FIX ME. DRAW ME WHOLE. COLOUR ME IN.
Nineteen-year-old actor Arlo likes nothing more than howling across the skyline with best friend Luke from the roof of their apartment.
But when something irreparable happens and familiar black weeds start to crawl inside him, Arlo flees to the other side of the world, taking only a sketchbook full of maps.
With its steaming soup and neon lights, this new place is both comforting and isolating.
There, Arlo meets fellow traveller Mizuki. Something about her feels more like home than he's felt in a while. But what is Mizuki searching for?
HOW FAR CAN YOU OUTRUN YOURSELF . . .
BEFORE YOU LOSE YOUR WAY BACK?

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Guest post from Lydia Ruffles!

Readers often ask authors where we get our ideas from and my answer is always that ideas are everywhere. I collect images, songs, art, things I overhear on buses, basically anything that could help build a book.

Here are some of the things that inspired my new novel Colour Me In, a story about friendship and first love, mental health and masculinity, art and adventure.

Tokyo neon

Colour Me In is about a nineteen-year-old actor called Arlo Thomas who flees to the other side of the world after a tragedy. I went to Japan for research. On my first (very jetlagged) night there, I took this photo of a wet zebra crossing with Tokyo’s neon reflected in it and it inspired a key scene where Arlo is a stranger lost in the city.

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Troye Sivan lyrics

​Arlo has achieved what he thought he wanted by becoming an actor but it’s left him feeling exhausted and empty. I’m a big Troye Sivan fan and played his song, EASE feat. Broods, while I was trying to capture Arlo’s frame of mind. I especially love these lyrics:

“But the truth is the stars are falling, ma
And the wolves are out c-calling, ma
And my home has never felt this far.”


Globes and maps

The only thing that Arlo takes with him on his travels is a sketchbook full of maps. He meets a young woman called Mizuki Gray and, although they’re both trying to get as lost as possible, maps and globes play an important part in their story.
For research, I watched this beautiful video about Bellerby & Co – one of only two handmade globemaking manufacturers in the world.
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Ruins and abandoned places

​I lived in Spain a few years ago and there was a huge derelict building on the outskirts of town, which always make me wonder what it used to be and whether anyone ever went inside. These snaps that I took of a seaside theme park out-of-season started me thinking about abandoned places again and it all filtered into Arlo and Mizuki’s adventures.


This boat

​Sometimes I take myself away to a hotel for writing and thinking sessions. I was daydreaming and watching the tide creep towards this boat during one such week when the idea for another key scene came to me. No spoilers so I won’t elaborate but there’s more Colour Me In aesthetic and inspiration on this Pinterest board.




Lydia Ruffles’ second book, Colour Me In, will be published by Hodder on 9 August 2018. Her debut novel, The Taste of Blue Light, was called ‘a gripping Bell Jar-type narrative’ by the FT and ‘dark and affecting … truly unforgettable’ by Heat magazine. A reformed corporate PR, Lydia also writes and talks about creativity and mental health for media ranging from Buzzfeed to BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. She tweets @lydiaruffles

The Real-Life Background of a Made-Up Story

The Book of Boy grew from my lifelong fascination with the Middle Ages, and stories such as The Sword in the Stone, The Maude Reed Tale, and David Macauley’s marvelous Castle. Give me men in hose, women in wimples, and dinner baked in a pie.
About a decade ago, I learned of an ancient pilgrimage route in Rome, and spent years researching it, hoping to write a book. I got to visit Rome several times, bliss, and spend my days reading about Rome, also bliss. Most importantly, I learned a great deal about medieval relics. Patrick Geary, a professor at Princeton University, wrote a superb history, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Middle Ages, describing how common it was for people to steal – and brag about! and sell! – the bones of saints. So when the pilgrimage-in-Rome book fell through, I started pondering relic theft, which is patently enthralling, and how to turn this thieving into a story.
Because I am a ghoul, I’ve also always been fascinated by the plague. And thanks to my pilgrimage research, I knew about “Holy Years” when hundreds of thousands of pilgrims journeyed to Rome for extra blessings. Thus my selection of the date 1350, a Holy Year just after the Black Death. The city of Rome had recently been leveled by a major earthquake plus a civil war, and France and England were locked in the Hundred Years’ War. All in all a pretty grim moment. But Boy, the wonderful wide-eyed hero of The Book of Boy, doesn’t see the grimness; he’s just thrilled with the adventure. As was I! As is, I hope, every reader.


The Book of Boy by Catherine Gilbert Murdock is out now, priced £6.99. Find out more and read the first chapter here.

Catherine Gilbert Murdock grew up in Connecticut, USA. She spent several years working as a screenwriter and has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of several children’s novels in the USA and The Book of Boy is her first to be published in the UK.

Nina's mother always told her that love there's no such thing as unconditional love. Now Nina will do anything for the boy she loves, to prove she's worthy of him. But when he breaks up with her, Nina is lost. What is she, if not a girlfriend? Broken-hearted, Nina tries to figure out what the conditions of love are, and what she's really made of.
A powerful and unflinching novel that explores what young women really think and feel about relationships, What Girls Are Made Of is for anyone who has ever had to pick up the pieces of their heart and rebuild it.

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1) You talk a lot about your own experiences in the Author’s Note. How far did they inspire both the things that happened to Nina and her choices in the novel?
What Girls Are Made Of is entirely sewn of the emotions, fears, desires, and curiosities that I felt as a teenage girl and that I feel now, as a woman. Though the book is a work of fiction, it’s a chimera, in both definitions. In Greek mythology, a chimera is a female monster that breathes fire; it has the body of a goat, the tail of a serpent, and the head of a woman. This is What Girls Are Made Of.
In the field of genetics, a chimera is a single organism composed of two distinct sets of genetic material, such that the DNA in a woman’s blood may be different than the DNA in her ovaries. This, too, is What Girls Are Made Of—an indivisible confluence of that which underpins femaleness. The unspoken rules of femininity. The male gaze. The existence as both a subject and an object.
In these ways, What Girls Are Made Of is both incredibly personal and terrifyingly universal.

2) A lot of people have described What Girls Are Made Of as being a brutal and hard-hitting but necessary read. Was it always intended to make people uncomfortable or do you think that’s just a side-effect of its subject matter?
I never think about audience when I write; my job is to follow the unspooling threads of the story wherever they lead, without regard to how uncomfortable they make me feel. If I were to consider my audience as I wrote, it seems to me that I would be making a product rather than creating art. This sounds didactic, I know, but it’s true; as I am writing, my mantra is, “It’s none of my business who reads my book.” My business is to write the book.
People may well be made uncomfortable by the subject matter in What Girls Are Made Of; I certainly am! But prioritizing comfort—the writer’s or the reader’s—is not a great platform from which to create a story.

3) A lot of people have also compared What Girls Are Made Of to the work of Margaret Atwood. How do you feel about this? Do you agree?
I have long been a fan of Margaret Atwood, so of course this comparison pleases me greatly. One thing I do think our work has in common is that it would be wonderful if her Handmaid’s Tale and my What Girls Are Made Of were not necessary books anymore. That is to say, I look forward to a future in which a young woman reads these books and sees no connection to her life, her feelings about herself, her body, and her sexuality, or her fears.
I want young women to meet my Nina and think, Did girls really feel those terrible things? I want them to read The Handmaid’s Tale and think, Surely, women’s sexuality could never be policed like that!
We do not yet live in this world. Atwood’s work and mine is still necessary and relevant—and challenged.

4) A lot of your descriptions are graphic. What do you think about censorship in YA fiction?
People want to censor the things that make them uncomfortable, the things that make the aware of their own fears, desires, and disgust. This is unfortunate, because the things that make us uncomfortable are, I think, some of the most interesting parts of being human.
I think that parents want to protect their children from the things that terrify the parents—sexuality; rage; death. But I don’t think teens need to be protected from these realities. I think what they need is to be trusted with the whole cloth of being human, the whole messy gross beautiful reality of embodied
life. A book is a great place to practice being uncomfortable, a safe place to experience something, and even to choose not to experience something by setting the book aside, until later.
This is a long way of saying that censorship makes me sad, and angry. It’s insincere, and it’s rooted in fear. I try to live my life with sincerity, and I try not to make decisions out of fear. Censorship is cowardly.

Bea has started to hear and see things that no one else can – creatures, voices, visions. Then strangers visit Bea and tell her she is different: she has the rare powers of a witch. They warn her she is being hunted. Her parents think she is hallucinating and needs help. All Bea wants to do is get on with her life, and to get closer to Lars, the mysterious young man she has met at the skate park. But her life is in danger, and she must break free. The question is – who can she trust?
Carnegie Medal-winner Melvin Burgess returns with a powerful, thrilling fantasy for young adults about magic, myth and following your instincts.


I am giving away a copy of this book over on my twitter! Go and RT the post to win a copy!

​All Andy wants is to dress like everyone else, but her mum's the owner of a run-down kooky vintage boutique, so she's bound to look - well - different. But when Andy finds a gorgeous bag full of designer goodies in the storeroom, everything changes …

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​When Aster wakes alone on a tropical island, she has no idea what has happened, why she is there, or where to find her younger sister, Poppy. Meanwhile Sam, who once met the sisters on a plane, makes links between the mystery of their disappearance and suspicious happenings in his own life. In a stunning dual narrative, the truth unravels with devastating effect - and the answer lies in the secret underwater world surrounding the desert island, populated by the beautiful and the impossible ...

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1. Hi Lindsay, can you tell me about your debut novel The Secret Deep.
Hi, thank you so much for having me. The Secret Deep is a thriller for teens that follows 14 year old Aster and her sister as they go to stay with their scientist aunt. They soon find that things are not all as they seem when Aster is washed up alone on a remote desert island. Her search for her sister leads her to discover a terrifying mystery hidden beneath the tropical waters surrounding the island. 
 
2. What are some books you have enjoyed recently? 
I read really widely particularly love speculative fiction and stories set in remote locations. I recently loved The Explorer by Katherine Rundell, The Boy in The Tower by Polly Ho-Yen and Where The World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean. For older YA readers I really enjoyed Ghost by Helen Grant and Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.

3.Did you plan to do a dual narrative or did that just happen along the way? 
I didn’t originally intend a dual narrative but it became clear that important parts of the story took place a long way from Aster and I needed another character to tell a different thread of the story. Sam, the boy who searches for her, came very easily, as though he was waiting in my mind to be given his voice and his own adventure.


4. Are you working on anything at the moment you can tell us about.
I have a few projects in different stages but can’t say too much at the moment. Hopefully my next book will appeal the same audience as The Secret Deep as another contemporary thriller blending sci-fi and myth.
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Hello everyone!

I am very excited to have Chris Russell on my blog for YA/MG month and this is also part of the Songs About A Boy book which, is the last book in the Songs About A Girl trilogy and I'm so sad that it's over! Today I have the soundtrack about Songs About A Boy!

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THE SOUNDTRACK TO SONGS ABOUT A BOY

Almost every author I know, from Sophia Bennett to Patrice Lawrence, considers music to be an integral part of their writing process - and as a musician myself, I’m no different.

Below are five songs which either feature in Songs About a Boy, or were playing on loop on my Spotify while I was writing it…
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​Wings by Birdy
If it was possible for a book to exist in song form, this is it. The emotion, the tone, the heart of Songs About a Boy - I listen to this track, and it’s as if I’m hearing those things immortalised in music. There’s the line about “taking pictures of the stage”, of course, but the references to aeroplanes and flying spoke to me too, what with the book being set mostly in America. I listen to verse two, and it’s like Charlie herself is singing it…
I'm in a foreign state
My thoughts, they slip away
My words are leaving me
They caught an aeroplane
Because I thought of you
Just from the thought of you

Welcome To New York by Taylor Swift
New York is one of the most exciting places in the world. I remember arriving there for the first time ever, on tour with my band in 2006, and feeling totally overwhelmed, but in the best possible way. Taylor really captures that feeling in this song, a track which I listened to over and over when working on Songs About a Boy - imagining Charlie arriving in Manhattan, staring out the taxi window at the food carts, the skyscrapers and the thousands of people rushing around…

She's Out Of My Life by Michael Jackson
I am a MEGA Michael Jackson fan. I doubt there will ever be a greater - or more deeply damaged - pop icon, and it was inevitable I was going to find some way to sneak him into the trilogy. I once saw an interview with Quincy Jones, who produced this track, and he talked about how incredible Michael’s vocal performance was, considering he was barely out of his teens at the time and had never actually experienced the romantic heartbreak described in the lyrics. (Man, don’t get me started on Michael Jackson trivia … I’ll bore you for days.) Anyhow, one of the characters in Songs About a Boy sings an intimate, acoustic version of this song, and it’s quite a pivotal scene … but I’m not going to tell you who it is. You’ll just have to read the book to find out. :)

Hurt by Johnny Cash
Is this the greatest cover of all time? Very possibly. The original, by Nine Inch Nails, is pretty raw, but Cash took the song to a whole new level, using it as a reflection on the strange sadness of looking back on your life as an old man. It’s devastating. In Songs About a Boy, Gabriel sings this track on an old, battered piano. Again, I’m not going to reveal when or where he does this (I drive a hard bargain on spoilers, don’t I?!), but something about the lyrics in the chorus - they just seemed to be telling his story.
​What have I become
My sweetest friend?
Everyone I know
Goes away in the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt

Dream A Little Dream Of Me by Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
This song is just gorgeous, and it soundtracks one of my FAAAAAVOURITE scenes in the whole trilogy. (On an unrelated note, when she was little, one of my friends thought Ella Fitzgerald’s name was “The Elephant Is Gerald”. Cute.)

​Click here to listen to the full Songs About a Girl playlist on Spotify

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​At the age of thirteen, Chris Russell formed pop/rock band The Lightyears with his best friends from school. Since then, The Lightyears have toured all over the world, performing everywhere from Wembley Stadium to Glastonbury, and trashing a grand total of zero hotel rooms. In 2013, after a three-month stint ghostwriting for a One Direction fan club, Chris developed an obsession with boy bands and came up with the idea for Songs About a Girl. He is currently busy writing the next book in the series, gigging with The Lightyears and fanboying in the general direction of Harry Styles.
TWITTER - WEBSITE

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​Just as Charlie allows herself to succumb to Gabe's charms, the explosive revelation about her mother's death threatens to pull them apart.
Meanwhile, a media circus has exploded around the future of Fire&Lights - when they announce a US tour to show the world that they are stronger than ever, Charlie gets the opportunity to accompany them. New York City, here she comes! But it's not all fun and games. Charlie is still feeling all kinds of awkward around Gabe and knowing that her mother's last days were in America touring with her band, Charlie uses the opportunity to uncover some more truths about her mother's death.
As Fire&Lights try to win over the world again, and as Charlie and Gabriel uncover the true story that links their pasts, will Charlie finally be able to follow her heart?

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I am so excited to have an extract on my blog today from the wonderful, The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree by Paola Peretti! This is a beautiful book and I can't recommend it enough!

​A novel for all ages about a young girl losing her sight, inspired by the author's own life story. For fans of Wonder, The Little Prince and The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly.

Mafalda is a nine-year-old girl who knows one thing: some time in the next six months her sight will fail completely. 

Can Mafalda find a way through a seemingly dark future and still go to school, play football and look after her beloved cat? With the help of her family, and her friends, Mafalda needs to discover the things that will be important to her when her sight has failed. 

A moving, empowering tale of courage and determination that will inspire young and old.

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Hello everyone!
Today I have Ana Sampson on my blog and we are talking about She Is Fierce. A collection of Poems and this is a book you will not want to miss!

Ana Sampson is the author of many best-selling anthologies including I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud and Other Poems You Half-Remember from School, Tyger Tyger Burning Bright: Much Loved Poems you Half-Remember, Poems to Learn by Heart, Green and Pleasant Land: Best-Loved Poems of the British Countryside and Best-Loved Poems: A Treasury of Verse.
Ana grew up in Kent and studied English Literature at the University of Sheffield. After achieving both a BA and an MA, she began a career in publishing PR and has appeared multiple times on radio and television discussing books and poetry. Ana lives in Surrey with her husband, two daughters and two demanding cats.
She is Fierce is her first poetry collection for Macmillan.

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​A stunning gift book containing 150 bold, brave and beautiful poems by women – from classic, well loved poets to innovative and bold modern voices. From suffragettes to school girls, from spoken word superstars to civil rights activists, from aristocratic ladies to kitchen maids, these are voices that deserve to be heard.
Collected by anthologist Ana Sampson She is Fierce: Brave, Bold and Beautiful Poems by Womencontains an inclusive array of voices, from modern and contemporary poets. Immerse yourself in poems from Maya Angelou, Nikita Gill, Wendy Cope, Ysra Daley-Ward, Emily Bronte, Carol Ann Duffy, Fleur Adcock, Liz Berry, Jackie Kay, Hollie McNish, Imtiaz Dharker, Helen Dunmore, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver, Christina Rossetti, Margaret Atwood and Dorothy Parker, to name but a few!
Featuring short biographies of each poet, She is Fierce is a stunning collection and an essential addition to any bookshelf.
The anthology is divided into the following sections:
Roots and Growing Up 
Friendship
Love
Nature 
Freedom, Mindfulness and Joy
Fashion, society and body image 
Protest, courage and resistance
Endings

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Hello everyone!

Today  I have the wonderful Candy Gourlay on my blog with an interview!

3- Who are some of your favourite authors?
I have already mentioned Philip Reeve, who also wrote one of my favourite fantasy series, Mortal Engines. I love Geraldine McCaughrean's books –they are all unique and surprising in their own ways. Best of Geraldine would be: Not The End of the World, a Noah's Ark retelling; The White Darkness, a girl is lost in Antartica; and Stop The Train, set in during the Oklahoma Land Run, when a spiteful railroad
owner refuses to stop at a town, the people sneakily think of ways of tricking trains into stopping. I also love Frank Cottrell Boyce, his books beat with a warm heart: Millions, boys find millions of pounds in a holdall; Framed, how the arrival of art from the National Gallery turns a grey Welsh town into place of many colours; andCosmic, about a boy who's as tall as his dad. My favourite author who writes from
grown-ups is Toni Morrison.

4- Are you working on anything at the moment?
I am having the year of saying YES to events because I have two books out: a picture book, IS IT A MERMAID, and my new novel BONE TALK, which is out in August. But I'm also trying to write a new novel.
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​Candy Gourlay is of Philippino heritage, and was a journalist before becoming an author. Her previous book SHINE was nominated for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2014. It won the Crystal Kite Prize for Europe 2014 - Candy's debut novel TALL STORY also won the Crystal Kite in 2011. TALL STORY was also nominated for the Carnegie Medal and shortlisted for 13 awards including the Blue Peter Prize, the Waterstones Children's Book Prize and the Branford Boase.

TWITTER-WEBSITE

B​e careful what you wish for . . . 
Andi is short. And she has lots of wishes. She wishes she could play on the school basketball team, she wishes for her own bedroom, but most of all she wishes that her long lost half brother, Bernardo, could come and live in London, where he belongs.
Then Andi's biggest wish comes true and she's minutes away from becoming someone's little sister. As she waits anxiously for Bernardo to arrive from the Philippines, she hopes he'll turn out to be tall and just as mad as she is about basketball. When he finally arrives, he's tall all right. But he's not just tall ... he's a GIANT. 
In a novel packed with humour and quirkiness, Gourlay explores a touching sibling relationship and the clash of two very different cultures.
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