Introducing the (RE)Sisters YA Anthology (and some of my writing...)

The first two months of the year are usually ones of laziness, boredom, regret and hiding under the duvet. But not in 2016! Oh no. Not for me anyway. Ok, maybe just a little bit. But my traditional post -Christmas blues have been warmed up somewhat by some exciting news...

Last year I submitted a short story to the wonderful For Books Sake when they announced they would be putting together a YA anthology and lo and behold it got selected! With the release date for (RE)Sisters now on the horizon (8th February people), I thought I'd share a bit about how my story came about as well as a sneaky extract.

It all started with a prompt. My writing buddy Jo and I selected three music videos for each other with the idea of creating a few paragraphs inspired by each one, and my story, Operation M, began life as a response to the video for 'People Help the People' by Birdy. For this particular prompt, I quickly found I couldn't stop until I eventually ended up with something that had the potential to become a fully formed short story which doesn't happen too often with me. I suppose the moral is that you never really know where you're going to find your next dollop of inspiration. Oh, and try out writing prompts because they really work - you might not come out with a story at the end of it all, but they're great practice and a good laugh which is just as important in the whole scheme of things I think.

I don’t expect it was how they’d planned it. Maybe they didn’t have a plan at all. Maybe they were just going to wait and wait and eventually forget that I hadn’t left the house in several years, or that I was even there at all. I’d tried to explain to Dr Carroll that the triggers, the clues, they weren’t working. But he said I needed to have patience and that eventually I might be able to remember the name of our first dog (Barry, apparently) or what my favourite subject at school was, or what my cousin Christine looks like, or that our neighbour used to have a budgie called Brilliant Bill who I liked to talk to when I was six (according to my sister Caitlin, Mrs Briggs was very disappointed that this wasn’t one of the very first things that came back to me after I woke up). I hadn’t forgotten everything. I could remember what it felt like when Mother was in hospital giving birth to my brother Alastair (like standing on the edge of a ravine). But I couldn’t remember the name of Alastair’s boarding school, or why he’s scared of cats. And I knew almost immediately that I didn’t particularly like the company of Caitlin, but I still couldn’t remember her middle name, no matter how many times I’d been told it before she’d slammed yet another door in my face. 

So what about this anthology then? Well, it's called (RE)Sisters and it's a celebration of women and girls in all our diverse glory. To find out more (and to pre-order), have a look here, and if you end up reading my story in full, you might find out how what that extract has in common with the video below...

Recent Review Round Up - Holiday Reading

Its'a amazing how many books you can go through when you give you brain a week off from everything else. Ok, so three and a bit books in two weeks might not sound like very many, but this is pretty impressive for my easily distracted brain right now. I'll start doing the odd full review again soon, but in the mean time here are three reads that got me thinking this summer...


The Paying Guests - Sarah Waters

This is the first Sarah Waters book I've read and it certainly won't be the last. Is that enough of a review do you think? If I don't end here then I'm in danger of offering you up an essay about it, but I shall continue and try to keep it brief. I've made a resolution to start reading a bit more adult fiction, and this book has set the bar, quite frankly - a masterclass in how to write a well-drawn, living breathing character. I was slightly daunted by the length (as I said, I get easily distracted), but there wasn't a single wasted word. The story of how the arrival of Lilian and Leonard impact on the formerly well-to-do Frances Wray and her mother is tense and romantic in equal measure.

Am staring to think I should have written a full review of this because now, as I'm typing, I have ALL THE THOUGHTS. Oh well.



Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - Jesse Andrews

I'm conflicted about this one. I enjoyed it. It was smart and funny (very funny) and refreshing, and I wish there was some way to bottle that feeling you get when you read something truly unique in YA fiction (sorry, but it just doesn't happen that often). I just wasn't entirely convinced by Andrews's attempts to subvert a the common dying teenager YA trope. It just felt like he should have pushed the button a bit more - tricky, I know - because I was just left with the feeling that the book hadn't quite managed to detach itself completely with that particular trope and that it had shied away from a few issues it touched upon. But whatever drawbacks I had with it, the voice is one of the most convincing I've read in recent months.



Since You've Been Gone - Morgan Matson

I enjoyed Roger and Amy's Epic Detour and I was looking for a good contemporary YA to get my teeth into. This had been sitting on my kindle for a while and seemed to fit the bill. However, I was THIS (imagine me holding up my fingers to indicate a short distance) close to giving up on it about half way through - shy Emily may have felt realistic, but my patience with her as a main character was starting to wane, I still hadn't gotten any sense of who her missing best friend Sloane really was and the flashbacks felt cumbersome. BUT, exactly slap bang int he middle, it drew me in and I started to care, really care, about all of them. I adore YA books about complicated friendships and I'm happy to say this one ended up being incredibly moving. Plus, there were also some excellent playlists hidden in these pages (although I much preferred Frank's taste in music to Emily's - sorry country fans).