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