I forgot to mention something.

So um, about a month ago I visited my parents and they had some mail waiting for me. I had no clue what it could be and then I opened up the several pages in the envelope and saw the letterhead for the Fellowship of Australian Writers. And then I remembered that while I was in England I had entered their Awards competition, in the Children's Literature section with a YA story about peer pressure at a party, called Life was easier when boys were stupid. That was months ago and since then I had essays and exams, a trip to Wales, SNOW!, Christmas and New Year's Eve in Scotland, a week of the West End (and other stuff) in London, a 3 flight, 30-40 hour trip home to Australia for 10 days before leaving again for New York for a week, then home again and moving into my new place in Melbourne, starting my new University course (which I'm loving) starting my new novel (which I'm also loving), dealing with a ghost and a new housemate (the ghost has gone into hiding now there's a boy in the house)...so basically what I'm saying is I forgot about it.

So I opened that envelope and the piece of paper said things like "congratulations" and "winner" so I said. "Oh my God." and my mum asked "what?" and I answered: "Oh my God."

Last night was the Awards night and I went along to pick up my Certificate (and prize money! WOO! I'm putting it toward a netbook. I'm soon going to be one of those writers who sits in cafes and alternates between staring at the wall and frowning at her computer.) Justine Larbalestier won an award for her book Liar, as well so I feel I was in good company.

It will be nice to be out in the world a bit more. I've been very much a home body write write writing my novel, short story for my fiction class, book proposal for my publishing class and non fiction articles for my erm... non fiction class. I'm all about the writing. I would also like to be all about the world which I know is out there somewhere, happening without me.

So last night I received my award, and this morning I opened my email to find a short story I submitted was accepted for publication in England.

Good end to an exhausted no sleep filled, burnt out week.

Attempting to refuel now. And these types of news help.

Ciao for now,

Sairz

Cursive Scripts - New Literary Journal Open for Submissions!

I am a committee member of a new Literary Journal called Cursive Scripts and we are open to submissions!

General Submissions

Submission Deadline 20 April, 2010

# Works Must be Under 500-3000 words

#Open to any submissions - Fiction, Non-fiction, poetry, all genres!

# We are currently only accepting general submissions in English. If you would like to submit in a language other than English a translation must be made available. Please contact us before submission

# Non-discriminatory language is mandatory.

# Defamatory content will not be accepted

# Words considered a proprietary term or trade mark must use the symbol � or TM.

# The author must have copyright of the manuscript/s submitted.

# Works must be submitted in MS Word format. Computer facilities available. See below

# Submissions must be sent via email attachment to cursivescripts at gmail . com


Author Copyright, Payment and Privacy
# Authors will not be paid.

# Submissions will not be returned.

# All authors selected for publishing will receive a hard copy of the publication.

# The Author retains full copyright of their work.


Looking forward to reading your submissions. Good luck!

Sairz

Stupid fan-girl-itis.

I should totally be getting ready to head to class right now, but I have a bee in my bonnet about something and I want to share.

Published authors are people too. I must remember that. They are just people who are a bit further along the publishing path than me. They're totally normal. Many of them seem like really cool people.

In fact I think THAT is why I turn into embarrassing fan girl when I get to meet some in person, because I reckon they're cool and I'd love for them to be my writer buddy maybe.

So what do I do? I linger, I stand, I don't know what to say so I turn into creepy standing linger girl.

Actually no, usually I go along to their talk and think it's awesome and amazing and how much fun is that person and then I leave without having said hello.

Yesterday however, YA author Penni Russon came to my University and spoke about YA for 2 hours. It was awesome hearing her thoughts on the subject, her thoughts on her books, how she ended up as an author and how her books were published (as a work experience girl, she became friends with the editorial assistant and years later the editorial assistant became the commissioning editor and wanted some PENNI RUSSON thank you very much. I think this is awesome. I have more on this story later)

Yeah, so Penni came, she talked and I decided to bite the bullet and speak to her cos she's a real human being. And freaky stalky linger girl happened. Sigh.

But that's okay, cos I'm going to another event soon that she's also going to be at and just maybe I'll be able to pry freaky stalky linger girl off me and try again. Or maybe I'll just say "'sup" from across the room and leave it at that.

Okay, next part of the story, which involves editorial assistant-commissioning editor girl and someone ELSE who will be at the event I'm going to soon, Lili Wilkinson.

Two years...was it two? I think it was two. Two years ago I read a newspaper article about another aussie YA author, Lili Wilkinson. I hadn't actually heard of her at the time, but discovered she was in her mid-twenties and had a couple of books under her belt. I'm a couple of years younger than Lili, but I completely aspire to have her career. Soon.

Anyhoo, in the article it said that she had been commissioned to write a book for a new series, called Girlfriend Fiction.

WELL, I decided. Commissioned? Well maybe I could get mySELF commissioned as well.

So I emailed Allen & Unwin who were doing this collection and told them about a book I had written (okay, not entirely written yet, actually, not at ALL written - I don't reccommend doing this. That could have bitten me on the bum) that I thought would be great for Girlfriend Fiction, how should I go about submitting, if they were even accepting unsolicited stuff.

I sent it to the comments section on the website, not really expecting a response, not expecting anyone but maybe the webmaster to see it.

The ACTUAL editor (hello editorial assistant-commissioning editor gal) replied saying that they were full at the moment, but they'd love to see it at the end of the year.

WHOA. So in my mid-semester break at University, so over 6 weeks I wrote the book. I had so much fun doing it, too. And I polished it up as best I could and I sent it.

She replied with a page and a half of notes and if I'd be INTERESTED in rewriting it, she'd take another look. There were notes about stuff that happens right at the end of the book so I was pleased to see she'd definitely read the whole thing.

I was so thankful for her notes. They made so much sense to me and the whole back half of the book is COMPLETELY different - and for the better. And the climactic conclusion? WAY better than it was.

In the end, she decided it wasn't quite right for Girlfriend fiction. But that's okay. She helped me make it a better a book just by considering it. I never sent her a thank you email for that, which I regret not doing, but just assumed she's a busy woman and didn't need it.

Since then, THAT SAME BOOK got me my kick ass agent and introduction to her other clients, many of which have become awesome writer friends, and some editors are now looking forward to Sarah Billington books. I mean, wow.

I put it down to that article about Lili Wilkinson, and Girlfriend Books. It's kind of a dream now, that I'll write a book for Girlfriend fiction, because to me, that's how my career finally lifted off.

I've been to a couple of events Lili runs, and it's so stupid but because of this history that she has NO idea about, I don't go up and talk to her because stupid scary stalky linger girl will come out.

Maybe she's reading this right now? If so - see you on Sunday. If I'm brave enough. :)

MUST go to class now.

Sairz

Injuries create greatness

Okay so um, "injuries create greatness" isn't exactly a rule or anything, but since I mentioned an interesting blog post earlier, I thought I should definitely tell you about a whole HEAP of really interesting blog posts that are going on over at Justine Larbalestier's blog (How to Ditch your Fairy, Liar).

She's been getting a whole bunch of writers, editors and agents to share their opinions and expertise, not only have there been a couple of "day in the life of" accounts by editors and agents in the children's publishing field, but the ever present Zombie vs Unicorn debate continues to rage between empassioned authors. Not that Justine's blog isn't usually interesting and valuable, but all of this EXTRA interesting stuff is because she is going sitting at a computer for 14 hours a day free, due to an injury sustained through mysteriously undisclosed ways. Hence in this case, an injury has created greatness. You get me?

www.justinelarbalestier.com/blog

Check it.

Sairz

Sara Zarr and her writing life

The Teen Fiction Cafe blog is having a 3 week 3rd birthday bonanza!

And to kick it off Sara Zarr (Story of a girl, Sweethearts) got all reflective over the past three years that encompassed her career.

I found it a really interesting read. You might too.

http://teenfictioncafe.blogspot.com/2010/03/three-years-ago-in-my-career.html

Enjoy.

Sairz

Bad blogger...awesome author contest!

Okay so I'm not the best blogger there ever was, huh. I never wrote a diary as a kid - actually I did give it a couple of goes but I was mortified of the idea of people possibly reading those private most intimate of thoughts? Seriously. I put the word HATE in there. And then a person's name. Even if it WAS true, I didn't exactly want THEM knowing that, did I? I mean I wanted to live a reasonable length of time. And I didn't want my grades to get any lower because one such said hated person had the power to do just that. Okay, yes, it was a teacher. And no there was no way the teacher was likely to EVER see my notebook journal that stayed at home and never went anywhere near a place that might be frequented by my teachers.

I guess it wasn't half-hearted attempts at keeping diaries, it was just paralysing fear of WHAT IF IT GOT OUT?!

Which makes me think. I'm not a very good blogger. But I don't think there's the same paranoid reasoning going on with why I'm so crap. I mean this blog is going to post to facebook, and some of you may have found it through twitter so clearly that's not the reason.

What I've come up with, in this hugely roundabout way, is this: I'm a lazy blogger. So um, sorry about that.

Now. Some people however, are not lazy bloggers. And they do more than just write about themselves. Some people have contests on their blogs. At this point in my career, I don't have anything to give away. But other people DO.

It has come to my attention that Vania of Vania's Life Captures Blog is a great photographer. I love YA covers that have photos of them, especially ones that are portraying a moment in time from inside the book. And if you check out Vania's character photos say oh, here you'll see that she's mega talented at creating potential cover art, and character photos.

I mean, look at these:

You can just TELL something about those women in the photos, can't you? I can. Or at least I can imagine all about them.

Anyway, she's offering to do one of these character shoots. You know, for the winner. So I'm entering. Cos it would be AWESOME. How am I entering? By writing this blog.

I'm pretty wordy today. Saying lots but without a great deal of content.

So um, to sum up: I'm a lazy blogger, and Vania's having an awesome character photo competition. If you would like to see your characters come to life, you could enter too!

The end.

Sairz

The jetsetting life and putting an end to that

I'm gonna put it out there - I co0uld never be a rockstar. Why? Well aside from not being able to read music nor play an instrument (though I learned the drums for a bit but didn't have a silencing kit so felt sorry for my neighbours and stopped practicing), the thing about rockstars is that they tour. A lot.

My point is that on January 16th I left England and after about 36 hours in transit, I got home to Australia. It was awesome to be home. It was warm since it was summertime, and my family was there, and my doggies were there and the cats were around but they didn't really seem to have realised I'd been gone.

And the night after I got home a bunch of friends turned up on my doorstep for a surprise homecoming party!
Wonderful, sneaky sneaky stuff.

However I was home for 10 days before I flew out again, and I was only JUST getting into a sleeping pattern of 10pm or later, waking up at 6am or later. Most nights my eyes were half closed by 6pm and brain disengaged by 8, and I was awake again between 2am and 4am.

SO. I am now BACK back in Australia, after spending 5 days in New York with my big sister. I went to the Winter Society of Childrens Book Writers and Illustrators conference which was held at the super-swish and ladida Hyatt Hotel, and my sister came for the experience.

It was fantabulous and I got a lot out of it. But getting sick just before the seven hour flight followed by fourteen hour flight then one hour flight then two hour drive? Kill me now.

So I could never be a rockstar. I never want to do a long haul flight again. I mean, I WILL, but JEEZ.

The conference was great, I got to spend lots of time hanging out as well as talking biz with my agent Jill, making some new writing buds and seeing some old writing buds. Well, by old I mean ones I made at the Summer conference in LA.

There were lots of interesting sessions at the conference, my favourites of which were Libba Bray's keynote speech - she was just as hilarious as I thought she'd be, and even more insightful - and Eddie Gamarra of the Gotham Group who spoke about Film, TV & New Media and believe me, the man KNOWS his stuff. Unfortunately for me, it turns out I was either concentrating too hard all morning both mornings, or I was jetlagged (I feel like I'll be jetlagged the rest of my life. I didn't even believe in jetlag until I got back from England) and found myself close to snoring a couple of times in the sessions that were run in the afternoons. Oops. Rude bloody Australians, eh.

Anyhoo, home now. I'm moving into my new place sometime next week so I have some packing to do. You know, after unpacking from England and New York I need to pack. And then in two weeks I start my new University course, a Bachelor of Writing & Publishing. That sounds a good fit for me, don't you think? :)

Plus I have an exciting new project to work on!

Hitting the ground running, I think it's called.

Ciao for now,

Sairz