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Comment from the book world in February 2009

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February 2009

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Working with a new editor - and on a sequel

9 February 2009

'It's a bit like getting divorced, and then having sex with someone for the first time. It's awkward and you sort of feel weird. And it did, until I read her editing notes and they were brilliant...

I am very nervous, I'm never going to do a sequel again. I'm out to prove something to myself and I'm not sure if that's a good idea. People will compare the fresh, untainted voiceof my 29-year old self that was completely unselfconscious about writing (it) because I didn't think anyone was going to read it. It was innocent, it wasn't trying to be anything, it just was. I've put myself in a vulnerable place, but I suppose you do every time you write a book.'

Lisa Jewell, author of Ralph's Party, in the Bookseller

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'Perhaps the greatest of human inventions'

2 February 2009

'A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person - perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.'

Carl Sagan