Today’s interview is with a cover designer at Walker Books, Jack Noel. Jack is the genius behind the cover of The Next Together, which I personally believe to be the greatest work of art that humanity has ever created. (But I might be biased.)
This is my favourite interview in the series so far, not only because Jack is very funny, but because he shares some of the abandoned cover designs for The Next Together with us!
What does your job involve?
I design covers for books. The process is: read, discuss, think, sketch, research, visualise, trial, error, copy, paste, discuss, refine, refine, discuss, refine … and that’s it.
How did you become a designer?
Before working in publishing I spent a few years as a freelance designer/illustrator doing occasional fun things like album covers but mainly less-fun things like corporate logos.
My dream was to work in children’s books so I wrote to my top two publishers – Walker Books and Nosy Crow – and asked if I could come and meet someone to talk design. Nothing happened for ages but then, about six months later, a junior position came up in the Fiction department at Walker. I applied and somehow ended up getting the job.
Do you have any favourite illustrators/cover designs that you remember from your childhood?
Yes! These ones:
What are your favourite and least favourite things about working in cover design?
How did you go about designing the cover for The Next Together?
I started by reading the manuscript and discussing ideas with the editor, Annalie. We also pulled together relevant book covers and other imagery for reference. This stage is important. Fun too!
I noticed that time-travel themed stories are often represented as layers. (I guess because time is linear and the layers are like different dimensions? I’m not 100% clear on the physics.) I knew I wanted to play on this for The Next Together as it fit well with my reading of the story, with the characters being consistent through the different time periods.
I started playing around with layers to represent the time-periods from the story.
I created dozens of variations. The whole way through I discussed the progress with Annalie as well as David, the Walker Books fiction art director, and our Sales and Marketing teams. We also occasionally shared it with you, the author!
One breakthrough (though it seems incredibly obvious now) was switching to the vertical bands. We read images like text – from left to right – and so this arrangement makes a lot more sense. The bands are made up of a mixture of old artwork, textures and stock imagery.
It took many many iterations to get the balance between the high-concept stuff and the romance but I think we got there in the end.I’m definitely pleased with how it all came out. I hope it lives up to the scope and emotion of the book.
Has being involved in publishing changed how you read books for pleasure?
Yes – now I always start by checking the copyright page for credits.
What trends do you predict will become more common in cover design?
Most covers now are encountered online, so I think there’ll be more and more moving and interactive ones. I hope so. I like them.
Do you have any advice for anyone looking to get into cover design?
Decide exactly what kind of books you’d like to work with and then make your portfolio as focused and as relevant as possible. Then keep showing it to people and listen to any feedback you can get. Also: good choice! It is fun.
Jack is an illustrator/designer type from London/Brighton. He was the Brighton Cooperative Beautiful Baby winner 1986. He also knows some words in Spanish.
Today I’m sharing a tiny little look at another of Kate and Matt’s lives – one which isn’t mentioned in the book. It’s set in a vaguely medieval time, and is 100% inspired by this picture I found, which looks exactly like Kate.
Photograph by Vestal Magazine
In the story, Kate is a midwife with a secret place in the woods where she keeps her herbs and medicines, because the villagers are suspicious of magic and witches. Matthew is the village hangman, mainly because I just couldn’t resist a ‘Matthew Galloway’ pun.
In other news: I’m going to be doing a panel at Waterstones Birmingham on 12 September! at their Book Blogger Bonanza! Tickets are available now by calling 0121 631 4333. You can see all of the events I’m attending here.
Today I’m sharing the playlist for The Next Together with you. I listened to this over 100 times when I wrote the book, and I can’t hear one of these songs without getting all tearful about it!
“But if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all? If you close your eyes, does it almost feel like you’ve been here before?”
If you want to know more about Kate and Matt, you can read the first chapter of The Next Together here, and buy the book in the following places:
As The Next Together takes place in lots of timelines, all of which are a different genre – there’s a Regency-esque romance, a war story, and a Dystopian thriller, to name a few! – I thought today I’d go even further. I’m writing the book in the style of a few other genres.
This was mainly because I wanted to see if I could really write in the style of Game of Thrones or Bridget Jones’ Diary.
Warning: these are all ridiculous.
You’re welcome.
i. high fantasy
Kate clutched fearfully at the helm of her sword, but outwardly retained her calm exterior, with all the poise and grace that generations of ancestral nobility had invested in her. The man was scarce but a twig, swaddled in layer upon layer of furs and tartan kilt with only the bridge of his nose visible, and with her years of training she could have defeated him easily- were it not for the wolf growling at his feet, froth bubbling at the jaw and pounds of raw strength braced to attack in its muscles.
“Where do ye think you’re headed, sassenach?” he intoned, gruffly. “This isnae England anymore.”
Today I’m going to be sharing my writing process with you. I’m going to post different drafts of the same scene, from first draft to final book, to show how much can change – and what can stay the same.
The very first draft, finished in 2012 when I was 19, and the final book!
This is quite a long post, because of the multiple extracts – and please forgive the terrible quality of the early drafts, which I’ve left completely unedited for authenticity.
Draft Zero: This is the very first scene, written when I was 18 in 2010. In the first draft Matt was 27 and Kate was 22, which was quickly changed as soon as I got an agent, when she suggested I rewrite a lot of Chapter One to make Matt a fellow student with Kate. Making them both younger made the book more appropriate for a Young Adult audience. I’m a little surprised in retrospect that this didn’t occur to me when I was writing this draft – I somehow thought this was fine for YA!?!
Today there was a new researcher in her lab, and she was watching him curiously. He was sitting on the lab bench (against the rules) attention focussed on an ancient paperback, curling and brown, cover bent backwards. Kate pulled out her incubated petri dishes, flipping down her lab glasses from where they were tangled in her red curls. She quickly counted out the spots on the agar, made a note in her electronic lab book and tried not to smirk when the new guy jumped at the sound of the morning fire alarm test. He turned the movement into a stretch to cover up his fright; swinging his legs, and hitting the cupboard doors below the bench with a thud.
Kate eyed his Doc Martens with longing, pen dangling forgotten in her hand, and bacteria untouched on her bench top. Her gran was still holding out on parting with her old ones and Kate wanted to know where he’d got his. The researcher abruptly flicked closed his book, eyes scanning the room. She realised she was openly staring, and too late he looked her way.
To cover up being caught, she flicked her eyes to the book and back, raising an eyebrow. To her surprise, a slight blush rose to his cheekbones, and he shrugged his shoulders self consciously, clearing his throat and looking away. She turned back to her work, absentmindedly setting up a pipette on autopilot, thinking.
Behind her, she heard him calling everyone’s attention to him, and she turned on her heels, leaning back against the bench and shoving her hands in her lab coat pockets. Everyone else took a few moments to finish their work, and she eyed the way his hair curled over the back of his collar, fingering a locket she’d stuffed in her pocket a few weeks ago, when she was working in a fume cupboard and it had been annoying her, and then later forgotten about. The lecturer raised his voice so he could be heard along the length of the lab.
“Alright guys! I’m Dr Galloway, and I’ve just transferred from the Section 4 labs to help with a research project Professor Michaels is working on.” He said, mentioning Kate’s tutor. He had a Scottish accent, Kate noticed without surprise, and then wondered why she had expected that. Section 4 was in the south of the country. He must have transferred from Section 6, in what used to be Scotland, before starting at Section 4, but Kate had no way of knowing that before he spoke.
“I’ll be teaching a few lectures and I’ve been assigned to supervise the labs a several times a week too, so I’ll probably see most of you around, especially if you help with the undergraduates. I’ll be coming round to see what you are all working on today. I’m guessing you know more than me about how the lab here operates, but if I can be of any help at all, let me know. I’m researching improvements in insect-plant fertilisation, so I might even be able to give a few of you some tips.”
He finished speaking with a smile, making a ‘carry on’ motion with his hands.
Most people turned back to their work, talking across the benches, to each other. Kate stayed where she was, watching Dr Galloway.
He had light brown hair, which hung over his eyes in a retro fringe that seemed to be based from something from the late noughties. He had cheekbones that Kate would kill for, and he wore uncommon square black glasses, which made him look like a character in one of those teen movies they used to make before the war.
He hadn’t put his labcoat on yet, instead he was using it as a kind of satchel, holding an assortment of stationary, notebooks and what looked like his lunch, or the beginnings of a very interesting experiment. He was wearing a tweed waistcoat, of all things, made even more bizarre by the fact it was mixed with ripped jeans (it was hard to tell if they had been ripped when he bought them, or not); and a ratty t-shirt for some kind of band, from what she could make out. For a lecturer, he seemed oddly against following rules, and actually kind of cool.
As he finally wrestled his way into the sparkling new lab coat, dumping its contents on a desk and rescuing an apple from where it bounced across the floor, she fished the locket out of her pocket and fixed it round her neck, so she didn’t forget it again. He turned around, and blushed again when he noticed her watching. He looked away, pretending to glance around the lab, but Kate carried on watching. There was something….familiar about him.
Finally, he gave in and walked over to her, clearing his throat. Kate didn’t let him speak, instead, saying, “You know, I knew exactly what your voice would sound like before you spoke. Why would that be, do you think?”
He looked even more confused at this than he had at her socially inacceptable staring, and gaped at her momentarily. She stared at him with an amused expression until he recovered.
“Sorry, what was your name?” he asked, looking her up and down. His eyes lingered on her labcoat collar, which was decorated with badges and beads, but he didn’t mention it.
“Kate. Hi, nice to meet you, welcome to Section 3, etc, etc. I know you from somewhere. Have we met before?”
“We haven’t met before. I would have remembered.” He blushed bright red, and then stammered, “I mean, I haven’t been here before.”
“Hmmm.” She eyed him speculatively. He made no attempt to continue conversation, instead staring at her with a slightly nonplussed expression, so eventually she said, “So, you’re working with my tutor, then. You’ve probably heard about me.”
A look of understanding dawned on his face. “Oh, you’re Kate. James warned me to keep away from you.”
Kate grinned, immeasurably pleased at this. “Did he really? Glad to hear I’m not letting the old lad down.”
“What did you do exactly? He said if I valued my sanity, and more importantly my thesis, I should stay away from you.”
“I think in order to maintain my air of mystery we shall leave it at that for now,” Kate winked at him, turning around and grabbing rubber gloves from a box on her bench. “I’m sure you have some important supervising to do.”
The doctor stood behind her, and she could feel the skin on the back of her neck prickling as he watched her press test tubes into a centrifuge. As he was turning to leave, she turned her head and called out, “Oh, and Matt? You have your lab coat on inside out.”
He looked startled and looked down, blushing a familiar red. He walked off quickly, ignoring her, and stripped off the offending article to turn it the right way around as he left her side. Kate carried on with her work and tried not to laugh too loudly when he nearly spilt over the liquid nitrogen canister. She hadn’t succeeded judging by the glare he shot across the lab at her, the effect of which was slightly spoilt by the huge goggles covering most of his face.
Draft One: This is the draft that got me an agent! Not much has changed – I’ve given it a tidy up, and made Kate a bit more sassy. As this is the chapter I submitted to agents, I wanted to make sure it captured as much of her personality as possible.
When Kate noticed the new face in the lab she naturally found herself watching him curiously. It was the boredom, perhaps, or maybe just the fact that he was sitting on the lab bench (against the rules) attention focussed on an ancient paperback, curling and brown, the cover bent backwards.
Kate eyed it, trying to read the name on the spine, and absently made a note in her lab book. The man was whistling softly and there was no one around him despite the fact that he was perched right next to the ice machine, a common gathering ground for gossiping. Kate couldn’t blame her colleagues for avoiding the cheerful stranger. It was often a sign of impending doom-or possibly explosions- to be that excited in a lab on a Monday morning.
Kate tried not to smirk as the morning fire alarm test rang out and the man jumped. He turned the movement into a stretch to cover up his fright; swinging his legs and hitting the cupboard doors below the bench with a thud. He looked up, eyes scanning the room to see if anyone had noticed. Kate was caught staring and to cover up her embarrassment she winked at him. To her surprise a slight blush rose to his cheekbones and he looked down, closing his book.
She gaped at him for a moment before remembering her manners and turned back to her bench. She absentmindedly set up a pipette on autopilot, mind still caught on the new researcher.
He had blushed! She wasn’t sure what to do with that, actually. Was it a good thing, a guy blushing when you looked at him? He might as well have a nametag saying ‘Hi, I’m a shy, socially awkward scientist, please don’t look me directly in the eye or I might faint’.
Kate was just imagining him introducing himself as ‘A socially awkward scientist’, his Scottish lilt skipping quickly over the words, when he cleared his throat behind her and called everyone’s attention to him. She turned quickly, astonished. That was a bit odd. He sounded exactly as she had imagined him: the exact same soft Scottish accent. She frowned, leant back against the bench, stared at him. Why had she assumed he was Scottish in the first place?
The man looked confidently around the lab as he waited for everyone to finish working. She eyed the ease with which he stood facing a room full of people, her gaze lingering on the way his hair curled over the back of his collar. She stuck her hand in her pocket, fingers catching on a locket she’d stuffed in there a few weeks ago when it had annoyed her while working in a fume cupboard.
“Hello everyone! I’m Dr Galloway, and I’ve just transferred from the Section Four labs to help with a research project Professor Michaels is working on,” he said, mentioning Kate’s tutor. Section Four was in the south of the country. He must have transferred from a Scottish bunker- probably Section Six, if they could afford to send him so far south. She returned her attention to his speech, trying not to feel like too much of a stalker.
“I’ll be teaching a few lectures and I’ve been assigned to supervise the labs several times a week too, so I’ll probably see most of you around, especially if you help with the undergraduates. I’ll be coming round to see what you are all working on today. I’m guessing you know more than me about how the lab here operates, but if I can be of any help at all, let me know. I’m researching improvements in insect-plant fertilisation, so I might even be able to give a few of you some tips.”
A few of the other researchers welcomed him, but it was too early in the morning for much of a response. After an awkward pause he made a little ‘carry on’ motion with his hands, and most people turned back to their work. Kate stayed where she was, watching Dr Galloway carefully.
He had made some interesting fashion choices, and it was slightly impressive how mismatched his outfit was. It was like an alien had watched a few teen films from the sixties, eighties and noughties and cobbled together a disguise from a mix of them all. He was wearing a tweed waistcoat, of all things- she wondered vaguely why anyone would save that as one of their most valued possessions in a mass evacuation- made even more bizarre by the fact it was paired with ripped jeans (it was hard to tell if they had been ripped originally, or not); and a ratty t-shirt for some kind of band. His light brown hair hung over his eyes in a retro fringe that seemed to be based from something from the late noughties and he had cheekbones that Kate would kill for.
He was in the process of trying to wrestle his way into his labcoat. He had apparently been using it as a kind of satchel, and he dumped onto a desk an assortment of stationary, notebooks and what looked like his lunch- in a biology lab, did he have no sense of survival instinct at all?- from its layers.
As he finally wrestled his way into the sparkling new coat and rescued an apple from where it bounced across the floor, she fished the locket out of her pocket and fixed it round her neck so she didn’t forget it again. He turned around, and once again blushed a vivid pink when he noticed her watching. Kate pulled off her goggles, fighting them for a moment from their determined grip in her red tangles of hair.
She knew she should get back to her work and probably give him a week or so to settle in before she began to torment him further by actually talking to him, or doing something equally terrifying like nodding to him in the corridor. It was obvious he was completely overwhelmed by her raw sexuality- or that was what she was telling herself, anyway, and no one could prove otherwise. But she couldn’t look away. There was something….familiar about him.
Finally, after a few painful minutes where Kate stared unwaveringly at him and he quite obviously tried to decide whether he was going to run away or go and talk to a girl, he gave in and walked over to her. He met her gaze, clearing his throat, obviously unsure how to confront her about staring.
She took pity on him and said, “You know, I knew exactly what your voice would sound like before you spoke. Weird, don’t you think?”
Kate winced internally. Good opener. Or, you know, the opposite of that. What was she trying to do, let him know just how crazy she was while there was still enough distance between them for him to get a good head start in a chase? Why had she even said that?
He gaped at her momentarily, naturally at a loss of what to say to that slightly terrifying conversation starter. Kate bit her lip, tried not to panic, and forced her face into an amused expression. It was too late to take it back now. She’d just have to pretend that what she’d said was completely normal.
“Sorry, what was your name?” he asked, looking her up and down. His eyes lingered on her labcoat collar, which was decorated with badges and beads, but he didn’t mention it. She felt that he was hardly justified to talk; there was still half a ham sandwich in his pocket.
“Kate,” she said brightly, trying to convey a more normal aura. She had to keep it simple; keep him in her general vicinity. There would be plenty of time to question him later. “Hi, nice to meet you, welcome to Section Three, etc, etc. I know you from somewhere. Have we met before?”
Or she could just act like his own personal stalker. That worked too.
“We haven’t met before. I would have remembered.” He blushed bright red, and then stammered, “I mean, I haven’t been here before.”
“Hmmm.” She eyed him speculatively. He didn’t seem like he was lying. Where did she know him from?
He made no attempt to continue talking, just fixed her with a slightly nonplussed expression. Kate was afraid to continue that line of conversation in case he actually died from the blood rushing to his face, so she eventually said, “You’re working with my tutor, then. You’ve probably heard about me.”
A look of understanding dawned on his face. “Oh, you’re Kate. James warned me to keep away from you.”
Kate grinned gleefully, immeasurably pleased at this. It always delighted her to hear she was mentioned among the university professors. “Did he really? Glad to hear I’m not letting the old lad down.”
“What did you do exactly? He said if I valued my sanity, and more importantly my thesis, I should stay away from you.”
“I think in order to maintain my air of mystery we shall leave it at that for now,” Kate winked at him, turning around and grabbing rubber gloves from a box on her bench. That was enough for today. She needed to think a little about what he was apparently doing to her mental processes before she embarrassed herself even more. “I’m sure you have some important supervising to do.”
He shuffled a little, cleared his throat. She could feel the skin on the back of her neck prickling as he watched her press test tubes into a centrifuge.
“I suppose I do. It was….interesting meeting you, Kate.”
“You too, Dr Galloway. Please don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions about Section Three. I’d be happy to help.” He nodded, turning to leave. “Oh, and Matt? You have your lab coat on inside out.”
He looked startled, frowned down at the coat like it had personally betrayed him, and quickly walked off. She watched him strip off the offending article, smirking to herself. He was interesting, to say the least, and not only because she knew she had met him before.
Draft two: As well as changing the ages of Kate and Matt, I also changed the setting for this draft. The original storyline also included a Dystopian setting, which my agent advised me to remove. She thought that publishers wouldn’t be buying any more Dystopian novels by the time we submitted it in 2013, because the trend would be ending. I changed the setting to a normal university instead of an underground bunker (although I do miss that world! In the first draft there were lots of explorations into abandoned city ruins which were very fun.)
This is the draft my agent submitted to publishers, that two editors made an offer on! This scene actually didn’t change much in the final book, so I’m just going to put anything which was deleted in Line Edits in italics.
Kate poured ethanol into her test tube, absently measuring out what she would need for her afternoon’s experiment. She wasn’t really in the mood for labs today, but it was only the second experiment of the year and she couldn’t miss it. It didn’t help that she was the only person without a lab partner, so she had to do double the work of the other students. Despite there being over two hundred biology first year undergraduates there was an odd number of students, and she’d been the one to draw the short straw.
Not that she minded the extra work particularly. She’d just enjoy having someone to gossip with whilst waiting for reactions to finish, which judging by the crowd gathered by the ice machine was all the other students did.
She was trying to remember the date to write in her labbook, when a voice from behind her said her name.
“Kate Finchley?” a harried looking supervisor asked.
“Yep,” she said, dropping her pen and turning to face her. She stuck her hand in her pocket, fingers catching on a locket she’d stuffed in there last week when it had annoyed her whilst working in a fume cupboard. The postgrad gestured to a boy standing behind her, looking nervous.
“Here’s your new lab partner; just transferred from Chemistry. You can get him settled, can’t you?”
The supervisor disappeared in a cloud of stress and steamed up goggles to deal with a fresher who had just managed to drop a beaker of something foul on the floor and then stand in it.
Kate stared at the boy.
“Hi,” she said dubiously.
She fished out the locket, putting it back on. The boy stared back at her. He was wearing a tweed waistcoat, of all things, made even more bizarre by the fact it was paired with ripped jeans (it was hard to tell if they had been ripped originally, or not); and a ratty t-shirt for some kind of band. His light brown hair hung over his eyes in a retro fringe that seemed to be based from something from the late noughties. She was delighted to note that despite his doubtful fashion choices he was exactly her type.
She gestured to the lab. “Welcome to my lair. Make yourself at home.”
He nodded hello and dropped his labcoat onto the bench like he’d just been waiting for her permission. He’d apparently been using it as a kind of satchel, and he dumped out an assortment of stationary, notebooks and what looked like his lunch (in a biology lab, did he have no sense of survival instinct at all?) from its layers. As he finally wrestled his way into the sparkling new coat and rescued an apple from where it had bounced across the floor, she found her gaze lingering on the way his hair curled over the back of his collar.
He turned around, and actually blushed when he noticed her watching, a vivid pink staining cheekbones that she was frankly jealous of. Bone structure like that was wasted on a chemist.
Kate pulled off her goggles to distract from the fact that she’d been caught watching him, fighting for a moment to pull them from their determined grip in her tangled red hair.
He had blushed? She wasn’t sure what to do with that, actually. Was it a good thing, a guy blushing when you looked at him? He might as well have a nametag saying ‘Hi, I’m a shy, socially awkward scientist, please don’t look me directly in the eye or I might faint’.
Kate was just imagining him introducing himself as ‘A socially awkward scientist’, his Scottish lilt skipping quickly over the words, when he cleared his throat and spoke.
“So, I didn’t actually get a copy of the labbook. What experiment are we doing today?”
That was a bit odd. He sounded exactly as she had imagined him: the same soft Scottish accent. She frowned, leant back against the bench, stared at him. Why had she assumed he was Scottish in the first place?
He was watching her expectantly, and she caught herself. Instead of answering his perfectly sensible question, she found herself saying, “You know, I knew exactly what your voice would sound like before you spoke. Weird, don’t you think?”
Kate winced internally. Good opener. Or, you know, the opposite of that. What was she trying to do, let him know just how crazy she was while there was still enough distance between them for him to get a good head start in a chase? Why had she even said that? Why had she even thought that?
He gaped at her momentarily, naturally at a loss for what to say to that slightly terrifying conversation starter. Kate bit her lip, tried not to panic, and forced her face into an amused expression. It was too late to take it back now. She’d just have to pretend that what she’d said was completely normal.
“Sorry, what was your name?” he asked, looking her up and down. His eyes lingered on her labcoat collar, which was decorated with badges and beads, but he didn’t mention it. She felt that he was hardly justified to talk; there was still half a ham sandwich in his pocket.
“Kate,” she said brightly, trying to convey a more normal aura. She had to keep it simple; keep him in her general vicinity. There would be plenty of time to question him later. “Hi, nice to meet you, welcome to Biology, etc, etc. I know you from somewhere. Have we met before?”
Or she could just act like his own personal stalker. That worked too.
“We haven’t met before. I would have remembered.” He blushed and then stammered, “I mean, I haven’t even been to this country before. I moved here for university.” Scotland had been independent from England since WWIII, almost twenty years ago. Since then most Scottish students studied there, to save on the hefty international tuition fees they’d have to pay to study in England. It had been one of the largest disadvantages in what was mainly considered a positive change, both for the economy and the culture.
“Hmmm.” She eyed him speculatively. He didn’t seem like he was lying. Where did she know him from?
She knew she should get back to work and probably give him a week or so to settle in before she began to torment him further by actually chatting to him, or doing something equally terrifying like nodding to him in the corridor. It was obvious he was completely overwhelmed by her raw sexuality- or that was what she was telling herself, anyway, and no one could prove otherwise. But she couldn’t look away. There was something….familiar about him.
He made no attempt to continue talking, just looked, slightly nonplussed. Kate was afraid to continue that line of conversation in case he actually died from the blood rushing to his face, so she eventually said, “Why are you transferring over to Biology, anyway?”
He shrugged, aiming for nonchalant but ending up closer to uncertain. “There weren’t as many explosions as I was hoping for in Chemistry.” It sounded like a prepared response; he’d probably been asked that question a lot recently.
“Well there aren’t nearly half as many giant octopuses as you’d want in Biology either, sorry.”
He grinned. “Shame. How’s the Physics department here?”
“Six out of ten. There aren’t enough brunettes,” she replied vaguely. There’d been a disappointing mixers event in fresher’s week.
“What?” He said, startled.
“Oh. I mean, I hear their NMR research rivals Cambridge’s.”
“I’ll look into that, then. If the octopi don’t work out.”
“I’m sure they will. No sea monsters today, though. We’re testing fertiliser effects on the development rates of bacteria cultures.”
He sighed a little in relief. “Sounds a lot easier than Chemistry labs. I had to bring an acid to boil. On my first day.” He winced, looking slightly haunted.
“Ouch. Well, I’ll look after you today.” She grinned at him, handing him a pair of latex gloves.
As you can see, the story changed a lot – as did the quality of my writing! It’s interesting that once I’d found the right set-up, by changing the setting and character’s positions, the dialogue and scene hardly changed at all from submission to the final book. I’d obviously hit upon the right version!
If you want to know more about Kate and Matt, you can read the first chapter of The Next Together here, and buy the book in the following places:
Today I have a Harry Potter/The Next Together crossover story which I wrote at the request of Alice Oseman back in April 2014, before either of us were published. I thought I’d resurrect it!
To celebrate the release of my first book, I’m posting a new “Behind the Scenes” exclusive about The Next Together daily until September 3rd. You can find them all here.
Today I’m giving my characters some much needed advice!
Dear Kate,
Stop doing stupid things, you’re hurting Matthew. Everything would be a lot easier if you didn’t always get yourself into contrived plots. Just trust him a bit.
Also, stop saying ‘that’s what she said’ all the time. After three hundred years, you probably need to get some new material.
Yours lovingly,
Lauren
This is so Kate and Matt that it hurts.
Dear Matt,
You can trust Kate.
Maybe.
It depends.
Yours, worriedly,
Lauren xxx
P.s. Don’t tell Kate, but you’re my favourite.
A rebloggable version of this post can be found here.
In the sixth instalment of my interview series, I’m so excited to be talking to Sorrel Packham, who typeset The Next Together. She once told me that because my book has so many different epistolary elements, it ended up containing the most fonts of any book Sorrel had typeset!
If you’ve read the book, you’ll know that she did an absolutely excellent job, and turned the messy word document I wrote into a work of art, so I had to find out how she pulled it off.
What does your job involve?
Taking the final draft electronic manuscripts from authors and creating the file that is sent to the printers. There are a few stages in between, however. Firstly the size of the book has to have been decided, and with the cover designer, the style of the printed page will be decided upon. Any quirky bits in the text will be discussed and how I should approach them with regard to layout. The programme I currently use to work in is called InDesign but equally you could also use a programme called Quark Express. Both programmes are called layout programmes and are used widely across the publishing and design industry.
Once the text has been ‘laid out’ and styled, it is sent to copy editors and proof-readers to check the content for sense and grammatical errors, and to the author and editor to make sure everyone is happy with the text and how it looks. Any corrections that need to be made are marked on a printed copy of the document and given back to me to make the corrections in the live file. Once all the corrections have been made and everyone is happy with the file, I send to print by ‘packaging’ the file with all its fonts and images into one bundle that can be archived for future use.
How did you get started in typesetting?
I did a degree in Book Arts at the London College of Printing (now Communication) and got interested in book lay out and text design then. I was lucky to get a job as an admin assistant at a local university and so when I saw a publishers assistant job come up at a neighbouring university it made me the best candidate for the role.
What’s your favourite part of your job?
Setting up complex documents in a way that means the text and any styling won’t change when any corrections are made to the file – like when you style something in word and then change a bit earlier on, it knocks everything out. I style my documents so everything stays in place regardless of what happens to the text. I also enjoy styling the more unusual aspects of the text – from handwritten letters to setting images within the text in a way that shapes the words around the image, for example.
How was the experience of typesetting The Next Together? (So many fonts!)
Hard work! But I enjoyed the challenge of it. Some of it was difficult to make the styling consistent but we did our best! I could tell just how much energy and enthusiasm you had when you wrote it and that’s rare to feel so I wanted to support that by doing the best that I could with the complexity of the styling.
And you did a really excellent job of it!
What are some of your favourite children’s books now and from your childhood?
For me, working in children’s publishing is a bit like working in a sweet shop – it sounds ideal but I’m a bit too immersed in it all to appreciate it all properly. Some of my more favourite books are the more quirky or grown up ones – Salem Brownstone, Rae Earl’s OMG series, and I love Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Colouring Book.
My favourite books when I was a child were the Beatrix Potter collection, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and Masquerade by Kit Williams which is not really a children’s book but I found the images captivating.
What are you proudest of in your career?
I’m proud of the more involved and more technically difficult jobs that I think only I would find interesting, but I’m really happy to have collaborated with the students from First Story in publishing their anthologies. Its always so moving to see a bunch of kids read proudly from work they have written and I have helped publish. They work is so frequently incredible too.
Do you ever work on picture books? How is this different to YA novels?
Occasionally. The text is completely dependent on the visual images and tends to take second place in terms of layout – although obviously not always. The work I do on those books tends to be more or an art-working role where I clean up images or rebuild really old files that we need to reprint.
Has being involved in publishing changed how you read books for pleasure?
Yes – it makes it much harder! I have to push myself to read at home now because I stare at text all day long, it’s hard to want to continue to do that when I get home. But I do try and am always glad of the effort made.
What advice do you have for anyone looking to get into publishing?
Unless you really want to live in London for a large part of your life, or another capital city like New York (although New York doesn’t sound that bad does it?!), pick a different career! For me, having most of the jobs available to me being in a city that is incredibly expensive – and is becoming increasingly prohibitively expensive to live in has made me re-evaluate what I want to do with my life to the extent that next year, I’m giving up publishing and will be retraining to be a Landscape Architect!
Sorrel Packham has typeset a variety of publications for Walker Books, such as Trouble by Non Pratt, Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman and More Than This by Patrick Ness. You can find out more at her website, where she offers freelance typesetting: typesetbysorrel.com.
In other news: Thirteen days to go until The Next Together is published! Today’s behind the scenes extra is sneakily short (but sweet!).
I’ve rewritten The Next Together……in the form of a haiku. Because I have fifteen days of behind the scenes extras to do here, guys, and they can’t all be entire chapter rewrites from the point of view of a different character. Enjoy!
“Kate, don’t do the thing.”
“I’m doing the thing. Suck it.”
“That’s what she said.”
You can find a rebloggable version of this post here.
To celebrate the release of my first book, I’m going to be posting a new “Behind the Scenes” exclusive about The Next Together daily until September 3rd. You can find them all here, along with extras I’ve released in the past like An Interview with Kate, Locations of The Next Together and more.
I’m releasing the first chapter from the point of view of Matthew Galloway. It’s always been my head-canon that Matthew knows a lot more about reincarnation than he lets on. While Kate is blundering through her double memories and deja vu, thinking she’s going mad, Matt accepted the whole thing years ago. He probably used to have an imaginary friend called Kate when he was a kid (awwwwww).
Give me a drum roll please, because . . . there are now fifteen days until my first novel comes out! In fact, the eBook is released tomorrow, so in the next few hours people will be reading my book, whaaaat?
To celebrate, I’m going to releasing a new Behind the Scenes extra about The Next Together daily until September 3rd. You can find them all here, along with extras I’ve released in the past like An Interview with Kate, Locations of The Next Together and more.
Today I’m going to introduce my darling characters, Kate and Matt.
I always say that both Matthew and Katherine are me. Both of them, at the same time, in different ways.
Art by the most wonderful Alice Oseman (click for source)
SAYING THAT, Matthew Galloway is totally based a little on Char, from Ella Enchanted*. Char is a wonderful character who just thinks the protagonist of the book is hilarious and incredible. He’s quite shy and quiet and serious until she brings out the fun and jokes from him.
“That’s funny, you’re funny. I like you, I’m quite taken by you.”
Char had freckles, and slid down the castle banisters. I had a lot of feelings about that character. So a lot of Matthew is based on my residual childhood crush on Char (I would have taken a bullet for Char when I was thirteen) but I didn’t realise that at all until recently.
*The book, not the film. The film….let’s not talk about what they did to Char in the film.
Matt is cautious and sweet, with a dry sense of humour, and he’s completely overwhelmed with admiration for Kate.
Katherine Finchley is probably more based on just who I would like to be as a person. She’s also based on……………………do I want to say this?
JUST….GO WITH IT. SHE IS.
Okay I’ll say it. She’s probably a little bit of Jim Kirk from the Star Trek reboot. THAT SOUNDS WEIRD, OKAY, BUT SHE TOTALLY IS.
She’s sassy, ginger, with a lewd and silly sense of humour.
My favourite description of Kate and Matt is actually from a review by Shinra Alpha, who said:
Kate is beautifully quirky and unashamedly funny and deliberately irritating in a way that so few authors ever let their characters be – which is a shame, because it’s so endearing to have her be so silly and fun with Matt, who is much drier and more serious, meaning they play off each other perfectly.
I thought that was really lovely, and captures something about the relationship between Kate and Matt which I wasn’t able to put into words. They both have flaws and strengths, but compliment each other and work best together than individually.
Picture of Kate and Matt being cuties by Rosy @ the Review Diaries.
The book takes place in several different lifetimes throughout, where Kate and Matt have different social positions and upbringings. In the earliest, Matthew is a servant in Katherine’s family home. In another, Katy is Matthew’s servant instead, in disguise as a boy (illustrated below).
Art by Alice Oseman!
In every life they meet and fall in love. I really loved exploring the way their different lives changed their relationship, but also what stayed the same – the chemistry and connection between them.
I’m going to be doing a fancast of Kate and Matt soon, but for now here’s a gifset of them, made by the lovely Arianne. It is so perfect it actually made me cry (especially the eighth gif, which is of Matt’s brother Tom, and is LITERALLY HIM. Like, Arianne, did you jump inside my brain and magic that gifset out?)
You NEED to click the link and see this gifset in all it’s moving glory. It’s honestly like watching a film of my book.
Because I’ve been thinking about these characters for over five years now (I started writing the book when I was eighteen, and I’m now twenty-three!) here are some other bits and pieces to help you get to know them.
Alignments
Kate is Chaotic Good and Matt is Lawful Good, which I think is basically a more formal way of saying that:
Hogwarts Houses
Kate is definitely a Gryffindor, because she’s an idiot. Kate is always running off into danger and Matt expends a significant amount of energy into trying to stop her.
Matt is a Hufflepuff. He thinks a lot before he acts (Kate doesn’t think at all, ever.)
Daemons
A daemon is an animal which takes the physical form of your soul in the world of His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman. The kind of animal they become represents your personality. Kate’s daemon would be a bouncy, ridiculous ginger fox.
Matt would have a shy little vole that hides in his sleeve. Kate will never even see his daemon until they’ve known each other for six months.
It is totally intentional that Kate’s daemon would eat Matt’s alive.
Most of their interactions look exactly like this.
OTPs
I think Matt would be really confused by the concept of OTPs, but when Kate had explained it to him, he would realise he has very strong feelings about Amy/Rory from Doctor Who – mainly because of Rory being referred to as Mr Pond because….yeah. He’s totally Mr Finchley. He would also be into Simon/Kaylee from Firefly for pretty much the same reason.
(He just has a thing for confident women, okay? It’s totally not even worth thinking about. CAN WE NOT TALK ABOUT THIS, PLEASE, KATE.)
Kate is a big fan of Orange is the New Black, so her OTP would probably be …. any and all ships in that show. She isn’t a very discriminate shipper.
Wedding Song
Their first wedding dance it would start with a really romantic waltz, strings and gazing lovingly into each others eyes, and then after a minute it would transition into THIS
Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen
‘At this moment, you mean everything. With you in that dress, my thoughts I confess turn dirty.’
They’d go MENTAL and start dancing like crazies and it would be the best thing ever. (I’ve thought about this too much.)
So, that gives you a little introduction to the characters of my book! Tomorrow I’ve got a very special treat to celebrate the eBook release, so watch out for that!
If you want to know more about Kate and Matt, you can read the first chapter of The Next Together here, and buy the book in the following places:
In other news: Tickets for YA Shot, which I’m appearing at, are now on sale! They’re expected to sell out quickly so buy them here now!
Also, this weekend I finished writing the first draft on my third novel, a day before I turned 23! The process turned me a little insane, which tumblr seemed to enjoy.
A rebloggable version of this post can be found here.
One breakthrough (though it seems incredibly obvious now) was switching to the vertical bands. We read images like text – from left to right – and so this arrangement makes a lot more sense. The bands are made up of a mixture of old artwork, textures and stock imagery.
The programme I currently use to work in is called InDesign but equally you could also use a programme called Quark Express. Both programmes are called layout programmes and are used widely across the publishing and design industry.
Wren James 