Sarah’s News

(Going out by blog and Facebook – problem with newsletter mailing list, apologies!)

Happy Christmas and all the best for 2010!

My dear friends, humble apologies. I have been rubbish on the newsletter front. Facebook I don’t have a problem with – and if you’ve also been sucked in you can find me at:

http://facebook.com/sarahwebbwriter

It’s fun, honest! And especially good for lonely old writers like me who crave some human interaction when they are at their desks. OK, yes, it’s a colossal time waster too – but that’s half the fun. It feels kinda naughty.

Book News

2010 will be a bumper year on the book front with four books out and also a charity book in aid of the Hope Foundation. If that counts, it’s five!

Book 1: The Loving Kind

The LOving Kind

In February my new adult novel, The Loving Kind will hit the bookshelves. I had great fun writing it as some of the characters are pretty bonkers. Eason have just made it their Book of the Month which is rather exciting news too!

It gave me a rather frightening insight into the whole world of fillers, Botox and plastic surgery. Maybe frightening is too strong a word. Unnerving is more accurate. I can now spot a filler-enhanced cheek a mile off. It’s great craic playing spot the Botox-Queen but I think I’m boring my nearest and dearest by this stage by shouting out every time a celebrity comes on the screen:
‘Botox, mini face life, chemical peel, filler . . .’
I hate to say it but as far as I can tell, more and more celebrities are dabbling, making us normal mortals look a little creased.
I hate injections with a passion (OK, I know no-one exactly loves them, but I’ve had teeth pulled with no jab ‘cause I hate them so much), so I don’t think I’d ever go down the enhancement route. But sometimes when I look in the mirror in the morning and see a tired looking face staring back at me I am tempted.
And I can understand why telly/film stars have it done – it does ‘freshen’ up the face. But it also wipes out detail and expression. Plus what happens if years down the line they discover a link between fillers and skin cancer for eg? It’s just not worth it.
OK, rant over.

Books 2 and 3: Amy Green, Teen Agony Queen – Summer Secrets and Bridesmaid Blitz

Summer Secrets

Anyway, book 2 is Amy Green, Teen Agony Queen: Summer Secrets. Set in Dublin, West Cork and Miami, it’s the second in the Amy Green series for tweens and teens and I’m very proud of it.
If you have a girl of 10+ in your life, please do buy it for her.
Amy Green is a lovely character and I adore writing about her adventures.

So much so that there’s another Amy Green in the autumn (Amy Green book 3) – working title Bridesmaid Blitz. Set in Paris and Dublin and full of school tour shenanigans.

Book 4: Emma the Penguin

I have an early reader out with the O’Brien Press in February called Emma the Penguin, about a little girl called Emma who is a penguin in her school’s Noah’s Ark play much to her disappointment – she thinks it’s a silly animal. But she makes the most of it and by the end of the book learns that making people laugh is a real gift.

Book 5: Hope Collection

And the lovely Vanessa O’Loughlinn of Inkwell Writers Workshops is putting together a charity collection in aid of the Hope Foundation and I have a short piece in it called Hope and J K Rowling.

Other Future Book News

Candlewick have just signed up the Amy Green rights. They will be publishing all six books in the series, starting in Autumn (Fall) 2010 and it’s mega exciting.

And I’ve just signed a deal for 2 new adult books with Pan Macmillan. They will centre around a shop and an elephant tamer and more than that, I cannot divulge at present. But they are called The Shoestring Diaries.

Oh and the first Amy Green has just come out in Polish – what fun!

Other News

To be honest apart from a trip to London to talk Amy Green with Walker I haven’t really been up to all that much recently. I’ve just been writing – a lot!

Here’s a low down of my week at the moment:
7.00 – drag myself out of bed
7.30 – drag the kids out of bed and make the sambos (I hate making school lunches – is there anything more tedious!?)
8.30 – get Amy to school
9.00 – get Jago to school
9.00 to 10.00 – walk until I feel guilty and rush back to my desk
10.00 to 1.00 – write – at the moment Amy Green book 4 – my aim is 2k words a day – notice the word aim!
1.00 – collect Amy and have lunch
2.00 to 5.30 – write again – editing, website stuff, reviews and articles mainly – I keep my best hours – the morning – for my novels (sorry, editors!!!)
8.00 to 11.00 – write again – editing etc (Facebook too!)

See – pretty thrilling isn’t it? Not!!!

Sometimes I take an hour or two off to walk with the lovely Martina Devlin or meet Vanessa O’Loughlinn for coffee. And I have the odd meeting with my Irish publishers or festival bods which get me out of the house (and my pyjamas).

And if I get my word count done by Friday – 8,000 words – I take Friday off. In theory. Recently I went to the Munch exhibition on my ‘day off’, sometimes I just mooch around the shops or go to the cinema in the afternoon (my guilty pleasure – I love an empty cinema). Laughed my way through New Moon last week – ‘Bella, will you marry me.’ Hilarious stuff! So swooney, great escapism but utterly mad. But who wouldn’t a great big wolf and a vampire fighting over them – especially if you were quite mopey and didn’t smile much – Bella is one lucky girl!

Writing for a living requires a lot of discipline. It also requires a thick skin and self confidence, the willingness to continue on writing in the face of a lot of knock backs.

I’m still at the learning stage in this writing game, but my favourite part of each and every day is sitting at my desk in the morning, jumping back into my fictional world, all my ‘real’ worries pushed to the back of my mind.

It’s a glorious thing when it all comes together.

Christmas Chez Webb/Cooke

Ben is cooking Christmas dinner with his dad. I am avoiding all responsibility! I will make soup and generally help out by ‘tasting’ and stuffing myself.
I’m hoping for books and book tokens for Christmas – fingers crossed! Speaking of which . . .

Books

I’ve been reading a lot of children’s books recently. I find them far more fun than a lot of adult novels, well plotted, fast paced and funny.

But I did enjoy The Brightest Star by Marian Keyes
Not as much as This Charming Man which was my favourite book of the year last year. But it’s still a cracking good read. Ideal for curling up with on cold days (or any day really).

I also loved Would You Rather by Chris Higgins, a teen writer I hadn’t tested out – shame on me! She’s good, very good. If your teen likes Cathy Cassidy, she’ll love Higgins too.

And The Help is brilliant – a book about black maids in the Southern states of America in the 1960s. A great read – funny, smart, fascinating and easy to read – I’d highly recommend it. By Kathryn Stockett

I’m also loving The American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld – about a President’s wife. A real sweeping novel to get your teeth stuck into. Highly recommended.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year and talk to you again in February.

Much love,

Sarah XXXX

Approaching the page with joy

I’ve been having some slow writing starts these mornings. Christmas is looming near and I’m not at all on top of things. No cards sent, few presents bought – apart from the kids’ stuff on Amazon – toys and Xbox games. All Jago, 3 wants is a rubbish truck, bless him. Amy, 6, a bike; Sam, 15, horrible gore-fest X box games. Books I buy from my local bookshops – as a former bookseller I feel it’s really important to support them always and forever but especially when things are a little tough.

Every morning I’ve been taking a walk, an attempt to shake me out of the Munch funk – feeling a little down and slow and sluggish and not all there mentally. I try telling myself how lucky I am, how thousands, millions would give their eye teeth to have one book contract, let alone several.

And I do feel lucky, really I do. But I must admit that now and again it all seems a little overwhelming and I feel swamped with work and scared at what I have to do.

So I have to take a step back (after moaning to some of my fellow writing friends of course, I’m only human), calm the voices in my head (you can’t write, it’s all nonsense, one day someone will realise how rubbish you are . . .) and just get on with the business of finishing the darned book.

I have to stop thinking about deadlines and start concentrating on my plot and my characters. And most importantly, as my lovely and very wise London editors told me, give my story room to breathe. I have to strip back all the unnecessary scenes from the book and let the main characters shine through.

I was at a talk by Carlo Gebler on Monday and he said something very interesting. He said that he only got published (after trying many times) when he started telling his stories simply – going from A to B to C with embellishment. It’s as simple at that. If you get that right, you can add a little sparkle to the writing later. It’s excellent advice.

A to B to C.

I’m currently rewriting Amy Green book 3, Bridesmaid Blitz. It’s set in Dublin and Paris, and Mills (Amy’s best friend) was the star of the Paris scenes. But I see now that Amy was being sidelined and it wasn’t quite working. Yes, even my carefully researched rapping scene starring Clover will have to hit the editing floor. And it’s hard. But it will be a better book for all the cutting and rewriting.

I have to stop worrying about deadlines and reconnect with the joy of writing – the reason I started writing in the first place. Write for the sheer love of it. The privilege of sitting down at my desk and losing myself in a story for hours and hours. You know the feeling you get when you’re lost in a brilliant book and you just don’t want it to end, ever? That’s the feeling I get on a good writing day.

Sometimes it takes days to get to that feeling, sometimes, if I’m lucky, minutes. But today I’m feeling lucky . . .

Back to the blank page . . .

May the joy of writing (and reading) be with all of you.

Sarah XXX

Editing

As you know, one of my favourite subjects – and a vital part of the writing process.

On Monday I was over at Walker Books in London, my Amy Green publishers. In the afternoon I talked marketing with the team – website, events, filming a special Amy Green trailer, fanzine, cute pink leather heart shaped Amy Green luggage tag to give away to readers . . . endless amounts of wonderfulness. And fab choc brownies at lunchtime in the Walker canteen.
They were full of brilliant ideas and I can’t wait to see the finished campaign.

In the morning I met with Gill and Annalie, my editors. They had some pretty interesting things to say about book 2, Bridesmaid Blitz.

Basically they did a nice sandwich – we love the writing, the plot needs some work, love the characters, especially Amy and her voice is fab.

Spot that bit in the middle? The plot needs some work.

Ah yes. ‘Some’ might be underplaying it a bit. I need to unpick the whole plot and piece it back together again, with more emphasis on Amy and less on Mills, her best friend. They said it very nicely of course but it still pinches.

Writers secretly want to hear how brilliant their book is, how it doesn’t need a bit of editing, how it just fits together so seamlessly that not one little tweak would make it better. But unless you are Roddy Doyle or Marian Keyes (who I bet would all laugh if they read this – as I know they both work very hard indeed on their rewrites and edits) your book will always benefit from an experienced editor’s eye.

I’m so grateful that Gill and Annalie took the time to read and really think about how I could improve my work. The more editorial notes I am given, the more grateful I am. Even though it means a lot more work.

So for the next few weeks I have to rip Bridesmaid Blitz apart and piece it back together again – my very own patchwork quilt of words and sentences and scenes. It’s up to me to make it as good as I possibly can. I owe it to myself and to my readers (bless them) to put everything I can into this rewrite and hopefully make it better.

How much of the original book will remain? I’d say about 1/3 or less. 2/3rds will be completely new material. Scary stuff really. Quite the cull. But it has to be done.

I’m thinking of putting the deleted scenes on my website – as an added extra – like they do on DVDs of movies. What do you think? Or maybe they should stay exactly where they belong – in the deleted scenes file on my laptop!

It’s all a learning process and nothing is every wasted. Or so I keep telling myself.

If you are interested in an editor/agent’s point of view on editing – read this post by the excellent Nathan Bransford, Curtis Brown, US:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/11/how-to-respond-to-manuscript.html

Good luck with your own edits.

Sarah X

D Day, Teens and Books

D Day, teens and books. OK, what is Sarah on about I hear you ask. Well, this morning I’d like to be writing but I have twenty minutes before I have to take Amy (6) to the dentist so it will have to wait. I find it very hard to climb in and out of my writing in short bursts – it interrupts the flow and for me it’s best to wait until I have a decent chunk of time – at least 40 minutes. So I’m scribbling this down instead.

Yesterday the teenager brought home his school project – D Day – with his grade, A-.

Now I’m delighted with this as:
a/ in the end he spent hours on it – OK, he only admitted he had to do the project a few days before it was supposed to be handed in. And at first it was a hard slog. More on this in a mo.
b/ he’s not the best at spelling or writing. He has a spelling exemption for exams but we don’t make a big deal of this. He knows he has to work just as hard as every other student in his year. Harder in fact.
c/ after a false start he used books and not the internet to do his research.

Like most teen boys he’s not all that library-aware. I tend to borrow books for him and hope he’ll enjoy them. He sees the library as geeky. So his first port of call for project info was the intent. Herein lay the problem – the sites he looked up were all ‘boring’. The information was laid out in a very ‘facts and figures’ way, there was no colour to the writing. Maybe he just didn’t find the right sites. I looked for others but again on the ones I found the information wasn’t delivered with any sort of style.

So he struggled to rewrite the information and add his own mark to the project at first. Then I went to the local library and found three books – one on World War II (Dorling Kindersley) and two on D Day itself. The DK one was particularly good – lots of photos, maps, personal accounts – it really brought the whole thing alive. On the way back from the library I read up on D Day and found out dozens of things I’d never known.

Sam flicked through the books, decided they looked ‘OK’ and that he’d give reading them a go. Twenty minutes later I stuck my head around the door and he said ‘Omaha Beach, all those soldiers dead, man! And those Mulberry yokes, mad. And some of the soldiers were my age, and . . .’ He’d started to really take the information in and think about the war in personal terms. Result!

Sam had every chance to be a book loving child. He was read to from birth, our house and his bedroom have always been over flowing with books, I read the books he reads (to review and out of choice – they are far better than most adult books) and we talk about which Skulduggery Pleasant is the best (book 3), what we liked most about Crocodile Tears (the scenes in Africa), when the new Eoin Colfer is out. We fight over my proof copies – especially the Derek Landy ones!

I’m by no means a perfect parent, but when I saw the interest, the spark in Sam’s eyes pouring over the D Day books it made me smile. At least I’ve done something right.

If you have a baby or toddler in your house – especially a boy – please do read to them as often as you can. As they get older – please never stop talking about books with them, leaving books around the house, using the library, visiting your local bookshop, listening to audio books in the car, encouraging your friends and rellies to give him/her book tokens for Christmas. It really can make the difference between a reluctant reader and a book lover.

It’s a true gift for life. I’m not sure I could get through even one day without reading something. For me books are lifesavers. And our teens need them too . . . it’s as simple as that.

Happy December!

Sarah XXX