Sweet 2016

Happy 2016 to you!

1. Above is my reading pile/s for Perth Writers Festival Schools and Teachers Days. Luckily I've already read a couple in that list, and it is proving a pleasure to read the rest.

2. If you're free on Saturday 16 January, come to the State Library of WA for free writing/reading workshops for kids - details here.

3. 2016 is already looking exciting writing-wise: I have started the year doing an edit for a novel I first drafted last year, and will be out at the beginning of next, and the calendar is filling up with lots of fabulous things, including the Asian Festival For Children's Content in Singapore in May (thank you, writingwa and Department of Culture and the Arts!). More of both forthwith.

4. I spent the first day of 2016 swimming in the clear, shark-less waters of Yallingup with cousins and kids. The evening before, we saw these folk for the hills. A visiting Irishman suggested that the sight of them to us must be ordinary: we put him straight. The elegant strangeness of a kangaroo can never be ordinary.

5. I wish you all a year of books, and the open-minded curiosity they create.

The Flyaway Girls: what Katy thinks

Waiting for first reviews to come in can be nerve-wracking, so getting one like this makes one's writerly heart sing.

I'm not sure about the recommended reading age - I would have thought The Flyaway Girls is definitely at the young (and younger) end of that spectrum. If you've read it, what do you think?

Reading Time's Katy Gerner said:

I found The Flyaway Girls refreshing and innovative. The vast majority of the books that I have reviewed for young people have been about romance, sex, dangerous bullies and family violence. It was a treat to read a book in which none of these played a part.

The Flyaway Girls is about life balance and also about learning to accept that although you can be very good at something you will not necessarily be the best. Other themes include nurturing relationships and making amends.

Chelsea is devoted to gymnastics and is recognised as the being the hardest worker at her club and a great performer by her coaches. She is also ambitious and hopeful for her future. This is until a new girl joins her class and, despite no previous training, quickly grasps skills that took Chelsea hours of practice to achieve. Chelsea can’t even enjoy hating her because Telia is a lovely girl and looks up to her.

The characters in the Flyaway Girls are also well-drawn, likeable and realistic: they become irritated, confused, try to be helpful and take themselves too seriously.

The environment in which the story is set is normal too: there are no long periods of suffering. Chelsea is uncomfortable with her father’s new girl friend but deals with it, her friend that makes snide remarks also has a good side and when Chelsea is snubbed by her long suffering friends, she makes new friends.

Lawrinson’s writing style is vivid, her descriptions of gymnastics interesting and her humour light. I recommend this book for girls aged 11-15.

Lawrinson has written more than ten novels including Bye, Beautiful which was a 2007 CBCA Notable Book and Chess Nuts which was a 2011 CBCA Notable Book.

The Flyaway Girls: what Kate thinks

I got my first two advance copies of The Flyaway Girls in the post the other day. This is my twelfth book, and the sight of the final product after years of writing, researching, editing, more editing, and even more editing never fails to delight me.

This novel almost never got written, and, after that, it almost never got finished.

And the reason it got finished was because I gave a copy to my colleague's daughter. I was so close to the novel that I'd lost any sense of whether it was any good or not, and I was so rusty after several years away from Real Writing that I felt I'd almost forgotten how. So I asked Kate. Now, I've never met Kate, but I know she's a keen reader, so I sent her mum an unfinished copy and asked if Kate would do me the honour of reading and commenting on the manuscript.

She did. She loved it, and passed it on to her friend and her sister. They loved it too, endingless or otherwise.

This week, it was fabulous to be able to pass on the novel, complete with ending, to Kate. And even more fabulous to get this response.

Many thanks to the Penguin Random House crew, past and present, for their patience, dedication, and for their cracking cover. (Which Kate and her sister also heartily approved, I might add.)

The book is dedicated to Amanda Quigley, the wonderful coach of Southside Gymnastics Academy.

But my biggest thank you goes to Kate. Kate, thank you!

The Flyaway Girls will be out in August.

Meanwhile in Germany

... this will be published early next year by Random House.

I'm sure you can guess which novel it is, even without a skerrick of German.

If you have do happen to have a skerrick of German, however, the details are here.

The Flyaway Girls - book and blurb

Nearly five years after its beginning, the idea I wrote about here has turned into an actual book. With an actual blurb. And it has a title.

The novel started with me musing: what do you do if you're good at what you love, but not the best? Do you give up? Do you keep going with different expectations? How do you measure success? Is success what you make yourself, or what other people think of you? What, in the end, really matters?

Nobody gets what they want in life, not all the time, anyway. There is luck and there is talent; there are the x factors of background and wealth, temperament and timeliness. Part of learning to be a human being is managing the gap between what you want and what life allows you to have. And you start learning young.

So, here is the story of Chelsea and Telia, gymnasts, friends - rivals?

It is out in September.

All praise Penguin for the gorgeous cover and the title. And all praise to Amanda Quigley of Southside Districts Gymnastics Academy for her inspiring coaching of gymnasts and invaluable and direct advice to one writer, me. Also thanks to my junior readers/writing coaches, Kate and Anna and Kate's friend, for inspiring me to get it to the finish line.

Kindling Words

Folk don't often become writers, illustrators or editors without possessing a reasonable degree of introversion: it is necessary to get the work done. However, creators are in need of communion with their people. Often this happens informally: we meet up at festivals, or are introduced through fellow artists, or at book launches. Here in Western Australia, organisations like the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, WritingWA, the Literature Centre and the ASA also provide forums and courses where creators at all different stages of their careers can get together, exchange information, and drink a lot complain about contracts bemoan the state of publishing talk.

In Australia, though, there is nothing like Kindling Words.

Thanks to the Copyright Agency and the Department of Culture and the Arts, I got to experience Kindling Words East in February this year - and be changed by the experience.

Seventy five established writers, illustrators and editors, lucky enough to have been chosen from a lottery system, gathered at the Essex resort in snowy Vermont to discuss, over three glorious days, what we do when we make stories for children and young adults. The rules are strict: no pitching to the editors and no sharing personal information about others. The focus is on deeply contemplating the craft of what we do: no discussion of contracts or book deals, just the real stuff. Each day there was a keynote speech by a writer and then an illustrator. There were readings. There were shared meals and conversations over those meals about Everything. There was warmth and intensity and a palpable creative charge. In the afternoons you could retreat to your room to write (as I did), or join in whiteboard discussions instigated by participants in various locations around the resort.

I cannot do justice to the level of inspiration that gathering generated, nor can I adequately describe the warmth and kindness with which I was treated by all the participants, and in particular by the organisers. The weather was also an experience: minus twenty five, with snow so cold you couldn't make snowballs.

Stay tuned for the results.

Farewell to fourteen

1. It's hard to think of a word to adequately describe this year: let's settle for hectic. But I have managed, in spite of everything, to write in the margins (ha! see what I did there?).

First, the indomitable Patricia McMahon and I have finished a draft and (almost) a redraft of Lark (can't sing) Jaz, or whatever the title will be of our joint endeavour. I have also redrafted the still-untitled (though I have some great contenders!) gymnastics novel, which will be published in June 2015 by Penguin. And my current project has just been supported by the Department of Culture and the Arts for 2015, and its panel of peers, for which I am immensely, indeed staggeringly, grateful.

This one is going to matter.

I am also beyond grateful for the Department of Culture and the Arts and the Copyright Agency for supporting my upcoming residency at Kindling Words East in the US, a residency specifically for professional writers, artists and editors - more of which in the New Year.

2. This is my summer reading list:

One of these things is not like the other

3. My old comedy buddy Jude Bridge won the Scarlet Stiletto Award this year: see here. Judy is a writer of quirky, funny, heartfelt short fiction: she's been published all over the place in recent years, and I hope to see a collection of hers on shelves near you sometime soon. You won't read anything like her anywhere. She's the one with the sausage in her mouth, from back in the day:

The wonders of latex

4. This is a blog about writing, but I have to acknowledge the hideous events of the past week, and shake my head in horror, along with the rest of the world. For my money, the best piece about one of the hideous events is Randa Abdel-Fattah: if you haven't read it, it's here.

5. A special thank you to The Literature Centre and its staff for its support of me this year, and to Writing WA. We writers and illustrators are so lucky to have such vibrant agencies supporting us in Western Australia. And, while I'm at it, thanks to all the SCBWI crew - you know why.

6. May 2015 bring peace to you all, joy if you can find it, lots of good books, good friends, good conversations. And time to breathe, reflect, and appreciate the life you have.