0 Yay YA! What a great day! - byLinda Strachan

   First Scottish YA festival to celebrate Young Adult fiction
took place last Friday as 200 Young Adult readers from 9 schools arrived at Cumbernauld Theatre.

All eleven authors who took part live and work in Scotland, writing a wide range of books, from gritty realism to fantasy, historical settings from Vikings to the First World War, adventure, humour, weirdness and wonder.  An amazing bouquet of words and writing  to delight any reader.

Kirkland Ciccone 

After the success of the YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) in London last year YA author Kirkland Ciccone decided there should be something to celebrate the wealth of YA books, and their authors who are living and working in Scotland.

A larger than life character, with typical enthusiasm and humour he gathered together a 'novel' of authors (is that the collective term?) and asked if we would be keen to take part.

No one was sure what to expect, least of all Kirkland himself, I suspect, but by the time the sell-out crowd arrived on Friday morning it had already gathered great momentum.

Kirkland had approached sponsors and secured a commitment from both the Cumbernauld Theatre and North Lanarkshire Council's CultureNL, who supported the event with great enthusiasm and helped to make it such a success.

Kirkland had everyone laughing with his introduction. Waving his ray gun and wearing a tin foil top he started it off by saying ...
 “Welcome to the first annual Hunger Gam…oh wait!”   

Almost immediately the audience was split into two halves with some spending the morning in the auditorium listening to three great authors -  I would have loved to be there but I was busy elsewhere as you will discover below. I did hear that the audiences were hugely entertained with their presentations, mesmerising words, and a few interesting props...

Barry Hutchison, Cathy MacPhail and Theresa Breslin

 Catherine MacPhail showed the trailer for the film of her book Another Me, which is delighting  and scaring audiences as much as the book does its readers!

Theresa Breslin took them on a trip into the past showing off her gas mask and some shrapnel from WW1

Barry Hutchison apparently had them enthralled with stories about death and.... squirrels  - I really must get in to listen to him sometime soon!


Meanwhile in lots of different nooks and crannies, such as dressing rooms and tiny bars scattered around Cumbernauld Theatre, with amazing efficiency the Front of House staff led groups of between 5 and 15 young readers around each of the other six authors.  We had about 7 or 8 minutes with each group before they were moved on to the next author.

In the Cottage Bar

What a challenge that was, to find a way to engage with the audience and let them feel connected with us and our books in just 8 minutes.

I was in the Cottage Bar, a lovely space with cottage-style windows and as each group was ushered in I had decided I would tell them a quick, hopefully atmospheric, snapshot of each of my three YA crime novels - Spider, Dead Boy talking and Don't Judge Me.
After that I threw it open to them to ask me anything they liked.  Almost every group had at least one or two who had questions for me and I thoroughly enjoyed that it was very much more personal than a large school event.  The pressure of the limited time was also less of a problem than I had expected.

Alex Nye

Next door to me was the lovely Alex Nye with her books Chill and Shiver and announcing her forthcoming novel.  Hers was the only presentation I got
in to hear a part of, because one school had cancelled (there had originally been 10 schools) which meant we all had a few minutes to catch our breath. . Alex passed around her notebook with all her changes and scoring out. It was lovely (serious notebook envy!)

The other four authors involved in the ' 8 minute speed dating'  were Lari Don, an amazing storyteller and writer for younger readers who was talking about her first YA novel, Mind Blind;  Roy Gill, with his werewolves in Daemon Parallel, is taller than anyone has a right to be;  Matt Cartney, a real life adventurer, with his Danny Lansing adventures, and V Campbell and her Viking Gold!

Roy Gill and Lari Don in the 'selfie' area

At lunchtime there was a chance for the young readers to buy books and the lovely Scotia Books had an amazing bookstall.

The enthusiastic teachers, librarians and bloggers seemed to be enjoying the day, too.

I saw lots of young readers with four or five books, eagerly chasing down authors for a signature, or a photo! 

 After lunch it all started again with the audience changing places so that those who were in the auditorium in the morning came around to meet us for their 8 minute chat, while the others had a chance in the auditorium.

Author Keith Charters joined us at lunch time for the latter part of the afternoon and excellently chaired the final event which was a panel of authors taking questions. Alex Nye, Roy gill, Victoria Campbell and Lari Don fielded some challenging questions and generally agreed to disagree with most of their answers which is probably exactly how it should be, because no two writers are the same!

V Campbell, Matt Cartney and Keith Charters

Despite all the rushing about, chatting and book buying sometimes you want a quiet spot to get stuck into that book you've just bought......

Finally it was all almost over when Theresa Breslin presented Kirkland with the Chocolate Trainer Award, which he promised to enjoy!

Chocolate Trainer Award

Everyone agreed it had been an excellent day and hopefully Yay YA! will continue next year!

Our thanks to Kirkland Ciccone without whose delightfully over-the-top exuberance, patience and organisation, this would never have happened. Well done Kirkland!

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Linda Strachan is the author of over 60 books for all ages from picture books to teenage novels and the writing handbook Writing For Children.

Linda's latest YA novel is Don't Judge Me . 
She is Patron of Reading to Liberton High School, Edinburgh.

Her best selling series Hamish McHaggis is illustrated by Sally J. Collins

website:  www.lindastrachan.com
blog:  Bookwords 

Detail: Yay YA! What a great day! - byLinda Strachan

0 My first post - by Anne Booth

My First Post for an Awfully Big Blog Adventure

Hello! I can’t quite believe this is happening. It seems only yesterday when I was on an Arvon ‘Writing for Children’ course with Linda Strachan and Cathy MacPhail, but in fact it was back in 2010 - four and a half years ago.

Linda and Cathy can be seen discussing it here:

http://awfullyblogadventure.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/arvon-writing-course-linda-strachan-and.html

I was on that week. It was wonderful. It was great to learn from Linda and Cathy, and to hear the work of the other writers and to write some things myself. I knew already that I loved children’s books - I had an M.A. in Children’s Literature, had been a bookseller, and had four children of my own ranging from 13 to 10. However, the love I felt for children’s books, combined with the awe I felt for those who wrote them, meant that I hadn’t dared to think I could write any of my own stuff. It was ‘having a go’ that week, and the encouragement and detailed feedback Linda and Cathy gave us all, that gave me confidence. I felt at home in that world, where it was normal to discuss pirates and monsters, for example, and see events through children’s eyes! I remember Linda talking about the Scattered Authors’ Society and am so amazed and happy that I am a member now myself.

There were many wonderful writers on that week, and on another subsequent week run the next year by Joyce and Polly Dunbar at Lumb Bank. I hope that all of us get published eventually. My own breakthrough came in 2013, when Nosy Crow Publishers accepted my picture book text, which is now ‘The Fairiest Fairy’, due to be published in June this year.

http://nosycrow.com/books/the-fairiest-fairy  I am overwhelmed by the loveliness of Rosalind Beardshaw’s illustrations!

2013 is also the year when my lovely agent,  Anne Clark , took me on. This transformed my life! It led to my novel ‘Girl with a White Dog’ being published by Catnip in March 2014, and me writing ‘Lucy’s Secret Reindeer’ for O.U.P. , published in October 2014. Now, in 2015, ‘Dog Ears’ will be published in April for Catnip, ‘The Fairiest Fairy’ (Nosy Crow) in June, and ‘Lucy’s Magic Snowglobe’ (O.U.P.) probably in October. There should be another Nosy Crow picture book for Christmas too, but perhaps that’s for 2016.

Next month I will be 50! This time last year I had no books published, and suddenly, by the end of this year I will have had 5, maybe 6! It feels like when you are waiting at a bus stop for ages, (in my case = years!) and then suddenly all the buses come at once!

So my message to anyone out there reading this, who loves reading children’s books so much that they do not not feel worthy to write them is - go on - have a go. It’s never too late. Sign up for a course with people as inspiring, encouraging and enthusiastic as Linda and Cathy, Joyce or Polly. Follow writers and  illustrators and agents and publishers you like on Twitter - I have had such lovely conversations with fellow enthusiasts - and found out about so many wonderful children’s books there. It was because of Twitter that, without an agent at that time, I submitted to the new publisher Nosy Crow in the first place. It is because of Twitter that I learnt that a new agent, Anne Clark, was looking for clients. There are THOUSANDS of amazing children’s books out there waiting to be discovered on all sorts of subjects, by all sorts of authors, for all different age groups, but there’s always room for more!  There’s a world of loveliness to enjoy as a reader AND as a writer, and if you’d like to combine the two - GO FOR IT! It’s the best job in the world!

And if you are an experienced writer like Linda or Cathy, please think about being a tutor. That course changed my life.

Anne Booth www.bridgeanneartandwriting.wordpress.com @Bridgeanne on twitter

Detail: My first post - by Anne Booth