We have a winner!

17 Feb 2012

I took my life in my hands holding the competition last month for a proof copy of THE BOY WHO COULD SEE DEMONS. My son saw my dedication to him in the front pages (or at least, he recognised his name) and held on to my copies for dear life. He would have slept with them if I’d let him. Bless.

Don’t be fooled by that angelic smile. You see the grip he’s got on that book? What it took for me to bribe it off him, I won’t tell you.

Anyhoo, we got ourselves a winner for the comp. I had LOADS of entries, thank you all kindly for spotting Ruen’s name, and sorry to disappoint so many, but I can only have one winner and it’s Cathy White. I’ll hold another competition closer to publication day. For now, though, purrllease make sure you check out the book trailer competition, it is awesome. In fact, please share it, won’t you? I need a great book trailer for this book! I’m counting on you!

Which reminds me: here’s a peek at the cover for the Italian edition which, unlike THE GUARDIAN ANGEL’S JOURNAL (in which almost all my foreign editions used the UK cover), is entirely different. I love it.

In other news, I have a title for my new poetry collection, which is coming along nicely. It’s MOTHERHOOD AS AN ORANGE. No cover image for that just yet, though I have a suspicion it might have an orange on it somewhere. I so loved the cover of INROADS, which featured a photograph by Jamie Baldridge. I think this one might be a bit different, though. Will keep you posted about publication details. So far, I’ve got poems from the collection coming out in The SHOp and Magma, and I’ll also be reading at the launch of the latter at the Troubadour, London, on March 5. In the area? Do come and say hello!

I’m leaving you with my Poem of the Week, right here. Nope, I didn’t write it. Helena Nelson at HappenStance Press sells be-oo-tiful poem cards (including one of my poem, ‘Yesterday, I failed‘) and she sent me this poem card as a gift. It’s stuck to my fridge so I can read it every day. Very necessary. Do purchase if you can think of someone else who might need this stuck to her fridge/stapled to her sleeve/written on her forehead.

‘Til next time!

Do you want to win £100′s worth of books???

9 Feb 2012

Well?? I know I do, but unfortunately I can’t enter this particular competition because it’s about my book, The Boy Who Could See Demons (it’s out in May, don’tchaknow). Not only do you get the chance to win £100′s worth of books, but the competition gives YOU (yes, you) a chance to be involved in the book’s launch in a really cool way. Like, a book trailer kind of way. A book trailer that will be posted all over the internet to promote the book. I LOVE book trailers, so I think this is amazing. Click here to find out more!

Or, here’s the link:

http://www.piatkusbooks.net/calling-all-aspiring-film-makers/

Good luck!

Juvenilia

26 Jan 2012

Today I came across a book (or rather, a manuscript) I wrote waaay back in 1990, when I was a young ‘un. Like twelve years old. This wasn’t my first attempt at writing. I’d been hammering away at my grandparents ancient typewriter for years and was delighted to receive a brand spanking new ELECTRONIC TYPEWRITER (woooah!) for my 12th birthday. But then I started grammar school, where they had five – FIVE! – shiny Apple Mac computers – the type that looked like this -

They also had a laserjet printer. I remember thinking I’d died and gone to heaven. Or that I was in some kind of technologically advanced nirvana when I slotted in my floppy disk – you know, the new kind that wasn’t actually floppy – and opened up all seven of my manuscripts on screen. It was a very exciting time.

(My kids still look at me funny when I wax lyrical about the days of cassette tapes and black and white televisions. They must think I’m about a hundred years old.)

Anyhoo, these computers just about rocked my world. I stayed behind after school most days so I could seize upon the opportunity to write. I’m sure my friends thought I was a bit weird. My home life wasn’t awesome, either, so I killed two birds with one stone. This was one of the outcomes of that time:

I chuckled a little when I saw the computer graphics added to the text, like this one of a wine glass and some grapes – completely unrelated to the text, but Clipart was a far cry from typing on a typewriter (which involved nothing more glamourous than corrector fluid and chafed fingers…)

Next time, the novel I wrote (or typed) when I was 10, a sort of ‘Lovely Bones’ tale called ‘Teen Ghost’…

The Proofs Are In!

4 Jan 2012

Possibly one of the best ways to be roused from one’s sickbed is the postman delivering the bound proofs of one’s second novel, titled The Boy Who Could See Demons. Look at this beauty:

Oooohhhh…….

Aaahhhh….

Did I really write a book this long? It’s much thicker than I remembered…..

Notice the graphics of dogs and cars and music and onions? Have another look:

They all refer to the plot. But THIS here’s something I’m particularly proud of:

Ignore my chipped nail polish. Ahem.

My publisher was kind enough to allow me to include my composition for a piece of music that’s mighty important to the story in the opening pages of the novel. Isn’t that cool?

So, now that I’m out of my sickbed I may as well do something useful. I know, let’s have a competition!

All you have to do is spot the name of Alex’s demon on the cover of these bound proofs and email me your contact details (and the demon’s name, of course) at my contact page. Sometime around February or March I’ll select a winner at random and send a signed copy of one of my bound proofs of The Boy Who Could See Demons to you in the post.

Good luck!

Happy New Year!

2 Jan 2012

Well a very happy 2012 to you all! I hope it has thus far been your best year yet.

I also wanted to apologise in a grovelly and not-my-fault fashion to those of you who had subscribed to my other blog, The Risk Taker’s Guide to Endorphins. It would appear that my domain subscription lapsed, and soon after sitemeter alerted me to some strange activity in distant lands a new site popped up at my old domain name, titled – rather imaginatively, don’t you think? – The Risk Taker’s Guide to Endorphins. I’m currently disputing the use of my old blog title but it would appear that this new site has binned my blog archives entirely. So I’m posting here one of the more memorable posts from that blog. Fare thee well, old blog!

Betty Crocker & Writing for your Reader

Here’s a little recipe I like to share with my creative writing students:

Forget homemade cake. Betty Crocker cake mix produces the best cake in the world. No need for a flour tornado and mounds of butter: just add an egg, splash of oil and water, give it a stir, and after half an hour in the oven, you’ve got Nirvana in a dish.

Interestingly enough, there’s no need for anyone to have to add more than water, but the Betty Crocker company found that early sales were bombing. Why? People wanted to contribute to the cake. Yeah, they wanted a short cut, but not too much of a short cut. They wanted the ‘I made this’ factor. Hence, the egg. Once people could start adding an egg or two to the mix, sales rocketed. And so, nearly a century since the company started, we still have Betty Crocker on our shelves at Tesco.

There’s an important analogy for writers here: let the reader add their egg. Let them get involved, contribute, work stuff out, make their own connections. Don’t tell them too much. Give them a way to put their hands around the dough of the plot, give it a good knead, feel its texture. Let them make shapes with it before rolling it out. Don’t roll it flat for them. Let the reader pummel the dough with their own life experience, emotions, interpretations. Allow the work to breathe, expand, cool, set.

As a writer, it’s important to think of the reader. Not necessarily in the commercial sense. That comes later. But good writing involves the reader; it gives the reader a way in, a chance to contribute, a feeling that they belong.

You might say that a good piece of writing is a soft, spongey cake. Not a burnt offering.