Winners of the Young Editor Competition

Ta, da! I can finally announce the winners of the Young Editor Comp. It was so hard to judge - we got so many great entries. But the Irish winner is Yazmin from Shankhill, Dublin and the UK winner is Anna from West Sussex, England. They will be helping me edit the next Amy Green book, Dancing Daze. I can't wait to work with them. I hope it gives them an insight into how a book is written and edited!

As there were so many fab entries, we also have 3 runner up prizes - which will go to Abby, Tasha and Keelin. Well done to everyone!

And we'll be holding another Young Editor Competition next year as it was so popular - so keep reading!

Best,
Sarah XXX

My Young Editor - Kate

My lastest blog for Girls Heart Books

Back in 2008 when I started working on the book which became Ask Amy Green: Boy Trouble, I had a dilemma. My main character, Amy was and still is thirteen (it’s been a long, dramatic year for Amy!), but it had been a long time since I was a teen. Maybe things had changed, moved on. Maybe girls weren’t as boy, fashion and friend obsessed as I had been at thirteen. I decided that before I went any further I needed to find out how modern teens thought, and most importantly felt about everything. Which is where Kate came in.

Kate was in my son’s class at the time – 6th class at Glenageary/Killiney National School – and was and still is a huge reader. She is smart, funny and chatty, and I asked her to gather some friends - Emma, Sinead and Isobel - and meet me in a coffee shop to talk all things teen. It was wonderfully interesting and informative, and I came away knowing for sure that although, yes, a lot of things had changed for girls since I was a teen, a lot of things were exactly the same. A lot of the hopes, dreams, aspirations, fears and worries sounded so familiar I could almost taste them.

It was both helpful and inspirational – they are such great girls! And it made me realise how cool Irish teenagers are and how much I wanted to write for them, give them the kind of books they deserved: funny, smart, immersive books set in Dublin. Most of the books Irish teens read are set in the US or England. We are a small country of four million people (smaller than Birmingham!) and this year I’m delighted to report that this year many other new Irish authors have started to write books for teens set in Ireland.

Above is a picture of Kate and Emma and if you’d like to find out more about them check out my Amy Green Fanzine here.

Kate is now sixteen and is heading towards important exams, so I’m looking for some new young editors. She’ll always be part of the Amy Green team of course, I couldn’t do it without her!

So I’m holding a competition to find some new young editors in September – when the new Amy Green book, Love and Other Drama-Ramas is out – I’ll put the details up on the Girls Heart Books site, so watch this space!

The New Blog is Here! Don't Miss Out - Read It Right This Second . . .

Before and after pics from the Irish Book Awards!

It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, and I’m feeling good . . .

I’ve been reading a couple of other writers’ blogs recently and I came to the conclusion that:

a/ some people put a whole heap more effort than others into blogging

b/ some blogs are boring

c/ no-one (me included) wants to hear about what writers had for breakfast – unless they ate something mad like ostrich eggs

and c/ my own blog is starting to get very *yawn and stretch* BORING indeed!

So I asked my teen son, Sam, is my blog boring. He said ‘Yes, Mum, snoozeville.’ (And he’d only read 3 lines)

So I asked one of my teen editors who was far more polite.

‘Well . . .’ she stalled. ‘I wouldn’t say boring exactly. I’d say informative.’

Informative – not good. School is informative. The Irish Times is informative. Emails from the bank are informative. But blogs should be fun, right? You’re tuning in to be entertained, not put to sleep.

Maybe you’ve had a rotten day in school, your mum’s nagging you about homework again, and you just want something funny to read.

So there’s going to be a change around her, my friends. Starting now, I’m going to say exactly what I like, when I like and no-one can do a thing about it.

Maw-ha-ha-ha! (Evil laugh)

You will learn the secret weird and wonderful workings of my very odd mind. I mean really, who spends hours thinking about school lock downs and how cool a story that would make?

Who spends hours discussing Wimpy Kid books with a gang of third classers just for the hell of it?

I tell you, I’m so far off normal sometimes, I scare myself.

Must be all the cool children’s books I’ve read – they’re seeping into my brain and turning it into a huge glowing ball of strange ideas and concepts.

Every day I wake up thinking something like – what if there was this surfing dog, now that’s interesting. No, no, surfing hamster. No, no, a boarding school for children of spies . . . and on it goes, all day, every day . . .

But that is how all books start . . . the big WHAT IF.

And I know a whole heap of you like writing too, so in this blog I’ll try to demystify (good word, huh!) the whole writing process – and tell you how a book is written from start to finish.

- OK, honest question to teen editor number one, is this blog boring?

- No way! But I hope you don’t mind me saying this – are you OK? You sound, well, different.

- Different in a good way, or in a bad way?

- In a good way I guess.

- Most excellent, my work here is done.


Till next week, Amy Greensters. Friday is blog day so check back every Friday from now on for your weekly blog fix.

Be warned, if you like this post and leave comments it will only encourage me! The more comments, the more blogs . . . it’s in your hands, folks!

Toodle pips as Clover would say.


Sarah XXX