Oh, the shame

Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. It's been bloody ages since my last confession blog post. No excuses this time. Let's just pretend this little blip never happened and have a quick round-up of what I've been up to, eh?

1. Finishing the first draft of book three. It was arduous. Like pulling teeth (but without the help of suitable tooth-pulling tools). There's still a lot of work to be done to make the story, y'know, make sense, but I'm taking a few days off to deal with all the other work I've been putting off since December. *cries*

2. Signing a contract to write a book for the wonderful Barrington Stoke. I'm crazy excited about this project. Here's what I know so far: it'll be published next year; the setting for the story is a house party; I'm stealing one of the characters from my crazy NaNoWriMo novel because I hearted her so much and decided she deserves to see the light of day instead of being banished to the shadowy depths of my hard drive until the end of time.

3. Going on tour! I visited a number of schools in and around London in February. It was awesome and exhausting.

4. Going to New York! I visited a number of shops and restaurants and spent a ridiculous amount of money I don't have. I bought these boots:

Aren't they amaaaaazing? I also met up with Nova Ren Suma and Victoria Schwab and Barry Goldblatt. It was officially Good Times.

5. Seeing The Hunger Games. I may have been a little over-excited about this (to the extent that I said 'OMG' out loud while sitting at a restaurant table all by myself). I saw it on an IMAX screen, so even tiny Peeta looked huge. I liked the film a lot, but loved the book MOAR. My thoughts: Jennifer Lawrence is spectacularly good; Lenny Kravitz is nothing like the Cinna in my head; Rue may well be the cutest person I have ever seen with my eyes; I wish the film was at least fifteen minutes longer; Stanley Tucci makes everything approximately 57% better.

I think that just about brings us up to date. I trust you are all well? If there's anyone out there still interested in what I have to say, that is...

Things

Yeah, I know, I'm a bad blogger. I'm sorry. But I have a really good excuse for not posting more regularly. I haz been writing. OK, it's not *that* good an excuse, since that's what writers are supposed to do, and plenty of them seem to manage to write novels and be all clever and funny on Twitter AND produce insightful/witty/moving blog posts. Alas, I am not one of them. 


I'm staring down the barrel of a scary deadline, wrestling with book three (it's like an alligator, only more slippery). This writing malarkey can be hard sometimes, and now is one of those times. Of course, this is when my procrastination skills really come in handy, so there's been a lot of...


1. Watching DVD box sets
2. Rearranging my bookshelves
3. Daydreaming
4. Reading other people's blogs
5. Thinking about book four
6. Hanging out with friends and talking about how hard writing is
7. Making playlists on Spotify
8. Online clothes shopping
9. Telling my puppy how handsome he is
10. Walking on the beach and pretending I'm a Home & Away character being all thinky and stuff


So you can see how busy I am. And I'm sure you now understand why the blog has been sadly neglected. It may well remain neglected until the deadline of hideousness is well and truly behind me, but one day (maybe) I'll be a better blogger.


In the meantime, there's the TORN launch party this week, a schools tour coming up AND a sneaky trip to NYC. Oh yeah, and book three to finish. Sigh. I hope YOU are keeping well, though?

WINNER!

Hey folks, hope you're enjoying the festive season. I am mostly enjoying it by being ILL. Urgh. Still, it means I'm getting a lot of reading done, which is good, since you lot have added heaps of books to be TBR pile with your awesome recommendations. 


I picked a winner at random (full disclosure: my pup picked the winner at random) and I'm delighted to announce that TRISHA LEIGH wins a copy of IMAGINARY GIRLS. WOOT!


Here's what she had to say about her favourite YA book of 2011:


Mine is DARK INSIDE by Jeyn Roberts. It's a story that takes places during the apocalypse and it truly terrifying. The reasons it stands out for me are, first, the 5 POVs, one of which is philosophical and sad and scary all at once. The second reason is that even though the book did scare me, it also had something to say about human nature, and about the things in our very real (read:not paranormal) world that SHOULD scare the bejesus out if every single day. I don't know what I was expecting when I opened this book, but safe to say it blew my mind out the back of my skull and left me thinking about it for day's. First book in a while that, if there had been a sequel available, I would have run right out and bought it.


I will definitely be getting my hands on this one - sounds exactly my cup of tea. Also? Five POVs? Impressive. So, Trisha, please get in touch with your address so I can send you Nova Ren Suma's bloomin' amazing book.


So what are you reading at the moment? I'm reading THE WOMAN IN WHITE, by Wilkie Collins. It is masterful.

PUBLICATION DAY! WOOT! AND A CONTEST! DOUBLE WOOT!

My book comes out today. My SECOND book. I can no longer call myself a debut author. Sad times. But the silver lining is that my book comes out today!

I'm kind of proud of this one. Writing it was not easy, but it turned out pretty much exactly like I wanted it to. I do hope you like it.


To celebrate the occasion, I'm giving away a copy of my favourite YA book of the year. It's this little beauty...

To be in with a chance of winning the unbelievably awesome IMAGINARY GIRLS, just leave a comment telling me your favourite YA book of the year, and tell me WHY it's your favourite. I'll pick a winner at midday on the 27th. The contest is open worldwide.


I'm muchly looking forward to picking up some recommendations to add to my somewhat intimidating TBR pile.


I suppose I'd best get on with the celebrating then. This morning it involves drinking tea and taking Griffpup for a walk. Exciting times, yes?

Two days to go... and a contest winner in a pear tree

It's Tuesday. TORN comes out on Thursday. Clearly watching panda videos on YouTube is a valuable use of my time.


So we have a winner in the guilty secret contest. There were a lot of awesome entries. Quite frankly, you lot have shocked me. I'd never have guessed my 'lovely' blog readers were such a shady lot. The winning entry jumped out at my straight away, mostly because I immediately thought That's something I would SO do. Also, the addition of a smiley face at the end of the confession made me laugh. Smiley faces negate evil deeds, don't you know?


Here's the winning entry in all its glory:


It's Christmas themed as well, we lie to our respective families every year & tell them my husband is on call for the hotel he manages & we can't go to Christmas dinner with either of our huge families in a stuffy restaurant. Then we stay in our pj's & have beef Wellington for dinner then go for a walk. Aaah. Even better, his boss is in on it & covers for us every year :-)


Congratulations to Sarah Writes! Please get in touch with your address so I can send you a signed copy of TORN. Enjoy that beef wellington, and don't let the bitter taste of guilt taint your enjoyment in ANY way.


Now, back to those panda videos.

ONE WEEK TO GO... THE CONTEST

One week. Eek. Also, that means Christmas is crazy soon, and I am nowhere near ready. (And if I hear one more person who says they finished all their Christmas shopping in September I may punch something).


So in honour of my little book coming out next week, I thought I'd host a little contest. The first contest anywhere in the world in which you can win a shiny finished copy of TORN. It's a proper book! With the exact right words in it!


1. Contest is open internationally.
2. Contest closes midday Monday, UK time.
3. If you spead the word, you won't necessarily be more likely to win, but the karma alone will make it TOTES worth it.


To enter, just answer the following question in the comments below...


WHAT'S YOUR GUILTY SECRET?*


*See what I did there? TORN is all about guilt and secrets and guilty secrets and secret guilt... CLEVER.

TWO-WEEK WARNING!

So there's this book coming out in TWO FREAKIN' WEEKS and I've heard all kinds of good things about it, including (but not limited to) the fact that it has PAGES and WORDS and a cute guitar-wielding boy and a black cocker spaniel and a very mean girl. Whaddya reckon? I think I would probably buy it, if I were you. If you don't fancy reading it, you could always use it as a frisbee or to shield your new hairstyle from an unexpected shower of rain.