STRANDED IS OUT NOW IN GERMANY!

You can order your copy from:

Amazon
Hugendubel
Thalia

Please note: these books are currently only available in GERMAN.
Published by Fischer FJB, Germany.
For rights enquires in all other languages, click here.

Don't get stranded on dry land. That's rule number one.

Shifter Mellie knows this better than anyone. Disgraced by her mother’s decision to strand herself, she’s desperate to prove that treason doesn’t run in the family. So when a surprise attack traps her on the surface, she must find a way to survive the night and return home.

But come daybreak, Mellie realises a terrible truth: she has lost the power to shift. Stuck in her human skin, Mellie is forced to seek refuge with Caleb, the land-dweller who saved her life. Under his watchful eye she must navigate the perils of the surface and search for a way to restore her abilities – all while keeping him from discovering who, and what, she really is.

Instead, she unearths a conspiracy that threatens the very existence of her world, and a life-altering secret that runs even deeper than the lake…

*

To say this book has had an unorthodox journey to publication would be understating things a little, so for those of you wondering why a book written in English will be hitting bookstores in Germany, I present:

TO GERMANY AND BACK AGAIN: A VERY UNUSUAL PUBLISHING STORY

At the beginning of 2015 I was about ready to call it quits on this whole writing thing. I’d just received some pretty damning feedback on my first novel, which — like many other first novels — turned out to be a cliché ridden trash fire. And that broke my heart, you know? Not only because it was the book I’d dreamt about writing since I was sixteen, but because I’d actually convinced myself it was a great book. I’d already mentally spent the advance and cast the movie. I’d already congratulated myself on being a writing prodigy.

Pride really does come before the fall, folks. And that fall hurts.

I had zero plans of writing another book after that. Hell, I never imagined myself as an author in the first place; it was only ever about that first book for me. One and done. Make my millions then retire to my own private island somewhere warm and free of spiders. So when that first book crashed and burned, I really thought I was finished.

Then came the prompt.
A writing prompt I never went looking for.
I don’t even remember how I stumbled across it, to be honest, but I do remember the words: Write a first line with a hook.

I couldn’t tell you what it was about those words that brought an entire lake of mermaids to life, but out of nowhere, the opening line for their story struck me: Don’t get stranded on dry land; that’s rule number one.

Four years and a million re-writes later, that’s still the opening line to STRANDED, the first book in my mermaid duology, and the first book I ever sold.

But see, STRANDED was never supposed to sell; it wasn’t even supposed to be any good, which is why I never bothered taking the market’s temperature for mermaid stories. This was the book that was going to teach me how to write a good book. I was hoping to achieve ‘readable’ with it. I would have settled for ‘this story probably won’t make your eyes bleed’. And in order to realise that goal, I immersed myself in the writing world. Forums, articles, writing groups, podcasts… if it existed I studied it. I lived, breathed and bled writing advice and critiques for two years straight, and when I surfaced at the other end, I had written a book that — gasp — people actually liked.

Trust me, I was just as surprised as you are.

STRANDED was my way of fixing all those big picture problems that plagued my first novel. I didn’t go too epic; I didn’t overreach or fall back on every cliché in the book. I focused on character and plot and emotion. I played to my strengths and created a story that was fun and whimsical and filled with all those things that I love to read about (banter, anyone? And ships! God, I do love me a good ship.)

So though STRANDED is a small book with a small cast, it has a big heart. And by some miracle (okay, no miracles were involved here, just a lot of hard work and learning and a little luck) that manuscript landed me an agent.

Three rounds of edits later, in February 2017, STRANDED went on submission.

Now, for those of you not familiar with children’s publishing, it moves slow. Like, microwave minute slow. So it was May by the time my hook-y first line got its first bite. From Germany.

How the hell did that happen, you ask? Well, in addition to sending STRANDED out to editors in the UK, my agent had sent the manuscript to ILA, an agency that specialises in foreign rights deals, and they’d also started shopping the book around.

Needless to say, that offer sent my hopes soaring. The plan was to leverage it into a home deal — and I won’t lie, mentally I was already celebrating the sale — but a couple of months on, the only thing we were hearing from English publishers was: we love this book, but there’s no market for mermaids in YA. British teens, it seems, don’t have much of a taste for fish. Not even magical ones.

Meanwhile, in Germany, that first offer had turned into a three-house auction. That’s how drastic the difference between the two markets was.

We ended up accepting a two-book deal from Fischer FJB at the beginning of June. We were still hoping to land a home deal, of course, but though we came very, very close on more than one occasion (oh the pain of acquisition meetings!) we eventually had to move ahead without one.

This left us in a bit of a grey area.

See, translation rights are usually sold after a home deal is in place, so all the foreign publisher needs to do is translate the manuscript, which will have already been edited and proofed. Mine wasn’t. And this was unusual enough that we weren’t entirely sure what this meant for STRANDED.

But thankfully, the acquiring editor at Fischer, Lexa, was happy to work with me the way she would any of her German authors and take the book through editorial. And let me tell you, the moment I opened her edit letter I knew that STRANDED had found the perfect home, because right from her first email I could tell that Lexa really got this book. Her edits didn’t just make STRANDED better; they also opened up a wealth of new possibilities for book two, which she played a huge part in shaping.

Together, we’ve made STRANDED into a duology that I’m incredibly proud of.

So yeah, this book has had an unconventional journey to publication, but those of you who know me will know that unconventional is pretty much my only speed.

I still hope to secure an English release for STRANDED one day, maybe once the market changes, or once I’ve sold a different book. But for now, I’m just thrilled this novel found the home it deserved. Even if that home wasn’t the one I’d originally imagined.