Notes from the Slushpile's Year That Was

If 2009 were a story arc, it would be one with a happy but tension-filled cliff hanger.

This is the year I officially moved off the Slushpile into The Beyond. Or have I? Will getting published fulfil my dreams or create new miseries? Will life as I know it change for the better? Or for the worse? Will readers like my book or hate it?

My first post in January 2009 was filled with hope and happiness, I surveyed what kids in my neighbourhood read in 2008. Here's the video I made:

I celebrated my friend Sue Eves' new book The Quiet Woman and the Noisy Dog with an interview. I hear it's doing very well indeed!

In February, as the screws of the credit crunch tightened, I advised authors building an online presence not to go wide but go deep.

Let me quote myself:

If you are a children's author writing about aliens, you don't want someone searching for "book" to find you. You want someone searching for "children's book about aliens". It's the quality of the traffic that counts, not the number. You don't want to be found by just anyone. You want people who are actually likely to reach into their wallets

...If you are trying to use social networking sites to raise your profile ... it's better to have one social network that really works for you than half a dozen that don't. It's the quality of the network, not the quantity (ie. You don't want to friend 3,000 people who will never buy your book) ...

March was the month I read the wonderful Solace of the Road by Siobhan Dowd, who died in the summer of 2007. It made me so sad to think there would be no more Siobhan Dowd books to come.

April was busy, busy, busy!

There was the launch of the second Undiscovered Voices competition - the very same competition that gave me a leg up, helping persuade my agent to take me on.

Then I discovered that Kathleen Duey, author of the amazing Skin Hunger, was writing a novel on Twitter!

Then I posted a whole bunch of stuff from the London Book Fair including this piece on what UK editors were looking for. If you're my friend on Facebook, you might have also noticed me updating my status with LBF facts Twitter-fashion (that was fun because each update launched hilarious conversations amongst my FB pals).

Then I participated in a monsters and zombies Comics Jam (my lovely friend Sarah "The Mankiest" McIntyre was one of the cartoonists there) at the Crystal Palace Children's Book Festival organized by author illustrator Alex Milway (of Mousehunter fame). On the right is my drawing of the kids I took to the festival (as zombies ... they didn't really have leaky brains).

Whew. April. Come she will.

May blew in - it was sunny, remember? I helped my friend Fiona Dunbar (Pink Chameleon) edit her video, found out what a textonym was (the textonym for book is cool, isn't that cool?), drove cross country from Sarwat Chadda's magnificent book launch to the SCBWI retreat.

The coolest thing about the launch of Devil's Kiss, the dark un-putdownable novel by Sarwat Chadda (pictured with spear), was this:


One of the younger guests at the launch was so engrossed in the book he ignored all the proceedings. What a compliment!

Then I discovered the text to movie website Xtranormal via uber-blogging author Nicola Morgan (Deathwatch), whose DIY video had me rolling around under my desk.


For most of June  I was busy with my day job and barely managed to post. Sorry about that.

I was still terribly busy designing websites in July and was shocked to receive some mail from the Vogon Postal Service ... as well as proofs of my very first little book, Animal Tricksters for Oxford University (Daughter is pictured holding it at right).

In August, I blogged about attending Arvon's Writing for Teenagers Course with Malorie Blackman and Melvin Burgess. Melvin kindly sent me off with this message of hope:

My friend Mark Hudson's book Titian: the Last Days came out and I helpfully made this video with his daughter -  titled 'My Dad Wrote a Book' and scored to the tune of  Bing Crosby's version of Yessir That's My Baby, the video was mentioned by the Guardian when it picked Mark's book as one of the best travel books for 2009:

In September, I attended a workshop on writing Fantasy led by Working Partners editor Sara O'Connor, who basically told us to slash and slash again. "KILL those darlings," she cried! "KILL KILL KILL!" Sara is pictured right, kindly advising attendees during the manuscript review session.

There was also a radio programme about how street performers built and kept their audiences and I was struck by the painful similarities to authors.

September ended happily with the launch of The Boy Who Fell Down Exit 43 by fellow Undiscovered Voices author Harriet Goodwin. After the launch, we took pictures of each other posing with random books. That's Sarwat with Twilight, Margaret with When Cats Turn Bad, and me with Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country.

With October, came Blog Action Day - the day bloggers get together and try to effect change. This year's topic was Climate Change which would have been a perfect time to plug the fact that I had a story in the new climate change anthology Under the Weather edited by Tony Bradman ...but there were more serious things going on. The terrible issue of Climate Change was horrifically brought home by a deluge of biblical proportions in my native Philippines. Thousands were left homeless and several hundred people died.

And then November came and with it, life-changing news.

Tall Story, my novel about a boy with gigantism, sold to David Fickling Books, of Random House. It felt like I was moving from one scary fairground ride to another.

From trying to get published:

To trying to succeed as a published author:

With all the possibilities ... good and bad.

The bad news that the Publishing industry endured in December ...

... gave us all a lot to think about.

All the good reasons why we do what we do as writers. And all the reasons why we should keep going.

For me personally, now that I'm on the cusp of becoming a published author, I've got to change mindsets -  I've been blogging for an audience of writers, how do I reach the readers? Suddenly I've got to practice what I've been preaching on this blog! It's exhilirating and scary at the same time.

A graphic from the Facebook page I made for Tall Story:

One can only do one's best.

So farewell, 2009 - what a year that was!

2010.

Here we go.

Geeked Up for Christmas: TALL STORY has a Facebook Fan Page!

At one of the London Book Fair seminars on marketing this year, one of the facts bandied about was that more people now use Facebook instead of email for online communication.

Not being totally on the ball that day, I can't provide you with the exact source/figures, but trust me, it must be true.

One of the websites I designed this year belonged to someone who didn't have time for social networking. When we reviewed the website's visitor stats however, we discovered that most visitors came from Facebook!

Indeed, Facebook has become such a distracting force in my own life that I have had to leave the house (and the internet) and work in coffee shops to avoid getting caught up in its allure.

A neat little app called 'My Year in Status' collated the best of my FB status updates - revealing how much I enjoyed hanging out on FB:

Click on the image to see it in readable size

If you've been living in the Real World, you might not know what a status update is. Facebookers post short status updates of what they're up to, what they're thinking, what they're doing. Status updates can be very entertaining and addicting especially if, like me, many of your FB friends are fabulously witty.

It's a bit like Twittering or Tweeting, except it's less ephemeral, and you can comment and have conversations with other commenters. (And please don't ask me what Twitter is.)

Last week my author friend Elizabeth Pisani sent me a link on how to build a Facebook Fan Page. To a compulsive geekoholic like me, it was a temptation not to be resisted.

SHAMELESS PROMOTION: Elizabeth's book is pictured right. Please buy it. You know you want to understand sexual health, prostitution and the politics of Aids funding.

Building an FB page for my book TALL STORY was a fascinating exercise. So was thinking through how to promote it and get people to actually become fans of the page (my KEY STRATEGY: uninhibited BEGGING).

I created this landing page for people who happen to search for TALL STORY:

You can read about how to create a landing page here. The page, that is, not the image, which I put together using Photoshop.

And once you become a fan, you get this page:

(The red heart and scrawlings are just me pointing out the fun stuff)

To make the page a bit more exciting, you've got to create an image that will tell people why the hell they would want to sign up as a fan. Graphic skills are very useful. Or a publisher's art department. Or an artistic teenager.

The word fan, of course, is a misnomer because TALL STORY will not exist in the real world until June 2010. I wish FB used the word 'follower' or 'person who thinks they might possibly like...' - but there you go. Fan it's got to be.

Now,  I love adding friends on FB (I'm a bit easy that way). At last count, I had 457 friends. Oops.

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Mini digression: I was writing in the cafe the other day when I overheard two women discussing teen novels. As they were leaving, one of them turned to me and said, 'Candy, is that you?' It was the author Keren David (When I Was Joe), who I had friended on FB. With her was Gaby Halberstam (The Red Dress).

As a result of the meeting, I managed to schmooze an advance copy of When I Was Joe and  got to read The Red Dress ... and OMG lucky me,  these two titles turned out to be terrific! Definitely on my list of STAND-OUT young fiction reads of the year!

Shameless but Sincere Promotion: READ READ READ When I Was Joe and The Red Dress!

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Where was I?

Back to TALL STORY's Facebook Page: I begged classmates, friends and acquaintances to help me not look like a fool and become a fan. And lo and behold, the last time I looked (today) I had 136 fans.

THANK YOU, fan people. YOU ARE AWESOME! If I could pay you for your awesomeness, I would. Instead, I promise to make the page as interesting and relevant to YOU as I can.

And to all the lovely authors hoping to build their own FB fan page, watch this space, once I've managed to digest the tonnage of Christmas junk I've consumed during these holidays, I pledge to post a How To article taking you through the Facebook Page process step by step and in simple, ungeekified English.

It would be a cool way for Notes from the Slushpile to celebrate the new year.

Many happy returns this holiday season!

Me, the husband and kids pose for our annual holiday portrait

... and have a MAGNIFICENT 2010!

Selfridges goes for fairy tales ... with grotesque retail twists.

Daughter and I were in shopping calvary on Oxford Street when we chanced upon Selfridge's fairy tale themed window displays.

A terrifying Goldilocks with petrified bears.

And Red Riding Hood is scarier than the wolf

And what a shapely Puss in Boots

And here's Cinderella's glamorous interruptus moment

And the mice flee with a golden slipper

And Captain Hook is stuck with a display of clocks!

And Snow White is good as dead (here shown with one of the seven dwarfs portrayed by clown faced child mannequins ... shudder)

All good fun with just that touch of darkness fairy tales are known for.