My first YA thriller, The Girl Who…

Posted on 14/09/2021 by admin

People can’t bring themselves to say what happened to her. They just describe her as ‘the girl who… you know…’. But nobody really knows, no one sees the real Leah.

Leah is the perfect survivor. She was seven years old when she saw her mother and sister killed by a troubled gang member. Her case hit the headlines and her bravery made her a national sweetheart: strong, courageous and forgiving.

cover image of the girl who book two crossed blue shoelaces and ominous blurred type

But Leah is hiding a secret about their deaths. And now, ten years later, all she can think of is revenge.

When Leah’s dad meets a new partner, stepsister Ellie moves in. Sensing Leah isn’t quite the sweet girl she pretends to be, Ellie discovers that Leah has a plan, one she has been putting together ever since that fateful day. Now that the killer – and the only one who knows the truth – is being released from prison, time is running out for Ellie to discover how far Leah will go to silence her anger . . .

The Girl Who… a YA thriller published by Atom

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“One of those books I spent all day thinking about”
AMY MCCAW, AUTHOR OF MINA AND THE UNDEAD

“Whether you’re a teen or not, it’s brilliant”
CATHERINE COOPER, AUTHOR OF THE CHALET

“A twisted, suspenseful thriller”
somewhereinabook

Want to know more about Ellie and Leah, my characters in The Girl Who…?

About Andreina Cordani

image of andreina cordani leaning back over a chair

I wanted to be a writer from the age of seven, but got a little bit distracted by the world of magazines. Over the years I’ve written for titles including Cosmopolitan, Grazia, Good Housekeeping, Prima, that’s life! and Marie Claire. I specialise in real life interviews, talking to seemingly ordinary people about their extraordinary lives, and these chats inspired me to put myself in other people’s shoes and imagine how different life can be. I write young adult thrillers about people in impossible emotional situations, with a little bit of murder thrown in. My dream is to sit and write books all day then sit and read books all night, but I also love procrastinating on social media, being sarcastic and swimming in the sea.

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Cover reveal for Dead Lucky – my next book!

Posted on 14/09/2021 by admin

Here it is – the cover for my next book, Dead Lucky and I love it so much! The idea first came to me almost two years ago, when there were lots of debates about dangerous copycat stunts on video streaming sites and I thought… what if a famous YouTuber was murdered on their channel? I mentioned it offhandedly to my agent and she got chills – so I immediately started working. And this is the result – my twisted lockdown-born baby. Dead Lucky has a few elements of horror, with a masked figure threatening my poor hapless content creators. It’s mainly a thriller with my “professional airhead” Maxine racing to uncover the truth while retaining her tenuous grip on reality. And it’s funny in places too – honest!

It’s always a bit nerve-wracking waiting for your cover design – visual arts isn’t my strong point as you can see by this picture on the right, which was my own terrible attempt at sketching out a concept! But like a lot of art-ignoramuses I do know what I like, and I absolutely love what the designer Mark Swan has done. Making the cover bright AND creepy must have been a challenge, but he’s pulled it off. I love the colours, the fractured image and the placement of the title. Now all we have to do is launch the thing!

And here’s the official Dead Lucky blurb, if you want to know more….

They are the influencers, the lucky ones. Gifted, gilded people who have everything – fame, respect, adulation, more freebies than they can ever unbox. Their lives, loves and feuds are shared with millions of fans on the streaming platform PlayMii, and they are living the dream.

But it’s broken Ed’s heart.

It’s crushing Maxine.

It’s destroying Leni’s friendships.

And it’s gone to Xav’s head.

Then, a masked figure walks into Xav’s apartment and murders him on camera.

As the world reels with shock, Maxine discovers Xav was sitting on a file of secrets about his fellow creators – career-destroying secrets that they’d do anything to keep hidden. And if she doesn’t find the file, she could be next . . .

Want to pre-order? Please do!

Amazon fans

The Book Chain Project – passing on the love

Posted on 06/07/2021 by admin

One of the weirdest thing about being an author is taking that secret beloved project you nurtured for years and then… having to talk about it in front of the whole world. Thankfully I had The Book Chain Project to ease me into this. It’s a really simple idea: One week one author interviews another, who then interviews the next in turn. It’s a great way to find out about different authors’ work – and amazing to find out how much we all have in common.

First I was interviewed…

When it was my turn, my interviewer was Dave Cousins, author of YA books like 15 Days Without A Head, and middle grade books including My Robot’s Gone Wild. I was unbelievably nervous and cack-handed, Dave was incredibly confident and professional! We talked the media spotlight, ‘missing White Woman syndrome’ mental health issues… But we also talked about Calvin And Hobbes, how we both write by the seat of our pants and why I love piglet squid. (Answer: what’s not to love?) It really was a pleasure to chat and swap writing tips.

Then I was the interviewer…

I’ve spent years interviewing people so I was much more comfortable being the one asking the questions. I was really excited to get the opportunity to talk to Sarah Ann Juckes, author of Outside and The World Between Us. Like me, she writes stories about young people in impossible situations so we have a bit of common ground.

Sarah’s books are full of insight, wisdom, suspense and big feels and it was brilliant to get the inside story on how she writes. The book is told from two different perspectives, which switch from paragraph to paragraph. That sort of thing is hard to pull off, but it works so smoothly and sends a strong message about how two people can look at the same view and see something completely different.

image of a piglet squid which looks like it has a cute smiley face and curly hair — A piglet squid, just because. Image credit: Caters, Samuel Greenberg, SunGazing

Huge thanks to KL Kettle for organising the Book Chain, and making it so wide and varied. There are debuts, well-known names, picture book, middle grade and YA fiction writers. If it’s writing tips you’re after there’s so much wisdom in there. Check out the YouTube channel for more Book Chain Project videos, and it’s also available as a podcast. And the chain is still rumbling on – for latest interviews, follow @thebookchain on Twitter!

You can read more about my writing on my blog, about my book deal here or get some more info on my book, The Girl Who… here.

Delve deeper into The Girl Who…

Posted on 05/07/2021 by admin

People can’t bring themselves to say what happened to her. They just call her ‘the girl who… you know…’

This is Leah. Ten years ago she witnessed a troubled gang member kill her mother and sister. The media focus on her as a survivor made her a public figure, a famous survivor and a poster child for forgiveness. People feel sorry for her. People admire her. But at seventeen she’s hiding a darker side, an angrier side. And she can’t stop thinking about revenge…

And then there’s Ellie. She likes to think she’s pretty easy going. All she wants to do is hang out with her mates, make YouTube videos and, eventually, get famous. But then her mum fell in love with Leah’s dad. And she has to move out of her nice comfy home in to Leah’s gloomy flat above a decrepit bookshop. And she’s the only one who can see that Leah’s really not OK. That she might be planning to do something terrible…

The Girl Who… is about surviving trauma, about coming to terms with the past, but it’s also about figuring out who you are, despite other people’s perceptions of you. It’s also about the cringes and quibbles of living with a stepfamily. I really hope that you like it.

Feel like adding it to your TBR?

Bookshop.org

Waterstones

Amazon

More about me here

Here’s some reviews…

YAundermyskin

Itsallaboutthebooks

ACornishgeek

Foul is Fair: blood, vengeance and death by Macbeth

Posted on 10/03/2020 by admin

I nearly called this post We need to talk about Foul is Fair, but I didn’t because the “we need to talk about” headline has been done to absolute death. However, cliches aside: we need to talk about Foul is Fair.

Cover of foul is fair by Hannah Capin a bold yellow cover featuring a sharp lipstick with a bloody fingerprint on it

There have been myriad novels about rape culture in American society, about how complacent, entitled alpha males are feted and worshipped and get away with anything while the victim shoulders the blame. From Jessica Knoll’s Luckiest Girl Alive to the uplifting The Nowhere Girls. But this book is different. It’s savage and relentless, just as these men often are. It sets aside the feelings of shame, trauma, self-blame and fear that rape survivors often experience and focuses on one emotion alone: rage.

It focuses on one emotion alone: rage

Like many girls before her, Jade Khanjara is raped at a party by a group of popular boys. This is not the first time they’ve done something like this, they have every intention of doing it again, and nobody is about to stop them. This time, however they’ve picked on the wrong person.

Instead of running to the police or going through therapy, Jade decides to kill the boys and everyone who helped them. She paints her nails, cuts her hair and, with the aid of her three loyal and lethal girlfriends, plots to bring them down.

The title is drawn from Macbeth, and what follows is a feminist revision of Shakespeare’s tragedy, with Jade as Lady Macbeth and her three best friends as the coven of witches who mess with Macbeth’s mind and manipulate him into murdering his closest friends. Each killing is just as grisly as the Shakespeare original, but will Jade, like Lady Macbeth before her, lose her mind with the horror of what she’s done?

This time they’ve picked on the wrong person

Foul is Fair is hypnotically written, slick, elegant and stylised. It’s not for everyone – if you’re looking for nuance, comic relief and realistic murder scenarios this ain’t the place. (The bit where she tells her parents that she’s planning to kill her attackers and they pretty much say “cool, what do you need from us?” was especially unlikely.) But it also speaks to the rage inside us all – the anger we feel when it happens to us or a loved one, or even hearing about stories like the Chanel Miller case. What Jade does is morally dubious to say the least, but thrilling. The concept gets you thinking, and talking and asking difficult questions long after you’ve turned the last page.

Fair is Foul by Hannah Capin is out now. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Lucky me, I received a complimentary early reading copy from the publisher, Penguin.

Book review: The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Posted on 27/12/2019 by admin

Sometimes I get to the point in life when I need a little magic, I want to feel what it might be like to live somewhere different, where the rules have shifted. In late December, after a few weeks of reading back to back crime fiction and juggling a terrifying pre-Christmas to-do list I was desperate for something to take me away from all this. So I rummaged through my TBR pile and surfaced with the prettiest cover I could find.

January’s anger as she throws off her old obedient persona is immensely satisfying

I was lucky enough to get a beautifully designed early reading copy of The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow. Ornate, foil-trimmed cover? Ooh, yes please. Set in the late Victorian era but with magic? Don’t mind if I do. Doors into other worlds you say? Sign me up now.

It’s the early 20th Century and January Scaller is being raised in a privileged bubble by her wealthy guardian, an eccentric collector of antiquities called Mr Locke, when she discovers that there are doors to different worlds, that her father spends his life travelling and seeking them out for Locke, and that an unknown force is shadowing him and closing the doors down permanently.

And when her father vanishes, her comfortable but oppressive life implodes and January must rely on her wits and her friends to survive and track her father.

That in itself would make for a page-turning adventure but it’s the characters which give the story so much more strength – her mysterious gun-toting Lady’s companion Jane Imru, the enigmatic Locke himself and Bad, her lovable brute of a dog. As January is a person of colour, there’s an extra layer of tension and threat to the story. Inside Locke’s protective bubble she’s seen by his rich friends as “exotic” and objectified as a curiosity, which adds to her frustration and disorientation as she grows up. She doesn’t know who she’s meant to be, how she’s meant to behave. Then the moment she steps outside of it and into mainstream 1900s society she is met with a distrust and hostility which would send a lesser person scurrying back to the gilded cage. January’s anger as she throws off her old, obedient persona is immensely satisfying.

If I had one criticism, it’s this: there’s a plot twist that came as a huge surprise to January and absolutely nobody else around her. Which makes her shocked reaction a little unbelievable – but there is a narrative explanation for it, and it doesn’t ruin the story. By then you’re rooting for her and wondering what her next move is going to be.

Alix E Harrow’s love of words comes through in her loving description of stories, books and even the way letters look on the page, but the book is also a tribute to those other world-shifting stories – Narnia, Middle Earth and others. The worlds we all run to hide out in when this one gets a bit too much. When we’re looking for a place where creatures and colours look different or where the brutal prejudices and ingrained social crappiness we put up with every day are washed away, replaced with something just as flawed but deliciously different, full of infinite possibilities. Just what I needed to get me in the right frame of mind for the year ahead.

If it scratches that otherworldly itch for you too, then nab a copy: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E Harrow is out now

Or read my review of the dark fairy tale world of The Hazel Wood

So… I got a book deal!

Posted on 04/12/2019 by admin

After a few agonisingly long weeks of waiting, the news is out – I have a book deal! In fact, I have a two book deal! My novel, the one I’ve been banging on about on here for the last few years, is called The Girl Who… and it’s an emotional thriller for young adults (YA), focusing on two seventeen-year-old girls.

I’ve written a real actual book!

There’s Ellie – lively, outgoing and desperate for fame. And then there’s her new stepsister Leah, who actually is famous but for the most horrific reason: as a child she witnessed a notorious crime, the stabbing of her mother and sister.

In the aftermath her father set up a charity to campaign against street violence and she has become a heroine, a poster child for bravery and forgiveness. It seems like the whole world knows what she’s been through but can’t bear to say it. They just call her “the girl who… you know…”

As Leah struggles to grow up, in the limelight but plagued with dark and terrible thoughts, Ellie is the only one who can see that something is very wrong.

The deal is with Atom which is great as they specialise exclusively in YA stories, so I know I’m in good, experienced hands. Just before the news came out I met met my editor (I have an editor!) Olivia Hutchings and publicist Stephanie Melrose as well as my brilliant agent Lina Langlee, who got me the deal. It’s the weirdest sensation, after writing away in my “spare” time over the years and barely showing anyone my story I now have a whole team of people who like it and who are committed to getting out into the world.

Atom editor Olivia Hutchings, author Andreina Cordani and publicist Stephanie Melrose — Me standing between Olivia and Stephanie after a lovely lunch talking about the book. Must learn to flash my teeth when I smile…

I know a lot of writers have a problem with letting go of their work and who knows, I might find it hard when Olivia’s first edit comes back to me. But after years of second-guessing and staring at the words thinking: Is this too much? Or too little? it’s wonderful to be able to talk to people about it and work on the story to make it the best it can be.

The weirdest thing of all is when I realised that other people around Atom and its parent company Hachette had also been reading the book and talking about it. There was talk of people being “up all night” and saying “just one more chapter.” When I met Olivia and Stephanie we were joking about the characters as if they were people we all knew and liked. It’s almost as if I’ve written a real, actual book. Hang on… I’VE WRITTEN A REAL ACTUAL BOOK!

Two days after I signed the deal I discovered there was already a placeholder for pre-orders on Amazon. And when the publishing trade journal, The Bookseller wrote about the deal calling me “Cordani,” I felt like a proper author. I also had so many lovely messages from people saying congratulations. So many that I ran out of excited gifs and emojis to respond with. It was like having a baby, but without the “I haven’t slept in days and my boobs are about to explode” part.

So this is it, a new step on the road for me. I’m still in the process of taking it all in at the moment, which is why there aren’t oodles of details in this post. I feel like I’ve got so much to learn before spouting any opinions.

There will still be lots of journalism and book reviewing in my life – I’ve no plans to give that up – but I’m also looking forward to sharing more of my novel-publishing experience as I go along. I can’t wait for next September when it finally hits the shelves!

Read my previous rant on publishing here

Looking for a twisty YA thriller with heart? Try this one

I’m doing NaNoWriMo! Again.

Posted on 15/11/2019 by admin

If you’re a freelance journalist the timing of National Novel Writing Month sucks. The ideas of putting aside all paid work THE MONTH BEFORE CHRISTMAS to work on a novel which may or may not get published is something I’ve struggled to get over year after year.

In fact, when I logged on and looked at my profile at the end of October, I found three versions of the same novel with three different now-discarded titles and dismal word counts for each. It was a fascinating glimpse back in time but also kind of depressing.

This year, though, was going to be different. Previous novel is finished, edited and re-titled, and I now had a fresh new idea I was itching to try out. Plus a small posse of online buddies who were doing it with me. Bring it on.

I’m half-way through it now, and here’s what I’ve learned so far:

1: It doesn’t matter if you write a pile of crap.
The sanctimonious little chart on my profile tells me that I should have written 25,000 words by now. It also says that to make the classic NaNoWriMo target of 50,000 words I need to write 2,250 words today. Well, that ain’t happening.

I have all my best ideas while writing crap

I’ve often thought the emphasis on words can be a unhealthy – you write a load of old rubbish just to bump your word count and end up having to go back and unstitch it later. But now I’ve got the first novel under my belt I realise I have my best ideas while writing crap (and also while in the shower for some reason.) Also, the unstitching is actually an unavoidable part of writing a novel. I have a trifling 13,993 words under my belt so far and half of those are utter crap but, like the weirdo I am, I’m actually looking forward to going back and changing it. I like seeding in all the good ideas I had while I was writing terrible stuff.

2: Buddies really do help
I’m lucky enough to be friends with a few unpublished writers online, and we’ve been bolstering each other up with word counts and pep talks. This wasn’t the case for the first few years and it’s made such a difference knowing I’m going to report back to people about it rather than just sitting here writing into the abyss. I spent my whole journalistic career with editors breathing down my neck, and I now can’t work without deadlines and pressure – or with the mutual support of colleagues.

3: Once a Brownie, always a Brownie
Back when I was in the Brownies, I loved getting a badge and being part of a tribe but I have to admit I find the whole tribal thing a bit cringy these days. And I’ve always thought the badges on the NaNoWriMo site were a bit patronising. You get a badge on your profile for writing two days straight, one for a week… etc. Pathetic, right? So why was it that last Saturday I wrote for 15 minutes between 11.40 and 11.55 so I could log a word count on the site and get my “Updated My Word Count Seven Days In A Row” badge? God I’m sad. But if it works, it works.

LOOK! LOOK AT MY SHINY SHINY BADGES!!! I mean… not that I care obviously.

Some of my friends also prepped beforehand – putting together a day-to-day (or even a scene-by-scene) plan of what they were going to write, reading the pep talks on the NaNo website, going to write-ins. I’m not that way inclined, being more of a “splurge the words onto the page” kind of a writer, but it’s nice to know those resources are there if I should ever have a personality transplant.

All I know is that at the beginning of November I had the stub-end of a novel and, if I continue writing on the same track, by the end of November I’ll be well into the second half – even if a large part of it is drivel. So, cautiously and with a due sense of trepdiation, I’m calling NaNo 2019 a win.

Why I’ve decided to keep blogging

Posted on 24/10/2019 by admin

Let’s be honest, this book blog has never really got off the ground. I make a start, do a few regular posts, then life takes over. I get a few urgent commissions, my poor neglected novel-in-progress needs attention, my entire family descends from different parts of the world wanting to catch up, my kids get ill. Of all the things in my head clamouring for attention, this blog has the smallest voice.

But the main reason I struggle to post anything is that I’ve never been sure why I’m doing it. I trained as a journalist in the 1990s and was taught in no uncertain terms to keep myself out of the story. You are not interesting, the tutors would say. Nobody needs to know what you have to say.

I was thinking of giving up, then two things happened…

And I still partly agree with that. Who needs this particular straight, white, middle-aged, middlish-class print media person yammering on about what books she likes? What’s so bloody special about my perspective?

And then there were the books themselves. Most people devote themselves to a single genre: they’re commercial fiction bloggers, sci-fi, horror, fantasy etc. I write YA fiction, but I never met a genre I didn’t like. I read pretty much everything so I’m never going to find a niche of loyal followers anywhere.

Another problem is that I’m chronically agnostic. I’m all about the shades of grey. I can see good things in the books I hate, and all the flaws in the books I love. “Ooh, nothing’s more entertaining than equivocation…” said no-one ever. I’m hardly about to set the world on fire, so why bother?

Last of all is the amount of hard work it takes to build a following. People post and post and shout and shout about their blogs which leads me back to my original point about not wanting to foist my opinions on other people.*

So recently I’ve been thinking of quietly winding the whole thing up. Then two things happened.

cover image of Unfollow a journey from hatred to h ope, leaving the Westboro Baptist Church by megan Phelps-Roper

First, I read Unfollow, by Megan Phelps-Roper – the story of how a girl was raised in the fanatical Westboro Baptist Church, had been holding horrible God Hates Fags signs since she could walk, but somehow got up the courage to leave the church, her family and the life she’d known because she realised what she was doing was wrong. (Review to come later once I’ve got this post out of my system.)

At the end of her book, she speaks about how often she sees the symptoms of Westboro mindset in the wider world – polarisation, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias. I completely understood what she meant – we might not all be holding offensive signs but many of us stubbornly cling to our beliefs in the face of opposition. And books are a great way of unlocking a closed mind, getting you to see things from another perspective. As a sheltered suburban teen Tales of The City gave me an insight into LGBT life I wouldn’t have otherwise had. More recently The Hate U Give put me in the centre of #BlackLivesMatter in the way a news report never could.

About an hour after I finished reading Unfollow, an author friend on social media made a throwaway comment which went something like: because of the Internet people expect to get words for free now. Soon nobody will buy books which means nobody will be able to write them.

Having just finished reading a book which had made me think a LOT, I suddenly had this desire to champion books, to never let them die. And that if I am a privileged white middleish class media person (most of the time I look at my overdraft and don’t feel privileged at all, but that’s another post…) then I should add whatever privilege I have to speak up for life changing books, biographies that open your eyes, stories that keep you up all night, novels that take you to new worlds or make you feel like you’re not alone in yours.

There’s a brilliant, vibrant community of book bloggers out there championing the books they care about. Why shouldn’t I join in?

meme stating I don't believe in much, but I do believe in books

As I write this the editor in me is already saying that none of this is news, all this has been written before. I think there was even an episode of Doctor Who about it. But clearly it needs to be said again and again and again. More and more loudly, by more and more people.

So here’s the deal. I’m not going to post several times a week, I’m not going to blog about every single book that I read but if I read something that I love, or that sweeps me away or made me think, I’m going to talk about it on here. Three or four people might even read it. One of you might even leave a comment (thanks Mum!)

So, for now, and until lame excuses take over again, I’m in. I really hope I can write something that helps make a difference.

*NB: I cringed the whole time I wrote this. Still cringing now.

Why anyone who publishes a book is amazing

Posted on 20/05/2019 by admin

It’s easy to slag books off. I do it all the time – as a reviewer I see lots of not-very-good books: novels which are cynical imitations of another title which did quite well a few years ago, novels written to a formula, novels cranked out when the writer had a deadline but was struggling for inspiration. And everyone’s favourite punching bag, Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s fun to slag off books and as a wannabe author it’s encouraging – if this load of old twaddle can get published, so can I. So yes, I do it, I’m only human.

But it’s also deeply wrong and unfair, because every non-celeb person who has ever had a book published deserves huge respect for beating the odds. They have been through at least a dozen agonising and increasingly Hunger Games-esque stages to get there…

To get your book published takes faith determination and a rhino-like skin 1: They had a Very Good Idea. You know, just like the one that’s floating round your head at the moment that would be an absolute best seller if only you could find the time to write it all down.

2: They had a Second Very Good Idea which gave the initial Very Good Idea wings. Boy goes to wizard school has potential, but Orphaned boy goes to wizard school where he discovers a dark link between himself and the powerful wizard who murdered his parents is the start of a seven-book series.

3: They found the time to write it down. Hours. Days. Months. In the middle of the night, getting out of bed at 5am, punching it out with their thumbs on their iPhone on a commute. Or even giving up their jobs. Despite all the crap going on in their lives, they found the time.

4: They didn’t give up when they got 30,000 words in and realised that the Second Very Good Idea actually doesn’t work at all unless they go back and unpick everything that happened after Chapter Two. Instead, they went back and unpicked. Or they replaced the duff Second Idea with a shiny new Third Very Good Idea which made it even better.

5: They wrote 60,000 to 150,000 words about Very Good Ideas One and Two (or Three.) It might not be in a genre you like, it might be too light and fluffy or too flabby and pretentious but they wrote the words down. A story now exists where there was none before.

6: Then they edited, going through the whole thing until they were sick of the sight of it, rejigging it, taking bits out, regretting it, putting them back in. They cut things they loved, sliced out whole characters and wrote entirely new scenes instead, all the while not truly knowing whether they were making the thing better or worse.

7: They then sent it to agents. Dozens of ‘em. They received rejection email after rejection email until they wondered whether the Very Good Idea was actually Utter Tripe Idea in disguise. Maybe they took too long writing it and nobody wants dystopian YA stories any more, or a major plot point has been wiped out by the invention of Google Maps. Or maybe they just wasted an immense amount of their time and passion on something nobody wants to read. This could happen, and does – all the time. But if it doesn’t…

More bashing into shape ensues

8: An agent actually picks it out of their slush pile of hundreds, is moved by the words, blown away by VGIs One and Two, and signs them up. More editing ensues. Author and agent eventually agree that book is in good shape. Hooray!

9: Said agent believes in the book enough to haul it all around town to different publishers, or even take it to a book fair and say: “Buy my client’s book, it’s great and it will make money for you.”

10: In order to get a book deal, the author then has to cage fight JK Rowling using only a copy of The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook as a weapon. Oh wait, no, that’s just a weird dream I had.

10: A publisher sees the book, likes it and thinks that this is a Very Good Idea, which will possibly make money for them.

11: The publisher then introduces an editor into the mix who undertakes more Bashing Into Shape along with the author who is probably feeling pretty bashed themself by now. Once they’re happy, they haul it around town to the booksellers and supermarkets, convincing them that the author has had a Very Good Idea and that they, too could make money from it.

12: It has been years since the author had the Very Good Idea but it’s stood the test of time, it’s on the shelves. Now the author, the publisher and booksellers all join forces to convince us – the reading public – that the Very Good Idea is worth spending the price of a cup of coffee on.

What a way to make a living!

Seriously, it’s ridiculous, but that’s the way it works in traditional publishing. So to get your book onto shelves and into people’s hands takes an astonishing amount of faith in yourself and your idea, extraordinary discipline and commitment plus a rhino-like skin to deal with all those rejections and edits along the way. So anyone who has ever, ever had anything published is an utter hero. I salute you. And one day, glutton for punishment that I am, I hope to join you.

Andreina Cordani

Author and Journalist

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