Looking for an extra-special Christmas gift for a young reader?
A personally signed novel could be just the thing!
In case you missed it, I’m offering signed copies of all A. L. Tait novels – The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries – until 30 November (or while stocks last).
Books are $25 each, including shipping across Australia, or buy multiple books to save!
Below you’ll find a little round-up of Australian (and one New Zealand) author offering you the chance to order signed copies of their books for Christmas!
Kate Gordon is offering signed copies of CBCA Book of the Year winner, Aster’s Good, Right Things, and each of the first four books in the Juno Jones series.
Aster’s Good, Right Things is $14.99 and the Juno Jones books can be bought individually for $12.99 each, or as a pack for $40.
Kate also has limited quantities of The Heartsong of Wonder Quinn and The Ballad of Melodie Rose, for $14.99 each, as well as the picture book, Amira’s Magpie, for $20.
Find out more about the books here and contact Kate here for more details and shipping costs.
Cristy Burne has teamed up with Paper Bird Books to offer personalised signed copies of her books for Christmas (see what’s on offer, left).
Cristy has a terrific range of books that draw on her STEM knowledge and her new series, Wednesday Weeks, co-authored with Denis Knight, blends science and magic! Perfect for middle-grade readers.
Due to postage jams, you’ll need to get in by 19 November if you are based outside WA – so don’t delay!
From junior fiction series Exploding Endings and Toffle Towers, to middle-grade mayhem in the Mr Bambuckle’s Remarkables series, Tim Harris books offer humour with heart and are perennially popular with primary school readers.
Zanni Louise has teamed up with The Bookroom Collective to offer personalised, signed copies for Christmas. Her picture book Florence & Fox is particularly lovely for the festive season.
Stef Gemmill is offering personalised signed copies of her picture books – A Home For Luna, In My Dreams, and the brand-new Toy Mountain – as single books or in bundles.
R. A. Spratt, bestselling author of the Nanny Piggins, Friday Barnes and The Peski Kids series, has teamed up with The Bookshop Bowral to offer personalised signed copies of her books.
New Zealand author Karah Sutton has teamed up with Good Bookshop to offer personalised signed copies of A Wolf For A Spell, a rollicking middle-grade adventure, with postage anywhere in New Zealand.
Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m Allison Tait, aka A.L. Tait, and I’m the author of two epic middle-grade adventure series, The Mapmaker Chronicles and The Ateban Cipher, and a new ‘almost history’ detective series called the Maven & Reeve Mysteries (you’ll find book #1 THE FIRE STAR here).
In case you missed it, the latest round of #writeabookwithal is over and I have finished the first draft of my latest manuscript. It is, brace yourselves, the 15th first draft fiction manuscript that I have written.
Fifteenth.
Four were written before my first children’s novel (The Mapmaker Chronicles: Race To The End Of The World) was published and I doubt that we will ever see that fab four again.
Since TMC #1 came out, I have written five manuscripts that are now published novels, plus five more, including this new one. News on all of those various projects will be with you once I have it to hand.
Anyhoo, my point is that I’ve written a few now and it got me to thinking about the various ingredients that are common to all of them. So I’ve packaged them up neatly as Cs because a) it’s been a while between blog posts, b) it amused me to use a maths concept in my creative writing post and c) that’s how I roll.
Creativity
I’ve put this one first because it’s hard to write a novel without an idea. Sometimes, though, I think the bigger challenge is working out which idea will sustain a novel and which is the starting point for a character (which will then be subsumed into a larger idea), which is the basis of a scene (which will then be subsumed into a larger story), and which is a short story all by itself.
The reality is that some of my many ideas are just half-formed fragments that end up in notebooks and stay there, taunting me forever.
The most difficult ideas, for me, are those that present themselves as ‘I’d like to write a book about X’, or ‘I’m going to write a mystery story’. For me, that’s not an idea, it’s a theme, or a genre.
The best and most creative ideas are specific. Often weirdly specific. And, for me, they usually present themselves as a question and a feeling.
The Mapmaker Chronicles came from that feeling you get when you look out into a clear night sky (where are the edges? what’s at the edges?) and a specific question: How did they map the world? (You can read about it here)
The Ateban Cipher novels came from the feeling I got when I looked at The Book Of Kells (I wanted to take it home) and a specific question: Why would you write a book that no-one can read? (You can read about it here)
Craft
If you have always been someone who can write – that is, sit down at school, or university, or wherever, and have words pour out onto the page when required – craft is often something that you come to later. It’s often about the time that you write the first draft of your first novel, all 70,000 words of it, and think that your work is done.
In fact, it’s the time that you submit that first draft to an agent who comes back to you with these words: “What would you like me to do with this? There’s some nice writing in here but it is in no way ready to send out.”
Or maybe that’s just me.
Valerie Khoo and I have often discussed on our podcast that you don’t know what you don’t know. I discovered this lesson the hard way when I had the above exchange with an agent. I knew I could write a sentence – hadn’t I been doing that for years as a features writer? What I didn’t know was how to write fiction. Not really.
I was lucky enough to have had a good head start, thanks to all of my years of reading and working with words. But I had a lot to learn, and that’s where craft comes in.
Structure, character development, logical plotting, pacing… Take the courses, do the reading, go to the workshops at festivals, join writers’ groups. Whatever works for you.
I’m still learning a lot the hard way, because I still write without a detailed plan. I have to write it to see what it is, which is not the most efficient way of managing a publishing career.
But at least I now know what I don’t know.
Calculation
If you had told Teenage Me that I’d one day be a published author and that I’d spend half my time walking around the block trying to work through logical solutions to problems that I had created myself, Teenage Me would have laughed.
Teenage Me thought that creative writing was all about… creativity. Little did Teenage Me know (about this and so many things, right Mum?)
When I do my school visits these days, I like to talk about writing superpowers. And when I tell the ‘maths kids’ and the ‘science kids’ that they have one of the greatest writing superpowers ever, I can see their confusion.
But so much of what we do as writers is problem solving.
If this happens, what happens next?
If that happens, what happens next?
And every decision has to come back to your character, and what your character would do in that situation.
Not what you would do. What your character would do.
Not what you, as the writer, needs your character to do to fix this festering plot hole you have created. What your character would logically do.
No wonder Procrastipup and I do so much walking (which is a great way to work through logical solutions, if you’re looking for one).
Commitment
Look, I wish that talking about writing got the writing done. I wish that I could tell you that your novel will write itself.
But it doesn’t, and it won’t.
If you want to write a novel, you have to commit to the process. You have to make the time. You have to write the words.
Yes, you.
It’s not easy. You’ll have to make sacrifices. You need to show up.
I well remember the first time I received a structural edit (you can read about it here). I have still been known to cry. But editing – fixing (correcting) what is wrong with your manuscript – is an essential part of the process.
The trouble with a big edit is that it feels like an insurmountable problem. How can you possibly make all of these changes when every single change you make affects the entire story?
The answer, of course, is that you climb that insurmountable mountain one step at a time.
I call it courage. Others, as one person on Twitter told me in no uncertain terms [insert eyeroll emoji], call it confidence. Perhaps it’s a blend of the two.
It’s the blind faith that will carry you through the process of sitting alone in a room for the countless hours it takes to write your novel, then the countless hours of hard graft it takes to edit your novel and then, right at the very end, the sheer will it takes to press ‘send’ to either submit your work to a traditional publisher or publish your work yourself – and it is not for the faint-hearted.
Putting your thoughts on the page and then handing them over to someone else to read isn’t easy.
Dealing with rejection isn’t easy.
There are a lot of people out there who say they’re going to ‘write a novel one day’.
Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m Allison Tait, aka A.L. Tait, and I’m the author of two epic middle-grade adventure series, The Mapmaker Chronicles and The Ateban Cipher.
Welcome to 2019! I hope you’ve had a fantastic and very restful holiday break.
I’ve spent a few weeks away from my blog and everything that goes with it, and I confess to feeling much refreshed by the virtual vacation.
But I’m back at my desk today and ready to do some serious editing (or, let’s face it, as ready as I ever am to face editing…)
While I was off at the beach, however, some exciting things have been happening.
My two Ateban Cipher novels, The Book Of Secrets and The Book of Answers, are now both available in the United States through Kane Miller, the fab people who have already brought The Mapmaker Chronicles series to US and Canadian readers.
The covers may be different but the epic adventure story, about the secrets of the mysterious coded manuscript known as The Ateban Cipher, remains the same.
I hope that US readers will take Gabe, Merry, Gwyn and the rest of the gang to their hearts in the way that Australian readers have done (you can read the Goodreads reviews here and here)! Thanks for all your support.
Today the very last of my 2018 book lists was published by Vanessa over at Style & Shenanigans, so it seems a very good time to collate them all in one place for easy reference (as much for me, as for you…)
So, here it is, the ultimate list of my recent book lists. Hundreds of books for readers aged from babies to teens.
If you’re looking for a new read for your kids for Christmas, for the holidays, or at any time of year, bookmark this page for easy reference. Click the post title to visit the full list.
If you’re after specific recommendations for a very particular kind of reader, why not join my Facebook community Your Kid’s Next Read, where you’ll find 5000+ parents, teachers, booksellers, librarians, bloggers and other interested parties all ready to help with recommendations? We’d love to see you there.
The life of a children’s author is a funny one. On one hand, we sit alone in our offices, talking to no-one, revelling in isolated splendour. And then term three of the school year rolls around, and suddenly we emerge, blinking, into the light, and into the wonderful chaos that is author talks and Book Week (which now seems to extend for about three months).
If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, I’ve been talking. And talking. And talking. To thousands of kids. After a week of Book Week school sessions in Sydney, which looked (in part) like this…
I rolled into a week that included a school literary festival, which looked like this…
With David Legge, Belinda Murrell and Louise Park.
Can you spot me?
And then straight into the amazing Word Play program at Brisbane Writers’ Festival, which looked like this…
Full house for ‘Find Your Writing Superpower’ presentation.
With Allison Rushby and Megan Daley: The Your Kids’ Next Read Team at BWF
My first webinar presentation as part of the Online Literature Festival at BWF
The weirdness of seeing your face on a wall…
The excitement of The Mapmaker Chronicles being in the Festival Top 10 (for a minute)…
In the process of all this, I lost my voice, caught up with author friends, met new author friends, and remembered the reason
why we all do this in the first place – because kids are enthusiastic and creative and incredibly entertaining and it is an absolute honour to write a book that a 10 year old will tell you is ‘the best book ever’.
I also answered questions. Lots and lots of questions. And I am here to tell you that if I had to give an aspiring children’s author any advice about author talks and presenting to kids it would be this:
Be prepared for anything.
When you get to the Q&A section of your author talk or presentation, and you are looking out at a sea of waving hands, all desperate to find out… something… brace yourself.
Questions you are likely to be asked include, but are not limited to:
How much do you get paid? (Be ready with a short, succinct answer to this)
Where do you get your ideas?
How long does it take you to write a book?
Did you draw the picture on the cover of your book?
What’s your favourite book?
Who was your favourite author as a child?
When did you know you were going to be an author?
When did you write your first book? (I’ve always wished I could answer ‘when I was six’ like some of my author friends, but this is not me…)
But then there are the other questions…
Over the course of three weeks, I was asked everything from ‘what colour is your toothbrush?’ to ‘does your dog ever get tired of walking?’ and ‘do you have any time to spend with your own children?’. Pulling out a favourite question wasn’t easy, but in the end, I think this one wins:
To show just how ready you need to be, I asked some of Australia’s favourite children’s authors to give me their favourite question from their Book Week presentations this year…
‘Do you sleep with your books under your pillow in case of burglars?’ – R.E. Devine, Jack McCool series
‘Can I have your jacket? / How was your weekend? / Can you dab? / Do you play Fortnite?’ – Mick Elliot, The Turners series
‘Does your mother ever steal your story ideas?’ – Allison Rushby, The Mulberry Tree
‘How do you have blonde hair?’ – Jacqueline Harvey, Kensy and Max series
‘When you were at school did you use a pen or a quill?’ – Catherine Pelosi, Quark’s Academy
‘Can you take your beanie off?’ – Matt Stanton, Funny Kid series
‘What do you want more than anything else? – Zanni Louise, Errol
Are you new here? Welcome! You can find out all about me here, and all about my books here. If you’re interested in talking to me about presenting at your school or event, go here. And if you’re keen to write your own book, you’ll find a heap of posts about writing here, as well as information about my courses, and you can listen to my podcast here.