Book Cycle with Jane Casey

As part of The Book Cycle series, I am pleased to welcome Jane Casey onto the blog to tell us how she goes from an idea to a finished book.

 

For the last three years I’ve written two books a year: a crime novel for adult readers and another for readers of YA. Both always start the same way - with a voice and an idea. The voice belongs to a character - not necessarily the main character, but someone important, saying something that’s key to the novel. And the idea might not be the main plot, but it’s a place to begin building the complicated scaffolding that makes a novel. The voice and the idea might not come at the same time, but I need both to make any progress at all. I have characters in search of plots and plots in search of characters wandering around my head constantly, and every now and then they collide. Put them together with a place - real or imaginary - and you have the start of a book.

Because I write series fiction, I generally have a story arc to develop, and that can be a help - but sometimes it’s definitely a hindrance! When I was writing the follow-up to How to Fall and Bet Your Life, featuring amateur detective Jess Tennant, I really struggled with arranging all of the elements coherently. In fact, I made a complete mess of it first time round and had to do the most comprehensive rewrite ever. The final manuscript is probably 20% first version, 80% new - and all the better for it! I had to go back to first principles with the book, starting again at this point: the thinking.

Okay, yes, it looks as if I’m just sitting around drinking tea but I am actually hard at work! I’m superstitious about writing ideas down until I’ve thought them through - sometimes the idea loses its energy as soon as I write it down, especially if it’s just a bare outline. I also find it’s a good way to test how good an idea is. If I think about something for a month or more then I’ll probably love it enough to stick with it through the hard times (and there are always hard times when you’re writing a book). I imagine key scenes, change how characters relate to one another, and rough out where I’m going to start and how I’m going to finish before I ever put pen to paper. If it sounds like a risky approach, well, it is - but my philosophy is that if I forget something it wasn’t meant to be.

I also start collecting inspirational quotes, pictures, and music as I come across them. It’s not a conscious thing - I see something or hear a song and it makes me think of the idea I’m developing. Sometimes it feels as if everything in the world revolves around your idea - I think they call that obsession . . .

I find I’m usually most creative when I’m supposed to be working on another book - that’s when I start writing notes on a new project! There’s no substitute for pen and paper when I get to the actual planning stage. I have a million notebooks but I always seem to write the most important things on little scraps of paper that are eminently losable. I write out a chapter plan, put in the bits I know (the beginning and the end) and try to come up with a sensible structure for the middle bit. I have to feel I know where I’m going when I start but I don’t stress too much about it - I find that there’s a certain logic to how a story progresses once I get into it. Chapters split into two or join up or move or simply disappear. But a basic storyline is a useful tool for when you feel confused.

If my agent and editor haven’t insisted on getting this already, I write a synopsis now. I know the story works and I have a fairly clear idea of what’s going to happen. The synopsis has to include the main elements of the story, including the ending - though that can change during the writing process. It’s a good chance for my editor or agent to raise any issues before I’ve spent months writing something. I get a little thrill when I write about scenes I’ve been imagining for months. This is the point where I can’t wait to start writing.

And then I start Chapter One and everything I know about the book - the characters, the voices, the plot - fades into the background. Books are written bit by painful bit, and once you get up close and start writing you tend to lose perspective on the whole thing. Your focus is on the next paragraph or sentence, not on how it all fits together. I would be lying if I said I didn’t get panicky once in a while. I go back and look at my chapter plan (which is now just a boring but easily amended table in a Word file, not a beautiful wall-chart or a scribbled-on notebook page). I indulge myself by thinking about the scenes I really want to write instead of whatever I’m struggling with. I never, ever allow myself to skip ahead. I get it right and then move on.

While I write I listen to music that fits with the mood of the book. For Hide and Seek I listened to a lot of moody female singers - Marika Hackman, Gemma Hayes, Lily and Madeleine and London Grammar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAXDCm0QyjM - Gemma Hayes, Chasing

Listening to music also really helps when I’m working in my local library or a café or a departure lounge. I can write anywhere - but it definitely goes more smoothly when I can tune out the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SjK1gZ6wt8 - Lily and Madeleine - Can’t Admit It

I also look at the pictures I’ve collected for the book. Some of them are to remind me of characters: this one, of Ellen Page, really helped me to create a minor but pivotal character in Hide and Seek.

This one made me write a whole scene for Jess and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Will.

And this one was my touchstone for the whole book - this was the one that came closest to matching the tone of what I was trying to write. I love everything about this picture.

I usually work over a single version of the book, making notes to myself if I need to, generally revising as I go along. I can’t move on to the next chapter if I know there’s a problem to be resolved - so by the time I get to type THE END I’ve usually written and rewritten it. Sometimes things change as I go - I have been known to dodge back to the beginning of the book and throw in a clue right at the last minute. There’s something intoxicating about feeling in control of the story - of knowing it so intimately that you can consider it as a whole and in its individual parts. There comes a point where you know a chapter has to change, or a sentence, or just a word because it’s not quite the one you need and you know that now, having written the rest. The best feeling of all is knowing what you have to do to make it right.

Despite all the hard work on rewriting it - or maybe because of it! - Hide and Seek is probably my favourite of the Jess Tennant books. No book is perfect, but I hope Hide and Seek will make a perfect ending to her story.

Hide and Seek will be published by Random House Children’s Books in August 2015.

Summary

Jess Tennant's classmate is kidnapped right before the Christmas holiday in this third novel in Jane Casey's brilliant young adult mystery series.
It's Christmas in Port Sentinel, the tiny English town where Jess Tennant has been living for more than a year now. She wasn't sure how she felt about moving away from London when her mom dragged her to Port Sentinel right before the beginning of high school, but even Jess has to admit the town has completely outdone itself for the holidays. There's a Christmas market complete with mini ice-rink, and fairy lights decorate the bare trees all over town.
For one of Jess's classmates, though, the Christmas season is anything but magical. She's been kidnapped and is being held in a dilapidated cottage near a deserted beach. And Jess might be the only one who can figure out where she is in time to rescue her.

To find out more about Jane Casey:

Twitter / Website

How To Fall by Jane Casey

Reviewed by Georgina Tranter

Published by Corgi in 31st January 2013

Freya ran.

It wasn’t a night for running, and the woods weren’t the best place for it.  The full moon cast enough light to make it easy to see in the open, but under the trees it was one shade above pitch dark, and Freya was running blind.  Rogue branches caught at her clothes, whipped her skin, barred her path.  The ground under her feet was uneven, pitted with hollows and ridged with roots, and more than once she stumbled.

But Freya still ran.

She had long since lost the path, but she knew where she was going.  The sound of the sea was louder that the leaves that rustled around her, louder than the voices in her head. Slut.  Bitch.  Freak.  Voices she couldn’t outrun.

About the Author

Jane Casey is one of a band of established adult authors who have now turned their pens, and laptops, to writing for young adults.  With four crime novels under her belt, featuring Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan, Casey has left her behind to write a beach story with a twist.

Summary

Jess Tennant lives with her mother in London.  Estranged from her father and her mother’s family, they only have each other - until the day her mum announces that they are off to visit her twin sister for an extended summer holiday in the sleepy seaside town of Port Sentinel.

When they arrive, Jess sets out to explore the local area only to be met with stares of confusion and shock from the residents.  She immediately feels uncomfortable and cannot understand why she should generate such reactions.  Only after meeting up with her cousins does Jess learn that she bears an uncanny resemblance to her cousin Freya who died a year ago after a cliff fall.

The more time Jess spends in Port Sentinel meeting up with those who were closest to Freya, the more she thinks that the verdict of suicide is the wrong one and she sets out to find the truth about Freya’s death.

Making new friends and enemies along the way Jess is embarking on a dangerous path to investigate what happened that summer.  Can she safely find out what happened to her cousin, or will Jess end up the same way?

**********

I love Jane Casey’s work so was eager to see how she would write for a different audience and I think she pulls it off with this book.  My only question was would a

teenage girl try to play detective in a strange town over the death of someone she had never even met, but having finished the book I think you can see how it would all work out that way.  Jess is an inquisitive individual and it is her nature to question those around her, therefore attempting to solve a suspicious death wouldn’t seem that strange, particularly of someone she was related to.  The characters and setting were believable, particularly the ‘cool’ girls who I instinctively took a dislike too, and I loved Fine Feathers - the owl charity shop that Jess gets coerced into working in, with all its designer cast-offs selling for pennies.

This is billed as the first Jess Tennant thriller so I am keen to read the follow-up to How to Fall, which I am sure will be as gripping.  I’d certainly recommend this book as it does keep you hanging on to the end to find out whether Jess will discover the truth about Freya.

Inspire Me with Jane Casey

To celebrate the forthcoming publication of How To Fall, the new crime novel for young adults, I am pleased to welcome Jane Casey onto the blog to tell us what inspired her to write this novel.

 

I usually write crime novels for adults - I’m just finishing my fifth - but I have an enduring love for YA fiction. I started out as a children’s books editor (not a bad Plan B for a writer, it has to be said) and I was lucky enough to work with great authors such as Meg Cabot and Alyson Noel on some amazing books. The idea to write a YA novel came around the time I should have been writing my second crime novel. I’ve never been able to resist a good story, either as a reader or a writer, and I got hopelessly sidetracked. That book didn’t quite make it to being finished - maybe I’ll get around to it one day. It led, however, to a very lovely editor at Random House Children’s Books suggesting I might write a crime novel for teens, which in turn became How To Fall.

How To Fall is mainly a mystery but also a love story. My heroine, Jess Tennant, is a new arrival in the sunny seaside town of Port Sentinel - but the town has a dark heart and many secrets to uncover. I wrote Jess as an alternative to the fainting heroines that were Bella Swan’s legacy in YA fiction and she’s pretty feisty. She has a lot in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, being blonde, opinionated and easily underestimated. Like Buffy, she’s addicted to wisecracks even when she should keep her mouth shut. Like Buffy, she has a strong moral sense. Like Buffy, she can’t help falling for what might be the worst possible guy for her. If you’ve never watched Buffy, seasons 1, 2 and 3 are pretty much essential viewing, despite the rubbish CGI when they were making each episode for about $12.50. There has never been a better TV show. About vampires and teenagers, anyway.

A few years ago I got completely addicted to One Tree Hill, despite the fact that it was preposterous. I don’t even like basketball. I do like evil fathers who pull strings to get their own way, and One Tree Hill had a great one of those. Also, cute boys. 

And speaking of which, Grant Gustin. I’ve often been asked who would play a particular character if they made films of my books. If How to Fall was ever filmed, I wouldn’t get a say in who played Jess or any of the other characters, and it takes approximately one million years to get a film made so he would be too old (and American), but when I imagine Will, he’s built along the lines of Grant Gustin. To find this image I had to look at literally hundreds of pictures of him. Had to. For ages. I won’t judge you if you find you have to do the same.

Don’t ask me why, but I am currently obsessed with owls. They, and their reproductive habits, play a major part* in How to Fall. This one was an eBay purchase and sits on my desk. The picture does not feature my desk, which was too untidy to be a backdrop but has altogether fewer fruit bowls on it.

*all right, a minor part

In many ways I haven’t grown out of my teenage taste in music. Give me an angsty pop song about heartbreak and I am happy. It’s not cool and I don’t care. I edge towards credibility with my love for Feist, Gemma Hayes and Martha Wainwright, but to be honest it’s Taylor Swift, One Direction and Take That all the way when I’m writing. I highly recommend the overwrought yodelling of Avril Lavigne, especially ‘Keep Holding On’. It’s a karaoke classic. 

Art is a big element in How to Fall and I couldn’t resist including a particularly lovely painting that hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. It was voted Ireland’s most popular painting recently, and you can see why. Called ‘The Meeting on the Turret Stairs’, painted by Frederick William Burton in 1864, it shows the final parting of Hellelil from her bodyguard, Hildebrand, and it’s a beauty. Hellelil, as a name, has been slow to catch on. I may try to revive it by giving it to a character. Then again, I may not.

Finally, Dirty Dancing, a film that really deserved a better title. I remember when it came out first (though I was FAR too young to go and see it in the cinema) and being fascinated by the poster - Jennifer Grey being lifted out of the water by Patrick Swayze. Like How to Fall it tells the story of a girl who learns to love and take risks and believes in doing the right thing, no matter what it costs her. I’ve seen the film so many times I think it’s woven into my DNA and every love story I write probably owes something to it. Sometimes falling in love is just the start of your problems, not the happy-ever-after ending you might expect - and that’s the kind of story I like to tell.

 Thanks for a fabulous post Jane!

How To Fall by Jane Casey will be published on the January 31st by Corgi.

To find out more about Jane:

 Author Place: http://authorsplace.co.uk/jane-casey/

Twitter: @janecaseyauthor