A QUESTION OF HISTORY

Hello, hello, hello Dear Readers! A couple of bits of business to take care of this morning before we get to the main point of the post.

Over on US Amazon The Swan Kingdom is available in Kindle format for the first time (it's been out over there for eight years, believe it or not) and as an eBook in various other formats, so if you're a USian and you've wanted to get hold of the digital version, behold, your wish has come true.

On UK Amazon, Barefoot on the Wind - my Beauty and the Beast retelling set in fairytale Japan - is now available for pre-order (and presumably it's available other places too, but I haven't looked). It's due out on the 1st of September this year, and I'm hoping that I'll have a cover to share soon. Snap it up right now if it takes your fancy, my lovelies.

Onto Other Stuff! Today's reader question comes from a young person whose name I have stupidly lost - sorry, whoever you are! - but never mind, I can answer their query anyway, and hopefully they will still see it.

I'm struggling with including back-story in a lot of my stories as I like to get straight to where the action is, otherwise I lose interest and move on to something else. So how can I make writing about a character's background more interesting?

A very good question and a topic that I've struggled with in various ways through my own writing. Hopefully this means I can give some practical advice on the topic. Hopefully.

So!

The thing about the term 'backstory' is that it has an inherently negative sort of sound to it. Like something unnecessary bolted onto the back of the real story, but which isn't really part of that story in its own right. And that's just not true, as we shall discuss below. So instead of talking about backstory, let's talk about HIStory. Because that's what 'backstory' really is: the history of your characters and your world.
 
Phrasing it that way gives us the big clue as to why filling in the background of your characters can be a tricky thing. History is traditionally considered a bit dry and dusty (and I say that as someone who loved history in school, for the record) and no reader really likes the forward momentum of a thrilling story to suddenly grind to a halt for a chapter while they are given a history lesson instead.

Some characters don't need much of their history to be depicted for everything to work. If you give your readers a contemporary setting and a thirteen-year-old protagonist who is the middle child in a normal middle class family, they will not require a detailed history of this person's life so far in order to fill in the gaps. You can concentrate on showing that the kid's unhappy at school and doesn't get on with her siblings right now and the reader will be happy for the story to move forward from there.

If you hate filling readers in on background information then these are the kinds of characters whose stories you may chose to tell.

But let's say your goal is to present your readers with a scarred, one-eyed mercenary who can kill five men with a pencil in under a minute and has a mysterious glowing tattoo and a soft spot for Airedale terriers.

If you *don't* want to share that person's history with the reader... well, why on earth did you come up with that character in the first place? Because everything about them has clearly been shaped by a very interesting and possibly traumatic history, we will *want* to know what their backstory is. What's more, it'll be very tough to care about them in the present until we learn more about it.

Of course, somewhere between those two extremes - the ordinary thirteen year-old and the battle scarred, glowing mercendary - is where you'll find most people's writing. But what you have to get into your head, Dear Reader, is that history is what makes a character who they are. It's not a separate thing from the story you want to tell. It *is* the story, every bit as much as dialogue and descriptions and action are.

Even in a contemporary world with an 'ordinary' main character? You may not need to fill in the blanks of history for the reader, but nevertheless the reader's understanding of or assumptions about the history of the world and the character shape their perception of everything you write.

You, the writer, really need to be clear on each character's background and what major events and choices have formed their personality and priorities. You may not chose to share all of this information with the reader, but if you don't know it then there's a strong chance the person on the page will seem flat and one-dimensional, without a coherent personality and with no spark of inner life.

Take the time to think about this. Work out these histories. Work out who your fictional people are. THEN you can decide what is vital to share about them, and what the reader can work out for themselves.

Some techniques to consider:

You can try to do what many young adult and genre authors do, which is to kick your story off at the very moment that the protagonist's life actually becomes interesting - the moment that it all goes to hell in a handbasket, basically. An example of this would be Shadows on the Moon, where the first line of the book is: On my fourteenth birthday when the sakura was in full bloom, the men came to kill us.

Nothing that has happened to the character in their past can compare to that, so the reader is happy for the story to grow from that point.

That's a bit difficult to manage for every kind of book or story though. If it just won't work for yours, you could chose to focus very much on who your character is now - making them particularly intriguing or charismatic - so that it is less important to the reader to know where they came from and what shaped them, and more important to find out exactly how their character works now, what they will chose to do next, and how those choices may shape the story.

This is going to take some skillful work, because you need to still give the readers the impression that this person *has* a past, and an inner life. They still need to feel nuanced and human and real. But their past must be something that the reader is willing and able to fill in for themselves because their present is more interesting.

For instance, you could create a famous safe-cracker whose past career is a thing of legend, hinted at in whispers by other members of your cast. This person chooses to live in isolation in a tiny cabin in the woods miles from anywhere and, once coaxed out of retirement, constantly expects betrayal and refuses to get close to anyone. If that same character turns out to be able to change a baby's nappy and sing them to sleep without turning an eyelash, the reader can guess even more about their past. Doing so will give them a sense of satisfaction because it's a story we're all familiar with - and although it's clearly tragic, we'll be more keen to know what's going to happen next, especially if the other characters around them come to their own conclusions about this person's history too.

The reader might still wish they could learn a bit more about this person's past. But if you carefully shape the story in such a way that the action in the present is illustrating this person's character - lets say that the story is about whether or not this person will be able to work with the others in order to pull off a thrilling heist that will lead to the defeat an intergalactic army - then THAT is what we will care about, not the specific details of how the mysterious safe-cracker came to be the way they are.

You don't have to offer us much background in this case because you've actually put it in the foreground via your choices about what to show in the present.

Doing it this way also means that you can give us a character who is capable of plausible change and development during the course of your story.

But let's say this all sounds too complex. It's not the only way to escape having to fill in the character's background in detail. Some characters are presented to us exactly as they are, and we can learn everything that we either need or want to know about them within a few pages.

When you meet that funny little genius Hercule Poirot it's clear to see that the man is a tightly wound ball of eccentricities and tics created to keep the reader entertained while the whodunnit is gradually unraveled. We know he used to be a policeman, and we know that he's actually getting on in years, so he's had a whole life before he turns up in the pages of the first Hercule Poirot mystery. But we feel no need to penetrate the mysteries of his former career or know about his lost loves or why he decided to move to England instead of returning to Belgium after the war. In fact, showing us a young Hercule Poirot (or a young Sherlock Holmes, or Indiana Jones or Han Solo) actually spoils the mystique and makes the character somehow much less interesting than they were before.

For some stories, that's all you need. The readers will embrace the mysterious mercenary who likes dogs but will happily stab anyone who approaches her with a pencil and make up their own history for her precisely because so much is left unsaid. Clearly she is not a character that we are meant to know. She's a vehicle to carry us through the story.

However, this strategy of leaving the heavy lifting to the reader's imagination has drawbacks, too. You have to be careful that in presenting things this way you don't leave so many obvious blanks in the history of the character - traits that don't add up with each other, or that seem to contradict things we know about them in the now - that these blanks stop being a pleasant space for the reader to mentally play and become a puzzle. Because if you present the reader with a puzzle within your story world and then don't give them the solution? They will become very, very annoyed with you very fast. And you can protest that you did this on purpose because you wanted to leave it ambiguous all you want - the reader will feel that you have broken your implicit promise to them and they will not be placated!

What's more, this will only work if the character you are presenting this way has no significant development within the story that you're presenting. Hercule Poirot is always Hercule Poirot - he observes, he deducts, and he reveals, but he himself is left completely unchanged by any of the gruesome and extraordinary events that he witnesses. Indiana Jones is Indiana Jones and Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock Holmes. We don't need them to change - we don't want them to! Part of their brilliance is that they are unchanging and unchangeable.

So if you want to produce work in which your characters evolve and grow and change throughout the course of the book, then this method is out.

You can also try to look at your characters histories in a different way and see if that helps you to feel more enthusiasm for sharing them. You say that you want to get straight to the action. So get straight to the action, then! Don't give us any history to start with. Present us with your thrilling car chase or sword fight and show us who the characters are now, mysteries and all.

Continue to depict them in the story's now, hinting at their pasts and what they've been through. Make it clear to the reader that their history as intriguing and complex and fascinating, but don't tell them what it is. By a certain point both the reader and you, the writer, will find yourself desperate to finally get stuck into the truth of how this person can bake the best pain au chocolats in Paris, climb a building using only paperclips, and swear in five languages, but screams when they see a spider.

Hopefully, having done all this teasing, it will not feel like such a burden to delve into their past and illuminate it for yourself and the reader.

There are a number of methods you can use to do this. The person can decide to confide a bit about their history to another character - a character they are furious with, perhaps, or one they've begun to trust. This is a good way of doing it because it clearly deepens their relationship (yes, even if the truth is blurted out during an argument) and because seeing characters vulnerable inherently engages the reader's sympathy with them and makes them seem more real.

Alternately, they can have a flashback.

Don't panic! It can be a tiny one! For instance, as they prepare to climb the side of the Eiffel Tower using only a handful of paperclips, they suddenly recall the first time they climbed the walls of the Sisters of Bleeding Mercy Home For Wayward Orphans when they were seven years old in order to rescue the bird with a broken wing from the guttering. They remember the flutter of the bird's heartbeat against their palm and smile or sigh. Then they get on with climbing the Eiffel Tower. Boom, you're done.

Little flashbacks like this blend so well into current action that the reader doesn't feel the story has paused at all, and you can work quite a lot of them into the narrative if you do it carefully, meaning that the character's history seamlessly becomes part of the action of now.

If there's just too much history to fit into the narrative this way, you could go for a longer flashback - one that covers a key moment of the character's past and explains a few things about their strange and contradictory quirks at once. If you do this, however, you need to ensure that we already have our sympathies and interests firmly engaged with this character, and that the scene from their past that you chose to depict is both significant and fascinating in it's own right. The flashback is putting the story's present on hold, so we need to feel that this information is vital to understanding the story's present, rather than that it's just been shoe-horned in there randomly.

Finally, if a character's past is so vital to understanding their present that there's no way for the story to begin properly without some hint of it, you could try using the sort of technique I used in FrostFire, where you entwine the character's past and their present so that they feel of equal importance to the reader. You present them as dual narratives - perhaps distinguishing them by using a different font, or by announcing 'Ten Years Ago' or 'Present Day' when you switch to help the reader keep track. You ensure that both the past and present stands of the story have action and unfolding mysteries and changing relationships, so the 'past' sections never feel as if they're stopping the action. Instead, they are clearly part of the action.

FrostFire begins with a description of a recurring, terrifying dream that the heroine has suffered from all her life. We then get a scene from the heroine's childhood - a depiction of a moment when the heroine's young life seemed genuinely in danger... and then something very strange clearly happens. The scene ends before we can work out exactly what it is. We then see an older version of the heroine, searching for something which seems as if it might be linked to what happened to her as a little girl.

For the first half of the book, the mystery of the heroine's strange condition and her past unfolds side by side with the action of the present. Only at the midpoint does the past catch up with the present. Then, the reader understands all that there is to know about the heroine's past and her frightening magic, and the story can fully inhabit her future going forward.

Does all this seem incredibly complex? That's because it is! But it's all part of the craft of being a writer and eventually, if you try to view your characters 'backstory' as just another, potentially valuable part of the story that you're so keen to tell, you will learn how to use these techniques and even enjoy doing so.

And if not, you can always write about the next Hercule Poirot. After all, it worked for Agatha Christie...

WHAT'S GOING ON: YA FANTASY 2007-2016

Hello, Dear Readers! Welcome to Tuesday - I hope the week is shaping up well for you so far.

First up, in the grand tradition of this blog, I share some hair news! This was me last week:

 

With thigh-length hair, easily long enough to sit on (which, by the way, hurts quite a lot if you do it accidentally), and which had been driving me up the wall for quite some time. Not because I really bothered to *do* much with said hair, I hasten to add, but just because when you have that much hair even the super basic stuff like washing, conditioning and air-drying before putting it into a plait is laborious and time-consuming and I had slowly become very bored of it. So I headed off to the hair place on Friday and this is me now:

Realistically, I know this is still pretty long, but to me it feels incredibly different, and is so much quicker to wash and dry. They cut off over a foot of hair (I had to stand up to have the first cuts made, since otherwise the hairdresser said she would have to lie on the floor to get to the ends) and I have donated the cut-off tresses to The Little Princess Trust, which is almost ridiculously easy to do. If you're losing more than about 8 inches of hair in the near future you should consider doing the same, and making difference to a sick little girl somewhere.

OK, onto the main topic of today's blog, which was inspired by a chance encounter with a guest post I did for PewterWolf (otherwise known as Andrew - hi Andrew!) for the FrostFire Blogtour in 2012. The post was simply entitled YA FANTASY and was me talking about how things had changed since I came into the business in 2007. Reading it again in 2016, made my eyes bulge a bit, so I'm going to reproduce it below, and then talk about what's changed in the four years since it was originally written and what that means for YA fantasy, and my books now.

I'm a relatively young author. Young enough that when I attended the Lancashire Book of the Year Awards recently, some of the other authors were amusing themselves by placing bets on how old I was (the answer? Not as young as they thought. But nearly!). I was first published in 2007, which means I've only actually been part of the professional publishing community for five years. I cannot claim to have seen or done it all - and I certainly don't have the t-shirt.

Publishing is generally considered to be an extremely slow moving industry. It certainly feels that way when you're waiting for your edit letter, waiting for your cover design, waiting for your book to come out. But in other ways publishing moves lightning fast, and in the five years that I've been calling myself a writer, I've seen our entire community undergo metamorphosis, seen the profile of children's and young adult writers shoot sky-high, seen the birth of a whole society of adult readers who defiantly and proudly read YA novels in their YA covers, and seen the kind of books that fill the shops sweep from one extreme (brightly coloured middle grade novels chasing Harry Potter) to the other (black and scarlet toned dark fantasies and romances trailing after Twilight). 

Back in late 2005 I finished a fairytale retelling that I titled 'The Wild Swans' after the Hans Christian Anderson story it was based on. I submitted it to an editor who had offered me encouragement after liking but ultimately rejecting my previous manuscript. He told me he thought it was very good, and invited me down to London to meet him and his boss. But, he warned me, although his boss liked my voice and thought I had potential, she wasn't really sold on the book itself.

You see, it was a lyrical, romantic novel. It was clearly the sort of thing that ought to be marketed at girls. And it was a fantasy. The loose framework of the fairytale had been reworked to follow a magically gifted heroine on a quest to save her Kingdom and her brothers, and the plot encompassed magical battles, and shapeshifters and mortal peril. And it was for readers twelve and above, as it had some very dark themes and some extremely scary scenes.

These things, the editor told me sadly, were a hard sell. It was believed that girls didn't like fantasy and wouldn't buy it. Plus, all the recent publishing success stories (like Harry Potter and His Dark Materials) had proved that the 8-12 market was where the real growth was. Young Adult novels were a bit of a poor relation, unless you could gradually shade into YA with later novels of your series as Philip Pullman and J.K. Rowling had done. No one at the publisher was really sure where my book would fit into their list. It wasn't like anything that had come their way before. He explained that his boss would probably ask me to write something else for them instead, maybe a novel for younger readers to fit into one of their established imprints.

Can you imagine an editor saying NOW that girls don't like and won't buy fantasy? That YA is a hard sell? But back then, that was the way things were. So I went into my terrifying and exciting first meeting with real life publishing people fully prepared to fight my corner. I talked about Tamora Pierce and Robin McKinley, perpetual bestsellers and award winners. I talked about Meg Cabot's '1800-Missing' series and Doctor Who. I talked about the girls who loved Harry Potter as ten year olds turning into twelve year olds and wanting fantasy FOR THEM, fantasy with girl protagonists and strong romantic subplots. 'YA Fantasy,' I said confidently, 'Is due for a huge boom'.
  
Somehow - and I'm still not sure how - my persuasions worked. After listening to me babble on for about forty minutes, the editor's boss said, 'OK. I'm convinced. Let's do some revisions and go for it'. Whooo! Success! 

Of course the book got a very small advance and had no marketing or PR budget. It was given a beautiful, unique cover, retitled The Swan Kingdom and flung into the marketplace quite ruthlessly to see if it would sink or swim. If it had sunk I'm not sure what would have happened to my career. But it didn't. It floated aimlessly for a bit, then developed a slow but strong backstroke that allows it to keep selling to this day. So in a way I was right. There was a market for The Swan Kingdom.

But that big huge YA fantasy boom that I had promised my editor and his boss would arrive?

It never quite did.

Twilight came out in the U.K. the very year of my first chat at the publishers office (the UK paperback had an...unusual cover very unlike its iconic US jacket art) bombed, and then exploded worldwide, bringing an overwhelming tsunami of dark paranormal romances and then ripples of urban fantasy which washed up every variety of unearthly boyfriend (vampire, werewolf, demon, angel, elf, pixie, fairy and god). Then The Hunger Games arrived and threw another grenade, opening the way for a Dystopian novels invasion. Science fiction is starting to make a resurgence too.  

All these genres are, in fact, varieties of fantasy. Speculative fiction. Books which embrace the unknown. Some of them focus more on romance, others are gritty in the extreme. Some of them are beautiful works of literature, others more pulpy reads. But what none of them are is high fantasy - what the average reader would point at when they say the word 'fantasy'. The burgeoning success of the Game of Thrones series in the U.S. and the intense anticipation for the Snow White and the Huntsman and Hobbit films seems to hint that there's a demand there for classic fantasy taking place in secondary worlds. But the book that can do for YA fantasy what Twilight did for paranormal romance or Hunger Games for Dystopian, or even what Harry Potter did for the entire middle grade category? It doesn't seem to have been written yet.

I'm waiting for it eagerly. 

In the meantime, I'm left to look around me at the extraordinary landscape of YA fantasy - and if you want to argue with me about whether Hunger Games or Twilight count as fantasy, feel free in the comments - and wonder... is publishing for children and young people always like this? Does it renew itself completely every seven years as the human body is said to do? Or have I, as a young fantasy writer just starting out in 2007 and just hitting her stride in 2012, been been privileged to witness an extraordinary era of change for my category and my industry?

And most important of all... what's in store for us next?

I think you can probably see why looking back at this now makes me sputter. Because I was right!  YA high fantasy WAS due for a massive boom, and it was literally right about to happen as I was typing those words back in 2012.

August of that year gave us Sarah J. Maas' THRONE OF GLASS which took readers by storm. The first of Leigh Bardugo's now legendary Grisha Trilogy, SHADOW AND BONE - originally entitled The Gathering Dark and given a different cover in the UK, but swiftly brought into line with the US version when it took off like a bottle rocket - was out in June! And Rachel Hartman's world-beating SERAPHINA hit the shelves in May of 2012. I even reviewed it, here. Laini Taylor's genre redefining DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE was there before all of them, making it's entrance on the scene in September 2011.

Having waited so long and so eagerly for this explosion in YA high fantasy, you'd think I'd have noticed it happening - but I didn't. I missed it completely, because when I finished writing FrostFire in 2010, I threw myself wholeheartedly into my new idea, my very first piece of urban fantasy and my very first series, THE NAME OF THE BLADE. I spent four years of my life focusing on a completely different area of the fantasy genre. So while, looking back, I can now see what was going on? At the time I was oblivious. I just wanted to write the idea I was in love with.

This sudden drop of interest in the previously bullet-proof genre of urban fantasy/paranormal romance, and the surge towards high fantasy, may have been why, just between you and me, Dear Readers, my beloved trilogy did not do as well as anyone (me, my agent, or my publisher) had hoped it would, or believed it deserved to. As well as I believe now that it might have done, had it only been published two or three years earlier.

High fantasy has a place in mainstream culture now that it was only barely beginning to glimpse back in 2012. Game of Thrones is everyone's favourite guilty pleasure, The Hobbit trilogy (controversial though it may have been) made billions at the box office, Frozen is the cartoon that launched a thousand merchanising deals, Into the Woods was nominated for three Oscars, the average Netflix account or DVD shelf is strewn with live-action fairytale retellings and Snow White and the Huntsman is getting a sequel with added Snow Queen and extra magic.

And the YA publishing industry has been a big part of this change. Not merely following the trend but actually anticipating and *driving* it.

I haven't had a high fantasy novel out since FrostFire in 2012. I effectively missed all of this in my own career. If I'm honest, the thought leaves me a little depressed. It seems that if anyone can be counted on to miss a growing trend, even when she's been sitting right on the crest of it for years, it must be me.

But it's cheering to realise that I'm back in the high fantasy and fairytale saddle in September this year, with BAREFOOT ON THE WIND. I love my Japanese-influenced Beauty and the Beast story. It's dark, and lush, and weird, and it has shapeshifters, talking trees, mazes made of ice and bone, and the undead, and Feminism. While copy editing it I was moved to tears by a piece of writing that I could hardly believe had come from my pen. I think it's a good book. I'm also hoping that it is, for once, the right book at the right time.

Again, Dear Readers, anyone who intends to read this book and thinks they'll have the cash to cover it in September can do me a huge favour by pre-ordering it now. And with any luck there will be more lush, dark, weird fantasies from me for you to enjoy in the future.

ONE SONG TO RULE THEM ALL...

Hello, Dear Readers! Happy Monday to you all, and thanks for joining me for today's post! What is our theme this fine morning, you might ask?

One Song to Rule them all, One Song to find them

One Song to bring them all and in the darkness bind them... 

OK, that sounds... a tiny bit sinister, but I promise it's not. What am I on about, you wonder? Well, the other day I was listening wistfully to my #BaBBook playlist (because it's probably the loveliest playlist I've ever made and I sort of miss it) and I tweeted a link to a particular track saying 'If you want to know what my Beauty & the Beast retelling feels like as a song, this is it.'

Then it occurred to me that actually, there's a song like that on the playlist for every book I've ever written, going right back to my very first YA novel that didn't even get published. One Song (if you will) that just summed up the atmosphere, the central character's struggle, the soul and feel of the thing for me. 

Sometimes I got this wrong in my initial playlist and then got stuck and had to re-think because that key track acts as a sort of story linchpin for me, drawing all the other songs, other moods, other characters in towards that unnameable, ineffable thing that I was trying to get at with this particular story.

This struck me as kind of cool. And once I'd realised that, I thought maybe it would be interesting for Dear Readers to able to listen to these One Songs and compare them? So I decided to do a post about it, and here we are.

First up is the One Song for BLOOD MAGIC, which was the very first YA novel I ever completed. I sent this to every single children's book publisher in the UK, and two in Australia, and was rejected by all of them - but it was this book which caught the attention of my first first editor when it landed on the slushpile of my current publisher Walker Books, and launched me on my publishing journey. So it served a very useful purpose in the end.

It was a high fantasy novel about a young noblewoman with a magical ability so terrifying that it would have led to her instant execution if she was found out (which of course, she eventually was). She ended up saving her country and her King's life with that talent, but the story had a bittersweet ending, with her and her lover spared their lives as a result of the King's gratitude, but at the cost of being banished from their beloved home country. Along the way the heroine - Rialenthe, Countess of Kefari (*snorfle*) - lost her father and her best friend. Really, it was quite dark and I think the One Song definitely reflects that! It's Elysium from the Gladiator soundtrack by Hans Zimmer:

The next book is my first published one THE SWAN KINGDOM, which was a retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale 'The Wild Swans'. The song is called Cumulus by Imogen Heap, but I always identified it so strong with my heroine's character and her journey through the story from tentative, unsure, and afraid, to strong, beautiful and confident, that in my head the song will always be called 'Alexandra'. There's so much in this song that links to the way I feel about the book, and when I listen to it I imagine clouds passing over the sun, ripples moving across the surface of deep green water, and tall rushes singing in the wind.

Next up is DAUGHTER OF THE FLAMES - the book where I took the 'lost heir' or 'lost prince' trope and tried to turn it on its head by having the lost conquering royal hero who must reclaim their throne and bring balance to the Kingdom be a biracial girl with facial disfigurement and an awesome, disabled husband. I used a lot of the Gladiator soundtrack for this as well, but when I think back to writing it, the song I know I listened to the most, and which summed up the epic, tense, high fantasy vibe I really wanted was The Host of Seraphim by Dead Can Dance:

I wrote all the fight scenes to that - I probably listened to it over a hundred times just writing the final confrontation between the heroine, Zahira and the antagonist alone. Incidentally, the singer, Lisa Gerrard, is the same one you hear singing on the track Elysium above.

My third book, SHADOWS ON THE MOON, is a Cinderella retelling set in a fairytale version of Feudal Japan, where the heroine witnesses her family murdered and discovers she has a talent for concealing herself with illusions when this talent is all that saves her own life. After the shocking discovery of whom was responsible for the attack that killed her father and adopted sister, she becomes ruthlessly fixated upon revenge and decides to try to win the Prince's favour in order to use his political power to destroy her enemy.

This book actually had two really significant linchpin pieces - I think because it's so long and took so long to write. The way the heroine exchanges identities throughout the book probably has something to do with it, too. I thought long and hard about which song to include, but eventually decided to go with the first one, because I think the second is more about the mask that the main character is wearing (playing the part of a beautiful courtesan named Yue) in the final part of the book than the person she really is inside (a frightened, bereaved young woman named Suzume). So you get The Meadow from the Twilight: New Moon score by Andre Desplat. It sums up Suzume's desperate search for a place to belong, an identity that feels like it's hers, a family that's worth of her. Weirdly this isn't on the soundtrack that's on Spotify - I had to link to YouTube instead:

The next one makes my dilemma over the One Song for Shadows look like cake, though. It's FROSTFIRE, the companion novel to Daughter of the Flames, another epic high fantasy, this time about a young woman named Frost who lives under a curse of berserker rage that can be triggered at any time and which has ruined her life. In her search for a cure she gets tangled up in the conflict left over after the events of the previous book, and comes to love two men whose lives hang in the balance of that battle.

Now, when I first began writing this book, Frost was a boy. Love interest #1 (Luca) was a girl, and the third person in their triangle was a boy called Arian. But then I realised Frost had tricked me. I knew Frost was a tall, very physically strong person with daddy issues who wielded their father's axe, so I assumed boy, but actually the character was a girl. But I didn't see why Luca should have to change. So I wrote a lesbian high fantasy. But that version just didn't work for my editor - not because of the sexuality of the protagonists, but because in my eagerness to get my first queer love story right I'd focused on that romance to the exclusion of everything else and the voice, pacing, plot, other characters... basically nothing else really worked. So I ended up making Luca a male character, threw out the entire first draft and started again from scratch (I still think of this book as a queer love story, btw, since my head canon is that Arian is bisexual).

Throughout this whole process of changing genders and writing new books with the same title and character names, I went through many, many, maaaaany tracks which I thought might be this novel's One Song. But I didn't find it until midway through writing that final, definitive version. You can imagine my relief! It's The Gravel Road from the score for The Village by James Newton Howard:

This song still makes me tear up a little - it speaks so poignantly about Frost's longing and loneliness, her romantic, loving heart. Plus, there's a certain series of notes within the piece (near the middle) that sounds like the distant call of a lone wolf to me, and that's a very important image in the book.

Now onto the NAME OF THE BLADE trilogy! This is my very first trilogy and also my very first urban fantasy story. It's set in contemporary Britain and is the story of a British-born Japanese teenager who 'borrows' a priceless ancestral katana (a Japanese longsword) from her family's attic and unwittingly unleashes the Gods and monsters of mythical Japan onto the streets of modern day London. The book has an all PoC cast and includes genderfluid and gay characters, plus unexpectedly badass parents, smexy fox spirits and all kinds of chaotic shenanigans.

For a while I was a bit stumped by how to pick a One Song for the trilogy, since each of the three books had a different playlist and a different One Song. And this post is already long enough! But then I whapped myself on the forehead for being so dense, because there's always been a single One Song that I've returned to again and again that just sums up everything I love about the trilogy, everything that makes it special to me - the fast pace, the Japanese influence, the modernity - and everything that makes the heroine Mio (who hangs onto her sense of humour grimly by her fingernails to the very end) a unique character. Long time blog readers have heard it before - it's Paprika from the Paprika score by Susumu Hirasawa (again, not available except on YouTube - whydo you hate me Spotify?):

Finally, it's the One Song that started it all, the track that sums up the essence of BAREFOOT ON THE WIND, my most recent fairytale retelling and the companion novel to Shadows, set in the same Japanese influenced fairytale world of Tsuki no Hikari no Kuni. 

This song sums up everything about my heroine, Hana. She's quiet and pragmatic, and just gets on with things - but underneath the matter-of-fact exterior there's such a painfully deep well of feelings which she's desperate to find a way to express. The narrative of the story and the deepening, changing relationships between her and the other central characters builds up inexorably towards a confrontation between Hana, a perfectly ordinary village girl who has only common sense, kindness, and determination on her side, and the monstrous magical forces aligned against her. This One Song really captures that sense of running out of control towards something that may be miraculous or fearful. It's Experience by Ludovico Einaudi and I love it:

I hope this has been as interesting for you to read and listen to as it was for me to write, Dear Readers! What a fun trip down memory lane. Read you later, honeys!

CODENAME: DtH & #WALKERFICTIONFEST!

Hello, my lovelies! Today I bring you a report on my flying visit to London over the weekend, which was so flying that I didn't even tell most of my London based chums about it (if you're reading this - Hi! Sorry, guys!) because I had to squash so much stuff into such a short period of time. It was exhausting, but immense fun, and I not only got to spend time with lovely Walker people, and gorgeous blogger pals, but also to meet a whole load of NEW blogger pals AND squeeze some research for a new book (Codename: DtH) in there, too. At some point on the train ride down, I decided to document the whole thing with photos, so here we go.

First things first: I staggered off the train and onto the Tube with my extremely heavy suitcase and found my hotel, where I flung off my boots with extreme prejudice and flumped onto the bed for a little bit until I cooled down, because even though it was gloomy and dark, London was *ferociously* hot and I was (as always) not really dressed for that. I just can't get used to the difference in temperature and humidity - it feels like being in a different country.

Here is said bed before I wrecked it:

And it was supercomfy, let me tell you. Eventually, after a judicious application of air conditioning, I peeled myself off the supercomfy bed and took a picture of the view, which was pretty spectacular.

The Gherkin AND the Shard! When you read Frail Human Heart you will realise why I'm so thrilled about seeing the Shard. It didn't look like that by the time my story was finished with it, that's all I'm saying. By the way - Frail Human Heart IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD ON KINDLE. If you have a Kindle or the Kindle App on your computer, and you're into that. Again: just sayin'.

Having got myself upright, it was time to tackle the first part of Operation Flying Visit, which was to get my butt back on the Tube and to the British Museum, where there was much researching for Codename: DtH to be done. I don't think I've talked very much about this particular future book on the blog before - I've mentioned that it's another fairytale retelling and is a sort of companion novel to Shadows on the Moon, right? However, it's based on a Chinese story this time, and therefore the setting needs to be a fairytale version of Imperial China rather than Tsuki no Hikari no Kuni/The Moonlit Lands, my fairytale version of Feudal Japan.

And I honestly know nothing about Imperial China, which is why I have a pile of books to read that reaches nearly to my hip (mostly library books - reference books are so expensive, erk) and why I was seizing the opportunity to spend some time in the Asian Rooms at the BM.

Looking at my camera this morning I was a bit stunned at the amount of pictures I'd taken. I mean, I knew I'd taken a LOT, just... not quite that many. We're talking in the hundreds, here. There's just so much to see at the British Museum and it's all so fascinating that you start feeling worried you'll miss or not absorb something important, so the impulse to snap images of *everything* is fairly overwhelming. And that's what I did. Here's a small and carefully curated selection of those photos.

 

 

I stuck around until pretty near to closing time, and then headed back to the hotel to get some rest, because the next day was the #WalkerFictionFest. I'm a bit gutted that I didn't remember to whip my camera out for this as well, honestly - I could have gotten some great photos with blogger pals and the other authors, but I was feeling a bit flustered (I was doing my very first public reading from a finished copy of Frail Human Heart!) and it basically slipped my memory.

Luckily lots of other people with more presence of mind were attending, including my friend Sarah of Feeling Fictional, who has the most fantastic Instagram account filled with photos of everyone who was there, and who (among other things) made this fantastic photoset of all of us and our book covers (thank you, Sarah!):

I got to meet Lauren James, author of The Next Together and hear her presentation about this highly anticipated debut as well as her reading from it. As expected, Lauren was charming and smart and adorable. I'm sure anyone who likes my books will love hers.

I also got to meet Katie Everson, author of Drop, who was thoughtful and sweet and lovely and she had the presence of mind to get a selfie of us, which I've pinched off Twitter:

Her book sounds emotionally shattering - perfect for fans of Keren David or Melvin Burgess. She is also a professional cover designer and she's the one who created the covers for both the UK edition of FrostFire and the second UK paperback edition of Daughter of the Flames. How cool is that?

Here's me during my presentation, waffling on about something, probably Frail Human Heart or my love for sushi (I don't know who took this one - someone from Walker Books?):

Much talking and laughter - and Pringles and mini-doughnuts - were had, and a good time enjoyed by all, including me. And that was Operation Flying Visit! And now I have to go and renew my library books, so I shall bid you all adieu, Dear Readers! Tell me how your weekend was in the comments - and if you haven't entered yet, don't forget that there are still signed copies of Darkness Hidden up for grabs here :)

A QUESTION OF BOOKS AND FILMS

Good Morning and Good Monday (if there is such a thing) my lovely readers.

I am sorry for the premature announcement of Exciting Tidings last week. I was told that everything was going to happen then, but obviously something went wrong. I mean, no one told me, so I was sat there hoping and waiting like the rest of you guys, but... nope. *Sigh* I'm hoping it'll all come together this week. I would cross my fingers, but currently my hands are hurting, so... I'll just cross them in my heart. At least I can absolutely promise that when the Exciting Stuff is officially released, it will be worth the wait (yes, it really is that good).

I am ill again. I feel as if I have just been ill constantly since my dad died. My immune system is not exactly robust, which comes along with the chronic health conditions I have (especially the IBS and asthma) but I've never been this ill this much before. Not since I was a kid, anyway. First there was the horrible cold/bug that wiped me out for a week after WFC in Brighton, then I had a deadly stomach bug, then my Repetitive Strain Injury in my hand kicked off, then I did something really weird to my hip that just ow ow ow why, and now I have bronchitis.

There is a perfectly good explanation for at least some of this. I remember seeing a documentary years ago in which a doctor - who had recently lost his own father, and been very ill afterwards - proved that your lymph nodes actually shrink when you are miserable. It sounds fantastical, but when you're really sad all the time your body is just swimming in certain 'sad' chemicals and the lymph nodes don't like those at all. They shrink and curl in on themselves in an effort to get away from the sad chemicals, which inhibits their ability to produce white blood cells, the warrior cells that fight off infection. And for me, whenever I get an infection, that seems to affect my joints, hence the hand and hip problems.

It still very much feels like the world - possibly even the universe - is conspiring to stop me from writing this book, the final book in The Name of the Blade trilogy. But I will not be stopped. I'm at 65k words as of this morning and hope to have added another 2k to that by the end of the day. That means I have probably another ten or twelve thousand words to go (if the story doesn't mutate in some strange way close to the end, which is always possible). I'm motivating myself by remembering how much my father loved and believed in this story and how proud he would be of me for finishing a proper trilogy, like many of the science fiction and fantasy authors that he loved.

Last week I had a lovely email from a group of readers - Daisy, Maia, Charlotte and Heike - which cheered me up and filled me with that nearly irresistable old-lady desire to pinch people's cheeks for being so darn adorable. The email posed a question that I thought might be interesting for other readers to get the answer to as well, so I'm doing it here.

Hello Zoë, we love all of your books, especially Frostfire and that's what we wanted to talk to you about. We think this book has full potential to become a film and we think you need to contact some producers/film makers and ask them about making a deal. We are not just doing this for us we are doing for you and all of you fans (we are some of them). We will not contact the producers without you permission.

I totally agree with you, my honeybunches! I also think that FrostFire would make a splendid film. And if you actually happen to know any film producers, you have my permission to direct their attention to the book, and let them know that the rights (owned by my publisher, Walker Books) are available.

You see, it's not up to the writer whether a film is made from one of their books or not. The world of novel writers like me and the world of the film industry are miles apart. In order to make a film of any kind you need a film studio and a production company involved, lots of connections to people in the movie business (like the heads of distribution companies and casting directors and screenwriters) and millions of pounds or dollars to spend on adapting, casting, filming and selling that movie. This is why if you do sometimes hear of authors who are producing films from their books, those authors are ones like Stephenie Meyer who are millionaires and can set up their own production companies.

For an ordinary writer, what has to happen is that someone connected to the film industry - like a scout, or a producer or a successful screenwriter - comes across the book somehow, either because the publisher or agent who holds the rights sends it to them, or because they've heard of it some other way. They have to read it, and love it, and as a professional, they have to think that it would adapt well into the medium of a film, and that the film could be popular enough in the current market to make a profit.

Even this sounds a lot easier than it is. Hundreds of thousands of new books for children, young adults and adults are published every year, and there are already millions of books out there too. And most films that are made don't even *come* from books. Usually the books that get made into films are the ones which are already hugely successful mega-bestsellers, because those books already have a massive built-in audience. A largely unknown book by a largely unknown author like me doesn't have that great a chance of getting the attention of anyone with the money and connections to make a film of it, even though the subsidiary rights departments of our publishers and our agents will send the books out to those sorts of people, just in case.

Let's say that FrostFire did end up on the desk of someone in the movie business, and that they did read it, and did want to make it into a film. What would happen next is that they would approach my publisher or my agent and offer to buy an 'option' on the book. That means that they pay for an option to develop the book into a film. But it doesn't mean they have to develop the book into a film. Once they have the option, all it really means is that no one else can develop the book into a film for the term of that option. The vast majority of options like this expire without any development actually being done at all. Other books have their option renewed multiple times but never make it any further than that.

In some cases things do progress further. Maybe the person who bought the option works for a film studio. They get someone to write a script and then take that script to a meeting with the bosses. The bosses may say: 'Yes, we like this - go ahead and start developing' but equally, they may say: 'No, we don't like it/it's too similar to another film that already came out/it won't appeal to a broad enough audience.' Or maybe the person who owns the option doesn't work for a studio - maybe they're a producer or a writer. They now need to convince a studio and a distribution firm to invest in making the film, and the same process as above applies.

Even out of the hundreds of bestselling, hugely popular books that get optioned by movie people every year, only a tiny amount actually get far enough to have a script written, let alone make it into cinemas.

And, did you notice? Apart from saying 'yes' when a movie person approaches them and asks to buy the option on the book, the original writer has NOTHING to do with any of this! They have no say and no influence at all. This holds true even if the book does eventually get the greenlight from a studio and is made into a film, too. Very successful writers, who've been promised that they will be consulted about any changes to their story, still often find that their book has been ripped to shreds and made into something entirely different for the screen, and there's nothing they can do about it.

So what all this comes down to is that if your favourite book hasn't been made into a film, it's not because the writer doesn't want it to be, or that he or she hasn't made the effort to contact producers and offer the book to them. It's because the book was sent out to all the usual movie scouts and studios by the publisher or the agent, and none of the movie people have so far read it, or wanted to buy it - or, if they did, and they bought an option, the film hasn't gone into development yet.

For the record, none of my books have sold film rights. I'm sad about that, but there's nothing that I can do to change it, so I just try to be hopeful that some day it will change. In the meantime, if anyone reading this DOES know an influential producer, studio boss or screenwriter (or is one)... give me a call! We'll do lunch (you'll have to pay though, because I'm broke).

A QUESTION OF COUNTRIES

Hello, my ducky darlings! Welcome to Thursday, and another reader question which was left by Giora in the comments.

 "...my questions about your books are: Did any of your novel been translated to a foreign language and did you have a book event outside Great Britain?"

Let me take the last part of this question first. Sadly no, I've never done a book event outside the UK. Generally authors are too skint (that's poor, for non-Northerners) and lack the connections to set up book events for themselves, especially foreign ones, which are obviously more expensive because of the costs of travel and accomodation. Therefore almost all the events we do, with the exception of things like local school or library visits, or maybe local signings, are arranged between a publisher, who will pay the author's expenses, and a bookshop or conference or other venue which wants to invite the author to take part in a signing or reading or panel event in order to sell books and add value for their customers. The author doesn't really have any say in what events they do, or where those are, or even if they do events at all. It's all about demand from outside.

There are exceptions to this; some well off (usually bestselling) authors sometimes can afford to combine a research trip or holiday abroad with meeting fans in other countries, if large enough numbers of fans from those countries contact them to express an interest. Sadly, I am not one of these well-off authors, so my visits are confined to ones which are either arranged by my publisher, or very local.

If anyone ever contacts me to ask me to do an event in another country, and can afford to pay my expenses, I promise that I will be only too delighted to take them up on it. In fact, I keep my passport current in hopes that one day such a thing will happen to me. But I'll probably need to sell quite a few more copies of my books first.

Now, the first part of your question has a more cheerful answer, thankfully! Yes, several of my books have been bought by foreign publishers and translated into a couple of different languages. Shadows on the Moon and The Swan Kingdom, my two fairytale re-tellings, were both translated into Polish by Egmont Poland.

And my most recent high fantasy novel, FrostFire, has been translated into German by Carlsen Verlag and will be coming out in Germany at the beginning of October year.

Those are all the translations that my books have had so far, but I have fingers crossed that more will come in the future. If there are any non-English-language publishers are reading this, please feel very free to contact Walker Books!

I hope this all makes sense, Giora. Thank you for your question. See you all next week, honeys!

THE NIGHT ITSELF UPDATES

Hello, Dear Readers! Happy Tuesday. A few lovely updates about The Night Itself today. Over the weekend a number of lovely things showed up in my Google Alerts or my Twitter feed. Let's start with this picture of The Night Itself in the wild in Malaysia from the lovely Lynn:

So pretty! Cosying up to her sisters FrostFire and Shadows on the Moon, too, aw.

And then! I got this picture of my hot pink precious looking great in a Waterstone's in Amsterdam:

This one was from long-time blog reader and commentor Alex. Thank you, Alex!

But as exciting as these pics are, even they can't quite compare to the news I had on Saturday morning. It initially popped up, as I said, as a Google Alert. A mention of The Night Itself... in The Times? The TIMES? Me? When I looked it up, the article was behind a paywall:

Which predictably sent me frantic because Amanda Craig is a really famous children's books reviewer and I had no idea if this was a good or bad mention, argh, what was happening? It was barely eight in the morning, and I was looking after my father, which meant that I couldn't go charging out in search of a copy of the paper. The suspense was killing me.

I appealed to friends on Twitter and Facebook. Did anyone have a copy of The Times? What did it say? Was it good? Bad? Break it to me gently, please!

Thankfully two lovely friends popped up on Facebook almost immediately. One typed out selected quotes from her paper copy of the review - quotes that made my heart go Ba-THUMP -  while the other went and copied the full review from the online paper that she access to and came back to paste it into the FB thread for me. This is what it said: 

"The Japanese cartoon-style manga, and its gentler, more sophisticated cousin, anime film, continue to exert their fascination over the young teenager. Zoë Marriott, a rising star of fantasy fiction, has taken its tropes for an enjoyable and unusual trilogy, The Name of the Blade, of which The Night Itself is the inception.

Narrated by the half-Japanese Mio, a 15-year-old living in London, it has a magical sword at its heart. A priceless antique katana that once belonged to Mio’s grandfather, it has been hidden away in the attic until she borrows it for a fancy-dress party and releases both its supernatural powers and danger. Trained to fight, our heroine is better placed than many to grapple with the ancient evil unleashed on our capital — but even before she discovers her sword is sentient, she knows she’s brought the “Hidden One” out too soon.

Of course, there is a beautiful Japanese boy involved in it too — something seemingly demanded by all young adult fiction these days — woken from a state of suspended animation and a spirit realm into which she must pass to confront her worst nightmares. There is a sparky best friend, Jack, and Hikaru, their guide who “looks like Neo in The Matrix’s younger brother”, but with the small addition of a tail. When Mio and Jack are transformed into foxes, it’s only one twist in a blend of Japanese folklore and modern adventure that is cool, fast-paced and fun.
 
Best-known for her prizewinning debut The Swan Kingdom, Marriott is terrific at rebooting fairytales. Her descriptions of the natural world, her literary intelligence and her scared yet courageous heroines are excellent role models in the mould first devised by writers such as Tamora Pierce , make her a katana-cut above the rest."

 Oh. My. Goddess.

My first ever review in The Times, and it was from Amanda Craig, and it was... glowing. More than glowing. Amazing!

You can bet that as soon as my dad had finished his dialysis and safely tucked into his armchair with an omelette and a mug of tea, I hightailed it to the bus-stop and into town to pick up my very own copy of the Saturday Times. When I found one and leafed to the right page to see it for myself, I was so overjoyed that I ended up getting the attention of one of the sales assistants, who came and celebrated with me right there in the shop. Because it was even better than I'd realised. The Night Itself was The Times Children's Book of the Week!

(Note: Mio is actually British born Japanese, rather than half-Japanese, just in case anyone was confused).

So all in all, that was an excellent weekend for me :)

In other news, I'm still hard at work on the Darkness Hidden edits, and am hoping to get those back to my editor this week. I'm also working on yet another post about female characters, Feminism, and the language that people use to talk about girls in fiction, which (surprise surprise) may be controversial. If I can manage to make sense of that, you may see it on Thursday.

Read you later, guys!

FROSTBITE

Hello, duckies! Today I bring an update with a European flavour. You may remember last year I told you that FrostFire had sold in Germany to Carlsen Verlag (the German publisher of Stephenie Meyer and Kristin Cashore)? Well, I've been keeping an eagle eye on their website for a bit hoping that I would manage to see the cover art before it turned up in a Google alert (there's just something so weird about finding out about your foreign editions and cover art through Google alerts) and yesterday my obsessiveness was rewarded with my very first glimpse of the German version of the book.

As the post title hints, the title has been changed to Frostbite - Frostblüte in German. Which is quite funny because that's probably what I would have called the book, if two other books with that title (one by Kelley Armstrong and one by Richelle Mead) hadn't come out about six months before here in the UK. C'est la Vie.

Here's the synopsis from the Carlsen website, which I translated using my wonderful GCSE German. Ha ha ha ha. No, actually I didn't actually learn any useful German while studying for the GCSE, unless you count knowing how to order icecream and count to ten. I did this with Google translate:

Frost can not get close to anyone - and for good reason: She bears a wolf demon, which breaks out and kills indiscriminately if she is injured or overwhelmed by emotions.
 
When she joins a band of warriors who protect the kingdom from insurgents, she quickly arouses the interest of Luca, the leader, and the distrust of Arian, his best friend. Both men feel that she is hiding something. Frost soon suspects that one of them will rekindle the fire of her feelings. But at what price?

A heroine to die for - fragile and strong at the same time. A story that will leave you on tenterhooks with the fight against ruthless villains and inner demons. A book to revel in and devour - full of unexpected friendship, serious decisions and delicate, bittersweet love.

I'm sure that Frost herself would be very flattered by that description (actually she'd be horribly embarrassed and probably go hide in a tree or something, but again, C'est la Vie).

And now at last, here is the cover art:

Copyright 2013, Carlsen Verlag

This is very pretty indeed, with the snow and the restained swirly letters, and I'm so happy to see an actual wolf on there that I'll try not to worry that the model doesn't really look like Frost at all. Once more, C'est la Vie!

It looks like this will be coming out at the beginning of October this year, and will have ebook and paperback versions. I think I have a couple of Dear Readers in Germany already, so I hope they like it, and recommend it to their friends :)

That's all for today, so have a great weekend and I'll read you on Tuesday chickadees.

RETROTHURSDAY: HOW EDITING WORKS Part I

Happy Thursday, Dear Readers! RetroThursday, in fact, as I select and herd a mature post from its comfy resting place in the archives and force it to assume its game face again. Today's post shall be:

HOW EDITING WORKS, Part I

 
I realised over the weekend - much to my embarrassment, although not to my surprise - that I promised to do you a post about editing/working with editors last week, and then forgot all about it. Frankly, sometimes I'm amazed that I can tie my own shoelaces. But anyway, here that long-awaited post is, and if anyone has any questions about this or would like any points clarified or gone into in more detail, bring it up in the comments.

In my leisurely roaming of the writing-centric parts of the interwebz, I've noticed a lot of general assumptions and misconceptions about editing - that is, the work that writers do with the professional editors employed by their publisher. Often I see people talking as if its an editor's job merely to fix typos and spelling mistakes (and that this means the writer shouldn't bother about those things) or bemoaning this widespread idea that 'real editing' is dying out because of the heartless paper-pushers in charge of publishers (and this can be proved by all the typos in published books).

Both of those ideas are, in my experience, dead wrong.

I can't claim to be a huge expert on this topic. I'm a relative newbie compared to many authors, and all my books have been published by one publisher (and their international sister companies). But over the course of five YA books (one of which never ended up being published) I've worked with three different editors (two at my UK publisher, one with the US one) and at least four copy-editors, so maybe I do have a bit of insight about the editor/author relationship that could be useful.

First: Fixing grammar, spelling mistakes and typos is only one very small aspect of a huge array of responsibilities that fall under an editor's job description - those things are primarily the author's job. Editors act as a safety net to catch the mistakes which everyone, no matter how careful, makes from time to time. Land in that safety net too often though, and the people in the circus will rightly wonder why exactly you climbed up there on the high-wire in the first place if you didn't know how to do the walk. Any writer who thinks they don't need to worry about those things themselves is operating under a tragic misapprehension.

Second: Editing is not dead. Neither is it a 'lost art'. Editors are not a dying breed; they're not even feeling off-colour, as far as I can tell. All the editors I've worked with have been fiercely intelligent, intimidatingly well-read and PASSIONATE about making the books they've acquired the very, very best they can be. These guys are hardcore; without them, half the books on your shelves would not be on your shelves at all, and the other half would be much the worse. Blaming the editor for a handful of typos which were most likely introduced during typesetting is like blaming the head engineer of a ship for a handful of lose bolts rattling around in the hull of a giant ship. Yes, the rattling is annoying. However, if the head engineer weren't around the ship would probably have sunk by now.

So, bearing that stuff in mind, how does working with an editor...work?

Generally, once you've managed to get your foot in the door with a publisher, the editing process breaks down into a few distinct steps. Reading author blogs, you can get the impression that these stages of editing are somehow set in stone, but I've found that it changes not only from editor to editor but from book to book. It's an organic thing. The steps I've listed below can blend into each other, be repeated multiple times, or sometimes be skipped altogether.

There's even rumour of a wondrous thing known as a 'clean' manuscript. This is a draft so perfect, so beautifully formed, so effulgent with divine beauty, that on being submitted by the author it needs no editorial work whatsoever before going off to the printers. Please note - If I ever manage to produce such a thing, you'll probably want to find a sharp implement (a shovel or a woodaxe perhaps) and remove my head immediately, as it will be a sign that I've been taken over by a malevolent alien intelligence and am plotting the end of human civilisation as we know it. *Shudder*

Basically what I'm saying is that this is just a guide, rather than a set of commandments.

HOW IT BREAKS DOWN

Structural edit/edit letter: Mention edit letters to published authors and you get one of two reactions. Either they groan and hold their head in their hands, or they bounce up and down with feverish excitement. The first reaction probably means they've just received an edit letter. The second kind are still waiting for it to arrive.

The structural edit is the first stage of getting a book ready for publication. It's all about the big picture - characterisation, plot, pacing, setting. The things that hold the book together and make it what it is. This is the stage where an editor may request big changes, such as transforming your main character from an elf to a vampire, killing off the erstwhile heroine in chapter four with a poison dart, or moving the whole story from Medieval Florence to the purple rainforests of Gundi'iip Prime in the Taurus Nebula. It addresses issues the editor has with the book as a whole and offers suggestions on how to fix them. The edit letter pretty much tells you what the editor thought of the book (from 'I love it! Let's talk about a few issues...' to 'I'm so sorry, but in its current form...') which is why writers tend to get very excited and scared about them.

The edit letter I received (via email) for Shadows on the Moon mentioned that my editor felt two important characters were a little vague - they didn't come fully into focus throughout the book and their motivations were unclear. She also felt that the middle section of the book was too long and contained too many secondary/minor characters, and that the ending was too abrupt and left a major plot thread inadequately resolved. We eventually cut nearly 30,000 words from my first draft.

If that makes you gulp? Brace yourself. With FrostFire, I never got a formal edit letter. My editor felt that it would be best for us to have a phone conversation about the book and the extensive changes that would be required. We talked for over an hour, going over all the issues that prevented the story and characters from working, and tossing possible solutions at each other.

At the end of that conversation I went away and produced a new, detailed synopsis for what I called FrostFire #2 - an entirely different version of the book in which the plot was turned inside out and most of the characters swapped sex. This served as a kind of backwards edit letter. My editor read it, and came back to me with detailed notes. I amended the synopsis accordingly. She read the outline again and approved it, and then I revamped the book based on that. FrostFire #2 was around 15,000 words longer than the original version in its final draft.

Subsequent structural work: After you've done your first run at any major changes and re-writing, you send the manuscript back to the editor. She may love the changes you've made and be happy to accept the book as 'delivered' at this stage. Or she might feel that you've not gone far enough to address the issues she brought up in the edit letter. Or she might now have new concerns caused by the changes you made.

The book can go back and forth between the editor and the writer several times at this stage. With Shadows on the Moon, I think we did about four or five structural passes (one of which included notes from my US editor). I tried to beef up and clarify the motivations of some characters, but in the process I made their actions seem contradictory in some places, so I needed to dig deeper into them and make the reader understand why they acted as they did. I cut some characters from the middle portion of the book and compressed it, but it still felt overly long and crowded. I extended the ending, but one plot element still felt unresolved.

We worked on those issues until each one was fixed. Every pass that we did moved us closer to that Eureka moment when all the elements of the story clicked together and worked - but it took at least six months for that to happen.

With FrostFire, after I finished rewriting the (radically different version of the) story and sent it in, my editor loved it and we moved straight onto the next stage with no further structural work.

Line editing: This is probably my favourite part of the editing process. This is where love of language really comes into play, as the editor and author work together to make sure that every line of the book expresses the author's ideas in the best possible way. We want to make sure that the words on the page are acting as the reader's gateway into the world of the story, rather than a barrier.

Normally at this point, the writer will receive a copy of their manuscript (either as an computer document or printed out) which has been 'marked up'. That is, the editor has taken out their red pen and gone through the whole thing, literally line by line, noting problems with sentence construction, clumsy wording, repeated words, grammar, places where the author's meaning is unclear, where drafting has left inconsistencies in the fabric of the prose or where ideas could be better presented.

Because my first draft of Shadows on the Moon was exceptionally long for a YA novel - 130,000 words - we did a huge amount of trimming during this stage. My editor would take two or three pages of lovingly researched descriptions of clothing or food or nature, or two or more seperate scenes that served a similar purpose, and suggest changes that snipped away extraneous words, clauses, sentences and paragraphs, reducing three pages of description to half a page, or compressing two or three scenes down into one. She also made sure that in my efforts to create a convincing fantasy world and weave authentic details into the story I didn't lose track of the important themes I'd introduced early on.

In FrostFire (probably because the book had already undergone a massive overhaul) the line editing was far more focused on polishing the prose and hunting down and murdering any sections where all the cutting, pasting and re-writing I'd done had caused jerky transitions or repetitions, or where characterisation or plot didn't track quite smoothly.

Copy editing: This is where, quite often, someone else will get involved in your work on the book. At my publisher they have dedicated copy editors who provide a fresh pair of eyes to double check everything in the manuscript, since by this point both the editor and the writer will have read it many times (in fact, it's normally at this point that I become convinced the book is utter dreck and start begging my editor to reassure me that they're not just publishing it out of pity). I'm told some publishers contract this stuff out to freelancers, which I think is a shame, as there's enormous potential to develop a friendship with your copy editor. One of mine used to make little pictures in the margins, which always made me smile.

If you thought that your editor was tough, be prepared for your copy-editor to bring tears to your eyes. Every little tic in your writing (words or phrases that you've taken a liking to and reused several times, the tendency to start sentences with But or And, incorrect use of semi colons, overly long sentences, overly short sentence fragments, repetition) is going to be mercilessly highlighted. Every mistake you made (changing a minor character's eyes from brown to hazel without realising it, making the moon gibbous in chapter two when it was cresent in chapter one, having the heroine scratch her head without first showing her letting go of the war-axe she was holding five pages ago) will be noticed.

No matter how much work you've put in up until this point - in fact, sometimes because of all the work you've done - this stage will usually drench the manuscript in red. By the mid-point, you will feel like a talentless, careless, moronic hack. You will swear that if you ever have to meet your copy editor, you will grovel at her feet for having forced her to wade through this awful soup of errors, although secretly you will be tempted to tip itching powder into her underwear for pointing out every single flaw your book has.

But sometimes copy editing can yield delightful surprises. During the US copy-edit of Shadows on the Moon, it turned out that the copy-editing manager at Candlewick Press was a haiku scholar and a Japanophile. So along with Americanising the spelling and grammar, we ended up re-writing most of the haiku in the book to reflect a more traditionally Japanese aesthetic, which made the whole process unexpectedly fun.

Pass pages/proof reading: This is the final stage of editing before the book goes off to be printed, and sometimes it sort of blends into the previous one, depending on how long the preceeding steps have dragged on. Basically, this when you get a massive envelope in the post which contains the typeset/formatted manuscript or pass pages. For the first time, you see your book laid out as an actual book, with chapter headings, section pages, page numbers and the correct font. This is when you will see the internal design and any extras that the designers have decided to surprise you with, like artwork or a special font for your chapter headers. Usually it arrives on very large pieces of paper which show two pages on each side.

This is your very last chance to make changes to the book - to catch any typos or errors that have been introduced at any point along the way, or which have been caused by the typesetting (or even, perhaps, overly enthusiastic copy editing). It's very much NOT the time to make radical changes to anything, since cutting a paragraph on page one of a chapter is going to have a knock-on effect on the typesetting of every other page in that chapter and cost the publisher money. But you should still mark anything that you notice, and approve or stet (that is, withhold approval of) any changes which have been made since the last time you saw the manuscript.

Seeing the pass pages for Shadows on the Moon actually made me tear up a little bit, as I realised the book had been decorated beautifully throughout with the same sakura that illustrated the cover, and that the final product really would be gorgeous. I remember reading a certain line in an early chapter about the low, wavering moan of the wind as it swept over the deck of a ship, and just being struck by it in exactly the same way that I would have been if I was reading anyone else's work. This sort of thing is what makes pass pages special.

And anyone who has seen the sublime swirling frost designs on the inside of FrostFire can probably imagine my reaction to that :)

Okay guys, this post is already mega long so I'm going to stop here for now. I think we'll come back to this topic on Wednesday, and I'll talk about how writers tend to feel during editing, how you work out disagreements with your editor, and how you ensure your book is the best it can be.