Winging it's way to bookshops near you this September!

 Finally I can shout about my new book... Grimogen Darkstar - Bat-Cat-Tastrophe

publishing with Tiny Tree Books

Coming out on the 18th September!

You can pre-order from:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/3G1OxOx

Waterstones: https://bit.ly/3TtNVUO

https://www.hive.co.uk/.../GRIMOGEN-DARKSTAR-BAT.../31715247

WriteMentor Summer Mentoring Programme

I'm thrilled to be taking part in WriteMentor's summer mentoring programme this year. Here's some important dates, and information about me and what I'll be looking out for this year.

The key dates:

Mentors announced: 24th March

Applications open: 7-11th April

Mentoring begins: 1st May to 30th August

Submission Package Draw: 1st May

Agent Showcase: 1st September

There will be a chance to ask mentors questions over on Twitter/X and also Instagram on Tues 1st April and Weds 2nd both evenings it will be between 7 and 8pm BST. I'll be at the Tuesday chat, but happy to answer questions anytime about the mentoring scheme, just ask :)

A little about me...

I'm a working class, autistic author and artist who lives in the West Midlands with my partner and a multitude of children and cats! I run #ukteenchat, a writing themed chat on Twitter; I have been a mentor for #WriteMentor since its inauguration, and am one half of Word Witches, an editing and mentoring business. When I'm not writing, I can usually be found painting, watching birds or wandering around graveyards, often all three simultaneously. 

I am primarily a writer of fiction for children, including my series for 5-8 year olds, Autumn Moonbeam, reading scheme books for OUP, and an upcoming young fiction story coming out in September 2025, which will be my first time illustrating as well as writing the book. My current MG placed in competitions last year and won third place in the Wells Lit Fest. You can find some of my YA and adult short stories and flash fiction online.

I have been writing and sending my words out into the world for a long, long time, and have learnt a lot over the years. I’ve been very fortunate to get advice and encouragement along the way from some fantastic writers and other writing industry people, and being part of the fantastic writing community both #WriteMentor and beyond, and I would love to share my experience and knowledge with other writers, and help get them get going in the right direction. I’m incredibly positive and optimistic, a silver lining in every cloud sort of writer, and would like to bring that to my mentoring.

I’m looking for a mentee who is keen to learn tips and tricks to help with their writing journey, both the writing side and navigating the rollercoaster ride that is the publishing industry. Someone who is open to edits, and wants to make their words sparkle. Happy to work with pantsers or plotters, but I can definitely help with some tips for the pantsers out there. But mostly, I just would like to work with a writer who is passionate about their story and wants to work together to make it shine!

I've been very lucky to work with some amazing writers in the past who have gone on to win competitions and be published, and to be part of such an amazing writing community with WriteMentor.

Genres: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Contemporary, Historical, Romance, Thriller, Mystery, Dystopian, Humour/Funny, Horror, Paranormal, Crime, Magical Realism, Time-Travel, Action/Adventure - basically, I love all sorts of genres :) 

To find out more about the programme and how you can apply, have a look at the WriteMentor website here: WriteMentor 2025: Meet the Mentors - WriteMentor

Social Media

Social media handles...

Blog: Emma Finlayson-Palmer

Twitter: @FinlaysonPalmer

Instagram: @finlayson_palmer 

TikTok: @EmFinlaysonPalmer

Bluesky: Emma Finlayson-Palmer (@finlaysonpalmer.bsky.social) — Bluesky

Skeletal Trees

I couldn't settle down to sleep last night until I'd painted something, and for some reason these skeletal trees were just begging me to paint them...

#ukteenchat Interview with Adam Connors

 #ukteenchat Interview with Adam Connors

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour, I am thrilled to be taking part with the tour for Adam Connors fantastic new book - FIND ME AFTER - out on 4th July 2024. This is the second book by Adam, and equally as brilliant as his first book, THE GIRL WHO BROKE THE SEA.

I'm excited to be sharing my Q&A with Adam, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have...

Could you tell us a little bit about your new YA Thriller Romance, Find Me After, please?

My main character, Kyle, wakes from an epileptic seizure to find that the world is … different. People flicker in and out of sight, buildings tremble and threaten to slip out of existence. In the ordinary world, Kyle is still having a seizure, but his brain activity is spiking and, like a near-death experience, it’s creating an alternative world, another version of reality.

Kyle ends up calling it the Stillness, and the point is that it isn’t a hallucination, it’s just a different rendering of reality. It’s not less real, it’s more real than the world we’re used to.

Was there anything in particular that inspired Find Me After?

I wrote the opening chapter of Find Me After on the kitchen floor, waking up after a seizure. I wanted to capture some of the fraught energy of a seizure, that feeling of “coming back”. The few minutes after a seizure always feels like a kind of hinterland, as if my brain is shifting gears, as if something still has hold of my ankle and is trying to drag me back. That’s where the story starts.

Did you need to research anything for Find Me After?

Lots! I didn’t want to write about a supernatural “afterlife” or purgatory, I felt like that had been done before and it would be too easy to slip into well-trodden territory. I’d been reading about this idea in neuroscience that the brain doesn’t just experience reality, it constructs it. Neuroscience is going through a bit of a renaissance at the moment, new imaging technology and data processing capability is changing the field dramatically.

Neuroscientists talk about our daily experiences as a “controlled hallucination” and there’s a growing body of hard physical evidence to back this up.

So I thought: if this world is partly a hallucination, maybe a traumatised brain could construct a different (but no less real) version of reality.

For me, that kind of background is what gives me the confidence and level of detail I need to make the world feel real, and it opens up lots of directions that I wouldn’t have thought of if I’d just seen the world as something supernatural.

Without being too spoilery, is there a specific scene or character that you really enjoyed writing in Find Me After?

Jonah is by far my favourite character. He’s the main antagonist and he’s kind of a nasty piece of work. But he’s a kind of “take control” which Kyle can’t help but find slightly alluring. He’s a bit of a force of nature, almost animalistic, and that is very much not me, so it was a lot of fun to write.

 

Do you feel your approach to writing or editing has changed the more books you write?

Yes, definitely. I used to get really bogged down on the first chapter (maybe the first page). I used to think: if I can just get this right everything else will fall into place. But it never did, I just wrote and rewrote and never got past the first 20K words.

One day I realised that the best thing I could do was write all the way through to the end. Once I have a dirty first draft, it’s much easier to see what the book is really about, and then go back and write that.

I actually did the maths for my last book, The Girl Who Broke The Sea: I figured out that I wrote about 250K words to get my 80K novel. I basically deleted two words for every word I kept, which is much more efficient than it felt at the time.

I haven’t checked Find Me After but I think the ratio will be smaller.

Have you always written YA, or do you write for other age groups?

I did an MA at City University and wrote an adult book as part of that, but it wasn’t good enough and it didn’t find a home. Then I wrote short-stories for a while because it was easier to fit around two young children. When my son was about 8 or 9 I realised that I was spending all this time writing things that he couldn’t enjoy, so I switched to middle-grade.

My first book was middle-grade and won Undiscovered Voices and allowed me to sign with my agent. My second book started out as middle-grade, but my editor at Scholastic pointed out that I really wanted to write YA, I just hadn’t realised it.

He was right.

For now at least I think YA is my sweet-spot. There’s enough freedom to build in ideas that are sufficiently sophisticated that adult readers can enjoy them as well, but YA also doesn’t take itself too seriously, and there’s still room to put things in that are just … cool.

Besides, my 8 year old is now 16.

Do you have any writing rituals, go to writing snacks, or a favourite place to write?

I have two very, very large monitors. Vast. And I’d have more if my desk would hold them. I like to have my writing document quite small (laptop sized) and then about ten other windows around it with notes and pinterest pages. I share my writing room with my partner so I can’t stick things to the wall, so my screens are my thought palace.

Are you a plotter or pantser?

Mostly a pantser. There’s a line from an old insurance advert I always think about when I’m writing: You don’t know what you’re made of until you’ve had the stuffing knocked out of you.

That’s mostly how I write, I knock the stuffing out of my characters in order to figure out what they’re made of.

That said, I usually have a pretty good idea of where the next third of the book is going and I tend to write that down in note form. The best feeling is when the next block comes into view and something about it surprises me. That’s when I feel like it’s probably good.

Can you tell us anything about what you’re currently working on?

I’d love to write a follow-up to Find Me After. There’s a lot of interesting stuff I’d like to play around with in Kyle and Jonah’s relationship. Imagine, Kyle has always felt controlled by his epilepsy, and in contrast Jonah is almost animalistic in his instinct to dominate the world he’s trapped in. I think Kyle might end up a bit conflicted in that relationship.

There’s a whole science experiment going on in the Stillness as well that needs to be finished off.

Do you have any writing advice or tips you’d like to share?

Hemingway had the right answer: “Writing is rewriting.” I go over and over the words, I delete ruthlessly and rewrite. Every time I sit down to write, I tend to start a page or two back and rewrite the words I wrote the day before. I probably waste a lot of time adding and removing commas, but being willing to rewrite so readily reminds me that the words are actually the least important part of a book — they need to be good enough to get out of the way and not jar the reader out of the illusion, but ideally the reader isn’t thinking about the words, they’re thinking about the characters, and the story, and the world. 

FIND ME AFTER - Out on the 4th July from Scholastic 

Paperback • 9780702331367 • £8.99 • 14+

Available from all bookshops, including: HIVE

Do check out all the other blog stops this week...

#ukteenchat Interview with YA author Rebeka Shaid

 

1, Could you tell us a little bit about your YA debut, Seven Days, please?

‘Seven Days’ can probably be best described as a diverse YA romance about finding love after loss. There’s sassy Noori who bumps into her misunderstood and troubled counterpart, Aamir. Both have recently experienced tragedy in their lives and are trying to figure out who they are and where they belong. While ‘Seven Days’ is about first love, the book delves into other themes such as grief, cultural identity, and family – all told with humour.  

2, Was there anything in particular that inspired Seven Days?

I wanted to write an unconventional love story featuring unconventional characters. Both Noori and Aamir don’t conform to norms and their life choices reflect that. Representation was also important to me as Noori is of mixed heritage and Aamir’s parents are immigrants, which reflects my own upbringing in a way. There aren’t that many YA novels out there that look at what it’s like to grow up between different cultures. My own experience of loss also inspired me to write about two grieving teenagers and their struggles with grief feel very real to me.

3, Did you need to do any research for Seven Days?

The novel didn’t require a lot of research but there were still a few things I needed to look up – about Lahore, the partition of India, Bollywood, and Bristol Zoo. Frankly, it was just very random things I ended up researching. My favourite: cinnamon gum and water bears!

4, What made you decide to set the book across seven days?

I wanted to write a story that is relatively fast-paced and seven days seemed perfect to me. I also like the number seven! Fun fact: initially I wanted to name the novel ‘Severn Days’.   

5, Without any spoilers, is there a particular scene or character you most enjoyed writing?

I enjoyed creating Noori’s character. She’s so bold and passionate about life despite the heartaches she has suffered. Of course she has flaws and is convinced that her life could be turned into a Bollywood movie, but she’s also incredibly kind and has a generous heart. She tries to really understand her pain, using it as an opportunity to grow. In terms of my favourite scene, I’d probably pick the unexpected bathroom encounter between Noori and Aamir in which Noori sees more than she bargained for.

6, Seven Days is dual narrative, did you find one voice easier to get into than the other?

I think it was easier for me to write Noori’s character because she’s a teenage girl and I very much remember what it was like to be that age! But I also had a lot of fun writing from Aamir’s perspective and getting his voice right was key to me. Overall I wanted to create a dual narrative that allows readers to truly connect with both protagonists, including their relationships, conflicts, and realities – and I do hope this comes across to readers.

7, Do you have any writing rituals or a favourite place to write?

I’ve developed some strange writing rituals over the years. For instance I like to wear a special necklace and light a candle before I start a new project or a new chapter. There’s just something calming about gazing at a flickering flame. During a writer’s retreat a few years ago I also learned about the benefits of meditation before starting a writing session, so that’s something I also like to incorporate into my writing.

8, Are you a plotter or pantser?

Definitely a pantser! I admire writers who are plotters as I find it difficult to outline an entire novel in advance. I will say though that being a pantser has its benefits as it allows me to get to know the characters and the plot organically as I write, which can be quite exciting.

9, Can you tell us anything about what you’re currently working on, please?

I’m currently on maternity leave so I feel my main job is changing nappies! But I am planning to write another YA novel and although I’m a pantser I’m in the middle of writing a rough outline for this.

10, Do you have any writing tips or advice for other writers?

Read and write whenever you can. Find your own style and unique voice. And most of all, believe in yourself and your abilities. Oh, and try not to procrastinate – easier said than done!

 

Book credit:

Seven Days by Rebeka Shaid (£8.99, Walker Books) available now.

 

You can follow Rebeka on Instagram, and Seven Days is available now at bookshops, including Hive 📚

My First YA Horror Graphic Novel

I've recently completed a sample for my first YA Horror graphic novel. This has been a great process to bring my writing and art together. I've been exploring new techniques and having fun creating some new illustrations including a new self-portrait, here's a few samples...