Links You Might Like

♥Neil Gaiman's inspiring Carnegie acceptance speech.

♥Melvin Burgess reveals his top 10 favourite books written for teenagers in the Guardian.

♥A very cute ring for tea lovers (even if it's very impractical).

♥Artist Tom Lewis. His work was featured on the show Junior Apprentice. Not at all writing related, but I love it.

♥The Edinburgh Book Festival programme looks awesome.

♥Nowhere Boy - a charming movie about John Lennon's teenage years. I really enjoyed it.

Thoughts for a Thursday

i want to be the minority
i don't need your authority
down with the moral majority
'cause i want to be the minority

green day - minority 

Nuffin like a Puffin

                   

I had another exciting meeting with my editor last Thursday in the Puffin Ireland offices on St. Stephen's Green. We discussed some final changes on Angel Kiss before it goes to the copy editors next month. We went through the entire book, which took almost three hours. There are a few edits still left to be done, I'm working on them this week. I love going to the Puffin offices, everyone is so nice there and the view is amazing. And I got to take my manuscript home in a Puffin tote bag!

Also, I was delighted when Puffin sent me a cody of Puffin by Design - a guide to Puffin's treasured and iconic covers over the last 70 years. It's a beautiful book and a lovely keepsake for Puffin fans.

The Notebook

Today I was looking for a quote and came across my notebook from three years ago, when I first started writing Angel Kiss. I thought I'd show you guys a few pages from it! Unfortunately they're not super interesting, as most of the pages contain spoilers of some sort, so I couldn't put those up. 

I bought the card taped to the inside cover the day I decided to try and make a career out of writing. I smiled when I saw where I'd noted down the date of the first writing workshop I went to, and I was a little surprised by my writing plan, apparently I used to get up at 6.30 a.m. The last page made me laugh, it's a rather simple writing philosophy, but it seems to work! 

Do you keep your old notebooks? I had such fun looking through this one, I'm definitely going to hold on to mine. 

Writers' and Artists' Yearbook Blog

Hi Everyone,


Hope you all had a lovely weekend! Mine involved dancing, shoe shopping, and walking through the Trinity College campus at night (a beautiful sight).


Today I'm back to writing book number 2, and I also have another guest post over on the Writers' and Artist' Yearbook blog. This time I talk about rewriting, and somehow end up comparing writers to Johnny Depp. You can check out the post here.
And if you missed my first guest post on the W&A blog, you can read it here. 

Thoughts for a Thursday

The medicine of the mind

The past few weeks I was feeling very stuck. I knew there was a problem with the plot of my second book 18 Kisses, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Until Tuesday night. While I was at Rage Against the Machine, looking down on the sea of people from my seat (I'm too small/old for moshing), the solution suddenly came to me. I actually hadn't thought about this plot problem for days, and certainly hadn't thought about it on that particular day, but the solution just popped into my head. When I go to gigs I enjoy just concentrating completely on the music and clearing my head and not thinking about anything else. And when my head is empty there is room for new ideas to fly in. The best ideas or most perfect solutions often come to me at music related things. I remember being at a Josh Ritter gig in Whelan's, frantically scribbling down a story idea on the back of a bar receipt. And I figured out how to fix a chapter during Neil Young's encore in the O2 last year. Maybe it's just a coincidence, and maybe I'm just trying to justify why a large portion of my income goes to ticketmaster, but I really think concerts are a great cure for writer's block.

'Music is the medicine of the mind.'
John A. Logan

While I'm on the subject, I'll share with you my latest writing playlist:

Skinny Love - Bon Iver
One of my favourite songs ever.

Jokerman - Bob Dylan
6:16 minutes of lyrical gold.

Rambling Man - Laura Marling
I'm in love with the line 'Let it always be known that I was who I am.'

Little Red - Cathy Davey
I cannot wait for her gig with Josh Ritter and Damien Dempsey at the Galway Arts Festival next month!

Shooting the Moon - OK Go
I really like the opening line of this song. "All of the astronauts, champagne in plastic cups." What a great image.

Pretty Little Liars

Pretty Little Liars premieres on U.S. channel ABC Family tonight. This new t.v. show is based on a series of Y.A. novels by Sara Shepard, which follow the lives of four girls - Spencer, Hanna, Aria and Emily. The girls used to be best friends, but their clique broke up after their leader, Alison, went missing. When Alison's body is found the girls are forced to reunite. They start getting text messages from someone using the name 'A', a mysterious person who seems to know all their secrets, even the ones they thought only Alison knew.

The series stars Lucy Hale as Aria (I think she's an adorable actress), and it has been described as 'Desperate Housewives for teens'. I haven't read the series, but I think it sounds great and I've just ordered the first book. Has anybody read them? Y.A. series tend to make super t.v. shows, Gossip Girl is one example!

I've seen the promos for Pretty Little Liars and it looks very promising. I haven't been this excited about a show in a long time!

A little update

I've just learned that the final draft of Angel Kiss will be going to copyediting in Puffin in London on July 26th! I'm so excited about this.

I'm delighted to be moving on to the next stage of the publishing process. 

The copy editor looks for repetition, contradiction, spelling and grammar mistakes and checks factual information. (My summary probably doesn't do their work justice, but I will be blogging about my experience so more details will follow in the coming months.)

When Angel Kiss is completely finished, I feel like I should mark the occasion by doing something crazy, like getting a tattoo or jumping out of a plane. But more likely I will end up going for tea and carrot cake!

In other news: I was in HMV on Saturday and saw Ghost World for 3.99! Haven't watched it in years but I remember really liking it. My brother bought me the Emily book the other day as a surprise, and I'm off to see Rage Against the Machine with him in the O2 tonight!