Christine Bongers's Blog, page 7

Top Aussie YA reads of the year

With just a month to go before the Children’s Book Council of Australia releases its Notable Books for 2014, my bedside reading pile is toppling under the weight of must-reads.

So far, three fantastic Australian YA novels have claimed slots in my Clayton’s shortlist:

What are your hot tips for best Aussie YA reads published last year?

Top Aussie YA reads of the year (so far)

With just a month to go before the Children’s Book Council of Australia releases its Notable Books for 2014, my bedside reading pile is toppling under the weight of must-reads.

So far, three fantastic Australian YA novels have claimed slots in my Clayton’s shortlist:

What are your hot tips for best Aussie YA reads published last year?

A marvelous launch at Riverbend Books Sunday 2 March

One of the great pleasures of the writing life  is welcoming a new book into the world. Especially when it is a simply marvelous story by a favourite author.

So if you’re free this Sunday afternoon at 4pm, please join me and Karen Foxlee to celebrate the release of her brilliant Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy at Riverbend Books at Bulimba.

We’d love to see you there.

(Note: this is a free event, but please rsvp for numbers to events@riverbendbooks.com.au – and if you can’t make it, be prepared to kick yourself when this book becomes an instant classic. You’ve been warned.)

First glimpse of my new baby

Ooh, look what’s turned up in my inbox – the front cover of Intruder, coming out on 1st June!

I love it, I love it, I really do (and so do random teens in my life – including the fourteen-year-old boys, interestingly enough).

Here’s a sneak preview:

I don’t walk past the house next door.  I don’t speak to the evil witch who lives in it.

I wish she was dead. Even deader than my mum.

Which makes it hard… because she was the one who came running when I screamed.

Kat Jones is woken at midnight by an intruder looming over her bed. She’s saved by her hated neighbour Edwina – the woman Kat believes betrayed her dying mother.

Kat’s shift-worker dad, Jimmy, issues an ultimatum. Either spend nights at Edwina’s, or accept another intruder – Hercules, the world’s ugliest guard dog. It’s a no-brainer, even for dog-phobic Kat.

When she meets adorkable Al at the dog park, Kat lets down her guard and family secrets tumble out. The prowler turns up the heat, and Kat is forced into an unlikely alliance with her nemesis – finally learning the explosive truth about their shared past.

So, what do you think?

Cover design by Astred Hicks, www.designcherry.com

Cover photograph by Julia Trotti, www.juliatrotti.com

Ten things I love about my copy editor

1. She points out when my characters find their way all the way up the hallway and halfway up the stairs.

2. She suggests how to tighten the poesis of my descriptions. (I go along with these suggestions because I don’t know what poesis means. Not even after googling it. Twice.)

3. She won’t let me start three paragraphs in a row in the same way.  Starting successive paragraphs in the same way is a no-no.

4. After deleting verbiage, she tactfully asks if I think that works better to improve the pace?

5. I try not to mix my metaphors but have been sprung cramming too many different ones into a confined space. Man, I gotta remember to let those suckers breathe.

6. She calls me on phrases like ‘crabbing backwards’ because crabs normally scurry sideways. Duh.

7. And, technically, characters can’t hiss if there isn’t a sibilant sound in their line of dialogue. Suffering suckotash, how did I not figure that out for myself?

8. Intruder, my soon-to-released YA novel, is nearly 65,000 words long and not a single page has escaped the red pen of my copy editor.

9. Because she’s been specially trained to give a shit.

10. She’s going to make me look good when Intruder hits the bookshelves on 1 June.

But right now, I’m a hundred pages into the copy edit, on-screen track changes are sending me blind, Monday’s deadline is staring back at me, and I can’t stop muttering ‘I love my copy editor, I love my copy editor, I love my copy editor . . .

Fangirl moment

There’s nothing better than a new release by a favourite author, and Karen Foxlee is right up there for me, along with Melina Marchetta, Markus Zusak, and Peter Temple, to mention just a few.

Ever since Foxlee’s brilliant debut with The Anatomy Of Wings, I’ve counted myself a fan.

Her mesmerising follow-up, The Midnight Dress, recently made the American Library Associations’s list for 2014′s Best Fiction for Young Adults and is a front-runner for the upcoming award season Down Under.

Now her middle grade novel Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy has hit the bookstores. I was lucky enough to score a signed copy direct from the Gympie-based author of the beautiful American hardcover with its exquisitely illustrated end papers.

This modern-day fairy tale reminded me of all the reasons I fell in love with reading as a child. It has it all. A cold and nasty villainess A plucky imperfect eleven-year-old heroine. Magic. Wizards. A marvellous three-hundred-and-three-year-old boy, locked in the highest room of the museum, needing rescue. Oh, and a ticking clock counting down to the end of the world…

For me, the most wonderful character was Ophelia’s dead mother, horror writer Susan Worthington, teller of terrifying night tales to her asthmatic daughter.

‘Can’t you just tell me a simple fairy tale?’ Ophelia might plead.

”Oh, darling, fairy tales are for beginners,’ her mother would reply.

Like all good mothers, she reaches out from the grave to lend her child courage, urging her to stay loyal to her friends, and follow her heart.

I cried at the end for all the right reasons, but most of all, because I just didn’t want it to end.

Perfect for nine years and up (and yes, I’m definitely in the ‘up’ category).

Race Wear for Drongoes

Look, if you’re going to wear a silly hat, think big I say.

It’s been years since I’ve taken part in our national Silly Hats Day, but this year  I’m keen.

As revealed at Saturday’s The Inside Story, a racehorse was one of the major inspirations for my children’s book, Drongoes … 

And now, with the Spring Racing Carnival in full swing, Drongo, The Immortal Loser has also hit the adult bookshelves.

Nice to have another drongo author out there….But do you think he has a fascinator to rival mine?

Don’t miss out on The Inside Story

The beagle’s depressed.

I’ve been holed up for weeks meeting my publisher’s deadline. And after a final, heroic, sixteen-hour sprint to an after-midnight finish, I am ready for an outing… and the beagle’s not coming.

Sorry, Huggy, but this is strictly for humans – especially those who love books for kids.

THE INSIDE STORY is a free, funtastic event on this Saturday 2 November from 10am, organised by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in assocation with specialist bookshops all over the world. In Brisbane, it’s being held at Black Cat Books at La Trobe Terrace,Paddington.

I’ll be there, along with a host of fabulous authors and illustrators including Pamela Rushby, Katherine Battersby, Peter Taylor, Julie Nickerson, Dimity Powell, Michelle Worthington, Judy Paulson, Candice Lemon-Scott, Samantha Wheeler, JR Poulter, Christina Boolenbach, Stephen Axelsen and Angela Sunde.

Love to see you there too.

For more information, click on QLD INSIDE STORY.

Intruder Alert!

Big news – my new YA novel Intruder will be hitting the bookshelves on June 1 next year!

So excited. Not only because hello, I have a new novel coming out!, but because now I get to spend the rest of this year on the heady delights of the edit.

Yes, folks, it’s a guilty pleasure: holing up in my new office with turkish delight, massaging all the kinks out of my manuscript.

For me, the first draft can feel a bit like a marathon, exhausting and endless. But the subsequent drafts, they’re  the well-earned warm-down that stretches and primes me for the challenges ahead.

Finessing characters’ backstories to reveal motivation, ironing out tone, teasing out thematic links…. this is my favourite part of the writing process. And I’ve been fortunate to have had first readers who’ve helped take Intruder to the next level.

Bouquets to uber-librarian Miss Trish Buckley, my wonderful  agent Leonie Tyle, Publisher Zoe Walton and Editor Cristina Briones at Random House Australia for their thought-provoking and incisive comments and questions. You’ve helped make Intruder all that it could and should be.

I’ll be flying off to Barcelona tonight with laptop and editing notes under my wing.  Hasta pronto mis amigos! 

The Author at fifteen…

Kids often ask me if I have any of the stories that I wrote at school, and the answer has always been no – until now.

Now, thanks to the 50th anniversary of my old alma mater Biloela State High, and the archaeological skills of my sister-in-law Bridget, an early Pleistocene era original Chris Bongers short story has been unearthed! 

The excitement generated by this fantastic find (in a 1976 edition of our school magazine Narina) has been felt from Jambin to Brisbane (though I’m hoping to spread the thrill beyond just Bridget and me, when I ring my Mum after dinner).

I may even share it with the Year 9 short story writers I’m talking to at All Hallows School this week.  The bar has been set low, girls. Feel free to vault it!