Stonewall Writer of the Year - Shortlisting...

That is possibly the most unimaginative title for a blogpost ever, but I am feeling excited to the point of incoherence.

I have been shortlisted for Stonewall Writer of the Year!

No, really, I have.

This means that someone at Stonewall knows who I am. That is pretty cool in itself. Also, I think (I hope) I get to go to the party, which is at the V&A and actually costs real money to go to if you buy a ticket. ('Do they know you're not gay?' my mother asked me. 'Should you pretend you are?' To which I replied, 'Mum, if Stonewall don't think you should be allowed to love who you want, the world is a sad and hopeless place.' Or would have done, if I'd thought of it. I think actually I burbled something about, 'Er... no, does it matter?')

The news came yesterday, totally out of the blue. As far as I'm concerned, the symptoms of being a Proper Writer include your heart sinking when you see your publishers' or agent's number coming up on your phone, so it came as a complete shock that my agent wasn't just ringing to ask me where the new book is.* I was so taken aback that it was good news that I didn't hear the word 'Stonewall' and thought he was talking about an in-house Bloomsbury Writer of the Year or something... (Luckily I think just having been shortlisted for something means you can be a bit more of an idiot than usual without your agents frowning and idly crossing you off the list of writers on their desks. Hopefully.)

Then: the V&A, he said.

Oh, I thought. That sounds... posh.

Sarah Waters won it a few times, he said.

Oh, I thought again. She's... well, a proper writer.

Stonewall, he said.

Stonewall? I thought. Stonewall?! What, like the - like really, Stonewall?!

I must have sounded utterly punchdrunk. Maybe he did absent-mindedly black out the letters of my name, after all.

But seriously, as well as being honoured and excited and all that (also, did I mention that my agent said he didn't think any other YA writers had ever been shortlisted? That was cool), I feel really proud. Because - as those of you who follow this blog might remember - Love in Revolution had a bit of a rough ride. Could I, my editor asked me - after the book had been accepted - change the love affair to, well, a "passionate friendship"? Because, you know, it's difficult, teenage fiction is really bought by the gatekeepers, the parents and librarians, and, well, we don't want to put anyone off... No one actually said, AND SOME PEOPLE WHO MIGHT OTHERWISE BUY THIS BOOK DON'T LIKE LESBIANS, but really they might as well have done.

I said no. I just said no. (I have said no on other occasions to my editor, but I'm not sure it's ever stayed no.) Bollocks to sales, I thought.** I mean, imagine calling a book Best Friends in Revolution.

And kudos to my editor, who respected that decision entirely - and indeed foregrounded the love story in the blurb, with no fudging or blurring of pronouns so that people might not notice the characters were both girls. Kudos to the cover designer, for making it look romantic. Kudos to my publishers for going with it and not putting pressure on me.

Right now I feel really proud of them, too.



* Still being buggered about with, and probably will be for some time, but that's another story.
** No change there, then. :)

A quick update.

This may not mean anything to anyone who didn't follow the original soul-searching about Come The Revolution a while ago, but to anyone who did and remembers vaguely what I was on about - I seem to have won the fight. Give or take a few explicit details in the sex-scenes, which I can live with. I love my editor.

I thought about making this post less mysterious, but if I did that I would have to kill you. And the Internet is a very populous place...

In other news, I am in She Stoops To Conquer at my local theatre next week (wigs, corsets, West Country accents, lots and lots of knob gags), am recovering (I hope) from a cold, doing well on my New Year's Resolutions (except for the one about punctuation), and haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey yet. (One of my friends is going to lend it to me. I suspect that as a big fan of The Story of O I will be disappointed. But watch this space. It strikes me as the sort of thing I might want to blog about.)

Anyway. Right now, my main feeling is: hurrah!

The glamorous life of a writer...

I was a little bit fragile last time I posted... I won't apologise, though, as I feel like it's important to share these things. Mainly because when I'm having a crisis of confidence it cheers me up no end to know that someone else is feeling bad. Hopefully that works for you, my lovely readers, as well - meaning that moaning and whining are in fact providing a useful public service. Wait, what do you mean, that's just me? :)

However. Thankfully things are looking up. (Or, as I mistyped that initially, "looking yup". I rather like that.)

So, NaNoWriMo, plays, love affairs, and books all end. But hey. Here is something which will always, always cheer me up. Yes, that's right. Lunch.

Especially lunch at someone else's expense. And especially lunch at my agent's expense.

In this case, wood-pigeon, twice-baked goat's cheese and thyme souffle, white chocolate and chestnut tart, and coffee. And wine, of course. Although not too much of it because I had to catch the train home and didn't want to doze off and wake up in Hastings. (I have nothing against Hastings but it's right at the end of the train line.)

And it was lovely. The food, obviously (see above) but also the company (my hopefully-soon-adult-book-agent*) and the conversation (about me)... We were talking about my grown-up novel, The Two Lives of Edward Leigh, which I sent off months ago and managed to forget about - only to get an email a few weeks ago which said that she was really excited about it and could we meet for lunch? Cue great jubilation in the Collins household. And added to that, the agent in question worked with me on The Traitor Game before it went out on submission and was a wonderful, incisive, tactful editor - so I was (and am) really pleased that she's interested in Edward Leigh. Now I just have to redraft it...  

That was Wednesday. And on Thursday I was at the Bloomsbury Christmas party - Quality Street, pretzels, satsumas, wine - chatting to my editor and copy-editor and lots of other nice people. (The big names included N. M. Browne, Celia Rees, Mary Hooper, Mary Hoffman, Mark Walden, Gareth Jones... and possibly lots of other lovely writers whom I met too late in the evening to remember clearly. My apologies if you're one of them. You were lovely, anyway.) It was fantastic. I came home on Thursday night feeling very glamorous and exuberant. Just those two occasions made up for many long weeks of slaving away alone over a hot computer.

And I'm not, contrary to appearances, just saying that because of the free food.


* Fingers crossed. If I manage to implement all her terribly sensible suggestions. Watch this space... :)