Authors Electric

2024 is a leap year, which means we all get an extra day in February to write our next masterpiece. This extra leap day, proposed by Julius Caesar more than 2000 years ago to keep our calendar in sync with the seasons, is traditionally added at the end of the month on February 29th. I make no apology for mentioning it now because there is a rare open submission event happening on that extra day at Chicken House, the original publisher of my debut novel  Song Quest . For 24 hours only, debut authors of fiction for young readers are invited to enter their (finished or unfinished) first novel into Chicken House's Open Coop. Open Coop 29th February 2024 Although there wasn't an official Open Coop back when I submitted Song Quest (Chicken House itself was still an idea in an egg at the time), I followed a similar route to publication by sending in the early chapters of my book myself. In those early days I had no agent and knew nobody in the business, so I simply worked my wa...

Part 3 of a typical writer's history. I suppose the occasion which defined my writing career was the day of the Smarties Award ceremony in 1991.  I was amazed to have a telephone call to say that The War and Freddy was   shortlisted.  It was such a little book.  I liked it in a mild sort of way but as soon as I heard the news it grew in stature until it became a  wartime epic, though only in my  mind.          The War and Freddy, in its latest guise  reissued by Catnip in 2007 So the day came and I presented myself in a rather exotic, plant-lined room at the top of the Barbican Centre.  An exciting atmosphere, full of other authors.  Jacqueline Wilson was there with the very first Tracy Beaker story.  No, that didn't win either.  Neither did Robert Westall.  Actually, I forget who did win our section.  Susan Hill was the judge.  Her tone of voice as she started talking about Fr...