Girls’ Fiction Series

I’ve written the first of a four-part fiction series for 8-11 year-old girls, designed to be published as an ebook with embedded multimedia. I’ve digitised some 1980s VHS footage to serve as dummy videos for the time being; the next step is to source funding for the production of new video material. I hope the ebook will published online in winter 2011.

Getting High

Getting High is my thriller for teenagers, set in the Lincolnshire fens. Currently a work-in-progress, it’s been recently reviewed by Year 9 and Year 10 English students at Bacon’s College and by Year 11 girls at the Royal Alexandra & Albert School. Having read the first three chapters, students have completed a worksheet to let me know what they think of the story. Their comments have been largely very positive; it’s interesting to compare the Bacon’s College feedback with the feedback from Royal Alexandra.

My (What I Call) Poems

Listen to my tongue-in-cheek, OTT poems about rage, lust and irritating couples. I performed them at the women’s arts festival LadyFest. The show, Eat My Words, took place at The Horatia, Islington last winter. Co-performers included Harper Collins poet/illustrator Laura Dockrill and Foyle Poet of the Year Jay Bernard.

Talking the Broads

At the Broadway Bookshop, Hackney I’ve read my fiction alongside award-winning writers Rebekah Lattin-Rawstone, Emma Henderson (novelist, Grace Williams Says It Loud),  Melissa Mann and Selma Dabbagh. (Photo by Carolyne Locher)

Snog, Shag, Marry, Kill

Our cheeky writing show Snog, Shag, Marry, Kill gained in popularity during our summer run at the Poetry Café, Covent Garden. We especially loved doing a gig at The Hamlet for the Streatham Festival, which is an annual arts festival in south-west London that’s really generously supported by local residents.

Vauxhall Chorus

I co-wrote Vauxhall Chorus with @ifbook and nine others. Award-winning novelist @katepullinger was lead writer. Our challenge was to use online tools to write, edit, print, publish and launch a novel within a weekend, a feat which we managed to pull off, despite insomnia and patchy internet connectivity.

In preparation for the weekend, each writer had invented a character who might own, visit or gatecrash the allotments in Vauxhall Gardens, which was to be the setting for the story. My character was Jasmine, a teenage girl who had fled to her dead grandfather’s allotment in order to grieve for him. Thanks to Richard Lewis for the illustration.

At a script meeting at the Spread the Word centre, the writers collaborated to devise a starting point for the story – the discovery of a rubber-trousered corpse in the flower-beds. We split up for the rest of the weekend, using Google Docs to draft and edit the story. Each writer took responsibility for his/her own character. The story included many encounters between the characters on the different allotments; we had fun co-writing the dialogue for these scenes. The use of Google Docs enabled us to freely read and edit each other’s work in order to ensure the story had coherence.

A community of users signed up to a social networking site to share photos of allotments, videos and written content for the story. Internally, a Ning was used to enable the ten writers to exchange stimulus material. The Society of Young Publishers edited the novel, print-on-demand publisher @CompletelyNovel printed it and it was launched at the beautiful House of St. Barnabas, Soho. It’s available to read online.

I was invited by Spread the Word to join the team that evaluated the project. We discussed how it might be adapted for use in schools or scaled up for use with larger groups of professional writers. Get in touch if you’re interested.

Check out this video on how we wrote the 24 hr book.

The Last Summer

I’m drafting a contemporary melodrama set in the garden of a north London house one warm, blossomy May. The play is an exploration of the grey areas in the relationships between men and women. It’s full of stalking and ballet dancing – oh, and there’s a tragic death scene, naturally. I won’t lie to you – this play is grim! I only write it on darker days! I’m sketching ideas for the set.

Chick Lit.

I’ve written a detailed plot outline for a chick lit. novel – here’s a little sketch of the ‘clinic’ scene.

In this scene, my heroine participates in paid medical research at a London clinic. The medics are running tests on tears, so she’s sitting in the waiting-room, wondering how to make herself cry. The bloke she sits next to turns out to be an out-of-work actor who’s skilled at faking emotion. He tells her that he has his name down on every medical research project in the city. ‘Got to pay the rent!’ he says, draping his arm over the back of her chair, running his finger along her collar-bone. ‘It’s not just tears I do  – it’s all bodily fluids. Know what I mean?’

Children’s Detective Series

In 2007 I wrote a first draft of the first book of the series. It’s definitely original, though it has one storyline too many in it, I think. I plan to revisit it and rework the story in 2012.