The Bookshop That Taught Me How To Write

by Jo Wyton

This week, I was going to write something so light-hearted it was barely hearted at all, given that it's the general election next week and we're all exhausted. And then a process that has been ongoing for two years finally reached it's thrilling conclusion: two of my close friends sold their bookshop.

Nicki and Mark Thornton have owned Mostly Books in Abingdon for over a decade. Abingdon isn't a huge town, and yet for many years it has somehow, miraculously*, sustained two independent bookshops. 

*There is nothing miraculous about it: these guys work their butts off.

The Bookshop of Awesomeness. And a Gruffalo.

I imagine that many people reading this will have a connection to their local independent bookshop. I met Nicki first, at a Kate Harrison event back in 2008 (I think!). I was headed there with someone I'd met on a local writing course, and Nicki was busy doing what all successful independent bookshop owners do - EVERYTHING. 

I am convinced I haven't ever seen Nicki or Mark standing still in the near-decade I've known them. It's possible they're magic.

I joined a local writers group that had been set up by Nicki, and from there joined the SCBWI and a children's writing critique group (with Nicki). At some point, she advised me (read: told me) to drop the middle grade novel I'd been working on and write the YA novel that would follow on from an excerpt I'd read out that evening. I went on to be one of the winners of Undiscovered Voices 2012 with that very novel and haven't ever looked back.

Critique group fun in the sun (actually it's in the shade because we're all pallid writer types)

So Nicki has, you see, been integral to my entire writing journey so far.

But she's also done what a really fantastic bookshop owner will do: she's introduced me to some of my very favourite authors. I think the first book she ever bought me was August by Bernard Beckett, a little-known Australian YA author who writes the most brilliant and unexpected books. August remains  The Book I Would Love To Write.

And on top of all that, she and Mark have really let me get involved. Independent bookshops rely on volunteers to help (if you want experience of the book industry on your doorstep, pop down to your local indie and see if you can pitch in at some events). 

At a Cressida Cowell event in dragon trainer-appropriate attire.

I've sold books with them at schools, book awards and in the shop. I've heard a dozen authors speak to school kids, watched how they deal with book signings (Anthony Horowitz was a total pro, hanging around until every single kid had taken a picture and had a scribble in their book, never rushing one of them), figured out how to recommend books to kids and to parents buying for kids, learned what sells and what doesn't, what the gaps in the market are, how booksellers run their businesses, how they integrate themselves into the community, more like a local service than a shop. Kids have been terrified by the Gruffalo in that shop, been bewitched by Hugless Douglas, coloured in and done easter egg hunts and spent their world book day vouchers. They've scoured the shelves for the next Skulduggery Pleasant and for something completely new.

A cake from my first Oxfordshire Book Awards. The OBA is the most crazy event I've ever done. Imagine about 100 kids all racing at you at once looking for something to spend their pocket money on. The tables we stand behind gradually get shoved back until our backs are against the wall and we are terrified for our lives. 

In so many ways, Mostly Books, Nicki and Mark have shaped the kind of writer and reader I am. So instead of writing a silly post (which I am sure I will thrill you all with at a later date), I thought I would say thank you to those guys and to all the booksellers who become part of our lives. 

And despite no longer owning the shop, next year will be Nicki's biggest one in books yet: her own book will find its place on the shelves after she won the Chicken House/Times competition with The Firefly Cage. Now that is a book launch I absolutely can't wait for!

The Agony of Choice

By Nick Cross

Photo by Jared Cherup

Over the last month, I seem to have changed my mind on an almost daily basis regarding what this blog would be about. At the risk of sounding like a Friends episode list, there was:

• The one about what writers can learn from tech startups
• The one about how I got the first critique back on my new YA novel and how I've started the book again but it's OK because it’s actually much better for it.
• The one about how I’m not going to send the completed book to any agents or publishers and have resolved to self-publish from the outset.
• The one about mental health, mortality and suicide, inspired by the tragic death of my teenage hero, Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell.
• The one about awards, because I realised that the Notes from the Slushpile team have an amazing FOUR Crystal Kite Awards among them and aren’t they all crazy talented?

Any and none of these may still become blog posts in the future, of course. But what I realised I actually wanted to blog about was difficulty of choosing between these options. When you have a surfeit of good ideas but limited time available, how do you choose the one idea to go forward with?

Making things up: finding the place for your story

by Teri Terry

Part 5 in Making Things Up: a blog series about the creative process

How do you choose the setting(s) for your story?

This is something I get asked about regularly, and honesty will make me admit: it isn't something I've always given the attention it deserves. With most of my earlier writing before I was published it was often the last thing on my mind. My characters and what was going to happen to them took centre stage, and where these (usually unpleasant!) things would happen was kind of by the by. As a reader I've also always had a horror of long descriptive passages, and describing where my characters were wasn't high on my list of writing fun. Being asked to use all five senses to describe a place in a writing workshop is kind of my idea of writing hell. 

It's fair to say I picked the opening setting for my first published novel, Slated - a village in the Chilterns - mostly because it was where I lived. To start with I had to remember to deliberately add some details of place to give the readers a picture of where the characters were, but felt I struggled to do it in a way that didn't feel I was just describing something for the sake of it. My character, Kyla, really helped me in this regard: having had her memory wiped, things were new to her. Therefore it was natural for her to notice details of place in a way a character generally won't if they are somewhere very familiar to them.

Somewhere along the way as I was writing Slated, something

interesting started to happen. The setting began to develop a life of its own in the story: the footpaths and canal ways became the other way to get around, unseen, for my characters, and this became vital for the plot. 

By the time I'd got to the third book of the trilogy, Shattered, I'd begun to expand how I used and related to settings. The scenes in Shattered in the stone circle at Castle Rigg are a good example. The feel the place evokes, the touch of the stone and so on were important to my character when she remembered going there with her father. 

The thing I learned wasn't to change how I approach writing, which is always from the guts of the character - but to accept that sometimes experiences and memories of place are part of the guts of the character. If they're important to my character, they're important to me.

Back then it was probably mostly serendipity that helped me along with the choice of settings. Now I have begun to approach it with more thought and deliberation, but I still haven't answered the question of how to make the choice.

To answer this question, another must be tackled first:

Is the setting another character in the story, or incidental to what takes places?

A story can take place in an almost unnoticed setting (like my pre-published stories often did); or it can be on the moors of Wuthering Heights. I know which I'd rather write!

Yesterday was the book birthday of Contagion: the first in the Dark Matter trilogy. When I started writing it I had the Scottish settings where the story begins firmly in mind. I've recently blogged on the Scottish book trust website on five ways to choose a setting, specifically in relation to Contagion. Rather than repeating myself I'll put a link below, but the more I think about it the more I think this: while the setting has to serve the story, it also absolutely must inspire me, the writer, to write it.

That is the overriding memory I have of writing Contagion: the sense of the
first time I went to Killin, and just knew: my character, Shay, lives here. This place is part of who she is.

Here's the linky*: 5 ways to choose a novel's setting, Scottish Book Trust website.

     *I apologise for linking to another blog rather writing anew, but I just moved house, have a head cold, and a zillion new book events: I hope you'll forgive me!

Contagion, on the beach:
it rather sounds like a dangerous sort of cocktail ...

... some things can't be cured, can't be killed, can't be stopped.

Callie is missing, and her brother Kai is desperate to find her. When Shay realises she was the last one to see Callie before she went missing, she contacts Kai. Together they race to find her, but can they outrun the epidemic?

A few weeks ago, at Cockermouth School:
 one of the very first school events for Contagion!