National Library Week - a lifetime of celebration

It's National Library Week this week, and that's given me a chance to look back on the libraries that have been part of my life as I've moved around the world. 

As a kid, my wonderful parents took me to one of the excellent Edinburgh City Libraries - Corstorphine and Blackhall branches, usually - every couple of weeks, and I had a great school library at the Mary Erskine School to borrow all sorts of books from. As a teen, I raided the music library in Edinburgh's Central Library for endless piles of sheet music to indulge my (not very realistic) ambitions to be a singer. 

When I moved to London to work at the Arts Council, there was a branch of the Westminster Library just round the corner from my office which had a fantastic stack of paperback novels, just perfect to read on a bus or train during my commute each day. When we moved to Wales a few years later, Penarth Library had a great storytime session down in the children's library every week when my kids were little. 

Now, I'm in Houston, I indulge myself with downloading from the amazing number of digital audiobooks on offer through the Houston Area Digital Media Catalog, as well as CDs and books I can order from the Houston Public Library website. 

So I am delighted to join in the celebration of libraries all over the world, not just during National Library Week, but every single day of my life!

For more information about how you can join in the celebration, visit the I Love Libraries facebook page or follow the #NationalLibraryWeek chat on Twitter.

Stunning YA cover - Elly Blake's FROSTBLOOD

Ever since my editor emailed me with the question, “So, Caroline, what kind of book covers do you like?” I’ve been looking at covers in a completely different way. I've suddenly realized how many assumptions I make about what is inside a book based on nothing more than what is on the front. Sometimes that's a good thing because I've picked up some great books like that, but sometimes . . . not so much.  

There are, however, some stunning covers being revealed right now for books which will come out next year alongside mine, and I have every confidence the story inside will more than match the awesomeness of their covers. So I'd like to share some of my favorites with you as they appear. And yes, I’ll show you the cover of WAIT FOR ME at some point soon too (and it’s gorgeous!). 

So to start you off, here is the stunning, chilling cover of FROSTBLOOD by Elly Blake, a fantasy adventure set in a world where flame and ice are mortal enemies, to be published in January 2017 by Little Brown Books for Young Readers.

Please go to FROST BLOOD on Goodreads and mark it in you Want To Read list for next year!

An end, and a beginning...

On Friday afternoon, I set down my fountain pen for the last time on the manuscript of WAIT FOR ME. I placed the lid carefully back onto the ink-pot, blotted the vellum, and sat back in my chair, lifting a glass of claret into the air to toast the end of my revisions.

Okay, not really. I crashed the last few changes onto my keyboard, prayed the formatting gremlin that's been plaguing the file for weeks had taken the afternoon off, banged out a quick email to Editor Alice to say, "Here you go, I'm done with it!" and raced out to the car with thirty seconds to spare to make it to school for pick-up.

But whichever was the truth, Friday afternoon brought me to the end of a very long journey with WAIT FOR ME. The story that started seven years ago with a chance remark by my friend, Angharad, which then became my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) project two years later, is now only a spit away from sitting on a bookshelf.

So yes, the end of a very long journey. But also the beginning of another one, not only for this story but for me as a writer too. My agent asked me just recently where I thought my career would be in five or ten years' time. The question startled me because only a few weeks ago, I was waving an unsold book over my head and now, apparently, I have a writing career. Imagine that!

I have been so lucky, to have had great writing buddies by my side, first Mike and now Penny, an incredibly supportive critique group too, and more recently, to have found a wonderful editor in Alice at Harper Teen, and then great agents, Danielle and Suzie at New Leaf Literary. So if you are a writer, standing with an unsold book in your hand, desperately waving it around hoping that someone will spot you, I'd suggest you keep on waving! You might only be seconds away from the end of this story and the beginning of the next.

But I'm realizing that publishing is a very long road to wander along, so perhaps I was wrong to say that one journey has ended for me and another has begun.

Perhaps on Friday, I simply walked past another mile-marker on my own long road.

Two-book deal with Harper Collins Children's Books

I am absolutely thrilled that Publishers Weekly today announced that Alice Jerman at Harper Collins Children’s Books has bought two Young Adult novels from me, with first refusal on a third. All three novels will be historical fiction, and the first – WAIT FOR ME - will be published in the USA in early 2017.

Here’s the full version of official announcement made today in Publishers Weekly.

WAIT FOR ME is set on a farm in eastern Scotland in the closing months of World War Two just as Paul, an injured German prisoner-of-war, is sent to the farm to work. Lorna, the farmer’s teenage daughter, soon discovers that in wartime, your family and your allies might not actually be your friends, and your enemy might turn out to be the love of your life. Lorna’s friendship with Paul, and their developing love for each other, is challenged by Lorna’s own prejudices and by the intolerance of her soldier brother and her friends in the village. Ultimately, will the events which bring peace to Europe tear Lorna and Paul apart?

The second book, as yet untitled, is planned for publication in 2018.

This story started out as a NaNoWriMo book in 2010 – that is, I wrote the first 50,000 words of it in just one month as part of National Novel Writing Month (yes, that’s 1,663 every day!). How appropriate then that the announcement that WAIT FOR ME is headed for bookshelves and e-readers comes during November, the month for NaNoWriMo 2015.

I am currently revising the WAIT FOR ME manuscript, under Alice’s insightful and intelligent direction, and it’s just staggering to think that in a little over a year, you might be reading the words that I have been writing/rewriting/playing with/deleting/adding in again this morning.

Thank you, Alice, for your enthusiasm and kindness.

And I also send enormous thanks to my spectacular agents, Danielle Barthel and Suzie Townsend at New Leaf Literary & Media Inc., for guiding me into and around the first turn in the maze that is the publishing industry. I think we might have some fun with this!

I’d love to keep you in touch with developments in the life of WAIT FOR ME and my other books, so if you’d like to follow this blog, use the Follow box to the right of this page, or I’d love to hear from you via the Contact box that’s over there too.

Pleae LIKE my Caroline Leech Author page on Facebook…

Or FOLLOW me @carolinesblurb on Twitter…

I’d love to have you along with me for the ride. #excitingday

Caroline

Wartime rationing sucked!

When you're writing a historical novel - my work-in-progress is set in Scotland during World War Two - you do have to trawl through a whole pile of research material, a lot of which is quite dry and sometimes even dull. But then you find a wonderful treasure of detail which not only makes you laugh when you find it, but keeps you chuckling every time you think about it! 

And here's my favorite so far. We all think we know about the deprivations of wartime rationing in Britain, but this takes the cake... erm, the carrot!

I mean, what kid needs an ICE CREAM when they can have a CARROT ON A STICK?!‪

Looking inside myself for the stubborn little bulldog

I was lucky enough to attend a reading this week by the celebrated Texan memoirist, Mary Karr, to promote her latest book, The Art of Memoir. She joined a packed and rapt audience at Christ Church Cathedral, brought together by Inprint, the fabulous Houston reading and writing organization (and I’m talking about “reading and writing” in LITERARY terms here, not LITERACY).

When I heard the word memoirist, my mind immediately went to names of dusty old chaps like Samuel Pepys and Winston Churchill, but Mary Karr is something else entirely. She is knowledgeable, witty, and self-deprecating, and she swears like the best of them. I’m really trying to describe her without commenting on her short skirt and her amazing red patent platform heels, but really, I think my eyes rested on those shoes as much as they did her face. They were, as I said, amazing!

Mary Karr read from The Art of Memoir and talked about her work with Mimi Schwartz, the executive editor of Texas Monthly, before talking questions from the audience.  But throughout all that, there was one passage about revising which really sang to me, given that I am currently struggling through major revisions on my YA novel manuscript.

In the final chapter of The Art of Memoir, Karr writes about how lucky writers are because we can go back to a previous draft, unlike a painter or a live performer, and that you should not look on the marks your editor makes on our manuscript as pointing out your mistakes. Instead, you should: 

Remind yourself that revising proves your care for the reader and of the nature of your ambition.

Writing. . . means celebrating beauty in an often ugly world. And you do that by fighting for elegance and beauty, redoing or cutting the flabby disordered parts.

Mary Karr with Texas Monthly's Mimi Schwartz

So as I battle through my scrawled-upon manuscript trying to find the elegance and beauty amid all the flabby disordered parts, it is reassuring to hear that a writer as celebrated and successful as Mary Karr has been here before. After all, she has told me: 

For me, the last 20 percent of a book’s improvement takes 95 percent of the effort – all in the editing.  I can honestly say not one page I’ve ever published appears anywhere close to how it came out in first draft. . .  I am not much of a writer, but I am a stubborn little bulldog of a reviser.

So let me raise a glass (okay, it’s a paper cup of earl grey tea) to finding elegance and beauty in my manuscript, and to finding the stubborn little bulldog of a reviser in myself.

The Art of Memoir is out now, published by Harper Collins. To buy a copy or to find out more about her memoirs The Liar’s Club, Cherry and Lit, or her books of poetry, visit her website.

For more information about Inprint and the other brilliant writers coming to Houston soon as part of the Inprint Reading Series, visit the Inprint website.

Let me introduce you to my literary agent!

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I am now represented as an author by Danielle Barthel and Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary & Media, Inc. in New York.

New Leaf is a major force particularly in the Young Adult arena, representing lots of amazing authors including Veronica Roth, who wrote the Divergent Trilogy, and Victoria Aveyard whose debut novel, Red Queen, went straight to No. 1 on the New York Times YA bestsellers list the week it was published in February.

Danielle Barthel and Suzie Townsend

Every author has a story to tell about his or her own distinct path to representation and eventually to publication, and one of these days, I’ll tell you where I am on my path. But in the meantime, my enormous and heartfelt thanks go to Danielle and Suzie at New Leaf for responding almost immediately to my plaintive submission email, for reading my WW2 love story over a sunny weekend when they could have been out enjoying themselves, and then for welcoming me into the New Leaf Literary family with such open and encouraging arms.  

Every un-agented writer harbors a suspicion that agents are all mean people who get a thrill out of saying “No!” to hard-working writers who just want a break. Well, from Danielle and Suzie at New Leaf, I got a whole bunch of "Yes!”.

Nikki Loftin
photo by Rae Dollard

I must also send a huge thank you to the wonderful Nikki Loftin for being so generous in putting in a good word for me with Suzie at New Leaf, who also represents her.  Nikki is an active member of the Austin chapter of Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She not only gave me my first ever SCBWI conference critique, back in 2012, later in the day when she also saw me standing alone at a reception, she immediately took my arm and started introducing me to other writers she knew. Some wonderful friendships began with that kind gesture and first introduction, but I could never have guessed that years later, Nikki would make yet another crucially important introduction for me. Thank you, Nikki – I still owe you that cocktail with the pink umbrella.

I can’t wait to tell you more about this roller-coaster journey towards publication, as it all plays out, but for the time being, I’ll try to contain my excitement at having Danielle and Suzie on my team, and try to work out how to round off this post without resorting to some clichéd comment about me turning over a New Leaf…

Darn it!

To see the other amazing authors and illustrators represented by New Leaf Literary & Media, visit www.newleafliterary.com.

Nikki Loftin is the author of three gorgeous middle grade novels, The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, Nightingale’s Nest and Wish Girl. You can find Nikki at www.nikkiloftin.com.