Tuesday 23 October 2012

A chat with Gennifer Albin

As part of the Crewel blog tour, I was lucky enough to get to ask Gennifer Albin a few questions about her writing journey.
1.  I would love to know a little about your writing journey. What did you do before writing books?
I taught Composition and Literature at University for a couple of years while I worked on my graduate degree, then I decided to stay home with my children.  My mother-in-law challenged me to write a book when my second child was a baby.  I’d always wanted to, so I started toying with ideas.  I got serious in November of 2010 and participated in National Novel Writing Month.  My husband encouraged me to treat it like a job, so I scheduled time to write, and by May 2011, I had offers of representation from agents.  My agent, Mollie Glick, sold it a few weeks later.
 2.   Your debut book, Crewel, is about to be published. How are you feeling right now?
Like I want to cry a lot in a goodish way.  It’s fairly stressful and surreal.  I can’t help wondering what it will feel like after it’s “on shelves.”
 3. Were there times when you felt that it would never get published? If so, how did you work your way through them?
Mostly I thought I could never get the book into decent enough shape to catch an agent or editor’s eye.  That’s when having supportive critique partners really helped.  They cheered me on to the finish line.
4.  What was your first reaction when you found out your book was to be published?
I sold my book at auction both in the U.S. and the U.K., so I got a lot of say in who it went to.  But when the first offer came in, I remember just feeling sort of dumb.  My agent is very business-minded, so we talked about specifics and plans and then I sort of drove home and mumbled the news that we had an offer to my husband.  He was able to conjure up more emotion :)
5.  Did you find it easy to get an agent?
I researched querying and agents for 4 months before I finished the book.  When I did, I entered my query for an online critique and within the week I had an offer from that agent, which snowballed into several more offers.  That was the craziest week of my life.  I went from writing a novel to talking about “my career.”  I think all the research paid off though, I was prepared when the request for a call came, but very shocked, too.  I did cry/scream/jump up and down when I got that email.
To find out more about Gennifer Albin:
Website: http://genniferalbin.com/
Twitter: @GenniferAlbin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/genniferalbinbooks
Over the summer The Spark ran a competition to find a young singer-songwriter, band or musician to create an original soundtrack to the official Crewel book trailer. The standard of entries was very high, but one track really stood out. The lyrics of fourteen year-old Roisin's O'Hagan's haunting song 'It's a Lie' allude to the themes of the book in a really intriguing way, and the music itself stays with you – everyone will be singing it to themselves for weeks!

You can watch the official trailer, created by artist Carolina Melis below and become a fan of The Spark in order to download the track for free here http://www.facebook.com/thesparkpage/app_160430850678443

1 comment:

Hiya, thanks for stopping by, it is always nice to hear what you have to say, so do leave a comment if you have time.