Tag Archives: Usborne

Guest Post – Meet Tamsin Winter by Tamsin Winter

Tales Q&A With Faye Bird

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I am super excited to have been asked to be part of the blog tour for this thrilling thriller of a book, What I Couldn’t Tell You by Faye Bird.

What I Couldn’t Tell You was released on the 1st May 2016 published in by Usborne Publishing and is a fab thriller.

A huge thank you to Faye Rogers for having me on this wonderful tour and to Anne Finnis for sending me a copy of this wonderful book.

For my stop on the blog tour I have had the chance to put some questions to the lovely Faye Bird!

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When love turns to jealousy, when jealousy turns to rage, when rage turns to destruction…

Laura was head over heels in love with Joe. But now Laura lies in a coma and Joe has gone missing. Was he the one who attacked her?

Laura’s sister Tessie is selectively mute. She can’t talk but she can listen. And as people tell her their secrets, she thinks she’s getting close to understanding what happened on that fateful night.

Hi Faye. Thank you for being here today! I’m so thrilled to have you here! What I Couldn’t Tell You sounds amazing and I cannot wait to read it!

Can you tell us a little about What I Couldn’t Tell You?

The book opens with a crime; Tessie’s sister, Laura, is attacked, and now she’s lying in a coma and no one knows what happened to her. Tessie, Laura’s sister, picks up the story. Tessie has SM – she is Selectively Mute – she doesn’t speak in certain situations, but she can observe, she can listen and it seems she might be the only one who can piece together what happened to Laura.

Can you tell us a little bit about Laura’s sister Tessie?

Tessie is just like you or I, but she suffers with SM. SM is a social anxiety disorder that prevents children speaking in certain situations, such as in school or in public. Selective Mutism is sometimes called Situational Mutism. As with others with SM, Tessie does not have any speech or language problems, and she can speak freely and at ease at home when she is with the people closest to her. If you are interested in finding out more about SM the charity SMIRA’s website is a good place to start www.smira.org.uk

What kind of research went into the writing What I Couldn’t Tell You?

I knew I wanted to write about SM after hearing a young woman who had suffered with it in the past speaking on the radio talking about her experiences. I loved the idea that giving a character with SM a first person narrative effectively gave that character a voice they wouldn’t otherwise have. But I needed to do a good deal of research. I hadn’t heard of SM before, and as it turned out all my assumptions about what SM was and what caused it were wrong. Research involved reading key texts on SM, mainly written by speech and language therapists, and meeting those who had a direct experience of SM. Once I started writing I didn’t seek out new research because at that point I felt I had all I needed to simply forge ahead with my imagination and write the story.

Do you see yourself in any of the characters in What I Couldn’t Tell You or have you used any of your own experiences in the story?

I guess I can see myself a little in Tessie. I felt an affinity with her, even though I haven’t ever suffered with SM or had any direct experience of it. I think that’s because there have been times in my life when I perhaps haven’t been able to say the things I’ve really wanted to say. I found the emotional tension between what Tessie thinks and feels and what she can or cannot say a rich ground for writing prose; it inspired me. I’m not sure whether that’s because of my own experiences or not, but I suspect it had something to do with it!

We would love to know a little bit more about you! Can you give us 5 random facts we don’t know about Faye Bird?

My first job was in a toyshop called Frog Hollow. I served lots of famous people there. Prince William and Prince Harry used to come in with their pocket money.

I love cats but have always been scared of dogs ever since one chased me and I had to jump on the bonnet of a neighbour’s car to escape.

After I graduated I went to America and worked in a rollercoaster theme park in Ohio. I served pizzas and chilli dogs and Mountain Dew.

When I was little I used to spend hours and hours jumping off the stairs in the belief that one day I would take off and fly.

I aspire to having a writing shed in my garden that I can escape to and write!

Can you tell us a little about your other books?

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My first book, My Second Life, is about a girl called Ana who has lived before. She’s always known she’s lived before and it’s been something that she’s always accepted about herself, until one day she sees someone she recognises from her first life and she suddenly becomes plagued by memories of a girl, Catherine, lying dead in the water. And with those memories comes strong feelings of guilt and responsibility, and suddenly Ana isn’t sure of who she is at all any more. Is she Ana, the good person she thought she knew herself to be, or is she someone who killed a person in her first life? And so her quest begins to find out the truth of what it is she has done.

Which of your characters from any of your books would you most like to spend the day with?

I think I’d like to spend the day with Ana in My Second Life. I’d like to ask her all sorts of questions about her two lives!

What are you currently reading?

I’ve got two books on the go at the moment. You Against Me by Jenny Downham and on my iPad I’m reading The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer.

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Can you tell us a bit about your writing process – do you plot the story out first, or dive right in and see where it takes you (or a bit of both)?

With My Second Life, I didn’t really plot at all. I had key scenes that I always knew I was writing to in my head – like Ana meeting her Mum from her first life, and the final scene right at the end – but that was literally it!

With What I Couldn’t Tell You I knew I had to plot more, not least because of the demands of the crime story. I was also writing to deadline and couldn’t afford to write quite so many drafts as I ended up writing with My Second Life. I’m currently writing my third book now – I’m just at the first draft stage, 10,000 words or so in – and I’ve spent a good deal longer planning out the story than with either of my first two books. I think, just as with anything in life, I am learning with each new book how the process works best for me.

Are there any exciting plans for the rest of 2016?

I’m going to continue getting the words down for the new book, which feels exciting, and I’m planning lots more school events. I love going into schools and meeting readers, so if anyone reading this is interested in me coming into their school then do get in touch!

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You can buy a copy of this book here

Or why not add the book to your Goodreads here

About Faye Bird

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Faye writes fiction for young adults. Before becoming a writer she worked as a literary agent representing screenwriters in film and TV. She studied Philosophy and Literature at Warwick University, but has otherwise always lived in London, and still does now. Her second novel, What I Couldn’t Tell You, will be published on 1 May 2016.

You can find out more about Faye on her website: http://www.fayebirdauthor.com/

Or why not follow Faye on Twitter: @faye_bird

Blog Tour

You can follow or catch up on the rest of this fab blog tour at the below stops!

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Monday 22^nd August

The Book Moo

Tuesday 23^rd August

YA Under My Skin

A Daydreamer’s Thoughts

Wednesday 24^th August

Howling Reviews

Teens on Moon Lane

Thursday 25^th August

Laura’s Little Book Blog

Mia in Narnia

Friday 26^th August

Another Teen Book Blog

Tales of Yesterday

Saturday 27^th August

Wonderfully Bookish

Overflowing Library

Sunday 28^th August

Linda’s Book Bag

Rachel Bustin

Monday 29^th August

Bookish Outsider

Kirstyes

Tuesday 30^th August

Luna’s Little Library

Serendipity Reviews

A huge huge thank you to Faye for answering all my questions and to Faye Rogers for organising!

Have you read any of the What I Couldn’t Tell You? What did you think? I would love to hear from you! Why not leave a comment using the reply button at the top of this review or tweet me on twitter using @chelleytoy!

Happy Reading!

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Guest Post – Publishing Point Horror by Anne Finnis

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Do you remember the Point Horror Book Series from the 90’s? The Point Horror Series was a series of young adult point horror books and was launched in 1991 by Scholastic always with the Point Horror banner on the spine and on the top of every point horror book. There were a number of authors that wrote these books for Scholastic: R L Stine, Diane Hoh, Caroline B Cooney, Sinclair Smith to name but a few.

They were basically what I was reading and enjoying as a young adult and thanks to the author Juno Dawson, who started #PointHorrorBookClub on her website in 2013, I have started to re-read these books that I used to rush to the shops every weekend and buy and sit for the whole weekend reading.

Juno announced in January 2015 that she was no longer able to carry on #pointhorrorbookclub and with her blessing I am going to try and carry it on with version 2! Juno has done a fantastic job – I hope I can keep up her good work *gulps*

For links to #pointhorrorbookclub posts old and new please click here

I know lots of people who hold Point Horror close to their hearts and one of those people is one of the people responsible for bringing Point Horror to the UK!

Therefore I have invited the lovely Anne Finnis to do a guest post for us all about publishing Point Horror, her love for all things Point Horror and being a part of British history !

It’s very exciting to have Anne here on Tales…I feel very honoured…and I have to admit this guest post is just fascinating and amazing! Thank you so much Anne!

*Hands microphone to Anne and hugs*

Publishing Point Horror

Love it or hate it Point Horror was a publishing phenomenon in the 1990s and I am delighted to say I had a part in it. I now meet people who grew up devouring Point Horror and tell me how much it was a part of their teenage lives. It makes me feel privileged to have been involved, though it reminds me that I must be getting old!

In the late ‘80s I was a young, upstart editor working at Hippo Books, part of Scholastic UK in Covent Garden.

We were the UK publishing outpost of Scholastic Inc – a publishing giant in the US. The US publishing output was enormous. Hippo’s was tiny in comparison and we published an eclectic mix of fiction, non-fiction and some novelty/activity books.

Every month we received a box of the books being published by Scholastic Inc and we were encouraged to publish some of what the Americans were publishing. (Most big publishing corporations have a dream that we should all be publishing the same books around the world though it rarely works like that.)

Scholastic Inc was enjoying massive success with The Babysitter’s Club. After much deliberating we decided to give The Babysitter’s Club a try in the UK. We rejacketed the books with covers that we felt would work better for our market and very quickly we too had a big success on our hands.

At about this time we realised that in these boxes from the States there were some spooky, glamorous and slightly dangerous-looking titles published under the Scholastic Inc teenage imprint Point.

There was little or no horror being published in the UK for teen readers, but I’d spent my teenage years being scared witless by authors like Stephen King, Ira Levin and Dennis Wheatley. I was desperate to have a go at publishing horror for a teen audience – I knew it was what I would have devoured had it been available. So I read some of the titles in the US boxes – The Lifeguard, Trick or Treat, April Fools – and realised they were page-turning, deliciously scary and with characters and plots based in teenage lives, albeit remote, glamorous, American ones.

I’m not sure many of the titles ever really constituted a horror story in the true sense of the genre (I’m squeamish and not very good with hardcore horror) but they were great psychological thrillers with plotlines that messed with your head – and that, to my mind, is much more enthralling.

So, Gavin Lang, the sales director, and I decided to give some of these titles a go. However, the authors were unknown – even RL Stine at this point – and there were several different authors so we needed to find a way to get them taken on by booksellers and noticed by readers. Our first decision was that we couldn’t publish them as Hippo Books – the logo was fun, but it was a cartoon drawing of a hippo’s big bottom – how was that ever going to be cool and scary? We thought the imprint name Point was good, though ultimately meaningless, so we decided to borrow it from the States. We then wanted to identify to readers exactly what these books were about. Point Psychological Thrillers was a mouthful. Point Horror told the reader what kind of story they were getting (or at least close enough) so we settled on that.

The American covers were bright, bold and stood out from the crowd. If we liked a particular cover image we used it. If not, our designer, Alison Gadsby, commissioned a new piece of artwork. She also devised the Point Horror logo and we agreed to pay for the cost of adding foil and/or a fifth colour to the lettering to make the titles really zing. At this time adult publishers were spending money on such lavish embellishments for their covers, but covers for kids’ books were generally very restrained.

We decided to launch with two titles – and here I become hazy. I think we launched in March 1991 with Trick or Treat by Richie Tankersley Cusick and Beach Party by RL Stine (April Fools was an early one too). We planned to publish a new book every other month, but we realised after the third or fourth title that sales were escalating and there was a growing demand for Point Horror. Because the US had been publishing these thrillers for a while there was a crop of titles which we could cherry pick from. We were therefore able to speed up publication and satisfy a growing appetite for the books.

At first some booksellers and librarians said to us “Point Horror? What is that? What does it mean?” But readers quickly got it. And we achieved what we’d been hoping for – booksellers began to display all the books together as Point Horror titles rather than by author name. It had been our biggest fear that the books would be stocked conventionally by the author’s surname, meaning the books would get dispersed across the alphabet and lost on the shelves. Soon most booksellers had a Point Horror section which looked significantly different from the majority of other books being published for teens at the time. (Hodder was publishing Christopher Pike, but apart from Hodder and us there was no one else in this market.)

There was a lot of resistance. Not everyone was keen – the books were trite, too scary, not good for children – all of those things. But Point Horror was getting kids excited about books. They were being swapped in the playground; readers were looking out for the next title. They were getting non-readers to read. What can be wrong with that?

By the end of 1991 we had a phenomenon going that lasted throughout the 1990s.

As the success of Point Horror grew British authors began asking if they could get involved. However, the stories were distinctly American and all of them no matter how scary had that American gloss, shine and accessibility that sets a lot of American writing apart from British (a vast generalisation I know).

By now we were working with some fantastic British authors and we were keen for them to share in the success. We’d already published an anthology of short stories from the US, 13 Tales of Horror, and I set about commissioning a UK one, 13 More Tales of Horror, as we felt an anthology was significantly different from the main list that we could risk doing something different. We published two collections of British Point Horror short stories – and the stories were darker, grittier and somehow much more real. However, they were taken up and published by Scholastic Inc in the States, which was gratifying.

We also wanted to commission and publish some full-length UK horror stories, so we launched Point Horror Unleashed to distinguish them from the American Point Horror brand. The stories were amazing but as with the short stories they were dark and gritty (arguably, something to do with British history and psyche).

Building on the success of Point Horror we went on to commission and publish very successfully other genre fiction for teenagers. Nothing ever quite reached the heady heights of Point Horror but it was a great time in which we were actively seeking out authors and asking them to write for the Point list.

Ultimately, from being controversial and daring, Point Horror gradually became old-hat and mainstream. Readers, editors and buyers move on and look for something new, and so gradually Point Horror declined and was discontinued.

I left Scholastic when I was expecting my third daughter in 1998, but looking back I’m amazed at how much we achieved in a fairly short period of time and what an exciting time it was. And now when I meet people who loved Point Horror, I feel proud and privileged to have achieved something that’s always motivated my career – publishing stories that kids really want to read!

Anne Finnis

Photos by Caitlin Smith, my third daughter, mentioned above.

Also check out Anne’s post for #Usborneyashelfies about Point Horror here

The #PointHorrorBookClub even gets a mention! Thanks Anne!

Do you have a Point Horror question for Anne?

Anne has been lovely enough to agree to answer any questions we may have following the guest post or Point Horror related?

Send me your questions by leaving a reply and I will put them to Anne in my Q&A which will hopefully be love for next month’s Point Horror Book Club!

Thank you Anne!

Anne is now the Fiction Deputy Director at Usborne and feels privileged to have worked with so many talented people. Mum of three. Wannabe salsa dancer. Love chats around her dining table.

Why not join in Point Horror Book Club and the discussion on the 13th of every month?

Don’t forget to use the #pointhorrorbookclub on twitter so I can see your thoughts or tweet me using @chelleytoy

Are the Point Horror books we loved as a teenager still our favourites on the re-read? Are you new to Point Horror? Has our opinion changed? Are they still as good? Do they stand up to modern day YA Horror? Or are the a whole load of cray cray?

You can find all #PointHorrorBookClub posts old and new here

A huge huge thank you to Anne for featuring on Tales and a huge round of applause for such a fab guest post!

I honestly cannot thank Anne enough! Point Horror was my childhood and I feel so honoured to be able to still chat about it today!

*claps hands excitedly*

Do you remember Point Horror? Which was your favourite? Would you like to join in on #pointhorrorbookclub ?

Happy Point Horror-ing!

Guest Post – Magic and “the old ways” of the West Country in Deep Water by Lu Hersey

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The 1st July 2015 marked the release day of this awesome book, Deep Water, by the fabulous Lu Hersey! I have heard nothing but praise for this wonderful book I am so excited to read it very soon!

Thank you to the lovely Amy at Usborne for sending me a copy of Deep Water and to Lu for organising it!

Today I have a brilliant guest post from the lady herself, Lu Hersey, talking about magic and “the old ways” of the West Country in Deep Water. It is a truly fascinating guest post and I’m so so happy I get to share this with everyone.

But first….a little about the book….

Winner of the 2013 Mslexia Children’s Novel Writing Award, Deep Water is a mesmerizing mystery set in a beautiful, remote Cornish village.

When her mum vanishes, Danni moves to a tiny Cornish fishing village with Dad – where the locals treat her like a monster. As the village’s dark, disturbing past bubbles to the surface, Danni discovers that she’s not who – or what – she thought she was. And the only way to save her family from a bitter

Check out the fab book trailer!

Without further ado I will pass you over to Lu…..who has been quietly munching on the foam shrimps left over from the book launch! 🙂

Magic and “the old ways” of the West Country in Deep Water

I’ve always been fascinated by magic, and it’s something I try to weave into my writing. Not just the crystals, wands and faerie dust type stuff you can buy in New Age shops – I’m talking about the elemental magic that people believed in for generations, the magic of conjuring wind and weather, spells and remedies for protection and healing (or not!) and the kind of shapeshifting magic of folklore and legend. And yes, I know most people dismiss all that type of thing in the 21st century – but I like to allow for the possibility.

In Deep Water I wanted to make a contrast between the New Age type magic and the traditional magic of folklore. So when her mum disappears, my main character Danni has to go and live with her dad, who owns a New Age shop. Although I mildly poke fun at this kind of magic in the book, it doesn’t mean I don’t like New Age shops…in fact I really love hanging out in places like Tintagel in Cornwall (Cararth in Deep Water is based on Tintagel), where there are so many shops like Danni’s dad’s, it’s easier to buy a shaman rattle than a cheese sandwich!

But on balance, I’m more interested in the folklore and traditional magic. Some of the weirder, darker magic of Deep Water was inspired by visits to the Museum of Witchcraft in Boscastle (the village of Ancrows in the novel is based on Boscastle). The museum is where I learnt about poppets, very dark Cornish magic that works along similar lines to voodoo dolls.

In the book, Elliot, the boy who works in Dad’s shop, comes from a family of poppet makers – I wanted to give him a bit of an edge so he wasn’t just some perfect, good looking boy that Danni falls for. If ever I write a sequel to Deep Water, it’s something I’d like to bring out much more…

Danni is also given a weather charm in the story, by a man in a graveyard. I got the idea for this from the sign outside the Museum of Witchcraft.

Apparently it was once common for ‘wind sellers’ to make and sell weather charms for fishermen going out in their boats from Cornish harbours.

Although there aren’t any examples of wind charms in the museum, I read quite a few books on northern European magic as part of my background research, and came to the conclusion that the charms were probably bits of knotted rope or string. In Deep Water, the charm is made of knotted sailcloth – mainly because I thought it would be a bit easier for Danni to undo the knots when her hands were wet!

There are so many more dark, weird and sometimes plain bizarre ideas I picked up researching Cornish myth and legends – I’m sure I’ll find a home for them soon…meanwhile, if anyone has any Cornish myth stories they’d like to share, please get in touch!

Deep Water by Lu Hersey, published by Usborne, is out now.

Read the first chapter online at www.usborne.com/readdeepwater

Eeeeeekkkk doesn’t this book sound AMAZING! I can’t wait to delve into it!

You can buy this book here or pop my your local bookshop and pick up a copy 🙂

You can also add it on Goodreads here

About Lu Hersey

Lu Hersey worked as an advertising copywriter until she escaped to become a librarian and study for an MA in writing for young people at Bath Spa University. She shares her house with a surfeit of young adults who won’t leave home and keep calling her “Mum” – although, surprisingly, she finds their dialogue, strangely disturbing habits and erratic sleeping patterns a constant source of inspiration. She lives in Bristol, but her heart is in Cornwall. Deep Water is her first novel.

You can follow Lu on twitter using @LuWrites

You can follow the rest of the blog tour below.

Check out a fab post about The People Of The Sea over on @yayeahyeah here

Have you read Deep Water? What did you think? Are you intrigued? Do you know any Cornish myth stories? I would love to hear from you! Why not leave a comment by using the reply button at the top of the page or tweet me on twitter using @chelleytoy !

Happy Reading!