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Siobhan's
Journal
June 12th 2007
I think this picture says it
all. Alas that Nina Douglas, the wonderful publicity manager at
Random House who took the shot and organised the June 7th launch party for The
London Eye Mystery, isn't in it: she is behind the lens!
Finally, more than
four years after I started writing it, the book's arrived... Things got just a tad
delayed when Mark Hadden's (wonderful) Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-time came out. I was halfway through my own story of a boy with
Asperger Syndrome who turns sleuth when Mark's book hit the stands and went
instantly stratospheric (to use a Ted-ism). Not that I was jealous or
anything... But it is thrilling to see my own story finally make the light
of day and with the same (and much beloved) publisher. How odd life
is. But the two books, despite some similarities, are really very
different.
The London Eye Mystery feels
like my first book in many ways, not my second; and that made having a party on
the London Eye itself all the more special. We had two pods booked.
I couldn't be in both, but my niece, also called Siobhan, did a reading in the
one I wasn't on and talented writer friend Fiona Dunbar
introduced her.
May 27th 2007
In Ireland... and I've just
received the Eilis Dillon Award for a first-time children's author. It is
very precious to me, my first ever award. Eilis Dillon was a hugely
talented Irish children's author, whose Island of Horses is a classic --
so gorgeously told and very idiosyncratic in style. If you want
transporting to a mid-last-century Irish fishing village on a tiny western isle,
read this. It is enchanting. I only regret that it took my winning
this award to finally read it! Just imagine if I'd missed out...
April 24th 2007
Bog Child is very, very near
the end, very very, very...
Meanwhile, more good
news. A Swift Pure Cry has made it onto the Carnegie Shortlist My first reaction on hearing this news was to exclaim to Bella
at David Fickling's "I just LOVE those librarians!". I am
married to a librarian, so they are indeed a breed close to my heart. My
advice to anyone reading this who is currently writing a children's book and
wants to make it onto the Carnegie shortlist is to put an upbeat profile of a
librarian into their story somewhere... and if you want to be SURE of getting on
the list, make sure the word "road" appears in your title (witness The
Road of Bones and Road of the Dead, also shortlisted). Anyone
following this journal since last year will remember the problems I had finding
the right title for my next teen novel (due out Jan 08). Am I glad I fixed
on Solace of the Road ... except that by the time it appears, the
vogue for the word "road" in titles will probably be passed!
Seriously, the news
astounded me. David sent me round an orange plant and a lemon plant with
a note starting "Oranges and Lemons say the bells of...". My
concern is that I do not kill these precious beauties off. I have whatever
the opposite of green fingers is. Acid Rain fingers. With Robert in
my local shop to help with advice on citrus feed etc, please may they be allowed
to grow. Bella said that the lemons would come in handy for my
gin-and-tonics. Roll on the ice, the tart Tanqueray, the sizzling tonic...
roll on the summer.
April 10th, 2007
A Swift Pure Cry is out
in America.
March 21st 2007
A
Swift Pure Cry has made it onto the Children's Books Ireland/Bisto
Book of the Year Award shortlist. I am utterly honoured... I must read the
other titles but have already read John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped
Pyjamas (haunting), which is also on David Fickling's list, and Kate
Thompson's The Fourth Horseman (gripping), so I already know I'm up against rigorous competition.
March 20th 2007
I'm now three chapters into
final tranche of Bog Child and terrified as I always am at this
point. Will it all come together neatly, movingly... or fall apart like
towel-turbans do on my head whenever I try to make them? I recently read
the fabulous biography by Kathryn Hughes of George Eliot (The Last Victorian).
I don't compare myself to the great blue stocking of all time, but I sympathized
with how she'd finish her stories sobbing with exhaustion and relief and then
flee on publication day so as to escape reviews.
I also now have book proofs of The
London Eye Mystery -- lovely, small, blue objects, very tactile. Can't
wait to see final result with cover (see below for rough impression of
latter). We are now definitely launching it with a party on the Eye
itself, on publication day (June 7th). Fun, zany and I hope, hope, hope it
doesn't rain.
Winter's been damp as an infected
sinus cavity here in Oxford. Flooded fields, honking geese, rapids on the
River. It's been a good time for getting the nose down and working, I
suppose, but I'm longing for some serious sunshine.
January 12th 2007
After a slow, truncated start,
my fourth novel, Bog Child, has really started to take off and I now have
100 pages, ie the first third down on paper (but it still needs a lot of
work). In these quiet, stormy, wet days it's been wonderful to be holed up
in my garret (actually our new loft conversion, very peaceful and airy)
scribbling this strange, eerie story... Also strange and eerie (and I
think utterly ravishing) is the new paperback cover of Swift Pure Cry.
November
22nd 2006
I
was delighted to hear that A Swift Pure Cry is long-listed for the
Carnegie Medal. My husband is a librarian and they are a breed close to my
heart! I also love the fact that this medal, so prestigious in itself,
brings only itself and a donation of £500 to the winner's favourite
library. How refreshing is that?
Meantime,
I am finishing up my revisions to The London Eye Mystery, to be published next
June. Random House have hired a wonderful illustrator to come up with a
cover and here is his rough. I think it's wonderful.
October
20th 2006
A Swift Pure Cry has
also made it onto Waterstones Children's Book Prize shortlist, along with nine
other titles. What a razzle-dazzle it all is. Fun but a tad
distracting!
I've been working on my new
story and am up to chapter 4, but there's also been a shift in future publishing
plans at David Fickling Books. Solace of the Road is now due to
appear in January 08, and The London Eye Mystery -- a story for 9- to
12-year-olds -- will appear in June 07. The London Eye Mystery is
about a boy who goes up on the London Eye and doesn't come down again: it
is down to his cousins Ted and Kat to solve the mystery of his bizarre
disappearance. This last-minute shuffle is exciting but means I have
to do my final edits on the story super-fast...
September
7th 2006
Good
news: A Swift Pure Cry has made it onto the Book Trust
Teenage Prize
shortlist. Also, today I started a brand new story for teenagers.
It's very early days,
but great to have a draft of chapter one.
August
31st 2006
Check
out these shots from our stunning holiday in Ireland.
Banna
Strand, County Kerry. It doesn't get more beautiful.
Goat
Island Cave (my inspiration for the cave in A Swift Pure Cry)
Inquisitive
Irish cows
A
jelly fish on Sherkin Island, West Cork (glad I saw it AFTER my swim, not
before...)
Siobhan
in a windy Donegal
August
27th
Thank
you to everyone who gave me feedback on my title problems. The feedback
was fascinating and fell into a distinct pattern. Adult men tended to like
Hurry, Hurry, Holly Hogan, Americans tended to like Where I Would Be
and the favourite overall, especially amongst younger readers, was Call Me
Solace. However, when I realised I wasn't 100% happy with that
either. Then, in a quiet, still moment en route to West Cork, it came to me. The title is...
Solace
of the Road
and
due out on June 1st next year.
June
17th
The
German edition is due out next month.
In the meantime, I've had the thrilling news that A Swift Pure Cry has
made it onto two long-lists for prizes. One is the Guardian Children's
Fiction Prize and you can click here to read about the prize and the seven other
fantastic contenders...
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2006/05/29/clones_witches.html
Meanwhile,
I am now doing final revisions on the Novel Number Two. Any of you reading
this, please take a second to help me with my title problems.
There
are four contenders:
Call
Me Solace
Hurry,
Hurry, Holly Hogan
The
Roving Jewel
or
Where
I Would Be.
The
last two are quotes from a traditional song that's quoted in the book, and the
first two were the working titles of Draft One and Draft Two, and it seems my
editors are split male/female according to which they prefer... which makes me
wonder if the quotes from the song might work better. If you have a
preference, please do tell me. Email me on Siobhan@siobhandowd.co.uk
Due out in Germany
July 2006
Check this out! It's the
proposed German cover of
A Swift Pure
Cry but in German it reads as A Pure Cry (Ein Reiner Schrei).
April 3rd
What a busy month
it's been. I had a publicity trip to Dublin and interviews and various
other activities to promote A Swift Pure Cry, plus I had to get novel
number two into my publishers. Now publication month is over I feel like
it's been one long March-Hare-Chase.
I must admit to
having had to email a couple of fellow writers who are more seasoned than me
about how they cope when the books come out. It's quite hard to look at
how it's doing and remain detached. At various points in March, I found
myself endlessly looking up sales rankings on Amazon, hunting down on-line
reviews and other rather sad activities. Somehow in April it all stopped.
'Enough is enough' I told myself. (Now I only look at the sales rankings
once a day...)
The reviews have all
been good... except for one which was awful. So awful, it
was funny. When I read a Mr. Hugh Tynan of the Irish Examiner
saying that "he hated every sentence" and that my courage in tackling
the subject material was "almost unseemly" I felt like I'd been
clouted with a rotten fish. Then I thought, hey! it's better than
being damned with faint praise (or silence), and then I thought maybe the review said more about him than
about the book and then I thought it takes all sorts to make a world and that's
what makes the world worth writing about... In other words, I survived the
experience.
I've also been putting together a storyline for book number three. I'm
excited by
it. But research is
needed first.
March
3rd
Publication
day has arrived. This morning a
bottle of champagne arrived from my publishers.
How absolutely adorable of them. But
best of all was seeing a pile of the books on sale in Blackwell's.
I decided not to be coy and introduced myself to the very nice
saleswoman, and I signed all their books there and then.
She was very encouraging about sales to date.
There was an upbeat story also in Imago, the glossy magazine that
comes out with The Oxford Times. It
was fun but very, very weird to see our living room in the local newspaper.
Today
I've put the final push on the new novel to one side (it is nearly there,
nearly) and am preparing my talk at tomorrow's London
Book Fair Masterclass.
February
16, 2006
Geoff
(my other half) and I are just back from a wonderful week-end in Cork and
Killarney. We visited my god-mother
and cousins and others, and then did some hiking around the Killarney lakes.
In times gone by, some of my father's family owned land here, but had to
sell it off when times got tough. A
pity, as it would now be worth a mint.
Although
only February, the weather was mild. We
saw daffodils, camellias, and you may not believe me but we even found one
rhodadendrum already out.
Sean
and his horse Joey took us on a spin in traditional Killarney jaunting car style
(see picture, courtesy of Sean). Whenever I visited Killarney as a child, I used
to beg Dad to let me have a ride in one. He said it was "too dear" and "a tourist
trap" but Geoff and I threw such warnings to the wind and went for it and
it plastered a grin over my face the whole time. The experience makes you feel like a heroine in a nineteenth
century novel.
After
the jaunt we walked for miles and got soaked.
We
also went up into the mountains and saw about a million frogs having a fiesta in
the bogs up there. There were also
wild goats and a beautiful creamy new-born kid. The mountains were fierce and beautiful.
It was the kind of place hermits used to go and live.
Now,
I'm not giving anything away, but all this was incredibly inspiring for a new
book I'm pondering…
February
14, 2006
March
2nd 2006 is definitely going to be not so much a red-letter-day as a
gilt-edged-telegram-from-the-Taoiseach day (the Taoiseach is the Irish Prime
Minister; they don't have a queen over there.). Nicky from Random House has been
in touch with publicity plans and it all sounds very exciting.
The only problem is, how can I keep calm enough to finish the book I'm
currently working on? (Mental note: must practice more yoga.)
[Home
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[The London Eye
Mystery] [A
Swift Pure Cry] [About
Siobhan] [Siobhan on the
Road] [Siobhan's Top Reads]
The
Siobhan Dowd Trust
Last updated March 2007 (c)
Siobhan Dowd & Geoff Morgan 2006 Photography by Geoff
Morgan