New Year's Excitements and Writing Resolutions: 2014

Hello and welcome to 2014! A lot has changed since I wrote out my year's goals in January 2013.

Did I achieve any of them? Well . . . 

2013: the year that I ended up here

- I got an agent for my crime novel. In fact, Murder Most Unladylike, the first in my middle-grade murder mystery series featuring Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, will be coming out in the UK in May this year (it'll be out in the US in spring 2015). So, you know, I'd say I pretty much ticked that one off.

- I also finished that other book I was writing. It's not Hazel and Daisy at all, but I like it, and one day (in the far, far future) I'm hoping that you might get to like it too.

- I certainly did not get 25% of the 1001 Books project read last year. I feel a bit bad about that. But I did have a few other things going on.

- I don't think I wrote something every day. I certainly didn't write fiction every day. Raymond Chandler would be ashamed of me (sorry, Raymond Chandler). But I wrote quite a lot, and I'm proud of a fair to middling amount of it, and I think that's probably all most writers can ever truthfully say.

- I did begin to plan my books before I wrote them! Sort of, anyway. In 2013 I discovered spreadsheets, and now I love them. I also got much better at cutting the boring bits and getting to the action. When I was revising Murder Most Unladylike, I took to muttering INCREASE THE PERIL! as I typed, and that was very helpful. Everyone loves a bit of peril.

- I did not manage to cut out the dogs from my writing. Nor did I get rid of the murder element in my plots. I'm realising that both might just be inevitable. I did not write any short stories, or enter any competitions. And I did not get a pet lion. But I do still have a pet bearded dragon . . .

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And now, some new writing resolutions for 2014.

- I am going to finish Murder Most Unladylike 2, which at the moment is called Arsenic For Tea. I admit, this is less a resolution than a contractual obligation, but hey, whatever works. I am also going to make it a lot better than it is right now.

I shall mainly be channeling the work (though not the life) of this person

- When Arsenic for Tea has been finished, I am going to rework the Secret Project mentioned above, and see what happens to it.

- I am going to do school visits. And I am going to make them be awesome.

- I'm going to try again with that short story thing - I definitely want to write some, probably set in Hazel and Daisy's world.

- I'm going to try to keep reading as many different genres and types of book as possible. Now that I work with children's books as my day job, as well as being a children's writer, it can get difficult to step back and try new things, but I know that it's important. Plus, I love it.

- I also want to do more rereading. I need to remember that trying to read every book ever published is unachievable, and sometimes it is better to just pick up I Capture the Castle for the eleventh time.

- I want to help other writers achieve their goals. I'm part of the awesome Author Allsorts group, as well as SCBWI, and they're both fantastic support networks for UK children's and YA authors. But of course, they only work if writers do support each other, and work together - and that's what I want to do more of this year.

- And I want to champion children's and YA writing however I can. I want to celebrate the brilliant writers working today, and help spread the word about what fantastic children's books are out there.

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And finally, on to (some of the very, very many) upcoming 2014 titles I'm currently getting extremely excited about. 

- On January 14th, Hollow City, the sequel to Miss Peregrine's School for Peculiar Children, will finally be published. I have been raving about Miss Peregrine - a crazy, creepy fantasy illustrated with terrifying found photos - since I read it last year, and I am beyond excited for this.

- In February there's a new Helen Oyeyemi book called Boy, Snow, Bird. I absolutely love Helen Oyeyemi (she wrote Mr Fox, a gorgeous take on the gruesome Mr Fox fairytale), and I would quite like to be her friend. But since I can't, I'll make do with reading her books.

- In March, Non Pratt's debut YA novel Trouble will be out. I am lucky enough to know a huge number of incredibly talented people who are all releasing books this year, and I am excited about every single one of them (Liz de Jager's Banished! Emma Pass's The Fearless! Katy Cannon's Love, Lies and Lemon Pies! So many others that if I listed them all this list would stretch to forever and potentially break the Internet!), but I got to read Trouble at proof stage and was absolutely delighted by it. It's so funny and sweet, and it manages to make the beaten-to-death teenage pregnancy plot point seem fresh and interesting. It's going to be a hit.

- March is also the publication month for my most anticipated non-fiction title: Did She Kill Him? by Kate Colquhoun. I love Victorian murders, the Maybrick mystery is fascinating, and Kate's Mr Briggs' Hat (about the first railway murder) was great. I can't wait for this.

- Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girls amazed me and freaked me out in equal measure last year, so I'm very excited about her new book, Broken Monsters, which publishes in May. It sounds a bit like sci-fi crime-novel Frankenstein meets The Island of Doctor Moreau, so obviously I will be reading it as soon as it comes out.

- In June, Leigh Bardugo's Grisha trilogy concludes with Ruin and Rising. Once again, I am restraining myself from simply listing every single one of the fantastic books that Orion will be publishing this year (Tess Sharpe's heartbreaking thriller Far From You, the cosmically brilliant new 5-8 series Pets from Space, and many equally worthy others), but this is just SO EXCITING that I have to talk about it. Concluding a series is obscenely difficult to get right, but Leigh's absolutely done it. I can't wait for you all to go absolutely nuts about this.

- In July, Rainbow Rowell's next novel Landline is out. I love Rainbow Rowell. Have I said that enough? Every one of her books is nuanced, thoughtful and absolutely beautiful - and also an amazing love story. I'm bouncing off the walls about this one.

- In August, Ali Smith's got a new one out: How To Both. Ali Smith never bothers with things like nouns or verbs, and a lot of her books don't entirely make sense, but I like her writing a lot, and so I'm very excited for this.

- September can only be the month of a NEW SARAH WATERS NOVEL. Oh my GOD. It's called The Paying Guests, but for all I care it could be called The Very Boring Book of Nothing Happening. It's written by Sarah Waters, and that means that I'll be buying it anyway.

And one final date for your calendars - in May 2014, my very own book, Murder Most Unladylike, will be available to buy from all good UK bookstores. Isn't that exciting? And weird? And amazing? I'm hoping to be able to share the UK cover with you very soon (I've seen roughs, and it's going to be wonderful), and I'm also hoping to run a giveaway on this blog when the proof copies are in - which, again, should be very soon! So stick around.

All in all, I've got a really good feeling about this year.

March reading round-up

Good weekend, Internet! I have several things to share with you today.

First, the two reviews I wrote for The Bookbag last month.

- The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. It's not out until later this month, but I got my hands on it early, and I can tell you now that is is terrifying, weird, gross and totally brilliant. I loved it.

- Blessed Are Those Who Thirst by Anne Holt. Many, many reviews ago, I wrote about Holt's novel 1222 on this very blog, and now I have reviewed her earlier (but more recently translated) effort. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't a patch on 1222, but it was an intriguing and far more than competent novel. Still definitely worth a read.

I also read a few books in my own time. Now, before you think that I'm falling down on the job, please know that not pictured are the thirty or so Orion Children's and Indigo titles that I've powered through with vast enjoyment. It feels a bit too odd to review work books on this very much non-work blog, so I'll just say that they were all extremely wonderful. I love our list.

Not on our list, though, were these - and they too were all fantastic, in very different ways. I think I've been lucky with my recent reading.


The Coronation by Boris Akunin

I have really worshipful feelings towards Boris Akunin. Recently, I went to a lecture he gave and came away dazzled by his literary genius. He looks like a twinkly silver-haired criminal mastermind, and he thinks so beautifully about what he writes and how he writes it.

In Akunin's lecture, he talked about the snobbery he encounters from people who think he's wasting his talents (he used to translate literary fiction) on silly, populist crime novels. You probably know what I think about that. To me, the Fandorin books are pretty much the epitome of what a really good reading experience should be - a book that's very well-written but also exciting and fun. They aren't afraid to enjoy themselves, and as a result they're a joy to read.

In Russia, Akunin's novels sell more than J K Rowling, and in my opinion they absolutely deserve to. Although each one features sexy aristocratic detective Erast Fandorin, they are all about very different types of crime, told in very different ways, and so they never stop feeling fresh and smart.

The Coronation is a racy tale of kidnap and jewel theft. It's narrated by stuffed-shirt butler Ziukin, who becomes Fandorin's unwilling stooge as they race to save both a child's life and the reputation of the Romanov family. As always, it was hugely entertaining and very clever, and as always, I loved it.

4 stars.


The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin

I have very high standards when it comes to science fiction. Yes, I want to feel transported to somewhere entirely different, but at the same time I want to feel absolutely connected to the characters who are seeing those strange sights. Because they're having such alien experiences, their essential humanity (even if they're aliens themselves) needs to be in no doubt. They have to be more human than human.

That's why I love Ursula le Guin so much. She's meticulous about creating her alien worlds - everything from geography to politics is beautifully thought through - but she's also fantastic at creating places and characters that feel real. The main character, Shevek, is both clearly from an alien culture and someone who you might meet on the street any day, and although she's obviously using our own world to inform Urras and Anarres, they're more than just allegorical Earths. They're places with distinctive characteristics of their own.

Be warned, though: if you're looking for a pacy sci fi read, you won't find it here. In fact, in terms of its actual contents, The Dispossessed is slightly boring. The story of mathematician Shevek and his quest to discover the principle of simultaneity, there are a lot of scientific concepts and very little action. But somehow, in the hands of Ursula le Guin, this dull material is made to sing. Shevek is such a believable main character that I passionately wanted him to succeed, and when he does - in a scene where he finally writes out the equation he's been searching for his entire life - it was such an emotionally recognisable moment that (I am not exaggerating) I had tears in my eyes. Yes. Ursula le Guin made me cry over some maths.

I'm pretty sure that, in terms of sci fi, no one does it better than le Guin. I loved this, and the only reason why I'm not marking it higher is because, when I read it many years ago, I remember loving its companion novel The Left Hand of Darkness even more.

4.5 stars.


Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

One of the best things about writing fiction is that you're allowed to decide what's true. In the world you create, you make up the rules - and as soon as you've made them up, they become the peculiar reality of that part of fantasyland. Philip Pullman, for example, made up a world with daemons partly because he saw paintings of people with their pets and thought but what if they weren't just pets? What if they were really part of those people?

Much along the same lines, Ransom Riggs looked at a series of weird old staged photographs that he and his friends found in charity shops, of sepia people dressed up in faceless clown costumes, or hovering five inches above the ground, or with an extra reflection, and thought, but what if these weren't staged? What if they were real?

So he wrote a book in which they were. As I tweeted at the time:

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by @ransomriggs. Like the scary weird-smelling back of an old junk shop. But a book. LOVED it.
— Robin Stevens (@redbreastedbird) March 31, 2013

 If Miss Peregrine's was just a great story I would still have loved it. I mean, a group of superpowered children living a secret existence on a hidden island of time? I'm sold. But Miss Peregrine's is a great story intertwined with an amazing (and totally terrifying) series of images that lifts it into being something even more special. It feels and looks precious, and it's very, very clever.

I'm all for ebooks in general, but this is one book that needs to be touched as you read it. It's very different from anything else I've read for a very long time, and - as I said in my tweet - I adored it.

4.5 stars.


Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley

There's been a lot of talk about this book lately. This always makes me a bit trepidatious, in case it turns out to be a case of mass hysteria. Having now read Amity and Sorrow, though, I think that in this instance the crowd has wisdom. It's an extremely well-written and weird take on sex and God in the American midwest, a novel that evokes its setting so vividly that, even though the weather is struggling to get into double figures in England at the moment, I was transported straight to the dust-dry heart of the Oklahoma summer.

The novel follows ex-cult member and first wife of fifty Amaranth, on the run from her abusive husband with her daughters Amity and Sorrow in tow. When Amaranth crashes her car at a remote gas station, the three are stranded, forced to assimilate into what is, for them, an alien world. But while Amity is happy to learn that it's OK to do things like read and go inside houses, Sorrow (who was the cult's oracular wunderkind) reacts to her freedom in a way that, to most readers, is going to seem completely insane. She spends half of her time crouched over a pot of water trying to have a vision of God (also known as her father), and the other half setting fire to things to bring about the Apocalypse. But although this may seem crazy, I think Riley has a point. Her story gives a balanced and intelligent look at the effects of brainwashing that doesn't (as many such books do) just show its ex-cult member characters shouting "Hooray!" and embracing the wonders of A&W's and network cable with open arms.

Plural marriage really fascinates me, partly because I just can't wrap my head around the emotional weirdness of it, and also because I have had to trot out the same no-actually-the-Church-of-Latterday-Saints-has-not-condoned-polygamy-since-1890-so-my-mother's-family-in-no-way-resembles-the-one-on-Big-Love explanation approximately one thousand times, whenever someone finds out that most of my relatives are Mormon. I think this is a sensitive and believable exploration of the issue that understands why someone would get into that kind of situation while it still concludes that it's a pretty terrible idea. I'm impressed.

4 stars.