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LUCY'S SUMMER TO AUTUMN 2008 DIARY NEW
Welcome to the place where there's NO RAIN!
There are lots of new things on the website, so do take a trip round and have a look. I've had some very nice reviews for Hootcat Hill, and you can now see the full TV interview with Bookzone on the site, as well as some other online chats I've had with Doodled Books and The Truth about Books. There are also new reviews for Coll and King Ocean. It's been a quiet summer--rather too damp for my liking. I feel like I'll grow mould if I sit still for one moment! We've been flooded, but not too badly, the garden is overgrown and the veggies are turning into triffids. Totally enormous too--I have a pumpkin the size of a small dog. If you're on Facebook, you might want to know that Atticus Storyteller has gone all technological and has joined up to tell you all about sandalmaking--he needs friends, so go and visit him! He's also set up a fanpage for me there, so please click here and join up!
I've also started blogging at An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (click here to see the blog), with a few other children's authors. One of us posts something new every day about Life, The Universe and Writing Books. As for my own writing--I've been doing a lot of thinking and pondering over the summer. This is just as much an important part of the process of making a book as the scribbling down/typing itself. I've had lots of new ideas, and will be sitting down at my desk between school and library visits to work them out on paper. If there's anything new, you'll read about it here first. Meanwhile, try not to get wet out there, and I'll see you soon! Bye for now....
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LUCY'S SPRING INTO SPRING 2008 DIARY
Welcome to Spring!
It's been a very busy couple of months. But the first and most important news is that Hootcat Hill is published and in the shops. I've been running around doing radio interviews for the BBC and local papers, and also a TV interview for the Borders website. A link to that will be up here soon on the Hootcat Hill page, so go and have a click on it. I thought it would be much scarier than it was, but the interviewer, Sam, was really calm and professional, so that made it easy for me. Sadly, you can't see my beautiful red shoes on screen!
I also spent an evening with some fantastic independent booksellers, who were all very interesting to talk to, and so incredibly knowledgeable about children's books. It was wonderful to see for myself that there are so many people out there who can give personal advice and help to the confused book buyer with such enthusiasm.
I guess the highlight of the year so far, though, has been my visit to Bishop Gilpin School in Wimbledon. I spent a whole day with classes 3D, 3M, 4S, 4AP, 5D and 5K, reading stories, answering questions (lots and lots of questions!) and doing 2 really satisfying poetry workshops. Everyone worked so hard and it was such fun for me to meet them all (and sign loads and loads of autographs on hands and faces and, more normally, books and bits of paper). I'd like to thank them all, their teachers, (especially Mrs Kingsley) plus Annie and Sue from the Golden Treasury Bookshop who arranged it all at very short notice. I just hope all that ink came off eventually, kids!
There have been some good reviews too--for which I am always grateful--those will be up on the site soon as well. Hootcat Hill now takes up 12 pages of Google, which is unbelievable. As for the new novel, with all the running around, it's understandably been on the back burner for a bit. I shall be getting down to work again soon--never fear. But first I've got to doodle on and sign 30 copies of Hootcat Hill for www.doodledbooks.com. Writer's cramp beckons!
I'll keep on keeping you updated when there's more news. Meanwhile those werewolves (and the occasional vampire) can't wait to get out of my brain and onto the computer. Watch out--they're behind you....
LUCY'S NEW YEAR 2008 DIARY
The autumn and winter are gone, Spring is nearly here, and the first copies of Hootcat Hill are here with the snowdrops. It looks really magnificent, with a rich black and gold-starred spine and back, and a mysterious and enticing Hootcat flying out of the trees on the front. I can’t wait for publication day on March 3rd. It’s been a while since I’ve updated the diary. Winter is for hibernating, for letting ideas sink to the bottom of the brain, bubbling away in a kind of creative soup. Hopefully they then rise to the top, and are skimmed off and transformed into some brilliant piece of writing! I haven’t been hibernating totally, though. I was lucky enough to share a book signing session with the wonderful Peter Malone, illustrator of King Ocean’s Flute, at the LAPADA Fine Art and Antiques Fair in Cheltenham. His pictures are really beautiful, and were snapped up in a trice by eager buyers, who were also keen to have copies of the book. There have also been school visits for Coll and King Ocean, and I had the treat of judging some fantastic pictures of King Ocean and friends, drawn by Groups 1,2 and 3 at Slapton Pre-Preparatory School. They were all marvellous and original, and I had a really hard time choosing the winners.
The new novel is coming along—slowly. I am trying to be disciplined and do lots of helpful charts and lists, so I know who everyone is, who they’re related to, and what their hair colour is, so I don’t get muddled later on in the book. Film directors call this creating a ‘back story’. Basically, it means I know lots of things about my characters which will never go in the main book, but I have to know them anyway. Yesterday I wrote a new legend about werewolves, and how they came to be. I love my job!
More soon, when Hootcat is out. Enjoy those snowdrops….
It’s been a busy summer so this is a bit of a roundup. First of all Glastonbury…Well, guess what? It was really, really muddy and it rained a lot! But I had a fabulous time telling some of the stories from Coll in the huge red and yellow stripy Storytelling Tent to a very appreciative audience of welliebooted kids and adults. Luckily for me, I found naughty Branwen the Raven lurking in one of the myriad stalls, and for a small consideration, the stallholder let me take her home with me (I think the poor woman was relieved to get rid of her for some odd reason). She and I had a great time sneaking up on lots of kids and pecking their ears—and we were even filmed for TV and for the screen behind the Main Stage. Fame at last! When we got home, Branwen decided to live on my bookshelf, where she now sits, wearing a fetching turquoise hat with flowers on it and caarrkkking at me occasionally when I fall asleep at the computer.
July was full of radio interviews about Coll, and I also had the great pleasure of hearing the wonderful Simon Russell Beale recording the first Atticus CD, which was released in August. He has a fabulous, deep, gravelly voice which really makes my words come alive, and it was a privilege to sit in on the studio session. I hope there are cars full of children listening to him right now—the stories are just the right length for a quick myth on the way to school!
I also had many sessions with Jon, my lovely editor at Orion, fine-tuning Hootcat Hill, which is now copy-edited and has gone off to be set into page proofs. All very exciting. I’ve put up the very first chapter on the Brand New Hootcat Hill Page on the main website, so do go and have a read. You won’t find it anywhere else on the web, and you won’t be able to read any more till it comes out in March. So go on—you know you want to! There’s also some info about how I came to write the book, including some vital stuff about where to find out how to combat bullying. This is something I feel very strongly about indeed, which is why Linnet dealing with it is an important part of the book.
In August I was lucky enough to visit South Africa and see lions, giraffe, impala, buffalo, elephant and many other wonderful animals in the wild. Walking in the bush with rhino just metres away was definitely the highlight of the trip. And from a literary point of view, our guide told me a wonderful story about How the Waterbuck got his Bottom. I am working out how to tell that one politely right now!
Autumn is nearly with us, the kids are back at school, and the house is uncannily quiet. Having decided that I’d give myself a little break from novel writing, a story then jumped into my head and demanded to be written. So I’m deep into research right now, finding out all sorts of interesting stuff I didn’t know about the Balkans (that’s Albania, Kosova, Macedonia and all those countries). There’s a long way to go before I get down to writing, but I am determined to be more disciplined about making proper notes on where stuff came from this time. Then I shan’t have to spend hours trawling through books to find where I read that perfect piece of information I desperately need!
That’s it for now! More soon….
LUCY’S DIARY FOR JUNE 2007
This is the best place to keep up to date with all the latest information on what I’m doing. I’ll be putting all sorts of new stuff here—book extracts, poems and so on— and things about me that you won’t find anywhere else on the web, so keep checking in to see what’s happening! Now, on to the June news!
If any of you are going to the Glastonbury Festival (22-24 June 2007) you can catch up with me and Coll in the Storyteller’s Tent in the Kidz Field. We’ll be bringing stories, a competition to win books, and a special offer. Do please come up and tell me you’ve been on the website—I’d love to have any feedback.
Other than that, I’ve been working on the editorial rewrites of my first novel—Hootcat Hill— which is being published by Orion in Spring 2008. It’s about an ordinary girl called Linnet, who lives in an extraordinary place called Wyrmesbury, and finds she has to save her world from a terrible dragon. I went to a wonderful cottage on the coast of Donegal in West Ireland to finish the first draft—the perfect place to do research on all my spells, most of which are written in either Irish or Scots gaelic. Being in a place with no distractions of phone or people was a revelation and I got a lot more done than I would have at home. Luckily I have been told I can go there again when I need to write my next novel (more on this in the future). I can’t wait. Enjoy the sunshine for now—and keep clicking on the site for updates. Bye for now!
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