Author Archives: Kay Woodward

Creased or smooooooth?

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Kay Woodward

Confession time.

I have a thing about book spines. I don’t snap them, EVER. If anyone else does, I actually wince. Honest.

In Jane Airhead, would you believe that one of the characters thinks just like me…? Here, Charlotte is talking to her mum.

‘You’re an English teacher. You love metaphors and similes and past participles and … and … and syntax!’ she finished triumphantly. ‘You go ballistic if anyone breaks the spine of a book – even if doesn’t belong to you!’

‘Well … yes,’ agreed her mum, with a theatrical shudder. This was totally true. Rumour had it that she’d once whipped a book out of an unsuspecting pupil’s hands after they’d opened a paperback and – horror of horrors – wrenched back the covers so far that they touched. Mum insisted that the crack could be heard in London. Sixty miles away.

(Don’t tell anyone, but that’s me, that is. I’m the mum.)

Me, when I discover a creased spine.

I don’t mind if anyone else breaks the spines of their books, by the way. (Well, maybe a bit.) But if anyone breaks the spine of one of my books, well… Just DON’T try it, OK?

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Are you feeling festive yet?

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Kay Woodward

Because I am!

Actually, I’ve been feeling festive since 11th December, which is when I did a storytelling session at Somerset House in London. That’s where they have this HUGE ice rink (but just in the winter – don’t turn up in August and expect to do a triple Axel) and festive music and hot chocolate and the MASSIVE Tiffany Christmas tree.

See that chair on the left? That’s where I sat WITH A MICROPHONE. It is the first time in my life I’ve spoken into a mic. I felt a bit like Terry Wogan (but not Irish and not a man and quite a lot younger). Trying to ignore the sound of my own voice booming through the speakers behind me (and hoping that I didn’t sound TOO much like Alvin or his Chipmunks), I read excerpts from the Skate School series to the ice-skating fans who’d braved the cold. (Fabulous audience, btw. Top marks for smiling!)

Afterwards, I had a skate on Somerset House’s wonderful ice rink and WOW… Swooping around the ice after dark to the Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy with fairy lights twinkling all around was pure magic. AND I didn’t fall over. Result.

Merry Christmas to all at Girls Heart Books!

Are YOU feeling festive yet?!

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Posted on December 5, 2011 by Kay Woodward

Using a random-number generator (my mum on the phone, picking numbers without a clue what they were for), I have selected five lucky winners! Orli Vogt-Vincent, Shakira Saleem, Fatima Sheikh-Nur, Kulsuma Begum and Chloe Smith each win a copy of ICE PRINCESS – the first book in the Skate School series. Smashing Usborne will be sending out copies as soon as possible.

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Kay X

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How to be an Ice Princess

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Kay Woodward

I’d love to be an ice-skating star. One who thinks nothing of knocking out a few triple Axels before breakfast. One who glides around the ice, swooping and whirling and jumping and spinning. One who wears A LOT of sequins.

An ice princess.

Here’s Kim Yu-Na. Isn’t she fabulous? She won gold at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010. She’s so good, she has a spin named after her.

I can ice-skate, a bit. I can go in a straight line AND, get this, I can turn corners! (It’s great. Try it.)

But when I was asked to write a fiction series about ice-skating, either my fabulous main character Frankie would have to stick to doing endless circuits of the rink – like me – or I’d have to find out a lot more about the really whizzy skating moves that make spectators go, ‘WOW!’ I went for WOW.

I did a LOT of research. I swotted up on technical know-how by reading about the different jumps and spins and then I watched each move on YouTube (so many times you just wouldn’t believe) muttering things like, ‘clockwise, toe tap, spin, ooh!’ I also watched pretty much all of the last Winter Olympics. And yes, I did go ice-skating too, to remember the feel of the ice and the sound of the blades and the chill of the air. Then at last I got on with writing. And when I’d finished, those NICE people at NISA checked everything to make sure my skaters were spinning the right way and landing on the right feet. Or the left feet. Or whichever feet they were supposed to be landing on, anyway.

So even though I’m not an ice princess in real life, I actually got to live the dream. Because as I was writing, I dreamed that it was actually me doing the skating and wearing the sequins (I LOVED designing Frankie’s outfits) and now everything is there on the pages of four (very sparkly) books.

What fab things would YOU like to write about?

PS On Saturday 10th December at 3.15pm, I’m lucky enough to be reading excerpts from the Skate School series at Somerset House in London. It’s free! Do pop along to say hello.

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Pulling daft faces

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Kay Woodward

I have done an actual, true-life vlog about getting into character when I write.

If you dare watch it, you will discover the following things:

a) I do not talk like anyone from upstairs at Downton Abbey;

b) I say ‘erm’ a lot;

c) I can grimace like a cartoon dog;

d) I don’t look QUITE as bizarre as the video still below.

So, if you can put up with all that… lights, camera, ACTION.

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That back-to-school feeling

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Kay Woodward

Hands up who gets unfeasibly excited around the beginning of September? I do. Every year. When I used to go to school I was unbearable. And even though it’s, erm, a few years since I went to school, I STILL have the urge to do the following things at this time of year:

Brand new pencils. Lovely.

1. Buy a new pencil case and fill it with STUFF: 2H pencils (who wants boring old HB?); a geometry set (including one of those twin-point compasses that are weirdly pointless); a perspex ruler (blue); a new pen to lose on the first day; and a rubber to scribble all over by the second day, and then lose.

Mine were beige. Cool, eh?

2. Shop for new school shoes. We didn’t have to wear black shoes at my school and the only pair I can remember owning looked like this.

3. Coo over my new pad of A4 paper (narrow-feint).

4. Point out to anyone who will listen that the shops putting their BACK TO SCHOOL signs up in June is frankly ridiculous because everyone knows that the schools go back in September.

Magical boarding school

5. Bemoan the fact that I didn’t go to Trebizon. (You have NO IDEA how thrilled I was to write the Skate School series. I went to boarding school – sort of – at last!)

6. Sigh wistfully about school uniforms. I REALLY wanted to wear one. It would have stopped me looking like such a fashion wasteland. (It would have been navy blue.)

ANYWAY, back to today, when I actually have the back-to-school feeling for real because I AM going to school. Well, technically, the school gates. It’s my little girl’s VERY FIRST DAY. She doesn’t have 2H pencils or boots that fashion forgot and definitely not pointy compasses because she’s only four and that would be dangerous, but she does have a school uniform, which I bought in (ahem) June. It’s good to be prepared, don’t you think? ;-)

Do YOU have that back-to-school feeling?

Now that's what I call school shoes.

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Just seventeen

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Kay Woodward

You know when you volunteer for something and then you wish you hadn’t because when it comes to doing it you are SO SCARED THAT YOU ARE TREMBLING WITH FEAR? I did that last week.

VERY brave.

Except it wasn’t anything fabulously daring like, say, abseiling down the side of Guy’s Hospital like my friend Bridget (who raised a stack of money for charity). Here she is, being VERY brave.

All I did was read bedtime stories at a festival to a few children. Actually, seventeen children. That’s SEVENTEEN. But if you have ever read picture books to seventeen children, you will know how scary it is. (Unless you are a very brave actor type. Or Mr Tumble.)

I sat down in an actual true-life yurt – and very nice it was too – and everyone stared at me. Silently. With eyes as big as saucers*. Waiting. Watching. (It was at this point that I would have jumped at the chance to abseil down Guy’s Hospital instead.) I took a deeeeeeeep breath.

Not really that brave at all. Quite a lot of fun, actually.

I’d already read this book to my little girl about a bazillion times, so I knew the words and off I went, trying to smile and not tremble. And it was by page four that I realised no one was looking at me. I could have been wearing a very tall hat and a long ginger plait for all they cared. All eyes were clamped on to the picture book. And they were loving it. All seventeen of them. So I figured that I might as well stop trembling and enjoy it too.

Which book have you totally loved this summer?

*More like dinner plates, tbh.

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Posted on July 29, 2011 by Kay Woodward

WUTHERING HEARTS WINNERS!

The first name pulled out of the virtual hat (which actually involved a VERY whizzy random-number generator), who wins a copy of Wuthering Hearts AND a box of Yorkshire teabags to complete the Northern-windy-moor-teen-romance-and-a-cuppa experience was … Amy-Anne Williams!

The next four names, who win a copy of Wuthering Hearts were Laura Harrison, Leah Auty, Nikki Clark and Dora Siddle.

Congratulations to all of the winners!

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Noooooo!

Posted on July 16, 2011 by Kay Woodward

A couple of months ago, while I was trying to finish writing a book, my husband (let’s call him Woody – everyone else does) decided that he would put a couple of nails into some VERY SQUEAKY floorboards, to make them stop squeaking. So he plugged in his drill, brrrrrrr’d through the wood and almost immediately cried, ‘Noooooo!’ Which I think you’ll agree is NOT the same as, ‘Goodness, I did a marvellous job there.’ I peeped out of my office to see something like this. On the landing.

So I shouted, ‘Noooooo!’ too.

And then we both ran up and down the stairs like maniacs turning the water and the electricity off and draining the central heating system, which meant firing water out of the front door with a hosepipe. (Another fountain.)

Next, we called the plumber to repair the pipe that Woody had drilled through. But to get to the pipe, we had to take up the floorboards on the landing, which also meant taking up the bathroom floor. And because the toilet and sink were sitting on top of the floor, they had to be ripped out too. And flung in the garden.

This is our bathroom. Outside.

This was NOT funny then. But now, it’s HILARIOUS.

Things going wrong can sometimes be much more exciting than things going right. Imagine if Woody had just repaired the floorboard. (Yawn.) So the next time something stupid happens, I’m really going to try to yell, ‘YES!’ and write it down. (After I’ve spat a few feathers, obviously.)

Has anything really silly happened to you that you’d love to put in a book…?

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Being the bad guy

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Kay Woodward

Once upon a time our school put on a play. Actually, it was a fairy tale. The best fairy tale of them all.

Cinderella.

I so wanted to play the lead, even if it did mean that I would have to kiss a boy on stage. Eww. So I found my classic Ladybird edition of Cinderella and did some detailed research. (I read it three times and looked at the pictures.) Then I went to the auditions, ready to wow them with my acting skills.

Cinderella

‘Hmm,’ said the teachers, looking me up and down. ‘Feet too big for glass slippers. And Prince Charming will need stepladders to look her in the eye.’

So they made me an ugly sister. (They also made me sing and dance on stage in orange flares, but let’s not go into that here.)

Pfft.

A really ugly sister

But actually, despite the make-up and the warts and the fact that everyone was booing me, I soon found out that Cinderella wasn’t the only one having a ball. Because playing a bad guy is FABULOUS.

Writing about them is cool too. Really, truly, honestly. Scarlett in the Skate School series is Mean with a capital M. She’s rude, outrageous and does the most terrible things. I love her to bits.

And there’s the Wicked Witch of the West, the Sheriff of Nottingham, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and countless others. Bad guys make the good guys look better. They get all the best lines. But the best thing about them is that you can enjoy their company for a bit, then close a book or turn off the telly or step off the stage like I did and say, ‘See you. Wouldn’t want to be you.’

Who’s your favourite bad guy?

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