something very wrong with their environment. It might be school, it might be home, it might be the friendship group itself. The book may be a trigger, it is unlikely to be the beginning and the end of the story.



I've never read a book that set out how to commit suicide (and would think that inappropriate and irresponsible). I would also be concerned by books which suggest that suicide is a good way to escape one's troubles or take revenge on one's enemies. I have seen this once or twice in teen books, describing very extreme situations, and I found it worrying. Powerful but worrying. I would hope that teen books would emphasise the importance of life, of enduring and overcoming even the worst problems.

 I just finished reading The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis, a German YA book which would give the editor of the Daily Mail a heart attack. (spoiler alert!) In it a girl is raped -  but she forgives her attacker, whose life is all too realistically grim. It's a book which features child abuse, male prostitution, drug addiction -  and ends with a teen suicide. It's also lyrical and sensitive, as concerned with the power of words and metaphor as with the grittiness of the story. It's an extraordinary book. Not for ten-year-olds.

Books like The Storyteller challenge teenage and adult readers. But some less ambitious books are, to my mind, almost more worrying. I mean those silly  'undead' books, paranormal books which suggest that death isn't really death, but actually a way of making yourself cooler, strong, more beautiful. Take the Beautiful Dead series by Eden Maguire:


Souls in limbo, they have been chosen to return to the world to set right a wrong linked to their deaths and bring about justice. Beautiful, superhuman and powerful, they are marked by a 'death mark' - a small tattoo of angel's wings. Phoenix tells her that the sound of invisible wings beating are the millions of souls in limbo, desperate to return to earth.Darina's mission is clear: she must help Jonas, Summer, Arizona, and impossibly, her beloved Phoenix, right the wrong linked to their deaths to set them free from limbo so that they can finally rest in peace. Will love conquer death? And if it does, can Darina set it free?

Now, this is clearly twaddle (I've never read the books, so I suppose they might be better than the blurb suggests)  but does an unhappy and impressionable teen know that?
Some of the dark romances, so popular in recent years, glamorised death, dangling prospects of sexy after-lifes. This was the trope that I set out to satirise in Lia's Guide by creating Raf, a boy with all the allure of a supernatural being  - gorgeous, moody, friendless and mysterious, who turns out to be depressed and broke, survivor of a suicide attempt. 'All that time we thought he was one of the undead,' says Lia, 'and we never knew how near he'd been to just plain dead and gone. Ashes in the air or rotten flesh in the ground.'

Lia's Guide confused some  readers because it is a romantic comedy which has big themes -  money, debt, sex, suicide.  At the moment I am adapting it to be a musical, which means it is (hopefully) going to be even funnier.  Re-working it has been an interesting experience. Quite often I have to remind myself why I thought a certain plot point was important, why Lia or Raf act as they do. I wanted to satirise the teen books which suggest that death is glamorous and desirable, that moodiness and stalking is attractive, that sex is more frightening than death. Some of these themes will be lost in the musical -  they belong in the context of a teen novel. But my point is really that it's not just  'issue' books or 'sick lit' that tackle big, important subjects. A rom com can help kids to gain insight and understanding, using laughter not tears.


My worry when journalists, authors and experts start condemning some teen books as sentimental or shocking, is that there is a suggestion that some books are not worth reading. A good librarian, a sensitive parent, will find the right book for the right child, and be there to talk to if a book is upsetting. The mawkish, the sentimental, the grim even the dreary all have their place. The most important thing is that teenagers have access to books and the chance to make their own choices. They have moved into a different phase of childhood, one in which they are preparing to become adults. Over-protected teens become anxious and unready adults.

One of the most sentimental books that I read last year was a piece of sick-lit. Wonder by R J Palacio is a story of a boy with terrible facial deformities who starts school for the first time and  -  surprise! -  eventually triumphs over bullies and prejudice.  Simon Mason, reviewing it for the Guardian said: 'Wonder certainly delivers what it promises – an emotional roller-coaster ride in which tears, laughter and triumphant fist-pumping are mandatory.'   It is  - in parts -  mawkish. I found it strange and worrying that the principal kept on reassuring parents that the school was not going to take other disabled children.
However, despite its flaws, Wonder is also heart-warming, engaging, tear-jerking and important - showing children their power to hurt and heal. Would I give it to kids to read? I certainly would.

The Next Big Thing

So, this week I'm taking part in the Next Big Thing meme which has been going around various writer's blogs..and very interesting they've been too. I was tagged by Keris Stainton and Ruth Eastham and you can read their posts by clicking on their names.


The idea is that we share a bit about the book we're working on, by answering some questions, which was actually quite hard for me. The thing is that I've written one book -  first draft anyway -  but now set it aside to work on another one, for which I have a looming deadline. And then there's the musical for Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery which is taking quite a bit of my time. But this is the one I'm working on now, and this is the one I have a publication date for -  all being well, January 2014.

What is the working title of your book?

Salvage. I got the idea when I lost my kindle at a shopping centre and it was found by someone whose husband tracked me down by looking at the list of books and working out that Keren's kindle was probably something to do with the Keren David whose books were listed there. He owns something called the Salvage Shop in north London.  The name chimed with my latest idea.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

I read a news story ages ago about birth families contacting adopted children through Facebook, and then a social worker friend of mine said 'I know what you ought to write a book about!' and it turned out to be the same idea.

What genre does your book fall under?

You could call it contemporary realism, but I like BritGrit.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

 
Robert Sheehan who played Nathan in Misfits would be good for Aidan, as long as he can lose his Irish accent and Kaya Scodelario who was Effie in Skins could work as Cass, his sister. Will, Cass's friend  could be John Boyega who was in Attack the Block (lovely smile), but he'd have to grow his hair.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When siblings Aidan and Cass are reunited through Facebook, painful memories can't be repressed.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

It is represented by my agent, Jenny Savill of Andrew Nurnberg Associates and will be published in the UK by Atom Books.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I'm still writing it! My deadline is December 15! Eek!

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
 
It's a bit different from my other books -  more of an emotional family story. Maybe Katie Dale's Someone Else's Life.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My friend the social worker, and another friend who  talked to me about her experience of adoption.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It's possibly the darkest book I've written so far.


Now it's my turn to tag some other writers who'll be posting about their work in progress on their blogs next Wednesday.  And they are:

Sara Grant - I can't wait to find out what Sara's working on, her Dark Parties is one of the best teen dystopias around.

Savita Kalhan - a writer prepared to go darker and deeper than most, her The Long Weekend was one of the most terrifying teen thrillers I've read.

Dave Cousins -  author of the brilliant Fifteen Days without a Head,  BritGrit at its finest

Bryony Pearce  - who isn't scared to tackle the most difficult emotions and themes, as proved by her nail-biting debut Angel's Fury

A musical interlude...

I was always being told off as a child for day-dreaming. It's not an activity that's valued, especially at school.
How wrong they were. It turns out that day-dreaming is one of the most important elements in writing fiction. The more I can lose myself in my latest story, persuade myself that I am writing about real people, the better the writing goes. It's a strange process though -  persuading yourself that imaginary people are real, capturing them on the page and then letting go of them again.
So just think how surreal it was for me last week to find myself in a room surrounded by characters that I had invented. What's more, they were singing lyrics based on the words I'd written, and instead of the London accents I'd imagined they were speaking in broad Lancastrian/Scottish/Yorkshire. There were moments when I felt as though I'd strayed into a dream.
In fact, I was in Carlisle, working with students on the University fo Cumbria's  musical theatre course to develop the musical of my book Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery,  alongside director John Brant, choreographer Cressida Carre and Musical Director Harriet Oughton,  and Andy and Wendy Barnes from Perfect Pitch, the organisation which is developing the musical.
It was something completely new for me -  I've never been involved in the theatre at all -  but it's actually the culmination of an ambition that I'd completely forgotten about. When I was a teenager I loved musicals, and I longed to write a musical - but I had no idea how to go about it, and so -  typically -  never even gave it a go.
We started with thedialogue from the book, and part of the week's work was to identify which characters translated quite easily to the stage -  Jack, Lia's laddish friend, for example -  and which ones needed considerable rewriting -  Raf, Lia's mysterious crush. For me that involved a certain amount of analysis -  what had I hoped to achieve by writing something in that way? How could I create the affect I wanted?
I spent most of Tuesday in the Travelodge in Carlisle (a fantastic place for writing, by the way, large light rooms, no internet in the bedrooms and peace and quiet. If I ever disappear near deadline time that's where you'll find me). re-writing Act One. I had to leave before the end of the week, but it was a complete joy to watch John, Harriet and Cress working with the students, creating scenes based on the book and helping them develop their ideas and skills. As for the students -  I can't wait to come up to Carlisle again and see how you've got on, you achieved so much in only three days.
I'm writing two books at the moment -  that's why you haven't heard much from me on this blog. One book is due mid-December. Another is finished  -  the first draft anyway -  and I am itching to rework it second time around. Add to that the work I need to do on the musical, and organising my lovely son's barmitzvah (January), and you can understand why I feel a little stressed and occasionally overwhelmed.
But there's something about musicals that lift your spirits and inject you with energy. The music for Lia's Guide that I've heard so far (composed by the very talented Paul Herbert) is gorgeous. I've been humming it all week. I can't wait to share it with more people.
I haven't won the lottery yet. But this week I felt as though I had.

Another Life is out

I nearly missed it, but there's half an hour left of publication day for Another Life.

It's a very special book for me. To be given the chance to develop characters, themes and stories over three books is a real  privilege. I have to thank everyone who championed the books  -  librarians, booksellers, reviewers and above all readers.  Personal recommendation  is the most powerful force in  making a writer's career financially viable. Everyone who buys a copy of Another Life makes it more likely that I can afford to go on writing books in the future, so thank you.
 

I made quite a bold choice in Another Life, to change the narrator. Ty does have his own chapters, but the story is mostly told by Archie, his cousin. I hope readers won't mind the shift and willl find it interesting to look for their similarities and differences, as well as seeing Ty from the outside and considering how much they trust their view of him. The cousins are both capable of great stupidity and can be infuriatingly annoying (especially Archie) but I hope they are occasionally admirable and generally endearing. I'm very fond of them both, which is surprising as I specifically created Archie to be as irritating as possible.

I'm, also very fond of their dads, although Danny (Ty's dad) is generally hopeless (but learning fast) and I'm sure that my affection for David, Archie's fierce dad, won't be shared by any of my teen readers who are generally much tougher on parental figures than I am. Their grandfather, Patrick is possibly my favourite character in the entire series (although he's as flawed as any of them), and perhaps now is the time to admit that he was slightly based on our very own Prince Philip.

 Another Life is a book about sons and fathers, crime and punishment, about rich and poor, and the inter-connectedness of Londoners despite the huge disparities in wealth. It was partly inspired by learning that children at  my daughter's school, a big inner city comprehensive, attend assemblies aimed at preventing them getting involved in knife crime while pupils at a nearby private school are warned against drug-taking and a party lifestyle.

Some people have asked me if there will be any more books about Ty. I have to admit that I think it's unlikely, as I'm now changing publishers  and looking forward to new projects. But it's possible they might make guest appearances in other books (I really wish I'd found a way of getting Archie into Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery  I could see them getting on very well) and I'm interested in the future for Ty's baby sister Alyssa. There's one huge question left at the end of Another Life, and it involves his friend Arron. So you never know.

I've been neglecting this blog recently, for which I'm sorry, but my life has been very hectic and somewhat stressful, full of anxiety and problems. I've been working like crazy to pull together one book, and now that I am nearly finished (tomorrow, I hope) need to move on to the next one with barely time to draw breath. I've got school visits next week, including one to  Zurich International School  - I'm working on the musical for Lia's Guide, it's been school holidays and I've just started a monthly newspaper column.Things should quieten down a bit by February...except there's another book I want to write then...

It's two minutes to midnight, so I'd better post this while it's still September 6. Thanks for reading!

Atomised!

So, I can at last share with you my second bit of good news...which is most welcome following the sad news earlier in the year about the end of the children's fiction list at Frances Lincoln.

I have agreed a two-book deal with Atom!

The first book is Salvage, about Aidan and his sister Cass who haven't seen eachother for years because Cass was adopted by another family. They are reunited as teenagers, but it is a bittersweet reunion. 

The second is still in development (that means ideas are buzzing around in my brain like a demented wasp).

I've been planning and thinking about Salvage for ages, because I'd thought it would be my next book for Frances Lincoln, so it's brilliant to be able to get on and write it. Atom's Editorial Director Samantha Smith really gets what I try and do, so I think it's a great home for my contemporary YA books. Atom published Twlight in the UK, and if you read Almost True or Lia's Guide you'll know that I'm ever so slightly obsessed.. And they also recently published Adorkable by Sarra Manning, one of my favourite books of 2012 so far.

While I've been waiting to find out what would happen with Salvage, I've been working on two other books...still no idea what will happen with them. It's been an interesting year so far, to put it mildly.

Here's the deal as reported in Book Brunch (an industry website)

 

     Atom buys 'home-grown YA' from Keren David

Atom Editorial Director Samantha Smith has acquired two new "home-grown contemporary YA" novels by multi-award-winning author Keren David, buying UK and Commonwealth rights from Jenny Savill of Andrew Nurnberg Associates International Ltd.

The first of the two stand-alone novels, Salvage tells the story of two siblings from a neglectful home, who were separated as young children when one was adopted by a middle-class family. Now aged 16 and 18 they are reunited through Facebook, with none of the preparation and support that social workers advise.

"Keren David treads that immensely difficult line between being compulsively readable but not shying away from many of the real, and heart-breaking, issues that teens face," says Smith. "We’re thrilled to be bringing such a strong, British author onto the list and have big plans for Keren in the future."

A former journalist, David made the transition to writing teen fiction with the publication of When I Was Joe in 2010. Her latest novel, Lia’s Guide to Winning the Lottery, was published in summer 2011 and is currently being made into a musical.

"I am thrilled to be working with Atom," says David. "I think there's a growing audience in the UK for home-grown contemporary YA, and it's great to get a vote of confidence from a leading publisher."

Atom - the Little, Brown Book Group’s children’s and young adult imprint - will publish Salvage in early 2014.                

Lia the Musical!

I haven't posted much on this blog recently because I've been busy with all sorts of things, most of them secret. I've been writing and having meetings and writing some more, and I hope to have some news about some of that quite soon.

But in the meantime something has happened which I can talk about. Something, in fact, which I can sing about. LIA'S GUIDE TO WINNING THE LOTTERY IS GOING TO BE A MUSICAL!

I have to admit when I first got the email, I thought it was too exciting to be true. Perfect Pitch, an Arts Council funded company which creates and supports new musical theatre and then licenses it for performance, had been researching the idea of a musical about a teenage lottery winner and came across my book. They read it, enjoyed it and thought it would work well as a musical. As Lia might say: SQUEEE!

I've never been involved in anything to do with musical theatre before, but when I was a teenager it was definitely an ambition of mine to write a musical (an ambition so deeply buried that I'd forgotten all about it until Perfect Pitch got in touch). And musicals must be in my blood -my maternal grandparents met when they co-starred in a youth club production of Glbert and Sullivan's Yeoman of the Guard.

Most amazingly of all, Perfect Pitch had already workshopped a few scenes with some drama students, so I was able to see my characters acting and singing -  something that broguht tears to my eyes.
The plan is to get on with the writing and staging quite quickly, in order to showcase the new musical to theatre compnaies next year. I can't wait to learn more about how a musical is put together. It's been the perfect mood-lifter during some tense and stressful months. I'll be reporting on our progress in the next few months.

 Some other news: My Brazilian publisher Novo Conceito is going to publish Another Life as well as When I Was Joe and Almost True. Lia's Guide is now on sale in the Netherlands, published as Wat te doen met acht milijoen?  And my German publisher, dtv has revealed the cover for Almost True (published December)  The title means 'The Last Statement'.

The making of Another Life, the trailer

It's remarkably difficult to find a roof that you can jump off. Plus, it's been hard to find a day for filming when it wasn't pouring with rain. Add to that an award-winning film maker who's always rushing off to war zones, or to speak at the UN, and an author who couldn't remember which year her book was being published and you can see that it hasn't been altogether easy to make the trailer for Another Life.

Finlay in action

But here it is! Woo! For some reason blogger won't let me embed videos, so best to view it on Youtube

Anyway, the story of this trailer starts way back in the late 1980s when I worked for the Sunday Times in Glasgow. Our rival was the Observer's Scottish correspondent, one Callum Macrae. I vaguely remember him as a tall, fair, quiet bloke who I used to see in press conferences sometime. Naturally we sneered at his efforts, and he doubtless felt the same about ours.

And that was that until a few years ago when we met again and became friends through having kids at the same school. Callum now runs a television company, Outsider Televison Production which is mostly known for making stunningly good documentaries. His best known is the devastating Sri Lanka's Killing Fields
which revealed the slaughter of civilians by Sri Lankan government forces, for this film Callum and his team were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and for a BAFTA, and won an Amnesty award for best documentary.
Outsider TV also make literary trailers, and have worked with authors including Maggie O'Farrell, Sharon Dogar and Jed Rubenfeld. So naturally I was thrilled when Callum offered to make a trailer for me.

New covers! These arrived this week.

Originally we were going to make a trailer for Lia's Guide, but Callum kept on flying off to warzones and the UN, and it never happened. So we started early with Another Life, and reckoned it would be a good way of drawing attention to the new covers for the whole trilogy.
We brainstormed ideas for the trailer and came up with two -  scenes from a boxing club, and a boy running and jumping his way along a roof. Callum actually had some footage from a boxing club, and a suitably aged teenage son, so all we had to do was find our roof.

Food from the Sky: not much room for running

We called our local supermarket, the very wonderful Budgens in Crouch End because we knew there was access to their roof for the very impressive Food from the Sky project, in which they grow fresh produce on the roof to sell in store. They were happy for us to come and visit. We climbed up the staircase to the roof and found a green haven of herbs, salads and vegetables, but no space at all for running and jumping, and a sensible but (for us) unhelpfully secure fence all the way around the garden.
Next we tried Waitrose. The staff were very interested, but needed permission from head office -  health and safety . We took the area manager's number and moved on.
 Further up the road the buildings are taller and older. We tried my hairdresser's -  but the manager, who I know, was out. And then my opticians, the exceptionally wonderful A View. There we struck gold. Not only did they have builders working on their roof, but they were going to have to call Terry, owner of the top floor flat with access to the roof, and get him to leave work early and come home to allow the builders to climb out through his flat. What's more, when Terry arrived he turned out to be an amateur filmmaker, who was only too happy to allow us to run around on his roof. We were on! Filming set for the following week.


Terry helps get Finlay and equiptment up onto the roof

Luckily, the rain held off that weekend (surprisingly, because it's rained virtually every day since March). We arrived at Terry's flat and surveyed the scary ladder out to the roof.  Did I mention that I'm scared of heights? So was Callum. Finlay, the runner and jumper, luckily was not, but as soon as we got out onto the roof and surveyed the sheer drops on either side, Callum and I spent the entire time taking deep breaths and saying 'Finlay! Be careful!' and 'Come away from the edge!'
Finlay was very good-natured about the whole thing and ran and jumped brilliantly, despite gravel, nails, junk and people telling him not to go near the edge.

The edge! Scary!

And that was that. Callum and colleagues started editing and composing music, creating graphics and deciding along the way that we didn't need the boxing club footage. I waited. Eventually I got an email from Callum. It's done! Here's the link!
Unfortunately we were away at the time, celebrating my husband's birthday at a hotel by the seaside (yes it rained, but we had a great time anyway). The link came through in the evening, when we'd had a nice meal and a few glasses of wine. It took ages to get an internet link, but eventually I did it.  'Wow!' I texted back to Callum 'I love it! It just needs one thing -  a screen at the end with the name of the book,the publishers and the date of publication. September 2013.'
Well, never ask an author for accurate information when she's a) had a few drinks and b) just seen the amazing trailer for her book. Yes, they added the end shot. No, the book is not published in 2013. It's published in 2012!!!! It took a remarkably long time to sort out that error.
In the meantime I've been showing the trailer on school visits, and getting a good response. Some pupils have suggested that it'd make a great film.  I think Callum's done an extraordinary job of getting inside Ty's head (or maybe this is Archie?) and encapsulating the essence of the book.  Thank you, once again!

What's your name?

One of the things I thought would be the easiest things about writing books turns out to be one of the hardest. Why is it so difficult to name my characters?
It's not, as I fondly imagined, just a case of picking your favourite names and sprinkling them around. Naming characters is an intricate alchemy, part art, part science and the more books you write the more difficult it gets.
Some things to consider:
 - your character's age. Which names work for someone of their age, class, nationality and with those particular parents? Some authors make the mistake of thinking that the names of teenagers when they were teens (in my case Tracey, Susan, Dave, Gary) are still used for teens today. Others pick the names they'd give a baby now and apply it to a 16 year old.
 - the  names of other characters in your book. It's just too confusing to have Kieran, Kevin, Kerry and Karen in the same book. Oh how I wish I'd remembered that when I named Claire and Carl in When I Was Joe.I had to rename Edward in Almost True when Claire started wittering on about Twilight..it took me ages to find and love the name Patrick.
 - the names of your friends, your friends' children, your children's friends, your family.  Claire in When I Was Joe was originally called Katie..but I have a good friend called Katie. When Katie's role grew, the weirdness of her being called Katie provoked a rethink, and she became Claire. My dad's name is Joseph, called Joe by non family members, but Joseph in the family. Quite a few people think I named my book after my dad.
 -  how to pronounce the names you've chosen. I got somewhat fed up with the number of people - my agent, my writing group -  who called Raf (from Lia's Guide) Rafe. In the end I made a point of explaining it in the text.
 -  How the name works internationally. Jack in Lia's Guide was going to be Jamie, until a friend told me it was a girls' name in America.

Some people use baby name guides to find character names, I prefer Facebook (just find a connection of the right sort of age and look at their friend list). Another very useful tool is a new blog which maps baby naming patterns for England and Wales since 1996. Want to know how many girls were called Champagne in 1996? This is where to find out (that it was zero, interestingly enough). 

Sometimes people name characters after friends or colleagues or important people in the children's book industry. I have a plant in Another Life which, I am reliably informed, bears the same name as a plant owned by a Carnegie judge...which Carnegie judge I am not entirely certain...anyway it has to work, doesn't it?

Sometimes I ask Twitter. People are only too happy to help, sometimes volunteering their own names, never mind the character. This is how my sometime colleague Marcus has ended up with TWO characters named after him -  a whinging failed X Factor winner in Lia's Guide and a whinging stoner in Another Life.The real Marcus is nothing like either of his namesakes, I hasten to add.

I've been asked by kids I know to put them in a book -  which is fine, but it has to be the right kid and the right book. Keja, you made it into Another Life -  but I changed the spelling to reflect how you pronounce your name. Sorry!


Sometimes writers suffer retrospective naming regret once a book is in print, and  can hardly bear to be reminded that they once thought that 'Graham' or 'Trevor' was a cool name for their hero. Others only realise after the book is published that Alistair is spelled Alastair for half of the book *whistles casually and walks away from the scene of the crime*.

The problem is that often you're called upon to name a whole bunch of people all at once, so all the fun of picking names evaporates in the panic of finding the right names that all go together without losing the thread of what you want to say about them. Pick the wrong name and...it just sounds wrong. It spoils the character. It puts you off.

I'm naming characters right now. I have a Sadie and a Hannah -  two names I love, but both are the names of friends of my children, both will probably have to change. I have a Tom -  feels wrong, may grow on me. And there's Emmy, who is perfect. For the moment.

Sad news

Some of you may already know that my publisher, Frances Lincoln Children's Books are no longer going to be publishing Young Adult books. This decision has been taken by Quarto, the company that took over FLCB and parent company Frances Lincoln in August.

The decision to end the YA list, which only launched in 2010, has not been officially announced by Quarto, but it was widely discussed on Facebook today among writerly people, and I just saw it mentioned on Twitter. So I thought I'd better say my bit.

First, my next book Another Life will still be published as planned in September, and the new covers for When I Was Joe and Almost True will also go ahead.  Frances Lincoln will continue to sell and market my books, including Lia's Guide to Winning the Lottery. I am relieved that this is the case, and happy that there will still be a dedicated sales and marketing team to work with.

I am, however, beyond sad to know that the brilliant editorial team will be broken up. Maurice Lyon, the editorial director was the person who saw the potential in When I Was Joe, when other publishers doubted the market for 'gritty realism'. Every award it has won (five), every nomination and short-listing it has achieved (a further 14) probably would not have happened without Maurice. He and I were jointly shortlisted for the Branford Boase award. When I Was Joe  earned back its advance within a year, it has sold nearly 20,000 copies. I'm not saying any of this to boast, just to show that Maurice's instincts seem to have been proved right.

Maurice and Emily are both great editors to work with, providing subtle guidance on the big stuff and keen-eyed attention to detail for the rest (not forgetting Yvonne, another member of the FL team whose eye for a misplaced comma is legendary). I'm certain that they will go on to great things at whichever publishing houses are lucky enough to employ them.
The news is devastating for many other authors who were writing books for Frances Lincoln, authors who had seen the high production values in place and were delighted to work with such a wonderful team. To mention just one, Jane McLoughlin's book At Yellow Lake is due to be published in a few weeks' time.  I read a preview copy and so did my 12-year-old son, we were both captivated by Jane's story. My son said it was the best book he'd read all year, and asked me to buy him a copy of the book when published -  this is a boy who never re-reads anything.
Britain at the moment feels like a place which is more about cuts and closures, pessimism and pratfalls, than optimism, imagination and investment. We're all learning that we can't depend on institutions- companies, government, the media -  to make good or positive decisions. But we're all in charge of our own response to bad news, and, without sounding impossibly mawkish,  mine is to face the future with a hopeful smile. And get writing. The stakes just got higher.

Ty Italiano

 It's Ty! In Venice! What is he doing there?


No, this is not a sneak peek at the plot of Another Life. It's an Italian YA book spotted by my eagle-eyed editor Emily Sharratt at the recent Bologna Children's Book Fair. 
It's called The Descent of Light and according to this blog post, it's a kind of Dan Brown meets the Mayans, SF/timeshift epic romance, set in Italy and Mexico. 
I whipped the blog post into Google Translate and this is what I got:

'The Descent of Light that, as adults, although it is YA literature, intrigues me most, is now known of the Mayan prophecy about the end of the world in 2012. The places where the story takes place is full of charm and mystery of Venice, the Tuscan hills, the ruins of Mexico. The characters by which we follow are Jude and Viola.In Venice comes a wonderful guy. Jude was instructed by his father to find a Maya text, that can save humanity from the provisions of the awful apocalyptic prophecy. During the searches in the Library of Archaeology Jude knows Viola, a student who has a bond with their dramatic Mayan code that the guy is trying.The meeting of two born a love, not wanted, but overwhelming, that will survive the events that occur at some point and that will take them in Tuscany and then back in Mexico. Events that they will meet / collide with characters who, like them, are seeking the all-important code.But the story is not simple as it might seem. It is not just a search, friends, enemies, loves, tragedies and ancient vendettas. There is an element that gives the story a different perspective. Why Jude is not simply a nice guy as a god by Jude is far, far away. It comes from another world, that of SO-CALLED Bright ... (with all the implications, in my opinion, this can result in the past history of the human race and its Gods ... But I'm just assuming ...). Enjoy!

Wow! I am especially thrilled that Ty is called Jude, because that is my son's name.  And it is great to see him in another guise. He looks suitable moody and I think they've made his eyes very blue. 
It's not surprising to find the same picture popping up on a different book, because the photo was sourced from a big photo library. I wonder if the original model knows about Ty and Jude. And I wonder what other uses have been made of his image. Someone once told me that'd seen Ty on a poster warning of STDs. I've never been able to find it, and I'm happy that way.