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Kerry Drewery!

19/8/2016

Kerry lives in Lincolnshire between the countryside and the sea, in a house filled with books, films and dogs. Before writing full-time she was a BookStart Co-ordinator for BookTrust and got to read picture books to children all day. She was also a finalist in a BBC ScriptWriting for Children competition and has a first class honours degree in Professional Writing. She leads young people’s writing groups for Writing East Midlands and is the co-organiser of the UKYA Extravaganza events.
Her first YA novel, A BRIGHTER FEAR was published in 2012 by HarperCollins in the UK and Callenbach in the Netherlands.
Her second YA novel, A DREAM OF LIGHTS (2013), was also published by HarperCollins and Callenbach. It was nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, awarded Highly Commended at the North East Teen Book Awards and shortlisted for the Hampshire Independent Schools Book Award.

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Interview

1. Can you tell me a little about Cell7?
Cell 7 is set in a society where the death penalty hasn't been abolished but has evolved into a system where everyone gets to vote on whether the accused is guilty or innocent. It follows Martha Honeydew who's admitted to shooting Jackson Paige, a celebrity millionaire, as she makes her way down death row. With seven cells - one for each day - the public follows her every move on a live TV show - Death is Justice - and as doubt is cast on her confession, the question 'should she live or die?' is on everyone's lips.

2. Who are some of your favourite authors?
I'm a massive fan of Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I loved his book 'Shadow of the Wind' and then went on to read everything of his I could find. I'm also a fan of Scarlett Thomas, in particular her novel 'The End of Mr Y' which was just so different to anything else I'd read. There's loads of very talented YA writers out there too, lately I've particularly enjoyed Julie Mayhew's 'The Big Lie', and am really looking forward to her next one. Also, Rhian Ivory's 'The Boy Who Drew The Future', and I've just started reading Kathryn Evan's 'More Of Me'.

3. Who inspires you?
Lots of people, and for lots of different reasons. People who overcome adversity in some way, or people who've seen failure and picked themselves up and carried on. Failure, of some kind, is unavoidable, it's how we deal we it that counts.

4. Are you working on anything at the moment?
I've just finished line edits for the sequel to Cell 7, and I'm now working on the final book. It's been lovely to be able to spend a bit longer with characters, but it's also presented other challenges that I hadn't expected - like trying to remember things a character was thinking two books ago!

5. What do you love about writing?
I suppose it's the pure creation, the chance to explore something from the smallest grain of an idea to a fully formed story. To make these characters in your head and follow through their actions and watch them on their journeys.

Books

A beautiful love story and contemporary fairytale set against the backdrop of the Iraq war, this stunning and moving novel will break your heart, only to put it back together again...This is the story of Lina, a teenage girl from Baghdad. It starts in 2003, as the bombs begin to fall on the city. In it, Lina fights to survive, to find a life for herself amid the chaos of war, to find what happened to her mother in the years before the war, when she was taken away by the secret police. She also falls in love, with the one person she should never have fallen in love with. It is many things. It is a love story, both for a country and for a person. It is about an amazing girl, growing up in the worst circumstances imaginable. It contains a necklace, that was lost but might still be found. And that is all we can say, without ruining this extraordinary and beautiful modern fairy tale...

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A powerful and moving stand-alone novel for anyone who loved A GATHERING LIGHT or BETWEEN SHADES OF GREY, in which a teenage girl struggles against the odds for survival in a North Korean prison camp...From the author of A Brighter Fear. Yoora is a teenage girl living in North Korea, dreaming of the lights of foreign cities while eking out a miserable existence in a rural northern village. But then she makes a mistake: she falls in love. With someone far removed from her social class. Someone dangerous to know. When tongues start to wag, her father is executed and she is taken to a prison camp in the mountains. There, escape seems even further from her grasp. But Yoora is about to learn an important lesson: love can surprise you, and it can come in many forms..

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A world where justice and the fate of those accused of murder is decided by the public, but has moved on from the Roman Gladiator 'thumbs up or thumbs down' public vote, to a public vote by telephone. If you are voted innocent you are set free; if you are voted guilty you are committed to death by electric chair. Those awaiting their sentence reside in ever decreasing cells, getting smaller each day, until Day 7 and Cell 7, where they hear their fate. Sixteen year old Martha has confessed to killing a famous celebrity. But has she done it? And if not, why has she claimed the murder? Perhaps she wants to show up the flawed and brutal system by sacrificing herself in the hope of a better world...Or perhaps she is protecting somebody else...A heart-rending, thought-provoking tale of doomed romance.

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Chris Russell!

19/8/2016

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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, trashing a grand total of zero hotel rooms and performing everywhere from Wembley Stadium (which Chris talks about rather a lot) to a cow shed in Belgium (which he talks about less - it was a booking error).

In 2013, after a three-month stint ghost-writing for a One Direction fan club, Chris developed an obsession with boy bands and came up with the idea for Songs About a Girl: a heart-thudding YA trilogy about first love, pop music and the power of teenage obsession. Chris has written a number of the songs that feature in the story, and if you’re not careful, he will threaten to play them to you.

Chris has a first class degree in English & Drama from Bristol University, and a yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do, which he isn’t afraid to use. He is currently busy writing the sequels to Songs About a Girl, gigging with The Lightyears and fanboying in the general direction of Harry Styles.

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Interview

1. Can you tell me a bit about Songs About A Girl and where the idea came from?
Songs About a Girl is a novel about heartbreak, pop music and teenage obsession. It tells the story of aspiring photographer Charlie Bloom, an ordinary teenage girl who finds herself taking backstage photos for chart-topping boy band Fire&Lights, and becoming ever more tangled up in their extraordinary world.

It was fairly inevitable that I would end up writing a music novel, as music has always been a huge part of my life. When I was thirteen I started a band called The Lightyears with my best friends from school, and we went to tour all over the world (in fact, we’re still together to this day). I experienced life on the road and learned about the strange and wonderful realities of being in a band, and I channeled much of this experience into the novel. Oh, and the other inspiration point for the book was a three-month period I spent ghostwriting for a One Direction fan club in Australia (no, really!). Basically, I fell in love with 1D, developed an incurable man-crush on Harry Styles and said to myself: “Hmm. I think there might be a story in this…”.

2. What do you do when you're not writing?
If I’m not writing novels or gigging with The Lightyears, there’s a pretty good chance I’m watching documentaries. I’m a documentary fiend. I hoover them up. Yesterday I watched one documentary about baked beans and another about the evils of global capitalism. Yeah, that’s right. That’s how cool and hip I am.

3. Songs About A Girl is based on a band, what bands do you love?
All-time favourite artist? Michael Jackson. There will simply never be anyone else like him - that staggering combination of great songs, eye-popping dance moves, ground-breaking production and raw talent only comes along once in a blue moon. As a piano player, I’ve stolen pretty much everything I know from Ben Folds, not least my tendency to leap around a lot onstage. And as for current bands, I’d recommend Bear’s Den (beardy folksters in the Mumford mould) and an American power-pop trio we used to gig with called Jukebox The Ghost.

4. Who are some of your favourite authors?
Like many readers, Tolkien was the first author that really consumed me. I then moved on to Bill Bryson and Douglas Adams, and looking back on it, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is probably the book that defined my adolescence. Books I have recently read and loved include My Secret Rockstar Boyfriend by Eleanor Wood, Remix by Non Pratt and Love Song by Sophia Bennett… all of whom I got to meet at YALC!

5. Are you working on anything at the moment?
I’m currently working hard on the sequel to Songs About a Girl. Book One was the first of a trilogy, so there’s a fair bit of road still to cover! This is the first time I’ve written a book under contract which, I have to say, makes me feel like a proper grown-up. Also, knowing that there are readers out there who enjoyed the first book and are waiting for the second one is really exciting… if a little nerve-wracking. Just have to make it a good one then, eh?!

Songs About A Girl

Heartbreak, romance, fame and pop music - for anyone who's ever dreamed of saying 'I'm with the band'. Charlie Bloom never wanted to be 'with the band'. She's happiest out of the spotlight, behind her camera, unseen and unnoticed. But when she's asked to take backstage photos for hot new boy band, Fire&Lights, she can't pass up the chance. Catapulted into a world of paparazzi and backstage bickering, Charlie soon becomes caught between gorgeous but damaged frontman Gabriel West and his boy-next-door bandmate, Olly Samson. Then, as the boys' rivalry threatens to tear the band apart, Charlie stumbles upon a mindblowing secret, hidden in the lyrics of their songs ..

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