Category Archives: Runners

2013 – a bit of this, a bit of that, a lot of fun…

by

photo2013 was such a mindblowing year that I hardly know where to start.  It was mixed, of course, and the good things that happened for me were, sadly, matched by the bad things that happened to friends. But good things happened to friends too, and I suppose that what I’m trying to say in my characteristically crap way (writer, apparently?????) is that it was, in most respects, a fairly typical year.  Except that I published a book.  Then I published another one… until I couldn’t stop writing them. Even more excitingly, people started to read said book.  And then they read the other ones… some even said they liked them…

My favourite thing this year has been finally getting the validation I’ve always craved for my writing. When I started out, years ago, I always said that all I wanted was for people to come into my worlds and share them. People have done that and truly taken my characters to their hearts and it has meant more to me than I can say.  It’s been hard work, every single spare moment has been spent doing something – if not writing then promoting or researching opportunities to reach more readers – but it’s been the most enjoyable nervous breakdown I’ve ever had.  I’ve had pen names this year – more than a few – and I love the books that each and every me writes, even though they’re all very different. As their creator, I think I’m allowed to say that, right?

My other favourite thing has been the wonderful friendships I’ve found through the writing community, both online and in the real world. Some of you I’ve managed to meet, some meetings we’re working on, some of you, sadly, live too far away and it’s likely I’ll never get to meet you.  But you’ve all been fantastic. You’re all ages and all walks of life and everyone has a different agenda, but we get along and support each other. And we’ve all shared each other’s journeys in many ways. I’ve seen some friends release their fabulous debuts and enjoy the same experiences as I’ve had as people have discovered their books. Some friends have finally found the professional success that they’ve worked for years to achieve – book deals, new agents, competition wins…  and so much more good stuff. Some of my friends have started new book blogs and gone on to find enormous and faithful followings as people have discovered their reviews and come to love and trust them.

Most of all, 2013 has been a year of change. I’ve learned so much about writing and marketing, but I’ve learned about life too.  I think this year has changed me as a person – I know now that I can do so much more than I ever believed I was capable of.  And as if the family dramas, friendship dramas, two children’s books, six young adult books, and an adult book on the cusp of release weren’t enough, there was one more lovely surprise, tucked right at the bottom of 2013’s stocking.

I finally got my fabulous agent…

2014 is a new chapter. And even I don’t know where this plot is going…

*

The Sky Song trilogy is a year old! To celebrate, all three books in the series will be reduced to 77p or 99c each for the next week. Thank you to everyone for your brilliant, valuable support and Happy New Year!

 

E=M…. something or other….

by

untitledI’ve always been fascinated by science, so it’s a crying shame that I’m too dim to understand how it works beyond a really basic level.  I read ‘layman’ books about science and I watch those TV programmes full of pretty pictures (or equally pretty professors… *cough…. AMAZING*…) that real scientists point at and laugh, and that’s about as far as my understanding will stretch.  My book, Runners, has a little bit of science fiction weaved into it which is integral to the plot, though, and I enjoyed the research I had to do for that, so when Runners was released and people began to comment on that aspect of the story, it got me thinking about the way science is used in fiction, not just in a sci-fi way, but in a more general way. Things that get me thinking generally lead to a blog feature, so I put a shout out on Twitter to see if any of my lovely and super-clever writer friends had any ideas on the subject.  Today I’m happy to announce that this coming week my blog will be dedicated to the musings of four such people.  The lovely thing about all these posts is that they each cover very different areas: Jack Croxall will be talking about parallel universe theories, Rebecca Bradley will be discussing the computer age and mobile technology, Dan Thompson will provide a fascinating insight into the psychology of phobias and Eleanor Reynolds will give us her views on the evolution of the horror genre including a look at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  I also have a blog tour scheduled to stop next week, so Thursday will see Clare Davidson talk about her new book Reaper’s Rhythm.

It looks as though it’s going to be a packed one, so I hope to see you around!

No heckling please, I’m only a poor author.

by

speechOn Monday I went along to a local school to talk about writing and publishing. I had been invited by the school librarian of Haywood Engineering College, a lovely lady who is as passionate about literature as anyone I have met (and she’s also named Sharon, which can only be good!). Sharon emailed me to ask whether I would be happy to talk to year seven. Talk to year seven? I can do that, I thought with a modicum of confidence. Two hundred year sevens, Sharon said. Ok, I can still do that, I thought, with slightly less confidence.

I made up cue cards so that I could remind myself of everything I wanted to say on my ten minute introductory talk. I carefully chose a passage of Runners to read that didn’t contain too much dialogue (doing voices is not my forte) and I rehearsed it. I thought about all the questions I might get asked at the Q&A afterwards.

Was I ready? Was I hell!

After a brief chat and a cuppa, lovely Sharon led me into the hall where I’d be meeting the kids. With row upon row of chairs laid out, it was at that point I realised that two hundred was a lot more than I’d imagined. It’s ok, I thought, I’ll keep it together. Then the kids started to file in, a class at a time. I was getting more nervous with each row of chairs that filled. Then I was introduced and it was time to talk!

In the hours beforehand, I had carefully gone over a succinct and chronologically correct version of my life and career, I had even prepared a few jokes to throw in, and the reminders for each bit were on my cue cards. But as I started to talk, my brain decided that it couldn’t read cue cards – I kept looking at them but the words on there didn’t mean anything. My clever little introductory chat turned into an outpouring of breakneck speed and I missed almost everything important out, especially my jokes. We were supposed to view the Runners trailer next but as we all know that technology hates me, the sound wouldn’t work. We went to a reading instead, which I’m sure I rushed through even quicker than the intro, and then went back to the trailer (phew, a break!) and then came the Q&A. This was where it got fun!

I loved the question and answer session. I was really worried that none of the audience would have anything to ask me and we’d be staring each other down in some sort of High Noon scenario, but I needn’t have been. The kids were fantastic, hands shot up all over the place with brilliant and funny questions (are you rich, are you famous, how long does it take to write a book, will you write a book with me in it?) and before I knew it I was bouncing around the hall like an over-excited chicken trying to not to miss anyone and trying to come up with the best answers I could.

The school very kindly supplied lunch (yum, good choice by Sharon) then I went into a class to help with a creative writing session. We took our cue from the Runners extract I had read out to talk about dystopia and utopia and, once again, the discussions and ideas coming from the kids were lively and interesting and in some cases hilarious. I haven’t had so much fun in ages.

I felt so welcomed by the school, its children and staff, that I needn’t have been worried or nervous. Next time I do an author talk I’ll be ready to enjoy it.  A big thanks goes out to Haywood year seven for being amazing!

Dreams can come true…

by
You can add Runners to your bookshelf on Goodreads

You can add Runners to your bookshelf on Goodreads

Six years ago I had a very strange dream in which a group of teenagers trekked across a barren landscape on a quest. I woke in the middle of the night and wrote it all down, each kid somehow a real, fully formed person that just squeezed out of my head and onto the notepad. I didn’t know what the quest was; all I knew was that they were on a great journey. A bit like the one Runners began the very next day.

I’m sure in lots of guest posts over the coming months, I’ll be talking about the characters of the book, what influenced the plot and setting, what I think about who is the strongest/ most reliable/ my favourite. So this post is going to be about the journey that the book has taken from my head that night to publication, for that has been a quest in itself.

I’d never actually finished writing a book before, though I had attempted many over the previous years. I was just coming to the end of the first year of my English and creative writing degree. I started the book straight away and worked on it during the summer holidays in between reading texts for the new term that would follow in September. I had an old cranky desktop computer which promptly died at around chapter four, so I resorted to carting the book file around on a memory stick between different computers at the university library and at my brothers’ houses. I worked whenever and wherever I could. At that time my daughters were still young so their care had to be factored in somewhere too, which often led me to work late into the night after they had gone to bed. It seemed that, for the first time, a book was just not going to leave me alone until it was out. By the time the new term had begun I had a first draft, which I nervously printed out and took to show my friend, Louise (an extremely talented writer herself) who was in the same creative writing class as me. I expected her to make up some sort of excuse, or give me a vague ‘it was good’, but she brought the manuscript back a matter of days later and told me she loved it. Still, I thought, she’s being nice to me because she’s my friend.

But I got the bug, I wrote another book straight away (which became Sky Song) and I was just addicted to writing more and more stories for a while so Runners sat on my memory stick (you’ll be relieved to hear that I got a new computer from my student loan too!). Then I saw a competition run by Chicken House for new novels. I entered Runners. My friend was convinced that I was going to win. I didn’t, but it did go past the first stages and that, considering the sheer number of entrants and that, really, looking back, the draft was far from complete, was an encouraging sign. So I worked on it some more and sent it to another competition. This time it made the long list. I knew it wasn’t finished. I rewrote it again. I tried a few agents but got the inevitable rejections. I gave it a new title (it wasn’t called Runners at first) I tried a brand new publisher who was calling for full manuscripts and they wrote a fantastic email saying that they had read it and that it was a ‘well written and heart-warming tale’ but, unfortunately, it wasn’t for their list.

Then university got more demanding and I had other creative writing projects to do for my degree and Runners got forgotten. I’m ashamed to say that I lost faith in it – perhaps I was mistaken, perhaps it really wasn’t all that good. Every so often my friend would remind me of how much she loved it and she’d tell me I ought to be submitting it again but I worked on other things. Just before my university course ended in 2009 I began to help out at Immanion Press as an editor; soon I was taken on with pay and it began to take up lots of my time. Shortly after that, I graduated and I had to get a day job too and so writing took a back seat for a couple of years.

Fast forward to 2012. Two things happened at the same time and my life took a surprising but wonderful path. Firstly, I met another local writer, Mel Sherratt, who had been self-publishing, very successfully, on Amazon KDP and gave me so much advice and support about it that I had the idea to self-publish Runners. Then, just as I was preparing to do that, Immanion Press, who had never published Young Adult before, decided they were going to create a Young Adult list and offered me a contract for Runners. With the ego boost, I started to write again, lots and lots. The Sky Song trilogy became my first foray into self-publishing instead and I’ve loved every minute of the ride so far.

Some things are undoubtedly meant to be. I’m convinced (as I’m an incurable romantic at heart) that my silly little dream might just be the start of something wonderful. It certainly changed my life.

If songs could be blurbs…

by

You know when you sit and daydream about your new book and imagine a montage in the film version that you’re absolutely certain will be made one day, then you make a mental note of the music that would be playing over the scene and decide that you’ll insist the film’s producers approach the band in question and pay them any amount of money they ask for that song?

Oh, so that’s just me then? Well, the first time I heard this song the lyrics immediately resonated with me because they were so reminiscent of the scenes where Elijah is travelling the road with his friends in Runners. Enjoy!

Trailer Trash

by

Today is all about book trailers. I’ve been looking at trailers for other books for a while now and I love the idea so I finally decided to set aside the time to make one of my own for Runners. You select some images, a tag line, some music, and stick it all together – I mean, how hard can it be?   You’re sighing now and rolling your eyes heavenward and you’d be justified.  Misguided doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The music I want is something like this…

or this…

but what I find is available that I am allowed to use sounds mostly like this…

And don’t even get me started on photos! Free and also royalty free downloads are as about as easy to find as a unicorn in Birmingham, but not nearly so much of a delightful surprise when you do. Then there’s the problem of converting everything you want so that it will all go onto the same software, setting up a YouTube channel… My lack of skill with anything technical is now legendary so you don’t expect me to be good at this, do you?

A twenty minute job is turning into twenty days. Don’t you dare laugh when you finally see it.

The ones that got away…

by

There’s some feverish activity going on chez Sant this week.  Number one on the list of jobs is final preparations for the release of Runners, my first traditionally published book.   Some of you may know that Runners is actually the first novel I ever wrote (or finished, at least) way back in 2007.  So it seems like I’ve been waiting for this moment forever, the moment where I finally get to see it in print and hold and stroke its pretty cover and… well, you get the picture…

The inside of the book has been set and needs a final proof read. I have my fabulous editor, Louise Coquio to thank for that.  The cover has been chosen after a very long period of procrastination and a lot of hard work from everyone involved.  I need to bestow huge thanks on our model, Erin, who braved soggy forests, rain, rampaging stags and swarms of bees to pose for us.  And I need to thank my lovely designer, Kath Hickton, who has spent hours bringing the photos to life.  I can’t show you the final choice yet, but I can show you some of the ones that almost made it.  I hope you like them…

ErinBlueEyesandFontDarkerblue

 

BlueTintcorrectsize1RunBWErin5

X is for Xavier

by

I’ll be honest, I had sat for some time last night writing a completely different post for X. One of those from-the-heart, frank posts that looked decidedly ill-advised when I read it over again in the cold light of day.  So, as a much more lighthearted treat, I thought I’d introduce you to Xavier Bettencourt from Runners.  Xavier is a somewhat enigmatic character at the start of the book; there is lots we dont know about him and his motivations aren’t always clear.  One thing is certain, he doesn’t like Elijah very much and the distrust is mutual.  Perhaps something to do with the conversation that Elijah overhears concerning himself at their first meeting.  Luckily for Elijah, things with Xavier aren’t always what they seem.

Excerpt:

The stable was damp and inhabited by a skeletal, disgruntled looking horse which snorted indignantly at their arrival but, after a fuss from Rosa, decided they were welcome after all.  Two of the three stalls were unoccupied and obviously unused; Xavier noted that, although they were cleanly swept, there was no straw down.  On a bracket hung a wire basket with a supply of clean dry straw, which Xavier spread around in one of the vacant stalls for them to lie on.  It pricked them through their clothes but smelt inviting and safe.  Rowan fell asleep almost immediately, as did Sky, after finally agreeing to entrust Elijah’s care to Jimmy.  Jimmy did his best to make Elijah comfortable, but his limp form failed to respond to any of Jimmy’s anxious manoeuvrings. 

Xavier, who seemed to have taken on superhuman qualities, was adamant that he was going out to search for food. ‘Did you pick up those tokens?’

Rosa nodded and reached into her backpack, extracting the booklet that had been the cause of so much misery.  She tossed it to him.

‘Thanks.’

‘Where are you going to use them?’

‘If there’s a stable here with a live horse, then there has to be a house nearby,’ Xavier reasoned.  ‘I’m going to find it and see if I can get them to exchange these for something.  It’s a risk, but we don’t have any choice.’

‘You’re surely not going now?’

Xavier nodded, his square jaw set with grim determination.  Rosa was too tired to argue. 

***

A couple of hours later, Xavier stumbled in with a small cloth bag.  Shaking Rosa gently, he showed her the bag as she rubbed her eyes, struggling to wake. 

‘Where did you get that?’ 

‘Quite a walk actually – there’s a cottage.  It’s in a bit of a hollow, which is why we never saw it before.  They were nice people.  Only had eggs to spare, though.’

‘But,’ Rosa began groggily, ‘we can’t start a fire in here…’

‘I know.  We’ll have to eat them raw.’  Xavier steeled himself, at the same time pulling a brown, slightly feathery, hen’s egg out of the sack.  Tipping his head right back he cracked it into his open mouth and swallowed it in one, shuddering.  Rosa looked horrified. ‘This is not the time to be squeamish,’ Xavier scolded. 

‘Didn’t they ask you any questions?’ Rosa asked as she accepted an egg from Xavier and held it as though he had given her a hand grenade.

‘Yeah.  I felt a bad about lying to them really. They are a bit too trusting. Anyone else would have robbed them blind.  They asked where we were staying. I was sort of straight with them.  I told them I was with a group of soldiers on exercises and we got separated from the others, so we were sheltering in the stable, just for tonight, and we’d move on in the morning. Just in case they came noseying, really.’

‘I thought you said they were nice.’

‘That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t report a gang of kids hiding out in their stable, though, does it?’

‘We don’t really look like soldiers.’  Rosa forced an ironic laugh.

‘No,’ Xavier agreed, ‘but hopefully I was convincing enough that they won’t come to check.  It’s quite interesting that they believed me so readily – don’t you think?  Puts a new slant on what Jimmy told us about the CMO.’ 

‘Or perhaps they thought you were seventeen.’

‘Perhaps.’ Xavier shrugged. ‘Anyway, I told them the horse was ok with us. That seemed to settle it really.’  He glanced over at Elijah, who was shivering in his sleeping bag, his eyes moving rapidly under their lids. ‘Give me a hand to get one of these inside him.  He’s not going to last otherwise.’ 

Rosa gently pulled Elijah’s head onto her knees and tipped it back without resistance. She pinched his nose while Xavier cracked an egg and poured it into his gaping mouth, stroking his throat like he was giving a dog pills.  Elijah gagged and it dribbled back out, the yolk running down his chin.

‘We’ll just have to try and keep him hydrated, it’s the best we can do for now.’ Xavier grimaced.  ‘His breath stinks. We’ll wake the others.  They need to eat sooner rather than later.  Plenty of time for sleep afterwards.’

You can check out the Runners page on Goodreads if you want to know more.  Or, ya know, you could add it to your shelf… or something…

Runners release news

by

After a long chat with the peeps at my wonderful publisher, Immanion Press, I’ve taken the decision to postpone the release of Runners.  The official date is now 8th June 2013.  I apologise to the readers who have been waiting patiently for the book’s release and hope that they’ll stick with me just a little longer.  I’ll make it worth your while, I promise!  For a start, it will avoid the rather messy business of my head exploding.  Spring 2013 will belong to the Sky Song trilogy – the final book in the series, Not of Our Sky, coming out early May – and summer will be all about Elijah and his friends.  The Runners cover is being designed by the team at Immanion as we speak, (after the humiliating failed attempt to get local kids to model for it) and as soon as I get a peek I’ll share it with you. For now, all I can do is keep everything crossed that I don’t have a total meltdown between now and June!

About Runners

Elijah is nothing special. He’s just a skinny kid doing his best to stay one step ahead of starvation and the people who would have him locked away in a labour camp – just another Runner. But what he stumbles upon in a forest in Hampshire shows him that the harsh world he knows will become an even more sinister place, unless he can stop it. As past and present and parallel dimensions collide, freedom becomes the last thing on his mind as he is suddenly faced with a battle to save his world from extinction.  But before Elijah can find the courage to be the hero the world needs, he must banish his own demons and learn to trust his friends. And all the while, the sinister figure of Maxwell Braithwaite looms, his path inextricably bound to Elijah’s by a long dead physicist, and hell bent on stopping Elijah, whatever the cost.