Wren James

April Favourites | The Raven Cycle | Go Fug Yourself | Meghan Trainor | Outlander |omgcheckplease

So…I’m going to try something a bit new today. I’m kind of obsessed with monthly Favourites features, which is something a lot of Lifestyle and make-up bloggers do. I’ve been wanting to try it out myself, so here goes!

I’m not sure if this’ll be a regular thing….but we’ll see! Here are my April favourites.

Make-up: Maybelline Superstay 24 hour Lip Color

This lip stain has changed everything about my make-up routine. I’m never going to buy another lipstick again! Normal lipsticks always wipe off immediately, or smear everywhere the minute you have a drink. This lip stain is like an epiphany. It has two parts, the colour and a balm that seals the colour. When it’s on it lasts all day, and it doesn’t smear. And it costs £9! It’s amazing!

Book: The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

Well, obviously I had to get a book in here! In April I read the Raven Cycle for the first time, despite many friends insisting I need to read it immediately for months and months. I put it off because I wasn’t sure whether it was really my thing….I was so wrong. SO WRONG.

It’s life-changing. It’s an epic character driven story about a group of friends trying to find a sleeping Welsh King of legend. But really it’s about all these people and their relationships and lives, and I love everyone so much. Gansey is my favourite (as discussed here) but they are all brilliant people, from Ronan to Noah to Adam to Blue to the Grey Man. Read it!

Recipes: Wrapped by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra

Since my year abroad in America, I’ve been obsessed with Mexican food. Every single time I go to London I buy a Chipotle burrito (that’s the only place you can get them; luckily I go down quite a lot these days because of Book Things). So when I found this recipe book of different wraps, of things like burritos to fajitas to steamed buns to Philly steak wraps to jerk chicken cooa rolls, I bought it immediately.

Every recipe is very complicated (considering all the meats need marinating overnight) but I drool every time I look through it. I’ve made one or two recipes, and I’m planning to fully commit to one of the longer this-is-going-to-take-all-day recipes soon.

Website: Go Fug Yourself

I came across this website recently because a blog mentioned the writers’ new book, The Royal We. The website immediately stole my heart. It’s a fashion blog that really lovingly pokes fun at celebrity clothing choices. It reminds me a lot of Grace Helbig’s red carpet fashion critiques.

Since I discovered it I think I visit the site at least once a day. It’s hilarious, but more importantly very nice and not at all mean about it. The writers also did a great article about writing as a duo, which I found really interesting, and made me desperate to write a book with someone one day.

Article: “In celebration of Old School Livejournal” By Lindsay Gates-Markel

“LiveJournal ended with a whisper; all the other girls I’d gotten to know over nearly a decade on the site stopped using it, too, seemingly within the same few months. Many of us moved to Tumblr, where there was no comment function, and our personal posts became rarer and rarer and—in my case, anyway—eventually stopped.”

My internet life started out on Livejournal, so this article brought up a lot of memories for me. I have a huge soft spot for early millennium internet.

Album: Meghan Trainor – Title

Everyone knows All About That Bass, but the rest of her album was an undiscovered gem for me. I especially like Title. She’s the perfect upbeat fifties pop that I love to listen to while I write, not just because it makes me type so much faster to match the beat.

TV series: Outlander

It’s BACK! Outlander is back!! I read these books when I was sixteen, and there are so many enormous novels that you can’t help but let it take over your life for a month or so.

Jamie and Claire are such an excellent couple, and the time travel and 18th Century Scottish history are huge favourites of mine (as evidenced by The Next Together…).

While I don’t like the tv series quite as much as the books (a lot of Claire’s medical adventures are cut out, which were the most interesting bit of the books) it’s still a lovely Sunday treat to watch the new episodes with my mum, who’s also a big fan!

Webcomic: OMG, check please!

tumblr_nihri0aXjs1szaospo6_1280 So going in, I wasn’t sure this was my kind of thing. It’s about hockey, of which I know exactly…nothing. But it’s so adorable! It’s told by a freshman Hockey player Bittle, who vlogs about his time on the team. He’s got the most sweet and slow burning romance with the team Captain Jack, and the whole comic is beautifully drawn and told. I especially love the comic’s twitter, which is ‘run’ by Bittle in real time, so updates about his day always pop up on my dash. It’s like he’s a real person!

image1xxl

Clothes: ASOS dresses

Last spring I had a huge love affair with ASOS dresses, and now it’s a bit sunnier I’ve got them all out again and remembered how lovely they are. I recently bought this dress, because I have a few events coming up when I have to look a little bit more fancy than usual.

It’s so pretty and comfy, and I absolutely swear by the ASOS curve selection, especially their skirts.

So, they are my April favourites! Should I do this again next month! Let me know if you love any of these things too!

The Next Together will be published on 3rd September. You can read the first chapter here.

Goodreads | Amazon UK | Waterstones | The Book Depository

My top ten Book Boyfriends

I’ve seen the idea of ‘book boyfriends’ going around on twitter recently, and it’s such an excellent idea I couldn’t resist writing a list of mine. These are fictional characters who you would totally marry if they were real and available, like, no questions asked. Straight to the alter. So. Here are mine.

Note: these aren’t all from YA books, but the ones that aren’t, are from books I loved as a teenager anyway.

10. Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle

The perfect example of a fixer-upper. Howl is messy and mopey and obsessed with his looks, to the extent that he has to be literally prodded into dealing with the Big Bad affecting the plot. He gets drunk and sulks and casts thunder spells on everything when a girl rejects him or something happens to his hair, and he’s the worst. It’s the best.

Literally…. if you haven’t read the book or watched the film, do both immediately. Both versions of Howl are slightly different and they are both amazing. I can’t think of another male character like him, he’s ridiculous and brilliant and I would hate him if I met him irl, but in books, I want to read about him forever.

9. Levi from Fangirl

Levi! LEVI!!! Literally the perfect man. He has a farm. He wears plaid shirts. He worships Cath more than anything else. He has special starbucks drinks. GOD!!! [drawn out whine] LEVI.

8. The Cyberfox from Exodus

This is one of those books which is totally under-appreciated. It’s one of my absolute favourites, and it’s insanely well thought-out and unique. But, more importantly right now, the love interest is a fox. LITERALLY, A FOX. Mara goes exploring a long forgotten and abandoned internet world, which is kind of like a 3D Sims land, and she meets a fox avatar of another user who is also exploring these internet ruins. (I know it sounds weird….trust me, it makes sense in the book.)

It takes the ‘internet romance’ trope to a completely different level of amazing, and the cyberfox….GOD. GOD. (Yes, that’s all I’m going to be able to say about any of these choices, but can you blame me?!?)

7. Morpheus/Dream from Sandman

Ladies and gentleman, if you aren’t yet aware of Dream of the Endless, I have the profound pleasure of presenting to you the immortal babe and literal God, Morpheus. Sandman is a series of graphic novels written by none other than our lord and saviour Neil Gaiman. Dream is the God of Dreams, basically, but more importantly he’s A STONE COLD BABE. He’s very mysterious and ghostly, and he has a bit of a twisted sense of morality, but he always tries to do the right thing, even when faced with impossible choices. He changes and shifts his appearance a lot, but he always has the same dark hair and floaty cape thing going on. It’s a thing, and I love it.

6. Locke Lamora from The Gentlemen Bastards sequence

Okay, yes, most of my choices are very nice and sweet. But we all need a bad boy occasionally, and Locke is definitely that. Locke is leader of a pack of thieves. He is extremely witty and clever and dangerously naughty, and he is absolutely in love with his girl to the point of worship. He’s got everything. He’s probably another one of those guys who I’d hate in real life, but who needs real life when there’s fictional thieves, eh?

5. Remus Lupin from Harry Potter

My darling Remus. My love for him mainly originates from The Shoebox Project, which I still maintain is one of the greatest works of fiction I have ever read.

He’s sweet and kindhearted and considerate, which a sarcastic side, and he’s a bit like Bruce Banner/the Hulk in that he is very clever and gentle and pacifist, but if he has to get in a fight he will destroy everyone else. Hnnnng.

4. Gansey from The Raven Cycle

This is a new addition to the list, who has immediately displaced whoever was in his place before. Gansey. GANSEY, GUYS. My one and only. My mental image of Gansey is literally Dylan O’Brien, which is superb. He’s obsessive about his interests, he worries a lot about upsetting people and actively tries to fix his stupid mistakes, he’s not afraid of admitting when he’s wrong, he cares about his friends more than anything, he’s literally described as “very classically handsome”, and he’s my darling. There are a lot (lot lot) of eligible gents in The Raven Cycle, but Gansey blows them all of the water imho. GANSEY.

3. Touchstone from Sabriel

Okay, this is a SFW blog, so I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but take a look at this, the first description of Touchstone, a paragraph taken from Sabriel:

That is . . . very, er, detailed. For a Young Adult novel, aimed at Young Adults.

So.

Erm.

Hello, Touchstone.

He is also a complete sweetheart, when he’s not made of wood and attracting the embarrassed gaze of the local necromancers. He worships Sabriel more than anything, and he is kind and lovely and gentle but also killer with a blade. Perfect guy.

2. Prince Char from Ella Enchanted

I am a huge, huge fan of Char. So much, that he deserves a post all of his own. If there’s any one character who inspired Matt in The Next Together, it’s Char. As I’ve discussed in detail on tumblr, here are my reasons for loving this babe:

he looks like hugh dancy
he knows that no means no
he gives pet centaurs to his crushes!!!
he slides down banisters
hugh dancy
he’s very diligent about being a good king, he takes his work SERIOUSLY.
he really really likes ella.

He is another case of a love interest who worships their lady, so I’m sensing a theme here. I’m not going to say Matt worships Kate….but okay, he totally worships Kate, straight up. I’ve clearly honed my interests from a young age.

Prince Char is short for ‘Prince Charming’, so it’s no surprise he’s excellent, but for me he goes beyond just charming and into UTTER PERFECTION. He’s a genuinely lovely sweet guy. Ahhh, Char. CHAR.

1. Artemis Fowl

It’s a depressing but accurate fact that I have had a huge thing about Artemis Fowl since I was twelve years old. Yeah. These days it’s developed into more of an imaginary, grown up Artemis thing, which I have a lot of opinions about, as indicated by my late night tumblr posts:

i would give up a lot of things for a grown up artemis fowl novel. a flustered artemis fowl in college suddenly getting chatted up by tons of girls and boys who are ‘into nerds’. artemis fowl at a job interview having to actively stop himself being rude to the boss because he really wants that research grant. artemis fowl trying to cook a fancy meal to impress a first date and burning it because he gets distracted arguing with someone on reddit. artemis fowl reluctantly being Butler’s best man and giving an unexpectedly heartwarming speech that makes nearly everyone cry. artemis fowl mentoring a baby genius and shaking his head over what an idiot he used to be. artemis fowl. everything artemis fowl all the time.

I can’t explain it, but there’s something about the super genius rich boy who gets to me. He’s got a lot of flaws, but he’s very aware of them and tries hard to fix them. He cares about his family and friends and has a lot of character development over the course of the series. If I could kidnap Eoin Colfer and persuade him to write a grown-up Artemis spin off, Misery style, I would. GIVE IT ME.

So, those are my top ten book boyfriends. Writing this, I sensed a lot of common themes which are evident in my character Matt in The Next Together. He’s a mix of all of these (expect maybe Locke Lamora, who he is definitely not). I hope he comes across as just as devastating as some of these lovely boys.

I really enjoyed writing this, so there may well be a list of my Book Girlfriends coming up, though I’m not sure I could limit that list to just ten

The Next Together will be published on 3rd September. You can read the first chapter here.

Goodreads | Amazon UK | Waterstones | The Book Depository

A rebloggable version of this post can be found here.

The Next Together is a real book!

Today I got to hold my book for the first time as a real physical thing. I’m feeling very emotional and a little tearful about it right now, so please indulge me for this post. Here’s the story of The Next Together, and why this is such a huge huge deal to me.

Two weeks after I turned eighteen I started university. I was very shy and awkward and didn’t really make many friends at first. Especially not in my hall/dorm, where I didn’t know anyone at all. I would sit in my room and feel so homesick I couldn’t bear it.

So to make myself less lonely, I started writing a story. I didn’t really have any ideas, so I started by making a list of all the things I like best in books, and brainstorming from there.

I described it on my livejournal, back in the early days pre-tumblr, as a ‘reincarnation type thing’. reincarnation 1

I quickly realised that I wouldn’t have enough time to work on it, so I put it to one side for a while, until the summer.

It took me a while – so long that I’d moved from livejournal to tumblr to scratch my social networking itch by then –

– but eventually I finished it.

Reading back through these entries now, it’s unbelievable how much determination it took to get to this point, where it’s a real actual book I can hold in my hands. On and off, I have been editing this story from July 2012 to March 2015. That’s three freaking years. THREE YEARS. I’ve been thinking about it for even longer – the earliest post I can find about it is from 2009. Six years ago. I was sixteen.

The internet has been a huge part of my writing process, from fancasting to research to just complaining about writing. I even ran a poll to ask the internet what I should call my characters!

Tumblr, you’ve seen this book develop from the very beginning:

You were the first people to ever read it:

You were there when I sent it to agents:

And then you put up with my panic again when it was submitted to publishers:

And celebrated with me when I got a book deal:

You helped me objectify actors in the noble pursuit of fancasting:

(Many, many times.)

(No, really.)

You mourned with me when I had to choose a new title to replace the original name, The Red Earth Rolls:

And you went mental with excitement when the cover was revealed.

I can’t even count the number of friends I’ve made because of a stupid idea I had for a book.

Some of whom have even drawn me FANART!!

And now, it’s time.

I’m now twenty two. I’ve been writing this book since I was eighteen. It’s more of a part of who I am, and my personality and my experiences growing up than almost anything else. When I started it, I was a shy teenager who couldn’t bear to be away from home, who wrote to escape the real world. Now I’m a grown up (kind of) (I mean, not really) (I still spend a lot of time on tumblr) and writing is my job: my actual, real life job. This book has changed and evolved and matured at the same rate as me.

And as of today, it’s no longer a figment of my imagination. It’s real. An actual, paper book that I can hold and stroke.

Please excuse me while I stare at it forever. And thank you, tumblr. Thank you, livejournal. Thank you, internet. You made this happen. Let’s celebrate.

The Next Together will be published on 3rd September. You can read the first chapter here.

How many times can you lose the person you love?

A powerful and epic debut novel for teenagers about reincarnation and the timelessness of first love from a talented young writer.

Teenagers Katherine and Matthew are destined to be born again and again. Each time their presence changes history for the better, and each time, they fall hopelessly in love, only to be tragically separated.

But why do they keep coming back? What else must they achieve before they can be left to live and love in peace? Maybe the next together will be different.

Goodreads | Amazon UK | Waterstones | The Book Depository

A rebloggable version of this post can be found here.

My favourite Literary Fiction novels (written by women)

Following up on my post of my Favourite YA novels, and inspired by a discussion on tumblr about my post on female authors, here are my favourite Literary Fiction books, written by women! Basically my blog is now just a place I post book recommendations, I hope you’re all okay with that.

My Education – Susan Choi – turns the common ‘male professor sleeping with female students’ trope around in absolutely the best way

May We Be Forgiven – A. M. Homes – If you’ve ever seen Breaking Bad, this is the book equivalent of that. There’s a huge ‘oh shiiiiiit’ moment on every other page.

The Idea of Perfection – Kate Grenville – The rare occasion when a female driven romance gets recognised for prizes. This is a lovely, sweet story about two unconventionally beautiful people, set in the Australian outback.

The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood – I read this when I was about 15 and I adored it. Super great book about female writers and relationships between sisters.

The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters – Literally amazing. Twenties ladies falling in love and getting into trouble. This better win the Baileys prize or else.

Station Eleven – Emily St John Mandel – This is a Dystopian, so I’m not sure if it’s technically Literary fiction, but it shares a lot of the same themes and in my opinion everyone should read it asap.

A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan – Goooood, I love this book so much. It hops from person to person via vague connections, and every POV is distinct and different and it’s! amazing! One storyline is told through powerpoint slides, and idea that may have *cough* inspired some elements of The Next Together.

The Miniaturist – Jessie Burton – Historical fiction with a little hint of magic, set in Amsterdam, with amazingly complex and brilliant female charaters.

Room – Emma Donoghue – A really intense read about a woman held captive, told from the point of view of her young son. (Happy ending, though!)

If I was going to carry this series on (which I most definitely am) what would you like to see next? My favourite historical books? Dystopian books? Graphic novels? Let me know in the comments!

A rebloggable version of this post can be found here.

Cover reveal for The Next Together + First Chapter!

Yesterday, the cover of my debut novel was revealed, along with the first chapter! Thank you to Lucy at Queen of Contemporary, Daisy Chain Book Reviews, Jim at YAYeahYeah, Hannah at Luna’s Little Library, Sarah Likes Books, Becki at A Word Shaker, Tilly-and-her-books, Manda at Bookmad, and Ink-slingers for their help with the reveal!

As you can see, it was posted practically everywhere, but just in case you haven’t seen it yet…here it is!

Ahhh, isn’t it stunning? The different sections represent the different lives of the characters, as they are reincarnated in different time periods throughout the book. The ink etching on the left is their life in 1745, going all the way across to their life in 2039 – which has these cool heart molecules on it:

I think one of the reasons I love my cover so much is that it’s not super girly and pink and glittery. It’s a romance, so I could easily have ended up with a cover like that…but instead I get this!

It’s very non-gendered and sophisticated and classy and I LOVE IT. Last week I blogged about coverflip, about how female writers tend to get more fluffy and less serious covers compared to similar books written by men. I think it’s a great sign that my cover escaped that. It could easily be used for a book by a male writer too, like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas! It’s so AMAZING.

And there’s a MOVING VERSION:

(Reblog here)

'Cloud Study' by John Constable, 1822 — ‘Cloud Study’ by John Constable, 1822

There’s so many more things I could point out about the cover, which is designed by Jack Noel at Walker Books – like that the second section is a John Constable painting! – but instead I’ll move onto the next exciting thing, the first chapter extract!

Continue reading “Cover reveal for The Next Together + First Chapter!”

REVIEW: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

Catherine Doyle chose The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender as one of her favourite books to be read by our book club. I can definitely see why Cat chose this book as one of her favourites. Her novel Vendetta is all about family, and Ava Lavender is the ultimate family saga. The relationships between siblings and parents and children is what really resonates about this story – it keeps a very magical and surreal plot tied firmly into reality.

One of my favourite things about this book was the length of the timeline. The author isn’t afraid to go back to the very traces of the family history, long before the real plot happens, and the gamble works. The writing is so lovely that it carried the book and kept me reading, even without any payoff in sight. The plot doesn’t kick off of a long time, but when it does I felt like I’d earnt it. The emotions of the characters hit hard, because you’re so invested in their lives and family.

I love the detail and sheer attention to worldbuilding that clearly went into this story. It feels so lifelike that at times I forgot it was fiction and not an autobiography. That’s how real and true the magic feels.

It also has one of the most tragic endings I’ve ever read: I think it’s going to haunt me for a long time.

I wouldn’t say it’s one of my all-time favourites, because I tend to be drawn to plot-driven rather than character-driven stories; however it was a lovely read that I can see myself going back to in the future. It’s not really a YA, in my opinion. It covers so many characters from childhood to adulthood that it can be read by people of any age, and everyone will get something different out of it.

I reviewed The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender for my book club, The Whackademics. You can read the rest of the reviews by Alice Oseman, Catherine Doyle, Louise O’Neill and Sara Barnard here, and find out what our magical powers would be!

Is women’s writing only considered literary fiction if it’s about men?

Recently I’ve been trying to read prize winning novels, and I’ve noticed a disappointing similarity between most of the books. Critically acclaimed books by women are usually about men.

Out of the last 7 Man Booker prizes awarded to women, 5 have had male protagonists*. Out of the last 7 Baileys/Orange Women’s prize for fiction winners, 5 have had male protagonists**. This prize is specifically for female writers, and yet according to the two of the big literary prizes, the best books written by women are usually about men.

They are always very good books, but it makes me wonder. Are the best books each year really about men – or are those just the books the judges that think are most valid? Regardless of whether or not this is a subconscious preference towards male-led fiction, it’s a disappointing trend that should be actively addressed.

Female writers can write exceptional books about women, but are those books more frequently classified as women’s fiction instead of literary fiction? For whatever reason, these books aren’t recognised as frequently as the high-flying books about men.

I started reading the list of Women’s Fiction Prize winners to highlight female writers, so it’s a disappointment that all the books are still about men. I’m not saying that books about men should be excluded from the prize, but books about women should surely be honoured more frequently than they are. Reading through the long- and short- lists shows that these books exist, and are recognised initially. They deserve to win more often.

Where are my prizes for the female anti-heroes, whose male counterparts are honoured in books like WOLF HALL or MAY WE BE FORGIVEN?

Male and female writers are treated differently in publishing: Coverflip is a very visual example of this. People redesigned female covers as if they were written by men and vice versa, and the difference is astonishing.

Male authors are considered a lot more serious-less ‘genre’ and more general, and they have very unisex advertising and audiences. In a lot of cases a female author usually has a female audience, and whether that’s because of marketing or because boys don’t want to read girls books, it is sad.

I think female writers have to be a lot more careful in the kind of behaviour they display outside of writing too. If they make one bad quote or mistake they are vilified, whereas Orson Scott Card is still successful with film adaptations aimed at YA audiences, despite being a thoroughly nasty homophobe.

It doesn’t seem to matter that he is a terrible role model, whereas the fact that Stephenie Meyer is a mormon has been used as a reason not to read her books – so anything else she has to say isn’t worth listening to. I haven’t heard any male authors being cut out because of their religon.

I think it is definitely harder for a woman to recover from mistakes, and get herself taken seriously as a real contributor instead of a ‘female’ contributor, in any line of work. It’s very sad that it extents to publishing, an industry that seems like it should be better, as it is very female dominated.

How to fix it?

It’ll fix itself, in time. As long as women keep getting the chance to share their work, keep showing how brilliant and worthwhile their stories can be, keep giving more strong female characters to the world (and the minds of young future writers and people) it will slowly get better. YA is the place where it has to be done right, because ideas and stereotypes teenagers read will shape the way they behave the rest of their lives.

There needs to be more female voices. As authors, and readers, as characters, as minorities, as clichés, as mary sues, as ‘strong women’ but also as weak or unlikeable women. More women.

I’m going to go and reread THE BLIND ASSASSIN and THE TIGER’S WIFE and try not to feel bitter about the state of affairs.

* THE LUMINARIES, BRING UP THE BODIES, WOLF HALL, THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS, and THE GHOST ROAD.

** MAY WE BE FORGIVEN, THE SONG OF ACHILLES, THE LACUNA, HOME, and THE ROAD HOME.

My favourite Young Adult novels

More than this by Patrick Ness

Ness’ writing is sparse and delicious, with a great use of space and emptiness. In particular this book is almost a work of art. It’s one of those amazing books where there’s somehow a cliffhanger at the end of every single chapter, so your heartbeat rises and rises and rises, until you can’t possibly imagine how it could be resolved by the end. With an incredibly diverse group of characters, this is a book to treasure.

Everything leads to you by Nina LaCour

It’s a lovely, angst free, happily-ever-after fluffy love story and it felt fresh and new and like coming home all at once. This is the kind of book that you reread, just because it makes you feel happy and content all over. I wish there was a film of this book, because I would watch it over and over.

I just love this book so much, it has everything: secret letters and long lost families and romance and celebrities….

Exodus by Julia Bertagna

A future dystopia about the sea levels rising and a village that is one of the only islands left in the UK slowly going underwater. The internet is a kind of 3D world that has been long since abandoned and the girl starts exploring its ruins, and finds a fox avatar that she makes friends with. Online dating of the coolest most adventurous kind.

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

This book! THIS BOOK, GUYS!! It’s a diverse action adventure, with a unique love triangle, an amazing plotline (GIANT GRASSHOPPERS.) and the best horny teenager protag ever. It’s a wild ride from start to finish, and I loved it.

The disreputable history of Frankie Landau Banks by e. lockhart

The best kind of feminist literature- with secret societies and private boarding schools and girls realising they don’t need no boys.

The Shoebox project

Not technically YA, but I love it so much I have to include it. Marauders era Harry Potter fic that’s novel length and ILLUSTRATED and one of the funniest things I’ve literally ever read.

Spindle’s end by Robin Mckinley

Retelling of Sleeping beauty which starts with a witch stealing the baby princess and trekking across the country with her for weeks, with the help of local foxes and other animals. HOW AMAZING!!! The love interest is totally unexpected too, and it’s all just a complete party of cool female characters, even the pretty pink ones. The princess is a tomboy who communes with wildlife and hangs out with the blacksmith. Perfect

The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke

Thieves living in an abandoned theatre in Venice, and magic on an island. Need I say more??

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

Commonly thought (by me) to contain the cutest fictional boy ever. If you’ve seen the movie: this is literally nothing like that.

Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster

This was written in 1912, and it’s basically the first ever YA novel. It’s a series of letters written from a first year orphan uni student to her Mysterious Millionaire Scholarship Provider. SO CUTE, and very easy reading considering it’s literally a century old. Nothing ever changes, especially not at uni.

Daughter of Venice by Donna Jo Napoli

Also set in Venice, because that’s clearly My Thing, this is a historical novel about a rich girl who sneaks out of her house to flirt with a cute Jewish boy who teaches her to write. I got this out of the library about three times when I was fourteen.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Everyone knows what this is about. A girl uses fanfiction to escape her life. So great.

Lirael by Garth Nix

This is the second in the series, but it’s by far my favourite. A girl in a huge underground library explores its thousand year old depths with her magic dog sidekick. Every delicious trope rolled into one – and no romance!

2014 Reading Review

I came across this reading survey by Perpetual Page Turner, and even though it’s February, I couldn’t resist doing it for 2014. Lots of book recs ahead!

Number Of Books You Read: 141

Number of Re-Reads: 3 (The Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix)

Genre You Read The Most From: YA

1. Best Book You Read In 2014? A full list is here, but my favourites were Nimona by Noelle Stevenson, A hero at the end of the world by Erin Claiborne, and Grasshopper Jungle, by Andrew Smith. All very diverse, and YA/NA.

2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t? Ayoade on Ayoade by Richard Ayoade. Ayoade is one of my favourite comedians, so I was expecting to find this hilarious, but it sticks to the same joke (him interviewing himself) the whole way through, and it quickly got grating. There was no actual content beyond the satire.

3. Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read in 2014? Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I’m not into video games, so I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with this book as much as I did.

4. Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did) In 2014? May We be Forgiven by A. M. Homes. I read this when I was working my way through the Bailey’s prize winners, and it was so brilliant I told everyone I knew to read it. I think 3 or 4 people did.

5. Best series you started in 2014? Best Sequel of 2014? Best Series Ender of 2014? The Magicians by Lev Grossman was the best new series (EXCELLENT- a cross between Narnia and Harry Potter), and the best series finale was Clariel by Garth Nix. The only sequel I read in 2014 was The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness, which was a very stressful read. I have the final Chaos Walking book, but I can’t bear to go through the trauma of reading it just yet. A great series about war on a new planet.

6. Favourite new author you discovered in 2014? A. M. Homes. I’ve also read Music for Torching, which was just as excellent. Brilliant Breaking Bad levels of family collapse and drama.

7. Best book from a genre you don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone? I don’t usually read any horror, but Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix was absolutely incredible. Brilliantly scary, and kudos to the great design of the book, which looks like an Ikea catalogue.

8. Most action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year? Mr Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan, which is just…I have no words to describe this book. Incredibly fast paced eery literature thriller.

9. Book You Read In 2014 That You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year? Haha, The Next Together by Me, Lauren Never-Going-To-Stop-Editing-This-Book James.

10. Favourite cover of a book you read in 2014? Definitely Everything leads to you by Nina LaCour. I still get this book off my shelf just to stare at it occasionally.

11. Most memorable character of 2014? Charles Maxim from Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell.

“Think of night-time with a speaking voice. Or think how moonlight might talk, or think of ink, if ink had vocal chords. Give those things a narrow aristocratic face with hooked eyebrows,
and long arms and legs. […] He was
thirty-six years old, and six foot three. He spoke English to people and French to cats, and Latin to the birds. He had once nearly killed himself trying to read and ride a horse at the same time.”

That’s pure art.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2014? Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas. You can’t read this without whispering the words under your breath. Excellent.

“It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.”

13. Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2014? Lies We Tell Ou rselves
by Robin Talley. Tackles homophobia and sexism and racism and bullying and bravery and is absolutely life-changing.

14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2014 to finally read? My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse. I adored the tv series, so I don’t know why I didn’t immediately start reading the books at the time…but I’ve since more than corrected my mistake. I now have Jeeves and Wooster Opinions, especially on the Sebastian Faulks sequel. Grrrr….

15. Favourite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2014? Basically any line from The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald.

“Florence had noticed one or two eccentricities in herself lately, which might be the result of hard work, or of age, or of living alone. When the letters came, for example, she often found herself wasting time in looking at the postmarks and wondering whoever they could be from, instead of opening them in a sensible manner and finding out at once.”

16.Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2013? Shortest was probably The Fir Tree by Hans Christian Andersen, and the longest was either Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides or The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. At least, they felt the longest.

17. Book That Shocked You The Most. Obviously, obviously it’s We Were Liars by e. lockhart. Best plot twist of ever.

18. OTP OF THE YEAR: Ewan/Oliver from A Hero at the End of the World by Erin Claiborne. I spent a good day and a half just solidly squeeing with Alice Oseman about this pairing. Urgh. So good.

19. Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship Of The Year: Evie and her dragon from The Bone Dragon by Alexia Casale.

20. Favorite Book You Read in 2014 From An Author You’ve Read Previously: The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters.

There are a lot more questions, but I’m all linked out, so I’ll leave this at 20 questions! I highly recommend doing this survey, it was a lot of fun.

THE NEXT TOGETHER, a reincarnation romance, comes out in September. You can add it on goodreads, preorder on amazon, or you can subscribe to my mailing list for updates nearer the time here.

Researching history

I recently posted about the historical events and locations in The Next Together, so I thought I’d explain how I did my historical research. If you asked my editor and copy Tipping_the_Velvet_UK_cover editor, they’d likely admit that I’m not the best at historical accuracy. I’m not a historian. I’m never going to be as good as authors who spent four years studying an area of history for their PhD before adapting it for fiction, like Sarah Waters.

My methods involve probably more wikipedia than they really should, so don’t take this a guide to doing historical research – there’s much better places for that, like this article.

This is just to give you a rough idea of how I went about it, so you can have a good laugh at naive eighteen year old me, who thought it would be so easy to write a book with three different historical settings.

Firstly, I had to chose my time periods. I knew I didn’t want to write about something big, like WWII, because everyone reads about it all the time. That would have been a lot easier to research, though.

diary Instead I chose more obscure events. I picked out a few, and then did some internet searches to see how easy it would be to research them.

I started by looking for free google books, which is a great place to find primary sources (that are written at the time), because they scan in lots of old books that aren’t digital anywhere else.

I found two sources, the diary of a journalist from the Crimean War called William Russell, and another a compilation of letters from a city official during the Jacobite Uprising, both of which are completely free to read (thanks, Google!).

They are both pretty heavy reading compared to a history biography written in this century, but at the time I had no idea whether I was ever going to finish this story, so I wasn’t willing to invest £50+ in buying books.

Google Books is a great free resource, and I highly recommend searching to see if you can find anything relevant.

If you do buy some books, it’s probably a good idea to start with diaries. As well as being a great way of picking up the dialogue style, and authentic slang, they have the kind of detail of day-to-day life that’s harder to find in general history books, and it’s also a great way to get inspiration. I found an anecdote about soldiers stopping in the middle of a battle to pick grapes in a vineyard – and then wading through a river during a firefight with bunches of grape held between their teeth – that made it into the finished book. Details like that are invaluable in bringing a story to life.

download (1) It’s also a good idea to try to find other point of view. The experience of a straight, white, middle-class man is going to be completely different from a woman of colour, in any period of history. Although it’s harder to find those kind of resources, there are some out there, and you can’t dismiss their experiences- they are often the most interesting. I bought a copy of the letters sent home from a soldier’s wife who travelled to the front during the Crimean war, Mrs Duberley, to get a female point of view. Although she mainly talked about her horse (!), it was an important part of my understanding of the period.

If you aren’t sure what primary sources are out there, get a copy of The Assassin’s Cloak, an anthology of famous and 51Ox3URGj8L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ obscure diary entries taken from history. As well as being an excellent read, there might be a diarist from a time period you’re interested in that you can investigate further, or a new period altogether.

After I’d exhausted the possibilities of free internet databases, I turned to my University Library and got the real history books. It was useful to get a broader understanding of the events, with years of perspective, but overall I still found the diaries more useful.

54453_900 At this point I (finally!) started writing. I would estimate that I had to do a google search about once a page. My internet bookmarks looked like a list of wikipedia articles, because I am super lazy.

There is nothing with wikipedia, especially not for a first draft. It’s better to doublecheck your facts, but you don’t need to get obsessive about it. Everything will be checked and double-checked in edits- just get the story down first. That’s the most important thing.

Don’t forget that even if there’s the odd inaccuracy, it’s unlikely anyone will pick up on, unless they are a historian focussing specifically on that era. And even then, if it’s something small, who cares? It’s fiction. It’s a story, with a plot. And, especially for YA or MG, teaching children about historical events is such an important thing to do that anyone can forgive a few mistakes. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you trying, because before your book gets published there’ll be a whole series of people helping you with it, to make sure you don’t embarrass yourself.

I also decided when I started writing that I wasn’t going to have authentic dialogue. I tried to make sure I didn’t use overly modern slang, like ‘okay’ or ‘alright’, but I think as long as it’s not jarring it’s better to keep it simple. I would rather one person be annoyed by inaccuracies by dozens of readers being put off by dialogue that’s too dense, that they can’t understand. Plus, I would have hated writing it!

After writing a historical novel, I’m now taking a break from history for a while and focusing on futuristic fiction. However, I do want to go back to history eventually, because it’s oddly satisfying to uncover a historical event and make it seem real.

Next time I’ll probably approach historical research a little differently, though. I’ll look for scholarly articles, rather than just primary sources and textbooks. I’ll try and speak to researchers who focus in that area. I’ll read all the fiction I can set in that time period. But I’m always going to write historical fiction, because it’s a wonderful, educational source of inspiration.

THE NEXT TOGETHER, a reincarnation romance, comes out in September. You can add it on goodreads, preorder on amazon, or you can subscribe to my mailing list for updates nearer the time here.

A rebloggable version of this post can be found here.