YALC's back - Tracy Darnton

YALC's back! 

Last weekend saw the return of the Young Adult Literary Convention after an absence of three years. Set up in 2014 by then Children's Laureate,  Malorie Blackman to celebrate teen and young adult books, and tap into the fandom overlap with London Film and Comic Con attendees, it has an atmosphere all of its own.

Olympia

For those who've never shared a lift with Chewbacca, Wonder Woman and a Dr Who enthusiast, or wondered if they should buy an inflatable Jabba the Hutt outfit or a replica sword, or contemplated joining in with Cosplay, prepare to be surprised. 

YA authors can struggle to get on the bill at children's lit festivals unless they're already incredibly successful so it's great to have a packed festival where the big American and British names in YA appear alongside debuts and mid-list authors on panels,

as well as deliver workshops and have signings with ticketed queues. 

Obviously a welcome marketing opportunity but also a time to socialise and meet up with all your Twitter author friends, and interact with the bloggers and readers who support your books. 

UKYA thriller writers assemble

In the space of five minutes in my signing queue there were readers from Brazil, the Netherlands and Spain.  Publishers have stalls with their latest books, activities and competitions:

and Waterstones sell the books of all the speakers.  

Many of the attendees are writers so there's also a popular Agent Arena running 1-2-1s, sessions on working with editors or how to get into publishing.  Workshops I attended this year included an Escape Room experience with Bryony Pearce; how to write a thriller with Sophie McKenzie; a mindful creative session with Sita Brahmachari and illustrator Natalie Sirett based on their book When Shadows Fall; and my own Release your inner teen with free curly wurlies where I was very grateful to the man with the white beard that I was not the oldest in the room. 

In addition to YALC royalty of Juno Dawson and Holly Bourne, this year had highlights of an in-depth interview of Jacqueline Wilson by Non Pratt, and the mega fandom around Heartstopper and Alice Oseman. It was fabulous to see a UKYA book attracting so much attention. I spoke to fans who queued from 5 am to get their place in her signing queue. 

So, what didn't work so well at this YALC compared to the others I've been part of? 

The usual part of the Olympia conference centre for YALC has been knocked down for redevelopment so we were on the balcony area around the LFCC hall. It was crowded and noisy! For anyone who struggles with constant background noise like me, it was a challenge to hear all participants, especially in workshops. I missed the usual quiet zone of beanbags and people reading their books. YALC used to have its own much quieter entrance - with no queue in the heat so that was much trickier for attendees this time. 

And I missed the merch or previous years, but then I'm a tote bag fanatic. (And yes, inevitably I did come back with Covid). 

So there you have it - the world of YALC. If you're reading YA, writing YA or just want a dose of popular culture, put it in your diary for next year. 

Tracy Darnton is the author of YA thrillers Ready or Not, The Rules and The Truth About Lies. She is having a well-earned lie down. 

Secrets of the Green Room - Kelly McCaughrain

Actually, today I appear to have replaced memes with bullet points (mostly) in order to bring you...

Things I learned at panel events this year!

First, the general stuff -

• The publisher pays for your hotel and travel to go to these things (score!).
• Sometimes the panel moderator will tell you the questions in advance, sometimes they won’t.
• Waiting to go on is worse than being on.
• Your editor will be completely sympathetic about your nerves. She’s probably a shy, bookish type herself.
• Every writer has a publicist/press officer following them around and looking after them at events, like a dæmon in His Dark Materials. It’s so cool. I had one too, but she was there to look after way more important Walker writers than me.
• The green room is full of snacks but you will be too nervous to eat them.
• Don’t even think about going to a YA event if you don’t know what Hogwarts House you’re in. Just do the test.

Hufflepuff rules! (In an unobtrusive way)

This year I was thrilled (and when I say thrilled, I mean bricking it) to be on panels at both YALC in London and DeptCon4 in Ireland. DeptCon is organised by Easons’ Department 51 and is a two-day event. This year had 10 panels (plus a DnD sesh) featuring about 35 writers.

My panel, with Katherine Webber

Signing with Simon James Green and Sebastien de Castell! 

Being one of the few complete newbies in the group, I was a little awestruck. You could tell I was the newbie because:

• I went to all the panels (except the DnD because it was either eat or faint at that point)
• I took notes
• I brought all my books and asked people to sign them in the green room
• I was shamelessly fangirling all over the place

If you think I’m exaggerating about the fangirling, here’s a brief resume of my lifelong history of embarrassing myself in front of writers I admire:

• Marilynne Robinson had to tell me to stop asking questions so someone else could ask one.
• George Saunders had to introduce himself to me because I couldn’t speak.
• Roddy Doyle agreed to read my book (possibly to get rid of me).
• Susin Nielsen probably thinks I’m a crazy stalker after I ran up to her on the street in the dark yelling, ‘Oh wow, you’re Susin Nielsen!!!’ Which she probably already knew.

Me and Susin. I think I genuinely frightened the poor woman.

I am very shy, and I deal with this by either gushing at jet-lagged writers in a hyper manner or running away to eat crisps in the hotel instead of hanging out in the green room with the cool people. But I did make it to the pub at DeptCon and managed to chat to a few of my heroes.

And it turns out, the interesting things writers say on their panels aren’t half as interesting as the things they say in the pub afterwards.

I love talking to writers who’ve been publishing longer than me (and that was all of them) because there’s always something to learn. I found myself mainly chatting about the dreaded Second Book Syndrome. I went to the conference feeling like a bit of a fraud because I’m finding my second book so hard, and I expected to come away feeling even worse, having been surrounded by ‘proper’ writers for two days. In fact, I came away feeling hugely reassured, because EVERYONE has been there. And they’re perfectly willing to tell you about it.

I was so inspired I scribbled notes on what they said (when I got back to the hotel, I’m not a complete loser. And I didn’t have a pen).

So I’m going to give you a recap of the helpful advice they gave me. I’m not going to ascribe names, (because I didn’t ask anyone if I could quote them and also I wouldn’t be quoting word for word, these are just my summaries) but they came from the likes of Susin Nielsen, Deidre Sullivan, Tina Callaghan, Sebastien de Castell, Juno Dawson, Simon James Green, Brian Conaghan, Louise O’Neill, Tom Pollock and Patrick Ness, as well as some publicists whose names I didn’t get. Some of them came from conversations in the pub, and some were things people said in panels.

Enjoy!

• The book I’m publishing next was started 6 years ago. Never throw anything out.
• Read This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett.
• Be kind to yourself, ignore the mean voice in your head.
• You must have a conflict engine in each act. Something that generates conflict after conflict.
• The first time I wrote a book under contract was book 5 and it was the first one I found hugely difficult and I swore I’d never do it again. But it’s hard to say no to security.
• Don’t read books on craft. They paralyse you.
• Read Big Magic.
• Don’t give up today because tomorrow could be the day it happens.
• I’ve told my agent that I want to write the next one without a contract. I’d rather write it first and then try to sell it even if there’s a risk it won’t sell. 
• If you wouldn’t bother finishing it if you knew it would never get published, you shouldn’t be writing it at all.
• I’ve never written 2 books in the same way.
• Sometimes you have to abandon things but never throw them out, you can come back to them later.
• Even when you’re published you totally fangirl over meeting other writers.
• It gets harder with every book.
• Read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.
• I hate prizes, even when I win. It’s best to ignore everything that’s written about you.
• Your book should have things in it that you didn’t know were there, that come out as if by magic when you’re done, because the whole is more than the sum of its parts. But if you plan it all to death and try to fit it to a formula, you won’t get those bits. You’ll probably delete them before you’re done because they don’t fit the plan.
• Writing a sequel can be a good way to avoid second book syndrome because you don’t have to fall in love with new characters. But then your third book will be your second book.
• Get feedback on your work before you send it out. Learn to ask for help.
• Be resilient. Do something else that’s creative when you’re stuck, don’t force it.
• You write your first book not knowing how to write a book. Then you think, ‘I’m a proper writer now, I should start learning about writing,’ so you read up on craft and story theory and you try to make book two fit a formula and it doesn’t work.
• Don’t let them cast 31 year olds to play the 16 year olds in the film of your book.
• It’s not fair that American books dominate the market.
• The work is the antidote for everything.
• Anyone can start a book. Writers finish them. If you’re obsessively going back over the first three chapters, stop. Finish the book.
• Talent is almost irrelevant. It’s more important to enjoy it enough to do the work to make it good.
• I panicked after my first book was published, and the next one I wrote was rejected by the publisher.
• The publisher will want you to produce something similar to your first book and not take any risks.
• Perfectionism is the enemy of creativity.
• If your book is out of stock at Waterstones etc, tell your publicist. They can give them a nudge.
• If you believe the good stuff that’s said about you, you have to believe the bad so it’s best to ignore it all.
• For the publisher, if you don’t publish something within a year of your first book, then it doesn’t really matter when the second one comes out, it can wait.
• I felt like, if I hadn’t already been with them, my publisher wouldn’t have accepted my second book, so I took it elsewhere.
• Write a story, not a sermon. The things you care about will come out in the story. If they don’t, you’re writing the wrong story.
• I had 217 rejections in 10 years before my first book was published.
• If your shoe has a hole in it, and it’s raining, wear the hotel shower cap over your sock.

I thought it was very interesting that at least three different writers told me they hate writing under contract/refuse to write under contract ever again. And someone told me about a publisher who only gives one-book contracts for that reason. Is this the future? And is it a good thing? Is it a move towards a sort of zero-hours contract situation for writers, or is it a move towards flexi-time and a healthier working environment? Security or freedom?

Kelly McCaughrain is the author of the YA novel Flying Tips for Flightless Birds. 

She blogs about Writing, Gardening and VW Campervanning at weewideworld.blogspot.co.uk 

@KMcCaughrain 

#YATakeover...starting tonight!

Anyone with an interest in Young Adult fiction, there is a treat in store for you today and tomorrow -  and all you need to take part is an internet connection.
#YATakeover is a book festival celebrating YA, held entirely on Twitter.

Organised by five brilliant bloggers -  take a bow, Chris, Georgina, Sarah, Laura and Megan - it involves authors, librarians, booksellers, journalists, readers and bloggers, with an international line up and an ambitious programme of events.

Today's first panel kicks off at 7pm, with a chat about the best YA reads of 2015 (a fiver to anyone who gives my book a namecheck).

Thereafter there's a non-stop flow of talks and debates including Art in YA, YA Prizes,  Libraries in the Digital Age and Suicide and Depression in YA. Tomorrow's programme includes every YA genre going, plus all kinds of crossovers and mash-ups. The whole thing promises to be a fabulous showcase for the breadth and depth of YA fiction today.

I'm lucky enough to have been invited to be on a panel about love in YA, alongside Cat Clarke, CJ Skuse and Laura Jarrett,. Between us there is NOTHING we don't know about love. So polish your questions, and look for us on Twitter tomorrow from 2.10pm until 2.55pm .

 Other authors taking part include Frances Hardinge, who this week won the children's category of the Costa Book Awards, Eve Ainsworth, Liz Kessler, Lisa Williamson, Taran Matheru, Alice Oseman, Abbie Rushton, MG Harris, Holly Smale, Sarah Mussi, Becky Albertalli, Non Pratt, Sally Green, Jennifer Niven, Louise O'Neill, Marcus Sedgwick and  Lauren Kate. The full line up is here.

Alexia Casale, YAShot organiser

#YATakeover is yet another example of the YA community taking the intitiative in creating events, although the first online book festival I attended was organised right here on ABBA.

 Last year we saw well-attended gatherings at Waterstones in Birmingham and Nottingham for the #UKYAExtravaganza, and a #UKMGExtravaganza as well. Authors Emma Pass and Kerry Drewery were the masterminds who made that happen. And another author, Alexia Casale worked with librarians in Hillingdon to make #YAShot happen, a crazy, busy, bustling day of bookish events and much socialising in October.

Authors line up at the Nottingham UKYAX

Before that was YALC fringe party in July 2015 and 2014, an author-led initiative to include more writers in the excitement that is YALC, and raise money for charity as well. There was a fringe party last year as well, and it would be great to grow the fringe events and perhaps have them recognised by the organisers of YALC, in the spirit of inclusion and fun.
But today and tomorrow, the place to be is Twitter. The hashtag is #YATakeover, and the whole of Twitter is welcome! 

Book bloggers at the YALC Fringe party 2014.

If you have room for another bit of YALC love - Liz Kessler

Being an author is, amongst other things, an absolute privilege. Sometimes we forget this. The times we forget it are generally:

• When we’re feeling completely stuck on a plot point that we can’t resolve.
• When we’ve just received a huge email from our editor with all her notes on our manuscript and don’t know where to start.
• When we have a deadline in three days and still have a third of the book to write.
• When we keep seeing people’s posts on twitter about how many amazing five-star reviews they’ve had and we still haven't forgotten that one-star review from six years ago. 

Generally, though, we tick along quite nicely, being aware of how lucky we are to have a job that is about sitting looking out of the window staring into space and making up stories. Or at least I do.

But then there are the times that make us stop, look around and seriously ask how on earth we got to be so lucky that THIS is what we do for a JOB!

Last weekend’s YALC (Young Adult Literary Convention) was one of those times.

A typical moment of authors and bloggers getting together and behaving very sensibly 

The weekend was an opportunity for writers, readers, bloggers and anyone else with an interest in YA books to make contact with each other. Authors spoke on panels ranging from talks about feminism and LGBT issues to mental health and Minecraft. There were writing workshops, editing workshops, 1-1 sessions with agents. There was a Harry Potter party, a Hunger Games quiz, a bloggers’ breakfast. In short, it was an absolute feast of YA wonderfulness.

Here's me in a Double Laureate Sandwich with outgoing Malorie Blackman, and brand new Chris Riddell

I attended YALC last year as a paying customer. This year I was over the moon to be on one of the panels, and I felt genuinely honoured to be given the opportunity to talk to the audience of readers, teachers, librarians and – well, yes, a fair few Wonder Women and Spidermen, and possibly a Thor or two. Not to mention more hair colours than you get in a Caran D'ache pencil box.

The gorgeous and fabulous Yael Tischler, bookseller extraordinaire

I was on the LGBT panel, and was SO proud to be there and be openly talking about LGBT issues in YA books. Together with James Dawson, Lisa Williamson and Den Patrick, and beautifully hosted by Julia Bell, I like to think we rocked the place with LGBTQ fabulousness for an hour or so.

James and me in our Stonewall t. shirts

After our panel, I had possibly (who am I kidding? Definitely!) one the best experiences of book signing I’ve ever had. Not because it was the longest queue I’ve ever had. It wasn’t. Not because I got paid to sign books. I didn’t. Even if the actors in the other part of the convention downstairs did. (Publishers take note: we’re missing a trick here!) (Joking, by the way. I would never want to charge for signing books, and I’m sure no other authors would either.)

It was the best queue ever because of the utter warmth that spilled from it. Each person in the queue had a story. Most of them ended up with a hug as well. One girl told me that she’d found my book just as she’d started having feelings for another girl and it had helped her deal with what was happening. A mum told me that she was buying my book for her daughter who has anxiety issues and we talked about how tough this is. Two boys were still buzzing after their first Pride. A few older teenage girls told me how they had loved my Emily Windsnap books when they were younger and were excited that I was writing for their age group now. One of these had tears as well as a hug!

The magnificent Nina Douglas, who, amongst the MANY wonderful things she did all weekend, organised Most Emotional Signing Queue Ever with her usual brand of brilliance

And then there were the two girls who had met in the queue and by the time they got to me, had asked each other out! This was a definite first for me. And an absolute privilege. (Don’t forget, ladies. I want a front row seat if there’s a wedding!)

The moment I realised Read Me Like A Book had brought together its first couple. Photo courtesy of Jo Cotterill

I can honestly say that I have never been at a festival where I have felt such an outpouring of love – for books, for authors, for the whole YA community. Even authors who were there as punters had readers coming up to them asking them to sign their books.

My partner in crime for much of the weekend, Keris Stainton, who got mobbed by someone wanting her to sign a book approximately once every five minutes!

And finally, there was silliness. Lots and lots of it. Here is my contribution to that aspect of the weekend, courtesy of the lovely Michelle from Fluttering Butterflies blog, and featuring a cameo performance from the somewhat bonkers but also lovely Jo Cotterill.

Whether I get invited to be on a panel again or not, I shall be putting YALC in the diary for as many years as it runs – and I would urge anyone who loves YA to do the same. A massive, massive thank you to Booktrust and all the organisers, and I hope that you all gave yourselves at least a day off and a large martini this week! 

See you next year!

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Something new...About Time!

Everyone’s saying what an amazing time it is to be a teen/YA writer. YA lit is being taken more seriously. Over the last ten years, the teen/YA market boomed, expanding dramatically with books about the paranormal, myriad dystopias (always in a long series) and dark supernatural romances. These books became the next big thing, and then the big thing, as they were adapted and appeared in a cinema near you. Book shops were awash with one or two narrow genres, filling shelves until they were overflowing. But there was barely any space left for any diversity, and dare I say it, bar a few exceptions, anything original.

Agents, at least in the States, are saying they’ve had enough. The market has had enough. It’s all reached saturation point. Now agents are looking for something else. The problem is, they’re not entirely sure what that is.

The genres they now say they’re interested in are crime, psychological thrillers, gritty realism and contemporary dramas. The one-off, stand alone book looks to be making a comeback. If that’s true then hooray!

It is too often I hear people saying that boys are reluctant readers, and asking what we can do about it? Well, given the choice they’ve faced over the last decade, I’m not entirely surprised. I was in a bookshop the other week and a teen, a boy, was asking for recommendations. The shop assistant had very little to offer him – he’d read the small number of general action/adventure series that were on display there, and he wasn’t interested in paranormal or dystopian. Well maybe, finally, the kind of books boys like him might like to read will get a look in now. Of course many other factors will play a part, but this is a beginning, a small kernel, which needs to be nurtured and developed.

To read the full report from the Publishers Weekly about the changing focus of agents and publishers in the US follow this link:

 Publishers Weekly

Here’s another link to an interesting US blog post with literary agents there about what they’d like to see landing on their desks:

Adventures in YA Publishing

Of course the most important thing in teen/YA writing, and actually in any writing, is the voice and the story, no matter what the genre. But it is good to hear that, at least across the Pond, agents and publishers are showing an interest in manuscripts across many different genres, which means that the contemporary stand-alone novel has more of a chance to get its voice heard and to find some shelf space in a bookshop or library.

Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman’s work has been diverse, covering different genres, themes and age groups. She has initiated a YA convention to be held in London next year where she will be promoting Young Adult literature. It’s going to be held at the London Film and Comic Con at Earls Court in June 2014. The convention will include publishers and writers, workshops, signings, and talks. It sounds exciting and I’m looking forward to it. I hope it makes a difference.

So what are publishers and agents saying here in the UK where UKYA is on the up and up? I think it’s time to find out...

www.savitakalhan.com

@savitakalhan