every day should be a susie day

How long does it take to find the perfect title for a book that you’ve written twice and spent nearly three years thinking about?

Ages, is the answer. Aaaaages. How do you sum up a book that is a coming-of-age teenage birthday summer holiday story with a bit of time-travel, two main characters who are really the same person, a pretty eyelinery boy named Merlin, and a family story which is funny, and sad, and sometimes both at once?

My lovely editor Marion Lloyd, her assistant Anna Solemani (who is also lovely, but ‘lovely assistant’ sounds quite wrong) and I sat in her office a few weeks ago, armed with our shortlist of the very best ideas, planning to pluck the solution from the pile before a nice bit of lunch. FOUR AND A HALF HOURS LATER, we still had nothing. Nowt. Nada. We had tried every dodgy pun; every timey-wimey birthday-wishy beachy-but-not-too-beachy summertime phrase. I had, it appeared, written an untitleable book.

It was nearly two more weeks before we got there. And inevitably, now we have, it seems impossible that it was ever called anything else. The perfect title.

You want to know the title? OK, bear with me a sec.

Because, of course, now we had the perfect title, we also had a squeaky-tight schedule, and designers at work on the next big decision: the cover. I was a teensy bit worried. Covers are as hard to get right as titles. We did not have three years of thinking time. IT COULD STILL ALL GO HORRIBLY WRONG.

Only, here’s the thing. You know those designer people? They’re really clever. Properly, remarkably clever. The super-talented Jamie managed somehow to take all that madly disparate stuff, and produce a cover that’s fresh and bright and utterly apt. The perfect cover.

And even though it isn’t out until August 2012  -I know! Aaaages! – the (lovely, so lovely) people at Marion Lloyd Books and Scholastic UK said I could share it.

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Look at my girls! Bluebell – aka Blue – is on the left. Red – who is actually Bluebell, too, but from one year in the future (did I mention this book was complicated?) – she’s on the right. Obviously. And I want to hug them both, lots. I hope you will too.

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PS: For those following at home who are now going ‘eh? I thought your next book was about peas and mermaids’ – yes, the first of the Pea’s Book series is coming out summer 2012 too. Other magical designer-people are still tweaking the cover into ultimate perfection, but what I’ve seen already is every bit as perfectly suited to that story – in a completely different way. Will share as soon as I can…!

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On the heels of this week’s other ten-year anniversary, I’ve been hesitating to share this – but real life’s a disorderly thing. It goes on. So, ten years ago today, still shell-shocked by the news from the US of what wasn’t yet called 9/11 (and reeling from 2 hours’ sleep after a very delayed flight home from a holiday in Tunisia) I turned out to have the most important, life-changing, amazing day of my life.

BBC Television Centre! Where they make the television!

I was one of six finalists in the BBC Talent Children’s Fiction Prize. I’d sent in one chapter and a short synopsis, been inexplicably plucked from 4500 entries, and commanded to write the rest by early December. All six hopefuls were invited to a day’s workshop at Television Centre, to get advice from – get this, this still blows my mind – Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Rosen. They were warm and hilarious, encouraging, and very kind to a group of people who (in my case at least) very plainly had NO IDEA AT ALL how to finish a book. (Jacqueline Wilson’s face on learning that we had 3 months left before the deadline and some of us hadn’t written any of it at all? Memorable. Oh so memorable.)

We ate the BBC’s crispy prawns, failed to visit the Blue Peter garden as promised because we were too busy nattering, and left clutching a sealed brown envelope marked ‘Feedback’ and all the other finalists’ email addresses, with promises that we would stay in touch.

I met my sister J for coffee, and burst into tears all over her. 2 hours’ sleep and the first ever experience of what a sealed brown envelope marked ‘Feedback’ feels like will do that to a girl. (It was – as all early-stage critiques should be – 90% positive, with a few gentle suggestions for improvements. At the time, it felt like the end of the world.) I was definitely not going to win the prize, and all those other finalists were definitely scary people who had probably given me made-up email addresses.

The following February, I got a call saying my book was the winner. Not long after, I got on a train to Market Bosworth, and all 6 finalists ate and drank and celebrated and commiserated, and they didn’t spit in my food or poke me with bitter sticks. In fact, they were lovely! We talked about how we didn’t really know a lot about the publishing industry, or any other writers: how maybe we ought to stick together, and help each other out.

Ten years later, that BBC prize-winning book is of course out of print – but that wasn’t the real prize. One of our little band decided not to pursue writing (we miss you, Zoe!), but the rest of us have kept at it. In the last ten years, between us we’ve published seven novels: there are contracts signed for another seven, with more waiting to be inked. We’ve cheered each other on, and been brutally honest when honesty was needed. We’ve skipped over hurdles because one of us has seen them before, and knows when to jump. We’ve eaten a quite startling amount of curry. I’d have given up in despair on multiple occasions without them – and I think that goes for the lot of us.

So thank you, Sarah, Ruth, Josie and Caroline: I owe you tons. And tons. And some more tons.

Sometimes we also eat cake in our jim-jams. *waves at absent Josie*

And for those of you who are aspiring writers, and don’t have a Sarah, Ruth, Josie and Caroline to read your first draft, or your submission letter (and spot that humiliating typo on line 1), or brainstorm plot with, or give you a hug when you get a rejection, or to pontificate wildly at that special wine-based time of the evening, or comfortingly hate that book that just came out that’s a bit like that idea you had, or just tell you you’re ace at the precise moment you happen to need to hear that – I hope you find some.

Here we go again. This summer, the Wall Street Journal published an inflammatory rant against Young Adult fiction – and writers fought back.   In March, Jessica Verday got told to de-gay an anthology short story – and her fellow writers leapt to her defence.   Back in 2009, Justine Larbalestier pointed out that white girl on the cover of her book about a black girl was, actually, not really at all ok, not even a little bit – and other writers jumped up and down till it changed.

Now it seems two YA fantasy authors have been told by an agent that they’ll only be taken on if they de-gay a character.  And writers – on Twitter, on blogs, all over everywhere – are, surprise! kicking off.

Cos us writers, we love a scrap.

Fisticuffs!

Only that’s not true.  We don’t love a scrap: we love our job. I’ve got a book to get started, and instead I’m writing this and getting shouty on Twitter and having a small impotent cry because some moron three thousand miles away is a bigot, and they’re not the only one, and that’s not right. It’s distracting, having to have this conversation again. It’s demoralising to read that this happens, all the time, to writers I know and writers I don’t – and writers who are scared to say so, because they know how hard it is to get a book published.

It makes me feel hopeless: like it isn’t worth bothering.

But that’s not true either. It’s not hopeless. Sometimes you don’t even have to fight.

I suspect horror stories will come out of the woodwork today, so I think it’s worth stating: I’ve never been asked to remove an LGBTQ character or storyline, by agent or editors.  I’ve not yet written an LGBTQ protagonist, and maybe that’s why. Maybe it’s about genre, too: you can read me talking about ‘pink’ books and inclusivity here.  (Incidentally, that ‘gay Georgia Nicolson’ book I pitch at the end of that? I haven’t pitched it in real life. Sometimes we don’t need other morons to censor us: we do it all by ourselves.) Whatever the reasons, that’s my experience.

But in light of the #YesGayYA hashtag on Twitter, there’s one element of that experience that I wanted to flag. I write MG (age 8-12) as well as YA (teen) – and everything I believe about inclusivity doesn’t stop just because I’m writing for a younger audience. ‘Sexuality’ isn’t the same as sexy naughty sexytimes. ‘Gay’ doesn’t mean explicit or age-inappropriate. Genuine inclusion means your kids are allowed to know that Heather has two mommies, ok? So when I wrote the first of my forthcoming MG series – which is about three sisters, and their famous-author Mum, and is generally sweet and daft and fun – I wanted to hang onto that. I also quite madly wanted to write an homage to Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes, in which two lady doctors (Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith) board with the Fossils, and teach them Maths and Shakespeare soliloquies. In the book, they’re a lovely pair of clever spinsters. Now I’m a grown-up gay lady, I think maybe they held hands between the pages. Does it matter to that story? No. But it’s not 1936 anymore, and in my book, the lovely lady doctors who live next door are allowed to be married and have kids, explicitly, and why wouldn’t we think that was a great good leap forward?

I wrote it expecting a ‘discussion’. Perhaps there was one. If so, I never heard a whisper. No pat on the head for fulfilling anyone’s diversity quota, either: they’re the family next door, just like anyone else’s.

Conclusion? Have high expectations, of yourself and everyone you work with.

YA fiction can speak powerfully and directly about personal experience to LGBTQ teens – and indirectly, through the kind of SF that the unnamed agent was so unnerved by – and that’s a glorious thing. But, heads up: we don’t have to wait until our kids are Young Adults.  If we’re serious about eradicating homophobia, we can’t. Don’t have a convenient set of cute gay neighbours in real life to help your kid expand their definition of ‘parents’ or ‘marriage’ or ‘relationship’? Hey, maybe a book could help.

#YesGayYA, a thousand times over. But #YesGayMG, too; #YesGayPictureBooks, too. What are you waiting for?

1. I am not dead!  But I have been pathetically quiet lately, due to the typey parts of my brain being busy with TWO honking great book deadlines.

2. I have met my deadlines! Both of them! Whole bookfuls of words with beginnings and middles and ends and everything.

Here is a balloon, because I am quite happy about Thing number 2.

3. EXCITING NEW BIT: one of the books even has a shiny new title! The Series Formerly Known as Mermaid Girls (which you may have encountered me waffling about here) is not being called that, because that’s a stupid name for a book that doesn’t actually have any mermaids in it. (I know. One day I will get better at titles.) Luckily, the kind people at Random House did the hard bit for me, and the first book in the series will be called…

PEA’S BOOK OF BEST FRIENDS.

Isn’t it lovely? I’d read that. There will be a second Pea’s Book out in 2012 too, and another one after that. I haven’t written them yet. This is not at all scary. LOOK AT THE BALLOON. KEEP LOOKING AT THE BALLOON.

4. I have been on holiday! To Corfe Castle in Dorset, which is allegedly the template for Kirrin Castle in the Famous Five stories.

Me, in a castle! Do not even ask me what is going on with my hair. I'm in a castle!

I was with littlest niece SP and littlest nephew ESP and their lovely parentals, which meant lots of sandcastles and picture books and MONKEY WORLD, and grown-up conversation in the evenings. It was ACE.

5. There is no number 5. Or rather, there are a billion number 5s because I haven’t blogged in ages, and have since read many lovable things (Cat Clarke and Liz Kessler and Ally Carter and Keris Stainton and a Cory Doctorow from 2003 that is so entirely about e-publishing right now this second that it makes your head hurt), and watched much intriguing telly (New Doctor Who, and New Torchwood, and The Shadow Line (oh Gatehouse, my Gatehouse), and loads of Fringe, and insane amounts of Leverage, several times over), and exciting things have occurred like my kitchen no longer being painted Angry Daffodil, and the discovery that Bananagrams is the best. game. ever. until really whittling them down to one would be silly.

So. Five things. Ish. LOOK AT THE BALLOON!

Day 6: Favourite Book Character

I’m starting to think I don’t have a ‘favourite’ anything. Not even about really important things, like cheese or Doctor Who. So this is a ‘book character I really like and if you’d asked me on a different day I’d say someone else, probably’ sort of answer.

Cassandra Mortmain, from I Capture the Castle

Day 7: Favourite word

I know. An adverb. Novelist Kryptonite. I don’t care, I like it, it is understated and simple and lovely.

Ceci n'est pas un drawing. Bof.

Day 8: Favourite Animated Character

At last, an easy one. I luff him. All stories should have a toy who doesn’t know he’s a toy in them.

To Infinity, and Beyond!

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30 Day Drawing Challenge

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