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* Hi Colin and welcome to tall tales & short stories.
Would you like to tell us a bit about yourself?
I work full time as a Teaching Assistant in a primary school. I laugh at my own jokes when no one else does, I like throwing things in the air and catching them, currently trying to learn to ride a unicycle despite being in my forties. I love cartoons, old horror movies, and anything with Simon Pegg in.
CLASH
Alex: school psycho and under-ground cage-fighting champion.
Kyle: talented artist, smart school-boy and funny man.
When Alex witnesses a brutal murder at the club he can't go back to The Cage, but without fighting, he starts to lose control. He soon sets his sights on Kyle, a boy he thinks can help.
But Kyle has his own problems and he's convinced Alex is one of them.
Boys can play dangerous games when they're scared and this one will haunt everyone involved.
What will it take for each boy to confront the truth?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Colin Mulhern on Clash and writing for teens.
First of all, I haven’t got a clue what teenagers like to read, and I think, for writers, it’s a lost cause trying to work it out. I spent several years trying to write for teens, trying to gauge what would work. I missed the mark every time. That’s probably because the market moves so quickly. If you look at what is popular now and try to write something similar, then by time an editor sees it, she’ll know it’s going out of fashion. The only thing you can do is write the book you really, really, want to write. That’s how
Clash came about – total frustration at getting nowhere for a long time. I decided to write something I wanted to read. I didn’t even plan to send it out because I never thought it would get picked up. Weird, eh?
On the subject of issues and moral boundaries, I try not to consider them unless they come into play as the story progresses. If you set out to write an “issue” book, say on a medical or mental condition, you risk it sounding like an “issue” book. There are issues in
Clash, but I never set out with those things in mind from the start; I started with Kyle and Gareth getting chased by the local psycho. It grew from there. The local psycho became Alex, began to develop, and before I knew it I was writing about him just as much as Kyle. Their individual problems developed with them.
I didn’t worry about taboo subjects, otherwise a lot of
Clash would never have been written. There were a few scenes that were calmed down when it came to editing, but I never really considered holding back at th
Catnip Publishing is an independent publisher of children's books for all ages from picture books to YA. Their list includes award winning authors and books, and new editions of old favourites. Tall tales & short stories talks to Catnip's Commissioning Editor, Non Pratt.
* Hi Non, and welcome to tall tales & short stories could you tell us a little about yourself?
I'm the commissioning editor at Catnip Publishing, an independent children's publishing house. I think books are rather wonderful things and I can get quite ranty about the importance of reading and extremely ravy about little things like cover finishes. I'm also a big fan of cats (I have two, who I often refer to in tweets as the Panda and the Tiger) and erm... mugs.
* What inspired you to become a Commissioning Editor and how did you prepare for this career?
I don't think I'm unusual in that I started applying for jobs in publishing because I liked writing as a teenager, but I was lucky to secure a job as an editor in children's non-fiction, which gave me invaluable experience in actually writing for a young audience. I moved across to fiction and into a commissioning role because I wanted to work with authors, instead of writing the material myself.
* How would you sum up Catnip Publishing’s philosophy?
We have a three-pronged approach to publishing: buying in books from elsewhere such as the excellent
Scaredy Squirrel picture books from Canada.
Bringing back titles that no shelf should be without, like the
Jinny at Finmory series:
And producing stand-out original fiction such as J.D. Irwin's Edwin Spencer books.
* What makes Catnip Publishing different from other publishing houses?
In the final post of Strident Publishing Month, tall tales & short stories talks to Strident Publishing’s Managing Director, Keith Charters and Commissioning Editor, Graham Watson.
Strident Publishing is the publisher of several award winning books including, most recently, Linda Strachan's Spider.
Spider won the
2010 Catalyst Award. The winner is voted for by teenage readers and Spider was chosen as The Book of the Year 2010.
Keith and Graham, welcome to tall tales & short stories and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. * Commissioning Editor, Graham Watson:
Hi Graham, could you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m the Commissioning Editor of Strident. I’ve been in the book trade since I was a teenager and have been involved in every part of the process from commissioning books in publishing houses to selling them over the counter in bookstores. All my heroes were writers, so being an editor is pretty much a dream fulfilled.
* Managing Director, Keith Charters:
Hi Keith, could you tell us a little about yourself and what inspired you to set up Strident Publishing?
It’s to do with history. Before I became a publisher I was an author ( and I still am). And before that I worked in business, running parts of other people’s companies. I always knew that one day I would set up my own business, it was simply a question of what.
By the time my first LEE novel (
Lee and the Consul Mutants) was published I had alread
Hi Jasmine. Welcome to tall tales & short stories and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. Could you tell us a little about yourself? I’m a senior commissioning editor for
children’s fiction at Oxford University Press and have worked in publishing for 7 years or so. I previously worked for a company called
Working Partners where I developed series fiction including Rainbow Magic, My Secret Unicorn and Beast Quest.
(Interview on this blog with Sara O'Connor of Working Partners) When I’m not editing, I’m writing, and my novel the Windrose - the first in the trilogy- has just been picked up by Harper Collins US.
Which authors/stories did you enjoy reading as a child/teenager? How do you think they compare to the children’s/YA novels available today? What do you think children of today want to read?What I liked to read as a child/teenager
• Roald Dahl – The Witches, Matilda, The Twits
• William Sleator—Interstellar Pig
• Phillip Pullman – Ruby in the Smoke
• Judy Blume Tiger Eyes, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret
• Lois Duncan – Stranger With My Face
• Christopher Pike and Point Horror books.
• Meredith Ann Pierce – Dark Angel, The Woman Who Loved Reindeer
• L.J Smith – The Vampire Diaries _ I read these the first time round, really pleased that a new generation of readers are getting a flavour of such an awesome love triangle.
• Michelle Magorian – Goodnight Mr Tom
• Harry Potter – I was still a teenager [just] so it counts!
What do you think children of today want to read?The same things that children of yesterday read, great narratives, characters that you can love and empathise with. Funny stories, sad stories, love stories and horror stories. The fundamentals of good storytelling don’t change.
What inspired you to become a children's/YA book editor and how did you prepare for this career?I have been a lifelong reader of children’s books. Indeed the fact that I was still reading children’s books when I was an adult was my first clue as to what I should do for a living!
I studied English Literature and Language at Oxford University and learnt lots about analysing books and talking about them. After I left uni, I worked for a year going to state schools around the country talking to young people about higher education and its benefits. I realised how important books were to raising aspirations and how they had raised my aspirations as a child without me even really noticing! After that epiphany, I knew I wanted to work with books—writing them and editing them.
I then got onto the Penguin Graduate programme. It was an eighteen month programme where I got to work in lots of different parts of the business – marketing, publicity, sales, a stint in the Penguin US office as we
SARA O’CONNOR -
SENIOR COMMISSIONING EDITOR
at WORKING PARTNERS
Sara O'Connor (right) and Sara Grant at the SCBWI Undiscovered Voices launch party.Hi Sara. Welcome to tall tales & short stories and thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. Could you tell us a little about yourself?Thanks for having me. I’m an American, born of British parents, and have been living in England for just under six years. I’ve been at WP for five and a half years and I worked at Little Brown BFYR in New York prior to moving out here.
What inspired you to want to work in children's books?When I went to university at Emerson College, I stumbled onto an Introduction to Children’s Writing class taught by
Lisa Jahn-Clough. Streaks of sun light shone down through the clouds and trumpets blared. It had never occurred to me that children’s book publishing was a profession, but once it did, there was nothing else I wanted to do. I took every children’s class there was and then made up my own on independent study.
Which authors/stories did you enjoy reading as a child/teenager? How do you think they compare to the children’s/YA novels available today? What do you think children of today want to read?I think I was about 11 when I stopped reading books meant for my age group. There wasn’t anything available to buy in between Sweet Valley High (which I gobbled up) and Stephen King (which gobbled me up). I went from the Babysitter’s Club to Jean M Auel’s Earth Children series, from Christopher Pike to John Saul.
In high school and college I read a lot of fantasy: Robert Heinlein, Robert Jordan, the Death Gate Cycle, etc. I have always been a fan of series fiction. In comparison, the “adult” books I was reading then are on the same level as YA is now in terms of mature content. The difference is that now, YA books are set in high schools or have teens as the protagonists, which can serve to make it that bit more real for the in-between reader.
Children of today want to read excellent stories: emotional, romantic, scary, triumphant – same as I did back then.
Could you tell us about Working Partners and how the company works?
Oh man, my blog is also called TALL TALES, oh well great minds think alike:-)
An honest and down-to-earth interview. I particularly liked the point about writing what you want to write, not trying to second guess what's flavour of the month with teens.