The Novel

Haven’t posted for a few weeks – sorry! I’ve been flat out with my novel. The first draft is finished – hooray – and I’ve nearly finished revising and tightening it ready to send off for a formal assessment. Then there’ll be more revising and tightening and rewriting – not too much rewriting, I hope! – before pitching it to a publisher. That’s when I’ll ask you all to start crossing your fingers and toes and anything else you can think of!

In the meantime, here are a few snippets to give you a taste —

When Ish goes looking for a lost dog, he ends up searching for his father’s love, and finds more than he expected along the way. A story about a boy, a ghost, adventure and acceptance.

The sky looks like my sister’s doona cover – black, dotted with stars and a misty moon in the middle. The tops of the gum trees, bending in the breeze, are casting scary shadows on the tombstones around me. It’s as if I’m watching giant grey ghosts creeping out of their graves, one by one.
*
Two sets of footsteps came closer to the box. I was trapped. Any moment now I was going to get sprung and there was nothing I could do. I closed my eyes and held my breath. Then I sneezed.
*
I was in the middle of pulling faces at my reflection, when the principal suddenly turned around – which was really unfortunate timing because, at that moment, I had my tongue out, my eyes crossed and my two thumbs up my nose.
*
Sweat trickled down the back of my neck and my hands felt clammy and shaky. The whispering seemed to be getting louder, and echoed up and down the sides of the well, filling my head with a kind of white noise – like you hear when the radio’s not quite on the station. I wanted to put my hands over my ears to stop it. And I wanted to turn and look. It was the ghost. Just like in the cemetery. It had to be. Everything was the same – the whispering, the heat —
*
I gasped. The spider lurched forwards. I sprang back, and hit my head on a paint tin, dropping the torch. The light went out and I felt around frantically, hoping it hadn’t fallen down beside the mattress. I willed myself to stop thinking that in the dark, I might pick up the spider instead of the torch.
*
Dad’s voice rang in my ears. What are you doing here? It wasn’t so much the words he said, but how he said it. The tone in his voice. As if every word had an icicle hanging off it.

One problem. The title. There isn’t one. Well, there sort of is. One of the grade six children at my school suggested Who Nicked the Dog? I like it, but Hannah, my trusty nearly fourteen-year-old editor daughter is not sure. What do you think? Please vote on the NEW survey and tell me. Add a comment if you can think of an alternative.( The boy's name is Ish, the dog Lucky and the book's target audience is around 11- 14 year olds.)

I’m open to suggestions…