Sophia Bennett's Blog, page 9
July 9, 2012
July competition – design a book cover
Hello lovely readers
It feels like ages since I’ve done a competition. I have 2 copies of books to give away: one of The Look (with its lovely pink page edges – stroke, stroke) and one of Adorkable, by Sarra Manning.
This is in honour of my event with Sarra at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year, where we’ll be appearing on 12th August, talking about fashion, style, jumble sales (apparently – not an expert), trendsetting on Twitter and being yourself.
I read Adorkable a few weeks ago and loved it. It’s definitely for older teen readers, in that it has a lovely boy (called Michael Lee) and a feisty girl (called Jeane Smith) and they … you know. So don’t say you’re not warned.
Jeane is fabulous at not caring about what people think of her, doing her own thing and acting as a role model for anyone who’s ever felt, well, dorky – but in a cool way.
The competition is this. In The Look, Ted is creative. Jeane is creative. I want you to be creative too, and to design a book cover for a book for teens.
The title of your book is Girl, Outside. It’s not a real book, I just made it up. You choose the genre, though. You can draw it, take a clever photo, do a collage (I love collages), paint a watercolour or whatever you like. Make it the cover of a book you know you and your friends would love to buy.
Then take a picture of your cover and send it to me. You can email me at sophiaben at me dot com.
I will pick a winner for each book, so let me know which one you would prefer.
The deadline is 31st July.
If I get enough good entries, I’ll put them up in a gallery here. Meanwhile, if there’s any crucial info that I’ve forgotten to give you, just ask me.
Have fun and get designing!
xxx
July 1, 2012
Cover story
In honour of its publication next week, here’s the cover of Beads Boys & Bangles in Italian:
Good luck, little book!
I’m now thinking I could have called it ‘Yarns’ in English. We spent ages looking for a one-word, multi-meaning title, but I don’t think we every considered ‘Yarns’. It might have worked well for anyone who knits.
While we’re on the subject of covers, here’s the paperback version of Threads in Italian, which came out last month:
Also very cute. They’re based on the French covers, which I loved. They really capture the kookiness of the girls. However, interestingly, the most popular cover so far has been this:
The German hardback version. It also exists in green. My theory, based on the girls who write to me, is that readers are really interested in craft: making their own things and reading about girls who are creative like them. The cotton reels really capture that, which I hope bodes well for the Italian cover too. Book 3 comes out in Germany in November. It has a sort of pincushion on the front. It’ll be interesting to see if people like that one too.
You’d never guess I originally wanted a tailor’s dummy, a spotlight, a laptop and a machine gun for Threads, would you?
If you’d like to design your own ideal cover for Threads, do send it in and show me. I’d be happy to put the best designs on the Threads website. And I’d love to see what you come up with.
June 28, 2012
Goodnight, Nora
At last!
I’ve just sent a few more chapters of the new book to my editor, to see if she thinks it’s working.
It’s been tough to get them done. It’s the end of term, and with one stepdaughter doing A levels, another doing GCSEs, a son finishing his primary school and another finishing his first year of Reception, there’s a lot happening. Add to that various school visits and book festivals round the country, and I sometimes have to programme time to breathe, never mind time to write.
However, it’s all been worthwhile. Watching the girls take the boys to school, seeing the school play, getting emails from readers I’ve met on my travels, planning events – I’ve had so many wonderful experiences recently.
The only sad thing has been the death of Nora Ephron, who wrote When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and Heartburn, among other fabulous movies. She was the best romcom writer we had the papers, and Twitter, are littered with women writers who were inspired by her work and her life. I really want to read her book, ‘I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman‘. She was wonderful at talking about love, and heartbreak, and being a woman, and growing old. But she didn’t get the chance to grow as old as she wanted to. She was only 71. So many of us who admired her as a person and a writer are devastated.
She loved life. Although she wanted to grow old fabulously, Nora didn’t deny how much she recognised the advantages of being young. My favourite line among all the tributes to Nora that I’ve been reading was this quote from ‘I Feel Bad About My Neck’: “If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don’t take it off until you’re 34.”
Goodnight, Nora. You are much missed.
June 21, 2012
School visits
I’ve been doing a few school visits recently – all of them lovely. Yesterday, for example, I was at St Albans Girls’ School (STAGS) in – unsurprisingly – St Albans, and on Monday I was at Hitchin Girls’ School. I really enjoy them. They’re the best opportunity I get to meet my future readers and find out what they’re up to and what they’re interested in.
If you’ve ever wondered what an author visit is like (at least, one of mine, anyway), here’s a great writeup of a visit I did earlier in the month from the girls at Dr Challoner’s in Buckinghamshire. Thanks very much, girls!
June 6, 2012
Feeling festive
It’s the start of the festival season! We’ve just driven through miles of countryside still bedecked with bunting from the Jubilee, and there’s about to be more. Tomorrow, I shall be here:
Two days of talking about books, watching other people talk about books, catching up with friends who write and read books, and possibly buying some books …
The Hay Festival is 25 this year. We may have to brave it in wellies and a mac, but it will still be magic.
And on Sunday I’ll be at the Wychwood Festival in Cheltenham, listening to music, oh – and talking about books. Again.
And that’s just the start of it. Happy festival season! Have you booked one yet? If not – quick – book one. It’s the most fun you’ll have all summer.
(photos madebyfinn.com)
May 30, 2012
Home remedies
There are worse places to feel under the weather than an English garden in this recent weather …
May 23, 2012
A caravan called Doris
Wouldn’t this be the perfect place to write?
It’s a caravan called Doris, and it’s the star of a very popular garden at the Chelsea Flower Show this year, created by Jo Thompson, to celebrate the Caravan Club. Click on the picture to read the story.
I haven’t had the chance to go to Chelsea this time, much as I love it, and although it’s almost walking distance across the river. I’m missing it loads, because so many of the gardens look particularly fabulous this year. Lots of beautiful planting and topiary, which I love, and less razzamatazz, which I’m not so bothered by. The five year-old is desperate to go up in Dairmid Gavin’s scaffolding sculpture, which features a dining room, a vegetable garden in the sky and even a working shower. The views from it are incredible. All it’s missing, in the little one’s opinion, is a toy shop. Next time, Dairmid.
Jo’s garden – back to the caravan – is gorgeous, different, girly and intimate. As I watched an interview with her on BBC2, I suddenly thought how familiar she looked, and how even more familiar she sounded. It turns out we were at university together, studying Italian, ooh – about *that* long ago. Even more wonderful than her garden is to see how well things have worked out for her. She’s an award-winning garden designer (well, she would be, wouldn’t she?). If only we’d known then what we’d be doing now …
May 21, 2012
May 4, 2012
New discovery – the shoe box
Well, you live and learn.
On Tuesday, I visited Farnborough Hill in Hampshire. Not just any old school visit – not that they ever are just any old school visit, mind you. This was the school where my mother was head girl, fifty-one years ago (Hi, Mummy, if you’re reading this) and where one of my goddaughters is in year 10.
They suggested that I give four workshops and a talk. I suggested that if I gave four workshops and a talk, I would be muttering unintelligible drivel by the end of the day, as four workshops is a lot of workshops. However, they bravely decided to risk it and I agreed to give it a try.
Here we are at the beginning of the day, when I’d like to think I was sounding quite coherent. We are drinking hot chocolate and talking about books. YES!
Do I look as if my mother is watching me from just out of shot? She was. She came to visit with me. It was very lovely, but you can so tell she’s an ex-headgirl. Here I am pretending that I’ve forgotten that my ex-headgirl mother is RIGHT OVER THERE LISTENING TO EVERY WORD I SAY.
Anyway. After the hot chocolate my mother nipped off to London to do lots of fun stuff, and I got down to the workshops, which involved creating mood boards for various of our favourite characters, requiring lots of paper, scissors, old copies of magazines and Pritt. Also fun. Very fun actually. I can only hope the Year 7s and 8s enjoyed it half as much as I did.
But here’s the thing. I’d asked them to do some preparation before I came – thinking of which character they’d like to illustrate and pulling together some images that might represent their complicated, multi-layered personalities. I’d assumed they’d all bring magazine cuttings and postcards, but they didn’t. Lots of girls arrived with beautifully illustrated shoe boxes, or boxes of other sorts, and inside the boxes were objects they’d gathered from home to represent their chosen character. Bracelets and trinkets, spectacles and handcuffs, feathers and leaves …
My favourites were a padlock and some tea bags. Character? Dolores Umbridge. The tea bags were for her cups of tea and the padlock was for the Quidditch brooms. There were also printed out copies of some of her decrees. Quite wonderful.
As Carrie Bradshaw would say, it got me thinking. My mood board is a nightmare to cart around with me. It’s about a metre wide and nearly as deep. As soon as I try and move it, thinks start to fall off. And I can only attach things to it that are flat. A mood box, which is effectively what the girls had invented, is so much more practical: small and portable; just as good at containing useful, inspirational stuff; and it can hold objects as well as pictures.
I’m not sure how coherent I was by the end, but I was certainly inspired by the girls. That’s the thing about school visits: you go in to try and educate them (actually I don’t – I go in to try and remind them that reading and writing can be SO MUCH FUN) and they end up educating you.
Boxes. Who knew?
April 25, 2012
Coco and Mary
Today it was Nonie’s turn to blog.
What do this woman
and this woman
have in common?
How do they remind me of The Look? And why does Nonie approve of them so much? Find out by reading Noniesworld.
