Rachel Hamilton's Blog, page 5

COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH – 5 WEEKS TO GO

Down to five weeks. I honestly can’t believe it. The final approvals were made yesterday and the book is ready to go to print. To quote my daughter, “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAL.”

I had amazing news this week – I’ve been invited to be an author at the 2015 Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. More SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEALS. It’s the best litfest in the world, and I can’t wait until next March. Hooray for Isobel, Yvette and the rest of the team for thinking of me.

Speaking of wonderful invitations, I hope you’ve received your invite to join my Facebook Launch Party. If not and you’d like to come, please yell. I’d love it if you could pop in (May 22nd, from noon if you’re in the UK and from 3 if you’re in the UAE) for all the cyber cake you can eat. If you know anyone who’s interested in kids’ books please invite them along too. The more the merrier – I can always hire a bigger facebook page, or put up a marquee out the back.

If you prefer things slightly more traditional, I’m sorting out the design for my post-launch monthly newsletter, which will feature book recommendations, games and event information, so if you’d like to receive it, please opt in HERE

That’s it for the blog today as I’m off to shoot a video interview with the fabulous Alice Potter (I was going to say ‘no relation to Harry’, but maybe she is because she is my friend and she is MAGIC). I’ll be uploading soon, providing I don’t think it will scare people. (#faceforradio).

All that’s left to say are this week’s thank yous. To Alice who is, as always, my  hero and has been helping in every way possible despite being enormously up the duff. To Tatum Flynn, my comedy crit partner, who has been casting an insightful eye (can eyes be insightful? Probably not. Tatum would have spotted that) over Book 2. To Reem who is wise in the ways of Mailchimp (except when it comes to colour schemes) and to Giles who stepped in when our colour scheme went all 80s-funeral-mailer on us. To Jodie for being my #1 cheerleader despite bashing her ankle falling offthe wardrobe (don’t ask). And to the wonderful Susan, Nayu, Abi, Katie, Laura and Viv who have provisionally agreed to be part of my blogtour (more on that later).

ps.  No, the cat isn’t relevant to anything -  I just thought the picture was hilarious. 

 

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COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH – 6 WEEKS TO GO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Only six weeks to go in my countdown to launch. Blimey! This week I was thinking about my actual launch day and I realised I hadn’t scheduled anything for May 22nd itself.  This scared me. Imagine if, after a year of anticipation, the release day itself is a massive anti-climax. No! Can’t happen! I want to share the moment with all the lovely people who’ve helped along the way, and I want to CELEBRATE (yes, in shouty capital letters). After all, as a famous philosopher once philosophized, ‘if an author says ‘Yay! Me!’ in a wood, and there’s no one to hear, do they still make a sound?’

 

One thought sprang to mind – PARTY!

 

Hot on the trails of that thought came several other thoughts:

 

A party would involve lots of cleaning and I don’t like cleaning.
Life will already be manic that week – my husband is travelling, we’re moving house and the kids are doing their school tests.
My friends and book-buddies are spread all over the world and it would be impossible to get them in one place.

 

So, a rephrased thought sprang to mind – VIRTUAL PARTY!

 

I haven’t firmed up the details, but I’m going to have a BIG FAT FACEBOOK PARTY on May 22nd with games and quizzes and videos and giveaways and lots of lovely chat. It’ll start at midday UK time (3pm in the UAE) and go on all day (or until people start photocopying their bums and falling into pot plants and the police come round to ask us to turn down the music.) You can either pop in for a few minutes (bringing virtual cake and cyber champagne) or go crazy and stay all day.

 

I’ll send the invitations out through Facebook. So, if you’re not already on there, click HERE so we can be friends (ahhh) and  I can include you on the list.

 

Sometime next week I’ll set up an event page with a banner and some links. If you know anyone who might be interested in popping in, please invite them. The more the merrier!

 

It’s a fine line between keeping people updated with what’s going on and boring everyone stupid, so I’ve also spent this week sorting out a mailchimp account through which I’ll be sending out a monthly newsletter with kids’ book recommendation, games and details of what’s going on, so if you’d like to be included, please opt in HERE:

 

All that’s left to say are this week’s thank yous. To Alice, Jon, Mark and Jodie for helping record the soundtrack to the book trailer – more on that soon. To Reem & Emma for the wise words about Mail Chimps and PR.  To the fab people at Facebook for their thoughts. To Omar and Heidi for tips on invisibility for Book 2 and to my  Twitter friends for making me laugh this week. You know who you are. Hashtag insectporn

 

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COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH – 7 WEEKS TO GO

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seven weeks to go before ‘The Case of the Exploding Loo’ starts appearing in bookshops, and it’s been an interesting week. The most surreal moment was when I saw myself on the news talking about my book. My sister’s response sums it up – “I very much enjoyed you determinedly not touching your wind-blown hair while pretending to type on an off laptop.” Still, who’d have thought I’d be able to say, ‘Watch this, Mum – I’m on after Sir Tim Rice!’

Less interestingly, the kids and I were sick, so I kept them off school on Tuesday. I realised this was a mistake at about the same time my son realised it was April Fool’s Day, but it was fun watching their pranking efforts:

My son decided he wanted to glue a coin to the floor so he could laugh at anyone who tried to pick it up. Luckily he announced this in advance and I had time to hide the superglue. Sellotape didn’t have quite the same effect.
My daughter tried the ‘pretend a raisin is a fly and then eat it’ trick, which may have worked better if she hadn’t waved the raisin about, making buzzing noises first.
After sulking because the loo rolls he’d balanced on top of the door failed to hit anyone, my son took to the computer, where I found him pranking Minecraft villagers by dropping bricks on their heads and pouring lava on their houses.

I’d love to draw a book-related conclusion about how this shows we can be more effective in imaginary/fantasy worlds than in the real world; but in reality it just shows a worrying desire to attack and maim poor defenseless Minecraft villagers. However, it did keep the kids occupied for a while.

This gave me time to start planning a blog tour. For anyone unfamiliar with the world of book-launch-jargon, that’s like visiting book stores, except instead of going to physical places I’m hoping to visit different blogs, with a mixture of interviews, reviews, ‘behind the scenes’ news about ‘The Case of the Exploding Loo’. My super-agent, Luigi Bonomi, has offered to write a post describing the role of a literary agent and how he decides which books to take on, which should be fascinating as he’s very wise and experienced (which doesn’t mean old). Eleanor Willis, the lovely S&S editor who gave me a book contract for ‘The Case of the Exploding Loo’, will be outlining the editing process and explaining her reasons for choosing my book (because, yes, this blog tour IS all about me, me, me). And my illustrator has provisionally agreed to do a Q&A. So I can’t wait to read them all.

Not to be outdone, my son has already started his ‘illustrated blog post’ about having a mum who’s a writer (in breaks between massacring Minecraft villagers). I laughed, but I’m secretly chuffed. He’s funny and Neil Gaiman, Kate Scott and Nikki Sheehan have all described his blogs about their books as their ‘best review ever.’ (I’ve put a link to his Book Walrus review page below). So I look forward to seeing what he comes up with.

I’ve also been sorting out UK book events and am hoping to have something in the Nottingham/Lincoln area in early July, in Bristol during the last week of July and in London around the 10th of August. Everything is looking good for the UAE events in Magrudy’s (May 30th), Kinos (June 6th) and The Old Library (June 13th). Hopefully I’ll see you some of you there – if only because I’ve already started having nightmares about sitting, pen in hand, gazing around cavernous empty spaces, murmuring, ‘Hello? Anyone?’

Well, that’s it from me for another week, apart from this week’s thank yous. A big thank you to Mark and Alex for a fantastic idea that I don’t want to talk about yet in case I jinx it, but which will be brilliant if it comes off. Thanks to  Alice for helping me come up with ideas for a book trailer – more on that soon! Thanks to Elen for her eagle-eyed typo spotting. Thanks to Toutam and Kelly for helping me when I was feeling poorly and to Frank for buying me breakfast, which turned out to be one of the only meals that didn’t make me feel ill this week. Thanks to Reem for talking to me about cookies, PR and school visits, to Carmel for looking over my press release with wise eyes, and to Sam for being my PR minion. Also big thanks to The Boy FitzHammond and the man, Nick Stearn, for creating such a wonderful book cover, front and back, which I’ll be posting on site soon.

Also a few congratulations. Firstly to my friend Annabel Kantaria for her book deal – I’m almost as excited as when I got my own. Secondly to my sister, Debbie on turning 30 – and dressing up as the dragon from Neverending Story to celebrate!? Thirdly to my husband on his new job – well done you! And last but not least to Zsolt Teleki and his beautiful wife on the news that they’re expecting a baby – apologies for thinking it was an April Fool’s joke!

If you have been a marvellous human being and deserve thanking or congratulating and I have forgotten you, feel free to give me a kick (not too hard). My brain seems to have been gobbled up by the bug I caught this week and I’m operating on half batteries!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH – 8 WEEKS TO GO

 

 

I like this blog post called ‘How to help an author’. But, then again,  I would. Because I’m an author – and I like help.

If you have a moment, click on it and think lovely warm thoughts about the many ways you’ll be able to help me in the future

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DEBUT AUTHOR REVIEW: THE YEAR OF THE RAT, CLARE FURNISS

“I always thought you’d know, somehow, if something terrible was going to happen. I thought you’d sense it, like when the air goes damp and heavy before a storm and you know you’d better hide yourself away somewhere safe until it all blows over. But it turns out it’s not like that at all. There’s no scary music playing in the background like in films. No warning signs. The world can tip at any moment … a fact that fifteen-year-old Pearl is all too aware of when her mum dies after giving birth to her baby sister. Told across the year following her mother’s death, Pearl’s story is full of bittersweet humour and heartbreaking honesty about how you deal with grief that cuts you to the bone, as she tries not only to come to terms with losing her mum, but also the fact that her sister – The Rat – is a constant reminder of why her mum is no longer around.”

 

 

 

MARCH’S DEBUT AUTHOR REVIEW: 

THE YEAR OF THE RAT by CLARE FURNISS

Published by Simon & Schuster,  24 April 2014 

 

‘Authentic’ is a word so overused that its meaning is disappearing in a swamp of advertising clichés and marketing jargon. Someone should have locked it in a box and saved it until the time came to write about The Year of the Rat. Because this book has a raw honesty you don’t often find, which provokes an equally raw response from the reader. In the decades that have passed since I lost someone I loved in my teens, I haven’t read anything that gave me such an instant shock of recognition or brought me so quickly to tears.

Pearl is a teenager. She is moody and brilliant and selfish and funny and hurtful and stuffed full of adolescent emotions that are hard enough to manage when things are going well. And, for Pearl, things are not going well. The shattering loss of her mum is followed by the arrival of ‘The Rat’ – Pearl’s new baby sister and (in Pearl’s eyes at least) the reason mum is no longer alive.

Pearl doesn’t know herself what she wants or needs, only what she doesn’t. So she shuns all offers of help from the people who love her, turning her pain against them and abandoning herself to the lonely emptiness of grief.

I don’t want to make this beautiful book sound like it’s one long misery-fest. Because it’s not. And that’s what makes it so painfully convincing. Pearl is a teenager. Pearl isn’t dead. She is still drily funny and mercilessly sarcastic, and despite her best attempts to alienate everyone around her she still makes some deep human connections with the other characters in the novel.

I loved this book and want other people to love it too. I recommend it to anyone struggling to cope with their own feelings of grief, or with the feelings of a teenager friend or relative who doesn’t know how to let you in. I also recommend it to anyone who is simply looking for an incredibly good read. Because ‘The Year of the Rat’ is not just authentic, it is also wonderfully written and perfect in every way.

 

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DEBUT AUTHOR REVIEW – WHO FRAMED KLARIS CLIFF? NIKKI SHEEHAN

People used to call them ‘friends’ and said how they were good for your brain. And then a day came when all that changed . . . when they became our enemy.

Now, anyone found harbouring a rogue imaginary person is in for the Cosh, an operation that fries your imagination and zaps whatever’s in there, out of existence.

That’s why I wish Klaris Cliff had never shown up. And why I know that proving her innocence is the last hope I have of saving myself.

 

 

 

FEBRUARY’S DEBUT AUTHOR REVIEW:

WHO FRAMED KLARIS CLIFF? by NIKKI SHEEHAN

Published by Oxford University Press,  6 February 2014 

 

All books are wonderful, but some books are more wonderful than others. For me, Who Framed Klaris Cliff? is one such book.

The concept of a society where imaginary friends pose such a threat they must be systematically ‘Cosh’-ed, leaving their child hosts without the imagination to conjure up future companions, instantly shot this to the top of my ‘must read in 2014’ list. And I wasn’t disappointed. I loved everything about this book.

The mystery element is well-plotted and gripping. 13 year-old Joseph and his best friend’s eccentric younger brother, Flea, have less than a week to prove their imaginary friend, Klaris, hasn’t gone ‘rogue’. If they fail to convince the authorities Klaris is innocent of all charges then they are both headed for the Cosh. The plot developments are creative and original and the final twist, when it comes, provides that perfect blend of surprise and satisfaction.

But this is more than just a well-paced detective story. Who Framed Klaris Cliff? is also a beautifully written exploration of imagination and individuality, and of love and loss. Sheehan’s depiction of Joseph’s relationship with his father as the two of them try to deal with the unexplained disappearance of Joseph’s mother is particularly touching. One minute you’ll be laughing along with the book’s complex characters and the next minute you want to grab them and give them a great big squeeze. Because you really care what happens to these people.

From the moment I picked up Who Framed Klaris Cliff? I’ve been recommending it to everyone I meet. I don’t see how anyone could fail to love this story. Described as ‘for age 12+’, this is a children’s book adults will love. I certainly did. And it is written with such clarity and skill that it also has a lot to give younger readers like my nine year-old son.

All in all, a wonderful, magical tale that will stay with you long after you put it down.

 

My son (age 9) also read Who Framed Klaris Cliff? and loved it too. Here is his review:

 

If you are planning to read Who Framed Klaris Cliff? get ready to have your mind blown. LITERALLY.

I liked the book because it was one of the first times I have read a book with so much imagination. At the back of the book I learnt the writer got the idea from Japanese folklore, which is preeeeetty cool!

I’m baffled by the idea that imaginary people can hurt others. Maybe that’s how the apocalypse will start…? Probably not though. Still it’s good to be prepared.

It’s a good mystery. My only complaint is that in the first chapters it doesn’t give many details and you want to know more about who these imaginary people are and what they’ve done wrong.

From the characters  I like Flea the most – he doesn’t care what people think of him and he just does his own thing. He is 2 KEWL 4 SKOOL!

I’ve never had an imaginary friend, but I would be interested if someone else did. Not my sister though. My sister’s imaginary friend would be annoying, and I bet she would tell it to eat all my biscuits… somehow.

My mum told me I would like this book. I wasn’t sure so I agreed to read the first 50 pages so she would stop talking about it. I did and I thought – what the heck just happened? – so I had to keep on reading so I could figure everything out. And it was brilliant. Really brilliant. Sometimes my mum is right about things.

I have never read a book like this before. I bet you have never read a book like this before. WELL YOU SHOULD NOW!!!

 

If you want to find out more about the lovely Nikki Sheehan, check out our interview with her on Book Walrus, where these reviews have appeared previously.

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