The Book That Poured Out by Sheena Wilkinson

As I revealed last month, I’m shortly to publish my tenth novel. But First Term at Fernside, published by the O’Brien Press in September, is actually my eleventh published book, and it’s taking me right back to the first one.

In 2007 Friends in the Fourth, based on my PhD about girls’ school stories, was published by Bettany Press, a small, specialist publisher.  Only a few hundred people bought that book, but it led directly to Fernside so I’ll always be glad of it, though at the time, having consigned my PhD to not-always-happy memory and being impatient to be published as a novelist, I found it a bit of a chore. 

When my last book, Mrs Hart’s Marriage Bureau, was published last year by HarperCollins, an interviewer in the Irish Times asked me: Your PhD was on girls’ school stories yet you’ve never written one. Why not? My response was: I’m fascinated by female spaces. My story “Let me be part of all this joy” (in Female Lines, New Island, 2017) is set in a 1920s girls’ school. There definitely is a girls’ school story in me: if any publisher reading this wants to commission one, I’m your woman!

Partly, this was a throwaway remark. But a little bit of me was sending out an idea into the universe to see what might happen… After all, I am a fiction writer: I have to believe in magic. 

And what did happen was that, maybe three weeks later, Kunak McGann, Rights Director at the O’Brien Press, a very well-established and respected Irish publisher, emailed to say: We really enjoyed your recent interview in the Irish Times and were intrigued by your mention of a girls’ school story. We ... would be very interested to explore what you might do with a novel (or series, even?) set in a girls’ school ... 

I replied 21 minutes later. By the next day I had Ideas, and a few days after that I more or less had my school, my main characters and my plot. 

Writing a novel is never exactly easy but I can honestly say that First Term at Fernside is the most fun I have ever had writing a book. In many ways, it was the book that had been inside me for most of my life, since, aged six, I read my very first school story – First Term at Malory Towers, the gateway book for so many school story fans! The story poured out. I wanted contrasting main characters whose fates were linked, so Robin and Linnet are cousins, and initially incompatible. Robin is apparently the perfect schoolgirl – a sporty, popular all-rounder, but she’s hiding quite a lot of worry under her sensible demeanour. Linnet is sensitive and eccentric, desperately at sea in this world of noisy girls. I loved exploring how they each find their own way of being in a community which is mostly benign but which has its challenges. 

 

And of course the writing had its challenges too: the story will be read by children born in the 2010s, but is set in 1925, right at the time when the girls’ school story craze was at its height. I needed to capture the attitudes and reality of that time – it’s very definitely historical fiction and is not pretending to be anything else – while allowing for the sensibilities of a different age. 

 

I was also very aware of being steeped in the traditional girls’ school story and wanting to honour that tradition, without any suggestion of pastiche – rather as my 2014 novel Too Many Ponies had done with the pony book tradition. 

What helped is that the school story has remained popular -- despite attempts by publishers and librarians throughout the twentieth century to outlaw what were often seen as elitist, trashy books, school stories just kept reinventing themselves. Fernside might well owe a lot to Malory Towers and the Chalet School, but it's by no means an outlier in 21st century children's fiction. Robin Steven's Murder Most Unladylike series; Elly Griffith's Justice books; Daisy May Johnson's How To Be books are all examples of recently-written books owing a lot to the school story tradition. Fernside isn't even O'Brien Press's only girls' school story -- earlier this year they published the wonderful TheTower Ghost by Natasha Mac a Bháird, set in a convent school in 1960s Donegal. 

So in First Term at Fernside you’ll find everything you’d expect in a traditional girls’ school story – sports teams and after-lights-out adventures (though no midnight feasts!); friendship and feuds; mean matrons and marvellous mistresses, and a big mystery which the girls have to rely on their own resources to solve. But it’s very much a 2020s book too, with an emphasis on diversity, empathy and inclusion. And like all my books, especially my 1916-1921 Irish trilogy, it’s feminist, with its unapologetic emphasis on female experience. It can’t possibly be anything else: girls receiving secondary education in the 1920s was, by definition, feminist.

So here it is -- the book that poured out of me! I can't wait for people to read it and to discover -- or rediscover -- the joy of the girls' school story. 

 

And will there be any more terms at Fernside? Reader, I do hope so! 

 

 

 

 

 

Going Into Double Figures by Sheena Wilkinson

My tenth book is going to be published on 23rd September 2024. Yay! It's special to be going into double figures. I feel like a Big Girl.

Of course, when the time comes I will let the book slip out quietly into the world without fuss. I won't acknowledge that it's a significant achievement or do anything likely to draw attention to it or me. 

Only joking! 

I'm planning a BIG PARTY not only to launch that book but to celebrate having got to Book Ten and still being here, still writing, still brimming with hope and ideas and enthusiasm. 

Every book deserves to be celebrated, because every book marks the culmination of hard work -- often in the writing, and even more, for me at any rate (or for my long-suffering agent!) in the selling. And I do think a tenth book is worthy of an extra fanfare. And if I don't do it, who will? 

Some people will think I am having Notions. That is OK. They don't have to join in. But there will be cake and champagne and speeches and obviously you are all invited. 

The book isn't announced yet... but here is a clue:

I plan to tell you ALL about it next month!

Will it be Kansas? -- or somewhere else? A new writing adventure by Sheena Wilkinson

I am transforming. Metamorphosing. Changing.  

No, I haven’t been translated into a donkey, as far as I know.

 

But very shortly my new publisher, HarperCollins Ireland, will announce my new novel, and in one very significant way it’s a huge departure for me, while in another way it’s very much in the tradition of my earlier books, especially my recent historical trilogy. 

The big difference is that it’s for adults, while my other books, though enjoyed by adults (possibly, if I’m honest, more than by younger readers) have all been written for teens.

 

I’m excited. This is the book I have been wanting to write for ages. I have always loved writing for young people and am passionate about the importance of giving them the very best writing and stories possible – after all, if I hadn’t had access to such quality when I was a child, I wouldn’t have become a reader, let alone a writer.

 

But just as I love reading all sorts of books, I also want the freedom to write all sorts of books. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I’ve loved experimenting with memoir, but my big project over the last few years has been this novel. It feels like, for the first time in a long time, what I write and what I love to read are the same. 

a little teaser from the cover 

                                                                    

By next month I’ll be able to talk freely about the novel, and show you the gorgeous cover, but for now I can say that it’s a bittersweet romantic comedy set against the turbulence of the 1930s, with a strong, endearing Irish heroine called April. The action takes place in a marriage bureau, but not all the happy endings are the ones you might expect. It's what I call feminist feelgood. I started it in lockdown, when I yearned to read books that were uplifting but substantial, and found myself going back to the novels of Dorothy L Sayers and discovering the author who has since become one of my favourites, Dorothy Whipple.

I do read authors who aren’t called Dorothy, but in the spirit of one last Dorothy, as I embark on the world of adult publishing, with different readers, different festivals and different – let’s hope more – reviewing opportunities, I wonder if I’ll feel I’m still in Kansas, or will the world look very different?

 

I can’t wait to find out. 

 

 

 

 

What happens when you press the panic button - by Lu Hersey

 A problem (admittedly a luxury one) came up this week because I have a book coming out.  On 21 June, to be precise. 

Not having had a book out in a while, I swanned about, thinking I had plenty of time to get all my book promotion ducks in a row. (Which simply meant arranging a couple of events where I could blow my own trumpet - invite a load of people to a launch and a book signing maybe, and hope a few of them might show up.) Easy enough, you'd think.

But sometimes things don't work out smoothly, the way you imagined. Stuff gets in the way.  And you start to panic.

Firstly, a holiday. Yes, I know. Another luxury problem. But not having had one for a couple of years, thanks to the pandemic, I hadn't remembered the dates. So a holiday in Cornwall, booked long ago, happened to coincide with the week immediately before the book launch. 

Also, I'd somehow forgotten about the Glastonbury festival - again because there hasn't been one for the last couple of years. I live in Glastonbury. The festival means a couple of weeks a year when trying to get in and out of town is a pigging nightmare. Just when my event books were due to arrive.  At my house. While I was in Cornwall.

Meanwhile, my 95 year old father needed a cataract operation, which had been postponed from January and rescheduled, so I abandoned everything to look after him for a few days. Which would have been fine, except that immediately after his op, he tripped over a kerb, fell flat on the pavement, and managed to pump out more than enough blood for a slasher horror movie over Plymouth city centre. Obviously I ended up looking after him for a few days more. And still not sorting the problem. 

I was starting to lose sleep. After a few nights of waking at 5am, wondering if it was too early or too late for a cup of tea, I thought maybe taking up smoking might help. 

Throughout this time, social media and all the junk emails I get from writing organisations, the bookseller etc., were busy shouting about the millions of books being published right now. Book awards, book launches - books, books and more books. 

Light dawned. 

What on earth I was worrying about? There are more new books out every week than anyone could possibly read in a blooming lifetime. So who would give a flying squirrel about mine? I hadn't even told anyone about the launch or the book signing, because I hadn't had time. In fact I hadn't said much about the book at all. So despite thinking the bookshop would probably never speak to me again....

I cancelled.  

I held my breath for a second in case the world exploded. Of course it didn't. What actually happened was the bookshop simply offered sympathy and asked if I wanted to reschedule. Because basically all bookshop people, librarians and writers are the best type of human beings.

However, there's one event I haven't cancelled. I'd actually arranged it at a sensible time, and organised it before anything else. I'm doing a book signing at the Henge Shop in Avebury on July 30th, the Saturday immediately before Lughnasadh or Lammas. It's the area where the book is set - and around the right date.  I'll be there all day, so if you happen to fancy a visit to Avebury and Silbury Hill, do come and say hello. It's an inspirational landscape, regardless of whether you want to buy a book or not.

And despite blowing out the book launch, Broken Ground is out 21 June, available to order from the publisher, via a bookshop or library, or even Amazon. It has a really nice cover, thanks to Rhi Wynter, and hopefully it's an exciting read, if a little dark. After all, Lughnasadh is grain harvest time, and the story is loosely based on the John Barleycorn myth - and we all know what fate held in store for him...

So that's what happened when I pressed the panic button. I didn't need to take up smoking. The world didn't end. And like I said, no one but me gave a flying squirrel anyway...

Lu Hersey

The difficulties of working with a goddess - by Lu Hersey

 Next month I have a new book coming out. 

So what, you might be thinking - big yawn, show us your cover and shut up about it. Writers have new books out all the time.

But of course I want to tell you about the book as well as showing you the cover. I mean, it's taken over seven years and more edits than you've had hot dinners to get here, and that takes a bit of explaining. 

One of my biggest difficulties was having a land goddess appear in the story, especially as she kept taking over. After all, Andraste is the goddess Boudicca invoked before battling the Romans, so she's really not to be messed with...and she was determined I got the story right before it was published.

Andraste, goddess and guardian of the land (image by Rhi Wynter, detail taken from the back cover)

But my (possibly more realistic) problems started when my publisher back in 2015 turned the idea for the book down, AND I KEPT WRITING IT ANYWAY. Yes, big mistake, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. My advice to my past self (and any other writer caught in this scenario) would be, even if you don't agree with your publisher and you think they're totally wrong about the commercial value of your work of genius, it's best to simply write something new they might want instead.

To be fair, they didn't realise that by the time the first section was presented to them, I'd written a whole draft already. The goddess was awake and ready for battle. 

Anyway, their feedback on the part they read was:

1. My main protagonist was a boy (he still is. He's called Arlo). They preferred female protagonists because they sell more books - and apparently boys don't read.

2. No one knows what a crop circle is and girls don't read about aliens (if they'd read past the first section, they'd have discovered there weren't - and still aren't - any aliens. But doubt they'd have liked the land goddess any better, tbh)

3. Teens aren't interested in ecological issues. (This predated Greta Thunberg, obvs)

I now fully acknowledge that sales and marketing have a valuable job to do, which is making sure what's published actually sells and makes the publisher a profit. OF COURSE I should have let go of the book and written something else immediately. But did I listen? Did I buffalo. 

I did try. After a while, I wrote new books and put Broken Ground on the back burner. In fact there are currently two of my books still going through the glacial submission process somewhere. But throughout all this, I still couldn't let the idea behind Broken Ground go. I kept coming back to it, again and again.

And now, zillions of edits and much generous feedback from writer friends later, Broken Ground finally gets to see the light of day next month - thanks to wonderful Debbie McGowan at Beaten Track publishers.  

Also, thanks to amazing designer Rhi Wynter, it has a stunning cover....

(AT LAST, you're thinking - FINALLY she's got to the cover reveal!)

That's it really. I'll be promoting Broken Ground a lot over the next couple of months, so you'll be tired of hearing about it soon enough. But if you like the idea of a book filled with scary magic, crop circles, blood sacrifice and a land goddess, it'll make me a very happy writer. 

(And even happier if you want to read it, obviously 💚).

Lu Hersey

Callum and the Other by Alan McClure

 

My first post in this splendid blog, back in September, was about the tribulations of writing a sequel. I had just pressed ‘send’ on a manuscript which had eaten a huge proportion of my time and energy over lockdown, and was feeling reflective: would the book live up to its predecessor? Had I recaptured the voice? Had I repeated myself?

 

Well, I’m pleased to report that readers can judge for themselves this week, as Callum and the Other is finally published on April 15^th. The editing and proofing process was painless, thanks to the fabulous folks at Beaten Track, and generous friends have previewed the book very positively. Does that mean I’m free of pre-publication collywobbles? Of course not!

 

Every Scattered Author must know the strange sense of letting go that comes with publication. The story is no longer mine – it becomes the shared property of anyone who takes the time to read it. There are parts I think are accessible to most readers and parts that will only chime with some. Ideas that struck me as important may well be completely lost in the mix, while aspects that never occurred to me might reveal themselves to insightful readers. It’s a strange and fascinating process, and I’m excited to see where it goes.

 

I hadn’t planned to write a sequel, but now I can’t imagine not having done so. Callum and his friends had more to tell me, and I’m profoundly grateful for the chance to share the results – I hope they entertain, amuse and mystify the brave souls who dip in, and that I can be part of the story’s journey out into the big wide world!

 

Good luck to everyone with new stories to share this month.

 

https://www.beatentrackpublishing.com/?ref=callum