First and Foremost by Ann Evans
Having your first ever
book accepted and published is a massive milestone in any author's
career and I can still picture myself back in 1995 gripping the
telephone and practically dancing for joy after just being told that
Scholastic Children's Books wanted to publish Cry Danger.
It wasn't Cry Danger
then, my working title was The Instructor but coming up with a
new title was just one of the changes that had to be made before it
could go to print. So as well as changing the title I also had to
remove all traces of blood from a particular scene; I had to calm my
main character down (in most scenes) as she was a bit prone to
screaming at the drop of a hat; and giving the woodcutter the chop from my story as
he was too scary.
All these changes and
more I willingly made, and under the eagle eye of editor Anne Finnis,
the finished book was something I was thrilled with and it ended up
being translated into a variety of different languages.
Happily more books have followed since then, but I can't help feeling a
special affection for the one that broke the run of rejections and turned me into a real life author!
After Cry Danger
went out of print I brought it back as a 'print on demand' book, and
now I'm excited to say, it's out as an ebook and can be found on Amazon. Needless to say the computer I wrote it on all those years ago has long gone. I think it was an Amstraad and used those little floppy discs (which weren't floppy at all).
So bringing Cry Danger to
ebook status was a matter of sitting down with the printed book
propped open and diligently typing it all over again. However in doing so,
the decades seemed to slip away as I clearly recall my thought
processes with every scene, and recalled how I'd re-work paragraphs
until I was happy with them. I could even recall what was going on in
my family life at different points in the story. Eighteen years or
more? It could have been yesterday.
The story is about a
girl who goes on an outward bound school trip to Wales – where
danger awaits her. My son had just been on such a trip which is where
the idea came from. Thankfully he didn't face the dangers and scary
bits like my character, Sophie. But I was able to divulge from him
all the activities he and his pals got up to. (Well at least the bits
he told me about!)
Then just a couple of
years ago my grandson, Jake was also going on a school trip to the
same place. He'd read Cry Danger – he knew who the villain
was. He was definitely nervous about meeting the fearsome Instructor.
And the fact that the villain's character had the same name as his
teacher, also gave him cause for concern for some reason.
“Don't be silly,
Jake,” I told him. “It's just a story!”
And that's all it is,
but for me a very special story.
What memories have you
got about your first ever book?
 |
| The ebook version of Cry Danger. |
Comments
My first book (1974, God help me)had an even greater stricture laid on it than a new title and no blood and screams. I was told to lose the first three chapters. No arguments. Refuse and you won't be published. I was mortified: to me they were incredibly important as they started my writing career. But I soon realised they were rubbish after all and now their whole content is conveyed in about three hundred words. First big lesson learned. Next seventy big lessons still to be encountered.
But there's no feeling in the world quite like seeing and holding your own first book for the first time. However, I'm not tempted to put mine out as an ebook. That would definitely be a bridge, or book, too far.
I bet lots of authors have happy memories of those Scholastic days - the start of the SAS, wasn't it.
My first published book was 'Charity's Child', published by tiny but wonderful Circaidy Gregory Press in 2008. Coincidentally, that is just out as an eBook, too.
Good luck with 'Cry Danger', Ann - the new cover looks fantastic!
More joyful than my first book was the thrill of my first short story being published, long before I even thought of writing a book.