Sophia Bennett's Blog, page 11

Latest on the tour …

Time flies! March has really only just got going, and already young daffodils are bravely dealing with sunshine and snowfalls, and my blog tour – which seemed so far away for so long – is half way through.

So far, I've done an interview on video, written about sisters and modelling, and shared an exclusive extract from The Look. Thank you SO MUCH to all the bloggers who've hosted me so beautifully.

Today, you're in for a treat. The lovely Clover is hosting my post about the playlist for The Look at Fluttering Butterflies. She's added the links to the YouTube videos, so you can see what I'm talking about, and lots of pictures too. So if you want to know more about the Japanese baby who got 30 million YouTube hits playing the Beatles, or Xena Warrior Princess, or Janelle Monae, now's your chance.

Tomorrow, I'll be stopping off at Wondrous Reads, talking about the story of the cover.

Enjoy!

xxx

 

 

One day to go! More about the blog tour …

So – tomorrow is The Look's birthday. It's a funny old day, because the book is already in the shops (according to my friends, who've managed to see it before I have), so it's not like one of those big Harry Potter events we used to have, with a massive embargo and the author doing a midnight reading in a museum.

Instead, I shall be visiting Alleyn's in Dulwich – one of my favourite local schools – for an early talk about secret dreams and writing, then celebrating World Book Day in Just Williams book and toy shop in Herne Hill later on, which sounds fab.

Meanwhile … the blog tour begins. I've been doing a lot of work for this, so for the next eleven days (until it lands up back here on 12 March) I shall use this space to point you to my guest posts elsewhere. If you're interested in how a book gets written, then this might just be for you.

Just to give you a flavour of what I've been up to, here's what I'll be talking about:

1st March: Mostly Reading YA – An interview about writing The Look

2nd March: Chicklish – Gimme Five: Sisters in books

3rd March: Painting with Words – Me and modelling

4th March: Bookster Reviews – An exclusive extract from The Look

5th March: Fluttering Butterflies - Playlist: my 8 favourite Look-based tracks

6th March: Wondrous Reads - The story of the cover

7th March: Bookaholics – Writing about illness

8th March: Writing From The Tub – The timeline of writing The Look

9th March: Books for Company - Video of me doing a reading from chapter 6

10th March: Overflowing Library - Bookcase Showcase

11th March: A Reading Daydreamer – Interview: fashion and me

12th March: Here – Some of my favourite writer friends talk about their secret dreams

Hope you enjoy it! xxx

Gah-la dah-ling

This is a very belated post. We actually went to the Gala last Thursday. When I say 'we', I mean me and Alex. Because my husband was actually invited too! Woo! It's a rare and lovely thing.

Which brings me to the invitation. It arrived in a bottle. Wrapped up in straw in a box. A message in a bottle. It was SO. EXCITING. But to what? And why?

Turned out, it was a bash organised by The Book People, to celebrate children's books. They held it as part of a festival at the Royal Festival (appropriately enough) Hall. And it was for 'the great and the good' of children's publishing. And, apparently, me and Alex. No idea how we made the list. Don't care. It was a chance to don our gladrags, stand *this far* from Patrick Ness and Michael Morpurgo, admire Philip Ardagh's umbrella, see Jackie Wilson (Dame Jacqueline to you and me) sneak off early, chat – actually CHAT – to Robert Muchamore over a James And The Giant Peach Bellini and eat food provided by Jamie Oliver.

Here's what it looked like:

Click to view slideshow.

There were about 400 of us there, and it was lavish. Children's publishing doesn't do lavish outside of Harry Potter movies, but on Thursday they did lavish in spades. The attention to detail was amazing. The canapes were based on Captain Pugwash (or Treasure Island, can't remember: they were sea-based, anyway). The wine said 'Drink Me'. The pudding was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There were colour-themed candles and sweetie jars on every table.

And there were speeches. Lots of speeches. Lots and lots and lots of speeches. (The best one was by Anthony Horowitz.) All about books and reading and how important it is for children to have a chance to read books they love. And that was really what we all had in common: passion for children reading.

Which I think is why, despite ourselves, we love The Book People. And the general feeling at my end of  the table anyway, was that, despite ourselves, we do. One of the reasons they can afford to be so lavish is that they sell books at a massive discount, which means our royalties from them are not lavish at all. But the reason they are so successful is that they pick books that people want to read, and they back them, and they make them really affordable, and easy to find (you may have seen them in your school or office), and package them beautifully. And it's hard to have a problem with that.

In my case, they were the first to sell the Threads trilogy as a series, beautifully wrapped, for £4.99. Which meant I could tell children who'd loved Threads in their local library that they could get all three. So much more appealing to the author than some other booksellers (not my favourite independents), who thought it would be a good idea to sell book 3 on its own, without access to the other 2, and drove this particular author INSANE with why-the-hell-would-you-do-that frustration.

Seni and Ted, the movers and shakers behind The Book People, love books, and on Thursday it showed. A whole bunch of book-making people loved them back. And then, after all the speeches, we said goodbye to our friends, moved out into the starry London night, hoped that one day there would be another night like this, and went home.

Blog tour

Well folks, it's that time of year again: new book, new blog tour.

First of all, I would like to send a VERY VERY BIG THANK YOU to all the bloggers – old friends and new – who've kindly agreed to let me talk about my book on their sites. I'm touched and grateful. Meanwhile I'm busy writing about inspiration, sisters in literature, covers, playlists and all sorts of things to share with you through them.

This time, I've had the help of Tina at Chicken House and the wonderful Steve Wells, who did the cover for The Look, to create the all-important blog tour banner. Hence the massively increased professionalism and wowness of it, compared with last year (which was a Kafka-esque nightmare of me using iPhoto, Powerpoint, Word and any other application I could think of – but nothing actually adapted for the task – to try and cobble something together that vaguely worked).

Steve makes it look easy. Here it is:

You'll notice that the final date of the tour will be right here, on this blog. It will be a collection of the secret career dreams of many of my writer friends, from when they were growing up. They are FAB! Can't wait to share them with you too.

xxx

Something pink for Valentine's Day

With thanks to Beverley at A Reading Daydreamer for taking this great photo:

Her review of The Look is available on Chicklish. She hated it.

Actually, she didn't. She was lovely. The words 'beautifully glamorous masterpiece' might have been mentioned. *coughs* *goes pink*

Previous Post

Oh dear – it's been a long time since the last blog. And it's not as if lots of interesting things haven't been happening.

In January there was the Chicken House Big Breakfast, for example, which is the annual post-Christmas bash that Barry Cunningham hosts in London for publishing friends. It was full of writers, editors, publishers, scouts and bloggers, all busily catching up over coffee and croissants. I spent two hours non-stop talking (apart from during the book readings – one of which was done quite spectacularly by Miss Chicken House dressed up as a cat.)

Even so, there still wasn't time to chat to everyone. But there were some lovely moments, such as Siobhan, my US editor, giving hints about the US cover of The Look, which will come out there next year, and one of the guests outlining the plot of a brilliant book she wants to write. Writing is generally a solitary profession, so it's always wonderful to be surrounded by friends who care about books. I'm not sure how we managed to drag ourselves home.

(Actually, I didn't. I went on from there to the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. If you can go – go. It definitely helps if you like trees, though. David has created lots and lots and lots of images trees, many of them on his iPad. The best ones, though, I thought, were his videos of driving through tree-fringed lanes in different seasons. If you want to go to Piccadilly and imagine yourself in the heart of the English countryside, it's perfect.)

Meanwhile, The Look is set to come out here in just over two weeks. Anyone who's ever had a book about to come out knows that this bit is WEIRD. The Chicken House team have been busy organising a blog tour and a schools tour, planning some exciting stuff for later in the year and sending out the book to reviewers. But nothing will actually happen until March, when it's launched. I can't wait until I see it on a bookshelf, finally. Or to hear what readers have to say about it. A book doesn't really feel alive until it's been read, and one of the wonders of the internet is discovering how readers respond.

And then, of course, I've been working on book 5 – which, in my laptop documents folder is officially called 'Book 5′, although it's developing a subtitle of DTFG. If it all works out, I'll explain what that stands for down the line. It will certainly be a more controversial title than, say, Sequins Stars & Spotlights.

Some of the highlights of the last few weeks, though, have been admiring other people's work. This has been a cold, dark season, peppered with stressful exams and a stressful economy at home, and tales of despotism and torture abroad. I admire everyone who's tackling the economy and the despots (and the exams, frankly, including my eleven year-old), but also all of the artists who've managed to break through the fog of misery with pictures, plays and stories. Without them, how do we make sense of what we know?

Apart from the Hockney exhibition, there was the middle act of Noises Off by Michael Frayn at the Old Vic, which had my eleven year-old – as I hoped – in tears of laughter. There was Matilda The Musical at the Cambridge Theatre (story by Roald Dahl, music and lyrics by Tim Minchin), which has become an instant classic. We all adored it. At the end, the five year-old said 'I might have to cry because it was so good.'

There was The Fault In Our Stars by John Green – the best YA book I've read in recent months. It stares teenage death hard in the face and is life-affirming and quite brilliant. It includes two teenagers kissing in the Ann Frank museum in Amsterdam, to the soundtrack of Otto Frank talking about his daughter. And you're rooting for them all the way. That's how good it is.

Tonight I'll watch Call The Midwife on BBC1, which I haven't seen yet but which has managed to attract 10 million viewers over a mere 3 episodes. (More than Downton Abbey did at the time, and with far less publicity.) I can't think of anything nicer than seeing Miranda Hart in a hat and sensible shoes, setting off on a bike to save lives on behalf of the NHS. Why did nobody think of this before?

Then it's the BAFTAs. They played a crucial part in the writing of Threads and the awards season always brings back my weeks of frantic plotting. It took ages to get the various award timings to fit in with the events in my characters' lives, so that a certain dress being worn to the Oscars, held shortly after the BAFTAs, would have the emotional impact I wanted it to.

That was three and a half years and four books ago. So much has happened since then! But for now, it's back to the writing …

Oh dear – it's been a long time since the last blog. And ...

Oh dear – it's been a long time since the last blog. And it's not as if lots of interesting things haven't been happening.

In January there was the Chicken House Big Breakfast, for example, which is the annual post-Christmas bash that Barry Cunningham hosts in London for publishing friends. It was full of writers, editors, publishers, scouts and bloggers, all busily catching up over coffee and croissants. I spent two hours non-stop talking (apart from during the book readings – one of which was done quite spectacularly by Miss Chicken House dressed up as a cat.)

Even so, there still wasn't time to chat to everyone. But there were some lovely moments, such as Siobhan, my US editor, giving hints about the US cover of The Look, which will come out there next year, and one of the guests outlining the plot of a brilliant book she wants to write. Writing is generally a solitary profession, so it's always wonderful to be surrounded by friends who care about books. I'm not sure how we managed to drag ourselves home.

(Actually, I didn't. I went on from there to the David Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. If you can go – go. It definitely helps if you like trees, though. David has created lots and lots and lots of images trees, many of them on his iPad. The best ones, though, I thought, were his videos of driving through tree-fringed lanes in different seasons. If you want to go to Piccadilly and imagine yourself in the heart of the English countryside, it's perfect.)

Meanwhile, The Look is set to come out here in just over two weeks. Anyone who's ever had a book about to come out knows that this bit is WEIRD. The Chicken House team have been busy organising a blog tour and a schools tour, planning some exciting stuff for later in the year and sending out the book to reviewers. But nothing will actually happen until March, when it's launched. I can't wait until I see it on a bookshelf, finally. Or to hear what readers have to say about it. A book doesn't really feel alive until it's been read, and one of the wonders of the internet is discovering how readers respond.

And then, of course, I've been working on book 5 – which, in my laptop documents folder is officially called 'Book 5′, although it's developing a subtitle of DTFG. If it all works out, I'll explain what that stands for down the line. It will certainly be a more controversial title than, say, Sequins Stars & Spotlights.

Some of the highlights of the last few weeks, though, have been admiring other people's work. This has been a cold, dark season, peppered with stressful exams and a stressful economy at home, and tales of despotism and torture abroad. I admire everyone who's tackling the economy and the despots (and the exams, frankly, including my eleven year-old), but also all of the artists who've managed to break through the fog of misery with pictures, plays and stories. Without them, how do we make sense of what we know?

Apart from the Hockney exhibition, there was the middle act of Noises Off by Michael Frayn at the Old Vic, which had my eleven year-old – as I hoped – in tears of laughter. There was Matilda The Musical at the Cambridge Theatre (story by Roald Dahl, music and lyrics by Tim Minchin), which has become an instant classic. We all adored it. At the end, the five year-old said 'I might have to cry because it was so good.'

There was The Fault In Our Stars by John Green – the best YA book I've read in recent months. It stares teenage death hard in the face and is life-affirming and quite brilliant. It includes two teenagers kissing in the Ann Frank museum in Amsterdam, to the soundtrack of Otto Frank talking about his daughter. And you're rooting for them all the way. That's how good it is.

Tonight I'll watch Call The Midwife on BBC1, which I haven't seen yet but which has managed to attract 10 million viewers over a mere 3 episodes. (More than Downton Abbey did at the time, and with far less publicity.) I can't think of anything nicer than seeing Miranda Hart in a hat and sensible shoes, setting off on a bike to save lives on behalf of the NHS. Why did nobody think of this before?

Then it's the BAFTAs. They played a crucial part in the writing of Threads and the awards season always brings back my weeks of frantic plotting. It took ages to get the various award timings to fit in with the events in my characters' lives, so that a certain dress being worn to the Oscars, held shortly after the BAFTAs, would have the emotional impact I wanted it to.

That was three and a half years and four books ago. So much has happened since then! But for now, it's back to the writing …

Nonie, Donatella and Miss Perry

Nonie has blogged today. Find her here.

Dear G

At some point last term, a lovely fan  whom we shall call 'G' wrote to me with a simple question for her book report: what was my aim in writing Sequins Stars & Spotlights – the last book in the Threads trilogy?

Dangerous question, G! Poor girl. I'm sure she wanted a couple of quotable sentences for her report, but I had quite a lot of aims in writing the book. Soon, it will be almost completely overtaken in my head by the book I'm writing at the moment and The Look, which comes out in seven weeks. Seven weeks, people! That's nothing. But before I forget, I thought I'd share what was on my mind when I was writing Sequins Stars & Spotlights, and rounding off the stories of my favourite foursome.

So here, for the record (and for anyone else with a book report to write), is what I wrote back to G …

"I think it's important to have lots of aims when writing a novel – or the story will quickly seem very thin. You were probably hoping for two sentences in reply, but you asked a really interesting question, so here goes … (If you need 2 sentences, skip to the last bit.)

First of all, the 'Star' of Sequins Stars & Spotlights is Jenny.  I wanted to show how she had a real talent for acting and singing, despite her horrible experience in the movies, and how she became a genuine musical sensation. However, I was also interested in exploring the sacrifices that big stars often make. Their lives aren't simple and they have to give up so much to focus on their work. In Jenny's case, she had to give up caring for her mother.

I'd assumed that I would write about another big issue of child exploitation, as I had in books 1 and 2, but Jenny's mum's story took over, and in the end I wrote about depression. It's a huge issue, suffered by many children who live with a depressed family member, and hardly anyone talks about it. I wasn't sure how that storyline would end when I started plotting the book, and I was so proud of Edie when she took over. The depth of Edie's compassion really showed through. There were hints in the other books that Edie wouldn't have been happy at Harvard – she hates travel – but I also wanted to show how people's ambitions can change over time, and that's OK.

This was really Jenny's book, but I also wanted to explain some of Nonie's lack of self-confidence. Nonie always seems so bright and breezy, but she's often insecure. This book gave the details of her family background [...]. When Nonie discovers how much she was always loved, it transforms her. Nothing will stop her now. I also wanted to show that Nonie has to face up to the problems of not taking school seriously for a long time. It matters! Exams are stressful! Poor Nonie. But once she concentrates, she discovers new depths which make her very proud of herself.

Oh, and Edie [... PLOT SPOILER, which I've removed. You'll have to read the book!] … That was a fun ending to write.

Writing about Crow was the hardest of all in this book. My aim for her was to show that if you're going to be a truly great artist (which she is), you need to grow roots, and not overstretch yourself while you're growing up. If you spend your teens manically producing things on demand, not absorbing new influences, you risk running out of ideas later on. The big story for Crow is that she doesn't give in to the demands of the fashion industry, but instead focuses on her friendships, her family, her studies and developing her ideas. It doesn't make for such an exciting story, but it means that if I ever write about Crow when she's older, she'll be a deep, grounded and fascinating person, with a lot to give. She won't be burnt out by the time she's twenty. (I've read arguments that John Galliano's big problem was that he was so overstretched by having to do a new collection every few weeks for Dior that it drove him to alcohol. I wonder if that's true. I'm also interested that the young winners of things like the X Factor generally burn bright for a short time, but don't go on to have long careers.)

I certainly didn't want to tell my readers what to do with their own lives. But I wanted to describe lots of different ways that talented people can approach that complicated time of becoming an adult. I wanted to show the good bits and the bad bits, and let my readers decide what they would do in that situation.

Most of all, I wanted to write about the joy of making musicals, which I love, and of designing wedding dresses, which I also love, and New York, which is an inspirational city, and my characters, who were all growing up in interesting ways. It meant I ended up with four different plots, all going in different directions and intertwining at different points. It was a nightmare to write! Thank goodness for my editor. In my next book, I have 2 main characters, which is quite enough.

Er, that was it, I think! I hope that helps.

sophia xxx"

 

One of our dinosaurs isn't missing*

I have one of the smallest kitchens in the world. You can stand in pretty much any part of it and touch pretty much any other part. Sometimes – like when you're unloading the dishwasher – this is great: you only have to reach out an arm to find the appropriate cupboard and put things away. You don't even have to move your feet, never mind actually walk anywhere. At others – like when two of you want to do anything in there at the same time, or you want to cook and chat to a child or a guest, or you want to find a place for a new mug, it's impossible.

However, the minuteness of my kitchen is a small price to pay for living in London. Sometimes. And yesterday was one of those times.

The day dawns cold and frosty. Christmas is approaching. The children are on holiday; I need a dose of culture. I make a picnic, sling it in a backpack and we head for the bright lights. By which, of course, I mean the V&A. I want to see quilts (something to do with the new book) and I have promised the boys lots of lovely old weapons to keep them happy.

On the way, there is a slight misunderstanding. Tom hears 'V&A' as 'DNA', which reminds him of the bit in Jurassic Park when the canister of dino DNA is stolen by the sweaty baddie and ends up floating out to sea. Tom doesn't have a problem AT ALL with the sweaty baddie being eaten alive by an angry dinosaur in the process: he's just worried about that canister. I keep on having to reassure him that it's OK.

So anyway, obviously by now Tom assumes we're going to see not patchwork, but dinosaurs. But at this point we are in South Kensington and we can see the beautiful, multicoloured towers of the Natural History Museum across the road from the V&A. So I promise him both. I also remember reading recently that the Natural History Museum used to be so blackened and ugly from coal soot (it was like that when I first knew it as a schoolgirl) that the council wanted to pull it down and start again. Instead, there was a campaign to save it and for years it was under scaffolding, while they sandblasted off all the soot. Up until then, we had always associated Victorian architecture with dark, lumpen ugliness. But suddenly, when the museum was eventually revealed, we realised that after all, those Victorians were really REALLY good. The Natural History Museum is one of the most beautiful buildings in London, AND it's got a skating rink outside at the moment AND it's got dinosaurs inside. Moving ones. What's not to love? As always, I mentally thanked Prince Albert – the Steve Jobs of his day – for having the idea and making it happen.

But first, the V&A. As usual, we fell in love with everything in the shop. Then we asked a nice man at the members' desk where the quilts and weapons were. He tried very hard, he did, not to wrinkle his nose, but I was informed that they only had quilts for a one-off exhibition, last year, and there are none to see now. (How I wish I could just flit to the Met in New York, where quilting is taken seriously as national heritage, and there are apparently a lot of them, all the time.) Also, they don't really 'do' weapons at the V&A, as it's all about 'the applied and decorative arts' – not killing people. But I knew better. I took the boys to the Japanese section, because those eighteenth century Japanese artists knew a thing or two about applying the arts to Samurai slung swords, blades, daggers, armour and really scary helmets. There were two cases of them. Job done.

There was also, as it happened, a temporary exhibition called 'The Power of Making', celebrating all sorts of crafts, from dry stone walling to saddle making, dress making, gun making (more guns – hah!), 3D-printers (the future), cabinets, bicycles, artificial eyes, shoes with guitars on … And yes, there was a quilt, with direction-sensing er … sensors on it, so it could map the shape of whatever it was thrown over. Also some needlework, done by British officers captured by the Nazis and containing a secret code. It was PERFECT. We could hardly drag ourselves away.

After some restorative cheese and peanut butter sandwiches (separate, not mixed – ew – and I'm sorry, cafe, but we were too skinflint to visit you this time), we headed off for those dinosaurs next door. We spent ages in the dinosaur section, watching the pretend moving ones, admiring the bones of the very dead real ones, learning far more about them and their times than we ever intended to. Tom bought a cuddly stegosaurus called Steggie and we were done.

Harrods was a bus ride away. We used to go there for the Krispy Kremes, but they don't do them any more. Instead, we happily window-shopped, the boys posed beside a couple of teddy bears that were at least four times their size (and cost £2000 – go figure), and I managed to buy a secret Christmas present without incurring shipping charges, so I actually saved money.

All in all, we were out for most of the day, before driving home across my favourite bridge (Albert) – working again and lit like a Christmas tree. We learned loads. We saw lots of beautiful, beautiful things. The children were enchanted and so was I. Apart from shopping, the total cost was one bus fare.

As I say, a tiny kitchen is a small price to pay.

* And in case you don't know the film already, do look out for 'One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing'. It is mad, and funny, and features the star diplodocus of the Natural History Museum. Not many films can say that.