Posts made in May, 2013

It’s Official! GLIMPSE Book Deal Announcement

Posted by on May 30, 2013 | 4 comments

It’s Official! GLIMPSE Book Deal Announcement

I’m very excited to share The Bookseller’s official announcement of my book sale: Constable & Robinson YA imprint Much-in-Little has acquired a novel by debut author Kendra Leighton, inspired by Alfred Noyes’ poem “The Highwayman”. Sarah Castleton bought UK rights in Glimpse by Leighton from Jane Finigan at Lutyens & Rubinstein. Much-in-Little will publish in autumn 2014. The story follows the increasingly eerie life of Liz who, after a car-crash erases all memory of the first ten years of her life, moves with her father to The Highwayman Inn. Castleton said: “Kendra’s super-fresh interpretation of ‘The...

How to Read as a Writer

Posted by on May 19, 2013 | 5 comments

How to Read as a Writer

Read books published in the last five years. ← I.e. Don’t read this. What’s popular in fiction changes so fast—genre, pacing, narrative voice, amount of description, dialogue, what’s controversial and what isn’t etc. Think of the books you read as a teen—rather different to today’s YA, right? You’re writing for a modern readership, so keep the bulk of your reading up-to-date. (This is one piece of advice I find easy. So many new books.)   Read bestsellers. To quote Randy Ingermanson (who has a great free writing-tips newsletter you can sign up to here): “…every novelist should be reading the current...

What’s So Great About YA?

Posted by on May 5, 2013 | 4 comments

What’s So Great About YA?

In the last five years, 99% of the books I’ve read have been YA. Unsure that this was a good thing, I took a mini-hiatus to explore adult fiction again—Gone Girl and a few other titles. The result? I’ve returned to YA with even more love than before. On the surface, YA usually has shorter word counts, faster pacing, less filler (Gone Girl, I loved you, but you did take a while to get going). But what really makes people fall in love with YA?   Emotion Maybe I still have the mindset of a seventeen year old, but given that as many adults love YA as teens do, I’m not sure it’s that simple. So why is reading about teenage characters so...