DEBUT JOURNEYS Kate Abernethy
Where are you now and where did you write your book?
I live in the New Forest where I moved to a couple of years
ago. The last five years or so have felt very transient, relocating from
London, trying to find a place to settle. So I haven’t really had that one
writing space until recently. This book was written wherever my laptop landed
at the time, which was a combination of coffee shops, the kitchen table of my
rental and my parents’ study!
What’s it all about? (Your book, that is!)
The Great Highland Games Chase is a picture book which
follows the adventures of a puppy – a Scottie dog – who is at her first ever
Highland Games, (a traditional summer event held in the Highlands of Scotland).
She steals a hat and is chased by an ever-increasing number of grumpy characters whose events at the Games have been disrupted by the dog. It’s full of rhyming,
counting and mayhem! There is a lot of action to capture but I was lucky
enough to be paired with illustrator Laura Darling, whose drawings bring so
much joy and energy to the text.
I am Scottish and as a child I often attended Highland Games in the summertime. It is such a wonderful celebration of many of the unique traditions that give Scotland its distinctive character. The story gives a whirlwind tour of a Highland Games showcasing some of the fun events you will find there. It also has a light message about good manners.
I’m delighted that
my first book is set in Scotland – it means so much to me and I’m proud to
shout about it!
Tell us about your route to publication
I have been writing with intent for almost 10 years now, although it doesn’t feel that long! At least half of that time was spent really learning the craft – doing courses, workshops, reading as much as I could, working with fellow writers in critique groups and practising a lot! I knew I was getting somewhere when I won third place in the Winchester Writers’ Festival for a picture book text. Not long after that I met my agent, Clare Wallace of Darley Anderson Children’s Agency, at a 1-2-1 at the SCBWI annual conference. I signed with Clare in 2020 – and Covid came along…
Needless to say it’s been a tough market and I had a few texts on submission that went nowhere but finally, in 2022, I signed a contract with Floris Books for The Great Highland Games Chase.
Summarising the journey like this makes it feel
very simple and straightforward but it wasn’t. It required a huge dose
resilience, very thick skin and a strong support network of family and fellow
writers. If this is what you really want to do, don’t give up!
What do you do when you’re not writing?
I am normally staring at a spreadsheet in my role as an
accountant – very different from children’s writing! One of my biggest
challenges is permitting myself the time to sit down and write when it doesn’t
exactly pay the bills and there are so many other tasks demanding to be done.
But I think of it as an investment in my future and I try to treat writing like
another day at the office – I put the time in my diary and everything else must
wait. Easier said than done but on a good week it works! Living in a national
park I also like to go jogging in the forest – it’s great for clearing the
head and thinking up new ideas!
What was the biggest bump in the road when it
came to getting your book out into the world and how did you overcome it?
With this text the word count was the biggest challenge. Every
spread repeats the list of characters chasing the dog – similar to The
Elephant and the Bad Baby – and it grows longer and longer as there is a
counting element involved:
‘One hat-loving lady,
Two pipers with puff,
Three grandads in pinnies,
Four strong folk so tough…’ etc etc
As well as this prescribed list I had to fit a story among it all. So my first draft only counted up to 8 and had 821 words! Somewhat predictably my agent advised me to make it count up to 10 and to keep it under 750 words.
That was a tricky challenge but in situations like this it is
helpful to try and detach yourself emotionally from the text and accept that
some of your most brilliant lines may never see the light of day. I became
ruthless. Where a scene was described in four lines it became two. If a
refrain was indulgent and didn’t drive the story forward it was cut. In the
end I was left with a more streamlined version of the same story.
Any tips for budding writers hoping to follow
in your footsteps?
In this tough market, especially picture books, having an
agent is invaluable. Agents are absolutely overwhelmed with submissions so I
never sent submissions into agencies. Instead I kept attending 1-2-1 events.
It may cost a little to do that but in return you get guaranteed feedback on
your text on or by a known date and you make a connection, which you can
follow up on at a later date, either because the agent has asked to see more of
your work or you’ve taken their advice on board and revised / improved your
text. I think the latter exercise demonstrates to an agent that you can take
feedback on board and can revise your work. These are important qualities that
an agent will be looking for in a writer.
What’s next for you?
This year will see some publicity work around The Great Highland Games Chase – some book festivals and school visits, which I’m really looking forward to. Meanwhile I do have another picture book in production but I can’t say much about that at the moment… And of course I’m constantly working on new texts, so fingers crossed there is more fun to come!
*Header image: Shannon Ell & Tita Berredo
*
Tita Berredo is the Illustrator Coordinator of SCBWI British Isles and the Art Director of Words & Pictures.
*
If you would like to feature in a future Debut
Journeys, please email Mario Ambrosi at ambrosimario9@gmail.com or
find him on X: @marioambrosi
No comments:
We love comments and really appreciate the time it takes to leave one.
Interesting and pithy reactions to a post are brilliant but we also LOVE it when people just say they've read and enjoyed.
We've made it easy to comment by losing the 'are you human?' test, which means we get a lot of spam. Fortunately, Blogger recognises these, so most, if not all, anonymous comments are deleted without reading.