AAARGH school holidays have started and my time is DISAPPEARING and loads of brilliant Stuff has been happening, and there is NO TIME to blog about any of it!! And I have DEADLINES!
So, here’s my quick round-up of the past three weeks:
Charney retreat with the Scattered Authors’ Society
I love Charney. I think this is my fourth time on retreat there with the SAS, and each time I come home feeling uplifted and re-energised.
There were sessions on how a book is financed (truly fascinating, and yet terrifying), creating characters, short story writing, desert island books and troubleshooting your book. For the third year running, I made everyone look ridiculous at my improvised comedy session. And I also took some author photos for others again this year – will put them in a separate post! Thanks so much to Sheena Wilkinson and Lee Weatherly for organising – roll on next year!
UKLA Book Awards
To my great pride, Looking at the Stars was shortlisted for this fantastic award in the 11-16 category. The UKLA awards are selected by teachers up and down the country, and they deliberately look for books they can use in the class room as class readers; those books that cover issues and styles of writing that can be discussed and explored with experienced staff. I didn’t win (Every Day by David Levithan did), but it was an immense honour just to be there, and my great thanks to the UKLA team for making me so very welcome.
YALC
The Young Adult Literature Convention is in its second year, and you can read my report of last year’s here. This year was SO much better – not so stiflingly hot, more space, more publishing stalls, more STUFF than you could shake a stick at – and loads and loads of really passionate people, from bloggers to authors and everyone in between. I had an absolute whale of a time.
And the lovely Michelle from Fluttering Butterflies blog took video footage, not just of Liz but of me too – and they’re VERY funny. I’ll post those separately because they are worth their own blog posts!
Today I am trying to cram three days’ worth of work (and emails!) into one day, and am thrilled (and relieved) to report that I have just hit ‘SEND’ on the first draft of ELECTRIGIRL 2, which is due to be published in August of next year – yes!! OUP has commissioned a second ELECTRIGIRL book, and I COULDN’T be happier about it!
But NOW I have to get on with some Very Important Planning because I’m due to run some creative writing workshops for 8-12s at the Story Museum and I am FIZZING with ideas that I need to trap on paper!
Wheeeee!!
