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Can I share this with you
Hope you don't mind me sharing this here; only other writers understand how it feels to get this sort of feedback. I haven't actually got anything I can submit - if only I was as prolific as TN or PB, but it's nice to be wanted.
e-mail from Walker Books
Peter Buckman passed me your details, I hope you don’t mind me contacting you. I read your submission Oy Yew back in 2011, when you were being represented by Ampersand. I really enjoyed it at the time but didn’t feel it was quite right for us, so I turned it down.
I have read and considered a fair number of submissions since then, but yours has stayed with me – the characters were lightly drawn and yet fully realised, and I so enjoyed the warmth of your writing. With so many authors writing either for the older age group (teen/YA) or for this age group but going down the slapstick humour route, it’s really quite rare to find such a lovely story with such a classic feel.
I wanted to make contact in case you had any other ideas or projects in the pipeline for this 8–12 age group. I realise that quite a bit of time has passed since you wrote Oy Yew, so your situation could have changed. However, if you’re still writing and still looking to be published, please do send along anything you have, or any ideas you’re working on. Obviously I can’t say at this point whether or not they’d be right for Walker, but I for one am a fan of your writing and would love to see anything you might have written.
Best wishes,
Emma
Emma Lidbury
Commissioning Editor
Walker Books Ltd
e-mail from Walker Books
Peter Buckman passed me your details, I hope you don’t mind me contacting you. I read your submission Oy Yew back in 2011, when you were being represented by Ampersand. I really enjoyed it at the time but didn’t feel it was quite right for us, so I turned it down.
I have read and considered a fair number of submissions since then, but yours has stayed with me – the characters were lightly drawn and yet fully realised, and I so enjoyed the warmth of your writing. With so many authors writing either for the older age group (teen/YA) or for this age group but going down the slapstick humour route, it’s really quite rare to find such a lovely story with such a classic feel.
I wanted to make contact in case you had any other ideas or projects in the pipeline for this 8–12 age group. I realise that quite a bit of time has passed since you wrote Oy Yew, so your situation could have changed. However, if you’re still writing and still looking to be published, please do send along anything you have, or any ideas you’re working on. Obviously I can’t say at this point whether or not they’d be right for Walker, but I for one am a fan of your writing and would love to see anything you might have written.
Best wishes,
Emma
Emma Lidbury
Commissioning Editor
Walker Books Ltd
Comments
If she likes the idea she may commission it - she's seen your writing.
She may move on before it's finished, but, you will have another novel.
And i would also like to say, your style is unique, one of these days you will be picked up, and it doesn't matter that you take a bit longer, if you are good enough, and you are.
GET BACK TO HER!!!
OK, do eat etc, but do get in touch and thank her and say yes you do have something but it's currently in the early stages. You'll be back in touch later with more information.
Don't lose her contact details, so if she moves on you can still find her.
I sent them my first book, I got a letter back saying it wasn't quite right for them, and the editor said, 'but I have taken the liberty of telling a few other editors about you, try sending it to these publishers', and proceeded to give me a list of names.
It was my first book, I was a very new writer, by that I mean it was the VERY first thing i'd written, and i had no idea what a good response tat was. I didn't send it to the other publishers, at the time it was play for me, I decided to try something else...
What was the 'something else' you did?
:-bd
I started going to a creative writing teacher (Crysse Morrison, who used to write for WM) and she told me I was a poet. I actually didn't want to be a poet (no money) but everything I wrote turned out as poetry.
Then I wrote a poem about my son (but not from my viewpoint) that was about all the things I found in his pockets. (That poem was my third poem to get published, and I changed it later into a short story and that was published as well.)
After Crysse a friend said she was going to Bath uni to try a new course, did i want to see if there was anything for me - and i found Mike Johnson, children's poet, advertising a course on how to write children's poetry. Again, I had no idea how unusual this was, I've never seen another one!
Serendipitously, I became a children's poet because he liked my stuff and sent it off with his.