(Not) A Word from Your Editor

Jan Carr is having a well-deserved break from the editorial this week, so I, Nick Cross, will be attempting to fill in. I won’t go on too long, because I know that this post is merely an amuse-bouche before today’s main course - the Chalkface Challenge results!

They’ll be going live early this afternoon, so keep your eyes peeled. I did enter the Chalkface Challenge myself but (spoiler alert) didn’t make the shortlist. Instead, I got some lovely feedback from the students of Chew Stoke School, which is really going to help me focus my book.

So, what’s been happening this week on Words & Pictures?

• Another of our terrific Ask a Publisher podcasts, talking to Karen Ball, publisher at Little, Brown Young Readers and Atom
• Some guy called Nick wrote a Blog Break, and it was as stuffed with tasty treats as a triple-topped deep-pan pizza (but with none of the calories)
• Nicky Schmidt had a lot of us nodding our heads in agreement, as she talked about the realities of the debut author journey
• Saturday saw us celebrating Helen Bonney's prize-winning song of peace (something the whole world could do with right now)

Elsewhere in the SCBWI world, we had a spirited Facebook debate on diversity, prompted by Amy McCulloch’s article in the Guardian.

We also celebrated the sixtieth birthday of one of our most beloved Scoobies, the wonderful Maureen Lynas. Not wanting to let the occasion slip by without the proper fanfare, Maureen’s daughter Katherine organised Maureen Day! The tributes kept coming, in the form of poems, pictures and treasured memories; here are just a few of them:

Amanda Lillywhite

Lesley Moss

Paul Morton

Have a great week, and good luck to everyone who entered the Chalkface challenge. I’ll see you on Tuesday for the Blog Break.

Nick.

---

A SCBWI member since 2009, Nick Cross is a former Undiscovered Voices winner who currently writes children's short fiction for Stew Magazine.

Nick's latest blog post is a guide to writing flash fiction, to celebrate the July issue of Stew!