This weeks Dear Unpublished Me post comes to you from the author of one of the most anticipated books of 2018 Anna Day! Anna grew up and still lives in the
North East of England. She studied Psychology at university, and worked for several years as
an Assistant Psychologist. She has always loved creative writing; even as a little girl she
would staple pieces of paper together and write stories for her parents to
read. However, she only started writing seriously a few years ago, and was
noticed by the Chicken House team when she was shortlisted for the Times/Chicken
House Children’s Fiction Competition in 2015. Her greatest love is her
children -- a little girl and a little boy, who provide her with constant
entertainment and inspiration.
Dear Anna,
It’s autumn 2014. You’re on maternity leave with your second
baby and, a few months ago, you lost your agent. You’ve printed off your novel The Gallows Dance and you want to post
it to Chicken House in order to enter the Times/ Chicken House competition for
unpublished authors. The deadline is tomorrow. You’ve just driven to your local
post office and it’s closed. You’ve got a toddler and a baby in the car and
you’re in the clutches of babydom: sleep-deprived, sore-breasted,
sleep-deprived, banana down your top, and did I mention sleep-deprived? You
have two options: drive to the post office in the next village, get the kids
out the car, drag them into town, manage your toddler’s war-cries for
chocolate, risk the baby waking up and screaming the place down and finally post
your manuscript, or you can just go home.
I understand why you’re tempted by the latter option, the just going home option.
Your writing journey to this point, whilst relatively short,
has not been smooth. You wrote a book whilst on maternity leave with your first
baby (two books in fact, but the first one was TERRIBLE!) and managed to get an
agent. She was awesome, full of life and ideas, and she really believed in you.
But, not surprisingly, someone else thought she was awesome and offered her a
job as an editor. Which she took. Hence, you became agentless.
She tried to help you get another agent, but The Gallows Dance was dystopia, and the
blanket response, though positive about your writing, was ‘sorry, the dystopia
market is saturated.’ You could not get your head around this. You LOVED
dystopia, and had read every dystopian book you could get your hands on during
both of your maternity leaves. It seemed people could get enough of a good
thing. And now you’re left wondering if the post office’s annoyingly early closing
time is a sign telling you to take the hint and give up on the dream of
publication.
Another factor nagging at you while you sit in your car,
massive envelope clutched in your hands, is the very realistic possibility of
more rejection. Like I said, I know how tired you are, raising kids is amazing,
but Christ, it’s hard work, and I remember too well those moments of fragility
when reading yet another book-related email containing bad news. Could you
really stomach another rejection?
I know you’re seriously considering driving home. But if you
do, that may well be the end of your writing dream. You now have two children,
not one. You’re back at work in a few months. Will you really find the
motivation to write a whole new novel without an agent encouraging you and
absolutely no guarantee of publication?
I understand why you’re tempted by the latter option, the just going
home option. But here’s why you mustn’t:
The need to make sense of internal and external worlds with
words, the need to connect with others through story-telling, the need to walk
in someone else’s shoes entirely and share their journey, is in your blood.
It’s why you became a Psychologist, and it’s why you must not give up on
writing.
And when your marriage ends, you will need writing more than
ever. It will give you a focus, a distraction, a way of rebuilding your
self-esteem. It will model to your children that a single Mum can achieve her
dreams. By doing what you love, achieving all you can be, you will show your
children how to find happiness from within themselves.
It’s why you absolutely should not just drive home. It’s why you should haul the kids out of the car,
drag them through town, deal with the chocolate-fuelled tantrums and the howling
baby and post that manuscript if it bloody well kills you.
I promise it will be worth it.
Lots of love, 2017 Anna xxx
P.s. – You will totally crack and buy your
toddler chocolate |
Publisher: Chicken House
Publication Date: 4th January 2018
|
THE FANDOM
by Anna Day
Summary
Cosplay ready, Violet and her friends are at Comic-Con.
They can’t wait to meet the fandom of mega movie, The Gallows Dance. What they’re not expecting is to be catapulted by freak accident into their favourite world – for real. Fuelled by love, guilt and fear, can the friends put the plot back on track and get out? The fate of the story is in their hands ...
A fast-paced, genre-flipping YA fantasy adventure from a brand new author, writing in homage to the best YA fiction.
