It’s the final countdown

One week today, it’ll all be over, one way or another. The results of the Great War Dundee Children’s Book Prize are announced next Wednesday, the 25th of March, and either I’ll have won, or either Joe Lamb or Lindsay Littleson will be getting their book published by Cargo Publishing instead.

Great War Dundee

It’s all getting very close now. Dundee Libraries have started publishing Q&A sessions with me, Joe, and Lindsay on their Facebook page. Joe is posting song-a-day countdown videos on his Twitter account. (So far we’ve had Cloud 9, Eight Days a Week, and Seven Seas of Rhye.) Joe, Lindsay, and I have been judging the book cover competition, where Dundee primary school children have been designing covers for our books – that’s been hard!

In other writing news, I completed my third draft of My Dragon Has No Nose and submitted it for this year’s Kelpies prize. Joe’s also submitted an entry (although Murphy’s Law got the better of him and he sent off the wrong draft – disaster was averted when the nice folks at Floris Books told him he could submit a corrected version). Fortunately for our chances, Lindsay hasn’t entered this year – given that she won last year for The Mixed Up Summer of Lily MacLean (coming out next month) that can only be a good thing for me and Joe!

I’ve also done a bit of tweaking on a short story, and done a fair bit of planning on my next project. It’s going to be a bit tricky to decide what to do next – I’ve got three or four story ideas at various levels of detail in my notes, and also a good idea about how I could tackle a rewrite of my Pictish dragon book.

But all that is going to have to wait until after the results of the Dundee competition. Because if The Wreck of the Argyll doesn’t win, my top priority is going to be to do another draft and then send it out to agents, making sure to write at the very top of my cover letter that the book was one of three books shortlisted for the Great War Dundee Children’s Book Prize. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written, so I’m not going to give up on it, even if it doesn’t win.

Fingers crossed, though.

AboutJohn

4 comments

  1. Giovanni
    I am not, as you well know, of the Twitterati cult else an avian host would even now be extolling thy virtues and exhorting judges to raise ‘The Wreck of the Argyll’. I have instead nipped out of hiding to wish you well from the comfortable living room of your blog. I have fallen shy of invoking a sky wizard.
    Antonio the dark and handsome, but not chimney, rabbit.

  2. Giovanni! Damn your glorious, sleek fur! You have done it! Awesome doesn’t come close!

    Antonio (still dark and handsome but no chimney rabbit).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.