
(I'm now nocturnal.)
We've officially proposed our Online Dating Guide for the Young Professional (Click Online Dating in the City), and although we didn't win the Pan Macmillan editorial prize (which went to the extremely deserving team who created Happy Hedgehogs a Gluten-free cookbook for kids with 'prickly tummies') we probably won with the world's most co-operative and peaceful team building experience. It was great working with you team 11!
Karly and I spent many an afternoon with wicked witches and dastardly devils trying to get to grips with the ins and outs of InDesign to redesign Monsters in the Movies into a new paperback format, with revised text and layout. Vampires and Werewolves, ghosts, fairytales and modern monsters were all scanned, edited and reformatted. And eventually we even figured out how to do the preflight checks (tip: do this as you go along and spot mistakes on the way!) My most successful accomplishment was learning how to do clipping paths on photoshop. I'll be reading my InDesign guide back to front this Christmas break to try and figure it all out at home.
And Beth and I have literally just this minute submitted our Marketing Plan for a series of four 'Living With...' titles under the Jessica Kingsley Publishers brand list.
FREEDOM!
In other news I've managed to stumble my happy way into three upcoming internships in 2013. The first you already know about, David Fickling Books, which starts in January. I've been reading lots of wonderful DFB titles in preparation, and am particularly fond of Richard Coleridge's beautiful winter picturebook When it Snows.
The second is a week in May with the sales and marketing department of an up and coming Childrens and Young Adult trade fiction imprint called Hot Key Books, who have signed Sally Gardner's fabulously trippy tale Maggot Moon, and one of my favourite American teen writers, Maureen Johnson. I'm hoping to build my dissertation/major project around the idea of social media and community building with marketing and PR in Young Adult markets, so am particularly excited at this amazing opportunity.
And finally I am incredibly happy to have been offered a month internship at Headline books immediately following my week at Hot Key. I can't wait to follow up the book signing event with Eowyn Ivey and Sam Eades with the chance to peek behind the scenes at the build up to such a campaign.
So I hope you all enjoy your winter holidays.
I shall be reading:
Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey (I'm half way through and it is beautiful, a definite must read!)
Divergent - Veronica Roth
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairytale Land In A Ship Of Her Own Making - Catherynne M. Valente
The Feathered Man - Jeremy de Quidt
A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness
Heart-Shaped Bruise - Tanya Byrne