An Exciting Day

I suppose I should keep this blog up to date. You never know who may pop by :o)

Well, today I had a lovely email from a London publisher, who contacted me after she read A Boy Called George on Authonomy and has requested a full!

Dammit! My bio page is still a mess after the excitement of making it to the desk. Something else I must do.
She also came along and read the blog!

Could have commercial appeal... or words to that effect! I presume she meant George and not the blog :o)

The funny thing was, I left George alone for four months, I got far too close to see any errors. Last night I read it for the first time bearing in mind what Harper Collins said in the critique and I was disgusted how awful it read.

I started a discussion with other writers with the intention of doing a complete re-write.

'It's good to leave it alone for a while'. Many agreed.

Now I am completely confused and wonder if I should just knock the story out as quick as possible and get it finished. After all, if they liked it in such a terrible state, I could possibly rip the heart out of the style that appealed to them.

I've been too excited to reply to her email. I need to sit down later and compose something that doesn't sound ridiculously childish.

You may have guessed, this is the first request I ever had a request!

What Harper Collins said.

As you may or may not know, A Boy Called George hit the editors desk on authonomy in February, therefore earned a professional critique by one of the Harper Collins team.
The review came in yesterday and I have to say, it exceeded my expectations by a mile.

The story of George is not straightforward and I needed to know if I was getting it right.

First, I am telling the story from the POV of my daughter. So of course, I can't just tell it my own sweet way. She was just sixteen when she had George, so I had to adopt the voice of a young girl. Okay that was the easiest part.

Then there was keeping the facts straight. It's a true story, right? Can't just add filler scenes for effect, these things had to have happened. Then there are other people to consider. For instance, his father (they are no longer together) George's other grandparents, who came on site and read the story and were a little hurt that they didn't get a mention. (Damned hard to please everyone)

Then of course, there is the medical profession. Whilst I often feel like going on the rampage and naming each and every one that I believe has been involved in one mahousive cover-up, I need to remember, these are just my opinions.

Then there is the less than useless solicitor, whom I fed enormous amounts of research which completely took over my life and ruined my eyesight. I was determined they would be able to bring about a case for George. I begged for some of the so called expert reports to be challenged. Specially when they came up with the possible diagnosis, when clearly, other facts were ignored. Just because they lost George's birth records, didn't give them the right to dismiss the fact that he did suffer a traumatic birth. It just couldn't be proved. So they came up with the same old story that we Brits will swallow every time.

Wrong Kind of Brain Damage!

We do though, don't we? Wrong snow, bit too wet for UK trains to run. Leaves on lines.

In fact, I think she was a feeble excuse for a solicitor.
The legal aid is ridiculous waste of time too. Unless we could PROVE causation, we had no case. Even though, the experts said 'we cannot rule out a mild hypoxic injury' we couldn't argue it in court.
That's not justice, is it?

Anyway. I was delighted with the Harper Collins Critique and it has given me the will to carry on.
Read it here.


www.authonomy.com A Boy Called George. It is the first comment on the book page

I can't get the link to work, I'll post it as a message.