Babette Cole

Babette Cole is the author and illustrator of over 70 books, including the Princess Smartypants series, Dr. Dog , The Hairy Book , The Smelly Book , The Slimy Book and The Trouble With... series. She owns a stud farm in England and breeds Show Hunters which she rides herself and has won several horseshow competitions. I interviewed Babette in November 2007, as she will be one of the key speakers at the SCBWI Bologna Biennal Conference 2008, which takes place on the 29th & 30th of March .

Here is a small preview of the interview:

What destinations have you travelled to, to research your books?

BC: Okavango Delta in Botswana; a lot of influence from the West Indies; Australia and most importantly the depths of my imagination.


How much do you think a writer needs to market his/herself/the work? What do you suggest?

BC: In the present climate of the times it is most important that writers market
themselves. A good website is essential.

Babette Cole
(Author-illustrator, UK)

All interviews are immediately available to registered SCBWI Bologna Biennial Conference attendees. Full interviews will be available to the general public at www.cynthialeitichsmith.com in the near future.

To find out more about Babette Cole take a look at her website: www.babette-cole.com

To register for the conference, please go to: www.scbwi.org/events.htm and click on SCBWI@Bologna.

Series Fiction

At the SCBWI Winchester Writers' Day last November, Diana Kimpton spoke to us about writing children’s book series fiction.

She has put a brief overview of her talk on the Wordpool website. Take a look at: Creating a series – How to Avoid the Pitfalls

Diana Kimpton is author of The Pony-Mad Princess series, published by Usborne.

For some more examples of series books to give you an idea of the market, take a look at: Series Books.

It may also interest you to know that Lee Weatherly’s new eight-book children’s fantasy series for Bloomsbury called Glitterwings Academy, is due to be launched April 2008. For this series, she is writing under the pseudonym Titania Woods.

Inspiration

There is Life After Rejection

A good friend of mine and very successful writer, Simon Whaley, said in his recent feature article entitled 'Positively Productive':

"Only writers who send their work off for publication can
ever be rejected, and there are thousands who don't even do that. Those people
who never send anything off, will never be published. "
Simon Whaley (Jan 2008)

This is so true! It is the same as everything in life. You should never put off doing things because of the fear of failure. You don't know until you try.

An article published this month in the Independent describes how many best-selling authors have struggled to get their first novel published. See: There's life (and a living) after rejection.

Tracey Adams

Tracey Adams is co-founder of Adams Literary, which exclusively represents children's book authors and artists. She founded Adams Literary in the US in 2004. The agency is affiliated to David Higham in the UK. I interviewed her, as one of the panel speakers at the SCBWI Bologna Biennal Conference 2008, which takes place on March 29 & 30, 2008.

In her interview Tracey Adams said:

"A manuscript may take time to sell, and when it does sell, there will be a
lot of waiting: for the contract, for your advance, edits, another round of
edits, galleys, the actual book, reviews, your royalty statements... Some
books will take off immediately, others will slowly find an audience, and
others, sadly, don't catch on. Since there is so much uncertainly in this
industry, my best advice to authors is to let an agent do the business work
for you - the author's job is to do what she is best at: write. Keep
writing."

Tracey Adams (Adams Literary, US)

All interviews are immediately available to registered SCBWI Bologna Biennial Conference attendees. Full interviews will be available to the general public at www.cynthialeitichsmith.com in the near future.

To find out more about Adams Literary, visit their website: www.adamsliterary.com

To register for the conference, please go to: www.scbwi.org/events.htm and click on SCBWI@Bologna.

New Year Resolutions

I do not set myself New Year Resolutions, as I do not like to fail! But, this year I have set myself some targets I would like to adhere to.

Ah, I hear you say that is the same thing. But, it is not quite! So rather than quibble over words, I will quickly move on and tell you a little about my targets...

1. To give up alcohol for the whole of January. However, this does not include chocolate liquers as I got quite a few boxes of them for Xmas and I do not want them to go off. Also, it is very rude not to eat chocolates if your friends and family have spent their hard earned cash on them - so I have an obligation to eat them.
2. To break into the children's fiction market. I had a lot of success last year with my teacher resources and children's non-fiction. Actually, I even had a few children's poems published too in a couple of anthologys and I am not so hot at poetry. But, now I would like to spread my wings further. I have made the first steps toward this goal and it looks like I am on track.
3. To continue with my success in writing teacher resources and children's non-fiction. Who knows, I may even need to start paying tax this year rather than the tax man having to give me a refund. Isn't that kind of sad - my target is to earn enough so I can pay the tax man.

Anyway, I will let you know how I get on as the year progresses.

Happy New Year

Hi All,

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Just a quick message to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope 2008 brings everything you wish for.

I did try several times to load a very lovely picture depicting New year celebrations but, it would not work. I thought I'd come back later and try again but, a week later, it still does not work. So, sorry folks, for now I am unable to upload any pictures.

Ah yes.... and...

Boldog Újév!

For any Hungarian readers who may be looking at my blog.

I do like to give my blog an international feel.