Authors Electric

Dear Aunty Debbie. I’m so happy!  (utterly deadpan) Why’s that then, Happy Writer?  HW: Because I’ve had an email from a company that’s going to make my book into a film!  AD: That’s amazing news. Which book is that?  HW: The one I put on Amazon last week. The one you told me needed editing and I couldn’t afford an editor, so I published it anyway.  AD: Okaaay. So what will this company do?  HW: Well, they found my book and they must have loved it so much, they told a producer friend who wants to make it into a film.  A D: They just came across it on Amazon?  H W: Yes – isn’t it incredible?  AD: (Totally incredible. As in not remotely credible …)  HW: And they won’t charge me anything.  AD: I’m sure they won’t. Yet. But this is what will happen:  The company’s representative – let’s call him John – will email you a few times, telling you how much they love your book (but oddly never mention anything specific to your story ...

My three Sterkarm books have many adult readers but they were originally written and published as Young Adult. Bad Girl by Susan Price   Bad Girl is the first novel I’ve written with an adult audience always in mind. A friend said she loved its 'audacious' plotting but kept thinking: ‘That wouldn’t happen. Nobody would do that.’ Every time she thought this, she told me, there followed several minutes of thought, at the end of which she had to admit that it could happen. She just found it hard to believe. Consider this blog a public service, then, because the events in Bad Girl are actually very plausible. Chillingly plausible. I did my research. Let me put this unhappy scenario before you, while hoping that it never comes to pass: A member of your family— a daughter, a niece, a cousin— reveals that she has terminal cancer. She’s broke but desperately wants to take her child to Disneyland before she dies, to leave the child with one lovely, happy memory. Yo...