Writing a middle grade manuscript

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I have exciting news from Nikki Young Writes and I’ve been bursting to share it.

My first book is going to be published soon!

Many of you who follow this blog will know I spent a lot of last year working on my young adult manuscript. I finished a second draft and decided that it wasn’t quite right, so needing to have a re-think, I put it to one side for a while.

Like any job, learning your craft as a writer requires on the job training. My YA story has been a bit like that for me and I have a love-hate relationship with it. What happened though, was that whilst giving myself some time off from that project, I went back and finished a middle grade story I’d started previously.

I introduced you to this story in a post I wrote back in April. Right after I finished the story and had done as much editing as I could, I saw a post on the Kent Nanowrimo Facebook group from an author who said her editor was going freelance and did anyone want her number. The editor came highly recommended from this well-respected and successful author, so I contacted her for the details.

Having spent time working on the manuscript with my editor, I now feel it’s ready to be published.

Like any aspiring author, I’ve gone back and forth with wondering what to do next. Do I send to agents? Do I go direct to a publisher that accepts unsolicited manuscripts? Do I self-publish?

The answer was clearer to me this year than it has been at any other point of my writing career. Self publishing is the way to go for me.

Do you want to know why?

There are a number of reasons actually. Turning forty is one of them. Call it a mid-life crisis or whatever you like, I’m not even sure myself, but I do know it’s made me feel that I’m not getting any younger. I also know that I have more of a sense of my own mortality than I ever had before.

I don’t think I feel this way just because I turned forty. I also think it is down to events this year – the increase threat from terrorist attacks, the shooting of MP Jo Cox in a village near my home town – so many lives lost for nothing. And I’m sorry if that makes me appear morbid, but it’s been an unsettling year and it’s made me realise life is for living and you have to go out and do the things you want to do whilst you’re on this earth.

Here is my dream: to be a published author. Do I want to fulfil my dream? You bet I do. Do I want to wait around whilst my story sits on various slush piles? No I don’t.

I’m going to make this dream a reality and that’s why I chose to self-publish.

It wasn’t the story I’d imagined would be my first to publication, but everything just seemed to fall in to place with it, which is why I’ve had the confidence to go it alone. It’s a good story – a mystery, with a fun side, but also a little bit of darkness. Plus, it’s a tale of overcoming a difficulty and I can’t wait to get it out into the big wide world. I must admit, I’m also a little bit terrified too, but you have to face your fears don’t you?

Keep in touch and I’ll let you know how it’s all progressing. In the meantime, here’s the blurb:

“Have you ever had something lucky?
A pair of trainers that helped you run faster, a pen that made you have the best ideas, a hat that every time you wore it, you won at chess?
Well I have my lucky underpants.
At least I did until they went missing.
Right when I needed them most.”

When Harry and James form a secret agency for the summer, their first task is to investigate the disappearance of Harry’s lucky underpants and to prevent nosey neighbour, Stacey, from interfering in their business. Fun and spy tricks soon turn more serious though, when a mysterious couple move in to the old house on their street. Harry and James join forces with Stacey and together they uncover the mystery of what is going on at number 35, with some surprising consequences. But will Harry find his lucky underpants?

 

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